Midworld

by Alan Dean Foster

“But we escaped it, Born. And there’ve been any one of a dozen … no, several dozen times we could all have been killed. Yet we haven’t even suffered a minor injury, beyond the usual nicks and scrapes.”

  That caused him to think a minute, as she had intended. Finally he murmured, “I am a great hunter. Losting is a good hunter, and Ruumahum and Geeliwan are wise and experienced. Why should we not have been as successful as we have?”

  “You don’t think it strange, despite the fact that five days’ journey is the longest any of your people have ever traveled from the Home before and returned?”

  “We have not yet reached our destination, or returned,” he countered quietly.

  “That’s so,” she admitted, edging back toward her own sleeping place. “So you don’t think this implies the intervention of a guiding, watchful presence, like a god? One who always knows what’s good for you and watches over you?”

  Born looked solemn. “It did not watch over us when the Akadi came, but I will think on it.” And he turned away from her.

  She had planted the seed. Satisfied with that and with what Hansen would have to say about it, she rolled up in her cloak and closed her eyes. Not that there were any missionaries at the station who would thank her. The station was hardly a Church-blessed enterprise. The steady drip of rain trickling down to this level through a million leaves and petals and stems formed a lulling rhythm on the lean-to roof, allowing her finally to fall asleep.

  “We’ve got to go up to the top of the First Level, Born,” Logan insisted the next day.

  Born shook his head. “Too dangerous to travel so much in the sky.”

  “No, no,” she went on in exasperation. “We don’t have to stick our heads out into open air. We can stay a good twenty-five meters,” and she translated that into percentage of level for him, “below the topmost leaves. No sky-demon is going to dive through that much brush to get at you.”

  “The First Level has dangers of its own,” Born countered defensively. “They are smaller than those of the Home level, but faster, harder to find and kill before they strike.”

  “Look, Born,” Cohoma tried to explain, “we could miss the station completely if we travel below that point. It’s constructed—like our skimmer—out of materials set down into the forest top, but not far into it. If we miss it and have to try and backtrack, we could get so confused as to direction that we’d never be able to find it. We could wander around in this jungle for years.” For emphasis, he grabbed the compass, showed it again to Bo and Losting as though they could comprehend its principle. “See this direction finder of ours? It works best the first time you hunt with it for a place. It grows less useful with each successive failure.”

  Eventually Born gave in, as Logan suspected he would. Their iconoclastic hunter had only two choices—take their advice now, or abort the journey. After all they had been through, she did not think he would suggest the latter.

  So they continued upward. Gradually this time, not in a muscle-killing vertical climb, but on a slant. In this manner they moved forward as well as higher, through the Fifth Level, the Fourth, and Third. She could sense their reluctance to leave those comforting, familiar surroundings for the danger and uncertainty of the upper canopy. Both she and Cohoma had grown so hylaea-wise by now, however, that neither hunter attempted to fool them into believing they had reached a higher level.

  Up they mounted, through the Second Level, where the sunlight was brilliant yellow-green, where it struck most vegetation directly and not with the aid of mirror vines. Where the day was bright enough to resemble the floor of a north temperate evergreen forest on Moth or Terra. Logan and Cohoma expanded, while Born and Losting grew steadily more cautious.

  Then they were in the First Level itself, climbing amid a profusion of riotously colored flowers, etched and engraved and painted by a nature delirious with her own beauty. Logan knew that any of the botanists restricted to the station and to studying specimens recovered by the skimmer teams would give an arm to be here with them now. Company policy forbade it, given the inimical nature of this world. Botanists were expensive.

  All the basic shadings and hues merged together with more exotic coloration. Logan passed a maroon bloom half a meter across, its pigment so intense it was nearly purple in places. The petals were striped with aquamarine blue, and it rested on a bed of metallic gold leaves.

  Nor was drunken variation limited only to color. One blossom boasted petals which grew in interlocking, multiple spirals of pink and turquoise and almond. Cohoma promptly dubbed it the clown plant. There were flowers that grew like a phalanx of pikes, green flowers springing from green stems, and green branches that sprouted green graphs. There were flowers inside flowers, flowers the color of smoky quartz, flowers with transparent petals that tasted of caramel.

