by neetha Napew
They climbed onto the Petraseal-laden shuttle and flew to the cave mouth, which was inconveniently distant from the village. In Satok’s absence, the location had grown even more inconvenient.
“Where the hell did these weeds come from?” he demanded, astounded by the sea of tangling vines choking the cave mouth and cloaking the cliff and mountain meadow where they usually landed.
Reilly shrugged. “I dunno. They weren’t here a coupla weeks back, but the season’s gone nuts. We can torch ‘em?”
“Not enough time. The fraggin’ cave would fill with smoke and we’d never get at the ore.”
“We could try the site back at my place,” Soyuk suggested.
“No, hell, we’ll hack ‘em back and splash ‘em with Petraseal as we go. We only need to get inside the cave.”
The stalks were amazingly tough and the stinging vines clung to the men with fierce tenacity, but they hacked and splashed until they reached the entrance of the cave.
“Just hack this crap away from the front here, and it’ll all be clear back where the Petraseal is, boys,” Satok directed.
The way was not as clear as he had hoped. They had to make several trips to lug the vats of Petraseal into the cave. Left on his own while the others pumped the Petraseal in, Satok wondered how the weeds had managed to penetrate right through the ceiling of the cave. Had the latest tremors shaken a hole in the roof? Roots and tendrils of vines drooped from the ceiling.
When Soyuk, Clancy, and Reilly returned, he sent the first two on ahead to paint where they could excavate, and told Reilly to start patching farther back in the cave. In order to listen for Fiske’s copter, Satok took the area nearest the entrance—he wanted to make sure the captain didn’t see too much of the operation.
He hacked and daubed and hacked and daubed. The interior of the cave, now insulated by the cover of vines, seemed hotter than it ever had before. The light grew dimmer and greener as he worked, almost as if he were working underwater.
He thought at one point he heard some scuffling, and the others seemed noisier than they had been for a while, hollering and swearing as they worked. Getting stung, no doubt, he thought with a grin, but that noise was soon masked by the steady chop and daub of his own work. The beat of his own heart, the rasp of his own breath, was all he heard.
In this new rhythmic silence, he worked and sweated, the faint drip of his perspiration landing on the cavern floor the only other sound he heard as he strained to listen for the engines of Fiske’s copter.
He didn’t notice when he first heard the slithering sound, a soft rustle followed by a dry whispering crackling noise, as if paper had fallen—or leaves.
Then it came to him, just as he felt something slide across the toe of his boot and curl to brush his pant leg, that he had heard nothing from the others for some time. The thought crossed his mind just before the thorns bit into his leg as the vine tendril tightened.
“Reilly!” he hollered. “Soyuk!”
For an answer, another rustle, another slither. It was darker now, and as he turned toward the doorway, he saw that a thick net of greenery had replaced what they had hacked away a bare hour before. More alarmingly, some of the greenery bore splashes of white. He tried to kick off the vines clinging to him, but succeeded only in embedding the thorns deeper into his ankles. Feeling an edge of panic, he switched on the flashlight he’d brought along.
It seemed to attract the plants, as if they couldn’t tell the difference between the light and sun. First roots, then more tendrils dropped from the roof, opening leaves as they slid.
This shouldn’t be happening, Satok thought. This couldn’t be happening! The Petraseal should have impeded any new growth, reduced it to dust. Where he had painted so industriously, he now realized that the Petraseal was marbled with cracks, fine in places, broadening in others to allow the plants to burgeon forth. Even the swath he had just painted had opened to emit tendrils.
And all of them seemed to be sliding toward him. From its sheath on his belt, he took his machete and hacked himself free, running to the rear of the cave as fast as he could without tripping over the vines.
He found Reilly first, hanging upside down by his ankles, which were pinned to the upper part of the wall. The vines twined down his legs and wrapped his arms tightly to his sides. His machete lay useless on the floor. The end of the vine—or maybe the first part to catch him—had wrapped around his neck five or six times, very tightly. Tender green shoots grew out of his mouth, nose, and ears.
