The area in which we worked was approximately one hundred and fifty square meters. Score was kept by a system of electronic signals. Somewhere in each working area on the glot’s carcass were embedded instruments that gave off beeps whenever a mite struck home. The first beep was followed by a second that sounded after the wound was treated and packed. The signals were recorded on a screen in the supply building. So many demerits were given depending upon how much time was required to take care of the damage. A sharp team of miters drew lavish praise. That was their payment.
“We should be looking for a yellow ring instead of playing this game!” Lamana yelled.
“Who says it’s a game?” I yelled back, jerking my head toward two o’clock.
She grabbed an arrow from a quiver hanging nearby, fitted it onto the bow which she scooped up from the scaffold, whirled and let fly just as an enemy sailed in for lunch. The missile caught the parasite in the distended portion of its abdomen which caused it to explode. From our position all the way to the ground we could hear the shouts of fellow fliers as they expressed their opinion of our having blessed them with an unwanted shower.
“They’ll get us for that,” said Lamana, giving an almost imperceptible nod toward eleven o’clock. It was my turn to fill my hands with weapons, my turn to fire, and I found out I was sufficiently skilled with the strange bow. Of course I hit the mite in the belly and again everyone got wet.
Mites were several varieties of winged parasites that forever lived within the aura exuded by glots. A gray mist rose from the waited behemoth, foul smelling to fliers but attractive to the mites who dipped, hovered, dived and dodged all through their waking hours. Most of them were pale yellow in color and approximately thirteen centimeters long with filmy wings, black head, bulging eyes, long sucker and many legs. They weren’t intelligent which was the reason why they didn’t give up glots and form an attachment for some other host.
One got through and squatted on Dinglo long enough to take a sizeable chunk out of his neck. After Lamana filled it full of arrows, I flew upward with a bucket and swab, shoved it off and doused the wound with antiseptic. Knowing how to do my job was no problem since there were miters everywhere whom I could imitate. Quickly I packed the hole with wadding that would fall out when a scab formed and then I returned to the scaffold and the battle.
Someone who was perched on Dinglo’s crown made a bad shot and hit a fatso in the belly. Junk rained all over us. La-maria’s wings took a direct hit and I had to do some fast scrambling to catch her before she fell. I used a swab to clean her off after which we both wasted time yelling at the bad shot above.
I was in the act of dispatching a fatty when the general alarm went off, a blast that knocked my bow out of my hands. Everyone on, around or about Dinglo who was capable of doing so dropped whatever they were doing and took to the air. An electronic probe embedded in the glot’s scalp had scanned his brain and signaled that he was preparing to leap.
The signal was always unexpected and I wasn’t ready for it but even so I managed to leap up and outward at the same time that I spread my wings. Not so far above me another flier did the same thing, but his spring was too energetic and carried him forward into Dinglo’s view. He screamed as the big red sucker flicked out and gathered him to destruction.
Watching the glot take his first hop of the day was as aweinspiring a sight as I ever saw and I nearly forgot to keep my wings working. He could have turned around and licked up enough fliers to last him all afternoon but he was stupid and only took a couple of graceless, gigantic jumps across the field before settling down again. Most of the scaffolds fell off him along with buckets, swabs and quivers full of arrows. He sat on a few hundred items, unblinking, grossly unintelligent and essential for the world’s tranquillity, at least the part of it inhabited by fliers.
People retrieved their equipment and went back to the job, either climbing or winging to the proper warts, knobs and bumps. The work load was heavier after a hop because all the mites seemed to think their host was leaving the area and swarmed down for a free ride and a final munch.
Lamana and I settled ourselves in our old spot and began firing arrows one after another. According to the number of beeps given out by our signal, we were just barely going to be able to hold our heads up in front of people at the end of the day.
As if we hadn’t enough to do, a troop of sphex attacked about an hour before quitting time. By then it was beginning to grow cool so we knew the invaders weren’t overly serious but were simply trying to harass us, which they did. Since they weren’t exactly brilliant it was coincidental that they came from the wrong direction. They charged us from Dinglo’s rear.
Spotters sounded a new alarm and we fliers prepared for a move on the glot’s part He didn’t wear a horse’s bit but a jolt to one of the electronic anchors in his cheeks would encourage him to turn away from pain. He turned now, scattering fliers, equipment and mites. As soon as he saw the sphex, his sucker flicked out and in at lightning speed as he gathered the creatures in by droves. When it finally dawned on the enemy that their numbers were being drastically diminished, they broke ranks and aimed for individual conquests.
A sphex stabbed the flier nearest to me in the back with its stinger, paralyzed her and then flew away to find a suitable place to deposit her and lay its eggs on her. Another came at me, buzzing frenziedly and with good will, sucking heartily as it made plans for my body. It was twice my size, long and red of skin, gray winged, a head like a giant fly, eyes bulging, mouth scarlet and drooling. Its stinger was short but adequate. Backing up in mid-air, I sucked in my stomach as it lunged. An arrow pierced one of its eyes and drove on through to protrude from the other. The creature died and fell out of sight Lamana hovered just above me, her bow and arrow ready to take care of anything else that flew near us. For the first time in my life I fully retreated, darted behind my friend and maintained a vigil in that quarter of the battlefield while she dispatched sphex as fast as they attacked.
