Maeve (8 page)

“You'll stop it again?”

“I'll stop it again.”

“They'll begin to be afraid?”

“I think so. I don't know. Depends on their leaders. But frightened men often do stupid things. You'll have to take care.”

“At least that thing will eat no more trees.”

Chapter VIII

Nine days later, wisps of smoke drifted in slow circles over the harvester as it lay in its own debris like a squashed bug. Armored men climbed down from the crawler and formed a circle, facing the sharp-cut perimeter of the forest, energy rifles held at ready.

Aleytys swung down to the closest limb and leaned out to nod at Gwynnor. He jumped up and ran off, Ghastay following close behind. When they were safely out of sight, she pulled herself back up until she was hidden by thick patches of leaves.

As soon as the eerie tune died, the leader of the guards barked a command and led his men at a trot into the forest. Hidden above their heads, Aleytys watched them tramp past, moving with a heavy efficiency she hadn't expected from the city bred. A few meters into the green gloom they broke into twos. Swinging energy rifles through fan-shaped spaces, the pairs trotted off in the beginnings of concentric circles with the collapsed harvester as their common center.

“Time to shift out of here, Lee.” Shadith's purple eyes snapped with excitement. “They've got heat-seekers mounted on those guns. Thank god, they haven't thought to look over their heads.”

Aleytys slid down the trunk again until she was hanging from the lowest limb. Then she dropped to the forest floor and ran lightly on the camouflaged path that led to the cludair village.

Perched in an offshoot of the vineway, Gwynnor watched her until the last bright gleam of her hair vanished. Ghastay pulled him around and jerked a double-jointed thumb after the thudding guards. “Come on. I want to watch the hunters.”

Gwynnor hesitated. “Aleytys told us to get back to the village.”

“We will,” Ghastay said impatiently. He tugged at Gwynnor's arm. “Come on, friend. We're missing all the fun.”

Uneasy but intrigued, the plainsboy followed the forest boy down the nearest tree and through the gloom under the canopy, the two of them sliding through brush like a mottled green-brown shadow in company with a silvery ghost.

They flitted through the brush and caught up with two guards. The men in the silvery, flexible armor, alien, like mobile units of the dead machine, ran lightly, absurdly lightly, with power-assisted legs to a faint sweet hum of machine noise—man-machines under the silent, aloof trees. One rested a gun lightly on a forearm, ready to fire at the slightest sign of life while the other watched the readout of the heat-seeker, fanning the directional instrument in a wide arc before him. Neither one bothered to examine the forest above eye level.

Without warning, the net dropped.

Tough, sticky strands wound around arms and legs as the guards struck out against the billowing folds of the net. Greenish-brown shadows dropped immediately after, leathery palms glistening with cuyen oil, applied to keep the sticky substance on the net off their hands. One of the energy rifles flared briefly. A cludair grunted and clutched at his side where the edge of the beam had sheared away his harness and bitten into muscle. Before the gun could fire again, another hunter kicked it from the guard's hand.

The four cludair still standing caught the net and tugged at it. In minutes, the armored figures were wound in its sticky strands like flies in a spider's web. As soon as the leader worked a polished pole through the web, three of the hunters shouldered the pole and trotted their burden deeper into the forest. The fourth helped the wounded cludair hobble toward the village.

Gwynnor watched both groups disappear. “What are they going to do with the guards?”

“Come see.” With a ghost of a laugh, Ghastay ran after the burdened hunters.

Five minutes later they watched the hunters drop the hardening lump on the ground with a careless thump that jarred the helpless guards till their teeth ached. Grimly, the leader rubbed the aromatic oil on his knife. Ignoring the frantic twitches that were the only movements the imprisoned men could make, he cut their heads free from the net, pulling the knife across the face-plates with a shrill nerverasping screech until they were clean. Then the knife poked and prodded at the plates until the point suddenly tripped the latch. The guards drank in gulps of the hot, humid air, then glared at the mottled face of the native bending over them.

