World of Tiers 05 - The Lavalite World

by Farmer, Phillip Jose

  Anana set three others on fire. Abruptly, the nearest ranks behind the flaming plants toppled. Those behind them kept on moving, rammed into them, and knocked a number down.

  The ranks behind these were stopped, their tentacles waving. Then, as if they were a military unit obeying a soundless trumpet call to retreat, they turned. And they began going as fast as they could in the opposite direction.

  The blazing plants had stopped walking, but their frantically thrashing tentacles showed that they were aware of what was happening. The flames covered their trunks, curled and browned the leaves, shot off from the leaf-covered stems projecting from the tops of the trunks. Their dozen eyes burned, melted, ran like sap down the trunk, hissed away in the smoke.

  One fell and lay like a Yule log in a fireplace. A second later, the other two crashed. Their legs moved up and down, the broad round heels striking the ground.

  The stink of burning wood and flesh sickened the humans.

  But those ahead of the fiery plants had not known what was happening. The wind was carrying both the smoke and the pheromones of panic away from them. They continued to the jam until the press of bodies stopped them. Those in the front ranks were trying to pull up the fallen, but the lack of room prevented them.

  "Burn them all!" Red Ore shouted, and he was seconded by his brother, Urthona.

  "What good would that do?" Kickaha said, looking disgustedly at them. "Besides, they do feel pain, even if they don't make a sound. Isn't that right, Urthona?"

  "No more than a grasshopper would," the Lord said.

  "Have you ever been a grasshopper?" Anana said.

  Kickaha started trotting, and the others followed him. The passage opened was about twenty feet broad, widening as the retreaters moved slowly away. Suddenly, McKay shouted, "It's falling!"

  They didn't need to ask what it was. They sprinted as fast as they could. Kickaha, in the lead, was quickly left behind. His legs still hurt, and the pain in his chest increased. Anana took his hand and pulled him along.

  A crash sounded behind them. Just in front of them a gigantic ball of greasy earth mixed with rusty grass-blades had slammed into the ground. It was a piece broken off and thrown upward by the impact. It struck so closely that they could not stop. Both plunged into it and for a moment felt the oily earth and the scratch of the blades. But the mass was soft enough to absorb the energy of their impact, to give way somewhat. It was not like running into a brick wall.

  They got up and went around the fragment, which was about the size of a one-car garage. Kickaha spared a glance behind him. The main mass had struck only a few yards behind them. Sticking out of its front were a few branches, tentacles, and kicking feet.

  They were safe now. He stopped, and Anana also halted.

  The others were forty feet ahead of them, staring at the great pile of dirt that ringed the base of the hill. Even as they watched, more of the mushrooming top broke off and buried the previous fallen mass.

  Perhaps a hundred of the trees had survived. They were still waddling away in their slow flight.

  Kickaha said, "We'll snare us some of the trees in their rear ranks. Knock off some more apples. We're going to need them to sustain us until we can get to that body of water."

  Though they were all shaken, they went after the trees at once. Anana threw her axe and McKay his helmet. Presently they had more fruit than they could carry. Each ate a dozen, filling their bellies with food and moisture.

  Then they headed toward the water. They hoped they were going in the right direction. It was so easy to lose their bearings in a world of no sun and constantly changing landscape. A mountain used as a mark could become a valley within one day.

  Anana, walking by Kickaha's side, spoke softly.

  "Drop back."

  He slowed down, with no reluctance at all, until the others were forty feet ahead. "What is it?"

  She held up the beamer so that he could see the bottom of the grip. The dial in the inset was flashing a red light. She turned the dial, and the light ceased.

  "There's just enough charge left for one cutting beam lasting three seconds at a range of sixty feet. Of course, if I just use mild burning or stun power, the charge will last longer."

  "I don't think they'd try anything against us if they did know about it. They need us to survive even more than we need them. But when-if-we ever find Urthona's home, then we'd better watch our backs. What bothers me is that we may need the beamer for other things."

  He paused and stared past Anana's head.

  "Like them."

  She turned her head.

  Silhouetted on top of a ridge about two miles away was a long line of moving objects. Even at this distance and in this light, she could see that they were a mixture of large animals and human beings.

  "Natives," he said.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE THREE MEN HAD stopped and were looking suspiciously at them. When the two came up to them, Red Ore greeted them.

  "What the hell are you two plotting?"

  Kickaha laughed. "It's sure nice traveling with you paranoiacs. We were discussing that," and he pointed toward the ridge.

  McKay groaned and said, "What next?"

  Anana said, "Are all the natives hostile to strangers?"

  "I don't know," Urthona said. "I do know that they all have very strong tribal feelings. I used to cruise around in my flier and observe them, and I never saw two tribes meet without conflict of some kind. But they have no territorial aggressions. How could they?"

  Anana smiled at Urthona. "Well, Uncle, I wonder how they'd feel if you were introduced to them as the Lord of this world. The one who made this terrible place and abducted their ancestors from Earth."

