Mid-Flinx (15 page)

Dwell had stumbled upon something all but alien to his people: a safe view.

All the cavity needed, Flinx decided, were a pair of sliding glass doors and air-conditioning to justify an exorbitant rent. Given that, the branch would still be a hard sell as a vacation site. Too much of the local flora and fauna had already demonstrated a robust liking for the taste of unwary travelers.

For the first time he was able to get an idea of the true size of some of the trees. Though draped in clinging vines and parasitic smaller growths, the boles fringing the valley had trunks six and seven hundred meters tall. They were the largest living things he’d ever seen, and possibly the largest ever discovered. This world, he knew, was the proverbial heaven dreamed of by deserving botanists.

If the Home-trees and Pillars were so massive at this height, he wondered, what must they be like at their base?

After two days spent deep within the shadowed forest, the hazy unfiltered sunlight, made him squint. He should have turned away, but the frenzy of uncontrolled growth held his mesmerized attention. Gradually his eyes readapted and he could make out individual, smaller features.

Nor was it a silent scene, alive as it was with buzzing, droning, humming, screeching, singing, whistling, cackling entities of every shape and size. Most adhered, as he had come to expect, to the pattern of physiologic trifurcation he had noted on arrival, though there were distinctive variants.

Occasionally an aerial predator would plunge into the green depths, only to emerge a moment later, often struggling to regain altitude, with some unfortunate canopy-dweller clasped in its talons or beak or teeth. Flinx particularly noted one flock of fliers that hovered on a dozen rapidly beating wings. They flashed up and down in succession like so many hooks on strings as each of the fascinating creatures sucked nectar from flowers through a meter-long tube of a tongue.

A bulbous, stubby-winged hunter shot into their midst, scattering the flock and its raucous chorus. Sharp spikes adorned the predator’s entire body. Dropping like a dead weight into the flock, it emerged with two of the nectar-sippers impaled on its spikes. It was not necessary, Flinx saw, to boast of talons and teeth in order to be a successful hunter. There were innumerable other ways of killing.

Something vast dipped down into the hole in the canopy, shadowing the green wall where they lay. An immense, iridescent gas-filled sac trailing dozens of tentacles, it grazed the edge of the forest in search of prey. When it had concluded its circumnavigation of the valley and returned to the mist-laden sky, half a dozen small creatures could be seen struggling to free themselves from its lethal grasp.

“Buna floater.” Teal leaned out slightly to make sure the dirigible-sized creature was truly departing. “It’s not strong enough to carry off a human, but it can kill one.”

Though imposing, the floater was not the most impressive flier they saw. That honor went to a gigantic blue-black glider with tercet tooth-lined jaws longer than Flinx was tall. Possessing the wingspan of a modest-sized aircraft, it resembled nothing so much as an enormous, airborne shark.

It was quite clear why Teal and her people had come to think of the sky above the canopy as the Upper Hell. Its revelations made him all the more curious to view the Lower.

But not right away.

The remote blob of diffuse light that was this world’s sun melted into the indistinct yellow-green horizon, to be replaced by the steady drumming of warm rain. Nocturnal criers commenced calling to mates, communicating with offspring and warning one another of the possible presence of concealed killers who whispered their way through the hylaea, silent shadows of death.

Chirps and barks, whistles and screeches, moans and feral hiccoughings punctuated the onset of night. Following a procedure Flinx was now familiar with, he joined Teal and her children in the back of the burnt-out cavity while the furcots formed a protective barrier along the edge of the opening. Pale, tenebrous moonlight illuminated the valley in the forest and the falling rain. It was bright enough to hint of a full moon or two, whose outline Flinx knew was masked by clouds and mist.

Surrounded by warm bodies and the thick but not unpleasant musk of the furcots, he allowed himself to drift toward sleep, Pip curled snugly atop his chest. Once, something stout and many-legged marched past directly overhead, shaking the branch with its weight. With the rain dissipating their scent, they remained safe and secure in the cavity while the tread of the unseen giant soon vanished into the distance.

