Misery loves company on every planet in the galaxy.
Middle C joined them in their unhappy huddle just before a dawn which, although still wet and windy, was promising to clear. His short pelt was streaming, and his supply of spears—and energy—was exhausted. It was the first time Mac, or even Pemot, had seen a Majestan tired out for more than a moment.
Speaking in dull-minded monosyllables, his own tribe’s version of taflak laced with pidgin Fodduan and English, he assured both of his offworld friends he was uninjured, thanks to an inborn reflex which had sent him burrowing into the leaves without a conscious thought, the moment he’d seen the danger coming.
Death, it seemed, had passed directly over him.
He, too, had been trying his best to kill the fusion-powered monster before it killed them.
He, too, had no idea whether they’d succeeded.
And what was worse, he’d brought them more bad news.
Chapter XX: Tunnel Rats
Middle C insisted on explaining in his own way.
Dawn had broken over the Sea of Leaves, the sun of Majesty bursting through a ragged covering of clouds, fleeing from the sky as if they’d been caught staying out too late. Birds and birdlike creatures sang. Everywhere the vegetation glistened in the morning sunlight as if it had been edged in silver.
The humidity was ninety-eight percent.
The two offworld travelers, Mac and Pemot, had been too weary the night before to listen to their taflak friend. For his part, he’d maintained that, although they were in terrible trouble—again—it was trouble that would take some time arriving. Although worried, the three had enjoyed total, limp unconsciousness for several hours—Mac was learning the secret of sound sleep: terror and utter exhaustion—awakening to a world transformed from the stygian bedlam of wind and rain it had been to a pastoral symphony of sunshine and birdcalls.
It made Mac nervous.
Middle C made one of his small fires again, although he wouldn’t hunt this morning. Instead, they all snacked on the last of Pemot’s field rations—even the taflak, with his single supporting tentacle coiled beneath him in a sitting position, nibbled at the dried and salted sandshrimp which were a lamviin delicacy and one of Pemot’s personal favorites—boiled tea, and kood smoke.
At last, when the human and the Sodde Lydfan could stand the suspense no longer, Middle C took up his spear thrower and, with many a high-pitched warble and whistle, showed them both a feature of it which neither had known existed.
“He says,” Pemot translated, “that, unlike Earthians and lamviin, who invented pockets because they seem to have convenient places on their anatomy to hang them—” The scientist patted the pockets covering the legs (or arms) of his own trousers (or tunic). It was more than just an illustrative gesture. He’d misplaced his monocle in the previous night’s excitement and seemed lost without it. He’d already mourned the passing of his radio equipment which had been reduced to sodden junk. “The taflak, unblessed anatomically, have had to arrive at some alternative arrangement. He directs our attention to the handle end of his spear thrower.”
This, it developed, was hollow, friction-sealed with a tapered plug. Thanks to his implant, Mac had followed more of the native’s speech than perhaps Pemot suspected. Now he heard Middle C explain the courage and strength which obtaining the materials for a spear thrower required on this vegetation-covered planet.
“Branches large enough to make spear throwers—and spears themselves—come from deep beneath the Sea of Leaves, the deeper beneath the sea, the larger the branches. A warrior is required to burrow down and cut a branch of the correct shape and size. No one else may do it for him. It is one of the rites of adulthood.”
“I’d wondered,” Mac confessed. “There doesn’t seem to be anything large enough on the surface.”
Pemot blinked. “Yes. I gather it’s also the source of the finer stems and branches their village platforms and dwellings are fashioned from, as well; although such materials as these must come from shallow enough depths practically any villager can—”
“Queet so!” Middle C answered Pemot’s guess in English and continued in his own language.
“If he has won a large enough thrower, a taflak warrior carries his few possession here…” The native pulled the tapered plug from the end of his spear thrower, splayed the dozens of hairlike tendrils at the end of one tentacle, and allowed the contents of the hollow handle to spill out onto the “palm” he’d formed.
