The Second Science Fiction Megapack

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

“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 attack.

  “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!”

  “I’m lighter than any of you,” Kyla called shrilly, “and not hefty enough to be any use on the ropes!” Her voice quavered somewhat as she added, “—and hang on to that rope, Lerrys! If you lose it, I’ll have done this for nothing!”

  She gripped the loop of vine and reached, with her free hand, for the next loop. Now she was swinging out over the edge of the boiling rapids. Tight-mouthed, I gestured to the others to spread out slightly below—not that anything would help her if she fell.

  Hjalmar, watching as the woman gained the third loop—which joggled horribly to her slight weight—shouted suddenly, “Kyla, quick! The loop beyond—don’t touch the next one! It’s frayed—rotted through!”

  Kyla brought her left hand up to her right on the third loop. She made a long reach, missed her grab, swung again, and clung, breathing hard, to the safe fifth loop. I watched, sick with dread. The damned girl should have told me what she intended.

  Kyla glanced down and we got a glimpse of her face, glistening with the mixture of sunburn cream and sweat, drawn with effort. Her tiny swaying figure hung twelve feet above the white tumbling water, and if she lost her grip, only a miracle could bring her out alive. She hung there for a minute, jiggling slightly, then started a long back-and-forward swing. On the third forward swing she made a long leap and grabbed at the final loop.

  It slipped through her fingers; she made a wild grab with the other hand, and the liana dipped sharply under her weight, raced through her fingers, and with a sharp snap, broke in two. She gave a wild shriek as it parted, and twisted her body frantically in mid-air, landing asprawl half-in, half-out of the rapids, but on the further bank. She hauled her legs up on dry land and crouched there, drenched to the waist but safe.

  * * * *

  The Darkovans were yelling in delight. I motioned to Lerrys to make his end of the rope fast around a hefty tree-root, and shouted, “Are you hurt?” She indicated in pantomime that the thundering of the water drowned words, and bent to belay her end of the rope. In sign-language I gestured to her to make very sure of the knots; if anyone slipped, she hadn’t the weight to hold us.

  I hauled on the rope myself to test it, and it held fast. I slung her boots around my neck by their cords, then, gripping the fixed rope, Kendricks and I stepped into the water.

  It was even icier than I expected, and my first step was nearly the last; the rush of the white water knocked me to my knees, and I floundered and would have measured my length except for my hands on the fixed rope. Buck Kendricks grabbed at me, letting go the rope to do it, and I swore at him, raging, while we got on our feet again and braced ourselves against the onrushing current. While we struggled in the pounding waters, I admitted to myself; we could never have crossed without the rope Kyla had risked her life to fix.

  Shivering, we got across and
hauled ourselves out. I signalled to the others to cross two at a time, and Kyla seized my elbow. “Jason—”

  “Later, damn it!” I had to shout to make myself heard over the roaring water, as I held out a hand to help Rafe get his footing on the ledge.

  “This—can’t—wait,” she yelled, cupping her hands and shouting into my ear. I turned on her. “What!”

  “There are—trailmen—on the top level—of that bridge! I saw them! They cut the loop!”

  Regis and Hjalmar came struggling across last; Regis, lightly-built, was swept off his feet and Hjalmar turned to grab him, but I shouted to him to keep clear—they were still roped together and if the ropes fouled we might drown someone. Lerrys and I leaped down and hauled Regis clear; he coughed, spitting icy water, drenched to the skin.

  I motioned to Lerrys to leave the fixed rope, though I had little hope that it would be there when we returned, and looked quickly around, debating what to do. Regis and Rafe and I were wet clear through; the others to well above the knee. At this altitude, this was dangerous, although we were not yet high enough to worry about frostbite. Trailmen or no trailmen, we must run the lesser risk of finding a place where we could kindle a fire and dry out.

  “Up there—there’s a clearing,” I said briefly, and hurried them along.

