In a few steps she was out of sight of the camp.
If she could not see Ahmed, at least she could see Jem. She pushed through the violet-oily growth, here all flickering with blue-green lights, and paused to listen: tiny skittering sounds from the underbrush, the rustle of the plants in the wind. There was no wildlife here that would harm her, she had been assured. Because of the presence of the camp, there were not many animals at all. Some had been frightened away, some poisoned away; where the garbage details had brought a day’s collection of slops into the woods and buried them, you could see the ferns withered, the crabgrass ground cover dry. Terrestrial biochemistry was as hostile to Jemman as the other way around, but the Jemmans had not had a Camp Detrick to make them salves and injections against the rot.
But what was left — how fascinating and how strange! Forests of plants like ferns, but fruiting and with woody stems; succulents almost like bamboo (the hollow stems would make good structural materials, and Ana’s thrifty soul instructed her to tell the colonel not to waste precious iron on tent stakes anymore); vines like grapes, with hard seeds no doubt meant to be spread in the excrement of small animals (if any survived in this part of the forest); and the mangrovelike giants called “many-trees,” a dozen or more trunks linking together at the crown, which made a canopy over her.
She stopped and looked around. There was no question of getting lost, she reassured herself, as long as she kept the red-glinting water in sight on her left. At any time she could simply climb down to it and return along the beach.
And there was no question of being tired here, either, when one climbed so lightly over fallen logs and rocks. It was an excellent time for taking a nature stroll, she thought, squirming between the trunks of a many-tree that glittered blue-green in firefly beads — if only her head did not hurt so.
In front of her was a lump of fungus, gray-pink and without lights of its own. It looked quite like a brain, she thought. In fact, rather like her own. Since the brain splitting had been done under local anesthesia she had seen every step, sometimes in the mirror overhead, sometimes in the closed-circuit likris screen. That was how her brain had seemed to her, quite remote and unfeeling. Even when the sharp hooked blade had halved it in one smooth motion, it had been hard to connect that sight with the insistent dragging pressure that was all she felt… Later, when they were reconnecting some of the necessary nerves, she suddenly felt the reality of it. She would have been ill except for the surgeon’s motherly scorn. “A great strong girl like you!” she had laughed. “No. Nonsense! You will not vomit.” And Nan had not…
What was that noise?
It sounded like distant sticks rattling against hollow logs and someone moaning. It was the sort of sound she had heard before, on tapes at Camp Detrick. The crustaceans, yes! But perhaps not the social race. Perhaps those wild and surely dangerous ones that had been only rumored -
The human voice that came from behind her was severe.
“Is it sensible for you to be alone here, Ana?”
In Urdu! With that stern compassion she had heard so often! She knew before she turned that it was Ahmed.
An hour later, a kilometer away, she lay in his arms, unwilling to move lest she wake him. The Krinpit’s sound was always audible, sometimes near, sometimes moving farther away; she smiled to herself as she thought that the creature had surely been near while they were making love. No matter. It was not a matter for shame, what she would proclaim anywhere. It was not at all like that American bleached blond, because — well, of course, because it was with Ahmed.
He twitched, snorted, and woke up. “Ah, Ana! Then I did not dream this!”
“No, Ahmed.” She hesitated and then said in a softer voice, “But I have had that dream many times… No! Not so quickly again, please, dear Ahmed — or yes, whenever you like; but first let me look at you.” She shook her head and scolded, “You are so thin! Have you been ill?”
The black-bead eyes were opaque. “Ill? Yes, sometimes. Also sometimes starving.”
“Starving! How terrible! But — but—”
“But why starve? That is simple to answer. Because your people shot down our transports.”
“But that is quite impossible!”
“It is not impossible,” he contradicted, “because it happened. Food for many days, scientific instruments, two ships — and thirty-four human beings, Ana.”
“It must have been an accident.”
“You are naive.” He got up angrily, pulling his clothes together. “I do not blame you, Ana. But those crimes are a fact, and I must blame someone.” He disappeared behind a many-tree, and after a moment she could hear the splashing of his urine against the bole.
And also another sound: the Krinpit’s rattle and moan, growing close again. If only she had had more time with the tapes at Detrick! But even so, she could distinguish a pattern that was repeated over and over. Sssharrn — , and then two quick notes: eye-gone,
She called weakly, “Ahmed?” and heard his laugh.
“Ah, Ana, does my friend frighten you? He will not harm us. We are not good for him to eat.”
“I did not know you had such friends.”
“Well, perhaps I have not. No. We are not friends. But as I am the enemy of his enemies, we are allies at least. Come along, Sharn-igon,” he said, like a householder strolling a puppy, and came back into view.
Scuttling lopsidedly behind him was a great nightmare creature, rattling and moaning. Ana had never been so close to an adult, live Krinpit, had never quite realized their size and the loudness of their sounds. It did not have a crab’s claws. It had jointed limbs that waved above it, two that tapered to curved points like a cat’s claw, two that ended in fistlike masses of shell.
It paused, seeming to regard Nan, although as far as she could tell it had no eyes. And among the sounds, she recognized words in Urdu! Syllable by syllable, it scratched and grumbled out a sentence.
“Is this one to die?”
“No, no!” said Ahmed quickly. “She is—” He hesitated, then emitted sounds in the Krinpit language. Perhaps it was his accent, but Ana could not understand a word. “I have told him you are my he-wife,” he explained.
“He-wife?”
“They have a very rich sexual life,” he said.
“Please, Ahmed. I am not ready for a joking little chat. The Krinpit said ‘to die,’ and what does it mean?”
“Naive Ana,” he said again, looking at her thoughtfully. Then he shrugged. He did not reply, but he unwrapped a ruddy-brown leaf from an object he had been carrying. It was a flat metal blade, broader at the end, the edge razor-sharp. The hilt was sized to fit a man’s hand, and the whole thing half a meter long.
“Ahmed! Is that a sword?”
“A machete. But you are right; it is a sword also now.”
“Ahmed,” she said, her heart pounding harder than the throbbing in her head, “some days ago three persons from the Food camp were killed. I have thought it was an accident, but now I am not sure. Shall I ask you if you know anything of this?”
“Ask what you like, woman.”
“Tell me!”
He thrust the machete into the loamy ground. “All right, if you will have it so, I will tell you. No. I did not kill those Fats. But yes, I know of their death. I do not mourn them, I hope many more will die. And if it is necessary for me to kill a few, I shall not shrink from it!”
“But — but — But Ahmed,” she babbled, “dear, gentle Ahmed, this is murder! Worse than murder, it is an act of war! Suppose the Food Bloc retaliates? Suppose our homelands do not accept this as a mere struggle far away, but themselves retaliate on each other? Suppose—”