I tried to tell him, but I’ve never been good at boiling things down into descriptions, and when he found I was not disposed to talk, he fell silent and I was free to drowse over what I knew of the trailmen and their world.
Nature seems to have a sameness on all inhabited worlds, tending toward the economy and simplicity of the human form. The upright carriage, freeing the hands, the opposable thumb, the color-sensitivity of retinal rods and cones, the development of language and of lengthy parental nurture—these things seem to be indispensable to the growth of civilization, and in the end they spell human. Except for minor variations depending on climate or foodstuff, the inhabitant of Megaera or Darkover is indistinguishable from the Terran or Sirian; differences are mainly cultural, and sometimes an isolated culture will mutate in a strange direction or remain, atavists, somewhere halfway to the summit of the ladder of evolution—which, at least on the known planets, still reckons homo sapiens as the most complex of nature’s forms.
The trailmen were a pausing-place which had proved tenacious. When the mainstream of evolution on Darkover left the trees to struggle for existence on the ground, a few remained behind. Evolution did not cease for them, but evolved homo arborens; nocturnal, nystalopic humanoids who lived out their lives in the extensive forests.
The truck bumped over the bad, rutted roads. The wind was chilly—the truck, a mere conveyance for hauling, had no such refinements of luxury as windows. I jolted awake—what nonsense had I been thinking? Vague ideas about evolution swirled in my brain like burst bubbles—the trailmen? They were just the trailmen, who could explain them? Jay Allison, maybe? Rafe turned his head and asked, “Where do we pull up for the night? It’s getting dark, and we have all this gear to sort!” I roused myself, and took over the business of the expedition again.
But when the trucks had been parked and a tent pitched and the pack animals unloaded and hobbled, and a start made at getting the gear together—when all this had been done I lay awake, listening to Kendricks’ heavy snoring, but myself afraid to sleep. Dozing in the truck, an odd lapse of consciousness had come over me…myself yet not myself, drowsing over thoughts I did not recognize as my own. If I slept, who would I be when I woke?
* * * *
We had made our camp in the bend of an enormous river, wide and shallow and unbridged; the river Kadarin, traditionally a point of no return for humans on Darkover. The river is fed by ocean tides and we would have to wait for low water to cross. Beyond the river lay thick forests, and beyond the forests the slopes of the Hellers, rising upward and upward; and their every fold and every valley was filled to the brim with forest, and in the forests lived the trailmen.
But though all this country was thickly populated with outlying colonies and nests, it would be no use to bargain with any of them; we must deal with the Old One of the North Nest, where I had spent so many of my boyhood years.
From time immemorial, the trailmen—usually inoffensive—had kept strict boundaries marked between their lands and the lands of ground-dwelling men. They never came beyond the Kadarin. On the other hand, almost any human who ventured into their territory became, by that act, fair game for attack.
A few of the Darkovan mountain people had trade treaties with the trailmen; they traded clothing, forged metals, small implements, in return for nuts, bark for dyestuffs and certain leaves and mosses for drugs. In return, the trailmen permitted them to hunt in the forest lands without being molested. But other humans, venturing into trailman territory, ran the risk of merciless raiding; the trailmen were not bloodthirsty, and did not kill for the sake of killing, but they attacked in packs of two or three dozen, and their prey would be stripped and plundered of everything portable.
Travelling through their country would be dangerous.…
* * * *
The sun was high before we struck the camp. While the others were packing up the last oddments, ready for the saddle, I gave the girl Kyla the task of readying the rucksacks we’d carry after the trails got too bad even for the pack animals, and went to stand at the water’s edge, checking the depth of the ford and glancing up at the smoke-hazed rifts between peak and peak.
The men were packing up the small tent we’d use in the forests, moving around with a good deal of horseplay and a certain brisk bustle. They were a good crew, I’d already discovered. Rafe and Lerrys and the three Darkovan brothers were tireless, cheerful and mountain-hardened. Kendricks, obviously out of his element, could be implicitly relied on to follow orders, and I felt that I could fall back on him. Strange as it seemed, the very fact that he was a Terran was vaguely comforting, where I’d anticipated it would be a nuisance.
