Because he had napped last, Ay’r volunteered to remain awake for the first sentinel duty, and Oudma decided to join him. The other three lay down to sleep within the Colleys’ wingfolds, where they would be protected. Even so, the wingfold lids didn’t block out sound completely, and Oudma suggested that she and Ay’r move away a bit to speak – a dozen meters distant, still within sight and range of the coleopteroids’ oddly nasal snores.
When Ay’r began to doze earlier, the canopy above had begun to alter its general coloration from a yellowish ecru to a deeper orange-tinged tan. When they were eating, it had turned to a dark gray-brown, and had dropped lower, closer to the ground. Ay’r supposed the canopy rose and dropped as a result of atmospheric pressures having to do with it being heated during the Pelagian day and cooled off when the sun set.
Although the darkness was by no means complete, the Pelagian night proved to be less than completely comfortable. While it was far less humid and warmer than in the Monosilla Valley, even with their leather-covered pillows, the ground seemed to be incredibly hard, as though it had been baked by some terrific fire. There were noises around them – nothing Ay’r could describe from his experience on other worlds as coming from any known animal life: rustlings in the fernbrake and scamperings through the underbrush and, once, a high-pitched eerie whistling.
Oudma also heard the noises; her alert eyes and ears turned toward their sources. But if she were fearful, she hid it well.
“By this time tomorrow, we should reach some settlements,” she said.
“The Bog people?” he asked.
“You mean the people of The Bog Way?”
“Is there a difference?”
“Haven’t you collected legends about The Bog Way?” Oudma asked. She didn’t press her advantage immediately, as she might have when he said no, but instead said, “’Harles told us the people of The Bog Way settled the land immediately after the New River was formed. He heard this from the Voice and Eyes at the Great Temple when he was initiated.”
“Where did they come from?” Ay’r asked.
“East.” She pointed in the direction they’d come from that morning. “Much farther east, beyond our mountain valleys. Our old Truth-Sayer used to sing a song about the people of The Bog Way and how they came from beyond the Mountains of Capin, when their own land was destroyed.”
“The Mountains of Capin are what we Northerners call the Eastern Mountains,” Ay’r said, remembering the relief map of the continent he had seen in such hologrammatic detail while in the Fast orbiting Pelagia. The people of The Bog Way must have come from that drowned continent he’d also seen. “The legends we know of say that their land drowned. That it wasn’t always Bog. Are these people so very different from us, then?” Ay’r asked.
She shrugged, clearly not interested in the question. Instead she asked, “Why is it, Ay’r Kerry, that your quest is so important? Is that why it is so mysterious?”
“It’s not at all mysterious.” Since the meeting with the infant Truth-Sayer, Ay’r had been expecting the Drylanders to ask this, but while he had rehearsed what he would reply, he still felt unprepared to answer. “I told you. P’al and I are Legend-Collectors. In the valleys we were separated from our companion.”
“Once you find your companion, what then?”
“I’m not sure. We might as well travel with your family to the Delta. Especially” – he smiled and fingered the small object – “since your prescient Se’er suggested that I’m to do something or other with this, once we’re there.”
“If you respected me at all, you wouldn’t mock me,” Oudma said so seriously that Ay’r felt chastened. “Never in our known history has a Truth-Sayer made obeisance to a Drylander. Great Father, he called you. Ecilef. That is the name of the Enigmatic One of our legends. By the time we had returned last night, every home in our three valleys resounded with the tidings. All of us know that something momentous is about to occur: otherwise Ecilef wouldn’t have returned to Dryland.”
“How can I convince you that none of that is true?” Ay’r asked.
“By telling me what you consider the truth.”
He hesitated. Ay’r had never faced explaining himself to a less-advanced society, not even to a single individual of that society, yet as Species Ethnologist, he knew it sometimes had to be done – if only as a last resort, and cautiously. So he hedged.
“I will tell you and only you the truth of my quest,” he said. “Rather than being any such Ecilef that your Truth-Sayer mistakenly attributed to me, I’m an orphan, searching for my own father. These two companions have joined me. One was separated.”
“What does your father look like?” Oudma asked, not unreasonably.
