Bame had already approached the eminence on the western slope of which Omis lay in his shelter. He was following the old tracks, and had to walk about fifteen steps past the cover, because Omis himself first had gone into the passageway and only later decided to rest on the nearside of the barbed wall. So, as soon as Bame passed him by, Omis could crawl out of his shelter and sneak up behind him.
Here Omis resumed thinking. After all, he still had only a bow and the arrows on his back, and he wanted to avoid killing. Omis quickly examined his options once more. Having gotten close to Bame, should he press the arrow to his throat and say “Drop your weapon”? What if Bame refused to do so? Then should he actually stab the arrow in his throat, as into that BOUC-1…? No, that would be the same as killing.
Meanwhile, Bame had already bypassed his shelter and approached the top of the hill. Omis could sneak up on him only here, among the plants, where the sand softened the sound of footsteps. There, in the corridor, he wouldn’t find a place to hide. It would also be difficult to do this on the other side of the thorny bush. While Omis was deliberately lagging behind his…neighbor, where would he find him amidst the thicket, then?
He carefully pushed aside the cloaking branches, intending to think through the rest of the plan as he proceeded. He soon crawled out from under the log, and by then he had a plan ready. He would pick up one of the thick sticks scattered in the sand and hit Bame on his head. He already knew how a collision of a solid object with a head worked—he had survived it the day before yesterday morning.
Omis crawled along the sand. He soon stumbled upon a relatively large, dry piece of wood about a meter long that looked quite solid. Although there were several knots on this zigzagged club, he yet considered that they wouldn’t interfere with his intention.
Once on top of the elevation, Bame slowed his steps. He ceased tracking the footprints in the sand and peered into the vegetation. He passed the top of the hill and headed straight for the entrance to the passage through the thorny bushes. Approaching one of the relatively thick trees, he stopped to observe his surroundings one more time. Omis, hidden behind a small bush, lay motionless. His shirt and shorts, originally white, now perfectly matched the spot.
Omis waited for Bame to go around the plant. After a couple of seconds, the wanderer took a few steps and walked around thet hick trunk on his left. Now he could not even look back, because the tree almost completely blocked that direction for him, though it also covered him from the rear. Omis decided that he would not have a better chance and quickly got up. He walked cautiously, often looking at his feet, trying to step only on the sand. Although the sound of the surf hardly reached here, it still drowned out the sound of his quiet footsteps.
When he’d approached the tree, Bame had already finished examining the vicinity and resumed his march, having moved a few steps away from the plant. Omis cast a glance at the stick in his hands and turned it so that the remnants of twigs sticking out of it didn’t absorb the blow.
Bame had taken a few more steps when he noticed from the corner of his eye that the large trunk of a plant was swinging behind him. At first he thought it was due to the wind, but in the next instant he realized the falsity of this idea. First, where was the wind? Second, how could it rock a tree of such thickness?
He wanted to pivot and see what was really happening, but instead, the next moment he felt a severe pain in the back of his head. His mind had clearly missed something that had taken place between these two points in time. He reached to touch the sore spot with his hand, but couldn’t manage do it, because something was holding his hands behind him.
At that moment he understood that his eyes were closed. He began to open them but immediately closed them again. Daylight snapped into his eyes like an electrical impulse and sharply intensified his headache. Nevertheless, he managed to notice that the dry leaves and sand were in a strange proximity to his face. The traveler realized that he was lying down.
“Have you woken up? Then tell me, why you did not save Em?”he heard a voice speak sharply.
This question made Bame even forget about his severe condition. He lifted his eyelids again and this time withstood the blinding light. Omis’s narrow eyes were looking at him warily.
“Did you see?” He mumbled. “Then why did not you help him yourself?”
“I was squeezed under a log and if I would have screamed from there, I would only have distracted Em from the danger. But if you had shot the animal, he would definitely have survived. Why did you want him dead?”
Bame frowned. His expression indicated that he wouldn’t say anything else. Seeing this, Omis uttered uncertainly, “I do not know why you two were here, or why you left the colony at such an important moment. Why did you let Em die? Based on this, I also do not know how dangerous you are to me or to the other colonists. Therefore, if you do not explain this situation to me intelligibly, I would be forced to kill you.”
In response to these words, Bame’s eyes widened and he exclaimed, “Why are you going to kill me?”
“I have already explained that,” Omis told him, and looked down as though he wanted to make sure that he still held the maser in his hands.
Bame twitched; he wondered once again why he couldn’t move his hands, but the next moment he finally realized that they were tied behind his back. A quick glance to his legs informed him that they were free. He raised his head and saw that Omis was looking at him expectantly, and it seemed to Bame that now the maser stared directly at his face. He swallowed his saliva and spoke, “I did not save him because he also wanted to kill someone else.”
Hearing this, Omis thought for a while, then shook his head, as if denying something, and said, “I still do not understand.”
Bame hesitated a little and then explained, “We… he wanted to kill Ama and… um, you. We… we wanted to balance the number of girls and guys, we needed to secure a female and offspring for ourselves.”
