Milo turned to them. “I think it’s Ulic.”
Doggins said: “Don’t be silly. He’s dead.”
“But he’s got a pack like ours.”
It was true; the pack beside the camp fire was undoubtedly like the ones they were carrying.
Suddenly, Milo was running as fast as his legs would carry him. They heard him shout. The man jumped to his feet and stared. Then Milo turned round, waving his arms. “It is Ulic!” The two ran towards one another, embraced, then began to perform a clumsy dance of sheer joy.
It was Doggins who voiced the thought that struck them all at the same time. “Thank God we didn’t bury him.”
Moments later, they were slapping Ulic on the back and shaking his hands until he winced. He was pale, and had several days’ growth of beard on his chin; otherwise he looked exactly as when they had last seen him.
This was no time for explanations; their relief made them incoherent. Their stories were told in jumbled fragments, which were only assembled into some kind of connected sequence many hours later, as they lay round the camp fire in the dark. Meanwhile, Niall climbed the tall tree and lowered down their canvas bags and the spider balloons; Manetho took a fishing line and went to the rocks to catch their supper; Ulic and Milo went off with a container of grubs to feed the porifids, who greeted their arrival with ecstatic bubbles of foul-smelling gas. Doggins, who was suffering from exhaustion and blistered feet, lay down in the shade of the palm trees and slept without stirring until dusk. Niall bathed in the sea, dried himself in the sun, then went and sat beside Manetho, who had already caught three large mullet, and would catch four more before they decided they had enough for a celebratory meal.
The fish were encased in leaves, then in a layer of mud, and baked in the hot ashes. While Manetho cooked, the others stared at the emerging stars, and gave themselves up to the curious magic of the Delta, in which the smell of danger seemed to blend with a marvellous sensation of freedom. Then Manetho raked the fish from the ashes with a forked twig, and the air was suddenly filled with the delicious aroma of fish that has been freshly caught and immediately cooked, and of bread molded into flat cakes and baked between hot stones. The reflective mood was banished by the food, and by draughts of wine, and was replaced by exhiliration as it dawned on them, for the first time, that they had returned unscathed from the heart of the Delta, and that they were all together again.
As they ate, Ulic caused gales of laughter as he described how he had awakened and found himself tied to the branch of a tree, fifty feet above the ground, and how he had shouted indignantly for his companions, convinced that they were playing a practical joke. It was not until he noticed that he was wrapped tightly in a blanket which had been secured around him by long thorns that it finally dawned upon him that he had been left for dead. After long struggles, he had succeeded in freeing his right arm — Manetho had tied him very tightly in case birds or prey tried to dislodge the body — and eventually untied the double knot on his chest. It had cost him a considerable effort to free himself without falling off the branch; the blanket, finally unpinned, had fallen to the ground, and he had saved the rope only just in time — “otherwise I’d still be up there.” (They continued to laugh — no longer out of mere amusement, but also out of admiration for Ulic’s sheer good humour as he recounted an episode that he must have found grimly serious.) Finally, after crouching in the fork of the tree, allowing his circulation to return, he had tied one end of the rope around the branch and lowered himself to the ground. There he had found his pack propped against the base of the tree, and the ashes of their camp fire, which had obviously been cold for many days, and which showed footprints of wild animals. After eating a meal and drinking some wine — which had restored his spirits — he had set out on the long journey back to the beach — which, fortunately, had been uneventful.
Niall asked: “When did all this happen?”
“Yesterday.”
“What time did you wake up?”
“At dawn — the birds woke me.”
It made Niall thoughtful. So Ulic had regained consciousness at the same time that he himself had awakened on top of the empress plant. . .
Doggins asked Ulic: “What did you do with your Reaper?”
Ulic looked surprised. “I thought you took it.”
None of them could remember precisely what had happened to the weapon; to the best of Milo’s recollection, he had left it beside Ulic’s pack, leaning against the foot of the tree.
Ulic shook his head. “Well, it certainly wasn’t there.”
They looked at one another. Niall said:
“Fortunately, you didn’t need it.”
Doggins shrugged gloomily:
“He might have done.”
Niall said: “I doubt it.”
Simeon gave him an odd look, but said nothing.
Niall fell asleep long before the others; the food and the night air made it impossible to keep his eyes open. Periodically, he was awakened by their laughter, or by a sudden brightness when dry branches were thrown on to the fire. Fragments of their conversation — “the biggest millipede I’ve ever seen,” “they looked like oversized frogs” — mingled with his dreams. Finally, there was only the sound of the waves breaking on the beach, and the wind rustling in the palm leaves.
Then Simeon was shaking him by the shoulder.
“Wake up. The wind’s blowing from the south-west. We’ve got to get the balloons inflated.”
As the Delta receded beyond the horizon, Niall once again experienced the sense of hanging motionless in a windless space between sea and sky. The sky above them was deep blue and cloudless; the sea stretched endlessly around them, its blue surface fading to misty grey where it met the skyline. Only the coolness of the air revealed that they were moving fast. It might have been a clear day in midwinter.
The three balloons were again linked together; but this time, Niall was sharing the undercarriage with Simeon, whose familiarity with the coastline made him the natural choice as navigator. Until they were out of sight of land, they stood on opposite sides of the undercarriage, to maintain an equal balance. Although they had been airborne for more than an hour, neither had spoken a word; they were hypnotised by the immensity of the circular horizon, and awed by the tremendous drop beneath them. Here, in the daylight, the flight seemed more dangerous than at night.
When Niall began to feel cold, he sat down cautiously on the floor and wrapped his cloak around him. He opened his pack and took out a biscuit and a slice of dried meat; there had been no time to eat before they left the beach. Simeon joined him, and for a few minutes they ate in silence. Then Simeon said:
“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. Something strange happened the other night, while you and Bildo were away. I was sitting on guard, listening to the sound of some wild animal in the forest. I knew it was watching us, waiting for the opportunity to attack. Then something happened. I can’t describe it except to say that I lost the feeling we were in danger. In fact, I felt so certain about it that I lay down and went to sleep.” He took a draught of water from the bottle. “Do you know what happened?”
Niall said: “That was when I threw the Reapers into the water.”
“Why did you do that?”
Niall had been expecting the question, and had not been looking forward to it. For the past two days, he had experienced a deep reluctance to speak of what had happened to him; it was as if some invisible force was ordering him to remain silent. Yet now, as Simeon spoke, he felt this inner prohibition dissolve, and knew he was permitted to speak. He described how he had lost his temper and fired into the river, and his skin became icy cold as he recalled how close he had been to destroying the empress plant. He told of the sudden impulse that had made him throw the Reapers into the water, and of how he had obeyed the order to cross the river. As he was speaking, many things became clear for the first time. Now he recognised that the goddess could have destroyed them at any time after they landed in the Delta, and that she had taken a calculated risk in allowing two armed men to approach so close. But he also understood that the impulse that had drawn him to the heart of the Delta was a summons from the goddess herself.