Fall of the White Ship Avatar

by Brian Daley

  In a similar way, the big locals had quickly become adept at knocking over pliabamboo and snapping off individual boot segments by means of their enormous strength and weight, with a little human help. Bone-wearying work by Floyt, Alacrity, and Paloma, from sunup to drillbug time, had gotten the preparations for the Long Trek more or less complete in just nine days. Scattered family groups of the herd had been summoned together; tomorrow they would begin.

  Paloma and Floyt came upon Alacrity, who was sitting on a rock and working away. He'd cut and patiently woven a rough square of netvine and weftweed, and sawn forearm-length pieces of young pliabamboo. He was patiently lashing it all together in some obscure fashion.

  "Camp stool," he explained.

  "And don't forget the mobile robobar," Paloma scoffed.

  Alacrity made a vaguely dismissive phui! sound and went back to what he was doing. "You're laughing now, but think about how sore your ass gets sitting on logs and rocks and whatnot here.

  "What about out there?" He gestured to their route of march with his chin. "Not even a stump or a dry patch of ground, maybe. I know what it's like to squat on haunches for dinner or get my landing gear wet and cold in the mud. Laugh away; just don't ask to borrow this collector's item of modern design once we're on the road."

  Floyt looked at Paloma and Paloma looked at Floyt. Without another word, they put down their burdens. Floyt went off to cut some more framing wood while Paloma bent and picked up some weftweed, studying Alacrity's technique. "You do have your strong points, shiasse."

  He smirked at her. "It's the little things that make life worth living."

  * * * *

  Alacrity, mounted on Treeneck, took a final glance around, ready to give the order to move. He felt a spasm of disbelief; so many times in recent days it had seemed that this moment couldn't possibly come to life.

  High overhead, flocks of avian things swarmed and soared. He wished for their wings, wished the trip would be the few hours or days it would take them, and not the weeks that lay ahead for the herd.

  Oh, well. The sooner we start …

  Floyt piped up, "Do you mind, Alacrity? After all, Pokesnout here is leader."

  "Huh? Why, go right ahead, citizen." Alacrity gestured for him to lead off. Floyt looked back grandly as Pokesnout took position, gazing over the shifting gawks, a number of the high backs bearing panniers of netvine. Invictus glinted up at the horizon, catching the avians, lighting them like metal mobiles. Paloma's face was solemn and haunting in the dawnglow; Alacrity's silver-in-gray hair touseled in the faint, faint breeze.

  Floyt was surprised to feel his fears slip away, replaced by an abrupt, vivid connectedness to the world around him, a mystic veneration for the moment. He drew a sharp breath, for the extraordinary clarity of it.

  Floyt made a long, trumpeting sound Pokesnout had taught him. The proteus translators didn't read it, but when the little alpha echoed it, Alacrity and Paloma heard, "Now let us go!"

  But the herd was already in motion; they'd understood Floyt. By stops and starts, the gawklegs began their Long Trek. My lordy! He's learning gawk! Alacrity thought, staring at his friend.

  Alacrity had feared that keeping trail discipline would be difficult, that the herd would tend to scatter and hold things up while strays and laggards were gathered in. But the gawks had evolved for this kind of migration. Luckily, the calves were old enough for the trip; they kept close to their mothers, and Pokesnout's deputies kept the herd in tight formation. Doctrine in Pokesnout's New Verities kept the gawks from spreading out or pausing to graze. The vermin eaters had gotten bold, and now fed from the gawks even when humans were astride.

  The gawks' gait ate up ground even though it was leisurely and energy saving, though a bit rough on riders. The creatures moved three hooves at a time, leaving them a tripod for stability. When moving fast, gawks abandoned the static stability of the tripod for the dynamic stability of rapid motion, and the broad hooves were a blur. Alacrity dearly hoped there wouldn't be much need for that.

  He thrust anxiety aside. For the time being there was the sheer joy and relief of being underway. Around mighty, blue Spica, the White Ship awaited him.

