by Greg Bear
Peter did not make a sound. He had to put all his energy into holding on. His grip tightened, yet his hand continued to slide. Clumps of torn leaves fell spinning and whirling past his head. He saw birds wheeling thousands of feet below and realized he must be on the western edge of the tip of the plateau. Had he made it to the eastern side, he would have encountered the overgrown roadway, not this cliff edge.
He brought up his free right hand and tried to grab the branch, but that only made his grip slip faster. His balance shifted, his foot skidded loose, and he whirled about, slamming into the rock with his chest and nose. In a starburst of pain Peter saw a brown creeper hugging the cliff face. He grabbed that with his free hand and prayed it would hold. His numb left hand slid to the thin tip of the branch and tore more leaves free as it slipped completely off.
His feet skipped down the rock and one boot's tip fetched up against a small ledge. Peter closed his eyes, certain he was going to sail out into space, but the creeper held. He dug both boot toes into the ledge. His eyes opened again and he scooted himself up a few inches, saw a crack in the rock, reached up and jammed his fingers into the crack, propped his toe against a knob, shimmied his hand up the creeper . . . Pulled with his left arm, causing more pain in his shoulder. And again . . .
Every muscle tense with the certainty he was about to lose his grip and fall, his fingers clawed against sandy rock, he pulled on the creeper, pulled and clawed, dug in the toe of his boot and
hung, and minutes later he slung his leg over the edge and rolled away from the cliff face.
His heart hammered, but he did not care about being hungry or thirsty or about his bleeding hands and bruised face and knees and chest. He was alive and that was more than enough.
The cloud flowed aside for a moment and Peter saw the sun setting over distant tepuis, limning their silhouettes like the hulks of ancient ships carved from dirty ice. They appeared frozen in the golden light, floating in a rough dusky sea of jungle and plains.
He could not believe an entire day had passed. It seemed only a few minutes since he had scared off the dog-lizards.
His left shoulder throbbed. The ache grew as he watched the sunset until he cradled his arm and moaned. His father had jerked that arm hard, saving his life the day before. Peter had jerked it again falling over the edge. Now the abused limb was taking the opportunity to complain.
The sweetness of simply being alive passed too quickly. In a few minutes, as dark closed and cloud damply blanketed everything once more, Peter felt himself wrapped in fire. He crawled into a narrow space between two rocks, made sure it was empty of vermin—scaring away a large brown spider with a mouse in its mandibles—and curled up. Body throbbing, forehead hot as a furnace, he closed his eyes. He envied the spider. At least it knew where it was and had food. He should have fought it for the mouse.
Half delirious, he dreamed of challenging spiders and scorpions with a stick and a rock. Finally, he ran into a nest of wasps shaped like a huge flower, and a delicate, buzzing voice invited him into the nest for nectar and roast tapir. Wachedi, the buzzing voice said.
He jerked himself awake before the queen wasp could sink her sting into his shoulder. It was so dark he could not tell he had his eyes open.
He called out weakly for his father, then fell back into troubled sleep. This time he dreamed of maggots burrowing in the Earth. He was one of them. It was so comforting to be surrounded by his fellows, so soothing not to be completely alone.
Chapter Three
Peter heard a voice.
"You are lost, Peter Belzoni! I walked almost to the jungle, past the swamp, but I hear all these noises. So I come back."
Peter sat up and rubbed sleep from his eyes. Someone had a hand on his shoulder and the shoulder burned. He shrugged the hand away and moaned.
Billie squatted in front of him, brown face sympathetic, rich black eyes watching him intently. He wore a woven reed vest tied with pieces of cloth, muddy torn pants, and a hat plaited from palm leaves. His machete stuck out of his belt to one side.
"Real glad to see you," Peter croaked. "I'm a stupid gringo white kid . . . I'll die out here."
"I see where you scared away the dog hunters. You did that right. But you can't find food here, that's sure."
"Have you found my father and the others?"
