by Brian Daley
What the things most resembled in Floyt's opinion was something that might result if a seal-skinned, giraffey beast had a fling with a mottled six-legged triceratops. Season lightly with moose and jackal. Add curled horns and strange articulation to high, strong legs and you wouldn't be too far off, he reckoned. Their markings ran to Lebensraum tones of soil and vegetation—vermilion and rust red, grays and green browns. Facial color patterns were vivid and varied. Little hummingbirdlike things darted around them, to land and feed on tiny vermin that fed off the gawks.
The low-frequency throbbings had increased.
"They've probably been aware of us since we left the site," Paloma said. "Their senses are very acute, which is odd in a species with no serious natural enemies to speak of except humans, who arrived so recently."
"Nothing's surprising in a place with Precursor artifacts," Alacrity replied. That gave Floyt pause for thought. There'd never been a single Precursor artifact found on Earth or Luna or in surrounding space, not one.
"Those infrasonics are coming from the gawks?" Alacrity asked.
Paloma nodded. "Ten to twenty-five Hertz range. They do it with a membrane that covers the nasal passage in their skull. Most of their communication's audible to us, though.
"Anyway, I'm sure they've seen us and caught our scent, probably heard us, too," Paloma said softly, watching the things.
"As long as they don't want to touch us. Or taste us," Floyt murmured. "See here, why don't we at least attempt a rescue call? After all, Alacrity's proteus and mine may or may not get through to the Lebensraum SATNET, but couldn't yours, Paloma?"
"Doubt it," she said. "No satellite receiver's aimed in this direction, that's pretty certain, and nothing ground-side for a long, long way.
"But that's beside the point. You have to understand, the Lebensraum Company means what it says about serious penalties for trespassing into the wilds. We'd spend weeks or months in detention even if we got them to believe what happened, which I doubt because I can hardly believe it myself. So we'd likely pull down ten years' hard labor, minimum."
"Sorry, Hobart and me have other things to do," Alacrity announced, not cautious about giving his partner's name away now that Floyt had betrayed his. "Let's see what the heffalumps, over there, have to say."
As the humans approached the herd, the larger ones strolled forward unhurriedly to protect the calves and smaller adults, whom Alacrity assumed to be females. The curled horns swung and dipped.
Alacrity tapped Paloma's back as they drew even with the last substantial tree-plant. It was like a gigantic asparagus tip. There might be some nasty life forms crawling among the imbricate fronds, but he'd prefer finding out about that firsthand to being stomped to a low spot in the road. "If you have a directional sound projector on that proteus, I think we're close enough to use it, Paloma. In fact, we're probably too close. The gawks look like they can move fast when they're in the mood."
Paloma nodded, adjusted her proteus, and spoke into a pickup. "Greetings to you, herd family."
The proteus gave a running, amplified translation much as Albrecht did back on Windfall. It was surprisingly loud and undistorted, great ambient sound, which was only right, considering how pricey it looked. It, too, produced infrasonic vibrations.
"We wish you no harm. We know and observe your decorum. We are lost and wish you to tell us the way to our homeland."
Moist rumblings and snortings went through the herd, along with horn tosses, tail flicks, postures, and other unspoken language the proteus couldn't register or translate. But to Floyt's surprise, the proteus rendered the sounds as a belligerent laughter.
One behemoth, large but not the largest, minced a step or two forward to make snorting, foaming, lip-smacking, raspberrying sounds, its triple nostrils flaring, ear cones swinging this way and that, and throwing in something between a pig's squeal and a yak's belch. And the humans could feel infrasonics seeming to go right through them.
The proteus translated it as "We're not afraid you'll harm us, vermin! Go away, or we'll harm you!"
Paloma pointed to what Floyt's survival-tool compass insisted was the west, to the six snowcapped peaks. "Can you tell me which mountains those are? Are they the Churchill Range?"
Her proteus made the translation. Alacrity wondered where Paloma'd come by such a linguistic program.