“He looks different from us. His hair is darker. His eyes darker. His skin darker.”
He expected her to be surprised, possibly even astonished, but he supposed that if his father were on Dryland, his coloring would give him away immediately.
“The Gods were once said to be like that. But that is a myth,” she added quickly, “since no one has ever seen the Gods and returned.”
“What exactly did the myth say?”
“Hair like glowing coals, blacker than nightmares. And eyes like burning peat. Their skin was as though touched by soot and left unwashed.”
In other words, as different from the features of Drylanders as possible. Which made sense, species ethnologically speaking.
“Perhaps your father has become a God? You’ve never seen him?”
“I’ve seen images of him,” Ay’r said, remembering holograms both still and moving, and he suddenly wondered if the Drylanders had images – so far he had seen none. “Pictures. Representations.”
“There are pictures at the Great Temple. We have none. Then you were an infant when he left? What of your mother?”
“I’ve never seen her. Not even an image of her.” Ay’r realized that Oudma believed him.
“This seems a rightful search. But what of your companions – why have they joined you? Your search must be of importance to your people.”
“I suppose so.”
“Which means you must also be of importance.”
“I never thought so until recently,” he admitted truthfully. “But I suppose you’re right again.”
“’Dward does not believe that you and your companion come from the North.”
“So ’Dward said.”
“He believes that you come from beyond the canopy.”
“As I would if I were Ecilef,” he explained for them both.
“Even if you aren’t Ecilef. Your arrival was sudden, unheralded from any other valley folk. As though you … dropped down … somehow. Don’t worry. Although we three Ib’r believe this, we will not tell anyone else.”
“What is beyond the canopy?” he asked, testing her.
“’Harles saw it once, remember?” Oudma said. “A great brightness during the day. And at night, a great darkness. But he didn’t tell you for fear of amazing you with what he saw in that great darkness.” She stared at him now, testing him. “He saw sparkles of light. Tiny and distant. And once he thought he saw something else, too. What it was he couldn’t describe. It seemed to him another canopy, firmer yet far more ethereal than this one. Much farther away.”
The solar system ice ring. Somehow, probably during that single dawn many years ago, the frightened adolescents had seen the sun rising and illuminating a section of the distant ring, which had refracted the light enough to seem to be something solid.
“So it is possible, Ay’r Kerry, that is where you come from.”
“You are an intelligent young woman, Oudma Ib’r. You think well on things and are not afraid of where those thoughts may lead you.”
“’Harles said that because we are so much closer to the canopy that we dwellers of the mountain valleys allow our minds to wander. And to hit on truths. From what ’Harles has said, we are by far the most intelligent people in Dryland. Only the Recorder knows more.”
“Who’s the Recorder?”
“I don’t know. I intend to ask the Voice and Eyes when we reach the Great Temple.”
“Perhaps if we don’t find my father there, the Recorder will know of his whereabouts.”
“Perhaps.”
Already ’Harles was awake. He suggested that Oudma sleep in his perch, and she did so. Ay’r remained on watch awhile longer. Then he, too, began to be tired, and ’Harles broke the silence by suggesting he sleep, too.
“Tomorrow is a long trek. And morning on this plain is more difficult than the night,” ’Harles said, sipping at a liquid made of various herbs guaranteed to maintain alertness.
It wasn’t yet full Pelagian dawn when Ay’r sleepily peered out from Colley’s wingfold. Both creatures’ heads were out of their carapaces, washing their legs and antennae against the lower mouths. In fact, everyone was awake. ’Dward was speaking to ’Harles excitedly, showing him something in the underbrush. Ay’r pulled himself out of his comfortable sleeping quarters and dropped to the hard ground.
“What is it?” he asked P’al, who didn’t respond.
“Arach spoor!” ’Dward answered. “A big one! I heard it pass by when I was on sentry but I couldn’t see it. It probably nests within the thistlebush wood.”
Ay’r took a sip of the morning tea Oudma handed him. She gave him a silent, yet meaningful look that told him she had absorbed everything he had told her last night, but would not tell anyone.
