The Bone Triangle (16 page)

“He must not want us around right now.”

“What a nice way to get rid of us. Well, the air seems breathable, but we’re going to starve, aren’t we?”

I thought it over. “We’ll probably die of thirst or radiation before that.”

She frowned. “Radiation? I’m not convinced about that part of his story. These suns don’t look all
that
bright. I don’t think they’ll burn us too badly. All the light put together is less than a sunny day at the beach. And if it’s water we’re worried about, we have some time to find another rip to escape through before we die.”

I looked at the sky. She was right; it didn’t match McKesson’s description. The blazing white star was missing. But the white sand-like material that made up the desert floor—that was too similar to his story. Why would he have lied about that or made it up? This world was so similar to what he’d described, I was fairly sure that it was the place he’d been talking about.

“Quentin,” she said. “I think I have it.”

I looked at her.

“I think this is
night
,” she said. “I think that on this world, the night is full of huge stars. It must be because they are much closer to this planet than the stars are back home. Maybe we are in the middle of a star cluster at the center of the galaxy, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. But this is night, and those small suns overhead are nighttime stars.”

Slowly, the truth of her words dawned on me. I couldn’t come up with another solution that would explain the difference. I didn’t like the answer, but it was inescapable.

“You’re right,” I said, “but if this is night, what will it be like when the sun comes up?”

She licked her lips, squinting up into the alien heavens. The suns were bright enough to make us squint when we looked at them at directly. “It won’t be good.”

I shook my head, recalling McKesson’s description. I had the feeling the sun that baked this world in the daytime would cook us. I decided to keep that to myself. “I’m glad I’ve got a pair of sunglasses handy. We’ll have to find shelter by then, or a way off this world.”

“Which way do we go?”

Her eyes were full of worry. I pointed toward the next dune in the long line; at least it went downhill at first, which would conserve our energy.

“That way,” I said. “Let’s try walking in that direction. We can always find our way back, as our footsteps are leaving a visible trail.”

“Wait a minute,” she said, clasping my arm. She didn’t let go. “What if McKesson is only having a little fun? Let’s wait a little longer. Maybe he’ll use the quarter again and open another gateway. If we go off and get lost, we’ll never know.”

It was a faint hope in my opinion, but I was willing to give it a few minutes more. I nodded, and we decided to wait. We wandered around the spot we’d found, poking at things. There were scraggly growths here and there. These were twisted and brown, with spines that we didn’t dare touch. They reminded me of dead, dried-up puncture vines.

I marked the exact spot where we’d arrived by dragging my heel in the grit. I drew a big circle all the way around it. After being on this world for half an hour or so, our hopes of McKesson rescuing us faded. Every minute that passed increased other concerns as well. I had no idea how long the day-night cycles were in this place. They could be as little as an hour, or this so-called night could last for years. I studied the stars overhead, trying to determine if they’d shifted since we’d arrived. As far as I could tell, they
had
moved a fraction.

“We need information,” Jacqueline said. “See that dune over there? Let’s call that north, until we know better. There is a large blue star above, right on the horizon. We’ll walk toward it and learn something.”

I squinted into the blue-white radiance. “I get it,” I said. “If it dips below the dune, or rises away from it, we’ll know the planet is spinning, and how fast. If the star moves a lot in a short amount of time, it means the world is spinning fast. If this world is spinning fast, that means the days and nights are short here.”

“Which means we’ll fry sooner,” she said cheerfully.

“Yeah.”

She sighed. “I should have come back out of the rip when you called to me.”

I smiled. “I remember the first time I stepped out to another world like this. It was with McKesson. I didn’t listen
to him, either. He almost shot me, he was so mad. I think it’s natural enough. The spirit of adventure overcomes you.”

“Thanks for trying to make me feel better.”

“You’re welcome.”

We walked toward the blue star, as it was as good a direction as any. We went downhill at first, then up again, climbing the dune the star appeared to squat upon. At first, I thought the star was dipping down because we were going downhill, but as we walked up to the top of the second dune, I realized that the star was actually rising.

“Hmm,” I said, pointing at it. “The star seems to be going straight up, like our own sun rising out of the east. I think we’re going to have to change the name of this direction. I think it’s east, not north.”

Jacqueline agreed with me. “I took astronomy in college,” she said. “But I skated and got an A minus. Now I wish I’d paid more attention. I never thought it would become practical knowledge.”

We reached the top of the second dune perhaps twenty minutes after we’d left the first one. The star we followed was noticeably higher in the sky, but not dramatically so.

“I think we’re going to be okay,” Jacqueline said. “At least, I think we have several more hours of what passes for night here before we see the real sun. The planet is moving, but slowly enough that we should get an hour or so of brightening skies, like a predawn glow, as a warning.”

I nodded, agreeing with her. We stood atop the second dune, admiring the scenery and contemplating our doom at the same time. We didn’t say anything for a while. While we’d had a simple goal of reaching the next dune, we’d been focused and somehow the grim nature of our predicament could be forgotten—or at least ignored. Now
that we’d reached our destination, neither of us really had another one that made any sense.

“I think we’re on top of this world,” Jacqueline said, leaning up against me.

I put my arm around her, and a breeze blew up. It made her hair fly and stream behind her. I contemplated kissing her, figuring that if we were going to die out here, I might as well give it a shot. Just as I built up my courage, she made an odd, high-pitched squeal and pointed downslope.

“What’s that?” she asked.

