"Don't hurry on my account," Ang said sardonically.
"I'd shake everything twice, if I was you."
I turned my back on him and shook everything out again with clumsy hands. I picked an opalescent blue green beetle out of my shirt pocket. After that my body did most of the shaking for me.
"Relax," Ang said. "It's over. At least you got the shower you've been bitching about." I stared at him, incredulous. He was smiling, but I couldn't tell what he meant by it.
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Spadrin climbed down out of the rover's cab. He looked sullenly at the ring of bottles, at me, and at Ang.
"That's half of what I had left."
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Ang shrugged. "Only way to get rid of the bugs.
You're the one who . . . tripped." His voice was flat.
Spadrin didn't answer him. "Got all the cooties out, Gedda?" He looked at me instead, and I knew exactly what lay behind his smile.
"You did that intentionally--"
"Me? How did I know they'd come out of there like that?"
"You knew!"
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"You want to make something of it?" His smile stretched taut. He flexed his hands almost casually.
"Gedda--?"
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My own hands made fists. They loosened again. I
looked down at my naked legs, away from his eyes, and shook my head. The hot breath of the desert whispered around me, stinging me with dust.
"Then say thanks for wasting my supply." He glanced at the empty bottles.
I looked up again, felt my face flushing.
"Forget it," Ang murmured, to someone, to the wind. "Just forget about it. . . ."
Spadrin stood where he was, waiting.
Anger paralyzed my throat. I tried, once, twice, before
I could get the word out. "Thanks."
Spadrin climbed back inside, and let us follow.
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day 49.
At least I think it's day 49. My watch isn't keeping time--even its logic functions are off. The cooling unit isn't in much better condition. Neither am I. Neither are the others, I suppose, but I don't give a damn. It's the middle of the night, and the inside of the rover is barely cool even now. I did the best I
could. I can't do it all alone, without parts, without help.
. . . That's what they expect. Miracles. In this stinking place?
Gods, how I want to go outside, breathe fresh air, even if it has to be here-- But Ang claims it's too dangerous to leave the vehicle at night; that we might lose our way, or ... or what, he won't say. Step on a beetle hive.
I feel those bugs crawling on me, all the time; I can't rest. I itch all over, my eyes water, I start shaking. . . .
Ang says I'm having an allergic reaction. Spadrin grins as if he planned it that way. Ang gave me salves and some kind of antihistamine, or I'd have crawled out of my skin by now. Every bite is oozing and swollen; they
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stick to my clothes; I can't stand touching them but I
have to scratch. ... I hate Spadrin. . . . Gods, I have to stop thinking about it!
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day 54. day 55?
The only thing I really know for sure is that we finally reached the place where Ang found the solii. It was a couple of mornings ago; I was spelling
Ang at the controls, to keep from going crazy with itching. It was almost midday when I began to see a line of hills ahead. Clouds of mist lay in their folds, like lint in pockets. To see fog lying on the land was more than my eyes could believe--after so many days in world's end, I thought it was an hallucination. I was still waiting for it to disappear when Ang came stumbling forward, with a reeking fesh stick in his hand. I turned as I heard him, and saw his eyes widen as he looked through the windshield.
He was excited; it was the first time since we began this journey that I remembered seeing any positive emotion on his face. Then he turned back and swore at me. "Why the hell didn't you call me?"
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"I thought it wasn't real," I said, scratching at a scab.
"It's real." He nodded, and wiped sweat from his eyes.
"It's real, all right. This is what we've been looking for."
He sounded relieved. He gestured me up from my seat
and took the controls.
As we drew closer I began to make out foliage on the hills. The spiny fireshrub and stunted thorn trees weren't much, but they were better than the last plant life I remembered--the bloated, unwholesome flora of the jungle. I strained for the first glimpse of the blue87
JOAN D. VINGE
water lake my imagination had set deep in some twisting valley.
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But as we entered the hills, in the blaze of noon, the mists still clung unnaturally to the land ahead of us.
Looking past Ang's shoulder, I asked, "What's up there in that fog?"
"Hellfire and brimstone," he said, with a bark of laughter. "Geothermal area." We entered the wall of fog.
The temperature fell unexpectedly as we traveled deeper into the hills. Clouds of sulphurous mist poured from craters large enough to swallow the rover whole.
Their rims were stained with minerals--ochres of yellow and red, greens, whites. The anemic gray Page 70
ground we passed over breathed fog; droplets of condensation glistened on leaves and branches, and splattered our windshield.
Eventually, after hours of silent journeying, we reached a vast, shallow lake--but not the lake I'd imagined.
Its steaming surface was perfectly transparent, but mineral springs tinted its depths with delicate pinks and blues, like blossoms under glass. Ang stopped the rover on the shore and said,
"There's a geyser somewhere around here. Goes off about once a day. I need it to give me a bearing on the place where I found the solii. We'll camp here tonight, find it tomorrow."
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"Here?" Spadrin said, and swore. He'd come forward finally, and the view through the dome was enough to startle him out of his plughead stupor. I'd watched him grow more and more uneasy as we entered this place.
He's obviously never been so intimate before with the unpleasant reality of a planet's surface. "I don't like it here."
"What's the matter?" I said. "Is hell too close for comfort?"
He swore at me, this time, and I saw a faint smile pull up the corners of Ang's mouth. I let myself smile, for the
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first time in days, but only after Spadrin turned away.
"What the--?" Spadrin's back muscles bunched as he looked out at the steaming lake again.
"Ang! What the hell is that?"
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Ang leaned forward in his seat; so did I. A line of figures was coming toward us through the mist along the lake shore. They moved with the slow, jerky progress of thorn trees come to life. My mind tried to make their shapes human, and failed. I echoed Spadrin: "What are those?"
Ang pushed eagerly up out of his seat. "Cloud ears, by the gods! Cloud ears." They gathered around the rover in a crowd of disordered limbs. As they peered in, Ang reached for the door-release.