Finally Athaclena tumbled to a halt, still curled up tight, just short of the forest on the valley floor. At first she could only lie there as the gheer enzymes made her pay the price for her quick reflexes. Breath came in long, shuddering gasps; her high and low kidneys throbbed, struggling with the sudden overload.
And there was pain. Athaclena had trouble localizing it. She seemed only to have picked up a few bruises and scrapes. So where… ?
Realization came in a rush as she uncurled and opened her eyes. The pain was coming from Robert! Her Earthling guide was broadcasting blinding surges of agony!
She got up gingerly, still dizzy from reaction, and shaded her eyes to look around the bright hillside. The human wasn’t in sight, so she sought him with her corona. The searing painflood led her stumbling awkwardly over the glossy plates to a point not far from the upended sled.
Robert’s legs kicked weakly from under a layer of broad plate ivy caps. An effort to back out culminated in a low, muffled moan. A sparkling shower of hot agones seemed to home right in on Athaclena’s corona.
She knelt beside him. “Robert! Are you caught on something? Can you breathe?”
What foolishness, she realized, asking multiple questions when she could tell the human was barely even conscious!
I must do something. Athaclena drew her jack-laser from her boot top and attacked the plate ivy, starting well away from Robert, slicing stems and grunting as she heaved aside the caps, one at a time.
Knotty, musky vines remained tangled around the human’s head and arms, pinning him to the thicket. “Robert, I’m going to cut near your head. Don’t move!”
Robert groaned something indecipherable. His right arm was badly twisted, and so much distilled ache fizzed around him that she had to withdraw her corona to keep from fainting from the overload. Aliens weren’t supposed to commune this strongly with Tymbrimi! At least she had never believed it possible before this.
Robert gasped as she heaved the last shriveled cap away from his face. His eyes were closed, and his mouth moved as if he were silently talking to himself. What is he doing now?
She felt the overtones of some obviously human rite-of-discipline. It had something to do with numbers and counting. Perhaps it was that “self-hypnosis” technique all humans were taught in school. Though primitive, it seemed to be doing Robert some good.
“I’m going to cut away the roots binding your arm now,” she told him.
He jerked his head in a nod. “Hurry, Clennie. I’ve… I’ve never had to block this much pain before. …” He let out a shivering sigh as the last rootlet parted. His arm sprang free, floppy and broken.
What now? Athaclena worried. It was always hazardous to interfere with an injured member of an alien race. Lack of training was only part of the-problem. One’s most basic succoring instincts might be entirely wrong for helping someone of another species.
Athaclena grabbed a handful of coronal tendrils and twisted them in indecision. Some things have to be universal!
Make sure the victim keeps breathing. That she had done automatically.
Try to stop leaks of bodily fluids. All she had to go on were some old, pre-Contact “movies” she and her father had watched on the journey to Garth — dealing with ancient Earth creatures called cops and robbers. According to those films, Robert’s wounds might be called “only scratches.” But she suspected those ancient story-records weren’t particularly strong on realism.
Oh, if only humans weren’t so frail!
Athaclena rushed to Robert’s backpack, seeking the radio in the lower side pouch. Aid could arrive from Port Helenia in less than an hour, and rescue officials could tell her what to do in the meantime.
The radio was simple, of Tymbrimi design, but nothing happened when she touched the power switch.
No. It has to work! She stabbed it again. But the indicator stayed blank.
Athaclena popped the back cover. The transmitter crystal had been removed. She blinked in consternation. How could this be?
They were cut off from help. She was completely on her own.
“Robert,” she said as she knelt by him again. “You must guide me. I cannot help you unless you tell me what to do!”
The human still counted from one to ten, over and over. She had to repeat herself until, at last, his eyes came into focus. “I … I think my arm’s b- busted, Clennie. …” He gasped. “Help get me out of the sun… then, use drugs. …”
His presence seemed to fade away, and his eyes rolled up as unconsciousness overcame him. Athaclena did not approve of a nervous system that overloaded with pain, leaving its owner unable to help himself. It wasn’t Robert’s fault. He was brave, but his brain had shorted out.
There was one advantage, of course. Fainting damped down his broadcast agony. That made it easier for her to drag him backward over the spongy, uneven field of plate ivy, attempting all the while not to shake his broken right arm unduly.
Big-boned, huge-thewed, overmuscled human! She cast a glyph of great pungency as she pulled his heavy body all the way to the shady edge of the forest.
Athaclena retrieved their backpacks and quickly found Robert’s first aid kit. There was a tincture she had seen him use only two days before, when he had caught his finger on a wood sliver. This she slathered liberally over his lacerations.
Robert moaned and shifted a little. She could feel his mind struggle upward against the pain. Soon, half automatically, he was mumbling numbers to himself once again.
Her lips moved as she read the Anglic instructions on a container of “flesh foam,” then she applied the sprayer onto his cuts, sealing them under a medicinal layer.
That left the arm — and the agony. Robert had mentioned drugs. But which drugs?
There were many little ampules, clearly labeled in both Anglic and GalSeven. But directions were sparse. There was no provision for a non-Terran having to treat a human without benefit of advice.
She used logic. Emergency medicines would be packaged in gas ampules for easy, quick administration. Athaclena pulled out three likely looking glassine cylinders. She bent forward “until the silvery strands of her corona fell around Robert’s face, bringing close his human aroma — musty and in this case so very male. “Robert,” she whispered carefully in Anglic. “I know you can hear me. Rise within yourself! I need your wisdom out in the here-and-now.”
Apparently she was only distracting him from his rite-of-discipline, for she sensed the pain increase. Robert grimaced and counted out loud.
Tymbrimi do not curse as humans do. A purist would say they make “stylistic statements of record” instead. But at times like this few would be able to tell the difference. Athaclena muttered caustically in her native tongue.
Clearly Robert was not an adept, even at this crude “self-hypnosis” technique. His pain pummeled the fringes of her mind, and Athaclena let out a small trill, like a sigh. She was unaccustomed to having to keep out such an assault. The fluttering of her eyelids blurred vision as would a human’s tears.
There was only one way, and it meant exposing herself more than she was accustomed, even with her family. The prospect was daunting, but there didn’t seem to be any choice. In order to get through to him at all, she had to get a lot closer than this.
“I … I am here, Robert. Share it with me.”
She opened up to the narrow flood of sharp, discrete agones — so un-Tymbrimi, and yet so eerily familiar, almost as if they were recognizable somehow. The quanta of agony dripped to an uneven pump beat. They were little hot, searing balls — lumps of molten metal.
…lumps of metal…?
The weirdness almost startled Athaclena out of contact. She had never before experienced a metaphor so vividly. It was more than just a comparison, stronger than saying that one thing was like another. For a moment, the agones had been glowing iron globs that burned to touch…