The river bent to the right, past a stand of trees. With luck, once they got past the bend, they would be out of danger. But the background thunder was growing louder. The alien yelled, "Don't-t . . . stop-p-p!"
He saw why. The riverbank ahead of them was becoming as riled as the slope behind them. The alien veered into the water with a splash.
"Oh, no—wait!" he panted. But the alien appeared to be crossing at a shallow point, trotting through ankle-deep water, with a glance back every few seconds. Bandicut hesitated at the water's edge, but a chunk of ice slammed into his shoulder blades and convinced him to keep moving. "C'mon, you two!" he yelled. "Don't roll over!"
The robots trundled after him, and this time kept upright, plowing through the water close behind him. The numbing cold flashed up Bandicut's legs again; it took all of his strength not to collapse back into the water. He staggered, but kept moving.
Where was the alien going?
The thundering grew louder. He hoped they weren't going to wade downstream through whitewater rapids. The view beyond the bend was blocked by a large outcropping with overhanging trees, but the alien was heading that way, apparently in an effort to stay close to the far bank. The creature waved them on, and disappeared around the bend.
As Bandicut hurried around the outcropping, he glanced nervously up at the overhanging trees, praying that nothing would fall down on them. Then he rounded the bend and saw the source of the thundering: a waterfall cascading down a cliff face, into the river. And the alien was striding directly toward it.
"What—" he panted "—are you—?"
It was too far away to hear. Bandicut glanced back at the robots. "Oh, Christ!" Napoleon had gone down, and Copernicus had paused beside it. Napoleon clambered back to its feet, leaning on its more compact companion. "Can you keep going?" Bandicut yelled. He ducked as a fusillade of ice scattered into the water around him.
Napoleon was up, squawking, "Coming, John Bandicut!" Copernicus revved its wheels, shooting back a stream of water as it surged forward. Bandicut turned and kept moving. The alien was standing in the spray at the base of the waterfall.
"Hraaahhh!" it cried, waving its arms. "Be-hiiind!"
Bandicut heard a new rumble. He looked over his shoulder and gasped.
The riverbed itself was coming alive. The surface of the water was dancing in agitation, as if coming to a boil. Several large boulders were shaking, almost lifting out of the water. Bandicut gaped in disbelief. Farther upstream, the river itself was rising in a large wave.
"NAPOLEON! COPERNICUS!" he screamed. "FASTER!"
The robots rushed in an eruption of spray.
Bandicut charged toward the falls—then stumbled to a halt. The alien was gone. Bandicut blinked, half blinded by spray. "HELLOOOO!" he shouted in a hoarse voice. "WHERE ARE YOU?" He looked around frantically. The boulders were dancing forward, and behind them, the wave was engorging itself into a thunderous wall of water. Directly in front of the wave, the barren riverbed was exposed, where the water was being drawn up like an indrawn breath.
"Hii-i-e-e-e!" The alien dashed out of the waterfall, gesturing wildly, then turned and vanished back into it.
Bandicut gaped at the falls, thundering before him, its spray drenching him. "What are you doing?" he cried. Was he supposed to run into the wall of water, and the cliff face behind it?
"Run, John Bandicut!" rasped Napoleon, behind him.
The water around him exploded with a shotgun blast of rocks. One caught him in the back of the head, and he staggered, half blinded with pain. The wave was looming, almost upon him.
A hand grabbed him and yanked him straight into the falls. Water crashed over his head, stunning him senseless. He was aware of shouting and mechanical clanking, and a great crash of rock upon rock. He pitched forward, tumbling into silence.
Chapter 4
Ik
BANDICUT GROANED AND sat up painfully, his head spinning. He must have lost consciousness for a few moments. He was chilled to the bone—but he was no longer under the waterfall, or in water of any sort. Where the hell was he? He blinked his eyes back into focus. There was a sun low on the horizon, and a warmish breeze blowing over his skin, and not a snowflake in sight. He was sitting on some sort of . . . grass. "What the—?"
He heard a crash, and turned to see Napoleon tumbling out of what looked like a shadow in a stone wall. Napoleon toppled over on the soft footing, almost landing on top of Bandicut. A minute later, Copernicus appeared. It rolled a few meters, then shuddered to a halt, tapping like a cooling engine. "Cap'n—we appear to have passed through another transition boundary," it announced.
