Pilgrimage

By Lelia Rose Foreman

A young widow is sentenced to planetary exploration for the crime of religiosity. She struggles to keep alive others whose crimes range from disability to assault as they walk across a bizarre landscape. What she finds on this new world is even more dangerous than anything she left behind on Earth. What will she need to sacrifice to save herself, save her colony, and save Earth?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lelia Rose Foreman
• Release date: Mar 12, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310042133

Lelia Rose Foreman

Lelia Rose Foreman has raised and released five children, and now releases books. She also tries to get books to Rwanda. She and her husband traveled the world in the Air Force and presently make their home in Vancouver, Washington.

Book preview

PILGRIMAGE

By

Lelia Rose Foreman

This is a work of fiction. The events and characters described herein are imaginary and are not intended to refer to specific places or living persons. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.

Pilgrimage, All Rights Reserved, 2014

Copyright © 2014 Lelia Rose Foreman

Smashwords Edition

Written in 1974

Published by Flawed People Press

Gilbert, Arizona

Produced in the United States of America

Thank you for downloading this ebook. It remains the copyrighted property of the owner and may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical, without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy at Smashwords.com. Thank you for your support.

Dedicated to Frank

BOOK ONE

Give me my scallop-shell of quiet,

My staff of faith to walk upon,

My scrip of joy, immortal diet,

My bottle of salvation,

My gown of glory, hope’s true gauge;

And thus I’ll take my pilgrimage.

Sir Walter Raleigh His Pilgrimage

CHAPTER ONE

Death better were; death did he oft desire,

But death will never come when needes require.

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

I walked the black tunnel, the way between the worlds. Earth side was suicide, which I am forbidden, and so I walked in the dark with my entrails cramping. I had planned not to be afraid. My flesh betrayed me, again.

I materialized, collapsed to my knees, sucked in air that held oxygen, and felt hot dust beneath my hands. I jumped and spun, clutching my staff like a weapon, in the midst of cracked boulders, plants like gaunt saguaro and squashed cylinders bristling with spikes, a hot, orange sun in a turquoise sky, faint odor of creosote.

I could breathe. Thank God I could breathe. Trembling, I touched a dusty rock with hunger-strike-slimmed fingers marred by the white stripe where my wedding ring used to be. Oh, Ker, my husband, I cried silently. And that was another betrayal. I had meant to say and think something else. Would I ever do what I meant to do? The rock did not move or change so I sat on it and held my staff with one hand and rubbed the pin on my lapel with the other as I waited for the rest. Perhaps they were believers, too. I could hope.

Space sucked in, a smudge, a distortion in the air, and a woman appeared. She screamed and fell. A jagged red scar crossed her forehead and gouged a part in her black hair. I ran to help her, but she kicked at me and writhed, eyes rolling.

A useless eater. I immediately felt shame at even thinking one of the government’s terms. The poor woman.

Another smudge, and the third and last one materialized. He stood crouched, swinging a staff, panting and blinking. He, too, glanced around before he set the staff upright and stared at me. A leer distorted his face. A woman, he said with the same tone of discovery and satisfaction I would use in a meat market on finding the steaks on sale, eighty percent off. I prefer ‘em blonde, but you’ll do.

I rose and tightened my grip on my staff. He was easily double my weight, a great, red-haired bear of a man with a massive chest and a stomach like a barrel. There would be little I could do to stop him. I nodded toward the woman rolling on the ground. We need to help her. And then we need to figure out how to survive.

The man looked at her and spat. A useless eater! We need to kill her. Split up her food between us so’s we can live a day or two longer.

I had heard of such things happening during explorations, but never so soon. Was the man such a gut he couldn’t wait until he was hungry? Anger put an edge to my voice. We need to work together for life, not death. If you want extra food, I’ll give you mine.

He folded his massive arms, stared at me, and cursed.

I pulled at my prisoner collar as sweat slicked my palms. What did you do to become an explorer?

His face did not change, but he, too, fingered his metal collar that recorded every conversation and the temperatures. Assault, murder, grand theft.

