World of Tiers 05 - The Lavalite World

by Farmer, Phillip Jose

  Kickaha awoke frequently as roars, barks, growls, and screams came up from the valley. None of them seemed to be near, though. Nor was he sure that he hadn't dreamed some of the noises.

  Shortly before "dawn" he sat up, gasping, his heart thudding. There was a rumbling noise. Earthquake? No, the ground was not trembling. Then he saw that the boulder had rolled away. It wasn't the only one. About half a dozen were hurtling down the slope, which was even steeper now, shooting off swellings, thumping as they hit the surface again, gathering speed, headed toward the valley floor.

  That floor, however, was now all water. The only beasts there were a few big cats, up to their bellies in water, staying only to eat as much of their kills as possible before they were forced to take off. There were millions of birds, though, among them an estimated two hundred thousand long-legged flamingoes, green instead of pink like their Terrestrial counterparts. They were eating voraciously in the boiling water. Boiling not with heat but with life. Fish by the millions.

  It was time to get up even if he had not had enough rest. The slope was tilting so that he would soon be sent rolling down it.

  He scrambled down and went into the water up to his knees and then got down and drank from it. It was still fresh, though muddied by all the activity. One of the flamingoes came scooting through the water, following a trail of something fleeing under the surface. It stopped when Kickaha rose, and it screamed angrily. He ignored it and plunged his knife down. Its point went into the thing the flamingo had been chasing. He brought up a skewered thing which looked like a mud puppy. It did not taste like mud puppy, however. It had a flavor of trout.

  Apparently, the water level was not going to rise higher. Not for a while, anyway. After filling his belly and washing his body, he slogged through knee-deep water along the base of the mountain. In an hour he'd gotten by that and was walking on a plain. About "noon" the plain was tilting to one side, about ten degrees to the horizontal, and the water was running down it. Three hours later, it was beginning to tilt the other way. He ate the rest of the mud puppy and threw the bones, with much meat attached, on the ground. Scarlet crows settled down on it to dispute about the tidbits.

  The splitoff had not appeared again. He hoped that when it did fall, it would be far far away from him. It would form an enormous pile, a suddenly born mountain range of super-Himalayan proportions, on the surface. Then, according to Urthona, within several months it would have merged with the larger mass, itself changing shape during the process.

  Some months later, another splitoff would occur somewhere else. But this would be a major one. Its volume would be about one-sixteenth of that of the planet.

  God help those caught on it at liftoff. God help those on it when it returned to the mother planet.

  One-sixteenth of this world's mass! A wedge-shaped mass the thin edge of which would rip out of the planet's center. Roughly, over 67,700,000,000 cubic kilometers.

  He shuddered. Imagine the cataclysms, the earthquakes, the staggeringly colossal hole. Imagine the healing process as the walls of the hole slid down to fill it and the rest of the planet moved to compensate. It was unimaginable.

  It was a wonder that any life at all remained. Yet there was plenty.

  Just before "dusk" he came through a pass between two monolithic mountains that had not changed shape for a day. The channel lay in its center, the surface of the water a few inches below the tops of the banks. There was room on both sides of the channel for ten men abreast. He walked along the channel looking now and then at the towering wall of the mountain on the right.

  Its base curved slowly, the channel also curving with it. He didn't want to settle down for the night, since there was little room to avoid any of the big predators. Or, for that matter, to keep from being trampled if a herd of the hoofed beasts was stampeded.

  He pushed on, slowing now and then to get as near the mountain as possible when big cats or wild dogs came along. Fortunately, they paid him no attention. It could be that they had run into human beings before and so dreaded them. Which said much for the dangerousness of Homo sapiens here. Probably, though, they found him to be a strange thing and so were wary.

  In any event, they might not be able to resist the temptation to attack him if they found him sleeping on the ground. He pushed on. By dawn he was staggering with weariness. His legs hurt. His belly told him it needed more food.

  Finally, the mountain ceased. The channel ran almost straight for as far as he could see. He had a great plain to cross before reaching a row of conical mountains in the far distance. There were many plants here, few of them now moving, and herds of animals and the ubiquitous birds. At the moment all seemed peaceful. If there were predators, they were quiet.

  The channel ran straight for as far as he could see. He wondered how long it was from its beginning to its end. He'd assumed that the flood had carried him for perhaps ten miles. But now it was apparent that he could have been borne for fifty miles. Or more.

  The earth had suddenly split on a straight line as if the edge of an axe of a colossus bigger than a mountain had smashed into the ground. Water had poured from the sea into the trench, and he'd been carried on its front to the end of the channel and deposited there. He was very lucky not to have been ground into bits on the bottom or drowned.

  No, he hadn't experienced great luck. He'd experienced a miracle.

  He left the mountain pass and started across the plain. But he stopped after a hundred yards. He turned toward the hoofbeats that had suddenly alerted him.

