I asked Harros why he was not present in the datasphere; he replied he had not asked me my business, and I was forced to let it lie. Nor would he divulge how he knew I was not listed there either.
He was not pleased to find that Timash was also included in our party, but to his credit, Harros kept his feelings to himself, nor did he query me as regarded my plans, despite the fact that they now perforce included him. I was not, under the present circumstances, planning to divulge to him my own destination or my origin: He was still a Nuum, and might buy his way back into their good graces with my scalp. On the other hand, we were bound together at least until we reached some spot of civilization where he might be released with some chance to remain anonymous. After that, his fugitive life was his own. I explained that to him the first night as we made camp, parking our stolen Nuum groundcar beneath a spreading forest giant.
He had gathered wood for a fire, almost apologetically eager to pull his weight.
“I wouldn’t mind sticking with you for a while. The Nuum have a long reach and a longer memory.”
We had passed out of the jungle an hour ago. I stared out at the endless grasses of the great plain for a long time, more to keep Harros off-guard than to formulate my answer, which I already knew. The sun-painted sky glowed a deep vermilion more intense than the sunsets I remembered. The Library had told me the atmosphere had changed in almost a million years; it scattered light in a different way. It was very beautiful.
“Timash and I have a lot to see. We’ll make sure you’re all right before we leave you anywhere.”
That was the plan.
* * *
I am not by natural inclination a talkative man, which served me well on the long days that followed, one from another onto the horizon. Timash was not happy that I had allowed another to join us, and a Nuum at that. I could hardly blame him for his taciturnity under the circumstances. Harros tried to bridge the gap, but he was rebuffed with silence. To have taken sides would have been divisive, so I kept my counsel. Either they would learn to get along, or not, and in any event we were not planning to remain a trio for long.
At first we had hoped to appropriate a Nuum flyer that could have covered the distance to distant Dure in a day—even if we detoured long enough to drop Harros in another town. This idea was stillborn: The flyer was available, but none of us could pilot the thing. Such practical but exotic information was outside the Librarian’s programming and unavailable from the research station’s database.
Ground transportation was our other option, offering more choices and controls that any one of us could have mastered with ease. One of our first tasks was removing as many identifying marks as possible.
I call it a groundcar, because that was how Harros referred to it, but in fact it was a marvelous invention that traveled through the air—albeit only two feet off the ground. In the trees, we had actually used retractable treads, but in the open we glided along with no more noise than a strong breeze. The controls were in the front; behind was a space somewhat larger than a Conestoga wagon, in which the three of us could sleep, if somewhat uncomfortably.
Ironically, and yet fortunately, the low vibration of the groundcar had an unaccountable and almost irresistible somnolent effect upon Timash. Try as he might, and fascinated by each passing mile as he might be, within a couple of hours of setting forth for the day he was dozing in his chair. (And perhaps each passing mile became less fascinating when it resembled nothing so much as the hundred miles behind and all those visible ahead.) Throughout the day he would doze fitfully, waking at unpredictable intervals and falling asleep again. The poor youth was highly embarrassed, but nearly helpless to resist. As penance, he took the night watches, leaving Harros and me with the sleeping space. (We had decided it was too dangerous to move at night; the catalog of nocturnal beasts was too long and too hideous to be repeated here.) At the time I thought this quirk of lower primate biology convenient and not a little humorous; had I only known then how much depended upon it!
In all of my civilized life I had never traversed such wilderness. Although the groundcar carried us several dozen miles each day (any faster and it blew up so much dust as to be undriveable), at dawn on the fourth day we still had seen no evidence of human habitation other than a few stray abandoned dwellings. Built around ancient watering places, these had all fallen victim to weather and wandering animals, crumbling until in truth I could not say for certain that the builders had been human after all. In this world of wonders, I was slowly learning to put my preconceptions behind me.
Thanks to the Nuum's unintentional generosity, we did not lack for supplies, although their rations looked and tasted as though they might have come straight from my own time. Again I was struck by how little the passage of nearly a million years had changed the basic materials and devices with which Man sought to better his place in the universe. Unconscious of the irony, my companions nonetheless swiftly grew as tired of our unvarying fare as I, and desired greatly to sample the wild game we passed on our way. These animals showed little fear of us, and supplementing our diet would have proven simple had not the conservationists forbidden our taking any of the ray weapons with us. Limited as we were to a couple of Nuum staffs, the beasts had little reason to run.
Little reason to run from us, at any rate.
Harros was poring over the computerized charts while I steered our course; Timash was enjoying one of his frequent naps.
“We should be coming up on an old river delta very soon. If we follow the river south, we may find a town.”
I nodded. “The land seems to drop away just ahead.” I snuck a peek at what Harros was viewing. “Looks like an old sea bottom gone dry.”
We reached the lip of the basin a few minutes later, and I slowed to a crawl. As I inched out into thin air, the soft earth gave way and we tilted forward at a dangerous angle. Harros and I were thrown into the controls, and the sleeping Timash tipped out of his chair, crashing heavily into my own. We slid forward several yards onto level ground again before the car could brake itself. A muffled whine came from below us that had not been there before.
