He relaxed, but it was a minute before the blue-gray beneath his pigment faded away.
She stepped forward and wrenched the axe from Urthona's chest. It hadn't gone in deeply, and blood ran out from the wound. His mouth was open; his eyes fixed; his skin was grayish. However, he still breathed.
"The end of a long and unpleasant relationship," she said, wiping the axe on the grass. "Yet..."
McKay muttered, "What?"
"When I was a little girl, I loved him. He wasn't then what he became later. For that matter, neither was I. Excessive longevity ... solipsism ... boredom ... lust for such power as you Earthlings have never known ..."
Her voice trailed off as if it were receding into an unimaginably distant past.
McKay made no movement to get closer to her. He said, "What're you going to do?" and he pointed at the still form.
Anana looked down. The flies were swarming over Urthona, chiefly on the wound. It wouldn't be long before the predators, attracted by the odor of blood, would be coming in. He'd be torn apart, perhaps while still living.
She couldn't help thinking of these evenings on their native planet, when he had tossed her in the air and kissed her or when he had brought gifts or when he had made his first world and come to visit before going to it. The Lord of several universes had come to this ... lying on his back, his blood eaten by insects, the flesh soon to be ripped by fangs and claws.
"Ain't you going to put him out of his misery?"
McKay said.
"He isn't dead yet, which means that he still has hope," she said. "No, I'm not going to cut his throat. I'll leave his weapons and his gregg here. He might make it, though I doubt it. Perhaps I'll regret not making sure of him, but I can't..."
"I didn't like him," McKay said, "but he's going to suffer. It don't seem right."
"How many men have you killed in cold blood for money?" she said. "How many have you tortured, again just for money?"
McKay shook his head. "That don't matter. There was a reason then. There ain't no sense to this."
"It's usually emotional sense, not intellectual, that guides us humans," she said. "Come on."
She brushed by McKay, giving him a chance to attack her if he wanted to. She didn't think he would, and he stepped back as if, for some reason, he dreaded her touch.
They mounted and headed at an angle for the beach. Anana didn't look back.
When they broke out of the woods, the only creatures on the beach were birds, dead fish-the only true fish in this world were in the sea-lands-amphibians, and some foxes. The grewigg were breathing hard. The long journey without enough sleep and food had tired them.
Anana let the beasts water in the sea. She said, "We'll go back into the forest. We're near enough to the path to see which way they take. Either direction, we'll follow them at a safe distance."
Presently the tribe came out onto the beach on the night side of the channel. With shouts of joy they ran into the waves, plunged beneath its surface, splashed around playfully. After a while they began to spear fish, and when enough of these had been collected, they held a big feast.
When night came they retreated into the woods on the side of the path near where the two watchers were. Anana and McKay retreated some distance. When it became apparent that the savages were going to bed down, they went even further back into the woods. Anana decided that the tribe would stay put until "dawn" at least. It wasn't likely that it would make this spot a more or less permanent camp. Its members would be afraid of other tribes coming into the area.
Even though she didn't think McKay would harm her, she still went off into the bush to find a sleeping place where he couldn't see her. If he wanted to, he would find her. But he would have to climb a tree to get her. Her bed was some boughs she'd chopped and laid across two branches.
"The "night," as all nights here, was not unbroken sleep. Cries of birds and beasts startled her, and twice her dreams woke her.
The first was of her uncle, naked, bleeding from the longitudinal gash in his chest, standing above her on the tree-nest and about to lay his hands on her. She came out of it moaning with terror.
The second was of Kickaha. She'd been wandering around the bleak and shifting landscape of this world when she came across his death-pale body lying in a shallow pool. She started crying, but when she touched him, Kickaha sat up suddenly, grinning, and he cried, "April fool!" He rose and she ran to him and they put their arms around each other and then they were riding swiftly on a horse that bounced rather than ran, like a giant kangaroo. Anana woke up with her hips emulating the up-and-down movement and her whole being joyous.
She wept a little afterward because the dream wasn't true.
McKay was still sleeping where he had laid down. The hobbled moosoids were tearing off branches about fifty meters away. She bent down and touched his shoulder, and he came up out of sleep like a trout leaping for a dragonfly.
"Don't ever do that again!" he said, scowling.
"Very well. We've got to eat breakfast and then check up on that tribe. Did you hear anything that might indicate they are up and about?"
"Nothing," he said sullenly.
But when they got to the edge of the woods, they saw no sign of the newcomers except for excrement and animal and fish bones. When they rode out onto the white sands, they caught sight, to their right, of the last of the caravan, tiny figures.
After waiting until the Amerinds were out of sight, they followed. Some time later, they came to another channel running out of the sea. This had to be the waterway they had first encountered, the opening of which had swept Kickaha away. It ran straight outwards from the great body of water between the increasingly higher banks of the slope leading up to the pass between the two mountains.
They urged their beasts into the channel and rode them as they swam across. On reaching the other side they had to slide down off, get onto the beach, and pull on the reins to help the moosoids onto the sand. The Amerinds were still not in view.
She looked up the slope. "I'm going up to the pass and take a look. Maybe he's out on the plain.''
"If he was trailing them," McKay said, "he would've been here by now. And gone by now, maybe."
"I know, but I'm going up there anyway."
She urged the moosoid up the slope. Twice, she looked back. The first time, M9Kay was sitting on his motionless gregg. The next time, he was coming along slowly.
On reaching the top of the pass, she halted her beast. The plain had changed considerably. Though the channel was still surrounded by flat-land for a distance of about a hundred feet on each side, the ground beyond had sunk. The channel now ran through a ridge on both sides of which were very deep and broad hollows. These were about a mile wide. Mountains of all sizes and shapes had risen along its borders, thrusting up from the edges as if carved there. Even as she watched, one of the tops of the mushroom-shaped heights began breaking off at its edges. The huge pieces slid or rotated down the steep slope, some reaching the bottom where they fell into the depressions.
There were few animals along the channel, but these began trotting or running away when the first of the great chunks broke off of the mushroom peak.
On the other side of the mountains was a downward slope cut by the channel banks. On the side
on which she sat was a pile of bones, great and small, that extended down into the plain and far out.
Nowhere was any human being in sight.
Softly, she said, "Kickaha?"
It was hard to believe that he could be dead.
She turned and waved to McKay to halt. He did so, and she started her beast towards him. And then she felt the earth shaking around her. Her gregg stopped despite her commands to keep going, and it remained locked in position, though quivering. She got down off of it and tried to pull it by the reins, but it dug in, leaning its body back. She mounted again and waited.