Harros seemed more disposed to conversation on the way back to our room; apparently he had forgiven me my earlier rudeness.
“That looked like fun, didn’t it?” He winked as though he didn’t believe I would understand his stab at humor.
“At least it wasn’t raining,” I answered, which earned me an odd look.
“Are you sure you haven’t done this before? I thought you were in the Library section.”
I couldn’t help it; he seemed so gullible.
“Do I look like someone who’s spent his entire life in the library?” Actually, up until a year ago, I had.
“You mean you have been in combat?”
“Years ago.” Inwardly I cringed at my own understatement. “But it was all on the ground,” I added, sensing his confusion. “No flying.”
He seemed satisfied to take me at my word. “Then you know what this kind of stuff is like—all this running back and forth and jumping into holes in the ground.”
I nodded unhappily. “Like I said, it’s worse when it rains.”
“I heard somebody say it rains down there every day. I guess it would, from all those trees we saw.” He stopped as we came abreast of our compartment. “We must be pretty far south, then.”
Pretty far, I agreed to myself. An unexpected stroke of Providence, that. But was it far enough?
I was awakened by the cessation of a motion I hadn’t been aware of before it stopped. I awoke clear-headed, a notable phenomenon for me under any circumstances, with the feeling I had just emerged from a dream—and the entire tactical situation of South Equator in my head. Across from me, Harros was rousing himself with somewhat less celerity than I; I used the few moments this gave me to myself to acquaint my conscious mind with what my sleeping brain already understood.
South Equator was what the Nuum, in the exercise of their limitless imagination, had christened the southern equatorial continent. I suppose that it most closely resembled northern Africa of my day, but only in geographic placement. The flora and fauna were more akin to that I had read of in certain explorers’ accounts of Central America in my own time. When I read them, I had frankly dismissed many of their tales outright; I found their tales of jungle fever and delirium more than an adequate explanation for imagined man-eating mosquitoes, plants, and just about anything else that crawled, slithered, or oozed.
After dreaming of South Equator, I viewed jungle fevers as almost friendly.
The political situation was clear enough: Less of a rebellion than a strike, the Thorans had abandoned their plantation duties for the trenches. Apparently believing soldiers were merely pawns to go and to fight where and when ordered without access to the higher reasons behind the fighting itself (another practice I was sad to see had survived the centuries), the Nuum had not bothered to describe why the workers had revolted. They told us that the harvest of a number of plant species was being interrupted, plants that served important purposes we were either assumed to know or weren’t entitled to be told.
Still, the pictures they did show us were instructive.
Along with many other animals I had seen in the hills during my first few days here, the beasts of the jungle had climbed up the evolutionary ladder in almost one million years. Most obviously fearsome were the lions. In addition to increasing in size fifty percent, their forelimbs had developed longer and more useful claws until now they were almost arms, and the King of Beasts walked nearly upright, like an ape. In my day they had climbed trees like ladders—now they climbed walls.
Our lessons touched upon my friendly fevers, but only to the extent that we would be vaccinated against them before we were allowed out. More ominous were the myriad bites and stings that awaited us, “all of which can be made harmless with immediate treatment.” I thought about the immediacy of medical aid in the trenches and resolved not to be stung or bitten.
Amazing, in hindsight, that anyone besides me ever stepped off the airship. That I did so could be traced to but one fact: On the other side of South Equator and perhaps a thousand miles further south from this spot stood the city of Dure.
But step off every man did, and purposefully, for we had a job to do. The local “blacks” had failed to keep order, and now it was our job. I still had not seen one of the “blacks.” We stood at parade rest outside the ship, in the sun, while our officers stood about deep in conference about matters far beyond the ken of their troops. As an officer myself once upon a time, I had participated in those conferences, and I knew they first and foremost had consisted of tossing about ideas as to how to get ourselves out of the hot sun.
As far as I was concerned, the officers could twiddle their thumbs all afternoon. I hadn’t asked to be part of this army, I didn’t believe in this army, and as soon as humanly possible I intended to separate myself from this army. And although I hardly needed my sleep-briefing to tell me that nighttime was a bad time in the bush, it beat being shot in the back trying to escape during the daylight. So I suffered in the heat. The longer we stood here the less likely it was that I would ever find myself in hand-to-hand combat with my own kind.
Nor was I planning any pitched battles with the men around me. True, they had enslaved my planet, but I was here only by accident, and I had my own fight. As soon as I could, I would strike out by myself across country and find my way to Dure and Hana. That was my well-laid plan…
…which I had plenty of time to reflect upon while I crouched in a trench awaiting the order to charge. Our officers hadn’t wasted away the afternoon in idle chatter; they had formed us into smaller units and marched us straight onto the field of battle. We were armed with staffs, just as I had seen in the moving pictures. I examined mine as carefully as I could without arousing suspicion, but as far as I could tell it was no more or less than what it appeared to be: a long, heavy stick. I looked about; only the officers carried sidearms.
I shook my head in disbelief. The Nuum were so afraid of damaging the local jungle plants that they sent their own men into combat with…sticks. I knew what crossing no man’s land was like. If the Thorans had gotten their hands on a single sidearm, they would wipe us out.