He stepped back, gestured briefly. A second hunter brought a green glass phial from the pouch at his belt and pulled the rolled leather stopper out. He thrust a finger deep into the phial and brought it out covered with a viscous amber liquid. Carelessly, with brisk economy of motion, he wisped his finger across a guard's face, leaving behind a trail of sticky sweetness. He repeated the action with the second.

In the brush, Ghastay clapped a hand over his mouth, smothering a slight fizzing of laughter.

“Why'd they do that?” Gwynnor whispered.

Ghastay pulled his hand down. “That dead tree the Company men are up against. You see?”

“So?”

“It's an ant tree. Get it?”

Gwynnor stifled a gasp, shoving his fist against his mouth. “Cwech arteith!” he muttered as soon as he had control of his speech. “The hatchlings have just cracked shell if they're the same as ours.”

Ghastay nodded, his young face turned grim. “The Company men want to eat the forest; well, turn and turn is fair. Let the forest eat them.”

A second pair of guards dangled, turning and twisting as hundreds of needlebirds darted at them in swooping dives. Only small crimson and blue bundles of feathers, their darting rushes sent the mecho-bodies at the end of the nooses swinging in erratic, sickening circles. The birds couldn't get at them but the faces inside the helmets had a greenish tinge that owed nothing to the verdant light filtering down through the canopy of leaves.

Ghastay and Gwynnor crept very carefully past the tree with the strange fruit. Very carefully, to avoid attracting the attention of the glittering swarm.

Safely past the danger, Gwynnor peered through bush leaves, his movement crushing the delicate fuzz on the leaves, loosing a stiffling cloud of oil droplets around his head. Ghastay jerked him away impatiently. “If you call out a swarm of needlebirds. I'm going somewhere else.”

He ripped a handful of purple leaves from a small vine crawling along the ground at ankle height. “Take this. Wipe the oil off your head.” He glanced around apprehensively. “Those damn birds make welts the size of your thumb. That oil pulls them in for miles.”

“Sorry about that.” Gwynnor rubbed the leaves over his upper body, wrinkling his nose at the fetid stench rising around him. “This is better?”

Ghastay grinned. “You ever been swarmed by needlebirds, you'd rather sit behind a bull weywuks with diarrhea.”

As they trotted on to intercept the third pair of guards and their ambushers, Gwynnor jerked a thumb back over his shoulder. “Will the birds get inside the armor?”

Ghastay shrugged without breaking stride. “Probably not, but those kiminixye will be pig-sick before they're cut down.”

Loops flicked out silently and dropped over nervously swivelling heads. Strong arms lifted briefly, then relaxed, swinging the startled guards into the center of a plant with leaves wider and taller than a man. Tentacles tough as wire cable snapped out and whipped around and around the struggling starmen. As Gwynnor and Ghastay slipped up to the edge of the clearing, a blue-edged ray of killing light sliced briefly through the leaves, burning a part of the plant away.

The thick serum in the succulent leaves quenched small flames that died into a smouldering stench while the wiry tentacles closed tighter, knocking the long gun out of the guard's straining hand.

Gwynnor stared as the remaining leaves began folding with a terrible, slow inevitability over the metal figures. “What's that?”

“Kalskals. A good thing to keep away from. Look.” He pointed at the knobbly white threads raying out from the base of the plant. They were visible over the short velvety grass only because they were twitching wildly as the plant struggled to deal with the metal covering its prey. At rest, they would be well-hidden by the grass. “Whenever you see those red-veined leaves, you look down fast. Those false roots carry enough shocking force to knock you out so you'd wake up down the kalskals' throat half-digested.”

Gwynnor shuddered. “You think it can eat through that armor?”

“One way or another. Come on. And watch out where you're stepping.”

The sticky net swooped down, tangling the last pair of guards in an awkward knot of arms and legs. A grinning adolescent hunter plunged in a controlled fall down the rope, checking himself with proud skill, one hand opening and closing so that he came to a smooth stop, kicking the gun loose before the guard could fire it.

The knot was secured and the pole thrust through. Then the cludair trotted off, pole slung between two shoulders, the other two running guard beside them.

Gwynnor watched. As Ghastay started to follow, he stopped him. “What are they going to do with those?”

Impatiently, Ghastay pulled free. “They go back to the machine. Hurry up. We have to play the music when they throw them back like inedible fish.”

