The Worthing Saga (12 page)

When at last he reached the shore, Doon was disappearing through a door in the garden wall. Jase looked desperately into his thoughts, searching for danger, and found waiting for him Doon's knowledge of the Estorian twick. A small marsupial with teeth like razors. He saw Doon's memory of the little animal leaping at lightning speed onto the udders of a cow before the beast so much as noticed it was there. The twick hung there for a moment by its claws, then disappeared, boring upward and inward into the cow's body, blood gouting from the wound. The cow only then reacted, it had happened so quickly. It shuddered, ran a few steps, then dropped to the ground and died. The twick crawled slowly from the cow's mouth, panting and sluggish and bloated. Jase had read about twicks too and knew something of their habits. Knew too that twicks had wiped out the first colony on Estoria, and even now they were only restrained by ultrasonic fences that kept them confined to reservations.

Why was Doon thinking of Estorian twicks? Because he was releasing one into the park right now. The only prey the twick would want was Jase, and Jase was naked and unarmed beside the lake. Yet still in Doon's mind, Jase could find nothing but goodwill. That frightened him more than anything else—that Doon meant well for him, and yet had no idea how Jase would survive the attack of the little beast.

Already the twick was perched on a branch not twenty meters off. Jase stood absolutely still, remembering that twicks rely mostly on smell and sound and motion to identify prey. He tried, desperately, to think of a weapon. He pictured himself picking up one of the stones from the lake's shore, and as he tried to bring it down on the twick, the little animal would leap up and eat his hand in mid-stroke.

The twick moved. So quickly that Jase hardly saw the motion, except that now the twick was in the grass, and only ten meters off.

Jase's hand throbbed where it had been torn under his captor's boot. The smell of blood is on me, he realized. The twick will come for me whether I move or not.

The twick moved again. It was two meters off. Jase tried desperately to see into the animal's mind. It was not hard to get the fuzzy view the beast had of the world, but it was impossible to make sense of the welter of urges. He would not know what the twick meant to do until it happened. Jase could not use the Swipe, and had no other weapon.

Suddenly Jase felt an excruciating pain in his left calf. He reached down to pry the animal off. For a moment the twick clung, still boring into his leg; then it wriggled out and immediately was burrowing into the muscle of Jase's upper arm. The leg gushed blood. Jase screamed and struck at the animal with his left hand. Every blow landed, but it did no good.

I'm going to die, Jase shouted in his mind.

But his survival instinct was still strong, despite the terrible pain and worse fear. Like a reflex he realized that the twick would simply jump from target to target on Jase's body. It was only a matter of time until it hit a vital artery, or until it found the boneless cavity of his abdomen and devoured his bowels. But with each gram of flesh it ate, the twick would grow more sluggish. If Jase could only manage to stay alive, the twick would gradually lose its frenzied speed. But Jase too was growing weaker as the blood flowed out of him through two great wounds. And he had no weapon, even if the twick were slow.

He threw himself to the ground, trying hopelessly to crush the animal under the weight of his body. Of course the twick was uninjured—its skeleton was flexible, and it sprung back to shape as soon as Jase rolled off.

But it had stopped eating for a moment, was not attached to Jase's body, and it would be slower now. Jase scrambled to his feet and began to run.

With a wound in his leg, he was slower too, and before he got three steps away, the twick struck. But Jase's back was to it now, and the animal only dug into the muscles under the shoulder blade.

Jase threw himself to the ground, backward. This time the twick made a sharp sound and scurried a little farther away. Jase tried to run again, skirting the edge of the lake. This time he managed a dozen staggering steps before the twick clutched at his buttocks and began tearing at him again. Jase broke stride, fell to one knee. The lake was only a meter away. I can't swim with all these wounds, thought Jase. Oh well, the coldly intellectual part of his mind answered. Maybe the twick can't, either.

He crawled toward the water, dragging his left leg, for the twick had severed the great muscles of the thigh, and the leg would not respond to him, except with agony. Jase reached the water just as the animal struck bone.

