ch 5 | Leda & Gull

When order returned to the campsite, Leda had induced the pony to settle himself downhill from the fire, so the rain dripping from his coat would find somewhere else to go. She began combing out his mane with her fingers and braiding the pale hair into small plaits.

Thunder grumbled in the distance, and the rain settled into a dogged drizzle. Blade and Sasha were comparing daily life in their respective communities, with the twins alternately interjecting comments and questions. Mitch reclined on the edge of the pit to let the fire warm his back and watched Leda's fingers moving through the pony's mane for a while.

"So, what have you been doing with yourself this past year?"

She struggled with a tangle, smoothing a burr free of the hair and finished braiding the lock before she spoke.

"The same stuff. Daddy has me down at Ruby and Richard's as often as he can. He wants me to read the old records, help him with his research."

"What about your hebrew and greek lessons?" The ancient languages, in their pure forms, and in a strange amalgam with english, had come to be the dominant tongues on the earth.

"Coming along. I do okay. Daddy doesn't care about them too much, but I want to be able to speak with the Continentals. You've changed a lot, Mitch. Grown up, I mean. What's it like?"

Mitch chuckled. "Compared to what? I was too busy paddling the canoe and carrying packs to notice. Oh, I suppose I notice the ladies more, but it happens gradually. You've got years ahead of you before the big change hits."

"Daddy says that in the old days, girls became women at my age."

Mitch regarded her soberly. "Don't be in such a rush. You've got a chance to learn who you are as a person, not as a set of glands. Get some wisdom, learn a couple of trades."

"But it seems like forever before people are going to take me seriously!"

"When you do serious things, then you get taken seriously. Enjoy being frivolous and free for a while. It's a big world out there, with a lot more going on than we can see from our little corner of the woods. Are you still sneaking out to watch the Settlement?"

"Not as often as I'd like." Before Mitch had left, the older children of the village would spend occasional summer afternoons on the bluffs across the Chak. They'd watch the activities of the settlement and wait for the big airships to come in and tie up at the tower, visible across the trees. The fact that their parents disapproved of the tech the Continentals imported only made it more fascinating.

"This trip made me realise that the stand the Founder's taken on City science and trade is pretty rare. A lot of the Communities that we passed through trade with the City a lot. Of course, some are even more closed- even hostile, though they're polite enough to the Nobles, to their face."

Leda sat up straighter, reaching for another handfull of mane. "So where did you go this time?"

"Well, the first leg out is pretty tame. We went straight up the Chak to where it drains Newly Lake. There's a couple of little towns up there, and they all have their own connections elsewhere. You can go overland through the ranges, but Chicago's got the routes mapped out on his other trips. The population's still pretty thin, and there's a limit to how far you can go without having to depend on wild game. This time, he took the other water route out of the lake. It actually drains down the other side of the continental divide. What with all the changes in the land from the earthquakes, you can't depend on the old maps. The locals call this river the Stairsteps, and that gives you a pretty good idea of what it's like. We broke down the cataroes and shot a bunch of rapids."

"Did anyone fall in?" asked Blade. The rest of them had shifted their attention to Mitch's account.

"We might as well have, as wet as we all got. We had picked up an older fellow that had his own canoe and knew the area, and he saved us a lot of grief. There's one blind curve in the river that ends in a thirty meter waterfall!" Mitch pantomimed a downward plunge. "We had to portage around that. That was the worst, but not the only one. Eventually we connected with what had been the old 'Hio. I'm leaving out a lot. We'd camp for a week at a time if the area was interesting, and explore. In the winter, we spent a whole month in a small holding in the deep woods untill the weather broke. There were just three families there, I'm still not sure how they got their supplies. But once we made the 'Hio River, though, shoo'- we could string the whole expedition out side by side across the water and never even touch paddle tips."

"So how did you meet up with Sasha's people?" asked Peace.

"Well, the 'Hio kept getting wider and wider, and the land flatter and flatter. The river broke up into a bunch of channels, and it was almost impossible to measure a flow. The land turned into a swampy prairie, dotted with mangrove thickets and reeds. We hadn't seen a soul in weeks, just mosquitoes the size of Spot, there. If we could 've figured a way to harness them, we would have been back the second week of spring. Anyway, we were just about to turn around when we saw some smoke on the horizon. It turned out to be the fires from Novopor's fish drying sheds. They had a big run of fish, and if we'd been a few days earlier or later, we never would have seen them."