The gawk shook its monstrous head. "That's one of their names. To us they're the Hooves of the Sky. Now if you wish to make the Long Trek back to your own kind, do it before we moisten our forage with your blood!"
He dug a giant, curved hoof into the ground, flinging up five kilos or so of turf and soil, and charged at them a step or two, horns lowered, bellowing so that the valley echoed with it. The little hummingbird things took to their wings.
The humans almost fell over one another while lunging for the asparagus tree. The herd made sounds again; the inaudible throbbings chorused. Paloma's instrument served it up as mocking, bovine laughter.
Alacrity shook his brolly at them furiously. "Va te faire foutre! If I had an RPG pistol, you'd be slipcovers!" He ranted on without benefit of translation, subsiding only when Floyt and Paloma each grabbed an arm and towed him off.
"Maybe we can come up with a way to buy their assistance," Floyt mulled as they went back the way they'd come. "If we catch them on a good day?" The herd was grazing again, lookouts staring to make sure the humans didn't return.
Alacrity sighed. "What if this is a good day? Paloma, d'you believe them? About where we are?"
"It adds up," she decided, then dangled her shimmering proteus before him. "If I could hook this up to a display screen, I could check some maps, but I don't see any around."
Alacrity tapped his own prote. "Got just the thing right here. Let's find someplace a little less alfresco and see what we've got."
Floyt indicated the thick foliage ahead. "I'm not so happy with all that yowling and coughing going on up there." He meant the forested valley sides, where a late-afternoon chorus was tuning up. Animals in their natural habitats always sounded famished to him.
Just then there was a loud, throaty rasp from the open land on the valley floor, in the high lichen-grass. It was answered by several more. "On the other hand a nice, tall tree might be just the thing," Floyt mused.
"Seconded and carried," Paloma ratified.
They made a cautious search, as Floyt learned a new definition of patience. Alacrity was practiced at survival scouting, but it became plain that Paloma Sudan knew more about naturecraft, especially where Lebensraum was concerned.
They made their way to a perch she'd spotted some hundred meters along the valley side from where the Precrusor site exit had been. It was a perch up in the middle of some tilted slabs of rock, five meters above the ground, and took some scrabbling to reach. The soles and toe surfaces of the pathfinders were helpful there. Alacrity got to the top and gave the other two a hand up.
It was a rock-trough redoubt of about nine square meters' usable surface. They could find no evidence that any other creature had a claim on it. Invictus was going for the ridgeline; the three agreed to stand pat there for the night. A gawkleg might be able to give them trouble if it came up with a good reason; so would any sizable predator that was sure of foot. Still, the spot was safer than open ground and less of an unknown than the trees.
"We'll need fuel and a fire soon," Floyt said, surveying the land.
Paloma, pencil-thin blue cigarillo between her duranailed fingers, looked dismayed. "I forgot my igniter back in my dressing room! Well, men, unless one of you is carrying a—oh!"
Floyt was holding up his survival gadget, flicking its friction-wheel firestarter. "Also, you can scale fish with it." Paloma lit her cigarillo and gave him such a glorious smile, raising his blood pressure, that he found himself blurting, "I'll gather some wood, and you two can plot us a route home."
While Alacrity dug around in a pocket to see if he had the right adaptor to hook up the proteuses, looking for the lit
tle kit he usually carried, Floyt cautiously scrambled back down, regretting his offer already. He glanced around for deadwood.
"Stay in sight, Ho," Alacrity warned. Floyt waggled a hand over his shoulder. His staff was ready in his other hand.
Luckily, there was plenty of fuel laying around for the taking; the idea of cutting a large supply with the survival-tool blades was too unpleasant for words. The staff near to hand, he began gathering branches fallen from a plant resembling a poison hemlock. They were lightweight and spongy; he gathered as many as he could, assuming they'd burn quickly. He soon had the hang of scrambling up the redoubt to just short of the last, most difficult portion of the climb, and heaving his burden up onto the bivouac surface. Alacrity and Paloma were bent over their proteuses together.
