Expendable - James Alan Gardner [64]
When I awoke the fourth day…I won’t say I was better or over my breakdown, because that makes me sound stronger than I was. I felt as fragile as an eggshell; but a tiny part of me was ready again for the future.
By the time Oar woke up, I was rewatching the broadcast from Chee and Seele. This time, I paid attention to the maps.
Geography
As I had seen from space, the lower half of this continent was a wide prairie basin, bounded to the south by an arc of mountains and to the north by the three-lake chain stretching well into the heartland. The more I thought about the layout, the more it reminded me of Old Earth’s North America: the Great Lakes in the middle of the continent with forest-covered shield to the north and grassy plains to the south. The parallels weren’t exact, but they were disturbing, as if someone had superimposed Earth’s ecology onto another planet’s plate tectonics.
In terrestrial terms, I was close to the south shore of the lowermost Great Lake—call it Lake Erie—and the city Chee and Seele described lay several hundred klicks to the south, somewhere in the mountains along the “Caribbean” coast.
The trip from here to there looked suspiciously simple. The region immediately below the lake had a good growth of forest (slightly thinned by Oar); but a few days travel would bring me to open grassland, and from there it was an easy walk all the way to my destination.
No doubt there would be difficulties—rivers to cross, wild animals to avoid—and winter could start snowing down in a few weeks. By then, however, I’d be substantially closer to the equator. If Melaquin’s weather patterns were comparable to Earth’s, I might miss the snow entirely.
As the broadcast ended, I finished scribbling in my notebook: Seele’s description of how to find the entrance to the subterranean city. Between now and the next broadcast, I would check the best food synthesizer Jelca left behind and get the rest of my gear together. Then I’d listen to the loop one more time to make sure I had all the details correctly. Within an hour, I’d be ready to head south…except for one loose end.
“You are writing, Festina,” Oar said. “Does that mean you are no longer crazed?”
Seeing the World
“When you are crazed,” Oar continued, “you are a very boring person, Festina. You nearly drove me to lie down with my ancestors forever and ever.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” I told her. “I still feel three quarters crazed, but at least I’ve cried myself out. How are you?”
“I am not such a person as has difficulties,” she answered, “except when you fucking Explorers make me bored or sad.”
“Lucky you,” I murmured.
She gave me a look of wounded dignity.
“All right,” I sighed, “let’s talk about important matters. Have you ever wanted to see the world?”
“I can see the world now, Festina. It is not invisible.”
“See more of the world. How far have you traveled from your home here?”
“As far as far.” She lowered her eyes. “When the other Explorers left with my sister—for some time I was…crazed like you. Later, I tried to follow them; perhaps I was crazed then too. I walked for many days in the direction they had gone, until finally I came to a river that was very wide and deep. It was not such a river as I could cross, but I tried anyway. That is how I know what drowning is like, Festina. It is very unpleasant. I was lucky the river had a strong current—it carried my body along till I washed up on shore. The same shore I left. I thought about trying to cross again, but I lacked the courage.”
She glanced up quickly, as if to check whether I was sneering at her as a coward. “You made a wise decision,” I assured her.
“I did not feel wise. I felt sad and lonely.