She was still behind Tarik, very close to
him, and he spoke over his shoulder to her.
“There are two of them. See there.”
A second bird swooped toward them, flying
lower than the first. In the same rich, lustrous, glowing way that
the first bird was blue, this second one was green. It came
directly at them, skimming only twenty feet or so above the desert
floor. Just before it reached them, it soared upward, flying upside
down for a few moments before righting itself, reversing direction
and flying off the way it had come. Above them the first bird, the
blue one, circled a few times, then followed the green.
“Guides,” Tank said softly. “They will show
us where the water is. This way, lieutenant.”
He changed course to follow the birds, and
Narisa went with him without argument. Whichever direction he
chose, it would make little difference, for the desert seemed
unchanging. Narisa glanced back once, but there was nothing to see.
The pod and the rock formations near where they had landed had
disappeared into the distance.
And still they walked over the barren
landscape. The sun remained high overhead, having moved only a few
degrees toward the horizon. Narisa began to worry about the length
of the day on this planet. With no shade at all, they might well be
overcome by sunstroke or dehydration before the day ended. She
could tell her face and hands were beginning to burn from the sun.
Then, during a long night on the desert with the temperature
falling rapidly as she knew it did in most deserts, she and Tarik
could freeze to death.
She wanted to speak to him about her fears,
but decided if she did, he would probably respond with some caustic
remark about her lack of intelligence or her inexperience. She kept
quiet. She felt hotter and hotter, and more desperately thirsty
than she had ever been before. She could feel the heat of the
desert floor through the soles of her boots. She could not continue
walking much longer. Just when she thought she would drop and never
rise again, Tarik stopped.
“They are coming back,” he said, his voice so
hoarse that Narisa thought he must be as parched and tired as she
was.
There they came, the same two birds, blue and
green, racing across the desert at the same low levels as before,
swooping past Tarik and Narisa, whirling to circle above their
heads three or four times, and then flying back the way they had
come.
“They are guiding us,” Tarik exclaimed.
“Your wits are addled from the sun and your
injuries,” Narisa cried. “Birds can’t guide people. They aren’t
intelligent.”
“They know we need water. I can feel it. And
look, see where we’re going. Look at the green ahead of us.”
He was right about that much, at least.
Narisa could see it, too, now: a definite shimmer of green, and
much nearer than the horizon. She had kept her sight on Tarik’s
heels for so long, trying to shield her eyes from the bright glare
of the sun, that she had not looked up to see where they were
headed. On a world with an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, green meant
leaves and grass. And water. She could almost taste it, almost feel
it running down her dry throat. In her present situation the
thought was unbearable.
“Tarik,” she gasped, forgetting formality, “I
am going to rest here. I need water right now. And food. You do,
too.”
She sat on the ground and broke open the food
packet, extracting two compressed wafers for herself and two for
him. He looked annoyed at first, then took the wafers, and a moment
later accepted the water container, too. He remained standing while
she ate. She drank from the container, taking more water than she
should have, but she could not help herself. Every cell of her body
cried out for moisture.
“Don’t drink it all,” he warned when she
lifted it to her lips again. “It will be a while yet before we get
more.”
“Why don’t you sit, Commander?” she
countered, her spirits revived a little by the refreshment. “Are
you afraid if you do, you won’t be able to get up again?”
“I am impatient to be on our way,” he
responded, frowning at her. “I am merely waiting for you to finish
resting.”
“I’ve finished.” She rose quickly, completely
aware that his words had been meant to produce just that reaction.
Somewhere inside her a small, honest voice admitted that without
Tarik’s verbal prodding she might well have stayed where she was,
letting her aching, exhausted body tell her to rest in spite of the
clear chance of reaching shade and fresh water. She could easily
have died there sitting in the sun, leaving her bleached bones
scattered over the desert. Heat or no, Narisa shivered at the
thought, and when Tarik started walking again, she followed him
gladly.
They were still a good distance away from
that lovely green area ahead, but once they resumed their trek,
having the goal in sight gave them renewed energy. They kept
going.
