Part 8 (1/2)

After the first few hours he had to carry Ooma most of the way. The girl, near to death from cold, soon ceased to care if she lived or died. When the moonlight petered out and he could not see to climb farther, Blade cast about for a spot where they might have at least a chance of surviving until morning. He spotted two huge, black, uprearing rocks that formed a crude cave and carried the girl toward them. It was a decision that eventually saved them both.

The animal, whatever it was, had scented them long before and was in hiding. But when Blade approached its lair it charged with a high bellow. Blade barely had time to drop Ooma and step aside. As it was, the creature caught him a glancing blow with one of its great horns, a blow that stunned Blade and sent him reeling near the edge of the precipice. He recovered his footing in time, plucked the little stone knife from his belt and cagily moved away from the edge of the fallaway. He could not see the animal well, but it was food and it had fur or wool of some sort. He did not want it charging him again and going over the edge. For already Blade knew that this beast, whatever it might be, spelled the difference between life and death. Blade charged it. The animal came to meet him, snorting and stamping its front hooves in fury and fear.

The last of the moon had gone and Blade had to kill it in the dark. He met the charge with his own great shoulders, was knocked back, kept his footing and clung to one of the curved horns with one hand as he daggered with the stone knife. He got a terrible leverage and bent the horn over and flung the animal on its side. Then Blade, a berserk animal himself, making mindless sounds, leaped on it and used the stone knife with both hands. His hands were red and hot and steaming with blood and still he attacked. Again and again, over and over, he stabbed and ripped and tore with the stone knife. When his senses came back the animal had been dead for minutes. Blade stood over it, his legs trembling, gouts of blood congealing on him, and knew that for a moment he had been very near to madness. Fatigue, fear, nervous strain, constant alertness, the great hazards he had already faced, they were all beginning to take a deadly toll.

Blade let out a great shuddering breath and slumped in relaxation. He laughed into the black wind. It was like this in Dimension X. Always.

He groped his way back to where he had dropped Ooma. She lay huddled, knees up, s.h.i.+vering convulsively. ”I am so cold, Blade. So c-c-cold. We are going to die here, I know. It would have been b-b-better to take our chances with the Api in the pa.s.s.”

He laughed as he picked her up. ”You are wrong, Ooma. We are not going to die and we would not be better off with the Api. I will have you warm in a few minutes.”

She mistook his meaning and shook her head. ”N-no, Blade. Not even that can save me now. I am too cold. I will die. Jedds do not stand cold well.”

Blade chuckled and carried her into the shallow cave that offered little but some shelter from the wind. He put her down and went back for the thing he had killed. It was totally dark now with no sign of stars or moon. The sky was a dark canopy pressing down on the mountain peaks, the wind a dank, cold sword seeking them out.

Blade, working by touch, gutted the huge woolly animal. He pulled the hot, steaming guts out and dumped them nearby, then picked up the s.h.i.+vering girl. ”This is going to be b.l.o.o.d.y and messy,” he told her, ”but you will be warm.”

By now Ooma was too cold, too near death, to care or to answer. She tried to cling to him, but her arms would not function. Blade put her into the hot cavern of the gutted animal and, wedging her as deeply into the carca.s.s as he could, closed it about her. He fumbled for the entrails, found them, strung them out and used them to bind the two sides of the carca.s.s together by looping the gut around the front and back legs. Ooma, at least, would be warm for tonight. He spoke to her down through the b.l.o.o.d.y slitted belly of the dead animal.

”How is it, girl? Snug enough now?”

”Warm, Blade. So warm. I think I will sleep now. It is like being in my mother's womb again.”

Blade smiled, shook his head and went about the business of his own survival. He hacked off lengths of the entrails and forced himself to eat. He would need all his strength tomorrow. He wedged himself back into a corner of the little makes.h.i.+ft cave, then pulled the carca.s.s, with Ooma inside it, over on top of him. Wind and sleet, cheated for the moment, moaned in constant threnody past the rock opening.

Richard Blade slept.

Two days later he and Ooma half slid, half fell, down the last rocky, shale-strewn incline and stood in a narrow ravine that led in turn into the lush valley of the Jedds.

It would be, Ooma said, some days yet before they came to the city of her people. As they left the ravine and came into the valley proper, she pointed about and explained: ”This land is old, nearly as old as the Idol of Birkbegn. When my people first came here, after being driven from their own land because they disobeyed the Books, they resolved to do better and so set about creating new and better lives for all the people. So it is written in the Books. Of course it did not last. The Jedds are an ill-fated people.”