It was actually Dinglo who finally routed the enemy and that was as it should have been since he was in the field for just that purpose. There was a mature glot in each of the six fields surrounding the city, serving as aggressive sentinels who kept away sphex and anything else hostile that happened along.
A squadron was sent to find the maverick who had paralyzed and kidnaped the female flier. It wasn’t too long before they brought her back unconscious but otherwise unharmed. By morning the effects of the venom would be gone.
I couldn’t recall having worked so long and hard in one day but after the sun went down I discovered that a flier’s real labor was just beginning. At that time glots, mites, sphex and other insects went to sleep and then the fliers opened their city and lived a human existence.
Nearly staggering with exhaustion, Lamana and I dropped our equipment in a pile outside Supply and followed the other fliers to the city.
“There are no rings that I can see,” said Lamana. We flew close together and stayed away from our associates.
“I feel strange,” I said. “All this feels so homey and familiar.”
“Which ought to teach you something about how strong is the pull of the body. But the mind should be stronger. In other words, let’s get out of here.”
“In the dark? With no rings in sight?”
The city was a jewel of a mound dotted with openings that sloped upward and then wound in, through and around the interior. There was no such thing as individual property. Even the living quarters were occupied each morning by new tenants, the old ones having settled down elsewhere. A guard came by and informed Lamana and I that we were scheduled for sleep during the first six hours of the night, for which fact I was grateful as I didn’t think I could have stayed awake much longer.
In my cubicle was a bunk, bureau and bathroom. The bunk was made of spongy material that peeled off in thin layers. I peeled off the top thereby giving myself a fresh, clean bed. A worker stopped in the doorway and aimed a fanlike ma
chine at the ceiling that freshened my air. Another machine came on and sucked up the dust. The bureau was a shelf built into the wall. It had a single garment lying on it. By picking it up, I activated a motor inside the wall which caused the shelf to roll upward and disappear while a second shelf bearing another article of clothing rolled into view. There was also a small library that operated on the same principle: read or scan a book and then send it on its way while another presented itself to you.
Sleep wouldn’t come so I scanned a few books. They were amply illustrated which was fortunate for me since the written words of the fliers were practically indecipherable. Their photography, on the other hand, was clear and comprehensible so that I learned a bit about my environment and its inhabitants.’
It would have been just as easy for the fliers to build an underground city but that would have been impractical because they were claustrophobic. Even now the mound’s off-duty personnel stirred fitfully. Specters haunted their dreams while sinister sounds reverberated against the walls of their subconscious. Only a small part of the city was occupied because fliers always built on too large a scale. Thousands of cubicles in the center were vacant. In fact my own was close to the empty area and I could have sworn there was activity in the abandoned quarters. Consulting another book or two, I finally decided the sounds were my imagination.
There were factories of all kinds in the city, food processing units, complex machinery and no price tags on anything. Fliers were comfortable and satisfied with just enough to get by on— food, shelter and working companions. They were a rich, kindly, industrious people.
The walls in the sleeping quarters lost their glow as fliers settled down. Vividly green at first, they dimmed perceptibly and continued losing their potency until at last it was possible for me to just barely make out the far wall of the corridor outside my quarters. The arched opening seemed smaller now and my active imagination threatened to keep me awake.
My wings began to ache so I lay on my right side. My eyes were glued to the doorway as I imagined armies of sphex marching from the empty core. All around me noises grew louder and more sinister, so significant that I forgot everything else and concentrated on them. It was true that my fellow boarders hadn’t very keen hearing while mine seemed to be much the same as when I was human. I wondered if Lamana was lying in the next cubicle listening to those sounds.
I lay on my other side but still my wings ached. Eventually I discovered that the best sleeping position was on the stomach so I rested that way with my head toward the hallway. After a while I could stand my curiosity and growing suspicions no longer and walked out of the cubicle. I wasn’t too surprised to discover that Lamana was already there and staring with interest at a tunnel leading straight to the center of the city.
“I swear they’re all deaf,” she said to me. “How else could they ignore that racket?”
Of course that was why the sphex managed to infiltrate the unpopulated parts of the city. Nobody could hear them. One at a time they had sneaked past Dinglo, found an abandoned entrance at the top of the mound and worked their way into the core. It was quite comfortable there and food could be taken from the granaries and warehouses after the work forces went to sleep. When their numbers were sufficient, they would simply march forth, stab the fliers into insensibility, lay a full load of eggs and turn the mound into a sphex nursery.
Lamana and I crept down the passageway which seemed never to end and which suddenly looked as black as the pit. Somewhere ahead of us something ponderous shifted its weight, a dry and rasping sound that was ominous because we knew it hadn’t been made by any person. It came again followed by a low keening whine as antennae touched.
