Don’t Bite the Sun by Tanith Lee (little red riding hood ebook free .TXT) 📕

thought. Turn around and follow my own footsteps back through the sand, that’s what I’d do. Which is what I did, and I was really getting elated when they suddenly stopped in a fresh drift. There are always little sand winds eddying around, and this one had really made a nice job of losing me. I climbed a rock spire and looked around in every direction, but saw nothing but rainbow glitter on the smooth and unmarked dunes.

And then I did see something, and this thing was moving. Oh no, I gasp-thought, the ski-feet are after me. I wondered what ghastly furry death they would condemn me to. Then I saw that this thing was a solitary thing, and much much smaller than a ski-foot, and it was streaking toward me over the faceless desert. The pet! Wonderful! It must have followed me, leaving its own track of six fresh paw marks, which we would now follow back to the ship. Galling and honking, we bounded to meet each other. The pet leaped into my arms and kissed me passionately on the nose and ears.

“Oh, ooma,” I gasped, “clever, derisann ooma!”

And holding it nestled close, furry and comforting, I started back along its track.

And then, of course, this sand storm had to start, didn’t it?

I was so scared. You couldn’t see or breathe or anything. I got my transparent tunic off and wrapped it around my face. I could glimpse things that way through the embroidery and the sand, and I could just breathe slightly too, and with the oxygen tablets it was enough. I tried to protect the pet, but it burrowed into my skin and seemed all right. I suppose it had weathered storms before. Its fur fluffed up around it too, in added protection. There was no point in going on and, besides, my bare parts were being nastily stung, so I got us into the lee of the nearest bit of rock and cowered down into the sand there and waited.

I’ll never forget the sound of that sand wind. I think I’ll hear it all my life.

Visibility cleared eventually and I dug us out; we stood there and stared around us. Well, if I was lost before, I was really lost now. I redonned my tunic and began aimlessly walking. Every so often I’d sort of choke out to the pet: “It’s no use, why bother?” and slump down. And then I’d get fierce with myself and say. “But I’ll never find it if I sit here, and I might if I walk on.” And on I’d go until the next choke and slump.

It was very dark and still. The stars were out. And there was this colossal feeling of waiting. The pet kept lifting up its head and sniffing.

Then this roaring started, somehow near yet far away all at once. I wondered in vague hysterics if there were still dragons in these parts, or if the ski-feet developed new and particularly awful personalities at night. But it was only thunder, in fact. And soon there were blinding green flashes of lightning to go with it.

“The rain,” I said to the pet, my sunken heart going down to about my kneecaps, but the pet just looked thrilled and wriggled until I let it go. It dashed about and rolled in the sand.

“Well, I’m glad you’re pleased,” I said.

In its good old desert units I imagined the rain was a big event; even though I didn’t know anything about it, I’d worked out it only happened every three vreks, from what Assule said.

And then there was this sound. A kind of soft, soft, pat-pat noise, like tiny paws clapping. I was just thinking how pretty it was, crazy and disorientated as I’d become, when the heavens opened and the desert was under water. The rain rustled and thundered to the earth, but over it all I could hear a chorus of excited twittering and wailing and squeaking all around me from millions of small furry throats in sand burrows and rock holes, celebrating the rain-rite. You couldn’t see eye gleams through the deluge, but I knew they were there. The pet got one of my ankle chains in its mouth and gently but firmly tugged me to some sort of shelter in the rocks. A bit late, though. I was soaked. I’m sure Four BEE could produce a rain-resistant fabric, but who needs it in Four BEE? The only rain there had been a couple of widely spaced drops after a minor Jang sabotage.

The pet honked and honked.

“You’re right,” I said, trying to dry my wet face on my wet hands, “it is beautiful.”

And it was really: solid silver wetness, the song of the desert drinking and drinking all around me. And from the burrows and holes, the song of life.

I never thought I’d sleep through the discomfort and the noise, but I did. I dreamed that I was a desert woman with a child, and we had found, at last, a watering place.

Dawn, like a pale green note of music in the mountains, woke me, and I sat up, damp, cold, and alone.

Now I’ll die, I thought, out here with no nice robots to carry me to Limbo. I’ll die of cold and hunger and oxygen deficiency, and loneliness. The pet had gone. “The rain’s stopped, anyway,” I congratulated it, as I crawled out of the rock and began to see.

And then I nearly did die, but not because of anything I’d thought of. It was what was out there that did it.

I’d never seen such unexpected, unlooked-for beauty. That the dunes, starved of water for so much of their life, could return a vote of thanks like this for what to them must have seemed a mere half-cup, was beyond me. I groveled mentally before the wonder of it all.

The desert had blossomed.

I thought the rocks were on fire again, but it was the flame of sudden flowers, the sparks of erupted gorse.