Stardogs (31 page)

Fear the open wrath of Princes. But be truly terrified if one begins to act with kindness and consideration.

Nicola Para-Machiavelli: Obliterating a Prince.

Thirst had eventually turned him back. Juan decided that he had no choice but to go back to his pool. The Denaari memories suggested that it could be an immense distance, even to a flier, to the snow-caps in the mountains. Down here he couldn’t even see them, though he knew that the thermals there were treacherous and difficult to ride.

The snake… Distance lent courage. He could throw rocks at that damn snake. Drat. His tongue seemed to filling more than its fair share of his mouth. He plodded back down the valley. The walk seemed endless, and he kept staring at the ridgeline, trying to spot landmarks. He would have done better to look at the ground. He crossed the trail of the others several times without noticing.

Eventually found the place again. The snake wasn’t there. Neither, to his horror, was the water. The sand it had leaked into was hardly even damp any more. He crawled out of the rocks despondent, despairing.

He stayed on his knees, lacking even the will to get to his feet. For a while he just stared at the tracks he’d crawled onto. He was station born and bred, but those could surely only be human boot and shoe-marks. Surely these must be the other survivors of the crash. Surely, surely they must have water?

He was too thirsty and desperate to think logically. He just set about following tracks, like a very inept Apache, sometimes unknowingly even following his own trail. He passed the canyon. If it had not been for Una’s definite footprint beside his on the rock-sheet, he’d have followed his own tracks back up the dry valley. But he saw the print, like a message to him personally, and looked back to the narrow canyon and knew where they’d gone. Why? It was away from the Memory Vaults, away from the Stardog Imprinting Centre.

It was so steep and he was so exhausted that he nearly gave up. At least, being slight, he had no difficulty squeezing through the gaps that had given Martin Brettan and Mark Albeer such trouble. The crown and Rat were awkward in some of the tighter wriggles, but he couldn’t take Rat out of his shirt. He also wouldn’t have dreamed of taking off the crown. Denaari-Juan knew that was simply inconceivable.

He was flagging, reaching the point of give-up-and-collapse, when he reached the slit-entrance to the cave into which Shari had followed Deo. A puff of hot steam curled out, wafting and eddying before him. For an instant he just stood there, looking at it. Then slightly delirious imagination took over. A vid-fantasy about dragons, fire-breathing hungry dragons, was woven into his perceptions of reality. Adrenalin kicked in and Juan-human ran and scrambled while Juan-Denaari tried to comprehend which of the creatures of his native world could be described as dragons. Nothing quite matched, although there were a few creatures that came remarkably close.

Behind them more pseudobats, perhaps from a further chamber, came hurtling up the passage. Shari and Deo found themselves enclosed and bowled along in the flying frantic mass. They had no choice of where they went, it was merely a supreme effort to keep on their feet. They were forced up a steep and awkward slope, into a different branch of the vent-cave system.

Then Otto wriggled free. He was lost somewhere in the moments of chaos that followed. Trying to turn, Shari found herself shoved forward by the sheer weight of pseudobats. Then she was falling, sliding tumbling down a long slope. She was almost unaware of it. For the air was filled and then overfilled with the roar of the big geyser finally blowing its cork-stone. The air boomed with the pressure wave. And the noise went on and on. This cave was isolated from the main fault vent, but even so the heat would have been enough for severe burns had the man, woman and dog not been insulated by the mass of pseudobats whose asbestos filament fur effectively sheltered them all.

Then the shovelnosed pseudobats began unfurling their wings, chirruping to their fellows and shaking their entwined filaments free of each other, quite incidentally freeing the two humans and the dog from a gordian tangle, and dropping them into the water. The pseudobats began heading for roosts. The pressure-cooker on the faultline would release several more blasts of decreasing volume before that cave breathed pressure in again and it was safe to go and feed. In the meanwhile it was time to roost, mate, squabble, and feed nestlings.

They left the humans and the dog to their own devices on this cave floor, in the shallow drip pool into which they’d fallen. Even now, condensing steam was beginning to drip off the roof and replenish it. The water did slowly seep away to recirculate in the geyser system that the canyon floods topped up. Shari didn’t know or care about this. All she was aware of was a persistent nose pushing at her face. As yet Otto couldn’t hear either, but his nose was not affected. The head-torch was lost somewhere in the tumble down into this place. She was aware of cold, of wetness, darkness, Otto, and a silence which was turning into a distant ringing in her ears. Holding a cupped hand to her nose she sniffed. Of course the nearly pure distilled water condensing on the roof ridges of the cave had virtually no odor. She tasted it. Water. Her dehydrated body would allow no other thought but to drink.