Satok wasted no more time looking for Soyuk or Clancy. He didn’t even worry about why the Petraseal hadn’t worked. He jumped, hopped, and ran for the entrance, hacking and slicing.
He went at such a speed that he dropped his flashlight. That’s why he didn’t see the root looping down from the ceiling, to lash itself around his throat while another knocked him to the floor.
He didn’t scream for long as the stinging, snatching vines overwhelmed him. As the sound died in his throat, he seemed to hear from the cave a low grumbling hum. As oxygen was cut off from his brain and optic nerve and his sight failed, the light from the setting sun pierced the leaves, lighting the greenery in the cave’s entrance like the watchful eyes of a thousand gloating cats.
Marmion and her entourage had returned to Kilcoole, bringing with them Luka and an injured cat for the attention of Kilcoole’s fat witch doctor, leaving Rick O’Shay’s bird available to fly Torkel to Savoy to meet Satok.
Torkel was not actually rubbing his hands together with glee, but he felt like it. O’Shay had received a radio message that Matthew Luzon, his assistant, and an unspecified passenger had just cleared the coast at Harrison’s Fjord. Torkel considered Luzon his staunchest ally, and he quickly sent a message asking Matthew to meet him and the McGee’s Pass shanachie at Savoy.
“Hope they got that clear, Captain,’ O’Shay said, shaking his head. “Terrible amount of static lately.”
When they circled the Savoy settlement, Torkel thought nothing of the brambles growing some distance outside the town until he saw the gleam of metal beneath them. Even then he thought it was some piece of cast-off machinery a local had allowed the vines to overgrow.
When he inquired in the village for the shanachie, he was told that the man had been conferring with his fellow shanachies for days and yesterday had made a visit to the cave and had not yet returned.
“Important gentlemen such as yourself should be sittin’ and restin’ and havin’ a cuppa, and not go worryin’ after the shanachies. Sure they was all together and they’ll be after makin’ powerful decisions and discussions and such like out to the cave. I shouldn’t like to be the one to interrupt them.” This advice came from a middle-aged woman in raggedy clothes.
Why did Torkel get the feeling that there was something spurious about her rustic humility? Perhaps it was because he had lately had occasion to hear many Petaybeans speak. They seemed to use that broad colorful accent only when addressing company officials.
So he was uncharacteristically curt with her as he said, ‘Take me to this cave at once. Shanachie Satok’s business is with me and I’ve come to meet him.”
“Ah, well, sir, I’m too old a woman to take you on that sort of a hike, sure I am. But my son now, he’d be after takin’ ya on his way up to the fields with the sheep like.”
“Then let him take us, but let’s go,” Torkel snapped.
A boy appeared abruptly, a human island in a white woolly sea. He shook his head when Torkel wanted to use the copter to get them there. “Coo-berries’ll take that, too. C’mon!”
It irritated Torkel no end that Rick O’Shay had the time to relax, drink tea, and exchange gossip with the woman while he traipsed after the boy. About a mile from the end of the vil1age, the boy started swinging in a wide arc around the lake of weeds.
“Just where is this cave, son?” Torkel asked him, panting slightly at the uphill climb. He’d have to get back into working out again at the station.
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��Over there, sir, but you won’t want to go there, sir. Only shanachies go there.”
“Are all you people nuts? I already told your mother I have business with the shanachies. Now then, how do we get through this shrubbery and into the cave?”
“Ah, sure and I couldn’t be doin’ that, sir. Coo-berries is dead poison to sheep, and they’ve not sense enough to keep from eatin’ them. Worse, I’d never get the stickers and thorns out of the wool.”
“Then don’t take the sheep, son. Did that ever occur to you?”
“But like, what would I do with ‘em then, sir?”
Torkel was about to make a suggestion when he heard the engine of another copter. Seeing it over fly their position and head for the village, he abandoned the boy and sprinted back down the hill to intercept it.
He arrived winded, back where he’d started from, in time to see the pilot shut down the copter and jump down, followed by the imposing figure of Vice-Chairman Matthew Luzon; one of his entourage, who looked a bit pale; and an individual dressed in ragged leather and fur. As Torkel approached, his nose twitched at the rancid stench that exuded from the creature.
