She slipped into the rubbery slickness of the thicket. The otter was there, waiting. Far enough, apparently . . . Nile turned, took out the UW, parted the weeds enough to see anything coming towards her. When she glanced aside again, Sweeting was gone.
She waited. A light-thicket hung twenty yards to her left; about her was dimness. Small skilt shadows slipped past, and something big and chunky drifted up, turning slowly head-on as it came opposite her to stare in at her among the weeds. It paused, moved off. A large weed skilt, perhaps three times the weight of the maddened projectiles which had made up the school. A carrion eater by preference. It should do well in the wake of the sea-havals’ hunt tonight—
Abrupt violent commotion—swirling of water, lifting and sinking of the weed fronds, thudding sensations which suddenly stopped . . . Nile knew the pattern of an underwater death fight; and this had been one, not many yards away. It was over now. She slipped forwards, gun held out, peering up. Dark smoky veils floated down and something bulky came settling through then, grazing the weed tangle. The Parahuan’s head seemed nearly detached from the squat body, blood pumping out through the throat gashes. Typical otter work.
Sweeting reappeared from above. Together they hauled the unwieldy thing by its harness straps into the weeds. Fastened to the broad back was the Parahuan version of a jet rig. Nile studied it a moment, gave up the notion of converting the device to her own use; she would lose more time over that than it should take her to get back into the floatwood. They left the big rubbery body wedged in the center of the tangle. As they turned away, the first scavenging weed skilt was nosing towards it from the other side.
A hissing had begun in the audio pickup and was growing louder. Nile halted Sweeting in the trailing fringes of the thicket. Then two other bulky figures were slanting down swiftly through open water towards them, trailed by thin jet tracks. The Parahuans’ guns were in their hands. Possibly they had picked up traces of the brief commotion and were looking for their dead companion. At any rate, they were hardly twenty-five feet away when Nile saw them, and their faces were turned towards her, semicircular water eyes staring. The UW couldn’t miss on such targets, and didn’t.
The immediate vicinity of a sea-haval rookery at night was not for the nervous. Monstrous rumblings and splashings came from within the floatwood walls surrounding it, as the adult kesters left the rookery by a diving hole hacked through the forest’s subsurface root floor, returned presently, beak-spears holding up to a ton of mangled skilts, to be greeted by the roars of their gigantic young.
Upwind of the racket, on the lagoon side, Nile finished recoating herself and her equipment with buti sap. She was down among the massive boles near the water, waiting for Sweeting to return and report. While they were dealing with three members of the Parahuan sea patrol, the wild otters had found and dispatched another three. That seemed to have left no survivors. But the patrol should have been missed by now; and what she did next would depend at least in part on what the Parahuans were doing as a result.
The tarm had been found still at its station beneath the blockhouse. Nile was thankful for that. The sudden near-encounter in the other forest with the pallid sea thing had rammed fear deep into her nerves; the thought of it hadn’t been far from her mind since. The early reports that the Parahuans might have developed the monsters out of their own kind somehow made the tarm more horrible. After seeing what their biological skills had done in creating the form of a Great Palach, Nile thought it was possible. She told herself the buti and reasonable caution would keep the creature from noticing her if she met it again, but she wasn’t at all sure of that. And the buti would be no protection if it came near her in the water.
Her wild allies might presently free her of that particular fear. They’d gone to get a supply of the poisoned thorns and seemed confident that in the underwater tangle of floatwood beneath the blockhouse they could plant a lethal dose into the farm’s huge body without too much trouble. Sweeting was prowling the lagoon, looking for signs of alien activity there or in the forest near Nile.
“Found Tikkos, Nile!”
“Where?”
Sweeting slipped up along the bough out of the lagoon, crouched beside her. “In boat,” she said. “With little waddle-feet.”
“Little waddle-feet?” Palachs? “Half-size,” said Sweeting. “Five, six. Tikkos talking to Guardian Etland. Then waddle-feet talking to Guardian Etland. Loud-voice. You Guardian Etland, heh?”
