Somewhere in there he fell asleep.
Hours later, it seemed, he woke and stared in astonishment at himself looming above him.
No: at his pressure suit, angular like fractured bones where a human would be smooth. Bram tipped the helmet back and asked, “Are you well?”
“I’m pretty sore.” The medkit was dripping stuff into him, but he could feel where the pain was waiting.
“Two ribs were out of place. I set them. No bones are broken. You’ve abused muscles, torn ligaments and mesenteries, slipped a spinal disk that I reset. You would heal with no more than your own defenses and the portable medkit.”
“Why are you wearing my suit?”
“Reasons of strategy.”
“Too complex for my tiny mind? All right, Bram. You’ll notice that we have more visitors. If you’ll disconnect me, the voice of Louis Wu can show a face.”
The Hindmost and Bram waited to either side of Louis and a little behind. On the other side of the webeye window, the Reds huddled under a fur, letting the Ghouls take center stage.
The Ghouls were shivering. The lanky woman said, “It’s cold out there! Well, I am Grieving Tube, this is Harpster. Is your box making sense of my voice?”
“Yes, it’s fine. How did you know about my translator?”
“Your companion Tunesmith seems to have departed, but his son Kazarp spoke of your visit to Weaver Town.”
“My regards to Kazarp. Grieving Tube, why did you move two manweight of poured stone over such a distance if you could have spoken to me through Tunesmith?”
The Ghouls laughed, showing way too much teeth. “Spoken, yes, but what would we say? The rim wall is in the wrong hands? We don’t know that. You, are you a vashnesht?” Protector, the translator said.
Bram said, “Yes.”
Tegger started to get up; Warvia held him back. The Ghouls, too, had flinched, but Harpster made himself speak to the protector. “We know enough to know our helplessness. These are vampire protectors. They take the High Point Folk as meat from a herd. Some return as protectors. Many simply disappear.”
Bram said, “They are repairing the Arch.”
“Do they do more good than harm?”
“Yes. There are too many, and they’ll fight when the repairs are done. We hope we can improve the balance.”
“How do you expect to help?”
“We must know more. Tell us what you can.”
Harpster shrugged hugely. “You know what we know. High Point will show us more, come dawn.”
The Hindmost fluted. The window shrank to background size.
“We wait,” he said. “Louis, we recorded earlier conversation. They know much of protectors and something of Teela Brown. Or shall we serenade you?”
Bram was reaching for the instrument package he’d brought from Hidden Patriarch.
“A little dinner music would go nicely,” Louis said politely. “And I’m starved.”
Louis was trying to do some stretching. Lifting Acolyte had pulled some serious muscles and tendons. Bram’s attentions had helped, but he had to move carefully.
Many hours had passed. Now the window at High Point was rotating bumpily across night-darkened mountainscape. A mixed bag of hominids were rolling the stolen webeye like a wheel over the worn paths of the village. When they left the village and began moving uphill over rock, the motion began to jar his stomach.
Louis turned his back on the display, trusting the others to alert him when the webeye got somewhere interesting. What was taking the Kzin so long? Anyplace in known space, he could at least have used a ’doc! The medkit wouldn’t do anything for him except inject chemicals, and he’d need it again in a few minutes.
Four High Point People carried the web and its backing. They climbed uphill in the charcoal night. Saron moved ahead of the Red Herders and Night People to point out footholds for them.
The Ghouls had tried to help carry, but they were doing well just to catch their breath.
“Sunlight soon,” Warvia said to the Ghoul woman. “What will you do then?”
“I was told we would come to the passage. Shelter.”
There were no roads here. What paths there were, were only scuff marks on hard dirt and rock. The High Village People moved up and up across a tilted land, on and on, miles above the infinite flatland.
To spin was the oncoming terminator line, and daylight.
Close up against the spill mountains the land below was a relief map, like the map the Ghouls had made for them outside the Grass Giants’ hall. A view like this may have given them that notion. Farther away, all detail was lost. A thread of silver linked by puddles might have been the Homeflow, or any other body of water, or something else entirely.
Warvia may have been thinking similar thoughts. “The lands the Red Herders move through, are they even big enough to see? How will we ever find Red Herders again?”
Harpster said, “That’s not the problem at all—”
Grieving Tube said, “Our people know the routes of the Red Herders. They’ll map—Forgive me.” She had to stop for breath. “They’ll map a path for us—by mirror—speech. You’ll find a new home—as quickly as you came here.”
“Oh. Good.” Then Warvia laughed. “Your solution was extreme! We didn’t need to travel quite so far.”
Tegger wouldn’t show weakness with Warvia watching. With dying strength he followed Saron. The old woman moved more slowly now. He could hear the other High Point People gasping as they carried the web’s weight along the hill.
Day swept toward them from spinward. As the first edge of sun peeped around the shadow of night, Harpster pulled from his pack two rolled-up hats with gigantic brims. Now only the Night People walked in shadow.
“We should be on the fringes of Red Herder turf,” Warvia said, “as far as possible from stories that must have started already.”
Harpster said, “No. Warvia, Red Herders aren’t all the same species.”
“Why, of course we are!”
Tegger said, “We woo our mates from other tribes at the feasts, when the herds cross. We’ve done it since before anyone can remember.”
Harpster said, “Good idea—”
“But you don’t always,” said Grieving Tube. “You and Warvia, you have the same accent—”
“Yes, we both were born into Ginjerofer’s tribe, but others mate across the lines.”
“Some tribes have given it up. Some just don’t push it, like Ginjerofer’s people. Tegger, the farther you go from Ginjerofer’s tribe, the less likely your children will find mates who can give them children. It wouldn’t matter so much if you didn’t mate for life.”
“Flup,” Tegger whispered.
Something flashed at them as they rounded a barrier of crumbling rock.
Tegger had tried to imagine what a mirror might look like. Now he couldn’t see it. What he saw was himself, Warvia, the Ghouls and High Point People, the sky and the rim wall. A mirror was a flat window that showed what was behind the viewer. It stood as high as a Red Herder man, and three men wide.
They set the web and its backing carefully in place, flat onto the mirror. Saron and the men went to the ends of the mirror, and the Night People went with them.
Harpster began to talk, spitting his consonants, as if he were addressing a crowd.
The men began to tilt the mirror up and down. It was mounted on hinges. Jennawil stood behind Tegger and pointed along the rim.
Toward the next spill mountain.
A highlight played on the mountain’s flank, falling and rising as the men tilted the mirror.
Tegger asked, “How does it work?”
Jennawil laughed. “Ah, the Night People haven’t told you everything! Sun mirrors flash a code known to us and Night People. They carry news between mountains, but also news of flatlands to mountains and back to flatlands.”