It seemed that nothing could have made Thymon happier. Eschewing the bog-shoes for nothing more than a pair of large leaves he’d tied onto his feet, the lizard-man skated over the soft peat with a grace that seemed entirely at odds with his bulky appearance.
“Soon, I think,” he said after a quick reconnoitre ahead. “The signs are what Mister Forbes tells. Clearing, four large trees like the back of kala lampora across lake. Very soon.” He tried a smile once more, with the usual unfortunate results.
Annabelle took the lizard-man’s massive arm for support, patting it affectionately. “You do realise that to the rest of us, this tree or lake looks fair much like that tree or lake?”
“Perhaps the Skreelan get lost in the skies like humans are lost on ground?”
“You have a point,” Annabelle said. She cocked her head. “Did you say ‘Skreelan’? Is that the name of your people? I have to admit, I’ve never heard the word before.”
Thymon’s face was as indecipherable as ever. “Skreelan,” he said, pronouncing it with far more clicks and whistles than Annabelle could manage. “That is name for all. Not just my peoples. Peoples here, with Germans humans, across seas. Everywhere. Is make sense?”
“The lizard-men, then? Sorry, that’s what we call you. You look to us like a type of animal back home.”
“And humans looks likes the egg eaters to us. Is no problem. Just no eat eggs of Skreelan, oh kay?”
Annabelle laughed. “I do believe you just made a joke. Well, ‘okay’! Been around Americans before, have you?”
“Last year works Scotts tribe, work with Americans, yes. Learn some American talk. Was—” Thymon mimed writing and telegraphing. Annabelle decided to hold back her laughter. “Humans do so many things, yes? You make things like far speaker, like big rekota, like….” With a clap of his jaws, Thymon stopped mid-soliloquy.
“Like what?” Annabelle asked. “Something that bothers you?”
Shyly, Thymon tapped her mechanical leg. “Professor said not to speak of it. But Thymon likes. Very smart, humans.”
Annabelle smiled ruefully. “Well, I can’t say I’m happy about needing it. But yes, I’m fortunate to have such clever friends.” She looked up at Thymon. “Both human and Skreelan. Thank you for the supporting arm. Not to mention bringing me a bow. I can’t believe you remembered that! Hard to find a human male who’d be so attentive to a girl’s needs.”
Thymon looked away quickly. Was the lizard-man embarrassed? It was hard to say, but he had a distinctively sheepish look to him.
“Is nothing, Miss Somerset. Few humans use same things Skreelan do in hunt. So Thymon remember this.”
“I’m an oddity, I know. Not that I don’t use and like modern technology. As you say, walking would be difficult without it.”
“Yes. This is humans. Always with machines. Skreelan is different. Different peoples. Different ways to do same things.”
“So what do your people use to fly?” Annabelle asked.
Thymon looked up and clacked his jaw a few times. “Is not. No. We does not fly. Not Skreelan.” He shook his head emphatically.
“I’m sorry. Did I say something wrong? I’m not upset about the glider, if that’s what you think. I honestly didn’t care for it all that much. It was akin to driving a cart more than riding a horse, if that makes any sense.” She sighed. “A flying horse, now that would be something. You know, there’s Martians who fly a local creature they call the skrill. Never got a chance to ride one, of course.”
Thymon shook his head. “Humans use the machines. Is what you know. Skreelan use only what they is made for. Humans should do same.”
“Well, now you’ve lost me,” Annabelle said. “But I’m sorry to upset you.” Thymon nodded slowly, seemingly calmer. “Speaking of lost, how much longer until we get there, do you think?”
“Thymon scout now, oh kay? Will know answer when get back.”
“Oh kay!” said Annabelle as the lizard-man darted away into the mists.
2.
“What the devil got into him?” Nathanial asked as he helped Annabelle put out an oilskin tarp for a picnic lunch.
“My fault, I think,” she said. “Too much philosophy.”
“Ah,” said Arnaud, sitting down on the tarp. “A fault of my people as well. The excesses of la Révolution can be traced to too much talking and not enough eating.” He produced a small tin from his knapsack. “Pâté, anyone? Not to worry, I’ve a flask of something passable as well.”