“Dr. Luzon, thank you for coming. I’m afraid there’s been a bit of a delay, however.”
Luzon smiled knowingly. “Ah, yes, the vines. I encountered the same problem when I serendipitously ended up at McGee’s Pass on my way to meet you. It’s a small problem, but a bit tricky, Captain. You simply enlist the aid of the villagers to throw boards and stones on top of the weeds to form a path. We found that worked fine when we landed in the middle of a patch ourselves.”
‘You went to the cave at McGee’s Pass?”
“Cave? Ah, was that what the locals were singing about? No, we didn’t examine the cave. When we discovered that you were, in fact, here, we came as soon as that . . . ah . . . song was over. I did, however, make a quite satisfying discovery during our brief stay which I’ll discuss with you later. Now then, where’s this fellow we were supposed to meet?”
“He’s in the cave,” Torkel said. “Beyond the weeds. Though I’m damned if I know how he got through.”
“Easy enough if you think about it,” Matthew said superciliously. He turned to the villagers who had gathered to watch the company men confer. “I want a work party to gather boards, stones, sheets of plasglas, anything that can be thrown across the weeds for a path. Now, step quickly, will you! We must reach the cave.”
“Sure, carryin’ enough things to get back there, that’s a week’s work you’re talkin’ about, sir,” said a local man with the broad weathered face of an Eskirish cross, scratching his head at the prospect.
“We’ve used all that sort of stuff we had building bridges across the streams when they flooded,” the woman said. “There’s not a scrap left hereabouts.”
“Then we’ll send back to SpaceBase,” Torkel said with a curt nod to O’Shay. “You radio for a team.”
O’Shay got on the radio, and in a moment he emerged and said, “None of the other copters are at SpaceBase, sir, or even available later today.”
“Then one of you fly back and pick up help and material,” Torkel said, vastly annoyed at all of the delays and rather surprised that Satok, who’d had twenty-four or more hours to work ore, had not been on hand to guide them.
“It will have to be your pilot, Captain Fiske,” Luzon said. “I require the full time services of my own.”
Torkel nodded to O’Shay, who climbed back aboard and restarted his engine. By now it was well into the afternoon.
“Why do you suppose we haven’t heard from your shanachie?” Torkel demanded of the woman as the noise of the copter faded in the distance.
“Cave’s a powerful ways back, sir.”
“How did he and the others get there, then?” Torkel demanded. “We could try the same thing.”
“Ah, sure, sir, shanachies has their ways as wouldn’t be known to others.”
Matthew Luzon nodded to Braddock, who hastily made a note of that remark.
“Yet more misguided souls in league with the Great Monster,” wailed the unwashed man.
“Ah, Captain Fiske, this is a particularly valuable . . . acquaintance. From the southern continent. Brother Howling, meet Captain Torkel Fiske, who has spearheaded the effort to have this planet fully investigated. Captain Fiske, the Shepherd Howling, a major spiritual leader from the Vale of Tears. A most influential man.”
Torkel gave the scruffy man an impatient look and limited his response to a mumbled “Delighted.”
While they accepted the dubious hospitality of the village, Torkel gave the commissioner the details of his meeting with Satok and the ore samples he had himself handled and identified. To his relief, Luzon did not appear at all skeptical about the authenticity of the ores. He knew the planet was ore-rich: every space probe had verified that, even pin pointing the exact sites from space. Finding the precise locations on the surface had proved to be impossible.
Howling had apparently been listening carefully and now he nodded wisely. “The monster is treacherous. Perfectly capable of transforming gold into stone, winter into summer, harmless plants into murderous serpentine weapons. Time and again I have warned my flock they must rise up and subdue the monster with no hint of capitulation, but they were weak and faltering.”
Torkel glanced at Luzon, appreciating what merit the lunatic could provide in discrediting the Kilcoole interpretation of the planet’s behavior. He smiled at Luzon. “We need a few more new . . . acquaintances like this good and wise Brother Howling, don’t we?”