  Chapter 13

  Endangered Species

  "Steady, steady," Alacrity said. But the weighty old cow was too nervous and frightened at the unfamiliar feel of the boot. Even Pokesnout's imprecations and those of the other herd leaders couldn't quiet her. She set the huge foot down then pulled it back before Alacrity could seat the pliabamboo segment properly, then brought it down again with more weight. The boot, askew, was bent and a split appeared along its side.

  "God … dammit!" Alacrity yelled. "Dinosaurs on stilts! Christ, I must be crazy!"

  He strained to regain his temper. He'd figured on two days for getting the herd shod there in the rocky marshaling spot a half kilometer below the high desert. But three days had passed and the gawks were getting hungry and restless.

  Some of the herdmembers shod earlier, wandering around looking unsuccessfully for forage, had, despite their best efforts to be careful, split their shoes, requiring reshoeing. The supply of spare shoes was getting smaller fast. But the main problem, as with the cow, was that nervousness and clumsiness simply made things maddeningly difficult. For the humans, it had been three days of anger, fatigue, exasperation, hair-pulling frustration, and near tears.

  Or maybe clumsiness isn't a fair word, Alacrity was forced to admit; the gawks were actually pretty graceful for beings of their size. It was just that the shoes were absolutely alien to them.

  "Listen," he said through his proteus, gathering the shreds of his patience. "We'll try it again, okay?" He showed the cow another joint of pliabamboo. "Please, please try to take it easy, all right? It won't hurt you; that's a Verity."

  Miraculously, the cow complied and the boot went on. Paloma and Floyt, assisting the operation, panted weary cheers.

  "That's the last, unless somebody else has split a boot," Paloma reported. "What do you think: should we get moving before one of them does?"

  Floyt was watching Invictus. "We have to take the trail slowly, and the desert, too," he reminded them. "We might still be out there when it gets dark."

  Alacrity gauged the light, too. "Can't be helped. If we wait another day there'll be more split shoes for sure, and we'll be yanged but good."

  "But what about the drillbugs?" Floyt objected.

  "There won't be any up here," Paloma put in. "Or on the other side of the mountains either."

  Pokesnout had been listening silently. He turned to his herd and gave a blast of basso sound. They oriented in his direction and began to assemble for the final ascent. Alacrity wondered if it was his imagination that the runt hadn't waited for the translation.

  Is he learning to understand Terranglish? What're him and Ho doing?

  The going was, in Floyt's opinion, better than they had any right to expect. Gawklegs weren't mountain goats, but they were surprisingly surefooted and the trail fairly negotiable. There were only three more shoe-splits, and they were replaced with gratifying dispatch.

  A visible wariness and hesitation came over the herd as it reached the pink sands, an unwillingness to set hoof out on the ominous wasteland. The herd slowed, the creatures buffeting one another. Even males assigned to help lead the way faltered and balked.

  Pokesnout whistled angrily and throbbed from one side, where he was monitoring things. Several bulls at the lead began nudging a trio of calves out onto the sands, the younger gawks' feet skidding and digging in their pliabamboo sheaths as the calves resisted futilely, bawling, bewildered and frantic. Their mothers answered but couldn't get to them past the wall of bulls.

  Floyt held on as Pokesnout trotted forward and butted one of the bulls, bellowing. The calves took advantage of the confusion to bolt and rejoin their dams.

  When Alacrity and Paloma got there with their translators matters were already sorted out, the herd in a semblance of order again, Pokesnout having faced
down several large males, Treeneck backing him up.

  "It's an instinct with some of us," Pokesnout explained. "When a trap or danger lies in wait, the very young, or old, or sick are sometimes driven forth to test the way. But we won't do things that way anymore," Pokesnout said. "I will lead. Sacrificing the weak is bad."

  "Because you were one of the ones they'd drive into danger?" Floyt blurted. Pokesnout craned his head around at an extreme angle to study him while the translator sounded,

  "You think well." Pokesnout stepped out onto the high desert, making sure the other males followed.

  The herd had been told what to expect and had the danger of panic hammered into them. Nevertheless, a kilometer into the crossing, when the pink sand started moving and yielding up sand devils and the corrosive smell filled the air, frightened bawls went up and the gawklegs began rearing and kicking.

