by Paul Kidd
The monsters were already making a second attack. They came in damned fast, shooting bolts of lightning out of their eyes. Again, fire broke out on the wooden deck. Xoota felt the attack an instant before it came. She dived and rolled, coming up to shoot at the first beast as it passed. She missed and swore violently before running to put out the flames.
The second monster had dived at the mainmast. Benek rose and fired then took a savage buffet from the monster’s batlike wings. It smashed him back across the decks, landing him in a tangle of armor plate against the port-side rail.
The monster made a lunge to snatch up the mainsail with its mandibles, but Rustle snapped his jaws, making the beast pull up in panic. Large plant teeth made an audible snap, taking a chunk out of the monster’s tail. The monster screamed and beat a hasty retreat, flicking off into the sky.
Both monsters arced around. Wig-wig raced to Benek, who was burned and dazed. At the catapult, Shaani finally had the machine loaded. Xoota came to help her as she tracked the next attack. Shaani aimed and Xoota stood by with the glowing, red-hot lighter.
The furry serpents came speeding in, low and fast, mere meters from the sand. They closed at frightening speed. A thousand meters … six hundred … three.
Xoota touched the lighter to the fuse. She had a sudden image in her mind of the monster dodging left. “Shaani, shoot to your right.”
Shaani jerked the catapult’s aim aside and fired. The bomb whipped through the air, detonating in an apocalyptic blast a mere hundred yards from the ship. One monster arced away, holes shot through its wings. The other slammed down into the sand and crashed. It lay there, dazed, then scrabbled back to its feet. Benek shot the damned thing with his crossbow, making it stagger and scream. The beast took off, retreating as fast as its damaged wings could carry it, jabbering in fright to its counterpart. Both monsters veered off and headed away to the east, to where a line of hills could be seen, blue against the horizon.
Xoota seared the air behind the monsters with curses. The mainsail had a rip a meter long. There were burns scored all across the deck.
Shaani reloaded the catapult in case the monsters returned. She ran to check on Benek. “Are you all right, old thing?”
“I need no mutant ministrations.” Benek sat up and removed his helmet. He looked badly injured. “I will survive. My superior powers—”
“Yes, well, let’s have Wig-wig tend to you for a while. That last knock was a tad savage.”
Shaani came over to Xoota, shaking her head. “I say, I thought he might have been translated to glory on that one. Did you see how far that threw him? He might have gotten a concussion.”
“Fortunately he is well protected by having a small particle of brain lodged in his skull.” Xoota dryly combed her antennae. “You know, I think they wanted the sail.”
“Well, they can jolly well go find one elsewhere.”
Xoota stamped on the last smoking embers on deck. “Can we move without the mainsail?”
“I think so.”
“Right, let’s get rolling before those things decide to come back.”
With the deck still in chaos, Xoota raised the jib and foresail while Rustle hoisted the main. The ship began to rumble on her way, sails standing proudly. She headed east, following the pipeline off toward the distant hills.
Wig-wig came to cling in the rigging, looking east. “Where are we going, quoll lady? Are we almost there?”
“Almost there, Wig-wig.” Xoota freed her hair into the wind. “East and an end to everybody’s troubles.” She felt her quills disappear. Thank Darwin she could go put her proper clothes on at last.
Things were looking up.
CHAPTER 10
A day later the ship encountered its first trees. At first there was simply brush—more and more and more of it, growing dense and wild, crackling beneath the wheels as the ship rolled. Grass trees stood out here and there, uncomfortably similar to those back home, with their spiky quills and their single eye atop a tall stalk. The ship gave the things a wide berth.
They lost sight of the pipe as it dipped back beneath the ground. Soon there were short, dense myrtle trees growing all around the brush, little hives of wasps tending the plants. They reacted with violent flashes of light as the ship went by, clearly trying to chase the mighty apparition away. The Sand Shark rolled on, unconcerned, although driving her had suddenly become damned challenging. The hard soil had ridges and runnels; there were stumps, deep bogs of brushwood, and loose sand. The wind was best if the ship stuck to driving along the flanks of the low stony hills.