Mitch lay back on the concrete, lacing his fingers behind his head. "My canoe came out from behind that last stand of mangroves, and there it was. From the distance, it looks like a forest of peppermint sticks. The city's built right over one of the main channels. The first set of docks was built out of floating debris from the old wrecked cities, and the hull coral the Pilgrims gave the survivors. Hull coral comes in two varieties- one grows in a thin layer over submerged surfaces, and hardens into an incredibly strong coating when it matures. It grows into the cracks between two pieces of wood and bonds them together. The other stuff grows in layers as long as it's fed a special enzyme, and the new layers generate a gas as they seal the old cells off, so it's actually bouyant. They grow the thin stuff on pilings and structural beams to keep them from rotting, but some parts of the city actually float- they build up coral on the botoms of platforms untill it's thick enough to support what they need."

"It sounds like the whole town is just glued together, complained Blade. "They won't need a carpenter after all."

"Oh, on the contrary," Sasha rubbed his shoulder. "We always need someone who understands joinery; most of the town is wood, pegged and mortised together- screws and nails are used in jewelery, they're so rare."

Leda watched her companions as the firelight licked at the smoke gathering between the rusty beams of the roadway over their heads. The rain was a glittering curtain dripping from the vines at the edges of their shelter. Patience was nodding, snuggling against her brother's shoulder, as Peace listened to the travelers' story. Yawns began making the rounds; In the absence of widespread artificial light, people's schedules had returned largely to a dusk-to-dawn rhythm. The pony was asleep, its coat steaming slightly in the cooling air. Leda finished the last lock of mane, and decided against doing the tail. Mitch, seeing he was loosing his audience, stretched and lay back.

"Why don't we try and get some sleep?" he suggested.

"Won't have to try very hard," mumbled Blade. Leda gave the pony one last pat and joined the growing huddle of bodies, sharing coats, packs and limbs for pillows. The last thing she remembered was the dying grumble of thunder, out over the Badlands.

* * *

The leaves and trunks of the trees slipped in and out of focus in a bewildering kaleidoscope of emerald and brown. Gull paused to rest his cheek against a mossy pillar. The earthy smell of damp forest and mushrooms in the morning air filled his nostrils.

"Aw'right Kev, where ya' hidin'?" Gull wiped a sweaty forehead with a hand blotched with small red bruises. For the last several miles Gull had thought that he was on a walkabout with a group of his cousins. It had actually taken place last summer.

Somehow, he had managed to miss every stream in the area. He tried to keep heading downhill, but the valleys he had been walking in were dry. Periodic bouts of nausea made him stop and hunch over, and he had long since stopped bringing anything up. Each time it was a little harder to straighten up and walk again. Nearly horizontal shafts of pearly sunlight glowed in the mist steaming from the rain-damp earth. Morning birds were just beginning to chirp; not a leaf moved. Gull's heart and breathing thudded and rasped in his ears, the loudest sounds in his universe, but something else was coming through. Closing his eyes, he tried to hold his breath for a moment and listen.

It was almost masked by his internal static, but Gull heard a faint liquid hiss.

"Water," he croaked from a dry throat. "Maybe tha's where the guys are. They shoulda waited for me." He pushed off from the tree trunk and wobbled on down the duff-floored vale, leaning on a twisted piece of wood.

As the sun brightened the morning sky, the bodies under the old bridge stirred.

"Remind me not to do this again," groaned Peace. "Sis, I think I slept with your knee in my back all night."

Mitch sat up, scrubbing crumbs of sleep from his eyes. "I don't believe we slept at all. Concrete is not my idea of a mattress. Hold it," he said, looking around, "Where's the pony?"

"Where's Leda?" asked Patience.

"Right over there- with the pony," yawned Blade, pointing upstream.

A small meadow spread a green carpet of clover and grasses beside the stream, ringed by blackberry bushes, and beyond them the beginnings of the eastern forest. Slender grey trunks marched into the shadow cast by their thick summer foliage. Leda knelt nose to nose with the pony, in seeming earnest conversation. The sun sparked silver glints from the little animal's mane, and copper from Leda's.

"What's she doing?" whispered Sasha, for they had all fallen silent. Leda had a small rope, tied into a halter, which she slowly eased over the pony's head, crooning quietly. The pony cropped placidly at the clover. Leda got to her feet and moved to stand beside him. He twitched his tail at an ambitious mosquito, but otherwise displayed massive unconcern.

