The Zanthodon MEGAPACK ™: The Complete 5-Book Series (35 page)

I groaned; sooner or later, someone must deal with the folk of the caverns. It was just that, right then, I didn’t quite feel up to it. But there was nobody else around to do the job but me.

During our excursion into the cavern city, the listless ones had stayed well out of our way. Although it must have scared the wits out of them to see people actually fighting and killing the precious Gorpaks, they were too timid and too lacking in any of the powers of will or decision to oppose us or even get in our path. Nor did they come to the aid of the Gorpaks. They just ran away and hid, although many of them tried to go about their ordinary routines and tasks as if the battle weren’t roaring and rampaging all around them.

I got to my feet and went over to where they huddled. They eyed me shyly; I looked them over and saw that they were not so much fearful as perplexed. Fear was something they had lived with all their lives—fear of the Gorpaks, fear of the whips, fear of the Sluagghs. I could understand that fear; by now it was bred into them. They woke with it, slept with it, ate it with lunch, copulated (joylessly) with it ever at their side, and died with it near at hand.

But perplexity was something new to their experience. Their lives had been things of orderly routine up until now. Everything they did they had been told to do. They had never felt doubt, for every factor in their miserable, pallid lives was laid out and prescribed by the Gorpaks. And now the Gorpaks were dead, all of them.

They didn’t know what to do. By invading the sanctity of the subterranean realm of the Sluagghs, by decimating the Gorpaks, we had turned their entire orderly little world upside down and shaken it briskly. For such as the zombie-like cavern folk, the universe itself had been transformed into a new and mysterious system, whose laws and regulations they did not comprehend.

I tried explaining to them what had occurred, but I could see from their faces that it was no good. Too many shocks, too many new things, and they would go into catatonia or something.

In the end, I did it the simple way. The way I knew they would understand.

“Attention!” I barked in my best parade-ground voice. “The Gorpaks have sinned against the Lords. The Lords have decreed the destruction of the Gorpaks. The Lords have decreed that we, the Ones-Who-Cover-Their-Bodies-and-Bear-Weapons, shall replace the Gorpaks. We are your masters now, and you shall obey us in all things. Is that understood?”

One of the males took it upon himself to nod tentatively. Since all I was getting from the rest of the lot was glaze-eyed, slack-jawed mystification, I singled this particular fellow out of the crowd.

“You!” I snapped, pointing. “What are you called?”

“The Gorpaks always called me Hoom, master,” he said timidly.

I nodded importantly. “Very well, Hoom. From this moment you are appointed to the following tasks. You will see to it that all of the rest of your people are instructed in what I have just told you about the sin of the Gorpaks, their destruction, and ourselves being appointed by the Lords to be your new masters. Do you understand?”

He nodded hesitantly. “I
think
so, master.”

“Very good! Now, here are further orders for you all. They are to be obeyed to the letter, even when we, your masters, are not present to enforce them. Food is to be prepared as food has always been prepared, and gathered as food has always been gathered. Only from now on it is your people, Hoom, who shall see to the preparing of the meals and their distribution, and the tending of the fires. For the Gorpaks no longer are here to perform these tasks. And we, your new masters, will be away for some time on business of the Lords.”

I thought for a minute, then added:

“From those storerooms where the clothing of the Gorpaks is kept, you and your people will fashion new garments for yourselves. With these garments, you will cover your loins, even as your masters cover theirs. This rule is to include your mates as well as yourselves. This is a particular sign of the favor you now enjoy under your new masters, and a sign that you have won favor in the eyes of the Lords—”

He blanched and his lips trembled. And I suddenly realized that, in the peculiar parlance of the cavern city, the favor of the Lords is to permit such as Hoom to supply them the nutriment of their life blood. Hastily, I covered myself.

“As another sign of the favor of the Lords, you and all of your people are permanently excused from serving the Lords at the Feastings,” I proclaimed.

Well, it would have done your heart good to have seen their faces. Cowed and broken in spirit as they were, these men were still men and the women still women. Eyes brightened in disbelief, and bowed shoulders straightened a little. I saw one mother clutch her young daughter to her and—actually, although tremulously—
smile
.

“The Lords have gone away for a long time. They will still be gone many, many wakes and sleeps after you and your people have died of old age, and your children have grown to adulthood. In fact, the Lords will never return again.”

That seemed to clinch it. Hoom stood taller than I had yet seen one of the cavern people stand, and there was something in his eyes I had never before seen.

