Just to complicate matters, Phrallet was a member of the party. Whether out of misplaced ambition, because she fancied she might make a better impression on this trip than usually at home on Voosla, or out of jealousy of Awb, or simply out of bad temper because of what Axwep had said to her last dark, she had insisted on coming along. Drotninch, who had gotten to know her slightly during the voyage, was no more in favor than was Thilling; however, Axwep was glad of the chance to be rid of her for a while, and she possessed sufficient charm as regarded strangers for Lesh to say with a shrug, “Why not? We can always do with an extra set of claws, and a volunteer is better than a draftee.”
Thilling’s view was that she was apt to be more of a nuisance than a help. And she was equally dubious about Awb. She still could not quite rid herself of the suspicion that her images might have been spoiled by his carelessness. Moreover she was moderately certain that his ambition to spend his future in light-tight bowers reeking of chemicals was due less to a genuine interest in the work than to the fact that if he became Voosla’s first official picturist he would always have an excuse to shut himself away from his budder.
Still, there was little point in speculating. Determinedly she forced her attention back to the country they were traversing, only to find that the view made her more worried than ever.
From the canal which carried waste and usable rock to the new harbor, irrigation ditches had been ichored off for the crops that fed the workforce. So much was normal; so much was sensible economy.
Yet the point in time at which the crops began to fail coincided with the failure of the nervograp links to the outside world, and in turn followed the first use of water from beyond the watershed. How was it that supposedly rational people could have overlooked the connection? They definitely had! Even in the light of what Eupril and Hy reported, Lesh was still obstinately hoping to find that the water-supply had nothing to do with the—the blight, the poison, whatever it might ultimately prove to be.
Now, fixing images of the true extent of the devastation in the morning shadow of Fangsharp Peak, Thilling started to wonder whether those who had been living here for two or three years might not already be affected, already be on the way to matching the miserable mindless natives.
Then she noticed something else even more alarming as the mounts wound in single file up and over the ridge. During the first part of the bright, the beasts had too much sense to browse off the nearby foliage, sere and discolored as it was. About noon, however, when presumably they were starting to thirst, the one carrying among other loads her own equipment did begin to help itself now and again from the nearest branches. But the leaves were wilting, and the rind of the cutinates whose line they were following was patched with suppurating black.
She glanced at Awb, laboring along behind her under the burden of her spare image-fixer and a spare lens-plant, and realized that he too appeared uneasy. But neither Lesh nor Drotninch seemed concerned. Why not?
Well, perhaps she was worrying overmuch. She strove to make herself believe so.
Night fell late in these latitudes, and was short. They crossed the watershed before they lacked enough light to wait for tomorrow’s dawn. The chance to rest was welcome; they all needed to accumulate pressure for the next stage of the journey. But Thilling was dismayed anew when she realized that Lesh, who had been responsible for organizing the expedition, expected everybody, and the mounts too, to subsist off the local plants because, as she said, “it would only be for a day or two.” This was enough to startle even Drotninch and Byra, and a furious argument broke out in which—predictably—Phrallet was prominent.
True, there were plenty of edible secondary growths of the kind which that far-sighted genius Gveest had modified to provide for the folk during their traumatic population explosion. Possibly, as Lesh was now claiming, the planners of the observatory project had seeded them deliberately to furnish an emergency resource for the workers. More likely they had arrived of their own accord; their spawn was designed to drift on the wind and displace natural rivals when it settled. But those which grew close to the path were so unwholesome both in appearance and in odor…