“I’ve seen blue skies before,” she said. “Wolff and Chryseis have a five-hour start on us. The Beller has a two-hour start. And all have a big world in which to get lost.”
He nodded and said, “There was no reason for Wolff and Chryseis to hang around here, since the gate is one-way. They’ll take off for the nearest two-way gate, which is in the Los Angeles area, if the gate still exists. If it doesn’t, then the closest ones will be in Kentucky or Hawaii. So we know where they should be going.”
He paused and wet his lips and then said, “As for the Beller, who knows? He could have gone anywhere or he may still be around here. He’s in an absolutely strange world, he doesn’t know anything about Earth, and he can’t speak any of the languages.”
“We don’t know what he looks like, but we’ll find him. I know the Bellers,” she said. “This one won’t cache his bell and then run away to hide with the idea he’ll come back later for it. A Beller cannot endure the idea of being very far away from his bell. He’ll carry it around as long as he can. And that will be our only means of identifying him.”
“I know,” Kickaha said. He was having trouble breathing, and his eyes were beginning to swim. Suddenly, he was weeping.
Anana was alarmed for a minute, and then she said, “Cry! I did it when I went back to my home world once. I thought I was dry forever, that tears were for mortals. But coming back home after so long exposed my weakness.”
Kickaha dried his tears and took his canteen from his belt, uncapped it and drank deeply.
“I love my world, the green-skied world,” he said. “I don’t like Earth; I don’t remember it with much affection. But I guess I had more love for it than I thought. I’ll admit that, every once in a while, I had some nostalgia, some faint longing to see it again, see the people I knew. But. . .”
Below them, perhaps a thousand feet down, a two-lane macadam road curbed around the side of the mountain and continued upward until it was lost around the other side. A car appeared on the upgrade, sped below them, and then was lost with the road. Kickaha’s eyes widened, and he said, “I never saw a car like that before. It looked like a little bug. A beetle!”
A hawk swung into view and, riding the currents, passed before them not more than a hundred yards.
Kickaha was delighted, “The first red-tail I’ve seen since I left Indiana!”
He stepped out onto the ledge, forgetting for a second, but a second only, his caution. Then he jumped back in under the protection of the overhang. He motioned to Anana, and she went to one end of the ledge and looked out while he did so at the other.
There was nobody below, as far as he could see, though the many trees could conceal anybody who did not want to be seen. He went out a little further and looked upward then but could not see past the overhang. The way down was not apparent at first, but investigation revealed projections just below the right side of the ledge. These would have to do for a start, and, once they began climbing down, other hand and footholds had to appear.
Kickaha eased himself backward over the ledge, feeling with his foot for a projection. Then he pulled himself back up and lay down on the ledge and again scrutinized the road and the forest a thousand feet below. A number of bluejays had started screaming somewhere below him; the air acted as a funnel to siphon the faint cries to him.
He took a pair of small binoculars from his shirt pocket and adjusted three dials on their surface. Then he removed an earphone and a thin wire with a male jack on one end and plugged the jack into the receptacle on the side of the binoculars. He began to sweep the forest below and eventually centered it on that spot where the jays were raising such a ruckus.