I gazed in the direction she was pointing. At first, I didn’t know what she was talking about. But then I saw it. A tiny, flickering light at the base of another distant dune. This dune was large and bulky, and crags of dark rock shot up from it here and there. We hadn’t noticed the fire at first, probably because the night was as bright as an overcast day back home.

“A camp, maybe,” I said.

We started walking, and as we drew closer to the camp, Jacqueline reached out and clasped my hand. My vision dimmed, and I knew she’d made us both invisible. Still, the sands at our feet gave us away.

“Good idea,” I said.

“Something’s moving.”

I squinted, and in time I saw it, too. For a moment, we stood still and our hearts raced. Jacqueline squeezed my hand. We watched shapes move to and fro in the distance. The winking, dancing campfire appeared lonely and out of place in this desolate expanse of nothing. There were dark shapes around the fire.

“Who are they?” she whispered.

“I don’t know.”

“Are we going down there?”

“I don’t think we have any choice.”

We walked onward. After ten minutes we approached the encampment. There were tents around the fire—sort of. They were more like half-domes of metal. Struts held them in place, each shelter tied together with cables at the top. They looked manufactured, but it was far from a permanent structure. They seemed more like something that a technological people would build in the wilderness if forced to rough it. The huts were shaped like open clamshells, all of them facing the big dune that butted up against the village. I counted nineteen huts in all.

I wondered if these people could be as lost as we were. Perhaps they’d come from somewhere else and been stranded on this desolate planet. As we got closer, I could see them better. They had eyes with vertical slits for pupils and legs that bent the wrong way at the knee. They were of the same breed as the feline assassin who’d come to my house so recently.

“Strange,” Jacqueline said aloud. “They only have a single, small fire.”

I shushed her, but it was too late. She may have gotten an A in astronomy, but she had just failed zoology in my book. Any cat aficionado should have known that felines have sharp ears.

The reaction to her voice was immediate. Several of the individuals rose up and looked around, sniffing the air. I got a good look at them for the first time.

Jacqueline squeezed my hand harder than ever, but she didn’t make another sound. We stopped walking and stood still. If the inhabitants of this tiny village were indeed related to cats, it was only logical they would have excellent senses. They might not be able to see us, but they could hear and smell us from quite a distance.

At last, the group settled down again. They were doing something with their tiny fire. It appeared they were preparing to cook food on a skillet they’d set up on top of it. They growled and clicked their tongues at one another. I imagined they were talking.

I tugged at Jacqueline’s hand. She didn’t want to move, but at last she stumbled after me. I pulled her around to the right, to the slope of the dune that rose over the encampment. I figured out the village had been placed here to shelter it from the wind and the sunlight. The half-shell-shaped huts were likewise turned away from the dune. I could see that when the sun rose, they would be protected from it all day long, first by the walls of their huts, then later by the long shadow of the dune.

We moved around the village until we were downwind of it. There, I crouched down and touched Jacqueline’s head. When I found her invisible ear, I pressed my lips there and spoke in a tiny whisper. The villagers did not seem to be able to hear my words.

“We must find a way to survive here,” I told her. “If they can do it, we can.”

I felt her touch, then the tickle of her lips at my own ear. Her whisper was so faint I could hardly hear it. “Why don’t we try to talk to them? Maybe they’ll help us.”

“No, I’ve met their kind recently. One of them tried to kill me a few days ago.”

She squeezed my hand and I sensed she wasn’t happy to hear this news. I couldn’t blame her. I strained my eyes and ears, trying to identify the one I’d met up with earlier. The one that had stalked me in my own home. I didn’t see the female.

“They might have powers,” I told Jacqueline. “The one that came for me could make my kitchen knives fly with her mind.”

“What are we going to—” Jacqueline began, but her words were cut off.

A sound rang out from the center of the encampment. It was a familiar sound, a human cry of pain and anguish.

It took us several minutes of creeping and shuffling around the downwind side of the encampment to locate the source of the noises. Most of the time, they amounted to nothing more than puffs of strained breath and inarticulate howls. These last sounds seemed to entertain the villagers, who tipped back their heads and made gargling noises when they heard his cries. They seemed to be amused.

When we stepped into the village itself, Jacqueline balked. I tried to drag her forward, but she resisted. I leaned close and whispered quietly into her ear.

“Whoever it is, they are in that hut directly ahead. Just come with me; I’ll peek inside.”

I had my gun in my right hand and held her hand with my left. She lifted our clasped hands to the bottom of her chin and shook her head. I couldn’t see her emphatic negative gesture, but I could feel it.

“Fine,” I whispered again. “I’ll let go and creep forward. If anything goes wrong, I’ll run back to you and you can take my hand again.”

This time, she found my ear and hissed back, “You’re not going to find me again if you do that!”

“You win,” I said after I thought it over.

Frustrated, I stood there for a time, quietly listening. I thought I caught a few words—a few words of French.

            
Sganarelle en riant lui réclamait ses gages,

            
Tandis que Don Luis avec un doigt tremblant

            
Montrait à tous les morts errant sur les rivages

            
Le fils audacieux qui railla son front blanc.

I realized with a shock that I recognized the words. They were from
The Flowers of Evil
, and they were in fact part of the poem about Don Juan’s journey to hell. I didn’t remember much about my past, but I knew I must have taken French classes at some point. The words translated to something about a guy laughing when a walking dead thing was pointed out to him by another guy with a trembling finger. It wasn’t an attractive image, but it left me no doubt in my mind who the cat people held captive. It couldn’t be anyone other than Gilling himself!