The pool was only a few inches deep… but if Deo had fallen face down into it? You could drown in an inch of water, if you were unconscious.

She began feeling frantically about. Something she touched squirmed away. She was aware of having screamed even if the sound seemed to be incredibly distant. She steeled herself and forced herself to go on. Deo was only a few yards off. He was unconscious, but fortunately lay half on his back, propped up on his pack. She managed to pick him up. He hung limp and heavy in her arms. Now what was she to do? She walked. The water grew deeper. She almost dropped her burden by stumbling into a hole. She turned, staggering now, and headed the other way. She was rewarded by shallows and then damp rock, and a place to put her burden down before she dropped him.

Sitting next to the unconscious man inside whose head the nanomech devices laboured frantically, she wrapped her arms around her wet dog and sobbed. She had no idea where she was or how to get out. Anyway, even if she could find it, the slope she remembered falling down had been long and steep… She could never carry him back up that. She wished desperately that Deo would come to. Even if he was still in his confused state, at least she wouldn’t have to carry him. At least she wouldn’t be alone.

In the pia mater teams of mechsurgeon-slave units, the size of dust motes, communicated with the nanomech surgeon unit. The pinhead sized unit itself, with its nano technology brain, sat far from the proximal damage site down near the brainstem. The surgeon unit concurred with the slave-units’ diagnosis however. At all costs the carrier organism must be rested. At least eight hours and the carrier might have a reasonable chance of recovery.

Otto snuffled, burrowing himself into a more comfortable position on her lap. He was content. He was, after all, with the person he loved most. He’d had a good drink. Now, a nice dinner and life would be sweet. He certainly didn’t feel trapped. To him the way out was nasally obvious.

The roar was deafening even to the waiting party about a mile and half further up the canyon. To Juan, barely five hundred yards off, and luckily virtually under a huge newly-fallen boulder, it was terrifying. Without thought the boy squirmed into a dark crack and then rolled himself into a catatonic ball.

“What the hell?” Hot steamy air rushed up the canyon. A few rocks tumbled from the canyon rim, unheard above the geyser’s throaty bellow.

“Princess Shari! My God! Do you think they’re all right?!” asked Caro staring at the column of steam now visible in the strip of sky.

“What was that? A bomb?!” Sam looked back, horrified. He hadn’t even felt the danger. Was he losing his touch?

“Geyser, maybe. We saw them on Taa’maz last trip I did with her Highness. I’ve never seen such a cloud of steam, though. If they were too close to it they’ll be cooked, I’m afraid,” said Martin Brettan grimly.

“Well, I’m going back down to see if I can find them. I should have gone with her.” Mark Albeer stood up. Guilt and worry shadowed the stocky bodyguard’s voice.

“I’ll come with you.” Caro swayed to her feet.

“Me too.” Three others stood up.

“No, stay, all of you. Remember what she said about all going to the cave. It could still be dangerous. I’ll go alone.”

The small Yak pulled himself to his feet. “Then I should go. Or at least the two of us, in case one gets into trouble.”

Captain Viscount Martin Brettan assumed command smoothly. “All right. Do that. Don’t take any chances. Sit down the rest of you. We’ll wait.”

Johannes was not sure how or why he’d got to his feet in the first place. He sat down quickly hoping no one had noticed. His arm throbbed and itched.

The bodyguard and the wiry Yak made their way hastily downwards, clambering over the rock that Juan was still cowering under, passing Shari’s pack, and to the steam-streaming cave mouth. The place was still furnace hot. Mark wanted to venture into it.

“No. Come away! The thing’s going to blow again. Run!”

Something about Sam’s voice prevented the bodyguard even questioning him. They were nearly the other side of Juan’s hiding place when another blast of steam roared out of the fault-cave. It was nothing like as fierce as the first one but it still left the two of them cowering behind a rock edge, wide-eyed and silent.

They didn’t go back to the cave. No one could live through that. Each, without consulting the other, began to walk slowly back up the canyon.

It was coming to Shari’s pack that broke the silence. “I suppose we’d better take it.” Mark Albeer was clearly reluctant.

“Yep.”

Neither of them made any move to pick up the pack. “I should have gone with her.”

The Yak shrugged. “Then you’d be dead too.”

“I was supposed to be her bodyguard, dammit.”

To his surprise, Sam Teovan felt a stirring of sympathy. What did he have in common with a bullet-stopper? Nothing. But he felt guilty too. She’d trusted him. If he, Teovan, had gone along with her, as opposed to the bullet-stopper, he could have warned her. “Look, she was a good Capo. I wouldn’ta thought a woman could be. But like my ol’ Capo say ‘Dead is dead, an’ we mus’ go on’. We gotta go back. The others will think we been cooked too.”