"I can't a' bin here that long. I figured maybe twenty-years...."
"We've all come from different times," Annabelle told him. "Sidi here's from the nineteenth century. Tomàs goes all the way back to the fifteenth. And Shriek...."
Lukey looked at the alien. "She ain't even front our world—not 'less things a' changed a helluva lot more'll I'd want ta think was possible."
"How did you come to live with the rogha?" Annabelle asked.
"Damn lucky—that's all. Just like you, girl."
"My name's Annabelle."
"Hokay—Anniebelle it is. Anyways, that blue light gobbled me up an' spat me out a ways from here. You bin in the upper levels a' this place?"
Annabelle nodded.
"Took me a half-year ta get this far, an' I guess I'd just be shark food if the monkeys hadn't been out raidin' the chasuck an' brought me back with 'em. Same deal as happened ta you. You folks were just plain lucky Chobba an' his boys was out huntin' some fins tonight." "What does that mean—chasuck?"
Lukey grinned. "Well, pardon my French, but I guess the closest I can come in plain English is 'shit for brains.' That's what the monkeys figure the chasuck to be. They bin fightin' each other for years—least, they do 'round here. You get deeper inta rogha country, an' you could go your whole life without seein' one a' them land sharks. 'Course, you go too far, an' then you run into the gree."
He paused expectantly.
"And what are the gree?" Annabelle asked, taking her cue.
"Thought you'd never ask. The rogha call 'em 'dick-faces,' if you'll pardon—"
"Your French. Sure."
Lukey wagged a finger at her. "Let a man tell his story in his own way, Anniebelle. Anyways, they call 'em that 'cause they look like birds—you know, all full a' black feathers an' with big yellow beaks in the middle of their faces."
"Can they fly?"
"Nab. Well, not really. Though they can glide somethin' fierce. See. they got hands, sort a', but they're at the ends of these long black wings. They're a mean bunch— almost as bad as the chasuck—though they don't go in much for live meat. Feed on carrion, that kind a' thing."
"I don't believe this place." Annabelle said.
"You're tellin' me. Gets so you'd welcome anybody that was human."
"So. why do you stay?"
"Where'm I goin' ta go?"
"You could come with us." Annabelle said. "We're going to the gateway in Quan."
"Quan? Not an' keep your skin in one piece, you ain't. You got somethin' against livin'?"
"What's wrong with Quan?"
"Haunts. That's the only thing you'll find in there. Nobody goes there. Damn things II strip the flesh from your bones like you was dipped in acid. Like those pie-ee-raner fish they got in Africa. Eat you up like there ain't no tomorra."He made snapping motions with both hands, bringing them up close to Annabelle’s face. She backed quickly away, and was suddenly aware again of the height of the platform as it swayed underneath her. Her face went pale, the forgotten fears rising up in a spinning whirl. Chobba plucked the pouch of byrr leaves from her frozen fingers and pressed one leaf between her lips.
She was too scared to even chew, but just the mixture of her saliva with the pulpy flesh of the leaf that slid down her throat was enough to unlock her jaws after a few moments. Relief came quickly again—no high, just a calmness that brought her heartbeat back down to normal and loosened the sudden tightness in her chest.
Just don't think about what's underneath you, she told herself. But then, she was thinking about it. She chewed another leaf.
"I used to chew a lot a' that," Lukey said, "when I first got here. But you get used ta the sway an' the height. In a couple a' months, you won't even notice it anymore."
"We don’t plan to be here for longer than it takes to get ready to go on to Quan," Annabelle told him.
"Much bad place, Quan," Chobba said.
Annabelle glanced at him. She'd been wondering how much he and the other rogha had been following of their conversation, and decided now that Chobba, at least, understood English better than he spoke it.
"We gotta go." she said.
"Speak for yourself." Tomàs said.
She turned to look at him. "I've told you before, no one's making you tag along, pal."
"I am part of the company." the Portuguese said. "I should have a say in what we do, and I say is estúpido to go on."