Omis fell into thought, although he felt that being extremely tired, hungry, and barely keeping awake, he almost couldn’t govern his thoughts. Omis fixed his gaze on Bame’s pale face and saw the sweat rolling on his forehead.
“But why did you come here to the ocean? Why did you think we would be here?” Omis continued his interrogation.
“We got lost—I think you did, too? Where are Mafkona and Ama?”
While pondering an answer Omis suddenly felt that the last question of his prisoner contained some danger. He failed to grasp what it was, so he decided just to stop the conversation.
“Get up,” he ordered. “We are leaving. I do not want to talk anymore.”
Obeying the order, Bame tried indeed to get up, but couldn’t cope with that because of his bound hands. He looked up at Omis, who simply stepped two steps back from him. Since he had no choice, Bame first managed to kneel, and then with difficulty he got to his feet. After that, they headed for the corridor. Bame walked ahead with tied hands, while Omis, loaded with two masers, a backpack, a bow and a quiver, followed him.
Chapter 86
In a certain section of its channel, the River Quiet imperceptibly corrected its course to the south. In contrast to it, inertia, insisting that the raft should conserve its motion vector, directed it towards the completely unknown left bank. A lot of time had passed, and finally the eight logs fastened to each other lodged into the plants growing on that shore.
Ama’s and Mafkona’s vestibular apparatuses immediately informed their owners that they’d ceased to move relative to the center of gravity of Neia. Despite their immense fatigue, the travelers nevertheless responded to this message, although far from right away.
The guy slipped out of his sleep and tried to learn what had happened and where they were. The light of the Milky Way allowed him, albeit vaguely, to see that they were stuck in the branches or roots of some bush. As far as he had discerned, this plant grew both on land and in water. In the next instant, his ears caught a rustling coming somewhere from behind the bush.
Ama reached for Mafkona’s shoulder and shook it. The youth then took the maser and, still half asleep, fired an impulse in the direction of the sound. Something wheezed in response, but it didn’t seem to stop.
The traveler, at last, finally shook off his dream and turned on the flashlight. In the following instant, to his horror, he saw a broad and muscular beast, among the plants that towered over him, on a thick branch at a distance of no more than three meters. The creature was about to jump down onto the raft.
“Oh!”Ama barely heard Mafkona’s short exclamation, sounding stuck in her own throat.
The animal looked like the LC-2 that Ama had driven away with a stone two days ago, but this one was much larger. In the electric light, its single eye gleamed like a yellow-green ribbon. This time Ama shot exactly at this tape. The beast, already evaluating the distance to the raft, suddenly seemed to freeze. Then it began to lean to the left. The young man fired again. As a result, the creature first fell on its side, then slipped between the thick twigs, pushed through the thin ones with its weight, and fell into the river with a splash.
“Let us get out of here. I will push,” Ama said tensely, and reached out to a pole lying in the middle of the raft. With his other hand, he handed the maser to Mafkona: “Take it and shoot. I think something else is approaching us.”
Until this moment, the girl was half-lying, leaning on her elbows and watching the event unfolding in front of her eyes. Hearing Ama’s words, she bent forward and extended her left hand to take up the weapon. Then she sat up abruptly to take an advantageous position for shooting.
Her sharp movement rocked the raft and Mafkona, trying to maintain her balance, involuntarily waved her hands. Because of this, the gun slipped out of her hand and fell with its butt end onto a short bough sticking out of the log. The stump first bent down like a spring, and then elastically straightened. With this action, it pushed the maser straight toward the water. An instant later the weapon touched the surface of the river and disappeared beneath it with a faint splash. At the sight of this, Mafkona lost her sense of reality.
Still not trusting her eyes she turned her head and heard that Ama was right. From above, from inside the bush, another animal was approaching the raft. Or more than one. The bustle and rustle among the branches and leaves grew louder and clearer. At last, in the starlight, she discerned the silhouettes of animals inside the plant. The predators were advancing as decisively as if they too had flashlights.
Mafkona turned her head back to the river, as if hoping that, given the extreme situation of the travelers, it would violate the law of physics and push something denser than water to the surface. Instead, the girl only saw the flickering galaxy, which had seemingly decided to swim in the middle of the night, until no one could see it.
Ama didn’t understand why Mafkona lingered and didn’t shoot. He cast a glance at the girl and at first remained in the dark about her behavior, but in the following instant it seemed to him that something was wrong. The dim picture before his eyes lacked some important detail. Another split second and he understood the reason for his confusion: Mafkona had nothing in her hands; the weapon had disappeared. It almost paralyzed Ama’s heart, but it turned out that he had yet to experience real horror. In the next second he witnessed a truly terrifying event—the girl had rolled over the edge of the raft and slipped into the water!
The stunned young man just froze, trying to grasp what had happened, but when the raft swung, he remembered about the impending threat. Ama turned his head and saw that one of the beasts already stood on the logs and had bent its trunk for an attack. The explorer did not even have time for fear. Instead, a thought flashed in his head about the ax, which lay right there, next to the backpack. With lightning speed he estimated the existing possibilities and concluded that first, the predators wouldn’t allow him to take it; second, that the tool was suited to an unexpected attack, not to his present situation.
