Virginia Hamilton (3 page)

“Their bodies may not be stretching at all,” Justice said. “The water could be causing some chemical change, making the cells multiply.”

“Who cares?” Thomas said. But they all watched, fascinated, as an overweight worlma struggled out of the pool. It tried to crawl away, only to have its legs snap in three places with a sound like corn popping.

“You look like you’re going to puke!” Thomas said to Levi, who had covered his eyes.

Brownish liquid trickled from the breaks in the worlma’s legs.

Healer, here’s your chance,
Justice traced to Dorian.
That thing is probably in pain.

“
Forget it, Healer,” Thomas said, mind-reading them. Before anybody could move, he had taken his sharpest bone and slashed the worlma down its back. There was a tiny sound like a faraway horn:
pank-a pank!
The worlma collapsed in a gush of its insides that stained the dust brown.

“Did you hear that?” Thomas said, laughing. “It goes off every time you try to waste one of ’em.”

Justice and Dorian rushed to the creature. “Is there life still?” Justice said.

Dorian nodded.

“Then try,” she said.

He lifted both hands above the broken worlma. Minutes later, what rose weakly from the dust was a normal-size worlma on stick legs. It was shaky, but it was healed.

“Wonderful,” Justice whispered.

“It would’ve died,” Dorian told Thomas. “Too much growing has changed the balance. They can’t take what pollutants are left in the pool. You don’t need to kill them.”

“Oh, cheezus!” Thomas said, exasperated. “That’s all you know, buddy. Them things would die even without some pollutants. You wanna know why? Because they’re made wrong, that’s why.”

“What?” Justice said. Miacis purred evenly against her arm, her blazing eyes staring at Thomas.

“What I said,” said Thomas, “is that they are made
wrong.
I’ve been combing their insides and I know how they work. I know that they get choked on the dust and they die. Oh, they don’t have throats that choke. But the dust oozes in through their skin and it chokes up their workings and they die.”

“I haven’t seen any of them die!” Levi said.

“Well, maybe you haven’t been looking hard enough,” Thomas told him. “Because they
do
die, and all the time, too. But they don’t
stop
to die.”

Dorian and Levi stared at him. Miacis blinked.

“Give him a chance to explain,” Justice said, before either of them could say anything.

“Well, thanks, girl,” Thomas said. “Glad somebody around here cares to listen some.”

Always as sarcastic as he can be, thought Justice.

They were silent, watching the creatures. Worlmas in the water grew to ten times their original size. They floated like footballs made too large. And when they tried to leave the pool, their legs broke under the pressure of their overblown bodies.

“Brother!” Justice cried. “How big would they get if they had an ocean to swim in?”

“There’d have to be a point where growth reached its outer limit,” Dorian said.

“That could be at the size of an elephant,” Levi said, “depending on the quantity and purity of the water.”

“So, as I was saying,” Thomas began, “these beasties don’t know when they’ve kicked the bucket. You can’t tell dead ones from live ones walking around unless you have something like a sharp knife. Then you slit one down its back. If the brown stain flows, it’s alive and it dies. You slit another one and what happens? Whatever life was in there, the mucous stuff, the membranes and the brown-stain acids, whatever,” Thomas said, “it’s gone, or drying up. But the beastie keeps right on moving until it’s so dried up it breaks apart into small pieces, which break up into even smaller pieces. But it never will go
pank-a-pank!
unless that brown stuff flows.”

“You sure of that?” Levi said, the sound of alarm in his voice.

“Positive,” said Thomas, proud of his scientific study of worlmas. “I’m telling you. They ought to die right off, all at once, but they don’t. Because these buggers are programmed to move around so they can dry out. Once they’re all dry, they come apart in littler and littler pieces. No remains to clutter up the place. All very efficient. It’s in the genetic code for beasties, I’d say.”

“So the dust is …” Levi began.

“… is maybe everything that has to die here,” Thomas finished for him. “I thought of that, too. That’s if moving around after death, drying up and falling to dust, is the same code for everything. But we don’t know that, either. Moving around after death could be an involuntary action, kind of like a slow rigor mortis.” He glanced at Justice and quickly away.

He had been looking at her fast and sideways like that all day, Justice realized.

