A few hundred meters out of camp, Chaugh broke his back.
It was definitely breathing Barrett heard. Slow and heavy, like an old steam engine. It didn’t come from any of the four humans, he was sure. Isabel started in his arms and he had to fight to choke off his own shout at the unexpected, abrupt movement. He whispered softly to her.
“Remember . . . no noise.”
She nodded, even though Barrett couldn’t see it.
A pair of tiny glowing coals, pits of fathomless red-orange, appeared in the blackness. Hot lava circles they were, fresh from the depths of the Earth . . . prime gems let by their own inner light. Now that his eyes had grown accustomed to the dark, he saw that there was some little light in the cave, peeking in around the edges of the wooden door.
But not enough light to show him the shape of the coal-possessor.
They flickered once. Another pair appeared alongside the first, and to the left, another. Soon there were a dozen pair of the enigmatic, fiery pinpoints floating opposite them.
There was a weird, quavering growl . . . it was answered by a familiar high snarl, not from the distant eyes (for surely that’s what they were . . . devil-eyes) but from close in front of them. Another growl, a deep-throated alien cough the likes of which the experienced Barrett had never heard. It was utterly new and alien.
Another snarl from Luana was answered by several husky growls and coughs.
Barrett tried to keep his voice as low as possible.
“Can you understand these . . . cats?”
Her reply floated back to him from a point in the pit only meters away. It was uncertain.
“They are cats . . . and yet they are not. Their minds are . . . slow. Not like Chaugh or Jukakhan. But I think—” She stopped, and he heard her make a rapid series of low growls and mewing sounds. They were answered.
“Move to the right side of the cave—right as facing in. Press close to the wall—and stay.”
Barrett and Isabel complied, nearly stumbling over Murin in the process.
“What is it? What are you going to do?” Damn this darkness! He couldn’t see a thing.
Luana was suddenly next to him, close, warm. “They were curious about me, so I told them things. And more besides, things that would not otherwise have occurred to them.”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” replied Barrett. “You even smell like them, a little.”
That was one of the things that had bothered them since their first meeting, and he hadn’t been able to pin it down until now, in the closeness of the cave. Her odor varied between that of a young girl and, say, Chaugh’s.
“They wish desperately to leave here,” she continued. “They have lived locked in this long cave as long as the oldest among them can remember. When the wooden door-bridge is raised and shuts out the light, they know food has been thrown in. But they are afraid of the fire. I have told them some things and explained others. They’d not the brains to think of them.”
Luana pressed herself tightly to him more tightly than was necessary, he thought.
“Stay very close to the wall. They can see a little, even in this, but not well.”
Barrett turned away from her and looked past Isabel, deeper into the cave. The red points seemed to have moved far into the distance. Luana snarled then, so close and loud that his hands clenched tight around Isabel. How he wished he had the Express now, despite Luana’s assurance!
The glowing eyes blurred suddenly, swept past him. His nostrils were overwhelmed by the concentrated smell of cat that wasn’t quite. Five or six of the things struck the metal gate high and together.
Abruptly the cave was filled with light as the metal bars and wooden door were smashed flat, like cardboard. They formed a neat bridge across the spike-strewn dry moat.
Barrett blinked in the sudden brilliance and tried to focus his tearing eyes. He looked up towards the roof of the cave portal where it was somewhat darker. The golden portcullus had been torn from its sockets. The holding chains dangled broken links from holes in the ceiling.
He lowered his gaze. The last giant shapes streaming past in front of him were a tawny yellow, but with impossible, incredible black zebra stripes. They flashed by, lightning quick. His sight began to return and he looked outside. Screams begin to fill the air of the cavern.
Having concluded a particularly odious task, the Bantu lords were already dispersed throughout the cavern when the creatures swarmed among them. Stunned and utterly entranced, the three explorers and Luana hurried across the makeshift bridge.
There were a dozen adults, plus a few cubs. One young cub sat on the side of the moat and watched Barrett, then turned to licking a paw. The children of most species are like all children: playful and cute. This one was undoubtedly playful, but characteristics marked it as anything but cute.
The tiny ball of striped fur yawned. In the process, it exposed a pair of long canines projecting down from the roof of the mouth. They were as large as those of a full grown lion. It had practically no forehead and a peculiarly flattened skull topped with tiny, dog-like ears. As it yawned, its lower jaw dropped to form nearly a straight line, almost touching its throat.