"Blow it out your face," Annabelle told him, and looked back at Chobba. "We don't belong here," she said. "At this point, the gateway in Quan is our only hope of getting back home.
Chobba stroked his furry forearm and muttered something in his native tongue.
"What’d he say?" Annabelle asked Lukey.
The old man smiled as he translated. "'Brains must grow in hair because you don't have much of either.'"
"Do you see?" Tomàs said.
"Only that you're looking for a fat lip." Annabelle told him. "Won't you help us. Chobba?"
"Sleep yoo," he replied. "Dark bye-bye, we talk."
"Okay. That's fair enough."
Chobba nodded, grinning again. "Hokay." he said.
His good humor was so infectious that Annabelle couldn't help but smile back at him. He handed her his pouch of byrr leaves and indicated she should keep it. As the troop of rogha began to break up. he showed Annabelle's party to the hut they'd be sleeping in. Happily, it was on the same platform that they were already on.
Thank God they didn't have to do any more climbing. Annabelle thought. She'd been eyeing the other platforms. and had not been too thrilled to see that the only connections between them were swaying rope bridges— which appeared to be mostly for the very old or the very young—or the boughs of the trees, which the majority of rogha used.
She just couldn't have done it.
Later, in their hut, she sat up with Shriek. Holding hands, they could speak mind to mind and not disturb the others as they talked over what they'd learned from Lukey and Chobba. Tomàs sat glowering in a corner, muttering about how spiders were only good for being stepped on, and that went double for women who thought wearing pants gave them a man's wisdom, until Annabelle gave him one of her hard stares and he fell quiet. But she could tell by the glower in his eyes that his monologue was still going on inside his head.
We were lucky. Shriek said finally. The Chobba being and his people arrived at a most opportune time.
Tell me about it, Annabelle replied.
But still ... we cannot remain here.
Thinking about living up on these platforms made
Annabelle's stomach go all queasy again. We'll leave soon, she said.
Shriek nodded. Soon, she agreed.
She touched Annabelle's cheek in a friendly gesture, then turned in on the mattress, stuffed with leaves, that the rogha had provided for each of them.
Annabelle pulled her own mattress in closer to where Sidi was already sleeping and gave hint a chaste kiss good night—chaste only because Tomàs's gaze was fixed upon them.
No cheap thrills for you, you little weasel, she thought.
Sidi woke to catch both looks—hers and Tomàs's. "You make a good boss, Annabelle," he said quietly before he rolled over once more.
Annabelle sat up, staring at Tomàs, until he finally lay down—face pointed at the wall, away from hers—then tried to get some sleep herself.
Gotta do something about Tomàs, she thought as she was drifting off. He was only going to get worse.
Annabelle spent an uneasy few hours, her sleep disturbed by a series of dreams in which she kept falling from a great height. Sometimes she was trying to get from one platform to another, and the rope or branch she was holding on to simply broke. Other times, she tripped on the platform and just tumbled off. Once it was Tomàs pushing her.
Each time she woke, she was sweaty and wide-eyed, the start of a scream just building up in her throat. She'd lie there, trying not to feel the sway of the platform under her. If she didn't move, she told herself??
?if she just lay where she was—nothing could happen to her. She couldn't just fall off.
But then the platform would shift slightly underneath her again and she'd sit up, arms wrapped around her chest, shivering. She fumbled for the pouch of byrr leaves that Chobba had left with her, then remembered she'd left it where they'd been sitting on the platform outside.
She stared at the rectangle of lighter darkness that the door made in one wall. Nope, she thought. There was no way she could face going out there to get the pouch.
Oh. Annie B. You gotta do it.
Outside, a wind moved in the trees. This high up, it wasn't impeded by the thick tangle of underbrush that was on the jungle floor. The platform moved with it, yawing only slightly, but it might as well have just tipped her right over the side, for the way her stomach felt.
Sidi stirred on his mattress beside her, turning in her direction.
"Annabelle?" he asked.