“It is…true, master, what you say?” he whispered—and instantly cringed, anticipating that I would strike him for daring to doubt the truth of my words.

Instead, I smiled. And looked him straight in the eye.

“It is true, Hoom. I swear it by the Lords themselves. They have all gone away to a far, far place. And from that far place they will never, never return. All of this city they entrust to you and your people, through us, your new masters. But we are soon going away ourselves, and you and those whom you select to give the orders must now tend to the needs of the city without recourse to your masters. Go, now, and tell your people what I have said.”

And he went, slowly and hesitantly, but with his back straight and his head up, followed by the others, who cast us timid backward glances, whispering among themselves, still not quite able to believe the miracle of their freedom.

I felt very tired.

I also felt like crying.

CHAPTER 24

A TIMELY INTERRUPTION

As Xask and Fumio led Darya through the brush, the jungle girl was thinking furiously to herself. To be so briefly reunited with her friend, Eric Carstairs, for whom certain strange feelings were burgeoning within her breast—feelings she could not quite put a name to—and, for an even briefer span of time, to be united again with her mighty sire and her fellow countrymen was too cruel to be endured without protest and revolt.

There seemed little that the savage girl could do to fight her captors. While Xask was small and slender and no fighting man from the look of his smooth face and puny limbs, Fumio was a mighty warrior and possessed twice the strength of her slim, lithe body. But Darya was coldly determined not to yield supinely to her present circumstances. The problem was—what could she do to circumvent them?

I have said it before but I will repeat it once again: the women of the Cro-Magnon tribes were no soft, pampered playthings. Many of them could run and hunt and fight nearly as well as a man. Life in this primitive subterranean world was hard and cruel; danger lay to every side in the form of savage beasts, hostile tribes, and nature herself, with all her storms and famines, earthquakes and pestilences.

To survive in so inhospitable an environment, even the children must acquire strength, agility, cool nerves and fighting skills. All of these faculties Darya possessed in abundance, as well as intelligence and patience and courage.

They had not bothered to bind her wrists, for that would take time and Xask believed—quite correctly—that already the Cro-Magnon warriors were in full pursuit. The little man wished above all else to put as much distance between himself and the men of Thandar as he could.

But although unbound, it would have been difficult for the Stone Age girl to break free and escape. Fumio kept a tight grasp on her upper arm, yanking her along whenever she pretended to stumble, which she did in order to slow their progress; and, in the thick brush, she could not have gotten far without being caught.

What was needed, Darya perceived, was something in the nature of a timely interruption. Plodding along through the heavy underbrush, the jungle girl resolved to be patient and alert and wait for something to happen.

Because something usually did.…

* * * *

From their vantage high on the ledge, halfway up the mountain, One-Eye and his captive, the unhappy Murg, had watched the battle against the Gorpaks and the victory of the warriors of the two tribes. The Apeman of Kor, like all of his kind, was not extraordinarily intelligent, but he did possess a strong and healthy sense of survival.

Forcing Murg to descend before him—although the scrawny Sotharian squawked and squealed and shuddered from his very first glance into the giddy, vertiginous depths below—One-Eye clambered down the side of the cliff and sought refuge in the jungle. He slew an uld and gnawed hungrily on its raw flesh, not daring to make a fire, as the smoke might give him away to those he deemed his enemies. Murg was too frightened to eat and cowered fearfully, covertly eyeing the huge Neanderthal as he grunted and slobbered over his hasty meal.

If asked, One-Eye could hardly have explained, even to himself, why he had bothered taking the whimpering Sotharian captive. It seemed to be something to do. Perhaps, a bully to his heart’s core, the Apeman did not feel quite himself unless he had someone smaller and weaker to push and slap around. At any rate, he was now saddled with the little man, and must put up with his presence. At any time, of course, he could easily have wrung Murg’s bony neck and tossed the corpse into a thicket. But, for the time, One-Eye permitted him to live.

Finishing his meal, One-Eye wiped his greasy mouth on his equally greasy hand, kicked Murg to his feet, and plowed off into the jungle. The hulking Drugar had no particular plan in mind; he simply intended to survive. He could have hoped to find his way back to Kor, but the cave kingdom was far away over the misty waters of the Sogar-Jad, and all of the dugout canoes wherewith the Drugars had come to this shore were long since swamped and lost.

One-Eye was a born hunter, and woodcraft was his middle name. He moved through the aisles of the jungle like a huge, shaggy ghost, making little noise. His only desire was to avoid the panjani warriors, and reach the coast of the underground sea. While he cherished notions of revenge against Eric Carstairs, among others, survival was uppermost in his mind.

