“What’s a larval stage?” Rick had the globe up to his mouth.
“The young stage of an animal.” Winnie’s manner was just a little too casual. “Something like, say, a caterpillar.”
“Uurh! A bug!” Rick threw the sphere onto the floor. Amethyst picked it up and sniffed it curiously.
Sig had kept his eyes on Ruby, who was sitting quietly in a corner with the leaf on her lap. He pushed his way across to her. “Can I look?”
“All right. But it’s mine, don’t forget.”
“I know.” Sig gently lifted the leaf and carefully inspected the base where it had been severed from the stem. He noticed that Josh was watching, and signaled him over.
“You had the best view of anyone,” he said, when Josh was in the corner with them, “except maybe for Dawn. What did you think it was?”
“The animal?”
“Sure.”
“Not a spangle, no matter what Ruby says. It was a lot too big. And not a bodger, not even a small young one. This thing was fast.”
“A rupert, maybe?”
“That would be my guess. Though I don’t know much about ruperts.”
“Then somebody has a bit of explaining to do.” Sig turned the leaf, so that Josh could see where he was pointing. “Remember what Bothwell Gage told us? A rupert is the smartest life form on Solferino, and it’s somewhere in intelligence between a dog and a chimp.”
“That’s what he said.”
“So look at this.” Sig touched the place where the leaf had once been attached to its stem. “I noticed the same thing with the plants when we were up on the ridge. That leaf wasn’t broken off, and the stems on the ridge weren’t chewed through, either. Everything has been cut, with something like a sharp metal knife.
That’s one hell of a dog or chimp, if it can make and use a knife.” He handed the leaf back to Ruby and turned again to Josh. “I want to have a talk with her, when the storm ends and things calm down a bit. And you might want to see if you can get anything out of Dawn.”
Within an hour the thunder and lightning had ended. The rain stopped, the clouds cleared. It seemed not like a true ending, but a brief respite. Wind still muttered menacingly along the line of the ridge. More bad weather was on the way from the west.
While the storm raged, no one could think about eating. Now they could think about little else.
People clustered about the oven of the little kitchen, sniffing and drooling and doing everything but steal raw food. Topaz and Rick weren’t really cooking, they were just heating whatever would be ready fastest.
Dawn had to be as hungry as anyone, but she didn’t stay in the camp. She walked barefoot down to the stream, swollen by the rains, and stood on its bank. Josh wasn’t worried much about her safety, because Dawn had grown up with Burnt Willow Creek and must have learned how to respect it in all seasons and conditions. He followed her for a different reason: he had an idea.
Sig was an insane optimist if he thought Josh might get something out of Dawn by talking to her. Dawn did talk a little, in her own fashion and with her own unknown agenda. What she did far more, though, when the time and means were at hand, was draw. In the past weeks Josh had seen beautiful sketches of everything from Burnt Willow farmhouse to the Messina Dust Cloud. Dawn’s drawing wasn’t just fast, it was easy and fluent and uncannily accurate. And she would sometimes draw on demand.
He didn’t have a sketch pad—anything like that was back at the main compound—but he did have colored pens in his pocket. For the rest, he had to improvise. He took the big flat leaf that Ruby had carried with her from the middle of the jungle.
“Dawn.” She turned as he spoke her name, and he held out pens and the broad leaf. “Will you draw for me what you saw when you were with Ruby and Sapphire, in the forest? The animal, the one that ran away.”
She took the materials from him without a word. She smiled, and went on smiling for the next few minutes. What she did not do was draw. Josh waited impatiently, glancing up at Solferino’s moon. Clouds were racing across its face, and they thickened as he watched. He could count on a few more minutes, no more, before the storm hit again.
And then suddenly, surprisingly, swiftly, Dawn was drawing. She had turned the leaf away from Josh, and the urge for him to tilt it and see what she was doing was almost overwhelming. He forced himself to watch and wait in silence. In a few minutes, she was done. She handed him the leaf, smiled again, and strolled away toward the camp.
He stared down in the wan light of Solferino’s moon, and felt huge disappointment. What Dawn had sketched was not the sleek animal that they had caught a glimpse of as it ran away. Her drawing was of a series of leaves, each similar in shape to the one that he was holding but far smaller in size. Each drawn leaf held its own drawing within it. Sometimes it was meaningless sharp-edged marks, darts and kites that sprawled up and down and anywhere. Four of the drawings were more structured, even if they were no more informative. Two showed a sort of hut built of umbrella-plant stems and leaves, rather like the lean-to where they had found the captive bodger. The other two little leaves contained within their frames what were, without a doubt, miniature sketches of spangles. The point was made extra clear by an umbrella plant on each picture, offering a sense of scale.
Well, it had been worth a try. Josh was tempted to drop the leaf into the swollen stream. Instead he hung on to it and lugged it with him back to the camp. By the time that he had taken those forty uphill paces it was raining again. He went into the kitchen-living area, resigned to a disappointing end to a turbulent day.
“What’s that you’ve got?” Topaz was sitting cross-legged near the door. She had been talking to Dawn, heads close together, when Josh entered.
“Not much.” Josh held out the big leaf. “I was hoping she’d draw the animal for me that Ruby found in the forest, but no luck.”
He eased his way past them toward the far side of the kitchen, where a big tray of food had been set out on a table folded from the wall. From the look of it, everyone else had already eaten. No knives, forks, or plates tonight—it was fingers or nothing.
Josh dug in and gobbled down mouthfuls of something like a greasy and half-cold omelets. He decided it wasn’t a good idea to ask what had been used to make it.
As he ate, he surveyed the crowded room. Winnie was in earnest conversation with Sapphire, who looked like she was still on either snap withdrawal or a bad guilt trip. Probably both. Near to them Ruby, egged on by Hag and Rick, was holding a knife and under Amethyst’s direction was cutting one of the big purple grapes carefully through the middle.
Ruby finally held one half out in triumph. The inside was a firm, pale-orange fruit with a brown center.
“I told you Winnie Carlson was kidding about the bugs,” Amethyst said. “She’s a lot more laid back when Brewster isn’t here. I bet that’s just fine to eat.” The Lasker twins glared at her for a moment, but soon turned their attention to the fruit.
Rick cut a thin slice and nibbled it. “Pretty good.”
Josh decided he might try a piece—once a few others had done the same, and they hadn’t rolled around in agony. Rick didn’t count, he would eat anything.
Josh looked toward the door. Topaz still held the leaf, and she and Dawn were crouched over it together. He noticed how similar they were in appearance—the same height, the same hair color. The other Karpov sisters were fair-haired and blue-eyed, but Topaz and Dawn looked like sisters. Odder yet, Sig Lasker, watching Dawn and Topaz but pretending not to, could have been the older brother of either of them.
While Josh was still comparing, Topaz glanced up and gestured to him to come over.