Deyv was indifferent to the babies’ fate, since his own tribe had the same custom. But he was horrified by what happened to the old people. ‘Those slaves are beasts! They deserve to be slaves!’
The Yawtl had smiled but had not replied.
Now, watching the khratikl, Deyv did not feel as repulsed or as indignant. It seemed to him that perhaps Feersh had done the right thing. After all, if the slaves grew too numerous, they’d starve. And they could not just drive the old ones into the jungle to fend for themselves. It really was better, more humane, that they be spared that horror.
Perhaps he had misjudged the witch. Could anyone who had prepared a forest like this, such a delightful place, be wicked? It did not seem likely. And if she was not a witch but was a good-magic person, then perhaps her motive in stealing the soul eggs was good. She may have intended, and probably did, some benefit for those who had been robbed. However, since they would not have voluntarily come to her with their eggs because of her bad reputation – no doubt the result of lies by her enemies – she had sent the Yawtl to steal the eggs. Thus, the robbed would have to track him down and follow him to Feersh. And she would then explain just why she had done this thing that had seemed so terrible to them only because of their ignorance of her true motive.
Had not the Yawtl said that he took care that those pursuing him did not lose the trail? If he had not left much physical evidence of his passage for Deyv’s party, it was because he knew Sloosh was of it. Contrary to what the plant-man had stated, Hoozisst was well aware of Sloosh’s ability to see psychic tracks. Deyv could not actually define what connection this had with his growing belief that Feersh meant them no harm. But he was sure that it strengthened his reasoning about her.
He did not understand why Feersh had placed the dangerous shishvenomi in ambush. That certainly was not friendly. But then she could have excellent reasons for it. Perhaps she had to have some test to weed out unfit candidates for whatever benefits she would bestow. Deyv’s party had proved itself worthy.
Since they’d come this far, and since the goal was in sight, why not just come out of hiding and show themselves?
So thought, so done. Almost, anyway. He had to talk to his colleagues and find out whether they agreed or disagreed. If they should disagree, though it did not seem likely, since Deyv’s logic was irresistible, then he would act on his own. But he owed it to them to discuss this with them first.
He was pleasantly surprised when the Yawtl said that he had been thinking along the same lines. Hoozisst was up and about, his broken arm almost entirely knit, his bruises and contusions gone.
‘Let’s see what the plant-man thinks.’
‘Where’s Vana?’ Deyv asked. ‘We should talk to her at the same time and so save time.’
‘She went hunting with Aejip.’
Deyv felt a little angry.
‘Why should she want to do that? We don’t need meat any more. The purple fruit is more than enough to eat. It’s all we need.’
Hoozisst nodded. ‘That’s what I was thinking. Why go out into that swamp with all its stinging insects and poisonous snakes and only Khrukhrukhru knows what else? She was inclined to agree, but the cat was hungry and wanted Vana to go with her. She’s very fond of Vana, isn’t she?’
The Yawtl had needled Deyv before about this. Deyv, however, no longer felt pangs of jealousy.
‘There’s no reasoning with a cat. She’d pester Vana until she got her way, and Vana knows that. Well, we can talk to her when she gets back. There’s no hurry.’
Sloosh was stuffing the purplish fruit into his chest-mouth when they came up to him. His eyes were closed, his brain seemingly orbiting, or perhaps entangled with, some philosophical problem.
Deyv was mistaken. Sloosh had been considering the same subject as the others. His logic was similar, too.
‘As soon as Vana gets back, we’ll tell her what we’re going to do. I’m sure she’ll agree with us. If she doesn’t, then we’ll leave her here. After a while, she’ll follow us. What else can she do?’
They strapped the folded-up vessel onto the plant-man’s back and then ate some more of the fruit. It did not sate or cloy but seemed to grow more delicious with each bite. The time passed pleasantly as they talked idly of many things. They noted that The Dark Beast would soon be covering this part of the sky. They had planned to cross the sand traps when the semi-darkness would make their passage much less visible from the tharakorm. Now they would not wait.
