Even when the air was clear of snow, the breath of the dogs rose like steam and concealed them from the passengers. The team included one bitch, to keep the other seven doing their utmost. The dogs frequently broke wind at the start of a new lap of the journey. Their panting could be heard above the shrill of the metal runners. Otherwise, sounds were muffled. There was no visibility, except for white walls on either side. The smell of the dogs and of stale clothes became part of the scene. Monotony dulled the sense of danger. Weariness, the reflections of the snow, reveries that ran half-formed through the mind, these filled the days.
The asokins were attached to the sledge by twenty feet of leather harness. They were allowed to rest for ten minutes every three hours. Then all eight would lie down except for Uuundaamp the leader. The man Uuundaamp was at least as close to his asokins as he was to Moub. They were his life.
During the break, Uuundaamp did not rest. He and Moub would walk restlessly about, studying natural phenomena—the shape of clouds, the flight of birds, any nuance of change in weather, tracks of animals, sounds and signs of landslides.
Sometimes they met pilgrims coming or going, making the great journey on foot. There were other sledges on the route, bells ringing. Once they were caught behind a slow herring-train and forced to tag along slowly before the vehicle moved into a passing place. The herring-train was a land version of the herring-coach. It bore barrels of pickled fish up to the distant rendezvous.
The asokins barked furiously whenever they met with another vehicle, but the rival drivers never moved a muscle in greeting.
The night’s break also had its set pattern. Uuundaamp pulled the team off the track in selected places he knew about. He then immediately went about settling the dogs, which had to be staked separately and away from the sledge, so that they did not eat its skins. Each asokin was fed two pounds of raw meat every third day; they worked best when starved. But each night they got a herring apiece, which Uuundaamp threw to each asokin in turn, starting with Uuun-daamp. They caught the fish in midair, swallowing it at a gulp. The bitch was last to be fed. The lead dog slept some way from the rest of the team. If snow fell during the night, the dogs remained under it, in small caverns carved by their own heat. Bhryeer the phagor slept with them.
At a night’s stop, everything had to be made ready for the evening meal inside fifteen minutes.
“It’s not possible. What’s the point?” Fashnalgid complained. “The point is that it’s possible and must be done,” Shokerandit said. “Stretch the tent, hold tight.”
They were stiff with cold. Their noses were peeling, their cheeks blackened by frost.
The sledge had to be unloaded. The tent was pitched over it and secured, which often entailed a battle against wind. Skins were stretched across the sledge. On this, the five of them slept, to be off the ground. Belongings required overnight were arranged nearby: food, stove, knives, oil lamp. Although the temperature in the tent generally remained below zero, they found themselves sweating in the confined space, after the cold of the journey.
When Uuundaamp entered on the first night, he found the three humans quarrelling.
“No more speak. Be good. Anger bring smrtaa.” “I can’t stand four weeks of this,” Fashnalgid said. “If you disobey him, he will simply leave,” Shokerandit said. “All he asks is that you put your personality away to sleep for the journey. The cold will not allow quarrels, or death will strike.” “Let the sherb leave.”
“We’d die here without him—can’t you understand that?” “Occhara soon, soon,” said Uuundaamp, nudging Fashnalgid. He handed Moub a pair of silver foxes to cook. They came from traps he had set on his previous journey.
A pleasant fug arose in the tent. The meat smelt good. They ate with filthy hands, afterwards drinking melted snow water from a communal mug.
“Food ishto?” asked Moub. “Gumtaa,” they said.
“She bad cook,” Uuundaamp said, as he lit up pipes of occhara and handed them round. The lamp was providently extinguished and they smoked in peace. The howl of the wind seemed to die away. Good feelings overcame them. The smoke filtering through their nostrils was the breath of a mysterious better life. They were the children of the mountain and it had them in its care. No harm comes to those who have eaten silver fox. For all the differences between men and women, and between men and men, all have this good thing in common—that the divine smoke pours from their noses, and perhaps from eyes and ears and other orifices. Sleep itself is but another orifice in the mountain god. Sometimes in sleep men become the dream of the silver fox.
In the morning, when they struggled in the dull, bitter air to fold the tent, Toress Lahl said secretly to Shokerandit, “How degraded you are and how I hate you! Last night, you biwacked with that bag of lard, Moub. I heard you. I felt the sledge tremble.”
“I was being courteous to Uuundaamp. Pure courtesy. Not pleasure.”
He had discovered that the Ondod female was far gone with child.
“No doubt your courtesy will be rewarded with a disease.”
Uuundaamp came up smiling with the two silver fox tails. “Carry these at teeth. Gumtaa. Keep off cold from face.”
“Loobiss. Have you one for Fashnalgid?”
“That man, he got tail grow along face,” said Uuundaamp, indicating the captain’s moustache, and laughing merrily.
“At least he means to be kind,” Toress Lahl said, hesitatingly placing the tail between her teeth to protect her chapped nose and cheeks.
“Uuundaamp is kind. And when we stop tonight you must be kind to him. Return his favour.”
“Oh, no … Luterin… not that, please. I thought you had some feeling for me.”
He turned savagely on her. “I have some feeling for getting us safe to Kharnabhar. I know the conventions of these people and these journeys and you don’t. It’s a code, a matter of survival. Stop thinking you are so special.”
Bitterly hurt, she said, “So you don’t care, I suppose, that Fashnalgid rapes me whenever your back is turned.”
He dropped the tent and grasped her jacket.
“Are you lying to me? When did he do it? Tell me when. Then and when else. How many times?”
He listened bleakly as she told him.
“Very well, Toress Lahl.” He spoke in no more than a whisper, his face hard. “He has broken the honour that existed between us as officers. We need him on this journey. But when we get to my father’s home, I shall kill him. You understand? For now, you say nothing.”
Without further words, they loaded up the sledge. Smrtaa—retribution. A prominent feature of life in these parts. Uuundaamp was harnessing up the dogs, and in a few minutes they were once more on their way through the mist, Shokerandit and Toress Lahl biting on their fox tails.
The unsleeping machines of the Avernus still recorded events below, and transmitted them automatically back to Earth. But the few humans surviving on the Observation Station took little interest in that primary function; their own primary function was to survive. Their numbers were so far down— lowered by disease as well as fighting—that defence became a less pressing need.
Much time was spent establishing tribes and tribal territory, to obviate pitched battles. In neutral territory between tribes, the obscene puden-dolls survived, to become something sacroscanct, something between gods and demons.
Though a measure of “peace” descended, the earlier destruction of food synthesising plants meant that cannibalism was still prevalent. There was almost no meat but human meat. The heavy tabus against this practice fell with great force upon the delicately trained sensibilities of the Avernians. To descend to barbarism and worse within a generation was more than their psyches could easily endure.