Moon-Flash (23 page)

“Too far . . . How far is that?”

“She’s—she’s beyond the moon.”

Icrane gazed at him in wonder. “Kyreol?” He gave a faint laugh, startling Terje. “The River carried her a little farther than she expected . . .” Terje nodded wordlessly. Icrane reached out, brushed the feathers Terje wore. “Did you make this vest here?”

“No.”

“Are you a hunter?”

Terje ran his fingers through his hair. “I hunt,” he said finally. The Healer was gazing at him again, patiently, waiting for him to stop edging around the question. He scratched his head, wondering what on earth Regny would say to the Healer at this point. Inspiration came to him. “Nara sends me,” he said. “In secret, to find out how you are.”

“But she won’t come herself.”

“It’s a different world,” Terje said helplessly. “It’s huge, it’s noisy, it’s full of sharp edges and very few dreams. The people in it know of the Riverworld. They know how simple and peaceful it is, and they try to protect that peace. They don’t want the Riverworld to disappear into the noisy, crowded world.”

Icrane lay very still, no longer looking at Terje. “Yes,” he whispered. “Yes. Sometimes, I dreamed of
that world. I never knew what it was, or where it might be.”

“It’s at the end of the River.”

“And they know of us?”

“Yes.”

“How? Do they dream of us?”

“No. They don’t dream very well. People just come like me, in secret. To watch. To guard the Riverworld against anything that might change it.”

Icrane’s eyes went back to Terje. “You.”

“That’s why I’m here. I didn’t—” He shook his head, swallowing at the sudden burn in his throat. “I didn’t know you were—I didn’t know—”

Icrane was silent for a long time. His eyes were half-closed; he watched the flames, motionless, unblinking. Terje wondered if he were dreaming. He sat still with an effort. All his hunter’s tranquility seemed to have left him. He was sweating, half-scorched by the fire; his muscles were cramped from sitting. He felt alternately grieved, appalled by what he was saying, and awed by Icrane’s dreams and by his understanding. He wanted to stay by Icrane’s side; he wanted to go into the night, keep walking until he forgot everything except the dark, the singing trees, the River’s cool touch. He wanted to talk to Regny, and yet he was afraid to tell Regny how much he was explaining to Icrane.

Am I doing what people have spent years being trained not to do?
he wondered.
Am I endangering the Riverworld?

“They’ve forgotten how to dream,” he heard himself say to Icrane. “That’s why they want to protect
the Riverworld from their world. They want the Riverworld always to remember how to dream. How to see.” He couldn’t tell if Icrane had heard him. Finally the Healer stirred, whispering for water, and Terje lifted Icrane’s head with his arm, held the waterskin so he could drink. The lines on Icrane’s face had deepened again; he moved restlessly when Terje loosed him, trying to escape from his pain.

“Kyreol . . .”

Terje leaned over him. “What?” The Healer’s fingers gripped him, hard. “Kyreol—”

“What is it?” He was taking quick, dry breaths, staring at Icrane. The Healer made a sudden, harsh noise. He looked as if he were trying to see light in a lightless place. Terje felt the blood run out of his face.

“Icrane!”

“What kind of world have you found,” the Healer whispered, “where such things can happen?”

“What happened?” He didn’t know he had shouted until Korre’s mother put her head in the door, and he saw a shadow that might have been Regny briefly cross a window. Icrane was still again, hardly breathing, his expression harsh, intent. Then, as Terje and Korre’s mother watched him, nearly breathless themselves, his face relaxed again and his feverish grip loosened.

“That’s all right.” He sighed, his eyes closing. “She’ll be all right.”

Terje turned his head, looked at Korre’s mother. He was so shaken, so frightened that she lost some of her own fear and stepped softly into the room.

“He must sleep, Terje.”

“I know.” But as he shifted to stand, Icrane held him again, this time gently.

“No. Don’t go. Stay with me. You have so many things to tell me and so few words to say them with. Maybe . . . there aren’t enough words in the Riverworld.”

“Kyreol—” His voice trembled.

“She’s having many strange dreams. Stay. Sleep beside me, Terje. You comfort me.”

Korre’s mother put skins on the floor for him. He stretched out, listening to the Healer’s breathing. A tear hot as fire rolled across his arm. Then the soft chanting from the River slid him into shoals of sleep.

THERE WAS an argument going on in Kyreol’s head.

Kyreol. Lift up your head and see what it is.

No.

How can you learn about aliens if you don’t look at them?

Nobody said I had to do it alone.

But you are alone. You have to.

No.

Then what are you going to do? Sit here with your eyes closed until you’re covered with dust?

It’s better than seeing something that might scare me to death.

But, Kyreol—

No.

But—

She lifted her head slightly, peeked out at an angle above her arm, her eye half-hidden by her hair. She blinked. A big ball of iridescent fur leaned against the opposite wall near the door. It seemed to have no head. Where its head should have been, six fingers,
rough and pointed like carrots, were interlaced. Two humps, with what looked like various tools and instruments belted around them, rose underneath the fingers. Kyreol shifted to look out of both eyes. The humps descended into feet ringed with bright bracelets of fur. In the angle formed by the knees and the feet a single eye, surrounded by a perfect circle of black fur, gazed back at Kyreol.

Kyreol lifted her head slowly. The eye rolled up into the fur. A soft, high note trembled in the air.

She sat up silently, amazed.
It’s as scared as I am,
she thought. Her hands felt like ice; her heart was pounding raggedly.
And that’s pretty scared. Now what do I do?
She whispered, “Joss, what do I do?”

