John Racham (9 page)

She
moved away excitedly, picked out a tree, stood close to it, and put her head
back. "Hah!" she shouted, and smacked her hands together. And the
miracle worked for her as before. Lambent lime green light sprang up in the
mighty bole and spread swiftly upward, and then out along interlacing branches
and leaves. And then she screamed, and Query stood for a moment in chill
horror, as down the mighty trunk scuttled a swarm of many-legged things like
giant spiders, bulbous yellow bodies as big as his palm all spotted with
scarlet eye patches, being rustled along on finger thick legs. She screamed
again with all the power of her lungs, and the tree shone brighter as if to
mock her.

VIII

Q
uery
shook himself
free
of his stunned horror and started to run to her. By his ear he heard a sibilant
"
wheep
!" of sound and the leading leggy
horror stopped still, squirted yellow
ichor
, and
there was a black spike there that pinned it struggling to the
bole
. Another "
wheep
!"
and another spider thing stopped short and wriggled on the spike that impaled
it. And now a virtual hail as the men moved in and the women clapped in
ruthless rhythm. Christine seemed paralyzed, staring upward. Query reached
her,

60 took her arm, and then he saw what she was
looking at, and his knees shook, his stomach curdling into an icy lump. High up
there, about thirty feet up, in the crotch of the first branch, squatted an
enormous shuddering mass of bright scarlet with black markings, and even as he
gazed at it in fear it moved and writhed and spread out a snaking mass of long
ropy tentacles, two of them twisting and slithering rapidly down the glowing
tree trunk.

He
shook her arm, his mouth suddenly dry, and she screamed again but stood there
unable to move. He shook her roughly, turned her around, grabbed her arm and
started to run. She stumbled and came a little way, then fetched up short with
a jerk and a frantic screech. He wheeled round and saw that one of the snaking,
ropy tentacles had caught her by the foot. He grabbed her tight and threw his
weight backward, slipping his arms under her armpits and hauling madly. The
snakelike thing curled and held on. She screamed again, kicked frenziedly and
became
suspended,
a human link in a macabre
tug-of-war, wrenching and kicking as the tentacle clung,
worming
its way around and up her leg, more and more.

Evans
came roaring up and past, and flung himself up at the straining tentacle,
missed, and fell back . . . and the second one, looping, caught him by an arm
and started hauling him in and up. Query dug in his heels, braced himself,
leaning back and hauling with every ounce of strength he could get, as that
-death grip hauled back and up, taking Christine's leg high in the air, dragging
him along no matter how he strained. The looping tip was circling her thigh
now, and she flung herself crazily to and fro, her free leg flailing.

Then there came a crack like a rifle shot,
and another, and another. Then the women were there, arms swinging and the
black thong-whips whistling with murderous effect. As each cracking lash bit
into the ropy arms there was a spout of scarlet and ragged chunks of flesh
leaped away. The cut limb thrashed savagely, dragging Christine and Query back
and forth like toys on the end of a thread. But the whistling lashes were
ruthless, hacking and slashing, tearing the tentacle to pieces with each slash.
All at once that powerful limb fell limp and dead, and Query

61
staggered back, with Christine plunging
heavily on top of him to cling and shudder and moan in helpless terror.

"All
rightl
" he panted, hugging her, trying to soothe
her. "It's all right! It's
gonel
"

"My leg!" she
mumbled, struggling in his arms.
"My leg!"

"It's
all right." He held her tight and stared down along her body, and the dead
end of the horror was still there, still gripping her leg, even in death.
"Hold still!" He eased out of her frantic clutch and got hold of the
repulsive thing, struggling to unwind it, to rip it free and throw it away. Around
her leg there was a sullen weal that would be a bad bruise later on, but there
didn't seem to be any other damage. He felt, delicately, and looked up at her,
meeting her staring brown eyes.

"Nothing
broken, Christine.
You're all right."

She
seemed stunned. He went to her head, helped her to sit up, and sat by her to
watch the carnage that was still going on. It was horrible, and yet, in a
strange way, with a beauty all its own, beauty in the pitiless and precise way
these people worked together. Three of the women strove in concert, lashing
away at the ropy tentacle that still held Evans by his arm. The bite of their
lashes spattered him with the red fluid, hacked away gory chunks of living
tissue, until that tentacle, too, snapped and fell limp, depositing Evans in a
heap on the ground.