  And these were matched in glitter and evolutionary exuberance by a swarming multitude of nonvegetable life, which crawled, hopped, glided, buzzed, and swung about like animated dreams before the spellbound gaze of the two skimmer pilots. Born was right—they were smaller and they moved faster, some darting across their pathway too rapidly to be seen as other then a blur.

  Hunters and gatherers here would have to work four times as hard to gather the same amount of food. There was greater natural competition here and, according to the hunters, greater danger as well. Which explained why the survivors of the trapped colony ship had chosen to forego this aerial paradise for the less competitive regions of the Third and Fourth Levels. Having observed the thunderous nightly storms from the comparative safety of the station, Logan assumed the protection the depths offered from violent weather was another factor in the decision to descend.

  The noise might have been still another factor. It was deafening here. Much of it seemed to emanate from huge colonies of little six-legged creatures about the size of a man’s thigh. About half-a-meter long, they were slimly built and moved rapidly through the thinner branches with six-clawed legs. Hard-shelled limbs joined to a furry cylindrical body, one end of which tapered into a long, whiplike tail, the other ending in a snout like an aardvark’s. The familiar triple oculars were set back of this, and behind them rose a single, flexible ridge of flesh, which appeared to be a sound sensor.

  They were the mockingbirds of this world, the hexapodal kookaburras, uttering everything from a high-pitched whistle to a tenor cackle. Tribes of them accompanied the party as it made its way through the vinepaths, offering unintelligible insults and suggestions. Occasionally one of the furcots would snarl menacingly at them and they would scatter, only to reappear when communal courage grew strong enough, to berate and admonish once again. Only boredom drove them off.

  Yet another reason for living lower down offered it self. Even here, many dozens of meters below the crowns of the trees, the branches and cubbies were thinner, less roadlike. Vines and lianas and creepers thinned in proportion. More often than they liked, Logan and Cohoma found themselves using their arms instead of their legs to move from one place to the next. When Born asked if they were tiring and wished to drop to more easily negotiable paths, both gritted their teeth, wiped the sweat clear from eyes and forehead, and shook their heads. Better to expend all one’s reserves here than risk passing below the station.

  They continued on that way, now and then dipping downward when the forest top thinned too much for Born’s comfort, rising again where the hylaea bulged into the sky.

  It rained early that night. For the first time since their skimmer had crashed, both giants were subjected to a thorough drenching before the two hunters could erect suitable shelter. Without hundreds of meters of intervening foliage to protect them, they caught the full force of the nightly downpour. The volume and fury they had anticipated from having observed similar storms from inside the station. It was the noise that was surprising—the station was effectively soundproofed against it. They had descended a good thirty meters more in hopes of securing a little protection. Even here the forest shook and rattled. Real, steady wind
up here, not the lost, dallying zephyr they had encountered at the Home’s level.

  There was no soundproofing to shut out the lightning and thunder, which rattled their brains in counterpoint to the flogging rain. Logan sneezed, reflected miserably that the first colonists here could have perished from pneumonia had they not chosen to live at more sheltered depths. It was only a momentary chill—the humidity and constant warmth made it hard to catch the serious cold she feared. But when the sun rose steamily bright the following morning, both pilots remained soaked to the skin.

  Under the concerned directions of Born—and Losting’s more taciturn comments—they underwent a reeducation in the following days. This world nearer the sky was as deadly as Born had indicated; only here the methodology of murder was matched in deadliness by the subtlety of execution. Without the advice and protection of Born, Losting, and the furcots, both giants would have been dead within a day.

  The danger which remained sharpest in Logan’s mind was a brilliant yellow fruit. Hourglass-shaped and about the size of a pear, its blossoms exuded a fragrance redolent of spring honeysuckle. The epiphytic bush was top-heavy with this fruit. Born pointed out how tokkers and other fruit-eaters assiduously avoided it.

