All of which made Ozzie worry about what kind of animals they might encounter. Rats the size of dogs? Dogs the size of horses? What might the elephants be like, or the dinosaurs?
They’d been here for eight days now, though, and hadn’t seen so much as a gnat so far. The plants didn’t quite match up to the scenery; they were all bland. Grass that was like a sheet of moss. Bushes that were globes with slender little leaves that were woven together so tightly that from a distance they looked like a single membrane. Trees that had a simple conical symmetry with dark green finger-sized leaves. Botany at least wasn’t adventurous here. In fact, he hadn’t seen a single flower since they arrived. Maybe evolution had bypassed the whole concept of pollination. Or maybe there were no insects to pollinate.
That made Tochee the most colorful thing on the planet. The big alien had recovered quickly from its frostbite as they wandered along the paths after escaping the Ice Citadel planet. Its rubbery locomotion ridges had almost completely healed up now after weeks of sliding along through temperate grassland and loamy forest floors. Of the three planets they’d progressed through, one of the paths had been in a tropical zone. Tochee had really liked that. The little shriveled fronds sprouting from wrinkles in its brown hide had sprouted into colorful life. They now resembled feathery ferns whose vivid pigmentation acted like a silky flowing cloak; ripples of scarlet, tangerine, turquoise, and emerald swayed along its body with every motion and gust of wind.
“It looks like a furry rainbow,” Orion had said when the fronds began to grow again.
The boy was a great deal happier now as well. A lot of his former chirpy confidence had returned, strengthening with every additional step they put between themselves and the Ice Citadel.
Ozzie was half expecting him to start asking: “Are we there yet?” Which given their circumstances was just about impossible to answer. The Silfen paths had been reasonably obvious on the worlds they’d visited so far, and the little friendship pendant had helped a couple of times when Ozzie was uncertain. But to date they’d found themselves in areas where the forests were close together, with just a couple of valleys or hills separating their boundaries.
This big world was different. They’d emerged from a tree line to see a vast undulating plain stretching away ahead of them. The forest behind filled a V-shaped valley; there was only the one path through it, leading straight out alongside the swift stream that gushed down the valley floor. So they simply carried on walking, keeping close to the stream. It was one of many tributaries feeding the river that cut across the plain.
In five days’ continuous hiking they’d found plenty of similar woods hugging steep valleys, not one of which had a Silfen path leading out. The trees did have edible fruit, globes the size of melons with a fibrous pap that tasted similar to bland apples. That seemed to be a constant on the worlds linked by Silfen paths: nothing edible had a strong taste.
Orion would knock the fruit down with a big stick, sometimes with Tochee holding him aloft in its tentacles so he could reach the ones dangling on higher branches. Every time Ozzie watched the laughing boy flailing away at the fruit, he would think of curries and chili burgers.
The river was leading them toward a range of snowcapped mountains that marked the end of the plain. As they neared the foothills, the pervasive mat of grass thinned out, leaving stretches of thin sandy soil exposed to the air. Soon only the broad ravine through which the river flowed held any greenery. They picked their way along the boulder-strewn sides, testing carefully for boggy ground. Ozzie and Orion were both carrying heavy rucksacks, while Tochee had a pair of big old panniers slung over its back. As the ravine started to slope down, the river flow quickened, foaming around stones sticking up from its bed.
“Still wish we’d made a boat?” Orion asked cheerfully as they passed one set of boulders that were sending out great spumes.
It was something Ozzie had suggested earlier, at around the third forest they’d examined for paths. While it made sense, his diamond-tipped blade wasn’t the ideal tool for cutting and trimming that many trees. In any case, they hadn’t had any rope to lash even a crude raft together. At the time he’d just wanted to get off the plain. Days spent under the silent expanse of sky were bad enough. But at night, he hurried into the tent, unnerved by the emptiness around them. Some deep-buried intuition was wary of the planet.
“I’ve been down worse rapids than these,” Ozzie told him defensively.
