Stardogs, page 24
The pyramid was so compelling to the eye that they all failed to notice the patchwork of tiny fields by the lake-side until later.
Only Sam felt the frightened eyes that watched them from the fringe of trees, even if he could not see the watcher. The Dagger of the Goddess, however, heard the movement in the forest as the watcher slipped away.
CHAPTER 18
BETWEEN THE DEEP BLUE LAKE AND THE DEVILS
Homo sapiens should be sued for fraud under the trade descriptions act and for contravening advertising standards in its choice of a name for itself. It is obvious that Earth is our ancestral land, from which we were forcibly removed. We want it back.
From the speech by Raintree Pig-ear’s-daughter to the UP congress of 2517.
Events wait upon each other. When anything happens it is a result of other, often minor incidents, eventually piling up. Thus, when things finally do start to happen they tend to cascade. The heat output of the fire of the previous night was so atypical of the normal geothermal events recorded by the eternally circling traveler-satellite and sent to Ground Control, that Ground Control eventually referred it to Central.
Central snappily demanded a reply to its earlier communication. Seven point two microseconds later it got it. Then it tied this to the tracking record that sector civil defense biocomputer had pestered it with. The analysis was so stunning that Central actually paused for .038 microseconds to re-analyze. Survivors. Or the ancient enemy or… a remote possibility, something else. It could effectively dismiss the last two possibilities. The probability of other aliens using a Stardog approached zero. It opened long-unused priority transmission frequencies to the sector Delat civil defense biocomputer, to Ground-Control, as well as to several other Command Centers. Depression was forgotten, along with the analysis in microscopic detail of Vault-data. Central had something to live for. Or was it something to die for?
Information from sector Delat civil defense biocomputer came in, without Central even reacting to the snippy ‘I-told-you-so-but-you-wouldn’t-listen’ tone from the unit. For the first time in millennia, Central had to plan a reaction which wasn’t pre-programmed.
It did something which no mechanical computing system could have done.
It dithered. Wasted 2.1 microseconds.
Central wasn’t the only being having trouble making up its mind. Shari had focused her effort on getting them all to water and food. She hadn’t really thought about what they’d do when they got there. Jarian was in some ways far ahead of her. He’d been stealing things against this moment. He had a headlight, a pipe-soldering blow-torch, Brettan’s lighter and a kitchen knife. It was pity he couldn’t get a gun, or even his poisons-case. But with what he had he was ready to set himself up as a God-king.
“I suppose we’d better go down to those fields. Try for a peaceful meeting with the locals. If you’re right Sam, they already know we are here.” Shari and the others were distracted, with no one chasing the ex-prince to front. He slipped to the back, and then away into the forest they were skirting. It was more than ten minutes before anyone noted his absence.
It was Una who noticed, and who pointed it out to Juan. He in turn pointed it out to Mark. The bodyguard called the rest of the party to a halt.
“Bugger the little snot.” Sam was irritated. He hadn’t got as much sleep as his body felt it needed the last few nights. If it was up to him Jarian would have been dead after they’d recovered the supposed antidote.
Shari felt much the same way. Still, she felt she had a duty to all of them. “Who saw him last, and where were we?”
“He said he needed to relieve himself, um… I think we’d just passed those tall trees there,” volunteered Johannes, the tail-ender.
They went back in a tight group, Johannes Wienan making absolutely sure that he was no longer tail-end Charlie. Lila, with her youthful experience of tracking strayed sheep on the ramshackle-fenced farm of her childhood, had no trouble following Jarian’s footsteps in the leaf mould. After a few minutes in the dense forest Shari called a halt. “We might as well go back to walking along the forest edge. This is hellish going, and it is obvious he ran off, and wasn’t ambushed or captured. Well, what I say is, if he wants to go, let him.”
Everybody agreed, some of them very forcefully.
Jarian found his journey to triumphal rule, even enlivened with graphic plans for the unpleasant demise of the rest of the castaways, harder than he’d imagined. Getting away had been easy. Walking through the forest was not.
