So what? What to do? What could anyone do?
Simple. You did what you could, in the here and now. Nothing else was possible.
The past was past. Remember, but let it go.
The future was not yet with us. Wise people planned and prepared, but didn’t obsess.
All anyone has is the present. Live there.
It sounds so trite when put into words. Stock phrases everyone has heard a thousand times. But in those few moments, as I bounced along on Festina’s shoulder, the words fell away like shabby clothing to reveal pure nonverbal reality. As if words were like a boat that had helped me across some river. Now I was on the other side, and could proceed forward without assistance. No words, no platitudes, just inexpressible realization: unvarnished unspeakable truth.
A path you can identify as a path isn’t The Path. A truth you can put into words isn’t true enough.
Thus I experienced a wordless release while Festina carted me down a game trail in the middle of a rainstorm.
So what? Why fixate? Be free.
Don’t ask why it happened then; how can such a thing be explained? And I realized this brief flash of freedom might be the Balrog’s work. Regions of the brain’s temporal lobe can be stimulated to create artificial feelings of spiritual awe. The spores in my head could have granted me a bloom of the numinous to distract me from other trains of thought, to keep me quiet, or simply to toy with me… the way you scratch a dog’s belly and laugh at how much the dog likes it.
But I accepted that. I could live with it, as I could live with all the universe’s other ambiguities. Would getting upset solve anything? Would it improve my life or anyone else’s? No. So let it go.
Let it go.
Let everything go.
I told Festina about my sixth sense. How it let me perceive at a distance: the pretas, the Rexies, Tut and the diplomats. How I could sense a person’s life force, including hidden emotions. How, back in Drill-Press, I’d overextended my brain and ended up with spores replacing much of my gray matter.
In other words, I told the truth. Up till then, I’d clutched my secrets as if they were rubies everyone else wanted to steal… but that furtive privacy had just been ego. The terror of being vulnerable. A desire to keep an ace up my sleeve. The dread of being chided for withholding important facts.
Disclosing the truth didn’t hurt me. Why should I have thought otherwise? And Festina didn’t react badly. She’d stopped trusting me long ago, and she knew the Balrog had senses beyond the human norm. I was telling her nothing she hadn’t already considered. Her aura showed no self-consciousness at my ability to see beneath her defenses. Instead of getting flustered, she shifted into a virtually emotionless state, thinking through possibilities. I couldn’t read her mind, but I believed she was debating how to use me: like a new kind of Bumbler, capable of scanning uncharted spectra.
If nothing else, she let me guide her on the shortest route back to Tut. The trip took slightly longer than expected, because Tut’s group had stopped moving forward — they’d reached a clear area on the Grindstone’s bank and had stopped while Li fussed about something. I could have eavesdropped to determine the exact nature of his complaint, but his aura revealed that the specifics didn’t matter. Ambassador Li was cold, wet, and angry. He felt useless as Tut found trails and Ubatu ripped through foliage, so he latched onto some flimsy pretext to raise a fuss. Just to get attention.
Li couldn’t stand being ignored. I saw that he bullied people out of loneliness… and how could I not sympathize? Hadn’t I done ridiculous things for the same reason? Still, it didn’t make his behavior any less obnoxious; and in this case, Li’s grandstanding might have disastrous results. I’d calculated our travel times based on the assumption that Tut and the diplomats would keep trekking ahead. Unfortunately, they’d remained on that riverbank five whole minutes while Li cursed and stomped about. It would therefore take Festina and me five extra minutes to reach them… which meant the Rexies might get there first.
I would have told Festina to drop me and go on alone, but that wouldn’t help. My weight slowed her down, but my sixth sense compensated by showing the fastest routes. We were already going as fast as we could.
So were the Rexies.
The bank where Li was having his tantrum rose three meters above the water below: a low weedy cliff overlooking the river. The top of the bank was mostly chalk-white grass growing ankle high… but here and there, slightly taller red ferns had put down roots, where they stood out like blood drops on snow. Not that a normal human eye could discern the color — it was full night now, and with rain clouds blocking the stars, the darkness hung as thick as a velvet blindfold. Only my sixth sense let me perceive more than shades of gray in the ponderous black. (Festina carried a chemical glow-tube, tied in a loop round her belt. Tut and the others, however, had no light at alclass="underline" one of the many things Li was railing at. "Stumbling blind through this stinking bush. I hate the smell of mustard!")
The darkness must have impeded the Rexies too — they were built for daytime hunting, so their eyes were relatively small, not the bulging orbs needed for regular nocturnal prowls. Still, the killer-beasts were driven by pretas who seemed unhindered by lack of light. Whatever senses the EMP clouds possessed, they could keep the Rexies on track despite the night and the rain. Perhaps the pretas had some limited form of the Balrog’s mental awareness; that might have been a "gift" they’d received from their incomplete ascension. But whatever their abilities, the clouds were nowhere near the Balrog’s omniscience. They couldn’t, for example, perceive the spores inside me… which is why the Rexies were going after Tut instead of straight for me.
Three Rexies: two in front, one behind. As I’ve said, the pretas planned to catch Tut and the diplomats using pincer tactics, with the rear Rexy driving the prey into ambush by the two others. The two at the front had taken good pouncing positions a short distance up the trail, in a region of bush where tall ferns provided more cover than the low foliage on the bank. But as Festina and I approached, the pretas must have realized they wouldn’t be able to spring their trap — our route would bring us to the two lurking Rexies before the third Rexy was in position. Festina would have time to stun the two predators, leaving only one Rexy to attack.
Furthermore, the remaining Rexy couldn’t rely on surprise. It would have to charge across the open area of the bank, letting Tut and the others see it coming. At that point, the odds would be three humans to one pseudosuchian in a straight-up, in-the-clear fight. Human blood would surely be spilled, but the Rexy just wasn’t big enough or strong enough to guarantee total victory. Tut was the same size as the predator, and Ubatu was slightly taller. Together, they might batter the Rexy into unconsciousness before it ripped out their throats.
Which meant if the pretas wanted surefire kills, they needed a new plan. They opted for simplicity: a massed assault. The Rexies in front broke away from their ambush positions and raced toward the bank, as the one at the rear did the same.