EVERYTHING ABOUT THE FUTURE had brought difficulty to Levi. The grimy air was bad for him. And he seemed not to respond well to the process of time in Dustland. Time took longer in the future. Waiting, sitting, seemed prolonged. The chase of Miacis to capture Thomas was taking so much more time than it should have. Justice sensed that time was stretched, extended and slowed.
Maybe Levi is bothered so much because all of himself that was needed didn’t make the Crossover to here, she thought.
She recalled Levi saying once, “I won’t live long. I’m glad.”
She would never forgive herself if something so unthinkable happened. But she knew it was Thomas who caused Levi the most suffering.
Giving Levi awful sights to see by magic and making him sick with it. For years!
But that was in the past. Now Thomas insisted he hadn’t bothered his brother with magic since they had become the unit and time-traveled to the future.
“I hate coming here,” Thomas had told her darkly. “But I wouldn’t hurt him over it.” And he had sworn he wouldn’t harm Levi ever again.
She had believed him.
He knows we have to get Levi home, she thought. And knows none of us can return unless we’re the unit. So it’s a battle of wits and nerves!
Justice moved around so that she could better watch Levi. His lips had turned a greenish color. Lack of oxygen might’ve affected Thomas’ mind as well, causing him to run out into the emptiness of Dustland.
Levi was lying on his back with his eyes closed. He seemed relaxed. But had his skin turned gray, or was the washed-out color caused by the dust covering everything?
“What skin?” Justice thought, and swiftly willed herself away from the question.
Suddenly a related one: When I’m back home, is Dustland here?
Justice, scratching at her arm, looked down, seeing her arm and hand. They were there. She saw them. And knew they couldn’t be there.
The unit can be injured. Can it? Can any of us be killed?
She recalled Miacis’ attack when they first encountered the animal.
I didn’t use anything on her, Justice thought, still she went right through me and the others. Had Thomas become strong enough to cause them to melt away when Miacis hit them?
I doubt that. What am I doing? We’re not even here! I mean, it just looks like we’re here. We’re here but not completely here. Oh, it’ll drive me crazy if I don’t stop thinking about it.
“Accept what you see, for now,” she told herself. “But keep a good watch and be on your guard.”
Her final pep-talk before finding something else to concentrate on.
Four ordinary worlma creatures were wriggling along in the dust together. They looked like human fingers stripped of the nails. From a distance, they had tiny faces that looked pleasant. Up close, the faces were small indentations. It was all true. Of the four, one was a dry husk. It moved and looked exactly the same as the others.
She shivered, keeping her eyes on them. She felt warm and cold at the same time. With no direct sunlight ever, what passed for Dustland day was bewilderingly hot. She and the others felt wringing wet most of the time, and bothered by thirst. Gritty dust seeped into their clothing and stuck to their skin.
What skin?
Levi had string-like lesions that spread over his neck and face. Justice had watched them form and disappear, then form again the whole time he’d been sleeping. There were worlmas near him, but Justice wouldn’t let them touch him.
Thomas is dead right about this place, she thought. It’s all wrong. Nothing makes any sense.
With a sharply focused flick of her thinking, she removed worlmas close to Levi. And floated them out over the dust, until the area around the cliff and pool was clear of them. In a quiver, like fingers a-tremble, they burrowed under the dust and disappeared.
Justice brushed Levi’s thoughts, very lightly, so as not to disturb him.
Try to get used to things, gently she traced in his sleep. Hold on. I’m sure nothing will harm you. She felt a coolness from him, so empty.
I never meant to get you hurt, Levi. You know I’m sorry that Thomas ran off. How could you know, you’ve been out all this time! Oh, I’m to blame for everything. But we mustn’t stop coming here.
Levi was still within.
She was so grateful to have him and Dorian with her. Both had agreed to become part of the unit so that all of them might enter the future. Unlike Thomas, they never fought against her.
She stared at Levi, marveling at his clothing. The bright woven tunic he wore had dyes that changed color tones. Although muted in Dustland’s dull light, the colors wavered and changed hues.
When the unit entered the Crossover between times, it at some point encountered a severe turbulence. The unit hurtled through it and into the future without a stitch of clothing. Thomas saved them embarrassment by fabricating the clothes they wore. He invented wardrobes and modified them to fit the conditions of Dustland, and to suit his own whim. Yet in Dustland their made-up clothing took on real qualities. The hooded garments kept the dust off them and saved their skin from chafing with the grit.
