She shouted into Khomich’s ear. He frowned—and then he crouched down and stuck his head and shoulders into the bottle. Its floor was littered with the dead husks of flies, its side still coated with a dry white skin. He stood up and nodded vigorously.
“You can’t be serious,’’ Magruder howled into Bruce’s ear. “It’ll sink and we’ll sink with it. I’m not going in that thing.”
Bruce wagged his finger at him. They got behind the bottle and began to roll it out of the weeds. It moved easily once they had it started. Magruder refused to help. They rolled it farther along the path until they found a small inlet where the water eddied gently out of the main stream. They turned it and then let it slide down as far as an exposed root. When he saw that they were going through with it, Magruder turned away quickly, intending to run for the first hiding place he could find.
Khomich got to him as he reached the concrete post, bringing him down with a diving tackle, grabbing the pistol out of his belt before he could reach for it. He made Magruder walk back to the bottle. The young American went down on his knees, imploring them not to make him climb down into the bottle. Khomich put the pistol against his head and held up one finger, mouthing the word One.
Magruder hid his face in his hands. Khomich tapped him on the head. He held up two fingers. He let Magruder see his trigger-finger moving back.
Magruder got to his feet. They stood around the neck of the bottle. He held on to the rim and lifted himself in, feet-first. Then he slid down out of sight. Anne took off her pack and let it slide down to join him. Then she climbed in. Khomich gestured to Bruce to go next.
Once Bruce was in the bottle, Khomich threw fn his own pack and then grabbed the rim with both hands. Slowly, he managed to turn the huge glass cylinder until the base was free of the root. As soon as it began to
slide, he vaulted in and slithered down the wall of glass on his back. The bottle slipped gently into the water. They were thrown together in a heap. When they picked themselves up they were staring at a swirling murkiness—as if they had a window into the heart of a dust-storm whirlwind. Everything had gone quiet.
“It’s floating!” Anne’s face was triumphant. “I knew it would! Didn’t you ever float half-empty bottles off a beach and throw stones at them? We did—I remembered and— ”
“How the hell do we get out?” Magruder moaned.
They were thrown together again as the bottle was suddenly caught in the vicious current. The bottle began to bob up and down. “Jesus Christ—I’m getting seasick!” Magruder whined.
Caught in the mainstream of boiling brown water, they could see nothing except a small circle of gray sky. They had no way of knowing that the stream was whipping the bottle into the middle current racing through the garden toward the pond . . .
It was in the bottle that Khomich made his decision. The death of Hugh Robinson was responsible, creating in him a sense of guilt and desolation. He wanted to tell the others—especially Bruce—but shame kept his mouth shut.
Something red flashed past the bottle. It seemed to have slowed down. The water became clearer. Again, there was a flash of red—and silver.
“It’s not moving so fast,” Bruce said. “We must be in a backwater.”
“Look!” Magruder shuddered, pointing at the glass
wall.
“That’s a koi carp,” Anne said frowning. “But they’re in the pond.”
“Climb up and see where we are, Anne—you’re the lightest.”
Khomich stood in the middle of the bottle, feet apart, knees braced. Bruce climbed on to his shoulders, steady-
ing himself by pushing against the opposite sides of the bottle. Magruder started to climb, standing on Khomich’s knee and then his shoulders. Khomich took big gulps of air. “Will you be all right?’’ Anne asked. He nodded grimly, his face going red, big veins pumping in his neck. She stepped onto his thigh and caught hold of Bruce’s jacket, pulling herself up until they were face to face.
“I suppose if a girl dates you, she has to bring her own scaffolding.”
“For God’s sake, woman, get off my head,” Khomich growled.
“Sorry.” The bottle began to wobble. She scrambled onto Bruce’s shoulders. Magruder’s terrified face looked down at her. “Uh uh—that’s my face you’re dancing on,” Bruce drawled from below.
“Sorry.”
“Honest, Anne, I didn’t intend for us to go through all this, it was simply a— ”
“Shut up, Stanley.”
