“Swim toward it,”Johann yelled.
Vivien shook her head. Her terror would not let her move. Changing direction, Johann swam over beside her and told her to climb on his back. With monumental effort (for he was still dragging Serentha as well), he swam toward the threatening sperden. Once the foul smell reached the equivalent of its olfactory senses, the sperden retreated, announcing with shouts to the rest of its herd that this entire group of humans was rotten.
The swells increased as they entered deeper water. Three times the group had to stop completely for Vivien to rest. Each time Johann supported her on his back while she regained her strength. Halfway to the island Serentha’s left arm passed through some kind of stinging nettle. After that she did not use her arms anymore.
Johann was totally exhausted when they finally reached the island. At that moment he could not have even considered swimming back to rescue the children in the East Village. At Vivien’s suggestion he found himself a shady place on the sandy beach and took a nap.
“WHERE ARE YOU, Johann?” he heard Maria’s voice call in his dream. “I need you.”
Sister Beatrice was in the dream as well, wearing her blue robe with the white stripes. She spoke softly to Johann, reminding him that God’s angels were protecting him even though he was a nonbeliever. She started to say something else encouraging when Johann was awakened by the sound of nepp chatter.
He opened his eyes slowly At the far end of the beach, the first contingent of forty or so nepps had arrived. Those who had completed the swim first were greeting the late-comers with exuberant shouts and helping them out of the water.
Johann glanced around and called for Vivien. She emerged from a small clump of trees behind the beach and came over beside him. “How long have I been asleep?” he asked.
“A couple of hours, I guess,” she answered. “Siegfried and Serentha are still resting, over there in that grove.”
Johann looked up at the sky and checked the location of the sun. “If I leave now,” he said, “I can swim easily back to East Village before sunset. Maybe I’ll even have time for an hour rest before I start back with the infants.”
Vivien sat down beside him and took both his hands in hers. “Darling.” she said, “I wish you’d reconsider. You must still be tired and there’s no guarantee—”
“We went through all this last night,” he said, gently interrupting her. “Nothing has happened to change my mind.”
Tears were forming in her eyes as she reached up to kiss him. Their lips touched and Vivien put her hands tenderly on Johann’s face. She did not want the kiss to end. At length, she placed her arms around his back and hugged him fiercely with her head resting against his chest. “Should I wake Siegfried?” she asked. “He’ll be upset that he didn’t have a chance to say good-bye to his father.”
Johann pulled away slightly. “No,” he said, gently wiping away the tears on her cheeks. “Let him sleep. And stop worrying so much. I promise I’ll return, with or without the children.”
Vivien sighed and shook her head. “All right, giant Johann,” she said, forcing a smile. “I know it’s useless to try to dissuade you. But be careful and don’t take any chances. My love and my prayers will accompany you.”
Johann looked out at the ocean. In the distance he could see another group of nepps swimming toward the island. Behind them was the mainland, with Black Rock Promontory the most prominent landmark. He waded into the water with Vivien beside him. “One more kiss?” she teased.
“Why not?” he laughed.
Johann lifted her up and she wrapped her legs around his waist. They kissed passionately and he put her down in the water. “That was our warm-up,” he said. “For our double full moon celebration tonight.”
Johann dove into an oncoming wave. He started swimming immediately. “Tell Siegfried I love him,” he shouted back at Vivien in between strokes.
THE SWIM BACK to the mainland was indeed easy for Johann. He took his time, alternating strokes every several hundred meters. Twice small groups of sperdens swam over in his direction, looking interested, but both times they turned away after they were close enough to smell the ackyong slime.
About midway through his swim Johann ran into a formation of several dozen animals who were swimming together toward the island. All Johann could see of these bizarre new creatures were their heads, brown, polished spheres with four eyes located on an equatorial line roughly ninety degrees apart. The most striking feature of the floating heads were long, thin, erect protuberances, resembling porcupine quills, on the top hemisphere of each head.
