She made a good landing, considering she was aiming her sled into a dark hole, faintly illuminated on the left by a small campfire. She let the sled down at the far right, bumping just once as she misjudged the uneven stone floor.
“Is Kai improving?” she called as she flipped open the canopy.
“Yes, but we’ve run out of leaves again,” Lunzie said, rising from her position beside Kai’s bundled form.
“I’ve more and food besides. And a helluva lot to tell you.”
“Any equipment?”
“No, but I have a specific remedy for that fever,” Varian took the purple moss from the piles of food in the sled, offering it to the medic who accepted it skeptically.
“This?” Lunzie smelled it. “Why?”
“Highly recommended by a local resident.” Varian grinned wearily at Lunzie’s reaction. “Yes, I ran one down. Oh, it’s all right. I made out that I was one of a relief team. He’s Bakkun’s grandson.” She offered the information with a huge grin, as if it were the best joke in the galaxy.
Lunzie fingered the moss for a few more seconds before she searched Varian’s face. “Grandson!”
“Yes, we cold-slept forty-three years.”
“Well, it’s not much longer than I’d estimated,” Lunzie said, and Varian was deflated by the medic’s calm acceptance. “What else have you here?” Lunzie peered at the dark mounds in the sled.
“Everything’s edible, and this sort of pod bean tastes better than the fruit. Just how is Kai?” she asked, struggling out of the sled and trying not to stagger too much as she crossed to Kai’s supine body. “Has he recovered consciousness yet?” She all but collapsed beside him.
“No, but the fever is down a little. Hold still a moment,” Lunzie said. Before Varian realized what the medic was doing, she’d the spray icily stinging her arm.
“You shouldn’t waste it. I’ve so much …”
“It’s no waste,” Lunzie was saying, her voice getting farther away as consciousness left Varian.
“You can’t see yourself but you’re drained white. Did you use Discipline all day long?”
46
Anne McCaffrey – Dinosaur Planet II – The Survivors CHAPTER FIVE
Varian came awake by degrees: the first one being her awareness of voices in low earnest conversation, either too far from her for the individual words to be audible or too soft to keep from rousing her. She thought to get up, but it proved difficult to assemble the energy. Could she have been in cold sleep again? No! She was resting, rather comfortably, on a bed of springy boughs, not the flat plasfloor of the space shuttle or the dust of the cave. She felt an occasional breeze waft across her face and exposed hands.
She didn’t feel so much tired as disinterested. Yet, in the back of her mind, a spark started with the observation: she had so much to tell Lunzie. Sneaky of her to knock Varian out like that.
She continued to listen and realized that two men were speaking. Then Kai was better! It was good to hear him. But he wouldn’t be well enough in three days’ time to join her against Aygar.
They’d better wake Portegin and get the technician functioning. No way was she meeting Aygar, and whoever accompanied him, in three days time without strong support. And if she was this tired after a day’s use of Discipline, would she recover sufficiently in three to draw on that inner reserve again?
What was it about Aygar’s manner that bothered her? The expression in his eyes had been wary, speculative, evaluating, not at all the reaction she might have expected from a man making first contact with off-world visitors! That was it! He had been expecting someone. Not her. And not someone who could best him in personal combat.
Varian became conscious of a rich, nutty smell. Her stomach began to rumble and her mouth to salivate. She stirred restlessly, keenly aware that she was very hungry.
“I told you that the stew would get to her,” Lunzie said suddenly.
Varian opened her eyes.
Lunzie, Triv, and Kai made a semicircle on one side of the crude hearth, complete now with a spit and crane from which a pail hung.