"Yeah," Bandicut sighed, overcome with joy at seeing the two intact. He was still shivering from the frigid drenching, warm breeze or not, but at least he had hope now of recovery. But what had happened to their rescuer? "Hey!" he yelled. "Hello! Friend!" Shrugging off his backpack, he clambered to his feet, squishing in soggy shoes. A small meadow lay before him, and there was a low cliff wall to his back. "Hallooooooo!" he called, cupping his hands.
He thought he heard a distant call, but couldn't quite locate its direction.
"Where is the other?" Copernicus asked haltingly. Its sensor-array looked a little bent.
"I don't know," Bandicut said. "Scan for him, will you? Nappy? You okay?"
The robot stood with a creak. "I seem unharmed by the immersion, John Bandicut." Stretching to its full height, it peered one way and then another, and finally sank back to a crouch with a sound remarkably like a sigh.
Bandicut echoed the sentiment. "I want to thank that guy for saving our hides. But first I guess we'd better look for some shelter. I don't know about you two, but I need to dry out and warm up." He hoisted his wet bag onto Copernicus's back. "That okay, Coppy?"
"Of course, Cap'n."
Of course. Loyal servant, never complained. "How are you two doing, power-wise?" He almost hesitated to ask. Away from the ship, once their batteries ran down . . .
"I read my charge at ninety-four percent, John Bandicut," said Napoleon.
"Eh?" That was much higher than he would have guessed. They had been running hard for some time now. "Coppy?"
"Ah—Cap'n, somewhere between eighty-nine and ninety-two percent. I must run some diagnostics to interpret the uncertainty."
Bandicut blinked in surprise. "Okay, but first let's find our friend—or at least a place to camp." He started walking, waving them to follow. What could give the robots such endurance? he wondered. Had their hardware, as well as their programming, been altered during the "transition" into this place? He supposed there was no point in worrying about it right now.
"Anyone know a song?" he asked.
Neither of the robots answered.
*
The sky was quickly taking on a twilight cast, as they crossed the small meadow. Beyond it, a stand of trees half-enclosed a rocky knoll. Bandicut moved cautiously, and passed under the trees. They looked a bit more Earthlike than the ones he had seen in the previous place. A couple of them looked like copper beeches, and several others reminded him of pine or fir. "Take note of the trees, the grass, anything you can put in your databases, guys. You never know what information we might need later."
Napoleon, in response, began to zigzag, inspecting the foliage.
Bandicut rubbed his arms, thinking that he would be smart to get a fire going. He glanced around for pieces of deadwood, and found one half-fallen branch hanging off one of the trees. He tugged on it and it came loose in his hand. As a sudden thought crossed his mind, he dropped it and stared at his palm to see if the contact was going to make his skin curl up and die. His hand looked okay, felt okay.
*Your body chemistry has been normalized to metaship standard.*
/Huh? What's that?/
There was no elaboration. But he wondered: Did that mean he could eat the local food? That would be a great relief.
He heard a snapping sound, and then "Glleeeer—" rasp "—com-m-me!" He turned toward t
he outcropping of rock. Their alien rescuer had emerged from a sheltered alcove in the rock, and was beckoning with a wave.
Bandicut sighed gratefully. A sudden shiver went through him, and he shook like a wet dog. He needed to get out of his wet clothes; with luck, some clothes in his backpack might still be dry. If he was luckier still, they could build a fire and both warm up. He suddenly realized that the alien was pointing toward a small, flickering pile of wood—a fire, already burning.
Bandicut waved to the robots to follow, picked up the dry branch—his contribution—and walked to join the alien. He paused at the entrance to the sheltered area, and the alien gestured toward the fire. "Come."
Yes . . . this is right, whispered a small voice in Bandicut's head, a familiar voice.
He started.
The alien cocked its head.
Bandicut swallowed, thinking, dear God this is no time to start in with the haunting memories—or, worse yet, silence-fugue. The alien stepped aside to let him kneel by the fire. It was small—the flames licking out of what was little more than a pile of twigs—but he sighed over and over in gratitude as he reached out to it, wishing he could drink its warmth through his hands and wrists.