She got a knee onto his shoulder. Bruce and Khomich had their arms extended tight against opposite sides of the bottle. Cautiously, she got her boots on to Stanley’s shoulders and pushed her head up into the neck of the bottle. “It’s no good—I can’t reach the top.’’ The bottle gave her voice a slight echo. “Just a minute— She spat on her hand and rubbed at the dusty film of dried milk residue. She was above water-level. She put one eye close to the glass. “We re right in the middle of the pond.”
“Which direction are we floating in?”
The bottle wobbled.
“Hurry up, woman,” Khomich grunted.
“I think we’re drifting toward— ” The bottle lurched violently to one side. They collapsed on top of each other. Down on their tangled bodies came a great inrush of water.
With their weight once again at the bottom of the bottle, it quickly righted itself. They got to their feet, wincing with the pain of their bruises. They were standing knee-deep in water.
“We’ll just have to wait until we hit the bank,” said Bruce.
“And how do we get out then—she couldn’t reach the top!” Magruder looked petrified. Bruce patted him on the shoulder.
“I’ll go up next time. I’m taller, I’ll reach it.”
“Oh yeah—of course,” Magruder said seriously. Then he frowned. “But it doesn’t matter which order we’re in—we won’t be any higher up!”
“How silly of me,” Bruce said drily. “Looks like we’ll have to let the bottle sink and then do a submarine escape.”
“With that waiting to gobble us up?” Magruder exclaimed. Another big red fish was swimming lazily past the window of the bottle. Behind it came an even bigger fish colored a brilliant silver. And, behind it, a fish with red and silver markings.
“Only goldfish,” Bruce said.
“Goldfish nothing—Anne told you, they’re koi carp!”
“You used to be such a bundle of fun and merriment,” Anne said.
The bottle bumped against black mud and softly undulating water-grass. It stopped bobbing.
“That’s the bank,” Bruce said, “it doesn’t look too
steep. What do you think, Khomich—we tip it over on its side and take our chances?”
“A little water won’t kill us.”
‘‘Okay. Anne—the moment the bottle starts toppling you shin up the neck and grab for the rim. You’ll have to give Stanley a pull up, the water will be pouring in on him.”
‘‘What will you and—Khomich do?” They had been through so much together, she had wanted to use his first name. He seemed amused by her hesitation. ‘‘It’s Andrei, isn’t it?” she said shyly.
‘‘Yes, but I would think you meant someone else. Now—you must wrap your pistols in clothes and put them in the middle of the pack.”
‘‘What do we do if any big fish come near us?” Magruder demanded. Bruce nodded seriously.
‘‘Splash a lot and hope they’ve been cured of their shark fantasies.”
Again, Khomich formed the base for their living ladder. When Anne was standing on Magruder’s shoulders, Khomich started to move, stamping his way inch-by-inch to the side of the bottle. Then it started to fall.
Anne’s knees slipped on glass. Water began to hit her face. For a moment she thought she was going to be swept back down into the bottle—but her clawing hands touched the rough glass at the rim and she pulled herself through the neck. Turning around, she caught Magruder’s hand. The bottle began to settle i
n the water. Magruder came out with a big bubble of air.
They pulled themselves away from the hole, hands slipping on wet glass. The bottle settled on the sloping bank. Through the glass they saw Bruce kicking water to propel himself up through the neck. He surfaced with a splash.
Khomich came up with the last big bubble of air. He blinked water out of his eyes. ‘‘Help me,” he said calmly just before he sank again, ‘‘I can’t swim.”
I "
They hauled themselves to the bank along broken
reeds. The rainstorm had raised the level of the pond by at least six inches, helping them to avoid the muddy stretch at the normal water-line. As soon as they were up on solid tufts of grass, Bruce turned to Khomich. “You went through all that and you can’t swim? Why didn’t you tell us?”
Khomich dragged off his pack. “Why should I boast about my deficiencies?”
“Oh God, I’m freezing,” Magruder moaned, his teeth chattering.
“Eat something—put on dry socks,” Bruce said, wringing out his jacket. “Come on, son, you’re supposed to be one of the intrepid pioneers of this luscious paradise.”
When they checked the map, they worked out that they’d landed on the east side of the pond.
“Believe it or not, that was a short-cut,” Bruce said, “Section Twenty-Seven is just through those nettles. We’ll catch up with that Australian she-wolf yet.”
