The Many-Coloured Land sope-1

by Julian May

  Yeochee gave him an awful look. “Just wait until it’s your turn in the king barrel! We’ll see how well you…”

  The steward came skipping out of the passage, carrying a large steaming tray and a glass flagon of tawny liquid. “It’s ready, Appalling One! Hot-hot-hot! And not with ordinary salamander sausage, either, but with a new kind! The cook Mariposa says it’ll frizzle your cojones!”

  Yeochee bent over the tray to savor the fragrance of the wheel-shaped open pie. It was cut into wedges, each one oozing delectable layers of creamy white and red.

  “Beggin’ your pardon, King,” Fitharn ventured, “but what the hell is that?”

  The King took the platter and the bottle of ale and began to trudge happily toward the crystal grotto. “The special dish of one Señora Mariposa de Sanchez, late of Krelix Plantation, earlier of Chichen-Itza Pizza Parlor in Merida, Mexico… Leave us, Fitharn. Go with those damned Lowlives and watch ’em.”

  “As you command, Appalling One.”

  At last, the great cavern was quiet once more. Yeochee poked his head around the entrance to the geode chamber. The candles burned low and two fascinating eyes peered at him from the stack of dark furs.

  “Yoo-hoo!” he caroled. “Goody time!”

  Lulo came bouncing toward him in the most charming way.

  “Grrum! Yumyumyum!”

  He gave a delighted screech. “Let go! Let me put it down first, you mad succubus, you! Oh, you’re going to love this. It’s my newest favorite. Half cheese, half axolotl!”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “The unicorn! The unicorn! The unicorn!”

  Martha keened the word unceasingly as she wept over the torn body of Stefanko lying in the middle of the marsh trail. Great cypresses reared up from pools of brown water on either side. Where the morning sunlight shone through the trees there were clouds of dancing midges and scarlet dragon-flies hawking among them. A lobster-sized crayfish, perhaps attracted by the blood dripping into the water, scrabbled slowly up the shallow embankment that raised the trail above the Rhine bottomland.

  Peopeo Moxmox Burke sat propped against a mossy trunk, groaning as Claude and Madame Guderian cut away his deerskin shirt and one leg of his pants.

  “The horn seems only to have grazed your ribs, mon petit peau-rouge. However, I will have to sew. Claude, administer a narcotic.”

  “See to Steffi,” the Chief pleaded through clenched teeth.

  Claude only shook his head. He took a herendorf bleb from the medical kit Amerie had prepared for them and applied the dose to Burke’s temple.

  “Oh, God. That’s better. How is the leg? I could feel the bugger’s teeth press me to the bone.”

  Claude said, “Your calf muscle is all slashed to hell. And you can bet those tusks were poison-filthy to boot. There’s no way we can patch this out here, Peo. Your only chance is professional care back with Amerie.”

  Cursing softly, Burke rested his huge gray head against the cypress and let his eyes close. “My own fault. Stupid schmuck, I was concentrating on covering our scent by taking us through that patch of stinking pitcher plants. Watching for hoe-tusker sign, traces of bear-dogs… and we get ambushed by a goddam hog!”

  “Silence, child,” Madame ordered. “You derange my stitching.”

  “It was no ordinary porker,” Claude said. He wrapped the chiefs leg in porofilm after packing the wound with antibiotic floe. The decamole leg splint was already inflated and ready to be fastened in place. “I think the beast that did this job on you was none other than Kubanochoerus, the giant one-horned Caucasian boar. It was supposed to’ve been extinct by the Pliocene.”

  “Huh! Tell that to Steffi, poor feygeleh.”

  Madame said, “I will finish tending Peo, Claude. See to Martha.”

  The paleontologist went over to the hysterical engineer, studied her swaying, wild-eyed actions for a moment, and saw what had to be done. He grasped her by one wrist and yanked her roughly to her feet “Will you shut up, girl? Your stupid bawling will bring the soldiers on us! Do you think Steffi would want that?”