Billie shrugged. "Footprints, but not as clear as yours. So I find you and wait to go after them. There are three—but who?"
"OBie, my father, Ray. We came across . . ."
Peter coughed and Billie offered him a cupped leaf filled with water. He drank it greedily. Billie pasted the leaf with a piece of gummy sap up against a rivulet snaking down the rock and it filled quickly. He gave it to Peter again to drink.
"I saw the bridge is gone, and the cages broken," Billie said. "And the old devil. He knows he should be over here to help challenge me. Why did you come?"
"To get pictures. Just to stand here."
Billie thought for a while, then wrinkled his forehead and looked at Peter. "Did you have a jaguar dream?"
"No," Peter said. "Wasps."
Billie whistled. "Not good. What else?"
"I became a maggot," Peter said.
Billie raised his eyebrows. "Better. In meat?"
"In the Earth," Peter said.
"I think such a dream may be good enough to make up for the wasps. White people have different dreams. It is the way your mind is made, out of radios and newspapers since you were born. Maggots . . . that is good. Big, juicy maggots?"
"Big as people," Peter said.
Billie smacked his lips and shifted from one leg to another. "I could eat some right now. Roast them in a fire."
Peter's stomach, empty as it was, did not appreciate this.
Billie
"Did you see anybody on the other side, on Pico Poco?" he asked, pushing himself up against the rock. The leaf had filled again and Billie passed it to him.
Billie said, "There is nobody there, not even the soldiers. But I hear noises down below. And trucks. They will bring big guns. Only white men would shoot the Challenger."
"Dagger, you mean."
"Yes. That is what they will try to do. I do not know what it will mean to kill the Challenger with guns. No one of any people or any of the families has ever killed the Challenger."
"Why did you run away?" Peter asked. "To become a hero?"
Billie swung his arms out like wings, fingers spread. "It is what I have dreamed of," he said. "I feel my father's spirit here. This is where the wiriki comes from, that flows down the rivers, and that my ancestors traded for iron with the Fanuru. It is Kahu Hidi, the Heaven Mountain of the gods." Billie looked up and squinted, though the sky was not bright. "My father found a door into Odosha's country," he said, "where the dead go, other side the Nona, the Moon. It does him honor if I find the door, too."
"I don't understand," Peter said. Billie's whole manner had changed, even his way of speaking. His voice now was lower-pitched and husky, with a different accent. He would not look Peter directly in the eye. His perpetual light smile was gone, too, replaced by a neutral mask. "This isn't like you at all . . . the way you were on the boats, before we got here."
"This is me when I am in Kahu Hidi. You are lucky to be here, but you are not ready, I see. You do not know what to eat or where to drink."
"I'm very hungry," Peter admitted.
"There are things you can eat and stay who you are. Eat some things only if you want to see Kahu Hidi the way it thinks it is. I will show you those, even though you are white, because you probably want to avoid them."
"Okay," Peter said.
Billie rested his hands on his knees. "We should find your father and the others so you can be together."
"Yes," Peter said.
"I can't stay with you long. I have important jobs." He looked around Peter and patted his pants legs, concerned. "You have no machete."
Peter searched his pocket. The folding knife was gone. It must have fall
en out while he dangled from the cliff. He didn't even think to use it on the dog-lizards. Suddenly, he felt very weak and incompetent and ashamed.
"Funny," Billie said. "I am glad to find you. Being in Kahu Hidi alone isn't easy."
He stood and pointed their way. Peter got to his feet slowly and went after him. They followed a seemingly endless series of curved fissures and turned dozens of corners, until Peter had no idea which side of his body was facing east or west, north or south. At one point, Billie paused over a muddy stretch and pointed out fresh prints. Peter bent to examine them: boots, too big to be his own.
"They are past the swamp by now, maybe into the forest. All this is Kahu Hidi's lips and tongue." Billie puckered his own lips and stuck out his tongue. "They do not know where they are going. They should wait for your people and the Fanuru."