Anne ran her hand through her short blonde hair. She sounded cheerful, in a grim sort of way. “I don’t know whether I’ll scratch her eyes out, or— ”
“Personal emotions are a negative use of energy,” Khomich’s voice might have come from an oral-capability computer. He turned away. Anne started to speak, but Bruce shook his head. Even with his back turned they knew that Khomich was weeping. Looking away in embarrassment, they saw a red and black dragonfly patrol- ing its pond territory, four huge wings forming radiant arcs of glinting light. Behind them, Khomich wept silently.
“Sad, isn’t it?” Anne said softly, “so beautiful and it lives for only a day.”
“That’s a myth,” Bruce said, not daring to look over his shoulder at Khomich, “they live all summer. That dragonfly is one of the deadliest predators on earth. It can fly at forty miles an hour and it can see eight times better than human beings—each compound eye has about thirty thousand facets.” They heard Khomich blow-
ing his nose. “What the compound eye does best is detect movement—the slightest variation in all those different pictures—’’
“Have we not seen enough of these creatures?” Khomich growled.
They pulled on their packs and started to look for a clear path through the forest of nettles.
“Looks like we’ll just have to crash straight through.”
“But a few nettle stings could be fatal for us,” Magruder protested.
Bruce led them to the first of the towering stalks. “Even in long grass, you can always tell a nettle because the stem is quadrangular. Those little white hairs cause the stings. When you brush against them, you break off this brittle tip—then the hair springs back and its sharp point sticks in your skin while this bulb at the base injects its acid.”
“As children, we were always told that a nettle wouldn’t sting if you grasped it firmly,” Anne said.
“That’s because you’ve flattened the hairs so that they can’t spring back. However, I don’t think we should be too eager to do any grasping. The rules are a bit different for us.”
Taking a last look at the gray sky, they edged cautiously past the first stem and plunged into a wet and green underworld that might have been at the bottom of the sea. Where the nettles thinned out, they plowed through huge dock leaves and coarse grasses; big black slugs prodded the air with finger-like antennae; silken ropes spun by little flying-spiders softly whipped their faces. On some of the stalks, they saw square nettle- bugs, some green, some brown, some dark chocolate with orange spots. It became harder to find openings between the tall, hairy stems.
“I keep having this terrible feeling I’m going to trip and fall face first against those poison hairs,” Anne said to Bruce.
“I know, a kind of hypnotic feeling, like a dream
where you’re standing on a skyscraper roof and every step takes you to the ... what was that?”
They stopped.
Bruce cocked his head. ‘‘I thought I heard a big bang. Let’s hope it isn’t thunder— ”
This time they all heard it.
‘‘That was a pistol,” Khomich said.
‘‘It wasn’t far away, either. You think Lena and Carr are having a tiff?”
‘‘She wouldn’t use a gun,” Anne said. ‘‘She’d suck his blood with her hollow fangs.”
They saw a rotten branch covered with gray fungus. It rose out of the undergrowth, forming a huge catwalk through the nettle-stalks.
‘‘It looks solid enough,” said Bruce. ‘‘As far as I can judge, it’s going the right way.”
‘‘Climb up it?” Magruder yelped. ‘‘What if we slip off? We’ll go crashing down through all those nettle- leaves! Stung to death in mid-air!”
‘‘Come on, it’s wide enough to take an army.”
‘‘Sorry, I’ve got no head for heights.”
‘‘You will have no head for anything if you don’t stop whining,” Khomich growled.
They climbed onto the thick mat of gray lichen and green hypnum moss and made their way up the dead branch. They walked through what could have been a vast amphitheater, below them, the thick, wet undergrowth; above, the canopy of nettle-leaves. Magruder was suddenly struck by a new possibility.
‘‘Hey! What if—” '
‘‘Keep your voice down.”
Magruder went into a panicky whisper. ‘‘What if this damned branch just ends in mid-air? You thouqht of that?”
“Yes,” Bruce hissed. “If it does, we’ll use a nettle- stem as a fireman’s pole.”
Magruder’s eyes showed a lot of white.
As the branch began to slope toward the ground, they heard Carr, shouting frantically.
THE M4CR0NAUTS
Khomich drew his pistol. Bruce gestured for Anne to get behind him. Khomich gave Magruder a warning look to keep quiet.
