by Chris Walley
“One other thing,” Perena said. “It’s slightly unusual—actually it’s unparalleled. As we go to land, I’m going to ask everyone who can get to a window to keep a watch for anything that might be an attack.”
“Such as?”
“Bright lights, flashes, smoke trails from missiles. If you see anything, do two things: first, yell with directions—for instance, ‘Flash at two o’clock.’”
“And second?” Merral asked.
There was a flicker of a smile. “Pray very hard.”
Four hours out of Isterrane, Ilakuma came into view. The island was an impossibly jagged massif rising up out of a brilliant aquamarine sea. It looked as if it had been shattered with a continent-sized hammer to form a landscape dominated by sharp slivers of stone lying at every conceivable angle. Between the towering blades and needles of rock lay valleys in whose depths fine creamy lines of turbulent streams ran before finally reaching the sea, where they disgorged brown plumes of sediment. Clinging to this brutal stone framework was the dense greenness of the new jungle. From its knife-bladed summits high clouds blossomed.
After some minutes, Perena and Deanna conferred.
“No signals, Merral,” Perena announced. “Not from the Eligotal Highlands. The usual electrical noises from the weather and background signals from Port Angby. Otherwise, silence.”
“Any signs of a ship or a base? Any geophysical anomalies?”
“Nothing, Commander,” Deanna said. “It’s so rough, it’s all anomalies.”
“Very well. Go for landing.”
They descended, heading out over the sea before swinging back toward the island. Merral looked ahead, seeing the island’s profile in all its stark angularity and was struck by its resemblance to a heap of broken crockery.
Lloyd opened his bag and pulled out his big double-barreled gun. “A sort of shotgun,” he explained as Dr. Huangho looked uneasily at him. “It discharges an intense blast of high-density pellets. You really don’t want to be on the wrong side of it.”
“No,” she said with a frown and looked out of the window.
As they started the run in for the first landing, Merral sent Lloyd to the hold with his twin-muzzled weapon and a bag of weaponry while the others pressed their faces to the windows to look for any signs of hostility.
Merral watched the coral beach pass by and the jungle begin—an eruption of vibrant greenery. A thousand-meter-high cliff—high enough to block out the sky—loomed ahead. At its feet the jungle was littered with vast broken-off rock fragments, some the size of houses.
The survey craft veered around the cliff and followed the silver trail of a river that kept vanishing from view under wreaths of cloud.
When the Nesta Lamaine climbed and suddenly flicked to the right, Vero groaned in discomfort.
A ridge appeared dead ahead, and then with another jolt, they were over it.
“Thirty seconds, Lloyd,” Perena’s unflustered voice announced. “All eyes open for hostile activity.”
As they began their descent, Merral stared intently, barely daring to breathe. What would death look like here? A dirty column of smoke or a clean beam of light?
He glimpsed a vast waterfall up a side valley, the fume of it rising until it blended with the clouds. With a stomach-heaving turn and descent they were down so low over the trees that Merral could see the branches. They flew past mudslides on the hills, red hemorrhages of soil bearing upended tangles of tree trunks.
An eagle dived out of the way.
“Five seconds.”
As the ship banked again, Merral caught a glimpse of a rock platform ahead between two rivers.
There was the sound of hydraulics, a brief new rumble from the engines, a slight sawing jolt, and then the noise of movement from the hold.
“Lloyd is clear,” Deanna announced, and the ship bounded skyward.
Twenty minutes after Lloyd reported that he could see nothing around the landing zone to alarm him, the Nesta Lamaine landed on the rock slab.
Merral walked down the ramp, careful to avoid the still-steaming circles where the jet exhaust had struck the rock. Lloyd, his face covered in sweat, stood by a sharp-edged boulder, cradling his gun. A rocket launcher lay at his feet.
As Merral walked over to him, blinking in the brilliant sun, he was suddenly aware of the air: hot, incredibly humid, and reeking of the life and death of a million tons of vegetation.
