Midworld (13 page)

“You might have guessed, Jan,” Logan reminded him, “that none of the natives would suggest deliberately hurting anything growing unless they knew you had no chance of success, even with a vine.”

Jaipur made an expansive gesture, grinning a crooked grin out of one side of his face. The other had been paralyzed by an encounter in childhood with a certain spiny plant. “There are many thousands of such pathways, twining and entwining, leading to the Home from every direction. Many are far thicker than a furcot’s body. There are not enough axes in the Home, or enough time in the world to cut them all, could they be so cut.”

Before moving to sharpen yet another ironwood spear Jaipur also showed Cohoma how each cubble had six others supporting it. Cutting one or two without cutting its dozen or more supports would be a waste of time.

“You’d need a tripod rifle to make a start,” Logan observed. “Hell, the undergrowth here is so entangled you’d have to cut down half the forest to make a decent gap between it and the tree.”

Reader passed the group and regaled the two giants with tales of how the Akadi could cross considerable open spaces without any support by forming a living bridge of interlocked bodies. This story of rending alien limbs engendered a desire in both Cohoma and Logan for a little more instruction in the handling of available weaponry. Both had been presented with ironwood spears, plus bone axe and knife. Logan would have preferred a snuffler, but the bazookalike blowguns required time and skill to make. There weren’t enough for all who knew how to use them.

They would have been abashed to know that one reason they had not been offered snufflers was that Born had convinced the chiefs that in a difficult spot, they were more likely to prick themselves on one of the toxic thorns than kill Akadi.

Requests for a more detailed description of the enemy resulted in Born’s displaying an unexpected talent for illustration. Using a white chalklike substance, he drew on a plate of polished black wood. “You must try to strike here,” he instructed them, “between the forelegs, or here between the eyes. Each Akadi,” Born continued, “is about half the size of a man … myself.”

“About the size of a German shepherd,” Cohoma mused.

Born went on. An Akadi had a thick flexible body with no tail; it walked on six thin but very powerful legs, each leg terminating in a single long, curved claw that enabled the Akadi to scurry slothlike along any part of a branch or cubble. The front of the body tapered slightly, ending in double jaws with no neck, surrounded by muscle. The double jaw arrangement fascinated Logan. One set worked up and down in the usual fashion, while the opposing ones moved from left and right. Working in unison they created a biting phalanx which could cut through the toughest wood or bone as neatly as a laser could slice sheet metal.

The teeth set in the upper and lower jaws were triangular and razor-edged, while those on the side were square, serrated on top, and curved slightly backward to shove food into the ever-hungry gullet. Three eyes, spaced across the top of the head, lay just back of the jaws. There were three tentacles, one on either side of the head and another below that were equipped with jagged, tearing suckers on the tips for holding prey. In color the Akadi were a distinctive rusty orange, eyes and legs bright black. Despite the triple oculars their sight was rumored to be poor.

“This is countered somewhat by their sense of smell and of touch,” Born concluded, “which is very good indeed.”

“An eating machine in multiples,” Logan declared quietly. “Very well designed, very efficient.” She shook her head, murmured, “God on a seat, I wouldn’t care to tangle with one of them. And we have to fight thousands.” She looked evenly at Born. “You people really think you can stop something like this armed with a few glorified blowguns and spears?”

“No,” said Born, wiping the polished wood clean with a forearm. “I have things to do now.” He turned to leave.

“There’s no hope for them, no hope at all,” a disgusted Cohoma blurted when Born was out of earshot.

“I’m afraid there’s not much left for us, either, Jan.”

THEY HEARD THE SOUND
while they were resting just outside the first ring of the Home’s pod-laden vines. Initially it was only a soft rustling in the distance, like wind moving through far-off branches. It grew steadily louder, became a hum, a buzzing like a billion bumblebees aswarm at a new nest.

It intensified, swelled, and resolved into a deafening crackling sound neither Cohoma nor Logan would ever be able to forget. The sound of hundreds of tons of organic matter vanishing down innumerable throats.

A familiar form bounded up from a liana below. “Be ready, giants. The Akadi near,” Losting advised them.

