Gool (6 page)

You will see.

They slept, then went on for two marches, with the land rising more sharply and the trees thinning out. Several times Xantee thought she saw a flicker of people moving in the trunks, but she could never be sure – and she sensed that it was harder for them; they were nearing the edge of their domain.

A glimpse of mountain showed: an ice field shining, high.

The jungle under-storey gave way to fern, then to sharp grass that cut their legs. They wrapped them in cloth from their packs and struggled on.

Xantee, Lo, Duro, this is the place where we must stop, the people said.

Is there – is there any way we can thank you for your help? Xantee said.

Kill the mother gool. She comes from the other side.

Of what? Duro said.

That lies beyond our knowing. But find where it is born, and learn what you must do.

Easy to say, Duro said.

Cross the mountains through the pass beyond the peak lifting like the bow of a sunken canoe. We cannot pass, but Dwellers who have come this way say it’s hard but sure. On the other side the land lies easy to the jungle. Call for our brothers and sisters there.

Thank you.

What about the gool we have to pass? Duro said.

It lives below the peak. You must stay on the lower side of the gully. Unless it has grown the way lies open.

Will we see it?

See, and smell, and taste it in the air, and hear it mewing like a sick tree tiger. Don’t go close. It lashes with its arms, and took a woman from a Dweller family passing through.

Xantee felt sick, remembering the gool that had dragged Sal and Mond towards its mouth and tangled Hari in its arms. This one would be bigger if it almost blocked the pass. And they would see it. It had no need to make itself invisible like the one Sal and Mond had found.

She thanked the people again but wasn’t sure they heard. The suddenness of their going would offend her if she let it – but what they had done, keeping them safe, guiding them, went beyond friendship. They might never come close, never be seen or named, but Xantee felt her kinship with them.

Let’s get out in the open. I want to breathe again, Duro said.

Don’t forget to keep watch. We’ve got no help any more, Lo said.

They kept on through the dwindling trees into hills climbing to the face of the mountains. Looking back, they saw the jungle stretching north and east and west – the same jungle, Xantee realised, that Pearl and Hari had seen from another vantage point on their escape from the city. It had vanished into the distance, Pearl said, and seemed never to end. It still seemed never to end in the eastwards direction, and yet a great ocean lay beyond, the ocean that the Fish People, the Wideners, had sailed across to find a new home. She felt there was too much of everything – jungle, mountains, sea, too much space, too much past and future, too much time. She felt it crushing, not releasing, her and wanted to be home in the kitchen.

So do we all, Duro said.

Keep out of my head, she snapped.

The peak that jutted over the pass matched the people’s description: the prow of a sunken canoe. The path to its base was strewn with boulders. Pools of water lay where it levelled out, but turned to grey mud as the travellers climbed.

It’s made from dust, Duro said. See, it’s everywhere. It must be what the gool shits out after it’s eaten.

There’s nothing for it to eat up here, Lo said.

It eats the rock. It eats anything. Smell it now? Taste it? Like fish bait ten days old.

I can feel the cold, Lo said.

I can hear it, Xantee said.

Stay here. Duro went forward and peered round a boulder, then recoiled. He looked again.

It’s here. It’s huge. I can’t see how we can get past.

His face was white.

It’s ten times bigger than the one that got Hari.

Lo and Xantee joined him.

The gool had been born from an oily crack in the mountainside. It bulged from darkness into the morning light, undulating beneath its skin. The main part of its body lay on the slope down from the crack, spreading, flattening, busy at its edges with a thousand tiny mouths eating whatever they found. Except for that ant-like busyness, and the organs turning under its skin, it was like a dead jellyfish on a beach – but larger, a thousand times larger than any jellyfish ever seen. The mewing Xantee heard was the sound of hunger coming from the mouths as they fastened on the living stone of the mountain slope. Every now and then a pit like a whale’s blowhole opened in the gool’s skin – there was no one place – and a puff of grey dust shot into the air.

Xantee, Duro, Lo could not speak. Each felt the same: there was no way they could fight this beast. There was no way it belonged in the world. Yet Xantee clung to one thing:

Barni found a way. Barni killed it, she whispered.

Barni was a story, Duro said.

Stories start in something real.

Maybe. What worries me is how we get past.

There’s room, Lo said.

Remember it puts out arms like a grabfish, Duro said.

There’s still room. We keep up hard against the opposite slope, where it widens out.

Can we climb those rocks? Xantee said.