“Look!” ’Dward pointed to something in the underbrush. “Have you ever seen Arach spoor this large!” ’Dward wanted to hunt the Arach, or at least catch a glimpse of it. In the mountain valleys, the Arachs were small, their bodies no larger than a Hume’s head, although their eight legs were sometimes extremely long. But plains Arachs could sometimes be gigantic, some larger than coleopteroids. And dangerous. ’Dward had taken to heart the Truth-Sayer’s prediction that he would perform “bold feats.” According to the Drylander youth, few deeds could be bolder than attacking a giant Arach in its lair and coming away with its stinger as a trophy.
“It’s foolhardy!” Oudma declared.
But if she expected their father to agree, she was wrong. ’Harles merely said, “We break camp in a half hour. Be back by then.”
“You’re not going after it alone?” Oudma asked. “What if it gets its stinger near you?”
“Perhaps one of our Legend-Collectors would care to join the hunt,” ’Dward said, half mockingly.
When neither of them reacted, ’Dward seemed pleased and went off into the thistlebush alone.
Oudma had set up a small peat fire and was cooking a breakfast of some sort of cereal gruel, the three males slowly eating, when ’Dward broke out of the fernbrake behind where the Colleys were grazing.
“No luck?” P’al asked.
“I found no Arach. But I did find this!” ’Dward said, his face bright and excited as he held up a piece of cloth that appeared to be a shred of a Drylander singlet. “Looks as though the Arach had already found himself a Hume meal.”
“Let me see that!” P’al said. In an instant he was on his feet. “Unless I’m very much mistaken, our companion was wearing this!”
“We must hurry. We might still save your companion’s life,” ’Harles said. “Arachs sting and paralyze their prey,” he explained. “They wrap them in webbing and feed off them at their leisure.”
Breakfast was laid aside, as the two Drylander males began to arm themselves with the largest and strongest blades in their packs.
“Take these!” ’Dward instructed Ay’r and P’al, handing them two sword-length thorns he had cut off the succulents they had tapped for liquid the previous day.
“Move quietly,” the Drylander youth warned them as they entered the thistlebush wood. “Watch out for ground roots which might trip you. If you hear a high-pitched sound, stop immediately. It’s an Arach’s call.”
Unlike the clearing they had slept in, the seemingly dried-up, almost petrified forest appeared to have drawn the canopy down into itself. P’al pointed out this was probably close to the truth: the bushes and trees had opened up innumerable buds containing white flowers, their petals crisscrossed by fine hairs, doubtless to absorb whatever moisture might be in the surrounding air, as well as to trap any tiny animals that might try to get at the precious collected water. As a result of this effect, almost instantly as they entered the wood, their sight was shrouded by nearly horizontal sheets of mist. As ’Dward had warned, the thistlebush roots rose out of the parched ground in an underfoot tangle of thick branches, doubtless also gathering moisture from the night air. As a result, walking was laborious and vision limited.
“Speak quietly but constantly, so none of us are lost,” ’Harles warned.
“Won’t the Arach hear?” Ay’r asked.
“Evidently not.”
“Father has hunted Arach before,” ’Dward explained.
The tangled terrain continued for a while and the four males whispered constantly among themselves, describing what they saw. At a small clearing, ’Harles found more spoor – “It passed by here recently. And has fed recently” – and ’Dward added that Arachs caught whatever entered into the wood, paralyzed and wrapped their prey, and so always had food on hand.
P’al discovered another piece of the Drylander costume that Alli Clark had been wearing. A lower garment. He recognized it from its weave, which he showed Ay’r was different from the leatherlike material of the Drylanders. This new sign boded poorly for finding her alive.
Ay’r whispered, “What of her pod? Have you seen signs of it?”
P’al shook his head and gestured to Ay’r to change the topic so the others wouldn’t overhear.
A fernbrake the two Colleys would had loved to munch on now interfered with any direct path forward, so they broke up into two groups, P’al and ’Harles moving left, the others right, agreeing on low-pitched whistles to remain in contact, with ululations and promised shouts in case of emergency.
“Beware!” ’Dward warned when Ay’r came too close to the head of a tall fern.