He gazed around, his brain trying to take in the scene. Beyond the basalt slab they were on, the river raced past, tumbling into muddy foam as it plunged over rocks. Just above the river, the rain forest began—wall after towering wall of dense foliage in a hundred shades of green, and above that, gray daggers of rock rose into menacing clouds.
“Thanks, Lloyd. Well done.”
Lloyd waved a fly away. “My job, sir. Had to be done. But I’m not confident we’re safe. Could be an entire army watching us up there.”
Merral gazed around again, aware of the sweat forming on him. Lloyd was right. He remembered the directions he had been given and looked to the east to where, barely a stone’s throw away, the jungle began with a towering confusion of foliage. There, he told himself, in that barely glimpsed darkness, was where they would meet the strange creature.
“You don’t like it, do you, Sergeant?” Merral asked.
“Sir, I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t say I was uneasy. . . . Could be absolutely anything around. We have jungle on Tralescant, but not like this. This is wild.”
A moment later Perena switched the turbines off, and one by one, the others emerged and stared at the scene.
Deanna took a quick look and then returned to the cockpit to stay at the controls.
Merral, mopping his brow, listened to the sounds. Above the permanent heavy roar of the river, he could hear only the buzz of insects. Occasionally, strange piping and trilling birdcalls or the wailing call of an animal came from within the rain forest, or a distant roll of thunder sounded from high in the peaks.
Slinging the rocket launcher over his shoulder as if its weight was insignificant, Lloyd paced about the rock platform, cradling the gun in his arms, his wary eyes constantly searching around.
Vero, who had emerged from the Nesta carrying a briefcase, looked around. “I grew up near jungles,” he said in an oddly subdued tone as he slipped his dark glasses on, and Merral wondered if he was thinking of his far-off family. Merral followed his gaze upward to the spearlike peaks. “But there was nothing like this,” Vero continued. “Merral, we aren’t in Kansas anymore.”
“Kansas?”
But Vero walked to a landing leg, and after sitting down, began to work through a sheaf of papers as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
The others settled nearby for the wait. Arabella sat on a cushion and began some needlework. “It keeps my fingers supple,” she explained.
Anya examined the plants and insects and with Lloyd made a foray into some of the vegetation to look at the butterflies.
After finishing a rigorous inspection of the ship, Perena surveyed the slopes.
“What are you looking for?” Merral asked after a few minutes.
“Somewhere to land a ferry craft.”
“See anywhere?”
She gestured toward a rock escarpment. “Depending on size, wingspan, and mobility, there, there, and there. And a dozen places other as well.” She turned to Merral. “I think I will go with you to this meeting. I don’t think this being, whatever it is, will bring the sick man here. So it may be that you will go to the ship or whatever they have. In that case I want to go with you. Deanna can mind the ship. She’s perfectly capable of flying it alone if needed.” She frowned and peered up the slope again. “I have the most uncomfortable feeling of being watched.”
“I wish we knew what was there,” Merral replied, trying not to think of the possibilities. He looked over at Vero noticing that, for all his attention to his paperwork, he would look at the rain forest every few minute
s.
“We’ll find out soon enough,” Perena answered, before moving to a patch of shadow under the craft’s nose. There she turned her attention to her diary.
Merral wandered around, strongly tempted to accompany Anya on her scrutiny of the wildlife. After all, what forester could refuse the chance of examining a rain forest, something widely seen as the ultimate triumph of Made World ecology? Had he not once almost been posted to a similar place? He toyed with the idea, but reluctantly resisted it. I am no longer a forester. I have other duties. Anyway, keeping a distance from Anya is probably a very wise policy.
Instead, Merral borrowed a fieldscope and scanned the area for anything unusual. As he surveyed the impenetrable tumult of greenery, his concerns mounted. What lay beneath it? He saw nothing and in the end, as much to calm his nerves as anything, he forced himself to sit in the shade of the ship and try to deal with some of the unanswered correspondence that had accumulated on his diary. Yet every few minutes he lifted his eyes to the rain forest around them. We are being watched. But by what?