The young man used another means, which he already had in his hands. He lunged with the pole like a spear, aiming at the head of the nearest predator and hoping to hit it in the eye. This counterattack clearly confused the beast. It wheezed angrily, but even so it delayed its attack. Instead, the animal looked back, apparently trying to figure out where its fellow was, and when it would join the assault on this strange two-legged creature.
Once underwater, Mafkona began hastily working her limbs, although without understanding what she was hoping for. To her disappointment, the girl discovered that the faint starlight couldn’t penetrate the depths, and untouched darkness reigned there. It was impossible to see anything; she could have been swimming with her eyes closed, and nothing would have changed. All the more, she’d plunged into such depths for the first time. Due to helplessness and chagrin, Mafkona almost cried, although she had already advanced quite far beneath the surface.
She had no other choice, and no time for emotions, so with the help of the composure absorbed from the robots throughout her life, the girl overcame this short spell of weakness and regained her ability to think. The scout decided to do the only thing she really could do now. She planned to move down until her lungs ran out of air. The girl had a ghostly hope that maybe she would catch up with the maser, because it was lighter than her and would sink more slowly. However, she immediately realized the failure of this consideration—a small pebble also weighed less than she did, but that didn’t prevent it from drowning quickly.
Mafkona, working her limbs, diligently swam down, still hoping to come across the maser or its strap. At some point, something rang in her ears. At first the girl was unpleasantly surprised, but then she realized that this was somehow connected with her diving to ever greater depths. Meanwhile, the oxygen in her lungs was beginning to run out.
At that moment, something slid along Mafkona’s right forearm. The girl flinched in shock, but this thing also suddenly stopped its contact. The traveler felt fear; she remembered that some little water predator had once bitten Ama. She also recalled that because of these creatures, even the BRLC-1 didn’t dare to live in the Quiet. At least, the day before yesterday they’d explained the phenomenon in such a way. Maybe these small but sharp-toothed predators attacked collectively, and it was lethal for any animal.
Here her hand touched something again. The girl immediately felt a crazy heartbeat and pulled her hand back as if from hot iron. But almost right away she realized that this thing was soft and friable, and thought that it might be silt. If so, then she had reached the bottom. Fortunately for her, now that she took it in this way, the river here, near the shore, appeared not particularly deep.
Mafkona, having strained all her will, frantically locking her lips, tried to ignore the desperate begging of her body for fresh air. Moreover, the recent collision with some creature, due to shock, seemed to have added oxygen to the air in her lungs. The girl was already crawling along the sticky, viscous and cold riverbed, forgetting about the predators.
Suddenly, for the third time, she felt the touch again, as if an aquatic plant had twisted around her left palm. The girl seemed to feel a familiar current impulse. What if this was not a plant at all, but a creature living in the depths, still unknown to the colonists? Maybe out of the unexpectedness, maybe just because she wanted to breathe, she released a few air bubbles from her mouth.
Her hand slipped over the thing by inertia and the girl felt a familiar sensation. An instant later she almost screamed with joy right underwater. She realized that she was touching the maser’s strap. The girl grabbed it and, turning up, pushed off with both her legs from the oozy bottom of the river.
Mafkona immediately felt as if someone had slashed a knife across her thigh, but now she could easily ignore that. The girl worked hard with all four limbs and rushed to the surface, for air, and to help Ama.
Surfacing next to the raft, Mafkona, simultaneously taking a deep breath, shook her weapon to rid it of water. Then, in the light of the galaxy, which after the underwater darkness was al
most equal to daylight, she quickly figured out the situation. She saw that Ama, pole in hand, was standing at one end of the raft. On the other side, there were two beasts on the logs. One of them had already bent its hind legs and was about to attack.
The girl canceled its plan. First, she turned on the flashlight; with her left hand she grabbed the nearest log and with her other hand directed a beam of light into the eyes of the predators. This confused the animals and while they were bewildered she released a burst of microwave pulses. This rain of electromagnetic energy poured both on these creatures and on the bushes above them.
Something warm splashed over Mafkona’s face and she noticed that both predators were reeling. This time the girl spared no energy, and the next volley, much better aimed, followed the first one.
Hearing the splashing water, Ama cast a transient glance to that side and saw Mafkona. Despite knowing it was incredibly good, the youth didn’t yet understand what had happened. He clearly remembered that Mafkona, when she jumped into the water, had nothing in her hands. Now the girl was shooting the maser.
The young man refused to think about it just then, and returned his attention to the predators approaching him. It was at this moment that a flashlight beam blinded them, and they hesitated. After that, the predators staggered one by one, and then, also in turn, they fell on the raft. Electromagnetic quanta are invisible and inaudible, but the scout, of course, understood what had happened.
Meanwhile, Mafkona first laid the weapon on the raft, and then placed both her elbows there. Then the girl lifted her left leg and threw it onto the log. Her companion took her leg with one hand and put the other under her belt. After that, he pulled her to him, helping the girl climb onto their already tilted vessel.
Space for Evolution Page 42
