Certainly, a ship flying overhead would not be able to see where he’d landed. But the tactic also allowed him to deive far deeper into the tangle than he had on his first little excursion, taking him closer to the city, with its legendary Waters of Strength.
And by penetrating farther into the tangle, he hoped the vegetation might permanently shield his ship from dronon sensors.
He hoped it would be safe to travel in the morning. The sfuz should be sleeping, and Gallen suspected that his ship could descend into their territory faster than he could ever go on foot.
When he got five hundred meters beneath the tangle’s canopy, Gallen felt confident that his exhaust would no longer show up on infrared scanner. He stopped the craft let it hover a moment.
He addressed the others. “I think before I go any farther, I should let you know: I won’t force anyone to come with me. It’s Maggie and me the dronon want. I’m going into the tangle, but I’m willing to go alone. The rest of you can stay on the ship.”
“Och, what are you saying, Gallen?” Orick asked “Don’t try to get noble on me, you’ll just muck it up. I’m coming with you.”
“I’ll follow Orick, wherever he goes,” Tallea said.
Gallen said, “Zeus there’s no reason for you to come.…”
Zeus said nothing merely watched the bears, brow furrowed. Gallen expected Zeus to leave, despite Orick’s bold facade. If he wanted to return to Felph’s luxuries, he had only to ask. Gallen was fully prepared to give him control of the ship.
Zeus smiled wanly. “I couldn’t leave you out there alone. I don’t know much about the tangle, aside from what Athena has told me, but I should be of some help.”
Gallen hadn’t anticipated this. Half an hour earlier, Zeus had seemed ready to attack them almost without reason. Now, he wanted to help? “You really don’t need to come” Gallen said.
Zeus laughed nervously. “My friend, if anyone else were going into this tangle intent on reaching the bottom, I’d part company in a most decisive manner. But you’re a Lord Protector, seeking the Waters of Strength. You believe if you don’t find them, you’ll die. While others have sought the Waters from greed or fascination, your motives are purer. I think … you could make it. I want to be there if you do.”
Gallen said, “You’re taking a great risk.”
“Smaller than you take,” Zeus said. “The life of your wife, your child, your friends all hang in the balance.” Zeus’s eyes went unfocused, though his lips held a smile.
Gallen was forced to wonder. He went back to the pilot’s seat, began talking with the ship’s Al, letting it help pilot them down into the weave of bizarre trees, cluttered with odd growths—vines and parasitic flowers that would soon fail so far from light. Still, here in the upper branches of the tangle, life flourished—strange batlike creatures fluttered about the ship’s lights on translucent wings, eating insects, while other creatures danced away, racing along vines, leaping from one branch to another. They feared the ship.
And everywhere was water. Up above there had been rain, but the water from it ran down narrow leaves or along vines till it collected in streams or pooled in strange scallop shaped bowls—some type of parasitic plant—that grew along some of the larger tree trunks. With so much water streaming down, waterfalls cascaded through the tangle, punching holes to the realms below.
Though in places the detritus collected, creating false floors in the tangle, Gallen found that if he followed some larger rivers, he did not need to use his gravity drives topuncture holes through the ground. Nature had done the job for him.
Gallen piloted the ship for hours, picking a path deeper into the tangle, till the living plants and vines faded. The ship’s lights began to display creatures of darkness-blind animals clinging to trees, living off debris that fell from above. In spots, when Gallen’s lights brushed the path ahead, hordes of dark insects shaped like the halves of a walnut shell would die, dropping from tree limbs as if torn away; apparently they were so sensitive to light, his lanterns shocked their nervous systems.
Gallen took a torturous path down, and at five hundred meters, discovered the detritus had become so thick, he couldn’t find any more holes the size of his ship. He would either have to break through, or they would walk.
He asked Maggie’s opinion on how to proceed, and was surprised when Zeus answered, “Don’t try to take the ship any farther. The mistwives sleep down here. They might feel the struggles of the ship.”