Justice reached down, and touched her brown sandals. They didn’t feel exactly like the material of shoes at home in the past. But her hand didn’t go straight through them as they should have with an illusion.
The feel of them might be an illusion, too, she thought. But she wasn’t sure. Not yet.
When the four of them returned to the present, each had on his or her proper clothing. Thomas’ magic clothing would no longer be. They’d spent hours at their favorite spot along the Quinella River trying to understand it all. Thomas seemed as confused as the rest of them; yet he might have been keeping from them something he’d discovered.
Now in Dustland the ankle-length robe Justice wore was a woven beige material, very soft and comfortable. A hood fastened beneath the collar. But the robe didn’t sparkle and change colors as did the tunics the boys wore. However, their trousers were the same material as her robe.
Thomas had given himself thick-soled running shoes. Made of a stretch nylon, they would massage away soreness over a long run.
She had noticed his shoes were different from the sandals the rest of them wore, but had sensed nothing wrong. Thomas’ usual hostile swagger had fooled her into thinking everything was all right.
I never thought about the shoes being really real in the first place, she thought. But the shoes are as real as this robe I’m wearing, I guess.
Her mind commenced slipping from her again. She felt slightly sick to her stomach. Tried for something solid to hold on to.
Levi. He was slimmer in the tunic. Carefully, Justice entered his mind, touching lightly and not probing at all. She met the cool emptiness in which swirled senseless fragments. She summoned Dorian. And together, very lightly, they scanned the sense and substance of Levi’s inner space. Sounds of his mind were harsh.
Do you think Thomas tearing away out of the unit did this? Justice traced to Dorian.
Maybe that, with the Crossover, he traced back. They both sensed segments of more than one time.
Justice took hold. Levi. Let yourself go. Don’t think about anything. Relax.
I. Where … who? Thomas. Get.
Levi, Thomas ran off, she traced. But don’t you worry about a thing. Miacis is after him and will bring him back. Then we can go home!
She and Dorian formed a wedge of energy and forced time segments back into their proper moments.
Don’t try to talk, Justice traced. Don’t move. Don’t look around. Keep your eyes closed. It’s Dustland.
The cool emptiness did not clear. It worried Justice.
“It’s the Crossover, more than anything else,” Dorian told her. They released their telepathy and combined sensory from Levi and from one another. Wearily, Justice dropped her head on her arms.
Thoughts closing in on her. Miacis saying, “Why, yes, Master, there are cities in Dustland.” Miacis too eager to please. Then she’d asked Justice the meaning of the word city. And later admitted there were no cities in Dustland. She’d become charmed by the sound of the word.
Will I know when Miacis is lying to me? Not when she doesn’t know.
Her mind retreated from her. I can’t fetch Thomas back, she thought. I’ve tried, but I can’t will him by blanketing him with my sensory. Now he’s too far away.
To keep following Thomas’ escape, she first had to contact Miacis. Miacis might let her tap in on the trace she had on Thomas. Or maybe she wouldn’t. There were times when Miacis pretended that the contact from Justice had never been made.
I don’t like having her out there chasing Thomas, she thought. But she won’t harm him. She’s a special kind of animal. Not really alien at all.
Concerned, Dorian kept his eye on Justice. He thought to send her sensory of peace and quiet repose suggested to him by his memories of home. He missed his mother, the seer, who had uncovered the power of Thomas and Levi, as well as that of Justice. He missed the Quinella lands they all loved so much. That ancient place, with its scents of life and decay; the insects and snakes and great shade trees. These he brought visions of now to calm Justice’s fears.
Justice brushed the sensory aside before it could take effect. With a blink of an eye, she denied any need of Dorian’s concern.
But home. Home, she thought. Some part of us is under the buckeye tree at home. Our hands still joined back there. They have to be joined, have to stay joined, for us to make the Crossover. What do we look like there, with part of us here? When Thomas ran away here, did he let go with his hands and break the joining under the tree?
Murmuring, “He never wanted to come here. And I made him. Did I do wrong?”
Suddenly, raising her voice, “But to run out there! Even if it is to get back at me! Knowing his own brother …”
Dorian touched her with his healer’s sympathy. And drew off some of her worry. Dorian, always unkempt at home, ragged and full of energy. Comical. Here he was calmer and appeared older. Ever alert to Justice’s slightest wish, he was also on guard to the outer world. His hands fidgeted at his collar, pulling the hood over his head.
