Conflation

Part 15 —Trust

Tuesday, 13 October 2009 22:01

"I knew I could count on you."

Nasim shook his head and said something indecipherable. Well, almost indecipherable.

"Say that again."

Another reply, this time in the form of a question.

Vanya stopped in his tracks, leaning his hands on his knees in an attempt to catch his breath, his chest heaving with the effort. The ambient temperature had increased steadily as they walked, or at least it seemed that way. Nasim hadn't shown any signs of feeling the heat, but then there were a lot of things about Nasim that didn't make a whole lot of sense. Vanya himself had long since passed the point of overheating: he felt dizzy and sick, and if he moved his head too fast he saw coloured spots dancing before his eyes. Not a good sign. On the other hand, he was almost certain he'd heard Nasim pronounce his name clearly, and that was something to be pleased about.

"Whatever it was you just said, say it again."

His companion came to a halt a metre or so away, then turned back with an almost imperceptible sigh. He repeated himself, enunciating each word slowly.

"I knew it!" Vanya allowed himself to crow triumphantly, though the effort made his head spin. "I definitely made out my name in there! Believe it or not, Nasim, but we're beginning to speak the same language."

The taller man caught him just as his knees buckled, adding another comment that Vanya didn't understand.

"One step at a time, I guess," Vanya docilely let Nasim prop him up against both their backpacks. His head ached abominably under the beating sun, and in spite of their momentary communications triumph, he was beginning to be a lot less optimistic about their situation than he'd originally felt. "How far do you think we've come?" his voice sounded weak, even to his own ears.

Nasim crouched effortlessly before him on the sand. Vanya smiled in spite of himself: the man was like a cat, lithe and graceful and never off-balance, with unmistakable power and strength beneath the surface. Whereas Vanya preferred to live in constant uncertainty, the word didn't appear to exist in Nasim's vocabulary (whatever language it was that he spoke): every gesture was deliberate, calculated, economical. Without bothering to open his mouth, Nasim drew seven parallel lines in the sand with the tip of his index finger.

"More than halfway. Well, that's something of a comfort."

Nasim said something incomprehensible, and gestured at the water skins they'd carried with them. It was not difficult to guess what he meant, and Vanya didn't bother replying. Not for the first time he found himself worrying about his ship, about Marianna and the others. Surely they must have had time to outrun the Panther's vessel by now? Unless he'd grossly miscalculated how powerful or how fast the Gato Nero truly was, which was possible but unlikely. Suddenly it seemed very difficult to think straight, or to think at all. Thinking straight had never been his specialty anyway.

What could have gone wrong? What couldn't have gone wrong was the better question, but an easier one to answer. There were any number of reasons that would explain the delay in their rescue. He never doubted for a moment that they would be rescued, though, eventually. Marianna would move heaven and hell and several of the places in-between before she left anyone from the Starburst behind. If there was anyone or anything he could count on, it was definitely Marianna, even if she did threaten on a regular basis to jettison him through the nearest hatch…

He jerked his head up, aware of a sharp stinging sensation, and realised that Nasim had slapped him, and quite hard at that. Wordlessly Nasim tilted the remaining contents of one of the water skins down his throat, and Vanya found that he didn't particularly want to argue about it. The water felt wonderful. He managed a slightly sheepish grin.

"I'm sorry, did I drift off? My thoughts were wandering a bit. I was trying to remember the instructions I gave to Marianna about coming to our rescue."

Nasim shrugged, then pointed in the direction in which they'd been heading for the past few hours.

"You think we should keep going?" There was nothing he felt less like doing, but Nasim nodded and pointed again, adding a statement that sounded as though it might mean that they had very little choice in the matter: it was go or die. "All right, then."

It was slow going. After only a few steps Vanya nearly pitched face-first into the sand, and only by leaning heavily on Nasim was he able to keep going after that. His lungs burned with the effort of breathing in the hot air, his legs felt like water, and there didn't appear to be single part of his body that didn't hurt right now. However, he wasn't quite so focussed on his own misery that he missed the obvious.

"You know," he panted, "there are at least two things that have occurred to me that don't make much sense." He took Nasim's slightly non-committal-sounding reply as encouragement to continue. "First of all, here I am, half-dead from heat and exhaustion, but you've barely broken a sweat. Granted, I spent a day in trank, but that doesn't go all that far in explaining this. Xiao Mei tells me you were tortured, pumped full of drugs, interrogated, and then suffered extensive contact burns before we took you on board. So how is it that you don't seem to feel any of the effects of all that? Are you just built that way, or are you doing it on purpose?"

Nasim paid him the compliment of delivering what sounded like a fairly lengthy explanation. For Nasim, anyway: Vanya was fairly certain he detected at least four separate sentences. Unfortunately, he didn't understand a word.

"Why don't we try a simple yes or no?" he said finally. "Say 'yes' and nod if you're at all in control of this."

"Yes."

"Good man. At this rate, we might be able to have a normal conversation in a few years' time."

They lapsed into silence for a while, but eventually Nasim said something that sounded like a question.

"We really need to find a better way to communicate. What are you asking me?" Nasim shrugged and said something else. "You mean what I was talking about before?" Vanya hazarded a guess, and Nasim nodded. "Let me think…" Vanya's head hurt far too much for thinking to be an enjoyable prospect. "Oh. Right. The other thing that didn't make sense."

"Yes."

"At least I understood that. What I don't get is why the Panther didn't kill us outright. Why go to all the trouble of destroying our shuttle and presumably attacking the Starburst –I can't think of another reason which would explain why Marianna hasn't come to our rescue yet– and yet leaving us alive? It doesn't make sense to me, and that's saying something. Maybe the heat truly has addled my brains."

Nasim said something that sounded suspiciously sarcastic.

"No lip from you, Nasim. Regardless that we're stranded on a desert-like planetoid with very little hope for survival, you still owe me for getting you off Salmig Station.

Nasim shook his head, frowning. Then he turned his back abruptly and began scanning the horizon, his whole body tensing. He ignored Vanya's questions and waved at him to stay put. At least, that's how Vanya chose to interpret the gesture. It wasn't as though he had much choice in the matter: even if he'd wanted to move, he couldn't go very far by himself. Before Vanya could so much as open his mouth in protest, Nasim had sprinted off, leaving him behind.

What in hell's name was the man up to? Vanya shielded his eyes against the glare of the sun with his hand, and squinted at the horizon where Nasim had just disappeared. There appeared to be nothing there, though he wasn't about to stake his life on it. Briefly he considered the possibility that Nasim might simply have decided to leave him behind after all; it wasn't entirely far-fetched, since Vanya constituted nothing but a liability for him. Nasim seemed to be completely in control of the situation, while Vanya was fading quickly. Even he had to admit it to himself: the whole operation had gone tits-up, and without some serious luck on their side they'd be lucky to both get out of this alive.

He dismissed the possibility a moment after he'd considered it. He was an excellent judge of character, and Nasim wasn't the type to leave a man behind. He might have been, before someone reorganised his brain for him, but now he needed Vanya and the crew of the Starburst the way a drifting ship needs an anchor. No, Nasim would be back, any minute now.

He was vindicated a few moments later as Nasim reappeared over the crest of a sand dune a few hundred yards away. Vanya allowed himself a smirk, but decided to forego feeling altogether too pleased with himself when he saw the platoon of Imperium soldiers hot on Nasim's heels.

*****