"Who are the Fanuru?" Peter asked.
"The Spanish in the cities," Billie said. "The Army. The Army is evil Fanuru. They do not know why to kill."
"The dog-lizards didn't get them—my father? Ray and OBie?"
Billie made a quick face of disdain. "These are little lizards, makako. They scare you, but if you are brave, you chase them away. They are nothing like the Challenger."
Peter felt relief. "But the Challenger—Dagger—is across the chasm."
"There is Challenger wherever you go in Kahu Hidi," Billie said. He walked on and added over his shoulder, "He is a good friend of Odosha. Some say he is Odosha's brother."
A half hour later, the sun came out and they stood on the margin of a wet, dreary bog filled with the gray moss-hung skeletons of dead trees. Billie squatted by the rocks for a few minutes, tossing pebbles into a finger of still, murky water. "The three others went around, I think," he said. "This is where a really big lizard lives, like the crocodiles in the river, but bigger than the barges are long. I saw her yesterday, covered with her young. She was not happy, so I did not say hello." He flashed a smile at Peter, then returned to his neutral mask. "She is not of the Challenger, but strong enough, I guess."
"Why are they going to the forest?" Peter asked, a tightness in his chest.
"I don't know," Billie said. "To get away from the makako, the dog-lizards, maybe."
"Maybe they know where a landing field is. That's it. OBie knows where Jimmie Angel cracked up, and they're going there." His eyes brightened and his head felt hot and he almost forgot his hunger. He thought of the roustabout waving his arms, as if signaling an airplane was coming. "They know a plane is going to land and pick us up."
Billie said nothing.
"Let's find them."
"I try to show you where they are, and then I go," Billie said.
"I'm grateful," Peter said.
"It is what my father would do."
They walked around the swamp, staying close to the rocky mounds. Peter heard something big thrashing among the dead trees, and a cloud of black and white birds with long pink legs ascended, blotting out the sun. He realized he did not know the name of anything and he was too ashamed to ask Billie. Billie behaved as if he had been born here, but maybe that was just his own kind of bravado.
The swamp was beginning to harbor a few living trees on grassy islands. Peter got his bearings from the sun and realized they were walking north, to the broad bowl-shaped depression and the forest.
"You're sure the others are going this way?" Peter asked Billie.
Billie, five yards ahead, stood on a low lump of sandstone surrounded by brilliant green marsh grass. He shrugged. "They leave little things behind, broken twigs, footprints. I suppose it is them. Who else?"
Peter felt his chest tighten even more. He did not want them to go this way, even if OBie did know where a landing site might be; he wanted to go back and stand by the chasm. Billie waited for him to catch up, then confided, "This Kahu Hidi, it is like a big body, and when it swallows you, you are pressed into the belly. No going back up to the lips."
"Oh," Peter said. He began to feel despondent again. This wasn't adventure; it was horrible.
Billie climbed a wall of grotesque ridges and prominences, like a jumble of old stone men with deep-set blind eyes and pouting lips. Peter followed, his left arm protesting with each tug and pull, and stood beside him. They looked north from their vantage, level with the upper canopy, over thick forest dotted with tors of yellow and brown rock. Several miles away, a small lake glistened brilliant blue in the afternoon sun. Just beyond, past the opposite side of the bowl, Peter saw a thin line of more blue: perhaps the south-central lake.
"I've lost their trail," Billie said. "But they must have come here. They did not go back."
Peter tried to spot any sign of them. He couldn't. Then he saw something about a mile northeast, a clearing in the forest. Beside the clearing rose a massive, artificial-looking structure, like a step pyramid in Mexico, though cruder in outline.
"What's that?" Peter asked, pointing. Such a formation had not been on any of the maps, nor had it been mentioned in the books he had read.
"I don't know," Billie said.
"Did people ever live here?"
"Not our kind of people," Billie said.
"More friends of Odosha?"
