Chelsea Quinn Yarbro - The Meaning Of The Word

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The Meaning of the Word

by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

Then I saw something odd, fuzzed with the sand glimmering in the coral

sunlight, and I began to slog my way toward it.

"Jhirinki, get back here!" Wolton ordered from the skiff. He was sounding

angrier by the minute.

"There's something out—" I tried to tell him but Almrid cut me off.

"Let him alone, Wolton. Your jurisdiction goes no farther than the skiff."

Then, with scarcely a change in tone, he said to me, "You stay here until camp

is set up. I want to know where everyone is."

Wolton gave him a sour smile and motioned me away. But it was important that

they know about that irregularity. I tried again. "I saw something out there.

It doesn't look—"

"Wait until the camp is set up. We need to get some more definitive readings

before we go exploring. And"—Almrid added to Wolton—"we can't get those

without the prowler."

Wolton jerked the hatch of the skiff open. "All right. Here's the prowler. You

know that it can't get any better data from the surface than the monitors

can."

"Look, Almrid—" I began.

"Not now, Peter. We'll talk later. When we have more accurate material to work

from." This last was, of course, for Wolton.

It was useless. I stepped back as Wolton reluctantly put the prowler in

action, letting it scuttle out over the hazy sand, scanners clicking

contentedly to itself.

Sumiko Hyasu had barricaded herself behind her equipment, preparing to run

soil tests. She and Langly, the biochemist, worked in silence, the remote

sounds of their breathing murmuring in my earphones.

On the other side of the skiff I knew Parnini and Goetz were furling the sails

of the weather unit. I could hear them swearing occasionally. They were busy.

Wolton and Almrid were still arguing. My eyes were dragged back again to that

irregular spot in the sand that might be what I wanted. That might be digs.

"I'm calling Captain Tamoshoe," Wolton declared to anyone who would listen.

"I'm going to give him a status report."

"That is your responsibility," murmured Almrid as he watched the prowler set

zig-zagging in a widening spiral. His heavy head was even larger in the Class

Eleven uniform. His hands hung like paws, wholly unlike what one expected in a

virologist. It was hard to think of him doing the minute manipulations that

were the mark of his work—it was like trying to imagine Caliban or Quasimodo

making watches or microcircuitry.

A yawning breeze wound a bit of dust on its finger and then sank back, too

tired to hold it. That was the feel of the whole place—drowsiness. The wind

barely breathed. The plain was heavy with dreaming, the sky unmarred by clouds

where the greater of two suns hung about fifteen degrees above the horizon, a

platter of polished copper. Our presence intruded on this somnambulistic

landscape where even the rocks were softened and sometimes crumbling and in

place of dirt there was sand that was not sand flickering in the monochrome

stillness.

Yet I wondered and hoped. There had been indications of structures from the

monitors on the Nordenskjold. I knew my digs were here to be found, if only I

knew where to look.

"Jhirinki's been wandering around," Wolton was reporting and the sound of my

name brought me back to the camp. He added in response to the captain's

garbled question, "It was Almrid's idea to bring along an archeologist. Not

mine. Ask him."

In the slow heat of the opalescent afternoon work was sluggish. There was

nothing for me to do but stare at the one odd spot in the distance—and wish.

Goetz swore in my earphone as his equipment toppled for the second time,

victim to the treacherous shifting of the sand. "Need help?" I asked him, not

reluctantly.

"What I need is a foundation," came his answer, the words bitten out in

frustration.

"According to the monitors," Almrid said icily, directing the insult at

Wolton, "there's all kinds of rock around here. Or, maybe not rock. Maybe it

once was buildings."

"Look, Almrid—" Wolton began.

Then, unexpectedly, Sumiko Hyasu cut in. "Leave him alone, Franz," she said

softly to Almrid. "We have work to do."

"It looks like you've wasted your trip, Peter," Almrid said to me, a certain

morose satisfaction in this statement. "Why don't you ride up tonight and

forget it? There are other planets."

I wondered if my disappointment showed so much.

"I think I'll stick around for a while," I said.

· · · · ·

"I don't know, Sumiko," I was saying as we watched the second skiff settle

onto the sand. "I can't give up the thought that there's something here."

Absently she made some answer.

"Don't you feel that?"

"I suppose so." She was only half-listening. This world was too unknown, too

compelling for us to pay much attention to each other. Every one of us saw it

through his/her eyes only. "Is any of this real, Peter?" she asked. "Or is the

planet hiding from us?"

I had felt that from the first. Something was hidden here right under our

noses and we hadn't the sense to find it. But all I could do was shrug. I

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