  “Bitter taste?” Cohoma asked.

  Born shook his head. “No, the taste is wondrous, and the pulp nourishing and rejuvenating to a tired wanderer. The danger is in separating the fruit from the seeds within.”

  “That’s a problem with most fruit,” the pilot observed.

  “It is a particular problem with the greeter fruit,” Born told him, as he reached up and casually plucked one free. After staring silently at the plant, for a long minute, Logan noted—emfoling again. “No animal of the world has been able to solve the problem,” the hunter continued, turning the attractive, harmless-looking fruit over and over in his hand. “Only the people.”

  He hunted around until he found a long, thin, dead branch growing from a nearby bush. Breaking it off cleanly, he sharpened one end with his knife. Then he slid the point into the fruit, taking care not to pierce the center. Laying the impaled fruit on a branch, he used the knife to make a multiple incision on the side away from the stick. Then he lifted the branch high overhead and began tapping the incised area firmly against the protruding knob of a small cubble.

  On the sixth tap there was a bang of such unexpected volume that Logan and Cohoma ducked. There was a violent snarl from their left. Ruumahum stuck his head out from a clump of wire bushes. Seeing that no one was injured, he uttered a snort of derision at such foolish goings-on and vanished once more.

  Born drew the stick downward, showed it to the giants. The whole left side of the fruit, where the incisions had been made, had been blown away as though there had been a small bomb within it, which was exactly the case.

  “This is how the greeter spreads its seed,” Born explained needlessly. Peeling off sections of the remaining undamaged fruit, he extended them to Cohoma and Logan. Logan slipped it hesitantly between her lips, the recent demonstration having dampened her appetite somewhat. As soon as her taste buds made contact with it, she sucked in the whole piece and rolled it around in her mouth, squeezing the juices free. It was exquisite, sugary, yet tart, like grenadine and lemon.

  “What finally happens to the seeds?” she asked, when the last drop was drained, the final scrap of pulp swallowed.

  By way of reply Born directed them upward and to the left of the parasitic bush. Born studied the trunk of the tree nearby, finally pointed. The pilots stared close. Arranged in a tiny, neat spray pattern on the trunk were a dozen small holes, penetrating the solid wood for several centimeters. At the bottom of each hole they could barely make out a tiny, dark seed. Six spines protruded from each. Each seed was perhaps a half-centimeter in diameter, including spines.

  With his knife, Born dug one of them out. Logan reached to touch it, and Born had to block her hand—had she learned nothing of the world these past many seven-days? She and Cohoma studied the minute seed with interest. Closer inspection revealed that the edges of the six spines were razor-sharp and lined with microscopic, backward-facing barbs.

  “I see,” Cohoma murmured. “The seeds germinate in the trees. But how do they get spread? Does the fruit dry up to the point where internal pressure sends them flying?”

  “Can’t be, Jan,” Logan objected. “If the fruit dries out, where’s the source of this kind of pressure? No, it has to be—”

  Born shook his head. “The greeter does not root in a plant. When an animal which is old or ill has lost its judgment, hunger may drive it to eat a greeter.” He resumed the march.

  Logan paused long enough for another glance at the little spray pattern where the seeds had bored holes in the thick hardwood, then followed the hunter.

  “An animal tries to eat one of the fruits, bites through the pulp until it punctures the inner sac and gets the whole barrage right in its face,” Cohoma theorized grimly. “If it’s lucky the seeds kill it outright. Otherwise it probably bleeds to death. Meanwhile the corpse serves as a ready-made reservoir of nutrients.”

  “Jan, the plants have struck an even balance on this world. No, I take that back. They have the upper edge. The animals are outnumbered, outsized, and outgunned. I wondered how Born’s ancestors could have lost so much technology so fast. I don’t wonder any more. How can you fight a forest?”

  The discovery came days later, announced in the usual phlegmatic fashion of the furcots. “Panta,” Ruumahum called back to them. Both furcots were sitting at the end of a long, relatively clear cubble.