Justice watched him and softly laughed. “You’re already hidden, Healer,” she told him. “Thomas saw to that with the cliff. Or do you want to have magic within magic?”
He shook his head at her, raising a thumb to his lips. He traced, Best to keep thoughts quiet now. Some one of them is coming.
Justice sucked in her breath, holding herself tightly in. Someone nearly out of sight of her awareness. She had been so deep, traveling in her mind, she had missed the whole thing. Someone. Coming closer.
Human! A vivid second sight: On our trail? she traced. Her tracing trembled at the thought that someone had been trailing the unit.
It’s the same one since yesterday, Dorian traced back. The Terrij of the Slakers.
Since when? The … what? Why wasn’t I made aware?
She sensed Dorian’s growing uneasiness. She, who held the Watcher—why would he or anyone need to make her aware?
She sensed it when Dorian arranged shields around his thinking, to save her embarrassment.
Dorian, calmly she traced, if my power is less, we’ll have to live with it.
He let the shields evaporate. He knew she could penetrate them at will—could she still?
Justice had had no idea that anything was tracking them. But the possibility that her gifts were altered in the future served to calm her. Swiftly her mind toughened of itself. She grew sharply more alert.
“I flat out missed it,” she told Dorian. “It won’t happen again.”
He hissed thinly at her through his teeth. Speak through the mind. Warning her: Mom always did say the best thing about you was how you almost never missed the details.
That’s it, she traced. I’ve had so much to think about, to worry from, I let myself get too much within.
She let herself loose then. Knowledge of the being of Dustland filtered through her exceptional mind, as from the air.
Terrij. Much like a scout. A Terry of the Slakers. A Jam people. Justice sought meaning behind these strange words. The Watcher came into her insight, lighting her eyes. Time ebbing and flowing on a tide of people. Justice knew the Slakers:
Closed in on kelms of hunting parties. Like all creatures of Dustland, they slept covered with dust. But they lived in the open in kelms of fifty or sixty. They bedded in groups, wrapped in one another’s wings. When danger threatened, groups came to the rescue by signal from a threatened kelm. Signals were carried from one kelm to the next.
They were hunters. But not always. They were killers. In the past they had been solely scavengers, living off the kill of others. Massing near a kill, they would signal until a neighboring kelm had come in contact. They called out even when the food was barely enough to feed one kelm. An ugly fight for food would take place between the kelms. Many would die. It took centuries for surviving Slakers to think of using food for themselves.
Justice watched the vision with growing revulsion. Slakers began eating while a kill still bled. They lapped the blood until the tissue was dry as toast, much as Miacis did. But as soon as a prey bled, they began eating it, nibbling away.
The Watcher observed: Place no blame.
From the beginning, Slakers were desperate for water. They massed at kills because of the need for moisture.
Again and again the vision showed that at first no Slaker would kill. But the instinct for peace went awry with the passage of time. It came to one of them, and then to more of them, that they could slow a prey down. They could move in; and there were enough of them to exhaust it by keeping it moving until it was too tired to defend itself.
Who could say when a Slaker had started tormenting a creature for the first time?
Justice couldn’t find that point in time. It hadn’t been there in the purpose of Slakers. Then it had been given to them.
She erased the thought at once. She watched the vision.
Slakers discovered that hard blows could maim a creature, crippling it so it could not move swiftly. The next step came on the heels of the first. Killing prey came to them easily. Slakers might scavenge or they might kill. There was no direct cause for their behavior one way or the other. They did what they did when they felt like doing it.
Not so nice, Justice thought. She revealed all she had learned to Dorian. He drew the hood tighter about his face.
You want to see for yourself? she traced to him.
No.
I think you should, she traced.
Are you telling me to?
I think I must be, she traced.
Why don’t you just say you’re commanding me the way you command Miacis?
I’m not commanding you. Why are you angry all of a sudden?
I’m not angry, he traced. I just don’t want to see.
You’ve never not wanted to see before. Dorian, what’s wrong?
Nothing’s wrong. I don’t like this place. Justice, I’m … I’m afraid something’s going to happen.
