Some small, sudden alteration in the tone of her voice made him look more closely at her. He thought he detected something nearly mischievous hiding in the corners of her eyes and mouth, at odds with the usual matter-of-factness of her appearance.
A suspicion stirred in him. The Morgans and the Graemes, growing up as close as cousins, had never been above playing small tricks on each other. It was strange, but somehow mind-clearing, to leave the puzzle of changes in the Exotics and his own frustrated search to think of himself for once in that youthful, long-ago context. "You shouldn't have waited," Hal said, calmly enough. He waved at the food spread between them. "Here, you go ahead."
She raised her eyebrows slightly, but reached out, picked up one of the strings of what looked like pith just before him and began eating. Evidently, it was more chewy than it looked. Otherwise her face told him nothing about its spiciness, bitterness, or any other aspect of its flavor. "By the way," he said, as he reached for some himself, and bit cautiously into the whitish cordlike length, "what kind of taste-" His mouth puckered instinctively, as if he had bitten into a lemon.
"Quite pleasant, actually, if a little bland," she replied cheerfully. "Of course, you have to be careful to eat it only when it has those pale yellow streaks like that - oh, that's too bad, you must have hit one that wasn't quite ripe yet, by mistake. Here, spit it out. There's no point trying to eat it at that stage. Try one of the others with the faint yellow streaks. I'm sorry! "
He got rid of what was in his mouth. "I'm sure you are!" he said - but she was smiling, and then suddenly they were both laughing. "So much for the sensitivity and kindness of an Amanda! Playing tricks like that on someone who might have had a concussion." "You didn't give me a chance to warn you," she said. "Oh? And it was pure chance nearly all the ones without yellow streaks are on this side of the leaf?" "Well, what do you know!" she answered with a perfectly straight face. "Those on your side are, at that!"
Hal carefully took one of the strips with pale yellow streaks -which were, in fact, almost invisible - and bit cautiously into it. The pith from the ripe plant was as bland-tasting as Amanda had said, with a flavor like bread and a decided texture. It was, indeed, more like chewing a crusty home-baked loaf than anything else he could think of. "From now on," he told her, "I expect you to warn me as I go, if something's going to be flame-hot or anything else." "I will," she said. Her voice was suddenly serious. "I'm sorry, Hal. You should have known me when I was young - but I forget, you couldn't have. Anyway, I didn't have all that much time to play, even then. There was always too much to learn. You're sure your head's going to be all right?" "Positive," he said. An unusual softness and gentleness made itself felt in him suddenly. "I'll bet you didn't have much time to play, at that, when you were small." "You didn't either," she said, almost fiercely.
He opened his mouth to disagree, then realized that she was right. From the time word had come of his uncle James's death, little of his time had gone into recreation, compared to that of the boys and girls his own age around Foralie. "That was different," he said. "I deliberately chose my life. " "Do you think I didn't choose mine?" she said. "The Second Amanda may have picked me to follow her when I was too young to have any say in the matter. But she picked me because of what I was when I was born. I was too young to know what I wanted to drive myself toward, but the driving was already in me, and working. But she saw it, even then, and gave it a goal, that was all. After that, I worked the way I did for her because it was what I wanted to do, not because it was something I had to do. I'd have been the third Amanda among the Morgans, no matter what my name or my training!" "Well," he said, still gently, "we are what we are now, in any case."
They finished eating and took up their traveling again. The day warmed as the sun rose, but it did not become so much warmer as to be actively uncomfortable. Still, with Procyon now a white point too bright to be looked anywhere close to, in the greenish-blue sky overhead, Hal found himself grateful for the fact they could walk in the shade of the vegetation alongside the road.
That vegetation was thick, but not tangled. It was undeniably tropical or perhaps it could be called subtropical, but if the latter, barely so. For one thing they were at a considerable altitude above sea level, for another, the angle of the planet to its orbit was something just over ten degrees less than that Old Earth made to its orbit, so that the tropical zone here was wider. Down in the steamy lowlands near sea level, the wild vegetation could honestly be called impenetrable jungle. Here, in spite of the fact it supported tropical fruits and warm-country plants, it had more of the openness of a forest. It would be possible to move through it at good speed without cutting one's way, as they would have had to do in the coastal jungle. There were even small, open, natural glades, as well as those areas that had been cleared for homes and their surrounding grounds.
But the roadside trees were tall enough - both the natives and those variforms which had been imported and found a home here - that the shade was pleasantly thick. The brilliant sky above was cloudless, and both before and behind them were the two ranges of mountains - what had Amanda called them? Oh, yes, the Zipaca and the Grandfathers of Dawn. It was the Zipaca that held the new Chantry Guild, and lay before them. The Grandfathers were behind.
Both were sharp-peaked. Geologically young ranges, clearly, by their appearance. They seemed to diverge to the far left, though this could not be established certainly, for in that direction the land became lost in distance and a blue haze. By the same token they seemed to angle together at the right, though this could also be an illusion of the distance. Ahead of Hal and Amanda, the land lifted gradually upward toward the Zipacas. But only gradually. In the main, between the ranges it was tableland, flat, with only an occasional swell or depression. "Where's the river?" Hal asked.
Amanda turned to smile at him. "So," she said, "you've been figuring out the terrain." "We're all but surrounded by watersheds in the shape of those ranges," Hal said. "And the general landslope is against us. There should be a fair number of smaller streams off the mountain slopes - particularly that of the Zipacas, ahead, to a large river running downward and back past where we landed." "Right you are," said Amanda, "there is. It's called the Cold River, and we landed just about half a kilometer this side of it, so we've been angling away from it. We'll also be crossing a few small streams today, but that's all. The place I'm taking you to is short of the next large stream off the mountains that feeds into the main river."
Hal nodded. "From what I've seen so far," he said, "this valley land ought to be overlaying older, sedimentary rock, younger than the ranges."
"Right. The ranges are young and still growing," answered Amanda, "and you're right, the rock under us here is sedimentary. In fact, you'll see the lower reaches of the mountains, when we come to them, are mainly limestone and sandstone, sheathing the granites and other igneous rocks that pushed up inside it. That's the reason the mountains seem to rise so suddenly from the valley floor. What you'll be looking at are slabs of the valley rock broken off and upended by the mountain rock lifting beneath it. The Exotics liked the contrast of building the peaceful sort of homes they made, in a geologically dramatic area like this one." "Little good it's done them," said Hal, looking at the road alongside them. "They've ended up getting drama with a vengeance."