  Martha choked in outraged astonishment and drew back one arm to slap the old man’s face. “How do you know what Steffi would want? You didn’t know him! But I did, and he was gentle and good and he took care of me when my damn guts were, when I was sick. And now look at him. Look at him!” Her ravaged, once beautiful face crumpled in fresh sobs. Martha’s momentary fury at Claude dissolved and her arm fell. “Steffi, oh, Steffi,” she whispered, then fell against the sturdy old man. “One minute he was walking along and smiling over his shoulder at me, and the next…”

  The gray monster had burst without warning from a thick stand of reeds and charged the middle of the line of hikers, tossing Stefanko into the air and then savaging him. It had switched its attack to Peo when the chief drew his machette and tried to stop the animal’s awful gobbling. Fitharn had burst into illusory flame, driving the boar off the natural causeway into the swamp shallows. Felice and Richard followed the fireball with drawn bows, leaving the others to help the wounded. But there was no helping Stefanko.

  Claude held the shuddering Martha in his arms, then pulled out the tail of his bush shirt and used it to wipe her streaming eyes. He led her to the mossy hollow where Madame was working on Burke and made her sit down. The knees of the engineer’s buckskin trousers were stained with dark blood and muck, but there were also bright scarlet patches down around both ankles.

  “You’d better have a look at her, Madame,” Claude said. “I’ll take care of Steffi.”

  He got a Mylar blanket from his own pack and went to the body, fighting to control his own rage and revulsion. He had known Stefanko only four days; but the ready competence of the man and the warmth of his personality had made him a congenial trail-mate on the trek from High Vrazel to the Rhine bottomland. Now Claude could only do his best to smooth the contorted face back into its accustomed smooth lineaments. No need to look so surprised any more, Steffi boy. Just relax and rest. Rest in peace.

  A horde of flies had descended upon the ripped mass of intestines and moved only with sluggish reluctance as Claude rolled Stefanko’s body onto the metallic sheet. Using the heat-beam of his powerpack, the old man welded the edges of the Mylar into a bag. The job was nearly finished when Fitharn, Richard, and Felice came squelching back out of the jungle.

  Felice held up a ridged yellowish object like an ivory marlin-spike. “We got the fuckard for what good it does.”

  Richard shook his head in awe. “A pig the size of a goddam ox! Musta weighed eight hundred kilos. Took five arrows to finish it off after Pegleg trapped it in a thicket. I still can’t figure how anything that big could have snuck up on us unawares.”

  “They’re intelligent devils,” Fitharn growled. “It must have followed us downwind. If I’d had my wits about me I’d have sensed it. But I was thinking about how we’d have to hurry to cross the river before the morning mist lifted.”

  “Well, we’re stuck here now that it’s broad daylight,” Felice said. She held up the trophy horn. “This fellow saw to that.”

  “Now what?” Richard wanted to know.

  Felice had undipped the arrows from the holder on her compound bow and she now knelt to dip the stained glassy heads in the water beside the trail. “We’ll have to hide out on this side until sundown and then cross. The moon’s nearly full tonight. We could probably get over the narrow strip of east-bank lowland in a couple of hours and then bivouac among the rocks at the foot of the Black Forest scarp for the rest of the night.”

  The Firvulag gave an exclamation. “You’re not thinking of going on?”

  She glared at him. “You’re not thinking of turning back?”

  Claude said, “Steffi’s dead. Peo’s in a bad way. He’s going to have to be taken back to Amerie by one of us, or he’ll lose his leg, or worse.”

  “That still leaves five of us,” Felice said. She frowned, tapping the boar horn against her buckskin-clad thigh. “Pegleg could go ba
ck with the Chief. He could get help from his people along the way. And before you leave,” she said to the little man, “tell us how to get to the stronghold of this guy Sugoll.”

  “It won’t be easy.” The Firvulag wagged his head. “The Black Forest is a lot more rugged than the Vosges. Sugoll’s place is up on the northeastern slope of the Feldberg, where the Paradise River comes off the snowfields. Bad country.”

  “The Tanu won’t be looking for us on the other side of the Rhine,” she said. “Once we’re across, we probably won’t have to worry about any more gray-torc patrols.”

  “There are still Howlers,” Fitharn said. “And at night, the Hunt. Airborne, if Velteyn leads it. If the Hunt spots you in the open, you’re finished.”

  “Can’t we travel mostly by day?” Richard suggested. “Madame Guderian’s metafunctions can warn us of hostile Firvulag.”