The bio-zoo had obviously not held all the species of the visited worlds. This had been but one of fifty-two of these treasure houses. Its focus had been on carbon-based animal life. The plants were incidentals, cage furnishing. But the Denaari were master-ecologists. The cage furnishings had been remarkably complete. When the major quake and flooding had occurred many of the specimens had been killed. Others had had their numbers reduced to such an extent that they became extinct. The cage furniture however… ask any zoo-keeper. Such plants as are chosen for this role are tough. And natural selection had made the survivors even tougher. The jungle resultant from the escapee plant-survivors of fifty-two worlds was the stuff of nightmares. It was still tame compared to some of the beasts that stalked there. The first Denaari expedition to Earth had brought back the most deadly creature that the explorers had ever found. An animal more dangerous than wolverlope or archo-ligers.
These creatures ruled the forest now, with something far more deadly than any claw or fang: Brains.
Jarian’s previous experience of heavy forest had been the Imperial gardens. Not creepers laden with thorns, and worse, a creeper that slithered off when he put his hand on it. He was sure the others must have heard that shriek. That gave him impetus to push through the immense tangle of springy fireleaf underbrush. He of course didn’t recognize the nettle-equivalent from Sofala II. He didn’t even understand why his hands and face were coming up in burning angry red weals. He just knew it was all going wrong. He was menaced by an arachnodeltid, its upraised fangs dripping toxin, and ran backward straight into a hook-and-stab bush. Scratched, bleeding, burning from the fireleaf, Jarian would happily have rejoined the party he’d planned to abuse, torture and kill… except that he was already lost. Then he stumbled onto a game trail. This was easier to walk along, even if he still didn’t know where he was going. He kept it up for ten minutes, getting deeper into the forest.
The three hunters had come to check their traps. They were unaware of what the gasping lookout was panting out to the village matriarchs three miles away. The ledge-access was usually watched for a few weeks after anyone had fled into the desert. Sometimes those exiled tried to come back. Nothing good came out of the desert.
The hunters heard Jarian blundering along the path. The animal must be either sick or wounded to make so much noise. They waited. Meat tonight!
The animal was like none they’d ever seen before. Pasty with lank yellow fur on its head, and the rest of its integument odd…. scales. It must be fine, fine scales on a loose skin. The creature seemed to be in moult, by the ragged bits. But it shambled upright. It walked like one of the people, even if its face was amazingly, monstrously ugly. They watched as it came closer and closer to the trap. And then… it stopped. Moaned piteously. Produced a water bottle and drank.
Silver-tip Wildscallion’s son was well known as the bravest of his folk. He could see the animal was perhaps going to get away. “I will taunt it,” he said, stepping onto the path, gripping his spear tightly.
Jarian stared, his eyes bulging. It… it couldn’t be! How had these crash survivors slipped that far from civilisation… from the human norm? Then he pulled himself together. Well, they’d be glad to have a handsome, wise ruler like himself. And with the smack of firm governance, he could make something even of fur-clad low-browed chinless wonders like this. Perhaps he would keep that Leaguesman who had wielded the whip so well on Brettan. Jarian took out the pipe-soldering torch and the lighter. “I am your new chief, sent to you by the gods from my home in the sky,” he announced pompously.
Silver-tip had been joined by his two fellow hunters. They didn’t want Silver-tip to be able to claim all the credit in the boasting. They were puzzled by the creature’s noises.
“Do you think it is trying to talk?” whispered Fireleaf to Silver-tip.
They were obviously, thought Jarian, overawed by him. They were probably the descendants of castaways from centuries back. Well, he’d start as he meant to go on. With them respectfully frightened. “I have very strong magic. Watch.”
He lit the blow-torch and the three wide-eyed hunters scrambled back. He advanced, laughing. The thin sticks holding up the cover of broad leaves so carefully covered by scattered leaf mould gave way. Jarian’s triumphal laughter ended abruptly on the sharpened stakes below.
