The wind's twelve quarters - vol 2 by Ursula K. Le Guin Read Free Book Online

the gun untouched. But her hand kept
coming back up to it. There was no sound at all, as soon as they were a few
meters away from the slow, brown river, and the light was dim. Great boles
stood well apart, almost regularly, almost alike; they were soft-skinned, some
appearing smooth and others spongy, grey or greenish-brown or brown, twined
with cable-like creepers and festooned with epiphytes, extending rigid,
entangled armfuls of big, saucer-shaped, dark leaves that formed a roof-layer
twenty to thirty meters thick. The ground underfoot was springy as a mattress,
every inch of it knotted with roots and peppered with small, fleshy-leaved
growths.
    'Here's
his tent,' Tomiko said, cowed at the sound of her voice in that huge community
of the voiceless. In the tent was Osden's sleeping bag, a couple of books, a
box of rations. We should be calling, shouting for him, she thought, but did
not even suggest it; nor did Harfex. They circled out from the tent, careful to
keep each other in sight through the thick-standing presences, the crowding
gloom. She stumbled over Osden's body, not thirty meters from the tent, led to
it by the whitish gleam of a dropped notebook. He lay face down between two
huge-rooted trees. His head and hands were covered with blood, some dried, some
still oozing red.
    Harfex
appeared beside her, his pale Hainish complexion quite green in the dusk.
'Dead?'
    'No.
He's been struck. Beaten. From behind.' Tomiko's fingers felt over the bloody
skull and temples and nape. 'A weapon or a tool... I don't find a fracture.'
    As
she turned Osden's body over so they could lift him, his eyes opened. She was
holding him, bending close to his face.
    His
pale lips writhed. A deathly fear came into her. She screamed aloud two or
three times and tried to run away, shambling and stumbling into the terrible
dusk. Harfex caught her, and at his touch and the sound of his voice, her panic
decreased. 'What is it? What is it?' he was saying.
    'I
don't know,' she sobbed. Her heartbeat still shook her, and she could not see
clearly. 'The fear - the ... I panicked. When I saw his eyes.'
    'We're
both nervous. I don't understand this—'
    'I'm
all right now, come on, we've got to get him under care.'
    Both
working with senseless haste, they lugged Osden to the riverside and hauled him
up on a rope under his armpits; he dangled like a sack, twisting a little over
the glutinous dark sea of leaves. They pulled him into the helijet and took
off. Within a minute they were over open prairie. Tomiko locked onto the homing
beam. She drew a deep breath, and her eyes met Harfex's.
    'I
was so terrified I almost fainted. I have never done that.'
    'I
was ... unreasonably frightened also,' said the Hainishman, and indeed he
looked aged and shaken. 'Not so badly as you. But as unreasonably.'
    'It
was when I was in contact with him, holding him. He seemed to be conscious for
a moment.'
    'Empathy?
... I hope he can tell us what attacked him.'
    Osden,
like a broken dummy covered with blood and mud, half lay as they had bundled
him into the rear seats in their frantic urgency to get out of the forest.
    More
panic met their arrival at base. The ineffective brutality of the assault was
sinister and bewildering. Since Harfex stubbornly denied any possibility of
animal life they began speculating about sentient plants, vegetable monsters,
psychic Projections. Jenny Chong's latent phobia reasserted itself and she
could talk about nothing except the Dark Egos which followed people around
behind their backs. She and O lleroo Porlock had
been summoned back to base; and nobody was much inclined to go outside.
    Osden
had lost a good deal of blood during the three or four hours he had lain alone,
and concussion and severe contusions had put him in shock and semi-coma. As he
came out of this and began running a low fever he called several times for
'Doctor', in a plaintive voice: 'Doctor Hammergeld ...' When he regained full
consciousness, two of those long days later,