"I don't know if this is such a good idea," said Peace, in a low voice.

Leda gathered her courage, and swung a leg over the animal's back. When the pony felt her weight settle onto him, a kind of ripple passed from his nose to tail. His eyes rolled wildly, whites showing all around. His ears snapped back like matching switchblades, and he spun on his hind legs and sprinted toward the bridge, small hooves cutting divots from the sod. The audience caught a blurred glimpse of Leda's face, and they jumped up and scattered toward the pony, trying to bring him to a halt before he ran over the edge of the dam.

Inches before their outstretched hands, the pony executed a neat u-turn and lit out for the woods. Leda's fingers were locked into the braided mane, but her heels were bouncing at about ear level. The two of them hit the blackberry bushes and disappeared. There was a muffled shriek and crashes, dwindling into the distance.

Leda emerged from the foliage nursing scratches on both hands and one cheek..

"Are you all right?" Blade arrived at the edge of the meadow, with the other four in hot pursuit.

"I guess so," said Leda, brushing leaves from her hair. "Come on, let's go!"

"Go where?" asked Sasha, next to arrive.

"To get my horse!"

"Are you nuts?" gasped Peace.

"That's the Badlands out there," finished Patience. "Who knows what's out there?"

"Exactly! I can't leave him out there! Anyway, he probably won't run far." Leda bent and sighted down along the pony-shaped hole through the bushes. "I'm going in, before he gets too much of a start on me. Blade, would you bring my pack?" Before he could argue, she had slipped off into the brambles.

Blade and Mitch shook their heads at each other. "She definitely has a mind of her own." said Mitch.

"And how. You guys head back if you want to. I'd better get her pack." Blade jogged back across the meadow.

"Who needs breakfast anyway?" shrugged Peace. "Off to the Badlands!"

"Now let's see if we can find another way through these- ouch! Brambles! Leda! Call out from time to time so we don't loose track of you!" Mitch bellowed, as he cast about for a less painful way through.

The droning of the air pumps made it hard to speak. Through the ports, the eastern horizon was catching fire from the sparks struck on the atlantic. The eyes of the search party were focused on the open cargo hatch, and the darkness of the ground, still in shadow, beyond it. Gull's father and the Chairman were strapped into the fold-down jumpseats flanking the hatch. Kev, Lucas, the kibbutz' healer, and Jacob his apprentice were seated on the bench that spanned the rear of the compartment. There had been a uneasy moment when it seemed that Adamson was going to protest his coming along, but Tiglath had handed Kev a flight pack and hustled him through the hatch. A small, subdued group had seen them off in the darkness; Gull's mother and his sisters, and Mary had been there, along with one or two other early risers. The hangar doors rumbled back open, and fog had come spilling in to pool and eddy around their waists. The NivenHawks had cut in: Kev felt a little queasy at the dropping-elevator feel. The fans spun, and the ship bobbed eagerly upward. There was a slight whistling as the propulsion vents were opened, and the E-2 slid down the hangar's ribbed gullet. Kev saw a flash of waving hands and then they fled into the night.

Tiglath and Mawri stood at the lip of the hatch, the dim, night-running lights turning their robes the color of blood. They seemed rooted to the deck, oblivious to the motion of the vessel as it butted through contrary winds. Kev found himself whispering to Jacob, who was sitting beside him.

"Do you think it's true what they say? That they're really ressurected humans? This is the longest I've ever been around any. How about you?"

"Well, I did study in Jerusalem a while, and you see them popping in and out of things there quite a bit. It seems like no two of them are alike, and then, they're all the same. They certainly look human enough, but they're too- well, polished or something. It's a bit eerie. I know they're the Nobles, and their word is law. We've got to obey them, but nothing says we've got to be comfortable with them."

"We're approaching Crater" the pilot's voice crackled over the intercom. "The Rangers' ETA is twenty minutes, and they will begin a serch pattern to the east when they arrive.I'm taking us up higher until we get a reading on the radiation levels. Brother Adamson, we're going to be hovering over Gull's last known contact point. We've generated a probable course after that, taking into account windspeed and such. It's possible that only his radio was knocked out, but we'd better start looking there. Do the Noble Ones concur?"

Tiglath inclined his head. "That would be wise. I would estimate that we are high enough for safety's sake, but perhaps Lucas would want to use his instruments."

