Ecce and Old Earth (8 page)
As Glawen approached the water below changed color, talking on an oily olive-green luster. Ahead the Vertes estuary became evident; Glawen swung somewhat to the north so that he might skirt the northern shore. Dead trees, logs, snags, tangles of brush and reeds floated on the current. Below appeared a bank of slime grown over with reeds; he had arrived at the continent Ecce.
The river flowed through a miasma of swamps, floats of water-logged vegetation, dull blue, green and liver-colored; occasionally fingers of soggy marshland supported a growth of sprawling trees, holding foliage of every shape up toward the sky. Through the air a hundred sorts of flying organisms wheeled and darted, sometimes diving down into the mud to emerge with a writhing white eel, and sometimes into the water, or occasionally one pouncing down upon another. Upstream on the river floated a dead tree. Perched in one of the branches was a disconsolate mud-walker a gangling half-simian andoril eight feet tall, all bony arms and legs and tall narrow head. Tufts of white hair surrounded a visage formed of twisted cartilage and plaques of horn, with a pair of ocular stalks and a proboscis on its spindly chest. Beside the drifting tree the river surged; a heavy head on a long thick neck rose above the surface. The mud-walker squealed in horror; the proboscis its chest squirted fluids toward the head, but to no avail. The head showed a gaping yellow maw; it jerked forward, engulfed the mud-walker and sank beneath the surface. Glawen thoughtfully raised the Skyrie so that it flew somewhat higher above the river.
Now was that time of day when the heat reached its oppressive maximum, so that the denizens of Ecce tended to become inactive. Glawen himself grew uncomfortable, as heat penetrated the cabin, taxing the competence of the cooling unit Chilke had installed. Glawen tried to ignore the sweltering conditions and concentrate on what must be done. Shattorak still lay a thousand miles to the west; Glawen could not hope to reach the base before dark, and nighttime would not be optimum for his arrival. He slowed the Skyrie to a hundred-mile-an-hour drift along the river, which allowed him opportunity to survey the unfolding panorama.
For a time the landscape consisted of olive-green river to his left hand and swamps to his right. On the slime, families of flat gray animals slid about on flaps attached to their six legs. They browsed on young reeds, moving sluggishly until a heavy tentacle with an eye at the tip thrust up from the mud, at which they darted away at astonishing speed, so that the tentacle struck down into the mud defeated.
The river embarked on a series of meandering loops, first far to the south, then back an equal distance to the north. Glawen, consulting his charts, struck off across the intervening tongues of land: for the most part dense jungle choked over with trees. Occasionally a rounded hummock rose to an elevation of as much as fifty feet. Sometimes the summits lacked vegetation, in which case each was inhabited by a heavy-headed beast with a lithe slate-gray body: a creature similar to the bardicant of Deucas, thought Glawen. As the Skyrie drifted past he noticed that the summit was cropped clean of vegetation by a band of waddling russet rodents, bristling with short heavy spines. The stone-tiger surveyed the troop with a lofty detachment, and turned itself away, evidently without appetite for the: creatures: a surprise to Glawen; on Deucas the bardicant devoured anything which came its way with undiscriminating voracity.
From the west drifted heavy gray banks of clouds, trailing curtains of rain across the landscape. A sudden squall struck the Skyrie and buffeted it sidewise, rocking and sliding, followed a moment later by a freshet of rain, so that Glawen could no longer see so much as the river below.
For an hour the rain streamed down upon the land, then drifted away to the east, leaving open sky overhead. Syrene floated low toward a tumble of angry black clouds; Lorca and Sing pursued their own erratic dance off to the side. To the west and slightly north, Glawen made out the silhouette of Shattorak: a dim brooding shadow on the horizon. Glawen took the Skyrie down at a slant to the river to fly close beside the right bank, almost grazing the surface, to make the Skyrie as inconspicuous as possible to any detectors which might be active on the summit of Shattorak.
Glawen flew on while Syrene sank into a welter of clouds. The river channel, at this point, was two miles wide. Tremulous fields of gray slime to either side supported tufts of black reeds tipped with pompons of blue silk, spongy dendrons holding aloft a pair of enormous black leaves. Along the surface ran multiple-legged skimmers in search of insects and mud worms. Beneath the slime another sort waited, invisible save for a periscopic eye barely protruding above the surface, or sometimes concealed among the reeds. When an unwary skimmer ventured near, the tentacle lifted high and darted down to seize the victim and then drag it below the surface. The torpid interval had passed; the inhabitants of Ecce were out in full force: feeding, attacking, fighting or fleeing, each to its particular habit.