Johann instinctively swam to the side, to avoid the formation. He then watched in fascination as a pair of curious sperdens, approaching too close to the quilled creatures, were each hit repeatedly, and painfully, by twenty to thirty quills fired with considerable accuracy and power by the unusual animals.
So they too, whatever they are, Johann thought to himself, are leaving the mainland for double full moon night. He wondered what it could be that prompted the mass exodus of both the nepps and the quilled creatures. He then resolved again to use every wile he possessed to convince Maria to let him take the two infants with him to the island.
Johann’s huge body swimming through the ocean water was noticed by the East Village residents long before he reached the shore. Both the two young couples were waiting for him on the beach when he finally finished his swim.
“Well, well,” said Eric sarcastically, “look what has washed in with the tide. It’s Johann the magnificent.”
Johann walked directly up to the two couples. “These carriers are for Stephanie and Kwame,” he said, taking the papooses off his back. “Please let me take them out to that offshore island, just in case…” He began opening one of the cans of ackyong slime.
Maria recoiled against the smell. “Wow,” she said. “What a stink! I’m not surprised that the sperdens swim away from it.”
“I have enough here to cover each of the two infants,” Johann said simply, looking first at Maria and then at Keiko.
Eric now reinserted himself into the conversation. “But why should they go anywhere?” he asked. “Look, the day is almost done, and nothing even slightly unusual has occurred. Double full moon night is going to be like every other—”
His final words were drowned out by the rumble of scurrying animals and nepp chatter. Down the beach, less than a hundred meters from their village, a large contingent of nepps, perhaps a hundred in all, had burst out of the trees and were scampering across the sand toward the ocean.
“What in the world?” Jomo asked, watching the nepps plunge into the water.
“Those are the animals that Sister Beatrice told me to observe,” Johann said calmly. “It was from them that I learned that the slime I have in these jars repels the sperdens.”
Everyone watched as the nepps began their swim, headed in the direction of the offshore island. The sperdens in sight, now accustomed to the fact that all nepp swimmers smelled foul, turned their heads only briefly and then ignored the whole group.
Johann noticed the expressions on the four young people’s faces while they were watching the nepps. At this point anyway he thought to himself, at least the two girls are no longer certain that Sister Beatrice’s warning was just a hallucination.
He walked up closer to the two women. “Look at it this way,” he said. “What do you have to lose? Do either of you have any doubt that I am totally committed to taking care of your babies? I would die before I would let anything bad happen to them… You know that, Maria, even if Keiko doesn’t… And what if the white Beatrice in my apparition was real, and something absolutely terrible is going to happen tonight. How will you feel, as mothers, knowing that you passed up a chance to save your baby’s life? Please, please—”
“This is ridiculous,” Eric said.
Keiko and Jomo suddenly came forward toward Johann. “You can take Kwame, Uncle Johann,” Keiko said. “Just wait a minute while I retrieve him fro
m his grandmother.”
She dashed off, leaving the other three of them standing beside Johann. “What about you?” Johann said to Maria. “May I take Stephanie as well?”
Maria turned away and walked down the beach. Johann followed her, as did her husband, Eric. At length she glanced back at both of them. “You really believe my mother appeared to you and warned you about double full moon night, don’t you?” she asked Johann.
“Absolutely,” he replied.
“And what if the warning was false,” Maria said. “How could I ever justify to myself exposing Stephanie to the dangers of that ocean swim?” She looked around, at the ocean, the hills, and the sky “I just don’t see any problems, Johann,” she said. “I can’t convince myself that there’s anything here to fear.”
Back down the beach toward the village, Keiko had returned with Kwame. Johann moved back in that direction, eager to begin the process of smearing the ackyong goo on the boy. Jomo and Keiko, in spite of the terrible smell that caused them both nearly to vomit, insisted on rubbing the slime on their own son.
