There wasn't much dissention; the recon party had become closer through shared hardship, and Rick's position as leader had solidified. "We can't stop so close to our objective," he told them.
"Maybe Rem will reestablish contact. But even if he doesn't, reaching our objective and carrying out our scouting mission before we turn back won't cost us that much more time."
Nobody seemed inclined to object, least of all Lron. But it was Bela who came up with an interim solution. She approached Rick with what he now thought of as "that goddamn canard-winged pest"-her malthi-resting with its many claws dug into her forearm sheath. "Hagane can serve as our messenger," she said.
Rick and the others looked at the woman and the little hawk. "You mean she can find her way to Rem?" Rick asked slowly. "What if she gets lost?"
Bela gave him an indignant look. "Hagane does not get lost." She was already taking banding and writing materials from a fancy tooled pouch at her belt, nodding. "Any route she has passed over, she can retrace, even one underground."
Bela looked to Lron. "And much faster than any Karbarran. If the shuttle is gone or the others are dead, my Hagane will simply return without a message."
And it seemed unlikely the creature would have any trouble with the winged things the team had spotted in the caves; Hagane's few exploratory flights had shown that the cave's inhabitants were only too eager to stay clear of the diamond-clawed, knife-beaked whirlwind that was Bela's pet.
Rick's head was swimming, but he made a few decisions then and there. "We'll send Hagane on her flight from the observation point, so that she'll know her route all the way back to us and-and won't, uh, have to track us." He had a vision of the avian thing whizzing through the caves, and tried to figure out how fast Hagane could make the trip. Hell; it would be a quick commute.
Bela nodded at Rick's wisdom, and he returned the courtesy. They pressed on and, as Lron had promised, soon found themselves looking out over a huge expanse of weather-tormented Karbarran landscape. The cave's irregular opening might have been any one of hundreds honeycombing the wind-and sand-scoured landscape of cliffs, but it was the only one that connected directly to the Karbarrans'
secret underground maze. Natural phosphorescence gave the place a dim blue-green glow, so that they didn't need their vision devices to see one another. They shed the bat-ears, too.
The Praxian had settled down to work. "Now, the message must be short, so what will it say?
Bear in mind, Gnea can send an answer back to me here, but that reply must be concise, too."
The message Bela laboriously wrote, her tongue in one corner of her mouth, was in cramped glyphics, the whole-concept code symbols of the Praxians, using a pen with a point as narrow as a syringe. She tucked the tissue-fine bit of paper into a tiny metal capsule and bound it to Hagane's leg.
Hagane sat still, though her menacing beak opened in objection to this liberty, even taken by her beloved mistress.
Bela kissed the lambent-eyed Hagane's feathers and Hagane nuzzled her. The amazon released the creature from her hands. Hagane dove down the cave, retracing her route. "How long will it take, do you think?" Kami asked, voice muffled by his mask.
Bela considered. "To get there and back? Perhaps there will have to be consultation with the flagship. Let us say, two hours."
"Then, we'll get what rest we can," Rick decided. Everybody was bushed, and the call to move fast and hard again might be no further away than Hagane's return. He saw no reason to set up double guards, or anything more than short lookout watches, so that everybody could get some rest.
There wasn't likely to be anything to observe or analyze for military intelligence purposes under the Karbarran night sky in the next few hours. The guard on watch would also make periodic commo calls in an effort to reestablish contact with the shuttle.
Karen Penn volunteered for the first half-hour shift. No one objected. Lron, who felt no need of blanket or bedroll, curled up by the mouth of the cave, and looked off into the night. The rest of them took swigs of water or went off into a private alcove to attend to personal business, and then composed themselves for sleep.
Karen Penn, muscles still cramped from the grueling traverse of the Karbarran underground, moved to a rock surface off to one side and silently began a tai chi routine, moving with precision and a flowing grace that wasn't occidental. Jack, curled in his mummy bag with only one eye showing, followed her every move but said nothing.
"What is that you do?" asked Bela suddenly, her voice unexpectedly soft, while the others began nodding off.
Karen spoke softly, too, without stopping. "This is an exercise/combat system that was devised long ago on my world. It gives a person focus and intimate awareness of the body and of nature."
She stopped and assumed another pose. "We have more vigorous, forceful systems as well."
She went through a brief kata at full speed, snapping punches and kicks, demonstrating rotary blocks and stiff-fingered blows with much less grace but as precisely as a machine.
When Karen was done, Bela regarded her for a moment, then said, "These are beautiful and effective-looking fighting forms, and you seem adept. You are not so foolish as I thought, Karen Penn."
She began pulling her campaign cloak, the only cover she appeared to need, around her.
Karen blinked. "Foolish?" Listen, honey, as big as you are, I'll-
"Foolish for placing such importance on a mere male," Bela said, and closed her predatory eyes, turning away to sleep. Karen stared at Bela, thinking about what she had said. Luckily for Jack, he had covered his face completely before Karen glanced his way, immersed in confused thoughts and crosswired impulses.
The fourth watch was Kami's; Rick woke him, then retired to his own ultralight but warm and comfortable mummy bag. He was asleep in seconds.
Kami went off into a small cul-de-sac so as not to disturb anyone and tried another commo call to Rem and Gnea, without success. Putting the apparatus aside, he realized he was feeling a certain oddness in his perceptions, a lack of depth and a flatness of feature. It occurred to him that he had lowered the flow from his inhalant tank, to economize during sleep.
The tank wasn't his sole source of air, of course; such a supply would have been too bulky to carry. Instead, his mask frugally mixed his homeworld's atmosphere with that of the local surroundings at any given time.
He increased the flow, and in moments felt the Higher Reality come into sharp focus again, with its enhanced perceptions and expanded awareness. The winds rustling the sands whispered their secrets to him, and the stars overhead twinkled messages from the moment of their birth. Ghostly-but unfortunately, minor-Sendings made themselves known in the form of images or disembodied voices. But still he couldn't perceive the greater Truths of this war.
Lron, his snore surprisingly soft, had rolled away from his watching place at the cave's mouth.
Kami stepped to the very edge to gaze out into the night. A glow lit the horizon, and he knew that somewhere over there was the great domed capital city, Tracialle, the single major population center of Karbarra.
Kami and his people diplomatically refrained from ridiculing the Karbarrans and their days-long chanting rituals and dramatic, sometimes painful rites and grandiose reenactments, all performed in the name of some Foresight the ursinoids claimed to achieve. The Higher World was nothing one could contact that way; the Karbarrans were simply indulging themselves in mass delusions.
The Higher World spoke to the Gerudans through their every sense, thanks to their strange ecosystem, and showed them routes and possibilities. Thus, they were allowed to listen in on the constant monologue put forth by every single extant thing, by dint of its very existence, and-sometimes-to comprehend what was being said.