She hated to admit it—somehow it was worse that she had to admit her weakness to him because she wanted him to think of her as a strong person—but it was all she could do to keep her breathing relatively normal. She kept wanting to hyperventilate—to just run out there and throw herself over the edge of the platform and get it all over with.
Sidi realized her problem immediately. He moved like a shadow across the room, out the door. Moments later he was back, the pouch in his hand. He placed a leaf between her lips, as Chobba had done earlier.
"Chew," her ordered her.
Again she had to wait for her saliva and the leaf juice to mingle and trickle down her throat before she could unclench her jaws enough to chew. But finally, she did. Sidi sat close, an arm around her shoulder, holding her while she chewed, then giving her another leaf when she was finished with the first.
"Take your time with it." he said.
She chewed more slowly. By now, the effect had kicked in. The tension washed out of her limbs, the lightness from her chest. She could breathe again. Her stomach stopped churning.
Calmer now, she shook her head when Sidi offered her a third leaf. Ducking under his arm, she rose to her feet. The slight sway of the platform didn't even faze her.
"Annabelle?" Sidi asked, the worry plain in his voice.
"I gotta sit outside," she said. "Thanks, Sidi. You're a bloody lifesaver."
It was cooler outside—still warm by any normal standards, but not so close as in the hut, and a hundred times better than it had been down on the forest floor. There were next to no mosquitoes, for one thing. And the humidity was at least bearable.
She sat down, back against the hut, and looked out at the jungle night spread around her. A moment later, Sidi joined her. She reached out and captured his hand.
"Not doing too good, am I?" she said.
She could feel him shrug. "No one is free of fear."
'Yeah, but it gets pretty bad when the only way you can handle it's with something like this." She shook the pouch of byrr leaves.
"We could ask the rogha to bring us down to the jungle floor," Sidi said. "It's not long until morning anyway."
Annabelle shook her head. "N'ah. I'm just gonna sit out here and wait for it to get light. When I start to get weirded out again. I'll just chew another of these. You go on and get some sleep."
"I'd rather sit out here with you."
Annabelle turned to look at him. "You're something else, you know that?"
"Something good. I hope."
"Real good."
He put his arm around her shoulder and she snuggled in close. It felt good to be held.
It was kinda weird, she thought, remembering Sidi as he'd been when she'd first met him—a sixty-year-old man. who'd looked his years. Dark-skinned and lean, worn by time, vet tough as nails, as the old saying went. Now he looked about her age—still tough, but the dark skin was free of wrinkles, the webwork of laugh lines around his eyes all smoothed away.
She'd liked him before the change, and liked him better now. In a different way.
Don't go getting all involved now, Annie B., she told herself.
But it was hard not to. It was lonely in the Dungeon, cut off from everything she knew. When she thought of all the time she'd spent on her own in that prison a few levels back, before Sidi and the rest showed up.... She didn't want to feel that cut off from people she could relate to. Not ever again.
So Sidi was an old man in a young man's body. So what? We should all be so lucky.
She lifted her head, bringing her face close to his.
"Remember just before the chasuck attacked us earlier?" She asked.
"I remember."
"Now, exactly where were we?" she murmured.
She brought a hand up behind his head and pulled him toward her until their lips met. Sidi pulled back, gently disengaging her hand.
"What's the problem?" Annabelle asked.
"This isn't right," he replied.
"Says who?"
"I'm old enough to be your grandfather."
"You'd never know from looking at you."
Sidi shook his head. "That still doesn't make it right."
"It doesn't matter to me."
"But it matters to me," he said. "Please understand, Annabelle. It's not just the age difference, but that we come from such vastly different worlds, as well. Here and now, it might not seem of much importance, but in the long run, it would set us against one another, and I would not wish to lose such a good friend."
Annabelle wanted to rail at him. but she knew he was right. It wasn't just age or race. It was everything that they were. A rock 'n' roller, and an Indian who was more a Zen sensei than a Hindu. Friends could bridge the differences that would have to arise as time went by. But lovers?
