He climbed upon a plant leaning at forty-five degrees to the ground and looked out over the jungle. As far as he could see, there was vegetation except on the top of some seemingly very high buttes in the distance. The whole forest shook as if afflicted with fear. He himself was tired of the eternal quivering and the faint, but definite, anxiety and slight nausea resulting therefrom. Apparently it did not bother the girl; she must have been born to this form of quaking.
Everywhere except to his right was jungle. On that side was the dead sea, expanding and contracting with the semblance of life.
The air sharks were gone. Far to the west was a broad reddish tinge which he supposed was another of the drifting clouds of tiny objects. With them would come more of the monstrous creatures of the air and perhaps more of the sharks.
The great red sun had rolled some distance down the sky, but it still had a quarter of the heavens to go. The heat had increased, and he felt thirsty again. He dreaded drinking when it meant helplessness for a quarter of an hour. Moreover, what would the cumulative effects of the narcotic be? So far, he had not noticed any headache or particular sluggishness or other results.
He looked down toward the girl. She had climbed into a giant leaf which, hammock-like, was suspended between two thick-boled plants. She was lying down, obviously preparing to go to sleep. He wondered if he was expected to stand guard while she rested or if she just took it for granted that he would crawl into one of the leaves near hers and also sleep. If she had not bothered to inform him of what was expected, then she was not worried. But he could not understand such unconcern. This place held enough known terrors. What of the ones he did not know?
Before lying down to face the question of to dream or not to dream, he looked around again. The utter alienness of the too-dark blue sky, the Brobdingnagian and blood-red sun, the salt-thick sea, the shaking land, the bloodsucking palsied vegetation and the air aswarm with floating animals and plants gripped his heart and squeezed it. He wanted to weep, and he did so.
Afterward, he thought about where he could be. The Rachel had been sailing on the nocturnal surface of the South Seas in 1842, and events indicative of unnatural forces had manifested themselves. And then, as if the sea had been instantly removed, the ship had fallen.
As if the sea had been removed. What if the sea had been taken away, not by magic but by evaporation? By Time's evaporation?
Ishmael had been a lowly member of the crew of a whaling ship. But that did not mean that he was only a sailor. Between voyages, he was a school teacher and, wherever he was, he read much and deeply. Thus he was acquainted with the theory that the sun would, some day, millions or even billions of years from now --from then, rather -- cool from white-hot to red-lukewarm and then become a cold Was he indeed on the Earth of the far far future? Had the Rachel sailed through a momentarily weakened spot in the fabric of Time or through some conduit of the cosmos, which, operating shutter-like, had opened to take in the Rachel?
He was convinced that he was on the bottom of the dried-up South Pacific. The dead sea was all that was left of the once seemingly boundless waters. And the shaking and swelling earth was no fit place for most life. The majority of animals had deserted the ground, filling the area above the ground with aerial fish of various sorts.
Far from feeling even more lonely and alienated with this theory, he felt greatly heartened. The man without a theory or a dogma is ship without sails or rudder. But he who has a theory or a belief has something wherewith to steer by and to sail close-hauled against the wind if need be. He can ride out the roughest of storms and stay clear of shoals.
That he might be on Earth, and not on some planet of some star so distant that no Earth eyes could see it, encouraged him. It was not the Earth he knew, and if he had had a choice, he would perhaps have gone back in Time, not ahead. But he was here. He had not had a home, except for the planet itself, for years; and if he could make himself at home in the forecastle of a whaling ship or among the cannibal Typees, he could try to make a home here.
He climbed down cheerfully and crawled into the leaf-hammock next to the girl. She raised to look at him and then turned her back and apparently went to sleep. There were other leaves above them to hide them from air sharks, but what about the great cockroaches -- he fondled his slightly wounded ear -- and who knew what other larger and more fearsome carnivores?
What about them? he thought and soon was asleep.
On awakening, he drank more water from one of the pods which the girl had torn off earlier. The sun had now one-eighth of the heavenly arc to go. The heat had increased slightly. The moon had rolled over the eastern horizon like a Titan's bowling ball. At the speed it was going, it would overtake the sun again and both might descend the horizon together.
The girl gestured, and he followed. They crawled around and pushed aside plants until she found breakfast. This was a paralyzed beast which may have been the descendant of the house cat Ishmael had known. Its head could have been Tabby's, but its body was serpentine and the legs were excessively long and thin. The fur was long and shaggy and barred with white and black.
The girl waited until the creeper had withdrawn from the cat's jugular before she stabbed it through the throat. Why she should wait, he did not know. Perhaps there was some sort of mental communication between sentient flesh and semisentient vegetation here. Or perhaps she was merely observing a rule which, if broken, would result in an attack by the plants.
There were many things which he did not understand. But he was glad that he was with her for more reasons than that she was human company. She knew how to fare in this difficult world, and she also seemed to know where she was going. He went with her, since she did not object, and as they traveled northward, he learned her language.
