The Sky People

by S. M. Stirling

  "Bruhathkayosaurus?" Blair asked, nodding towards the beasts passing by.

  "Search me. Cynthia would know," Marc replied, then winced a little at the other man's stoic pain. "Something like that, weh"

  The fifty or so creatures plodded slowly northward…

  No, Marc thought. They just look slow because they don't move their legs quickly. Mais, the legs are fourteen feet long… they're traveling faster than a galloping churr.

  They had the classic shape most people associated with dinosaurs, long neck and tail, a head that looked ridiculously small although it was actually longer than a tall man, and a huge, globular body supported by four immense, columnar legs; the upper side was a mottled green-and-brown, the stomach a pale cream. The adults were a hundred and fifty feet long, and fifty at the shoulder—though their haunches were a little higher than that. Sam Feldman had estimated similar beasts closer to Jamestown at two hundred tons on the hoof. Their cries were long, melancholy buzzes, like a huge steam engine with a head cold, and the long necks weaved back and forth as they looked for fodder. The smell was overwhelming, a hard, dry scent leavened with the stink of the gigantic piles of dung they left.

  That accounted for the dense grass that covered the whole great valley to the great river westward. They weren't finding much to eat here, except when they dipped to strip up a clump of tall grass or pull a bush out of the cliff, casually masticating something taller than Marc and covered in needle-pointed thorns longer than his thumb and harder than ivory. Elsewhere he'd seen their cousins push mature oaks over by leaning on them and then chew them down to bare logs.

  "I can see why there aren't many trees around here," he said, as a six-foot head swept by a little overhead.

  It snorted with nostrils on the top of its snout, cocked an eye and looked for vegetation, and then swept on with ponderous majesty. Marc ignored it—as much as you could ignore something four times the weight of a battle tank—and unlimbered his binoculars. Out in the hazy distance between here and the river, other herds moved, creatures huge and still more huge, with long, sinuous necks, and among them squat, armored shapes like monstrous beetles with fringes of foot-long spikes and tails that sported huge clubs of bone… Beside the monsters, 'saurs of merely elephantine or rhino dimensions looked like small game.

  "And on the fringes, the predators," he said, handing the glasses to Blair.

  "Gigantosaurs."

  "More or less," Marc said.

  Big yellow-and-brown-striped bipeds, forty feet long, the largest six or seven tons, with substantial three-clawed forelimbs and protruding "eyebrows" of bone. Their heads split wide to reveal teeth like two-foot steak knives, driven by muscle that could shear through bones four inches thick.

  Others ranged from there down to the man-sized feathered raptors, packs of greatwolves, saber-tooths, and similar scavengers and minor hangers-on and riffraff. Hundreds of thousands of tons of meat on the hoof were passing through this time of year, and there were plenty of opportunists looking for a share. As Marc watched, four Gigantosaurs caught a titanosaur calf—a three-year-old weighing a mere thirty tons or so—as it bent its head to drink from one of the streams that veined the plain. The great jaws gaped as the six-ton carnivore reared back, its thick, supple neck curved into an S-shape, then slammed forward.

  Even at half a mile distance, the scream of the calf was ear-hurtingly loud, as if God had gotten his toe stuck in a closing door. A stampede went out from the spot like the ripple of a stone thrown into a pond as the plant eaters fled; the armored ones backed into circles, lashing the air with their knobby tail-clubs. The calf and the Gigantosaur went over into the stream in a whipping cloud of spray and flying mud; the others gathered around, dipping their heads to strike like nightmare four-story birds.

  After a moment, the flurry of motion died down, and they set their great eagle-claw feet on the calf's carcass as they worried loose chunks the size of Volkswagens and threw their heads upright to unhinge their jaws and bolt the great gobbets down, rammed backward by the peristaltic motion of their thick tongues. Now and then they would stop to make half-completed strikes and hissing roars at their pack-mates, for all the world like newly elected senators divvying up pork.

  The Terrans and Cloud Mountain party waited, sipping water and gnawing on strips of dried preserved meat; those tasted like old sandals sweating salt crystals. At last—

  "There!" Blair pointed, and handed the field glasses back.