Gallen considered. Zeus knew more than he spoke. If the giant mistwives, with their long pale bodies, were as blind as other creatures down here, they probably would have a strong sense for motion. The ship’s pulsing gravity waves would vibrate the trees. The ship would be like a fly in a web, its death throes calling the spiders.
“All right then, we land,” Gallen said. He picked a spot among the branches where humus was thick, docked the ship.
He got out to check the landing site. He didn’t see any of the long, two-toed tracks of the sfuz, yet the ground here was soft and thick. It had not been disturbed in years. On their initial voyage, he’d spotted sfuz spoor early.
But this time Gallen had landed far away from the ridges where he imagined Teeawah would have been, farther out toward the center of the valley. With all this rain, Gallen imagined that beneath them the tangle would give way to lakes and rivers. Certainly the roots of the great dew trees would block the streams, choking them like beaver dams. The mistwives would be in those waters. The thought gave him a chill.
The ship’s lights showed vapor hanging in the air like tattered cobwebs, air so still Gallen could hear his heart thump. In the distance, a strange noise echoed through the tangle—the crashing of falling detritus, then a thundering boom. Gallen didn’t know if it was a natural cataclysm—a log breaking—or if the gravity waves his ship emitted had dislodged something. More frightening was the concern that a living creature had made that noise—a mistwife, moving aside whole trees?
Gallen returned up the gangplank into the ship. “This is a good place to camp,” he told the others. “I think we should get some rest, do some packing.”
“Camp? In the middle of the day?” Orick asked. “What are you after thinking, lad?”
“If I’m right, the dronon don’t know we’re here yet,” Gallen said. “But eventually they’ll find us. Our ship will detect any sensors they use to search for us. Once they find us, they won’t give us much rest. I think we should take what we can get.”
“What about the sfuz?” Zeus asked. “Won’t they discover the ship?”
“Not likely. I’ve parked us out over the water, about even with the tops of the cliffs where the sfuz live. I didn’t exactly plan this, but there’s no sign of sfuz here—no sign that they ever come here. So now I’m thinking that maybe the fox doesn’t hunt where the wolf is on the prowl.”
“Meaning?” Orick asked.
“The sfuz won’t come searching for us—not with the mistwives about. No sfuz has been through here in months, I’d wager.”
“But, it’s still early morning. The sfuz are sleeping,” Orick said. “Shouldn’t we make tracks while the sun shines?”
“I didn’t say we’d sleep all day,” Gallen said. “You’ve got two hours to rest, then we leave.”
Chapter 30
As the doors to his stateroom closed, Orick felt pensive. He had to decide about Tallea. He’d taken her into danger before, but never into anything as foolhardy as this. He owed her a decision.
So he wondered: do I continue teaching her as a missionary, as if she were some young cub first learning its catechism, or do I tell her of the love that’s in my heart?
Tallea had clambered into the room before him, her lumbering form oddly mesmerizing. For a black bear, she was rather small. Attractive, but not a classic beauty. His feelings for her ran deeper than they should. Orick had been drawn to her all along, even when she was still human. And it wasn’t right. No one who wanted to devote himself to God should
feel this deeply in love with a she-bear.
Tallea hopped on the bed and closed her eyes, resting. When Orick didn’t move to join her, she said, “Gallen is right, we should get a moment’s rest while we can.”
Orick considered climbing next to her, but didn’t. He just stood, forlorn, trying to make up his mind about her.
Tallea opened her eyes to slits. “Did you want to tell me more of your stories about God?”
The idea hadn’t occurred to him. “They’re more than stories. At least they feel like that to me.”
“Tallea didn’t speak for a moment. “You can if you want. I don’t mind.”
But Orick felt uncomfortable. “I’m sorry,” Orick said. “I shouldn’t have been making you listen to them all this time—”
“Oh no, you’re not making me,” Tallea said. “I like hearing them. They make me feel—”
Orick didn’t believe her apology. “Really, I didn’t mean to cram it down your throat. I should be …”
“What?”