It had never occurred to him that the hunters might not understand a word he said. But then, the Homo neanderthalis brought here by Denaari ships for their Bio-zoo nearly forty thousand years ago didn’t speak his language.
It had taken a long time for the other castaways to skirt the forest, walking along the edge of a hard sill that sub-irrigated the forest with ground water from the mountains. Then they followed the largely dry river bed to the lake-shore, beside which the patchwork fields were scattered. At first they couldn’t see anyone.
Then Juan spotted someone darting from one of the huts. Running for cover. But not running away from the castaways. Advancing on them. Otto barked, his fur standing on end.
“We’ve got to get out of here!” said Sam. He shuddered. “They’ll eat us.” A vision, a stark real vision of being alive but helpless while a cheerful group of Neanderthal women flayed the skin off his Tanzo, washed across him. He knew with absolute certainty that that was what would happen if they failed to run now. “Run!” He said in a fierce undervoice, “Run for those rocks.”
“But…”
“Run!” Shari had spotted flankers to their right.
At this point three triumphant hunters, deep in the boasts they planned for the punyatchet this evening, emerged from the forest, at a point about midway between the village and the castaways. On a pole between two of them hung Jarian’s limp and bloody body, suspended by the hands and feet. His head, hanging at an odd angle, was half severed.
The hunters dropped their catch and ran to join the rest of the people. Their chagrin was great. All that hard work which had gone into preparing boasts was wasted. None of the girls would be interested in them now.
A hail of stones and a few spears were flung at the castaways. The Viscount was struck on the temple by a stone. He staggered. Then he stopped. Took his pistol out, and stood like a marksman. Fired.
There was a scream, and another ragged shower of spears. “Come on, Martin. You can shoot from cover!”
Instead he waited. The next target presented itself and he fired again. There was no scream this time, but he was sure he’d hit. There were still spears and stones being flung, but there were no visible targets now. He legged it after the rest of them, blood streaming down his face. The cluster of rocks at the lake-side seemed too far.
They made it. It was not the ideal shelter, the rocks being rounded and low and offering next to no shade. But there was a flood-scoured rock-sheet plain in front of them, and the lake at their backs.
“They’re no strangers to fighting,” said Martin Brettan as Caro dressed his head.
“There seemed to be fields up-valley too. There are probably several villages. They may fight amoungst themselves.”
“They’re damned good at keeping out of sight,” said Mark, peering over a rock, looking for the source of the stone-tipped spear that had shattered against his shelter. Indeed, their attackers moved like ghosts. They were predators, after all. The most deadly predators, winnowed by a natural selection process harsher than any other.
Brettan felt his ribs gingerly. Nodded. “They’re skilled hunters. Come nightfall and we’ll all be dead meat.”
Shari was still stunned by the sight of young Jarian’s body. She’d despised him, but… “I’m out of ideas. What do you all think we should do next?”
Tanzo shrugged. “All I can suggest is talking to them. We can shout from here, without getting speared.”
“All right,” said Shari tiredly. “Try it Tanzo. Tell the monkey-men we mean them no harm. Tell them we’re also castaways, just as they are. They must surely at least have stories about it.”
Tanzo tried. Unfortunately oral history, while longer-lasting than written history, had not survived 40 000 years. And these weren’t castaways, they were captives. Their oral tradition was about the destruction of Eden, and having to flee from its snake, into the wilderness. Anyway, they thought animals crazy enough to run into a herd of snoozing petrovores were probably just baying in their insanity. Neanderthal speech, which was long on sibilants, gutturals and clicks sounded nothing like that. They continued to fling rocks. Sooner or later that would wake the petrovores. The only one who was dissatisfied with this stratagem was Fireleaf. He decided to count coup in a quicker manner. Perhaps he could use some of the boasts he had planned after all.
“Could we swim across? Get away to the other side, perhaps?” asked Juan tentitavely.