“I don’t like any of it, much. It’s creepy,” Dorian said.

“To think things can be moving around and dead at the same time,” Levi said solemnly. “You see them and you don’t even know they’re dead.”

“But how long do they keep on moving?” Dorian wanted to know.

“It would depend on the genetic code for the kind you’re talking about,” Thomas explained.

“So how long does a worlma move around after death?” Levi asked.

“I can’t say for sure. It could be an hour or a day dead. Probably no more than two, three days dead to dry up and pull apart. But I’m guessing.”

Silence, in which they watched creatures struggle and die. In which Justice closed off a tracing between her and Miacis so the others couldn’t scan.

Talking about worlmas, Master, shoot,
Miacis tracing. Her language was a mixture of words she found in any of their minds.
Worlmas ain’t no nevermind to nothing, man, lady. He hiding something?
This about Thomas.

Justice had to laugh, but kept it within.
Thomas gets interested in something, he won’t let it go,
she traced.

“We going to sit around here forever?” Thomas said, suddenly impatient with small creatures.

“Where do you want to go?” Justice asked him smoothly. She was a study in relaxation, stroking the golden animal at her side.

“Well, don’t you have a plan or something? You brought us here.”

She smiled at him. “The plan is to stay right here by the water. Everything, whatever kinds there are, has to have water and will come here eventually.”

“Yeah, eat us and then drink!”

“Oh, for heaven sakes, Thomas,” she said. “We can’t be eaten or hurt here.”

“Don’t you believe it,” he said quietly, controlling his anger. “And I don’t like it out in the open like this. We should become the unit.”

“Don’t we always become the unit, Thomas?”

“Yeah; but not soon enough. We should become it before Nolight.”

Thought he hated the unit, she thought, making sure she kept it to herself.

“We’ll have the unit when Nolight comes,” she said.

Not far off now, my Master,
Miacis traced.

Please, call me Justice,
Justice traced back, automatically now; she had traced the same thing so many times.

Yes, Master,
traced Miacis.

Justice sighed, patted the animal; then pushed her away and lay down, leaning on her elbows.

“Meanwhile,” Thomas said, “think I’ll make me something. I don’t care for being out here like sitting ducks.”

The next moment the four of them and Miacis were positioned high on a cliff edge. Gleaming white rock had fallen from the face of the cliff, rising nearly as high as the cliff itself.

“Oh!” cried Justice, lifting her feet away from the dangerous edge. Miacis switched her marvelous tail, but otherwise made no move.

Thomas laughed. Far below them and all around was Dustland with its endless sameness. “How you like that?” Thomas asked them.

“Neat!” said Dorian.

They all had the sensation that they were at the very top of a cliff, when actually they were still in the open on the dusty ground. And nothing coming anywhere near them would be able to see them. All that was visible was the real pool and the shining rock and cliff of Thomas’ powerful magic.

“I’m getting dizzy way up here,” Dorian said.

“Sweet, isn’t it?” Thomas asked, looking at Justice.

She had to admit that it was. “Guess it
is
better that we not stay in the open,” she said, “even with the unit.”

When, later, the landscape began changing in glowing shades that reddened the dust, they knew the sun was going down. One instant there was still Graylight; the next, there was the darkness of the period Miacis called Nolight.

Nolight was more oppressive than any nighttime at home. For one thing, it felt heavy. With the dust, it sifted the day’s heat down on the unit so that the power of four could think of nothing else. The unit grew vague and listless as the rhythms of this strange place relaxed it overmuch. Only one of the four kept all his wits about him.

Thomas violently wrenched himself out of the unit, tearing away psychic chunks of the rest of them as he did so. Justice, Dorian and Levi were rendered unconscious, with only Miacis to watch over them.

The golden animal had lain between Justice and Levi. She had not bothered to cover herself with dust this Nolight, as was her way. With the Master beside her, she had no fear of the open. She neither believed nor disbelieved that Thomas’ cliff hid them all, for, being blind, she couldn’t see how craftily the illusion was erected. Then, suddenly, three sleeping humans had started up in awful, convulsive movements and fallen back. As Thomas pulled away, Miacis rose on her four legs.

