The Nitrogen Fix

XIII Peregrination, Painful

It was pain that caused the faint, and pain that brought back consciousness; Kahvi was out of action only a few seconds. Danna’s shrieks had ceased, and the mother’s awakening was completed by the realization that the child had torn her mask off — it had interfered with the deep breaths needed for the cries. The little chest was still heaving, but the lips had already turned blue.

Again Kahvi’s own pain was forgotten. She snatched up the discarded breathing gear, squeezed the bellows to empty it of outside air, replaced the mask on the child’s face, and pulled the bellows open again to fill it with straight oxygen from the cartridges. It was no longer possible to see the lips, but the convulsive gasping grew quieter and in a minute or so the still unconscious girl was breathing normally.

Kahvi, her terror reduced to a bearable fear, examined her own foot. Like Bones, she had no trouble identifying the cause of the pain. In full sunlight the slivers were easy to see, and for the most part easy to withdraw. Their shape made them easy to get hold of, they were not simple, straight splinters, but caltrops, their four ten millimeter points directed tetrahedrally. No matter how they landed on the ground, one point was always upward. The other three provided a good stand on the ground and, fortunately, a good handle for pulling the things out where they protruded from the skin, provided they had not broken off. Two or three had done this, and Kahvi was still working on the last of these when Danna began to regain consciousness.

The mother instantly turned her attention to relieving the child’s pain. Pulling out the Hillerspikes, as the woman had mentally dubbed them, did not hurt very much; the real torture came when they were pushed in. Danna, once she was fully conscious and had been made to understand what had happened, was able to help with the removal.

She had been far more seriously hurt than her mother, however. Both feet had gotten into the trapped area, and she had then fallen down, so that both hands and much of her right arm, leg, and side were involved. They removed nearly forty of the things; Kahvi’s foot had contained only seven.

Danna, with her mother’s help, got to her feet at last and walked gingerly around. There were still tears behind her mask, but the sobbing had stopped. It was obvious that she was still in pain, but the pride of self-sufficiency and self-command which her parents had tried so hard to instill was taking over.

“Can you walk all right, now?” Kahvi asked.

Danna gave an affirmative nod. “Good. I’ll still carry you for a while, because I know you’re tired and your feet are sore, but I had to be sure that you can go by yourself if you have to. Now, remember;We’re looking for a place to get air — air and food, but mostly air. You know the jail. What we’ll most likely find is something that looks like that, though maybe bigger or smaller. It will probably be on a river — ”

That word had to be explained. So did the reason why they were travelling near the top of the ridge when what they sought should be in a valley. So did what they would have to do if they didn’t find a jail.

It was some minutes before Kahvi could swing the little one up to her shoulders again and resume their journey.

She was rather proud of herself: It had been a temptation to denounce the Hillers as a tribe of subhuman, torturing savages and murderers. Her anger at the people who had set out those hellish bits of glass was still at white heat, but she had not passed it on to her daughter — though she knew that if she met a Hiller at this moment her normal hangups against violence might not hold up. There would actually be pleasure in tearing the mask from his — or her — face and throwing it as far as possible, and watching the creature run after it, and stagger, and fall, and die as Danna almost had. It might even be pleasant to watch such a person roll on ground covered with the same bits of glass he had obviously intended for use against other people. To hear him shriek as Danna had shrieked — to watch him tear off his own mask in agony, as her own little one had done — Kahvi suddenly had to put the child down and open the eating flap of her mask. For two or three minutes she was very sick, while the child watched in uncomprehending sympathy.

When she stood up again, the mask once more in place, her mind as well as her stomach had been cleared, but she felt depressed. She usually enjoyed looking at things — at hills and trees and plants, at clouds and sky; she had never seen a green Earth, but regarded the multicolored one she knew as beautiful. Now, however, she could not appreciate it. It was not just the realization that habits of human behavior formed such a thin skin over antihuman urges; there was more material fear. She could not appreciate any beauty as she walked. Travelling was not just walking; every step had to be taken with care. She was unlikely to see the Hiller-spikes even if she walked bent over with her face as close as possible to the ground. This meant that every step had to be taken cautiously, feeling for the slightest twinge of pain, ready to pull back at once before weight was put on the foot.