There were trees growing in the valleys—real trees, things as tall as the big figs on the sky island. Eucalyptus trees with blue-green leaves and eerie, silver trunks. There were birds in the air along with something that looked a little like a melon, rowing through the sky on leafy paddles. Xoota and Rustle both hung their heads over the railings as small kangaroos erupted from the grass and went bounding through the trees. The two carnivores positively slathered.
“Stop. We should stop and hunt.”
The sails were dropped at record speed. Xoota equipped herself in her new, alien armor, all retrofitted onto her old leathers.
Shaani emerged from the control cabin, eating a scone. “Oh, you’re not going to hurt anything, are you?”
“Yep.” Xoota was enthusiastically loading her crossbow. “I aim to terrorize things, send them on a horrific chase filled with angst and horror, then shoot them full of holes.” She placed a hand over her heart. “Never fear. I have taken a solemn oath never to wantonly hurt another living creature—unless it is either tasty or annoying.”
The white rat waggled her finger. “That is unknown wildlife, you know. It should be studied.”
“I intend to check it carefully for taste and texture.” Xoota lowered the rear ramp. Mounted on Budgie, she scampered out onto the dry grass. Rustle came with her, all three mouths grinning and snapping in anticipation of a decent lunch. His root clusters churned like bicycle wheels as he chased after Xoota.
The rat called out after them one last time. “Remember, don’t eat anything that has a face.”
Xoota called back over her shoulder as she rode past. “Don’t worry, I cut the faces off.”
Shaani gave a sigh. She made the best of the halt and put the teakettle on.
Benek appeared on deck and frowned. “What are they doing? Scouting?”
“Foraging.” The rat busied herself with tea mugs. “Ah well, it’s probably good for Rustle to have fresh food. He’s been eying Budgie in a very strange way these last few days.”
The muscled human glared out over the weird landscape with its tall grass and green trees. “How far are we from my target?”
“Well, the timing of sunrise and sunset seems to match what you’d observed. So we’re close. Within a few hundred kilometers at least. But a starport is an omega facility; it might have appeared virtually anywhere. So we might be in for a bit of a search.”
Benek had a dire, intense look in his eye. “But we are close.”
The rat nodded thoughtfully, pouring tea into the pot. “Oh, yes. We’re decidedly closing in.”
At the bottom of the hill, there was a gully, and the gully was well packed with trees. The whole region was far cooler than the desert. A waterhole still had muddy brown water in the bottom. The local wildlife had been scraping shallow holes in which to lounge away the heat of midday, but they had taken fright and all hastily changed their places of address.
Xoota rode up on Budgie, scanning the area for anything to shoot. She had been living on biltong and dried bugs for so long that she had almost forgotten what fresh meat tasted like.
Behind her, Rustle suddenly stuck one huge, fanged mouth through a bush, trying to surprise whatever was on the other side. He was disappointed to find nothing but grass and dirt. He uprooted a whole bush to see if anything was hiding underneath. Having no luck, he thoughtfully replanted the bush, and sat tapping all three chins in though
t.
They pushed through the thicket. A host of little birds went twittering off through the trees, their feathers a startling blue. They gave off a beautiful green, radioactive glow. Something was wending its way behind a fallen log. Xoota’s antennae tingled, but she ignored the signal, focusing instead on the hole in her belly. She stealthily dismounted from Budgie. Crossbow in hand, she crawled on her stomach through the grass. She emerged slowly from the bushes, resting her crossbow on a chunk of fallen tree.
Behind her, a large goanna emerged and clamped its jaws shut right on her tail. Xoota gave a piercing, indignant scream. She dropped her crossbow and turned around, desperately trying to latch hold of the lizard and pull it free. “Get it off! Get it off, get it off, get it off!”
Rustle reached down and simply ate the critter, chomping down on it with vast satisfaction.
Xoota looked up at him resentfully as she rubbed her stinging tail. “You’ll keep.”
The plant beamed back at her in satisfaction.