  Mark took them, peering and adjusting the focusing screw with his thumb. The beasts in question looked a lot like those used in Jamestown; the main difference was a short thick-based horn on the nose and perhaps a slightly rangier build. He felt a moment's keen nostalgia for that bustling little town.

  Wish I'd never left. Then: No, I don't. I'd go through it all again to meet Teesa. His mind gibed at him: Aren't you planning on going back, then, you?

  "Shut up, Marc," he muttered to himself. Then louder, to the tribesmen: "Those will do, if they come close enough."

  Taldi took the binoculars; he'd adapted to them with innocent calm after a moment's wonder. Marc wasn't surprised; you expected magic to do wonderful things, like giving a man the sight of an eagle or pterosaur.

  "They are large," Taldi said. Then he grinned. "I would like to ride on such a thunder-lizard."

  From the look in his eyes, he was thinking of what Teesa would say if she saw him on one. Marc smiled himself. Sorry, podna. I think you're not her type… weren't even before we did the mind-meld thing.

  Tension grew as they watched the herd of ceratopids grow closer; they seemed to be edging closer to the cliffs, avoiding the creeks where they got deeper towards the main river… which, considering some of the things that lived in the Missouri-sized stream, wasn't surprising. Now and then they'd stop to dig in the dirt with the points of their beaks, crunching contentedly on roots. When some Gigantosaurs came and gave them a once-over, they backed into an oblong with the calves in the center and a ring of belligerent horned snouts pointing out, shaking their bone-sheathed heads like Brobdingnagian rhinos or bison. The huge bone shields were covered in skin, and they flushed with blood as the beasts raged.

  OOOOOOONNKKK!

  The hoarse bellow sounded across the plain, and a big male with an orange shield flushed reddish put his massive head down and broke into a lumbering trot towards a carnosaur. The meat eater sheered off, easily striding away. The horned 'saur stopped and tossed his head, bellowing again, throwing plumes of dust from under his stamping forefeet. This species tended to have dispositions like rhinos, too, only with less brainpower and more belligerence—their response to anything that seriously pissed them off was a flat-out charge. The big carnosaurs dropped back and followed when the herd resumed its northward passage.

  "All right," Mark said. "They're going to come fairly close. Let's get ready."

  Taldi gave him a nod, and Blair a thumbs-up. They turned and scrambled down a ravine that split the cliff. Marc went carefully; the last thing he needed now was to fall and break a leg or dislocate a shoulder. More than his own life was riding on this, more than his friends' lives—more even than Teesa's.

  As he dropped the last few feet to the floor of the ravine, a four-inch rodent of some sort stood and chattered defiance at him from only inches away, eyes bulging and long chisel teeth bared, curling its tail and clutching an acorn to its chest. He touched a finger to his brow.

  "You can keep it, little podna," he said.

  It suddenly fled up a vertical rock wall, and he turned to the pile of torches and clay firepots. A dozen warriors awaited them, mostly younger men—the ones who'd volunteered for this part of the job.

  He grinned at them, and they smiled back. If the expressions looked forced for a few, he didn't particularly blame them; his own testicles were trying to crawl up past his navel, and his bladder was doing a balloon imitation as well. The whole operation was mad, but this part was certifiable. He glanced aside at Blair; the Englishman still ha
d the big-game rifle slung across his back.

  "You sure you want to take that, podna? We only have half a dozen rounds left and it'll slow you."

  "You're taking your bow."

  "Weh, but that only weighs about two pounds. The rifle's fourteen."

  "Still, I think I can bear it."

  "Your funeral." Or your trip down a throat, whole, headfirst. "Let's go."

  The Cloud Mountain warriors had their spears and bows along, too, probably for psychological reasons as much as anything. They trotted out behind Taldi and the two Terrans into the thigh-high grass and among the herds that stretched from one edge of sight to the other. In a way it was worse down here at ground level; there was no perspective, except the one looking up at the creatures that paced by.

  "Now I know what it feels like to be a mouse," Marc said, looking out over the plain and its mountains of moving flesh.

  Blair laughed with Marc, and the tribesmen looked at them with respect tinged by awe.