The sound of the fans diminished, and the medic approached the hatch with a radiation meter and his data slate. After some rapid calculations, his face cleared. Despite the increased capacity for repair the Tree gave the human body, radiation still held an almost primeval terror.

"It's true. We can stay at this height indefinitely. I'll need to take more readings as we go lower, to build a curve. Let me know our altitude at fifty meter increments."

Everyone gathered around the hatch now, and watched the slow progession of dawn. Light spilled over the horizon, striking the higher hills and trickling down into the valleys. Air hissed from manouvering jets, and the landscape began a stately rotation in the frame of the hatch. The light grew stronger, illuminating the areas outside the crater, which, shielded by the ejecta rim, remained stubbornly dark. Gull's father got out a pair of high powered binoculars, the digital image enhancement electronics chirping periodicaly as he scanned the shadows.

As the sun cleared the crater rim, it was as if it pulled a black and blue sheet off the face of a corpse. Fissures and cracks became visible, and the melted rock surface reflected a dusty grey light. Mawri and Gull's father saw it first- a long shred of shadow that stayed behind as the dawn drove the rest of it away.

"Something's down there- turn us! Turn us toward it!"

Kev's soul reflected a smoky turmoil of emotion, mixed dread and excitement, which soured into disappointment. The sun revealed a small mound of vegetation, not the smooth surfaces of the hyperlight. The rest of the crater was completely featureless.

Gull's father muttered. "Not him- have to keep looking."

Lucas kept taking readings, and a curve began taking shape on his slate. It would predict how long they could maintain their vigil over the radioactive wasteland.

"What was Gull doing out here yesterday?" Tiglath asked, as if prompting pupils during a school lesson. Everyone's ears picked up.

"Actually, he was a good bit west and north of here, most of the day," explained the Chairman. "He was seeding some of the toxic areas with skudzu."

At the words, an electric charge seemed to run down the back of Kev's neck, and he shouted, "That mound of plants- that's skuzzweed! Gull must've had a pod left in the basket, and it's sprouted and buried the flyer!"

"He went down just last night- no way it could've grown that fast," snorted Jacob.

"You've never dropped pod, Jake." said Kev. "The hotter the day, the thinner the ozone, the better the skudzu likes it. That patch down there has been in noonday sun all night, as far as it's concerned. The radiation will kill it eventually, but it'll grow like crazy for a while."

"If Kevin is right, we've got to go down there and check." said Adamson. "Lucas, can you tell us yet how long I can stay down there?"

"The ship began to settle toward the surface like an egg deciding whether or not to land on a griddle. At ten meters, the pilot reported trouble.

"The computer is glitching, and we're picking up a lot of noise on the comm channels. I think the radiation is starting to degrade the microcircuits. We can hold at this level maybe five minutes, but we really ought to get higher. Any lower, and we'll be walking home."

Gull's father looked stricken. "We're so close! Is there anything that we can do? My son might be in there!"

Mawri put a hand on his shoulder and spoke gently. "If Gull is down there, he is most surely dead. Nevertheless, we shall see."

Kev burrowed head and shoulders inside one of the storage compartments, emerged with a coil of rope and a bundle of cargo netting.

"Help me rig this into a sling," he gasped. "We can ride down on the winch!"

A few minutes later, three figures pendulumed gently in the morning sunlight as the winch hummed quietly above them. With the dead zone of Crater stretching for kilometers about them, the mechanical noises of the airship were the only ones to be heard.

"As your healer has said, we have perhaps a quarter hour to spend on the ground before significant damage may occur." Tiglath stood as did Gull's father and Kev did, bracing one foot against theirs at the center of the netting, safety belts and one hand locked to the cable, though Tiglath used no belt. Kev got the impression that he could have hooked one finger against the thrumming cord and considered it a secure hold.

"Brother Adamson, your immune system is augmented with the Tree of Healing, and could withstand a higher exposure. Kevin, however has not yet acieved his majority, and has merely the equipment that he was born with. We must be swift in our examination."

Kev watched the obsidian surface spiraling upward to meet them and tried to sense the impact of charged particles against his merely human skin. To distract himself, he spoke.

"Sir, how about you? How long could a Noble stay on Crater?"

Tiglath chuckled, a warm, rich sound. "I enjoy the same level of protection that old Sadrach, Meschach, and Abednego did in their day."'

"Shadrach, Mes- oh, uh, right." It was unnerving to hear Nobles speak so familiarly about characters out of the human scriptures.

