Chapter 23
- Riley -
We decide to not build a fire the next day, so we spend the morning widening the hole in the ice. If we light a fire in that hole, it will melt that ice and the water will run down into the narrow hole, gathering there until we can scoop it up.
We go to the snow cave well before midday, then wait while the Gar tribe maybe comes, checks everything and then leaves again.
Hopefully. If they even came today. But I worry that Nator’ax is right, and they will just search all the snow drifts for days until they find us.
We can’t stay hidden that long, and we don’t have the food.
When I dare crawl slowly out and then stick my head out to see, there’s nobody there. So we walk carefully back to the glacier.
If the Gar tribe are as crafty as I think, they will realize that the smart thing to do is to hide and wait for us to come out.
And sooner or later, we’d have to come out.
They can wait longer than we can. For months, if they think it makes sense.
So this is a risk that we simply have to take, gambling on them not being that smart.
I start to hack at the ice while we discuss Nator’ax going on a hunting trip with the spear, and what I can do while he’s gone.
As I slam the spear back down for the ten thousandth time, it goes a little deeper than I expect, and the impact at the bottom is softer than usual.
I pull the spear back out, and the churned-up ice at the bottom of the hole drops all the way out.
“Nator’ax! We’re through to the hull.” We’ve hacked a narrow little hole all the way down to the saucer, so deep that only two feet of the spear are above the ice.
He turns around to see. “Ah. Well done. Now all that remains is to hack away the rest of it.”
He’s right, of course. One tiny hole going eight feet down isn’t going to help us much. But it’s something, a small success. “If that’s what we have to do, fine.”
He turns back and shields his eyes with one hand. “It may not take that long, if we use fire to-” He cuts himself off. “Take the spear out,” he says calmly. “They’re here.”
The heart drops in my chest when I see the fur-clad men coming from different angles. They’ve hid by the edges of the glacier, behind snow drifts, out of sight for us. Our gamble failed.
Running won’t do us much good. We may evade them for a day or two, but they’ll have packed food for a long trip and we have nothing. And from what I understand, this way ends in icy, desolate fields, much like the ones beyond the hot springs.
I take out my switchblade. “Remember what we said. They won’t take us alive.”
“They won’t,” Nator’ax says flatly. “But not all of them will return to their village, either. If we’re through to the saucer, can you try to talk to it?”
I try to process what he said. “Talk to the saucer? Why?”
“It sometimes does things by itself. Melting its way down was its own doing. It must be alive somehow.”
I think of that unripe Plood that must still be inside, either dead or alive. I never had much affection for those guys. “Maybe.”
The Gar men calmly make their way up the glacier, spears in hand. Their white bone masks makes it impossible to tell who they are, except one of them, who has only one arm.
There’s no doubt about what they have in mind: kill Nator’ax and capture me. This time they won’t bother with sham trials or councils or things like that. It’s not even worth talking to them. They know that we know why they’re here.
“Stay at a distance,” Nator’ax says tightly. “When a man tries to grab you, surprise him with your knife. Aim for the face. The eyes. Do your best to blind him.”
“Do it fast,” I urge him. The point of that spear is blunt, and I don’t relish the idea of being run through with it. But rather that than what the tribe has in store for me. “Right through the heart.”
Nator’ax looks me up and down, eyes cold. “Open the fur at the chest. Just a small opening. I can aim well with this.”
The reality that I’m about to die hits home for real and makes me gasp. For a split second I afford myself a thought about the girls, and how they will never know what happened to me. How they lost the saucer forever, and all hope of ever going home to Earth.
Then I fill my lungs with cool air. “I wish we could be together longer, Nator’ax. But if this is all we get, I’m grateful for the days I had with you.”
“As am I,” he responds, shifting the grip on his spear. “But we’re not quite dead yet. Talk to the saucer.”
Yes. Of course. Spend my last moments begging a buried flying saucer to listen.
I drop to my knees and lean over the hole, pushing my head down as far as I can, towards the whitish-blue light that the saucer always gave off.
“Can you hear me?” My voice comes out tighter than I expect. “It’s Riley. We need you. Can you come back up?”
Nothing answers. Just that dim, steady light.
Or… no. It changes. Barely. A faint brightening, like something stirring.
I swallow and lean closer. “Please,” I say, more urgently now. “Come up. We have to leave.”
