The Lavalite World

When they broke out of the woods, the only creatures on the beach were birds, dead fish-the only true fish in this world were in the sea-lands-amphibians, and some foxes. The grewigg were breathing hard. The long journey without enough sleep and food had tired them.

Anana let the beasts water in the sea. She said, "We'll go back into the forest. We're near enough to the path to see which way they take. Either direction, we'll follow them at a safe distance."

Presently the tribe came out onto the beach on the night side of the cha

When night came they retreated into the woods on the side of the path near where the two watchers were. Anana and McKay retreated some distance. When it became apparent that the savages were going to bed down, they went even further back into the woods. Anana decided that the tribe would stay put until "dawn" at least. It wasn't likely that it would make this spot a more or less permanent camp. Its members would be afraid of other tribes coming into the area.

Even though she didn't think McKay would harm her, she still went off into the bush to find a sleeping place where he couldn't see her. If he wanted to, he would find her. But he would have to climb a tree to get her. Her bed was some boughs she'd chopped and laid across two branches.

"The "night," as all nights here, was not unbroken sleep. Cries of birds and beasts startled her, and twice her dreams woke her.

The first was of her uncle, naked, bleeding from the longitudinal gash in his chest, standing above her on the tree-nest and about to lay his hands on her. She came out of it moaning with terror.

The second was of Kickaha. She'd been wandering around the bleak and shifting landscape of this world when she came across his death-pale body lying in a shallow pool. She started crying, but when she touched him, Kickaha sat up suddenly, gri

She wept a little afterward because the dream wasn't true.

McKay was still sleeping where he had laid down. The hobbled moosoids were tearing off branches about fifty meters away. She bent down and touched his shoulder, and he came up out of sleep like a trout leaping for a dragonfly.

"Don't ever do that again!" he said, scowling.

"Very well. We've got to eat breakfast and then check up on that tribe. Did you hear anything that might indicate they are up and about?"

"Nothing," he said sullenly.

But when they got to the edge of the woods, they saw no sign of the newcomers except for excrement and animal and fish bones. When they rode out onto the white sands, they caught sight, to their right, of the last of the caravan, tiny figures.

After waiting until the Amerinds were out of sight, they followed. Some time later, they came to another cha

They urged their beasts into the cha

She looked up the slope. "I'm going up to the pass and take a look. Maybe he's out on the plain.''

"If he was trailing them," McKay said, "he would've been here by now. And gone by now, maybe."

"I know, but I'm going up there anyway."

She urged the moosoid up the slope. Twice, she looked back. The first time, M9Kay was sitting on his motionless gregg. The next time, he was coming along slowly.

On reaching the top of the pass, she halted her beast. The plain had changed considerably. Though the cha

There were few animals along the cha

On the other side of the mountains was a downward slope cut by the cha

on which she sat was a pile of bones, great and small, that extended down into the plain and far out.

Nowhere was any human being in sight.

Softly, she said, "Kickaha?"

It was hard to believe that he could be dead.

She turned and waved to McKay to halt. He did so, and she started her beast towards him. And then she felt the earth shaking around her. Her gregg stopped despite her commands to keep going, and it remained locked in position, though quivering. She got down off of it and tried to pull it by the reins, but it dug in, leaning its body back. She mounted again and waited.

The slope was changing swiftly, sinking at the rate of about a foot a minute. The cha

Heat arose from the ground.

McKay was in the same predicament. His moosoid stubbornly refused to obey despite his rider's beatings with the shaft of his spear.

She turned on the saddle to look behind her. The ridge was becoming a mountain range, a tiny range now but it was evident that if this process didn't stop, it would change into a long and giant barrow. The animals along it were ru

However, the two mountains that formed the pass remained solid, immovable.

Anana sighed. There was nothing she could do except sit and wait this out unless she wanted to dismount. The gregg, from long experience, must know the right thing to do.

It was like being on a slow-moving elevator, one in which the temperature rose as the elevator fell. Actually, she felt as if the mountains on her side were rising instead of the ground descending.

The entire change lasted about an hour. At the end the cha

Anana tickticked with her tongue to the gregg, and it trotted toward the sea. McKay waited for her to come to him. He didn't ask her if she'd seen Kickaha. He knew that if she had she would have said so. He merely shook his head and said, "Crazy country, ain't it?"

"It lost us more than hour, all things considered," she said. "I don't see any reason to push the grewigg though. They're not fully recovered yet. We'll just take it easy. We should find those Indians sometime after dark. They'll be camped for the night."

"Yeah, some place in the woods," he said. "We might just ride on by them and in the morning they'll be on our tails."