Drowning World (25 page)

“Might as well camp here for the night. It's early, but we're not going anywhere until morning.” Advancing through the rain, Hasa began the search for a suitable site.

Nothing fazes the human, Jemunu-jah thought. No obstacle, no danger. Yet there was no denying that the furless biped possessed common sense as well as intelligence. So much effort, not for clan or
mula,
but in the pursuit of Commonwealth credit. Was Hasa civilized or just smart? Jemunu-jah was beginning to think that the two did not necessarily go together.

As he turned to one side, Masurathoo caught his eye. The Deyzara's plan was typically devious. The Sakuntala were more direct. Yet Jemunu-jah could not see himself killing the human merely because they disagreed on what course to take. He was more inclined to kill the Deyzara simply to shut him up. Briefly, he considered killing both of them. That would leave him alone in the depths of the southern Viisiiviisii. It was better to have companions, even if one talked so much it made his ears hurt and the other dripped contempt the way a horulia shrub shed water.

“Remember what we discussed,” Masurathoo was whispering to him out of his fully extended speaking trunk. “Have you come to a decision?”

Jemunu-jah did not look down at the Deyzara. He was contemplating the river, using his exceptional vision to penetrate the rain and study the far side. “Yes, I have. We going to cross this river, on raft.”

Masurathoo sagged visibly. “You can't be serious, Jemunu-jah. Even with our tools, it will take at least two days to construct something suitable. And then where will we be?”

“On other side of river,” the Sakuntala replied sensibly.

“And what does that gain us? The opportunity to continue this interminable march through hostile varzea?”

“Not interminable, I think.” Raising a long, slender arm, he pointed with his two middle fingers. “Look.”

Masurathoo could not squint: his eyes were either open, shut, or shielded by double lids. But he could hear the human's shout at the same time he detected movement on the far line of submerged trees.

Whatever it was, it was coming toward them across the river. It took a momentary lessening of the rain for him to resolve the slowly advancing shapes.

There were two rafts. Each supported a pair of minimally clad Sakuntala. A large, dead ti-tokuliu lay in the middle of the nearest. Using long paddles, the Sakuntala were propelling the two unlovely but sturdy craft across the river, their strong arms battling the current. Off to his right, Hasa was gesticulating in the rain, voicing an alternating stream of excited whoops and joyful obscenities.

“Hunting party from a village.” Jemunu-jah's eyes glistened as he tracked the rafts' approach. “
Hauea!
Maybe not the village we seek, but right now I will glad to accept the hospitality of the lowliest of clans.”

“So will I.” Turning at a sudden thought, Masurathoo found himself searching the surrounding trees and deadwood for waltzing black rhizomorphs. None were to be seen. That did not mean, he realized, that the pannula was not present. Its mycelium could be running through the body of the decaying tree just off to his left or through the fallen log under his feet. If it was as vast an organism as Hasa had suggested, it could be everywhere around them.

“Coincidence. We have just been traveling in the right direction all along.”

“Right direction, yes,” Jemunu-jah agreed. “Original direction we chose, not. How do one give thanks to a fungus?”

“It's coincidence.” The Deyzara was insistent—but not as insistent as before.

Peering across the river, the villagers had been astonished to see three strangers staggering out of what they had believed to be uninhabited forest. While their dialect was distinctive, Jemunu-jah had no trouble communicating with them. Hasa and Masurathoo managed less well. It did not matter. What
was
important was that the villagers were friendly, distant relatives of the minor but well-known Kioumatii clan. The hunting party of S'Kio was happy to bring the strangers back to their village.

It was a rudimentary community, Jemunu-jah saw immediately. The dwellings in the trees were suspended above the water by cables of woven vines, loopers, and lianas, not imported strilk. Few signs of modernity and Commonwealth culture had penetrated this far south. There were a handful of advanced tools and utensils, sheets of lightweight rain-shedding fabric, a couple of vermin-proof food storage lockers, and one thing more.

A battered old model but operational communicator.