The girl Kyla was still something of an unknown quantity. She was too taut and quiet, working her share but seldom contributing a word—we were not yet in mountain country. So far she was quiet and touchy with me, although she seemed natural enough with the Darkovans, and I let her alone.
“Hi, Jason, get a move on,” someone shouted, and I walked back toward the clearing squinting in the sun. It hurt, and I touched my face gingerly, suddenly realizing what had happened. Yesterday, riding in the uncovered truck, and this morning, un-used to the fierce sun of these latitudes, I had neglected to take the proper precautions against exposure and my face was reddening with sunburn. I walked toward Kyla, who was cinching a final load on one of the pack-animals, which she did efficiently enough.
She didn’t wait for me to ask, but sized up the situation with one amused glance at my face. “Sunburn? Put some of this on it.” She produced a tube of white stuff; I twisted at the top inexpertly, and she took it from me, squeezed the stuff out in her palm and said, “Stand still and bend down your head.”
She smeared the mixture efficiently across my forehead and cheeks. It felt cold and good. I started to thank her, then broke off as she burst out laughing. “What’s the matter?”
“You should see yourself!” she gurgled.
I wasn’t amused. No doubt I presented a grotesque appearance, and no doubt she had the right to laugh at it, but I scowled. It hurt. Intending to put things back on the proper footing, I demanded, “Did you make up the climbing loads?”
“All except bedding. I wasn’t sure how much to allow,” she said. “Jason, have you eyeshades for when you get on snow?” I nodded, and she instructed me severely, “Don’t forget them. Snowblindness—I give you my word—is even more unpleasant than sunburn—and very painful!”
“Damn it, girl, I’m not stupid!” I exploded.
She said, in her expressionless monotone again, “Then you ought to have known better than to get sunburnt. Here, put this in your pocket,” she handed me the tube of sunburn cream, “maybe I’d better check up on some of the others and make sure they haven’t forgotten.” She went off without another word, leaving me with an unpleasant feeling that she’d come off best, that she considered me an irresponsible scamp.
Forth had said almost the same thing.…
I told off the Darkovan brothers to urge the pack animals across the narrowest part of the ford, and gestured to Corus and Kyla to ride one on either side of Kendricks, who might not be aware of the swirling, treacherous currents of a mountain river. Rafe could not urge his edgy horse into the water; he finally dismounted, took off his boots, and led the creature across the slippery rocks. I crossed last, riding close to Regis Hastur, alert for dangers and thinking resentfully that anyone so important to Darkover’s policies should not be risked on such a mission. Why, if the Terran Legate had (unthinkably!) come with us, he would be surrounded by bodyguards, secret service men and dozens of precautions against accident, assassination or misadventure.
All that day we rode upward, encamping at the furthest point we could travel with pack animals or mounted. The next day’s climb would enter the dangerous trails we must travel afoot. We pitched a comfortable camp, but I admit I slept badly. Kendricks and Lerrys and Rafe had blinding headaches from the sun and the thinness of the air; I was more used to these condi
tions, but I felt a sense of unpleasant pressure, and my ears rang. Regis arrogantly denied any discomfort, but he moaned and cried out continuously in his sleep until Lerrys kicked him, after which he was silent and, I feared, sleepless. Kyla seemed the least affected of any; probably she had been at higher altitudes more continuously than any of us. But there were dark circles beneath her eyes.
However, no one complained as we readied ourselves for the final last long climb upward. If we were fortunate, we could cross Dammerung before nightfall; at the very least, we should bivouac tonight very near the pass. Our camp had been made at the last level spot; we partially hobbled the pack animals so they would not stray too far, and left ample food for them, and cached all but the most necessary of light trail gear. As we prepared to start upward on the steep, narrow track—hardly more than a rabbit-run—I glanced at Kyla and stated, “We’ll work on rope from the first stretch. Starting now.”
One of the Darkovan brothers stared at me with contempt. “Call yourself a mountain man, Jason? Why, my little daughter could scramble up that track without so much as a push on her behind!”