  It's laugh or scream like a little girl, Marc thought, as they wound their way through a herd of the titanosaurs.

  That was more dangerous than you'd think. It was hard to estimate just where the tree trunk legs were going to come down, and close up, the walking walls of flesh gave you a vertiginous sense that they were always toppling over on you. The sound of their footfalls filled the world, like rumbling thunder on a hot summer day or batteries of heavy artillery. Tahyo followed so closely that Marc could feel the cold, wet nose touch his bare calf every other stride.

  Taldi threw himself aside with a yell as a foot with hundreds of tons of weight behind it slammed down not four feet from him. That and the miniature earthquake tossed him off his feet and onto his shoulders and neck; half-stunned, he doggedly began to gather the scattered arrows that had spilled from his quiver and snatch up the leather sack of torches. The next time the rear foot came down it would be on top of him. Marc dashed in—you could run under the beast's belly without stooping—and grabbed Taldi by one arm, lugging him through under the vast sagging creamy arch of the belly.

  Lice the size of small cats crawled across the massive roof of skin; one dropped, attracted by the humans' body-heat and landed on Taldi's neck, poised with its jaws and sucker parts ready to clamp on his skin. Marc struck at it with a fist and a cry of loathing, but the shell resisted him as well as a lobster's might; it reared up and hissed at him, waving its mandibles. He drew his bowie and smashed it with a blow from the brass cap on the pommel and it dropped away, leaking white ichor. Behind him there was a heavy clop-crunch. sound as the young greatwolf bit another in half; Marc's skin crawled with the knowledge of what might drop on him at any instant.

  Out on the other side he stopped, panting; Taldi shook himself back to alertness, and gave Marc a nod of thanks. Everyone had made it, though some had grazes and bruises and one a bleeding bite from a parasite like the one Marc had killed—the things secreted an anticoagulant to keep the blood of a victim flowing. They stopped for an instant to bandage the wounded man's shoulder and then trotted on.

  "We've got to get there before they're too far to turn," Blair said grimly.

  "Weh. We've also got to get there alive," Marc replied.

  The next herd between them and the ceratopids was a larger one of smaller 'saurs—armor-headed things with spikes down their backs and two more sticking out horizontally at the end of each tail and pebbled brown skins; they were the size of large cows, or horses. That made them more dangerous, because they were close enough in scale to see humans and react to them, and vastly more agile than the walking hills. Taldi looked a question at Marc, and he nodded. The Cloud Mountain hunter took a torch out of the bag slung over his back and one of his friends opened a firepot. The hot, scorching smell of glowing oak coals came out of it; when the ball of resin at the top of the torch touched them, it flared into hot orange flame, trailing black smoke.

  The nearest of the herd bawled in panic, showing thick purple tongues in their beaklike mouths. He'd counted on that. Animals on Venus were even more afraid of fire than they were on Earth; when it got loose it burned harder and hotter because of the greater concentration of oxygen in the air. Perhaps that was the main reason that humans were able to survive at all in this world of hostile giants.

  Taldi shook the torch and waved it through an arc; sparks fell down into the fresh green grass, little flickers of flame springing up and dying where they touched. The whatever-they-were-saurs parted to either side… which was fortunate, for at that instant they suddenly shuddered into a gallop, making the earth rumble almost as badly as the titanosaurs had.

  When they were past, everyone could see why. A saber-tooth stood with his forepaws on a dead 'saur; the creature was still twitching, and bleeding copiously from a ripped-open throat.

  "Circle around him!" Taldi called, holding the torch up between him and the carnivore. "Spread out so he doesn't have anything to charge!"

  "Weh, that's good advice," Marc said. "Chat! Chat!" Which meant scram, cat! in the lingo he'd learned at mawmaw's knee.

  The grizzly-sized spotted feline opened his mouth and squalled at them, an appalling catamount shriek but bigger; the fangs that gaped back in the killing rictus that let it stab were eighteen inches long and seemed longer beneath the little yellow eyes that blazed out from his dark-brown-and-fawn fur. His heavy shoulders made the hindquarters and the stubby tail that twitched there look nearly as absurd as they were menacing. You couldn't say that about the fangs and the great claws on the plate-broad forepaws.

