Midworld

by Alan Dean Foster

  “Can it be,” he said, the incredulity plain in his voice, “that on your world there is nothing that grows?”

  “No,” Logan corrected, “there’s much that grows, but nothing we live in, as you do. But we use our growing things, as your people do.”

  “Use? I don’t understand, Kimilogan.”

  She settled herself back against a branch. “Some plants we eat the fruit of, others we make into foods we can eat, some we still, but rarely, use in the building of our homes. Some we use for medicinal purposes, as you did the tesshanda. We use the forest world much as you do.”

  “I still do not understand,” Born said. “We do not use the forest. We are a part of the forest, the world. We are part of a cycle that cannot be broken. We no more use the forest than the forest uses us.” Cohoma murmured something unintelligible at that.

  “Your people serve this tree,” Logan explained slowly, “even if you don’t realize it. You’re its servants, in a sense.”

  “Servants.” Born thought hard, spread his hands helplessly. “What is a servant?”

  “Someone who performs a service at the bidding of another,” she explained.

  Madder and madder! Truly the giants had spells of idiocy, Born mused. “We do not serve the tree, the Home. The Home serves us.”

  Logan eyed him a little sadly, then she looked over at Cohoma. “They don’t understand, all right. Probably wouldn’t want to.

  “And why not?” Cohoma added. “They seem perfectly happy with the arrangement.”

  “It ties them down mentally, though,” she countered. “With shelter and basic food provided by nature, there’s neither reason nor motivation to regain the knowledge they’ve lost. We’ll have trouble trying to re-educate them. Tell me, Born,” she asked gently, turning to him as he laid out a meal of fruit, nuts, and dried grazer meat, “would you ever consider leaving your tree?”

  Born was so shocked he stood momentarily frozen. “Leave the Home? You mean, forever? Not to come back?” She nodded.

  That confirmed the giants’ madness. Why would anyone even think of leaving the Home? Here was shelter, food, companionship, security and protection from the unpredictable jungle outside. Away from the Home lay only uncertainty and eventual death.

  Then he understood the reason, and it explained many of the giants’ strange words. “I see,” he told them as gently as possible. “I truly did not understand before. It is evident that you have no Home of your own.”

  “We have homes,” Cohoma shot back. “Mine would overwhelm you, Born. It does what I tell it to, offers food when I wish it, and I come and go from it as I please.”

  “You do not have to care for it?”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  Logan’s chuckle cut him off. “He’s got you there, Jan.”

  Cohoma looked upset. “Not at all. I can leave anytime I want, for as long as I want, without worrying about it. But these people can’t.”

  “That is not a Home, then,” Born argued. “One cares for a Home, and one’s Home cares for its own.”

  “Well, it’s my home,” Cohoma grumbled, sampling a spiral nut from the cluster spread before him. It offered a faint flavor of pepper and celery. He took a second.

  “I see,” Born replied. He was too polite to add what he knew. Though there had been no talk of material construction, of artificial abodes, Born knew that the giants’ homes were not living, but were dead things, rotten with indifference. For all their wonders, Born would not live in a dead thing, dead like the axe. You could not emfol a dead thing.

  Thoughts of axes and the waning daylight reminded him that the hunters and gatherers would soon return. He would present the giants to them then and perhaps someone would finally venture to say that the hunter Born was a bit more daring and brave and worthy than the average hunter.

  As he sat and ate and composed what he would say, he noticed toes below the leafleather doorway. He got to his feet, shoved the partition aside. Din jerked back, startled, but Born was too preoccupied with the anticipation of his own triumph to be angry. Instead, he invited the boy in to eat, putting a foot in the face of the cub Muf when it tried to follow. The cub whimpered, but stayed outside. Born found some food for the youth and the orphan consumed it eagerly.

  So much for his audience: an orphan child and two giants afflicted with inherent insanities. He bit angrily into a tough slab of meat.