At this point the lake was not very wide. Perhaps 300 yards of blue separated them from the other bank. “It’s an idea,” said Shari. “If we slipped into the water in the dusk, and swam across…”
“I can’t swim,” Lila said regretfully. Water, in that quantity, had never been a feature of her life as a debt-slave or farm-girl from the semi-desert of New Texas.
“Me neither.” Sam looked out between the rocks at the azure water.
Tanzo signed to Una. The girl shook her head. “She can’t swim, and I couldn’t swim that far,” Tanzo added.
“Besides, if they spot us, we’ll be sitting ducks in the water.”
Shari made a wry face. “I suppose the good swimmers could take the non-swimmers across.”
Sam had continued staring at the water. “Look. What’s that?”
Whatever it was, they were not going to be swimming. All they could see of it was a head with cold reptilian soup-plate sized eyes staring back at them. The head was the size of a dinner-table and the long snout held far too many teeth. Sharp teeth.
For a moment they stared at it. Then, without a ripple, the head disappeared back into the water. They could dimly make out a huge dark shape sliding away into the depths.
There was a collective exhalation. “Next idea, anyone?”
Fireleaf had chosen to sneak closer along the waterline as soon as he saw the Mega-ichthyodile. It was sure to distract the attention of the strange animals. What a coup! How he would brag. He wouldn’t be surprised if one of the matriarchs themselves took him. He stepped around the petrovore’s bulk, as Shari said ‘anyone’, his spear ready.
The Dagger of the Goddess had seen the demon in the water. He was wondering at its meaning, when it was abruptly made clear to him. It was a vision. A warning of the evil that stalked within the man he had to kill and become. Amadeo Cerros was no innocent servant. He was a spy and a murderer. A foulness who killed for money and pleasure. The Dagger had been thorough in his research of the man.
When Fireleaf stepped around the rock the Dagger of the Goddess did not see a young Neanderthal with too much testosterone for his own good. He saw a man to whom the Dewa would refuse rebirth. Amadeo Cerros. A man he must kill and become. Fireleaf’s chance of boasting his way to in between a matriarch’s thighs died, before he could push the spear forward.
Deo began the cleansing, ignoring the dead. Only Shari heard him say, “Tenfold be your damnation in the pit, Amadeo Cerros.”
Amadeo Cerros. Shari swallowed. She knew that the next person he had gone to kill had been herself. Her neck felt vulnerable and exposed.
Tanzo stared at the body. Wished desperately she’d paid more interest to anthropology. But it had always seemed so tame compared to the alien Denaari. There was something about the heavy, short-bodied hairy man that she ought to understand.
The close proximity to the killing had horrified Una. She clung to Juan and sobbed. The boy was fairly horrified himself. What was that man in grey? Some kind of robotic-killing machine? He moved his back up against one of the round boulders. It throbbed. A Juan-Denaari memory plucked insistently at him. Rounded rocks. Rounded rocks that throbbed… They weren’t rocks! “We’ve got get away from here. These rocks… they’re petrovores! They’re alive! They’re going to wake up and start feeding. We’ve got to run!”
“What!?” This was one crisis too many for Shari on top of what Deo had just said.
The young stationer grabbed her hand and pressed it against the rock. She felt it throb. “It is alive! They’ll liquify the ground here and start to feed any minute now!”
Sam obviously felt something too. “Yeah. This place is turning bad. We gotta chance it, Princess-Capo. Soon.”
One of the Petrovores groaned, and then began to hum and vibrate visibly. Shari looked for a way out. Their foes were mainly hidden in the dead reeds of the flood margin. These were thickest back towards the waterfall. There was only one route that would not force them to run through this. That was up valley, towards the towering golden structure. “The pyramid. It is our only chance.”
The broken corner of the Bio-Zoo was at least a mile off. But the ground was flat and open, with little cover for Neanderthal ambushes. Several more of the rounded rocks moved, and groaned. The humming became almost overpowering. The ground began to shiver.
