Darkover Landfall

Chapter FOUR

"I simply can't believe this weather," Heather Stuart said, and Ewen, stepping to the door of the tent, jeered gently, "What price your blizzard warnings now?"

"I'm glad to be wrong," Heather said firmly, "Rafe and Camilla need it, on the mountain." An expression of disquiet passed over her face. "I'm not so sure I was wrong, though, there's something about this weather that scares me a little. It seems all wrong for this planet somehow."

Ewen chuckled. "Still defending the honor of your old Highland granny and her second-sight?"

Heather did not smile. "I never believed in second sight. Not even in the Highlands. But now I'm not so sure. How is Marco?"

"Not much change, although Judy did manage to get him to swallow a little broth. He seems a little better, although his pulse is still awfully uneven. Where is Judy, by the way?"

"She went into the woods with MacLeod. I made her promise not to go out of sight of the clearing, though." A sound inside of the tent drew them both back; for the first time in three days, something other than inarticulate moans from Zabal. Inside he was moving, struggling to

sit up. He muttered, in a hoarse astonished voice, "Que pasõ O Dio, mi duele--duele tanto--"

Ewen bent over him, saying gently, "It's all right, Marco, you're here, we're with you. Are you in pain?"

He muttered something in Spanish: Ewen looked blankly up at Heather, who shook her head. "I don't speak it; Camilla does, but I only know a few words." But before she could muster any of them, Zabal muttered, "Pain? You'd better believe! What were those things? How long--where's Rafe?"

Ewen checked the man's heart-rate before he spoke. He said, "Don't try to sit up; I'll put a pillow behind your head. You've been very ill; we thought you weren't going to make it." And I'm still not so sure, he thought grimly, even while he wadded his spare coat to put behind the injured man's head and Heather encouraged him to swallow some soup. No, please, there have been too many deaths. But he knew this would make no difference. On Earth only the old died, as a rule. Here--well, it was different. Damn different.

"Don't waste your breath talking. Save your strength and we'll tell you everything," he said.

The night fell, still miraculously clear and free of fog or rain. Even on the heights, no fog closed in, and Rafe, setting up Camilla's telescope and other instruments on the flat place of their camp, saw for the first time the stars rise over the peaks, clear and brilliant but very far away. He did not know a Cepheid variable from a constellation, so much of what she was trying to do was incomprehensible to him; but with a carefully shielded light--not to spoil the dark-adaptation of her eyes--he wrote down careful strings of figures and co-ordinates as she gave them. After what seemed hours of this, she sighed and stretched cramped muscles.

"That's all I can do for now; I can take more readings just before dawn. Still no sign of rain?"

"None, thank goodness."

Around them the scent from the flowers on the lower slopes was sweet and intoxicating, as quick-blooming shrubs, vivified by two days of heat and dryness, burst and opened all around. The unfamiliar scents were a little dizzying. Over the mountain floated a great gleaming moon, with a pale iridescent glow; then, following it byonly a few moments, another, this one with pale violet lustre.

"Look at the moon," she whispered.

"Which moon?" Rafe smiled in the darkness. "Earthmen get used to saying, the moon; I suppose some day someone will give them names..."

They sat on the soft dry grass, watching the moons swing free of the mountains and rise. Rafe quoted softly, "If the stars shone only one night in a thousand years, how men would look and wonder and adore."

She nodded. "Even after ten days, I find I miss them."

Rationally Rafe knew that it was madness to sit here in the dark. If nothing else, birds or beasts of prey--perhaps the banshee-screamer from the heights they had heard last night--might be abroad in the dark. He said so, finally, and Camilla, like the breaking of a spell, started and said, "You're right. I must wake well before dawn."

Rafe was somehow reluctant to go into the stuffy darkness of the shelter-tent. He said, "In the old days it used to be believed it was dangerous to sleep in the moonlight--that's where the word lunatic came from. Would it be four times as dangerous to sleep under four moons, I wonder?"

"No, but it would be--lunatic," Camilla said, laughing gently. He stopped, took her shoulders in a gentle grip and for a moment the girl, biting back a tart remark, thought in a mixture of fear and anticipation that he would bend down and kiss her; but then he turned away and said, "Who wants to be sane? Good night, Camilla. See you an hour before sunrise," and strode away, leaving her to go before him into the shelter.