Blade, gazing far down the valley, felt a moment of regret that he would not be able to explore these ancient wonders. But his time was growing short, on the final descent into the valley he had been seized with that sudden sharp pain, the brain spasm, that told him Lord Leighton was groping with the computer. Any time now he could be s.n.a.t.c.hed back to Home Dimension. Tomorrow, the day after, next week, next month. Or in the next minute.

He put an arm about Ooma's shoulders and gave her a hug. ”The first thing we do,” he said, ”is to find water and clean ourselves. If we come on any of your people looking as we do now they will either kill us for demons or die of fright.”

It was true. They were both covered with dirt and dried blood, and Ooma's hair was one great tangle. Blade had hacked the skin of the beast into two equal parts and made crude cloaks for them both, binding them around their waists with twists of gut. With the leftover sc.r.a.ps he made a pair of shoes of sorts for the girl, his own feet and legs were a ma.s.s of bruises, sores and still-oozing rock cuts. They were in truth sorry sights, both of them, but as Blade glanced back at the mountains he was not discontent. They were alive, with the barrier range and the Api behind them, and that in itself was miracle enough.

Over the valley, narrow and steep-sided and lushly rank with greenery out of control for centuries, there hung a great and perfect silence. Dry ca.n.a.ls, choked with weeds, interlaced to make a great frond-choked net. Everywhere were deserted temples and desolate, leering images, some in the image of the Idol of Birkbegn, others merely grotesque. Ooma did not know their meaning or origin.

After some hours of walking, during which their thirst grew, the snow they had eaten in the mountains was gone, they at last found a temple which mirrored itself in a cool, steel-colored pond. It had no visible source and the water, when they plunged in, was icy cold. Blade guessed at springs on the bottom.

They drank and scrubbed and drank and scrubbed. Ooma made brushes of twigs and leaves and they washed each other. They flung away the raw skins. Ooma, a little to Blade's amus.e.m.e.nt, made a small prayer for the soul of the unknown animal that had saved them. Blade, by this time, had come to think of it as a Dimension-X version of a mountain sheep or goat.

Ooma was her old self again. This Blade knew when, being clean at last and their thirst slaked, she insisted on making love on an altar before one of the eroded idols. He held back for a moment, teasing her.

”You forget, girl. It is not yet dark and we have not yet eaten. It is against all the Jedd law and custom, so you told me. So it is written in the Books of Birkbegn.” He grinned and pointed around with a finger. ”You see what happens when you disobey the Books? All this desolation.”

Ooma scowled at him and s.n.a.t.c.hed at his p.e.n.i.s, which was belying his words. ”Do not tease me, Blade. It was you who begged me to break the laws, remember? And I did and I liked it. So I care not what happens now. Come, Blade, and carry me to the altar and we will celebrate being alive again. For we were all but dead and you know it.”

When they had made love and both lay satiated and content beneath the vacant stare of a long-forgotten idol, Blade said at last: ”How far do you reckon it from here to the city of your Jedds?”

Ooma stirred lazily in his arms. She was nearly asleep. There was no sun, but a warm gray haze lay like a blanket over the valley and the air was silky against their newly-scrubbed flesh. When she did not answer, Blade nudged her. ”Come, girl. This is no time for sleep. We must be on our way. For one thing there is the matter of food, I like your valley and it is warm and peaceful here, but there is nothing to eat. Your little stomach may still be content, but mine is not.” They had long ago eaten the last of the mountain beast, Blade taking the larger share since he needed it more and had had the burden of carrying Ooma over the most difficult trails.

”I seem to remember,” said Ooma, ”that as we come near to the city there are fruit trees and bushes. I think there will be no food before that.” She yawned and stretched and bent quickly to kiss his now-shrunken organ. ”I suppose you are right. We had better get on.”

Blade was not listening. His ears, as near to perfect as a man's could be, caught a faint sound in the undergrowth about them. He said nothing, but stared over Ooma's head at the spot whence the sound came.

He was never sure, never positive beyond a doubt that he had seen and heard what he thought he had. Not even when, back in Home Dimension, Lord L taped Blade's automatic memory and played it back to him.

The sound was a faint hissing. The sight, if indeed it was there at all, was that of a brilliantly colored snake, long and sinuous and diamond-backed, slithering away into the greenery. Blade shook his head, blinked, and when he looked again the thing was gone. Or had it ever been?