"Hrrr—" rasp "—c-c-cold?" said the alien, crouching on the other side of the fire. The stone in the alien's right temple glimmered as it spoke.
Bandicut stared at the tingling stone in his own wrist. He sensed that it was working hard to translate the sense of the being's various words; except for the rasp of uncertainty, the sounds of the translation were indistinguishable from the alien's own voice. He looked up earnestly into the alien's sculpted, blue face, and felt the sudden full impact of what was happening. An alien. His life had just been saved by a flesh-and-blood being from another world. His mind reeled at the thought. "Yes," he whispered, answering the question at last. "Very cold."
The two robots lumbered alongside and parked themselves. Bandicut got up with a grunt and lifted his sodden backpack off Copernicus. "My, uh, supplies," he explained.
The alien, whose face was shadowed now in the dimming twilight, angled its head for a better look. Bandicut opened the bag and tilted it so that his host could see into it—or least feel that the gesture had been made. He reached in, groping for dry clothes, and pulled out a jumpsuit and some underwear. They were damp in spots, but a lot drier than what he was wearing now. The air was cooling quickly as the daylight faded, lending urgency to his actions.
He shook out the clothes and held them up for the alien to see. He tugged at the wet fabric clinging to his body. "Dry clothes," he said, as distinctly as he could, through the quaver in his voice. "I'm going to change."
The alien remained silent, perhaps waiting for him to demonstrate.
He hesitated, feeling a sense of absurdity. Here he was, in a historic encounter with an alien species, and the first thing he was going to do was undress. It couldn't be helped, of course—and there was a certain logic to it, beyond the necessity. He might as well let the creature see what he looked like, and perhaps reassure it that he wore no weapons. He took a breath and quickly unzipped his soaked jacket and jumpsuit, stripping naked. He grabbed his spare clothes—then hesitated a moment, though he was trembling and covered with goosebumps.
The alien studied him with interest, and spoke again in that tongue-rolling tone. "Cl-l-l-ooooothes?"
"Yes." Bandicut starting dressing, hurriedly, then hunkered back down by the fire. It was faltering a bit, and he puffed gently on it. He picked up his dry branch, cracked it over his knee, and propped the pieces over the tiny, flickering flames.
The alien responded by picking up something from the grass on its side—another piece of deadwood. Snapping it in two, the alien placed the pieces of wood carefully beside the fire—not on it, but beside it. Saving it for later.
Bandicut nodded, rubbing his hands together. The alien, too, crouched close to the small flames, extending its own hands. They were larger than Bandicut's hands, with three long, articulated fingers—bony, but powerful looking—and two opposing thumbs per hand, giving them the look of strong mechanical grippers.
"Warrrmmm."
"Warm," Bandicut repeated. He looked up into the alien's eyes and realized suddenly that he was not the only one who had gotten soaked in the frigid waters. Was the alien suffering from the cold, too? It was wearing a smooth body covering that looked like leather, and was probably as wet as Bandicut's clothes. Maybe that was why it had vanished after pulling Bandicut to safety—to hurry and get a fire going.
Bandicut tried to read its expression, but couldn't. The being's face was angular, and rather high and narrow. It had a horny-looking mouth that protruded slightly and appeared to have a fixed curve to it. There was no visible nose, but its eyes were close enough to being humanlike, though smallish and deep set in bone-ridged sockets. Its gaze was intense; there was a diamondlike sparkle deep in its eyes that seemed to be more than just reflection. Its head was hairless, and sculpted with smooth indentations and bulges.
"Are you cold, too?" Bandicut asked. The stones pulsed in his wrists as he posed the question.
"C-cold. Ik-k-k c-cold," the alien agreed. After a moment, it cast a sidelong glance at the robots.
"They won't bother you," Bandicut said hastily. "I—" He hesitated. "My name is—Bandicut." He pointed his hands back in at himself. "John Bandicut."
The alien sat back a little, eyes flickering. It seemed to consider this for a moment. "Ik," it said finally, pointing a finger at its forehead.
"Your name is Ik?"
"Ik!" the alien repeated, with a sharp emphasis, as though to clarify the pronunciation.
"Ik," Bandicut repeated.
The alien grunted, perhaps in satisfaction. It—or he, Bandicut decided, based on nothing more than intuition—made a small sweeping gesture toward Bandicut. "J-John . . . B-Band—"
"Bandicut. John Bandicut."