  “A number of colony transports,” Cohoma explained to the wary but politely attentive audience gathered around the evening Home fire, “were reported lost, sometimes in a natural disaster, sometimes through a careless shift in records by an incompetent clerk.” He swallowed, aware he was treading on quasireligious grounds. “It seems likely,” he continued, stressing the word likely, “that you people are descended from the survivors of one such ship and are trapped here. Though considering the inimical nature of this world I find it incredible that any of the misplaced colonists were able to survive after the initial supplies were exhausted.” He sat down again. “That’s our best guess, anyway.”

  No one seated around the evening blaze said anything. Cohoma and Logan eyed their shorter, better armed cousins a mite apprehensively.

  “All this,” Chief Sand finally responded slowly, “may be as you say.” Both giants relaxed visibly. “But while we have not the benefit of your peculiar knowledge, we have explanations of our own for our existence.”

  He glanced over at Reader and nodded. The shaman rose. He was clad in his ceremonial raiment of spotted gildver fur, brilliant brown and red with orange stripes, and the feathered headdress wrought from moltings drifted down from the Upper Hell. And the axe, of course, which he brandished prominently as he rose. Swinging it like a conductor’s baton, he told the story of how the world happened.

  “In the beginning there was the seed,” Reader intoned solemnly. The people listened reverently. They had heard the legend a thousand times, yet it still commanded their attention. “And not a very big seed at that,” the shaman continued. “One day the thought of water descended, and the seed took root in the wood of emfol.” That word again, Logan mused. “It grew. Its trunk became strong and tall. Whereupon it put out many branches. Some of these formed the Pillars which dominate the world. Others changed and became the two hells which envelop the world. Then buds appeared, buds uncounted, blooming. We are the offspring of one such bud, the furcots another, the peeper that lies still in the hyphae yet another. The seed prospers, the world prospers, we prosper.”

  Cohoma held his knees up and together. “If that’s so, and if you believe we come from a planet different from this one, how does all that fit into your universe?”

  “The branches of the seed tree spread far,” Reader replied. There were appreciative murmurs from the circle.

  “What if one of your branches was transplanted to another part of this tree?”

  “It would die. Each blossom knows its place on its branch.”

  “Then you can understand our situation,” Cohoma went on. “The same is true with us. If we don’t return to our particular branch—or seed, or home, or station—we will surely die, too. Won’t you help us? We would do as much for you.”

  Logan and Cohoma did their best to appear indifferent while the villagers discussed the situation among themselves. Someone threw another rotted section of log onto the fire. It blazed higher, tossing off angry sparks, slim smoke trails rising lazily to curl skyward around the edges of the leafleather canopy. Warm rain dripped down through the smoke.

  Sand, Joyla, and Reader conferred in whispers. Finally, Sand raised a hand and the muttering subsided.

  “We will help you return to your branch station, your Home,” he announced in a strong voice that sounded as if it came from a distant loudspeaker and not that thin frame. “If it is possible.”

  Born held his place in the inner circle and stared groundward so his smile would not be visible to the chief or to Reader or to any of his fellows. He could hardly wait for their response
when they found out how far away this precious station of the visitors actually was.

  No one laughed when Logan told them.

  “Such a journey is unthought of,” Sand announced when Logan had concluded. “No, impossible, impossible. I cannot direct anyone to accompany you, cannot.”

  “But didn’t I make it clear?” Logan said pleadingly, scrambling to her feet and gazing anxiously around at the silent brown faces. “If we don’t get back to our station we’ll … we’ll wither, wither and die. We’ll—”

  The chief cut her off with a calming hand. “I said I could not direct anyone to accompany you. This is so. I would not order any hunter to undertake such a journey, but if one wished to go with you …”

  “This is foolish talk,” the gatherer Dandone commented from her place. “No one would return alive from such a trek. There are tales of places where the Lower and Upper Hells are joined and the world stops.”