  Around the corner of the mountain to his right, concealed until then by a bulge of the mountain-wall, came a score of moosoids. Men were mounted on them, men who carried long spears.

  Aware that he now saw them, they whooped and urged their beasts into a gallop.

  For him to run was useless. They also serve who only stand and wait. However, this wasn't a tennis match.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE MOOSOIDS WERE of the smaller variety, a trifle larger than a thoroughbred horse. Like their wild cousins, they were of different colors, roan, black, blue, chestnut, and piebald. They were fitted with reins, and their riders were on leather saddles with stirrups.

  The men were naked from the waist up, wearing leather trousers which kept their legs from chafing. Some of them had feathers affixed to their long hair, but they were not Amerindians. Their skins were too light, and they were heavily bearded. As they got close enough, he saw that their faces bore tribal scars.

  Some of the spears were poles the ends of which had been sharpened and fire-hardened. Others were tipped with flint or chert or antelope horns or lion teeth. There were no bows, but some carried stone axes, and heavy war boomerangs in the belts at their waists. There were also round leather-covered shields, but these hung from leather strings tied to the saddle. Evidently they thought they didn't need them against Kickaha. They were right.

  The first to arrive halted their beasts. The others spread out and around him.

  Their chief, a gray-haired stocky man, urged his animal closer to Kickaha. The moosoid obeyed, but his wide rolling eyes showed he didn't like the idea.

  By then the main body of the tribe was beginning to come from around the bend of the mountain. They consisted of armed outriders and a caravan of women, children, dogs, and moosoids drawing travois on which were piled heaps of skins, gourds, wood poles, and other materials.

  The chief spoke to Kickaha in an unknown language. Of course. Not expecting them to understand him, Kickaha used test phrases in twenty different languages, Lord, English, French, German, Tishquetmoac, Hrowakas, the degraded High German of Dracheland, several Half-Horse Lakota dialects, a Mycenaean dialect, and some phrases of Latin, Greek, Italian, and Spanish he knew.

  The chief didn't understand any of them. That was to be expected, though Kickaha had hoped that if their ancestors came from Earth they might speak a tongue that he at least could identify.

  One good thing had happened. They hadn't killed him at
once.

  But they could intend to torture him first. Knowing what the tribes on the Amerind level of Jadawin's world did to their captives, he wasn't very optimistic.

  The chief waved his feathered spear and said something to two men. These got down off their beasts and approached him warily. Kickaha smiled and held out his hands, palms up.

  The two didn't smile back. Their spears ready for thrusting, they moved toward him slowly.

  If Kickaha had been in his usual excellent physical condition, he would have tried to make a run for the nearest moosoid with an empty saddle. Even then, he would have had only one chance in twenty of fighting his way through the ring. The odds had been heavier against him in past situations, but then he had felt capable of anything. Not now. He was too stiff and too tired.

  Both men were shorter than he, one being about five feet six inches tall and the other about an inch higher. The bigger man held his spear in one hand while the other reached out. Kickaha thought that he wanted him to hand his knife to him.

  Shrugging, Kickaha slowly obeyed. There was a second when he thought of throwing the knife into the man's throat. He could grab the spear, snatch the knife out, run for ... No, forget it.

  The man took the knife and backed away. It was evident from his expression, and those of the others, that he had never seen metal before.

  The chief said something. The man ran to him and gave him the knife. The gray-headed graybeard turned it over, gingerly felt its edge with his palm, and then tried it on a leather string holding his warshield.

  All exclaimed when the string fell apart so easily.

  The chief asked Kickaha something. Probably, he wanted to know where his captive had gotten it.

  Kickaha wasn't backward about lying if it would save his life. He pointed at the mountains toward which he had been traveling.

  The chief looked as if he were straining his mind. Then he spoke again, and the two dismounted men tied Kickaha's hands in front of him with a leather cord. The chief spoke again, and the scouts moved on ahead. The chief and the two aides got down off their beasts and waited. In about fifteen minutes, the front of the caravan caught up with them.

  The chief seemed to be explaining the situation to his people, making frequent gestures with his spear toward the direction indicated by his caplive. There was a babel of excited talk then. Finally, the chief told them to shut up. During this Kickaha had been counting the tribe. Including the scouts, there were about ninety. Thirty men, forty women, and twenty children.

  The latter ranged from several babes in arms to preadolescents. The women, like the men were black-or brown-haired. The general eye color was a light brown. Some had hazel; a few, blue eyes. Some of the women weren't bad-looking. They wore only short kilts of tanned leather. The children were naked and, like their elders, dirty. All stank as if they'd been bathless for a month or so.

  Some of the beasts of burden, however, carried big water skins of water. A woman milked a cow during the brief stop.

  The travois, in addition to the piles of skins, weapons, carried a form of pemmican. There were no tents, which meant that when it rained the tribe just endured it.