They were perhaps halfway through an appreciated, if damp, repast when Thymon came bursting back into the clearing. The lizard-man whistled a few anxious chromatic scales punctuated by jaw clicks before turning and pointing in the direction he came.
“Mister Collins house broken!” he managed.
3.
The safehouse would have been nigh on undetectable, save for the three standing stones propped over it, looking for all the world like a stray part of a giant’s jack and ball game. But even with such an obvious landmark, the house itself was built like an earthen bunker, with nothing but slits for windows and a rounded fern-covered dirt mound for a roof. If one didn’t know what to look for, it would have been easily overlooked as yet another clump of vegetation-choked peat.
What couldn’t be overlooked was the ripped open front door and the dense graffiti of peculiar symbols painted on in a myriad of colours. Reminiscent of Celtic triskelions, they seemed to be created by digging into the dirt with a trowel, then filling in the resulting scar with a brightly dyed mixture of sand and mud.
“Who would do this, Thymon?” Annabelle asked the Skreelan, who was hanging back at the edge of the clearing while the men scouted ahead. She’d objected to that, of course, but Nathanial seemed to be in the throes of a chivalry attack. Well, worse come to worse, she had her bow and arrow and a clear line of sight to the building.
The Skreelan shook his head. “Not know, sorry.”
“Well, I don’t know either, so that’s two of us. But honestly, aren’t those symbols the sort of thing you people paint on your belly? Could it be a clan?”
“No. Not thing Skreelan does. No.” Thymon clicked his jaw firmly.
4.
“It’s safe, come on in,” called Nathanial. “Not that there’s much to see,” he added as Annabelle ducked through the low doorway. “I’m thinking he might have run afoul of some rogue tribe or another.” He grimaced. “Occupational hazard for those in the jungles. Hope he didn’t end up in a stewpot.”
“I don’t think he did,” said Annabelle, looking around. “After all, he seems to have cleaned house before leaving.”
The safehouse was Spartan, to say the least. Aside from a mouldering pile of bedding perched atop a rusting cot, the only other items of note in the bunker were a small Franklin stove and a long galvanised cabinet with at least a hundred drawers. Arnaud was methodically going through them, but judging by his occasional dismissive sniffs, finding little of note.
“Perhaps he did leave abruptly. But why then all this destruction?” Nathanial waved at the room. The door to the stove had been ripped off its hinges, spreading coal ash across the woven reed flooring. Water was streaming in through several holes in the ceiling, and a pile of leaves that had blown in through the open door formed the bedding for an excessively healthy colony of Venusian mushrooms.
Annabelle had to admit, it was decidedly untidy. “Perhaps it was done afterwards.” She pursed her lips. “Doesn’t this remind you of something?”
Nathanial glanced around the room. “Maybe?” He pulled at his whiskers. “On second consideration, I’ll go with no.”
“I’m sorry, being a touch cryptic. Must come from hanging about with you two.” Annabelle gave him what she hoped was an amiable wink. “Last time we were here, remember the oberst’s plan?”
“Right, how could I forget? Make the British look like mass murderers, when in fact it was our Prussian friend.” Nathanial nodded. “Thought our old friend had been pulled out by
his higher ups. I mean to say, even by German standards that was a bit much.”
“It doesn’t have to be him,” said Annabelle, walking slowly around the room. “But really, why would the locals take such things as books and notes? A researcher would at least have a few maps. But there’s nothing here but mud.” She walked slowly around the room, poking the piles of leaves with her cane. “It’s as if it was first cleared out, then mussed up. Not the behaviour of an angered mob of Skreelan, I think.”
“Skreelan?”
“Their name for themselves,” Annabelle said with glance towards Thymon. The lizard-man was kneeling down next to the cot, apparently looking for clues. What with that deerstalker of his, at any second she half expected him to produce a magnifying glass.