He glanced down at his hands. Not only had the irritation disappeared completely, the skin was as smooth and soft as it had ever been. The juice of the O’opaa fruit not only healed, it restored. What might it do for wrinkles? Not all the wonders of this place were large and fearsome.

Bearing Teal’s warning in mind as he checked his positioner, he used his body to carefully shield its internal illuminator from outside view, and as soon as he’d noted the readout, quickly shut it off. They were on course.

Dwell was dreaming, a rush of indefinable sensation Flinx had no difficulty detecting. Dreams he was able, with an effort, to shut out. It was a skill he’d been forced to learn in order to get any sleep. Easier to do here than on Moth, or Samstead, where the nocturnal cacophony of millions of sleepers would have driven him mad had he not been able to master the shut-out technique.

It struck him forcefully that he had gone three days without a headache of any kind. Not a record, but close. This world was at once soothing and deadly. That was the last thought he had before passing over into a contented sleep of his own as the rain pounded on the stems and leaves and branches outside the refuge.

He dreamed of small biting things and the comforting emollient of cool liquids. Of vast shapes filled with teeth and others that only smiled. Of slipping, and of falling, to land unharmed in a hell he could not envision.

Permeating it all was an indefinable presence, alien yet somehow reassuring, full of questions he did not understand and answers to questions he did not know how to ask. It was, not surprisingly, green as well as formless. Bursting with life, it seemed too expansive to be contained only within a dream. All velvet ties and luxurious bindings, it encompassed without restricting, enveloped without imprisoning. It strove to draw him in even as it left him free. Seeking definitions in his sleep, he found only greater mysteries.

Amidst the assurance was an anxiety that correlated well with his own. Shining through it all, like a beacon, was the need first to survive and second to comprehend.

In particular there was a distant and voluminous mass, inconceivable in size and incomprehensible in its evil, that defied understanding. With a start, that part of Flinx’s mind that was conscious in sleep recognized the pit at the center of his own encounter. The darkness was stirring, and scattered matter shifted imperceptibly on a cosmic scale. From seemingly stray neutrinos on up, the infinitesimal was alert.

Anxiety. Incomprehension. Flinx swam in a pool of shared glaucous concern, trying to keep his conscious unconsciousness from drowning in confusion, unable to offer succor or solution.

But there was a possible solution. Incredibly complex, difficult beyond imagining, the legacy of great thinkers long since departed, it hovered tantalizingly on the edge of his understanding. That was because he was not yet ready.

Not yet ready, but incontestably a part of it.

He twitched in his sleep. On his chest Pip, wide-awake, her triangular head centimeters from his own, stared at the face of her master with glazed reptilian eyes. She understood nothing of what he was feeling, nothing of the torrent of sensation and information that was flooding through him, but she remained as close as possible, concerned and protective.

It was the best she could do. She was not an interpreter, but a vector.

It was the middle of the night when he sat up sharply, wide-awake and staring. In the darkness he looked around, saw only the sleeping forms of his companions. Moomadeem snuffled and kicked out with a middle leg while Dwell swatted a nonexistent bug from his face. Teal was silent and motionless. Attentive as always, Pip licked at his face.

A presence had been in the hollow, and in him. The keen reality of certain dreams is often difficult to separate from wakeful thinking. Slowly he lay back down, resting his head on his hands as he pondered all that had washed through him, trying to fix it in his conscious memory. Much of it was already beginning to fade, indistinct and senseless. Despite his drowsy state, there was one characteristic of the experience he knew he would have no difficulty recalling.

It had been very, very important.

Chapter Twelve

“Peeler!”

Aimee screamed as she started to fall. The man next to her reached out but missed. It was Chaa who reacted in time. While his body remained securely atop the swaying liana they were traversing, he was able to twist his neck sideways and down and reach for her with three of his powerful arms. One caught her by her suit. Slowly she felt herself rising in the Mu’Atahl’s grasp.

Peeler leaned over and managed to get ahold of her other arm. Together they hauled her back up through the rain and unto the liana. She promptly lay back on the rufous walkway, hands on her stomach, and fought to catch her breath.