  * * * *

  It was hard climbing now, on rock, and there were places where we had to scrabble for handholds, and flatten ourselves out against an almost sheer wall. The keen wind rose as we climbed higher, whining through the thick forest, soughing in the rocky outcrops, and biting through our soaked clothing with icy teeth. Kendricks was having hard going now, and I helped him as much as I could, but I was aching with cold. We gained the clearing, a small bare spot on a lesser peak, and I directed the two Darkovan brothers who were the driest to gather dry brushwood and get a fire going. It was hardly near enough sunset to camp; but by the time we were dry enough to go on safely, it would be, so I gave orders to get the tent up, then rounded angrily on Kyla.

  “See here, another time don’t try any dangerous tricks unless you’re ordered to!”

  “Go easy on her,” Regis Hastur interceded, “we’d never have crossed without the fixed rope. Good work, girl.”

  “You keep out of this!” I snapped. It was true, yet resentment boiled in me as Kyla’s plain sullen face glowed under the praise from the Hastur.

  The fact was—I admitted it grudgingly—a lightweight like Kyla ran less risk on an acrobat’s bridge than in that kind of roaring current. That did not lessen my annoyance; and Regis Hastur’s interference, and the foolish grin on the girl’s face, made me boil over.

  I wanted to question her further about the sight of trailmen on the bridge, but decided against it. We had been spared attack on the rapids, so it wasn’t impossible that a group, not hostile, was simply watching our progress—maybe even aware that we were on a peaceful mission.

  But I didn’t believe it for a minute. If I knew anything about the trailmen, it was this—one could not judge them by human standards at all. I tried to decide what I would have done, as a trailman, but my brain wouldn’t run that way at the moment.

  The Darkovan brothers had built up the fire with a thoroughly reckless disregard of watching eyes. It seemed to me that the morale and fitness of the shivering crew was of more value at the moment than caution; and around the roaring fire, feeling my soaked clothes warming to the blaze and drinking boiling hot tea from a mug, it seemed that we were right. Optimism reappeared; Kyla, letting Hjalmar dress her hands which had been rubbed raw by the slipping lianas, made jokes with the men about her feat of acrobatics.

  We had made camp on the summit of an outlying arm of the main ridge of the Hellers, and the whole massive range lay before our eyes, turned to a million colors in the declining sun. Green and turquoise and rose, the mountains were even more beautiful than I remembered. The shoulder of the high slope we had just climbed had obscured the real mountain massif from our sight, and I saw Kendricks’ eyes widen as he realized that this high summit we had just mastered was only the first step of the task which lay before us. The real ridge rose ahead, thickly forested on the lower slopes, then strewn with rock and granite like the landscape of an airless, deserted moon. And above the rock, there were straight walls capped with blinding snow and ice. Down one peak a glacier flowed, a waterfall, a cascade shockingly arrested in motion. I murmured the trailman’s name for the mountain, aloud, and translated it for the others:

  “The Wall Around the World.”

  “Good name for it,” Lerrys murmured, coming with his mug in his hand to look at the mountain. “Jason, the big peak there has never been climbed, has it?”

  “I can’t remember.” My teeth were chattering and I went back toward the fire. Regis surveyed the distant glacier and murmured, “It doesn’t look too bad. There could be a route along that western arête—Hjalmar, weren’t you with the expedition that climbed and mapped High Kimbi?”

  The giant nodded, rather proudly. “We got within a hundred feet of the top, then a snowstorm came up and we had to turn back. Some day we’ll tackle the Wall Around the World—it’s been tried, but no one ever climbed the peak.”

  “No one ever will,” Lerrys stated positively, “There’s two hundred feet of sheer rock cliff, Prince Regis, you’d need wings to get up. And there’s the avalanche ledge they call Hell’s Alley—”

  Kendricks broke in irritably, “I don’t care whether it’s ever been climbed or ever will be climbed, we’re not going to climb it now!” He stared at me and added, “I hope!”

