“Ice-eaters?” Haniman said. “Coming up underneath us, the way they did under the cocoon?”
“Ice-eaters here?” said Hresh. “No, that can’t be. I thought they lived only in mountains. But the ground is shaking, all right. And—”
Then came a sighing sound of a sort that he had heard before, and another deep groan; and Hresh realized what was happening. There were no ice-eaters here. The sounds they heard were those of the unseen machinery that had carried them into these depths.
“The stone!” he yelled. “It’s taking off all by itself!”
Indeed it had begun slowly to rise. Desperately he rushed for it. It was already as high as his knees when he caught it by the edge and pulled himself up. Looking around for Haniman, he saw him lumbering and thundering along in a strange sluggish way, as though running through water. It was the Haniman of old returned, the fat clumsy boy out of whom this Haniman had grown; that fat Haniman might be gone, but evidently even this new improved version was still a slow runner. Hresh leaned over the edge of the slab, furiously gesticulating at him.
“Hurry! It’s going up!”
“I’m — trying—” Haniman grunted, head down, arms flailing.
But the slab was nearly as high as Haniman’s shoulders when he reached it, an eternity later. Hresh reached down to catch him by the wrists. He felt a terrible hot wrenching pain, as though his arms were being yanked out at the sockets; and he thought for a moment that Haniman’s weight would pull him forward and off the slab. Somehow he anchored himself on the smooth glossy stone and heaved. In one terrible burst of exertion Hresh hauled Haniman up until he was able to hook his chin over the edge of the slab, and after that it was easier. The slab rose into the dome of blackness above them. They lay sprawled side by side, both of them gasping, shaking, exhausted. Hresh had never felt such pain as he was feeling all along his arms now, pulsating fiery tremors that went on and on and on; and he suspected that was going to get worse before it healed.
The slab glided up and up. When he dared, Hresh looked over the edge and saw only empty darkness below; the amber light must have gone off once they were in midair. Above was darkness also. But before long they were back in the tower of the metal webwork, and the slab was fixed once more on the tower’s bare dirt floor.
They rose from it in silence. In silence they made their way back to the tribe. Night had come, heavy, starless, mysterious. Hresh could not recall ever feeling so weary in his life, not even during the worst days of the long march. But in his mind there blazed the brilliant images he had seen, in just that single moment, of the Great World alive. He knew he would return to the cavern under the tower soon. Not at once, no, however much he wanted to do that, for there were certain preparations he knew he must make first. But soon.
And this time he would bring the Barak Dayir.
Taniane, studying Hresh and Haniman in the days that followed, sensed that something extraordinary must have happened on their last trip to the heart of the city. They had come back with eyes glowing and faces strange with amazement. Hresh had gone straight to Koshmar, simply brushing aside anyone who tried to speak with him before he found her, as if brimming with urgent things to report. But when Taniane asked him that evening what he had seen, he glared as if she were one of the hjjk-folk and said, almost angrily, “Nothing. Nothing at all.”
It seemed to her that she had been trying to get Hresh to tell her things all her life, but he had always kept her at arm’s distance. That was, she knew, not strictly true. In the days of the cocoon they had played together often and he had told her many things, fanciful things, his visions of the world outside the cocoon, his dreams of life in the ancient times, his versions of the tales that the old chronicler Thaggoran related to him. And all too often she had not been able to understand what Hresh was talking about, or had simply not been interested. Why should she have? She was only a child then. That was what all of them had been then, she, Orbin, Haniman, Hresh. But Hresh had always been the strange one, far beyond them all, Hresh-full-of-questions.
He must think I am a fool, Taniane thought bleakly. That I am empty, that I am simple.
But she was no longer a child. She was rapidly rising toward womanhood now. When she ran her hands over her body she could feel the buds of her breasts sprouting. Her fur was deepening in tone, a rich glossy dark brown with undertones of red, and it was growing thick and silken. She was becoming tall, almost as tall as such full-grown women as Sinistine and Boldirinthe. Certainly she was taller than Hresh, whose growth was coming on him more slowly.
It was the time when Taniane was beginning to think of finding her mate.
She wanted Hresh. She always had. Even when they were children in the cocoon, bouncing from wall to wall in the wild games they played, the kick-wrestling and the arm-standing and the cavern-soaring, she had dreamed of being grown up, dreamed of becoming a breeding-woman, dreamed of lying in the dark breeding-chambers of the cocoon with Hresh. Even though he was so small, even though he was so strange, there was a force about him, an energy, an excitement, that had caused Taniane to desire him although she had not yet known what desire meant.
Now she was older, and she still desired him. But he seemed still to treat her casually, with little show of interest. He was wholly absorbed with being the chronicler. He lived in a realm apart.
And chroniclers never took mates, anyway. Even if Hresh loved her the way she loved him, what chance was there that they would ever form a couple? No, she would probably have to mate with someone else, when her time came.
Orbin? He was big and strong, and gentle within his strength. But he was slow-minded and stolid. She would be bored with him quickly. Besides, he was unmistakably interested in little Bonlai, though Bonlai was two or three years younger than they were. Bonlai was the sort of easygoing, sturdy girl that someone like Orbin would prefer. And calm patient Orbin would be quite willing, Taniane guessed, to wait for Bonlai to grow up.
That left Haniman, then: the only other young man of their group. It struck her as odd, the idea of mating with Haniman. He had been such a woeful thing when they were younger, so slow, so fat, always tagging along behind the others. In the cocoon days she could not imagine that anyone would want to mate with Haniman, or twine with him, or do anything much else with him. But there was something likable about him, or at least unthreatening, that had drawn her to him for companionship. Now he was greatly changed. He was still a little slow and awkward, always fumbling things and dropping them, but he was strong now, and all that soft childish flesh was gone from him. There was nothing fascinating about him, as there was about Hresh. But he was acceptable, she supposed. And he might well be the only choice she had.
I will mate with Haniman, she told herself, trying the thought out to see how she liked it. Taniane and Haniman, Haniman and Taniane: why, the names had similar sounds! They went well together. Taniane and Haniman. Haniman and Taniane.
And yet — yet—
She couldn’t quite bring herself to it. To mate with Haniman, merely because he was the only one — Haniman the slow, Haniman the outsider, always the last one to be chosen in any game — no matter that he was different now, he would always be the same Haniman to her, a boy she liked to have as a friend, but not as her mate, no, no—
Maybe someday soon they’d meet some other tribe of people, as Hresh was always speculating. And she would find a mate in that new tribe, since she couldn’t have Hresh himself.
Or maybe she wouldn’t mate at all. There was always that possibility. Torlyri had never mated. Koshmar had never mated. A person didn’t have to mate. Koshmar was a magnificent leader, Taniane thought, though she seemed sometimes a driven person, narrow-souled, hard. There was no room in Koshmar’s life for a mate: the closest she could come to it was what she did with Torlyri, which was twining, not mating. But she was the chieftain. The chieftain did not mate, by custom. Or perhaps by law. And in Koshmar’s case by preference as well.