The birds returned periodically, sometimes
one, sometimes both. Narisa still did not believe they were acting
as guides. No bird she had ever heard of could be that intelligent,
but this seemed their only chance of survival. Besides, she
recognized she was no longer thinking clearly. Perhaps Tarik
wasn’t, either.
After a while the ground began to change in
character. First there were patches of dry, desiccated vegetation,
dusty and gray and stunted, pushing up through the stones and
gravel of the desert floor. Then they were walking through low
bushes interspersed with clumps of grasses. As they went on there
were more and more grasses, until they were plowing their way
through a savannah thickly overgrown with knee-high grass, and the
few bushes they saw had green leaves and some even had berries.
Ahead were the trees, green and cool, beckoning them onward. There
was still no sign of open water.
“Underground,” Narisa muttered. “It’s all
underground. We’ll never find it.” Tarik did not answer her.
They were both at the end of their strength
by this time, stumbling through the grasses, thinking only of those
alluring trees, not so far away now, shade and shadow and respite
for burning eyes and aching heads.
They were there; they had made it. Tarik was
bent over, hands on his knees, gasping for breath, while Narisa
clung to a tree to hold herself upright.
“I told you,” Tarik rejoiced, “told you
they’d bring us to water.”
“Where? Where is it?” She could hardly speak.
She had never been so tired before in her entire life.
“Listen, Over there.” He flung out one
hand.
It was true; she could hear the sound of a
stream trickling over rocks and tree roots. Narisa pushed away from
the tree and staggered toward the sound. It was farther away than
she had thought, but she finally found it, clean and cool and edged
with golden moss. She stood looking at it, hesitating.
Tarik was right behind her. He did not waste
a moment; he simply dropped flat on the moss, put his face down
into the water and began to drink.
“No, wait.” She pulled at the hem of his
uniform jacket.
“What?” he spluttered. “Why wait? Drink,
Narisa. Drink.”
“How do we know it’s safe? It could kill
us.”
“The birds brought us here. They wouldn’t
have brought us to bad water.”
“Commander Tarik, that is the silliest reason
I have ever heard for doing something potentially dangerous. It is
not sensible to drink unknown water.”
“Then don’t. Die of thirst if you want.” He
put his head back into the stream, while Narisa stood watching him.
When he finally took his dripping face out of the water and sat on
the bank, wiping one sleeve across his chin, she dropped into a
squat beside him.
“Commander, regulations clearly state that on
a strange planet, all unknown food or drink should be carefully
tested before being swallowed.”
“Regulations don’t matter in the Empty
Sector,” he told her with simple logic. “The writ of the Assembly
does not run here. I for one am glad of it. A planet on which
sensible regulations do not apply. Delightful.”
Narisa looked from him to the tempting water,
and back again, not certain how long she could hold out against her
body’s desperate craving for liquid. She was so thirsty, so very
thirsty. Still, she had been well trained by the Service.
“Look there.” Tarik pointed downstream. A
small creature had come to the stream to drink, an oval shape of
lavender-gray fur with large round ears and six legs, and a
lavender tongue that lapped up the water fearlessly. “I have drunk
and am still alive. That animal drinks and lives. You can drink
without fear.”
“That animal lives here,” she responded
stubbornly.
“So do you, now. Drink, Narisa. That’s an
order. If my ribs didn’t hurt so badly, I’d push you in. Drink, I
said.”
Regulations required one to obey a superior
officer. Narisa lowered her head to the stream and began to drink.
Then she put her whole head in, feeling the sweet coolness on face
and scalp. She sat back at last, and enjoyed the way the moisture
from her hair dripped down her back under her uniform.
“Feeling better?” Tarik sat propped against a
tree trunk, watching her.
“Yes. Sorry I was so rude before,” she added,
recalling her earlier decision to try to make a friend of him. “I
wanted to drink, but I was afraid.”
“I know. You weren’t yourself. All that heat
out there.” He gestured back toward the edge of the forest, toward
the desert’s glare. “I’ve seen it before - starving men who
wouldn’t eat, freezing men who won’t put on a cloak, something in
the mind that won’t adjust to sudden new circumstances. Like those
in the Capital, never wanting anything to change.”