A clear night, over the planet of the four moons. Banshees prowled on the heights, freezing their warm blooded prey with their screams, blundering toward them by the heat of their blood, but never coming below the snow-line; on a snowless night, anything on rock or grass was safe. Above the valleys, great birds of prey swung; beasts still unknown to the Earthmen prowled in the depths of the deep forest, living and dying, and trees unheard crashed to the ground. Under the moonlight, in the unaccustomed heat and dryness of a warm wind blowing away from the glaciated ridges, flowers bloomed and opened, and shed their perfume and pollen. Night-blooming

and strange, with a deep and intoxicating scent... .

The red sun rose clear and cloudless, a brilliant sunrise with the sun like a giant ruby in a clear garnet sky. Rafe and Camilla, who had been at the telescope for two hours, sat and watched it with the pleasant fatigue of a light task safely over for some time.

"Shall we start down? This weather is too good to last," Camilla said, "and although I've gotten used to the mountain in the sun, I don't think I'd care to navigate it on ice."

"Right. Pack up the instruments--you know how they go--and I'll fix a bite of rations and strike the tent. We'll start down while the weather holds--not that it doesn't look like a gorgeous day. If it's still fine tonight we can stop on one of the hilltops and camp out, and you can take some more sightings," he said.

Within forty minutes they were going down. Rafe cast a wistful look back at the huge unknown range before turning his back on it. His own undiscovered range, and probably he would never see it again.

Don't be too sure, a voice remarked precisely in his mind, but he shrugged it off. He didn't believe in precognition.

He sniffed the light flower-scents, half enjoying them, half disturbed by their faintly acrid sweetness. The most noticeable were the tiny orange flowers Camilla had plucked the day before, but there was also a lovely white flower, star-shaped with a golden corolla, and a deep blue bell-like blossom with inner stalks covered with a shimmering gold-colored dust. Camilla bent over, inhaling the spicy fragrance. Rafe thought to warn her, after a moment;

"Remember Heather and Judy turning green? Serve you right if you Do!"

She looked up, laughing. Her face looked faintly gold from the flower-dust. "If it was going to hurt me it would have already--the air's full of the scent, or haven't you noticed? Oh, it's so beautiful, so beautiful, I feel like a flower myself, I feel as if I could get drunk on flowers--"

She stood rapt, gazing at the beautiful bell-shaped blossom and seeming to shimmer with the golden dust. Drunk, Rafe thought, drunk on flowers. He let his pack slip from his shoulder and roll away.

"You are a flower," he said hoarsely. He seized her and kissed her; she raised her lips to his, shyly at first, then with growing passion. They clung together in the field of waving flowers; she broke free first, and ran toward the stream which flowed down the slope, laughing, bending to toss her hands in the water.

Rafe thought in astonishment, what has happened to us, but the thought slid lightly over his mind and vanished. Camilla's slight body seemed to flicker, to go in and out of focus. She stripped off her climbing boots and thick socks, dabbling her feet in the water.

Rafe bent over her and pulled her down into the long grass.

In the camp on the lower heights, Heather Stuart woke slowly, feeling the hot sun through the orange silk of the tent. Marco Zabal still drowsed in his corner, his blanket drawn over his head; but as she looked at him he began to stir, and sniffed at her.

"So you sleep too, still?"

"I suppose the others are out in the clearing," Heather said, stirring. "Judy said she wanted to test some of the nuts on the trees for edible carbohydrates--I notice her test kits aren't here. How are you feeling, Marco?"

"Better," he said, stretching. "I think maybe I get up for a minute today. Something in this air and sun, it does me good."

"It's lovely," she agreed. She too was conscious of some extra sense of well-being and euphoria in the scented air. It must be the higher oxygen content.

She stepped into the bright air, stretching like a cat in the sunshine.

A clear picture came into her mind, bright and intrusive and strangely exciting; Rafe, drawing Camilla into his arms.....That's lovely," she said aloud, and breathed deeply, smelling the curious, somehow golden scent which seemed to fill the light warm wind.

"What's lovely? You are," said Ewen, coming around the tent and laughing. "Come on, let's walk in the forest--"

"Marco--"

"Marco's better. Do you realize that with all these people I've hardly spoken to you alone since before the crash?"

Hand in hand, they ran toward the trees; MacLeod, coming from the edge of the forest, his hands filled with ripe round clear greenish fruits, held out a handful.

His lips were dripping with their juice. "Here. They're marvelous"

Laughing, Heather bit into the round smooth globe. It was bursting with sweet, fragrant juice; she ate it all, greedily, and reached for another. Ewen tried to pull it away.