What kind of assault?

He grinned, sort of, and stared at something below my chin.

You know. . . I faltered. You know you have a good chance to get acquitted. We’re not dead yet. The climate and geography don’t seem lethal. If you make good observations, when they come back in sixty days, you’ll be a free man.

He snorted. But I spoke the truth. I had heard of murderers getting acquitted after exploration. I did not tell him I could be free, for that was impossible. If those of my kind of criminal survived sixty days, they were obviously plotting something against the government and became fair game for the sports-bounty hunter. If they died, then their names were cleared, and their names were entered on the roster of heroes of the State. I should know. That’s how my husband’s name was cleared.

Watching the man, I knelt beside the now softly moaning woman. I stroked her dull black curls and wondered if what had scarred her face had also damaged her brain. Can you hear me? It’s all right. We’re going to find a way to live here. Her ID bracelet showed the name, Sharlee Pompideau.

Well? the man shouted.

I rose and faced him warily. Well, what?

What are you in for?

Psychotic, sub-group religiosity.

His mouth dropped open, and I think he noticed the glint from the gold cross pinned to my shirt. Oh, for Christ’s sake!

Exactly, I snapped back. I knelt by the woman again and crooned, It’s all right. My name is Paula. Would you like a drink of water? The sun is hot, isn’t it?

As though she were arthritic she sat up and turned her face to mine. It’s all right, she whispered. My name is. . .

The man grabbed my shoulder and jerked me around. My name’s Malik. I’m in charge here. You’re not giving her our water.

Sharlee lurched up and kicked him in the knee-cap. I twisted away.

Malik swore and grabbed his knee. Sharlee staggered, weeping, her hands flailing uselessly at shoulder height. He started after her, stopped, and turned to lunge at me.

I’m little, but I used to be good in track. I sprinted around a gaunt cactus and a tangled patch of ochre, knee-high vines.

Malik shortcut through the plants. He screamed halfway across. I glanced back and saw him jump out of the patch, thrashing at his leg.

I ran back to see something yellow and round, like a shell, clinging to his calf. He tore at it with fat fingers as blood ran down his pants and clotted in the dust. I pulled out my survival knife. He kept jerking his leg and tearing at the shell with his short fingernails. Had he forgotten his knife? I grabbed his hair and pulled his head back. Stop moving! I shouted in his face, I’ll kill it! Stop!

He writhed as I sliced down the joint of the shell severing it in two halves like a clam. I flipped out the halves rimmed with fang-like thorns. Several of the thorns stayed in his leg. Using the knife case and knife as tweezers, I pulled them out.

Malik flinched when I rolled up his pants leg and squirted water from my pack on the torn gashes.

We’ve got to save our water, he gasped.

First, we’ve got to save you, I said. But I was pleased. He was beginning to think. Would he faint? Mom, a medical technologist, had told me it was never the frail, old ladies or the squalling children who fainted when she drew their blood; it was always the husky truck drivers. I blinked rapidly and swallowed. I would not think about Mom. I would not think about Dad. I would not think about Ker.

He could handle the bandaging, so I let him do it while I checked for predators and called Sharlee. She did not answer. I studied the yellow clamshell plant and saw it was much like a giant Venus flytrap. Malik had torn this piece from its vine when he leaped out of the patch. I tried to cut some vine, and couldn’t. How strong was Malik?

I watched the horizon while I pondered why a plant would grow that kind of trap. There had to be animals that it caught. Did it digest the animals? Maybe it let bodies rot to provide fertilizer for its roots. Maybe dead bodies attracted flies to pollinate it.

The blue sky arched empty over us as sweat trickled down our faces. The sun worried me. With its slight orange cast, perhaps it radiated a spectrum that would kill us ten or twenty years down the line. I almost laughed. To live through the first day would be victory. Thirty percent of all explorers don’t. Seventy percent don’t survive the first week. It’s hard to survive if you are placed on a polar ice floe or on an ocean wave. Pity the ones who crunch down on some monster’s nest.