  “We’re not.” I was glad of the interruption. If the youngsters and amateurs wanted to amuse themselves plotting hypothetical attacks on unclimbable sierras, that was all very well, but it was, if nothing worse, a great waste of time. I showed Kendricks a notch in the ridge, thousands of feet lower than the peaks, and well-sheltered from the icefalls on either side.

  “That’s Dammerung; we’re going through there. We won’t be on the mountain at all, and it’s less than 22,000 feet high in the pass—although there are some bad ledges and washes. We’ll keep clear of the main tree-roads if we can, and all the mapped trailmen’s villages, but we may run into wandering bands—” abruptly I made my decision and gestured them around me.

  “From this point,” I broke the news, “we’re liable to be attacked. Kyla, tell them what you saw.”

  * * * *

  She put down her mug. Her face was serious again, as she related what she had seen on the bridge. “We’re on a peaceful mission, but they don’t know that yet. The thing to remember is that they do not wish to kill, only to wound and rob. If we show fight—” she displayed a short ugly knife, which she tucked matter-of-factly into her shirt-front, “they will run away again.”

  Lerrys loosened a narrow dagger which until this moment I had thought purely ornamental. He said, “Mind if I say something more, Jason? I remember from the ’Narr campaign—the trailmen fight at close quarters, and by human standards they fight dirty.” He looked around fiercely, his unshaven face glinting as he grinned. “One more thing. I like elbow room. Do we have to stay roped together when we start out again?”

  I thought it over. His enthusiasm for a fight made me feel both annoyed and curiously delighted. “I won’t make anyone stay roped who thinks he’d be safer without it,” I said, “we’ll decide that when the time comes, anyway. But personally—the trailmen are used to running along narrow ledges, and we’re not. Their first tactic would probably be to push us off, one by one. If we’re roped, we can fend them off better.” I dismissed the subject, adding, “Just now, the important thing is to dry out.”

  Kendricks remained at my side after the others had gathered around the fire, looking into the thick forest which sloped up to our campsite. He said, “This place looks as if it had been used for a camp before. Aren’t we just as vulnerable to attack here as we would be anywhere else?”

  He had hit on the one thing I hadn’t wanted to talk
about. This clearing was altogether too convenient. I only said, “At least there aren’t so many ledges to push us off.”

  Kendricks muttered, “You’ve got the only blaster!”

  “I left it at Carthon,” I said truthfully. Then I laid down the law:

  “Listen, Buck. If we kill a single trailman, except in hand-to-hand fight in self-defense, we might as well pack up and go home. We’re on a peaceful mission, and we’re begging a favor. Even if we’re attacked—we kill only as a last resort, and in hand-to-hand combat!”

  “Damned primitive frontier planet—”

  “Would you rather die of the trailmen’s disease?”

  He said savagely, “We’re apt to catch it anyway—here. You’re immune, you don’t care, you’re safe! The rest of us are on a suicide mission—and damn it, when I die I want to take a few of those monkeys with me!”

  * * * *

  I bent my head, bit my lip and said nothing. Buck couldn’t be blamed for the way he felt. After a moment I pointed to the notch in the ridge again. “It’s not so far. Once we get through Dammerung, it’s easy going into the trailmen’s city. Beyond there, it’s all civilized.”

  “Maybe you call it civilization,” Kendricks said, and turned away.

  “Come on, let’s finish drying our feet.”

  And at that moment they hit us.

  * * * *

  Kendricks’ yell was the only warning I had before I was fighting away something scrabbling up my back. I whirled and ripped the creature away, and saw dimly that the clearing was filled to the rim with an explosion of furry white bodies. I cupped my hands and yelled, in the only trailman dialect I knew, “Hold off! We come in peace!”

  One of them yelled something unintelligible and plunged at me—another tribe! I saw a white-furred, chinless face, contorted in rage, a small ugly knife—a female! I ripped out my own knife, fending away a savage slash. Something tore white-hot across the knuckles of my hand; the fingers went limp and my knife fell, and the trailman woman snatched it up and made off with her prize, swinging lithely upward into the treetops.