They labored up and out of the tree line. Another hill was before them. Several small kangaroos—complete with mutated balls of spine on their tails and armor plates down their backs—were grazing. A few rabbits loped around in the weeds.
Xoota ignored the rabbits; she was a hunter from the desert lands, and she was stalking heftier prey. Budgie made a chirping noise and immediately held back. Xoota shushed him and crept out to take aim at a kangaroo. “Now watch this, you idiots. This is how it’s done.”
Xoota limped back to the ship some time later, her face glowering, daring anyone to say a word. Budgie and Rustle walked behind her, both smirking. Xoota held a dead rabbit swinging in one hand.
They climbed back aboard. Xoota came limping up to Shaani, clearly in some pain. Three long quills were jutting from her backside.
Shaani lowered her glasses and bent down to inspect the damage. “Yes, you really do seem to have a talent for this kind of injury.”
“Shut up and pull them out before I hit you with a dead rabbit.”
“As you wish.” Shaani called up into the rigging. “Oh, Wig-wig. We have a customer.”
They bent Xoota over a deck chair with her backside high and began to pluck out the quills. Xoota suffered it all with ill grace.
Shaani examined the quills with happy interest. “Well, these are impressive. Where did they come from?”
“Mutant kangaroos.” The quoll was in a pouty sulk. “The damned things launch showers of them at you through the air.”
“I did tell you to be careful.”
“Yeah, that didn’t work out so well.”
“Well, at least you got a rabbit.”
“Sort of. It was a kangaroo quill that impaled the dead rabbit, not a crossbow bolt,” said Xoota shamefully. “I want lunch, damn it.”
Shaani politely looked over to the happy, grinning plant. “Rustle, did you manage to find anything to eat?”
The giant plant opened up to proudly show off the dead goanna lizard dissolving in one of his mouths. Immensely pleased with himself, the plant then shut his trap.
“Yes, so I see. Jolly good.” The sight made Shaani a bit queasy.
The last quill was plucked out of Xoota’s behind. Her heart-spotted underwear would need some repairs. Shaani doused the quoll’s backside with alcohol then ushered a horde of earwigs forward. “Wig-wig, the field is yours.”
“Glee.” Wig-wig came down from his particular nest up aloft. “Quoll botty. I fix it.”
The earwigs began their healing, waving back and forth and humming while Xoota’s backside took on a golden glow. Shaani sat cross-legged at the other end of her friend and offered her a cup of tea. Xoota drank with gratitude.
Shaani sipped happily at her mug. “So … any interesting sights in the valley?”
“Some.” Xoota winced as her backside gave a twinge. “There are some strips of shorter grass on the other side of the hill. It’s all mown short, clipped off at the base.”
The rat mused over her tea. “I wonder if it’s another gardening robot.”
“Damned big one, then. The mown bit is really wide.” Xoota winced again then looked back over her shoulder. “Hey, careful. That’s tender territory.”
“Is big territory.”
“Watch it, bug.”
Shaani looked thoughtfully over to the far side of the valley. “Did the mown strips seem to lead anywhere?”
The quoll tried to think. “They disappeared over the hill. Seemed to be heading sort of northeast.”
“Let’s cross the valley and see.”
They rolled the ship slowly downhill, letting gravity do the work while they used the engines to take her up out of the shadow of the trees before they raised the sails. The ship began to move steadily, her speed a gentle twenty kilometers per hour.
The hill at the far side of the valley was oddly patterned. The knee-high grass had been mown short in long, even strips twelve meters wide. The strips ran parallel to each other, up and over the hill and out of sight. Shaani steered into the strips and followed them. The sails caught the wind beautifully at the hillcrest.
Xoota was finally able to stand after a few up-and-downhill runs. She pulled her pants back on, grudgingly thanked Wig-wig, and joined everyone clustered at the bow railings. The ship followed the strange grass strips along yet another hill to pass what looked like massive piles of dung.
At the crest of the next hill, they finally saw what had been mowing all the grass.