  “You confuse bravery and foolishness,” Joyla countered. “A foolish person is merely one who does brave things without thought. Would not any among us risk her life to return to the Home from a far place, no matter the distance or hazards? And would we not seek help from whomever we found ourselves among?” She looked over at the giants. “If these people are like us, they will go despite our entreaties and warnings. Perhaps we have some among us brave enough to go with them. I am no hunter, so I cannot.”

  “If I were a young man,” Sand added, “I would go, despite the dangers.”

  But you are young no longer, Born thought to himself.

  “But since I am young no longer,” the chief continued, “I cannot. Let this not restrain others, those among you who may be eager to go.”

  He stared around at the assembly, as did Cohoma and Logan, as did the men and women, as did the wide-eyed children who peered inward from behind shoulders and heads and between calves. No one stepped forward. The only sounds were the brisk crackle of dead wood in the fire, the soft, indifferent murmur of falling rain. Before he had time to think it out, Born found himself saying, “I will go with the giants.”

  Innumerable stares of varying intent and intensity pinned him in his place. Now, at last, he hoped for some show of admiration and appreciation. Instead, those stares held sadness and pity. Even the two giants gazed on him with expressions of satisfaction and relief, but not of adulation. Bitterly he reflected how that might change in the many seven-days ahead.

  “The hunter Born will accompany the giants,” Sand noted. “Will any others?” Born looked around at his friends. There was stirring within the inner circle, but it came from men finding excuses to study the ground before them, to feel the warmth of the fire, to examine the seams in the leafleather canopy overhead—anything but meet his eyes.

  Very well. He would go alone with the giants, and he alone would learn their secrets. “Possibly,” he said coldly, getting to his feet, “it would not be too much to ask for some to see to the provisioning of our party.” Then he turned and stalked out of the gathering, back toward his bower. As he did so, he thought he heard someone murmur, “Why waste good food on those already dead?” More likely, he had imagined it; nevertheless, he did not stop to find out.

  Successful hunts, the killing of the grazer—all had brought him nothing. When he alone of all the hunters had been brave enough to descend to the giants’ sky-boat he had gained only the accolades of children. Now he would do something so overawing, so incredible, that none would be able to ignore him any longer. He would take the giants to their station-Home and return, or he would die. Maybe that would make them realize his worth, if this time he failed to return. They would be sorry then.

  In his anger, he stumbled on a protruding rootlet and turned furiously to hurl imprecations at his thoughtless enemy. It made him feel a little better. The central fire was well behind him now, and the darkness snuggled close around him. He pulled his cloak down over his head to shield himself from the rain.

  If the giants felt they could reach their mysterious station, then why should he not feel as confident? Why not indeed, unless …

  What if there were no station? What if these two giants were imps of the Lower Hell sent here to tempt him to stray from the Home?

  Bah, nonsense! They were as human as he, despite their great size and strange garb. How else could it be that they spoke the same language of man? Though what strange modulations and phrasings they used! And they did not emfol. Born could not conceive of a person who could not emfol, so he conveniently forgot about it

  He parted the leafleather dooring and entered his home, closed it carefully behind him. Untying his cloak, he slung it into a far corner. A muffled sound came from the darkness. Immediately he crouched, the bone knife jumping reflexively from belt to hand. A dim figure whimpered. Moving carefully in the blackness, he brought out the little packet of incendiary pollen, sprinkled it over the pile of deadwood in the center of the floor. A touch, and the wood coughed and blazed, revealing the huddled form of Brightly Go.

  Relaxing, he replaced the knife in its sheath. After a curious glance at the girl, he sat down beside the fire and crossed his legs. Its yellow-bright depths were soothing, friendly, undemanding. They would leave tomorrow, the giants and he, and he would have liked a long, quiet sleep but …

  “You come to laugh at me like the others,” he muttered, without rancour.

  “Oh, no!” She crawled timidly toward the fire. The light made olivine patterns deep in her eyes, and Born found the attraction of the fire waning steadily. “You know my feelings, Born.”