"Heather, you're mad, they haven't even been tested yet--"

"I tested them," MacLeod laughed, "I ate half a dozen for breakfast and I feel wonderful! Say I'm psychic, if you like. They won't hurt you and they're chock full of every vitamin we know on Earth and a couple we don't! I know, I tell you!"

He caught Ewen's eye, and the young doctor, a curious awareness growing in him, said slowly, "Yes. Yes, you do know, of course they're good. Just as those mushrooms--" he pointed to a greyish fungus growing on the tree, "are wholesome and full of protein, but those--" he pointed to an exquisitely-colored golden nut, "are deadly, two bites will give you a hell of a bellyache and half a cup will kill you--how the hell do I know all this?" He rubbed his forehead, feeling the odd itch through it all, and took a fruit from Heather.

"Here, we'll all be crazy together then. Marvelous! Better than rations any day... where's Judy?"

"She's all right," MacLeod said, laughing. I'm going off and look for some more fruits l"

Marco Zabal lay alone in the shelter-tent, eyes closed, half-dreaming through closed lids of the sun on the Basque hills of his childhood. Far away in the forest it seemed that he heard singing, singing which seemed to go on, and on, high and clear and sweet. He got to his feet, not stopping to draw any garment about him, disregarding the warning pounding of his heart. An incredible glow of well-being and beauty seemed to surge through him. The sunlight was brilliant on the sloping clearing, the trees seemed to hang darkly and protectively like a beckoning roof, the flowers seemed to sparkle and glitter with a brilliance that was like gold, orange, blue; colors he had never seen before danced and sparkled before his eyes.

Deep in the forest came the sound of singing, high, shrill, unbelievably sweet; the pipes of Pan, the lyre of Orpheus,the call of the sirens. He felt his weakness fade; his youth restored.

Across the clearing he saw three of his companions, lying on the grass laughing, the girl kicking flowers into the air with her bare toes. He stood enraptured, watching her, entangled for a moment in the webs of her fantasy... I am a woman made of flowers... but the far-off singing lured him on; they beckoned him to join them, but he smiled, blew the girl a kiss, and bounded like a young man into the forest.

Far ahead he saw the gleam of white--a bird? A naked body?--he never knew how far he ran, hardly feeling the rapid pounding of his heart, wrapped in the glorious euphoria of freedom from pain, following the white gleam of the distant figure--or bird?--calling out in mingled rapture and anguish, "Wait, wait "

The song shrilled and seemed to fill his whole head and heart. Gently, without pain, he fell into the long sweet-scented grass. The singing went on, and on, and he saw bending over him a fair face, long colorless hair waving around her eyes, a voice too sweet, too heart- wrenchingly sweet to be human, and hair turned to silver by the sun slanting through the trees, and he went happily, joyously down into darkness with the woman's face, sweet and mad, imprinted on his dying eyes.

Rafe ran through the forest, his heart pounding, slipping and falling on the steep path. He shouted, as he ran, "Camilla! Camilla!"

What had happened? One moment she was at peace in his arms--then pure terror had surged across her face and she had screamed and begun babbling something about faces on the heights, faces in the clouds, wide-open spaces waiting to fall on her and crush her, and the next moment she had wrenched away from him and dashed away between the trees, screaming wildly.

The trees seemed to waver and dip before his eyes, to form long black witch-claws to entangle him, tripping him up, throwing him full length into briars that raked along his arm and stung like fire. Lightning flashed with the color of the pain in his arm; he felt a wild and sudden

terror as some unknown animal crashed a path in the forest, a stampede, hoofs, beating, beating, crushing him... he flung his arms around the bole of a tree and

clung to it, the pounding of his heart driving out all other thought. The tree's bark was soft and smooth, like the fur of some animal; he laid his hot face against it. Faces were watching him from the trees, faces, faces... .

"Camilla," he murmured, dazed, slipped to the ground and lay insensible.

On the heights, clouds gathered; fog began to rise. The wind died, and a thin fine rain began to fall, slowly turning to sleet; first on the heights, then in the valley. The flowers closed their bells; the bees and insects sought their holes in the tree-trunks and underbrush; and the pollen dropped, its work done, to the ground... .

Camilla woke, dazed, into dim darkness. She remembered nothing after she had run, screaming, panicked at the wideness as of interstellar space, nothing between her and the spreading stars... no. That had been delirium. Had it all been delirium? She explored slowly in the darkness, was rewarded by a gleam of light--a cave-mouth. She crept to the door of the cave and shivered with sudden icy cold. She was wearing only a thin cotton shirt and slacks, torn and disordered--no. Thank God, her parka was tied around her neck by its sleeves. Rafe had done it while they lay together by the bank of the stream.

