The hita surrounded the boat and dragged off the camouflage. At the stern stood a huge fan for traveling though shallows and marsh grass. Beside the fan rested a raised seat with control buttons and a joystick on an adjustable armrest. Four long benches crossed the middle, bins lined the sides. A large refrigerated container hugged the bow.
Several hita jumped into the boat, wound their trunks around the benches and pulled. The wooden seats groaned then splintered away from the sides. The creatures arranged leaves, sticks and blankets and pillows from the tents into nests in the bottom, then the four remaining mothers tenderly arranged the eggs and young before settling themselves over them. Two non- breeding hita adopted the three orphan babies, soothing and roosting around them. The other hita busied themselves packing the bins with the folded tents, canned goods, guns, ammunition, and their own supplies. Thin, supple branches glued and hammered with metal human nails were bent over the boat and covered with the camouflage to create a temporary long house.
Dante examined the controls, trying through his fuzzy haze to figure out their relation to steering of the farm combine or his bike. Shaman waded out behind the stern and examining Dante's mind picture, reported that no propeller existed. Dante pressed a button and the fan whooshed on, undulating the top of the camouflage as the hita ran about pulling down the branches and tightening it. He moved the joystick forward, the fan whirled faster, backwards, it reversed, side to side moved it back and forth for steering. The boat groaned against the sand and Dante shut it off.
"The mothers are going to have to get out if we want to move this into the water," he pointed out. "And we'll sink from overloading if everyone gets in."
The hita conferred and decided that the two juveniles, the mothers, Shaman and Dante would travel in the boat as far as they could. The others would trek by foot to the caves, the route memorized from Shaman's mind. The breeding hita got out of the boat and helped push it into the water. Dante watched from the control seat as they all hugged then the hikers held the sides while the mothers got back in, took a rifle from Shaman and settled themselves. The older juvenile took charge of an anti-aircraft gun in the bow.
The stream of moons arched across the other side of the sky, a few hours and the sun would rise. Dante turned on the fan and adjusted the joystick. The boat whooshed across the inky lake, bumping over the little waves. The wind blew away his cobwebs. He cracked another beer, drank it down and sped up the boat with a whoop. A trunk wound his arm as he reached for another bottle.
"Trouble." Shaman showed Dante the memory of his drinking just before Yevgeny found him.
"I know." Dante sighed and placed the bottle on the floor beside him. His companion gathered up the beer and started to drop it over the side. Dante grabbed it back.
"No, the humans will find them bobbing in the water."
Full of regret, he bashed one bottle after another against the outside of the gunwale and threw them out into the water. He found it impossible to hold back tears as the last one sank out of sight.
"Damn stupid," he muttered to himself, rubbing the back of his hand across his cheeks as he turned his attention back to the running of the boat.
A wave of grief flew around him, the pain of the night catching up with the hita.
The mothers hugged each other, the chicks and the juveniles, tears dripping from their snouts. They imaged Shaman to join them, but it stayed standing beside Dante, a trunk wound round his stump, tears rolling onto his furry sleeve.
"Go to your people," imaged Dante. "I'm O.K. A bit drunk, but I'll be careful."
Shaman crawled down among the rest for a good cry. Dante's tears had dried with his embarrassment and the remains of the alcohol detached him from everything. He concentrated on the crossing of the water until the communal mind of the hita recovered and showed him a river to the south, slow-moving and overhung with trees.
Dawn poked its fingers through the forest on either side as the slowed boat slid from the mouth to the channel of the river. A few lizards peeped and cooed at the morning, luminous flutterbys, big and flat as dinner plates, drifted in the air above the water. The occasional marmot ran along an overhead branch and stared, huge eyed, at their passing.
The juvenile heard the plane first. It wondered, hopefully, if it should use the anti-aircraft gun. Dante imaged in the negative, switched off the fan and drifted the boat deep into the overhang. Shaman helped him cover the fan with a camouflage bag made for the purpose. No need for a telltale glint of metal.
Human and hita huddled under the canopy, clutching their guns and listening to the rumble grow louder. The plane roared overhead, flying low and searching. A wave of terror pulsed from the crouching hita. Dante froze, swallowing his fear with a vow that he'd kill the humans then himself before they took him. And this time he wouldn't fail.
The plane buzzed away, the sound fading into the distance. The hita relaxed. Dante' head pounded, his abdomen cramped, full of lead. The drinking caught up with him, would he never learn? He leaned over the side of the boat and retched until his stomach brought up nothing then rested the side of his head on the cool metal of the gunwale, watching as small piranha churned the water at the unexpected feast. He must remember not crash the boat in this river, once in the water, they would be stripped of flesh in a minute.
"Why do you try to poison yourself?" imaged Shaman.
