down, expecting to see the tents. But there wasn't a tent in sight.
For a moment he panicked. They've left without me, he thought. They hurried past me, struck the camp and left me behind, all because I couldn't see the stupid hare.
Then he realized that he was simply downstream from the camp. There were the tents, up there to the left. And of course he was much closer to the sea. If the Scour Sea had had any waves like the ones on the shore of the Earthbound Sea, he'd have been able to hear the surf from here. And there were the baboons, eking out their miserable supper from the roots and berries and plants and insects and warty little animals that lived near the river and the seashore.
How did I end up here? So much for my sense of direction.
Oh, yes. We did walk down this way this morning, when we left Daddy's lazy wife asleep in the camp and all the lazy women, especially my completely useless stupid lazy wife, lolling around the tents and the garden. That's the only part of the route that I missed, just that one turn, so big deal, I still have a good sense of direction.
But he had a really bad taste in his mouth, and he wanted to kick something, he wanted to break something, he wanted to hurt someone.
And there were the baboons, right down there, stupid doglike animals that thought they were human. One of the females was showing red right now, and so the males were cuffing each other and maneuvering to get a quick poke. Poor stupid males. That's how we live our lives.
Might as well go down the canyon wall here and walk up the valley to the camp. And on the way maybe I can get a clear shot at whichever male ends up plugging her siggle. He'll die happy, right? And Nafai won't be the only one going home with a dead animal to his credit.
About halfway down the rugged slope, after scuffing a knee and sliding a couple of times, Meb realized that the lower he got, the worse his line of sight would be toward the baboons. Already there were rocks and bushes blocking his view of some of them, including the ones who were busy trying to mate. However, a smallish one was in plain sight, considerably closer than the others had been. It would be an easier shot anyway.
Meb remembered what Elemak had taught them earlier in the day and braced his elbows on a boulder as he took aim. Even so, his hands kept trembling, and the more he tried to hold them steady, the worse the sight on the pulse seemed to bounce. And when he pressed his finger against the button to fire, it jostled the pulse again, so that a small jet of smoke erupted from a bush more than six meters from the baboon he had been aiming at. The baboon must have heard something, too, because it whipped around to look at the burning shrub and then backed away in fear.
But not for long. A moment later it moved in again, and watched the flame as if trying to learn some secret from it. The bush was dry, but not dead, and so it burned only slowly, and with a great deal of smoke. Meb aimed again, this time a little to the right to compensate for the movement that pushing the button would cause. He also found that his hands were a bit more steady this time, and now he remembered that Elemak had stressed the need to relax. So ... now Mebbekew was doing it just as Elemak had said, and this boon would soon be history.
Just as he was about to pull the trigger, he was startled by a sharp cracking sound only a meter from his head. His own shot went wild as he turned sharply to look at the place the sound had come from. A small plant growing from a crack in the rock a couple of meters above his head had been burnt to nothing, and smoke was rising from the spot. Since he had just seen the same thing happen to the shrub near the baboon, Meb recognized immediately what had happened. Someone was firing a pulse at him. Bandits had come - the camp was in danger, and he was going to die, off by himself, because the bandits had no choice but to