[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

shorts and windbreaker! But she'd never make it, and she was blocking the path.
A ten-meter fall would break bones. He guided her down, letting her stand on his shoulders when he
had to. She knelt at the bottom, panting like a dog. He made her strip and took her shorts and
windbreaker.
The others were climbing. Shar plodded back toward the barracks.
Jemmy pulled himself along a row of Destiny plants. Or was it all one plant? He couldn't see a break,
just a line of roots prying a mountainsized rock apart.
Before that crack ran out there was another.
The world was all tilted surfaces, black and lightning-white, and roar of thunder. He remembered
wandering in a daze, mostly blind and mostly deaf, pulling himself from nowhere to nowhere just because
he wasn't dead yet. .
But this night was very different from the night he'd abandoned Carder's Boat. He'd been fed and
succored, and twelve people had given their lives into his hands. . . gloves. Nobody else had gloves.
The plants ended suddenly. Other climbers started having trouble. Jemmy had to double back a few
times to guide the others to foot- and handholds. The prole gun's strap left Jemmy's arms free. He could
see Andrew watching from far above.
If Jemmy slipped, Andrew would have the gun again.
Page 198
"Here," Andrew bellowed. "The ledge. Leave your ponchos here. Firebird shorts too. Use rocks to
weigh them down."
Rafik exclaimed, "Now what on Earth are you playing at, Andrew?"
"Do it right!" Andrew bellowed. He'd left his own clothing where he was, fifty feet above the ledge,
sleeves spread and wedged in cracks. "They can't see through unless the clouds break!" He scrambled
back and helped Rafik, then Willametta, then Amnon place rocks to display flame-colored ponchos and
shorts against dark wet rock. The others were getting the idea.
Andrew was painting a picture of climbers scattered over a cliff face. "We're halfway up and frozen
in fear, right? And that's the way it is until they get here themselves, and look. Right?"
"Andrew," Jemmy asked, "do you think they can see us?"
Andrew's teeth flashed in lightning. "Not yet. All set? Come!"
"Andrew, there's too many!" Andrew looked at him, and Jemmy shouted, "Me! I'm one too many!
They're looking for thirteen ponchos, not fourteen, and if we meet a spectre or something, someone has
to pose!"
And after they found Shar they'd be looking for twelve ponchos, not thirteen. . . still one too many. . .
unless Shar talked.
Andrew said, "One of us should have started naked. Damndamn. Ansel, you look cold-"
Ansel Tarr dressed again in flame colors.
Jemmy looked arouhd at them. "Willya?" He gave her Shar's swim shorts and windbreaker. She
looked no more skeletal than the rest.
Andrew led off again, leaving twelve posed ponchos.
The ledge was straight, hard to lose in the flashing dark, but it wasn't a split in rock. It was a frozen
flow of lava, naked of plants, and slippery. There were holes etched by rain for handholds and footholds.
Jemmy stayed on hands and knees even where he could stand, because those behind him were copying
his style.
Jemmy, Henry, Andrew, Willametta, Barda, and Amnon wore swim trunks and windbreakers. Ansel
wore the last poncho. The rest were naked and not liking it.
He barely heard the scream, but he turned quick and shouted down. "Who fell?"
He heard: "I caught something. Caught a plant." Amnon's voice. "Thorn."
"Can you climb up?" Oh, Earth and Moon, Amnon was in a windbreaker and trunks! If proles found
those on a gatherer's corpse, they'd guess there were more.
"I can't move! It's like two handfuls of hypo needles!"
"I've got rope, Jeremy." Andrew hurled a coil of rope at him. He leered atJemmy and said, "Anchor
Page 199
me." Plan? Where's your rope?
Jemmy tied the rope to a low, knotted Destiny tree. He could hear Amnon whimpering. The rope
didn't seem to be finding him.
The sky lit like a sun.
It hurt the eyes. . . like the light that burned over the speckles field after Shimon's death. Jemmy
blinked. "What on Earth-?"
"Quicksilverrr!" Andrew's bellow was all triumph. He trolled the rope toward Amnon, who was
clinging to a double armful of thorn on a sixtydegree slope. The rope was too short. "Jeremy!"
It was long enough when Jemmy had untied it from the tree, but the
only anchor now was himself and Andrew. Amnon didn't want to let go of the bush.
Andrew shouted, "Take it, you damned fool!"
Amnon moaned and snatched at the rope, lost his grip and had only the rope. He clung and swung
while Andrew and Jemmy pulled hand over hand. At the end he lay sobbing at their feet, his hands full of
needles and blood.
And Jemmy asked again: "The light?"
"It's Quicksilver, you Crab-shy dropout! And the date is late summer, and Quicksilver rises just an
hour before sunrise. And we are right on schedule, Jeremy, but we should move!"
"Quicksilver's bright, but this bright?"
"Settler magic. That's what you call it, isn't it? Argos flew past Quicksilver. They dropped a metal
and plastic turtle-I've seen pictures-it makes solar-electric plates, and lasers to beam the power, and
more little mining turtles. Now it's hundreds of years later and Quicksilver's covered in solar collectors.
That's why it's so bright."
An entire planet covered in Begley cloth.
Jemmy began to understand that DestinyTown had power undreamed by the towns along the Crab.
They could light up a mountain range. Launch ships into space. Andrew had known. Did they all know?
Did they all take this for granted?
Lightning flickered dimly against a sky like a hazy noon. The rock slope was etched in detail. It
looked to be four hundred meters to the ridge, and there, that crack might be a way up.
But-"They're looking at us. How?"
"Amnon? Got your nerve back? Ready to move?"
"Dammit, Andrew! How are they watching us? From the sky?" Light like this had burned behind
them this afternoon, lighting the proles' investigation of Shimon's death.
Page 200
The others gathered around Andrew and Jemmy and Amnon. Andrew said, "All right, Jeremy, but
we don't have forever. Now, that light isn't for us. They're looking for firebird ponchos-Ansel, get that off
now, ball it up and hide it!-and those are upRoad. They're looking through video-you understand video
cameras?"
"In Spiral Town we still have a few that work."
"Video from orbit. So they can't see us unless the clouds break, but there's a way to split light into
colors. They'll look for firebird colors. They'll match every firebird in the area, but firebirds don't gather
the way Our ponchos are gathered-"
Willametta said, "Andrew?"
"The light's on us. It isn't on the ponchos. Can't you see? The mountain's lit up all around us, but it
fades going back toward the barracks. Fades toward the fields too."
The others murmured. Jemmy saw that she was right. But Andrew said, "You're imagining that. Why
would they be looking at us?"
"I thought they might be focusing on this." Jemmy held up the prole gun.
"Why?"
But Willametta asked, "Jeremy, how long has that light been blinking?"
A blinking green light in the butt of the gun. Jemmy said, "It's been doing that all along. Why?
Because they wouldn't want a gun like this wandering loose! If they've got phones-"
"Prole guns don't blink when we're harvesting. They didn't blink after the proles shot the birds,"
Willametta said. "Andrew, when did it start blinking? After you killed a prole for it?"
"Maybe. Damndamndamn. It's sending a help call, isn't it, Willya?"
"Throw it away, Andrew!"
"Daaamn! Damn. Jeremy, do it." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]