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.Each ofus, in his or her own way, reacted according to type: Justine sang a cheerful little tune and laughed atevery difficulty just because she loved being outside in the snow next to her husband; Katharine,distracted and disassociated from her labor, was fascinated by the ice's glitter and the texture of thedistant forest, and she could not stop looking all around at the things of the world; Soli seemed torelish problems of any sort, probably as a test of his cleverness and ability to endure pain.Only mymother - and here was one of the great surprises of my life - seemed at ease with the muscle-poppingwork.She moved across the dangerous ice crusts lithely and surely; she seemed to relish the strengthof her new, Alaloi body.This newfound pleasure of being was apparent in the relaxed way she pulledat the harness traces and leaned into the wind, driving forward with her hips as she set her bootsagainst the slippery ice; it was apparent in the set of her sculpted face, which, for all its thickness ofnose and jaw, was very beautiful.It was late afternoon when we reached the edge of the forest.The muscles along my forearms wereswollen and burning.I had strained my knee when Katharine lost her footing and slipped, and thewhole weight of the near-dangling sled had fallen upon me.I had slipped too, twisting the joint with aligament-tearing force.I owed it to Mehtar, I knew, that the ligaments had held.I limped along thesnowline where the beach gave way to the dark forest, and I found myself - absurdly - giving thanksto the tubist cutter that I was not a cripple.Bardo, who pretended to be crippled with exhaustion, sat on a rock holding his head in his hands ashe moaned, "By God, I'm tired! See my hands? Why can't I close them? This is madness.Ah.butit's cold, cold enough to freeze your piss before it hits the ground as I'd show you if I weren't too tiredto stand.Goddamn Shiva Lai and goddamn Drisana Lai for spreading her legs and having him andhaving me.Damn Govinda Lai and damn Timur, too, and Hanif and." He went on in this mannercursing his ancestors for inflicting upon him the pain of living; he went on for quite a while.Theprinces of Summerworld, I knew too well, had an excellent memory of their lineage.He cursed hisgreat-grandfather's grandfather, and he cursed the unreasonableness of water for permitting itself tofreeze into the greenish-white icicles hanging down his mustache.At that moment I did not pity him,even though I knew that before coming to Neverness he had never seen snow or ice.While my mother took one of the dogs and went into the woods on skis to survey the terrain, Justinebegan wrapping skins around the other dogs' bloody paws.Katharine, I noticed with a mixture ofannoyance and wonder, bent over a bristly bush, holding her naked hands spread above the petals of afireflower."It's warm," she said."The colors, look how they change, red into burning carmine,carmine into."Soli crunched up the beach over to me, and we immediately started to argue.I was eager to drive onto the Devaki's cave, but he shook his head and said, "It's late.The forest is no place to be at night.""By nightfall," I said, "we'll be in the Devaki's cave.There's only four miles of easy forest ahead.""Yes, if Rainer's memory is true.""Don't you have faith?" I asked him slyly."Faith!" he said, and he knocked the snow from his boots."We've two hours before twilight.""Do we, Pilot?"I looked to the west but we were too near the base of the cliff to see the position of the sun.I wishedwe had brought a clock with us.It would have been an easy thing to do.I remembered seeing in theTimekeeper's Tower a clock no bigger than the nail of my little finger.(The nail of my little finger,that is, before Mehtar carved my hands.) The clock was a wafer of some alive substance whichglowed and shifted colors to mark the passing of the seconds and hours, much as Katharine's flowersmutated from magenta to flame-purple.If I had hidden one of these wafers in my furs, I could havepredicted the moment when the turning edge of the world would obliterate the sun."We could have had the tinker attach a clock to the radio," I said, reopening the old argument."Butyou wouldn't break the Timekeeper's edict."The radio itself was hidden inside the false bottom of Soli's sled along with the spheres of kryddawe would need to preserve the culled Devaki tissues.Of course, it was not easy to get at the radio; wewould use it only to signal the windjammer when we had finished this dangerous business of posingas cavemen. It seemed that Soli regretted he had not broken the Timekeeper's edict against clocks.It must bedifficult, I thought, to be the Lord Pilot.He stared at the base of the cliff, at the banded layers of rock;it was as if he were staring through ancient marls and sediments down to the heart of the world."TheTimekeeper is right, isn't he, to hate time? Why should we care what time it is? Why do we need aclock when we have Mallory Ringess to reassure us we have two hours before the light dies?"When my mother returned to report that the way through the woods was clear and not very steep,our decision was made."There's deep snow," she said."But the crust is thick.Look at Ivar.With hishard, little paws - he didn't break through the crust."It was while we were harnessing the dogs for our final run through the forest that a terrible thinghappened.I should have been forewarned because Katharine suddenly dropped the traces, stood erectand gazed off into the sky as if she were looking at a painting.But I was tired, too busy with Liko torealize she was gazing at the reenactment of a past vision [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]