Drowning World (3 page)

Jemunu-jah took a care not to clench his pointed teeth, even though those sharp incisors were offset so as not to damage his own mouth. He could only envy the more galactically sophisticated Deyzara his perfect terranglo that in some ways sounded more polished than that of the administrator herself. That the newcomer was as soft-spoken as the rest of his kind did nothing to diminish his eloquence.

Despite what Matthias had said, Jemunu-jah felt compelled to offer one more objection. “
This
the one I going into southern regions with?”

Distressingly, the human nodded. “Masurathoo is an excellent skimmer pilot. You'll decide where and how to look, and he will facilitate your efforts to the best of his ability.”

“That I will do.” In spite of the Deyzara's accommodating tone, Jemunu-jah could see that the newcomer was himself something less than overly enthusiastic about the assignment. No Deyzara would be keen on the idea of being forced to work in tight, isolated quarters for an indeterminate period of time with a surly Sakuntala warrior. On the other hand, when there was good money to be made, a Deyzara would endure almost anything.

One last time, Jemunu-jah thought briefly about turning down the task. Since Kenkeru-jah had already promised his services, to refuse would be to insult his chief as well as bring shame on his clan. Accepting meant money and
mula
. When a difficult situation presents itself, he knew, it is sometimes useful to have no choice.

“Since this an emergency, I can of course leave immediately.” He felt like a hypocrite, but
mula
was
mula
. If he was going to have to suffer, he was going to wring every bit of gain from the arrangement.

“I have already seen to the provisioning of the assigned vehicle,” Masurathoo informed them both. “We can be on our way as soon as you wish.”

The mournful eyes that humans seemed to find so—what was the word he had once heard used?—“winsome” stared up at him. When the pilot's speaking trunk was not in use, compact muscles kept it coiled flat atop his head. The eating trunk swung lazily back and forth from the lower portion of the skull, its naked hairlessness a distasteful sight at best. He would have to get used to it, he knew, for as long as it took to locate the stupid missing human and bring him back. Or to admit defeat. Given the extent of the region to be searched, the latter was a very real possibility.

“Leave now,” he muttered as politely as he could. A glance out the nearer of the two windows showed that the rain was likely to lessen for a little while. That would mean more local traffic but better visibility. “Better to leave town during clearing.”

“Precisely what I would have suggested,” concurred the Deyzara knowledgeably. He looked back to the administrator. “We will file regular reports; you can be sure of that.”

“I have every confidence in the two of you,” she lied. “You were the best team that could be assembled.” Given the exploration and rejection of every other possible alternative, she thought silently.

Still, it was part of her job to give these kinds of orders and to look after the human contingent on Fluva. Both of the sentients standing before her seemed quite competent. Given that, there was always the slight chance they actually
would
find the misbegotten bioprospector alive somewhere in the unmeasured depths of the Viisiiviisii.

Turning back to her desk's readout as soon as they had departed, she could only hope they might manage to do so before they killed each other.

2

S
hadrach Hasselemoga had come to Fluva hoping to make a killing—of the financial kind. He had sincere hopes of making a fortune—always a possibility where the discovery of useful, previously unknown botanicals was concerned. While others might find the combination of soldier of fortune and botanist (with a special interest in mycology) a peculiar melding of professions, to men and women engaged in Hasa's line of work it was perfectly natural. People had indeed been known to kill one another over the discovery and possession of something small, green, and deceptively insignificant. They were willing to go to such occasional extremes because alien botanicals were frequently the key to the gengineering of everything from new pharmaceuticals to artificial flavorings, and much else besides.

Too bad he hated his new posting.

There wasn't much about it he didn't hate, from the constant rain to the molds and fungi that matured so fast you could watch them reproduce on your supposedly spore-resistant clothing. Or on your face, if you weren't careful. One poor
simick
who had gone hunting for a celebrated lotion-oozing slime mold about a thousand kelegs to the north of Taulau Town had been found only a hundred meters from the safety of his skimmer. Apparently, he'd become disoriented in the varzea and had wandered around unaware that the mold he'd collected had enthusiastically transmuted in the warmth of his collection pack into an ambulatory amoeboid state. Its potential lotion-generating properties notwithstanding, it had invaded his body right through the allegedly impermeable material of both pack and clothes, whereupon it had then proceeded to bed itself down nice and comfy inside his vital organs. Harold Tsukakaza, yeah, that was his name. He'd been lotioned to death.

Perambulating slime molds were the least of a person's worries on lush, fascinating, deadly Fluva. There were fungi that put out toxic mycelia and actively hostile basidiocarps, rusts that gave new meaning to an old word (and class), and all manner of nasties that made their homes in the trees or in the waters of the flooded forest. The Viisiiviisii was no place to be marooned. Hard to walk out of the woods when the base of the tree in which you found yourself stranded was twenty meters or more underwater.