I set my chin and glared at him. “The rocks aren’t easy, and some of these men aren’t used to working on rope at all. We might as well get used to it, because when we start working along the ledges, I don’t want anybody who doesn’t know how.”
They still didn’t like it, but nobody protested further until I directed the huge Kendricks to the center of the second rope. He glared viciously at the light nylon line and demanded in some apprehension, “Hadn’t I better go last until I know what I’m doing? Hemmed in between the two of you, I’m apt to do something damned dumb!”
Hjalmar roared with laughter and informed him that the center place on a 3-man rope was always reserved for weaklings, novices and amateurs. I expected Kendricks’ temper to flare up: the burly Spaceforce man and the Darkovan giant glared at one another, then Kendricks only shrugged and knotted the line through his belt. Kyla warned Kendricks and Lerrys about looking down from ledges, and we started.
The first stretch was almost too simple, a clear track winding higher and higher for a couple of miles. Pausing to rest for a moment, we could turn and see the entire valley outspread below us. Gradually the trail grew steeper, in spots pitched almost at a 50-degree angle, and was scattered with gravel, loose rock and shale, so that we placed our feet carefully, leaning forward to catch at handholds and steady ourselves against rocks. I tested each boulder carefully, since any weight placed against an unsteady rock might dislodge it on somebody below. One of the Darkovan brothers—Vardo, I thought—was behind me, separated by ten or twelve feet of slack rope, and twice when his feet slipped on gravel he stumbled and gave me an unpleasant jerk. What he muttered was perfectly true; on slopes like this, where a fall wasn’t dangerous anyhow, it was better to work unroped; then a slip bothered no one but the slipper. But I was finding out what I wanted to know—what kind of climbers I had to lead through the Hellers.
Along a cliff face the trail narrowed horizontally, leading across a foot-wide ledge overhanging a sheer drop of fifty feet and covered with loose shale and scrub plants. Nothing, of course, to an experienced climber—a foot-wide ledge might as well be a four-lane superhighway. Kendricks made a nervous joke about a tightrope walker, but when his turn came he picked his way securely, without losing balance. The amateurs—Lerrys Ridenow, Regis, Rafe—came across without hesitation, but I wondered how well they would have done at a less secure altitude; to a real mountaineer, a footpath is a footpath, whether in a meadow, above a two-foot drop, a thirty-foot ledge, or a sheer mountain face three miles above the first level spot.
After crossing the ledge the going was harder. A steeper trail, in places nearly imperceptible, led between thick scrub and overhanging trees, thickly forested. In spots their twisted roots obscured the trail; in others the persistent growth had thrust aside rocks and dirt. We had to make our way through tangles of underbrush which would have been nothing to a trailman, but which made our ground-accustomed bodies ache with the effort of getting over or through them; and once the track was totally blocked by a barricade of tangled dead brushwood, borne down on floodwater after a sudden thaw or cloud-burst. We had to work painfully around it over a three-hundred-foot rockslide, which we could cross only one at a time, crab-fashion, leaning double to balance ourselves; and no one complained now about the rope.
Toward noon I had the first intimation that we were not alone on the slope.
At first it was no more than a glimpse of motion out of the corner of my eyes, the shadow of a shadow. The fourth time I saw it, I called softly to Kyla: “See anything?”
“I was beginning to think it was my eyes, or the altitude. I saw, Jason.”
“Look for a spot where we can take a break,” I directed. We climbed along a shallow ledge, the faint imperceptible flutters in the brushwood climbing with us on either side. I muttered to the girl, “I’ll be glad when we get clear of this. At least we’ll be able to see what’s coming after us!”
“If it comes to a fight,” she said surprisingly, “I’d rather fight on gravel than ice.”
* * * *
Over a rise, there was a roaring sound; Kyla swung up and balanced on a rock-wedged tree root, cupped her mouth to her hands and called, “Rapids!”
I pulled myself up to the edge of the drop and stood looking down into the narrow gully. Here the narrow track we had been following was crossed and obscured by the deep, roaring rapids of a mountain stream.
