by Greg Bear
"I didn't. One minute we were together, walking along a nice stream trying to find some high ground to see where we were . . ."
He paused as a lyco made another attack on the larger baby. The noise drowned out everything for a few minutes as the mother stamped around her young, trying to gore the carnivores, who always managed to bound out of reach.
"And then the lycos attacked us, and we fled our separate ways."
"You don't know if they're alive or dead, then," Peter said, a lump rising in his throat.
"No, but we're alive, and that's a small miracle."
"What are we going to do?" Peter asked.
Ray shook his head and took another bite of root. "I feel like a spectator in a bullring," he said. "But I'm getting damned tired of these seats." He peered down at the lyco guarding them. It was still paying more attention to the action in the glade.
"Do you see that branch?" Ray pointed to a slender offshoot from a main branch near the one on which they perched, and a couple of yards higher up the tree. "I've been looking at that branch for almost a day now. See how it gets real close to that next tree?"
Peter examined the branches. "We could climb over."
"You might. I don't think it would hold my weight."
"What will you do, then?"
Ray shrugged. "If we're in two trees, our wolf-jaw friend here might drop his guard long enough to let one of us get away."
Peter looked dubious. "I don't know," he said.
"My butt is getting very, very tired," Ray said with a pained expression. "What little I can feel of it."
"We should try something," Peter agreed. He stood on their branch, reached up to the higher branch, and swung out onto it.
Then he crawled carefully to the offshoot, tested it with half his weight, and looked back at Ray.
Ray nodded.
The lycos in the glade had finally worn the mother centrosaur to a frazzle. She seemed to make some instinctive strategic choice, and nuzzled in close to the larger baby. In a flash, a lyco savaged the flank of the smaller and now more vulnerable baby, bringing it to its knees. The mother nudged the larger baby and they pushed through the perimeter paced by the lycos, toward the forest, away from the tree in which Peter and Ray were perched.
The lyco guarding them suddenly became restive, harrumphing and swinging its head at the smell of blood from the glade. It glanced up at Ray and let out a frustrated bellow.
Peter was halfway out along the thinner limb when it snapped. He reached out with his sore arm to grab another branch, caught a handful of leaves, and fell.
Ray shouted. Peter heard the shout, and then landed on something moving, knocking the wind out of himself. He tumbled to one side into grass, on the edge of the glade.
He couldn't move. Something nearby groaned. Peter turned his head, managed to catch his own breath, and saw the lyco barely five feet away, leaning to one side with its right leg splayed. Peter could smell its rank breath and see the insects buzzing around its big shoulders and neck pelt. He also heard somebody making a great commotion up in the tree.
The lyco righted itself, swung its head, and glared in stupid surprise at what had hit it. It lifted its heavy-jawed head. The oddly shaped pupils in its eyes flexed, and the eyes grew even blacker, with tiny glints of blue.
Peter pushed to his feet.
Ray was still trying to distract the lyco by whooping and screaming.
"Damn," Peter said.
The lyco took a step forward. Peter raised his arms and shouted, "You're nothing but a big old horny toad!" Then he stamped his foot and waved his arms.
The lyco took a step backward, clearly unsure what to do with this strange bipedal animal now that it was within reach.
Peter jumped and the lyco scuttled a couple of yards to the rear again, growling and whining. It lifted its head and opened its jaws to their fullest extent, and very impressive they were, boasting long rows of sharp teeth culminating in huge canines. The forked tongue dangled.
Ray landed beside Peter with a thump. Peter did not expect this and jumped away, startled, and the lyco also jumped. It seemed for a moment as if all three were waiting for the others to be spooked and run. Instead, Ray waved his arms and shouted, "We're tough and stringy! Get out of here!"
The lyco circled around them and the trunks of the two trees, then looked longingly at the glade. The other lycos had brought the baby centrosaur down on its side and were ripping at its abdomen. The baby's screams had stopped and the forest and the glade seemed very quiet.