By the clearing where the machine huddled, still sending up occasional spurts of pungent blue smoke the cludair, with swift efficiency, knotted ropes to the hardened web and pulled the pole free. As Gwynnor watched they swarmed up the tree, the ropes jerking behind them.

The webbed knot, with the two guards forced in contorted embrace by the hardened exudation, rose rapidly as the hunters hauled on the ropes. Then it began swinging in an increasing arc until, at the end of the swing, the cludair let go of the ropes. The knot flew into the clearing, landing next to the machine with a heavy metallic clang.

Several startled offworlders dived down behind the bulk of the tracks, then, after a while, emerged cautiously, wincing as the eerie music frazzled already jangled nerves. As they discovered the guards inside the glassy webbing, their startled exclamations cut through the thread of sound. Ghastay's dark-reddish eyes caught Gwynnor's. His hairy, mobile brows dipped down then up in humorous appreciation.

Aleytys lifted her hands and inspected the cludair's side. The skin was a grayish-silver where it was denuded of hair by the burn. She patted the young men on the shoulder then looked up to see Tipylexne watching her.

“That's it?”

He nodded briefly. “There was only the one who got hurt.”

“You got all the guards?”

“Yes. I don't think they'll send after us again.”

Aleytys frowned. “No. But now they know the danger comes from the trees. We've lost that advantage.” She rubbed her thumb beside her nose. “I don't know enough. I don't know how they'll react to this.”

Tipylexne shrugged. “You've bought us some more time, fire sister.”

She stood up, staggering a little as her knees locked briefly. “Time. Damn. Knowledge is what I need.”

His face twisted in a thoughtful scowl, Tipylexne flexed his double-jointed thumbs. “We left two of them alive. Want us to bring them in for you?”

Before she could answer, Gwynnor and Ghastay slid into the circle of hometrees. The two boys were immediately surrounded by children clamoring to hear what had happened. The noisy group swept away out of sight.

“We've brought change.” Aleytys touched Tipylexne's shoulder, feeling the warm plush of his fur, the swift throb of life under his skin. “Do you mind?”

“All things change, flower to seed to plant to flower.” He laid his own long-fingered hand over hers. His body temperature was higher than hers and the warmth was comforting. He went on, eyes on the vaulting arch where the boys had disappeared. “Hybrids grow and sports come as they of the earth play with destinies of plants. If the sport is strong and life-giving, it survives. If not, it dies. If this change is good, it will last.”

Aleytys smiled wearily. “You're a wise man, my friend. Thanks.” She stepped away from him, running hands through her loose hair. “I think I want a bath.”

He shuddered. “Water all over. Even thinking of it. Hah!”

With a chuckle, she moved off. “I like it, Tipylexne. Remember, I haven't fur to groom like yours.”

“You miss a quiet joy, fire sister. Sitting of an evening, my wives grooming me, their slim fingers hunting through the fur on my back and head. Ahhhh …” He shivered with pleasure.

She laughed. “To each kind his own kind of joy. The council meets tonight?”

“Yes.” His ugly, friendly face puckered. “After your bath.”

She laughed again. “I'll see you then, my friend.” Still chuckling, she vanished under the trees.

Chapter IX

A tree cat somewhere to the south howled in frustration, the wavering shriek jerking Aleytys out of her uneasy sleep. The darkness inside the guest house was stygian, stifling, quickening an urge to get outside. She pulled a tunic over her head and stumbled out of the swaying tree house.

Below, a faint red spark marked the coals of the community fire, the glow thickening the blackness under the trees. Cautiously, she edged along the broad limb, stepped over the poison-tipped wirebush and climbed swiftly down the trunk, feet moving from loop to loop of laddervine with the blind eyes of habit.

A thread of music broke the silence. She followed the sound and found Gwynnor sitting on a grassy tongue of earth thrust out from the woods, forcing the stream to swing wide at this point. Here the sky was almost clear of leaves and a scattering of stars was visible. He lay on his back, listening to the song of the water and staring hungrily at the open patch of sky. The flute lay on his stomach and his hands were clasped behind his head.