Someone swore loudly behind him. Reede swung around, abruptly aware of time again, and that he was not standing here alone; that the others were already in more or less efficient motion around him, following Gundhalinu’s orders. He watched them setting up camp, in the act of protecting themselves and their equipment from the brutal heat—the only thing they could reliably protect themselves from, here. He turned back, irritated, mostly at himself; gave sharp orders to Niburu and Ananke. He reminded himself that Gundhalinu had seen this landscape, or ones just as strange, half a dozen times; and even if he hadn’t, he was compulsive enough not to let the alienness of it distract him from getting the job done.
Reeds wiped a hand across his sweating face, trying to ignore the song of his own blood inside his ears. “Gundhalinu,” he called. Gundhalinu turned to look at him, and came back to his side. “Is this place safe? What about flash floods—” He gestured at the stagnant, standing pools, the high, narrow walls of the wash, their image overlain by a memory that wouldn’t take form but scraped the back of his eyes with a razor’s edge.
Gundhalinu shook his head. “It won’t happen while we’re here.”
“You mean it’s the dry season … ?” Reede’s voice faded before he finished the sentence, as he saw the expression on Gundhalinu’s face.
“Yes, of course,” Gundhalinu murmured, “it’s the dry season.” He looked away, calling out directions to Hundet.
Reede started back to the rover and went to work, suddenly wanting it all to be over, to be finished with his real work here as rapidly as possible.
By the time they had fully set up camp the setting sun had all but disappeared behind the canyon wall, giving them some respite from the pitiless heat. Reede found himself still stunned by it, each time he left the access to one of the bubble domes, even though he was no stranger to hot weather. At least the shielded microenvironments they had set up inside the domes would protect their equipment—and incidentally themselves—from as much of Fire Lake’s disruptive electromagnetic fluctuation as possible.
Reede exited the dome that held his personal living quarters, certain at last that his own equipment was reasonably functional, and his personal belongings were completely secure. He had spent the entire afternoon checking and rechecking them, running experiments. He wanted to rest; but he could not keep his thoughts off Mundilfoere. Her mystery, her heat, her power over him were as all-consuming, as inescapable as World’s End … and he was exiled in this bizarre wilderness, unable to return to her until he had fulfilled the quest she had set for him. And he realized now that the quest was going to be harder to complete than he had ever imagined … for all the wrong reasons. The knowledge fed his need for her, fed his doubt and sense of isolation, until he could not close his eyes.
“Niburu!” he shouted. Niburu appeared in the arched doorway of the tent that he shared with Ananke, facing Reede’s. Reede stared at him, realizing that he needed to have a reason for calling the other man out here, besides simply to prove that he still existed. “What’s for dinner?” If anyone could make the rudimentary rations he had seen unstowed from the rover palatable, Niburu could. And at least this was one ungracious request Niburu actually wouldn’t resent.
Niburu shrugged. “Shit surprise, probably.” He grinned. “I’ll see what I can do.” He started away toward the supply dome.
“Niburu.”
Niburu hesitated, looking back at him with sudden wariness.
“Good job today.” Reede nodded toward the rover, fingering his ear cuff selfconsciously.
Niburu smiled uncertainly, and went on again. Reede watched as Hundet intercepted his course, imagined the conversation he read into their gestures, as Niburu justified his right to freely access their communal food supply. The two government troopers had taken the rover as their sleeping quarters—for security reasons, he supposed, so that they controlled the communications equipment and the only way of escaping from this hellhole. It amused him to realize that their institutionalized paranoia was perfectly justified. It was also damned inconvenient to his plans; but he told himself that it was only an inconvenience, no more… .
Hundet let Niburu pass, finally; momentarily satisfied by another round of petty humiliation. Reede had watched him all afternoon, bullying Saroon, harassing Niburu and Ananke. He did his own work with a sullen disinterest, glaring at Gundhalinu and at Reede.
Reede looked away, wondering where Gundhalinu was. Ananke came around the back of the dome with the quoll draped across his shoulders like a fur piece; started violently as he almost walked headlong into Reede.
“Where were you?” Reede said, more abruptly than he meant to.
“Just … looking.” Ananke shrugged, looking guilty now. “I wanted to see Fire Lake… .” His eyes broke away from Reede’s gaze and focused on his feet, which were scuffing gravel. “Did you need me for something, bo—Dr. Kullervo?”
“No.” Reede tried to make his own expression more pleasant; every time he looked hard at Ananke, the kid wilted like a plant. Dressed in a loose shirt and baggy shorts, with his hair tied back in a ponytail, he looked almost fragile, in spite of the athlete’s muscles that showed along his bare arms and legs. Ananke couldn’t be more than three or four years younger than he was himself; but sometimes Reede felt as if the difference between their ages was measured in centuries. “Gundhalinu said not to get too far from camp. It’s … dangerous.” He hadn’t tried to explain; World’s End’s reputation was enough.
“Yes, Doctor, I know.” Ananke nodded earnestly, patting the quoll. The quoll burbled contentment, apparently undisturbed by anything as long as it was attached to its owner “Commander Gundhalinu went with me; he said it was all right.”
“Where is he?”
“He’s still looking at the Lake.”
Reede glanced away down the canyon, and back. “Doesn’t that thing ever walk?” he said, gesturing at the quoll, wondering why they didn’t both have heat prostration.
Ananke shrugged again, the quoll riding the motion easily. “They like to sit,” he said.
Reede smiled in spite of himself, as Niburu returned with an armload of supplies. He left them standing together and walked off between the domes.”
He followed the curving canyon in the direction he knew led toward Fire Lake. As he rounded the first bend, shutting away the sight and sound of the camp behind him, he had the sudden, unnerving feeling that if he turned back he would find it was no longer there, and he was all alone. … He pushed on resolutely, frowning, listening to the substantial crunch of sand and gravel under his boots, feeling the heat, touching the crumbling mud of the canyon wall as he walked.
Up ahead a flicker of movement caught his eye on the stark, stony ground. He caught up with the thing that floundered there; stared down at it in silent fascination. It was brown, or green, or red, or all of those, and it resembled a fish more than anything else he could imagine, but it was crawling, after a fashion, on things that were more than fins but less than legs. He watched the fish-out-of-water struggle on up the canyon, oblivious to his presence in its grotesque, single-minded urge toward something that was probably forever incomprehensible even to it.