Menace Under Marswood

by Sterling E. Lanier

  Out on the floor, her approach was about as subtle as that of a main battle tank. "What are you guys cooking up, you Pathan rat?" she purred into his ear. "Feng won't tell me, although I know everything else. You types are leaving the fort. I know that because I get to be I-Corps chief until Captain Inscrutable comes back." She rubbed softly against him and at the same time looked deep into his eyes. Several watching males felt their temperatures rise ten degrees.

  "Ah, what am I bid for my secret, Helpless Hindu Passion Plant?"

  "I might have known," she said with mock weariness. "But," she added, her voice hardening, "I want something besides words. You bums are going on some spree or other. I want in. Why should I stay here and knit? I can deck any one of you, including Nakamura—and I mean in hand-to-hand, so wipe that leer off your face."

  "Well, I do have a certain amount of discretion, Mohini," Slater said, his face rigid. "But I can't talk about it here. Why don't we adjourn to—"

  "My quarters? Well, I can always throw you out. Anyway, my boy is on leave at Orcus and we couldn't go together. He must be shacked up with at least three of those rapacious base bimbos by now, poor darling." Her current flame was Senior Warrant Palacios, whom Slater had always thought a near relative of a Mountain gorilla. However, he had the sense not to laugh. He enjoyed the glare he got from Nakamura as he followed Mohini from the big lounge, but missed the tears in the eyes of little Spec. 4 Bronwyn Carter, who had been eyeing his dashing leanness for the whole fortnight of her present assignment.

  "Never mind, love," said Bronwyn's superior, Sergeant Palla Gluck. "Have a drink and relax. That big slob will wear him out and it's only a temporary arrangement anyway. Next week he'll be free again."

  After a pleasant but totally enervating night, Slater reported to Captain Feng and soon discovered that he was not there for a rest cure. Classified hypnotapes of what was known to I-Corps about the Ruckers began at once. To break the train of thought and keep one alert, a refresher on the life-forms of Mars, native and introduced, began the minute a segment of the other tape stopped. By noon, lieutenants Slater and Nakamura had the feeling that they had been carrying bricks up Mount Everest. Hypnotapes are not easy to digest, being high-pressure, subliminal teaching of the most advanced kind. A morning on the couch was followed by a long afternoon of the same. Slater and his friend had only the dubious comfort of seeing Feng put himself through most of the same tapes, with Mohini Dutt taking over the transmission machine. The colonel and Thau Lang remained in Muller's quarters and the three younger Ruckers stayed in a sealed-off section of the I-Corps basement. No one mentioned them, but Slater tried to burn into his mind every scrap of information he could extract about the Rucker Wise Women. Mohini Dutt would have been quite annoyed to learn that even in their moments of greatest passion, the curious amber gaze of Danna Strom had kept intruding into Slater's mind. Somehow he could not get the girl's face out of his head. Or her slim body. Even while tapes and pictures fed into his brain through the omniviewer, somehow the strange loveliness of the little wild woman kept obtruding between his consciousness and the images he was supposed to be absorbing. Damn! This is really incredible. It has to stop! Back to work, idiot!

  "The outstanding characteristics of the Mars plant we call Neorhus and the locals, giant ivy, are incredibly fast growth, adaption to considerable cold, and the refined vesicant poison of the leaf surfaces. The constituents of the latter, a mutated modification of the urushiol secreted by the ancestral plant, consist essentially of two complex vegetable proteins. Serums worked out on Earth, where the original plant is no more than a nuisance, are useless here on Mars, and the virulence of the mutated secretions must be combated by different measures. First, injections—"

  The droning, supercilious voice on the tape he was listening to suddenly cut off and the mask of the viewscreen removed from his face. He found Mohini Dutt looking down at him. The others still lay under their headshields on nearby couches.