Logan’s grip tightened on the shaft of the ironwood spear and she checked to make certain bone axe and knife were still strapped securely to the belt of her rapidly disintegrating shorts, though she intended never to get close enough to one of the carnivores to use either. They would run before that.

Losting moved to go by them. Cohoma gestured at him to pause. “We haven’t seen Born for a couple of days now, Losting. I know he’s been busy. Is he manning another part of the line?”

“Born.” Losting’s face went through several changes of expression ranging from satisfaction to disgust. “You’ve not see Born for some days because he’s been gone for some days.” Losting clearly relished the shock on the faces of the two giants. “He left the Home one night and has neither been seen nor heard from since. It is certain he did not go toward the Akadi. We have had scouts out marking their progress toward the Home. His furcot has vanished with him.” The implication was clear—the hunter had run.

“Born, a coward?” Logan sounded confused. “That doesn’t make sense, Losting. When the rest of you were afraid, he was the only one who would come down to our skimmer.”

“Those who are mad act for reasons of their own, which no man can comprehend,” Losting countered. “Your sky-boat was an unknown quantity, unlike the Akadi, who are known too well. With them, one knows exactly what to expect. Death. Born is a hunter and a solitary person by habit. If the Home dies and the village dies with it, he could survive alone. There is no doubt he is the cleverest among us.” His expression darkened. “But he has not been clever in this, for if there is any village to come back to, he will not be allowed to live among us. The chiefs and the shaman have ordained this already.” He spun. Gripping the vine nearby, he pulled himself up to the branch immediately above to check on the readiness of the defenders there.

“I still don’t believe it,” Logan whispered, turning back to face the forest. “I consider myself a better judge of human nature than that.”

“I told you they’d abandoned their humanity in making concessions to this world,” Cohoma grumbled.

“Oh, come on, Jan! How could they have regressed so much in so short a time? The earliest colony ships only go back a few hundred years.” She quieted. “I could swear I had that Born figured.”

“There’s another possibility, you know, Kimi,” Cohoma ventured after a pause. He eyed her appraisingly. “Even someone like Losting, who doesn’t like him, admits he’s a smart boy. Maybe … maybe he’s figuring on us bailing him out.”

Logan looked at her companion curiously. “How do you mean?”

“Well, think a minute,” he said, warming to the subject. “He’s out there somewhere”—he gestured back through the palisade of sharpened stakes toward the other end of the village—“waiting for us to join him if the battle goes as badly as everyone expects. We circle clear as soon as the end is in sight. He joins us, we make it to the station, he gets that burning curiosity of his satisfied plus he saves his life.”

“That would imply,” she countered vociferously, “that he cares nothing for his Home or his friends. I don’t believe that. I think the tie is as strong, if not stronger, in Born than in any of these folk. I could understand such an attitude in some soldierof-fortune, the kind of gun for hire you might meet in the back streets of Drallar or LaLa or Repler, but not in Born.”

Cohoma grinned. “I think you see a little too much of the noble savage in our stunted cousins. Our friend Born is just resourceful enough to make the break, just iconoclastic enough to—”

The first line of Akadi broke through the dense wall of green and all conversation died. The column measured seven or eight Akadi across and extended into the forest until it disappeared in verdure. They were packed body to body, so close that the front resembled a single monstrous snake, all woolly orange fur, clawed legs, weaving tentacles. Filtered green light shone on orbs like ebony cabochons, dark wells of unsapient malignance.

Tiny explosive pops sounded as the ring of carefully positioned hunters let loose with a dozen tank seeds at once. The Akadi crumpled, tentacles and clawed legs digging in blind fury at the pricking thorns, chewing at themselves. Even before the frantic flailings of legs and tentacles ceased, the first row had been shoved aside and tumbled and bounced off branches and epiphytes into the depths below.

A metropolis of scavengers was going to form beneath this place, Cohoma reflected.

While the first dozen hunters reloaded, the second group fired and more Akadi died. Then the first fired, and the second reloaded. Such elementary tactics were only temporarily effective. It was like fighting the sea, wave upon wave, a living red-orange ocean of suckers and teeth moving forward as though squeezed from a tube.