Orick made a little noise, half growl and half bark, a sound of consternation among bears. “I just wanted to say, thank you for listening. I didn’t mean to preach at you like this. I keep doing all the talking, and you do all the listening. It’s good of you, but your problems are so much … bigger, or more important, or something “
“What do you mean?” Tallea asked, all innocence. Orick suspected she knew what he wanted to say. “Well, I keep babbling on about things; and for the last couple of days, I haven’t talked to you at all about—you know, other things. I talk about only what I want to talk about, not what’s important to you.”
“I see,” Tallea said, all coyness. She wriggled on the bed, putting her muzzle under her paws, staring at him. By giving him her complete attention, she begged him to go on.
“I mean,” Orick said, “well, what about you? I know you aren’t happy as a she-bear, but I don’t dare so much as ask you how you’re feeling?”
“I feel fine,” Tallea said.
“But, you told me you missed your hands. Don’t you miss having human hands?”
“You can do a lot without hands,” Tallea said. “I have a nose that works better than my old one ever did. I never get cold. I don’t miss my hands.”
Orick’s mind did a little flip. He couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. Tallea seemed suddenly—well, changed. She seemed so at peace. Orick argued, “Yes, but you’ve got all kinds of other problems!”
“Nothing larger than the giant David slew,” Tallea said. “The angel of death has passed me by. What should I fear? My friends have not betrayed me or sold me for silver. I see no crosses on my horizon.”
Orick considered her words. She wasn’t just telling him she felt peaceful, she was speaking in symbols, the symbols he’d taught her over the past two days, and the sincerity in her eyes told him that not only had she been listening, but his stories were important to her. He wondered if the spirit had touched her. “I … I don’t get it.”
“I was in a bad mood when I complained,” Tallea said. “l see that now. You let me think about other things. My problems aren’t as big as David’s Goliath. It might be true I was human once, and I’ve lost that. But you must also remember that I was a Caldurian—restless, protective, never able to sleep. So I’ve been thinking, what did I really lose? I lost my hands and my appearance, but as a bear I feel so much more … at peace than I ever could as a Caldurian. I think maybe I should quit thinking about what I lost, and consider what I’ve gained.”
“And the angel of death?”
“That’s easy,” Tallea said. “If nothing else, I still have life. The angel of death passed over me, and I’m reborn. If I don’t like this life as a bear, then when I die, I can always hope to be something else. All I have to do is live worthily, so the Lords of Tremonthin will resurrect me. How could I be sad?”
“Yes.” Orick could feel a hollowness in his chest, a deep sense of guilt. True, at this moment she made light of her problems, but he’d wronged her. “But, you came back to be with me, and I—”
“—You aren’t responsible for my decisions. I made them without consulting you. You’re as much a victim of my shortsightedness as I am.”
Orick felt astonished. “I don’t understand. A few days ago, you were so mad at me.”
“You took my mind off my own problems,” Tallea said. “Seen in a different light, they aren’t so bad.”
“But …” Orick had more to say. Indeed, he had something tremendously important to say but didn’t quite know how to put it. “Tallea, I have something to confess to you. Something I should have said: when you decided to be reborn—I-when you died, I’d never felt hurt like that before. I’d never felt so desolate.”
Tallea’s eyes widened.
“I didn’t want to tell you,” Orick admitted. “I was afraid it might sound like a commitment, a commitment I’m not ready to make. But even when you were human with hairless skin and those gangly legs, I still … uh, cared for you.”
“What are you trying to say?” Tallea asked. Orick felt that she knew what he wanted to say, but she was going to make, him confess.
“Uh, Tallea, I think I have strong feelings for you.”
Tallea perked up her ears, just as some dogs do, and stared at him. “I know,” she said. “You love me. Why don’t you admit it? You want to marry me.”
“I’m not saying that!” Orick stammered. “Just because I like you, doesn’t mean we have to do anything rash.”
Tallea laughed. “Still, I know you love me. You show it in everything you do—in the way you look at me when you think I don’t see. I felt it as a human, when you licked my ankles or warmed me at nights with your fur. You love me. You’ve always loved me. That’s part of your nature.”