After half a day trailing along the side of the ravine, it turned sharply and opened out into a massive canyon. The river surged forward and fell away down a series of steep steps, each taller than the last, ending with a waterfall that thundered over a cliff three hundred yards high. After so many days immersed in the deep silence that blanketed the empty plain, the roar from the cascading water was shocking.
“So now what?” Orion asked. He was facing the giant canyon that carried the water away beyond the falls. It seemed to slice clean through the mountain range.
“There’s no way off this world behind us,” Ozzie said, thinking out loud. “We either keep following the river, or look for some other way around the mountains.” He brought out a very tatty sheet of parchment. His last charcoal stump was down to a small nub, so finding the sharpest edge, he wrote: I think we should go on. This seems to be the path.
I AGREE, Tochee’s forward eye segment flashed.
All throughout the long afternoon they picked their way down the side of the falls. With the rocks slick from all the spray, they moved slowly and carefully. If there was to be any kind of accident here, the chances of help were effectively zero. Traveling alone had instilled a sense of caution into them; even Orion didn’t make any complaint about how long the descent was taking. Tochee took the lead; with its locomotion ridges it was easily the most agile of the three of them on the precarious gradient.
The sun had long vanished behind the canyon walls when they reached the floor. According to Ozzie’s virtual vision timer they still had another two hours of full daylight left. He took his sunglasses off to squint at the bright naked rocks all around. Somewhat inevitably, the sun here was bright enough to make them wear the protective glasses all day long. The mist thrown out by the waterfall had fooled him for a moment, producing a pocket of cool humid air around the base of the falls. But even out of the direct sunlight, he was better off with the glasses on.
They walked past the deep rock pool formed by the churning impact of the waterfall, and carried on to where the river resumed its calm flow, gurgling across the sandy pebbles that made up its broad bed. He stood on the bank to take in the view. The near-vertical walls of iron-red rock on both sides were about two-thirds of a mile high, and as the canyon curved gently around to the east in front of him, it looked as though they were growing progressively taller. At the widest, the canyon floor stretched about five miles wide. Nothing grew within the canyon, no grass or scrub. The floor was shingle and sand, all the same sandstone red as the walls. He could see great conic mounds of jagged rock piled up all along the base of each cliff, where giant sections had broken off far above to crash down into pulverized scree.
One of Tochee’s manipulator flesh arms poked up, a very human gesture it’d developed to attract their attention. When Ozzie turned to check the alien, mauve patterns were flickering in its forward eye segment. SOMETHING AT THE FIRST CURVE. POSSIBLY A TREE.
Ozzie ordered his retinal implants to zoom in. The air was shimmering from the heat of the rocks and the air, but some dark smudge was visible beside the river just as it turned out of sight. Could be, he wrote.
They started off along the canyon, and almost immediately came across the ancient fire. It was a simple circle of stones, their inner sides blackened. The ash had blown away long ago, leaving just darkened sand inside.
“Look!” Orion cried and ran off. He stopped a few yards past the fire circle and picked something out of the sand. His smile was victorious as he held up his trophy.
“Son of a bitch,” Ozzie grunted. The boy had found a soda can. Its coloring had bleached badly over the years, but the familiar logo was easily visible.
“Are we on Earth?” the boy asked excitedly.
“Sorry, man, no way.”
“This must be somewhere in the Commonwealth, though. We even had soda on Silvergalde.”
Ozzie scratched at his large fuzzy beard. “I think it’s just litter. You know what people are like, the biggest hooligans in the universe. But hey! It proves we’re on the right path.” He didn’t want to crush the boy’s fragile hope.
Orion gave the can a vexed look, and chucked it back onto the sand.