Matthew wore a smug expression while Brother Howling said gravely, “Thank you, my son.”
Matthew mentioned to Torkel, in an amused tone, what the villagers had sung of Satok at McGee’s Pass.
“We’ve constantly been given the impression here that shanachies are universally respected and their views reflect those of their communities. At McGee’s Pass, this was not so.”
“I see. Discrediting what we have been told of the whole system. Yes, definitely, Dr. Luzon, we will need to have testimony from McGee’s Pass at the hearing. And Brother Howling here, too, will represent a unique viewpoint at odds with the Kilcoole party line.”
“My thoughts, exactly. Although Brother Howling also falls into the error of believing this planet to be sentient, his view is that the planet, far from being a benefactor and friend, is in fact a great monster. He believes that the colonists were brought here by the company as banishment for misbehavior elsewhere and that one day, if they do well and obey his teachings, the company will redeem them.”
“Verily, have I said it thusly, my brethren,” Shepherd Howling said. “I have done the company’s work on this forsaken rock, Brother Matthew, that I and my family may be delivered from the monster and into the grace of the company once more. I will commune with the planet here, if you will excuse me.”
His absence was welcome on several counts: the obviously fresher air, and the chance for Torkel and Luzon to make plans based on their respective discoveries. Torkel listened intently to Luzon as the man talked of similar investigations he had conducted into the folkways of various planets and systems and how he had corrected mistaken concepts and behaviors. The dialogue was briefly interrupted when a bewildered and bruised Shepherd Howling was herded back at the end of their hostess’s broom.
“With all respect, gentlemen, you keep this maniac away from my little girl or I’ll geld him!” the woman said and stomped away.
“Sit in the sun, Brother Howling,” Luzon suggested, pointing to a half-broken bench against the outside wall—downwind of them.
All the while, Torkel kept expecting Satok to arrive to guide them to the rich ore faces as he’d promised. But several hours went by with no sign of the man. Finally the sound of helicopter engines once more routed the four men from their chairs.
Two helicopters approached the village. Torkel figured one would have men and one equipment to rid the area of the bushes, but when the passengers disembarked,
he was annoyed to see that there were no figures in fatigues emerging, except the pilots, O’Shay and Greene. No one useful at all, in fact. Marmion and her entourage had come, along with George and Ivan from Luzon’s group. And to his further irritation, he watched as Clodagh Senungatuk was courteously helped to descend by O’Shay from his copter.
“You’re on report, O Shay, for disobeying orders,” he told the pilot.
“Oh, please don’t punish the dear boy, Captain Fiske,” said Marmion, with a flourish of fashionable fabric scarf and a charming move. “It’s all my fault really. Captain Greene returned from the southern continent with Yana Maddock, Dr. Shongili, and those sweet youngsters, plus another little girl Dr. Shongili says is the sister of his other niece—“
“Goat-dung!” Shepherd Howling said. “She is mine. She is to be my wife.”
“Oh. surely not,” Marmion said, smiling brightly at him. “The girl’s less than twelve years old. But, at any rate, our teams were in need of one of Clodagh’s hearty meals and we sat listening to Yana and Sean tell us the most fantastic adventures—ah, but I needn’t tell you, need I, Matthew? You were present for some of them.”
Luzon inclined his head, his eyes half-hooded and dangerous.
“Well, Johnny Greene heard Captain O’Shay’s message about the weeds here, and then Clodagh said that a work party wouldn’t do much good and might even be in danger. But that she knew something that would work.” Marmion paused, as if expecting approval, her eyes all wide and innocent. “Et viola! We have come to offer assistance.”
Before anyone could say anything else she added ingenuously, “Also, Matthew, your young friends were absolutely pining for you, and I simply had to help reunite you, isn’t that so, boys?”
Luzon’s muscular assistants nodded—rather miserably, Torkel thought.
While everyone was standing around thinking of a response to Marmion’s gabble, Clodagh Senungatuk started walking out of the village.
“Where the devil do you think you’re going?” Torkel demanded.
“To make a path to the cave,’ she said simply, and kept walking.