Before Ay’r could react, it seemed as though the frond had slid across his bare arm and cut it lightly. In a second, the tiny dots of blood attracted an entire section of fernbrake, which bent over, surrounding Ay’r, the tiny cilia on the fern’s tip sucking at the moisture released in the blood.
Ay’r pulled back in disgust and almost fell on the hard ground, but caught himself on a thistle root and propped himself up when he spotted something gleaming – in fact, glittering. At first Ay’r couldn’t make out exactly what it was. It seemed to be an entire wall of silken stuff just behind the long line of fernbrake.
“A web trap!” ’Dward said. “Your eyes are sharper than mine in this light. Doubtless where you come from, nights are darker. You lead.”
“What am I looking for?”
Ay’r immediately spotted a place where the fernbrake seemed irregularly trampled, with a web trap extending on either side, but not in the middle. Amid the underbrush, he spotted another piece of Alli Clark’s clothing – her headband. From the dents in the fernbrake, it looked as though a body might have been dragged through here.
’Dward began whistling in an ululating tone. Then he said, “Let’s go!”
“Aren’t we waiting for the others?” Ay’r asked.
“They’ll take too long.”
On the other side of the fernbrake they found themselves in a sort of clearing. Here the thistlebushes were scrawny and looked torn apart. Shreds of web traps depended from every forked branchlet, like rags hung out to dry. Even more noticeable was how clearly the fernbrake ended, and how it seemed to form a rough circle, as though it had been torn up deliberately to form this clearing – or gardened to shape it. The Species Ethnologist in Ay’r couldn’t say how exactly, but this area no longer seemed “natural,” like the rest of the wood, but constructed, designed purposely.
He turned to listen to an ululating whistle, simil
ar to that which ’Dward had given before – doubtless ’Harles, signaling that he and P’al were on their way – when Ay’r spotted something on the ground right at his feet.
Tiny, undoubtedly Fast-constructed, metal-ceramic. So Alli Clark had taken a force-field after all! Why, then, hadn’t she used it? Did it still work? Ay’r picked it up and wrapped the belt around his waist. He was about to turn it on to try it out when ’Dward’s face was suddenly inches away from his, the look on it unlike any Ay’r had ever seen: intense, almost grimacing.
“Arach nest!” ’Dward whispered. “There!” pointing ahead.
Ay’r pushed aside mist and thistlebush and saw why ’Dward’s face had been so odd. If before Ay’r had thought the clearing was a constructed circle, he now saw not only that he had been correct but also that they had reached the very center of the Arach’s desmesne. Every scrap and line of thistle-hung webbing, every path, now gave only one way – inside. And all of it pointed to what looked at first to be an enormous collection of bubbles of differing sizes and shapes, some as small as a hand, others big enough to contain a Colley, all of them semitransparent, all connected to one another by the sticky glue out of which they were apparently made, their surfaces moist enough to give off a dull shine even in the poor light.
“The Arach?” Ay’r whispered.
“Not here.”
’Dward moved forward toward the collection of bubbles, which rose twice as high as he was tall, and – fascinated – Ay’r followed. His fascination grew as he peered into the bubbles. The smaller ones held small rodents and lizards Ay’r had seen scampering across the baked-earth ground to avoid the Colleys during their trip. They seemed to be half mummified, wrapped tightly in contorted positions within the whitish silken stuff. Few were whole. The silk had been twisted especially tight around sections of their bodies and a hole poked in, from which their insides and flesh had been sucked out.
“Look!” ’Dward drew Ay’r away from the half-dead animals to the largest bubble. “What could that be?” the youth asked.
Ay’r shrugged elaborately, but knew very well. It was what was left of Alli Clark’s transport pod. About one-half of it, including instrumentation and viewers. She must have crashed inside the nearly indestructible pod, but somehow it had opened – or been pried open. She must have been knocked unconscious: even with the pod’s own protective webbing, the sudden drop in pressure would have blacked her out when it crashed. Explaining how the pod had been dragged back here. Explaining how she had been undressed. Explaining why she hadn’t turned on her shield.
Dryland's End Page 23