Horrible, unfeline yowling filled the cavern, reverberated from distant walls. The pent-up cat-things were turning on their hereditary tormentors from ages past.
They were older than the city, older than the Great Empire and how they’d survived he didn’t know. A terrifying, heartrending apparition from man’s desperate times past.
“George, George, come now! Stare later, yes?” Murin was pulling frantically at his arm and Barrett was aware he’d been watching and not moving. He blinked, gathered himself. Then he in turn had to half drag, half carry a stunned Isabel.
Luana stayed close to them. Whenever one of the cat-things strayed too close, too forgetfully, she would growl warningly at it and it would dash aside in search of other prey. They ran for the stream.
A loud rumbling filled the air, louder even than the screams and roaring behind. Dust and a few pebbles fell in front of them, not from being kicked up by their running, but falling from the roof.
It came again, louder. Behind them human shrieks and animal bellows continued unabated. So now did the rumbling. A stalactite plunged like a monster spear to the ground just to their left, shattering into limestone fragments and chips.
“It’s all the noise!” he yelled above the continual groaning of stone on stone. “No wonder their ceremony was subdued! No wonder they kept those things penned up in their own cave.” Another huge section of roof crashed to the ground nearby, the concussion so close nearly spilling Barrett off his feet. Somehow he stayed upright, kept Isabel from falling too.
“Sympathetic vibration!” he shouted again as they reached the water.
At some time in the recent past the roof of the cavern had collapsed. Now, coupled with decades of pounding from the small waterfall, the sudden uncontained cacophony proved too much for the weakened dome.
Cracks appeared overhead, but well behind them now. One titanic chunk of rock fell from the lip of the opening, crashed to the cavern floor in a shower of flying rock and dust. Another tumbled in seemingly slow motion, shattered half a multi-storied storehouse.
They’d reached the small cascade. Barrett uncoiled the nylon line and hurriedly secured it to a rocky outcropping. Murin went down first, then waited and caught Isabel as she fell the last meter. Barrett gave Luana a gentle shove, but she resisted, shaking her head. It hardly being the time for idle discussion, Barrett turned and let himself down, rappelling easily over the short drop. The cord followed a moment later and he recoiled it carefully.
Luana appeared over the edge and started to climb down. Then she pushed off and dropped the remaining three meters to the stone floor.
Barrett followed as she led the way back down the tunnel. They held hands in the dark. His mind went back to his final sight from the top of the cascade.
A single warrior had been running towards him. Not in
pursuit this time, but like them, seeking escape. A huge yellow form caught him from behind. The man screaming. Great, monstrous jaws opening, distorting wide. Upper jaw descending and the two fifteen centimeter-long canines, each thicker and longer and sharper than Barrett’s lost skinning knife, biting, penetrating clear through the man’s shoulder beneath the clavicle and above the ribs, and coming out his back.
As the final remnant of their world crashed about them, the last sabertooths continued their ultimate, redemptive orgy of revenge.
Barrett brought up the rear of the stumbling, soaked party. He was beginning to wonder if even Luana’s magnificent senses were equal to the task of finding their way through the black tunnel. Of course, they had the stream to guide them, but there were twists and turns and they were running. Somehow, though, she knew to tell them when the stream curved left, bent right, or took another slight but ankle-straining drop.
Tremendous rumblings and stentorian pseudo-explosions sounded constantly behind them.
Before he knew it the water came up to his knees, then his waist. The exit was just ahead. There was no time to fix a guide rope . . . they would each have to feel their way to the outside.
“Go, Isabel, and watch your head!” If one of them knocked themselves out part-way through the submerged tunnel, with others crowding close behind . . .
Then he was out in the bright daylight, drinking in the sun and taking long, deep breaths. The silence and peace outside the mountain was almost painful. There was nothing to indicate the cataclysm, the horror, that doubtlessly continued unabated inside.
Isabel, Murin, and Luana were waiting for him. As soon as he appeared, they turned and swam for the beach. Suddenly the water turned gray, then gray-brown around him. He turned. Pulverized rock and dust were exploding out of the tunnel like an underwater avalanche, staining the clear water.
The others continued towards the camp, but Barrett waited. Dust and powder were washed away by the current. When it had cleared, settled enough to see, he went under the surface a last time.