Floyt worked until the dusk had him too nervous, then hauled himself up to the redoubt again. Alacrity had mated the proteuses and Paloma had accessed a map and located the Churchill Range, switching to larger and larger scale to bring up details and land features that would help them locate themselves. The map was projected up into the gathering darkness by the little holo-display of Alacrity's high-end-tech proteus.
"Here's more or less where we are," Paloma was saying, "if your pal's compass is accurate. And there's the high desert."
"It's accurate," Alacrity said absently, engrossed in the map. How many weeks left? Seven, maybe. Or six; I'll have to do a conversion a little later. "Too bad your compass isn't a lensatic, Ho. I have a feeling that could come in handy real soon."
"Don't worry; the gawklegs know the way," Paloma assured him.
"To them we're just mobile salads. Forget 'em."
Floyt began arranging a fire, something he'd done only a few times before. Mostly, he was trying to stay out of the debate. Alacrity was his friend, but he had a feeling Paloma was right.
"Are you considering trying to slog it out of here on foot?"
"Why, you see any bus stops? Did I miss something?"
"Would you like the bad news all at once, or gradually? This isn't a good spot, but there're even worse ones al! around us. The shortest route out of here, by a thousand kilometers, takes us that way. through some of the more hostile territory on this world, and Lebensraum's got no shortage of hostile, either." Operatic belching erupted from a gawkleg somewhere in the distance.
She looked to Floyt, who was arranging the wood, shaving off long, fine curls of it for tinder. "The thing is, we won't last very long here, even if we scavenge enough to eat, because there aren't any diet-supplement dispensers or imported food sources. We're looking at a slow death from deficiency diseases—something to do with Lebensraum amides or proteins or whatever. Now, there's only one way to get to the nearest outpost so we can steal ourselves some transportation: do it quickly and do it without getting killed and eaten by the more truculent life forms between here and there. And the only way we'll accomplish that, fellas, is with help from them."
She said it with an inclination of her head to the gawklegs, who were bellowing and chorusing. Alacrity glared at her.
"Didn't you hear what that big bull said? They'll squash us flat and jump up and down on the stains! You know what 'human being' probably means to them? 'Dangerous when armed, delicious with onions!' "
Paloma was undeterred. "If we can talk to them, we can talk them into it."
"Yeah, while we're on the subject, how'd you do that? Talk to them?"
"The original survey contingent from Shalimar, the ones in the research project who were stranded here, they and their descendents worked out a translation program. It's still kept in a top-secret company archive."
Alacrity shook his head. "And next you're gonna remind me how men like to tell you things, right? But how come you care about the gawklegs?"
"I just started hearing rumors about what had been done to them. The company covered everything up, of course, because intelligent autochthons would've been inconvenient."
Alacrity had his chin on his fist. "Head 'em up, move 'em out, huh?"
"Rub 'em out, for the most part. Y'know, there used to be millions and millions and now there're only a couple-three scattered little herds. You think these ones stay out here by choice, when their prime grazing areas are in company operation sectors? They talk tough, but they know what would happen to them if they strayed someplace that antagonized humans."
She thought for a moment. "I was planning, when I finally got off Lebensraum, to see what I could do about it. All it would take is a few words in the right place on Shalimar. They've been dying to get hold of Lebensraum for a long time and this is the perfect excuse. Shalimar goes to the Bali Hai Republic, beats its chest over what's been done to the poor gawks, and gets to be the new landlord."
"Not that Shalimar's any wholesale outlet of virtue, from what I heard," Alacrity said.
"It's not," she conceded. "The gawks'll never get their planet back all to themselves, but at least they'll have a better shake. Anyway, that was what I had in mind, and I could use a little help. Humans have done so much to the gawks that it's only fair humans do a little something for the—"
"You don't have to preach to the choir," Floyt, who'd gotten the tinder going, was saying in between blowing softly on the little flames. They caught fast, the stuff burning like fatwood. "We'll help you."
Alacrity hadn't been consulted on the decision, but after a moment's thought he grinned to his friend and nodded. Floyt went back to tending the fire, smiling.