  The old woman had come up to the group, an expression of deep concern upon her face. “I am not so worried about les Criards as about Sugoll himself. Without his help, we may never locate the Danube in time. But if Fitharn does not accompany us, Sugoll may feel that he can ignore the King’s directive with impunity. And there is another matter for grave concern… Martha. She has begun to hemorrhage from the shock. Among the Tanu, she was forced to give birth to four children in quick succession and her female organs…”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” said Felice impatiently. “If she rests, she’ll pull out of it. And we’ll take our chance with Sugoll.”

  “Martha is greatly weakened,” the old woman persisted. “She will become worse before she is better. This has happened before. It would be best if she returns with Peo and Fitharn.”

  Richard looked dubious. “But now that Stefanko’s gone, she’s the only technician we’ve got. Without her help, God knows how long it might take me to trace the circuits on that exotic aircraft. And if the zapper needs work, I wouldn’t have a prayer of fixing it.”

  “The expedition could be postponed,” Fitharn said.

  “That would mean waiting a whole year!” Felice blazed. “I won’t do it! I’ll go get the damn Spear all by myself!”

  Back at the cypress, Martha cried out to them, “We can’t postpone the search, Madame. Anything could happen in a year. I’ll be all right in a day or two. If I get a little help, I know I can make it.”

  “We could rig a litter from one of the cots,” Claude suggested.

  Felice brightened. “And in the rough spots, I could carry her on my back. She’s right about anything being likely to happen if we delay.” Her eyes strayed to the Firvulag, who looked back at her with bland objectivity. “Others could find the Ship’s Grave ahead of us.”

  “It would be wisest to turn back,” Fitharn said. “However, the decision will have to be that of Madame Guderian.”

  “Dieu me secourait,” the old woman murmured. “One of us has already given his life.” She took a few slow steps toward the Mylar-wrapped bundle lying on the trail “If we could ask him his opinion, we know very well what he would say.”

  She turned back to them, lifting her chin with the familiar gesture. “Alors… Fitharn, you will turn back with Peo. The rest of us will go on.”

  They concealed themselves for the rest of the day in a dense taxodium grove hard by the western bank of the Rhine. The gnarled, low-growing branches made comfortable perches. Curtained by festoons of lichens and flowering epiphytes, they could safely observe the river traffic and at the same time be secure from the crocodiles, hoe-tuskers, and other potentially dangerous wildlife that infested the bottomland.

  It became very hot as the sun climbed. Food was no problem, for there were plenty of turtles whose meat could be roasted with the power-beams, as well as palms with edible hearts and an abundance of honey-sweet grapes the size of golf balls that drove Richard into raptures of oenological speculation. But as morning dragged into afternoon, boredom and reaction from the dawn violence made the younger members of the party drowsy. Richard, Felice, and Martha striped off most of their clothing, tied themselves to upper limbs of the big tree, and slept, leaving Claude and Madame on branches below keeping watch over the broad river. Only a few supply barges from upstream plantations drifted past their hiding place. Finiah itself lay about twenty kilometers to the north on the opposite bank, where the short Paradise River tributary tumbled out of a deep gorge that almost bisected the Black Forest massif.

  “Later,” Madame told Claude, “when it is dark, we will be able to see Finiah’s lights against the northern sky. It stands on a promontory jutting into the Rhine. It is not a large city, but it is the oldest of all the Tanu settlements and they have illuminated it with great splendor.”

  “Why did they migrate southward, out of this area?” Claude asked. “From what I’ve been told, most of the Tanu cities are down around the Mediterranean, with this northern country left pretty much to the Firvulag.”

  “A very warm climate is more to the Tanu taste. I believe that the division of territory between the two groups reflects a very ancient pattern, perhaps one that goes back to the origins of the dimorphic Race. One might imagine a world of singular niggedness where highland and lowland forms evolved, perhaps interdependent yet antagonistic, With the coming of high civilization and the eventual migration of the race to other worlds in their galaxy, these ancient tensions would be sublimated. But it would seem that Tanu and Firvulag genes never blended completely. From time to time during the history of these people the old rivalries would be resurrected.”

