The stones, he realized quickly. In falling he'd twisted, and in twisting he'd landed partly on his back. Both sacks must have snapped open, throwing their contents together. His backpack had become an unintended incubator for the offspring of stone fusion.
Hurriedly he slipped free of the shoulder straps. The heat from within now verged on the uncomfortable. His hands hovered over the top flap of the pack, hesitating. What could he do to terminate the reaction? What was the accepted procedure for dealing with stones that had been unintentionally melded? Could he pry them apart manually? He unfastened the flap.
So intense was the green‑blue light that spilled from the interior that he could barely stand to look directly at it. He could just make out the source of the light and heat: a single uneven mass where earlier there had been two. The individual specimens had melted into one, duplicating the reaction Fawn had described previously.
To what end? Aside from the heat, which might be nothing more than a residual by‑product of the commingling, he felt nothing. His health was unaffected, as was the color of the sky and the pungent odor of the rain forest. Nothing sprouted dramatically from beneath his feet‑or died, either, he noted with some relief.
He had a flash of inspiration. Maybe the bright light itself was the intended end product of the accidental conjoining. Perhaps this combination of stones was designed to illuminate the interior of caves, or long night‑time walks through heavy jungle, or to attract nocturnal sea creatures to a fisherman's net.
His fingers hovered over the lambent mass. The heat was substantial but not unbearable. How did one separate commingled stones? Squint as he might, he saw neither seam nor crevice nor cleavage plane. How did the stone masters do it? Or did they simply wait until the reaction exhausted itself, at which time the stones would separate of their own accord?
Exactly how much control did the stone masters have over these devices anyway?
He felt he had to at least try. Maybe a good, strong, old‑fashioned tug on both ends simultaneously, he speculated. Grabbing one side of the composite mass in each hand, he tried pulling. No luck. Interestingly, the heat seemed to dissipate through his palms rather than burn him. A twist, then, in opposite directions. As he worked his hands and wrists he thought he felt something give within the mass.
The stone exploded.
No, he decided, aware that he had not lost consciousness. The glassy mass had not blown up. In fact, he and the conjoined stones were the only things that had not exploded. They remained intact and unaltered.
It was the universe that had detonated.
Well, come apart, anyway. Disintegrated, dissolved, shattered,; When eventually it reconstituted itself, he was someplace else.
The only constant in this mental and physical transposition was the stone, which continued to pour forth its intense, unrelenting radiance. Deciding to chance the heat, he slipped the pack back over his shoulders.
Odd sort of explosion, he reflected, during which the cosmos had seemed to disintegrate and re‑form around him. Only, the process had produced some changes. Significant changes.
For one thing, there was no sign of pursuing Parramati. There was nothing to even suggest the presence of Parramati. He was still standing on a moderate slope in the midst of dense forest, but the foliage was not of the kind he had come to associate with the Vounea Peninsula. In fact, it was not of a kind he recognized at all.
There wasn't a sane trunk in the lot. Trees took the, form of sharp curves, right angles, berserk spirals: anything but straight. Instead of leaves, the majority sported tiny red pustules. Some were no larger than the tip of his little finger while others were a meter and more across. Nor were these singular growths stable. They twisted and writhed as if in pain beneath a pale red sky in which hung suspended an orb of deepest crimson, whether sun or moon Pulickel couldn't tell.
There were other lights in the sky, but he balked at calling them stars. For one thing, most were purple, except for those that blinked lavender. Within arm's length of his right hand a cluster of narrow, blue‑striped shoots quivered in the still air. As they trembled, they hummed.
Their murmuring resonated in time to the humming that was intensifying inside his head. It felt and sounded as if he'd been locked inside a steel cylinder full of bees. Stumbling to his left, he saw something thick and ropy slither out of sight below the surface of a tangerine stream. Glistening wetly as it moved, it resembled animate yellow slime.