But other women were working their way in by
slow steps, arms swinging in powerful rhythm. It was like a macabre dance.
Query watched the shoulders swing, their firm breasts lifting and tensing as
they threw weight behind each lash, cutting away, higher and higher, literally
butchering the repulsive thing up there by inches. And the men were busy, too.
They were something to see. Apparently the bottom, or handgrip of the slim
tube they carried, was also a store for the slim, six-inch spikes. Darts fell
into the left hand, which moved instantly to the tube tip to drop them in and
grasp and strain the tube into a quivering arc; and then flick—faster than the
eye could follow—and "pluck" as they struck home in that shuddering,
octopuslike
body up there.

The spider things had all been taken care of.
They were pinned all the way around the massive trunk, and even as he watched,
Query saw one man put his tube
neady

62 under his arm and move in, clapping into
the rhythm for a moment, then seizing and tugging at the spike, freeing it and
the spider body in the one motion, moving on to another, tossing the
many-legged bodies clear, stuffing the spikes into his weapon butt. This done,
the man moved back out and clear, keeping the clapping going while another man
moved in and collected spikes. And Query realized of course these people could
work together. If he could share something of their common feeling, then it was
obvious that they all shared with each other a common awareness. No need for
words of command or drilling. They knew what to do and what everyone else was
doing.
The ultimate in teamwork.

Christine
shivered, and he put his arm about her. "All right now," he said,
feeling the inadequacy of the words and wishing he could touch her mind the way
he could reach and touch these "savages." The play was almost over,
the long whips hissing and slashing close to that obscene body up in the tree.
One of the women drew back, coiled her whip, and stooped to give old Evans a
strong arm, helping him up and assisting him away. And only just in time. Down
came the bloated thing, a bladder of scarlet and black, to hit the ground
soggily
and quiver. And the murderous lashes flicked and
tore at it until there was positively no life left.

Query sensed jubilation, almost exultation,
and not just the victory over a threat. It was more than that. Rejoicing? He
stared at the way the women gathered up the cutoff chunks of tentacles, and at
the men who collected the spider bodies as if they were precious. And when the
warm saliva flooded his mouth he knew—revolted and unbelieving —but he knew.
The head man came across to where he sat hugging Christine. He carried a
dripping chunk of tentacle as thick as an arm and almost a foot long. He
offered it, and Christine took a good look and moaned, turning her head away.
Query had difficulty mastering his stomach as he stretched out his hand and
touched the delicacy to acknowledge it
Then
he pushed
it away and shook his head, hoping to be understood.
It may be a tasty morsel to you, my friend,
but we don't fancy it. You have it!
The head man's expression showed puzzlement, and then a shrug and
finally a big grin. He went away quickly, to

come
back with the original fruit-body Query had put aside when Christine tried her
experiment.
You're
smart
Query thought,
that's much more our speed!
and
he accepted the fruit gratefully. But there
was more in the mental crosscurrent than that.

"Better
eat something, Christine, you need the strength. We're going to move, soon, and
you have to come along now. You're something of a heroine, far as I can
gather."

"A heroine?"
She opened her mouth to ask it, and he plugged it with a nut and
chuckled. The sense of it was quite clear in his mind.

"Right.
You knew where the good food was; you went right to it and called it
out. And you didn't even have a whip!"

"Food?
They are actually eating . . . those
things?"

"Right
again. Just some, though. The rest they are going to carry back to the . . .
village, I guess it must be. Home, anyway. And you're the guest of honor. We
all are. They've never seen anything like us before, but we have proved
ourselves, it seems. Look, your father has made a hit, too. See?" Query
aimed his arm to where Evans sat nearby being fed and obviously admired by two
women. "This place has its attractions as well as its dangers. I doubt if
it would ever get boring . . ."

"I've
been thinking about that," she said, in a curious, little girl voice,
"and I remember something from biology class—it seems a lifetime
ago—something about intestinal bacteria. We all have them, of course, and
without them we would ' starve, because they work to produce all the enzyme
breakdowns we need. That's why one has to be careful not to take too much of an
antibiotic dose when sick.
Because that destroys the
digestive bacteria, too.
And that's what this air must be doing to
us."

"That
sounds logical," he admitted, "but maybe we are replacing our kind
with the local variety while we eat?"

"I
doubt if it's that simple. Stephen
...
I think we are going to die, after all. It's ironic, isn't it? To find
this,
and each other . . . too late!"

