First, the facts. A straight course along the ion trail would put whatever had left it somewhere in the area of Tagen’s own ship, give or take thirty kilometers. A Jotan could comfortably cross overland at a speed of eight kilometers an hour. Kanetus E’Var had a lead of five Jotan days, which translated roughly into three of Earth’s.
And now the assumptions. Tagen would assume first that E’Var was, in fact, on Earth. That would make his mission here slightly more bearable. Secondly, he would assume that Kane was on foot, and perhaps expecting pursuit. He would assume Kane could travel for an even hundred kilometers a day, forgoing sleep in favor of distance. It would be an extraordinary feat considering the current temperature, but it was remotely possible and so it gave Tagen a solid outside number on which to pin his expectations. So, beginning within thirty kilometers of Tagen’s position, and making phenomenal use of his three-day head start, the prisoner could be anywhere in a search area of two thousand seventy-two square kilometers.
Hm. All right, step back and try again.
At the outside, E’Var could be six hundred and sixty kilometers away, and he was probably not wandering aimlessly. In Tagen’s experience, men in the wild had a tendency to follow the sun. If E’Var had landed at night, he might be traveling east, pursuing the rising star he had first seen. If he had come during the later day, he might be headed west.
Tagen scowled as he hunkered down to sketch his figures in Earth’s dry soil. He’d hated math when he was a boy and he hated it now, but despite his great childhood conviction that he would never need to learn how to solve his schoolwork in the real world, here he was: A ship leaves High Court on Jota Prime at two of the bells traveling nine hundred kilometers an hour. If he maintains his speed and pilots the most direct course, what time will it be on Earth when he lands at these coordinates?
He was getting a headache. Already. Gods.
So, all right. It would be the middle of Earth’s night. So. In all likelihood, E’Var was aimed east and Tagen was three Earth days behind him. He would have to manage better than one hundred kilometers a day in order to overtake the prisoner, and he would have to do it on foot, on an alien world, in temperatures in excess of one hundred degrees.
As he moved into the woods under the blistering eye of Earth’s sun, Tagen found himself hoping he really did find E’Var somewhere on this miserable planet.
He’d hate to think he was having all this fun for nothing.
*
Kane woke to the sound of incessant screaming. Even before his eyes had opened, he reared up and balled a fist to knock whoever the fuck was responsible silent if not completely senseless. The movement brought out a flare of agony all down his back. He snarled out a curse and carefully sat up.
Earth’s sun had really done a number on his bare skin. His arms were stinging, red and shiny, and if the pain was any indication, so was his back and his face. It wasn’t a serious burn, he knew, but it was going to get that way soon if he didn’t find a better way of traveling than on foot.
He was inside the human’s shelter. Flimsy as it was, it was still protection from the brutal sun. He could even remember, very dimly, dragging the female in here with him. And there she was, lying on her back beside him and staring straight up into space. She wasn’t screaming.
But something sure as fuck was. Short, hoarse, relentless screaming, each one a spike straight to Kane’s brain. He crawled to the mouth of the shelter and looked out, shading his eyes against the brilliance of mid-day.
There was a bird on top of the table. A big, black bird, and it was shrieking like all hell.
There were no birds on Jota. Kane could remember a time when he’d thought that was a pity. One of Urak’s So-Quaal contacts kept a collection of birds, many of them from Earth, and as a young boy, Kane had been allowed to look at them while his father and the So-Quaal scientist talked. Some of them could even mimic speech. Over several of these visits, Kane had managed to teach one of them to say, “I’m going to kill you in your sleep,” in So-Quaal. He still thought that was pretty funny and, despite the beating that it had resulted in once the So-Quaal found out about it and complained to his father, he thought Urak had, too.
Moving slowly so as not to spook the shrieker facing him now, Kane reached out and found a nice palm-sized stone. The bird saw him well enough, and even cocked its head to acknowledge him, but kept right on ripping the woods up with noise.
Kane bared his teeth in a hard smile and threw, his arm producing a shriek of its own as it cut through the air. The stone struck, shattering the bird’s breast, and it flopped over with a final cry, slapping its wings against the ground futilely until it died.
Kane grunted and lay back down beside his human. He was awake now and he supposed he should get up, but it was too damned hot to think about travel. Still, he had the female, and that was something. Heat would be on him again in an hour, but once he’d fucked it out of his system, it would probably be well on to evening and cool enough that it would not return until tomorrow. He could travel tonight and take the human with him.
Kane raised himself up on one elbow and looked his female over, thinking. If she could pilot the groundcar he saw outside, so much the better. Although he’d never had trouble finding humans in the woods when Urak had brought him here before, the blistering weather seemed to have driven them all away. If he was going to fill forty vials with Vahst, he needed to find some in greater numbers.
“Hi,” Kane said. It had been a while since he’d last spoken N’Glish, or any of the human languages for that matter, but he spoke it pretty well, and he knew that was the right word.
The female closed her eyes.
Ah well. He wasn’t keeping her for company’s sake.
Kane got up and went out of the shelter, picking up the dead bird and tossing it on top of the dead human male as he passed. He had left the cold-storage crate open, and he cursed himself for a fool because now all the ice was melted and there was grit and tree-needles in the water. Kane drank it anyway, relishing the way it sluiced down his throat and throughout his body. The crate’s actual contents, metal canisters containing human beverages, glinted enticingly at him but Kane ignored them. Previous experience told him they were likeliest to hold either toxic fermentations or concentrated sugar syrups. Water was what he needed now.
As an afterthought, Kane sucked up an extra mouthful and went back into the shelter. He knelt, turning the female to face him, and then put his mouth over hers and poured water into her. She dribbled most of it out, but swallowed at the end. That was a good sign.
“I need to eat,” Kane said, mostly to re-accustom himself to the language. “Where are you keeping your food?”
The human did not reply. She lay motionless, her eyes still shut against him. She hadn’t even wiped her mouth where she’d drooled.
She wasn’t sleeping, Kane was fairly sure of that. She was choosing to ignore him, escaping him the only way she could. He had a choice now. He could let her lie there and hide from him, or he could bring her out of it.
His first thought was to stand her up and give her a good slap. In his not-inconsiderable experience, humans responded best to pain. But as he ran his eyes over her bruised body, he realized that he appeared to have been pretty harsh with her. Heaping abuse on top of that might only push her further into her own mind. If he wanted to keep her, and if he expected her to do any groundcar-piloting in particular, it was time to show a little restraint.
Kane slipped his hands under her sides and pulled her up and onto his shoulder. She did not resist.