Lit by the reflected glow of its owner’s flash, a face was staring down at her; expressionless, devoid of emotion. There was, however, some concern in the voice. Not necessarily for her personally, she knew. Coerlis was worried about losing any more of his party.

“What happened?”

She took a deep breath. “Slipped. Was trying to watch something in the trees and stopped paying attention.” She sat up and put her arms around her knees as she drew them in toward her chest. “It’s not easy moving at night. You’re trying to watch where you’re going at the same time as you’re trying to be careful where you put your feet. And everything’s soaked.”

Coerlis looked away. “If we don’t try something different it’s going to take forever to catch up to him.”

“I know, I know,” she snapped, reaching up with a hand. Peeler took it and helped her to her feet. His simple face was full of the kind of honest worry that was alien to Coerlis. She even felt closer to Chaa.

“Thanks, guys.” She wiped bits of sodden plant matter and soil from her chameleon suit.

“You can pull me up when I slip.” Chaa did not smile, but he had a pretty good understanding of the range of human expression. He showed his teeth.

She hesitated, then laughed. “Right, sure. With one hand. Just don’t fall too far.” The Mu’Atahl weighed in the neighborhood of half a ton.

Coerlis was peering through his night-vision monocular, searching the hylaea ahead. “I don’t understand why we haven’t caught up with him. There’s no reason for him to think he’s being pursued, therefore no reason for him to be moving so fast. You’d think he’d stop in one place for a while.” He lowered the opticon. “And there’s only one of him, and that minidrag. By rights he should be having a harder time of it in this morass than we are.”

Shielding the tracker from the rain, Chaa checked the readout. “He continues to travel more or less in a straight line, as if he has a specihfic destihnation in mihnd.”

Peeler tugged on the hood of his suit and waved at the sodden, smothering verdure. “How could anybody have a destination in this? It all looks the same.”

“Maybe he’s just trying to cover as much ground and see as much as possible.” Aimee had risen to her feet again. She reached up, straightened her hood and touched her hair. A smile lightened her expression. “At least I didn’t lose my flowers.” In the crisscross of artificial light the spectacular specimen continued to twinkle like a bouquet of faceted gems.

“Let’s get moving.” Coerlis led the way off the liana and onto a convenient, more stable branch that led in the right direction.

“Lucky, that time,” Peeler told her conversationally. Noting the look on her face, he frowned. “You sure you’re okay?”

Her smile returned. “Just feel a little queasy all of a sudden.” She fumbled for the medkit on her belt “I’ll go ahead and take something.”

“Delayed reaction to your slip,” Coerlis suggested without looking back.

“Or these stinking rations we’ve been living off for three days.” Rundle was gnawing distastefully on a soaked protein block.

Eyes flashing, Coerlis turned on the big man. “Maybe you’d like to try some of the local fruit?”

“Uh-uh, no thanks, Mr. Coerlis, sir! It might bite back.”

“I’m sure some of the local vegetation is not only palatable but tasty.” As always, Chaa brought up the rear. “The problem is in decihding what is edihble and what is lethal.”

“Yeah.” Peeler chided his associate, nudging him in the ribs. “Go on, man.” He aimed his light at a cluster of swollen, bright blue cylinders hanging temptingly from a nearby epiphyte. “Take a bite out of one of those.”

Rundle glared back. “How about I shove a whole one down your throat and see if you blow up?”

“Quiet,” Coerlis snapped. “Unless you want to see what kind of nocturnal carnivores your babbling can attract.”

The two men went silent, abashed not because their boss had chewed them out but because they knew he was right.

“We wihll snare your quarry, sihr,” Chaa assured Coerlis. “If necessary, you and Aimee can rihde on my back. That would enable us to increase our pace slihghtly.”

“Not worth it.” Coerlis wiped a mixture of perspiration and rainwater from his face. “I want you at full strength when we reach him. We’re still going to have to deal with the flying snake.”

“As you wish, sihr.”

A grumbling Coerlis angrily shoved a clinging creeper out of his way. “At least he’s stopping for the night.” Feeling thoroughly miserable, he sneezed twice despite the temperature.

