If there was one thing certain in both worlds, it was uncertainty.
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By the time Anana awoke, she found that her companion had eaten, exercised vigorously to remove the stiffness from his muscles, and had dabbed water on his face and hands. He had bathed in the spring the evening before and so was presentable enough. He did not worry about shaving, since he had applied a chemical which retarded beard growth for months Just before he left the Hrowakas’ village. It was a gift from WolfF. It could be neutralized at any time by another chemical if he wished to have a beard, but this chemical was not available; it was in a cabin in the Hrowakas’ village.
Anana had the ability to wake up looking as if she were getting ready to go to a party. She did complain, however, about a bad taste in her mouth. She also voiced dislike for the lack of privacy in excretion.
Kickaha shrugged and said that a ten thousand year old woman ought to be above such human inhibitions. She did not respond angrily, but merely said, “Do we take off now? Or could we rest today?”
He was surprised that she seemed to give him authority. It was not what he would have expected from a Lord. But apparently she had a certain resiliency and flexibility, a realistic attitude. She recognized that this was his world and that he knew it far better than she did. Also, it must be evident that he had a tremendous capacity for survival. Her true feelings about him were not apparent. She was probably going along with him for her own sake and would drop him if he became a liability rather than an asset—which was an attitude he approved, in some respects. At least, they were operating together smoothly enough.
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Not too smoothly, since she had made it obvious that she would never think of letting him make love to her.
“I’m all for resting,” he said. “But I think we’ll be better off if we rest among the Hrowakas. We can hide this boat in a cave near their village. And while we’re living there, we can talk to my people. I’m planning on using them against the Sellers, if they’re willing. And they will be. They love a fight.”
Shortly afterward, Anana noticed a light flashing on the instrument panel. She said, “Another craft is trying to call this one or perhaps the headquarters in Jadawin’s palace. They must be alarmed because it hasn’t reported in.”
“I’d bluff by talking to them, but I’m not fluent enough in Lord-speech to fool them,” Kickaha said. “And you could try, but I don’t think they’d accept a woman’s voice either. Let it flash. But one thing does bother me: do the Sellers have any means for tracking down this craft?”
“Only if we transmit a message for several minutes,” she said. “Or if the craft is in a line-of-sight position. These are my machines and I had them equipped with some protection devices. But not many.”
“Yes, but they have the devices of four palaces to draw on, “he said. “Wolffs, yours, Nimstowl’s, and Judubra’s. They may have removed devices from these to equip their crafts.”
She pointed out that, if they had, they had not equipped this one. She yawned and got ready to take a catnap. Kickaha shouted that she had slept over twelve hours already, and she should get up off her beautiful rump. If they were to survive, they had better get in gear, stir their stumps, and
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so on with a number of earthier and more personal cliches.
She admitted he was right. This surprised him but did not put him off guard. She got into the pilot’s seat, put on the stasis harness, and said that she was ready.
The machine slid parallel to the face of the mountain and then headed for the edge of the level, keeping a few feet above the surface of the jagged terrain. It took two hours to get out of the range, by which time they were on the lip of the monolith on which rested the Amerind level. The stone cliff dropped vertically—more or less—for over a hundred thousand feet. At its base was Okeanos, which was not an ocean but a sea shaped like a ring, girdling the monolith and never more than three hundred miles wide.