Then there were the natives. The happy, smiling Sakuntala and the hardworking, comparatively diminutive Deyzara. Except that the Sakuntala were as likely to cut your head off as offer you a cup of traditional katola and the Deyzara would bow enthusiastically and wave their trunks in their disarmingly disconcerting fashion while quietly picking your pocket. Not that his own kind were much better. Among the many different species of sentients Hasa had encountered in his travels (and there had been many), humans fell somewhere in the shifting middle of the sentient muddle. That they were not as obvious cheats and liars as the Deyzara or as blatant deceivers and cutthroats as the Sakuntala was only due to the fact that power and experience had rendered them a tad more restrained.

Now, seemingly good and stuck in the middle of nowhere, and an unrelentingly hostile nowhere at that, he was going to have to rely on those same self-serving sons-of-bitches to extricate him from a bad fix not of his own making. Hasa was reasonably willing to take responsibility for his own mistakes. But he'd done nothing wrong this time, certainly nothing that should have led to his current imbroglio.

He'd done everything right prior to setting out: had the skimmer thoroughly overhauled and checked out, paid any overdue bills, settled with that thieving Dararpatui who ran the Kus supply depot, notified the proper authorities of his tentative flight plan, and registered his intentions with Administration. All so he could find himself, a week out from town, locked in a frantic uncontrolled dive down into the yawning depths of the Viisiiviisii. When oral commands failed to effect the necessary adjustments to his craft's plunge, he'd taken manual control, only to find that the relevant instrumentation was also locked and unresponsive. At the last possible moment, he'd thrown himself to the left and activated the craft's emergency self-contained landing sequencer. It, at least, had worked, as evidenced by the fact that he was still alive, mobile, and bitching.

Ripping himself out of the swollen cocoon of sofoam that had saved his life, he'd rushed the control console, only to stumble and fall. Not because he had been injured in the crash, not because he was suddenly overcome with dizziness, but because the floor of the skimmer was pointed down and sideways at respectively sharp angles. Recovering from the slip, he noticed immediately that the protective climate-controlled canopy was cracked in at least a dozen places. He was made aware of this fact because he was sitting in the rain. Also because several blue-striped tree branches now extended inside the skimmer. A head-sized flying creature was presently perched on one. It stared at him out of eyes that were so deep-sunk it seemed they must be set in the back of the animal's skull. In actual fact, they were positioned in the center, where by rotating they could stare as easily out the back of the skull as the front.

“Get out of here, you neeking goscack! I'm nobody's dinner yet!” Reaching down, he picked up a piece of some instrument that he hoped was not essential to the skimmer's functioning and threw it.

Letting out an unexpectedly melodious tootle, the weird arboreal with the internally gimbaled oculars dodged the chunk of airborne apparatus as it spiraled up and out of the wounded skimmer. Multiple wings extended out of the sides of its head and rotated parallel to the ground. In addition to providing lift, the spiral-screw wing system was an excellent design for shedding precipitation. Nature was ever so goddamned inventive, he told himself sullenly. Trying to taxonomize the bizarre creature would twist a bemused biologist's bowels.

Shadrach Hasselemoga was only mildly interested in it. The life-forms that commanded his attention were the ones that put out leaves and sent down roots or popped ballooning basidiocarps out of decaying wood. They didn't have internally pivoting eyeballs. Or, for that matter, eyes of any kind. At least, not usually.

Turning back to the console that was shielded from the ubiquitous rain by a still intact portion of the skimmer's transparent canopy, he spoke in the direction of the omnidirectional voice command pickup. There was no response from the skimmer's internal controller. This was hardly surprising since nothing was lit, indicating a complete loss of power. The emergency backup node was supposed to be sufficiently armored to survive all but a hundred percent destruction of the rest of the craft. The fact that he could now sue the manufacturer of said device for false and misleading claims was at present of little comfort. When he tried it, the craft's manual instrumentation proved equally demised.

Something was not right. Yes, the skimmer's environmental dome was shattered. Yes, the craft had suffered serious damage. But certain components on the sophisticated vehicle should still be functional. The air-circulation system, for example, was independently powered. Even in the event of catastrophic energy failure, it should still be cycling atmosphere. But it was as silent as the communicator.

Alternately cursing the rain and his undeserved ill fortune, he made an attempt to effect temporary repairs, something someone in his position had to be skilled at. No luck. He attempted to coerce the skimmer's computation unit to effect minimal internal resuscitation. No chance. He tried cursing and beating and threatening the variegated deities of half a dozen different religions, not all of them human. The multispecies heavens ignored him.

He was stuck.