  “And crushed by the high-tech majority,” Claude said. “Until this one group of barbarian throwbacks found a perfect refuge instead of coming to the usual quixotic end.”

  She nodded her agreement “It was perfect for the exiles, our Pliocene Earth… except for the irony that equally quixotic humans should also have desired to dwell on it.”

  She pointed to a pneumatic barge far out on the river. “There goes one of the products of the human advent. Before the humans came, the Tanu had simple rafts of wood. They had little river commerce because of their dislike of water. They supervised their own plantations and even did honest work because there were not so many rama slaves. The torcs for the little apes formerly had to be made by hand in the same manner as their own golden torcs.”

  “Do you mean that human know-how enabled mass production?”

  “For the ape torcs, yes. And the entire silver and gray system, with its linkage to the golden torcs of the Tanu rulers, was devised by a human psychobiologist. They made him a demigod and he still lives in Muriah, Sebi-Gomnol the Lord Coercer. But I remember the pinched little self-hating man who came to my auberge forty years ago. Then he was called Eusebio Gomez-Nolan.”

  “So a human being is responsible for this slave setup? Sweet Lord. Why do we screw things up, wherever we go?”

  She gave a short bitter laugh. With her hair straggling in sweat curls about her ears and forehead, she seemed to be scarcely forty-five years old. “Gomnol is not the only traitor to our race. There was a Turkish man of the circus, one of my earliest clients, named Iskender Karabekir. His fondest wish, as he told me, was to train sabertooth tigers to do his bidding. But I have discovered that in this Exile world he devoted himself instead to the domestication of chatikot and heuadotberia and amphicyons, which became pivotal in the subsequent Tanu domination of society. The ancient Hunt and Grand Combat were fought by Tanu and Firvulag afoot. The groups were evenly matched, for what the Firvulag lacked in finesse and sophisticated metafunctions they made up in sheer numbers and a more rugged physique. But a mounted Tanu Hunt was a different matter. And a Grand Combat with Tanu and torced human warriors on chalikoback and Firvulag afoot has become an annual massacre.”

  Claude stroked his chin. “Still, there was the Battle of Agincourt, if you’ll pardon my mentioning it.”

  “Bof!” said Angélique Guderian. “Longbows will not conquer the Tanu, nor will gunpowder. Not while perverse member of our own human race betray their fellows! Who tau
ght the Tanu physicians how to reverse the human sterilizations? A gynecologist from the planet Astrakhan. A human woman! Not only our talents but our very genes have been placed in the service of these exotics, and many, such as Martha, choose death rather than the degradation of becoming brood stock. Do you know how Martha came to us?”

  Claude shook his head.

  “She threw herself into the Rhine, hoping to drown herself in the spring flood rather than submit to a fifth impregnation. But she was cast ashore, Dieu merci, and Steffi found her and restored her. There are many others like Martha among us. Knowing them, loving them, and knowing also that I am the one ultimately responsible for their pain, you will understand why I cannot rest until the power of the Tanu is broken.”

  The river was turning from shining pewter to gold. On the Black Forest side, the heights of the Feldberg to the south became luminous with the sinking sun, tinted primrose and purple. In order to reach Sugoll, they would have to go up into that high country and cross at least seventy kilometers of mountain forest, and all this before even beginning their search for the Danube.

  “Quixotic,” Claude said. He was smiling.

  “Are you sorry you agreed to help me? You are an enigma to me, Claude. I can understand Felice, Richard, Martha, the strong-willed ones of our company such M Chief Burke. But I have not yet been able to understand you. I cannot see why you came to the Pliocene at all, much less why you agreed to go on this quest for the Ship’s Grave. You are too sensible, too self-posssessed, too, debonaire!”

  He laughed. “You have to understand the Polish character, Angélique. It breeds true, even in a Polish-American like me. We were speaking of battles. Do you know which one we Polacks are proudest of? It happened at the beginning of the Second World War. Hitler’s Panzer tanks were rolling into the northern part of Poland and there was no modern weaponry to stop them. So the Pomeranian Cavalry Brigade charged the tanks on horseback, and they were wiped out, man and beast. It was madness, but it was glorious… and very, very Polish. And now suppose you tell me why you decided to come to the Pliocene.”