As the lesser hunters slowed, the firing of the snufflers grew more erratic, less deadly. Now men and women armed with long lances of ironwood moved forward to stab and cut at the furry bodies. Others holding axes and clubs stood ready around the spearmen, prepared to fend off any Akadi that tried to escape the spears on either side, above or below.

The blood of the Akadi, Logan noted with the eye of a trained observer, was a dark dirty green, like thick pea soup with streaks of brown in it. The spears were more effective than she would have thought. Each time one of them moved, an Akadi died, clutching briefly with tentacles and claws until the lance was drawn free.

Logan had to admire the efforts of the tribe, primitive or not. While the hunters high in the branches used their snufflers to pick off as many of the attackers as possible, the forward rank of the Akadi army, reduced in strength, ran into the wall of spears, were punctured and cut, and plunged in a steady rain of corpses to a green grave.

The spirited defense would have worked but for one overriding factor. There was an endless number of Akadi. The furry killers perished by the dozens, the hundreds. But the river of death never stopped, never slowed or rested, but bored steadily onward.

Eventually there would be a pause while a couple of the hunters waited for a fresh supply of thorns and tank seeds to be brought up to them. Now and then one of the spearmen would grow too tired to strike any longer and would have to be replaced by a reserve.

Then the Akadi would gain another few centimeters, would press the line of ironwood back a little further. Nor were casualties absent among the defending people. A man or woman might tire and slip on the never-too-certain footing of cubble and branch and would have to be helped back by companions. Another few centimeters lost, if not the defender.

Given an endless supply of jacari thorns and tank seeds, and inhuman reserves of strength, Cohoma estimated the tribe could continue to fight the Akadi with minimal losses. But they couldn’t prevent the omnivores from gaining ground. Once a centimeter of footing was lost to the invaders, it could not be regained. That living torrent would not be forced back.

But the line held, held with the determination of churchmen. Those in the front rank who finally collapsed from exhaustion continued to be replaced. Yet, there were only so many fighters in the village, and now the replacements were growing fatigued as well. Occasionally an Akadi would slip under a faltering spear to grab a leg or arm with steely tentacles. Then an axeman would have to hurry to cut the monster away, for once having a grip they would let go only in death.

Steadily the little knot of humans was forced backward, back toward the tree-vines themselves which formed the natural and last line of defense for the Home-tree. Once through the pods, the Akadi would begin devouring the body of the tree itself. Then it would be only a matter of minutes before irreparable damage was done.

Logan knew what would happen. The villagers would throw everything into a final futile effort to push the Akadi back. For a moment, heads, and arms would rise above the writhing tentacles. Then all—men, women, children—would be engulfed by the unthinking mass, leaving the tree to perish despite their sacrifice.

The fighting raged continuously. It was not as noisy as a war between men would have been, but neither was it silent. Along the line of spearmen, men and women shouted encouragement to each other, defiance at their dog-sized tormentors, while the Akadi pressed blindly forward, chattering like a million castanets.

Slowly, grudgingly, the people gave way to the pressure of the untiring Akadi. The army was three or four meters from the first winding pod-vine when shouts traveled up and down the line of defenders. Logan recognized the voices of the shaman and the chiefs Sand and Joyla, that of Losting, and several other hunters. A sudden flurry of thorns from the snufflers held the Akadi for a moment while the line parted and fell to the sides. But the army did not pursue, so the living stream moved on, eating as it went. They began to gnaw at the nourishing bark of the tree, eager for the living wood beneath, as others rushed on to the first vines.

Cohoma felt a hand at his arm, saw one of the hunters pulling at him. The man’s tone was urgent. He followed him into higher branches, Logan with them. Even as they ran, she turned to gaze over her shoulder as a shout rose behind them. She saw the big nuts dropping, to land and burst among the slithering line of Akadi. As they burst, a fine powder gushed forth. It shone iridescent in the light of the receding sun. The Akadi slowed, stopped, began to paw among themselves with legs and thrashing tentacles. They tumbled over and over on each other, fell and rolled on their backs, beating against one another, against the wood of the Home, in a sudden, inexplicable frenzy.