Carmela glanced down at Ponch, who was jumping up and down beside her, trying to get her attention. She got down to give him a hug, and started getting her face seriously washed as a result.
In the middle of this, Ponch glanced over at Kit and gave him a reproachful look. I can’t find any more biscuits, he said.
“That would be because you and Memeki ate every one you could find!” Kit said.
Ponch snorted and went back to slurping Carmela’s face. “And in the meantime,” Kit said, “I really need Ponch to be concentrating on helping us all get out of here to somewhere safer. So if you can please stop fussing over him—”
Carmela glanced up. “Now, here I am having some quality smooch-time with my favorite doggie,” she said, “and you’re just standing there ruining it. Bear with me while I ask one of these nice people for a spell or something to destroy you with.” She glanced around. “Filif! Would you destroy Kit for me, please? You’re such a honey. Thanks.” And she went back to scratching Ponch behind the ears.
“‘Melaaaaa!” Kit said as Filif came up behind Kit.
“If I were you,” Filif’s nearest fronds said very quietly in Kit’s ear, tickling it, “I’d bend in this wind, and not break yourself trying to stand against it.” To Carmela, he said, “Destroy him how, exactly?”
“Melted lead?” Carmela said. “Boiling oil? Forget it, those are way too retro. Disintegration’s big this year…”
Filif stood there looking innocently at the ceiling with all his berries as Carmela started to hit her stride. Kit just shook his head and turned away.
Off by the mochteroofs, Memeki stood watching Carmela and Ponch and the rest of them. There was no making anything of a Yaldiv’s expressions, but Kit got a sense from Memeki of something much like wistfulness, like a kid who stands off to one side of the playground, knowing he’s about to be picked last for a game, as usual. Kit swallowed: he’d been there. But there was something else going on besides that sadness—a strange and growing hope that something different was about to happen. Off across the cavern, as she was taking down her pup tent, Kit saw Nita pause, looking at Memeki, too. She glanced at Kit.
She’s terrified, Nita said silently. And not just for herself. But something else is going on, too. You feel it?
He nodded as he came up beside Memeki and patted her carapace again. “We’ll be ready to go pretty soon,” he said, “but you don’t have to be by yourself.”
“Kit,” Memeki said. Kit’s mouth dropped open, for it was the first time she’d actually used a name for any of them. “You need not take me anywhere else,” she said. “I must go back to the City, for I see I am putting you all in danger. Particularly Ponch.”
Kit looked at her thoughtfully, as Ponch, who had left Carmela to follow him, stood up on his hind legs and put his forepaws on her. We’ll stay with you, he said. We’ll take care of you.
The wash of fear that Kit caught from Ponch was astonishing: it made him wince. “I see how you do that,” Memeki said. “You care for each other. It is so strange. Somehow, though you come from so far away, you are like me. How, I can’t say.” And then she, too, sat down on the ground, a strange, jerky motion. She twitched. “But there are other reasons. I must return to the grubbery. My time—” She broke off, went silent, like someone distracted by a spasm of pain.
Ronan came up behind Kit and stood there for a moment, just a dark presence that said nothing. Kit glanced at him.
“Ponch is right,” he said. “If she’s going back to the City, we can’t just leave her there and tiptoe away, not after what happened here! We’ve got to stay with her and keep her safe.”
“That’s not going to attract any attention, I’ll bet,” Ronan said. “When someone asks, just what are we supposed to be doing hanging around her?”
“We’re her guards,” Kit said. “The One sent us.” His grin was a little grim. “Though what we mean by that won’t be what they mean by it, it’s still true. And if anyone gives us trouble”—he shrugged—”we play it by ear.”
Ronan shook his head. “I hope this works,” he said. Kit did, too. He looked around. “Are we packed up?”
Nita joined them. “All you need to do is take down your pup tent, and we’ll be ready to run,” she said. “What time is it outside?”
Kit looked at his watch. “About an hour till dawn. So we’ll go in half an hour?” He looked around at the others. Roshaun bowed agreement; Filif rustled “yes.”
He looked over at Carmela, who was leaning against one of the mochteroofs, fiddling with her curling iron. Kit let out another exasperated breath. “Fil,” he said, “can you retailor Sker’ret’s mochteroof for Carmela? And better put some training wheels on it.”
“I take your meaning; I’m working on that right now,” Filif said. “Fifteen minutes more will see the work done.”
Kit nodded. Neets, he said silently, we really need to talk.
You’re right, she said. We do. But she was looking at Memeki.
Ponch looked up at Kit. And about the biscuits…
Kit sighed. “Okay, so I hid a box,” he said. “Come on.”
***
Sitting cross-legged on the floor of the cavern, Nita drank her soda and watched Filif working over the last remaining mochteroof, while Carmela walked around it, kibitzing and apparently offering design tips. Off to one side, Dairine and Roshaun were sitting down and conferring about something. Kit and Ponch had vanished inside Kit’s pup tent. By the scarred-over crevasse, Memeki crouched, every now and then shivering a little. And in that shiver, Nita suddenly felt that both their biggest problem and its solution were buried.
She closed her eyes and breathed out, breathed in. The messages that were coming to her—whether as hunches or visions or half-heard whispers—were getting so intense, in this past day or so, that she didn’t have to be asleep to have them. Is this going to be a permanent thing? she wondered. Or is this just the peridexic effect working? When all this is over, is it back to business as usual?
Don’t ask me, said the silent voice in the back of her brain. Nothing about this business has been usual.
She smiled slightly, opened her eyes again. Crouched down on the gritty stone in front of her, Spot looked up at her with two small, stalked, glowing eyes. “So how’re you holding up, small stuff?” she said. “You feel better since Dairine took you back home?”
“Much better,” Spot said. His voice was clearer than Nita had heard it for some time. Nonetheless, there was a hesitant quality to it.
“You don’t sound too sure.” She reached out and stroked his case between the eyes.
“There’s still much stored data to assimilate,” Spot said. “And it will take a long time. But in the short term, I can say that I seem to be more than I was. If I can just work out what to do with it.”
Nita laughed, just once, a brief and rueful sound. “That goes for both of us.”
“But at least you’ve come back from Earth with what we need,” Spot said. “The word that has to be heard.”
Nita gave Spot a look. “I have?” She found this news reassuring coming from Spot, and she needed the reassurance.
He wiggled his eyes at her and trundled back off in Dairine’s direction. “Getting a lot more vocal, that wee fella,” said the voice from behind her.