Less than twenty feet across, it tumbled in an icy flood, almost a waterfall, pitching over the lip of a crag above us. It had sliced a ravine five feet deep in the mountainside, and came roaring down with a rushing noise that made my head vibrate. It looked formidable; anyone stepping into it would be knocked off his feet in seconds, and swept a thousand feet down the mountainside by the force of the current.
Rafe scrambled gingerly over the gullied lip of the channel it had cut, and bent carefully to scoop up water in his palm and drink. “Phew, it’s colder than Zandru’s ninth hell. Must come straight down from a glacier!”
It did. I remembered the trail and remembered the spot. Kendricks joined me at the water’s edge, and asked, “How do we get across?”
“I’m not sure,” I said, studying the racing white torrent. Overhead, about twenty feet from where we clustered on the slope, the thick branches of enormous trees overhung the rapids, their long roots partially bared, gnarled and twisted by recurrent floods; and between these trees swayed one of the queer swing-bridges of the trailmen, hanging only about ten feet above the water.
Even I had never learned to navigate one of these swing-bridges without assistance; human arms are no longer suited to brachiation. I might have managed it once; but at present, except as a desperate final expedient, it was out of the question. Rafe or Lerrys, who were lightly built and acrobatic, could probably do it as a simple stunt on the level, in a field; on a steep and rocky mountainside, where a fall might mean being dashed a thousand feet down the torrent, I doubted it. The trailmen’s bridge was out…but what other choice was there?
I beckoned to Kendricks, he being the man I was the most inclined to trust with my life at the moment, and said, “It looks uncrossable, but I think two men could get across, if they were steady on their feet. The others can hold us on ropes, in case we do get knocked down. If we can get to the opposite bank, we can stretch a fixed rope from that snub of rock—” I pointed, “and the others can cross with that. The first men over will be the only ones to run any risk. Want to try?”
I liked it better that he didn’t answer right away, but went to the edge of the gully and peered down the rocky chasm. Doubtless, if we were knocked down, all seven of the others could haul us up again; but not before we’d been badly smashed on the rocks. And once again I caught that elusive shadow of movement in the brushwood; if the trailmen chose a moment when we were half-in, half-out of the rapids, we’d be ridiculously vulnerable to att
ack.
“We ought to be able to get a fixed rope easier than that,” Hjalmar said, and took one of the spares from his rucksack. He coiled it, making a running loop on one end, and standing precariously on the lip of the rapids, sent it spinning toward the outcrop of rock we had chosen as a fixed point. “If I can get it over.…”
The rope fell short, and Hjalmar reeled it in and cast the loop again. He made three more unsuccessful tries before finally, with held breath, we watched the noose settle over the rocky snub. Gently, pulling the line taut, we watched it stretch above the rapids. The knot tightened, fastened. Hjalmar grinned and let out his breath.
“There,” he said, and jerked hard on the rope, testing it with a long hard pull. The rocky outcrop broke, with a sharp crack, split, and toppled entirely into the rapids, the sudden jerk almost pulling Hjalmar off his feet. The boulder rolled, with a great bouncing splash, faster and faster down the mountain, taking the rope with it.
We just stood and stared for a minute. Hjalmar swore horribly, in the unprintable filth of the mountain tongue, and his brothers joined in. “How the devil was I to know the rock would split off?”
“Better for it to split now than when we were depending on it,” Kyla said stolidly. “I have a better idea.” She was untying herself from the rope as she spoke, and knotting one of the spares through her belt. She handed the other end of the rope to Lerrys. “Hold on to this,” she said, and slipped out of her blankety windbreak, standing shivering in a thin sweater. She unstrapped her boots and tossed them to me. “Now boost me on your shoulders, Hjalmar.”
Too late, I guessed her intention and shouted, “No, don’t try—!” But she had already clambered to an unsteady perch on the big Darkovan’s shoulders and made a flying grab for the lowest loop of the trailmen’s bridge. She hung there, swaying slightly and sickeningly, as the loose lianas gave to her weight.
“Hjalmar—Lerrys—haul her down!”
The Marion Zimmer Bradley Science Fiction Page 12