“I think you’re right,” Nathanial said. “If one wished to kidnap a harmless scientist without a diplomatic incident, why not pin it on the natives? But the next question is where is—”
He was interrupted by a piercing whistle from Thymon. The Skreelan leapt to his feet, knocking over the cot in his haste. The cot had been hiding a now open box filled with dry straw.
Resting on the straw like an egg in a nest was a mummified hand. Slightly larger than a human hand but more graceful and delicate than the claw-like hand of Skreelan, it had four long fingers opposed to each other.
“Here now, Thymon,” Nathanial said. “It’s dead. Can’t hurt us now, whatever it is.” He picked up the box. “Annabelle, you seem to have some control over him, could you settle him down?”
“I think he can hear you perfectly well,” Annabelle said. “He’s not a beast.” She put her hand on Thymon’s arm. “Can you tell us what the trouble is?”
“Four fingers, come from skies,” said Thymon. “If hatchlings are noisy in the nights, comes to take and eats them.” He tried a smile with the usual unsatisfactory results. “Story. Perhaps scared Thymon when Thymon small. Sorry humans.”
“Right, a superstition. I thought as—” Nathanial was cut off by a sharp look from Annabelle. He resumed examining the hand.
“Almost like the foot of bird, no?” Arnaud said. “No claw. Difficult to believe that would be a survival trait.”
“Always the Darwinian, my dear Arnaud?”
Arnaud shrugged. “Even the Lamarckian would acknowledge fauna sans defence would not last long on Venus.”
“We haven’t claws.”
“Exactement. We have the reasoning ability, yes? We make our own claws. In likewise, whatever this is, it must have been able to defend itself. If not with ability given by nature, then with its intellect. Quod erat demonstratum.”
“I wonder how old this is?” Nathanial asked no one. “Mummified, but how long would that last on this planet? This isn’t the Egyptian desert. Things rot with distressing ease.”
“Preserved for now,” Arnaud said. “But temporarily. I think our friend Collins made a discovery and this is a sample.”
“Stopped by our German friends before he could tell anyone,” Nathanial said.
“But yes.” Arnaud looked concerned. “My friend, I am thinking what you are thinking.”
Nathanial raised an eyebrow. “You know my thoughts so easily?”
Arnaud smiled quickly. “Perhaps. But this is not the time for such conversation. For now, I will be happy to leave here with skin intact. The one thing the world has learned over the last few decades is that Prussians are an efficient people, if not always the best of neighbours. And an efficient kidnapping would include the plan for any rescuer who might arrive after, non?”
“Yes.”
“Allons-y, then.”
“But where?” Nathanial asked. “Are we supposed to just squat outside in the mud, wandering aimlessly about looking for minerals? We still have no idea where to start. I’m for caution, but I’m also for doing what we came here for. Else we might as well have Thymon take us to the extraction zone.”
“Your cot is not uncomfortable, as I recollect,” Arnaud said with a subtle wink.
Nathanial looked around, but Annabelle did not appear to notice. Nonetheless… “And how are your lungs?” he asked pointedly.
As if in answer, Arnaud unsuccessfully attempted to suppress a cough. “I understand. But it is better in the damp.”
“Well then, it’s settled,” Nathanial said. “Until we get the Ceren minerals back to Earth, your lungs are best off with us down here.”
“You seem to have an excess of motivation. With all due respect for your concern, I can worry about my own lungs. I do not relish the thought of being captured by the Germans.”
“Oh, we’ve survived the experience before. Admittedly, not with anything approaching ease, but there it is,” Nathanial said with a cheerfulness he didn’t feel. “I don’t want to abandon this area, not until we discover whatever it is that Collins found out. It’s what we were sent down here to do. And besides, we’re just civilians. We’ve plausible deniability here. We were completely manipulated into that particular advantage, but sitting here, I have to admit that perhaps Folkard was right. We’re no threat at all.”
“You say that as if it were a good thing,” Arnaud said. “Myself, I wish for the occasional ability to threaten.”
Nathanial looked over at Annabelle, who was sifting through the cabinet drawers with Thymon. “Find anything?”
