Exuding fascination, Awb hunched forward. “I’ve always resented that myself! I mean, one never really stops thinking, does one? It’s just that by dark it always seems so much harder to make action match intention!”
He added self-excusingly, “I envy you the fact that you’re going to spend this dark doing something constructive, you see. I don’t know how.”
For a long while Thilling remained indecisive. Should she broach her most precious secret to this chance-met stranger? Yet the magnitude of the catastrophe that was set fair to overwhelm the great observatory was daunting, and the need for the information it could supply was so urgent. Could she confront the insights she was burdened with entirely alone?
No: she could not. She needed to confide in someone, and none of the scientists from Chisp was right to share her private anxiety. At least Awb had fought back against the handicap of being Phrallet’s bud…
She said after a small eternity, “Then I must teach you how to liberate consciousness from concern with digestion. That’s the first of the mental exercises Pletrow developed for the Jingfired.”
“You mean you…?” Awb’s pressure failed him.
“Yes, I do mean!” Already she was half regretting her admission. “But if you so much as hint that you’re aware of the fact, I’m bound by oath to leak you. Understood?”
Fervently he echoed, “Understood!”
“Very well, then. Now there’s one other thing I ought to ask you. But I’m not going to. If you’re the person I think and hope you are, you’ll work it out yourself.”
“Does it have to do with why Lesh doesn’t want to consider any other site for the observatory?”
“Very indirectly I suppose it does. We all hope to bequeath some achievement to the future … No, that’s not what I want you to say. Think it over. In the meantime, what about setting up my dark-bower for me?”
VI
Was Thilling truly one of the legendary Jingfired?
That question haunted Awb as the party wended its way down from the crest of the ridge, still following the line chosen for the cutinates, either side of which the trees were stunted and their secondary growths pale and sickly. The stink of decay in the air was worse than where they had started from because it was older, as though even storms could not disperse it. Its impact was unnerving; one heard fewer voices raised to normal pitch, more murmurs of apprehension and more cries from unseen creatures in the overgrowth.
Along the bottom of the valley, where they were bound, ran a watercourse formed by the confluence of three streams half a day’s journey to the east. It was the middle one which remained so warm during the worst of winter that it could keep the whole river free of ice. Nobody had explored it to the source, but presumably it must rise where there was hot rock of the sort well known on other continents, that created geysers or pools of bubbling-hot mud.
An earth dam had been built to make an artificial lake for the cutinates to draw from. Now and then they could glimpse the sunlight gleaming on its surface, wherever the vegetation had died back sufficiently.
That was disturbingly often.
Byra announced loudly, “This is far worse than what I recall from my first visit! If things had been this bad then I’d have argued strongly against choosing this site.”
“I thought the Jingfired didn’t make mistakes like that,” was Lesh’s snappish response. Close enough behind to overhear the exchange, Awb whispered to Thilling:
“Is she one of—?”
“Of course not!”—with contempt. “She’s enjoyed giving herself the sort of airs she thinks might suit one of us ever since the first time she was assigned to a foreign survey team. She carries it off well enough to mislead the ignorant, but she’s never dared to make the claim outright.
One of the reasons I was sent here was to make sure about that. It’s all right, though: it’s a bit of harmless vanity, no more.”
“What do you think about Eupril’s attitude towards the Jingflred?” Awb risked.
Thilling gave a soft chuckle. “The more people who feel that way about us, the better we can achieve our aim.”