A flock of flying creatures appeared, keeping less than a meter off the ground. Showing no sign of changing direction or swerving, the V ‑shaped formation headed straight for him. At the last instant he threw up his arms to ward them off.
Most sailed past on either side. The several that did not, penetrated his skin and passed completely through his body. No ghosts they, he could feel every centimeter of their passage. Gasping at the sickening sweetness that filled his belly, he bent double and grabbed his midsection. Only after the sensation had passed was he able to straighten and look behind him. The flock continued on its way, oblivious to the ineffectual human blockade it had so effortlessly ignored, penetrating anything that stood in its path with lugubrious ease. Hasty inspection revealed that the incident had left not a mark on him. Not a hole, scratch, bruise, or puncture. Atomic structures had been momentarily rearranged. His, or theirs? he wondered.
The scarlet orb that dominated the heavens was sinking rapidly toward the distant horizon. Much too rapidly, he thought. The purple sky‑points brightened. They were stars then, he decided, but arrayed against the red‑tinged firmament in no pattern he recognized. Certainly these were not constellations discernible from anyplace on Senisran.
Several of the energetic stellar formations resembled nothing in the canon of known celestial features. Riding in the pack on his back, the luminescent stones continued to radiate steadily.
Taking a couple of hesitant steps in the direction of the peculiar stream, he saw that it ran not with water but a much more viscous liquid that had the consistency of orange syrup. With each step the surface underfoot let out a quavery moan, as if he were treading the spine of some enormous, somnolent being. Those tortuous, serpentine growths he'd assumed were forest: were they trees‑or hair? Was his presence here disturbing enough to make the earth complain?
His throat dry from running, he dipped an uncertain hand toward the orange current. It twisted away from him, retreating like a live thing. Insistent, he shoved his fingers sharply downward. The fluid flowed over and around his hand and forearm, never touching the skin. Whatever it might be, it was repelled by his humanness:
Defeated, he straightened. There was nothing inherently inimical about the place he'd been dumped. It simply didn't like him. Where was he, and where was Fawn Seaforth? For that matter, where was Senisran? The questions led him to an answer. He knew now what kind of stones he'd stolen. Not growing stones, or healing stones. Not stones for filling nets or imparting wisdom.
They were transportation stones. But transportation to where?
Roads. Stones and spaces and roads. That was the core of Parramati kusum, brought home to him now in a manner as overwhelming as it was unexpected. He'd accidentally opened a road, only to find himself catapulted down its length utterly ignorant of his destination. As a demonstration of unfamiliar alien science, it was several orders of magnitude greater than enhanced garden growth.
The world on which he found himself resembled nothing he'd ever heard about, read about, or researched. Certainly it wasn't in the Commonwealth catalog of known systems.
His orgy of speculation was interrupted by the appearance of a puffy pink fuzzball laced with delicate blue veins that materialized among the growths just in front of him. It was roughly half his size. After a moment's hesitation, it began rolling toward him. Wary, he drew his pistol and held it ready.
As it neared, the creature slowed. Halting, it exuded a strong pseudopod that terminated in a pair
of impressively thick yellow lips. Approaching to within a meter, this flexible organ proceeded to scrutinize him intently, the lips making soft sucking sounds every time they altered position. His feet, legs, torso, arms, and head were all carefully inspected.
When he took a sudden step forward, the limb retracted completely into the round body. Avoiding him, the fuzzball rolled into a clump of dancing spines and vanished.
One faint hope was dashed when his communicator responded to his terse entreaties with the expected silence. He would have been shocked if Fawn had replied. Clipping the unit back onto his belt, he tried to decide what to do next. What could he do? He had been transported to a very elegant nowhere. Everything was off, outlandish, and unnatural, from the stream to the stars to the sun that had abandoned the alien sky with deviant precipitousness.
At that point the orange liquid inhabiting the creek bed began to flow out of its banks and head toward him. As he backed away warily, the whole stream lifted itself up and started looping in his direction like some gigantic candy‑flaked sidewinder.