  He huffed, turned nervously away. “Losting you like, Losting you love—me, I amuse you!”

  “No, Born,” she protested, her voice rising. “I like Losting, yes, but … I like you as well. Losting is nice, but not nearly so nice as you. Not nearly.” She looked at him imploringly. “I don’t want you to do this thing, Born. If you go with the giants you’ll never come back. I believe what everyone says about the dangers so far from Home and what is whispered about the places where the two hells come together.”

  “Stories, legends,” Born grumbled. “Cub tales. The dangers far from the Home are no different than they are a spear’s throw from this room. Nor do I believe there is a place where the two hells join. But if there is, we will go around it or through it.”

  She moved around the fire on hands and knees, to sidle close and put one hand on his shoulder. “For me, Born, don’t go with the giants.”

  Looking at her, he started to lean close, started to agree, started to give in. Then the thing that drove him to lie in wait for grazers and to go down into the depths of wells reached out, interceded, crossed him up. Instead of saying, “I’ll do whatever you desire, Brightly Go, for the love of you,” he whispered huskily, “I’ve given my word and said before the whole tribe I will go. And even had I not, I will do this thing.”

  Her hand slid from his shoulder. She half-mumbled, “Born, I don’t want you to,” then bent over and kissed him before he could draw away. Then she was on her feet and out the door before he could react. The night-rain swallowed her up.

  He was silent a long time, thinking, as the fire consumed itself and the tepid drops trickled off leaf-leather roof. Then he mumbled something there was no one to hear, rolled back onto his sleeping fur, and drifted off to a troubled, dream-filled slumber.

  Ruumahum’s left eye opened halfway, cocked sideways. A dark bulk stood on the branch by his resting crevice. He coughed, shook droplets from his muzzle, and snorted in the sibilant rumbling way of the furcot.

  “Where is your person, cub?”

  Muf jerked his head, in imitation of the human gesture, down toward the cluster of enclosed branches below. “Somewhere there, asleep.”

  “As you should be, nuisance.” The eye closed, and Ruumahum rearranged his massive head on his fore-paws.

  Muf hesitated before blurting out, “Old one, please?”

  Ruumahum let out a furcot sigh and lifted his head slightly to face the cub, all thr
ee eyes open this time.

  The cub dropped his head and eyed the village sleeping below.

  “My person, the boy Din, is troubled.”

  “All persons are troubled,” Ruumahum replied. “Go to sleep.”

  “He fears for his half-father, the person Born. Your person.”

  “There is no blood attachment,” the big furcot mumbled, dropping his head down again. “The cub-person’s emotional reaction is unreasonable.”

  “All cub-persons’ reactions are unreasonable. I fear this time my person’s reaction is reasonable.”

  Ruumahum’s eyebrows rose. “Offspring of an accident, can it be that you enter into wisdom?”

  “I fear,” the cub continued, “the boy-cub-person will do something rash.”

  “His elders will restrain him, as I would restrain you. I will do worse if you don’t leave me to my rest.”

  Muf turned to go, looked back over a shoulder, and grumbled defiantly, “Don’t say I didn’t tell you of it, old one.”

  Ruumahum shook his head, wondered why it was that cubs were so questing and inquiring, so disrespectful of an elder’s rest. They rose with questions at all hours and times. The drive to dispel ignorance—a drive, he reminded himself, he also had been subject to—the drive was still there, but mellowed by experience. Mellowed also by the quiet assurance that death explained everything.

  He snugged his head back into his crossed paws, ignored the steadily dripping rain, and was instantly asleep again.

  VII

  BORN ANGRILY BROKE OFF another of the dead branches from the trunk of a tertiary parasite, careful despite his rage not to harm any of the healthy, living shoots.

  They were four days linear march out from the Home, and his anger at the now distant group of sullen hunters had hot abated. But some of the anger was directed inward at himself for locking himself into this crazy expedition.