Honor - Kevin Killiany [14]
Looking past their performance, Corsi saw individual chiptaurs entering other lean-tos in the row, then emerging a few moments later. She laughed, the sudden sound startling her nurses.
“Got it,” she said. “Public toilets fertilize mushroom garden. Thanks for the thought. Not now, maybe later.”
At length the nurses decided she’d understood their message and declined the offer. Corsi waited with the head nurse while Lefty and Spot availed themselves of lean-tos, then followed them back toward the cliff face that bordered the other side of the clearing.
Corsi realized they were back in the first amphitheater. Orienting herself to the cliff, she headed back toward the tunnel from which they’d emerged hours before.
Her nurses headed her off and led her again toward the cliff. As they got closer she realized a stream of water ran along a stone trough at the base of the wall.
Several chiptaurs were kneeling on their front pair of legs as their back pair remained standing, dipping all four arms into the flow of water.
“Hand washing?” Corsi asked, pantomiming scrubbing.
Her nurses seemed to approve, mimicking her gestures.
“Hygiene is good,” Corsi agreed and knelt beside them to wash her own hands in the water.
It was hot.
She snatched back her hands, expecting them to be partially cooked by the brief contact with the boiling water.
Leaning back on her heels, Corsi looked up at the cliff face. Now that she was looking directly at it, she realized it was strangely uniform, rising at a constant slope.
“This is a volcanic cinder cone, isn’t it?”
The image was back. She was on the roof of a rain forest canopy, beneath a white sun and hazy sky. In the near distance was a ring of volcanoes, cinder cones as symmetrical as a child’s sand castles barely protruding above the giant trees. Smoke or steam rising…
The head nurse chittered at her, getting her up and moving toward a tunnel leading into the face of the cinder cone.
“If the only reason you guys patched me up was you needed a virgin to sacrifice to the volcano, I’m afraid we’re both going to be disappointed.”
Great. Trapped and alone on a strange planet and the first time I think of Fabe is when I make one of his lame jokes. Sentimental fool, that’s what I am.
As soon as they crossed the threshold, Corsi saw this tunnel was different from the others she’d seen. It was paneled, for one thing. Or wainscoted. Great broad planks laid horizontally covered the rough pumice walls to just above chiptaur height. Which was to say about even with Corsi’s elbows. For another, the walls slanted in, disappearing in the darkness above the glow baskets without ever coming together. This was a natural fissure, perhaps an ancient steam vent from the volcano’s early days, not a passageway the chiptaurs had carved by hand.
Corsi could sense a difference in her escorts as well. They seemed subdued, but excited as well. Their chirps and chitters took on a hushed quality, but their eyes were bright and active. Anticipation? Reverence? Something like that. Corsi couldn’t put her finger on it.
The temperature within the tunnel rose, to at least thirty-five degrees she estimated, feeling the sweat trickle down her back. A sharp, sulfurous tang watered her eyes and scratched at the back of her throat. From the deep breaths the chiptaurs were taking she guessed this was a good thing.
The tunnel abruptly opened into an irregular chamber, roughly thirty meters across, well lit by hundreds of glowing baskets. Corsi fought gagging against the stench of chemicals as she looked around. This was obviously something special to the chiptaurs and her collapsing in a spasming heap would probably spoil the moment.
Two streams, each staining the gray rocks around it with orange and red chemicals, poured from the walls, their flows caught in a series of troughs. The troughs in turn carried the water to a series of pools. Something about the interconnected waterways snagged a corner of Corsi’s mind, but it was gone before she could