To the left and right of me men walked with a certain caution, sniffing the wind like a dog that knows the bear is in these woods but can't pick him up yet. But they stood straight up like reeds before a storm, or the armies of the Continent before they met the hideous reality of the German machine gun. Only I approached the enemy bent like an old man, ready to dive to one side or another at the first sign of the withering fire that would turn the other men into stalking-horses.
Some of my comrades looked at me oddly, but they had their own business to mind. The officers were different. One whose name I had never known and would never find out walked straight over to me with a parade ground strut and planted himself in my path. He opened his mouth to speak and took the blast that had been meant for me.
I was rolling madly away from that spot before his ashes settled. I began to shout at the men to get down, to take whatever cover the grass offered, but because they were still in shock or because I wasn't an officer, they ignored me. The Thorans had found more weapons somewhere, and all around me Nuum died.
The grass all around me cut off my vision. Mud was caked all over my uniform and my face; I had to clear my ears to hear what I couldn't see. A sudden shout went up and the ground vibrated under me. I knew what had happened: the Thorans had used their ray-weapons in a surprise attack, panicking the Nuum, and now they were following up their advantage. If I stood, I would be shot; if I didn't, the enemy would stumble over me in seconds.
I have said that my body has always possessed the ability to act independently of rational thought, and that on odd occasions I find myself acting in ways that on later reflection even I find completely lunatic. I have also said that such lunacy has saved my life, and it did so now.
I leaped straight to my feet and charged the entire Thoran army single-handed.
Screaming at the top of my lungs and waving my staff about my head, I plunged right through their line and kept on going. Somewhere deep in my unconscious a small voice had reasoned that no one would shoot me if their own men were in the way, and that same voice had convinced me, for the most fleeting of instants, that these rebels were likely a small "army;" there would only be enough of them for a thin battle line, not a massed attack. That little voice was right. When I burst past the startled Thoran troops, there was no one between me and the jungle. I wasted no time in putting the jungle between me and the Thorans.
As soon as I felt I could, I slowed to a stop. There was no pursuit, of course. Who would be so insane? I congratulated myself for escaping my merely human enemies and placing myself in the hands of animals less known for their merciful qualities than for their large appetites and poisonous fangs, the antidotes for which I had just neatly rendered unavailable to me.
My breathing once more under control, I undertook to examine myself. In the heat of battle and flight, I could have suffered wounds all unknowing, but serious nonetheless. Happily, I had escaped, the most annoying injury being a persistent throbbing on my right thigh. It felt as though I had rolled over a rock—in fact it felt as if the rock were still there. I felt a cold thrill of fear. There was something in my pocket.
The jungle fauna briefing had not been encyclopedic in its scope, but it hadn't mentioned any small round animals with hard shells. Did that mean none existed? Slowly, carefully, I forced the unseen object from my pocket from the outside, protecting my bare hands.
The miniature library fell out of my pocket and plopped to the ground.
It greeted me in a voice I recognized. "I will be of about as much use to you down here as I was in your pocket, young man."
"I had forgotten you were there," I breathed, picking it up.
"I will accept that as an apology, under the circumstances." It was still the old librarian's voice, but the tone was different, less deferential. There was also an undertone of humor. I liked it better.
A distant roar followed immediately by an agonized, short scream recalled me to my situation.
"What do you know about my current circumstances?"
"Not a great deal," the small metal sphere admitted. I marveled at the clarity of its voice. "However, I can extrapolate from the ambient temperature and humidity, and what sounds like a lion's roar, that you are either in a zoological habitat dome, or you have traveled very far off the course I prescribed for you back in the Library."
"I'm afraid it is the latter. Can you help me find a way out of here without getting any closer to that roaring?" I was trying to watch every direction at once, and the effort was making me dizzy.
"Not likely. My video capabilities are limited by my size. I can't see much better than you can—although at night I'll still be able to see even when you can't."
"That doesn't leave me with a whole lot of choice, then." My rampage through the trees had left some signs; not much, but enough given the virgin nature of the territory. Gripping my staff with one hand, and apologizing to the library unit as I slipped it back into my pocket, I set off the way I had come. By picking my path carefully, I might be able to reach the battlefield again. Then, if I could just avoid both sides, something might present itself.
And something did. I simply wasn't prepared for it.
I had gone far enough to be completely lost when I froze at a noise from ahead of me. It did not recur, and I took a step, only to freeze again at a noise above me. I looked up as a dark blur plunged toward me from a tree branch. I jumped back but the blur leaped out of the brambles and seized me. I had no time to level my staff before I was helpless.
I stared directly into the eyes of a full-grown bull gorilla whose hand encircled my throat. There wasn't even room to swallow one last time. With its free hand it ripped open my pocket and removed the library.
"That's a very nice toy you have there," said the ape. "I think I'd like to own one."
16. Tiger Spiders!
My grandmother used to say, "Sometimes you want to kick God in the ankle, just so he'll know you're there." And that's what I did.
