Reede hung against the emergency restraints of his seat, gasping. Ariele stirred beside him, shaking her head, making a thin whimpering protest. The sound stopped abruptly, and she turned her face toward him, holding her hand against her cheek. Between her fingers he could see the print of his own hand like a red brand on her pale skin. “Why didn’t you let us crash?” she cried fiercely, her voice in rags.
He rested his gibbering, pain-filled body against the solidness of the seatback, watching her out of the corner of his eye. He felt bruises beginning to form, too easily, felt a telltale dribble of blood run out of one nostril, sliding down his lip. He wiped his nose on his sleeve.
“You don’t want to die,” she said, “any more than I do! We can radio for help—”
“Get out,” he said, and when she didn’t move, shouted, “I said get out!” He waited for her to push aside the crash restraints and obey, before he climbed out on his own side. Not trusting her, he ordered the doors sealed when they were both outside, on opposite sides of the craft. He looked at the hovercraft, seeing its battered undercarriage, the wake of debris its slide along the ground had left behind. One look told him that its ruined repeller grid would never lift them again.
He looked away, taking in the rest of their view. This was not the island he had been heading for; he could see that one still in the distance, looming out of the sea He could see the entirety of the island they were on, turning where he stood; some miserable, nameless rock barely keeping its head above water. Stranded. He felt his stomach cramp with sickness; swallowed convulsively, barely able to stop himself from retching. At least the hovercraft had ended up beneath the trees. The small stand of giant ferns was the only shelter he could see; the trees were probably the only living things on the island besides the two of them, and random flights of birds. The grove would conceal the craft from an aerial search well enough; if all they were using was visual, anyway. At least it might buy them a little more time.
He turned back to Ariele. “The village is on that next island, the big one.” He pointed. “You’re a strong swimmer. Find something that floats; you’ll reach it in a few hours.”
She stared at him for a long moment. “No,” she said
“Damn it, Ariele—!” He took a step toward her, his hands tightening into fists.
“I won’t leave you.” Her own hands twisted together like a lover’s-knot on the hovercraft’s sloping hood. “I won’t leave you.” She was weeping now, silently.
He stopped moving and stared at her; watching her weep, for him, for them. He felt as if his body were swarming with invisible worms, until he wanted to scream. “All right, then,” he said bitterly, “stay if you want. You think it’s ‘just a drug’ that’s making me sweat? Stay and watch it happen then, if that’s what you want. Watch what’s going to happen to you, if you ever go back to Carbuncle. Stay and be damned!” He hit the craft’s door with his clenched fist, sending shockwaves of pain through his body. He swore again, blinking his vision clear. “Get away from the hovercraft!” He waved her back. “Stay away from me,” he said furiously, when she would have come close to him. “Stay where I can see you, over there, under the trees.”
She backed away, uncertainly, until she had gone far enough to suit him. She settled at the base of one of the tree-ferns, wrapping her arms around her knees, hugging herself. She watched him, her eyes like dark pools in the shadows.
He slid down the side of the hovercraft, sat on the hard, sand-gritty surface of the ground, blocking access to the door at his back. He pulled his stunner out of his belt and laid it on the ground beside him with exaggerated care. He knew what she was thinking; she would be waiting for a chance to get access to the craft’s radio. She didn’t believe him. He could see it in her eyes, she still thought there was a way out of this. He hoped he could hold her off until she’d seen enough to understand; that when she did, she’d leave him here and never look back.
He rested against the hovercraft’s curving side. Everywhere that his flesh came in contact with anything, the pain was a bed of nails; but he was too weary even to bother holding his head up any longer. The metal grew warm, as the sunlight shafting through the broken foliage touched his resting place. The sunlight warmed his skin too, and the rustred ground he sat on. Gods, it was actually hot, here— Not like back on Ondinee, although it probably would be before High Summer reached its midpoint; but hot compared to the northern coast, where Carbuncle lay. He let the Twins’ heat comfort him, although it made his flesh burn as if he were a bug under a magnifying glass. His veins seemed to be filled with icewater, not blood, or filled with acid, or sludge.
The hours passed. Sunlight and shadows made a slow promenade through the quiet grove. Ariele sat unmoving; so did he. Birds flitted intermittently across his vision making it strobe; the sound of rustling fronds merged into the sound of the sea. The soft, incessant whispering seemed to grow louder the longer he listened; as if the sea were creeping closer, closing in on him where he waited, helpless, to drown him… .
He struggled to his feet with a cry as water struck his face—found himself standing in the rain, staring up at a sky as blue-black as a bruise, while the clouds of the passing squall wept overhead. Raindrops pelted him like pearls, hard and smooth, melting with his fever heat, flowing into his sweat, drenching him. He stood gaping up at the ram as the dream sea subsided; felt his legs go out from under him suddenly as reality dragged him back down.
He slid down the rain-slick door of the hovercraft until he was sitting again in the red mud. Mud oozed between his fingers, soothingly warm/cool. He looked down at his hands, seeing them swollen and purplish; like someone else’s hands attached to him, not his own hands at all. He looked up again, saw Ariele still huddled miserably beneath the tree-fern’s inadequate shelter. She called his name, seeing him look at her.
He did not answer. He let his head drop back, until he was staring up into the sky, letting the rain fall into his parched mouth. His face shed the sky’s tears; he waited for its grief to pass.
The rainsquall departed as swiftly as it had come, swept on across the sea by a freshening wind. The Twins emerged, midway down the sky toward sunset, firing the clouds with rainbows and sundogs, doubling, splintering, painting the sky with watercolor visions. He watched them form and fade and re-form, the way his awareness of his pain-wracked body faded and reformed now; awed and grief stricken as he watched them. Somewhere, in a place lost in the infinite reaches of space and time, he had seen stars in a night sky illuminated like stained glass… . He could not remember anything else in all his memories that had touched him with such terrifying beauty. He had never really had a moment like that since. He wondered whether he simply hadn’t bothered to notice the beauty all around him; or whether it was only the closing hand of death that let him see clearly.
At sunset Ariele got up from her sitting-place at last, and came toward him. He picked the stunner up in clumsy hands, and trained it on her.
She looked at him, her forehead furrowing, her face so devoid of expression that it was perfectly transparent. He saw her made of glass, waiting to shatter. But she only said, “I’m hungry.”
“There’s no food,” he said.
“There are emergency supplies in the back of the hovercraft.”
“All right… get them,” he mumbled. “Keep away from the radio.” She nodded, her face reddening. Slowly and painfully he moved aside, giving her access to the craft; his joints resisted motion like rusting hinges. He watched her find the food and bring it out, and then he moved back again.