Reede stared at him. “How the hell do you know things like that?”
“I ask,” Niburu answered, meeting his stare.
“There are some things you can’t change, Niburu.” Reede looked away from him. “Unless, of course, you’re willing to kill somebody.” He stood up and went toward his own quarters without looking back.
NUMBER FOUR Fire Lake
Gundhalinu stood in the heart of Sanctuary, on the cliff-edge above the shining river, looking down. Even from this height the water’s motion seemed indefinably alien. He stared at the wreckage that lay waiting in the depths like a fallen star. A fallen starship. The heat licked at his sweating body with sensual desire; the voice of the Lake was a lunatic choir screaming inside his head. He stood listening to its voice a moment longer, before he turned to look at Kullervo.
Kullervo stood beside him in nothing but a pair of shorts; a delirious profusion of stunning color and vibrant design covered his naked arms to the shoulders. His face showed a stubble of beard; the pale unprotected skin of his back was already burning in the fierce heat. Gundhalinu watched a ghost hazed in red drift heedlessly through Kullervo’s slim, well-muscled body and wander back toward town—the energy echo of some former resident of Sanctuary, indelibly trapped in the random memory of Fire Lake. It struck him that Kullervo looked surprisingly strong and fit, for a researcher.
He looked away again. The town behind them was filled with insubstantial forms, to his haunted eyes. They were redshifted into the past, blueshifted into the future, because the Lake existed not only in the here and now but, as far as he knew, in all times. The Lake had even shown him unnerving glimpses of his own future and past. He knew that no one else here saw them. It was no wonder he had thought he was crazy. … He envied Kullervo his relative ignorance, even though Reede was not blissfully immune like most people. Kullervo reacted to the Lake in a way he had never seen anyone else react, and he had no idea why.
But he was in no position to figure it out, when the Lake was like a parasite living in his own mind, feeding off him, every single moment day and night while he was within range of its power. Its voice murmured like the sea behind his eyes, louder now as he stood here, preparing to do this thing. Its emotions bled into his own, making him moody and distracted. It took all his self-discipline even to keep a thought in focus.
All his life he had been taught that less than perfect self-control was unacceptable. The Lake had taught him the absurdity of that unachievable ideal. It had made him a better human being … but everything had its price. He hated being here; he wished it would end. He wiped sweat from his face, not all of it caused by the heat.
Kullervo glanced up at the glaring blue sky. It seemed never to rain here; just as it seemed always to be raining in Foursgate. As Gundhalinu glanced at him, Kullervo looked down again, staring grimly at the river waiting for them far below, and the narrow path cut into the rockface leading down to it. His entire body was clenched like a fist, and his disturbing blue eyes touched the path, the water, the red rock walls, the water again, with the restlessness of a trapped animal.
Kullervo had barely spoken three words since they had left camp this morning. Something about the water had obviously triggered his paranoia, though he would not admit it. And yet Gundhalinu was aware that on a certain level, Kullervo always felt the way he felt right now, barely holding it together while something inside him tried to eat him alive. He wondered whether it was Kullervo’s genius that was also his personal gutworm… . And as he thought it, suddenly the voice of the Lake in his own head did not seem so loud.
“Let’s get it over with,” Kullervo said. His voice sounded strangely distant; Gundhalinu wasn’t sure whether the effect was in Kullervo’s voice or his own ears. He nodded, picking up the backpack that held his equipment. He slung it over his shoulder, the way Kullervo already wore his, and started down the steep, narrow trail that had been chiseled into the side of the gorge gods-only-knew how long ago. It had been done by human hands, by human design; he was sure of that much. He had seen the redshifted ghosts of memory at work on it. He watched his own footing compulsively, because his eyes kept wandering from the track, toward that gleaming silver mystery far below that he was about to explore at last.
They reached the bottom of the canyon and stood on the red rock of the shore Gundhalinu watched the river flow past, able to see clearly once again what it was that was so alien about its motion: It did not obey the laws of gravity or atmospheric pressure, like any normal liquid. It flowed in ripples and braids, undulating like a snake; its surface was not perfectly smooth but mimicked the deeper pattern of the stone bed through which it moved. His memories seemed to roll and flow like the motion of the river.
“Ye gods,” Kullervo muttered, “what the hell is this stuff—?”
“It’s water,” Gundhalinu answered.
“Water doesn’t do that!” Kullervo’s hands jerked.
Gundhalinu crouched down, putting his cupped hands into the flow, lifting up a transparent pool that lay obediently in his palms. He drank it down deliberately. “It’s water. I don’t know why it looks like that. Some effect of the energy fields, I suppose. Nothing makes sense here. You just have to accept it.”
Kullervo said nothing for a long moment, while both of them looked at the water. Then, finally, he asked, “Is it cold?”
Gundhalinu glanced at him. “No. It’s quite warm, actually.”
Kullervo shrugged the equipment pack off his shoulders. Setting it on the beach, he pulled out the oxygen helmet and lifted it up. “All right, then,” he said, as if he were speaking to the river.
“You don’t have to do this,” Gundhalinu said suddenly, remembering Kullervo’s offer to him as they prepared to treat the plasma. “I can get Niburu—”
“No.” Kullervo shook his head, frowning. “He’s not—qualified. I have to . . I have to.” He settled the helmet over his head, shutting Gundhalinu out.
Gundhalinu stood watching him seal it in place, left effectively alone to wonder whether it was compulsion or only some misguided sense of personal honor that ;ye Kullervo. Well, what did it matter…? He had lived through both those emotions, too. He checked his own helmet quickly and methodically—the small hard nodule at the back of the transparent bubble where the oxygen pellet and the recycler were located. He took off his shirt and put on the helmet, pressing its seal against his bare skin. The sensation was like something putting its mouth over him. vaguely sensual, vaguely unnerving. He took a deep breath, and was given air. The shadow readouts drifted across his vision like translucent fish, meaningless here, where nothing read true for long. “Can you hear me?” he asked.
“I hear you… . You hear me?” Kullervo answered tonelessly.
“Yes. When we get down to the wreckage, you can put me into Transfer and we’ll look it over.”
“Do a survey …” Kullervo said.
Gundhalinu looked at him, laughed mostly in surprise as he realized that Kullervo had intentionally made a joke. “Two strangers, and very far from home,” he murmured, staring at the serpentine flow of water while the Lake gnawed at his brain, breathing and muttering inside his head. He started forward, wading into the tepid flow—cool enough to soothe his sweating skin, warm enough to relax his tension-knotted muscles. He thought he felt a tingling in its touch against his skin. wasn’t certain if it was some energy force he was sensing or only his overactive nerves. He glanced back to make sure Kullervo was following, and saw him enter the river with stiff, uncertain movements.