I nudged Malik. Can you walk? I want to move you to where I can set up some shade for you to rest in. Here, lean on my staff. We’ll get yours on the way back to the rock we materialized at.

Malik said. Why bother? We’re dead.

I pulled on him. It was like trying to lift a building. I believe in living ‘til I die. Come on.

He got up, cursing me and the planet and the government. In between his groans, as we hop-shuffled back, I told him the rules for survival. Touch everything with your staff first. Don’t assume a rock is a rock. Move slowly unless something big is chasing you. Check the position of the sun now and in a few hours to see if you’re at a pole or the equator. Look for a distinctive landmark. Maybe you’ll meet another party heading for the same landmark. I pointed to a distance-dimmed mountain range.

Sure a know-it-all, muttered Malik. Where did you learn this?

I wasn’t about to betray my contacts. There are books on planet survival. I didn’t tell him that we Christians studied survival almost as much as we did history. Just as the early Christians had to figure out how to remain calm while being mauled by lions, we studied how to acquit ourselves during exploration. I shook my head. Because I knew some history, I knew there was a time – for part of humanity—when the mentally ill were cared for with compassion and people could follow any religion they wished.

Some genius, that, who figured how to kill two birds with one stone. When our scientists discovered how to move objects from one gravity well to another without bothering with intervening space, they discovered millions of planets that could theoretically support human life. But finding out if theory fit fact cost a lot of equipment and a lot of good, intelligent people. Then someone realized we could empty our asylums and prisons and institutions by sprinkling twenty thousand useless people at a time on a planet with recorders locked around their necks. Then all the scientists had to do was come back in sixty days and collect the collars’ data for twenty thousand reference points. If every one of the twenty thousand died, then there was something drastically wrong with the planet, and, oh well, there’re plenty more planets to look at. You break eggs when you make omelets.

Whoever survives is given another chance to be sane or crime-free or intelligent. I knew of a man who survived three planets before a sports-bounty hunter got him. If I lived the sixty days and surrendered peacefully, I, too, could try another planet. But like that man I knew I would never surrender. I was heading for higher ground. Some escaped. Perhaps I would.

I wondered how accurate our contacts were. They said some managed to get their collars off. Some. The government told us nothing. We heard about those gone before us through secret Christians and Muslims working in file departments, and the more decent government officials who felt families had a right to know what happened to their loved ones.

We made it to the rock. Malik lay down and panted. Where had the other woman gone? Sweating, I unrolled our reflector blankets and made some shade. Then I sank down beside him to rest.

As I stared dully at the coppery blanket and heat-faded sky, a familiar sorrow began to wash in. Oh no, not now, but it surged and overwhelmed me. I doubled over. Oh, Ker, I should have died with you! My husband had died the second day on a planet with air so thin you could breathe only if you didn’t move. He died trying to rescue a man with Down’s syndrome who had slipped into a glacial crevasse.

What’s the matter with you? grunted Malik.

I wiped my face. Keep in mind what you’re in for. I’ve got to find Sharlee, I said, and left.

She wasn’t far. She crouched in a cleft, face buried in her arms.

I touched her arm and said, Come on. Let’s have lunch. We’ll make some plans.

Come on, she murmured. Let’s have lunch. We’ll make some plans.

Right.

Right.

She held hands with me as we walked back. Her eyes darted back and forth as she kept up a steady stream of muttering. Hot. It’s hot. Sun. Sun makes it hot. Jerry said be good. I was good. I didn’t break it. . . She gasped and drew back when we reached the shade.

I pulled her on. It’s all right. Malik is sleeping.

It’s all right. Malik is sleeping.

I sighed as I set out the irradiated carrot salad sandwiches and limp cheese. This lady was going to drive me crazy. Ha! I had forgotten. I was already crazy. Psychotic. Yeah.

We were finishing when Malik woke up. He struggled to a sitting position and blurted, Why are you giving our food to a useless eater? Sharlee cringed.

Here’s your lunch. I tossed his food to him.

Malik snatched the plastic packets. You get these from my pack?