She had no way of telling where the Hillers might have set other traps. The only obvious quality about the first one was that it lay between the fire site and the raft. Had it been intended to keep people — barefooted people — away from the fire, or from the structure which had been destroyed by the fire? If so, there might be no more traps; but there was no way to be sure, and she could take no risks — certainly not with Danna; so she went very, very slowly. The delay was irritating, and the irritation gradually brought back the subhuman thoughts about Hillers. .

They followed more nearly the way Bones had been carried than the route taken by her husband.

Hemenway, the nearest of the Blue Hills, was the eminence Kahvi was now taking as a reference point.

She knew that the city extended underground from Little Blue Hill on the west to Hemenway and Houghton on the east; unlike her husband, she knew the location of many of the air locks, and knew that she could certainly find one of these if no jail turned up — though she certainly hoped to renew air and food somewhere outside the city.

She might, if these had been her only object, have headed for the west side of the city where she did know many of the jails; but she had heard enough while eavesdropping to make Hemenway her goal.

They had wanted to take Earrin there; he had apparently escaped on the way there; and while he might have gone anywhere afterward that still seemed the best place to start looking for him. Unfortunately, none of the contingency plans they had so often amused themselves by concocting had managed to cover any situation much like this one; and well as she knew him, Kahvi had been quite unable to guess what her husband might now be up to.

The top of Hemenway was about a kilometer and a half from the fire site and glass trap, so there was in fact little chance to get far from Earrin’s actual trail. They encountered the jail to which her husband’s captors had been leading him, and after some hesitation Kahvi checked the interior, found it empty, and rested there briefly; but of course there was no sign of Earrin in the building.

They had passed the point where he had escaped but Kahvi had none of the experience needed torecognize any clues which might have been on the ground.

She had no hesitation in eating from the food growing in the jail, or in exchanging her used cartridges for full ones. The rest was shorter than either of them liked, and Danna could not see why they had to go on after finding the food and air her mother had said they needed. She was outspoken about this, and Kahvi had to take more time to explain.

“We can’t stay here, because some of the City people come here sometimes. Remember, we don’t want them to find you.”

“But why can’t we hide a little way off, and come back whenever we need air?”

“Maybe we will, but there’s something else we want to find.”

“What’s that?”

“Your father. I think these people may have taken him, so we’ll have to get him back just as he and I would get you back if they took you.” Danna accepted this as reasonable, to her mother’s relief; she had gotten enough rest to be more cheerful, even if it wasn’t all she wanted. She checked and donned her outdoor gear with no more complaint, and even grinned with pride when her mother approved the check.

The way now led up Hemenway slope. The sun had set, though the sky was not yet completely dark.

A few bright stars could be seen between slowly drifting clouds. They were still traveling very slowly as Kahvi continued to feel her way.

Danna was walking now, but had been warned to stay behind her mother; with the memory of the glass still fresh and its pain still in her body, the child was quite willing to obey.

Kahvi knew of an air lock on this side of Hemenway, and was making their way toward it.

She had decided that there was a good chance of Earrin’s being inside the city. There would have been no chance for him to get back to the raft, and no evidence that he had tried. He had either stayed free and gone to a jail or the city for air, or been recaptured and brought to Hemenway as had apparently been the original Hiller intention.

In the old days, the citizens of Great Blue Hill had very seldom gone outdoors after dark. This seemed to have changed now, and she didn’t dare approach the lock as casually as she might have done earlier. Since she had to travel so slowly anyway, the extra care wasn’t as much nuisance as it might have been.