The order came to advance.
And it started to rain.
In my months in France, I had learned of the concept of déjà vu, or living through the same event twice. It had come over me again and again in those ancient trenches, and it hit me now. The rain, the men, the uncertainty of enemy fire were all the same elements I had faced the day I left France for this place. Only now I wasn’t in charge.
We clambered over the slippery lip of the trench and began walking. Other than my mood, which was blacker than the Kaiser’s mustache, it wasn’t all that bad. The rain was warm, and the ground seemed to absorb as much as it could drink, so that the mud was only mud and not soul-sucking pools of sludge into which a man might disappear without so much as a cry. It made sticking sounds when I lifted my boots but at least I could lift them.
To the left and right of me men walked with a certain caution, sniffing the wind like a dog that knows the bear is in these woods but can’t pick him up yet. But they stood straight up like reeds before a storm, or the armies of the Continent before they met the hideous reality of the German machine gun. Only I approached the enemy bent like an old man, ready to dive to one side or another at the first sign of the withering fire that would turn the other men into stalking-horses.
Some of my comrades looked at me oddly, but they had their own business to mind. The officers were different. One whose name I had never known and would never find out walked straight over to me with a parade ground strut and planted himself in my path. He opened his mouth to speak and took the blast that had been meant for me.
I was rolling madly away from that spot before his ashes settled. I began to shout at the men to get down, to take whatever cover the grass offered, but because they were still in shock or because I wasn’t an officer, they ignored me. The Thorans had found more weapons somewhere, and all around me Nu
um died.
The grass all around me cut off my vision. Mud was caked all over my uniform and my face; I had to clear my ears to hear what I couldn’t see. A sudden shout went up and the ground vibrated under me. I knew what had happened: the Thorans had used their ray-weapons in a surprise attack, panicking the Nuum, and now they were following up their advantage. If I stood, I would be shot; if I didn’t, the enemy would stumble over me in seconds.
I have said that my body has always possessed the ability to act independently of rational thought, and that on odd occasions I find myself acting in ways that on later reflection even I find completely lunatic. I have also said that such lunacy has saved my life, and it did so now.
I leaped straight to my feet and charged the entire Thoran army single-handed.
Screaming at the top of my lungs and waving my staff about my head, I plunged right through their line and kept on going. Somewhere deep in my unconscious a small voice had reasoned that no one would shoot me if their own men were in the way, and that same voice had convinced me, for the most fleeting of instants, that these rebels were likely a small “army;” there would only be enough of them for a thin battle line, not a massed attack. That little voice was right. When I burst past the startled Thoran troops, there was no one between me and the jungle. I wasted no time in putting the jungle between me and the Thorans.
As soon as I felt I could, I slowed to a stop. There was no pursuit, of course. Who would be so insane? I congratulated myself for escaping my merely human enemies and placing myself in the hands of animals less known for their merciful qualities than for their large appetites and poisonous fangs, the antidotes for which I had just neatly rendered unavailable to me.
My breathing once more under control, I undertook to examine myself. In the heat of battle and flight, I could have suffered wounds all unknowing, but serious nonetheless. Happily, I had escaped, the most annoying injury being a persistent throbbing on my right thigh. It felt as though I had rolled over a rock—in fact it felt as if the rock were still there. I felt a cold thrill of fear. There was something in my pocket.
The jungle fauna briefing had not been encyclopedic in its scope, but it hadn’t mentioned any small round animals with hard shells. Did that mean none existed? Slowly, carefully, I forced the unseen object from my pocket from the outside, protecting my bare hands.
The miniature library fell out of my pocket and plopped to the ground.
It greeted me in a voice I recognized. “I will be of about as much use to you down here as I was in your pocket, young man.”
“I had forgotten you were there,” I breathed, picking it up.
“I will accept that as an apology, under the circumstances.” It was still the old librarian’s voice, but the tone was different, less deferential. There was also an undertone of humor. I liked it better.
A distant roar followed immediately by an agonized, short scream recalled me to my situation.
“What do you know about my current circumstances?”
“Not a great deal,” the small metal sphere admitted. I marveled at the clarity of its voice. “However, I can extrapolate from the ambient temperature and humidity, and what sounds like a lion’s roar, that you are either in a zoological habitat dome, or you have traveled very far off the course I prescribed for you back in the Library.”
“I’m afraid it is the latter. Can you help me find a way out of here without getting any closer to that roaring?” I was trying to watch every direction at once, and the effort was making me dizzy.
“Not likely. My video capabilities are limited by my size. I can’t see much better than you can—although at night I’ll still be able to see even when you can’t.”
“That doesn’t leave me with a whole lot of choice, then.” My rampage through the trees had left some signs; not much, but enough given the virgin nature of the territory. Gripping my staff with one hand, and apologizing to the library unit as I slipped it back into my pocket, I set off the way I had come. By picking my path carefully, I might be able to reach the battlefield again. Then, if I could just avoid both sides, something might present itself.
And something did. I simply wasn’t prepared for it.