They came to where the nettles stopped, looking out over a rubble-strewn plain under a huge gray sky. Between them and the new wall built to seal off Project Arcadia from the rest of the grounds, the soil was light and sandy, littered by bricks and hard cement and a huge sheet of corrugated iron. Where the dead branch turned- into a crown of twigs, they saw Carr. He seemed to be struggling. Lena Davidson was watching him.
“Cut the bloody things,” Carr was yelling. They moved silently down the branch. Carr was caught in some fine, silver strands hanging from a twig. Only his toes were touching the ground. Lena was making no move to help him.
“Don’t just stand there—cut these bloody ropes!”
She sounded nervous. “There’s a spider up there— ”
“I know there’s a spider, you idiot! Cut me free!”
Bruce swung his legs over the edge of the mossy branch, holding his pistol in his lap. “Well well,” he said. “We didn’t expect to meet you hanging about here.”
Lena spun round. Khomich stood up, pistol aiming down at her. “Go on,” he said, “I would like to see what a mercury bullet would do to you.”
She jerked her hands away from her belt.
“Get me down, please,” Carr said.
Bruce dropped to the ground. He took Lena’s pistol from her belt. He walked over to where Carr was dangling from a dozen or so vertical strands beaded with lumps of glue. He pointed up at the mottled spider hovering at the top of her curtain-like trap. “Clever, isn’t she?” he said. “These strands are high-tension, she sticks them to the ground with a drop of gum. When an ant sticks to one, its struggles break the connection and the strand whips it up into the air for a lunch appointment. I don’t think she was expecting such a heavy meal, Carr. Were
you playing blind man’s bluff?”
“A big mosquito panicked him,” Lena sneered. “He thought it was going to suck him dry.”
Carr went on struggling, succeeding only in entangling himself in more of the sticky threads. Khomich dropped to the ground. Carr stopped struggling. “Cut me down, please,” he said quietly.
Khomich spat. “You were going to leave us to die.”
Lena pouted. “All you tough soldiers—armed to the teeth? You weren’t in any danger. Where’s jolly old Hugh, anyway?”
Khomich slapped her. She sat down heavily, a big red welt coming up on her face. Khomich turned toward Carr, raising his pistol. “Captain Robinson is dead,” he said slowly.
Carr blinked rapidly. “I was a bloody fool, sir. Sorry.”
Khomich fired quickly. Carr let out a scream, jerking on the end of his puppet-strings. But Khomich had not fired at him. The mottled spider evaporated in a blast of mercury fragments. Khomich gave Bruce his pistol and took the machete from Magruder. He started cuttinq Carr down.
“Where is Richards?” Bruce asked Lena.
“We couldn’t find the capsule,” Lena said, still sitting on the ground.
“Isn’t Control giving you a fix on the bleep?”
“No, they stopped picking it up just before the rainstorm. They think the battery may have failed.
Khomich cut the last sticky strand. Carr dropped to his knees, rubbing violently at the sticky spider’s silk on his face and clothes. Khomich waited. Carr looked up, apparently resigned to whatever punishment Khomich had in mind.
Khomich nodded, as if agreeing with some unheard voice.
Without warning, he kicked Carr in the ribs. Carr fell back, trying to scramble to his feet. Khomich went after him, slashing out with his right boot. Carr turned and ran. Khomich caught up with him at the edge of the huge sheet of corrugated iron.
“You still have your pistol, Corporal,” he growled, standing back, defying him to reach for the gun.
“I deserved it, sir,” Carr said. Khomich nodded,
holding out his right hand. Carr gave him the pistol, butt-first. Khomich threw it behind him on the sandy soil. Then he punched Carr in the throat.
Carr went down on his knees. Khomich ran at him and sank his boot into his side. Carr caught hold of his leg. They started wrestling across the smooth undulations of the huge metal sheet, their boots crashing down like dustbin lids. At first Carr was reluctant to fight back, but whenever he managed to push Khomich away, he got another fist to the face or a boot to his groin. He realized he was fighting for his life and made a rush at Khomich. They rolled over into one of the smooth troughs, the corrugated sheet clanging like a metal sounding board.
The Micronauts Page 17