As he morosely contemplated his indisputable stuckness, a line of brilliantly iridescent blue-and-crimson kindling came marching in single file through a gap in the broken dome. Wending their way toward where he was seated, their multiple short, jointed legs striding along in unison, they looked for all the world like a monkish procession of deeply religious stick insects. They had bulging black four-lensed eyes, slender quadruple slowly weaving antennae, and disagreeably sharp proboscises. Looking down, he gazed sternly at the first of the twenty-centimeter-long intruders. It halted in front of his leg. Delicate, sensitive antennae tapped gently, tentatively, at the hydrophobic tropical weave of his pants. The hypodermoid proboscis probed, searching for an opening between the raindrops that ran down his leg.

His off-world blood would probably give it indigestion, he knew. Without giving it the opportunity to sample the possible stomachache-inducing effects of imported alien body fluids, he raised his foot and brought it down firmly. There was a muted
crunch
. Green-and-yellow goo splotched across the floor.

Instantly the dance line of intruding ambulatory twigs did a united about-face and, without breaking stride, proceeded to take their leave of the skimmer. There was no violent counterattack, no attempt to gain retribution for the death of their point twig, no multiple keening high-pitched wail of despair. But as they exited the craft back along the branch they had used to enter it, each one deliberately and pointedly defecated on the still gleaming composite rim.

Go ahead, he thought irately. Take your turn. Fate has already done to me what you are only doing now.

He needed to take stock, he knew. Best to do so before nightfall. If those responsible for such things were doing their job, he would be located and lifted out of here before the onset of twilight, let alone darkness. But one never knew. As those in his position were well aware from long and bitter experience, the number of complete and utter morons inhabiting government posts was inversely proportional to the distance from recognized centers of civilization. It might happen that he would be compelled to spend a night, or even two, out in the Viisiiviisii before a rescue-and-recovery team arrived from Taulau or another Commonwealth outpost. Should that come to pass, it would be nice to have a few small items readily available. Water would never be a problem on Fluva. But it would be nice not to have to search for food. A dry place to sleep would also be welcome, and a weapon or two was imperative. The Viisiiviisii was not a benign place for the solo visitor to go camping.

Thoughts of a dry place to sleep caused him to rise and scramble to the far side of the skimmer. Having briefly blacked out at the moment of impact, he had no idea of the terrain on which he had landed. Reaching the outer wall, he stuck his head out into the full force of the rain, leaned through a wide gap in the shattered dome, and looked down. A single monosyllable emerged from between tightened lips. It was foul.

His incapacitated skimmer was resting amid a tangle of broken branches and trailing vines some twenty meters above the placid water, held aloft by trees whose bases and buttresses were submerged in at least another twenty meters of tannin-infused muck. A plethora of unpleasant possibilities rushed helter-skelter through his brain.

Then there was a loud
crack
, and the necessity to think was obviated by the need to grab onto something solid and unmoving. It was a futile gesture, because the entire skimmer was already moving—downward.

The supportive branches beneath it having finally given way under the weight of the intruder, the skimmer banged and bounced in an inglorious and quite noisy descent toward the water below, banging off trunks and smashing through branches at the astonishing rate of one irate invective per second. It landed stern-first with a great splash, its back end sinking halfway under the surface before it finally stabilized atop a pile of exhausted wood.

Breathing hard, teeth clenched, Hasa picked himself up off the slanting deck. An intermittent morbid gurgling continued to rise from the part of his craft that was now underwater. His initial reaction was to kick the console, the walls, the floors, everything around him. He wanted to hurt every corner of the craft that had so rudely betrayed his trust. But he didn't dare, because further violent movement risked destabilizing his already precarious roost. Losing the skimmer didn't worry him. If it sank, it sank. Fine and good riddance. Once safely back in town he would eagerly apply to collect the insurance. But it could not be allowed to sink before he had recovered and stowed somewhere safe and stable those few vital elements of survival he had mentally inventoried only moments earlier.

Moving as carefully and slowly as his temper and the rain-slicked floor of the skimmer would permit, he made his way to the back of the vehicle. The storage lockers he sought were now underwater. Opening them and extracting their contents meant working up to his neck in the placid nutrient-rich liquid. He did not worry if the food paks, for example, were spoiled or not. Everything on Fluva that was subject to invasion and spoilage by mold or fungi was sealed tightly against such intrusion. Anything that wasn't did not last more than a week before it was overwhelmed by the planet's incredibly fecund, moisture-driven flora.

So the food paks he dragged out were still secure in their self-cooking wrappings. He located a repeating pistol and packets of old-fashioned explosive shells. Fancy neuronics and electrics didn't work well on alien worlds where the neutral tolerances of inimical local life-forms had yet to be calibrated. Either of the former might do no more than give a tickle to an onrushing carnivore. Explosives, on the other hand, had the virtue of not being species- or nervous-system-specific. They were marvelously egalitarian in their lethality.