“The waddle-feet think so.” Loud-voice was a loudspeaking device. “Let’s get this straight! First, where’s the boat Ticos and the waddle-feet are in?”
The otter’s nose indicated the eastern end of the forest. “Boat’s coming into lagoon. Coming this way. Got lights. Got loud-voice. Talking to forest. They think Guardian Etland’s in forest. Tikkos say waddle-feet talk, not fight. You talk and maybe they go away. Waddle-feet say they sorry about fighting. No guns in boat. You come talk, please.” Sweeting paused, watching her. “Kill them, get Tikkos now, heh?”
“No,” Nile said. “No, we don’t kill them. I’d better hear what they have to say. You say the boat’s coming in this direction—”
“Coming slow. You don’t listen to waddle-feet, Nile! Trick, heh? You come close, they kill you.”
“It may not be a trick. Stay here.” But she felt shaky as she climbed quickly back into the forest towards the sea-haval rookery. The theoretical Tuvela, totally self-confident, certainly would be willing to talk to the aliens at this point, press the psychological advantage she’d gained. On the other hand, the Tuvela presumably would know what to do if it turned out she’d stepped into a Parahuan trap. Nile wasn’t sure she would know what to do.
She caught her breath briefly at the wind backed up and assorted rookery stenches billowed around her. Far enough from the lagoon . . . She opened the pouch, took out the roll of tanglecord, added the otter caller to the other items, closed the pouch and shoved it into one of the fins, the buti stick into the other. She taped the fins together. They made a compact package which she wedged into a floatwood niche and secured further with tanglecord, leaving the roll stuck to the package. She was keeping the climb-belt and the UW.
She looked around a moment, memorizing the place, started back to the lagoon. Sweeting was hissing with alarm and disapproval when she got there. Nile calmed the otter, explained the situation as well as she could. The boat lights hadn’t yet appeared around the curve of the forest to the east. They set off in that direction, Nile moving through the floatwood not far from the edge of the lagoon, Sweeting in the water slightly ahead of her. If a trap had been laid, they should spot it between them before they were in it . . .
Going by Ticos’ descriptions, the six Parahuans in the boat with him were Palachs. Concealed at a point some fifty feet above the water, Nile looked them over. Two were about his size; four ranged down from there, though none came near the midget level. In the boat lights they displayed odd headgears and elaborate harness arrangements . . . And, of course, they might be carrying concealed weapons.
She studied Ticos more carefully than his companions. There was a stiffness in the way he moved which showed he wasn’t in good physical condition. But his amplified voice was clear; and if his phrasing had more than a suggestion of obsequiousness about it, that fitted the role he was playing—an inferior addressing the Guardian. A role of his own choosing; not one he had been forced to assume.
She was convinced that so far there was no trap. But there were other considerations . . .
The loudspeaker began booming about her again. It was set to penetrate high and deep into the forest, overriding the surging winds, to reach the attention of the Guardian Etland wherever she might be. Ticos and one of the Palachs used it alternately. The others squatted about the boat as it moved slowly through the lagoon along the forest.
The message was repetitious. She’d been listening to it for the past few minutes, keeping pace with the boat. Her talk with the Great Palach Koll had been
monitored by the Everliving. The transmitting device presumably had been another of the jewels fixed to Roll’s head; and the idea might have been Kofi’s—to let the other Great Palachs and Palachs follow his interrogation of the captured human, witness the collapse of her pretensions as Guardian and Tuvela. If so, the plan had backfired. Everything said, the fact that Kofi was the prisoner, the Tuvela’s evident knowledge of Porad Anz’s secrets, was designed to further undermine the Everliving’s confidence. It explained Kofi’s sudden furious attack. He felt she had to be silenced then and there to preserve the goals of the Voice of Action.