The sun eventually abdicated below the horizon, and a black sky with strange constellations came into succession. The moon, like the death's head of a god, rolled down the heavens. It was so gigantic that Ishmael took a long time getting used to the feeling that it was dropping upon Earth and would crush him. He learned to tell when the large earthtides, following the moon, were coming. He hated these, because they increased that always present -- if slight -- nausea. She was Namalee, daughter of Sennertaa, ruler of the city of Zalarapamtra. Sennertaa was the jarramua, which meant king but could be more closely translated into English as the grand admiral. He was also the chief priest of Zoomashmarta, the great god, and superintendent of those who spoke for the lesser gods.
The city of Zalarapamtra was far to the north, halfway up a mountain which Ishmael suspected had once been the undersea half of a South Pacific island. There Namalee lived in a crystalline palace carved by stone tools and by acid secreted by beasts under the guidance of the founder of the city, the demigod Zalarapamtra. She was one of the twenty-four daughters of Sennertaa, who had ten wives. She was a sort of vestal virgin whose chief duty it was to go out with a ship on its maiden voyage to bring it good luck.
Ishmael did not comment on her failure.
She did not seem to be downcast about that. But it was only because a far greater tragedy had obliterated the comparatively small one of the destruction of her ship and its crew.
Several days before the Rachel had fallen out of the empty skies, Namalee's ship had met another whaling ship from her city.
The other ship had hailed them, and its captain had come aboard. It was evident that he had horrible news, because his skin was pale and his eyes were red with weeping, and he had applied ashes mixed with grease on his hair and had gashed his breast with a knife and had covered with a mask the face of the little god of the ship.
Namalee had thought at first that her father or mother or the only son of the family had died. The captain's news was far worse than that. The city of Zalarapamtra had been destroyed, and most of its inhabitants killed, in a few hours in the middle of the long night. The Purple Beast of the Stinging Death had done it. Only a few had escaped on ships, and one of these had brought the news to the c
aptain of the whaling ship. He had sailed around and around in his grief until he had found another ship to which he could tell the news.
Tears ran down her face, and she had to hide her face behind her hands for a while before she could continue.
"This Purple Beast," Ishmael said. "What is it?"
"There are fortunately very few," she said. "The half-god, the founder of our city, Zalarapamtra, killed the great Purple Beast that owned the mountain where the city now stands -- stood. It is vast, bigger than that tremendous but harmless beast through which we and our ships fell. It trails many thousands of thin tentacles which sting men to death. And it drops eggs which explode with great noise and ruination."
Ishmael lifted his eyebrows at this.
"I am indeed sorry," he said, "that you lost your family and your nation in such a short time and in such a manner. Tell me, are we going north because Zalarapamtra is there, and you hope to find some survivors and start rebuilding the city?"
"First I have to see for myself what happened," she said. "Perhaps it is not as bad as the captain said. After all, he fled the city during the destruction. He only surmised that everybody had been killed and that the city was totally destroyed.
"In any event, other whaling ships will be returning, and these will be carrying mostly men but each will have one of my sisters. We can make obeisance to our chief god, and promise to obey him better in the future so he will not allow such destruction to come again. And we will elect a new Grand He thought about her story for a while, feeling a great pity for her. She was, for all she knew, the last of her family and she might be the last of her nation before the story was ended.
"This kahamwoodoo," he said, using the name which, translated, meant the Purple Beast of the Stinging Death, "this kahamwoodoo must truly be gigantic. Its tentacles must be very long, too, if they can probe into every room of the city, which you say is carved out of rock and goes deep into the mountain. Surely, though, some must have been able to avoid the stinging death."
"They may have," she said, "but there are some things I did not tell you about the kahamwoodoo because I took it for granted that you knew. And I should not have done so, since you are not even of this world, if what you tell me is true."
"It is true," Ishmael said, smiling. He did not blame her for her doubts. If, when he had been sailing with Ahab, he had met a young woman who claimed to have been propelled from the past, would he have believed her?
"The kahamwoodoo, according to the stories told by the priests and by the grandmothers, is often accompanied by smaller beasts. These are of various kinds and travel on top of the great beast. When the great one kills, he is sometimes robbed by the smaller, though they dare not take too much. And he does not bother these fellow travelers unless he becomes too hungry or they annoy him. So, you see, the small beasts would have gone into the rooms of the city to kill what the great beast missed."
They were lying on two leaves side by side and over which was a thick canopy of interlacing leaves and vines. Ever since the huge red sun had dropped into the slot of night, she had been particular about having a heavy cover of vegetation over them. She was especially cautious when they prepared a place to sleep. Ishmael had asked her why, and she had replied that there were a number of reasons. She described some of them, and he had trouble getting to sleep thereafter and staying asleep.
This was the second sleep for them that night. He awoke suddenly, feeling a dull pain in his neck. He knew at once that a creeper had inserted its hollow tooth into his jugular. Namalee had told him that the plants went into a semihibemation during the night, but that some awoke enough to search for a victim, just as a sleeping person, half-awake, feeling thirsty, may stumble to the bathroom to get a drink of water. Namalee had advised him that, if this happened, he should submit. It was better to lose some blood than to jerk the tooth free and so fully awaken the plant.
He had asked her why it mattered if the plant was denied its drink. She had replied that it was best to cooperate with the earth growths. She was vague about what might happen if he did not. All she knew was that she had been taught that one should always go along with the arrangement. It was true that a person could avoid the creepers, if one had not drunk the paralyzing water, but it was better to submit.
