«I seem to remember,» said Ooma, «that as we come near to the city there are fruit trees and bushes. I think there will be no food before that.» She yawned and stretched and bent quickly to kiss his now-shrunken organ. «I suppose you are right. We had better get on.»
Blade was not listening. His ears, as near to perfect as a man's could be, caught a faint sound in the undergrowth about them. He said nothing, but stared over Ooma's head at the spot whence the sound came.
He was never sure, never positive beyond a doubt that he had seen and heard what he thought he had. Not even when, back in Home Dimension, Lord L taped Blade's automatic memory and played it back to him.
The sound was a faint hissing. The sight, if indeed it was there at all, was that of a brilliantly colored snake, long and sinuous and diamond-backed, slithering away into the greenery. Blade shook his head, blinked, and when he looked again the thing was gone. Or had it ever been?
Richard Blade and Ooma began the trek down the valley, walking hand in hand and as naked as when they came into the world. Of his weapons Blade had only the little stone knife left, and this he carried in his hand. Ooma assured him that in this wasteland there was no danger, not until they reached the city or encountered a Jedd scouting party. Then the peril might begin again. She did not know. She did not know how Blade would be received by her people.
Blade had his own ideas about that.
They came at last to a wild orchard where trees bore an apple-like fruit as large as watermelons. He slashed one open and they devoured it eagerly, then another. The inner flesh was a soft and creamy pulp, reminding Blade of durian, the prickly-rind fruit he had eaten in Malaysia, yet without the bad odor. They both ate until their stomachs bulged.
Now there were clear streams of water tumbling into the valley from both sides, noisy falls that spilled ice cold water, and beside one of these, having drunk their fill, they fell asleep in each others arms.
Blade was first to awaken and he noticed the smell immediately. During their slumber a breeze had set through the valley and it carried to him, now, clouds of dirty gray smoke and the odor — of burning flesh? Human or animal?
Ooma was still sleeping peacefully and he did not disturb her. He felt a tenderness for the girl as he gazed at her, and ignored for the moment the smoke and the smell — knowing that both were a harbinger of trouble ahead and the end of this brief peace. She was lying curled up, her knees drawn up under her chin and her cheek cushioned on her two hands. In her thick, long hair were still the two wooden combs she had made. He smoothed her hair and she stirred and murmured something in her dreams. Ooma was, he thought watching her now in this caught moment of time, as lovely as any of the women he had ever known back in Home Dimension. Or, for that matter, in any Dimension X. And he had known many.
Brief memories, misty and fragmentary, drifted through his mind like a cleaner smoke than that now encompassing him. Taleen — Lali — Zulekia. Had he really known them all, made love to them all, left them all forever? Had they ever been anything but dreams, computer-induced fantasies?
Ooma smiled in her sleep. Blade in turn smiled and continued to stroke her hair. Renewed tenderness surged through him. In what dreamland did she wander? Through what maze and in what personal dimension? Through what reality was she struggling at the moment?
He felt the beginning of pain and rubbed a spot on his forehead just between his eyes. Reality — who could say what it was? Not even the person who experienced it and—
Pain sprang at him like a tiger. His head was filled with white-hot sparks and expanding gases. Blade moaned and leaned forward, then fell over on his side. Lord L and the computer were reaching, searching, had found him. His last thought, as darkness swirled in with a rocket roaring, was that of resentment. Not yet. He was not yet ready to return.
A splash of icy water in his face brought him awake. Ooma was haunched down beside him, peering at him anxiously. She had made a gourd of one of the huge fruits and had carried water from a nearby spring. It was still half full.
«Blade? Blade master — do you live?» She raised the half gourd and was about to drench him again. Blade rolled away and sat up, sputtering.
«I am all right, Ooma. I merely slept, girl.» He tried to carry it off with a grin. «Am I so dirty, then, so unclean that you must bathe me while I sleep?»
She put down the dipper and regarded him with narrowed eyes in which there lurked both suspicion and concern. «You were talking, Blade. Talking and screaming and crying in your sleep. A most strange sleep, I think. I was very frightened. It was as — as if your body remained here while your soul had gone far away. As if you had left me and would never return. I was,» she repeated, «very frightened. I would not have you leave me, Blade. Ever.»
He felt a twinge at the dog-like devotion in her dark eyes. He pulled her down beside him and held her tight. No use trying to explain the truth to Ooma, no use at all. Matters must take their course, as always. But the computer had almost had him that time, had nearly taken him back to Home Dimension. Lord Leighton was searching for him with a vengeance. Why was he so loath to go? Blade could not answer that.
They made love, slowly and with great pleasure, and not until it was over and they had caught their breath did Blade mention the stinking smoke that by now was clogging the valley and hanging over them in a greasy brown-and-gray pall.
«They are burning corpses.» Ooma explained at once. «Or so I think. In my life I have never seen it done, but I have heard the old people speak of it. It is like the Yellow Death, come again to plague the Jedds. It is said to appear once in the lifetime of every man, if he lives a true and normal span.»
Blade listened carefully, silently, prompting her only when she faltered in the tale. She did not seem unduly concerned, and this he understood. Ooma was young and had never seen the Yellow Death, and so to her it meant little. Blade felt a bit differently — his prime mission was to survive and to return to Home Dimension with a report. This expedition, into a dimension so like his own, with the promise of vast treasure to be teleported one day — was especially important. Plague could kill him as surely as a knife or spear or sword.
Yet go into it he must. He and Ooma resumed their journey. She had never seen a victim of the Yellow Death, but could only tell him what she had heard. Blade, listening intently, could not escape the parallelism. He had read it all before in his history books.
The Yellow Death came suddenly and without warning. None knew whence it came and no Jedd was safe. First there were blinding headaches and a rash, then buboes — inflammations — in the armpits and groin, then bleeding from the nose and ears. All this was accompanied by a heavy jaundice that turned the victim a deep yellow color. Then death. Death always to manic laughter.
This last shook even Blade. He questioned her closely on it as they trekked deeper and deeper into the smoke.
Ooma, trotting along beside him and clinging to his arm, tried to answer all his questions. «Some call it the Laughing Death,» she said, «but most call it the Yellow Death because that is how the elders have always called it. But it is true, or so I suppose, that all begin to laugh when death is near. They cannot stop laughing, nor can anyone else stop them.»