You were sleeping on your pack. That sandwich is on the house.

Malik hesitated. Are you sure?

Go ahead.

Malik tossed the packets back to me. You might need them.

I stowed them. I might. If these cactusoids poison me, you’ll have to nurse me back to health with real food.

You’re going to eat those things?

Yep. I stood up.

Malik grabbed the rock and pulled himself up. I thought you kind of people couldn’t kill yourselves.

I might not die. You can fast for sixty days and live. I can’t. The reason they gave us only four days rations is to make sure we try the native food. I’m not going to disappoint them. I walked to the nearest yellow cylinder.

Malik limped after me, his shadow stretching out over the red dust.

I nodded, glad he could walk. The plant stood alone, barrel-shaped, about a meter high with a fringe of blue wires on top. Most planets explored so far had a fairly clear division between plants and animals. Since this planet could be one of the exceptions, I slowly touched its midsection with my staff, and then prodded it. For five minutes, I pounded on the plant and brushed the blue wires and sniffed it before I cut out a wedge. I touched the yellow covering, spongy moist insides, and a blue wire to three different spots on my forearm. Then I wrapped the pieces and stowed them in my pack. I heaved a sigh of relief. The inner part smelled like a gymnasium, but there was no immediate rash on my skin.

Okay. I’ll try the tongue-test in an hour. We start walking now, and an hour should see us six kilometers closer to that mountain range.

Hey, who made you boss of this expedition?

Malik, there’s no water here. You can’t go sixty days without water.

Who made you boss?

See how the sun is setting? We need to walk in the cooler evenings and mornings and rest at night and hot noon.

Suppose my leg hurts and I don’t want to go?

Fine. Stay here and rot.

I say, stay here and eat that veggie.

She’s no veggie! She’s a human, just like you, a human! Somebody Christ has died for! I picked up a rock and smashed it into a boulder. Chips flew. I almost smashed it onto Malik’s head. It shook me, the violence I wanted to do to him. Before I said or did anything I would regret for eternity, I dashed back and tore down the shelter and jammed everything into my pack. I was going to the mountain range.

Sharlee sat crouched into a ball again. Couldn’t blame her. I patted her back. Let’s go for a hike, Sharlee.

Sniffling, she got up and started walking with me. Let’s go for a hike, she echoed mournfully.

There, a flicker of something red? I stirred the dust at the base of the rust-streaked boulder. Nothing. I took Sharlee’s hand and led her through the gaps between rocks.

Malik trailed by fifty meters. He limped badly as we walked between scattered boulders and patches of vine. The sun slowly settled on our left. After an hour, I touched the plant tissues to my tongue. They didn’t blister my tongue and I didn’t go into convulsions. So far, so good. I put them away for another hour.

Sharlee and I rested until Malik caught up to us. I asked if he needed to rest. He waved us on. We walked for another hour and a half. By then we were barely creeping. The sun nearly touched the horizon anyway, so I called a halt.

Boulders, car and house-sized, lay jumbled together with stretches of flat ground squeezed between. Yellow plants and brambly vines nestled in canvasses. Tall, jointed stalks in bunches rose to ten meters and sported purple-black balls on their frazzled ends. They might make good spears. I hadn’t seen an animal yet, but with nighttime coming, I expected to see several far too close.

I pointed to a fairly flat boulder the size of a living-room. We’ll sleep up there.

Malik thunked down his staff. My leg hurts too much to go climbing.

I’ll help you up. Unless you want to stay down here with the snakoids and who-knows-what creepy-crawlies. I studied the base of the stone. I couldn’t climb up. There were smaller rocks littered around. I levered up a number of them with the staff and rolled as many as I could against the base.

Malik sighed heavily. Then he wrestled the bigger rocks into place. How could any man be so strong? How could I love this man as Christ commands for sixty days? How could I live by fact instead of feeling, when all I felt toward him were fear and loathing?

We scrambled up, me first, then Sharlee, then Malik, grunting and wincing.

