[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
with the flat of his palm, then braced against the rocks and the hood, worked
himself inside the car.Leo had crawled or had been tossed into the luggage
space behind the seats. It had been, in the plum-meting, disintegrating car,
the safest place to be. Hulann lifted his own suitcase off the boy's legs,
rolled him over onto his back. Leo, he said softly. Then louder. Then he
shouted it, slapping the small face.The boy's face was very white. His lips
were slightly blue. Hulann used the sensitive patches of his fingertips to
test for skin temperature and found it dismayingly low for a human. He
remembered then how little tolerance these people had to changes of
temperature. Two hours exposed like this could do great damage to one of their
frail systems.He rummaged through his suitcase, brought out the powerful
personal heat unit and thumbed the controls on the smooth, gray object that
looked like nothing so much as a water-washed stone. Immediately, there was a
burst of warmth that even he appreciated. He placed the de-vice next to the
boy and waited.In a few minutes, the snow that had blown in melted and ran
away, down the slanting floor to collect in the corners. The blueness left the
boy's face; Hulann deemed it proper to inject a stimulant now. From the sparse
me-dicinals in the case, he filled a hypo with serum and slid the needle into
the visible vein in the boy's wrist, being careful to do as little damage as
possible with the naoli-broad point.Eventually, Leo stirred, kicking as if in
a nightmare, Hulann quieted him by stroking his forehead. Ten min-utes after
these first signs, he opened his eyes. They were bloodshot. Hello, he said to
Hulann. Cold. It's getting warmer. The boy moved closer to the heat
unit. Are you all right? Cold. Aside from that. Broken bones? Cuts? I don't
think so. Hulann leaned against the back of the passenger's seat as he sat on
what should have been the wall of the car. He breathed a sigh, realized his
primary nostrils were still closed, and opened them. The warm air was good
inside his chest.In time, Leo sat up, held his head in his hands, began to
massage his temples. We have to get out of here, Hulann said. They'll be
after us soon. We can't waste any time. Also, the heat source is going to give
out if we have to keep it on full power. We'll have to find someplace to
shelter and regain our strength and perspective. Where? Up the mountain.
There's no sense in going down. We don't know if there's anything down there.
But there's a road at the top. If we get back on that, follow the guardrails,
we should come to a building sooner or later. Leo shook his head with doubt.
How far up? Not far, Hulann lied. I'm still cold. And tired. And hungry
too. 'We'll use the heat unit, Hulann said. We'll have just a little to eat
before we go out. You'll just have to fight the weariness. We must make time.
The Hunter will surely be sent out soon. Hunter? One of my kind. Yet not of
my kind. He hunts. Leo saw the terror in Hulann's eyes and stopped argu-ing.
Maybe there were two kinds of naoli. The kind men had fought, Hulann's kind.
Hulann was friendly. The other kind hunted. Maybe that explained the war. Yet
Hulann had given him the impression that there was one Hunter no more than a
few. So that did not explain the war. That was still a mystery.Hulann withdrew
some doughy material which he compared with wheat bread though Leo thought the
taste altogether different, and inferior. He did not say so. The naoli seemed
proud of the quality of the food he had been able to bring and considered
these things minor naoli delicacies. To argue otherwise would only be to
in-sult him.They also had the eggs of certain fish suspended in a sour
honey-gel. This, Leo thought, was indeed some-thing special. He would have
eaten much more if Hulann had not pointed out the danger of requiring too much
heat for digestion and thereby forfeiting that needed to keep from freezing to
death. Also, it might be wise to begin rationing.When they finished and were
as warm as they could get, Hulann closed the case, shoved it through the
win-dow. It slid down the hood, caught in among the rocks of the column on
that side. He went out next, back into the maelstorm, and pulled Leo through
the broken wind-screen. They scrambled down until they were on the ground.
Hulann fetched the case. He had Leo hold the heat unit, though the boy
protested that Hulann was the naked one. He promised he would take turns with
the unit now and then, and stay within a few feet of the boy in order to
benefit by what it broadcast.They turned and faced up the slope. Though
daylight was now upon the land, visibility had not increased much. He could
see an extra thirty feet, no more. The sky was low and threatened to stay that
way for many hours to come. Hulann was thankful. At least, in the gloom and
the walls of dancing flakes, Leo would not be able to see how far the top of
the mountain really was . . . I'll break a way, he said to Leo. Stay close,
in my steps. Crawl when I crawl, walk when I walk. Okay? I can take orders,
the boy said haughtily.Hulann laughed, slapped him on the shoulder, then
turned and took the first step of the trek back to the highway . . .. . . and
simultaneously heard the first word of the Phasersystem alert . . .Banalog
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]