When they were finished, Johann hoisted Kwame’s papoose and secured it on his back and shoulders. He then looked at Maria. “It will be sunset and moonrise in a few more minutes,” he said to her. “Time is running out. Will you let me take Stephanie as well?”
“I don’t think so,” Maria answered. She started to add another comment but she was interrupted by Jomo’s sudden shout.
“Look, look over there, at the Sun,” he yelled. “Something weird is happening.”
Indeed their sun, now only two or three degrees above the western mountains, already had its lower right quadrant covered by some kind of dark material that was rapidly spreading across its face.
“What’s going on?” Jomo said excitedly to Johann. “That certainly doesn’t look like any cloud I’ve ever seen. Are we having some kind of eclipse?”
Johann barely heard the question. He was staring at the now blackened Sun, slowly dropping behind the mountains. The dark matter obscuring the Sun continued to grow and spread out. Whatever it is he said to himself, it’s headed this way.
“We must act immediately,” Johann shouted at Maria. “Run now, and get Stephanie. Bring her here quickly!”
Maria saw the eerie black phenomenon as well and a chill went down her spine. She said nothing, but simply bolted toward the village. She returned with her daughter in about a minute. By that time the blackness had grown to cover a wide area of the western sky Meanwhile, the twin full moons crested the horizon in the east.
Johann and Maria hurriedly swabbed the crying Stephanie with the ackyong slime and thrust her into the papoose. When the baby was momentarily silent, they heard for the first time the distant chorus of cacophonous noises. “The sounds are coming from that black cloud,” Maria said, her voice trembling. “It must be something alive.”
Johann was already in the water. Maria checked the twine to make certain it was secure and hurriedly kissed both Johann and her daughter. Then, after glancing one more time at the onrushing black matter, she removed her necklace with the carved amulet and stuffed it deep into the papoose where Stephanie was riding. “Take care of my daughter, Johann,” she entreated.
Johann churned through the surf with his powerful legs until he was waist deep in the ocean water. Then he plopped down on his stomach and began to swim furiously The black cloud of onrushing doom now obscured the mountains completely The chorus of hideous, threatening noises continued to grow in amplitude, echoing through the twilight with a high-pitched brank, brank, brank that terrified any living creature who could hear.
Johann was about four hundred meters out into the ocean when the first of the branker scouts reached the East Village. Maria, Keiko, and the others looked up at the giant, loathsome, insectlike creature flying into their living area and began to run toward their huts. The branker pirouetted in the sky, screamed brank, brank at another scout hovering over Black Rock Promontory and the pair descended into the village. Only moments later they held Eric, flailing uselessly, in their combined talons about forty meters above the ground and were flying rapidly in a westerly direction.
Johann saw nothing of this. He was swimming as fast as he could away from the mainland, the two papooses strapped to his back. It was not until he felt something sharp tearing into his right thigh that he realized he was being pursued.
Being careful to keep the infants’ heads above the water line, Johann stopped and treaded water. Hovering half a meter above his head was one of the ugliest creatures he had ever seen. At first glance it looked like a monstrously large fruit fly with a pair of sharp talons descending from the front end of its elongated jet-black body. The branker had a double pair of wings which fluttered so fast as it hovered that some of the time they could not even be seen. The stronger, broader upper wings, attached to the top of the branker’s body, were over two meters in length. The lower wings, smaller in every dimension, were attached to the bottom of its body; directly under the upper set.
A huge, black, solitary eye filled most of the branker’s head. Under this eye was a gaping dark hole filled with thirty or forty sharp teeth. Its mouth was open continuously and drooling a white viscous material that fell onto the top of Johann’s head and made him shudder. The branker suddenly turned toward the mainland, apparently deciding it needed help, and screamed brank, brank in a loud voice.
By this time at least three dozen brankers were already scavenging in the East Village. They grabbed everything, not only the human occupants, but also their equipment, food, and anything else that looked noteworthy Maria, Keiko, Satoko, and Jomo were all now airborne and flying toward the west, each a prize claimed by a pair of brankers looking for unusual prey.