Presently, they heard Vana calling loudly, and they walked slowly to the edge of the forest facing the swamp. Here she came, splashing through the dark stinking waters, blood upon her arm and the tip of her spear. Behind her swam a dozen or so sleek greenish creatures about two feet long. They had weasel-like heads with long thick whiskers and large blue eyes.
‘Anything wrong?’ Deyv called out.
‘“Anything wrong?”’ she screamed. ‘This is no time for your twisted sense of humour!’
She left the swamp and ran up the gently sloping bank and into the trees. There she sat down, panting. The beasts followed her a minute later, clucking, their sharp teeth exposed in wicked grins. But they stopped when they came within a few feet of the edge of the forest. Some sat up on their hind legs and waved broad paws with webbed toes.
Having regained her breath. Vana stood up. The blood on her arm was flowing heavily. Deyv suggested that she stanch the wound with mud.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ she cried. ‘You’re all acting as if you didn’t care that I could’ve been killed and that Aejip is treed by those beasts. I killed six with my darts and two with my spear. They could have caught me when I was in the water, but they were so busy eating their own dead that they let me get ahead of them. As it was – !’
‘Well, you’re safe now,’ Deyv said. ‘But I suppose we’ll have to rescue Aejip.’
‘“Suppose!”’ she cried. ‘What’s the matter with you, Deyv? What’s wrong with all of you?’
‘Nothing at all,’ he said. ‘We feel really fine.’
He proceeded to tell her what he and the others planned to do.
Vana heard them out with increasing incredulity. She did not, however, say anything until after she had smeared mud on her wound.
‘Do you know, I’d been feeling something the same. Not nearly so strongly though. Still, I was wondering this morning if perhaps we weren’t mistaken about Feersh. But when I went with Aejip I got too busy to think about anything but hunting.’
She paused to look at them.
‘You’re all eating that fruit. Standing there munching away and looking blissful. You aren’t bothered by what happened and yet you should all be excited, ready to drive those beasts away and save Aejip. For all you know, she could be dead by now. Those beasts can climb trees, you know.’
Deyv began to feel just a little uneasy.
‘What’re you thinking?’
Narrow-eyed, Vana stared closely into his eyes. Then she looked into Hoozisst’s and Sloosh’s.
‘Yes, they seem a little glazed. I’d be in the same drugged condition if I hadn’t gone hunting and got rid of some of its effects. That must be it.’
‘What do you mean?’ Deyv asked.
‘It’s that fruit! It’s making us think this stupid way! I bet Feersh planted these trees here. She did it so that if people hid here to spy on her, they’d eat the purple stuff and it would affect their minds.’
The three males looked at each other. Deyv and Hoozisst burst out laughing. The plant-man buzzed his equivalent of loud scornful mirth.
Her face flushed and angry, Vana said, ‘You dolts! You can’t see I’m telling the truth because you’re drugged!’
Sloosh buzzed his equivalent of ‘Tut, tut!’ Then he said, ‘Even if we were, why should we decide that Feersh is not dangerous? You’re surely not saying that the fruits contain mental suggestions somehow implanted by the witch? That’d be a scientific impossibility.’
‘No, but the frui
t might affect you so that you’d want to take the easy way out, no matter how foolish it might be. Look at you now! You’re not the least bit worried about my wound or the cat!’
Sloosh spoke even more slowly than usual. ‘I think you’re quite mistaken. However, there is only one way to determine whether you are. I’m loath to take that course, since it means giving up the eating of this superb fruit. It also entails considerable output of energy, which, frankly, I don’t feel up to just now. But if it’s to be done, we should do it now.’
Deyv and Hoozisst didn’t want to venture out into the swamp. The plant-man said that he sympathized with their feelings, but logic demanded that they test Vana’s theory. They armed themselves and went out to meet the greenish beasts. Sloosh carried a big dead branch, the first time Deyv had seen him bear a weapon. The Yawtl and Vana shot darts with their blowguns; Deyv slashed with his sword. Within a few minutes, the predators were dead or fleeing.