If we have to.

Does it know we’re here? Does it have eyes?

Does it have a brain? I can’t feel one.

It’s got hunger, that’s its brain, Xantee said.

It’s got eyes, Duro said. See those white things floating under its skin.

They look like a blind man’s eyes, Xantee said.

They can see. They’ve seen us.

The thousand tiny mouths were still. The hungry undulations ceased their movement under the skin.

If we’re going we go now, Duro said. Ready?

Ready, Lo said.

Yes, Xantee said.

They drew their black Dweller knives.

Duro led, going fast on the path while they were out of range, then veering a dozen of its body lengths away from the gool, climbing into the boulders on the side of the pass opposite the crack it had been born from.

The gool gave a loud mew – a dozen screeching cats. All its mouths had vanished and a maw the size of a brine tub opened in the part of its body nearest Duro. It grew six arms, each coiled like a rope. They unrolled heavily, then fattened and leaped, and ran like hungry stoats across the path and through the boulders. Yet they thinned as they approached, as if the creature could not force enough of its bulk into the tubes it was shooting out.

‘Come on,’ Duro yelled. Come on: a silent cry, even louder. He scrambled a dozen steps clear of the probing arms. Xantee came behind him, also clear. She felt in greater danger from the stink and taste of the creature, and from its malevolence – it had a mind and hated them – than from its tentacles. Then, behind her, Lo gave a yell of fright. She turned and saw him overbalance, grab at the air – at nothing – then fall backwards from the boulder he had jumped to, and vanish into a crevice. She heard his cry of agony, and a long-drawn wail.

Lo!

She turned back, jumped, peered down, with Duro quickly at her side. Lo lay wedged between boulders that seemed to squeeze and crush him like closing hands. His face was turned up, agonised, his fingers clawed the rock.

My leg. My leg.

They climbed down to him, legs and arms braced on the slanting sides.

My leg. The gool.

They pulled him and slid him free, Lo screaming with pain. Below him, in the crack, a blind grey tentacle crawled upwards, seeming to sniff.

We can’t lift him, Xantee yelled. He’s too heavy.

Rope. In my pack, Duro said.

She scrabbled for it, pulled it out, uncoiled it, as Duro hauled Lo another metre.

Round him, under his arms. Tie it. Now take it up.

She climbed to the top of the boulder.

Lo, Duro said, we’re going to pull you out. It’s going to hurt.

But Lo had fainted. Xantee felt his consciousness blink out.

Duro swore. He drew his knife, slashed at the tentacle that had found his heel. Its stub fell away. He climbed the boulder crack to Xantee.

Right, pull. As hard as you can.

Painfully, slowly, they drew Lo to the surface and laid him on the smooth top of the boulder. Xantee freed the rope, which had bitten into his chest. Then she saw his leg. It was bent halfway down the shin, almost at right angles. A long gash in the calf welled blood. She thought she saw a gleam of bone.

Duro was busy scraping gool-slime from his heel.

Duro, his leg.

Yeah, broken. We’ve got to get him back to the Peeps. No, don’t touch it. Let them.

Can they? Will they?

He’ll die if they don’t.

They stopped Lo’s bleeding with a tightly bound cloth, then hoisted him, dragged him, back through the boulders away from the gool. Then they carried him, one on each side, down the path towards the jungle. Xantee dosed him with a pain-killing drug Tealeaf had given them, but still he wept and groaned with pain.

The western sky turned red. Darkness closed in. They were in the mountain scrub, not yet in the jungle. Xantee made a torch from twigs twisted round a shard of rock and they went on, with Duro carrying Lo on his back. She felt for animals with her mind, and sent out cries for the people. It was midnight before an answer came.

Stay where you are. Lay the hurt one down.

His leg is broken.

Lay him down. Then go.

I can’t. He’s my brother, Xantee cried.

Go. We’ll take care of him.

His leg’s smashed. He’s bleeding.

We will take care. Go quickly or he’ll die.

I can’t –

Xantee, Duro said, trust them. They’ll fix him. They said they would.

I want to see. I need to know.

You can’t. You can’t see them. And Xantee, they’ll be letting him see them. No one else has, ever. So let them do it. Xantee, come.

They laid Lo down carefully. Xantee kissed him on the brow, on the lips. Her brother. She felt she was tearing her mind in half, leaving him – tearing her heart too.

Lo woke.

Xantee?