  Alacrity was just thankful the scuttle-death didn't simply climb one another, mounding high enough to bite above the gawks' boots. But as he'd seen on his scouting foray, that wasn't a part of their behavior; any sand devil that stepped on another was instantly driven off or engaged in combat. Almost at once a hundred incredibly vicious duels were going on among the teeming midget monsters.

  The gawklegs—the cows in particular—were unnerved by it all, but they were intelligent beings, not bovine-brained ruminants. They quickly understood that as long as they didn't fall they were safe.

  And none wanted to be left behind; that was an imperative of the herd and the Verities were too strong to be denied. Pokesnout led off and Treeneck, Rockhorn, and some of the others got the rest moving. Sand devils thronged and slavered, hurling themselves at the plia-bamboo sheaths. Again and again they slid off, teeth unable to penetrate the stuff. The things were sometimes trampled into the sand by gawks, only to rise and try again.

  "We're barely making two kilometers an hour!" Paloma called to Alacrity. "What do you say? Is it decoy time yet?"

  "We'll have to give it a try," he yelled back over the din of the herd. "We've got to make some headway."

  He guided Treeneck out away from the main body of the herd, trying to block mental images of what would happen to a tender Homo sapien down there among the fishhook teeth.

  But the big bull was steady and ploddingly calm though he had quite an escort of ravenous devils, and more were skittering in the herd's direction all the time.

  When Alacrity reached a spot a half kilometer to the left of the route of march, he unlashed a stiffened fawn-cricket carcass from behind him and dragged it free.

  Bracing himself with one hand on the surcingle and both knees thrust under it, he raised the kill and heaved it as far as he could, bouncing his heels against Treeneck's sides as a signal to get clear. The body had sand devils swarming to it the instant it hit.

  And if those warrior-workers really take their prizes back to the hive, our luck's gone sour, he saw; the hive looked to lay along the herd's route of march.

  Waves of scuttle-death came hurrying in response to the new olfactory message; the decoy drew quite a few devils away from the herd, but that still left an awful lot of little uglies. Still, the herd's speed more than doubled as the gawks got used to wearing their new boots in sand.

  In the next four hours there were no two minutes in a row when disaster didn't loom. Calves stumbled; a frightened male took a misstep that threatened to send him foundering; a cow put her foot into a hole and nearly fell. Panic and stampede were never more than an instant away. The infrasonics made the air feel like an invisible vibrobath. The vermin eaters abandoned the herd, flitting homeward.

  According to Paloma's data, sand devils normally preyed on small game and certain plants, and a single hive might claim hundreds of square kilometers as its territory, warrior-workers lying somnolent under the sand until awakened by the smell of prey or an olfactory cue from hivemate or queen. In especially hard times, excess hivemembers simply let themselves be consumed as emergency rations. Alacrity could think of a lot of ways he'd prefer to go, or see any of the others go, rather than nourish a hive of rotten little hyper-communists.

  He scanned and searched, but it was Paloma who finally spied the pyramid-vent hive entrances, three two-meter-high mounds. "What do you think, Speed?"

  He looked at the sea of sand devils squirming to snap at the gawks' legs. "Might as well give it a shot, Babyfat; we've got nothing to lose. Ho?"

  Floyt nodded, readying his torches and friction-wheel firestarter. With luck, a little diversion might activate the scuttle-death's hive-survival reflexes or something and take some of the pressure off the herd. Floyt pointed out the pyramids to Pokesnout, who understood even without benefit of translation.

  The mounds were sand hills hardened with some secretion; the shafts were meter-wide sand-devil super-highways. Floyt lit torches of twisted grass and noxious plants, and lofted one down each shaft. Then Pokesnout stumped away as fast as he could. Smoke rose from the shafts as from so many chimneys; the scuttle-death scent message changed at once, sharply.

  The hive was aboil; the assault on the herd slackened. But about then the sand became loose and treacherous underhoof, and soon after a wind came up, making the humans squint and shield their eyes and their mounts close two layers of nictitating membranes over their own. Alacrity pulled his blue bandanna up over his nose and mouth; Paloma protected herself as best she could with her wrap, and Floyt fastened his fatigue jacket up all the way, closing the collar flap, burrowing his chin down.