Throwing the gears into neutral, I turned to see if Timash was all right, but one look was enough to tell me it was best not to ask. He was levering himself off the floor using the back of my chair, which groaned alarmingly, his teeth bared in anger.
“If that was somebody’s idea of a joke, it wasn’t funny.”
I exchanged glances with Harros and spoke very carefully.
“It wasn’t on purpose; we were going down a hill and something gave way. And I think something may be wrong with the car.”
Harros seized the opportunity to volunteer to go outside, inching his way past Timash. I followed his example, and Timash, once he had calmed down, followed me.
The car had settled down onto the ground—mud really, from the embankment all the way across to a line of trees some yards before us. A river or stream, then, and one that had recently flooded. Water seeped up between the car and the mud.
“It looks like mud has gotten caught up in the fans underneath the car,” Harros said.
“What do we do?” Timash asked him. There were few motorized vehicles where he came from. I was in no better position. Harros sighed.
“I’m no mechanic, but it seems to me the best thing to do is float the car and let it dry out. But I don’t think we want to try to drive over this mud until the fans are clear; we’ll just muck everything up worse.”
Unable to offer a more sensible suggestion, Timash and I agreed. Harros clambered back into the car to start the engines again, explaining that the process might take some little time, so perhaps we would be more comfortable outside. Given my gorilla friend’s recent burst of temper, I made no argument. We stepped away from the car as it geared up.
Laboring with a noise I had not heard before, the car rose to half my height, spitting out such quantities of mud from its underside that we had to retreat hurriedly, lest we be covered with sludg
e. Harros experimented with moving forward, but quickly gave it up as a lost cause. Waving to us, he sat back to wait.
We headed for the distant line of trees, by virtue of there being nothing else of even remote interest upon the horizon. Looking back, boredom would have been a welcome alternative…
The trees were set in a line too straight to have been natural, almost as though they had been intended as a windbreak. They had been there a long time; they towered above us and their boles were crowded about with lesser shrubs and piled brush, but through it all I thought I saw a glint of faraway metal. I moved faster, urging Timash along. Breasting the bushes, I saw much more clearly.
Across a narrow river sat a settlement, grayish metal walls surrounding squat buildings, some surmounted with flat-topped towers. Sunlight glanced off odd points on the walls, as if they had once been bright and shining, but now only bits of the original coating remained. My heart sank with the fear that this was nothing more than one of the many ruined cities of the south, then rose again with apprehension at what such a city might hold. In this new world, flyers more hostile than bats inhabited the high towers, and crawlers more deadly than spiders wove their cobwebs in the cellars of the long-deserted.
Timash, naturally, was all for going exploring.
I vetoed the idea immediately, but he insisted. “We don’t even know that there isn’t anybody living there. Maybe we could drop Harros off and get on with why we’re really out here.”
I was loath to let on how much that idea appealed to me. I did not dislike Harros—in truth I had not formed a definite opinion of him, save that he was less onerous a traveling companion than I had feared—but he was an impediment to my quest to find Hana Wen. Moreover, as long as he was with us, I hesitated to remove the Librarian from my pocket, and the old man’s counsel I missed much.
As I thought of him I reached down to retrieve the small sphere, but an abrupt, ugly sound from across the water stopped me.
“What was that?” Timash had heard it, too. He would have to have been deaf not to. “It sounded like somebody dragging a big sack of rocks on the ground.”
“A very big sack,” I agreed uneasily. “Let’s get back to Harros.”
Our intentions were sound, but the best intentions do not guarantee the best results. Before we could move, something moved within the city opposite us, something large enough that we could see it over the wall. All at once the Thing lifted its slate-colored head and screamed at the sky with a hundred teeth half the height of a man. Its shoulders topped the wall. I needed no explanation from Timash to identify it.
“A thunder lizard,” he breathed.
Had he been there, the Librarian could have told us that thunder lizards have extremely poor eyesight, but good hearing and a bloodhound’s sense of smell. Its head swiveled in our direction, and before our horrified eyes it jumped over the city wall, raised its fearsome head to the skies and roared its triumph to its prey: us.
Chapter 25
We Are Pursued
A hot, wet blast of wind from the creature’s mouth, redolent of mud, dead fish, and even more foul odors to which I still dare not attribute a name all but choked us, but the thunder lizard’s own cries were so loud as to cover our frenzied coughing, else it would have been upon us in another instant and this memoir would not be in your hands.
In plain view at last, it stood upright on two massively-muscled legs ending in yard-long claws tearing ferociously at the mud. Its upper arms, puny in comparison, appeared nonetheless strong enough to rend a bear—and its teeth would make a Burmese tiger run and hide. Twice the size of an elephant on its hind legs, its scales rippling rainbows in the sun, it was a nightmare come to roaring life.
Recovering his voice, Timash leaned close to me.
“Uncle Balu says they have very good ears and noses but very bad eyesight. I don’t think it can see us in these bushes. Thank God we’re downwind from it.”