  Urthona paled, but he said, "They're used to this world. They don't know any better."

  "Is their lifespan a thousand years, as on Jada-win's world?"

  "No. It's about a hundred years, but they don't suffer from disease."

  "They must see us," Kickaha said. "Anyway, we'll just keep on going in the same direction."

  They resumed their march, occasionally looking at the ridge. After two hours, the caravan disappeared over the other side. The ridge had not changed shape during that time. It was one of the areas in which topological mutation went at a slower rate.

  "Night" came again. The bright red of the sky became streaked with darker bands, all horizontal, some broader than others. As the minutes passed, the bands enlarged and became even darker. When they had all merged, the sky was a uniform dull red, angry-looking, menacing.

  They were on a flat plain extending as far as they could see. The mountains had disappeared, though whether because they had collapsed or because they were hidden in the darkness, they could not determine. They were not alone. Nearby, but out of reach, were thousands of animals: many types of antelopes, gazelles, a herd of the tuskless elephants in the distance, a small group of the giant moosoids.

  Urthona said that there must also be big cats and wild dogs in the neighborhood. But the cats would be leaving, since they had no chance of catching prey on this treeless plain. There were smaller felines, a sort of cheetah, which could run down anything but the ostrich-like birds. None of these were in sight.

  Kickaha had tried to walk very slowly up to the antelopes. He'd hoped they would not be alarmed enough to move out of arrow range. They didn't cooperate.

  Then, abruptly, a wild cluttering swept down from some direction, and there was a stampede. Thousands of hooves evoked thunder from the plain. There was no dust; the greasy earth just did not dry enough for that, except when an area was undergoing a very swift change and the heat drove the moisture out of the surface.

  Kickaha stood still while thousands of running or bounding beasts raced by him or even over him. Then, as the ranks thinned, he shot an arrow and skewered a gazelle. Anana, who'd been standing two hundred yards away, ran toward him, her beamer in hand. A moment later he saw why she was alarmed. The chittering noise got louder, and out of the
darkness came a pack of long-legged baboons. These were truly quadrupedal, their front and back limbs of the same length, their "hands" in nowise differentiated from their "feet".

  They were big brutes, the largest weighing perhaps a hundred pounds. They sped by him, their mouths open, the wicked-looking canines dripping saliva. Then they were gone, a hundred or so, the babies clinging to the long hair on their mothers' backs.

  Kickaha sighed with relief as he watched the last merge into the darkness. According to Urthona, they would have no hesitation in attacking humans under certain conditions. Fortunately, when they were chasing the antelopes, they were single-minded. But if they had no success, they might return to try their luck with the group.

  Kickaha used his knife to cut up the gazelle. Ore said, "I'm getting sick of eating raw meat! I'm very hungry, but just thinking about that bloody mess makes my stomach boil with acid!"

  Kickaha, grinning, offered him a dripping cut.

  "You could become a vegetarian. Nuts to the nuts, fruits to the fruits, and a big raspberry to you."

  McKay, grimacing, said, "I don't like it either. I keep feeling like the stuffs alive. It tries to crawl back up my throat."

  "Try one of these kidneys," Kickaha said. "They're really delicious. Tender, too. Or you might prefer a testicle."

  "You really are disgusting," Anana said. "You should see yourself, the blood dripping down your chin."

  But she took the proffered testicle and cut off a piece. She chewed on it without expression.

  Kickaha smiled. "Not bad, eh? Starvation makes it taste good."

  They were silent for a while. Kickaha finished eating first. Belching, he rose with his knife in his hand. Anana gave him her axe, and he began the work of cutting off the horns of the antelope. These were slim straight weapons two feet high. After he had cut them off from the skull, he stuck them in his belt.

  "When we find some branches, we'll make spear shafts and fix these at their tips."

  Something gobbled in the darkness, causing all to get to their feet and look around. Presently the gobbling became louder. A giant figure loomed out of the dark red light. It was what Kickaha called a "moa" and it did look like the extinct New Zealand bird. It was twelve feet high and had rudimentary wings, long thick legs with two clawed toes, and a great head with a beak like a scimitar.

  Kickaha threw the antelope's head and two of its legs as far as he could. The lesser gravity enabled him to hurl them much further than he could have on Earth. The huge bird had been loping along toward them. When the severed pieces flew through the air, it veered away from them. However, it stopped about forty feet away, looked at them with one eye, then trotted up to the offerings. After making sure that the humans were not moving toward it, it scooped up the legs between its beaks, and it ran off.

  Kickaha picked up a foreleg and suggested that the others bring along a part, too. "We might need a midnight snack. I wouldn't recommend eating the meat after that. In this heat meat is going to spoil fast."

  "Man, I wish we had some water," McKay said. "I'm still thirsty, but I'd like to wash off this blood."

  "You can do that when we get to the lake," Kickaha said. "Fortunately, the flies are bedding down for the night. But if morning comes before we get to the water, we're going to be covered with clouds of insects."

