Oar's face brightened. "I will be your partner? Your real partner?"
I closed my eyes against a stab of heartache. Oh God, Yarrun! I thought. But he would be the first to tell me, Let go, let go. "Yes," I said, "you'll be my new partner… if you want to be."
She leapt forward and seized me in a bear hug so fierce it had a serious potential for cracking my ribs. I might have been squeezed to a pulp if a sudden thought hadn't struck her. Releasing her grip, she stepped back a pace and asked, "Now that I am an Explorer, do I have to make myself ugly?"
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
Part XI
TRAVEL
Weeds Transformed
Riding back to the beach in Oar's glass coffin was more pleasant than my previous trip. This time there was a hint of brownish green light, dimmed by fathoms of water but enough to show where the boat was going. I lay on my stomach and looked through the forward wall, watching for fish crossing the bow. There were several collisions on the trip — smallmouth bass who glanced off and scuttled away in terror — but the thumps of impact weren't so loud when I knew they were coming.
The boat opened up as soon as it landed, and I hurried to unload the equipment I'd been lying on: my pack, the Bumbler, and Jelca's food synthesizer. The last was a heavy brute — it took all my strength to wrestle it out of the boat, even using the carrying straps that I'd attached to it. If I carried the machine myself, I'd only manage a few klicks a day before dropping from exhaustion. Oar, however, claimed to have no trouble hauling such a weight. When her ancestors engineered themselves transparent and immortal, they'd obviously thrown in the strength of gorillas as a bonus.
And Oar felt inferior to me?
After two minutes, the boat closed itself and slipped back into the lake, returning underwater to pick up Oar. In the meantime, I busied myself testing the food synthesizer. If it didn't work, we'd still press on with our trip — I could shoot game with my stunner, or forage for nuts and berries — but spending time as hunter-gatherers would reduce the distance we could travel in a day, and increase our chance of being caught by winter. Added to that, I preferred not to eat local flora and fauna. Everything might look like Earth species, but they still could turn out poisonous. Even if they were fully terrestrial, that was no guarantee of safety. What if I cooked a rabbit for supper and later found it had rabies?
Since the synthesizer was solar-powered, I set it in the sun and loaded the hopper with weeds from the face of the bluffs. Grinders whirred immediately, turning the plants to puree: a good sign. There was no way to guess how long the machine needed to do its job, breaking the weeds into basic aminos, then reassembling the components into edible blobs: maybe five minutes, maybe several hours. In the meantime, the day was fresh, and placidly warm outside the shadow of the bluffs. I took off my top to air after wearing it four days straight… or perhaps just to feel the autumn sun on my skin.
For a few minutes, I had the planet to myself.
Alone
I had never been alone before… not in this specific way. Often I had been one of only two sentient creatures on a planet — the other being Yarrun, of course. But a planet-down mission was different, with goals to accomplish, checklists to work through, and a shipload of Vac personnel listening to your transmissions. Even as a little girl, I never felt truly alone. I was constantly accompanied by responsibility: the schoolwork heaped upon potential Explorers from the age of three, plus the chores I had to do on the farm. Now and then, our family took vacations; now and then, I played hooky or ran off to sulk in "secret hiding places" my parents likely knew from their own childhoods. But wherever I went, I was shadowed by what was expected of me. You don't free yourself from duty by running away. That only increases the weight on your shoulders.
Now, I was free — forcibly cut loose. If I stayed on this beach forever, what difference would it make? How would anything change? Jelca wasn't expecting me. He might not even be glad to see me: just some kid who made a spectacle of herself, mooning after him at the Academy.
Ullis would be happy if I showed up — we got along well as roommates. Even so, I remembered one night in the dorm, when she complained after hours of study, "Who cares about zoology, Festina? Cataloguing animals is as pointless as stamp collecting. There's only one classification system that interests me: things that can kill and things that can't." Even as Ullis hugged and welcomed me, she might be thinking, A zoology specialist… why couldn't it be someone with useful skills?
Why force myself on them? It might be better just to lie in the sun. I could keep Oar company, and give her English lessons till she felt brave enough to use a contraction.
And then what, Festina? Help clear fields to prove you're both civilized? Play "bed games" with her out of sheer boredom? Endure it as long as you can, then go lie down with her ancestors? That would be a vicious way to die: withering up with radiation sickness, while the glass folk around you fed on the rays.
"I'm an Explorer," I said aloud. The words had no portentous echo — they were just words, spoken as waves lapped the shore and bushes rustled in the breeze.
I touched my cheek. "I'm an Explorer," I repeated.
As a duty, it was stupid; but as an open opportunity…
Some maudlin urge made me want to address a speech to Yarrun — an apology and a promise. But the only phrases in my mind were too banal to voice.
The sun continued to beam warmly on my skin. A gull launched itself from the top of the bluffs and I watched it soar into the cloudless sky.
Oar's Axe
Ten minutes later, Oar's boat slid onto the sand. She stepped out, and with rehearsed casualness, swung a gloss-silver axe onto her shoulder. It looked deadly heavy, but not metallic — perhaps plastic, perhaps ceramic. Whatever it was, I'd bet my favorite egg the blade was sharp enough to shave a balloon; a culture that could make a see-through woman could certainly produce a monofoil cutting edge.
"On our trip," Oar announced, "we should clear trees now and then. Then we can tell the Explorers we traveled in a civilized way."
"Let me guess," I said. "When Jelca taught you our language, he never explained the word 'ecology.' "
Oar Food
Before I could lecture Oar on environmentalism, the food synthesizer gave a subdued chirp. I looked at my watch: eighteen minutes since I pressed the machine's ON button. Jelca might be lax on conservation, but he made admirably efficient gadgets.
When I opened the drawer at the bottom of the synthesizer, it contained two dozen blobs of jelly, each the size of my thumb. They came in several shades: light pink, frost green, and dull brown, with a few clear colorless ones too. I lifted a pink blob and smelled it; the fragrance was generically fruity, like cheap candy that simply tastes red.
"What are those, Festina?" Oar asked.
"Food."
Her nose wrinkled skeptically. "Explorer food?"
"And Oar food."
During my three days of breakdown, Oar had fetched us both food from the big village synthesizer, so I knew what she usually ate. Most dishes had the shape of common terrestrial foods — noodles, wafers, soups — but of course, each morsel looked like glass. The jellylike output from Jelca's synthesizer was at least translucent; but I had to admit it didn't resemble Oar's normal cuisine.