A broad incline of solid stone stretched towards the floor of the pool from the top of the former cave entrance. The entrance itself sparkled . . . not with diamonds, but from shards of glittering calcite and pieces of lost dream.
Barrett surfaced and followed the others. Not only the bearers greeted them joyfully. A four-legged bolt of black lightning, followed close by one of beige-brown, rushed from the bushes and bowled Luana over. She rolled around and around with Chaugh and Jukakhan, an inseparable pile of fur and flesh. The cats purred and meowed like big kittens, bright points of pink showing as they licked her all over.
In the branches overhead a squat, familiar simian shape chittered hysterically and beat at the leaves, turning crazy sommersaults and leaping back and forth between two trees.
Entebbe came up to Barrett and handed him the rifle. He was smiling, but his tone was solemn.
“The fat one said you’d all been killed, Boss George. I could not believe him when he said he escaped from a place where you remained.”
Barrett put a hand on the other man’s shoulder. “You did right, Entebbe, you did very right.” His eyes went around the circle, touching on every man there. “You all did right.” Then he exchanged handshakes and hugs all around.
His eyes turned to the jungle and his voice was low and hard.
“When I catch up with that putrid turtle—”
Luana disengaged herself enough from the affectionate grasp of the two cats to speak.
“You will catch up with him sooner than you think, George Barrett.” She smiled humorlessly. “Chaugh saw to that.”
She reached around and scratched the back of the panther’s neck. The burning eyes closed with pure pleasure.
Barrett grunted, half-disappointed, half-pleased. That added up to resignation. He turned to the rock wall. It returned no hint of what had taken place behind.
“At least I’ve had the rare satisfaction of having a dream come true—even if it wasn’t in the cards that I get to keep it.” He sighed, sat down on a case.
“Beg your pardon,” Isabel interposed smoothly, slipping sinuously onto his lap. “You can keep me all you want.”
He kissed her deeply this time, while the bearers made ribald comments and jostled each other.
“And . . . and,” she continued, breathing the way she had on first emerging into fresh air, “if you’ll get out of this indecent pose and put your pants on, I think you’ll find you still have a piece of it left.”
Barrett looked blank, then shook his head.
“Idiot! The necklace!”
He got up hurriedly and checked his pants. Sure enough, the priceless necklace was still there.
“And that’s not all,” she added, staring at him low, “you dummy! You’ve had it so long you’ve gotten used to it! Don’t you think your tootsies would turn heads in the Easter Parade?”
“What?” Barrett’s gaze went to his feet.
He was still wearing the diamond sandals.
“Well, god damn!” He slipped one of them off. The sun of Africa rewarded him with a hand full of rainbows.
“Beautiful.” He held it close. “Water pure, flawless. Cut into individual stones—necklaces, pins, and,” he grinned, “one wedding ring. There must be a few thousand carats in each. Too bad the guy who wore these wasn’t a size twelve.” Isabel kissed him again. When he could breathe once more—
“Everybody gets paid! Even us! Even . . .” he pulled away from her slightly, searching over her shoulder. “Luana. Luana?” His eyes hunted in green.
Murin turned. So did Entebbe and the other bearers. Barrett cupped his hands to mouth and yelled into the forest.
“LUANA!”
From her distant vantage point in a high, moss-filled kobo tree, Luana rubbed Ohoh’s fuzzy pate and watched George Barrett and the others call.
They would try to take her back with them. To the cities, to the crowded, choking places. Isabel would try to claim her guardian rights as sister, detailing the wonders of civilization, the miracles and unimaginable delights that awaited her.
She pulled a ripe fruit from the tree, bit deeply into it. The semi-sweet pulp and juice flowed over her lips, stained her chin. She wiped the residue away with the back of a forearm and spit out a few small pits.
Miracles and delights? There were more here than she’d ever be able to see. And as for sisterly rights and family love, well—was ever a girl blessed with three such fine brothers as she?
She looked down and snarled. Jukakhan and Chaugh growled back up at her, waiting. She dropped to the ground and swung herself astride the lion’s back. Her hands dug into is mane.
“To the Blue Window,” she called.
Flanks heaving to take in air, the steel muscles under her arms contracted.
A second passed. Two macaws teased a green tree snake.
They were the only movement left in that section of the great forest—
Luana Page 19