The creature hummed again, gently, so not to break more rods. Its eye was still hidden. Kyreol, her voice trembling and cracked with terror, hummed the same note back at it.

The eye opened again. The fingers shifted slightly. Something very small and furry bulged briefly underneath the hands. A second eye opened above the first.

It studied Kyreol for a long time, then turned gradually from a pale pink to a deep purple. A third eye opened.

Kyreol jumped, startled. All the eyes disappeared at once.

She sat very still again, terrified and fascinated at the same time. The instruments dangling from the creature’s kneebelts looked sleek, complex, the tools of the explorer. But it was using none of them. Not even a communicator to call one of its kind and say:
I’m alone in a room with an alien with a black face and a silver body. It has only two eyes, and they’re in the wrong place. Please come—
I’d be doing that,
Kyreol thought,
if I had anyone to call.
She watched another little lump of fur burrow into the deep fur around the shoulders.
Will it attack me?
she wondered nervously.
If I stand up? Does it have teeth? Will it shoot me with something?

One eye opened again, cautiously. A faint, brief hum curled up into the air, like a question. Kyreol tried to imitate it; her voice only squeaked like a mouse.

The creature shifted. All its eyes opened. Its hands unlocked very slowly. As its shoulders lowered, all the vague little movements on them ceased. Its head rose from between its knees.

Its long neck retracted. Its head was a mound of pure white fur. The eyes were ringed with black; the oval pupils were purple. It had no teeth; its mouth was a hard, shiny white beak. The humming came from two moist, mobile slits on the sides of its beak. It sat back against the wall, studying Kyreol out of three eyes. Then the center eye closed. Its hands opened, stroked the small, quivering, brightly colored fur-balls that circled its shoulders and front like a chain. A fine, faint, very high sound, like a musical purr of many tiny voices, drifted up from under its hands.

Kyreol’s mouth opened. “Babies?” she breathed, and at the new sound, the long bony fingers stilled.

The eyes paled nervously, but the creature didn’t
curl up again. Kyreol smiled, half in wonder, half in relief, and the beak opened in another startled yip.

“Oh please,” Kyreol pleaded. “Don’t disappear again. Look. I’m not moving. I’m sitting still. It’s just me, Kyreol. I’m nothing to be afraid of.” All the eyes were closed again. But instead of curling in fear, the being rested its head against the white wall, wailing softly to itself like a mournful, perfectly pitched violin.

Kyreol’s fear eased. She sat transfixed, her chin in her hands, wondering how in the world she could talk to something that made noises through its nose like an orchestra.
What is it saying? Probably:
‘What am I doing here on this empty moon, I wish I were home . . .’
But where is its ship? Did it crash like us? If it’s so terrified, why is it even here? How can I ask?

And then, alarmed again, she thought:
Mothers are sometimes dangerous. Will it think I’m a threat if I stand?

She sat very still, then. They gazed at one another across the room; the creature’s eyes paled occasionally at some fearful thought of its own. The younglings stopped moving after a while; they looped their parent’s neck in a bright, lumpy chain.
Napping,
Kyreol thought, and sighed.
Now what? I’m here, it’s there, we can’t talk to each other, and neither one of us is going to move. What if it bites?
Space explorers, she knew, usually didn’t bite other aliens. But if it was an explorer, why was it so frightened?

It was moving. It lifted one bony hand from the ring of young, held it out. Its fingers closed, uncurled.
Closed, uncurled. An alien greeting? Kyreol lifted her hand very carefully. The alien fingers curled, uncurled. One finger at a time.

One. Two. Three.

“Oh,” she breathed, and opened her own fingers. “One.” Her voice sounded peculiar in the dead air, still shaking, and high as a child’s. “Two. Three. Four. Five.”

Then she waited, her mouth open in astonishment, while the creature went through an amazing confusion of sounds. First the white beak clicked, a brittle, insect-sound. Then the beak-vents made noises like a steam whistle, a windstorm, a tree full of monkeys, a horn, a bass drum, a pool of boiling mud, a window breaking, a foghorn, the beginning of a symphony, and finally, a ghostly voice that vaguely resembled Kyreol’s, saying: “One.”

Kyreol stared at it, stunned. It held one finger up. Its beak made a brief series of clicks, like a code. One, Kyreol thought after a moment. One. Her mouth was still hanging open. She closed it. The only thing she had to click with was her teeth, and the beak noises were far too rapid. The alien finger closed after a moment. They gazed at one another again perplexedly.

It had no eyebrows, Kyreol realized. Where her own face was mobile with expression, the furry, beaked face could only change its eye color. No wonder it had been startled when she smiled.

Now what?
she thought again.
Here we are, two aliens stuck in a dead city on a strange moon. How
can we talk?
Then she stared down at the dust on the floor.

Pictures.

She stood up. The creature mourned a little, but its eyes didn’t close. She walked slowly, noiselessly, to the center of the room. There, with a clearer sense of the size of the alien, her courage faltered.
No closer,
its silence seemed to warn.
No closer.
She knelt down and began to draw.

“This is the sun.” Her voice wobbled in the still air. “These are the seven planets. Corios. Xtal. Niade.” She drew large circles with her forefinger, so that the alien could see them where it sat. “Thanos, Chance, Tliklok, Septa. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. I am from Thanos.” She pointed to herself, then at the planet. “Four.” She added a moon. Then she pointed to the third planet. “Three.” She surrounded that one with moons. “Niade. Number Three. This is where we are now. On one of its moons.” Her hand swept over them. She sat back, shrugging. “I don’t know which one.”