  Alacrity threw out another carrion decoy at a spot where the sand was especially bad. The third and last decoy, carried by Paloma on Rockhorn, they held against extreme need. Their hopes picked up. The wind died.

  Then the duneline hove into sight.

  At first Alacrity hoped that the pink ramparts of sand were a trick of the late-afternoon light, but a few more minutes made it certain: a wall of dunes had been thrown up by winds sweeping up from the rocky stretch beyond and below the high desert.

  "There has to be a way around the dunes or through them," Paloma said. Darkness would be on them soon and the herd was tiring. Some of the weak and ill gawks were already lurching.

  "I will do this thing you've taught, going-ahead-with-out-the-herd," Pokesnout resolved. "Keep them moving, keep them together," he told his deputy males and senior females, and Alacrity and Paloma as well.

  Then he was charging off, Floyt clinging as best he could, praying the surcingle would hold. Pokesnout was amazingly fast and sure despite the pliabamboo sheaths.

  Soon the duneline loomed up; Floyt's heart sank. It wasn't very formidable by normal standards—ten meters high, a thirty-five-degree incline. No problem for a gawk who, churning along and sinking to its knees or losing balance, could simply right itself and keep on going. But a lethal obstacle when a single falter could leave a helpless herdmember covered with clinging, venomous sand devils.

  Pokesnout slowed to a trot, he and his rider searching for some solution. Floyt pounded Pokesnout's neck and pointed, crying "Look there!"

  For the first time it came to him that he didn't have a proteus, and he wondered how in the world he was going to get the message across. But Pokesnout craned around to glance at his arm, then followed the pointing finger. At the very least, he'd learned what the gesture meant. At most …

  He is! He's picking up Terranglish!

  Sand devils were far fewer at the dunes, perhaps because of the shifting sand. But more than a dozen were attacking the alpha's various shoes as he trotted for the little saddle between dunes. The bull shifted to a strong six-by-six low gear as he climbed. He was more coordinated and efficient than an articulated adjustable-suspension vehicle that Floyt had seen do the same sort of thing once on Blackguard. Pokesnout's limbs were far more agile and adaptable than the ASV's pantograph legs.

  Floyt held his breath, hypnotized by the straggle, clutching for all he was worth. He watched the solid legs work, and the crest of the saddle came closer. Sand devils circled and darted in
a frenzy, showing their teeth to each other when they bumped. Pokesnout's sheathed feet sank in halfway to the rims of the pliabamboo segments.

  The top bull took a near spill that had Floyt's heart in need of a jumpstart. Then Pokesnout crested the rise. His sides heaved and his head hung tiredly as he inhaled in rapid whooshes and exhaled in unbelievably loud whistles, foam dripping from his muzzle.

  Beyond the dune ridge's base, a gentle slope led to a rocky barrens lying between cliffs and talus heaps. There were a few isolated patches of sand, like pink snow disappearing in springtime. Though the air was rank with the furious sand devils' frenzy-smell, there were none below.

  Floyt patted Pokesnout's head. "You made it, you … made it. You got us through … "

  The bull huffed, brought his head back up with a shake, and whirled to start back for the herd, making his way downslope cautiously. Floyt wasn't sure the weaker calves, oldsters, and other marginals could make the upgrade, but those who couldn't had no way out but death.

  Floyt took a last look back at the lowlands that lay along the route of march. In the distance, there was still the barrier of Lake Fret. As suddenly as that, inspiration came to him. He exulted and urged Pokesnout back to the herd.

  "We lost two while you were gone," Paloma told him when he rejoined the others. "One calf fell, and there was a beta-male whose boot split wide open."

  When Floyt explained what he'd found, she summed it up. "If that's all there is, we'll have to take it. It looks like smoking out the hive wasn't such a master stroke; there's a lot of activity back that way and the gawks have picked up some new smell. We think the hive queen may have come out for the hunt."

  Floyt absorbed the bad news. According to Paloma's proteus, a queen's decision to take part in the hunt made the borderline sand devils completely crazy, as she programmed their behavior with her royal scents.