Once in sight of the lock pool, in fact, she decided to wait for a time to see whether any of these young people who seemed to go out a lot at night might be around, so she settled down in the center of a clump of bushes which provided materials for a hastily-made nest. Danna made no objection to going to sleep; there was nothing which interested her in the surrounding darkness.

Kahvi, in spite of her intention to keep watch, might have followed her daughter’s example, but they had been there only a few minutes when sounds came from the nearby air lock. The moon was not up yet, but part of the pool reflected starlit sky, and the reflection was now broken by ripples and by dimly silhouetted human figures rising from the water. They were not showing any particular caution; there was an occasional splash, and some of them were talking. There was nothing in Kahvi’s large collection of highly virtuous hangups which prohibited listening; information, including information on what other people were doing and planned to do, was necessary for life. She listened: “D’you suppose it’s gotten away yet?”

“Of course not. Les was watching; he’d have come to tell us if it had started anything he couldn’t take care of himself, or if it had gotten loose before he could stop it. Besides, what could it do? It only tried the things we expected.”

“And what,” asked a female voice, “gives you the idea that it couldn’t think of things we haven’t? Of course it tried the obvious ones first. Sometimes they work. Remember how those two got away inside — and we still don’t know where the other one is, you know.”

“Of course not. It got over into the main city, where we can’t look for it without getting the old fogies excited. Come on; we’re getting this one. Maev thinks that it’ll have used up all its ways of escape by now, and if it’s still there we might as well bring it in for other tests. Make sure your sandals are tight, and go slowly; there’s a lot of slime down that way, and travelling in the dark can put hard heads against harder rocks if you aren’t careful. We’d better link up — who has the rope?”Kahvi heard all this and drew the obvious conclusions. The two captives who had escaped must be Bones and Earrin, and the native had been recaptured. For some reason she was being held outside — some sort of testing, it appeared. This group was to bring her back into the city. Could Kahvi forestall them? Which way were they going? How was Bones being held? If the Hillers were going to rope together, the route must be dangerous; could she find it by that fact? Could she get there, over slime, ahead of the Hillers?

Quick decision was standard. Kahvi got to her feet, drawing the child up with her and signaling for silence, and began to retreat carefully. She moved quietly, not because she feared being heard but so as to continue hearing what the others might be saying as she worked her way around the lock pool in search of a slippery area.

“What if it has gotten away?”

“Then good breathing to it, of course. Les will be able to tell what happened — unless it ate him.”

“They don’t eat people, idiot.”

“Why not, if they eat each other?” This question went unanswered, since there were no biochemists in the group. The one who had asked it went on after a pause. “I don’t like the idea of getting close to that thing. I think we’ve learned enough from it. If it’s still there I’m for putting more spears through it — ”

“Why should a lot be any more use than one?”

“Then cut the thing to pieces and make a fire with it — unless Maev wants to cut it up to see what’s inside.”

“That may be next. It’s up to her, but we bring it in the way it is. Come on.”

“No. Wait. Look, I’ll go down carefully; you come slowly behind me. If we do need weapons, at least I can give some warning so you can get off the rope in time.”

“All right, but don’t be too slow or we’ll have the moon in our eyes.”

Kahvi had heard enough; the last sentence told her which way to go — not precisely, perhaps, but nearly enough, since the distance couldn’t be very great. She headed east, with Danna hurrying behind.

They would have to take their chances on glass and slime now; if these Hillers were planning to cut Bones up she would have to be gotten away or at the very least warned.

The voices from behind grew louder; the main-body was gaining — what of the one who was coming ahead f them? How far ahead was Bones?

Could Kahvi get there in time to do anything but watch? There was noise behind, nearer than the voices. There — a little to the right — was that a clearing?

It was, and suddenly she could see Bones’ figure silhouetted against the slowly brightening eastern sky. It would have to be warning; she could not possibly get there long enough before the others to give physical help. She called out loudly to Bones, and almost instantly a human figure rose in her path.