I had gone far enough to be completely lost when I froze at a noise from ahead of me. It did not recur, and I took a step, only to freeze again at a noise above me. I looked up as a dark blur plunged toward me from a tree branch. I jumped back but the blur leaped out of the brambles and seized me. I had no time to level my staff before I was helpless.
I stared directly into the eyes of a full-grown bull gorilla whose hand encircled my throat. There wasn’t even room to swallow one last time. With its free hand it ripped open my pocket and removed the library.
“That’s a very nice toy you have there,” said the ape. “I think I’d like to own one.”
Chapter 16
Tiger Spiders
My grandmother used to say, “Sometimes you want to kick God in the ankle, just so he’ll know you’re there.” And that’s what I did.
The gorilla’s grip on me had loosened as he examined the library. He hadn’t let go, and he still could have killed me in an instant, but at least I could breathe. As soon as blood began to flow back into my brain, I knew I had had enough. From the moment I had stepped through the silver door, I had been chased, shot at, kidnapped, and used—and now to be robbed of my one useful possession by a talking gorilla? I had had enough!
I reversed the staff and jammed it as hard as I could into his foot. He might not have been God, but he sure knew I was there.
Roaring with pain, he tossed me through the air. If I had hit a tree in my flight, all my worries would have ended right then. They almost did anyway.
I hit the ground and skidded to a stop in the damp loam, shook my vision clear and saw the gorilla bearing down on me, eyes red and hands clenching with rage. I scrambled to my feet, leveled the staff, and stood my ground. He might have been mad, but he had nothing on me.
The ape stopped short. We stared at each other. The moment stretched on without end.
“I think you broke my damned foot.”
I cleared my throat painfully. “You should complain.” I nodded at the library. “I’d like that back.”
The baring of his fangs may have been meant as a smile, but it was ferocious in any event. I stayed my ground by sheer will.
“You willing to take it from me?”
“If I have to.” Lord, I prayed, don’t make me have to.
He laughed. I had never heard a gorilla laugh before, had never even considered such a thing, but if I had I wouldn’t have expected this. Out of that gargantuan chest, from which growled the lowest voice I had ever heard, leaked a feminine squeaking, a pin-pricked balloon of a laugh, that abruptly exploded and sprayed me with gorilla spit. He laughed until he could not stand up, and had to support himself on his knuckles like his ancestors. As soon as he realized what he was doing, he straightened up in a hurry, but he couldn’t keep the giggles from escaping.
“You are the biggest damned fool I have ever met!” he boomed, and tossed me the sphere. Like an idiot, I caught it, leaving myself off-guard and completely defenseless. If he hadn’t been so busy snorting between mumbled editorials about my sense—or lack thereof—he might have crushed me.
I placed the library in another pocket and waited with what remained of my muddy dignity for him to stop. The formality of my upbringing rescued me.
“Keryl Clee,” I offered, extending one hand. He stared at me for a moment, then held out his own. That’s when I took hold of my staff and swung straight at his head. “Duck!”
He ducked as I screamed and my stick caromed off the tree trunk, almost vibrating out of my numbed hands. I managed to stagger partway around the tree and away from his inevitable counter-attack, barely in time. I heard him rush me and cleared my throat frantically.
“Look at the tree!” I croaked. He frowned, backing away, quickly glanced at the wood where my blow had landed, a
nd saw a large yellow-and-black smear, pulpy with red, where none had been before.
“Tiger spider!” he gasped.
It was a tribute to the dead creature that he had recognized it even in its altered form. Tiger spiders frightened even the lions—or, as in this case, the great apes. Here in the wild, they were primarily tree-dwellers, and they didn’t spin webs like the garden varieties I had known in my own time, they hunted. Tiger spiders routinely attacked creatures several times their own size, including human beings. The power of their venom was unquantifiable because no researcher could capture a specimen; few even wanted to try. But the most horrifying thing about them was that they traveled in packs.
The gorilla jumped back away from the shelter of his tree, shivering as he realized that the thing must have been in the branches below him while he was watching me. If he hadn’t fallen on me from that height, he probably would have stepped on it.
Our minds were traversing the same path now; he looked at me with a new expression in his eyes.
“You aimed high on purpose. You saw that thing ready to bite me.”
“I would’ve warned you, but there wasn’t time,” I replied tersely. “We’d better move. If it was ready to attack something your size…”
“It wasn’t alone. I know. Follow me.”
He took off through the underbrush, whether because he knew a path away from the tiger spiders or simply because it was more dangerous to stay put, I don’t know. I didn’t stop to ask.
Needless to say, I had never observed a gorilla in the wild, nor had I had much chance to visit them in zoos, but from what I had heard, this one moved more nimbly on the ground than his ancestors. There was none of the knuckle-walking I had been lectured about, although his gait was less limber than mine, and there was no question I could outrun him in a sprint. We never got that far; even our fair trot was only attainable due to his familiarity with the terrain and the faint paths that I was only beginning to discern. Trying to keep up this pace on my own in the jungle would have had me down with a turned ankle inside of a mile.
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