Dirge - Alan Dean Foster [109]
“I’m not disoriented!” Seeing her flinch behind the faceplate he hastened to apologize. “Really, I know exactly where I am. Sometimes my words still get all mixed up, but not my actions. Everything is just as I remembered it.” Turning, he indicated the location and position of the repair craft, the jagged hilltop looming in the distance, the shallow circular crater. “This is all correct. Everything is where it should be. Except for that damn rock.”
“Which damn rock?” she inquired quietly. “I’ll help you look for it.” Turning her head, she glanced back in the direction of the assembled group. “We’ll all help.”
Mallory hesitated. It was his rock, his potential vindication, and he wanted to find the damn thing. But it wasn’t where it was supposed to be. Maybe he was forgetting something. Or maybe he was imagining it after the fact. Maybe…maybe the Pitar who had visited him in the hospital room had been right all along and his brain was inventing elaborate cover-ups for his debased memory. Panic threatened to rise in his throat like vomit.
“Okay, sure. Why not? Everyone can have a look. The important thing is not who finds the rock but finding it, right?” Smiling tenderly behind her faceplate, Tse nodded encouragement. The others gathered around.
“We’re looking for a flat stone about this big.” Mallory used his hands to trace size and shape in the vacuum. “About eight centimeters thick. No other distinguishing features.”
“What color is it?” asked one of the techs from the ship.
Mallory had to laugh. “Look around. You’ve got a choice of two: dark gray and darker gray. It’s the shape that’s significant.”
The party split, half searching to the left, the other half marching methodically in the opposite direction. When they met unsuccessfully on the other side of the crater they passed each other and kept going. By the time they met again, back at the original starting point, discouragement and the first flickerings of serious mistrust were beginning to make their psychological presence felt among several of the searchers.
“Are there any other identifying landmarks?” Nadurovina probed as gently as she could. It would not do to challenge the patient too forcefully or say anything accusatory. Upsetting him could only have deleterious mental consequences.
She need not have worried. Mallory was already actively upsetting himself. The strain showed clearly on his face.
If he had imagined burying the mollysphere, then maybe he had imagined having it. If he had imagined having it, who knows what else his mind had invented? The presence of the Pitar? Not the devastation of Treetrunk—that was real enough. All too much proof of the atrocity was hanging in the sky on the other side of the small moon. Under incredible psychological pressure and mental stress, had he written on the blank sheet of his memory an elaborate scenario that had never taken place, that was the product of an overheated imagination instead of cold, composed reportage?
He could see the faces of his companions through the transparencies of their faceplates, could see the skepticism stirring in their expressions. Outwardly they remained committed and supportive, but within themselves they were beginning to question, to wonder, and he lay square at the nexus of their mounting uncertainties.
Where was that damn rock? A man could contrive any number of chimeras, but a rock was a real thing: solid and unforgiving, a piece of stellar matter made hard and cold. Ignoring the accusing stares, he focused on the surface on both sides of the crater: scanning, searching, scrutinizing. There were plenty of rocks, hundreds of rocks. Some were the right size, but none were quite the proper shape, and not one was where it had been when he’d first decided on the hiding spot.
“We have to go back.” The voice of the tech reverberated like a bell in Mallory’s helmet: tolling failure, ringing fiasco. He was studying a gauge. “Overall, group air is down to fifteen percent. Return to ship is standard security