'Easy,' said Jazz. 'Easy!'
'The Sunsiders are after me,' she continued to sob, 'to give me to the Wamphyri, and Vyotsky said there's a way back home, and — '
'He what?' Jazz held her close. 'You've spoken to Vyotsky? That's impos — ' And he checked himself. The antenna of a radio was sticking out of her top pocket. 'Vyotsky's a liar,' he said. 'Forget it! There isn't a way back. He's just looking for a chum, that's all.'
'Oh, God!' Her fingers were biting into his shoulders. 'Oh, God!'
Jazz tightened his grip on her, stroked her face, felt her tears hot in the crook of his neck. He smelled her, too, and it wasn't exactly flowers. It was sweat, and fear, and more than a little dirt, too. He pushed her away to arm's length and looked at her. Even in this deceptive light she looked good. A little haggard but good. And very human.
She couldn't know it, but he was just as desperately pleased to see her.
'Zek,' he said, 'maybe we should find ourselves a nice safe place where we can talk and exchange notes, eh? I think you can probably save me a hell of a lot of time and effort.'
'There's the cave where I rested,' she told him, a little breathlessly. 'It's about eight miles back. I was asleep when I heard your voice on my radio. I thought I was dreaming. By the time I realized I wasn't it was too late. You'd gone. So I headed for the sphere, which was where I was going anyway. And I kept calling every ten minutes or so. Then I got Vyotsky…' She gave a small shudder.
'OK,' Jazz quickly told her. 'It's all right now — or about as right as it can be. Tell me all about it on our way to this cave of yours, right?' He stooped to pick up her gun, and the great wolf went into a crouch, screwed its face into a ferocious mask and snarled a warning.
She patted the animal almost absently on its great head where its ears lay flat to the long skull, said: 'It's all right, Wolf — he's a friend.'
'Wolf?' Jazz couldn't help smiling, however tightly. 'That's original!'
'He was given to me by Lardis,' she said. 'Lardis is the leader of a Traveller pack. Sunsiders, of course. Wolf was to be my protection, and he has been. We got to be friends very quickly, but he's not much of a pet. There's too much of the wild in him. Think of him in a friendly way, like a big dog -1 mean really think of him that way, as your friend — and he won't be any trouble.' She turned and began to lead the way down from the crest toward the misty orb of the sun sitting apparently motionless over the southern mouth of the pass.
'Is that a theory or a fact?' Jazz asked her. 'About Wolf, I mean?'
'It's a fact,' she answered simply. Then, as quickly as she'd started off, she paused and grabbed his arm. 'Are you sure we can't get back through the sphere?' Her voice had a pleading quality.
'I told you,' Jazz answered, trying not to sound too harsh, 'Vyotsky's a liar — amongst a lot of other things. Do you think he'd still be here if he knew a way out? When they put me through the Gate I dragged Vyotsky with me. That's the only reason he's here. I figured if it was bad enough for me it was good enough for him! Khuv and Vyotsky, those people are… it's hard to find a word for them without being offensive.'
'Be offensive,' she said, bitterly. 'They're bastards!'
'Tell me,' said Jazz, following her as she started off again, 'why were you heading for the sphere in the first place?'
She glanced at him briefly. 'When you've been here as long as I have you won't need to ask. I came in that way, and it's the only Gate I know. I keep dreaming about being able to get out that way. I wake up thinking it's changed, that the poles have reversed and the flow lies in the other direction. So I was going there to try it. At sunup, of course, which is now. One chance and only one, and if I didn't make it through, then I wouldn't be making it back to Sunside, either.'
Jazz frowned. 'Reversed poles and all that — is that scientific stuff? Is it supposed to mean something?'
She shook her head. 'Just my fantasy,' she said, 'but it was worth one last shot…'
They walked in silence for a while, with the great wolf loping between them. There were a million questions Jazz wanted to ask, but he didn't want to exhaust her. Eventually he said: 'Where the hell is everybody? Where are the animals, birds? I mean, it's nature's way that where there are trees there are animals to chew on them. Also, I saw things at Perchorsk that made me think my coming here would be like rolling a snowball into hell! And yet I haven't seen — '
'You wouldn't,' she cut him short. 'Not on Starside, not at sunup. Now we're down toward Sunside you'll start to see animals and birds; on the other side of the range you'll see plenty of them. But not on Starside. Believe me, Michael — er, Jazz? — you really wouldn't want to see anything of what lives on Starside.' She shivered, hugged her elbows.
'Starside and Sunside,' he mused. 'The pole is back there, the mountains run east to west, and the sun is south.'
'Yes,' she nodded her head, 'that's the way it is — always.' She stumbled, said: 'Oh.' and went to one knee; Jazz reached out and caught her elbow, stopped her from toppling over. This time Wolf made no protest. Jazz helped Zek to her feet, guided her to a flat rock. He shrugged a pack from his shoulder, took out a twenty-four-hour manpack: food for one man for one day. Then he dumped the pack onto the rock and made Zek sit on it.
'You're weak from hunger!' he said, pulling the ring on a tiny can of concentrated fruit juice. He took a sip at the juice to clean his mouth, handed her the can and said, 'Finish it.' She did, with relish. Wolf stood close by, wagging his tail for all the world like a low-slung Alsatian. His great tongue was beaded with saliva. Jazz broke a cube off a block of Russian chocolate concentrate and tossed it. Before it could hit the ground Wolf's jaws closed on it crunchingly.
'It's mainly my feet,' Zek said. Jazz looked at them. She wore rough leather sandals, but he could see caked blood between the toes where they projected. The mist had cleared from the sun a little, and now Jazz could take in the rest of her. True colours were still difficult, but outlines, shadows and silhouettes made readable contrasts. Her one-piece was ragged at the elbows and knees, patched at the backside. She carried only a slim roll, hooked to her harness. A sleeping-bag, Jazz correctly supposed.
They're no kind of footgear for this terrain,' he said.
'I know it now,' Zek answered, 'but I'd forgotten. Sunside is bad enough, but this pass is worse. And Starside is sheer hell. I had boots when I came here, like you. They don't last. Your feet harden quickly, you'll see, but some of these pebbles and rocks are sharp as knives.'
He gave her chocolate, which she almost snatched. 'Maybe we should rest right here,' he said.
'Safe enough, with the sun on us,' she answered, 'but I'd prefer to keep moving. Since we can't use the sphere, and we can't stay Starside, it's best we get back to Sunside as soon as we can.' Her tone was ominous.
'Any special reason?' Jazz was sure he wouldn't like the answer.
'Lots of them,' she told him, 'and they all live back there.' She nodded back the way they'd come.
'Do you feel like telling me about — them?' Jazz unhooked one of his kidney-packs; he knew it contained, among other things, a very basic first-aid kit. He took out gauze bandages, a tube of ointment, plasters. And as Zek talked he kneeled and carefully slipped the sandals off her feet, began to work on her wounds.
'Them,' she echoed him, making the word sound sour; and again a shudder ran through her. 'The Wamphyri, do you mean? Oh, they're the main problem, it's true, but there are other things on Starside almost as bad. Did you see Agursky's "pet", the thing in the tank at Perchorsk?'
Jazz looked up, nodded. 'I saw it. Telling you exactly what I saw would be a different matter!' He tore off a strip of gauze, soaked it in water from his flask, gently wiped away the caked blood from her toes. She sighed her appreciation as he squeezed ointment from its tube and rubbed it into the splits under her toes and the pads of her feet.