  "I don't know about you, super stud," was her affectionate greeting. "I have orders to let the three new pets have whatever they want, within reason, that is. Guess what little Miss Man-eater wants? You, lover boy, that's what. So shake loose and go hold her hand, or whatever she wants held. The colonel says you can have half an hour." She made an obscene gesture and went back to her machines.

  Somewhat dazed from the omniviewer, Slater made no wisecracks as he went down the corridor. A guard, who had notice of his coming, admitted him to the quarters occupied by the three younger Ruckers.

  Once inside the suite, he was conscious of a strange but not unpleasant odor. Then into the main room from a side door came Danna Strom. She carried two cups of something that steamed, the obvious source of the smell. There was no sign of the other two Ruckers.

  "Sit down on this couch, please, Lieutenant Slater." As he did she extended one of the cups. The fragrance was sharp and yet pleasant, bittersweet and untamed, not unlike the girl herself. She sat next to him, still holding out one cup in invitation.

  "I have made the Tea of Dreaming. You do not know yet what that is. As a Wise Woman, I cannot lie to myself. Our lives are mingled—at least, that is how I read it in my own dreams." The amber cat eyes stared into his from a foot away. "Drink. It will not harm you. I swear by my oath of guidance, by my medal of office." She drew the leather thong from out of her collar. From the end hung a flat medallion, apparently of hammered silver. With his right hand Slater reached for the cup. With his left he took the medal and held it up.

  It showed one blank side, but on the other, much worn by time and use, a face. It was not human, but it might have been mammalian. The chin was very square and the large oval eyes wrapped around the round head to well on the sides. The ears, if that is what they were, were cones, set higher on the skull than those of humans, so that they were almost stubby horns. The forehead bulged. The thing was very, very old, Slater realized, and he knew that he was seeing something that probably no one not a Rucker had ever looked at before.

  There was only one response to a gesture of trust such as this. He tilted his cup and drank. He had been sitting erect, but as the hot liquid raced down his throat, its effect was instantaneous. Despite himself he clawed for his holstered gun even as he slid sideways. Yet his last thought was one of relief, for he saw with fading sight that the girl was slumping beside him, her drained cup also dropped to the floor. Then blackness closed in.

  Chapter Five – The Sea of Dreams

  AT FIRST THE darkness was broken only by vague patches of light, as if Slater were in the ancient empty belly of space between the great galaxies, and the galaxies themselves were just distant blurs, the only breaks in the chaos of mindless night, the outer rim of eternity.

  Then the light grew, the blurs increased, like ink spreading over a blotter, until suddenly it was day and Slater found himself looking out over an alien landscape. And beside him was the girl.

  He knew, deep inside, that he was in the grip of the unreal, but he was quite incapable of doing anything about that. It was as if he and the Wise Woman were puppets being moved about the land by mighty and invisible fingers. Despite his awareness of the dream state, it was real, yet on another plane.

  The sky overhead was green, and from it two suns flamed, one red and close, the other blazing white, twice the power of the red orb but much, much farther away. They sat in tall blue-green grass. In the middle distance tall trees swayed in the wind, their bronze trunks gleaming in the sunlight. Even as he thought this, the man realized that there was no wind. It was beautiful but quite unearthly. And un-Martian as well.

  It was the immediate foreground that gripped him, however. The grass grew right down to the edge of water, brown still water that stretched out of sight, both before them and away on either hand. No beach was visible, just the sward reaching down to the sea. Somehow he knew that it was a sea, not a lake or river. Brown was its normal color, not soil or vegetational staining, this too he knew.

  Now, far out, someth
ing broke the surface. Its details were beyond the range of vision, but it was coming toward them rapidly and soon its outlines could be made out. It was some kind of boat.

  They stood up now and he noted that they were both nude. He felt as innocent as a child, and as lighthearted. She turned to him and smiled and held out a hand to take his. Together they walked down to the water, to await the boat, which was now very close to the land.