Everything Mac saw had been made in miniature: a spool of some sort of thread or twine, a couple of spare spear tips which could be used as knives, a bundle of herbs, fire-making tools, several items, including some small, hand-polished wooden washers or doughnuts, which neither he nor Pemot could identify.
And a foil-covered roll of candy.
The kind with the holes in the middle.
“This, I take it, is why you say you’ve bad news for us this morning, Middle C?”
If the native nodded, winked, or gave any other nonverbal sign in the affirmative, it was lost on Mac.
“Every gathering bag contains at least one decaying berry which, if left alone, may spoil the rest.”
“Which means?” Mac asked.
“Most taflak, even those you have disagreements with, are fine people, if you get to know them well enough. All they want is good hunting, a dry, safe place to live, a happy mating, and perhaps, if they are ambitious, a better life for their offspring.”
Middle C indicated the wooden doughnuts. “For dealing with such people, I carry these. They are tokens for which food or metal can be traded.”
“Good heavens!” Pemot exclaimed. “A monetary system which I didn’t even dream existed!”
“But for others,” Middle C continued, “the decaying berries in the gathering bag, I carry this.”
He held up the spear thrower itself, and, thought Mac, would have indicated the spears if he hadn’t spent them all on the hovercraft last night.
“You New Strangers are much the same,” stated the native. “You carry metal tokens for good people, and, for the decaying berries in your own bag, you carry death spewers.”
He laid a gentle tentacle first on the holstered reciprocating pistol attached to Pemot’s upper leg, then on the Borchert & Graham plasma gun at Mac’s side.
“I see what you’re getting at, old fellow.” Pemot blinked understanding. “But what—”
“It is not comfortable to tell you, although I must, that some entire tribes among the taflak have become decaying berries. Mostly tribes in the barren lands. They trade with the Old Strangers, exchanging their willingness to do evil for crazy coins.” Now Middle C held up the roll of perforated candies.
Pemot answered, “Hmm.”
“I get it,” Mac offered. “New Strangers—us Confederates. Old Strangers are the First Wavers. Some tribes near the poles do their dirty work, for candy?”
“Why,” Pemot asked Middle C, “do you call them crazy coins?”
“Because, slipped around the end of one’s tentacle, they dissolve slowly, and make you do crazy things.”
Mac shook his head. “Candy’s a drug for the taflak?”
“It would appear so,” answered the lamviin. “And where, might I ask, did you acquire this?”
Middle C took the roll of candy and, rising, threw it as hard as he could out into the Sea of Leaves.
“After we fought the death machine, I scouted around. Polar tribes are coming this way, following the slave machines of the many wheeled tribe of Old Strangers. I sneaked into their encampment, listened to them talk, and took this to show you. They would travel much faster on their own, and we would be dead by now, except that they do their masters’ bidding and come at their masters’ pace.”
“So,” Mac translated, “the bad news is that more Securitasians are on the way, backed up by hostile tribes.”
“Hostile drug-crazed tribes,” Pemot corrected.
“Yes,” affirmed Middle C, “th
at’s part of the bad news.”
“Only part?” Mac and Pemot had spoken at the same time.
“Yes, they travel slowly because they are afraid. Many whirly machines of the other Old Strangers also come this way.”
Mac swallowed. “Why do I have a feeling, Pemot, that this is still only part of the bad news?”
“MacBear is smart. The worst of the bad news is that the many-wheeled Old Strangers, the whirly Old Strangers, and the decaying berries, all of them, come from many different directions.”
Middle C raised a tentacle and swept it around in a circle, following the horizon.
“In short,” offered Pemot, “we’re surrounded.”
“The good news,” Middle C chirped, “is that this is all of the bad news.”
“Well, what can we do about it?”
“I have already done what I can do. These movements cannot go unnoticed by my people. When they discover our plight, they will no doubt come and try to help us.”