Rafe. Where was he? Come to think of it, where was she? How much of the wild and disordered dreams were real and how much insane fantasy? Evidently she had caught some fever, some illness which lay in wait here. This horrible planet! This horrible place! How long had elapsed? Why was she alone here? Where were her scientific instruments, where her pack? Where--this was the burning question--where was Rafe?

She struggled into her parka and zipped it up, and felt the worst of the shivering subside, but she felt cold and hungry and nauseous, and her body ached and throbbed with a hundred scratches and bruises. Had Rafe left her here in the shelter of the cave while he went to fetch help? Had she been lying in fever and delirium for long? No, he would have left some message in case she recovered consciousness.

She looked through the falling snow, trying to figure out where she could possibly be. Above her, a dark slope rose. She must have dived into the cave in mad terror ofthe open spaces around her, seeking any darkness and shelter against the fear that lay on her. Perhaps MacAran was out in this wild weather looking for her, and they could wander for hours in the dark, missing one another by a few feet in the driving snow.

Logic bade her sit down and take stock of her situation. She was warmly clad now, and could shelter in the cave till daybreak. But suppose MacAran, too, was lost on the hillside? Had it attacked them both, that sudden fear, that panic? And where had it come from, that joy, the abandon... No, that was for later, she couldn't think now about that.

Where would MacAran seek her? The best thing was to climb up, toward the peak. Yes. They had left their packs there; and it was the one place from which they could orient themselves when the sun rose and the snow subsided. She would climb, and chance that logic would prompt MacAran to do the same. If not, and she found herself alone when dawn broke, she could make her way back to the camp where the others could help--or to the ship.

She climbed in the dark, driving snow, seeking each step for the way straight upward. After a time she began to guess that she was on the path they had made in their upward climb.

Yes. This is right. It was a sureness inside her, so that she began to move quickly in the dark, and after a time she saw, without surprise, a small bobbing light, making orange sparks against the snowflakes; and MacAran came straight toward her, and clasped her hands.

"How did you know where to look for me?" she asked.

"Hunch--or something," he said. In the small light of the handlamp she could just see the snow clinging to his eyebrows and lashes. "I just knew. Camilla--let's not waste breath on trying to figure it all out now. It's a long climb still to where we left our packs and equipment."

She said, twisting her lips in bitterness against the memory of how she had flung her pack from her, "Do you suppose they'll still be where we left them?"

MacAran's hand closed over hers. "Don't worry about it. Come," he added gently, "you need rest. We can talk about it some other time."

She relaxed, letting him guide her steps in the darkness. MacAran moved along at her side, exploring this new

sureness and wondering from where it had come. Never for a moment had he doubted that he was moving directly toward Camilla in the darkness, he could feel her in front of him, but there was no way to say that without sounding quite mad.

They found the small shelter-tent set up in the lee of the rocks. Camilla crept inside gratefully, glad MacAran had spared her the struggle in the dark. MacAran felt confused; when had they set the tent up? Surely they had taken it down and stowed it in their packs before descending this morning? Had it been before or after they lay together by the stream-bank? The worry nagged at him but he dismissed it--we were both pretty freaked-out, we might have done anything, and hardly been conscious of it. He felt considerable relief at realizing that their packs were neatly piled inside--God, we were lucky, might have lost all our calculations...

"Shall I fix us something to eat before you sleep?"

She shook her head. "I couldn't eat. I feel as if I'd been dream-dusting! What happened to us, Rafe?"

"Search me." He felt unaccountably shy with her. "Did you eat anything in the forest--fruit, anything?"

"No. I remember wanting to, it looked so good, but at the last minute--I drank the water, though."

"Forget it. Water's water and Judy tested it, so that's out."

"Well, it must have been something," she argued.

"I can't quarrel with that. But not tonight, please. We could hash it over for hours and not be any closer to an answer." He extinguished the light "Try to sleep. We've already lost a day."

Into the darkness Camilla said, "Let's hope Heather was wrong about the blizzard, then."

MacAran didn't answer. He thought, did she say blizzard, or was it just weather? Could the freak weather have had anything to do with what happened? He had the uncanny sense, again, that he was near an answer and could not quite grasp it, but he was desperately tired, and it eluded him, and still groping, he slept.