Lo, the people are going to look after you. They’ll fix your leg.

Xantee, he whispered.

We’ve got to go.

He closed his eyes. Faintly, in a voice that drifted way, he said, Kill the gools. All of them.

We will.

She kissed him again.

The people were singing. With light and harmony they led Xantee and Duro up the track. Looking back, she saw another light dome settle on Lo, and thought for a moment she saw small figures moving in it.

We’ll come back for you, Lo, she said, but felt no throb of consciousness in him.

An hour up the track the people left them. They made camp and ate and slept. In the morning they climbed to the pass. The gool was feeding on stone. Carefully they climbed and leaped past its tentacles. Without looking back – the beast seemed to suck in even a glance – they went on. The pass would take three days, the people had said. They ran when they could, trying to make up the time they had lost.

No one can come this way again. The gool’s growing too fast, Xantee said.

Unless we kill the mother, Duro said.

She made no answer. This beast was only one of hundreds loose in the world. And she had lost her brother – abandoned him – Lo, who was part of her.

Tears streamed on her face as she ran behind Duro.

I hate you, gool. I hate you, she said.

SIX

Three days and nights of wet and cold. Painful scrambling followed by painful sleep. The view at the end of it was of a magic land: brown slopes, warm in the sun, forested hills falling away. Then a band of jungle, simmering with heat. Beyond that they could not see, but had a sense of plains and water. Clouds like puffballs drifted across the sky.

But look, Xantee said, pointing west. Coldness, like a flattened dome, uncoloured and painful to the eyes, floated on a pillow of grey mist. It was almost beyond the range of sight.

Another gool, Duro said.

It’s the city. It’s some sort of cloud hanging over Belong. I wish we had Hari. We need Hari.

No wishing. What we need is the Dog King. But first we have to rest.

He was right. She was exhausted. She had travelled too hard. She looked at her legs and arms – stained, bruised, stringy, scabbed; and she was the same inside, bruised in her mind.

Sleep for a while. For the afternoon. Otherwise you can’t go on, Duro said.

Nor can you.

We’ve done the first part. Let’s get ready for the second.

And after that the third.

Yes, the third.

He looked away at the cone of coldness and shivered.

They rested not one day but two, on a bank beside a stream flowing from an icy waterfall. They washed, then ate and slept, taking turns to listen for prowling animals. Xantee felt the pain of leaving Lo recede. She must trust the people. They would heal him. And he was free from the danger she and Duro must face. She watched Duro sleep through the second afternoon, turning her eyes from time to time over the forest. Somewhere in that huge land the Dog King had his camp. She had no idea what he would be like. All she could picture was a man with a furry body and the head of a dog, yet he was human like her. She expected him to be savage although, at times, like a father, she imagined he opened his arms to her. Pearl had told him Tarl could not ‘speak’, except with dogs, so she practised what to say: ‘Tarl, I’m Xantee, Hari’s daughter. Help us save Hari, Tarl.’

Duro stood up and stretched and she took her turn at sleeping. He shook her awake as the sun went down and gave her a meal of tubers he had found, baked in the embers of a fire. They broke the night into watches, then started south in the dawn, fresh and ready and fearful. The hills gave way to forested slopes, where trees with silver trunks and canopies of spoon-shaped leaves and tribes of shrieking, berry-eating birds reminded them of the forests by the Inland Sea. Their confidence returned. They did not need the people. The people were stupid to live in the jungle when they could live here.

But help Lo, look after Lo, Xantee whispered, contrite.

The next day they reached the edge of the plateau where the forest ended. The strip of jungle ran below like a wide, black river.

Climbing down took another day. They faced the close-packed, damp-leaved, indifferent trees – their third jungle. Neither wanted to go in. Perhaps alone, they would find their way through – eating berries and grubs, making paste from toadstools to ward off poisonous insects, making a wall with their minds to lock animals out; but there might be some new animal, too strong for them, or animals that hunted in packs – or, or . . . Xantee could not number the dangers. Snakes too quick for their defences, swamps that might suck them down, rivers too dangerous to cross – all the things the people had guided them past. They needed the people.

Call them, Duro said.

Join me. You’ve got to help.

They sent their voices out – their knitted voice. The answer came at once. The people had been waiting.

Tell us what you need.

Each word was like a breath of wind rounded at the edges.

Take us to the Dog King, who will guide us to the city to find the gool, Xantee and Duro said.

Follow us.