“Gee, that’s confidence-inspiring,” Mac observed. “Any ideas of your own, Pemot?”
“Hmm. I seem to have a rather short supply of ideas at the moment. Where do you suppose your grandfather went with that hovercraft of his? Even damaged, it would be a good deal faster than either the taflak or the First Wavers.”
“Ha!” Mac answered. “And my grandfather would be real likely to help us out, too. On the other hand, if he’s stalled somewhere out here, he’s in the same mess we’re in, isn’t he? And if it meant his own escape—and if he needed us to help repair his machine…”
“Three ifs, MacBear. Nonetheless, they appear to be the only hope left to us.”
“Not quite.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I came here for the Brightsuit. I never intended to leave without it. And now, I may not be able to leave without it. Remember, it’s essentially a one-man spaceship, complete with weaponry. If I can get it away from my—”
“Another if, MacBear. I never have more than three with my breakfast. I accept that we need to find your grandfather’s hovercraft, for one reason or another. Therefore—”
“You want to go and look for the death machine?”
Mac laughed. “Yeah, as crazy as it seems, we do. Do you know where it is?”
“No, but I do not think it went far, and I should be able to find it easily. Should I do this now?”
“We’d appreciate it greatly—but do have a care, will you? You’ve none of your throwing spears left. Don’t get too close until we’re there to back you up.”
“Agreed. I have acquired great respect for these death spewers you New Strangers carry. I will avoid any such that may be with the machine and await the protection of your own.”
While Middle C departed to look for the damaged Trekmaster, Mac and Pemot cleaned up their camp, packed their remaining possessions, and stowed them on the sand-sled. Pemot even found his eyeglass, hanging by its ribbon from a broken radio antenna section. They hadn’t been at it ten minutes, when they heard a loud hooting not far away. Looking up, they saw Middle C waving a pair of spears in the air, which he’d recovered from where they’d fallen the night before. He went on with his search as they continued with their camp chores.
The taflak hunter returned in half an hour with news. He’d found the Preble hovercraft upright and intact. Following his agreement with Pemot, he hadn’t approached it, but he had a keen eye which had discerned no activity within it.
The pair of outworlders trudged off in the native’s impatient wake.
It took them all much longer than the half hour Middle C had required to find the Preble Trekmaster. Long before it was within sight, the warrior halted them, advising them to keep low and maintain silence. Pemot’s sled would be left where it was.
From Mac’s viewpoint, the area they’d come to was identical to every other spot on the Majestan equator. Flat, for the most part, from horizon to horizon, the Sea of Leaves formed low, rolling features too small to be called hills.
Mac wondered how Middle C could tell one place from another.
That he could soon became evident. Peeking out from behind a “bush”—a lump of vegetation raising itself a few feet above all the other vegetation—they spied the crippled machine lying at a slant amidst the leaves. One side window was cracked. Scorch marks and bullet holes showed where Mac and Pemot had scored hits.
And, visible inside, movement.
Drawing his pistol, the boy started forward, only to feel a three-fingered hand on his shoulder.
“Excuse me, MacBear, just what is it you hope to accomplish this way?”
Irritated, Mac squatted back down and turned to the lamviin. “What we said. Check out the machine. Make a deal with my grandfather. Double-cross him and get the suit back.”
Pemot made his throat-clearing noise, and it occurred to Mac for the first time that he must have picked it up from other humans he’d known, perhaps on Earth.
“Is it possible for larceny to run in families? Never mind, in this case I approve the broad outlines of your plan. Nonetheless, it’ll most likely get off to a bad start if your grandfather shoots you before you can speak to him.”
“You’ve got a point. What should we do, show a white flag?”
“And provide him with a better target? No, I believe we should confer with our mutual taflak friend instead.”
Middle C had been waiting, impatient, for the extra-Majestan council of war to conclude. Hearing Pemot’s reference to him, he came closer and asked what was required of him.