The light deepens by a shade, then steadies again, as if whatever lives inside the hull is listening without deciding. The saucer itself, or that Plood in the hidden compartment. I don’t know which.
Behind me, leather boots grind against ice. The scrape carries clearly in the cold air. They’re closer.
“I need more than a flicker,” I whisper down into the hole, pressing my shoulder against the rim to reach deeper. “You moved before. You melted your way down. Do it again. Please. Come up to me.”
A shadow passes across the ice beside me. One of the Gar men has broken ahead of the others, testing the distance, circling for an angle.
“Stay back,” Nator’ax warns him, voice carrying with a hard edge that makes even me flinch. “Another step and I will put this through your chest.”
The man keeps coming. “Come and get your sword, jungle man. It’s in our village.”
I force my voice steady. “If you can understand anything, understand this. They will open you. They will break you apart. I won’t let them take you.”
The blue light pulses again, stronger this time, a slow throb that seems to answer the urgency in my voice.
“Riley,” Nator’ax says with a calm, friendly tone that has something final in it, “if it isn’t working, give it up and come here.”
My fingers dig into the ice at the edge of the hole. “I’m trying,” I breathe, lowering my face closer to the glow. “You’re not just a machine. You chose to move before. Choose again. Come up. Please.”
The light flares, brighter and deeper, and the ice beneath my hands gives the faintest, trembling move. I wonder if it’s trying. But it’s not trying hard enough.
The Plood, it goes through my mind. What was it we said? Something someone said, back at the Borok village, a lifetime ago…
I raise my voice. “Get up here! Get up here and open the hatch! Now!”
The ice cracks like a window pane being hit by a brick and the whole glacier shakes. I scramble to get away from the hole.
The Gar men have stopped at thirty feet distance, halfway surrounding us, a semicircle of spears pointing inward.
The glacier rumbles and the ice shakes so bad I fall over.
Only Nator’ax and a couple of the Gar men are able to stay upright.
There’s another hard crack as the circle of ice on top of the hole comes loose and rises like the cork of a wine bottle, pieces falling off and shattering as they hit the glacier.
Then the top of the saucer appears and the ice layer on top of it slides off completely.
Slowly the saucer rises until it’s hovering a foot above the ice. The hatch snaps open, revealing the blueness inside.
All the Gar men stare, not even bothering to get to their feet.
“Get in!” I yell. “Nator’ax!”
I run over and put one foot inside the saucer. Nator’ax comes running, while the Gar men are just staring.
Only one of them runs towards us, spear held high as if he wants to throw it with his only arm. It’s Shaman Crelt’ax, eyes wild behind the ugly holes in his bone mask. “Stop them! Get the woman!”
Nator’ax calmly turns around and throws his spear at the shaman. It hits him right between the eyes, shattering the bone mask and knocking him on his back. There’s no blood - Nator’ax threw the spear with the blunt end first.
I step into the saucer to give room for him, and when he jumps in I hit the button. The hatch closes with a hiss and the world is suddenly very quiet, except for the usual hum.
I walk fast into the control room. “Go higher!”
The little Plood is standing at the controls, fully matured and making my skin crawl. It turns its head and looks at me with huge, black eyes. It doesn’t say anything, but I get the impression that it’s acknowledging my command.
The screen around us shows the landscape, with the glacier and the snow wastes around it. And the Gar men, getting to their feet and gawping up at the saucer as it rises.
“That’s enough,” I say. “Now go… that way.” I point in the approximate direction to the Gar village.
Nator’ax stands behind me. “That’s a Plood,” he hisses. “The servants of Darkness!”
“I think this one is a servant of me,” I tell him. “At least for now. And as a servant only, he must be commanded, not asked nicely.” I embrace the giant caveman. “Are you all right?”
He doesn’t take his eyes off the Plood. “They never got close enough to do harm. But they were going to. I’m glad the saucer obeyed you.”
“It’s not the saucer, it’s him.” I nod at the Plood who’s busy flying the saucer, so smoothly and well that there’s clearly a connection between them. “He flies it now.”
“Where did he come from?” Nator’ax’s hand hovers over his waist, as if he wants to draw his sword.
“He was always in here.” I point to the compartment where the Plood was before he matured to a living creature. “He was needed for the saucer to fly. Cora discovered that.”
“There was always a Plood nearby? When we were flying the saucer? And sleeping in it?”