Quite suddenly, without the slightest warning, the jungle gave way to a smooth, grassy glade. And One-Eye, plunging through the bushes, froze. For he had burst upon an amazing scene—

* * * *

The timely interruption Darya was waiting for came erelong. The simple philosophy of the jungle girl proved correct and true: here in Zanthodon, things do, indeed, happen.

What happened was that Xask ran into a spiderweb.

In itself, this is neither unusual nor noteworthy. What made this particular web different from the others in Xask’s experience was its
size
.

The web stretched like a sticky curtain across the mouth of a jungle aisle. Here, all was dark and dim, for interwoven boughs above blocked the light of day with thick foliage. Thus Xask did not see the spiderweb before running into it, and once he found himself in it, he yielded to amazement.

For the strands which composed the web were of the thickness of his little finger. And the imagination of Xask faltered before picturing the hugeness of the spider that had spun it.…

This was exactly the sort of thing Darya had patiently been awaiting. The moment she saw the web she knew exactly what it was. It was the web of a vathrib—an albino spider, swollen to immense size. Such were not uncommonly found in her native country far down the coast of the sea from here.

Caught in the adhesive strands, Xask kicked and struggled, which only served to entangle him more tightly. He shrilled to Fumio for assistance. The big man hesitated, then stepped forward—

Darya kicked his feet out from under him
.

As he fell floundering in the bushes, the jungle girl darted away. Snatching the Professor by the arm, propelling him ahead of her, she sprinted across the clearing swift as a gazelle. Then she glided between the close-set boles of two trees, vanishing into the jungle gloom as if the darkness had swallowed her up. The Professor stumbled along, halfblind, through the blackness. Deftly, the Princess of Thandar guided him around obstacles unseen to him.

Behind them, they could hear Fumio cursing wildly as he scrambled to his feet, and the shrill yelps of Xask as he kicked and struggled in the web. Then there came to the ears of the two in their flight a screech of pure terror.

Darya smiled briefly to herself. In her far-off land, the vathrib grow to the size of human infants. That is not very large or intimidating, to be sure: but it is very large for a spider. And the vathrib is a ghastly thing to look upon, its swollen belly thick with sickly white fur, exuding a fetid stench, its drooling mandibles clacking greedily, fierce little mad eyes staring, soulless, filled with mindless hunger.

It was the custom of the vathrib of the jungle country down the coast to hide in the leafy boughs above its web until an uld or some other small edible beast blundered into the sticky trap.

Then the oversized albino spider leisurely clambered down its strand to feed.

This must be what had happened in the clearing they left behind them, thought Darya, with cold amusement. And it served Xask and Fumio right!

* * * *

After a time, she paused to let the old scientist catch his breath, and to orient herself. Darya intended to circle around through the jungle, reentering the encampment before the cliffs. As she possessed that uncanny sense of direction which nature has bequeathed to her children in Zanthodon, this did not seem difficult to her.

Alas, it proved more difficult than she had expected. And the reason for this was that when she had plunged into the jungle upon escaping from the clutches of Fumio, she had not taken the time to notice in which direction she was going. Soon she found herself thoroughly lost.

So dense was the jungle at this part of it that Darya could not even estimate her location. She might be fifty yards from the clearing before the cliffs, or half a mile away. The girl strained her ears, but could hear nothing that denoted the presence of men. She did not dare call out, hoping that her voice might reach the ears of the warriors of the two tribes, who were surely searching the woods for her and the old man, since her call might reach other ears. And those other ears might well be those of Xask and Fumio, as for all she knew thay may have somehow survived the attack of the giant spider.

She resolved to go forward warily, tracing a broad, circular route, while employing every keen sense to detect the nearness of men or beasts. If she could hear someone or something as it approached, she and Professor Potter could climb a tree and lie concealed on a branch above the jungle aisles, until the stranger revealed himself as either enemy or friend.

Before long her sensitive ears did indeed detect the approach of an unknown jungle denizen. Perhaps many, for from the amount of noise there seemed to be several of them. She could hear as dry twigs snapped under their feet, as they went rustling through the fallen leaves, as they crept through the bushes.

Touching the Professor’s arm to get his attention, she pointed to a great tree. Then she sprang up, seized one of the lower boughs, and swung herself into the foliage with the nimble agility of a young acrobat. Eyeing the tree limbs distrustfully, Professor Potter groaned to himself. He ached in every limb and muscle, and even in his hardy youth he had never been very good at climbing trees.