  While several men pointed spears at him, he was stripped by others. The chief was given the ragged levis and worn boots. From his expression and the tones of his voice, he had never seen anything like them before. When he tried to put on the levis, he found that his wide buttocks and bulging paunch would not accommodate them. He solved this problem by slitting them with the knife around the waist. The boots were too large for his feet, but he wore them anyway.

  Finding the package of poison darts in the rear pocket of the levis, he passed them out to men whose spears lacked flint or chert tips. These tied the darts on the ends with rawhide cords and then had a good time play-jabbing at each other, laughing as they leaped away.

  The only possessions left to Kickaha were his holey and dirty jockey shorts.

  A big female moosoid was pulled out from the herd, fitted with reins and a saddle, and Kickaha was urged to mount it. He did so, holding the reins in his hands. The chief then said something, and a man tied the ends of a long thong under the beast's belly to Kickaha's ankles. The caravan started up then, an old woman-the only old person he saw-blowing a strange tune on a flute made from a long bone. Probably it was the legbone of a moa.

  The ride lasted about an hour. Then the tribe camped-if you call such a simple quick procedure camping-by the channel. While Kickaha sat on the animal, ignored by everybody except a single guard, the people took their turn bathing.

  Kickaha wondered if they meant to keep him on the moosoid until they moved on. After half an hour, during which time he was savagely bitten by a horde of blue flies, his guard decided to untie the leg thongs. Kickaha got down stiffly and waited. The guard leaned on his spear waiting until he was relieved to take a bath.

  Kickaha gestured that he would like a drink of water. The guard, a slim youth, nodded. Kickaha went to the edge of the channel and got down on his knees to scoop up water with his hands. The next moment, he was in the water, propelled by a kick on his buttocks.

  He came up to find everybody laughing at this splendid joke.

  Kickaha swam forward until his feet touched the bottom. He turned around and cast one longing glance at the other side. It lay about three hundred feet away. He could get over to the opposite shore even with his hands tied before him. His pursuers could swim or ride across on swimming beasts. But he could beat them. If only there had been a wood nearby or a mountain, he would have tried for escape. However, there was a plain about two miles broad there. His captors would ride him down before he got to it.

  Reluctantly, he hauled himself onto the bank. He stood up, looking expressionlessly at the youth. That one laughed and said something to the others, and they broke into uproarious laughter. Whatever it was he said, it wasn't complimentary to the prisoner.

  Kickaha decided he might as well start his language lessons now. He pointed at the spear and asked its "name. At first the youth didn't understand him. When he caught on, he said, "Gabol."

  Gabol, as it turned out, was not a generic term. It meant a spear with a fire-hardened tip. A spear with a stone tip was a baros; with an antelope-horn tip, ayava; with a lion-tooth tip, a grados.,

  He learned later that there was no word for humankind. The tribe called itself by a word which meant, simply, The People. Other human beings were The Enemy. Children, whatever their sex, were summed under one word which meant "unformed." Adult males were distinguished by three terms: one for a warrior who had slain an enemy tribesman, one for a youth who had not yet been blooded, and a third for a sterile man. It made no difference if the sterile man had killed his enemy. He was still a tairu. If, however, he managed to steal a child from another tribe, then he was a full wiru, a blooded warrior.

  Women were in three classes. If she had borne a child, she was in the top class. If she was sterile but had killed two enemy, male or female, she was in the second rank. If sterile and unblooded, she was a shonka, a name which originally was that of some kind of low animal.

  Two days and nights passed While the tribe traveled leisurely along the channel. This was, except for the great conical mountains far ahead of them, the only permanent feature of the landscape. Sometimes it broadened and shallowed, sometimes narrowed and deepened. But it continued to run straight as an Indian chiefs back for as far as the eye could see in either direction.

  Hunting parties went out while the rest of the tribe either camped or moved at the rate of a mile an hour. Sometimes the younger women went with the men. Unlike the primitives who lived on the World of Tiers, the women of this tribe were not engaged from dawn to dusk in making artifacts, growing food, preparing meals, and raising children. They tended herd and shared the child-raising, and sometimes they fashioned wooden poles into spears or carved boomerangs. Otherwise, they had little to do. The stronger of the young women went hunting and, sometimes, on the raiding parties.

 
The hunters returned with antelope, gazelle, ostrich, and moa meat. Once, a party killed a young elephant which had been separated from its herd. Then the tribe traveled two miles across the plain to the carcass. There they stripped it to the bone, gorging on the raw meat until their bellies looked like balloons.

  The cutting of the meat was done with flint or chert knives. Kickaha would find out that these rare stones came from nodules which occasionally appeared when the earth opened up to deliver them. Except for the boulders, these were the only solid mineral known.

  The diet included fruit and nuts from various trees. These were usually knocked off by the boomerangs as the hunters rode out of range of tentacle or dart.