Indeed, although it had leaped over the wall giving every intention that it was about to swoop down on us, it now simply stood swiveling its head back and forth, its chest rising and falling like a giant bellows.
“You’re right,” I whispered back carefully, watching the monster to see if it reacted to my voice. “I don’t think it knows we’re here. It must use that roar to panic its prey into making a run for it.” And judging from what we had seen of its celerity on foot, that would doubtless be the last move any prey would ever make.
“Uncle Balu also says they are very stupid.”
I had an absurd notion of three or four thunder lizards under a circus tent while a man with a whip tried to teach them to jump through hoops.
“I have an idea,” my friend continued. I gestured for him to tell me his idea quickly, because I honestly had none. He outlined it in a few sentences: It was foolhardy, extremely dangerous, and all in all better than remaining where we were until the giant lizard decided to cross the river.
We parted, moving carefully in opposite directions under cover of the trees—this was the “safe” part of the plan. So intent was I upon not making a sudden noise that I was forced to devote my entire attention to the ground before me; I had none to spend on the lizard. If it made a move, I would only have my ears to warn me. Two creatures out of their times playing cat and mouse by hearing alone. While I suppose it leveled the playing field, I doubt seriously that the lizard was any more interested in the philosophical ramifications of our respective situations than was I.
A sudden shriek brought me out of my self-absorption. The plan was for Timash and me to separate by about two hundred yards, start screaming simultaneously, then run like the devil back toward Harros and the groundcar. Whichever one the lizard pursued, the other would shout louder to draw its attention. If it was as stupid as Balu had claimed, we might confuse it enough to allow both of us to escape—if Harros had the groundcar ready.
But Timash had screamed before we agreed—and the creature was moving in his direction—fast. I choked back a curse against romantic bandy-legged youth and churned my legs as fast as they would go.
I broke through the bushes and ran into the water, splashing and shouting and waving my arms. For a moment I feared the thing would not turn—then it did turn and I knew fear of an entirely different kind. It leaped into the river and charged me like an ocean liner overtaking a sailboat.
I clambered back onto the bank, panting hard, feeling its hot breath already at my back. As I broke through the brush, I heard another scream and a mighty splash: In trying to change its direction, the lizard had lost its footing on the slippery riverbed and fallen in. Its head went down and came up again, spewing water and mud. A stunned fish landed at my feet. I didn’t wait to see how the monster fared; I put my head down and ran.
Timash not being built for sprinting, he was still in sight when I emerged on the other side of the trees. I could hear the beast behind me thrashing about in anger, and those sounds lent my feet all the swiftness I could use, heedless of the sudden ache in my side.
I ran for the car, but was still many yards short of my goal when it rose from the ground with a gurgling growl and proceeded upriver away from me! Stopping involuntarily, I watched aghast as my only hope of escape, escaped—but then there was the thunder lizard again, shedding water from its bath and loping after the car!
I felt a rush of shame for my less-than-charitable feelings for our comrade Harros: His sacrifice was saving our lives. The car was not only noisy, but slow, and the hell-spawned lizard was gaining literally in leaps and bounds. No doubt existed in my mind but that this prehistoric behemoth would tear the metal car apart like an origami sculpture, leaving its occupant only a red smear to be licked up at leisure. Yet through it all, chest heaving and ribs aching, I could do nothing. The two ends of history would soon meet before my helpless eyes.
The lizard pounced as the car sputtered and whined, Harros desperately jerking the controls about in an effort to veer away—an effort only half-successful, yet fully enoug
h. The car spun on its axis and the lizard missed, half-burying itself once more, but this time not in the river, but in an ocean of soft mud. As in the tar pits of my own home time and place, the more it struggled the more it became ensnared. Its cloud-searing roars masked the sounds of Timash’s approach.
“There’s not enough mud there to drown it,” he said hopelessly.
“No, but it might be enough to allow Harros to get the car away.”
Our hope was quickly dashed: The car had run its last race. With a loud bang that startled even the thunder lizard, it settled into the mud. Harros leaped out the opposite side before it hit the ground, running, managing somehow to stay afoot until he could get a safe distance away. He needn’t have bothered; the dimwitted dinosaur was so busy tearing the earth to bits in its frenzy to reach the car it hadn’t even noticed him.
Abruptly it found its footing, reared over our transport—and fell on it. Inside something sparked—and the ensuing explosion scattered thunder lizard steaks for a hundred yards. When the smoke cleared, the decapitated monster lay across the shattered remnants of its final prey.
Harros was stunned but unhurt, as the force had hurled him head over heels onto the marshy turf. His front was covered with black mud, his back with grass and water-stains. We reached him at a run as he rose up on his elbows and looked back the way he had come.
“Good god,” he muttered, staring at the carnage. “Good god.”
The only survivor of the explosion was my staff—the damned thing was apparently indestructible. It did, however, require a long rinse in the river before I felt comfortable touching it again (and Harros made sure he bathed upriver of my cleaning).
After our respective ablutions were accomplished, we three stood across the river from the walled city, watching its silent ramparts as the sun marched inexorably toward the point where our decision must be made.
The Stolen Future Box Set Page 18