It was impossible for Jase to float. He just crouched under the water, holding his breath forever, trying to ignore the agony pulsing from his buttocks, from his leg, from his arm, from his back. He could feel the twick burrowing along the edge of his pelvic bone. His analytic mind noted the fact that this was taking the animal away from the vulnerable anal areas. Muscles can heal. I can live. Muscles can heal. The repetition kept him underwater despite the pain, despite his lungs bursting for air.

The twick slowed. It emerged from Jase's body at the hip. Immediately Jase grabbed it, fumbled for its neck. The twick was slow, and Jase had it by the throat, crushingly. Now Jase let himself rise from the water enough to take a breath, still holding the twick under. The air came like fire into his lungs, and he almost immediately fell forward into the water again. But he did not let go of the slowly wriggling twick. His hands, if anything, held it tighter. He struggled with his elbows and one good leg to drag himself toward shore again. The water became shallow enough that he could keep his head above the surface without trying to stand. The twick vomited and the water went black-red with Jase's undigested blood and flesh. Then, at last, the twick stopped moving.

Jase found the strength to fling the limp animal out toward the middle of the lake. Then he fell forward, onto the shore, his face slapping into the mud, his bleeding leg and buttocks and hip still under the water. Help, he thought. I'll die, he thought. After a moment he gave up trying to turn his thoughts into words. He only lay there, feeling the blood rush out of him, filling up the lake, touching every shore of the lake, until it was all red, all part of him, and there was nothing left in his body at all, nothing inside him now at all.

There were tasks, as winter came on, that books must wait for, even though Lared's book work was bringing money to the family; The coming of snow was not taken lightly, and all hands were needed to be sure of food and fuel enough for the season. Especially now, when they knew there was no protection; since the coming of pain, any dark thing was possible. So each day when Lared awoke he did not know whether today would be spent twitching his fingers to move a pen or bending his whole body into some heavy task. There were days when he hoped for one, and days when he hoped for the other; but regardless of what he hoped for, he worked hard at whatever the day required. Even when the story that he wrote was painful; even when the tale was held in memories of dreams that had been near unbearable when they came.

The first snowfall began late on the afternoon of the day Lared wrote the story of Jase and the battle with the twick. The snow had threatened all day; the sky was so dark that Jason had lit a candle at noon to light the page for Lared's work. But now that part of the tale was told, and Lared was already putting away the pen and ink when the sound of the tinker's cart could be heard above the ringing of Father's hammer in the forge. It was the old saying— the coming of the tinker is the coming of the snow. Actually, as everyone knew, Whitey the tinker came several times a year, but always arranged it so he'd reach Flat Harbor before the first hard snow.

Jason looked up from blotting the new ink on the parchment with a linen cloth, for Sala was stuttering up the stairs—both feet hitting each step, she was so short. “The tinker's come,” she shouted, “the tinker's come! And there's snow on the ground today!”

It was worth a little rejoicing, that something in the world still worked as it should. Lared closed his pen box. Jason set aside the parchment. So small and fine was Lared's writing, so economical of words, that the first sheepskin was not yet full.

“It was good work for today,” said Jason. “We've finished the first part. The worst part, for me, I think.”

“I have to make up the tinker's bed,” said Lared. “He stays the winter. He's a good bellows mender, and he can make a goatskin bag tight as a bladder.”

“So can I,” said Jason.

“You have a book to write.”

Jason shrugged. “Looks to me like
you're
writing it.”

Lared took two tick covers from the shelves in the attic, and together they ran through the inn yard without bothering to put on jackets against the cold. The flakes were already falling, the little ones that had come twice before, but didn't stick to the ground. They were sticking now, on the grasses and leaves, at least. They made their way into the hay barn, which was musty and crowded with the year's straw. Lared went unerringly to the bed straw, which was cleanest, and they began stuffing the ticks.

“The tinker gets two beds, and I get only one?” asked Jason.

“The tinker comes every year, and does his work for free, and pays nothing. That makes him kin.” You'll never be kin, because. Mother doesn't like you, Lared said silently. Knowing, of course, that he would be heard.

Jason sighed. “It's going to be a very hard winter.”