As if they weren’t uncomfortable enough, the lingering moonlight faded and the downpour intensified, drenching them afresh.

Peeler mumbled something unrepeatable, and even the normally unperturbable Chaa had a few choice words to say in his own language. Their meaning and intent was obvious from his inflection even if a straightforward translation was impossible.

Coerlis’s light found a shadow at the base of a large parasite. Looking exactly like another, smaller tree, it grew from the heart of the branch they were traversing, its roots penetrating deep into the heartwood of the emergent and nearly straddling their chosen course.

“Hold up!” He raised his hand. Huddling against the unrelenting deluge, the others halted gratefully.

Advancing on the secondary growth, Coerlis saw that the shadow that had caught his eye was a cavity that ran all the way through, a tunnel formed by fire or disease. Or maybe, he thought, the consequent growth was the result of two parasitic trees that had grown together and merged to form a single trunk. Whatever the cause, there was room enough within to shelter all of them from the rain. Even Chaa would be able to stand up and keep dry.

“Inside,” he ordered curtly. They needed no urging.

“See.” Shining his light downward, the Mu’Atahl scuffed the wood underfoot with one circular pad. “The interior is slihghtly higher because of root growth. Water runs around but not insihde.” He tilted his head and neck back. “The ceihling rihses higher stihll. This wihll be very comfortable for the balance of the night.”

Rundle leaned back against the interior wall and let out a relieved sigh. “As long as it’s dry.”

Peeler was inspecting their serendipitous refuge more closely. “Funny sort of place. Doesn’t look damaged.”

“Neither do you,” quipped the big man. Peeler started to reply, then frowned. “Hey, where’s Aimee?”

“Right here.” Entering, she rustled the collar of her suit to remove the clinging drops. “Just got dizzy for a moment.”

Coerlis eyed her unblinkingly. “How much medication did you take earlier?”

“Enough. Relax, Jack-Jax. I’m fine.”

“You still nauseous?”

“A little. It comes and goes. I’m glad you decided to stop for the rest of the night.”

The merchant looked resigned. “Doesn’t do any good to close the gap if half of us don’t make it.” Sitting down with his back against the inner wall of the cavity, he fumbled for a food packet. Peeler settled himself nearby, while the exhausted Rundle stretched out on the delightfully dry floor. Chaa languorously twisted his neck around to rest his head on his shoulder.

“Hey!” Trying to clear her head, the engineer had tilted her neck back. “Something moved up there.” She raised a hand and pointed.

Coerlis swung his light to the vertical. Sure enough, there were three, four—perhaps a dozen of the tiny creatures. Each small enough to fit in his palm, the fuzzy brown shapes clung to the apex of the conical cavity. Their flat, homey faces were covered with bands of shiny black keratin. The single horn that protruded from each forehead was flanked by a pair of bulbous eyes, with the third lying below and slightly forward of the horn. Each eye was capable of swiveling independently of the others. It was disorienting to see.

Protruding between two bands of hard keratin, the coiled muzzle or mouth was thin, gray, and strawlike. The creatures had no visible teeth, and clung to the ceiling of the shelter with six stubby legs. Each foot ended in an unintimidating but obviously efficient hook.

“Impressive secondary sexual display,” commented Chaa, referring to the individual horns. “Or perhaps they are for defense.”

“This must be their roost.” An indifferent Coerlis eased back against the wood, trying to find the least uncomfortable spot. “I don’t think they’ll mind sharing.”

When a nervous Peeler shined his light directly on them, the cluster of brown shapes drew back into a defensive knot, blinking painfully at the illumination. He cut the intensity of the beam by three-quarters.

“Mr. Coerlis is right.” A grinning Rundle waved his own light at the mass, forcing them to huddle together even tighter. “They’re afraid of us.”

“They just want the same thing we do.” Once the source of the shadowy movement had been revealed as harmless, Peeler had relaxed. “A nice, dry night’s rest.”

“Kittens with alien faces.” Aimee was entranced. “Listen to them.” Soft burbling sounds floated down from the ceiling, sounding like bubbles popping to the surface of a quiet pond. Whether it was an expression of mutual fear or some kind of group communication, the visitors had no way of knowing. Certainly it was anything but threatening.

