“I’ve seen enough of ’em, back in the Pool. Saph’s a classic case.”
It was the first time that Sig had hinted at his own background, but Winnie didn’t pursue it. She said, “That’s going to make things even harder. There’s no way she’ll get snap on Solferino when her supply runs out.”
“It’s not just snap, it’s triple-snap,” Josh said. It was Sig’s turn to give him a startled glance.
“Worse yet, then. She’ll need lots of help.” Winnie nodded. “All right. That’s what I wanted to say to you. Keep your eyes open, and be ready to help the others. If anything happens to me, be even more careful.”
“What sort of thing?” Josh asked.
“If I knew that, it wouldn’t happen. Carry on. Do your exploring.”
Dismissed, Josh turned to climb the valley slope that led to the ridge. He wanted time alone to think, but apparently he wasn’t going to get it. Sig was heading in the same direction.
“What was all that about?” Sig asked, as they ducked side by side into and under the chest-high canopy of leaves.
“Beats me.” Josh wondered how they were going to walk. You could travel crouched over, with the leaves touching the top of your head, but it wouldn’t be easy. And something might be clinging to the underside of the leaves—worms, slugs, caterpillars, he didn’t know what. He didn’t even know if any of those forms existed on Solferino. But the thought was enough for him to bend over and shuffle up the hill sideways like an uncomfortable crab, looking from forest floor to forest canopy alternately with every step.
“Seems like Winnie Carlson is scared,” he said. “She knows something we don’t know.”
“Yeah,” Sig grunted. He was bent over too. “Maybe this planet isn’t as safe as Gage and Brewster make out. I don’t see how they can know what’s here, when no one has explored more than a little bit of the place.”
It was even harder work for Sig. Being taller, he had to bend more. After three uncomfortable minutes, with no evidence that the top of the ridge was anywhere near, they paused for a breather.
“How did you know that Saph’s on triple-snap?” Sig asked.
“I saw her doing it. She didn’t try to hide, didn’t act as though she cared. She seemed to be looking for trouble.”
“Not the only one, is she?” Sig stretched upright, poking his head up through a gap in the leaves to take a rest from his doubled-over stance. His disembodied voice came back down to Josh. “You might as well know that when Rick and Hag get you on your own, they plan to beat the crap out of you.”
“What do they say that I did?”
“They don’t. Not to me, at any rate. I haven’t asked, and I don’t care. But I know how they feel. I’ll say to you what I said to them: When you start to mix it, I won’t take sides and I won’t stop it. I got my own stuff to take care of.”
“Right.” Josh decided that Sig, in his own twisted way, had just done him a favor. “Thanks.”
“For nothing.” Sig crabbed on up the hill, and Josh followed. It was easy enough for Winnie to tell them to see what they could find, but it was hard to evaluate what they saw. A fern of virulent green grew a few feet away to the right. It was striking, it was different, and in its own way it was even beautiful. But it probably wasn’t valuable, and according to Gage anything that color was likely to be poisonous. Josh moved a little farther to the left, just to be safe. In that direction, away from the direct line up the valley side, he saw a patch of light.
“Hey. There’s a clearing. Up this way.” He moved faster, looking forward to being able to stand up straight. With luck they would get an overview of the valley and stream, and learn where everyone else was.
He arrived a few steps ahead of Sig, and paused in surprise. He had said it was a clearing, and that was what he had expected. But it wasn’t. What he found was odder than that. It was an area on the brow of the ridge, thirty yards across, where the stems of the plants were as numerous and substantial as ever. However, all their huge umbrella leaves had been removed. It was a forest of thick bare sticks, through which Grisel’s ruddy light struck to illuminate the cover of ground plants.
Josh looked for the severed leaves. There was no sign of most of them, but off to his right, in the upstream direction, two had been caught between close-growing stems. They hung snagged a couple of feet off the ground. He walked across and picked up the smaller one.
It was dry and thin, but pliable enough that he could easily bend the sheet double. The hairy underside had shrunk as the leaf dried, to form a dense white mat. The colors on both sides of the leaf were much paler when it was dry.
Sig had picked up the other leaf and was turning it around in his hands. “No teeth marks. Nothing’s been chewing on this.”
“Even if they had, there’s supposed to be nothing dangerous on Solferino.”
“Yeah, sure. There’s nothing dangerous. And I’m your long-lost brother, and tomorrow Winnie Carlson will beat up Sol Brewster. What’s ‘dangerous’ mean? Animals eat each other here, they must. So who are ‘they,’ who say the place isn’t dangerous? And how do ‘they’ know?”
Josh did not try to answer. Sig felt the same as he did, that Solferino was more of a mystery than anyone in charge was willing to admit.
He stared off along the ridge. At last, with the advantage of height and with the top layer of leaves out of the way, he could see the giant balloon plants. He tried to estimate their size, and decided they were at least fifty feet tall and almost as wide. It was hard to believe that they would survive even a moderate breeze, and strong winds were in the forecast. What would happen to them? Already, up here on the ridge, he could feel the first stirring of moving air. Did the balloon plants have some strange and unknown method of remaining in one place? Did they perhaps deflate, like real balloons losing air?
Lower down, Josh could make out the line of the stream. He realized now what he would have known earlier, if he had stopped to think before he started to climb. The view from a height offered no great advantage. The long reach of the stream was visible, and a narrow clear strip on each side of it. But beyond that, the jungle of umbrella plants shielded from view everything beneath them.
Downstream, he could see nothing at all of Hag and Rick. Upstream, he thought he caught a glimpse on the edge of the cleared strip of Dawn’s pale yellow dress. A figure in blue was about fifty yards beyond her. He did not know who it was, or even which way she was going. All the Karpov sisters had been dressed in the same color, and without some reference object he could not estimate the girl’s height.
Grisel was past zenith, and beginning its long afternoon descent. It illuminated long ribbons of high cloud. Josh turned to Sig, who was examining the top of a thick stem from which the leaf was missing.
“I’m going back. Are you coming?”
“In a minute. Something funny about this.” Sig, his attention on the extreme upper end of the stem, gave a dismissive gesture. “You go on. I’ll follow”
Josh started, but when he came to the place where the leaves had not been cut off he found that he was in real trouble. After a few seconds he realized his problem. On the way up, he had been uncomfortably doubled over, but because the ground ahead was rising there was always more headroom in front of him. Stooping forward helped. On the way down, the situation was reversed. When he leaned forward, his head moved to a place where the top leaves were lower. He simply could not bend far enough to stoop under the leaf layer.
There was only one answer. He had to go down backward, doubled over as before but now stopping every couple of steps and turning to make sure that he was not on a collision course with one of the thick stems.