Even before we saw the humped, lumpy-headed shadow on the wall we knew the enemy was near. Quietly we trailed the single specimen as it clumsily walked away from an open granary. It had room to fly but it didn’t dare because the sound of its wings might have alerted restless sleepers.
For what seemed like kilometers Lamana and I tracked the thing until it came to a high wall dotted with many archways. On the other side was a large recreation area and the sounds coming out of the openings were deafening. The sphex didn’t much care by then how much noise they made because they were preparing for their invasion. There were thousands of them in the park, crawling on top of one another, six deep in some places, all making half-hearted attempts to be quiet but obviously excited by thoughts of the coming battle. No doubt they expected to lose a few fliers who were awake and working near the mound’s exits for they would escape once the alarm sounded, but the sphex plainly had hopes of capturing the majority of the city.
Lamana and I beat them by about ten minutes. They had long ago reached their complement necessary for an attack but they were stupid and didn’t acknowledge the fact until they were so numerous they couldn’t find crawling space. Then when they did decide there were enough of them to conquer the opposition, their leaders quarreled about the exact moment of invasion. They were still trying to make up their minds as Lamana and I took wing and headed for the nearest alarm.
It was such a loud squawking noise that fliers were literally knocked from their bunks and working places. Hosts of winged people fled into the halls and hurried toward the openings leading to the outside. Not everyone abandoned the city.
Many armed themselves and marched on the enemy. There were bows and arrows on shelves in the corridor for distance fighting while for close combat there were the fire guns. I helped myself to everything I could carry and took a stand in a corridor not far from my cubicle. A sphex zoomed on the wing straight at me, so unexpected I barely ducked his stabbing weapon as he went above me. I heard him crash as someone else brought him down.
My rules became uncomplex: if they crawled they were burned, if they flew they earned an arrow. It didn’t take long to stop them in that corridor as they quickly piled up and made it impossible for the live ones to get through. Slowly we retreated and found another hallway where we dug in and killed so many it became almost automatic. Burning and letting fly with arrows, we were adamant while the sphex came in hordes that never seemed to end, clogging hallways until they couldn’t move. It would take them a while to clear passages to freedom.
In just a matter of a few hours the city was abandoned by its builders who formed a swarm in the sky and began flying south. The sphex were still trying to get out. Their bodies blocked the exits so that the majority would still be inside when the sun came up and shone into the eyes of the six sleeping glots.
At dawn there would be no one to activate the paingivers in the glots’ jaws. The beasts would be drawn toward the bright green dome they were supposed to guard. With gigantic hops they would travel to the glittering object, squat around it and literally lick it into nonexistence. It wasn’t really glass and even if it had been, the corrugated tongues would have worn it away in a short time. Then the giants would wander in the fields until some other fliers came along and decided it would be a good place to build a city.
“There! See!”
I had been flying along reliving the battle in my mind and anticipating more when Lamana’s words dented my consciousness. With savage disappointment I saw the cluster of yellow rings bobbing through a cumulus cloud. With raw dismay I remembered who and what I was.
“Now!” she said, as if she knew my thoughts. “Don’t hesitate and don’t think but one thing. You want to go back to Earth!”
But I didn’t, not even when I broke from the squadron and followed her toward the cloud. My comrades, my work, my weapons, my future world—what were they if I couldn’t enjoy them?
I felt a distinct dislike for the Indian beside me as I let my wings carry me to the nearest yellow ring. At that moment she was unwanted and unnecessary, much like my conscience when it butted, unbidden, into a dangerous situation. I could have remained a flier and probably I would have enjoyed my existence as long as it lasted, partly because fitting into this society was so easy and partly because here in this worl
d I could forget the other, more complex one.
Had I told Lamana I needed a vacation and would stay in this land a while longer, she would have seen through my rationalizing and given me a lecture. The conscience was full of thorns and I think I bled a little as I left that dimension of green mounds and winged entities.
My problems too often came in bunches and this was one of those days. I transmutated with my mind full of regret at having left an interesting existence and right away I was doubly troubled when the process didn’t take place as it should have. I was supposed to drop beside Lamana onto an innocuous plot of Earth somewhere on the west coast of the U.S., for that was the kind of ring it was. Neither Lamana nor I was prepared for the warping of space and mind—for all of twenty or thirty seconds while we hovered between realities—that occurred around and within us. For a brief period of time we were on some strange kind of carousel that careened between worlds and gave us the impression it was about to spin out of control. Then we settled down to a merely dizzy universe.
I could have sworn we touched a piece of Earth after which we were bodily snatched up and deposited elsewhere.
17
Gorwyn seemed a little surprised to see us and not too pleased which was normal for him. “Now that you’re both here you might as well come in,” he said.
I took a last disbelieving look behind me. We had just left the land of the glots. The fields here were so dry and parched that it appeared as if the area was swiftly becoming a desert The mountains in the distance were bleak and shrouded in fog. It seemed a strange place to live, but here the building was, sitting on a hill, an old-fashioned stucco mansion with a rusty iron gate and a knocker shaped like a gargoyle.
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