“No,” Sharrow said, shaking her head (and felt dizzy when she did that, and stumbled on a blackened branch crusted with white). “No, I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s what’s going to happen to this guy, not at all.”
Zefla looked at Sharrow as they walked, an expression of concern on her face. “You all right?” she asked.
“Hungry!” Sharrow laughed. She nodded to herself, breathing deeply in the chill air and staring up at the blue expanse above. “How about you?”
“Never better,” Zefla said, scratching through her gathered-up hair to her itchy scalp. “Could use a shower, though.” She took another look at Sharrow as she stumbled again. “Maybe we’ll take another rest soon.”
“Yes,” Sharrow said, shaking her head briefly as though trying to clear it. “Why not?”
They tramped amongst the fresh young trees and the burned dead.
Sharrow and Zefla stopped in a small clearing near the shore to eat the last of their food, then waited for Miz and Dloan to rejoin them. Sharrow continued to deny there was anything wrong with her, then fell fast asleep, propped against a tree trunk. Zefla was worried; she thought Sharrow looked ill. Her grey, drawn face twitched as Zefla watched, and her lips worked.
Zefla looked up at the mountain slopes. She was surprised they hadn’t heard any shots. She left Sharrow to sleep and went down to the shingle beach. She left her little back-pack there, so that Miz and Dloan wouldn’t walk past them. Then she went back to sit with Sharrow.
The men arrived an hour later. They were both limping; Dloan from the bullet wound he’d received the night Cenuij had died, Miz from the combination of hard boots and soft feet.
They were empty-handed. Zefla thought they had brought something, but it was only the back-pack she’d left on the shingle. They had shot at a few birds with their laser pistols and killed one, but it had been crawling with parasites when they’d picked it up and they hadn’t thought it was worth eating. They still hadn’t seen any large animals, though they had heard impressive bellowing noises from still further upslope.
“Fish,” Miz said, as he and Dloan tore into the last of their foodslabs and Sharrow looked sleepily at them, frowning and rubbing her left glove. “We’ll do some fishing.” He grinned at the others. “Fish; we’ll eat fish tonight.” He patted the pocket of his fancy hunting jacket that held the fishing gear.
They heard what sounded like gunfire just as they were setting off again; a distance-dulled crackle that seemed to come from further down the fjord in the direction they were heading.
They ran to the shore and stood there, gazing down the fjord.
“Shit,” Miz said. “Wonder what that means?”
Nobody suggested anything.
They had been walking for about an hour when they saw Feril jogging towards them through the trees.
“Welcome back,” Zefla said. Sharrow just stood there, smiling at the android.
“Thank you,” Feril said. It still had the dials and the laser they had given it; it presented both to Zefla.
“So?” Miz asked it.
“I have been to the end of the fjord,” the android began.
“Let’s walk and listen at the same time, eh?” Zefla said.
They hiked on; Feril walked backwards in front of them without once putting a foot wrong, which was an unsettling but also rather impressive sight.
“The ground between here and the end of the fjord,” it told them, “is similar to that you have already traversed. There are two sizeable streams to be crossed, one of which has a fallen tree across it and so is quite easy, the second of which is more difficult and has to be waded. There is a place where one must either cross a very exposed beach only a kilometre or so from a point on the far side, or make a four or five kilometre detour round some cliffs.”
“What did you do?” Zefla asked.
“On my outward journey,” Feril told her. “I crossed the beach without incident; on my return I again started to cross the beach. But then I was fired upon.” Its upper body did a quarter turn to show a bullet graze on one shoulder. It kept on walking. “I returned fire with the laser pistol but then decided that my position was too exposed, and entered the water. I completed that part of the journey crawling along just under the ford’s surface.”
Zefla smiled. Miz shook his head. Dloan looked vaguely impressed. Sharrow just blinked and said, “Hmm.”
“Where is this beach?” Dloan asked.
“About ten kilometres from here.”
Dloan nodded. “We heard the gunfire.”
“So they’re that much further ahead?” Zefla said.
“I believe only a sniper has been left on the point opposite the beach,” Feril said. “I think I saw the main body of the Solipsists earlier, about another three kilometres further down the fjord, ferrying themselves across the mouth of a side-fjord in an inflatable boat. I attempted to fire on the boat, but the range was approximately four kilometres and I was not able to observe any effect.”
Dloan shook his head understandingly.
“So,” Miz said, “what have we got to look forward to apart from finding the Solipsists there first?”
“There are no more major obstacles after the beach I mentioned, though there is a small hill to be climbed, avoiding a cliff which is sheer to the water. The end of the fjord has many small islands and rocks, starting from about ten kilometres or so from its head; I believe these are why the flying boat did not simply land immediately. The end of the fjord is quite sudden; there is no significant narrowing, just the islands and then an almost straight length of shore in front of a marshy plain, which looks as though it is the result of land reclamation.
“The Gun is, I believe, in a stone tower. The tower is approximately fifteen metres high and seven metres in diameter and topped with a hemispherical black dome of indeterminate substance. It stands in the centre of a stone square about fifty metres to a side; the square has a circular wall half a metre high built upon it which just touches the mid-point of each edge of the square, and a metre-high stone post at each corner. A small river delta forms the far boundary of the square; on this side there is a field of tall rushes.
“The stone tower is surrounded by numerous human bodies, pieces of equipment and debris; these are mostly within the circular stone wall. From the state of decay involved, I would estimate that some of the bodies and pieces of debris have been there for many decades. The most recent bodies in the vicinity appear to be those of two young men I took to be Solipsists by their uniforms. Both bodies were attached to parachutes; one lay against the inside of the circular wall, his parachute snagged on a small tree just outside the square; the other parachutist appeared to have been dragged for some distance through the rushes before being stopped by rocks, and I was able to determine that he had been killed by some form of laser device which had removed his head. It had also left a hole in his chest and another in his groin, consistent with a sixty-millimetre beam. I deduced that the dome on top of the tower housed such a device, perhaps along with the concomitant detection and tracking equipment it would require.”
“Amazing deduction,” muttered Miz. He glanced at Sharrow but she didn’t seem to have heard.
“I noticed,” Feril continued, “that the few birds which overflew the area kept well away from the tower, though there were avian bodies of various species distributed around it, along with those of numerous small animals. Insects appeared to be tolerated. I conducted a brief experiment with pieces of wood, and found that anything moving within twenty-five metres of the centre of the tower with a frontal area greater than approximately two square centimetres will be attacked by the tower’s defences. I believe this to be a powerful X-ray laser, though the beam used on the pieces of wood I threw into this zone was considerably smaller than those which had killed the two Solipsist parachutists. I also noticed that when the dead parachutist resting against the inside of the wall moved-when his parachute was caught by a gust of wind-the beam that hit him was narrow and attenuated, and one of several dozen or so which had seemingly hit him after his death while he was presumably in the same state of morbid mobility.”