Their hearts leapt when the village elder informed them of its existence. Its range was extremely limited, they were informed, and it could not talk to one of the Commonwealth speakers in the high sky. But it
would
reach to Tavumacia, the next nearest village. Tavumacia had a more powerful communicator and could talk to not one but a dozen additional villages. Eventually, contact could be made with Taulau Town.
If
the village's own cranky apparatus was in the mood to function.

The visitors spent several anxious moments hovering over the device until it was clear that it would. The message was sent. The village's friends in Tavumacia readily agreed to pass it along. In return, they were told of the Sakuntala uprising.

Then there was nothing to do but wait.

“How long do you think it will take, good sir?”

“What, for us to be extracted from this Sakuntala landfill?” Following a (by Sakuntala village standards) decent meal, Hasa's habitual ire had returned full force. But then, Masurathoo reflected, it had never really left. “Lemme think. Message has to get to Taulau. Once there, it has to be passed to the proper department. Someone has to decide it's legitimate and validate a report. Then the lazy bastards have to organize a rescue. At least they've got the coordinates of the communicator here.”

Swinging slowly back and forth in the suspension chair of their host's home, he pondered the motionless debris-stained water of the Viisiiviisii shimmering a few meters below the carefully constructed porch. Here no advanced charged fields protected them from anything inimical that might be waiting just beneath the surface. No automatic weaponry rested ready and armed to blast whatever might emerge. They didn't care. For the first time in many days, the three of them reposed with full bellies, if not satisfied palates. Masurathoo in particular had had a difficult time keeping down the simple village food.

“Couple of days at most,” Hasa continued. “Even if they wanted to, educated and enterprising village Sakuntala couldn't fake the kind of electronic identification I'm carrying on me. Administration will send someone.” He favored his companions with a knowing smirk. “They don't have any choice. I'm a Commonwealth citizen.”

A fact that does not speak well for the Commonwealth, Jemunu-jah thought to himself. Fortunately, the existence of appalling individuals like Shadrach Hasselemoga was offset by the genuineness of persons such as the administrator Lauren Matthias. Jemunu-jah found that he was looking forward to filing an official report of their misfortune and subsequent survival, if only so that she might read it.

Gazing out through the rain from the porch of their host's home, Hasa regarded the unassuming ramshackle houses of the villagers with disdain. “Could've hoped for rescue from a village with something more going for it than this dump.”

The fact that Jemunu-jah agreed with Hasa's assessment did not lessen the force of the associated insult. He would have objected, but the human was still talking.

“Okay; we're alive and likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future. As soon as the twits up in Taulau can manage to extricate their brains from their pants, they'll send a rescue skimmer down here to pick us up.”

A perfectly horrible thought sprang unbidden into Masurathoo's ever-wary Deyzara mind. “What if it is sabotaged by the same individual or individuals who incapacitated our craft?”

Hasa was curt but reassuring. “We've explained what happened to us. Unless whoever's responsible for sending out the rescue crew is utterly barren of intelligence, they'll triple check everything before taking off. I think it'll be okay.” Leaning back in the suspension chair, he sucked on something brown, round, and full of sweet syrup. “I wouldn't want to be rescued by anyone stupid enough to let what happened to us happen to them.”

The human's confidence bolstered Masurathoo's depleted spirits. The Deyzara had decided that Hasa was worth saving after all—just barely.

“Couple of days,” Hasa repeated. The rain had intensified. If it started to come down any harder, he mused, they would have to move inside. He didn't want to do that. Like any traditional Sakuntala dwelling, that of their kindly host stank to high heaven. “That gives us time to sort a few things out.”

Nearby, Jemunu-jah lolled in comparative contentment in his own chair, idly watching the rain. Amazing how soothing it was; in its sound, its smell, its constancy. He never would understand why it made humans so irritable.

“What things? We have already agreed on a common report.”

Having drained the boku of the last of its sugary contents, Hasa let it slip from his fingers. It landed on the otherwise clean deck. Jemunu-jah eyed the human disapprovingly. The least the disagreeable one could have done was throw it over the side, into the water. It would not have taken much of an effort. But then, a lack of concern for others was one of their human companion's most notable characteristics.