  They pushed on. They thought they'd covered about ten miles from the hill. Another two hours should bring them to the lake, if they'd estimated its distance correctly. But three hours later, by Anana's watch, they still saw no sign of water.

  "It must be further than we thought," Kickaha said. "Or we've not been going in a straight line."

  The plain had begun sinking in along their direction of travel. After the first hour, they were in a shallow depression four feet deep, almost a mile wide, and extending ahead and behind as far as they could see. By the end of the second hour, the edges of the depression were just above their heads. When they stopped to rest, they were at the bottom of a trough twelve feet high but now only half a mile wide.

  Its walls were steep though not so much they were unclimbable. Not yet, anyway.

  What Kickaha found ominous was that all the animal life, and most of the vegetable life, had gotten out of the depression.

  "I think we'd better get our tails up onto the plain," he said. "I have a funny feeling about staying here."

  Urthona said, "That means walking just that much farther. I'm so tired I can hardly take another step."

  "Stay here then," the redhead said. He stood up. "Come on, Anana."

  At that moment he felt wetness cover his feet. The others, exclaiming, scrambled up and stared around. Water, looking black in the light, was flowing over the bottom. In the short time after they'd become aware of it, it had risen to their ankles.

  "Oh, oh!" Kickaha said. "There's an opening to the lake now! Run like hell, everybody!"

  The nearest bank was an eighth of a mile, six hundred and sixty feet away. Kickaha left the antelope leg behind him. The quiver and bow slung over his shoulder, the strap of the instrument case over the other, he ran for the bank. The others passed him, but Anana, once more, grabbed his hand to help him. By the time they had gotten halfway to safety, the stream was up to their knees. This slowed them down, but they slogged through. And then Kickaha, glancing to his left, saw a wall of water racing toward them, its blackish front twice as high as he.

  Urthona was the first to reach the top of the bank. He got down on his knees and grabbed one of McKay's hands and pulled him on up. Red Ore grabbed at the black's ankle but missed. He slid back down the slope, then scrambled back up. McKay started to reach down to help, but Urthona spoke to him, and he withdrew his hand.

  Nevertheless, Ore climbed over the edge by himself. The water was now up to the waists of Kickaha and Anana. They got to the bank, where she let go of his hand. He slipped and fell back but was up at once. By now he could feel the ground trembling under his feet, sonic forerunners of the vast oncoming mass of water.

  He grabbed Anana's legs, boosted her on up, and then began climbing after her. She grabbed his left wrist and pulled. His other hand clutched the grass on the lip of the bank, and he came on up. The other three were standing near her, watching them keenly. He cursed them because they'd not tried to help.

  Ore shrugged. Urthona grinned. Suddenly, Urthona ran at Ore and pushed him. Ore screamed and fell sideways. McKay deftly pulled the beamer from Anana's belt. At the same time, he pushed with the flat of his hand against her back. Shrieking, she, too, went into the stream.

  Urthona whirled and said, "The Horn of Sham-barimen! Give it to me!"

  Kickaha was stunned at the sudden sequence of events. He had expected treachery, but not so soon.

  "To hell with you!" he said. He had no time to look for Anana, though he could hear her nearby. She was yelling and, though he couldn't see her, must be climbing up the bank. There wasn't a sound from Red Ore.

  He lifted the shoulder strap of the instrument case holding the horn and slipped it down his arm. Urthona grinned again, but he stopped when Kickaha held the case over the water.

  "Get Anana up here! Quickly! Or I drop this!"

  "Shoot him, McKay!" Urthona yelled.

  "Hell, man, you didn't tell me how to operate this thing!" McKay said.

  "You utter imbecile!"

  Urthona leaped to grab the weapon from the black man. Kickaha swung the instrument case with his left hand behind him and dropped it. Hopefully, Anana would catch it. He dived toward McKay, who, though he didn't know how to fire the beamer, was quick enough to use it as a club. Its barrel struck Kickaha on the top of his head, and his face smacked into the ground.

  Half-stunned, he lay for a few seconds, trying to get his legs and arms to moving. Even in his condition, he felt the earth shaking under him. A roaring surged around him, though he did not know if that was the flood or the result of the blow.

  It didn't matter. Something hit his jaw as he began to get up. The next he knew, he
was in the water.

  The coldness brought him somewhat out of his daze. But he was lifted up, then down, totally immersed, fighting for breath, trying to swim. Something smashed into him-the bottom of the channel, he realized dimly-and then he was raised again. Tumbling over and over, not knowing which way was up or down, and incapable of doing anything about it if he had known, he was carried along. Once more he was brought hard against the bottom. This time he was rolled along. When he thought that he could no longer hold his breath- his head roared, his lungs ached for air, his mouth desperately wanted to open-he was shot upward.

  For a moment his head cleared the surface, and he sucked in air. Then he was plunged downward and something struck his head.