Ishmael, thinking of the endless miles of jungle through which they would have to travel before coming to the mountain city of Zalarapamtra, decided to submit. He lay with his eyes closed and imagined the drain of blood. The red fluid was oozing through tiny capillaries of the creeper into the body of the parent stem. And then --
He started as he heard a very faint whistling sound somewhere above him. Something bent the tops of the plants, and something shook the vegetation. The rustling he now heard was not the never-ending motion of the plants quivering to the movements of the earth. The rustling was heavier and more prolonged and undoubtedly caused by some great body.
He managed to turn slowly on his side and reach out and swing Namalee's hammock-leaf. The creeper extended itself to compensate for his motion and so leave its tooth in his vein.
Namalee awoke suddenly and sat up, but she did not say anything. Moonlight filtering through spaces here and there enabled him to make out her body as a dim shape, and she could see his hand clearly in a shaft of light. She rolled over to the edge of the leaf very slowly and whispered, "What is it?"
"I don't know," he said. "Something big is out there."
He pointed upward at an angle.
The tentacle, which was a dark gray and about an inch thick, was blindly probing. But it was coming closer, sniffing for heat. The shivaradoo was blind, like most of the predatory beasts that came out at night, but its sense of heat detection gave it eyes and it had a strange hearing sense that enabled it to pinpoint its victims.
Ishmael plucked the creeper's tooth from his vein, hoping that the forcible ejection would not result in heavy bleeding. He rolled over and eased himself down from the leaf while Namalee did the same from hers. They had to drop a few feet and so could not avoid making some noise. About four seconds later, he heard a sound as of air escaping from pressure, and something pierced a leaf by his shoulder.
Namalee made a strangling sound, and both dropped flat on their faces to the ground. There were about six or seven hisses, and the thud of several objects striking the hard skins of stems.
Immediately after, the two got to their hands and knees and crawled swiftly to a fallen plant with a diameter of two feet. They went over and behind this just in time to escape three more missiles.
Ishmael reached over the trunk and groped until he found a tiny arrow-like thing embedded in the semi-wood. It was a needle-pointed shaft of bone about two inches long and one-sixteenth thick with four featherish growths at the other end. He did not test the sharp end, since Namalee had told him that this was coated with a poison.
According to her, the shivaradoo had thirty tentacles, all hollow. The beast grew the bony missiles in its own body. When they were fully developed, they dropped out into a pouch on the underside of its pancake- thin, sixty-feet-diametered body. The shivaradoo plucked the missiles out of the pouch with one tentacle and inserted them into the ends of other hollow tentacles. When the shivaradoo was close enough to a victim, it expelled a missile with air forced from a bladder-like organ on the top of its body. The range was about sixty feet.
The shivaradoo, like most of the creatures of the air, had large bladders of lighter-than-air gas to buoy it. These grew on top of its body.
Ishmael reached over the fallen trunk again to get some more missiles, and he heard hisses, followed by the dancing of leaves through which shafts pierced and the faint thud of more striking into the plant. One had plunged in only an inch from his hand.
Hastily he pulled several out and, holding them carefully, crawled after Namalee.
"It will follow us until it finds usl" Namalee gasped. "And we can't do a thing!"
"You said it could be killed with its own poison?"
"That is what the old tales say!"
They increased their speed on their hands and knees as a crashing noise came from behind them.
"O, Zoomashmarta!" she said. "It's smashing the plants to get at us!"
"It can't come down too far!" he said. "Otherwise, it'll spear itself on the plants! Some of them have pretty sharp points, you know!"
An animal leaped out in front of their faces and caused them to cry out and stop. But it was only one of the kwishchangas, the antennaed twin-nosed monkey-bears, as Ishmael called them. Squawking and chirruping, it raced through the middle terrace of the plants and then suddenly fell.
Ishmael could not see what had happened to it, but he supposed that a poisoned dart had killed it.
The jungle was a series of vast snappings and whippings as plants broke or, released of the weight of the passing monster, sprang back to their original positions.
"Zoomashmarta, help us! Zoomashmarta, help us!" Namalee whispered.
The jungle ahead of them was boiling out with life. A horde of the nine-inch-long cockroaches erupted and raced off in all directions. A family of the double-nosed beasts fled up a pole-like plant, each leaping off the end to a branch of a larger growth.
The two, without a word between them, leaped up at the same time and raced through the jungle. They stumbled and fell, helped each other up, and Ishmael dropped his missiles and did not have the time to look for them. But he did take Namalee's stone knife from her.
"What is it?" Ishmael said.
"It's lifted and is going slowly now," she said. "Listen!"
Ishmael forced his breathing to slow down and to become quieter by opening his mouth wide and drawing in air in large bagsful. He could make out a susurrus behind them, but it was difficult to hear it through the shrieks and crashings of the smaller animals.
"The shivaradoo has no wing-sails, if you will remember," Namalee said. "It travels by seizing the plants with its tentacles and pulling itself along just above the top of the jungle."
The Wind Whales of Ishmael Page 3