Hasa half closed his eyes, blissfully indifferent to the affront he had just delivered to their absent host. “On a report about what happened to us, yeah. We also have to decide what to say, or what not to say, about what we've discovered. Specifically, the pannula.” His gaze shifted from Sakuntala to Deyzara and back again. “Are you going to agree with me that it's an intelligent organism? Or are you going to continue to reference it as a purely reactive ‘forest spirit,' or just a dumb hunk of fungus?” Rising from the suspension seat, whose swinging he did not still, as would have been proper, he headed for the doorway into the main house.

“I'm gonna take a walk. The rain's not bad, and I'd like to see the rest of the village before we're lifted out of here.”

Masurathoo fixed him with both bulging eyes. “Hoping to chance upon some useful undescribed plant or animal the knowledge of which you can steal from the locals?”

As Hasa looked back from the portal, it was clear that he had entirely missed the point of the Deyzara's sarcasm. “Well, of course. That's what I'm doing here. I'm not proud. I've got no problem with letting some dumb native do the dirty work for me.”

As he watched their companion depart, Jemunu-jah bristled at the human's offhandedly offensive manner. “We save each other's lives, but I do not like Hasa. He is poor representative of his species.”

Masurathoo was slightly more understanding. “If nothing else, I have to say that I find his xenophobia remarkably consistent. You should not feel singled out, my tall friend. Bear in mind that he hates his own kind as well.”

“Heesa, that is so.” Jemunu-jah regarded the shorter Deyzara. “What he said has merit, however. How are we to describe pannula in our official statement?”

Masurathoo gazed out into the forest. Below, something long and green made a half-hidden leap, leaving behind rain-dappled ripples on the surface of the water. It came nowhere near reaching the floor of the porch. “Do
you
think it is sentient?”

Jemunu-jah pondered the question. “The human is convinced. I am not. My people have always been aware of certain presences in the forest. There no stories of any pannula consciously trying to help them.”

“Maybe they did not need help,” the Deyzara pointed out. “Or maybe the timing wasn't right, or the moment of contact. Or perhaps, being so familiar with your kind, the pannula was not interested. It might have taken the arrival of an entirely new species, like Hasa's, combined with just the right circumstances, like our helplessness and isolation, to induce it to make itself known.”

Jemunu-jah was still not convinced. “The Sakuntala eat fungi. We do not talk to them.”

“That may have to change.” Rising from his seat, whose motion he carefully stilled so as not to offend any watching Sakuntala, Masurathoo walked to the open edge of the porch. Alive with haunting sounds, masked by rain and mist, the southern Viisiiviisii emerged from the waters of ten thousand conjoined rivers.

“Do you not realize what it means if the human is right about the pannula? It would completely change the sociopolitical dynamic on Fluva.”

Jemunu-jah struggled hard to comprehend. “I not sure I understand.”

Carefully stepping away from the edge, the Deyzara turned to regard his fur-covered fellow traveler. “Allow me to point out that Commonwealth classification of this world is based on the presence of one indigenous intelligent species and one imported one. The way the Commonwealth government treats Fluva is based on that classification. The situation here is already atypical in that the resident sentient population is almost evenly divided between two different species. If a third is added into the mix, the situation becomes unique.”

Jemunu-jah frowned. “I do not see how it changes anything.”

“Some of it will be good. The Commonwealth will pay more attention to Fluva. That means more aid credits and a greater voice within the galactic government. But consider this: Where sentience is concerned, Commonwealth and Church policies are designed to safeguard the most primitive.”

“Are you saying that the Commonwealth will work to help the pannula before it will the Sakuntala?”

Masurathoo was gesturing with both trunks. “Or the Deyzara. That is the way of things. The government will be especially interested in the pannula because it represents the first evidence of intelligence in a life-form of its kind, although I understand that there are rumors of something similar on another world. They are only rumors, though. The pannula is real.” Sorrowfully he eyed the remnant shards of his once striking garments.

“At least one good thing will come of it. If the Commonwealth Authority accepts the human's interpretation of the pannula's actions, it will gain leave to intervene in the uprising promulgated by the extremists among your people. The Authority will be able to use the excuse that it is interceding to protect the interests of the least advanced of Fluva's three resident sentient species.”