Troops of mud-walkers climbed through the trees, or strode across the slime on feathery feet, prodding the muck with long lances in order to gaff and retrieve a mud worm or some other morsel. Such creatures were representative of a more or less andromorphic genus prevalent everywhere, in many aspects and species, across Cadwal. These 'mud-walkers' stood seven feet tall on spindly double-jointed legs. Their high narrow heads were surmounted with caste-markers of colored fronds; black fur grew in tufts and blotches from hard hides which shone with a luster sometimes lavender, sometimes golden-brown. Despite a seeming contempt for discipline, they went with vigilance, inspecting the terrain before venturing in any direction. When they noticed a periscopic eye they chittered in outrage and pelted the organ with mud-balls and sticks or squirted it with repellant fluids from their chest proboscis, until the eye sullenly retreated into the mud. Coming upon large predators they showed what seemed reckless audacity, throwing branches, prodding the creature with their lances, then darting aside from its lunges on great high-legged jumps, sometimes even running up and down a massive back, shrilling and chitterling in glee, until the beleaguered creature submerged in the river or the slime, or fled pounding into the jungle.
So went the affairs of Ecce, as Glawen flew through the dark yellow light of late afternoon. Syrene sank; Lorca and Sing cast a weird pink illumination over the river, and as they too approached the horizon, Glawen neared the closest approach of the Vertes to Shattorak.
Across the river Glawen noted a low bald hummock, which upon investigation revealed no stone-tiger in residence. Glawen cautiously set down the Skyrie and erected a surrounding electric fence with enough potential to kill a stone-tiger and stun or disable anything larger.
Glawen stood out in the dusk of Ecce for a few moments, listening, breathing the air, feeling the oppression of the humidity and heat. The air carried an acrid stink, which presently began to cause him nausea. If this were the ordinary air of Ecce, then he must be sure to wear a respirator. But a breeze from the river blew past, smelling only of dank swamp water, and Glawen decided that the stench was resident upon the hummock itself. Glawen retired into the cabin of the Skyrie, and insulated himself against the outside environment.
The night passed. Glawen slept fitfully and was disturbed only once, when some sort of creature brushed against the electric fence. Glawen was awakened by the thud of the discharge, followed by a muffled explosion. He turned on a high floodlight to illuminate the area, and looked through the window. On the cropped turf lay a ruptured corpse from which drained a yellow ooze: one of the lumpish bristle-backed creatures he had seen browsing on another hummock. Steam created by the electric energy had burst the creature's heavy gut; nearby a dozen other such creatures grazed undisturbed by the incident.
The fence had not been damaged; Glawen returned to his makeshift couch.
Glawen lay for a few moments listening to the night. From far and near came a variety of sounds: long low eerie moans, coughing grunts and hoarse snarling grinding noises; cackles and squeaks, whistles and fluting cries uncannily similar in timbre to the human voice…. Glawen dozed, and woke only to the light of Syrene rising in the east.
Glawen made a perfunctory breakfast of packaged rations, and sat for a few moments wondering how best to conduct his mission. Beyond the river rose the mass of Shattorak a low cone shrouded in jungle two thirds of the way to the summit.
Glawen disarmed the electric fence and stepped from the cabin to fold it into a bundle. He was instantly struck with a stench of such immoderate proportions that he jerked back into the Skyrie, gasping and wheezing. At last he gained his composure and looked respectfully out toward the corpse. The usual plague of carrion-eaters: insects, birds, rodents, reptiles and the like, was nowhere in evidence; had all these creatures been repelled by the stench? Glawen reflected for a few moments, then consulted the taxonomic almanac included in the flyer's information system. The dead creature, so he discovered, belonged to a small but distinct order, unique and indigenous to Ecce, and was known as a 'sharloc’. According to the index, the sharloc was notorious for ‘an odorous exudation secreted by bristles along the dorsal integument. The odor is both repulsive and vile.'
After a moment or two of reflection, Glawen donned his jungle-suit: a garment of laminated fabric which insulated him from exterior heat and humidity by means of a flowing film of cool air from a small air-conditioning unit. He stepped outside and with a machete hacked the sharloc corpse into four segments, grateful that the filters in his air-conditioning unit excluded all but a trace of the stench.
One of the segments he tied to the forward end of the Skyrie’s frame with twenty feet of light cord; he similarly tied a second gobbet to the after end of the frame. The other two pieces he gingerly caught up in a bag and loaded upon the bed of the flyer.