He
had nothing to say to that, nothing that would help. In a while the natives
made obvious preparations to be on their way again. Query helped Christine up,
lending an arm to ease some of the weight on her bruised leg. He

64
saw that Evans was still being taken care of. Those women had probably never
seen a fat man with white hair. It was natural for them to be fascinated. And
it was, he supposed, equally natural for Christine to cling to him and to heed
him as a man in a moment of stress like this. The group moved easily now, in
less of
a hurry
, and it was no strain to keep up. It
gave Query time to think. The imminence of death had to be considered in a new
light now. It was nothing to him. He had become resigned to it long ago. But
she was now beginning to accept it, what with the shocks and stresses of this
weird place and the obvious fact that they were not going to be rescued.

And,
as he himself had said, when you're going to die, all bets are off. It was
natural
then, that
she should cling to him, want him,
see their relationship as something more than just the throw of fate. But it
wasn't like that for him. She was a beautiful girl, true, and under that
civilized exterior so recently peeled away she had qualities he liked. But it
was no more than that; no more than affection and sympathy. Person to person,
she was more alien to him than these silent natives gliding through the dark
jungle all around him. He couldn't sense her feelings, her emotions, the way
he could touch these others. And that was something to marvel at as they
trudged along, finding some obscure way in and out through the standing trees,
gradually but steadily making their way uphill.

He
had never thought of himself as psychic in any sense.
Quite
the reverse.
Always he had known extreme difficulty in understanding
other people's motives and values. He could understand words and observe
actions, but when it came to knowing why people did what they did he had always
been stuck with the sense of being alien. Different wavelength, he had called
it. Only that was an explanation that didn't explain anything at all. She,
Christine, had said it was ironic. How little she knew how truly ironic it was.
After a whole lifetime of being odd man out, he now felt at home and akin to an
alien race of jungle savages, who had no right to exist at all according to all
the best authorities. Yet he couldn't blame her for wanting the nearness of
his presence and the comfort of his maleness. And it would have been
unnecessarily cruel to remind her that in any other setting she wouldn't have
had a second thought

65
for him nor
he
for her. In the face of death, he
mused, nothing seems to be very important anymore.

And
now the way really was uphill, a steep climb between the looming walls of a
gorge. Christine began to sway and lean on him heavily. He understood her
fatigue. His own legs were beginning to fail, and his stomach had been gnawing
at him for some time. But he had one advantage denied her and he shared it
now.

"Not
much further, Christine," he muttered, holding her up. "We're almost
home. Not much more to go."

And
it was true. Within minutes the narrow zigzag path opened out onto a flat area,
and there came a slow, scented breeze that was warm but wonderfully refreshing.
Ahead of them a pool shimmered in the rock, fed by a slim waterfall beyond, a
silver ribbon of water that tumbled down the steep side of a cliff pocked with
caves and graced with bushes and creepers. And people came running, old men and
women, youths, toddlers, all in a mental deluge of warm reunion, rejoicing and
eager anticipation of a feast. And this was home, in a sense Query had never
known. He was swamped in it, excited and shaken by the instant acceptance, the
friendliness, the complex crosscurrents of chatter and gossip, the frankness
of the comments on these strangers, these weird ones . . . but all in friendship.

"That water looks inviting."
Christine mumbled.
"Oh, to be clean and cool again!
Help me, Stephen." She had no need to urge him. The returning hunters had
laid down their burdens and were trotting toward it. He saw old Evans being
half carried along. He hugged Christine and they ran together and waded in; it
was wonderful to feel it washing away the aches, the grime and sweat. Warm, it
was, but clean and stimulating. Query felt his spirits rise,
rnost
of his strength coming back, as he wallowed and went
under and luxuriated in it. Beside him, Christine ducked under and came up to
blow and laugh and shake the water from her face.

"I
needed that!" she sighed. "It's wonderful to be clean again. I
suppose it wouldn't do to drink it?"

"Not
here.
Over there, by the fall.
Come on." He took
her hand and they waded across, shoulder deep, to where the silver rope of
water plunged from the rock into the

66
pool
. He stood
under it, let it fall on his face and into his mouth, and drank as if his
insides were sponge. Then she shoved him aside and did the same; and he had
time to look at her and marvel. The short hair clung boyishly to her skull, but
there was nothing boyish about the rest of her as she stood up out of the water
and reveled in the splashing flow. She had a glow,
a sheen
on her skin. She was really beautiful, lovely and desirable—purely primitive,
he thought—and she shook her head, and laughed, and met his eye before he could
shield his thoughts . . . and the rosy color came
instandy
to flood her cheeks. In that instant she knew what he was thinking, and there
was another marvel for him to puzzle over as they joined hands and made their
way out and onto the mossy
bankside
.
Purely primitive.
Body to body, instinct to instinct . . .
and who was he to say there could be anything more than that?