By late afternoon, the weather changed. Tattered clouds drifted across the sky and coalesced so that the sun’s light slowly waned. The luminous greenness of the world about them faded to greenish grays. The rumbles of thunder amid the peaks increased in intensity and drew nearer as gray misty clouds drifted down the slopes. The rain started, fat drops splattering on the rock, rapidly increasing into a deafening downpour of such intensity that water bounced off the rock. Soon only Merral and Lloyd were left outside and had to retreat by the ramp under the very middle of the Nesta Lamaine to avoid getting soaked. The wind battered the wet trees and sent squally flurries of rain under the survey craft.
“Not long now,” Lloyd said, as they sat on the ramp squinting into the intense shadows around them. “You like jungles, sir?”
“Yes. Most places on Farholme you can feel that life is hanging on as a fragile skin. In a rain forest like this I am reassured; it’s here to stay. Does that make sense?”
But Lloyd didn’t answer. Instead his big frame stiffened as he leaned forward, peering into the gloom. Strange calls erupted within the trees and Merral glimpsed a party of monkeys bounding away swiftly. A flock of crimson parrots flew noisily away through the rain.
“Something’s there,” Lloyd muttered and grasped his gun more tightly.
But as the light continued to fade and the storm lashed about them, with thunder echoing around the valley in almost deafening blasts of sound, there was no further sign of anything else unusual stalking the rain forest.
At half past six, with visibility down to few meters and the light almost gone, Merral assembled the contact team. Various medical supplies were divided between them and as rain capes were donned and packs put on, Merral gave last-minute instructions.
“If there’s trouble, remember Lloyd is armed. You want to say anything, Sergeant?”
“Yes,” the big man said, wiping rain off a pale eyebrow. “If the commander here tells me to fire, then everyone lie down. Quick. And stay down. That’s all.”
They stood under the craft, adjusting their packs and watching the water run across the rock around their feet. The ceaseless drumming of the rain on the fuselage could be heard.
Deanna saw the signal first. “Flashing light seen,” she called down from the cockpit. “Three o’clock.”
In the darkness, Merral turned to see repeated pale flashes of silver light.
“Here we go,” he said and uttered a silent prayer.
Carefully picking his way by his handlight’s beam, Merral led the way forward, trying to ignore the rain running into his eyes. It seemed as if the whole hillside was awash and his feet seemed to alternate between slipping in the mud or sinking into it. Ahead the light kept flashing: one, two, three, off; one, two, three, off.
They were soon under the trees. Merral pulled out his bush knife to cut the undergrowth and vines blocking his way.
Under the tree cover, the wind lessened. Water ran or dripped from every branch and leaf. Despite the excellent cape, Merral felt soaked.
The light beams from the party slid this way and that and lightning stabbed, creating wild and grotesque shadows. Merral threw up a new prayer that Lloyd wouldn’t be panicked into firing.
As he walked and sometimes stumbled toward the flashing light, fear clawed at his mind. He began to doubt the wisdom of coming. This was a trap and he had fallen for it.
Something slithered away in the darkness amid tangled roots. A snake or a trick of the light?
Merral walked on, his feet squelching through mud and leaves, aware of the others following behind him.
The light seemed to come from by a high pile of rocks. As Merral pushed toward it, halting only a few meters away, his heart pounded in his chest. Lloyd and the others clustered tight behind him.
There was nothing behind the rocks.
Lightning flashed, almost immediately followed by a great reverberating boom of thunder.
Merral let the echoes die away, then called out, “I am Merral D’Avanos, Commander of the Farholme Defense Force! We come in peace to seek Betafor Allenix!” His voice seemed to be swallowed up in the rain forest.
“Welcome, Commander,” another voice said in a rasping tone.
