“Do you have something to protect yourselves from the rains?” he asked.
Hudnee produced the square of hides, and Menon appraised it.
“Perhaps you can rig that with some of the driftwood poles higher up the shoreline,” he conceded. “If you slope it into the rain you might be able to keep a fire going at the entrance.”
Hudnee and Daneesa hurried to do this. Already a dark wall of rain was sweeping over the mainland from the east. Menon packed Kanuk into the left hull of the dooplehuel, on a raised plank underneath the platform that joined the two hulls. There was enough space in the stern for the boy to sit up comfortably.
Kanuk saw that the hull was made of axed planks joined with wooden pegs. The Sea People chinked the planks with a sticky sap that they mixed with plant fibre. Menon raised the sail, and it flapped idly in the growing breeze that heralded the rains.
“You will keep hold of this rope,” he said to the boy. “And you will pull it in and let it out exactly as I tell you to. Do you understand?” Kanuk nodded vigorously.
“How’s your leg?” asked Menon, a little more kindly. Kanuk smiled bravely.
“Not good, eh?” said Menon. “I’ve got something for that in the boat. I’ll give it to you when we get going.”
“Give me a hand pusher her out!” he called to Hudnee, as he fitted a bladed pole to a slot in the stern of the right hull. Daneesa and the girls crowded around Kanuk, saying goodbye to him.
The boy held the rope attached to the sail in front of him, pleased to have something important to do. There was a chorus of last goodbyes as the two men prepared to push the double-hulled vessel out into the river.
“If all goes well I should be back to collect the rest of you about the same time tomorrow,” said Menon. He directed Hudnee to push the left hull while he took up a position behind the right one.
“Gently, man,” he said. “We have to do this together. The boy’s added some extra weight on your side, and the platform won’t take a lot of flexing. Easy now.”
The dooplehuel slid slowly down the sand.
“And again,” said Menon. “Steady. That’s it.”
Menon swung himself aboard as the dooplehuel coasted gently out into the Sweetwater. Kanuk pulled the triangular sail in as Menon told him what to do.
The twin prows turned downstream as the current in the middle of the river caught them. Menon got Kanuk to ease the sail wider, and then he held the bladed pole straight out behind them. The vessel moved steadily into the middle of the river.
Daneesa called after them, but already they were dwindling away. They seemed to be somehow part of the river now, no longer anything to do with the little party on the shore.
With a last halloo Hudnee turned back to the campsite. A murky wall of water was already moving in over the swamp, and they would have to hurry to be ready before the rains hit them.
While Menon rode the freshening breeze back to Shellport, and Hudnee and Daneesa tried to make the most of the wet and gloomy afternoon with the two girls, things far beyond their understanding were taking place on the edge of the planet’s atmosphere.
A survey ship from the Human Solar System eased into the upper atmosphere of the planet, taking samples of the gases it encountered, and mapping the surface of the watery planet.
The Sumerians had agreed to a ‘closer examination’ of the situation on Hud, as long as the inhabitants of the planet were not aware they were being monitored. Considering the thick cloud cover over the entire planet, that would not be a problem.
The survey ship noted the scattering of islands around the equator, and the one large land mass. It also noted that the planet spun at a right angle to the plane of its sun. Combined with the lack of a moon, it followed that the weather should have been the same all year round at any given spot on the surface below, a constancy unbroken by tide or season.
But that evenness had now been disrupted, following the surge of activity in the planet’s sun. The thick clouds and uncertain weather they recorded had become the norm on the surface of this world.
The survey ship would report its findings back to the great scientific and production facilities at Prometheus, on the second largest of Neptune’s moons. Regent Cordez had tasked his people with finding a solution to Hud’s problems.
Hudnee and Daneesa had no hope of realising it, yet, but they had unexpected friends. The universe was also a great deal bigger, and far more complex, than they had ever thought possible.
By the time the survey ship departed, Hudnee was tying his family’s meagre belongings onto the rib and hide deck of a dooplehuel. He was almost directly beneath the departing ship, somewhere underneath the clouds and on the edge of the one main continent.
Menon had ferried Kanuk safely to Shellport, where he was now under the care of the medicine woman Habna. He had returned the next morning, with another of the Sea People and a second double-hulled sailing vessel.
The day was still and grey, as all the days were now. Hudnee and Daneesa had taken down the shelter they’d made for the night, washed themselves and the two girls in the Sweetwater river, and cooked the last of their grains for breakfast. The two dooplehuels arrived in the middle of the morning.
“You’ve created quite a stir back at Shellport,” said Menon, with a grin.
“No one can believe you made it through the swamps. We’ve picked up a few people lately, people who came down the rivers in boats and were swept out to sea, but never a family – and no one who was foolish enough to tackle the swamps!”
Hudnee smiled ruefully. “Just dumb luck. I still get the shakes when I think about it myself.”
With the sacks containing their belongings tied onto the platforms of the two vessels, Menon pushed off into the Sweetwater first. With so little wind they would have to drift with the river and guide themselves with the paddles. For the first part of their journey anyway.
