He stopped so suddenly that she almost walked into the back of him, and when he turned around, her face was nearly up against his chest. He kissed her nose, said, “How come you’re smarter than me?”
“I’m not.”
“You’ve proven it a couple of times now.”
“It’s just that you’ve never been in a war. You don’t understand about things like this as well as I do. You’ll learn.” She said it with such sincerity that he was forced to laugh again, though the situation certainly did not merit mirth.
“There’s a cross trail just ahead,” he said. “Left or right?”
“Doesn’t matter. Maybe right, since we’ll be bearing just slightly to the left when we start down the other side of this mountain.”
“Let’s go,” he said, leading the way, taking the right turn and striking off on the false trail. He just hoped Proteus would locate the Sherlock and destroy it in time to let them get back to the right trail and make some distance on it before the blue uniformed boys arrived.
Proteus’s plasti-plasma gurgled.
It seemed an interminable time that they walked, though he knew it could not have been more than three or four minutes. But each step away from the trail they intended to regain seemed like a step into a swamp from which there was no egress—a swamp lined, beneath the brackish water, with quicksand. He even fantasized, for a moment, that the Sherlock might be quite aware of their plan and only leading them on long enough for the soldiers to arrive. But that was hogwash, for the Sherlock could not think, not even as much as Proteus. It was a densely packed shell of seeking equipment, nothing more. It was a game machine, a very clever one at that, but not a man.
Still, it would not show itself. At least, not visually. He wished there were some way he could know if Proteus had it spotted. He remembered having often pondered the simplicity of being a machine, of seeing the world in black and white, in quantities of good and bad without shades of gray in the middle. Now he realized a few other values in a machine’s existence. There was no fear, no worry. No anxiety— and therefore no urgency. He wished there were some way to make Proteus aware of the value of these ticking seconds that slipped by them so terribly fast.
The projectile weapon made a whoofing noise as Proteus blasted at something almost directly ahead, through the trees. There was an explosion, light and smoke, then silence.
“He got it!” Leah cried.
“Let’s see before we celebrate,” he said, rushing forward to the spot where the projectile had struck. There, steaming in the snow, melting hollows in it, were dozens of chunks of the blue-husked Sherlock.
Leah dropped the suitcase and slapped her hands against her bulkily clothed hips, laughing much as he had seen the other Demosian girls laughing when, they had been playing games with the mythical demons in the forest back at the Sanctuary. He was intrigued by the way these people could mix joy and humor with the direst of events, the manner in which they never lost track of the things that should be appreciated in life no matter how many tons of dross and ugliness those nuggets were buried under.
“Fast now,” he urged, turning and pushing past her to lead the way back to the other trail. “They’ll be here in moments if they’ve taken a chance of sending a copter up in this storm.”
They gained the first herd path in two minutes, moving at a trot. When they got there, he insisted taking the suitcase from her was the wisest course, since—for a short period anyway—he could run faster with it than she could and, without it, she would be able to keep up. She did not argue this time, perfectly aware of the urgency involved and the truth of it. She was, just as she said, a good soldier. Had it been better for her to straggle with the luggage, she would have refused; but seeing the wisdom of his suggestion, she complied.
Time passed much too quickly for comfort.