After a while, he got to his feet and pulled her up to stand by him. He took her hand and pulled her along after him as he began walking. He did not know where he was or where he was going, but they just could not stay in one place. They would die of thirst if they did. And if there was relief from this light or somebody who could help them, they had to look-though "look" was not the right word-for refuge and rescue. That would be slow going since he had to slide his forward foot along and feel with its toe for drop-offs.
His face felt as if it were in sunlight. Though he was sweating, no doubt from stress, he was not too hot. The air was a mild breeze, and it slightly cooled him.
They had gone perhaps a hundred yards when he jumped, and he swore a soundless oath. Something had flicked against his cheek. It was soft and momentary, but it had felt like the end of a finger. The sensation was not caused by the Imaget moving across his face. It had been too solid to be that. The Imaget had been like lightweight velvet sliding across his skin. Also, its body had been too broad to be a fingertip.
Tappy squeezed his arm and moved so close to him that she seemed to be trying to melt her cells into his. She was no longer racked with sobs, but she was trembling. Had she felt that soft touch too?
"For God's sake!" he said. "Whoever you are, whatever you are, speak to us! "
It was useless to speak; his words were imprisoned in his tiead.
He still had Malva's beamer-pistol. stuck in his belt, and the beamer-rifle, strapped to his back. But it would do no good to fire blindly. Besides, whoever had stroked his cheek probably did not intend to harm him. If the toucher did, he or she could have done so long before this. On the other han,], the personor thing-might just be biding his time. For what?
It was then that he smelled a pleasant odor. Flowers? Wherever it came from, it was camied by the breeze from behind him. He turned around, sniffing, and then pulled Tappy along in the direction from which the odor seemed to come. I cant see, he thought, and I can't hear, but I can feel and smell. I'm not completely helpless.
Brave words. He was whistling in ... not the dark, though this light was no better than complete blackness. If he tried to whistle, he probably wouldn't hear that.
The odor, which reminded him of tiger lilies, became stronger.
He shuffled on until his leading foot suddenly felt a change in level. Carefully moving the foot, he determined that he was on the edge of a hill. Or a slight declivity. He began gong down the gentle slope. After a hundred feet, he stopped. His left hand held out at a downward angle before him, felt a stalk. He moved it around and encountered many stalks. The odor was so powerful that he knew he stood before a mass of flowers-if the stalks had flowers.
They did. His hand, sliding up a stalk, found the head. It was sunflower size, had nine big petals and a soft spongy center.
Beneath the surface was a slight pulselike throbbing. Groping around, he found others like it. Then he let loose of them as something long and soft, too narrow to be the Imaget. sl'thered across Ih,- back of his hand. An insect? A caterpillarlike creature"
Though he had been startled by it. he was, in one sense, reassured. A world that had flowers and insects could not be entirely alien to him. And his sense of hearing was not completely gone. The rattling of the stalks as he moved them was clear.
He spoke again, hoping that his voice would project beyond his head.
"Tappy! Can you hear me?"
She could not do so. The question fluttered around inside his brain and could not escape.
He patted her shoulder, then took his hand from her and slapped his hands together. He jumped; his heart jumped. The clap was as loud as if it had been made on Earth. Thiere was nothing wrong with his ears except that he could not hear his voice or Tappy's.
The echo of the hand-slapping had just died away when he jumped again.
A voice spoke from an unknown distance. It cried out, "Help!
Help!" And then the woman-it was indeed an adult female's voice-began sobbing.
Jack shivered from a cold not caused by the breeze.
"My God!" he said, though no sound issued from his lips.
His panic, which had dwindled somewhat, roared back. He felt I trange, strange! This could not be!
strange, s The woman who had cried out and was now weeping was Malva!
It was her voice. No doubt about that.
But Malva was dead!
He reached out, touched Tappy, and took her hand. It felt clammy. She must have recognized the voice of the recently slain woman. He wished he could soothe her or, at least, talk to her. Then he turned to his right, his left side brushing aga' inst the flowers, his right shoulder brushing against her. After some seconds of slow progress, he could no longer detect the flowers except for the lessening odor behind him. Then he stopped. Malva was no longer crying out, but he could faintly hear other voices.
They became stronger as he led Tappy toward them. But he halted once more. Silence had gripped his head again. It seemed to be squeezing him.
I can't take much more of this, he thought. And Tappy must be as close as I am to screaming with the pain of the brightness and a fear that tears the mind apart. A screaming only we can hear inside us. If this lasts much longer, I'll start running, stumbling around in the light that blinds, falling down, letting loose of Tappy, losin, her because I'm so terrified I can only think of myself and of escaping this pain. But there is no escape.
Other voices, weak and distant at first, then stronger and closer, were brought by the breeze blowing against their backs. He stopped. Let them come to him. It was pointless to keep moving.
They were going to die no matter where they were.
Then, an undercurrent to the approaching voices, the sound of running water came to him. That was followed by the splash of feet in the stream and, suddenly, more voices. He waited, though for what he did not know. Certainly, the voices did not seem hostile. They were low and murmurous. Again, he trembled. Soft fgefs had brushed against his cheek. He felt Tappy become rigid as if she, too, had been touched.
Once more, he quivered, and his heart beat harder. Two hands had seized his face. Now they were running the tips over his face. Before they had withdrawn, he became bold enough to reach out and do the same thing to the person who was tracing his lineaments. The skin was almost as velvety as a baby's, and the bones below them were fine. It had to be a woman's. Then she spoke-he could feel her breath from her mouth onto timehand-and she said, "Son."
"Mother!" Jack said.
He almost fainted.
It was not only her voice that told him that she was indeed his long-dead mother. His fingers, moving over her face, had evoked an artist's image. It would, if he painted it, be a portrait of her.
But she was now a young woman. When she had died, she had been middle-aged, close to being old. She had home him when she was forty-eight, her time of fertility almost gone. The wrinkles and the sags he was so familiar with had disappeared.
A whisper came to him. Someone must be speaking very softly to Tappy because she had suddenly begun shaking far more violently than before. He could not hear her reply, of course, any more than she would have heard him say, "Mother!" But she must have tried to utter something.
Things went swiftly after that. Hands turned them around so that they faced the direction from which they had come. They were pushed along, past the clusters of flowers, went up a long slope, were on level ground, and then began a long march. Jack was so numb with shock that he could not resist them. What sense was there in doing so, anyway? Yet ... yet ... he had met his dead mother; he could not speak to her; he was being sent away.