“Yes, but I’m not making a commitment,” Orick blurted.
“You’re committed to the things you love,” Tallea said. “It’s a part of you. You can’t separate commitment from love. Right now, Gallen might well be walking to his death, and you’re going to tag along. Why? Because you love him. You say you want to be a priest and serve God. Why? Because you love Him. You can’t just walk away from God, any more than you can walk away from Gallen O’Day. And you can’t walk away from me. Why?”
“Because I love you,” Orick said.
Tallea grinned, a gesture that looked foolish on humans and more so on bears. “Yes,” she said. “You want to marry me. You want to commit, but you can’t. Not until you figure out how to serve all of us at once.”
“Yes,” Orick said, “but I’ve already made a commitment to God. I made promises to Him.”
“To serve Him?” Tallea said. “But how do we serve Him? You told me just this morning. `When ye are in the service of your fellow beings, ye are only in the service of God.’ So I ask you, Orick, isn’t marrying me the same as marrying God?”
Orick stood there, flabbergasted. “That’s a pretty loose interpretation of that Scripture.”
“Is it?” Tallea said. “You take the Scriptures literally most of the time. Why not this one? Is it just inconvenient?”
“Well,” Orick said, “you’re stretching it. Besides, that’s just a line from the Tome. Not everyone accepts it as Scripture.”
“You told me if I prayed, God would answer my prayers,” Tallea said. “So here is my prayer: ‘God, you know I love Orick and Orick loves me. If you think his devotion to You is more important than his devotion to me, I pray that You will strike me dead by sundown. I’d rather die than live without him.’”
Orick gulped, fearing Tallea had blasphemed. It wasn’t right to say an insincere prayer. The problem was, he feared just as much that it was sincere. He looked about the room, wondering if God would strike her with a lightning bolt or if He would choose some other weapon. To tell the truth, if she was going to follow Gallen O’Day into the tangle, God might not need anything more than a cold-hearted sfuz.
“Don’t talk like that,” Orick said, taking a
sudden chill. “I wouldn’t want God to answer that prayer.”
“It’s too late,” Tallea said. “The prayer has been said. But I’m not afraid. You said God loves me, and I know you love me. God won’t deny me your companionship.”
“We seldom appreciate what God has in store for us,” Orick said. “We all seek comfort in our lives, but God just gives us problems, to make us grow.”
“You forget how many difficulties I’ve already had to contend with,” Tallea said. “God can only stretch a person so far before He begins ripping them apart.” She sounded angry.
“Don’t go getting all riled at God,” Orick said. “He’ll never let you be tempted beyond that which you are able to bear.”
“Of course not, you and I both can bear more than the next man.”
Orick. wrinkled his nose at the pun. “Back on Tihrglas, there always seemed to be a few folks who’d make such puns at a bear’s expense. I grew tired of hearing such jokes as a cub—everything from tales of bear-breasted women to those old stories of a bear named Repeating who always repeats everything you say. I get so mad when I hear those jokes, I can bearly stand it.”
“I’ll try to remembear that,” Tallea said, “next time I bear my soul to you.”
“If you’re going to bear your sole to me, at least put a little fish sauce on it, please,” Orick said.
Tallea said, “Ah, no fish jokes. I had a pet sole, once. His name was Full.”
“Soulful?” Orick said. “Was he your sole possession?”
Tallea winced. “Okay, I won’t play that game with you anymore. I’m beat.”
“Bear me no malice,” Orick said.
With a growl, Tallea leapt from the bed and landed on Orick’s back. She nipped his ear, and Orick backed away, put one paw on her chest to hold her down. He planned to chew her for a minute, but suddenly she had her paws around his head, and Tallea began licking his eyes and muzzle, kissing him passionately, and Orick’s heart pounded with excitement.
He kissed her in return, more lustily than he first intended, and in moments she held his face and began alternately nipping his lips and licking him. Tallea was on her back, and Orick straddled her, his nostrils filled with the scent of her. Knowing how much she wanted him, Orick found himself enticed beyond measure.
Lords of the Seventh Swarm Page 27