They sloshed through the water and the mud, Vana leading. When they arrived at the tree up which Aejip had fled, they found some dead or dying beasts at its foot. Aejip was also there, eating one. She was bleeding slightly where claws had raked her, but evidently she had not been bitten.
When they returned to the forest, Vana said, ‘If I catch anybody eating that fruit, I’ll knock his skull in.’
–That would be a rather excessive measure,’ Sloosh said. ’Or are you exaggerating again?’ ’You should know by now.’
Sloosh buzzed the equivalent of a sigh. ‘Ah, the hyperbole of humans. Why can’t you be exact in your speech?’
18
Two sleep-times passed. The Dark Beast dragged a heavy twilight behind it. The only light from the sky was a narrowing band around the horizon. The Yawtl’s and Vana’s wounds were entirely healed. In the meantime, they all stayed away from the purplish fruit, and their minds became clear.
‘We owe the woman an apology,’ Sloosh said, ‘even though it was an accident that she didn’t succumb, too.’
Reluctantly, Deyv and Hoozisst thanked her.
‘You two don’t have any more gratitude than you have brains,’ she said. ‘As for you, plant-man, you might compliment me just once without making some reservation.’
None of them replied; they wanted to forget all about the fruit and their foolishness.
‘It’s time to set out,’ the Archkerri said.
They strapped the cube to his back and checked their supply of poisoned darts. Then with Sloosh leading as before, they went single file across the sandy plain. Though they knew what to expect, they felt terror when the tips of the tentacles writhed within a few inches of their ankles or the sting-poles exploded from the sand. On leaving the trap area, they sighed with relief, though greater danger might be ahead.
Presently they came to the three ship-creatures, which Hoozisst had told them were not tied but glued together. Also, what they had at first thought was a single cable attached to the central underside was actually three thick vines wound about one another. The Yawtl cautioned them again that the vines would send an alarm up to the tharakorm if they were touched.
‘During sleep-time, each vine is sensitized. But only to animal life. If a leaf or an uprooted plant should blow against the cable, it won’t register the contact. It would be nice if Feersh’s crew had forgotten to draw up the rope-ladder, but they haven’t. However, we’re very lucky in having Sloosh. He’s a plant, so he won’t trigger off the alarm.’
‘Don’t be so sure,’ Sloosh buzzed softly. ‘I’m half-protein.’
Hoozisst grimaced and said, ‘We’ll know in a minute.’
Sloosh walked up to the triple cable. Without touching it, he looked up into the darkness. The tharakorm was a vague whitish bulk. Hoozisst had assured him that the hole from which the cable hung was large enough to admit even his giant body. He had wanted to check this for himself, but he could not see in the dim light and at this distance.
He put his hand out without hesitating and grabbed the cable. Deyv expected to hear the alarm. He did not know what it would be, a loud scream or a roar. The silence continued. His relief was short. Sloosh commented that possibly the alarm was audible only to those sleeping above. If they were all sleeping, that is. It was true they did not seem to have been observed from the tharakorm when the party crossed the open area. But then a sentinel might have missed them or perhaps have been absent from his post when they passed.
The Archkerri took hold of the thick cable with both huge hands. Deyv climbed onto his back and with his rope tied his waist to Sloosh’s upper torso. Sloosh began pulling himself upward, his upper trunk extending straight out from the lower, his legs wrapped around the vines. Up they went, slowly but unceasingly. Deyv hung onto the rope, making sure that no part of him touched the vines.
Halfway up, the Archkerri stopped to get his wind back. Deyv looked down. The ground was a long way off, though he could see it only dimly. The group below was not even visible. That assured him that a sentinel would not have been able to see them on the plain. Now, however, if the sentinel looked down the hole, he might be able to spot Sloosh and Deyv. On the other hand, why should he?
The cable did not rise straight from the surface but was at a slight angle because the wind was pushing the tharakorm. Now and then the wind lessened in strength, and then the cable swayed back and forth. Deyv had been in situations where he had felt more secure.
‘I wonder,’ the Archkerri buzzed softly, ‘if it’s possible, as the great Sindsindbat maintains, that the oscillation of matter in this universe is caused by psychical means rather than physical ones? Or perhaps I should say psychophysical.’