"Go get your share!" Ray shouted, standing beside Peter. "On your mark . . ." He crouched and looked at Peter. "Get set! GO!" They both leaped toward the lyco, shouting nonsense at the top of their lungs. This was too much for the big animal and it turned decisively and loped to the glade to join its fellows around a more familiar kill. The growling and bickering rose to a crescendo as dominance was reestablished, and Peter and Ray ran back to the stream, away from the glade and its grim scene of feasting.
"We won't be that lucky again," Ray said as they hid in the shadow of a fallen log.
Peter nodded agreement. "I hope the others have been as lucky."
"Me, too."
They caught their breaths and listened for the sounds of more big animals. Far off, they heard roars and hisses and growls, like the mixed voices of lizards and lions.
"Poor thing," Ray said. "Mama left it behind."
Peter felt in his shirt for the remaining root. It had fallen out— not surprisingly.
"She knew she couldn't save both," Ray said.
"What a choice," Peter said. Missing the root reminded him of the machete. "Do you think it would be safe to go back?"
"Why?" Ray asked
"The machete," Peter said.
"Oh." Ray slumped back into his seat beside Peter and crossed his arms around his knees. "Could be useful. I wouldn't try it now, though."
They stared at each other.
"We're both pretty dopey, aren't we?" Peter said.
"Yup," Ray acknowledged. He coughed and shook his head. "I need some water."
Ray got up and went to the stream to drink. He scooped great handfuls of water to his eager lips. "Tastes like fine wine," he said between swallows. He returned to the tree trunk's shadow.
"How long can we last out here?" Peter asked.
"Depends on whether we catch our second wind. I haven't had any sleep for a day and a half. I've got to take a nap."
"Maybe the lycos will be done by then," Peter said.
But Ray had already dropped his chin to his chest. Peter listened to the jungle and smelled the air. I'm becoming like a wild animal myself, he thought hopefully.
While Ray slept, Peter walked cautiously back to the glade, trying to be as alert and quiet as possible. The lycos were still
feeding, but the fighting seemed to have stopped. There were six of the big carnivores and they had almost stripped the small centrosaur. Peter saw a few small green heads pop up in the grass, and then he saw an avisaur like the ones in the circus land in a tree near the carcass. More scavengers and opportunists showed up, keeping a respectful distance from the lycos. Peter hid behind the trunk of the same tree he had fallen out of, his heart racing.
We don't know where my father and OBie are. We can't just stay in one place—we'll starve, or something will finally call our bluff and eat us. Tears welled up in his eyes at the next thought. There is no place for an airplane to land. The soldiers on Pico Poco must have killed Dagger by now. Father would tell me to go on without them, to try to get back . . .
Then he remembered what Billie had said: that El Grande, Kahu Hidi as he called it—the Heaven Mountain—swallowed you.
When you're swallowed, you don't just crawl back up the throat. But we have to try. We won't last more than a few days here.
The lycos growled over a few last scraps of tough skin. Two of the animals grabbed the centrosaur's head and tugged and another two grabbed the remains of the tail. They pull
ed each other around in a circle, their feet kicking up great divots of dirt and grass. After a few minutes, they dropped the carcass, sniffed around, made a few tentative attempts to snag an avisaur, and finally wandered back into the woods.
Peter waited a little longer. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and his lips had split painfully. The sky had been cloudless and the wind light all day and it was now at least eighty degrees, warm for the plateau. A few smaller dinosaurs— two-legged theropods, he thought, though he saw none of them clearly—bobbed out of the tall grass and chased or nipped at avisaurs who had settled on the carcass. Peter looked at the trampled area where the mother centrosaur had defended her children, then walked across to see if he could find the machete.
The grass formed a thick mat and the ground had been thoroughly pounded. He got as close as he dared to the carcass and squinted at the dashing green heads and feathered wings, the lashing tails. They paid him no attention.
Back and forth he walked in the sun, the smell of the baby dinosaur's blood thick in the air. He stared at the grass until his eyes crossed, almost dead from exhaustion but unwilling to give up. Without some sort of tool, Peter knew they didn't have a chance of getting back.