Having no intention of being strangled by a stream, he turned and ran, hoping as he did so that he wouldn't run smack into something worse. Swinging the backpack around in front of him, he half closed his eyes as he searched the surface of the pulsating stone for a significant depression, a crack, anywhere it might make sense to place a manipulative organ. A glance back showed that the perambulating tributary was closing on him.
A couple of the larger growths twitched and leaned in his direction. If the stream didn't get him, it seemed increasingly likely that the forest would.
Twisting the stone had brought him here. There was nothing for it but to try again.
Reaching into the pack, he secured a firm grip and wrenched hard with both hands. His greatest fear was that the mass would separate back into its component halves, marooning him here for what promised to be a very brief if spectacularly educational future.
How far was he from Senisran? A light‑year or half a galaxy ‑away? Not that it mattered. When nothing happened, he twisted hard against the mass a second time. The ambulatory orange tide was quite close now. When it caught up, would it try to choke him, or drown him?
For a second time, the cosmos fragmented on the fringes of his consciousness. When he could again focus and cogitate, he found himself once more transported. There was just enough time for him to breathe the proverbial sigh of relief before realizing that, while liberated from hostile rivers and neurotic woods, neither was he back on Senisran.
Chapter Thirteen
The distant mountains were limned in black. Closer at hand stood a cluster of stark, gnarled trunks, leafless and forlorn, that on a lusher world would not have passed for trees. Bare‑stemmed and ghostly, they thrust naked limbs at the sinister sky as if struggling to hold a hostile universe at bay.
Gaunt, spectral flying creatures twitched uneven paths through the oppressive atmosphere, dipping and soaring as if avoiding unseen, unpleasant lumps in the air. Beneath his feet the ground was pale gray. Rocks were a darker gray or charcoal‑hued. Atop one, something the size and color of old sewer pipe was quivering with horrid life. Smaller, dun‑colored young huddled close to its protective bulk.
Holding up one hand, an unsettled Pulickel saw that it had acquired the same unhealthy ashen pallor that permeated this place. It was cold, and his jungle shorts and shirt provided inadequate protection. Only the warmth that continued to pour from the sacred stone kept him from shivering.
Though no sun appeared, the sky began to lighten. Instead of blue it was white. Not a revelatory, illuminating white, but a dull, listless shift from gray to something else farther up the spectrum. Stars revealed themselves in a night that was brighter than the day. They were black.
Instead of blinking, they regarded the stark landscape with a steady, baleful glare.
Ahead, the sun began to emerge from hiding, and it was as caliginous as the misbegotten stars. A sickly gray effulgence ghosted the rim of the burning black orb.
Slowly Pulickel brought his hand toward his face and found that he could see through the pale, wan flesh. Black bones stood out as clearly as in an old‑fashioned X ray. But the sky was worse‑the ghastly white sky splotched with unhealthy constellations of black stars.
Color had been banned from this world and no suitable replacement found. Or was everything normal and only his vision damaged, or his mind? Had the universe gone mad, or only he?
Was this the view from the bottom of a black hole? he wondered. A place where color as well as matter was crushed out of existence? But if the latter, how could he still stand, still feel his body, his face?
Here I cam drugging the bottom of a gravity well, he thought wildly, and it's dry.
The stone had cast him into the realm of unnatural law. Physics here were not merely different: they were other. But he could still see color. He knew that to be true because the radiance from his backpack remained that steady, unvarying green‑blue. Whatever powered it was strong enough to resist even the morbidifying effects of this place.
His eyes hung gratefully on that green glow as he gripped the glowing mass for a third time and twisted, his effort this time driven more by desperation than hope. When nothing happened a deep shiver of sheer panic raced the length of his spine.
Shaking, he fought to keep from losing control completely. Remembering that his first effort immediately prior to this one had also failed, he steadied himself for another try. The stone had to work. Around him, the pallid gray emptiness shouted death. His fingers convulsed on the softly glowing mass.