They reached ground level with a thud that rattled Kev's teeth, and left the cable describing a lazy circle on the ground as the ship tried to maintain position in the freshening wind. Carrying the netting with the various tools between them, they cautiously approached the skudzu growth. It was higher than even Tiglath's head, a riot of interwoven vines and broad, green-black leaves. Runners quested octopus-like out from the main mass, suckered tendrils gripping in cracks and forcing new roots downward. Kev could actually see it grow, a perceptible writhing as the interlaced vines swelled against one another.

Adamson pulled a pole out of the bundle and started probing at the clump.

"I don't know. I can't see into it, the pole will hardly go in; it's too dense," he complained. "We'll have to cut into it to see what's in there." He trew down the pole and grabbed a machete.

"Perhaps I should do that," suggested Tiglath. Gull's father ignored him swung the blade at the wall of vines. There was a snap and a sizzle, and he was thrown backward more than a meter.

Kev ran over and helped the dazed man sit up. "He's alright, sir." Tiglath picked up the machete and walked around the clump, studying it closely. He set to work on a section, no different than any other to Kev's eye. The crackling as charged electrolyte shorted out resumed, and chunks of vine flew off,to land in smoking clumps.

"What happened?" Adamson tried to shake feeling back into his hands.

"Electrochemical potential, sir. Doesn't seem to bother the Noble." They watched him disappear into a deepening cleft in the vines. After a few minutes they heard his voice.

"Tie the hoist line to the middle of that pole. Leave a few meters of tail on it!"

Having done so, Kev stepped gingerly into the opening in the skudzu. The acrid smell of sap was thick, but the slashed vines were already closing over their wounds. Tiglath stood in the gap, the machete thrust into the belt of his robe like a corroded pirate's broadsword, the juices still dripping from the tip. His robes, somehow, were still a spotless grey. He took the pole, made of a dense graphite composite, and worked it into the tangle.

"Now, Kevin, take the line and bring it around to me, wrapping it tightly around the base of the vines. Hurry now!"

Adamson signaled the ship to pay out more of the monomolecular rope. As Kev brought it around in a great loop, Tiglath took it and fashioned a noose. Striding into the clear, he signalled the airship with a single, expressive thrust of his arm. The E-2 turned its nose, and the propulsion vent began a rising howl. The hoist line began to sing with tension, and then with a series of ripping pops, the skudzu began to peel away from the ground in a green-black mat.

"There it is!" cried Adamson. The hyperlight rose, embedded in the net of vines and pale roots. Tiglath severed key vines and pulled the craft's carcass from the vegetable embrace. The skudzu mat lost its grip on the crater floor and flopped over, pale roots to the sky. A rounded form of red plastic emerged, a helmet, Kev realized, and almost cried out. It lifted above the roots, and twisted slowly about, as if searching for someone. The Noble reached for it and pulled it off the knot of vines that had filled it, constrained unpleasantly into the form of a human head. Even more unpleasantly, it began to come apart as the vines began to unkink.

Tiglath studdied the evidence. "That safety harness is whole. He must have unbuckled it by himself. The helmet, also, is in one piece, though slightly scuffed." He pulled out the foam liner and studdied the electronics that lined the collar. He detached a section of the circuitry, held it up to the morning sun. What normally looked like transparent enamelling seemed discolored, smoky. "He must have taken a lightning strike or been near one. Induced current has ruined the circuits." He opened the access panel under the wing, checked the ship's cards. "These too. He must have realized that his transponder was EMPed out."

Adamson looked first joyful, then distressed. "He knew he couldn't stay here, but which way did he go?"

"The crucial question. I fear we can learn no more here. The crater floor is fused into glass, and any traces Gull may have left would have been obliterated by the storm. We must leave these things here; they are contaminated, as is this blade. He drew the machete, sent it spinning toward the skudzu, where it neatly severed the hoist cord. The E-2, seeing that its role as a crane was over, pivoted and resumed its position overhead as they reconnected the sling.

A few minutes later they stood shivering in the cargo bay, watching their coveralls flutter like wounded birds to the crater floor. Lucas' instruments had discovered radioactive contamination; perhaps from dust, perhaps from the juices of the skudzu. The Noble's robe had caused not a flicker in the readouts. He ordered the pilot to make a sweep of the waterpool in the center.

Adamson protested. "Sir, how can we find him? Which way could he have gone? We've got to start looking outside the crater!"

