Dark Space - Marianne de Pierres [116]
‘I need the rifle to hunt with; the korm must have food.’
Cass didn’t argue, just nodded in Marrat’s direction. He was on the opposite edge, close to where Innis lay with his hand on Liesel’s thigh. Mira walked around to him, aware that people’s gazes were on her. Most had their facefilms open and she could see their dully curious expressions. Would they care that the korm was dying?
‘There might be checclia out after the storm. I need the rifle,’ Mira said.
‘’Esques can’t eat checclia,’ Marrat objected. ‘Stinkin’, spittin’ poisonous things.’
Mira lowered her voice. ‘But korms can.’
He shook his head, scowling at her. ‘Unlikely to hit a checclia with a rifle—waste of ammunition.’
‘Please,’ Mira begged.
‘Innis—’ Marrat called.
She grabbed his arm urgently. ‘The korm will die if it does not eat. It has had nothing while we’ve all had something.’
Marrat became still, surprised at the contact.
‘Have my pane ration,’ Mira whispered. ‘But let me use the rifle. We cannot travel today. Not until the dust has settled.’
Innis had sat up and was looking over at Marrat. ‘Yeah?’
Please, no. Mira implored him with the pressure of her hand.
Marrat hesitated and waved Innis off. ‘Nothin’.’
Innis gave them a wary look and lay down again next to Liesl.
Mira’s relief was like a shot of kiante. ‘Grazi.’
Marrat stood and walked Mira around the corner of the barge, out of sight. He handed her the rifle. ‘You bring it back to me quietly. Don’t want everyone knowin’. They won’t understand about our deal.’
* * * *
Over the next ridge Mira lost sight of the barge, though voices drifted out to her. She confirmed her pathfinder obsessively as she searched among the scant, stubborn thorn bushes.
On the Studium interactives she had seen the different shades of flora of other worlds, which the programs had told her were due to different pigments in the photosynthesis process. She tried to imagine living on a green world as she stared into Araldis’s iron-stained reds and browns.
After climbing only a few ridges Mira’s energy was spent. She sank wearily onto the sand, wondering how she would find the energy to return to the barge. They would not look for her, Cass had said. Her eyes hurt so much that she closed them for a while. The thoughts that came to her were filled with hopelessness. They had no more food. Pablo was days away and what would they find there? More of them would die before then, she knew. Had she been right to trust Marchella? If Trin’s tia was with them now so much might be explained. And she would know how to bolster Cass. She would know how to bolster them all.
A tiny noise bought Mira out of her reverie. A lig had landed on the thorn bush closest to her. It rubbed the base of a thorn with its spiny abdomen, seeking moisture.
Her spirits lifted a little. Ligs might mean checclia. If she waited quietly . . . aah ... a slight depression in the sand began to sink further a short distance from her outstretched legs. Slowly, with delicate, tasting care, a red-skinned checclia the size of her forearm burrowed up into the air.
Mira barely breathed as the lone creature eased its long body all the way out. It rested for a second, then collapsed its body into a tight coil. It sprang right up into a thorn bush, catching the lig in its feet. With precise, quick movements it curled, pressed the lig under its stomach flap and swallowed it whole. Then it dropped and rolled back into the well of sand.
Mira crawled forward on her stomach, propping the rifle against her shoulder. She sighted on the sand well the way she had been shown and waited—reflecting on how inhospitable Araldis was compared with other worlds. The fragile ecosytem of the plains would never sustain even the hardiest humanesques. The Latinos had produced all their protein from cuisine-culturers that had come on the original familia vieships. That was the one thing that the Cipriano habitat-developers had not cut corners on.
Mira’s mouth watered involuntarily. Her stomach contracted