The universe came apart in a shower of coal and snow, shimmering shards of white and blackness. They pierced like knives and he gasped in pain.
Only to find himself saturated with color, beneath a sunset sky, standing on grass.
Red grass.
The bushes were round and yellow, the herd of hexapods browsing them burnt umber with camouflaging canary stripes. Multiple mouths paused in mid‑nip as bulging pink eyes swiveled sharply to regard him. Limpid stares reflecting sudden shock at his unannounced appearance, the entire herd promptly lumbered past the line of foliage and disappeared into the distance in a cloud of eyes, legs, cud‑chewing mouths, and red dust.
He was alone again.
Except for the occasional patch of dense, fiercely colored vegetation, the land in which he found himself was perfectly fiat. Not a ridge, not a mound, not even an anthill interrupted the horizon. It was as hot as the previous world had been cold, but devoid of humidity. The red grass formed a thick, lush carpet beneath his feet.
Blissfully blue, the sky was vacant of cloud. While not a comforting yellow, the single ripe red‑orange star that dominated the firmament did not inspire dread, either. It wasn't Senisran‑but it was better. He wasn't home, but it felt like he was back in the neighborhood.
Something irritated his throat and he suffered through a brief coughing jag. The red dust, down in his lungs, or some impurity in the atmosphere? Attractive as his new surroundings night be, he knew he couldn't stay long. With a sigh, he fondled the conjoined stones.
How extensive was the route it followed? How many worlds could it access? Undoubtedly it offered a means of selecting one's destination, but he didn't have a clue as to how that might work. He'd found the ignition, but steering remained a mystery to him.
He might die of hunger or thirst before he twisted his way back to Senisran. Or it might be the next stop on a preprogrammed, alien itinerary. Meanwhile, as the old saying went, he might as well try to enjoy the ride.
Was the green glow fading slightly? If whatever powered the system failed, he would be marooned forever. Marooned by the side of a Parpamati road, he mused, with no one likely to come along and offer him a lift. The source of the stone's energy remained as much a mystery to him as its alien engineering.
Maybe the glow wasn't weakening. Maybe the color change was due to some quality of the lo
cal atmosphere. Forcing himself to accept that comforting hypothesis, he took a deep breath and twisted hard on the stone.
His hands came loose and went drifting slowly off over the grass. They were followed by his forearms, which broke free at the elbows and began to spin lazily end over end in the direction of his peramubulating hands.
There was no blood, no pain. Just an unmistakable physiological parting of the ways. As he lunged instinctively after his escaping body parts, his torso detached from his hips and his legs came apart in sections. Last of all, his head popped free of his neck.
Obeying some unknown, unimaginable herding instinct, his component bits and pieces remained in the same general vicinity. Too focused to scream, he strove to will his corpus whole again. Though fully functional, his disembodied head no longer exercised any control over the muscles in his limbs. His hands seemed to have the most mobility. Fingers fluttering like thick cilia, they darted in and around the rest of him, kicking backward through the air. One hand latched onto a forearm and rested there like a bird taking roost on a branch.
As he stared dazedly, the yellow bushes began to detach themselves from the ground and drift off into the sky. Pulling themselves free of the soil, roots separated from branches and drifted off on their own. Indeed, the soil was beginning to separate from the ground.
Caught by a rising breeze, clumps of grass were whisked toward the eastern horizon. Elevated from their subterranean homes, burrowing creatures twisted helplessly in the air, only to be preyed upon by flying teeth that seemed to have no trouble coping with the jabberwockean change in conditions.
Overhead, the orange‑red sun was coming apart, fiery prominences dancing in all directions. In the distance he saw the handsome brown and yellow grazers coming apart, only to re‑form as a spherical mass of floating eyes, legs, horns, and bodies.
This time only the absence of lungs prevented him from screaming.
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