Richard Blade and Ooma began the trek down the valley, walking hand in hand and as naked as when they came into the world. Of his weapons Blade had only the little stone knife left, and this he carried in his hand. Ooma a.s.sured him that in this wasteland there was no danger, not until they reached the city or encountered a Jedd scouting party. Then the peril might begin again. She did not know. She did not know how Blade would be received by her people.

Blade had his own ideas about that.

They came at last to a wild orchard where trees bore an apple-like fruit as large as watermelons. He slashed one open and they devoured it eagerly, then another. The inner flesh was a soft and creamy pulp, reminding Blade of durian, the p.r.i.c.kly-rind fruit he had eaten in Malaysia, yet without the bad odor. They both ate until their stomachs bulged.

Now there were clear streams of water tumbling into the valley from both sides, noisy falls that spilled ice cold water, and beside one of these, having drunk their fill, they fell asleep in each others arms.

Blade was first to awaken and he noticed the smell immediately. During their slumber a breeze had set through the valley and it carried to him, now, clouds of dirty gray smoke and the odor, of burning flesh? Human or animal?

Ooma was still sleeping peacefully and he did not disturb her. He felt a tenderness for the girl as he gazed at her, and ignored for the moment the smoke and the smell, knowing that both were a harbinger of trouble ahead and the end of this brief peace. She was lying curled up, her knees drawn up under her chin and her cheek cus.h.i.+oned on her two hands. In her thick, long hair were still the two wooden combs she had made. He smoothed her hair and she stirred and murmured something in her dreams. Ooma was, he thought watching her now in this caught moment of time, as lovely as any of the women he had ever known back in Home Dimension. Or, for that matter, in any Dimension X. And he had known many.

Brief memories, misty and fragmentary, drifted through his mind like a cleaner smoke than that now encompa.s.sing him. Taleen, Lali, Zulekia. Had he really known them all, made love to them all, left them all forever? Had they ever been anything but dreams, computer-induced fantasies?

Ooma smiled in her sleep. Blade in turn smiled and continued to stroke her hair. Renewed tenderness surged through him. In what dreamland did she wander? Through what maze and in what personal dimension? Through what reality was she struggling at the moment?

He felt the beginning of pain and rubbed a spot on his forehead just between his eyes. Reality, who could say what it was? Not even the person who experienced it and, Pain sprang at him like a tiger. His head was filled with white-hot sparks and expanding gases. Blade moaned and leaned forward, then fell over on his side. Lord L and the computer were reaching, searching, had found him. His last thought, as darkness swirled in with a rocket roaring, was that of resentment. Not yet. He was not yet ready to return.

A splash of icy water in his face brought him awake. Ooma was haunched down beside him, peering at him anxiously. She had made a gourd of one of the huge fruits and had carried water from a nearby spring. It was still half full.

”Blade? Blade master, do you live?” She raised the half gourd and was about to drench him again. Blade rolled away and sat up, sputtering.

”I am all right, Ooma. I merely slept, girl.” He tried to carry it off with a grin. ”Am I so dirty, then, so unclean that you must bathe me while I sleep?”

She put down the dipper and regarded him with narrowed eyes in which there lurked both suspicion and concern. ”You were talking, Blade. Talking and screaming and crying in your sleep. A most strange sleep, I think. I was very frightened. It was as, as if your body remained here while your soul had gone far away. As if you had left me and would never return. I was,” she repeated, ”very frightened. I would not have you leave me, Blade. Ever.”

He felt a twinge at the dog-like devotion in her dark eyes. He pulled her down beside him and held her tight. No use trying to explain the truth to Ooma, no use at all. Matters must take their course, as always. But the computer had almost had him that time, had nearly taken him back to Home Dimension. Lord Leighton was searching for him with a vengeance. Why was he so loath to go? Blade could not answer that.

They made love, slowly and with great pleasure, and not until it was over and they had caught their breath did Blade mention the stinking smoke that by now was clogging the valley and hanging over them in a greasy brown-and-gray pall.

”They are burning corpses.” Ooma explained at once. ”Or so I think. In my life I have never seen it done, but I have heard the old people speak of it. It is like the Yellow Death, come again to plague the Jedds. It is said to appear once in the lifetime of every man, if he lives a true and normal span.”

Blade listened carefully, silently, prompting her only when she faltered in the tale. She did not seem unduly concerned, and this he understood. Ooma was young and had never seen the Yellow Death, and so to her it meant little. Blade felt a bit differently, his prime mission was to survive and to return to Home Dimension with a report. This expedition, into a dimension so like his own, with the promise of vast treasure to be teleported one day, was especially important. Plague could kill him as surely as a knife or spear or sword.