To me? When he didn’t answer, she smiled. Don’t worry, Healer. Something’s going to happen, all right, but I don’t think it’ll hurt me. At least … But she broke off. The Slaker vision would not wait. It overwhelmed other thoughts. Dorian couldn’t help seeing.
Premonition! traced Justice.
Scattered in groups, Slakers knew by premonition of kills, of preys, of strangers near. Knowledge came to a few individuals scattered across the dustscape. And these had foreknowledge of events, apparently through the skin, with no sighted use of the mind.
A special individual of a kelm would shudder. It would communicate with another special one by impulses from its skin. The other special one would be in its own kelm and would shudder as the signal hit it. In this way, kelms would come together at a precise, foreknown place.
Really strange! Justice traced to Dorian.
Slakers had five extremities—two arms and three legs. The third leg was positioned at the rear of the body. It was a powerful and flexible appendage, used to fling the Slaker off the ground in an extremely high lift.
The female Slakers above the age of twelve were able to fly. Their arms were forelimbs of paired organs, They had lifting surfaces formed of membranous skin connecting the long, modified digits of their hands.
The male Slakers could not or would not fly, although they had forelimbs identical to, if not stronger than, the forelimbs of the females. They didn’t use the third limb or leg in the same way as the females, for lift-off. The male third leg was a vicious weapon, used for whacking or kicking a prey. The weapon was unleashed like a fist, with the force of a half-ton weight.
Pretty awful dudes, traced Justice.
Yeah, and I’m not sure the women are much better, either, traced Dorian.
Male Slakers also used the third leg as a place to sit, to rest on, during a long search for food. Females used it this way occasionally. For the males, the membranous skin, unused for flight, served as pouches to store what was left of blood and meat from a kill after they themselves had eaten their fill. They shared the leftover food with the females. They disliked sharing, and they shared only after threats from the females. Sometime in the distant future, males more than likely would not share. Females would then die out; and so, too, the species.
Maybe the females who learned to fly could learn to do more than threaten. Why don’t they try something else? Justice traced, unsure of what she meant by that.
There was no reply from Dorian.
Now they could see the Slaker, the Terrij, who had followed them. It came toward them from the far side of Thomas’ cliff. It came up from behind them. In their sighted way, they could see it come warily on.
The creature had to feel their presence; yet it was clear that it couldn’t actually see them. It perceived Thomas’ cliff with the fallen rocks and showed a disturbance akin to astonishment. It slowed down, then stopped completely. After a paralyzed pause, in which its breathing was a continuous, churning groan, it came cautiously forward.
The Slaker moved in an uncertain pattern, with the oddest rhythm Justice had ever seen. It leaned back on its third leg. Without appearing to have moved, it was instantly in a place forward from where it had just been. An incredible change of place.
I missed something, Justice thought.
But as the Terrij came on, Justice knew that the sequence, the movement itself, had been left out. The Terrij would be in one place, lean on the leg and would be closer.
It had come this way before, but had never encountered a cliff. Staring at the rock, its eyes were glittering wild. It moved its legs as if climbing. It raised winged arms to grab hold of the rocks. Its robe fell open. Justice saw that the Terrij was a female; sensed that she would change in the last stage of maturity.
Nambnua was one of her names. Meaning wifeman stalker. The Terrij was best called Bambnua—Dustwalker—which was both a title and a name.
Suddenly, everything happened too fast, in flashes before Justice’s and Dorian’s unaccustomed eyes.
The Bambnua moved in incredible bursts of, being in one place, then in another. She discovered the water pool. She beat her chest, flapping her wings. She drank deeply from the pool. Her skin broke out in welts as she began signaling her kelm.
She was back at the cliff, trying to climb, and did not uncover Justice and Dorian. Yet she knew something, felt something there. She whirled around and around, trying to find them. She found Levi. She could have been a statue standing there, she was that still. Not a muscle moved for at least ten minutes. They watched her, not daring to think. Without any warning, she was at Levi’s side. A rush of air from her mouth seemed to slide down the dust. It fell in whispers around her feet. Sounds and breaks, language, unlike anything they had ever heard.
The Terrij, Bambnua, reached for Levi with the finger-like digits at the end of winged forearms before Justice could think what to do. The hands, the winged arms went right through him.
Time hung over them in the dust. Justice and Dorian were stunned. Before their eyes, the form of Levi vanished. And the Terrij hawked a keening sound.