  It was a small boat, high at bow and stern. In the stem was a tall figure, garbed in curious red wrappings, its head masked in a featureless round helm, also red, with no eyeholes. It was very thin, and as the vessel touched the shore it stood, holding a steering oar in bluish, bony claws, in an attitude of listening. Somehow, Slater knew, it could not see, but used another sense. For the first time he grew a little afraid, and he felt the girl shrink against his side. He noticed, almost in passing, a bulbous, glittering object protruding from the creature's scarlet belt, but caught no detail.

  The compulsion to board the boat was overwhelming, and the strange helmsman and the dread he radiated were not enough to prevent it. The creature stood unmoving until they stepped aboard, and only then did it thrust with its oar and turn them from the bank. As the boat glided across the surface in the direction from which it had come, Slater realized that no means of propulsion was apparent and that the strange master of the craft steered it. only with his oar.

  So fast was the dream's pace! Already they were far out on the waters and the land behind them had receded to a distant blur. All around them the brown and silent sea stretched, still, without wave or wind motion, without a ripple or a sign of life. On and on sailed the little boat. Hand in hand, like two frightened children, Slater and Danna sat silent in its center, ever conscious of the tall figure that towered behind them.

  At last in the distance ahead another blur showed that once more they were approaching land. Like two numbed spectators of some shadow play, who cannot take part but are doomed forever to watch, the man and woman waited as the details of the land ahead grew out of the alien sea on which they floated.

  It was not similar to that which they had left but higher, and as the details became clearer their blood grew chill, despite the warm and windless air.

  Tall reddish things, slimy fronds limp in the dead air, rose above the dark soil of the landing place. Under these nightmare growths—for to call them trees was impossible—grew stunted, twisted shapes like deformed mushrooms, only far larger and with overlapping petals of a pallid yellow.

  The boat came gently to rest on the marge, and still hand in hand, the two got out. Before them, up a gentle slope, led a path that they knew, despite their feeling an increasing dread, they must follow. As they began to walk, terror building slowly in their captive minds, behind them they heard the faint swash of their ferry craft's turning to retrace its track across the brown water.

  Before they turned a high corner of the path, they paused to look back. Behind and below them, the half-moon boat was putting out to sea again, the red ball of the pilot's helm gleaming in the setting of the large red sun. The white sun had gone and now they realized that the light was fading. Far below, from the surface of the distant water, came a strange, echoing cry, high and mournful. It was the farewell of the nightmare boatman, a note somehow mocking and scornful as well as somber and menacing.

  Now they turned once more and continued their enforced pilgrimage into the evening shadows of the strange wood. They were high on the shoulder of a hill, and before them the dark growths seemed to cluster closer still about the narrow path. The land leveled too, but they had felt no strain of climbing.

  The sense of being pulled grew stronger yet, and as they advanced, for the first time, Slater tried feebly to fight back, as feeling grew that they were being lured to some unimaginable horror. The girl's pale body beside him, still gripping his hand, seemed to lend him strength. For the first time he managed to check his pace, as if the laws of the alien land of dreams were relaxing and might allow him—if he was strong enough—some control over his own body.

  Then the pull strengthened and he was powerless to gainsay it. Something ahead was drawing them on, and no mere human strength would ever be enough to resist it. Lurching and stumbling, he and his helpless companion were led inexorably on into the deepening shade of the accursed tree things that by then actually grew over the path.

  The red sun was on the horizon, and the gloom under the strange plant life was becoming hard to penetrate. The path still led on, though, and they had no trouble following it. Then the call began.

  From the trees ahead there came a hideous sound. It was a wailing that rose and fell on the still air of the haunted wood. It was not loud, but it was curiously penetrating, seeming to permeate their very bones. Slater sensed a kinship to the cry of the eldritch boatman, even as he heard it. Despite the icy chill which warned them that only doom lay ahead, the two began to run. They were being called, called to some unknown end by some unimaginable horror and there was no way they could halt their progress, no way they could stop. Hand in hand they raced on, while the wailing grew in volume ahead of them. Now it was so close that a turn around the next corner would bring them to it. It had to be stopped, but there was no help, no help, no—

  "No! No!" gasped Slater. He was half off the couch, his arms raised to ward something off. Beside him the Rucker girl was waking too, her eyes filled with the same terror as his, her mouth also open to cry out in defiance and despair.

