“You’d act that way, anyway,” she said. “But I think you may be right.”
She fell asleep. He left the bed and went to the front room to watch. The sun started down from the zenith. Beautiful birds, most of whose ancestors must have been made in the biolabs of the Lords, gathered around the fountain and pool before the house. Once, a large brown bear ambled through the trees and near the house. Another time, he heard a sound that tingled his nerves and filled him with joy. It was the shrill trumpet of a mammoth. Its cry reminded him of the Amerind tier of Wolff’s world, where mammoths and mastodons by the millions roamed the plains and the forests of an area larger than all of North and South America. He felt homesick and wondered when-if-he would ever see that world again. The Hrowakas, the Bear People, the beautiful and the great Amerinds who had adopted him, were dead now, murdered by the Bellers. But there were other tribes who would be eager to adopt him, even those who called him their greatest enemy and had been trying for years to lift his scalp or his head.
He returned to the bedroom and awoke Anana, telling her to rouse him in about an hour. She did so, and though he would have liked to sleep for the rest of the day and half the night, he forced himself to get up.
They ate some more food and packed more in a small basket. They set off through the woods, which were thick with trees but only moderately grown with underbrush. They came onto a trail which had been trampled by mammoths, as the tracks and droppings showed. They followed this, sensitive for the trumpetings or squealings of the big beasts. There were no flies or mosquitoes, but there was a variety of large beetles and other insects on which the birds fed.
Once, they heard a savage yowl. They stopped, then continued after it was not repeated. Both recognized the cry of the sabertooth.
“If this was the estate of your family, why did they keep the big dangerous beasts around?” he said.
“You should know that. The Lords like danger; it is the only spice of eternity. Immortality is nothing unless it can be taken away from you at any moment.”
That was true. Only those who had immortality could appreciate that. But he wished, sometimes, that there were not so much spice. Lately, he did not seem to be getting enough rest, and his nerves were raw from the chafing of continuous peril.
“Do you think that anybody else would know about the gate in the boulder?”
“Nothing is sure,” she replied. “But I do not think so. Why? Do you think that Urthona will know that we’ll be going to the boulder?”
“It seems highly probable. Otherwise, he would have set up a trap for us at the summerhouse. I think that he may expect and want us to go to the boulder because he is also leading another toward the same place. It’s to be a trysting place for us and our two enemies.”
“You don’t know that. It’s just your highly suspicious mind believing that things are as you would arrange them if you were a Lord.”
“Look who’s calling who paranoid,” he said, smiling. “Maybe you’re right. But I’ve been through so much that I can hear the tumblers of other people’s minds clicking.”
He decided that Anana should handle the beamer and he would have his bow and arrows ready.
Near the edge of the clearing, Kickaha noted a slight swelling in the earth. It was about a quarter inch high and two inches wide, and it ran for several feet, then disappeared. He moved in a zigzagging path for several yards and finally found another swelling which described a small part of a very large circle before it disappeared, too.
He went back to Anana, who had been watching him with a puzzled expression.
“Do you know of any underground work done around here?” he said.
“No,” she said. “Why?”
“Maybe an earthquake did it,” he said and did not comment any more on the swelling.