And in absolute agony with every step.
They walked in a straight line with light pucks strapped to their fronts and backs and a rope slung around their waists via a carabiner rig to ensure that they couldn’t lose each other. The blizzard was calm compared to the open ice sea, with heavygusts but no sustained wind. As such, the vital pods that floated between them swayed and course-corrected repeatedly, tugging on the ropes slung through their hitching rings.
Roz led the way with her uncanny sense of direction and internal maps, bundled up with an environ-visor and heat filter that blocked her face from Fásach’s view, but no amount of bundling up could deter his obsessive stalking. She was a beacon in the eerie green night, her hips swaying as she slung her heavy boots one foot in front of the other.
In the early morning when his cock wouldn’t soften despite the punishing weather, there was no longer any doubt that Roz had sent him into a rut. He had a fever that made it painful to wear gloves, a hood, or muffler, and the icy air filling his lungs no longer stung but felt refreshing.
His forehead was tender right where his antlers would grow, and he felt two bumps above his eyes as painful and swollen as if he’d been hit with the butt of a gun.Again.He raised his claw to the velvet of his forehead and pinched the fine fur. It shed away easily as he rubbed the pedicles hardening beneath his skin.
He’d never seen his antlers before. Would they be brown and matte? Or maybe as shiny and rich as petrified honey…
Would he lose his mind to the rut like the ancient stories? Would he possess Roz the way his father had his mother? Would she look back on it years from now with the same fondness his mother had?
If he felt harmony with her, did that make her histhuais?He hadn't ached for his mamau's guiding presence in a long time, but he wished she were there to tell him if this was it. If he'd found his north.
The winds bowled them over once more and Fásach watched Safia and Misila’s vital pods correct themselves gentlybefore giving a tug to Roz’s rope, letting her know they were all clear to keep moving.
The blizzard, the rut… Thank the symphony that his daughters were in stasis.
Roz waved one fist in the air, coming to a stop near an outcropping overhanging with ice, the signal to take a break. Fásach took Safia’s pod in hand and guided it towards her while she pulled on the rope connected to Misila.
“I’m getting hungry. But also, I found something,” she panted through his linguitor. Her face was still hidden behind her visor, so all Fásach could see was himself. His pedicles still weren’t visible, but his hair was longer. He shook it out and dislodged the gathering frost around his eyelashes and wide, flat nostrils.
“What did you find?”
Roz pushed the vital pod under the outcropping like pushing a floatie under water. She rode it in to ensure it didn’t scrape its hood against the jagged curtain of stalactites, then slid off once its sensors adjusted to the new ceiling. Fásach followed suit, though the small space was a tight fit for him now, and he crouched near the entrance to keep the comforting cold against his hackles.
Roz removed her environ-visor and hooked it to her belt. “Look,” she said out loud, pointing at a dark mass that took up a third of the small space.
Fásach’s nose twitched instinctively. It was a body, but it had long lost the smell of death, if it had ever had one to begin with. The shilpakaar’s bright orange strap-ins were pristine, the weave frozen in time with the clear logo of the Samridve trans-atmo fleet written on the shoulders and chest. The style looked old though, several decades out of style even by Huajile standards.
But his coloring was long lost. Instead, his tendrils and exposed skin had turned black like rot, even if he was otherwise frozen in time with the fine lines of late middle age around his eyes, as if he’d just sat down for a nap. Shells, bits of coral, dried fish, and unopened rations had been placed carefully around his hands and face in tribute, but while some were bright with new packaging, others were old and faded. Shell and long-wilted flower necklaces draped his chest and lap.
“It’s a pilot,” Fásach said, sitting on the cold black stones. He doffed his pack and rolled out one of the bedrolls for Roz to sit on, joining the dead man as if he would be eating with them. “He’s been dead a long time.”
Roz opened a nutrient bar and swallowed down a thoughtful mouthful. Fásach watched her throat bob, then reached for their water, looking away. He wasn’t able to smell the dead pilot, but Roz’s scent was filling their little refuge quickly.
“I think we’re on a trail,” she said, squinting at the man. Fásach’s ears swiveled towards the entrance, and he glanced out at the blanket of white falling thick outside.
“How can you tell?”
She tilted her head in thought, then winced. “I don’t have memories of anything like this, but I have impressions. There’s a place on Earth that has frozen graves and the ones that are close to trails have offerings.” She pressed her fingertip to a conch shell carved with geometric spirals.
“Impressions,” Fásach urged. “Like a gut feeling? If we’re on a trail, that’s good news. It means we’re close to Pahadthi 03.”
They needed to get close enough to use the relay station as a trail marker, but not close enough to get spotted. The whiteout would help with that… Maybe enough that Fásach could sneak into the station’s storage and scavenge some supplies.
Roz had already blown through one of the four slabs of her Slab4 thanks to the harsh cold, and Fásach was burning from the inside out. He was lucky the fever that came with rapid transitions was happening to him in a blizzard, otherwise he’d be screwed.
And a rut on top of it. The two simultaneously would catapult him ahead of nearly any predator or enemy, but not until his body had settled in. What he felt now was scattered, distracted, ineffectual. He needed control of himself if they were going to make it.
He’d assess when they got closer.
“More like data fragments, as if I’d dipped a photo in water and the ink blurred,” Roz explained carefully. “I think they’re memories of stuff I saw but never experienced… Books, vids, media feeds.” She smiled, nodding to the blizzard. “I get an impression about the endless twilight too. I really wanted to see the green lights in the sky and was saving money for it.”
Green lights… Fásach thought of Byd Farrwell and the clear nights he’d lay sprawled with his tadau on the clover knolls while his mamau helped their comradai put the pack’s younger pups to sleep. They’d watch the satellites glide by, just beyond the blue and green wisps of particles dancing along the planet’s magnetic field.
It was the only part of Byd Farrwell that still resembled life before the rot.