  They came truly awake and checked their cries at the same moment. Staggering to his feet, Slater leaned against a table on the side of the room and looked down at the girl who had come through the ghastly experience with him. For he had no doubt that she had somehow been with him, had shared whatever emotions and experiences he had. The mysterious drink they had taken had somehow linked their minds in a way he had not dreamed possible, but that he was nearly not sure existed. His breath came more evenly but it was still a moment before he could trust his voice.

  "So much for your oath! I wonder why I believed you when you said nothing could happen to me!"

  Her response was agonized. "No, no, you must believe me! Nothing like this ever happened before. On my life, Slater—on my life, I swear that nothing like this ever happened. We have been taken by something else that is not from us but outside! Please, I beg—" And here her glance grew proud and she sat erect. "I, Wise Woman of the True People, beg you to listen. You do not know what that means, maybe, but since I became a woman, I have never begged anything. This is terribly important, what just happened to us."

  He could not but believe her. Her sincerity was too transparent, and besides, the True People did not lie when they said, like children, that they would not. That much he had come to know from his most recent training. He sat down again and took her outstretched hand in his.

  "All right, Danna. I'm sorry. I was too hasty. Tell me what you think happened. Better still, start by telling me what you think ought to have happened when we drank the stuff—it links minds, doesn't it?"

  "Yes! The Dream Tea helps one to see the future, and it also ties the minds of those who—well, of friends, persons who trust one another together so that they sometimes can see part of the future together. Only the Wise Women know how to make it, and we alone have the right to give it out. But it is uncertain. You cannot always trust what it shows. It might show a hunt, with men being killed. Then the real hunt might have other, different men killed. Or it might show a man his father or mother when they were long dead." She made this latter announcement quite calmly, as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world.

  She looked away and her voice grew slightly muffled. "I had a vision which said that you and I might be tied to one another in some way. It was a strong vision!" She looked back and her eyes grew larger as she continued. "But what happened to us, I never heard of anything like that! We were in a place that does not exist, being pulled by some awful power. I never believed such a thing possible. Those trees and wh
atever creature was in the boat, they were like things out of an evil dream, the kind you get when you eat bad food. That surely was no vision of the future!" Her voice was shaking with remembered disgust.

  Slater was silent, thinking hard. He was deathly tired but he also felt that somehow, somewhere, the elements of the dream vision had a message for him. But the effort required to use his tired brain, already overtaxed by the forced learning of the hypnotapes, was too much and he gave up trying. Perhaps it would make more sense later.

  The girl eyed him in silence. She had recovered her self-control and now she sat on the plastic of the issue couch and waited for him to speak.

  "I'm going to see the colonel and your boss, Thau Lang," he said, thinking out his problem slowly. "Maybe they can make some sense of this." A new thought came to him. "Where are the other two? They must have heard this, heard us cry out. How come they aren't here by now?"

  A movement too small to be called a smile touched the corner of Danna's mouth. "They are asleep. They do not like the fort; they are like your Nakamura and cannot give up their hatred easily. I gave them a drug, to sleep until we go. Besides," she added, her voice perfectly frank, "I wanted to be alone with you. Our lives are linked. The dream showed that even if whatever else was there makes no sense. I think we are to love each other ..." She looked down, as if a little startled by what she had said.

  "Danna, Danna," Slater began. He could not immediately frame words, and paused, startled by the intensity of the emotion that swept over him. "Listen, I feel strongly toward you, but I am an officer on duty. I cannot talk of such things now, not until the mission is over. Do you understand?" Slater's words surfaced with an intensity that surprised him. Desperately, with a passion that one corner of his brain continued to regard with amazement, he wanted the girl to believe him.