The two girls looked over the edge of the deck at the small fish that darted away from the prow under them. They jumped up when Menon growled at them for trying to put their hands in the water, and kept their arms inside the hulls from then on.
Daneesa had been entrusted with a paddle, and sat inside the other hull of Menon’s craft. Merrick pushed off after them, and he and Hudnee soon settled into a steady rhythm, cutting through the clean, clear water with their paddles.
The journey to the sea was uneventful. The river flowed between two strips of more vigorous growth that made an impressive avenue along the riverbanks. The trees must have been keeping back the silvery-grey brush and patches of ooze on either side of them.
The larger trees and giant water grasses along the edge of the river seemed to have survived the climate changes, though they looked strained and grey in colour, certainly not the healthy green Hudnee would have expected. Among them were the dead patches of other plant species that had not acclimatised to the changes.
Menon pointed to some long-leaved, squat plants that had rotted off at the base. The leaves had fallen in the water, or been cast about in tangles, like something carelessly discarded.
“The penack, the fibre plant,” he said. “They were among the first of the plants to die. Perhaps we were lucky, because they were the most important part of our way of life, so that woke us up.
“We knew immediately that everything was going to change. So we made the necessary changes before any one thing became a crippling loss.”
Then they came to the mouth of the river, and at last they were free of the toxic swamps. A gentle current carried them along the coast in the direction they wanted to go, and the first small examples of the sea forest began to appear.
Here they were no more than bushes dotting the surface of the sea. Without tides, and with eternally balmy weather, they hovered just above the surface of the sea. Hudnee noticed they confined themselves to areas of freshwater run off from the land, or, he presumed, subterranean soaks that surfaced along the foreshore. It seemed they would not tolerate a purely seawa
ter environment.
A light breeze had now sprung up, and the two Shellport men hoisted the woven hide sails. The dooplehuels moved faster now, and it wasn’t long before the bushes of the sea forest became small trees. Each trunk was girdled with a thick layer of barnacles and corals, so they seemed to grow out of a column of stone.
Underneath each dooplehuel the pale sea bottom, unblemished by rocks or greenery, was clearly visible. Ahead the trees slowly gained height, reaching up under the darkening sky. In the distance they could see a massive dark patch that might have been a headland, but was not.
“The sea forest,” gestured Menon.
“The trees grow tallest where fresh water runs over river mud. The Kapuas river flows into the sea there, and it’s the biggest river in all of Hud. The sea forest has claimed the waterways in all directions there, spreading along the many mouths of the Kapuas.”
Hudnee and his family looked at the patch of darkness in the distance, darkness under a darkening sky, and wondered what life might be like in the sea forest.
Then the breeze picked up, and Hudnee could see a wall of darker rain sweeping across Hud toward them. He figured it must be almost midday.
Menon shouted something to Merrick, and then he pointed at the sky so they would all look up. Hudnee followed his fingers. Strange black shapes twisted and writhed under the clouds above them.
“I’ve never seen these devil-things before in all my life on the sea,” yelled Merrick. They were all having to yell now, trying to be heard over the din that seemed to come partly from the wall of rain approaching over the swamps, and partly from the groaning, elongating shapes above them.
“But now these things are turning up nearly every time it rains,” said Merrick. “And each time they come they’re bigger, and stronger.”
Fear was written across his green-tinted bronze features. He couldn’t place this phenomena anywhere in the natural order of things.
“The sky gods are trying to break through and rip the surface off the sea!” he said desperately.
Menon had steered his dooplehuel closer. He motioned to Merrick and they both dropped their sails before the strengthening winds.
“It should be all right,” shouted Menon over the noise. “These things usually ease off when the rains arrive, and the rains are not far away now.”
He pointed skywards.
“The black bulges in the clouds seem to form on the edge of the land,” he yelled. “I think they might be caused by the wind that drives in ahead of the rains, driven upward where it meets the cooler sea air.”
They all gazed at the strange shapes in the sky. Six black torsos seemed to be dancing their way across the bottom of the clouds, then seven, then eight.
CHAPTER 8
________________
“I don’t like this!” yelled Merrick to the other craft. “I think we should head for the shore!”
“No!” yelled Menon, and the wind increased to a roar that made it hard for the others to understand him. “I’ve seen these things pick up dooplehuel on the shore and fling them about like toys. We need to stay in the water.”
There was a protracted tearing sound as two of the writhing shapes collided above them, and the noise abated somewhat. Then a long, black tongue flickered down to the sea, and the roaring began all over again.
Daneesa began to scream, and Merrick had his mouth wide open. Hudnee couldn’t tell if he was screaming or not amidst the howl of the wind around them. The sea began to mound up under the long, black tube that writhed on the surface of the water.
For a moment the frightening apparition looked like a long, slender tree that reached up through the clouds into the sunlight, with its roots mounding up the ground around it.
Menon threw the girls into the water, and Daneesa instinctively threw herself in to save them. Menon mimed once what he was about to do, and then stood with his feet wide apart, one on the stern of each hull. Tugging on the line to the mast be pulled the nose of the dooplehuel out of the water. The wind caught under the deck and slammed it over, with Menon underneath.