A red and brown snake at least seven feet long slithered to one side of the trampled area, lifted its head, and stuck out its tongue at Peter. He waited for it to pass—there were far too many poisonous snakes for him to take any chances—and resumed his search. Flies big and small circled the carcass and bit Peter as a consolation prize. His neck and cheeks burned with stinging welts. He thought of a long hot shower and an ice cream soda and his mouth made a dry sucking sound when he tried to open it.
Muttering, he got down on his knees and spread the grass blades. His chest hitched whenever he sucked in air, and he felt as if he might strangle. His vision started to swim. The grass melted together into a yellow-green field. In the middle of the field floated something dark. Another skull, he thought, and a sudden picture of finding his father's head made him shudder. This is an awful place. When you read about such a place, it seems wonderful—but up close it is just awful.
He tried to focus on the dark thing in the grass. He reached out with one hand and touched it. The coolness of steel and the sharpness of a cutting edge gave him strength. He pulled the machete from the dirt and grass, wiped it on his pants leg, and stumbled back across the glade to the tree. From there, he did not remember the trip to the fallen log. He dropped to the ground beside the stream and drank greedily, stopping only when his stomach protested and he began to gag.
Thirst quenched, he lay down beside Ray, who was still asleep, and leaned back on a mossy bit of rock.
Chapter Six
Peter came awake in darkness. Ray shook his shoulder. "Almost a half moon and clear skies tonight," he said. "Let's get moving."
"We're going back?" Peter asked.
"We need to find some high ground first. One of these tors might be suitable. We could thrash our way through this forest and never know which way to turn. Right now, which way is south?"
"We can tell by the stars," Peter said.
Ray chuckled. "We could, if you know how to do it. I don't."
Peter felt his face burn.
"Next time, we'll have to remember to bring our Boy Scout manuals. If we learn a few landmarks we can keep a good sense of direction."
The tors dotted the jungle every few hundred yards.
"What about nocturnal hunters?" Peter asked.
"Are they any worse than day hunters?"
"At least we can see better in the daytime."
"So we see them before they eat us. Any other arguments?" Ray sounded testy.
"No," Peter said. "I'd rather be doing something than just sitting here, waiting to die."
"Amen," Ray said.
Ambition was easier than accomplishment. They stumbled through the velvety-dark forest for half an hour before deciding to follow the stream again. Ray did not remember any tors south of where they were; Peter could not visualize their location well at all.
They went north along the stream, more to be doing something than with any plan in mind. Following the stream was not easy; tree trunks and leaves thrust out over the banks until they had to walk in the stream itself, which Ray did not enjoy. "I remember the teeth on that fish," he said. "Let's stay to the shallows."
The moonlight was less help than Ray had anticipated and after a while he began to get discouraged. "I don't know why we're even trying," he grumbled. He plunged up to his knees into a hole in the streambed.
A cloud of stinging gnats enveloped them before Peter could take his turn to give a pep talk. Swatting and swearing, they splashed half blindly in the stream and on the bank. Finally, Peter ducked himself completely underwater and swam a few yards, until he bumped against a submerged rock. He stood and saw Ray splashing along the surface close behind.
"Jesus, Jesus," Ray swore with each stroke. Peter expected to feel fish mouths nibbling at him and scrambled up onto the shore. He crawled along a tilted tree trunk and grabbed at dead, rock-hard creepers.
The river curved in such a way that moonlight now fell full between the halves of parted forest, painting a shimmering band of white on the stream. Ray was surrounded by a carpet of diamonds as he splashed ashore. He stopped in the shallows, body tensed, standing in only a few inches of water, staring downstream at something hidden from Peter by the dense overhang of foliage. He seemed transfixed.
"What is it?" Peter asked.
"A salamander," Ray said.
Peter wiped water from his eyes. " What? Come on!"
"No," Ray said, eyes still locked on the unseen animal. "It's a kind of amphibian, I'm sure."
"Ray, get out of the water!"
Ray held out his hand with fingers spread toward Peter. "I've never seen anything like it. Not even fossils. It doesn't look like a Diplocaulus."