Wait, Xantee said. My brother, Lo. He’s with your people on the other side of the mountains. He was hurt. Is he all right?

Our brothers and sisters told us you were coming. The word travelled far ways, through the narrow jungles at the mountains’ end, by the sea coast, but no word of a human. Follow us.

Please –

Xantee, they don’t know, Duro said.

They can find out.

They’re not going to. Their minds don’t work like ours. Trust them. Lo’s all right. They said he would be.

She wanted to believe him, but she had heard Lo’s pain, felt it inside her. She had seen white bone gleam in his leg. She needed a word – and would not get one.

Duro put his arm around her. ‘Xantee,’ he said, speaking aloud for intimacy. ‘Leave him now. Leave him with the people. They’ll cure him. Know it, Xantee. He’s theirs and you’re with me.’

After a while she said – but could not speak aloud: Yes, I know it.

Then come on. One more jungle. Let’s just follow them.

The singing began as soon as they moved. The globe of light enclosed them when night fell. The people left food in their resting places. They found dry ground for them to sleep. A natural bridge made the way across one river. A dugout canoe waited at the next. Passing a swamp at the foot of a cliff, Xantee caught a faint smell of – not swamp water or mud, not something dead . . .

Gool, she said.

Yes, Duro said.

A gool we found before it grew, the people said. We wrapped it in our thoughts and it can’t break out. When the mother dies it will die.

Are there any more?

Many, held in our traps. But those that have grown can’t be stopped, they’re too strong.

Are there any more big ones?

One by the sea coast. One in the pitted place in the western mountains. Others you have seen – two. But there are more in places we can’t go.

How can we stop them? Xantee whispered.

The people did not answer.

Again Xantee and Duro went on – rivers, swamps, howling animals, shrieking birds. They slept and woke and had little idea of day and night.

We’re turning west, Duro said.

Two more sleeps, two marches, the people answered. Then we reach the open forest, where we do not go. After that the dry plains and the city.

Where’s the Dog King?

Somewhere, they said. You will find him.

One more river to cross, one more swamp to wade through. They burned off ticks that fastened on their legs – the people’s singing had no effect on ticks. Then the land began to rise and the ground was firmer. There were fewer trees, with outcrops of grey rock here and there.

We must leave you, the people said.

How do we find him, the Dog King? Xantee said.

Travel in the silver trees, toward the setting sun. That is where he rules. Listen for his dogs, but beware of them. Make yourselves safe where they can’t go.

How –? she began, but the people were gone.

We’ll never see them, she said.

They wouldn’t be the people if we did, Duro said.

The rock outcrops grew more numerous, the jungle thinned. They broke through ferns and creeping vines into wide clearings where animals had dragged their prey. Gnawed bones and skulls lay here and there. Walking was easier but watching, listening, without the people, tired them. By nightfall the jungle lay behind and the silver trees, widely spaced, rustled their leaves in the evening air. They climbed a rock outcrop and found a warm basin near the top. They ate, then slept, taking turns to watch, Duro first.

In the morning Xantee said, Before we go I want to listen.

They’re not here, they’re in the jungle, Duro said.

I don’t mean the people. Remember the voice you heard last summer. I’ve heard it too, only once, saying my name. I want to hear it again.

I think we should leave that voice alone.

Pearl hears it. Hari hears it. Pearl heard it first in a dream, then with Hari out in a boat. Now it speaks whenever they want. She told me just to wait.

Then wait.

Pearl and Hari hear it, Xantee said stubbornly.

Pearl and Hari are better people than us.

You needn’t try, she said, but I’m going to.

She made herself ready, emptied her mind. Perhaps she should take her clothes off and be naked – but she put that thought aside, with Duro watching. Why though, should she care if he saw? He saw her swimming.

Angry, she turned away from him. Now her mind was cluttered and she must empty it again. Deliberately she set about it, and when it was done had no consciousness except a ghostly one of self – Xantee – but not a self able to get in the way.

She had first heard the wind and sea and forests and mountains breathe her name silently inside her diminished self one morning as she walked alone on the beach. It said nothing more, just Xantee, yet those two syllables united her with the thing that spoke – took everything from her, gave everything back, increased in all its cells by its oneness with the voice.

She had told no one, but Hari and Pearl knew, just as she had known when Duro heard. Don’t go chasing after it, Pearl said. Wait and one day you’ll hear it again. But you don’t need to.

