The Thing in the Attic Page 4

came out onto the ledge again.

  "He's really sick," he told Mathild in a low voice. "He needs water, andanother dressing for that cut. And we've got to get both for himsomehow. If we ever get to the jungle on the other side of the Range,we'll need a navigator even worse than we need a needlesmith."

  "But how? I could dress the cut if I had the materials, Honath. Butthere's no water up here. It's a desert; we'll never get across it."

  "We've got to try. I can get him water, I think. There was a bigcycladella on the slope we came up, just before we passed that obsidianspur that hurt Alaskon. Gourds that size usually have a fair amount ofwater inside them and I can use a piece of the spur to rip it open--"

  A small hand came out of the darkness and took him tightly by the elbow."Honath, you can't go back down there. Suppose the demon that--that tookCharl is still following us? They hunt at night--and this country is allso strange...."

  "I can find my way. I'll follow the sound of the stream of blue lava orwhatever it is. You pull some fresh leaves for Alaskon and try to makehim comfortable. Better loosen those vines around the dressing a little.I'll be back."

  He touched her hand and pried it loose gently. Then, without stopping tothink about it any further, he slipped off the ledge and edged towardthe sound of the stream, travelling crabwise on all fours.

  But he was swiftly lost. The night was thick and completelyimpenetrable, and he found that the noise of the stream seemed to comefrom all sides, providing him no guide at all. Furthermore, his memoryof the ridge which led up to the cave appeared to be faulty, for hecould feel it turning sharply to the right beneath him, though heremembered distinctly that it had been straight past the firstside-branch, and then had gone to the left. Or had he passed the firstside-branch in the dark without seeing it? He probed the darknesscautiously with one hand.

  At the same instant, a brisk, staccato gust of wind came whirling up outof the night across the ridge. Instinctively, Honath shifted his weightto take up the flexing of the ground beneath him.

  He realized his error instantly and tried to arrest the complex set ofmotions, but a habit-pattern so deeply ingrained could not be frustratedcompletely. Overwhelmed with vertigo, Honath grappled at the empty airwith hands, feet and tail and went toppling.

  An instant later, with a familiar noise and an equally familiar coldshock that seemed to reach throughout his body, he was sitting in themidst of--

  Water. Icy water. Water that rushed by him improbably with a menacing,monkeylike chattering, but water all the same.

  It was all he could do to repress a hoot of hysteria. He hunkered downinto the stream and soaked himself. Things nibbled delicately at hiscalves as he bathed, but he had no reason to fear fish, small species ofwhich often showed up in the tanks of the bromelaids. After lowering hismuzzle to the rushing, invisible surface and drinking his fill, hedunked himself completely and then clambered out onto the banks,carefully neglecting to shake himself.

  Getting back to the ledge was much less difficult. "Mathild?" he calledin a hoarse whisper. "Mathild, we've got water."

  "Come in here quick then. Alaskon's worse. I'm afraid, Honath."

  Dripping, Honath felt his way into the cave. "I don't have anycontainer. I just got myself wet--you'll have to sit him up and let himlick my fur."

  "I'm not sure he can."

  But Alaskon could, feebly, but sufficiently. Even the coldness of thewater--a totally new experience for a man who had never drunk anythingbut the soup-warm contents of the bromelaids--seemed to help him. He layback at last, and said in a weak but otherwise normal voice: "So thestream was water after all."

  "Yes," Honath said. "And there are fish in it, too."

  "Don't talk," Mathild said. "Rest, Alaskon."

  "I'm resting. Honath, if we stick to the course of the stream.... Wherewas I? Oh. We can follow the stream through the Range, now that we knowit's water. How did you find that out?"

  "I lost my balance and fell into it."

  Alaskon chuckled. "Hell's not so bad, is it?" he said. Then he sighed,and rushes creaked under him.

  "Mathild! What's the matter? Is he--did he die?"

  "No ... no. He's breathing. He's still sicker than he realizes, that'sall.... Honath--if they'd known, up above, how much courage you have--"

  "I was scared white," Honath said grimly. "I'm still scared."