Nile gathered that the ranks of the Everliving had been in turmoil since. The loss of the sea patrol did nothing to calm them. They didn’t suspect she had nonhuman assistants, so it appeared to them that the patrol had encountered the Tuvela on her way over from the other forest and that she’d wiped it out single-handedly before it could get out an alarm. Then a short while ago they’d begun getting reports that a small fast surface vessel was maneuvering elusively about the drift—the Sotira sleds had kept their promise to provide her with a message courier. The Everliving naturally associated the presence of the ship with that of the Tuvela. But they didn’t know what its purpose was . . .
They’d been under psychological pressure since she’d first avoided what had seemed inevitable capture. With each move she’d made thereafter the pressure increased. That the moves were forced on her they didn’t realize. All of it would seem part of the Tuvela’s developing plan . . . a plan they didn’t understand and seemed unable to check. They didn’t know to what it would lead. Fears they’d nourished and fought down for over half a century fed heavily on them again.
So they, the proud Palachs of Porad Anz, had sent out Dr. Ticos Cay and a delegation of the Voice of Caution to offer the Tuvela a cessation of hostilities and the opportunity to present the Guardians’ terms to them in person. No doubt some of Kofi’s adherents remained ragingly opposed to the move.
Could she risk talking to them?
As things stood, she had a very good chance of getting away from here presently. Then she could warn her kind that there was an enemy among them and that they must prepare for attack. If she walked into the enemy’s camp and couldn’t maintain the Tuvela bluff, she’d have thrown away the chance. If Ticos had understood that, he mightn’t be urging her now to reveal herself.
But if she didn’t respond and remained concealed, the pressure on the Everliving wouldn’t let down. They’d interpret silence to mean that they were no longer being offered an opportunity to withdraw.
How would they react? They might feel it was too late to attempt retreat. They’d had many weeks to prepare the strike against Nandy-Cline from their hidden floatwood bases. If they decided to launch it before countermoves began, how long would it be before space weapons lashed out at the mainland? Hours? Her warning would come too late in that case . . .
The real question might be whether she could risk not talking to them.
Abruptly, Nile made up her mind.
The Parahuan boat came slowly about the curve of the forest. The loudspeaker began to shout again. After a few words it stopped. The Palach Moga, standing beside Ticos Cay, lowered the instrument carefully and turned it off with an air of preferring to make no sudden moves. There was a burst of sibilant whisperings behind Ticos. They ceased. The boat’s engines cut out and it drifted up against a tangle of lagoon weeds. The man and the six aliens stared at the motionless figure standing at the forest’s edge ten yards away.
The Tuvela’s voice said crisply, “Dr. Cay!”
Ticos cleared his throat. “Yes, Guardian?”
“Have that craft brought over here and introduce the Parahuan officers to me—”
Stepping down into the boat was like crossing the threshold of a grotesque dream. They stood erect on long legs, abandoning the natural posture of their kind, balanced not too certainly on broad feet. Parahuan heads inclined in obeisance to the Guardian as Ticos introduced them in turn. She knew the names of the Palach Moga and one of the others from his report. Along with half a dozen Great Palachs, Moga was the most influential member of the Voice of Caution. He retained his place beside Ticos. The others stood well to the back of the boat as it turned out again into the lagoon.
Moga spoke briefly into a communicator, said to Nile, “The Everliving are assembling to hear the Guardian . . .”
She didn’t ask where they were assembling. A Tuvela would show no concern for such details. An angry whistling came for an instant from farther out in the lagoon. Sweeting still didn’t approve of this move.
The sound seemed to jar all along Nile’s nerves. She was frightened; and knowing that now of all times she couldn’t afford to be frightened simply was making it that much worse. For moments her thoughts became a shifting blur of anxieties. She tried to force them back to what she would say to the Everliving, to anticipate questions to which she must have answers. It didn’t work too well. But the physical reactions faded gradually again.
Stocky Oganoon figures, weapons formally displayed, lined the sides of the water-level entrance to the blockhouse. The boat moved a few yards along a tunnel, was moored to a platform. She followed Moga up into the structure. Ticos stayed a dozen steps behind, effacing himself, playing his own role. After the introductions, she hadn’t spoken to him. On the next level, she realized he was no longer following.