An hour later they stopped and set up camp for the night. Ozzie and Orion pitched their tent on a small rise several hundreds yards from the river, then set about washing socks and shirts before the last of the light vanished. Ozzie would have loved to dive right in and give himself a decent clean, but even though they still hadn’t seen a single living creature on this world, he just couldn’t quite bring himself to trust the water. Too many late student nights with a pizza, a couple of six-packs, some grass, and a bad sci-fi DVD. God only knew what lurked along the bottom of the river, maybe nothing, but he certainly wasn’t going to wind up with alien eggs hatching out of his ass, thank you. All of a sudden, the long evenings spent lazing around in the Ice Citadel’s hot pools didn’t seem so bad after all.
They were making their way back up to the tent when Orion stopped and said, “There’s a light.”
Ozzie looked down the canyon where the boy was pointing. A tiny golden spark was shining a long way downstream. He wasn’t even sure it was on their side of the river. His retinal insert zoom function couldn’t get a clear image; no matter how high the magnification, it remained a flickering blur. When he switched to infrared, it barely registered. Not a fire, then.
“Probably someone else walking the path,” he said with a reassurance he didn’t feel.
Tochee had seen the light as well, though the alien’s eye was unable to focus on it either. They kept watching it as they ate their evening meal of tasteless fruit and cold water, but it wasn’t moving. Ozzie and Tochee took turns through the night to make sure it didn’t come any closer. It was Ozzie who got the midnight to morning shift. He sat on a flattish rock beside the tent, dressed in his cords and checked shirt, with his sleeping bag wrapped around his shoulders like a blanket. The river murmured away quietly, and occasionally he heard a low rattling wheeze from Tochee that he classed as alien snoring; other than that there was only the deep silence he would always associate with this world.
A brilliant multitude of stars shone down through the cloudless, moonless sky. He’d never seen so many before, not even when he went worldwalking on new Commonwealth worlds before they were contaminated by civilization’s light pollution. One hazy nebula, four or five times larger than Earth’s moon, kept drawing his attention. It bent sharply at one end, with a reddish spike protruding away from the main haze. He couldn’t remember any astronomical phenomenon remotely like that being close to the Commonwealth. The Devil’s Tail, he named it. Shame nobody would ever know.
In the wilderness hours just before dawn he heard voices. He sat up immediately, unsure if he’d been drifting off to sleep. They could have been the start of some dream. But they weren’t human voices, or at least not ones speaking any language he recognized.
The spark of light hadn’t moved. He switched his inserts to infrared and slowly scanned around, turning a complete circle.
The voices came again. Definitely not a dream. They swept past him, causing him to turn so fast he almost lost his balance. Several of them babbling together. A nonhuman language. They sounded urgent. Frightened.
But it was only the sound. Nothing moved in the canyon. Nothing physical.
Almost he asked: “Who’s there?” Except that really was the stuff of late-night horror DVDs. Dumb.
Whispers slithered past him, somebody—something—whimpering into the distance. Ozzie dropped the sleeping bag and held his arms out, concentrating on his hands, trying to feel air being stirred, the tiniest hint of movement. He closed his eyes, knowing that a visual sense was no longer any use to him. Listening, stroking the air. The sound came again, conjuring up the old phrase “voices on the wind.” He heard what was said, and repeated it back to them softly. It made no difference. They carried on past him, paying no attention.
That was how Orion found him as the first wave of a pale dawn lifted over the canyon wall: standing motionless with arms outstretched like some religious statue, mumbling words in an alien tongue. The boy clambered out of the tent, rubbing sleep from his eyes as he yawned. “What are you doing?”
Ozzie sighed and let his arms down with a suspiciously yogalike sweeping motion. He gave Orion an inscrutable grin. “Talking to the ghosts.”
Orion’s head whipped around, trying to find… anything. “Are you all right? Did you hit your head or something?”
“Not since that bar on Lothian, and that was years ago. This world is haunted.”
“Ow come on, Ozzie, that’s not funny. Not here. This whole planet is creepy.”
“I know, man. I’m sorry. But I did hear something, like a bunch of people or aliens.”
“The Silfen?”