Then the rain came again, brushing its way up the fjord in tall sheets, and by that interposing sweep extinguished-if not the fading embers themselves-the projected image of that fire in her eyes.
21 A Short Walk
“But what’s he like?”
“Oh… Attractive, I suppose.”
“What? Tallish, darkish, handsomish? Hunkish?”
“All of the above. Well, maybe not hunkish… But that’s not it; it’s his… manner. When you hear him, it sounds like something between philosophy and politics, and even if you don’t agree with what he’s saying you can’t help being impressed by the way he says it. It’s as though he knows even more than he’s saying, knows everything, but still really needs your approval, your agreement for it to be true, and you just can’t help but give it. You feel flattered, privileged… seduced.
“It looked like there was a big but vague organisation there; something that had grown up organically around him. And even though most of the people I saw were young, there were plenty of older people there too, and I got the impression he was talking to the establishment on the Ghost; maybe beyond. But he was just an amazing person.”
“Obviously,” Zefla said, smiling at her as they walked.
It was cold. The weather had turned just before dawn, the heavy rain clouds blowing away before a chill, clear sky that had shed moonlight and sparse junklight on the forested mountains of the fjord, coating them in silent silver. Then Thrial had risen, casting a rich glow like pink gold down the fjord.
After a miserably small breakfast which had left them all hungry, and with only a quarter of a foodslab left each, Miz and Dloan had decided to make a serious effort to kill something edible for lunch. The two men had set off uphill when they broke camp that morning, hoping to find game in the higher forest.
Sharrow and Zefla walked through patches of frost and puddles skinned with brittle crusts of thin, glass-clear ice. Their breath smoked in the air.
Sharrow felt spacey and vague and slightly numb; she kept shivering, even though she didn’t really feel cold. She put it down to lack of food. She felt ashamed at how pampered she had become; she hadn’t realised how much simple things like toilet paper and a toothbrush meant to her, and felt demeaned that their absence could assume such significance.
Her hand throbbed dully inside her glove; she had taken some painkillers. She hadn’t changed the plaster that morning because the hand had swelled up during the night and it hurt too much when she’d tried taking the glove off. She’d decided just to let it be; perhaps it would get better of its own accord.
“Probably end up as one of those sordid cult leaders,” Zefla said after a while as they plodded into a bare area of the forest where a fire had left thousands of tree trunks standing upright and bare, black posts already surrounded by slender young trees forcing their way towards the sky around them. “You know, pedalling some weird concoction of re-tread gibberish and living in a palace while their. followers sleep shifts and work the streets and give you this big flatline smile when you tell them where to stuff their tracts.”
“No,” Sharrow said, shaking her head (and felt dizzy when she did that, and stumbled on a blackened branch crusted with white). “No, I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s what’s going to happen to this guy, not at all.”
Zefla looked at Sharrow as they walked, an expression of concern on her face. “You all right?” she asked.
“Hungry!” Sharrow laughed. She nodded to herself, breathing deeply in the chill air and staring up at the blue expanse above. “How about you?”
“Never better,” Zefla said, scratching through her gathered-up hair to her itchy scalp. “Could use a shower, though.” She took another look at Sharrow as she stumbled again. “Maybe we’ll take another rest soon.”
“Yes,” Sharrow said, shaking her head briefly as though trying to clear it. “Why not?”
They tramped amongst the fresh young trees and the burned dead.
Sharrow and Zefla stopped in a small clearing near the shore to eat the last of their food, then waited for Miz and Dloan to rejoin them. Sharrow continued to deny there was anything wrong with her, then fell fast asleep, propped against a tree trunk. Zefla was worried; she thought Sharrow looked ill. Her grey, drawn face twitched as Zefla watched, and her lips worked.
Zefla looked up at the mountain slopes. She was surprised they hadn’t heard any shots. She left Sharrow to sleep and went down to the shingle beach. She left her little back-pack there, so that Miz and Dloan wouldn’t walk past them. Then she went back to sit with Sharrow.
The men arrived an hour later. They were both limping; Dloan from the bullet wound he’d received the night Cenuij had died, Miz from the combination of hard boots and soft feet.
They were empty-handed. Zefla thought they had brought something, but it was only the back-pack she’d left on the shingle. They had shot at a few birds with their laser pistols and killed one, but it had been crawling with parasites when they’d picked it up and they hadn’t thought it was worth eating. They still hadn’t seen any large animals, though they had heard impressive bellowing noises from still further upslope.
“Fish,” Miz said, as he and Dloan tore into the last of their foodslabs and Sharrow looked sleepily at them, frowning and rubbing her left glove. “We’ll do some fishing.” He grinned at the others. “Fish; we’ll eat fish tonight.” He patted the pocket of his fancy hunting jacket that held the fishing gear.
They heard what sounded like gunfire just as they were setting off again; a distance-dulled crackle that seemed to come from further down the fjord in the direction they were heading.
They ran to the shore and stood there, gazing down the fjord.
“Shit,” Miz said. “Wonder what that means?”
Nobody suggested anything.
They had been walking for about an hour when they saw Feril jogging towards them through the trees.
“Welcome back,” Zefla said. Sharrow just stood there, smiling at the android.
“Thank you,” Feril said. It still had the dials and the laser they had given it; it presented both to Zefla.
“So?” Miz asked it.
“I have been to the end of the fjord,” the android began.
“Let’s walk and listen at the same time, eh?” Zefla said.
They hiked on; Feril walked backwards in front of them without once putting a foot wrong, which was an unsettling but also rather impressive sight.
“The ground between here and the end of the fjord,” it told them, “is similar to that you have already traversed. There are two sizeable streams to be crossed, one of which has a fallen tree across it and so is quite easy, the second of which is more difficult and has to be waded. There is a place where one must either cross a very exposed beach only a kilometre or so from a point on the far side, or make a four or five kilometre detour round some cliffs.”
“What did you do?” Zefla asked.
“On my outward journey,” Feril told her. “I crossed the beach without incident; on my return I again started to cross the beach. But then I was fired upon.” Its upper body did a quarter turn to show a bullet graze on one shoulder. It kept on walking. “I returned fire with the laser pistol but then decided that my position was too exposed, and entered the water. I completed that part of the journey crawling along just under the ford’s surface.”
Zefla smiled. Miz shook his head. Dloan looked vaguely impressed. Sharrow just blinked and said, “Hmm.”
“Where is this beach?” Dloan asked.
“About ten kilometres from here.”
Dloan nodded. “We heard the gunfire.”
“So they’re that much further ahead?” Zefla said.
“I believe only a sniper has been left on the point opposite the beach,” Feril said. “I think I saw the main body of the Solipsists earlier, about another three kilometres further down the fjord, ferrying themselves across the mouth of a side-fjord in an inflatable boat. I attempted to fire on the boat, but the range was approximately four kilometres and I was not able to observe any effect.”