The gorilla's grip on me had loosened as he examined the library. He hadn't let go, and he still could have killed me in an instant, but at least I could breathe. As soon as blood began to flow back into my brain, I knew I had had enough. From the moment I had stepped through the silver door, I had been chased, shot at, kidnapped, and used—and now to be robbed of my one useful possession by a talking gorilla? I had had enough!
I reversed the staff and jammed it as hard as I could into his foot. He might not have been God, but he sure knew I was there.
Roaring with pain, he tossed me through the air. If I had hit a tree in my flight, all my worries would have ended right then. They almost did anyway.
I hit the ground and skidded to a stop in the damp loam, shook my vision clear and saw the gorilla bearing down on me, eyes red and hands clenching with rage. I scrambled to my feet, leveled the staff, and stood my ground. He might have been mad, but he had nothing on me.
The ape stopped short. We stared at each other. The moment stretched on without end.
"I think you broke my damned foot."
I cleared my throat painfully. "You should complain." I nodded at the library. "I'd like that back."
The baring of his fangs may have been meant as a smile, but it was ferocious in any event. I stayed my ground by sheer will.
"You willing to take it from me?"
"If I have to." Lord, I prayed, don't make me have to.
He laughed. I had never heard a gorilla laugh before, had never even considered such a thing, but if I had I wouldn't have expected this. Out of that gargantuan chest, from which growled the lowest voice I had ever heard, leaked a feminine squeaking, a pin-pricked balloon of a laugh, that abruptly exploded and sprayed me with gorilla spit. He laughed until he could not stand up, and had to support himself on his knuckles like his ancestors. As soon as he realized what he was doing, he straightened up in a hurry, but he couldn't keep the giggles from escaping.
"You are the biggest damned fool I have ever met!" he boomed
, and tossed me the sphere. Like an idiot, I caught it, leaving myself off-guard and completely defenseless. If he hadn't been so busy snorting between mumbled editorials about my sense—or lack thereof—he might have crushed me.
I placed the library in another pocket and waited with what remained of my muddy dignity for him to stop. The formality of my upbringing rescued me.
"Keryl Clee," I offered, extending one hand. He stared at me for a moment, then held out his own. That's when I took hold of my staff and swung straight at his head. “Duck!”
He ducked as I screamed and my stick caromed off the tree trunk, almost vibrating out of my numbed hands. I managed to stagger partway around the tree and away from his inevitable counter-attack, barely in time. I heard him rush me and cleared my throat frantically.
"Look at the tree!" I croaked. He frowned, backing away, quickly glanced at the wood where my blow had landed, and saw a large yellow-and-black smear, pulpy with red, where none had been before.
"Tiger spider!" he gasped.
It was a tribute to the dead creature that he had recognized it even in its altered form. Tiger spiders frightened even the lions—or, as in this case, the great apes. Here in the wild, they were primarily tree-dwellers, and they didn't spin webs like the garden varieties I had known in my own time, they hunted. Tiger spiders routinely attacked creatures several times their own size, including human beings. The power of their venom was unquantifiable because no researcher could capture a specimen; few even wanted to try. But the most horrifying thing about them was that they traveled in packs.
The gorilla jumped back away from the shelter of his tree, shivering as he realized that the thing must have been in the branches below him while he was watching me. If he hadn't fallen on me from that height, he probably would have stepped on it.
Our minds were traversing the same path now; he looked at me with a new expression in his eyes.
"You aimed high on purpose. You saw that thing ready to bite me."
"I would've warned you, but there wasn't time," I replied tersely. "We'd better move. If it was ready to attack something your size…"
"It wasn't alone. I know. Follow me."
He took off through the underbrush, whether because he knew a path away from the tiger spiders or simply because it was more dangerous to stay put, I don't know. I didn't stop to ask.
Needless to say, I had never observed a gorilla in the wild, nor had I had much chance to visit them in zoos, but from what I had heard, this one moved more nimbly on the ground than his ancestors. There was none of the knuckle-walking I had been lectured about, although his gait was less limber than mine, and there was no question I could outrun him in a sprint. We never got that far; even our fair trot was only attainable due to his familiarity with the terrain and the faint paths that I was only beginning to discern. Trying to keep up this pace on my own in the jungle would have had me down with a turned ankle inside of a mile.
We couldn't make it that far; within two hundred yards he was slowing, his breath coming in heaving gasps from his bellows-like chest.
"When you're my size," he wheezed, "you don't have to run very often."
I looked back the way we had come, nervous at even this short rest. With their black and yellow banding, tiger spiders blended well with the sun-dappled branches, and the few, short studies ever done on them had carelessly failed to measure either their speed or their tracking ability. They could be preparing to drop down on us as we spoke.
"Just another moment," my companion begged when I said as much to him. "I'm really not used to this kind of exercise."
"Well, perhaps they are." I was literally hopping from one foot to the other in my anxiety. I imagined a horde of huge spiders dropping from the trees onto our heads, covering us with webbing like living mummies—never mind that these spiders didn't spin webs. As though reading my thoughts, the great ape straightened with a groan and we were off again, if less agilely than before.