Annabelle frowned. “Nothing. Thymon suggested that Collins might have written something on the drawers themselves, or perhaps hidden inside. But we came up bust, I’m afraid.” With Thymon’s assistance, she limped over to the cot and lay down. “I’m sorry, Nathanial.” She sounded beyond tired.
Nathanial felt deflated. It had been a lovely little speech of his, right then. But while it was all well and good to talk about perseverance and duty, there was the niggling difficulty of figuring out what exactly they were supposed to do.
“Thymon?” he asked. The Skreelan was standing over Annabelle, staring at her intently. “Are you any good at tracking things? You know, following the footprints left by Collins?”
“Sometimes, yes,” Thymon said without looking up. “But outside is no tracks. Not that Thymon saw. Not the best hunter, Thymon. Good speaker, yes. Others is better with the bow and arrow.” He nodded at Annabelle. “Perhaps Miss Somerset can finds the tracks.”
Annabelle patted Thymon’s leathery hand. “You flatter me. I can shoot things, but finding them is another matter. I knew Apaches who could track a man’s week old trail through the desert, and even tell you how old the fellow was. But I suspect even they would be hard pressed to track anything in a bog with all this rain. It fills in far too quickly.”
“Then I say we head off to the nearest German settlement and scout things out.” Nathanial held a hand up. “I know, it sounds foolish. But it’s the most logical place that Collins would be held. Travel in this swamp is troublesome, and we just have to hope that he’s still there.”
“You are not planning on capturing and interrogating a poor peat farmer, are you?” Annabelle said.
Nathanial sighed. “I honestly don’t know. Maybe. Maybe we can do this with some semblance of diplomacy. But clearly the Germans are hiding something, and not just Collins. I don’t want to crawl back empty handed.”
“Arnaud’s right,” Annabelle said. “You’re truly driven. Are these rocks worth so much to you?”
“Something is going on here,” Nathanial said. “But we’ve no idea what. And that hand raises even more questions. What was Collins on to?”
Annabelle sat up. “Fine, then. As Arnaud says, allons-y. We can take that ghastly hand along for further study, don’t you worry.”
“Should pack it in oilskin, though,” Nathanial said. “Can’t risk it getting destroyed by the damp. Then wrap some more around the box proper. One simply can’t be too safe.”
“I don’t think that an excess of safety is an issue at the moment,” Arnaud said.
“That’s precisely the issue,” Nathanial said. He gingerly lifted the hand out of its box,
along with enough bedding to cushion it. Then he paused. “Here’s our purloined letter.” He pulled out the last of the bedding and pointed at a scrawled message on the inside of the box. “Embarrassingly obvious, eh?”
Annabelle looked inside. “The gods brought themselves down,” she read. “Not exactly a latitude and longitude of where he’s being held, is it?”
“Not exactly much of anything except disturbing,” Nathanial said. “Did he go mad?”
“The base commander didn’t seem to think he was playing with a full bag of marbles,” Annabelle said. “Who knows, perhaps he did all these artistic embellishments on his own. In which case, we are on our own.”
Nathanial smiled wanly. “What else is new?”
Chapter Nine
1.
Leave it to the Germans to discover a way to drain the swamps of Venus, Nathanial thought. That said, nothing remained dry on this planet for long. The mining pits on either side of the dike they were walking on were already filling up with rainwater. A hundred yards below them, the steam diggers lay abandoned, half-covered by dark brown water.
There was no sign of anyone, human or Skreelan. All they could hear was the soft patter of rain.
“It is apparent that our friends were looking for something,” said Arnaud. “Although I see no signs of Asterium ore down in those pits.”
“Underneath the water?” Nathanial suggested.
“Perhaps,” Arnaud said. “Shall we have a look? I don’t see any persons at all. This spying business is easier than I expected.”
“I have to admit, that worries me,” said Annabelle. “You two go off exploring, Thymon and I will stand guard up here.”
Nathanial thought that a good idea, what with her leg. Annabelle had done well enough on the hike over, admittedly with the occasional need to lean on Thymon’s arm. But the embankment leading to the bottom of the pit was fairly steep and the leg’s stabilisers far too rudimentary.
Leviathans in the Clouds Page 6