A dozen animals, each one six meters high and almost twice as wide, grazed sleepily. They moved forward at an ambling pace, one plodding step every few minutes without a worry in the world. On the backs of the animals, there were platforms covered with awnings. People looked to be living on the platforms; on some, families with children did family things, on others young women combed their hair (or quills, spines, tentacles, feathers, or whatever the case may have been). Young men strolled along beside the titanic animals, seeming to guide them as they climbed rope ladders up and down the beasts in shifts.
It was a whole little village on the move. The huge animals must have been carrying eighty people slowly along the grasslands.
As the natives caught sight of the sand ship, people began to run back and forth on the animal platforms, calling down to the men on foot all around the animals. The rearmost animals suddenly changed appearance as the passengers raised wooden screens around their homes.
The men on foot came in many different shapes and sizes. They were typical mutants, if such a thing could be said; some were descended from humans and some from other creatures, both familiar and completely foreign to the crew of the Sand Shark. Their weapons of choice were long spears fitted into spear-throwing devices called woomeras. Their most complex armor seemed to be made out of animal hide. Their technology was low, but they clearly were civilized.
Shaani was extremely excited. “It’s a settlement. We must greet them in peace.”
“Oh, absolutely.” Xoota leaned down to mutter quietly to Wig-Wig. “Have Benek load the catapult, and keep the crossbows cocked and out of sight, okay?”
“Hokay.”
They brought the ship to a halt far from the animals, dropping sails and putting on the hand brake. Shaani climbed up out of the control cabin to stand, waving, out of the roof. A group of the natives came forward cautiously, waving back. Shaani gave them a dapper little bow.
“Hello. Greetings. We are explorers from afar.” Shaani doffed her hat, speaking with her perfect, cultured accent, absolutely positive that everything in the world could understand English, if only one’s pronunciation were clear enough. “How do you do?”
One of the natives shuffled closer, and they saw it was a creature dressed in hide armor, his blue skin painted over with ritual lines and swirls of ochre. The man doffed the animal skull he wore as a hat. “Terribly well, thank you. And you?”
“Oh, topping. Quite topping.” Shaani was delighted. “We’ve come from across the desert. Care for
a spot of tea?”
“Oh.” The man consulted a wristwatch. “Well, it’s just gone elevenses. That would be splendid.”
Xoota’s antennae flopped to either side of her head. “You’re kidding me …”
Taking it all in her stride, Shaani climbed out onto the main deck. She clapped her hands together in satisfaction as she passed Xoota. “Right. Let’s get the kettle on. Hands across the wilds and all that.” Shaani stuck her head into the kitchen. “Do we have any scones left?”
“I think so.” Xoota pushed back her goggles, feeling bemused. “I’ll just go get some.” She looked anxiously at the animals up ahead. “Are you sure you want these people on board?”
“Of course.” Shaani polished off the good teapot. “He’s a man of letters. Surely you heard the accent?”
The native leader climbed up a rope ladder and stepped onto the main deck. He proffered a long, blue hand to Shaani and made a bow. “Tadash, madam. And a very good day to you.”
“Good day to you, sir. I’m Shaani. Welcome aboard.”
Shaani shook hands with the man and led him around the deck, pointing out the operative principles of her vessel. Following more cautiously came six warriors, all armed with spears and wooden clubs. They kept their distance from Rustle, the three-headed plant.
Benek looked them over, frozen faced; there was not a pure human in the lot of them. Xoota and Wig-wig welcomed the visitors aboard.
They took tea along with dried fruit and fresh scones under the awnings by the deckhouse. The leader of the native delegation—who had an extraordinary handlebar mustache—was really quite the gentleman. He refused a chair and sat cross-legged on the deck, drinking tea with real satisfaction.
His accent was the male counterpart to Shaani’s. He spoke cordially as he brushed at his mustache. “Good lord. So you’ve actually crossed the great desert?”
“Bit of an epic journey, really.” Shaani passed the scones. “Storms, doldrums, thirst, mutant monsters—all that sort of thing.”