  But her hand touched his again in the solid blackness, and after he hadtaken it, he felt irrationally cheerful. With Alaskon breathing soraggedly behind them, there was little chance that either of them wouldbe able to sleep that night; but they sat silently together on the hardstone in a kind of temporary peace. When the mouth of the cave began tooutline itself with the first glow of the red sun, they looked at eachother in a conspiracy of light all their own.

  _Let us unlearn everything we knew only by rote, go back to thebeginning, learn all over again, and continue to learn...._

  With the first light of the white sun, a half-grown megatherium cub roseslowly from its crouch at the mouth of the cave and stretchedluxuriously, showing a full set of saber-like teeth. It looked at themsteadily for a moment, its ears alert, then turned and loped away downthe slope.

  How long it had been crouched there listening to them, it was impossibleto know. They had been lucky that they had stumbled into the lair of ayoungster. A full-grown animal would have killed them all, within a fewseconds after its cat's-eyes had collected enough dawn to identify thempositively. The cub, since it had no family of its own, evidently hadonly been puzzled to find its den occupied and didn't want to quarrelabout it.

  The departure of the big cat left Honath frozen, not so much frightenedas simply stunned by so unexpected an end to the vigil. At the firstmoan from Alaskon, however, Mathild was up and walking softly to thenavigator, speaking in a low voice, sentences which made no particularsense and perhaps were not intended to. Honath stirred and followed her.

  Halfway back into the cave, his foot struck something and he lookeddown. It was the thigh-bone of some medium-large animal, imperfectlycleaned and not very recent. It looked like a keepsake the megatheriumhad hoped to save from the usurpers of its lair. Along a curved innersurface there was a patch of thick grey mold. Honath squatted and peeledit off carefully.

  "Mathild, we can put this over the wound," he said. "Some molds helpprevent wounds from festering.... How is he?"

  "Better, I think," Mathild murmured. "But he's still feverish. I don'tthink we'll be able to move on today."

  Honath was unsure whether to be pleased or disturbed. Certainly he wasfar from anxious to leave the cave, where they seemed at least to bereasonably comfortable. Possibly they would also be reasonably safe, forthe low-roofed hole almost surely still smelt of megatherium, andintruders would recognize the smell--as the men from the attic worldcould not--and keep their distance. They would have no way of knowingthat the cat had only been a cub and that it had vacated the premises,though of course the odor would fade before long.

  Yet it was important to move on, to cross the Great Range if possible,and in the end to wind their way back to the world where they belonged.And to win vindication, no matter how long it took. Even should it proverelatively easy to survive in Hell--and there were few signs of that,thus far--the only proper course was to fight until the attic world wastotally regained. After all, it would have been the easy and thecomfortable thing, back there at the very beginning, to have kept one'sincipient heresies to oneself and remained on comfortable terms withone's neighbors. But Honath had spoken up, and so had the rest of them,in their fashions.

  It was the ancient internal battle between what Honath wanted to do, andwhat he knew he ought to do. He had never heard of Kant and theCategorical Imperative, but he knew well enough which side of his naturewould win in the long run. But it had been a cruel joke of hereditywhich had fastened a sense of duty onto a lazy nature. It made evensmall decisions egregiously painful.

  But for the moment at least, the decision was out of his hands. Alaskonwas t
oo sick to be moved. In addition, the strong beams of sunlightwhich had been glaring in across the floor of the cave were dimming bythe instant, and there was a distant, premonitory growl of thunder.

  "Then we'll stay here," he said. "It's going to rain again, and hardthis time. Once it's falling in earnest, I can go out and pick us somefruit--it'll screen me even if anything is prowling around in it. And Iwon't have to go as far as the stream for water, as long as the rainkeeps up."

  The rain, as it turned out, kept up all day, in a growing downpour whichcompletely curtained the mouth of the cave by early afternoon. Thechattering of the nearby stream grew quickly to a roar.

  By evening,