Part 44 (1/2)

Ali watched their reactions as extensions of herself. She felt numb. Enraged. Paralyzed. Like her friends and comrades, she wanted to shout and kick at the sand and fall on her back. The treachery was beyond belief.

'Why have they done this?' someone cried.

'They must have left a note. An explanation.'

'Listen to you,' Gitner jeered. 'You sound like teenagers who just got jilted. This is business, people. A race for survival. Walker just jettisoned a bunch of empty stomachs. I'm surprised he didn't do it sooner.'

Ike came over from the cache site with a piece of paper in one hand, and Ali saw a row of numbers on it. 'Walker left a portion of the food and medicine. But the communications line is destroyed. And they took all their weapons.'

'They've left us here like a speed b.u.mp,' someone cried. 'A sacrificial offering to the hadals.'

Ali grabbed Ike's arm, and her expression made them pause. Suddenly her visitor in the middle of the night made sense. 'Do you believe in karma?' she asked Ike, and they followed her to the buried blanket of guns and knives'. It took less than a minute to dig it out. Then it took an hour to argue about who got which of the weapons.

'I don't get it,' Gitner said. 'Ike saves the guy. But then he gives the hardware to a nun?'

'It's not obvious?' said Pia. 'Ike's nun.' They all looked at Ali.

Ike detoured it. 'Now we have our chance.' He finished loading his sawed-off.

In the depot they picked through the boxes and cans. Walker had left more than expected, but less than they needed. Further, his men had plundered care packages sent down to the scientists by anxious families and friends. The interior of the sand fort was littered with little gifts and cards and snapshots. It added insult to the crime, and put the scientists into greater despair.

The scientists numbered forty-six. A careful accounting showed they had food for 1,334 man-days, or twenty-nine days at full rations. That could be stretched, it was agreed. By halving their daily intake, the food would last two months.

Their exploration was dead. All that remained was a race for survival. The expedition faced two choices. They could try to return to Z-3 - Esperanza - on foot. Or they could continue in search of the next cache, more supplies, and an exit from the subplanet.

Gitner was adamant: Esperanza was their only hope. 'That way, at least we're not dealing with a complete unknown,' he said. With two months' rations, they would have time enough to reach what was left of Cache III, splice the comm line together, and call in more supplies. He called anyone who did not agree a fool. 'We don't have a minute to waste,' he kept saying.

'What do you think?' they asked Ike.

'It's a c.r.a.pshoot,' he said.

'But which way should we go?'

Ali could tell that Ike had made up his mind. But he wanted no responsibility for their decisions, and grew quiet.

'There's nothing but hole to the west,' Gitner declared. 'Anyone that wants to go east, go with me.'

Ali was surprised when Ike turned crafty and bartered with Gitner over the weapons. He finally let go of the rifle and its ammunition and the radio and a knife for an extra fifty days' rations of MREs. 'If you don't mind,' he said, 'we'll just take a stab around this water.'

Now that he had the majority of the weapons, food, and followers, Gitner didn't mind at all. 'You're off your nut,' Gitner told Ike. 'What about the rest of you?'

'New territory,' said Troy, the young forensics expert.

'Ike's done okay so far,' said Pia.

Ali didn't defend her choice.

'Then we'll remember you,' Gitner said.

He quickly wrangled his crew together and got them packed for their journey, prodding them with the possibility that Walker might decide to reclaim what was left. There was little time for the two groups to say good-bye. People from each coalition were shaking hands, bidding one another to break a leg, promising to send rescue if they got out first.

Just before leaving, Gitner approached Ali with his new rifle. 'I think it's only fair that you give us your maps,' he said. 'You don't need them. We do.'

'My day maps?' Ali said. They were hers. She had created them with all the art in her, and saw them as an extension of herself.

'We need to remember all the landmarks possible.'

It was the first time Ali actively wished Ike would stand up for her, but he didn't. With everyone watching, she gave the tube of maps to Gitner. 'Promise to take care of them,' she asked. 'I'd like them back someday.'

'Sure.' Gitner offered no thanks, just hitched the tube into his backpack and started up the trail beside the river. His people followed. Besides Ali and Ike, only seven people stayed behind.

'Which way do we go?'

'Left,' said Ike. He was so sure.

'But Walker went right with the boats, I saw him,' Ali said.

'That could work,' Ike allowed. 'But it's backward.'

'Backward?'

'Can't you feel it?' Ike asked. 'This is a sacred s.p.a.ce. You always walk to the left around sacred places. Mountains. Temples. Lakes. That's just how it's done. Clockwise.'

'Isn't that some Buddhist thing?' said Pia.

'Dante,' said Ike. 'Ever read the Inferno? Each time they hit a fork, the party goes left. Always left. And he was no Buddhist.'

'That's it?' marveled a burly geologist. 'All these months we've been following a poem and your superst.i.tions?'

Ike grinned. 'You didn't know that?'

The first fifteen days they marched shoeless, like beachcombers. The sand was cool between their toes. They sweated under heavy packs. At night their thighs ached. Drifting on rafts had taken its toll.

Ike kept them in motion, but slowly, the pace of nomads. 'No sense in racing,' he said. 'We're doing fine.'

They learned the water. Ali dipped her headlamp underneath the surface, and she may as well have tried s.h.i.+ning her light from the back of a mirror. She cupped the water in her palms and it was like holding time. The water was ancient.

'This water - it's been living here for over a half-million years,' the hydrologist Chelsea told her. It had a scent like the deep earth.

Ike stirred the sea with his hand and let a few drops onto his tongue. 'Different,' he p.r.o.nounced. After that, he drank from the sea without hesitation. He let the others make up their own minds, and knew they were watching closely to see if he sickened or his urine bled. Twiggs, the microbotanist, was especially attentive.

By the end of the second day, all were drinking the water without purifying it.

'It's delicious,' said Ali. Voluptuous, she meant, but did not want to say it out loud. It was somehow different from plain water, the way it slid on the tongue, its cleanness. She scooped a handful to her face and pulled it across the bones of her cheeks, and the sense of it lingered. It was all in her head, she decided. It had to do with this place.

One day they saw small sulfurous flashes along the black horizon. Ike said it was gunfire, maybe as much as a hundred miles away, on the opposite side of the sea. Walker was either making trouble or having it.

The water was their north. For nearly six months they had advanced with no foresight, trusting no compa.s.s, trapped in blind veins. Now they had the sea. For once they could antic.i.p.ate their geography. They could see tomorrow, and the day after that. It was not a straight destiny, there were bends and arcs, but for a change they could see as far as their vision reached, a welcome alternative to the maze of claustrophobic tunnels.