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Page 58.

When he awoke, his aches had subsided a bit, though the pain in his right shoulder was steadily worsening. It cost him effort to rise, to stoop, to turn.

He feasted on the last of the little packets given him by Leeree. The food tasted like dried flowers and fruits, and he savored it to the last sweet, summery mouthful. He wrapped Leeree’s sling around his shoulders to warm and restrain his aching shoulder. He gripped his weapons in his other hand and headed on. He knew now the first thing he must do.

He found the watering hole, near the city wall, that he’d been looking for. It was near the place he and Maryan had found the first dead LooWoo! and from which he had vainly set out to explore the transit terminal. All that seemed like a lost time now, long ago like all else in this ancient place.

So much time here. He made his preparations intently, with great focus, though his mind kept wandering off on tangents. So much time stored in this place, in this earth, up and down the great cylinder’s inner surfaces. So much had happened here, and no record of any of it, save the disconnected ramblings of Vectors and Nectars, Ectors and Lectors. Incomplete, all of it. Useless. Need a central vision, a picture, a plan, a coherent terminal. Need a master, a Rector.

Leaving his spear lying on the ground, and his quiver to the other side, he prepared the bow and its arrow that meant anything. Not the crude one made by Nizin but one of the fine ones from the village. He prepared the scene of his final drama as best he could and then withdrew into the low hills just beyond. There, under a canopy of leaves and branches, he uttered the pride-call, the war-whoop, the triumphant caw of the big black crow.

Silence. Just the wind in the leaves.

He repeated his challenge to the world.

Silence. Just the insects on the water surface.

Breathing hard, grasping his painfully throbbing shoulder with his left hand, he raised his face to the moon like a dying crow or a fatally wounded wolf from some long-ago ice age and howled.

He heard the snap of a twig, the grunt of curiosity, the yelp of triumph, and knew who was coming down the trail to the watering hole.

He could hear the gleeful hiss of air through Nizin’s sharp incisor teeth. He raised himself up, pushing leaves and twigs away, to see the glint of victory in the other’s eyes as he hovered over Alex’s supposed body just fifty feet away in a tangle of dark brush, under the sling cloth.

Nizin rubbed his stomach with both hands and groaned hungrily: “Siiiirrrk!”

Then he bent over to reach out and remove the sling. As he did so, he stepped on the branch Alex had carefully laid across the path. Even as the sling came away, the bow that sat in its hollow, propped apart by a branch between bow and string, jerked.

Alex heard the tight twang noise and the ripping sound as a fine stone tip ripped into Nizin’s torso.

Alex rose and cried out in triumph. “Yesss!”

Nizin looked up, puzzled, even as he held the wound near his heart and sagged. All triumph was gone in Nizin’s face, replaced by shock and realization. He held the arrow that was killing him with both hands but did not have the strength or leverage to pull it out. Bright scarlet blood poured down the soft scales on his chest and belly.

“Die!” Alex roared, raising his well arm while the other dangled bloody at his side. “Look at me! Die like you made so many die!”

Nizin struck the ground hard, looking up one more time before closing his eyes.

Alex picked up a large round stone, staggered down to the body, and smashed Nizin’s head so that gore and gray matter flecked the gravel.

Then Alex turned and headed into the woods away from the great wall. He had one last stop to make before he closed his eyes.

As he staggered along, bouncing from tree to tree, Alex laughed. “This place,” he muttered out loud, “this crazy place. This whole crazy world. Rigged, all of it!”

He fell down several times. Each time, he hauled himself back on his feet and staggered on. The wound in his shoulder wasn’t bleeding copiously, but it was infected. He could smell it, and he knew in a day or two, if he were still alive, the stench would be overwhelming. At this point, he felt the heat, the throbbing, the edema, the pain. He felt his arm getting numb, and he held it with his left hand to keep it from swinging, because every limp motion caused the shoulder joint to rotate with excruciating pain. But the pain was his salvation, in a way, because it kept him awake. It kept him moving.

“This whole place is alive,” he said. “Yes, you!” he shouted to the clouds, to the wall behind him, to the crazy quilt of glass and sap and spider webbing far off. “I know what you are doing!” he shouted to the entire L5 station. “You are alive, aren’t you? The forest is your lungs and the rivers are your blood. When you are cut, you heal yourself by sending the blankets flying. You coagulate, you great monster!”

So he rambled, crawling up hills and falling, sliding, rolling down hills. He splashed through ponds and paddled through lakes.

He let a big artery river transport him, half consciously, over tiny toy rapids where rounded rocks tickled his back, until he was back in deeper water and bobbing along. Fish came to nibble at his skin and make him laugh. Fish came to suck at his wounds and dart away carrying bits and pieces of him trailing blood and gore. He laughed uproariously at the beauty of it. Tiny krill crept into his infected cuts and pockets and sockets, feeding hungrily on the pus and sickness there. Alex laughed until he had no more strength to laugh. He lay on his back in the water, spinning while birds and clouds wheeled overhead and moonlight blazed over him with searing brightness. Just to snub fate, he said loudly: “Thank you.” He laughed. “Thank you. Thanks for everything. It’s been a great party. I loved every minute of it, speaking of course for myself and my late partner Maryan who cannot be here with us for these ceremonies today.” He felt himself losing consciousness as his head tipped back. For some interminable time, he kept passing out and waking again. Each time he woke, he dragged himself another few hundred feet. Sometimes the river picked him up and carried him bobbing down its moonlight-dappled course. Somehow, he navigated the last mile or so, pulling himself along as best he could. His head hung down weakly, but each time it lolled from side to side, he saw how close he was to that beach of starlight on which he and his beloved Maryan had stood, where the heat of the sunlight boiled the rocks shooting up from the moon and melted them so that the station could grow, by inches per century.

It was bright daylight, and he could smell the distant cooking fires of LooWoo! but he was beyond wanting any of that. His body was shutting down already, and the going was tougher by the minute. He staggered, a foot at a time, falling to his knees, getting up, falling to his knees again, crawling. He pulled himself forward by his fingertips. He shed his sandals and pushed against the sand with his toes. His chin made a furrow in the damp sand as the going got easier and he was going downhill to the water. Crawling on, he felt swells of water under his chin. Coolness enveloped his chest, soothed his shoulder, welcomed his torso and his legs. He was weightless now, swimming, paddling feebly. The current carried him in slow circles toward the middle of the lake where she lay. The wind brushed his back with cool fingers. He gathered his last strength and jackknifed, going down head-first through bright yellow-green bubbles, through sleepily swaying underwater grasses and leaves, toward that silvery glowing mound of sand and silt.

Her skull looked toward him with large calm eyes. Her fingers beckoned with bony joints. Her hips were under the sand, but open and waiting for the final union. He was exhausted and could not summon another bit of energy. Not even to float to the surface. Reaching down with both arms, he opened his mouth and breathed in a huge lungful of water. He felt the coolness enter his chest, and he sensed that his heart beat one, two, three more beats, each slower than the previous, each spaced farther apart, and then stopped.

That made a final soothing darkness rush up through his brain in place of the warm blood of life.

At the same time, he felt the sand opening up to swallow him, and he shot down among her bones, among the darting krill, among the drifting motes, into the beauty of her smile.