Six beams of light swung round to the source—a figure standing at the foot of a crag a dozen paces away.
Merral stared at the creature, recognizing all the features he had seen during the diary conversation: the uneven mottled green skin that in places seemed to have worn away to show an underlying paler creamy green layer, the angular head and ears, the hunched posture and the jacket. Yet new features struck him. For one thing, it was smaller than he had expected, no larger than the average ten-year-old child. For another, the surfaces that made up the face and limbs glinted in the light as the rain ran over them as if they were part of some strange abstract sculpture cut out of ice, glass, or plastic. Still another was the way the head, neck, and body seemed to be separate structures placed abruptly against each other.
I would never have mistaken it for an animal.
“Commander,” the thing said, “I suggest that no one does anything sudden. I think only one light is needed.”
Merral snapped an order. “Very well. Vero, keep your beam on. Everyone else, point them on the ground.”
With only a single light focused on the creature, Merral noted that its limbs, which emerged through the stiff fabric of the jacket, were angular and hard surfaced. The front limbs seemed longer than the rear ones. Taken as a whole, he saw something that was unique and that defied characterization; a rigid, almost delicate creature that seemed utterly alien.
“Commander, Sergeant Enomoto is armed.” As the creature spoke Merral saw how the lower jaw moved as a single rigid unit. “It is understandable, but I pose no threat. I would prefer it if the weapon was . . . disarmed.”
Merral hesitated, then said, “I would prefer if he kept the weapon ready to fire. Trust must be earned.”
“As you will,” the creature said and moved toward Merral.
“I am unaware of protocol at meetings such as these,” Merral said looking around, suddenly aware in a moment of utter irrelevance that rainwater dripped down his neck.
“Let us be basic then.” The creature’s head bowed as if in greeting. “I am Betafor Allenix, the sole surviving Allenix unit of the Freeborn vessel Slave of Rahllman’s Star.”
Arabella stepped forward next to Merral. “I am the doctor. I gather you have a patient. Where is he?”
“He is in the shelter. It is some distance away. Please follow me. There is a poor path. I will try not to go too fast.”
“How do we know that this is not a trap?” Merral said. As soon as the words were out, he wished he hadn’t spoken.
The green head twisted toward him. “Really, Commander, if this were a trap, I could have killed you earlier. Learn this: Allenix units can be trusted.”
Betafor turned, bent her back, and extended h
er forelimbs so that they touched the ground. Merral felt that although the creature’s movements had a certain grace, they were somehow mechanical; it was easy to sense that underneath the skin lay synthetics and metal rather than blood and bone.
Merral glimpsed Anya’s face beside him and saw on it a look of utter fascination. “Only partially bipedal,” she said, as if to herself. “And she must have better night vision than us.”
“The path is steep and . . . winding,” Betafor said. “This will help you to follow me.” Suddenly the sides of her jacket began to glow a ghostly white. She set off, moving lightly but confidently on all fours up the hillside.
“Close bush knives!” Merral ordered. “I don’t want anyone slipping onto an open blade. But keep them to hand.”
Merral set off after the glowing creature. “Your Communal is excellent,” he said, as he came up alongside, trying to avoid stepping on the swaying tail.
“Thank you. The ability for language was a priority in our making and it has improved over the millennia of our existence. The ancient form of Communal has always been used by all the Freeborn for some purposes. Your modern version is not very hard. My language ability will improve as I listen to what you say and my circuits . . . calibrate. My knowledge is, of course, mainly derived from listening to your broadcasts and from reading material from your Library. The other Allenix unit and I used to practice between ourselves on the ship.”
As the path steepened, Merral struggled for breath and saw from the extended and wavering line of handlight beams that the others were evidently feeling the strain too.
“C-can we pause?” he gasped, wiping the rain and sweat off his face. Although the doctors considered his ribs and internal injuries to be now healed, the exertion made Merral aware of them.