  Born’s spirits rose. “A Panta is a large open space, a depression in the world. Of course,” he added hurriedly, seeing the look on the giants’ faces, “it might be a natural Panta. There are half a dozen within two days’ walk of the Home.” He turned back to Ruumahum.

  “How big?”

  “Big,” the furcot replied softly. “And in the middle, thing of axe metal like sky-boat.” Triple eyes stared suddenly at Logan.

  Without knowing why, she looked away, concentrating instead on Born. “The station! It’s got to be!”

  “It is done, then. Quickly.” He turned to jog down the cubble.

  This time it was Logan who put out the restraining hand. “Not too quickly, Born. There are mechanisms—like our compass—which protect the station from marauding forest-dwellers and sky-demons. No creature of the hylaea world can reach it.”

  “Silverslith?” asked Losting with uncertainty.

  “No, Losting, not even a silverslith.”

  The hunter persisted. “Has your station-Home ever been attacked by a silverslith?”

  Logan had to admit it had not, but she was adamant in insisting that even that gigantic animal could not stand up to a gimbaled laser or explosive shell. Both hunters were forced to confess they had no idea what these magical weapons were. Cohoma assured them with a barely supressed smile that they were more toxic than jacari thorns.

  “Then the demons of your own worlds must be far, far greater than even those of Hell,” Born surmised, “for you to need such weapons.”

  “They are,” she admitted, without bothering to explain that the demons in question were two-legged. Besides, now that they were within hailing distance of the station, there was an experiment she had been waiting all this time to try. She looked straight at Ruumahum. “All right,” she said in a commanding tone, “take us to the Panta, Ruumahum.”

  The furcot eyed her strangely for a moment, then turned and trotted into the greenery ahead. Born said nothing. Perhaps in his mind the event held no significance. But it indicated to Logan and Cohoma that the furcots would respond to the commands of humans other than those of Born’s tribe. That could be most important in smoothing certain things over.

  A few more lianas, some two-meter-tall leaves, and a couple of branches eased aside—and they were standing on the fringe of what looked like a vast green circle paved with green, beige, and brown.

  The floor of the P
anta was composed of the tops of hundreds, thousands of trees, cubbies, and epiphytes which had been sheared off to provide the station with a protective “moat” of open space devoid of concealment. In the center of the green-walled amphitheater the station itself rose on the cut-off crowns of three Pillar trees grown close together. They supported the whole weight of the station. The structure itself consisted of a single vast metal building with a sloping, domed top. A large blister of transparent acrylics emerged from the apex. A wide porch, protected by a waist-high mesh fence, encircled the entire structure. At each point of the compass, a covered catwalk extended from the central edifice, terminating in a bubble of duralloy and plastic. The narrow, blunt end of a laser cannon projected from each of these turrets.

  The independently mounted cannons could swivel so that three could be brought to bear on any one point as near as twenty meters to the station. Any impartial observer surveying this awesome array of firepower might have calculated that the modest exploratory outpost was expecting an invasion in force from the surrounding forest. Actually, they were also there to protect against assaults from other than local predators.

  The “sky-demons” the founders of the station were really worried about would attack at high speed, backed by intelligence, and armed with writs, ordainments, ordinances, and regulations. These last-named were more to be feared than the teeth of roving carnivores.

  Halfway between the bottom of the station and the top of the cut-off forest, a series of interlocking struts laced with thick cable mesh surrounded each Pillar-tree trunk. A steady electric current flowed through those cables, sufficient to discourage any curious meat-eater, which might somehow have evaded starlit eyes and electronic surveillance systems.

  That explained, Born inquired as to the purpose of the flat disk of metal set off to their right. A fifth catwalk, slightly larger than the others, extended from it to the station. A smaller-topped tree was sufficient to support this lesser weight.

  Born did not recognize the oblong shape resting on the platform as a larger cousin of the giants’ skimmer. The shuttlecraft differed sufficiently in shape to remain unidentifiable to both hunters, as did the web of grids and antennae which projected from the station’s sides and from the observation dome at its top.