As he saw the low, streamlined shapes of the hulls upside down in the water, Hudnee understood. He reached across and grabbed Merrick, and pulled him out of the other hull into the water. Then he stood on the stern of the craft and repeated Menon’s trick. The wind caught the dooplehuel and slammed it over, catching Hudnee under the thin deck.
He struggled away from the deck, and eventually bobbed up to see what the others were doing, but there was no sign of them. Then he realised what they had done. Of course! They were under the upturned hulls.
Holding the deck between the hulls, now underwater, with one hand, he reached out and pulled Merrick to him. The sudden drenching had sobered the Shellport man. Hudnee mimed diving under the far hull with his hand.
Understanding dawned on Merrick’s face, and he followed the edge of the deck over to the other hull and pulled himself under it. Hudnee ducked his head under the closer hull and manoeuvred himself into the space inside.
The howling of the wind shut off, reduced to a steady, distant roar by the thickness of the wooden hull. It seemed for a moment that everything was eerily peaceful. Looking down he saw the sea bottom below his feet.
Then the dooplehuel began to move, dragged sideways by a gigantic hand. The craft was shaken violently, and in a moment Hudnee was standing in soft silt on the sea bottom. He clung to the edge of the deck where it crossed the hull in front of him, and a moment later he was sucked out of the mud and hauled upward, the bottom disappearing well below him.
One end of the hull lifted clear of the water, and the interior was filled with a hellish shrieking as the wind fluted under the wooden edge. Hudnee lifted all of his weight onto the deck supports, trying to hold the dooplehuel down. There was an audible snap as the writhing black tube lost contact with the surface of the sea, and then it blew apart around them, dumping an enormous weight of water back into the ocean.
The upturned dooplehuel lifted buoyantly through the deluge, and settled back upon a calm and windless sea. The little party emerged, hesitantly, from their hiding places. The children were wide-eyed, clinging tightly around Daneesa’s neck. As Hudnee looked around, checking that everyone was all right, the midday rains began to patter gently around them.
Menon appeared from under the far hull, and swam slowly over to Hudnee. There wasn’t really a lot to say about what had just happened to them, and the two men set about righting the dooplehuels. A careful inspection showed they would last until they reached Shellport, where they would need some repairs.
Most of the contents of the hulls had floated, but some had to be retrieved from the bottom of the ocean. It didn’t take long, and then the two watercraft got underway again. A rather subdued little party watched in silence as the sea forest got closer, and the trees got larger and larger.
It was clear the sea forest had not escaped the fury of the writhing black tubes that had descended on it from the clouds. As the two craft approached the imposing mass of the great forest, they sailed through a sea that was scattered with leaves, branches, and other debris.
The afternoon rains fell steadily, and the dooplehuel moved slowly, the light breeze from the west augmented by the rowing efforts of the people inside them. The exercise took their minds off their wet, cramped positions inside the hulls. The two girls were able to crawl gingerly about the platform of Daneesa’s boat, and point out each new feature of the sea forest as it came into view.
The trees ahead of them grew steadily higher, and at last they began to skirt the main part of the forest. Hudnee saw how the great trunks lifted above watery columns made up of living reefs and soared into the overcast sky.
Among the giants of the sea forest the effect of the turbulence, the ‘black fists’ as Merrick called them, could clearly be seen. Many of the trees now leant at odd angles, and ahead of them one giant had crashed through the scrubby growth at the edge of the forest. The massive head of the tree create
d an island they circumnavigated in awe.
They could see that the forest was still adjusting to the damage inflicted upon it. Some trees supported their neighbours, and some leaned precariously off balance. Everywhere the forest creaked and snapped as it settled. By unspoken consent the two dooplehuel kept well out to sea, and away from the chance of a falling tree.
Then the rains lifted, earlier than usual.
“Well, that’s a blessing,” commented Menon. “It must have something to do with the stormy weather.”
The two watercraft came to one of the mouths of the Kapuas, and steered across the deep channel toward a large island of trees ahead of them. The island was surrounded on three sides by other channels, and ended at the open sea.
This was Shellport. Here the thick tree trunks rose out of the water like living columns in one of the pilars Hudnee had built in what now seemed like a much earlier life. The trunks were perfectly symmetrical, until they branched suddenly into round, massive heads at a height above the water equivalent to several of the dooplehuel hulls.
Hudnee looked excitedly at a long row of docks that ran along the edge of the forest ahead of him. Many of the docks was new, built since his visit here with his father when he was a boy. Menon looked grimly at the forest giants at the sea end of the island of trees. Some of them leaned at precarious angles. Shellport had not entirely escaped the destruction.
“Ahoy the Watch,” shouted a voice. It was coming from a walkway that circled one of the trees several times before it disappeared into the canopy. The voice appeared to come from a platform built half way up the ramshackle construction.
“Two dooplehuel on the southern sea route!” snapped the voice. “Get to it you lot!”
Hudnee could at last see a still figure on the platform. Whoever it was, they were leaning nonchalantly back against the massive trunk. Below it more figures swarmed over the planking and formed a ragged line along the edge of the docks.
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