The Wind From A Burning Woman by Greg Bear

Author:Greg Bear [Bear, Greg]
Format: epub
Published: 2010-05-16T11:45:46.550000+00:00

Thinner put on his scrappy clothes. �Why do you want to go?�

�I�ve got reasons.�

�Are you a criminal in Ibreem?�

Jeshua shook his head. �I�m sick,� he said. �Nothing contagious. But I was told a city might cure me, if I could find a way in.�

�I�ve met your kind before,� Thinner said. �But they�ve never made it. A few years ago Winston sent a whole pilgrimage of sick and wounded to a city. Bristled its barbs like a fighting cat. No mercy there, you can believe.�

�But you have a way, now.�

�Okay,� Thinner said. �We can go back. It�s on the other side of Arat. You�ve got me a little curious now. And besides, I think I might like you. You look like you should be dumb as a creeper, but you�re smart. Sharp. And besides, you�ve still got that club. Are you desperate enough to kill?�

Jeshua thought about that for a moment, then shook his head.

�It�s almost dark,� Thinner said. �Let�s camp and start in the morning.�

In the far valley at the middle of Arat, the Mesa Canaan city�now probably to be called the Arat city�was warm and sunset-pretty, like a diadem. Jeshua made a bed from the reeds and watched Thinner as he hollowed out the ground and made his own nest. Jeshua slept lightly that evening and came awake with dawn. He opened his eyes to a small insect on his chest, inquiring its way with finger-long antennae. He flicked it off and cleared his throat.

Thinner jack-in-the-boxed from his nest, rubbed his eyes and stood.

�I�m amazed,� he said. �You didn�t cut my throat.�

�Wouldn�t do me any good.�

�Work like this rubs down a man�s trust.�

Jeshua returned to the river and soaked himself again, pouring the chill water on his face and back in double hand-loads. The pressure in his groin was lighter this morning than most, but it still made him grit his teeth. He wanted to roll in the reeds and groan, rut the earth, but it would do him no good. Only the impulse existed.

They agreed on which pass to take through the Arat peaks and set out.

Jeshua had spent most of his life within sight of the villages of the Expolis Ibreem and found himself increasingly nervous the farther he hiked. They crawled up the slope, and Thinner�s statement about having tough soles proved itself. He walked barefoot over all manner of jagged rocks without complaining.

At the crest of a ridge, Jeshua looked back and saw the plain of reeds and the jungle beyond. With some squinting and hand-shading, he could make out the major clusters of huts in two villages and the Temple Josiah on Mount Miriam. All else was hidden.

In two days they crossed Arat and a rilled terrain of foothills beyond. They walked through fields of wild oats. �This used to be called Agripolis,� Thinner said. �If you dig deep enough here, you�ll come across irrigation systems, automatic fertilizing machines, harvesters, storage bins�the whole works. It�s all useless now. For nine hundred years it wouldn�t let any human cross these fields.

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