Rundle was still standing and shining his reduced light on the cluster. “They’re cute. C’mere, little pretty.” Standing on tiptoes and reaching upward, he made scratching motions in the direction of the nearest.

It immediately swelled like a balloon to three times its previous size. On the taut skin pinkish flesh was visible through the individual hairs.

The Mu’Atahl looked back. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Rundle.”

The big man looked over at him. “Aw, c’mon. What’re you afraid of? It’s not any bigger than—ow,
damn
!” He drew back his hand sharply. “Ow, ouch, look out!” Arms crossed over his head, he bent over and tried to present only the back of his chameleon suit to the ceiling.

Coerlis had rolled to his right, colliding with the engineer as she scrabbled backward on her hands and backside. Chaa had darted out the other side of the tunnel, while Peeler lay huddled against the far side of the cavity.

With an explosive
whoosh
half a dozen of the swollen creatures had sharply contracted. The compressed, expelled air had blasted each tiny horn free of its supporting face shield. Three protruded from the back of the startled Rundle’s reaching hand. Another had stuck in his forearm, two more in his shoulder, piercing the thick weave of the chameleon suit. He wrenched one from his forearm, leaving a spot of red behind.

Above him the furry shapes were starting to move.

Ignoring them, a disgusted Rundle plucked the remaining pair from the back of his hand. “Last time I try to be nice to anything on this planet,” he muttered. “Hey, how about giving me a hand with these?” His head tilted back, his expression malign. “I’m gonna fry every one of the little bastards. All I wanted was to pet one.”

Aimee helped him remove the rest of the horn darts, carefully working them free of his flesh. “How do you feel? Besides angry, I mean.”

“Little woozy. Not too—bad.
Whoo!
” He staggered, and it was all she could do to help him sit down. Peeler was too late to help.

Instead he rested a comforting hand on his associate’s shoulder. “How you feeling, man?”

“Pretty potent stuff.” Rundle blinked. “Spice it up a little and I think you could find a market for it.” When he looked up at them, a stupid smile dominated his expression. “Tried a couple o’ shots o’ kentazene once. Just for kicks, of course. Felt kind of like this.”

“There.” Aimee removed the last of the horn darts. Favoring it with a look of distaste, she flung it out into the rain.

Employing a very subdued beam, Chaa was cautiously studying the inhabitants of the ceiling. “I wonder how long it takes them to grow new ones? It seems to be an effective defense. It’s not necessary to kihll. Only to discourage. Any predator taking a couple of those in the face would most lihkely stagger off, stunned and destablized.”

The engineer nodded ceilingward. “Look,” she whispered.

It was clear now there were more than a dozen of the creatures. They had been so densely packed together that their true numbers had been effectively concealed. She counted twenty, thirty of them, making their laborious way down the sloping flanks of the cavity. Several simply rolled into balls, released their grip on the ceiling and dropped. They bounced a couple of times, unfolded themselves, and started crawling, their protruding, staring eyes fixed on Rundle’s seated form.

Aimee rose, nervously using her light to scan the floor near her feet. “Come on, we’ve got to get out of here. Get up, Rundle.”

“Why?” He smiled happily up at her. “It’s the first night since we landed I haven’t been soaked through.”

Chaa was beckoning from out in the rain. “Outside, everyone. Now. We must get out of range.” Coerlis was standing next to him. Eyeing his friend reluctantly, Peeler hesitated. There was an explosive pop and a dart horn struck his service belt. He nearly fell over his own legs in his haste to get clear.

Covering her head with her hands, Aimee started to retreat. Rundle grinned at her as he scuttled backward on his hands and feet, and propped himself up against the wall.

“What’re you all afraid of? I can handle this.”

One of the little creatures was approaching his right boot. Contemptuously, he drew back his leg and kicked out, sending it spinning all the way across the cavity. Fetching up against the far side, it righted itself, fluffed out its fur, and started back in Rundle’s direction as if nothing had happened.