She leaned against his shoulder again. "Okay. Sidi." she said. "But friends can comfort each other, can't they?"
He gave her shoulder a squeeze.
Seventeen
For Clive, it was as though he was in the middle of a bad dream—a nightmare in which everything familiar had been given a twist to set it slightly askew. Here was a man who claimed to be Neville Folliot, who was expecting his brother Clive—yet he was not Clive’s twin. He was a complete stranger.
Given the man's poise and assurance, one could almost believe that he spoke the truth, and that all of their own memories were a lie.
Clive glanced at Smythe, but his former batman's face remained impassive, his stance that of a man prepared to defend himself at the drop of a glove. Keoti had taken a few steps away from them, and was now watching the party warily. The distrust with which she now regarded him pained Clive.
"Doomed," Finnbogg muttered mournfully.
So it seems, Clive thought. We are in desperate straits, perhaps, but not for the reason you think, Finn.
Their best course of action was to beat a hasty retreat, but that was. no doubt, already impossible. They were underground, at the mercy of the Dramaranians and their technological wonders. Even if they should manage to escape to the ground level, the Dramaranians undoubtedly had mechanical bloodhounds with which they could track them down.
As though reading Clive’s mind, the man behind the desk smiled. Though he made no motion that Clive could see, some signal must have been given, for there was a stirring in the doorway behind them through which they had entered. When Clive turned to look, he saw a number of the silver-suited Dramaranians blocking their escape. Each of them held one of those curiously shaped pistols in their hands. He remembered the blades of light with which the Dramaranians had been carving up the carcass of the brontosaur. It seemed likely that these weapons would be equally marvelous and strange. And deadly.
"What manner of game are you playing?" he asked the man behind the desk.
"Game?" The man's amusement faded from his features. "We play no game. We haven't sought guesting under false pretenses, claiming to be who we are not. 'Fess up. now. Who are you, and what do you want front me?"
"My name is Clive Folliot. I am a major of Her Majesty Queen
Victoria's Fifth Imperial Horse Guards. I am searching for my brother. Major Neville Folliot of the Royal Somerset Grenadier Guards, who is currently on an extended leave of absence for the purpose of exploring East Africa. Upon his disappearance, I applied for and received detached service for the purpose of seeking him out."
The man at the desk leaned back in his chair. "Very pretty. You have all the facts correct—learned by rote. I imagine—but it will do you no good, sir, for you remain a stranger to me while my brother, for all our differences, is decidedly not."
"This man is not your brother?" Guafe asked.
"He most certainly is not."
"I had no idea," the cyborg said. "I look him at his word that he was who he said he was—there was no way I could look into the facts, and I had no reason to disbelieve him before, but I now disown all association with him."
"Well played," the man behind the desk said, "and it certainly sheds light upon the purity of your dedication and loyally to your companions, but you are a touch loo late, don't you think? It's very easy to step forth now and disclaim any guilt that might be associated with the others of your party."
"I had no way of knowing the truth until this very moment."
"Yes, well. That is a shame, isn't it? But we can't simply set you free now, can we? Seeing as how you arrived here with them, being a potential enemy and all?"
"I tell you I had no knowledge of this man's true motives."
The man behind the desk raised his eyebrows. "And I suppose we'll just have to take your word for that?"
"I do not lie." Guafe said stiffly.
"Ah. Well, that is welcome news, isn't it? Quickly, my friends, allow the cyborg his freedom. Open the doors to all our secrets to him, for he is an honorable being—or. at least, the part of him which is not a machine—and he means us no ill."
Not one of the Dramaranians stirred. Guafe's cybernetic eyes flashed red. but he kept his own counsel now in the face of their captor's sarcasm.
Clive wasn't particularly surprised, or even hurt, by Guafe's attempt to dissociate himself from the rest of the party. What hurt more was the recrimination that lay plain in Keoti's eyes. But, who was she to believe? he asked himself reasonably. A stranger she had known for a day or so—intimately, yes, but a stranger all the same—or a man who was the savior of her people and had lived among them for the past five years?