Xantee waited on the rock above the forest. I need you now, she thought – and that let in a part of herself, and nothing came, no whisper, no name. Tears ran on her cheeks, and soon she felt Duro’s arm around her.

Go away, she said – but did not want him to. They sat until the sun warmed them through a gap in the trees. Xantee dried her face. I was stupid, she said.

Yes, you were.

I think we need the Dog King, not anything else.

We need more food. We need water.

I know.

You’ll hear it again when you’re not expecting to. It was like that with me. I think I fell over.

You would.

They climbed down from the rock. Water was easy to find; streams ran everywhere. Food was more difficult – berries that must be climbed for, fern roots that must be dug. They found enough, then went on through the trees. Soon they saw deer, too shy to be approached.

The dogs must hunt them, Duro said.

What dogs?

I’ve seen their scat, haven’t you?

Old scat, fungus on it.

It means they hunt here.

They stood and listened but heard only the rustle of wind in the trees and the coughing of a stag far away.

The next day it was the same. They kept on towards the setting sun. There was no dog sign and only the sounds of trees and birds and deer.

I think the Dog King’s just a story, like Barni, Duro said.

No. He’s Hari’s father, Xantee said.

Your gran’daddy.

Shh, Xantee said.

What?

Something touched me.

She meant in her mind: something that asked a question – Who? – and sniffed at her and gave the answer – Meat. She saw a flicker of black in the silver trunks.

Dog, she said.

Small one, Duro said. A scout. He’ll go for the pack.

He had found dogs on his solitary trips over the mountains and knew how they hunted.

He’ll bring them back and follow our scent. We can’t get away.

We don’t want to, Xantee said. I’m going to stop him. We’ll send a message.

She glimpsed the dog again, running through the trees, and sent the command: Stop, dog. Come here.

She heard its yelp of surprise and felt its fear.

I won’t hurt you. Come here.

Slowly it approached – a small, long-eared dog, heavy in its jowls. A dog, she supposed, skilled at following scent and finding prey. It fought against her command, writhing its hindquarters, snarling weakly. Xantee did not stop its advance until it was close enough to touch.

Dog, she said, lie down. Can you speak?

It made no reply, sent no image, but lay as she had told it and kept its teeth bare.

It can’t speak, Duro said. Just tell it what to do.

Xantee was disappointed. If Tarl was able to talk with dogs she had supposed that dogs were able to reply. But perhaps he had a way of reading them. And this one, like all animals, must project images – of place, of food, of water, of prey. She had met with that in farm dogs and wild animals in the forest. Only the gool sent no images.

Dog, she said, tell me about Tarl.

The animal curled its lip back more.

Tell me about the Dog King.

It doesn’t understand, Duro said. Let it go. It’ll bring the others.

But will it bring Tarl?

We’ve got to take that chance.

Duro, if it doesn’t they’ll kill us. We can’t hold off a whole pack. I’m going to let this one go, but hold him and follow him. He’ll lead us to the others. We can feel if Tarl’s there and if he’s not we’ll make this one forget and sneak away.

They’ll scent us. You can’t fool dogs.

Tell me a better way.

Duro shrugged.

So, Xantee said. She told the dog to stand, ordered it to stop snarling, reached out her hand and patted its head.

It hates me, she said. It’s trying to bite me but it can’t. All right, dog, take us to your pack. To the Dog King.

It turned from her and ran, but she slowed it to a walk and followed with Duro at her side.

They kept on till late in the afternoon, the dog in front as if unaware of the humans half a dozen steps behind. Then Duro said, I smell dogs. It’s worse than a swamp.

I can hear them, Xantee said. They’re in those rocks. Stop, dog.

The soft yelping, subdued barks, reminded her of children lined up at the village school. She patted the dog.

Now dog, you’re free. Forget you ever saw me. And forget him – pointing at Duro. Have you forgotten? Good. Now go or you’ll miss whatever it is they’re feeding on.

The dog turned in a circle, as though chasing its tail, looked at them without seeing, then trotted away to the jumble of rocks where the pack was resting. It vanished as though through an open door.

Now, Xantee said, let’s find out if Tarl’s there.

They joined their minds and sent them after the dog, through the opening it had taken, and sensed, with disbelief, the size of the pack in the ring of stones – more than a hundred, more than two hundred. It was impossible to isolate one, except – they found the dog they had followed, but before they could fit themselves into his mind and see what he saw, they felt his blinding inrush of terror, heard him scream . . .