We set up inflated mattresses. Sharlee and Malik ate the food in plastic pouches. I chewed on the inner fiber of the yellow plant. It was sour and bitter, like chewing on foam rubber rolled in mud. I kept staring at the distant mountain range and tried to see a good route through the increasingly rocky desert.

When it became too dark to see and a faint river of stars shimmered in the night sky, I told Malik I would take the first watch. He laughed in derision and rolled over. Sharlee crept into her bag and curled into a tight ball.

I stared at the stars. Not a single recognizable constellation. Where was Earth, and Mom and Dad? Mom, disgusted I had become Christian; Dad, afraid something would happen to his princess. Deep depression entered my soul. The smell of dust and creosote rose from the ground as it released its heat.

I roused myself and started to sing. Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy. When I fall, I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me.

Malik shouted, Shut up, broad! I’m trying to sleep! He made some filthy suggestions and pulled his blanket over his head.

I said nothing, but stared at the glittering stars. They blurred as I surrendered to despair. Who was I trying to kid? At twenty-two, Ker and I had thrown our lives away for what? If there was a God, where was He? What was I struggling for? An illusion, a stupid illusion. But as I glanced over at the stiff form of Sharlee, I realized the alternative was just as illusory. Seven hours later, I was nearly catatonic with hopelessness. I had stayed awake playing the same broken tape of despair over and over again. I crawled over to Malik and shook his shoulder. Your turn at watch, I whispered, my teeth chattering. He did not wake. I shook him harder. It’s your turn to watch.

He moaned as he sucked in the frosty air. Watch what?

Teeth. You’ve got to watch for teeth. But he was asleep again.

I felt a touch on my shoulder. Sharlee pushed me toward my bed. I can’t. Someone needs to stand guard.

Someone needs to stand guard. Sharlee placed my hand on her shoulder.

Since I was going to collapse, I decided to let her try and crawled into my sleeping bag. I looked at the stars wheeling silently one more time and whispered, Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. There was a lot of that going around lately. Yeah.

Sharlee woke me with a gentle tap on my arm. She had already laid out a breakfast from her own stores. Malik still snored. He probably needed to sleep because of the wound in his leg. Sharlee wasn’t about to touch him, so I hobbled over and woke him up. Pink streamers across the pearly sky heralded the rising of the sun while we ate. Sharlee tried to eat some of the purple-black balls with me, but I told her to wait until we saw what it did to me. I would have enjoyed the quiet morning, but Sharlee kept babbling about glaciers and sand and somebody named Marlee; and Malik kept snorting and belching and complaining. He hurt. So did Sharlee and I, but we needed to find water or die of thirst. I didn’t tell them I knew how to make a desert still. They might not have agreed to keep traveling.

I slipped climbing down the rock, but Malik caught me before I plunged two meters into a thorny vine patch. His slow wink as he helped me stand chilled me. We both helped timid Sharlee down.

Walking proved hard for all of us. None of us were used to day-long hikes. I think we got only two kilometers along before we had to stop. My stomach and legs hurt. Malik reeled along, unable to put much weight on his hurt leg. Sharlee muttered non-stop nonsense as she rubbed her back and shoulders.

So we stopped. Malik sat close and covered the receiver on his prisoner collar with his hand and motioned for me to do the same. I knew it was a useless gesture, but I complied to hear what he had to say. He whispered. You remember when you tried to hit me with that rock yesterday?

I clenched the receiver. Was the cause of my stomach’s sudden revulsion Malik or the purple balls I had eaten? If I had wanted to hit you, I would have.

Never mind. When it broke open, I saw something inside. He placed both hands over the receiver. So did I. Gold, he whispered. I saw gold in the rock. His eyes glittered as he stared into mine, hoping I would read his mind, I guess.

I laughed. That’s great. Let’s run back and smelt it down and mint it and run to the nearest store to spend it.

He grabbed my arm. No, listen! If I live sixty days, I’ll be acquitted. Then I can come back as a colonist and make a claim on that land. So could you.

I looked at him. Now he had a reason to try to live. Good. Why should I tell him that unless I recanted, I had a snowball’s chance in the desert of making it to day sixty-one? Good thinking, I whispered back. My stomach quivered. Uh-oh.