Lared shrugged. “Some say it is, some say it isn't.”

“It is.”

“The worms in the trees are furry, and the greybirds flew on by us this year, going farther south. But who knows?”

“Justice and I checked the weather on the way in, and the winter's going to be very hard.”

No one knew weather that far in advance, but Lared was long past surprise. “I'll tell Father, then. It's firewood time. I'll have to cut firewood, you know. And we always start at first snow. The trees always drop their sap by then.”

“You need a rest from writing.”

“The more I do, the easier it gets. Words come to mind easier.”

Jason looked at him oddly. “But what do you think it all means?”

Lared didn't know how to answer without sounding foolish He folded over the top of his tick. “Don't overstuff, it goes lumpy.”

Jason folded the top of his, too. “If you put shadowfem in it, the fleas go away.”

Lared made a face. “And where will we find shadowfem in the snow?”

“I guess it's a little late.”

Now Lared had the courage to ask. “Doon is the devil, isn't he?”

“Was. He's dead now. At least, he promised me that hell die.”

“But was he?”

“The devil?” Jason heaved the tick over his shoulder like a collier with his sack. “Satan. The adversary. The enemy of the plan of God. The undoer. The destroyer. Yes. He definitely was.” Jason smiled. “But he meant well.”

Lared led the way back across the yard to the house and up to the tinker's room. “Why did he put you with the twick? Did he want you dead?”

“No. He wanted me to live.”

“Then why?”

“To see what I was worth.”

“Not much, if you had lost.”

“Not much for a year afterward—it took a long time to heal and I still get twinges at my hip. Don't ask me to run long distances, for instance. And I sit a little slanted.”

“I know.” Lared had noticed that the second night, that Jason always leaned a little to the left in a chair. “I know something else, too.”

“Hmm?” Jason cast his tick out along the bed first, and together they worked at smoothing it.

“I know how you felt, with Cousin Radamand's memories in you.”

“Oh, you do?” Jason was not pleased. “That's why I insisted Justice give the story to you as dreams, instead of waking—”

“They're always too clear for dreams. They feel like memories to me. I wake up some mornings and see these split-log walls and I think—how very rich we are, to have real wood. And then I think, how very poor we are, to have a dirt floor. I reach out sometimes when I come to the door of Father's forge, to palm the reader.”

Jason laughed at that, and Lared laughed, too.

“Most of all, I think, Sala and Mother and Father surprise me, just for being there. It's as if your memories are realer to me than my own. I like to pretend that I can see into their minds, the way I do in your memories. I look at their eyes, and sometimes I even think I know what they're about to do.” Lared cast his tick over Jason's. “They never do it, though.”

“I wish I had been like you,” Jason said.

“I wish I had been like you,” Lared answered.

“What Doon did with the twick—I don't think he meant it this way, but it sorted out my memories. Coming so near to death, having so much pain, it does things to the way you remember the rest of your life. Nothing else seemed quite so real to me anymore. I still was not clean, mind you—I still felt guilty at what I had done to my own mother, at what I remembered having done in Radamand's past. But it didn't matter so much. I counted the days of my life from that moment. Before Doon, and After Doon. He had plans for me. He cleared my record of the blot that Torrock had put on it, he had Radamand's crimes made public—all but the Swipe—and my dear cousin was put on an asteroid somewhere; And then he made me a starpilot. Like my father.”

“Justice hasn't given me any memory of that.”

“She never will. We're trying not to clutter up your brain with things that don't matter. I became a starpilot the way everyone else does. I was just better at it than most. The hardest thing, though, was to make sure I always won my battles in ways that could be counted as clever thinking—not the Swipe. There I'd sit, knowing exactly what the enemy intended to do, and helpless to save as many lives as I might have, if I had been free. Always I had to wait a moment too long, see the enemy do a little too much, and people died to save my life. That's a problem for you, Lared. If I can save a hundred lives by making it obvious I have the Swipe, which would lead to my death, is that better than to save only fifty lives in order to hide the Swipe, so I can live to save another fifty, and another fifty, and another fifty?”