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her feet almost beside me!
Like an ac-robat or something. She told me to find you and she was going to
check on the Blondie Twins."
"Let's join up," he told her, gesturing forward.
"You are limping! Come! Put your hand on my shoulder, and I will help you,"
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she invited, standing erect.
"I I can make it on my own," Lori insisted, then gri-maced and almost fell
forward. She caught him and helped brace him, and this took just enough weight
off that he was able to manage it.
"I thought you couldn't even move, let alone stand in this place," he noted.
"I grow strong when I am needed," she responded, quot-ing a female Erdomese
proverb.
Both Dillians had jumped without a hitch and now waited with Mavra for Lori
and Julian to join them in a dark area behind the first automated switching
tower. Mavra, seeing them in the very dim glow of the tower lights, motioned
for the much larger centaurs to remain where they were and ran toward the two
Erdomese. "What happened?" she asked. "Are you hurt bad?"
"I'm not sure," Lori answered honestly. "I
thought the ankle was just twisted a little, but now I'm not so sure. It
doesn't feel broken, but I think it's a hell of a sprain."
"Well, a very ancient man who knows the Well World far better than I do once
said to never travel without a Dillian if you can manage it. We can repack all
the stuff on one of them and put you on the other.
Don't argue! Whoever's watching us has probably already discovered that we're
not there. The sooner we get away from here, the better!"
When they reached the Dillians, one of them was already repacking the
saddlebags on the other. Then the one who carried all the equipment helped
Lori onto the other's back.
"Ride forward," the centauress suggested. "That should take the pressure off
your tail as well. And watch that horn on your head! I don't want to get
stabbed if I have to make a sudden stop!" Left unsaid was the rather
noticeable stink of swamp and mud permeating his hair.
He felt awkward and helpless and, even worse, stupid. It was almost like a
horse riding a horse. He was just never designed to ride on the back of a soft
animal, but there was little choice at the moment.
Mavra turned to Julian and said, "Well, you're leading the way because you can
see and we can't. Can you handle it? I know how hard this high G is on you."
"I'll be all right," she assured the woman in black. "You said south, right?
How far do you wish to go tonight?"
"Well, we're going to be moving a lot slower and more cautiously than I
planned, but we ought to go on until at least one of us has to stop. It
shouldn't be more than a dozen kilometers or so to the border if we head due
south. That's a haul on foot in the dark under these conditions, but we
haven't done much more than rest on our duffs all day. Can you make it?"
"Yes." No equivocation, no hesitancy. Mavra liked that.
"I think you're gonna do just fine, Julian. You sure you know which way's
south? We had a bend just before we came in."
"I know. It is something in the Erdomese brain. Once we have a fix on the sun
at any point, we always know direc-tion, even when the sun is gone." She
looked around, think-ing. "The first thing is to find a road or trail of some
kind going in our direction and parallel it. I do not think we should risk
Tony or Anne Marie tripping over jungle vines or fallen logs. Just keep close
and I will get you through."
"You sound like you've done this sort of thing before."
"Air force survival training. This is no worse than the jungles of Panama or
Honduras."
"That's right
! Lori said you were once captain of a spaceship."
"No, captain was my rank in the air force. A military service. I was a mission
specialist on the space shuttle, not a pilot or commander, although I had a
jet pilot's license."
"Too much of this is new to me," Mavra admitted, her translated voice coming
to Julian's ears as an odd
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but under-standable mixture of Erdomese and English, depending on the terms
used. "I was in the jungle, cut off, for so long that it wasn't until a few
years ago that I even realized that Earth had progressed to power tools, let
alone flying machines and spacecraft, and by that time I saw them only as evil
magic. Until
I spoke with Tony and Anne Marie here, I had no idea Brazil wasn't still a
Portuguese colony, let alone that your own country even existed. It was all
very ironic. All I was doing was holding out in the wilderness until
technology ad-vanced to where I could get off that planet, and I managed to
fall into a trap where I rejected all technology. Even now I'm sweating like a
stuck pig. I still haven't gotten used to clothing, and these boots feel
bizarre."
"What's stopping you from taking them off? The nearest Earth-human type is
probably a thousand miles from here, if even that close."
"Practicality, mostly. Certainly not modesty. I was born without that word
having much meaning. Back in the Am-azon, that was my jungle. I loved it and
still do, but I knew everything about it. Everything. This isn't my jungle. I
don't know the effects of anything I step on here, and any protection is
better than none when you've only got bare skin in an unknown land." She
dropped her voice low. "Hell, I remember when female
Dillians wore bras, and they weren't nearly as hung as those two."
Julian also lowered her voice to a high whisper. "Is it just me, or is it
really difficult to tell which is which unless they speak? I mean, I've had
the eeriest feeling that the same one I spoke to who was Tony, definitely
Tony, was later talking like Anne Marie."
"I know what you mean," Mavra whispered back. "Ac-tually, I'm sort of relieved
that somebody else feels it, too. Maybe it's just how absolutely identical
they look, but it's spooked me more times in the past few weeks than I can
tell you."
"That is what I mean. Is there something else about them I do not know but
should?"
"Could be, but if so, I don't know it, either. If it is more than mental
confusion on our part, I'm absolutely positive that they aren't aware of it
themselves. I just don't know. Ev-ery time I say that absolutely nothing can [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
