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Terry was suddenly up, and he felt her momentary confu-sion at waking up
somewhere far removed from where she'd thought she'd gone to sleep, but she
dismissed it immediately. She had slept through all his clever tricks, but
she'd come instantly awake when she'd felt his sense of peril.
Using sign language, he pointed in the direction of the passage, then at the
water, and made swimming motions, pointing to the far end of the cove where
the crack was. He had no idea if that crack was big enough for either of them,
having only noted it in passing, but it was better than noth-ing.
She nodded, and he felt her draw on some reserve of strength and become
suddenly energized in the physical sense, tense and ready to jump into the
water.
The engine sounds echoed down the passage and into the cove itself; Brazil was
certain that the ship would be com-ing down the passage, was perhaps coming
down even now, and that they should wait no longer.
Still, something stopped him. Something subtle, a very slight diminution of
the sound, perhaps, that rapidly grew more noticeable. He looked up over the
jagged rock wall and saw a plume of white smoke proceed in an orderly fashion
down the misshapen spires at the top.
The damned thing wasn't coming in! It had passed them by!
He laughed out loud in relief, grabbed Terry, and kissed her. She was somewhat
startled by the action but felt his joy and relief and knew what it meant.
For a moment at least they were safe once again, and, he reflected, it was the
perfect end to the business he'd been playing at. Being able to tap all that
power, to do all these new things, hadn't changed the fact that he was a
fugitive hiding out from the closest thing to a government this world had,
stuck inside a bunch of barren and smoky rocks on a fly speck of an island in
the middle of an indifferent ocean.
He signed to the girl to go back to sleep. She needed the rest almost as much
as they both needed food.
At least he was no longer overanxious to get under way; he wanted the navy to
be well on its way to wherever it was going and well over the horizon before
he ventured out. But more than ever he was determined to leave and to weather
what-ever the nights in this hotbox hex might bring.
There was no more game playing. While Terry slept, he pored over the charts,
seeking some sort of alternative source for food. There were other islands,
certainly; this was the start of a crescent-shaped chain of island volcanoes,
many quite a bit larger above the surface than this little dot. The question
was what, if anything, the Well would allow to take root in the rich soil.
Whatever it would be would have to be consistent with the fixed ecology of the
hex and not injurious to it or vegetation that would be expected to evolve on
the actual planet this place represented.
He examined the topographic information, sparse as it was, on the various
charts and guessed by knowing some-thing of volcanic islands and checking
elevations that one larger island about forty-five kilometers northwest was
the most likely. It was kind of peanut-shaped, two volcanoes that had risen
large and whose flows had merged into each other at the center, creating a
single unit that appeared to be a lowland plain.
He wondered for a moment why the ser-vice company hadn't put an anchorage
there, but a refer-ence to the island on the chart legend showed that flows
were irregular, were not far below the surface all along both sides, and
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tapered off at an extremely shallow slope for a fair distance. There simply
was no decent sheltered harbor available, and the only anchorage spots were
marked at four or five hundred meters out
even for a ship with this draft. From that distance one would be expected to
come ashore in a small boat or raft. It was marked emergency provisions only,
and the only indication that there was any-thing there was the note of the
locations along both coasts of the flat region the sort of place one made for
if one was shipwrecked or at least too damaged to get anywhere else. There
were no habitation markers, but its position and the stations indicated that
it would probably be checked on a regular basis by the company, the navy, or
both.
It also would take them even closer to the Mowry border instead of toward the
northern coast, but without food it would be touch and go.
Unless Gus came back, and with enough to eat, they had no choice but to try
it.
The next problem was how the hell to get out of this cul-de-sac. There was a
very slight gravitational tide, but with-out a clock or a means of recording
it he couldn't even use that, meager as it was, nor did he know if it would be
enough. He looked up at the rock cliff and the forbidding terrain beyond. He
had used a slight wind to get in, essen-tially a land breeze or one created by
the nearby storms. It would be enough to get out if it was an every-evening
thing. He'd just have to wait and see. He couldn't count on the girl to move
the ship again, and they sure as hell couldn't push or pull it.
If there was a breeze, anything at all he could use, he'd have to take it,
whether Gus was back or not. He realized that now. Whether it came in two
minutes or ten hours, that was the way it was.
For the time being there was nothing to do but lie down, stretch out, and
rest. After a while he looked over at the girl and studied her features. For
all the extra weight, whose purpose he now knew, she had a good body and a
very pretty face. It was hard to imagine her as a hard-driving ca-reer
newswoman.
That was the problem, of course, and he knew it. He didn't really want her to
be any different he wanted what they had now on the gut level to continue on
and on. If he got to the Well before Mavra, or even if Mavra got there first
but left his own connection intact, he would have to undo much of what had
been done to her. Her future had to be her own choice, not his. He owed her
that much.
But if she were restored, even with the memory of all this, what would that
other woman, Terry, whom he'd never known, think of him? And what sort of
reaction might she have seeing him not this way but as something of a monster?
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