Could there be something in the next Mode that she knew about and he could not see? He brought out his mirror tube and extended it forward. But as he started to take a cautious step, she stopped him a third time.
He almost lost his balance. The end of the tube dipped to touch the ground.
A pointed stake shot up from the ground, right beside the end of the tube. The end of the stake was discolored.
“A poison trap!” Darius exclaimed. “If I had stepped there, it would have stabbed my leg!” Or worse.
He put away the tube, found a stick, and poked beside the stake. In a moment another stake shot up, and then another. There was a row of them slanting across this Mode segment.
“I think you just saved my health or life,” he told Provos, shaken. “How did you know?”
But she now seemed to be ignoring the situation, as if it were of no further concern.
He walked to the side, beyond the stakes, and poked some more. There was no further reaction from the ground, and Provos did not balk him. The danger seemed to be limited to that one segment.
All the same, he used the tube to check the next Mode carefully before crossing. This escape had been quite too narrow!
Nothing was in view. They crossed cautiously. He fetched a stick in this Mode and poked ahead. There was nothing. The stakes seemed to be an artifact of a single Mode, in much the way the net of the dragons had been.
They continued until the afternoon grew late. Darius didn’t know how to ask Provos about camping arrangements, so he simply went ahead and trusted her to protest if she chose.
And protest she did, after he located a suitable tree to use for the night. At first he thought it was because she was prudish about climbing or sharing warmth, but it seemed that she was becoming increasingly nervous about this whole region. He saw no reason for it, but after the experience with the stakes he took it seriously.
He offered to make the same camp in the Mode they had just crossed. To that she agreed. She opened her bag and produced what seemed to be homemade bread and a sweet spread, which she shared with him. He wasn’t sure whether he could eat it, because of the problem retaining foreign food when crossing Modes, but realized that if it had traveled with her through all the prior Modes, it was safely on the Virtual Mode and should remain with them. The substance of her Mode was as real for him as the substance of his own or of Colene’s. That was the thing about the anchors; they really were firm.
“Thank you,” he said. She did not acknowledge.
They performed their separate natural functions in different nooks of the Mode, then mounted the tree and shared his blanket. Provos seemed to be entirely at ease with the closeness, which surprised him. He was considerably more at ease than he would have been before the experience with Prima.
Prima. Provos. There was a certain similarity of names. Did it mean anything? He decided that it didn’t. It was a minor coincidence until proven otherwise.
IN the morning they got down and unkinked their bodies. Provos was old but spry; she must have had camping experience. Indeed she produced a set of stones which struck a spark that started a fire, and they were able to have a hot meal of some kind of tasty tubers she brought from her bag. She was certainly doing her part.
Then they doused the fire, got organized, and stepped back across the boundary.
Darius stared. There were footprints where there had been none before; something had come here in the night. Huge claws had dug into the ground, as if a giant bird had landed here. The bark of the tree they would have slept in was torn away in patches.
“Something came here and smelted our traces,” he said, awed. “It scratched the ground where we stood, and scratched at the tree where I had started to set up for the night. By the marks, it was huge and predatory: a dragon or carnivorous bird. I think we would have been dead.”
But Provos seemed unconcerned, hardly noticing the marks. She was just interested in going on.
He refused to settle for that. “What is it with you?” he demanded. “Twice you may have saved my life, yet you act as if it is nothing.” He pointed to the marks, making her look. “How did you know?”
“Yes, future,” she said. “No, past.”
“You said that before, but I don’t know what it means!”
She tried to explain. “I yes future. You yes past. I no past. You no future.”
He tried to make sense of this, in the context of what he had seen. She was yes future and no past. He was no future and yes past. He had no future and she did? He couldn’t accept that! And that couldn’t be it, because the corollary would be that she had no past while he did. The only thing that made remote sense was that he could not foresee the future, while she—
She could see the future? She had precognition? That did seem to be the case! And the barrier of language prevented her from telling him exactly what it was that she saw, so she was able to warn him only by crude gestures. But that could not be the whole of it. What did she mean about no past?
She could not see the past?
He walked on with her, his mind laboring. How was it possible for her not to know the past? She would have no memory! She would be completely unconcerned with yesterday.
Which was exactly the attitude she showed. Concern for the future, none for the past. It seemed unbelievable, but she was from an alien Mode, and its ordinariness in the physical aspect might mask a truly amazing difference in the mental aspect.
He reviewed specifics as they went. She had balked at one place, and there had been a deadly trap there. She had surely not been there before; she was as new to the Virtual Mode as he, and had been waiting for someone to come along it, so she would not have to go alone. She had probably been waiting for days, and acted the moment she saw him. Why had she not been afraid of the stranger? Because she had foreseen his arrival! She might not be concerned about what was past, but she knew she would be traveling with him, so she had made sure to be there at the right time.
Yet she had not seemed to foresee the poisoned stakes, exactly. She had just been very nervous. It was the same with the monster of the night. She had not been concerned about that immediately; only after camping preparations were well along had she insisted on leaving the area. It didn’t seem to be straight anticipation of future events.
She had likened her situation to his. “I yes future, you yes past.” He did not foresee the past, he remembered it, and the farther in the past it was, the foggier his memory tended to become, unless it was something important. Could she remember the future? “I no past, you no future.” She could not remember the past, though she might have a notion of it by judging from the present. If she was here with him, and remembered what they would be doing in the future, she could safely assume that they had met in the past and had some kind of understanding. Just as he could assume that he would be traveling with her for a while.
But that monster of the night—that was not a threat to be forgotten quickly! Why had it taken her a while to catch onto it?
Because it happened in a foreign Mode! He could not remember the past of Modes he had not been in; she could not remember the future of Modes she would not be in. But if he stayed in a Mode for a while, and got some experience in it, he could remember that much of it. She must have become acclimatized to it, gradually, and then realized that something terrible was about to happen there. So she had warned him.
When they moved into the adjacent Mode, that feeling did not come on her, so she relaxed.
It did seem to make sense. But if so, there would always be some problems. How could they relate, if she remembered only what they would be doing, and he remembered only what they had been doing?
He saw Provos nodding as if she had just come to understand something. Yet there was nothing unusual about the landscape of the Modes they were passing through, and they had not spoken.