"Vonda N. McIntyre-Fireflood" - читать интересную книгу автора (McIntyre Vonda N)

Fireflood
by Vonda N. McIntyre
This story copyright 1979 by Vonda N. McIntyre. This copy was created for Jean Hardy's personal use.
All other rights are reserved. Thank you for honoring the copyright.

Published by Seattle Book Company, www.seattlebook.com.

* * *


Dark moved slowly along the bottom of a wide, swift river, pushing against its current. The clean water
made long bubbling strokes over her armor, and round stones scraped against her belly scales. She could
live here, hidden in rapids or pools, surfacing every few hours to replenish her internal supplies of oxygen,
looking little different from a huge boulder. In time she could even change the color of her armor to
conform perfectly to the lighter, grayer rock of this region. But she was moving on; she would not stay in
the river long enough to alter her rust-red hue.
Vibrations warned her of rapids. She took more care with her hand-and footholds, though her own
mass was her main anchor. Stones rumbling gradually downstream did not afford much purchase for her
claws. The turbulence was treacherous and exciting. But now she had to work harder to progress, and
the riverbed shifted more easily beneath her. As the water grew swifter it also became more shallow, and
when she sensed a number of huge boulders around her, she turned her back to the flow and reared up
above the surface to breathe.
The force of the current sent water spraying up over her back, forming a curtain that helped conceal
her. She breathed deeply, pumping air through her storage lungs, forcing herself not to exceed her body's
most efficient absorption rate. However anxious she was to get underwater again, she would do herself
no good if she used more oxygen than she stored during the stop.
Dark's armor, though impenetrable and insensitive to pain, detected other sensations. She was
constantly aware of the small point of heat-- call it that, she had no more accurate word-- in the center of
her spinal ridge. It was a radio transceiver. Though she could choose not to hear its incoming messages, it
sent out a permanent beacon of her presence that she could not stop. It was meant to bring aid to her in
emergencies, but she did not want to be found. She wanted to escape.
Before she had properly caught her breath, she sensed the approach of a helicopter, high above and
quite far away. She did not see it: the spray of water glittered before her shortsighted eyes. She did not
hear it: the rush of the river drowned out all other sounds. But she had more than one sense that had as
yet no name.
She let herself sink beneath the water. An observer would have had to watch a single boulder among
many to see what had happened. If the searchers had not homed in on the transmitter she could still get
away.
She turned upstream again and forged ahead toward the river's source.
If she was very lucky, the helicopter was flying a pattern and had not actually spotted her transmitter at
all. That was a possibility, for while it did not quite have the specificity of a laser, it worked on a narrow
beam. It was, after all, designed to send messages via satellite.
But the signal did not pass through water and even as the searchers could not detect her, she could not
see or feel them through the rough silver surface of the river. Trusting her luck, she continued on.
The country was very different from where she had trained. Though she was much more comfortable
underground than underwater, this land was not ideal for digging. She could survive as well beneath
liquid, and travel was certainly quicker. If she could not get to the surface to breathe, the time it would
take her to stop and extract oxygen directly was about the same. But the character of water was far too
constant for her taste. Its action was predictable and its range of temperature was trivial compared to
what she could stand. She preferred to go under ground, where excitement spiced the exploration. For,