"Is there a clearing anywhere nearby?" The pace we were making now hardly impeded my ability to talk, however taxing it might be to my guide. He raised one arm in what I hoped was a sign and trotted on.
Then the birds stopped singing.
Through redoubled efforts we reached the clearing ahead of the spiders. It was smaller than I had hoped, too small to dissuade the tree-dwellers from pursuing us through the tall yellow grass, which I realized belatedly would only allow them to blend in better. On the far side of the clearing one liana-strung tree stood alone, and it was toward that I pushed my comrade-in-peril.
We stood on its exposed roots, the grass on all sides of us unable to grow within a few feet of the tree itself. Even now the impatient spiders were dropping out of the shade we had just quitted—in their eagerness they could not be bothered to climb down their trees. Their bloated bodies made a soft thud as they hit the ground. The grass began to weave evilly.
Glancing upward, a slim hope was born. "Up the tree!" I didn't wait to see if my friend complied; there was no time for noble sentiment and he climbed faster than I anyway. Startled questions died on his lips and he took the only course open to him. Not until we were quite a ways up (and not without his help), did he address them with me.
"What are we supposed to do now? Those things live in the trees!"
"So did you, once—or at least your ancestors," I replied, casting about for what I needed. Had I the time, I would have laughed out loud at the irony of my idea, an irony, had he but known it, more suitable to my companion. If we lived, someday I would have to explain it.
"What are you talking about?"
I thrust aside the consideration of how long it must have been since the apes had come down from the trees that they would not even remember their own heritage. I had less doubt that he could accomplish what I intended than that I could; my only consolation was that if I failed, the tiger spiders would cease to be a worry.
"Take a vine," I instructed hastily. "One that's secured to a branch. We're going to swing on them into those trees over there."
"We're—" words failed him. "If—" he sputtered again. "Are you insane?"
All the time I was arguing I was trying on vines for a secure hold and length. This was not as easy as I had read. I resolved to have a talk with the author when I got back to my own time.
"I've read about this. You can swing on the vines into those trees. The spiders will have to climb back down and run after us, but we should be able to get away."
"Are you crazy? You'll break your neck! I'd rather stay here with the spiders!"
"Then have it your own way!" I pointed behind us. The first of the monsters had reached our branch, and I didn't have to look down to know that the trunk beneath us must be swarming with venomous eight-legged demons. The gorilla screamed and tried to bounce up and down on the branch to dislodge the spider. I myself nearly fell to a merciful death, but it only stood and watched with unconcerned evil certainty. Suddenly my companion whipped about, seized the first vine to come to hand, and launched himself into space. If tiger spiders have breath, I swear that I felt this one's frustrated exhalation as I recklessly followed suit.
We both survived our amateur jungle lord experience, and not surprisingly (to me, at least) I was less eager to try it again than my new anthropoid friend. In the face of its unarguable advantage in speed over walking, I did consent to two more airborne voyages, though they were successful more by chance than design. At last determining that our luck was merely finite, we once more descended to terra firma.
My friend was a new man... er, gorilla.
"That was incredible!" he repeated over and over again with frequent longing looks skyward. "What was it you said about my ancestors?"
"It's a long story," I said cautiously, "but from what I have read, once long ago, gorillas and apes were tree-dwellers, or at least some of them were." To be honest, I was about at the end of my zoölogical rope. And despite what we had been through together, almost everyone I had met in this world had treat
ed me as an enemy or a prize. I did not want to show off knowledge that might brand me as an outsider.
"No kidding," he breathed, never taking his eyes off the high branches. "That must have been something."
Somehow, I had held onto my staff throughout our ordeal. I shouldered it and nudged my new friend. Reluctantly he left off his daydreams and struck a path.
"The name's Timash," he said as we fell into our pace. "Alin Timash."
"Keryl Clee," I said again. The last time I had offered my hand I had followed it with a swing at his head. As the gesture seemed unfamiliar to him anyway, I restrained myself this time.
He acknowledged my introduction with a distracted grunt, not seeming inclined to take the conversation any further. The silence stretched on painfully; unlike the companionable quiet of a long hike, there felt here as if there were an obstacle between us, something unsaid but floating in the air. It was the silence of tension. Something was wrong.
"Thanks," I said.
It took him a moment to answer. "For what?"
"For not leaving me behind. You were better at swinging through the trees than I was; you could have left me behind and gone on your way."
That stopped him, and he turned to me. He had been walking slightly ahead, but now he waited until I had come abreast. He stood, hands on hips, and leaned in to me.
"Are you ever going to make sense?"
I opened my mouth but he cut me off.
"Every time you want to talk about something, you just jump right into the middle of it. Now that's fine when we've got tiger spiders on our butts, but now we've got nothing to do but walk and you don't have time to start a conversation at the beginning. What's your hurry, anyway?"
If you have never been berated by a gorilla with a chip on his shoulder, take it from me, you are blessed.
"Are you listening to me? Hello? Is anyone home?" He shook his head. "You are the strangest Nuum I have ever met."
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