Malik smiled and relaxed. He laid a hand on my knee and leaned close. Women like what I do for them.

I-- and I twisted and vomited the purple balls. I nearly vomited my toenails. Ten minutes later, Sharlee gave me some water. Shakily I stood. I could stand. If I could stand, I could walk, so I shouldered my pack and started hiking again.

Malik followed, glowering. I guess he thought I got sick on purpose. Sharlee tried to help me walk, peeping anxiously, keeping me between her and Malik. Six hours later, we set up a shelter against the noon sun and lay exhausted. Sharlee must have overheard our conversation, for after resting a bit, she gathered several rocks and spent the next two hours cracking them open. Finally, when one split, we all saw the glint of gold. Malik glowered some more. Sharlee studied the bright flecks intensely. Then she dropped the rock fragments and laughed, laughed so hard she rolled backward.

I stared fascinated. What was she thinking? Malik grumbled, Useless eater.

As the heat danced off the rocks, we gradually sank into torpor. It wasn’t until the sun nearly touched the horizon that we could gather ourselves up and hike toward the shimmering mountain range. We moved slowly, like insects wading through molasses.

As dusk softened the harsh outlines of the rocks and thorny plants, I tried to find another high spot to camp.

Malik refused to search. There ain’t no animals here. Why should I perch on a boulder so you can have the satisfaction of bossing me around?

I kept searching. Ah, there. It was only about a meter high, but relatively flat and broad. It would be snug, but we would fit. It was getting too dark to look for something else.

As Sharlee scrambled up and took our packs, Malik grunted, Would you look at my leg? It hurts bad.

Oh, sure. I’m sorry. I should have looked at it this morning. Let’s get you up here.

Down here is fine. Malik sat in a clear, dusty spot.

Hey, I’m leery about being on the ground at dusk.

Malik pulled up his pants leg. I slid down, knelt beside his leg, and gingerly unrolled the bandage. Pus dribbled from two red, raised puncture marks. The smell made me gasp.

I dabbed at them with a moistened cloth. Blast the government! A gauze bandage and an alcohol wipe each were supposed to take care of our medical needs.

Malik laughed, grabbed my arms, and jerked me to the ground. I struggled futilely. Stop it!

Simultaneously I heard Sharlee scream and felt an intense sting on my left calf. Malik shoved me away. Sharlee leaped off the rock and clubbed a low, red, white-fringed, undulating rug. The thing curled and flopped. I grabbed my staff and started beating on it, too. It sucked back under a crack between the boulder and soil. I looked at Malik. Blood ran from puckered wounds on his cheek, and stained his clothes at his shoulder, arm, and hip. We grabbed our packs and fled.

A kilometer further, we found a boulder high enough to suit us. Only one person at a time could sleep on its wretched ledge, so we shared watch.

Together, Malik and I looked at the spangled arch of the planetary ring and stars bright against an iron-cold night. We sat, hunched and shivering, while we listened to steady, faint ticking sounds. The calls, perhaps, of more rugs scurrying about on the desert floor?

An hour passed. Malik cleared his throat. I hate this place. This is worse’n prison. If you couldn’t get a woman, there was always a pretty-boy to—

Stop it, I said. If you’re going to talk to me, talk about something else.

Malik spat over the side of the rock. Sure. Let’s talk about garden clubs. Maybe you want to tell jokes?

I shivered. I didn’t want to hear his jokes. And what was there to laugh about on this planet? Come to think on it, I hadn’t laughed in a long time, not since they took Ker. I don’t think you would understand the kinds of things I laugh at.

Try me.

I laugh at babies. And then I cried. We had been planning to have one next year. Ker was gone, frozen in a glacier. Here I sat, desiccating in a desert.

Babies!? Malik spit. What’s funny about babies?

Toothless smiles, slobber, and wibble-wobble hands, I said, sobbing.

Malik edged away, saying, She really is crazy. Of all the luck. I get stuck with two nut cases.