Syrene now stood an hour high in the east. Glawen looked to the north across the river, here two miles wide and marked only by drifting snags and detritus. Before him, at the back of swamp and jungle, nose the bulk of Shattorak, gloomy, brooding and sinister.
Glawen climbed into the Skyrie, took it aloft, and flew at low altitude back across the river with the two gobbets of sharloc dangling below. Where swamp impinged upon the river he saw a tribe of mud-walkers, hoping and sliding, leaping and marching, from tuft to tuft, running high-legged across the slime with great finesse and style, pausing to thrust down their lances in hopes of harpooning a mud slug. Glawen saw that they were being stalked by a flat black many-legged creature which slid across the slime with stealthy movements. Here, thought Glawen, was a good test of his theory. He changed course, to drift over the flat black predator, the segments of sharloc hanging low. The predator writhed forward suddenly, but the mud-walkers had fled in bounds and jumps; and now, from a distance, inspected the Skyrie with astonished attitudes.
The test, thought Glawen, had been indecisive. He flew on, toward the dark line of dendrons and water-logged trees where swamp merged with jungle. In one of the trees he noticed a monstrous serpent forty feet long and three feet in diameter, with fangs at one end and a scorpion’s sting at the other. It slid slowly down a branch, head dangling toward the ground. Glawen flew close above; it writhed and coiled and flailed its sting into the air and then slid rapidly away.
In this case, thought Glawen, the trial had seemed to yield positive results.
Skimming the treetops Glawen searched the area below and presently noticed a large hammer-headed saurian directly ahead. He lowered the Skyrie slowly above the mottled black and green back, until the sharloc segments dangled only three feet from the saurian’s head. It became agitated, lashed its heavy tail, roared and charged a tree; the tree fell crashing to the ground. The saurian pounded onward, whipping its tail to right and left.
Once again the test might be interpreted positively, but whatever the case, Glawen deemed it prudent to delay his expedition up the side of Shattorak until mid-day, when – so it was said – the beasts of Ecce became torpid. In the meantime, he must find cover for the Skyrie, to keep it safe from molestation. He approached the edge of the jungle, and landed in a small open area.
The mud-walkers had been watching with curiosity and a constant interchange of rattles and squeaks. With grotesque celerity they scampered around to the windward slide of the Skyrie, and slowly approached, beating on the ground with their lances and extending red ruffs to signal displeasure. Fifty feet from the Skyrie they halted and began to hurl mud-balls and twigs. In exasperation Glawen took the Skyrie into the air and flew back toward the river. A half-mile upstream he found a cove shaped by the current and dropped the Skyrie into the water, so it floated on its pontoons. He took it to a tuffet of thorn but was deterred from mooring the flyer by a horde of angry insects, oblivious to the submerged chunks of sharloc – of questionable efficacy in any case, after submersion.
Glawen let the flyer drift on the current to a stand of black dendrons, all pulp, punk and scaly bark, but adequate for the mooring of the flyer, or so it would seem.
Glawen made fast the flyer and took stock of the situation, which was neither the best nor the worst. The sky was overcast; the afternoon rains would shortly be upon him, but these could not be avoided. As for the predators, stinging and biting insects, and other dangers endemic to the country, he had prepared himself to the best of his ability, and now must take his chances.
Glawen unclamped the swamp crawler from its chocks. The evidence seemed to indicate that sharloc stench was repellent, Glawen tied the remaining two segments to front and rear of the crawler, then winched it off the deck into the water, where it floated on its own pontoons. He loaded aboard his backpack and such equipment as he deemed useful, climbed aboard the crawler, and churned toward the shore.
To Glawen’s annoyance the tribe of mud-walkers had arrived on the scene, where they watched his approach in agitation, ruffs displaying the bright red of displeasure and threat. Glawen steered so as to arrive at shore upwind, where he hoped that they might be dissuaded from approach by the stench of sharloc. He did not wish in any way to harm them: an act of incalculable consequence were it to occur regardless of precautions. They might either be driven away in terror or their furious vengeful hostility incurred, against which, in the depths of the jungle, Glawen might have no control. He halted the crawler a hundred yards from shore and let it drift. As he had hoped, the putrid sharloc appeared to dissuade the mud-walkers from further hostile behavior. They turned away with a final barrage of insults and mud balls and wandered off. Of course, thought Glawen, they may simply have become bored.