“You come near me, dog-face,” Thomas whispered, “and I’ll carve you in little pieces.” He had the bone-claw weapons that Miacis had bitten and chewed to razor sharpness.

Miacis stared in Thomas’ direction. She sensed how strange was this one, who called himself human. Proudly she sat down again, swishing her tail.

Going somewhere, are you, buddy?
she traced to Thomas.

The sentences Miacis was able to put together from words out of his own mind shocked him. Yet he wasn’t going to let their slangy accuracy throw him now.

You stay back, dog-face. Yeah. I’m going someplace. She thinks she can run me. Either she leaves me be or I’ll stay out there and none of them will ever get home. You tell her that, dog. Tell Justice I don’t
w
ant to come here ever again! And if she wants to get back home, she’d better make some promises!

Sure, what’s your game?
Miacis traced.
Brother, you are some tough guy for sure.

She turned clear around so that her back was to him. She flicked her gorgeous tail at him just once. But before she turned, she had sensed something. Thomas was concealing something behind him—some form, some shape. Without having seen it, she knew it was important.

That’s okay, man,
Miacis traced.
You get yourself a good headstart.

Come after me, I’ll slice you up!
warned Thomas. He was already running, putting distance between them.

Justice came to with Miacis licking her face. She had a terrible headache and hurt all over. She knew at once what had happened. Thomas. He was gone, of course.

“Why didn’t you wake me?” she demanded of Miacis.

I waited for you to awaken, Master,
traced Miacis.

“Then why didn’t you stop him if you were awake when he ran?” Justice demanded.

The Master didn’t command me to,
traced Miacis.
I was resting. Think I must’ve been sleeping, oh, yes.

“Well, which?” Justice said angrily. “Or was it all three?” She got up to see about Dorian and Levi. Dorian was coming out of it as if from an uncomfortable, cramping sleep. Levi lay still, breathing softly.

She returned to Miacis. “Answer me!”

I … saw him leave. But I couldn’t go after him till you told me to, Master. But you tell me to and I’ll bring him on in. You just let me at him, oh, yes!

Justice said nothing for a moment as she scanned Miacis’ thoughts.

“So that’s why you didn’t try to wake me,” Justice said, probing. “You wanted to give him a good headstart. Why, you love a run, a good chase! What’s going on between you two? I bet he wants you to chase him, doesn’t he?”

“You want me to wake Levi?” Dorian said, interrupting them.

“No,” Justice said. “Give him time. He’ll come out of it like we did.”

“Why did he do it?” Dorian asked, speaking of Thomas.

“Part of it’s to get back at me,” Justice said. “And then, he’s planning some game on Miacis, I suspect. But mainly he hates coming here, so he’s showing me that none of us can get back home until he says so.”

He say you better promise to stay home for good, too,
Miacis traced.

“Oh, he did, did he?” Justice said.

I can bring him back, Master. Let me go get him.

“I ought to go myself,” Justice said. She glanced apprehensively over at Levi.

“I don’t get it,” Dorian said. “How can he run away when … when nothing of any of us is here to run?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But just look at us.” She was wearing a hooded robe and sandals. Dorian and Levi had on hooded tunics with pants that fitted tightly about the ankles. “There’s some unknown affecting things. Thomas did run away and we’ve got to get him back.”

She looked over at Levi and knew she couldn’t leave him. She would need Dorian, the healer, if Levi was deeply hurt. Only time would tell.

Justice turned to Miacis, not quite sure she had made up her mind. But Miacis was aware she had.

Thank you, Master!
Miacis leaped away. In seconds she was streaking across the Nolight of Dustland.

“Wait!” Justice called. But Miacis was gone.

How can Miacis bring him back? Justice wondered. Rarely now did she think of Miacis as an animal. She was rather more like a cousin. And she divined that somehow Miacis could do what she set out to do.

We can’t get home. Bring him back!

M
IACIS GROWLED.
S
HE WAS
impatient to complete her task for her Master as soon as possible. But fast motion always gave her so much pleasure.

Softly, she growled again, enjoying the thought of the capture to come. Perhaps she should run even faster in order to get the long pursuit over with. At top speed she could gallop, streaking across the dust.