A far-off hoot silenced us and the ticking. After a few heartbeats, the ticking resumed. We did not hear the hoot again.

When my turn to rest came, I lay uncomfortable, staring dumbly at the black sky, miserable in this God-forsaken place. I rubbed the cold metal of the cross on my lapel and felt even colder. Why was I forbidden to kill myself? Why were the nights so long?

CHAPTER TWO

"Then doe no further goe, no further stray,

But here ly downe, and to thy rest betake,

Th‘ill to prevent, that life ensewen may;

For what hath life that may it loved make,

And gives not rather cause it to forsake?

Fears, sicknesse, age, losse, labour, sorrow, strife,

Payne, hunger, cold that makes the hart to quake,

And ever fickle fortune rageth rife;

All which, and thousands mo, do make a loathsome life."

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Before the sun rose, we started again and came out of the tumbled boulders to a plain with warty yellowed plants and palm-sized animals shaped like thick paper triangles that moved like inchworms. Walking was easier and more straightforward, but it became harder to avoid brushing against plants.

We passed a red, velvety plant with flaring trumpets that smelled like rancid butter. Sharlee stumbled and fell into a patch of yellow-brown lichen-like growth, but received no hurt.

The wounds the red rug had given Malik and me puffed up red and hot.

We trudged under a hot sun. A few shredded clouds hovered on the horizon. Too far away to see clearly, parachutes rose and dipped on thermals. Small bugs with multitudinous legs scuttled behind yellow rocks and up wiry stems.

The plains ran straight to the mountains looming like giants. Sweat trickled between my shoulder blades, down my face, behind my knees. The mountains and ground quivered in the dancing waves of heat as we crept across the face of this desert. Sharlee muttered about the Rocky Mountains and granite. Malik panted as he limped. Sharlee added a steady stream of consciousness about gneiss and Charles and quartz and her mamma not liking it and wind-eroded sandstone.

I almost had it tuned out when Malik growled, Why doesn’t she turn it off? He dropped his pack and shouted, Sharlee! Why don’t I turn it off for you?

She repeated, Why don’t I turn it off for you? squeaked, and cowered.

I pushed myself between them. Look, she can’t help it!

He grabbed my throat, thrust his face into mine, and screamed. She’s useless until she’s dead! You want to die with her?

I hung on his massive forearms and choked out, We need each other. I’ll show you how to make a desert still. For water. We’ll have lots of water.

He threw me down. Sharlee scuttled away, crab-like. I lay crumpled, gasping in the heat, greasy, sweat-stiffened hair stuck to my forehead, trying to ignore the pain in my lower back and neck.

Malik stood over me. Get up, woman, and make that still.

I did as he said. When I had finished, he set up shade and let me crawl into it.

When I woke, Malik was snoring on his mattress. The wounded side of his face swelled grotesquely, red and lumpy. The swelling in my leg strained against my pants. Where was Sharlee? Long shadows from the long poles and yellow-lumps and black-lace stretched over the forlorn ground. I found her curled under the meager shadow of a tangle-briar bush. Multi-legged pincers crawled in and out of her pack. Her shallow breathing, her sunken cheeks, her hot, dry forehead, all said heatstroke.

I bathed her face with distilled water and dribbled some into her open mouth. Bit by bit she roused. We staggered back to the shade. I brushed off the pincers and stepped on them, hating how they crunched and then smeared on the dirt.

Malik still snored. As I moved a rock to make another desert still, my hand tightened around it. You know, if I found a big enough rock, I could smash Malik’s head like a cantaloupe. I wouldn’t have to be afraid of him. I picked up the rock rounded by erosion and hefted it. Yeah.

I walked over to him and nudged his shoulder.

He blinked, with one eye nearly swollen shut, confused. "What time is it?’ he croaked.

The sun sets in an hour. There’re no boulders here to camp on. I don’t know if we should gather rocks like these to try to build a wall around us, or if we should dig a trench, or make a fence out of tangle-briar. What do you think we should do?

He glared at me. The red rolls of