"It's not insurmountable," I said. "Her new family, whoever they might be, would have to invest in a biomolecular synthesizer and program it to produce suitable protein material for her. We all know it's a bother to eat the glop, especially when it's not textured and flavor-rendered properly ― any human traveling outside Terran space knows it ― but she might survive, with a little love, and a lot of Hothouse-brand ketchup."
Darla showed concern. "I hope you're right. I've already gotten attached to her. She's so warm, open…. By the way, you're high in her pantheon of Great Beings. You saved her from a beating, and she's eternally grateful."
I polished my fingernails on my shirt. "Well, all in a hero's day, you know. Rescuing fair maidens, screaming like a banshee upon being bitten by a nasty ol' bug, faulting, almost getting my ass shot off because I had to play it proud instead of safe. I should have backed away from Wilkes' table."
"That's you, Jake. Dumb, but proud!"
"I thank you. But you were telling me about Cheetah and how she got here."
"Didn't I finish? Oh, yes. I told her she was welcome to come along with us, and while I was packing she disappeared. By the time I finished, she returned with an armful of fruit and such. I stowed the stuff in my bag, and…"
"She knows biochemistry?"
"Huh? No, certainly not. Maybe she's taken journeys before. Perhaps her tribe migrated now and then. I don't know."
"I thought they stuck pretty much to their home turf." "Then, I don't know how she knew to bring food. But I'll ask her."
I drained the last of my coffee. It was of a good bean, grown on Nuova Colombia. "You also mentioned something about Cheetah's real name. How did she get tagged with the handle of a fictional Terran chimpanzee?"
"That's what the motel people called her." She raised an ironical eyebrow. "Cute, what? Fit in with the theme, I guess. You know, it's amazing how popular those Burroughs books still are after ― what is it, going on two hundred years? Anyway, her proper moniker is Winwah-hah-wee-wahwee. She told me it means Soft-Green-is-the-Place-Where-She-Sleeps. At least, that's my rendition of it. Her translation was a bit garbled."
"Okay, then, 'Winnie' it is, now and forevermore. I got up and stretched. The kinks were gradually working out.
"There's one more thing," Darla said.
"About Chee ― I mean, about Winnie?"
"Yes. It was something about you and Sam. She said she was confused at first about Sam, about exactly what he was, until she realized that he was… well, that his spirit permeated the rig, if you follow me. Then she said she sensed something about you. Something she didn't like."
I shrugged. "Oh, well. A man who's hated by children and cute furry animals can't be all bad." '
"Don't be silly. She loves you ― I told you that. No, it's something concerning you. Something about what happened to you or what will happen…. I can't say for sure."
"Premonition?"
She chewed on her lip. "No." She shook her head. "No, forget about the 'happen' stuff. She didn't use those words. It wasn't a prediction, a precognitive intuition or anything. It was just something 'around' you. That's how she put it. The only thing coherent I could get out of her was that she didn't like your jacket because it smelled bad."
I sniffed my underarms. "Well, I guess if your friends can't tell you, who can?"
She rolled her eyes. "Jake."
"Sorry. But it's all a little vague, isn't it?"
"Yes, I suppose. But she seemed so sure."
"What she probably sensed was the lingering aura of my life of libertinage and debauchery."
Darla giggled. "You mean your life of fantasizing. I happen to know that you're just this side of a monk in such matters. You haven't even tried to kiss me."
"I haven't? Well…" I took her shoulders and pulled her. toward me, planted on those full pouting lips an unmonkish kiss of journeyman quality. She kissed back after the first fraction of a second. (I think I surprised her.) We continued in this fashion for some time.,
When things had gone as far as they could under present circumstances, we parted. Darla commenced a straightening-up rituaclass="underline" smoothed her hair, adjusted her clothing, checked the state of her lip gloss in the warped reflection of a shiny; sugar canister. Her face was perenially made-up, perfectly, even at the worst of times. There was a certain composure about her, a kind of coolness ― which attracted me, I must, admit. Note: cool, not cold. Self-possessed. Well, there was no nonsense about her (not to say no sense of humor), no wasted motions, no false moves, no hesitations. I felt her incapable of uttering something even remotely insipid. The controlling factor was not intellectual, but was more in the way of being worldly, knowing, aware, hip, if you will, to use an archaic term. She was a veteran of the Skyway, but there wasn't a rollermark on her. I couldn't guess how old she was; anywhere from nineteen to thirty. But a special native wisdom sparkled in eyes that had seen more than they told. To use another hoary Terran colloquialism: she had been around. Yes, she had.
"I hate to break up anything momentous, kids," Sam discreetly announced over the aft-cabin speaker, "but there's something up ahead."
I went forward. We were continuing our race for the mountain range, which now hove over the horizon as a brown-gray mass with an intermittent edge of white. Snow-tipped peaks. They looked like mounds of day-old pudding, whipped-cream toppings gone stale and dried.
A vehicle, an old bus, was pulled off the road ahead, and it seemed to be experiencing mechanical problems. A group of people were gathered near the off-road side.
As we drew up I braked instinctively, as I usually do when I spot a breakdown; however, recent events had spooked me to the point where I considered passing them by. But no. One of the stranded passengers waved pleadingly ― a bearded black man who wore a loose robe that smacked of the sacerdotal ― and I pulled completely off the pavement at a prudent distance download, across one of those spontaneous bridges that spanned a deep dry-wash.
"Well, let's get a whiff of the stuff they call air here," I said reluctantly. "It's supposed to be rated EN-1B, which is as close as you can get. Sam, were those people wearing respirators or anything?"
"No, but take a nasal inhaler of CO;. You could hyperventilate under extreme exertion. There are a few in the glove box, I think."
The pumps sucked the good air out and let the bad come in. Mark you, Earth people: there is nothing like the first breath of alien atmosphere, no matter how near to Terran normal it is. The weird odors are most unsettling. Strange trace gases never meant for human olfactory systems tiptoe across your nasal membranes in spiked shoes. At best, you gag and choke and cough. At worst, you swoon and wake up with an assist mask slapped over your face, if you're lucky. But the atmosphere of Goliath wasn't all that' bad. It carried a whiff of iodine on a stench of decayed fruit, a strange combination to say the least, but the fruity smell masked the medicinal one enough to make it bearable. There wasn't a fruit tree in sight. On the bad side, there was a trace of a nose-tickling element, an irritant of some sort that kitchy-kooed the sinuses maddeningly close to the sneeze-point without getting them over the hump. But… I guess you get used to anything. In fact, the longer I breathed the stuff, the less I noticed its noxious qualities. There was good oxygen here to be sure, though at pressure a bit too high. Maybe ― mind you, just maybe ― a person could get to like running this sort of soup through his lungs.
The air I could live with; the heat was another matter. I wasn't ready for it, even after Hothouse. I sprang the hatch, and it was like opening an oven door. Talk about dry heat versus humid heat, and the misery indices of both didn't apply here. It was punking HOT and that's all there was to it. The heat smothered me, the planet strained my arches, and the sun began to pan-fry my skin in a sauce of sudden sweat.