Billie cocked his head to one side. "Odosha is death and your devil and the power of night. He would invite all his friends here if he could. He is master of the Challenger. He takes the shape of Dinoshi, the biggest Challenger."
Peter had had just about enough of this new Billie. "Do you believe all that?" he asked.
"Do you believe in Jesus and Mary?" Billie asked sternly.
Peter's face reddened. "I've never spent much time in church."
Billie shrugged. "Who knows what is real here? Nothing the whites or Fanuru can imagine."
Billie climbed down the other side of the jumble, to the edge of a wall of green. Peter looked behind him regretfully. Still, he did not want to face the dog-lizards again, even if Billie held them in contempt. There might be something to eat in the forest. He would eat leaves pretty soon if he did not find something. He could always find his way back, if Billie did not lead him too deeply into the forest.
Peter used all these excuses, but really, he had no option but to follow Billie. Billie had a machete and knew something, if not everything; Peter had nothing and knew nothing.
Over the jungle, from some distance away, came a low rattling squawk, like a parrot melded with a snare drum and spun on a slow record player. Other sounds—chirping yips, a dismal hooting, and the wheeling reedy cries of a rising pink cloud of birds near the lake, were the jungle's answers.
Peter scrambled down the rough slope and into the green.
Chapter Four
Billie did very little hacking at first. Beneath the thick canopy, the jungle was relatively clear, with huge tree trunks spaced every four or five meters, some wrapped in iron-hard black vines. There was little understory save tiny patches of white flowers rising from pale thick leaves. Peter's feet sank into a thick loam topped with moist dead leaves and bits of bark. Insects, mostly small black ants, scampered across the leaves. Very little sunlight leaked through the high green roof of this shadowy world.
Gradually, the canopy let in more slanting beams of sun and the understory grew thicker as the big trees were spaced farther apart. Huge fallen logs nursed a profusion of orchids and young saplings, as well as fungal shelves hard as wood, orange and brown and black.
"Do you know the names of all these plants and things?" Peter asked.
Billie shook his head. "Some I know from stories. There are big grubs here good to eat—some birds are familiar. Some frogs. A few trees. Not much else. It is different here, like we are fleas going from the body of a man to the body of a god."
Peter chuckled despite his hunger. "I'd hate to be a flea on a god," he said.
"Yes! The flea doesn't know where to bite. And when he bites, he gets sick, or has strong dreams."
"If I don't bite something soon, I'll die," Peter said.
"No, you have
maybe four, five days before that," Billie said.
"Well, I'm a white," Peter said, trying to mix a little irony with a real message of hunger. "I'm used to three square meals a day."
"I had square bread once," Billie said. "They called it white bread and it was pale. Whites make square meals out of it."
Peter could not tell if he was joking.
After a time, Billie stopped beside a thick clump of bushes beneath a hole in the canopy. He made several signs with his hands, smiled and waved as if saying hello to something in the treetops, and then pulled up a bush. At the end of the bush hung a thick root, like a long potato.
"Here," he said, offering it to Peter. "It is yuca. South it is called manioc."
"That's poisonous until it's fixed," Peter said.
"This is sweet yuca. It is wild here. Some say it was brought down from Kahu Hidi long ago, in the beginning. I will taste it first if you like."
"No, I believe you," Peter said.
"There must not be many animals like Sammy around here," Billie said as Peter bit into the dirty skin and hit a starchy, crisp pulp inside.
"They'd like these, wouldn't they?" Peter asked, chewing.
"Probably. I think there will be small bananas ahead."
"No monkeys?"
"Only us," Billie said.
He picked as many roots as he could carry and forged ahead. Peter took several of Billie's discards and followed. The going was getting tougher and Billie wielded his machete frequently to hack a pathway.
"I don't see how big animals could get through here," Peter said, still eating. The root tasted wonderful, though the starch made his mouth dry. Billie said nothing but stopped and listened. Peter heard a chorus of high-pitched chirping, like big crickets, and then a rattling buzz. "Insects?" he asked, stopping beside Billie.