‘By Skreekmishgakl!’ Deyv said. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Sindsindbat says that the matter expelled by the primal fireball explosion doesn’t keep expanding outward to infinity but instead eventually falls back towards the centre of the matter because of the angry, hence negative, charges radiated by the zillions of sapients on the quadrillions or perhaps quintillions of inhabited planets. These charges cause the stars and indeed all matter to stop when the influence of all this anger and hatred achieves a certain intensity. The negative energy slows the matter down, then causes a reversal in direction. A fall, as it were.’
‘It sounds interesting, though I don’t have the faintest idea what it means,’ Deyv said. His voice was low but angry. ’Do you think this is the place to tell me about Sindsindbat’s theory, whoever he is?’
‘My grandfather on my mother’s side but my great-grand-mother on my father’s side,’ Sloosh said. ‘Undoubtedly one of the greatest, if perhaps somewhat unstable, minds of the Archkerri. It’s his –’
‘Shut up!’ Deyv said. ‘Your own mind can’t be too stable if you start propounding some irrelevant nonsense about stars falling because people are mad about something. Here we are –’
‘“Irrelevant nonsense” is a redundancy,’ Sloosh said. ‘All nonsense is irrelevant.’
‘That shows what little you know about humans,’ Deyv said. ‘Anyway, be quiet! Sound carries upward. What if somebody is awake up there?’
‘True. But my comment was caused by my recently hearing you and Vana quarrelling about whether or not women should be taboo, that is, ritually unclean, for a certain period after childbirth or menstruation. She claimed –’
‘Shut up! Shut up! Do you want to get us killed?’
‘Well, your argument led me to think about anger, and –’
Deyv managed to stretch himself far enough to place his hand over the plant-man’s beak.
‘Now, be quiet! Or I swear I’ll lop off your buzzer with my sword!’
Sloosh said nothing after that. He resumed climbing; and after what seemed a long time, and may have been, they rose through the shaft in the centre of the middle tharakorm. The cable was wound around a huge windlass suspended about ten feet above the top of the shaft. On the edge to their right was a smaller windlass, used to let down or draw up the rope-ladder.
Deyv looked around quickly. No one was in sight, though, because of the dimness of light, that did not mean that no one was on the decks of the two tharakorm attached to the central one.
However, that no one was around was good. But they were still in trouble. Sloosh could not go any higher than the point at which the cable came off the monstrously large drum of the windlass. There was nothing for him to hold onto. The cable was wound too tightly around the drum.
It might have been possible for Deyv to crawl up Sloosh’s body and, standing on his shoulders, dig his fingers into the cable and draw himself on up. This was out. One touch from him, and the alarm would go off.
The rope-ladder had not been drawn all the way around its windlass. About ten feet hung down below the edge. Deyv explained what he must do. The Archkerri did not reply, but he must have been thinking of what would happen to Deyv if he failed. He may also have wished to tell Deyv not to cry out if he did fall. Or perhaps he was calculating how long it would take Deyv before he struck the ground. Who knew what went on in the mind behind the cabbage leaves?
Deyv wondered, fleetingly, what Vana would think if his body came through the darkness and splashed in front of her. That was a strange thought, he thought even more fleetingly. What did she care?
Or perhaps he might fall on the Yawtl. Though he had not killed Hoozisst, as he had felt like doing, and though he had treated him as a comrade, which he was, in a sense, he still was angry because the Yawtl had stolen his egg. At least, if he, Deyv, fell on Hoozisst, then the thief would die, too. There was some satisfaction, though not much, in that visualization.
Deyv would have liked to ask Sloosh if his grip was still strong. He needed reassurance. It did not matter, however. He had to act now, whatever the situation was.
Gripping the Archkerri’s lower body with his legs, Deyv untied the rope around his waist. Then he slowly slid down the rope, only a few inches from the triple cable and, when he was a few feet below Sloosh’s legs, he began to swing on the rope. Back and forth he went until he could almost reach the dangling rope-ladder with the fingertips of his extended right arm.