Mawri brought them spare clothing. "Even we can not see tracks if none exist. It's possible, even probable that he is ill, perhaps injured beside. If we were to rush off in an ill-considered direction, we might miss God's hand."

"So while we wait for His, we sit on ours, is that it?" Adamson said bitterly. Hearing his own tone, he paled. Tiglath merely continued his scan of the ground.

"In the absence of direct revelation, it is often best merely to do only what is necessary. And pray," he said dryly.

Just then, a musical tone sounded, drawing all eyes to the comp screen in the bay wall, set to repeat the nav sat view of their position. Almost at the limit of the display, a crosshair cursor blinked, with some cryptic numbers beside it. Lucas consulted his data slate.

"That's one of the new Sparrow Network screamers," Lucas said. Looks like the transmit code is out of the batch that Asher was taking to the Chak village Market this trip."

"But the Natives never go into the Badlands," protested Adamson. "Surely this is a malfunction."

"You are obliged to respond," Tiglath pointed out. "At the moment, this craft is the closest to the signal. You can allow the Ranger craft to take over the perimeter sweeps."

The pony had left a pretty clear trail, even past the blackberry thickets that stood sentinel at the forest edge. Wandflower, young sumac and ferns were trampled in an arrow straight line that ran up and over a low hill. Leda jogged along, hearing her friends call from the clearing, their voices muffled by the shrubs. She grinned at their yelps as their homespun leggings lost the battle to the thorns. At the crest of the hill, she stopped and shouted.

"I'm going over the hill!" she caught sight of Mitch, struggling through the undergrowth. He waved.

Turning, she surveyed the wilderness before her. It resembled a stretch of ocean in a hurricane, quick frozen. Great waves of earth swept away before her untill they were screened by the trunks of saplings and larger trees that produced the dense canopy overhead. Decades of cast off leaves and twigs covered the ground in a springy, footstep-swallowing carpet. It would be easy to get lost out here, Leda realised. Every random hummock and hollow would look just like any other. Tales were told of whole towns fallen to ruin out here, pits of forgotten toxics, rotten foundations that would swallow the wanderer in a rush of sand and decayed brick, old tanks of pressurized chemicals with corrosion eating away at weak spots. These were the Baba Yagas and boogeymen of their post-industrial culture.

Leda swallowed hard past a sudden lump in her throat. Surely the little pony would tire soon and stop, perhaps even retrace his steps. She could see his trail in the sparse forest floor growth, broken twigs and disturbed leaves and humus. She slid-walked down the back side of the hill and began walking along the floor of the little valley, where the young horse had taken the path of least resistance after his initial indignation had worn off. The valley wandered sinuously between tree-crowned mounds. Everything was still damp from the previous night's storm. She heard Mitch's call .

"Leda! Don't get too far ahead!" She could barely see him, swinging a stick he had picked up somewhere. He was beating at the brush as he went, marking their trail more deeply.

"Here I am!" she called, waving her arms. The seemingly sparse tree trunks threw up a surprising amount of visual interference. "He can't be too much further!"

After one or two more twists, the valley emptied into a larger ravine. Looking downstream, Leda sighted the pony, belly deep in a patch of grasses where the floor had broadened, and the tree cover was more sparse.

"There you are, you little haybag!" The ravine was still wet with runoff, so she worked her way down the side clinging to trunks and root knees untill she could jump across. She approached cautiously, but the pony just blinked at her and pulled at the thick grass. Leda took another step, almost close enough to grasp the rope halter still looped over his head, and trod on something that moved and groaned.

At Leda's scream, Mitch gave up marking the path, and charged down the little valley. He came flying over the bank of the ravine, reaching the other side with a single leap. He saw Leda kneeling in the grass, with the pony snorting nervously. Three strides brought him to her shoulder, stick cocked to break the back of a copperhead or mocassin. Instead, he saw what appeared to be a boy with a bad sunburn lying with his head in Leda's lap. His clothing was in shreds, and they could see various cuts and scratches that seemed to have been oozing blood for a while.

"That you, Kev?" the boy croaked through puffy, cracked lips "Wha kept ya?"

"Who's Kev?" whispered Mitch. "Whew- boy, does he stink!"

They saw a flash of metal at his wrist. Pulling back the sleeve, they saw the complicated surface of a compcuff.

"He must be a settler. But what's he doing in the Badlands?"