She decided to disregard that last treasonous
remark, since for the first time he was showing appreciation for
her feelings. She sat down beside him.
“Commander Tarik?”
“Hmmm, yes.” He was looking into the green
depths surrounding them.
“You don’t really think those birds led us
here, do you?”
“It seemed to me they were trying to
communicate something. We did find water.”
She started to say it wasn’t very likely that
birds would try to communicate with them, but she was too tired to
argue the point. She did not for a moment believe the birds took
any interest in them other than an instinctive curiosity in case
she or Tarik were edible or dangerous. Let Tarik believe what he
wanted. The birds were gone now. She voiced her primary
concern.
“We have to get back to the Capital. It is
our duty to report to the Assembly what has happened to the
Reliance.
How are we going to do that, Commander Tarik?”
“I don’t know. Are there any more food wafers
in that package? You see,” he told her gravely, “I am now following
regulations. Until we know what food is safe, I will confine my
eating to these tasteless things. Or until we run out of wafers and
I get hungry. Then I may start experimenting.”
“Perhaps we’ll find a settlement before
then.”
“Of what? Humans? Cetans? Some other species,
known or unknown? Or perhaps we are here alone, the only ones on a
deserted planet.”
“Don’t forget your birds,” she said between
bites of wafer. “Or that thing, whatever it was, that drank from
the stream. There must be other life forms here, and some of them
may be intelligent. We must find a settlement. You need medical
care. You look feverish to me.”
Tarik slid down from his position against the
tree to lie flat on the soft moss.
“I’m tired,” he said. “You, Lieutenant, may
follow regulations and keep watch, or you may sleep, too, whichever
you like. It’s pleasant here. I’ve had enough to drink and a little
food to content my belly until I find something better. ‘A loaf of
bread, a jug of wine, and thou beside me in the wilderness…’”
Narisa glanced at him sharply, but his eyes
were closed, and he seemed to be asleep. She was certain, after
that speech, that he had lost his wits, and no wonder, considering
the events of this long, strange day. Well, the day must be nearly
over at last, for it seemed to her the shadows were lengthening.
She would let Tarik rest for now, and when morning came she would
try to find help for him, and some way to communicate with their
superiors at the Capital.
She drank from the stream again, then sat
peering into the increasing darkness. The forest was quiet except
for the ripple of the stream and the gentle rustling of the leaves
far above their heads as a soft breeze skimmed by.
Tarik was right, it was pleasant here. Too
pleasant for the Empty Sector. It would have been sensible of her
to be on guard, even afraid, in such a place as this. But Narisa
had no feeling of danger at all, no fear, and she was tired of
always being sensible. It was nice to relax and enjoy the
peacefulness of the forest.
How long she sat there, she did not know.
Slowly a gentle drowsiness stole over her. Several times she caught
herself nodding into sleep. She stretched out, lying on the moss,
which she discovered made a wonderfully soft bed, and after a while
her eyes closed.
She awakened from a sweet and remarkably
realistic dream of home and parents and sister to find herself
huddled against Tarik with one of his arms under her head. It
seemed to her it must be early morning, for a few shafts of pale
orange sunlight filtered through the thick, leafy boundaries of the
tiny clearing where they lay, and a faint mist curled upward from
the stream. The air was chilly enough to make her shiver and move
closer to Tarik as she sought to return to her lovely dream.
She had lost the dream. It was gone forever.
Perhaps it was because of Tarik’s nearness. Something about him
disturbed her still partially drowsy consciousness. In the coolness
of the morning, he was much too warm. In fact, he was feverishly
hot. All thought of returning to sleep vanished. She touched his
flushed cheek. He tossed his head from side to side, muttering
broken phrases that made no sense to her. The fear she had not felt
last night flooded over her, not for herself, but for him. She
might not like him, but he was a fellow human, and if he died, she
would be alone on this strange world. She could not let him die,
for his sake and her own.