Peter made a face and screwed up his courage. He walked out into the stream and stood beside Ray on the pebbly bed.
"Quiet," Ray said. "Who knows what it eats, or how fast it moves?"
"Great!" Peter whispered, and stared downstream. The moonlight shone on a still pool set aside from the stream's flow. Trees surrounded the pool on three sides. On a patch of sloping shore stretched a nightmare length of shiny dark flesh, eight or nine feet from its yard-wide, scythe-shaped head to its thick, wrinkled, partly submerged tail. The creature raised its wide blade of a head, eyes mounted on the extreme ends of the scythe, and blinked lazily.
"It's like a shark," Peter whispered, all his misery temporarily forgotten.
"A hammerhead Axolotl," Ray agreed, boyish enthusiasm in his subdued voice. "Look at the gills."
Behind the creature's jaw puffed faint flowers of paler color against the dark flesh. The amphibian cheeped. None of the three moved.
"Dawn of time stuff," Ray said. "Why such a broad head? Think of the stereo vision—"
A thick bank of cloud covered the moon and dropped them into pure black ink. Peter felt the darkness as a viscous resistance. Disoriented, he reached out for Ray, touched his arm, and said, "Let's get out of here."
"I want to see it again," Ray said.
"Ray—"
Something big splashed in the pool.
"Ray, let's get out of here!"
Gripping Ray's forearm, Peter dragged him to the unseen bank of the stream. They collided with an overhanging limb and almost lost their balance, but managed to blindly creep onto the leaning tree trunk and squat there like frogs.
"What a wonderful monster," Ray said. The clouds parted briefly, allowing a final shaft of crystalline moonlight to sparkle on the flowing water and the shimmering leaves. Darkness closed in again. Peter couldn't see his hand in front of his face.
It began to rain. Hard.
Chapter Seven
The upper and middle canopy of the forest sounded like the rhythm section in a big band: fat drops of rain hit the leaves like brush sizzles on a snare drum, drips la
nded on the lower leaves and floor like taps on a hi-hat. "Damn," Ray said. "We forgot our bumbershoots."
There was nowhere to go in the darkness so they sat blind on the tilted trunk. Peter nursed his sore shoulder and arm, rubbing his joints and grimacing. He licked at the drops that fell from his hair. He was suddenly very hungry again.
"Where's your camera?" Peter asked. The question had just popped into his head.
"I threw it at a dog-lizard," Ray said. "How's that for dedication to my craft?" Silence between them for a moment, listening to the rain's music, then, "You went back and got your machete, didn't you?"
"Yeah."
"Still have it?"
"Yeah." It seemed glued to Peter's hand, his grip on the tape-wrapped handle was so tight. He couldn't remember swimming
with it, but he must have—and without slicing his legs off, either.
"We're not helpless, then. We can whack something."
"We could find more edible roots."
"I'll eat tree bark and ants pretty soon," Ray said.
Peter wondered what ants did in the wet.
"It's going to be dawn in a few minutes," Ray said. "Isn't it getting a little brighter?"
Peter couldn't tell at first, but after a while, he could make out pieces of wet sky through gaps in the trees. The rain continued unabated, however, and soon a fork of lightning cast a ghoulish glare over the forest. Ray came and went in a flash before Peter, squatting like a gargoyle on the tree. The rain suddenly doubled and the music became a steady pounding roar so loud they could barely hear each other.
"I don't like this," Ray shouted. "We're down in a little gully here—about two yards below the—"
Upstream, they heard a sharp crack, a splintering, and a deeper rumble. There was not enough light to see more than vague shadows but Peter felt Ray's foot on his arm and reached out to grab a knee. "What?" he called.
"We should get to higher ground. This might be an arroyo— a flood channel!"
"Right," Peter said. He slithered down the tree onto the spongy forest floor and felt rather than heard Ray close behind. Walking any farther was difficult. Branches and vines reached out to grab, and Ray collided with him. "We've got to get to an open space," Ray shouted.