"I'll bet he's the one that I saw yesterday, before you and Sasha came by. He was flying one of those little nothing floater ships! He's a pilot!"

"How'd he get so messed up? He looks like he's been out in the sun for a week!"

They heard voices calling. "We're down here," Mitch bellowed. "Blade, hurry up with Leda's waterbottle!"

Blade's hat popped over the crest of the ravine bank, and shortly there was a small crowd around the stricken young man.

"Don't give him too much," warned Blade, passing over the earthenware flask. Leda uncorked it and dribbled a little over the swollen lips and into his mouth.

"Whoa, now! Not so fast!" he tried to grab for the bottle, but he was weak as a new kitten, and she was able to fend him off. "Take it easy. Hey, what's your name? What happened to you?"

The water seemed to help; his eyes focused, tracked on her face. "I- I'm Gull Ben Adamson, from Jeshua kibbutz. Got caught in a storm, had to walk out of Crater. Could I have some more water, please?"

After he had first heard the sound of running water, he had struggled out of the little dell he was in on legs that seemed to be stuffed with moldy straw, only to find that he was in another blind hollow. That one had led him into a ravine with banks that looked like the walls of the airship hangar. A wave of nausea had doubled him over; he had overbalanced and fallen into some tall grass. It had been so comfortable, and he told himself he'd just rest for a minute.

Gull had blinked open sticky eyes because Kev was poking him in the side, taunting him. "'Sa matter, Gullible, can't get up that itty bitty hill?"

He'd looked up, and known that he was hallucinating because Kev had turned into a small, white horse with a braided mane. It bothered him, that his mind was going, but he was too tired to care a whole lot. Then, somebody stepped on him, screamed, and then turned him over. He couldn't have sworn to the sequence. It seemed to be a child, a young girl with dark, stringy hair, pale skin, and huge, deep brown eyes. She was dressed in some sort of a coarse woven material sewn to resemble an old time suit coat. A white cotton undergarment exposed a fair portion of her skinny chest. Something in her eyes held him for a moment. Other children appeared, and a young man who seemed to be just a little older than Gull, and by his sparse moustache, had crossed the threshold into adulthood. Their voices buzzed for a moment, but without meaning to him.

The girl gave him some water, and it seemed to wash some of the fog out of his brain. Shapes became clearer, and he was able to understand what they were saying. After he had identified himself, he looked at the heads solemly clustered over his and asked, "Okay, shouldn't someone be calling the plays about now?" The reference to the ancient game of football seemed to go over most of their heads, but the dark haired girl seemed to get it. She smiled, and it transformed her; Gull got a sudden flash of what she would look like in a few years.

"I'm Leda, and this is Mitch, Sasha, Blade, Peace and Patience. You're a mess, Gull. I'm not sure what we should do for you."

Gull accepted a little more water. "Well, I'm probably radiation sick- wait!" he said, as everyone except Leda drew back. "It's not catching. I'm pretty sure the rain washed me clean last night. But I spent a lot of time in the old bomb crater. I may go out of my head again. You've got to get word back to the settlement.

"Okay," Mitch took charge. "Sasha, you and the twins head back to the village, let everyone know we're okay. Tell them about Gull here; someone may know a fast way to get in touch with his people. Blade and Leda and I will try to get him out of here, at least back to the creek." The three nodded, and started scrambling up the side of the ravine.

"Let me see about the cuts on your hands, first." Leda slipped off her overshirt and started tearing strips from the hem of her tunic. As she worked, the pendant that the trader had given her swung into view. Gull grabbed at it.

"Where did you get that? It looks like City stuff." He struggled up on his elbows, then began coughing and had to roll away as the little water he had swallowed began to come back up. Leda looked down, startled. She had forgotten about the necklace. She grasped the milky tube, about the size of her little finger, and bent it experimentaly. It was slightly resilient. She bore down harder, felt something inside give and snap, and it turned blue. No other reaction was evident. She turned to see Blade and Mitch looking at her.

"What did you do?" Mitch asked.

"Sent for help, I think. Come on, we'd still better try and get him to the open meadow beside the creek. Hey, Gull, are you okay? Can you walk?" She grasped his shoulder, but got no response. She tugged, and he rolled limply onto his back. Only whites showed under half closed eyelids.

"Guess not." Mitch squatted, and pulled the unconcious boy over his shoulder. "Blade, I'll need your help. That ravine is going to give us trouble."

Chapter 6