The world changes as we travel. It grows flatter, the snow less deep. I begin to smell the salt of the big water in the air, though I do not know if Har-loh notices these things yet. The trees change, spiky and taller, and the herds of dvisti that are so thick in the mountains thin down to a few stragglers. It is warmer here, and even Har-loh seems to shiver less. I like that.
I push hard but we don’t make it to my cave that night. Har-loh’s steps slow and she sags in exhaustion when we pause for a rest, and so I decide to camp for the evening. We can make it there in the morning. We crawl into the furs and I immediately reach for her folds, expecting to find her wet and willing.
Instead, she pushes my hand away. “No. Donfeelgud.”
I frown. Is she tired? Her face looks drawn, but normally she welcomes my touches no matter how exhausted she is. Instead, she moves away from me, just enough that our skin isn’t touching, and curls up in her furs, trying to sleep.
I feel…odd. I don’t know the words. All I know is that this feels…not right, and it makes me miserable. I move to the fire and sit there, tending it for hours and watching her as she dozes fitfully. She seems as restless as I am. My chest throbs and hums, so loud that it feels as if it’s shaking my insides like a ground-quake.
Something’s wrong. But what?
I’m nodding off, watching the fire, when Har-loh cries out. It’s a sound of pain and loss, and I immediately bolt to my feet, terrified for her. Was I not watching? Did something bite her? Is she wounded?
But when I pull her against me, her eyes flutter as if lost in a dream, and her chest drums wildly, in the same frantic beat of my own.
“No,” she cries in a weak voice. She’s not looking at me. Instead, she shakes her head, as if arguing with an unseen person. “Yusehdtwasgawn!”
“Har-loh.” I tap her cheek, then brush my fingers over it. What is happening?
HARLOW
It’s back.
I know the tumor’s back, because all the symptoms are there. I sit up and look around the campsite, but everything’s blurred and double. Two fires, two Rukhs, two trees when there should only be one. There’s no color; the world is black and white. That’s another symptom. My head pounds and my entire body pulses.
This is just like before.
It’s not gone. The ship’s computer lied to me. The brain tumor isn’t eradicated by my khui. It’s been lying dormant, waiting for my guard to go down. I raise one of my hands in front of my face. It’s shaking. I’m seizing – another symptom of the tumor pushing on my brain.
“No,” I cry out, squeezing my hand into a fist in an effort to make it stop shaking. “You said it was gone! You said the tumor was destroyed! That it wasn’t there!”
“Harlow,” the computer chides me. “There are rules and you’re not following them. You ask a lot of your khui and you give it nothing in return. What did you expect?”
“What does it want?”
“Harlow.”
“What?”
“Harlow.” The computer’s voice is all around me. It’s in my head, resting on the tumor that’s determined to kill me. “Harlow. Harlow.”
I jerk awake with a gasp, like water has been splashed on my face. My eyes focus in on the face – the single, crisp face – inches from mine. There’s no blurring. No vision doubling. I tap the roof of my mouth with my tongue. No stroke. The shaking I feel? It’s my cootie, reminding me that I’m joined to Rukh. It’s vibrating so hard that my chest feels like there’s a motorboat trapped inside it.
My stomach heaves, and I fling myself out of Rukh’s arms a moment before I throw up.
It was just a nightmare, I tell myself as I cough dinner up into the nearby snow. My brain’s just being overactive. The intense vibration of my cootie scared my sleeping brain into thinking it was a seizure.
I’m just scaring myself.
I rock back on my heels and wipe my sweating brow. Throwing up didn’t make me feel much better. I only feel worse, really. I don’t feel like it was just a bad dream. Maybe it was a warning. I’ve been putting off resonance with Rukh because I don’t want to get pregnant. Is this my subconscious letting me know that I need to take action and do what my khui asks? I don’t know what happens if I keep ignoring things, other than get more miserable. Already my skin is so sensitized that it feels almost…unpleasant to touch Rukh. It’s like it’s too much to bear.
And my poor Tarzan. He doesn’t understand. I look over at him and feel a stab of guilt. What we need is to get good and drunk somewhere so we – so I – can lose my inhibitions.