Dante shrugged. "Because I'm stupid."
Shaman sent one picture after another. "Humans are more alien than the Shine. You love like us, I see it in your memories. Yet within your clans, between your clans, you destroy each other like each human was a different dangerous species of animal. You even want to kill yourself. Only the curiosity of El keeps such creatures alive." It imaged the hita god spraying the mud of life over humans dead from fighting each other.
"When I first met you, you looked like you wanted to die," said Dante.
"Working at healing the pain. You cover it up with that drink, make it worse, suffer alone." Shaman hugged him round the shoulders, making Dante fight back tears.. "See that, what you do with your eye water. It's the same as trunk water. Needs to flow, purifies the body and soul. No good this human way. I'll drive the boat, you rest and let your tears go. "
"I once cried a river of moons, changed nothing, ended up worse." Dante showed his grief after Martha died.
"I see the poison drink, also," pointed out Shaman.
Dante jerked the camouflage off the fan with a wave of annoyance. He tapped the battery and noticed the juice was getting low, soon the spare should replace it, then pressed a button. The battery hissed and the blades whooshed to life with a slight shimmer. Shaman eased the boat back into the river. Dante's head pounded. He crawled among the mothers who curled their trunks around him in a broody maternal instinct to comfort. He fell into an exhausted, hung-over doze, half convinced that they really cared.
Thunder. Roaring earthquake and tsunami slamming against the boat. Light ripped open Dante's eyes. Screams engulfed him. A monstrous snout vacuumed up a scrambling mother, the hita's bullets pinged against the thick flesh. Thunder lizard! A feather and a few curls of decorative hair fluttered down to the water from the empty control chair. Shaman! He stared up the height of a temple to a second snout and a weakly struggling bulge. Giant alien eyes rolled back in a demonic head. A jagged toothed mouth gaped in anticipation.
"The anti-aircraft gun. The gun," screamed Dante to the terror frozen juvenile. He scrambled down the boat, shouting, "Die, die!" His magic words sparked up and burned the lizard's scaled chest, slowing the creature long enough for Dante to fall on the bazooka and raise it up, aiming for the open jaws. The lizard's trunk convulsed. Shaman squirted into the mouth, the jaws snapped down and ground. The medicine hita's thoughts blinked out.
"No!" screamed Dante.
His word engulfed the bazooka. A magic shot tore apart the creature's head and the remains of Shaman. The thunder lizard toppled backwards into the water, its other trunk crushing eggs and babies as it crashed to the floor of the boat. The hita snapped and tore at the closed snout, freeing the mother who rolled out dead and covered with snot onto the broken nests. The rudderless boat circled, heading for a crash against the immense beast. Flashing piranha slashed at the fresh meat. The hita hacked at the lizard trunk binding the boat to the monster. Dante shoved his way through them to the controls, grabbed the joystick and, as the hita freed the ship with their bites, blew the boat out and away, down the middle of the river.
"Oh, Gaia, Oh, shit. I shouldn't have given up the controls," he gasped. He stared back at the huge body bobbing up and down on the water behind. "Oh, my Gaia."
Eerie caws echoed above. Vultures and pterodactyls swooped down, aiming for the two surviving chicks. The mothers jumped at them, snapping their jaws, then remembering, fired their rifles. It rained dying predators. The remaining vultures flapped off to the piranha feast. The boat rounded a corner, leaving behind a tornado of scavengers swirling above the dead thunder lizard.
The hita collapsed on the bottom of the boat, shaking with shock. The weeping juvenile clung to the bazooka. The youth showed them images of Shaman and itself dozing as the boat rounded a bend and drove directly at the thunder lizard standing drinking in the river. The monster stomped in delight, grabbed Shaman and ripped off the camouflage. The rest of the juvenile's images reflected their own terrified muddle of memories.
The hita gathered up the egg shards and tiny broken bodies and placed them on top of the dead mother. The second juvenile collected the relics of Shaman, a few decorative hair pieces, some Dantes, feathers, some beads; and put them on top of the other dead. The hita huddled over the remains, praying and weeping, the tears dripping out of their snouts onto the bodies. Dante couldn't look at them. He kept thinking he should feel Shaman's strange, dry, sarcastic images in his mind as his companion -- his mentor and master, Dante admitted the truth to himself with a lump in his throat -- taught its dunderhead alien apprentice another lesson about medicine, the planet, magic or, Dante sighed, himself.
The hita lifted up the dead and gently dropped them over the side. The water churned as the piranha feasted. As he steered the boat away from the spot, the hita pulled ornaments from their manes and sent them spinning back along the wake. Dante stared at the river ahead. Giving in to Shaman's last lesson, he wept, open and uncaring.