Ik raised his head slightly, then lowered it. "John Ban-dicut."
/// John Bandicut.
Do I . . . know you? ///
There was a whispering movement in his thoughts, like a breeze fluttering around loose papers in an old attic. Bandicut felt a sudden upwelling of sadness, mingled with hope. /Charlie?/ But there was no further sound. He wanted to believe it was Charlie's voice he had just heard, but there had been too many echoes of memory haunting him lately. Charlie had returned to life once before, after dying—but much more quickly. Best not to hope, or believe. He felt tears welling in his eyes. At that moment, a waft of smoke from the fire caught him in the face, and he coughed violently.
Ik sat back in a crouch, hands raised a little, in what looked like a defensive posture. He was undoubtedly uncertain about Bandicut; it would only be natural. What could Bandicut say to explain himself? The alien's eyes flickered with a glint of blue.
"Ik," Bandicut whispered, thinking, I know I should be excited, but I'm cold. Tired. Confused. The warmth from the fire was ever so slowly seeping into him. "Where are we, Ik? This is all new to me. Do you live here? Do you know this place?"
"No. No." Ik rose suddenly. "Not my—place. Cannot—stay." He took three steps from the fire and surveyed the copse that lay outside their little shelter. Daylight was fading fast. "Must leave—" rasp "—at first light."
Bandicut rose, too, his legs protesting with a sharp ache. "Why? Is there danger?"
Napoleon suddenly beeped. "Danger, John Bandicut? Please specify."
Ik stared at the robot for a moment, then returned to hunch close to the fire.
Bandicut sat crosslegged once more. "Ik, are we in danger here?"
The alien reached out with his hands until they were almost in the flames. He looked at Bandicut with a sharp gaze. "D-danger? No. But I have . . . need." Ik stared into the fire.
"Then, we can stay here for the night?"
"Yes," Ik said to the fire. "It seems a good place to stay."
Bandicut sighed. "Thank God. And Ik?"
The alien's gaze did n
ot shift.
"Thanks. For saving me—us—back there."
Ik looked up. "Th-thank?"
"For what you did. I appreciate it." Bandicut made a gesture, pointing from his heart toward the other.
The alien's eyes flickered.
Bandicut took that as acknowledgment. "I would really like to know," he said, "just exactly what happened back there. Why were we attacked?"
Ik cocked his head, then made a gesture toward the two robots.
Bandicut blinked, and remembered the way they had tumbled down the slope into the river. Had some defensive mechanism taken that as an attack?
"Disturbed—" rasp "—frightened—the ice," said Ik.
"Uh?" Bandicut's right wrist tingled as the translator-stone struggled with the words. "Frightened the ice?"
"Hraaahh," said the alien, looking sideways again at the robots. "Yes. In a manner of speaking."
"You're saying the ice back there was alive?" Bandicut swallowed, remembering the tidal wave that had nearly swept him under. "And the riverbed, too?"
The alien rubbed his chest, peering at Bandicut. "Riiight." He leaned closer to the fire, which was snapping and darting taller. In its flickering light, his face looked eerily like a wind-carved stone formation.
Bandicut frowned, wondering if they were communicating accurately. The stone in his wrist seemed to be tingling still, inconclusively.
Ik stirred, as though disturbed by something. "The ice, the—" rasp "—life-water, the—"
Bandicut's wrist buzzed; the stone flickered and flared.
"—river—heart—slope." The alien scratched at the grass with a long finger. "One." He looked up again. "Do you under-s-stand?"
Bandicut stared. "They're all alive?" he whispered.
"It!" said Ik. "It."
"All of it? One being? Alive?"
"Yah!" Ik clacked his hard mouth shut. He sat back. After a few moments, he drew a hand, uncomfortably it seemed, over his clothing.
Ik probably had nothing dry to change into, Bandicut thought. He poked nervously at his own wet clothes, spread out on the ground, and thought of a riverbed, river, bank, and icy slope all being one enormous organism. The idea frightened him, not so much in principle—even though he couldn't understand how such a thing could be—as because he had just witnessed the temperament of one such being. "Hostile," he murmured, more to himself than to Ik.
The Chaos Chronicles Page 36