Johann could not see what was occurring on the mainland. But he was acutely aware of his own danger. The branker hovering over him repeated its call for help. Johann kept the creature in his sight and did a kind of back-breaststroke, moving farther and farther from shore. At length the solitary branker, perhaps irritated because it had not been joined by a mate, flew hurriedly away toward the mainland. Johann immediately started swimming again, as fast as he could, keeping a close watch on the sky over his head.
No more than a minute later a pair of brankers flew out to where Johann was swimming with the infants. Since he was deep in the water, with only his head exposed, the brankers appeared unsure of how to proceed. Suddenly, however, one descended and grabbed each side of Johann’s head with one of its powerful talons. Fighting back, Johann pulled the talon off the right side of his face. His effort caused him temporarily to submerge the two babies, who came up sputtering and crying.
The sounds of the infants must have surprised the brankers, for they stopped to conduct a lengthy brank, brank conversation while still hovering over the rapidly tiring Johann. Just when they seemed poised for another attack, Johann heard a familiar frenzied cry and two pair of sperdens struck the brankers from both sides. In the melee that ensued, Johann swam away with the children. He didn’t see who won the battle. But no more brankers bothered him during his long swim to the island.
JOHANN WAS SO tired that he collapsed on the sand as soon as Vivien and Siegfried had removed the papooses from his back The children were fine, considering what they had endured. Vivien reached down to give her prone husband a kiss but he had already closed his eyes and fallen asleep. “You are a wonderful man, giant Johann,” she whispered.
From the offshore island Vivien, Siegfried, and Serentha had watched the huge cloud of dark material move into the two villages from the west. Of course, they had had no idea that what they were witnessing was a branker invasion. When, much later, an hour or two before sunrise, they awakened Johann so that he could enjoy the spectacular sight of the setting of the double full moons, they listened with rapt attention as he described the horde of flying monsters who had descended upon their world.
“So you don’t think that anyone survived?” Siegfried asked.
Jo
hann shook his head. “I don’t see how it could have been possible,” he replied. “There must have been a thousand of those creatures in the first wave alone. As far as I could tell, they attacked everything in sight.”
Serentha began to cry Siegfried tried to console her. “They didn’t believe you, Uncle Johann,” she kept repeating through her tears. “And now both my mother and father are dead.”
“We don’t know that for certain,” Johann said. “Let’s hope they figured out some way to escape.”
As the Sun rose, down the beach on the far end of the island the hundreds of nepps entered the ocean for the long homeward swim. Scanning the water with his youthful eyes, Siegfried found the formation of the quilled heads, already well out to sea, also heading toward the mainland.
“So,” Johann said to the others, “are we ready to return?” Siegfried volunteered to pull Serentha and her contraption as long as Johann would swim behind him in case anything untoward occurred. Vivien helped Johann place the two infants in their papooses, with Stephanie’s new necklace carefully packed in her wrappings. There was not much conversation as the preparations concluded. Everyone was thinking about what they would find in their village with a mixture of dread and hope.
Any hope they might have had was dispelled when they were close enough to see the remains of the village. Even from out in the ocean a hundred meters away, the total destruction was obvious. The huts had been ripped apart and demolished, the fields and orchards destroyed. Johann and the others somberly trudged onto the beach and began the process of assessing the damage. A few personal effects were left scattered here and there, apparently deemed unimportant by the rampaging brankers, but there were no signs of Ravi, Anna, or Beatrice.
“They must have been taken away,” Johann said sorrowfully, “along with our food, our furniture, and most of our possessions.”
He put his arms around the weeping Serentha and called for Siegfried and Vivien to join him. “We must rebuild, of course,” he said. “And this site still seems to be the best place. We will begin the day after tomorrow, after we have mourned those we have lost.”
Rama: The Omnibus Page 248