  They circled, keeping faces and weapons towards the saber-tooth.

  It's nervous, Marc realized. Like a cat with a dead mouse when there are wolves around—things that could snap it up like a rabbit, and its kill, too. It wants to bolt as much meat as it can and then get back to where there's cover.

  "Easy does it," he crooned. Then: "Mais, wait a minute. Don't saber-tooths hunt in—"

  Suddenly Tahyo whirled and lunged, wulfing furiously. Marc's instincts reacted to that before his mind could; he threw himself flat and rolled.

  The other saber-tooth shot through the space Marc had occupied an instant later, paws outstretched to seize him and head back on his massive neck for the killing downward stab. The beast squalled in disappointment as he landed, spinning with impossible speed for something that weighed half a ton. Marc felt like a butterfly pinned to a board as the saber-tooth reared over him; he scrabbled at his belt for his pistol, but even if he got it out in time that would be like poking the animal with a safety pin. Death reared over him with slaver running from fangs that would go in his chest and come out his back. Tahyo bounced forward to throw himself on the huge animal with insane courage—or stupidity. Taldi tried to get between Marc and the animal with his torch, but there wasn't time—

  Crack.

  The glaring eyes of the saber-tooth bulged and popped as the heavy bullet traversed his skull from side to side, mushrooming as it went and exiting in a pink mist of bone fragments and bits of brain. It dropped flaccid as a flayed skin.

  Crack.

  Another round broke the right foreleg of the other cat as he braced himself to leap. He spun in place, the thrust of his hind legs turning him on the pivot of his one sound forelimb.

  Crack, and a third round punched through his lungs and severed the big veins that ran from the top of the heart. He spasmed and died with blood pouring from his open mouth.

  Tahyo's rush stopped. He crouched and peed; Marc sympathized profoundly with the impulse. Instead of following it, he rose and turned to see Blair smiling wryly and working the bolt of the big-game rifle.

  "Now we only have three rounds left," he said. "Sorry about that."

  "Cost-effective," Marc replied. "I figure I'm worth three bullets at least. Let's get out of here before something smells the blood, Chris."

  A couple of the younger Cloud Mountain warriors wanted to stay and dig the fangs out of the saber-tooths; they were coveted ornaments. Taldi solved that problem b
y knocking one of the enthusiasts down and kicking the other, hard. He dropped the torch, and several of them put it out by the simple expedient of undoing their breechclouts and pissing on it in unison.

  Then all sprinted until they were across the front of the herd of ceratopids they'd spotted from the cliff, and on the opposite side of it as it trudged northward.

  Tricky, Marc thought.

  These beasties were about twelve feet at the shoulder, and weighed in a bit heavier than a big elephant. That made them small enough to notice humans; a couple of the big bulls walking along the edge of the herd were already giving the dozen men the hairy eyeball. The three leaders arranged the Cloud Mountain warriors in a staggered line, trotting tirelessly to keep up with the long stride of the 'saurs. The females inside with the calves would be even more chancy.

  "Drop back a little?" Blair suggested, and Marc nodded.

  "The wind's from the south—that'll be perfect."

  They all did drop behind the herd—though that meant avoiding knee-high heaps of ceratopid dung and the insects swarming over it. One or two of the rearguard beasts swung their heads to keep an eye on the humans, and a raptor pack—these had sleek black feathers with blue crests on their heads—came dancing by to check them out, but decided to move on. Marc watched the cliff-face for the feature they'd picked out—

  "We're coming up on the fissure," he said. "Get ready!"

  Everyone reached over their shoulders and pulled out torches. The men with the firepots set them down and pulled off the covers.

  Marc took a deep breath, looked at Blair and Taldi. Both nodded slightly.

  "Go for it!" he cried, and thrust his torch into the firepot.

  Flame leaped up, resin burning with an orange flare and a crackling hiss. The 'saurs reacted instantly, halting and milling for an instant, tossing their great heads and bellowing as they took the scent of flame.

  "Eeeee-ha!" Marc screamed, and the whole group joined in with a chorus of screeches.