As
if to rebuke him, his stomach knotted into
a
sudden savage twist of pain, so that he bent over and clutched his
belly. In
a
moment she was down with him, her
face
white and strained, holding herself.

"The
water!" she groaned through clenched teeth. "We shouldn't have
...
oh God . . . it's burning me!"

"Caught
all ways," he muttered. "Starve, die of thirst
...
or be eaten alive from the inside.
Nothing we can do. Just bear it!"

Just
when it seemed he had to scream, the spasm passed, leaving him limp and shaken.
She was rocking to and fro, hugging her knees and groaning, shaking her head.
Then, all at once, she fell back, straightened out and arched herself up and
away from the moss in a straining wrench, groaned and then slumped flat,
panting heavily. "Oh, Stephen!" she moaned. "I can't stand
anymore of that. It was hellish!"

"I know. I wish there was something
..."
he looked about desperately,
wondering if his mental need would strike any chord now. Would these people
understand sickness? Would they be able to help? Something was happening.
They were all starting to gather in
a
rough
semicircle around the cave wall, and he got a blurred impression of some kind
of ceremony. Then a native woman came
up
to
him, holding in each hand a gourd-shaped something.

67

He
knew it was something to drink, well meant, helpful. He took one, and the other
. . . and the woman smiled and went away. It
was
a gourd, and full. What's to lose?
he
argued,
and lifted it, tilted it, let the stuff touch his lips. It seemed to evaporate
inside his mouth, straight into the soft tissues, spreading a glow and a tingle
. . . and a blessed relief.

"Here!"
he handed her the other one. "It may be just local brew, or anesthetic—or
plain poison, but it certainly feels good inside."

He
took another sip and the warm goodness spread further, soothed his aches. He
watched her come down from a second and third sip and a
swallow,
saw the color come back to her cheeks and a glow in her eyes.

"Powerful
stuff," she murmured, looking at the gourd with respect. "We'll
probably get high on this!"

"We
have a choice?" he demanded, and she shook her head and tilted the gourd
again. He copied her, and came down feeling light-headed and good.

"Better than gut-rot, anytime.
If this is the way to die, I'll take
it." He laughed at her as if he had said something witty, and she laughed
in turn, scrambling around to sit by him, to put her arm around him and hug him
close. All around them the natives were settling by pairs, completing the
semicircle, facing the cave wall as if about to watch a performance of some
kind. "Curtain up!" he said, fondling her.
"Last
act!"

And
then the clapping started, perfectly in rhythm, to a steady beat, and the
lights came on, spreading swiftly up the
walL
up the
steep slope, rippling and glowing with quiet fire in every imaginable hue and
shade of color, a vast living rainbow. Query held his breath. He felt Christine
stir and sigh, looked aside to see the colored radiance painting her face and
throat and breasts. She turned to him in ecstasy.

"Isn't
it wonderful?
Heavenly beautiful.
Oh, Stephen! To live
here, with beauty like this just for the asking! Such radiance! What lucky
people they are
to
have all this!" She turned back to it,
glorying in the display, dazzled by it. The clapping was augmented now by a
wordless chant that stirred fresh combinations in the orchestral color. She
gasped as if overcome by her feelings. "It's too much!

68

Too
much
lovelinessl
" He glanced away from her
delight to look at the couples around him and saw that they were finding joy in
each other, those who weren't clapping. She saw, too, and turned back to him
with wordless invitation in her eyes, her lips offered, her arms enfolding
him, drawing him down and down.

IX

T
he
wordless
chanttng
, the thudding primitive beat, the incredible
loveliness of that living color display, and the potency of the brew all
conspired together to lift them into an urgent ecstasy, that soared and soared,
again and again, until they were both utterly exhausted, completely drowned and
drained of all tension, only half-conscious, floating in a mist of soft
weariness. The chant-and-clap drummed on, washing over them, and the glorious
rainbow hillside shone down . . . until, all at once, he was aware of
something new, something different, something cool, clear, electric, that
needled through the warm complacency which drugged him. He sat up, peering
stupidly, wondering—and the clap-beat surged up, grew fast and furious—and he
felt a swelling tension that was almost painful.