“I hesitate,” Pemot told him, “to send you into danger on our account, old fellow, but I should like to know if it’s possible for you to burrow all the way to the hovercraft under the covering of leaves.”
“I myself burrowed down over fifty body lengths to obtain this, my three-eyed friend, a mere half body length is playtime for children not yet hutbroken.”
“Very well, we’ll either await your signal to follow on the surface or your return to tell us it’s unsafe.”
“Why not follow him under the leaves?”
“What?”
“MacBear has a good idea. I burrow, you follow. It should not be more difficult than walking on the surface.”
“Dear me, I—”
“Claustrophobic, Pemot?”
“Of course not! I’m simply cautions. Very well, for Triarch and Empire, and all that sort of dryrot, let us go forward!”
Middle C began to whirl, not tentacle-over-tentacle as he did when traveling on the surface, but about the axis of the tentacle he was using for a leg. In a twinkling, he sank into the leafy “ground” like a post-hole digger.
Before too many seconds had passed, the taflak had disappeared from sight, leaving a narrow, cylindrical tunnel behind him, perhaps four feet from side to side. For a moment, the noise of his passage—which sounded to Mac something like the ice crusher in Mr. Meep’s kitchens—ceased, followed by several chirps and whistles.
“Hurry, my friends, before it can grow closed behind me!”
“He says,” Pemot translated, “we must hurry, or—” Mac firmed his grip on the Borchert & Graham. “I heard him. You go first.”
Giving the Sodde Lydfan fur ripple which was the equivalent of a human shrug, Pemot drew his own weapon and climbed into the hole which Middle C had left behind him.
For both of the offworlders, it was like crawling through a translucent green plastic tube. This close to the surface—they were never more than inches from it—plenty of light found its way between and through the leaves. Pemot picked his way along, placing each of his six feet with exaggerated care, just as he did on the surface.
Mac’s moss-shoes continued to work as they had above. The boy wondered how the vegetation, as green here as above, at this and lower depths got enough light to stay alive.
On occasion he brushed a nervous hand at the unprotected back of his neck or caught Pemot in a similar gesture. Small, gray, many-legged things skittered out of their path before the
y could quite be seen. Some ran along the ceiling. The leafy walls rustled with the movement of the creatures living within them.
And with something else more sinister.
Mac happened to look back for a moment, and noticed the hole they’d entered by had disappeared—along with several yards of the tunnel they’d just come through.
“Hey! This thing’s closing up behind us!”
Pemot’s rear eye blinked at the boy, and the lamviin replied without slacking his pace. “Indeed. That’s why our trusty guide felt compelled to hurry us. The planet’s vegetation’s incredibly mobile, churning and turning over like a thick soup boiling in a pot, so all the leaves can be in sunlight for some part of their existence.”
He raised a hand to brush at the walls, only to have a rat stick its head out from between the leaves and snap at his fingers, which he was quick to withdraw.
“Ghastly creature.”
Pemot reholstered his reciprocator and drew a large, curved, gleaming knife.
The next rat which tried to bite the lamviin lost its head.
“In any event,” Pemot went on, “for all we know, these leaves around us now may have begun their lives at the bottom of the sea, a full six miles below us, just last year.”
Mac, who didn’t have a large fighting knife and hadn’t yet learned to reduce the power of his father’s plasma gun—if it could be done—used the heavy barrel as a club to kill a rat the size of a small dog which had lunged for his ankle.
Squealing and whistling came from ahead of the lamviin. Middle C was disposing of rats by the tentacle-full, as if they were part of the worldwide hedge he bored through.
“I have never seen anything like this number of rats,” whistled the native warrior. “Something from below must have driven them up out of the leaves.”
Mac wiped blood and fur from the front sight of his pistol, looked at his hand, and shivered. “What do you think, Pemot? Could it have been the shooting last night, that one wild plasma ball of mine?”
“Or something else,” observed the lamviin. “I don’t believe that ball went deep enough.”
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