"But if the gawklegs are afraid of humans, that's an even bigger reason why they're not gonna take us anywhere," Alacrity pointed out. "Especially toward human settlements. Unless you think they're stupid enough to let you lead them into a duckshoot, which I assume you don't want to do anyhow."
"You know damned well I wouldn't," she snapped, giving him a dangerous look. "But they wouldn't have to take us all the way to the nearest outpost; just through the most dangerous country."
"But you heard for yourself, they don't want anything to do with us except maybe as shoeshine rags—Ho, would you stop playing around there and back me up?"
"Hmm?" Floyt looked startled. He'd been pursuing certain engrossing thoughts of his own, nearly forgetting their dilemma.
Alacrity gazed at him disappointedly. "Aren't you even a little bit curious about whether or not we're going to survive this one?"
Floyt half smiled. "Oh, I'll find out one way or the other, won't I?" He was feeding small pieces to the growing fire. The spongy fatwoodlike fuel burned brightly but quickly. There were still some odds and ends lying around the foot of the redoubt; he got ready to make a last foray but stopped with one foot over the side to listen to Paloma.
"Men," she announced, "I have reason to believe I can talk the gawklegs into it. But first I want to study up on some of the company wildlife files and maps." She flicked her fingers at her proteus. "Then I'll let you in on the whole thing. First, though, we can figure out our route."
She made sense; Alacrity yielded to the inevitable. "All right, let's just see if we can get some contour lines on this map, then try to adjust it for—"
He stopped, and all three of them went statue, at a gargling rattle that wasn't a snarl or roar but had the same impact. Floyt was frozen a pace or two from the base of the redoubt.
Less then fifty meters away a creature had emerged from a patch of undergrowth that looked like a kelp forest. Six-legged, about the size of a lion. It carried a kill clamped in its four-segment, rock-crusher jaws. The prey was a four-legged animal, like a delicate cross between a fawn and a cricket.
Behind the killer's narrow head, flat along its neck, was a webbed collar of bright green-and-silver wattling, As it spotted Floyt, the hunter lifted the collar all around its head like an evil flower in warning display, vanes holding the webbing taut. It whipped into view a tail with a sting that slid in and out like a kinetiblade.
The killer looked up to where Floyt's fire was beginning to burn high, its globular eyes reflecting the light in red. It made
a low sound of irritation, debating attack. Floyt eased his back up against the rock slab behind him, holding the puny knifeblade ready. Alacrity edged his hand to his brolly, gathering himself to jump down if the thing charged. Paloma reached for her staff.
Then there was another not-roar; a second, larger predator sprang into the clearing to confront the first, neck wattle spread wide, stinger high, jaws mashing. It slunk at its rival, head low and extended to grab the prize from the other's maw.
The newcomer was leaner, almost emaciated. With the two predators occupied with one another, Floyt turned and went up the slab of rock in the nimble tradition of his primate forebears. Alacrity and Paloma each gave him a hand and they landed in a tangled heap as he overbalanced them. There they lay, watching the drama below and wondering if they'd be on the menu. Floyt rolled over to throw more wood on the fire, not sure it would help.
The first creature scuttled backward a few paces, glancing around it undecidedly. Seeing no avenue of quick retreat or shelter, it dropped its kill and sprang at its rival.
The two things locked in gouging, snapping combat, rolling over and over, spending most of their time in the air. The sheer ferocity of it was spellbinding. The brilliant neck ruffs, at full deployment, battered and flopped. The animals tore at one another's hide and dark blood streamed; the stingers plunged and stabbed. They had to be immune to their own species' toxin, or they'd both have been disabled in no time.
The bigger one got a telling hold. Its jaws clamped down with power-vise pressure as it braced itself against the other with all its legs, ripping. There was a crack of bone and some tearing of tissue. The smaller hunter lost its right foreleg from the center joint down. The stump gushed blood for a few moments, then the bleeding all but stopped. Alacrity expected to see the thing keel over or at best beat a slow, maimed retreat. Instead, it streaked for cover, a blur disappearing back in the upright, dry-land kelp bed.