The Palach Moga paused before a closed door.
“If the Guardian will graciously wait here, I will see that the Assembly is prepared . . .”
Nile waited. After moments the door reopened and the Palach emerged. He carried something like a jeweled handbag slung by a long strap over one shoulder. Nile had the impression he was ill at ease.
“If the Guardian permits . . . There are Great Palachs beyond this door. They are unarmed. They would prefer it if the Guardian did not address them with a weapon at her hand.”
If she couldn’t convince them, Nile thought, she would die behind the door. But a Tuvela would not need to draw courage from a gun at this stage—and the UW by itself was not going to get her back past the clusters of guards in the passages behind them. She unclipped the holster from her belt, held it out. Moga placed it carefully in the bag and drew open the door. Nile went inside.
For a moment she had the impression of being in the anteroom to a great, dimly lit hall—too large a hall by far to be part of this structure in the fioatwood. Then she knew that the whole opposite wall of the room was a viewscreen. There were upward of a dozen Great Palachs in the room with her, squatting along the wall to either side . . . creatures not much larger than Koll, in richly colored stiff robes and an assortment of equally colorful hats. The remainder of the Everliving, Palachs and Great Palachs of all degrees, were arranged in rows along the hall, which must be a section of the headquarters ship below the sea. Shallow water shifted and gleamed here and there among the rows. Motionless and silent, the massed amphibians stared up at her from the dimness.
Nile heard the door through which she had come close quietly at her back. And curiously, with the tiny click her uncertainties were gone. A cool light clarity seemed to settle on her mind, every thought and emotion falling into place . . . She discovered she had moved forward and was standing in the center of the chamber, facing the screen.
Selecting her words with chilled precision, the Tuvela began to speak.
VII
The outstanding feature of the big room in the blockhouse structure the Parahuans had assigned Ticos Cay as his working laboratory was its collection of living specimens. The floatwood island’s life forms lined three of the walls and filled long shelf stands in between. Neatly labeled and charted, they perched on or clung to their original chunks of floatwood, stood rooted in the pockets of forest mold or in victimized life forms in which they had been found, floated in lagoon water, clustered under transparent domes. They varied from the microscopic to inhis organisms with a thirty-foot spread. For the most part, they we
re in biological stasis—metabolism retarded by a factor of several million, balance maintained by enzyme control and a variety of other checks. Proper handling would otherwise have been impossible.
The Guardian was able to find little fault with the progress Dr. Cay had made in his work projects. “In this respect you have not done badly,” she acknowledged, for the benefit of whatever ears might be listening. She tapped the charts he’d offered for her inspection together and dropped them into the file from which he’d taken them. “It’s disappointing, however, that it became necessary at last for me to intervene directly in a matter we had expected you to handle alone.”
“Given more time, I might have done it!” Ticos remonstrated humbly. “I was opposed by a number of intractable beings, as you know.”
“I do know—having encountered one of those beings. But it was hardly a question of time. The issues were clear. If they had been presented with clarity, a rational majority of our uninvited guests would have drawn the correct conclusions and acted on them. We must count this a failure. You needn’t let it concern you unduly. The excellent thoroughness of your work on the basic assignment, under somewhat limiting conditions, will offset the failure, at least in part.”
Ticos mumbled his gratitude, went back with evident relief to additional explanations about his projects. Nile checked her watch.
Forty-two minutes since she’d been escorted with careful courtesy from the assembly chamber to the lab and left there with Ticos. No word from the Everliving since then, and the Palach Moga hadn’t showed up with her gun. Good sign or bad? While she was talking to them, she’d almost been a Tuvela. She’d blasted them! She’d felt exalted. There’d been no questions. The Great Palachs closest to her in the chamber had edged farther back to the walls before she was done, stirred nervously again whenever she shifted a glance in their direction.
Complete Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 190