Midworld (12 page)

“Born,” Logan said after a long silence, “we are still ignorant of your ways and much of your world. You must pardon us. What are the Akadi, and why do they force us back?”

“We must warn the Home,” said Losting. “The Akadi may pass it. If so, all will be well. If they do not …” He shrugged. “We must try to stop them.”

“I believe you, Losting,” Born confessed hesitantly. “But I would have final proof.” He indicated Cohoma and Logan. “And I think it would speed our return if the giants were to see the sign of Akadi passing.”

Losting nodded agreement and rose. “It is not far, not as far as I would wish. We can be near and return before the water falls.”

Both hunters started off down the limb. Cohoma and Logan had to hurry to follow. Logan stumbled and twisted her way through the clutching thorns and branches and saw-edged leaves. Ruumahum paced below her as a precaution. The first two days had accustomed her to living the death of a thousand cuts every sunrise to sunset, and she was getting toughened. She marveled at how Born never seemed to get cut or scratched despite the thickness of the brambles he led them through. It was positively uncanny. No doubt, she reasoned, it was his smaller size, his lithe build, coupled with the innate knowledge of the hylaea’s construction that enabled him to slip smoothly between the most closely packed webs of leaves and stems and twigs.

A bulky green shape appeared next to her. She didn’t jump this time, just quivered a little inside. She was growing used to the furcot’s size and silent approach.

“Ruumahum, what are the Akadi?”

The furcot sniffed. “A thing that eats.”

“One thing, or many?”

“There are thousands of them, and there is one of them,” Ruumahum replied.

“How can there be thousands and only one?”

Ruumahum growled irritably. “Ask Akadi.” He plunged off the branch and downward.

Logan followed his path in her mind’s eye, repeating to herself theatrically, “into the foliage below! … foliage below … foliage below … foliage. Fol—emfol— Empathetic foliation?” Precise terminology for an acquired superstition, she mused. That might explain the term, but not the rationale for the belief’s intensity. She was missing something. It would have to wait. Losting had been right, they did not have far to go.

Now they were moving through a densely packed thicket of aerial greenery striped with bright yellow. It grew at right angles, forming a living checkerboard. Losting indicated they would have to pass around it, a detour of some dozens of meters.

Cohoma put out a hand and grasped the nearest of the interlocking, finger-thick stems. “Why go around?” he asked Born, with a gesture at the latter’s broad-bladed knife. He squeezed the branch. “This stuff is herbaceous, soft, pulpy. If we’re in a hurry, why not cut our way through?”

“You consider death with such indifference,” Born told him, eyeing him in much the way Cohoma would study a bug under a microscope. “Can it be that on your own world you are a hunter of sorts, too?” There was a certain unidentifiable stress laid on the word sorts.

It was Cohoma’s turn to stare at Born. “It’s just some big succulent.”

“It is alive,” Born said patiently. “If we cut through it, it will become not-alive. Why? To save time?”

“Not only that. If there’s some kind of multiple omnivore around here, I’d rather not be caught in tight quarters. The more space cleared around me, the better.”

Born and Losting exchanged glances. The two furcots waited nearby. “He would kill for a few minutes of better light,” Born observed wonderingly. “Your priorities are strange, Jancohoma. We will go around.” Cohoma had additional questions, and Logan as well. However, neither Born nor Losting would answer them now.

Eventually they rounded the copse of the checkerboard succulents. In another minute they were walking in dense jungle. A turn, cut, and suddenly they entered an unexpected open space, much as Cohoma had wished for, tunneled out of the forest. The tunnel was taller than a man, taller than Logan or Cohoma. It was a good five meters wide, stretching in a straight line to left and right until it merged into green.

“Akadi made this. They are mindless and of one purpose. They eat their way through the world, leaving—this.” He indicated the clear space. Within that tunnel, life had ceased to exist. It had simply disappeared into … what?

“Is the line always so straight?” Logan asked.

“No. The column sends out scouts. If the food lies thicker in another direction, the Akadi swerve and eat in a new path. Once started, nothing turns them but their own hunger. See.” He pointed down the tunnel. “They will eat through anything, consuming anything living in their path that cannot get out of their way. I have seen them eat through the heart of a Pillar tree and come out the other side. It is said that one can stand by the very edge of their tunnel and, though one could reach out and pull you in, they will not deviate from their chosen path. As those in front are sated, they drop back, letting new members eat themselves full. By the time the last has eaten, the first are hungry again. They stop only to rest and breed.”

Cohoma looked relieved. “No problem, then, is there? Don’t tell me you’re concerned because they seem to be heading toward your village?” Born nodded.

The giant spread his hands. “What’s the trouble? All you have to do is pack up your kids and furcots and get out of the way until they’ve eaten their way through, then move back in, right?”

Born shook his head slowly. “No. The pods will kill some of them, but not very many. You do not understand. We could do what you say, but it is not ourselves we fear for. They are on the village level. They will reach the Home and eat their way through the trunk itself. Once the bark is pierced they will eat through to the heartwood. The Home will lie defenseless to parasites and disease. It will blacken and die, unless we can stop the column, or turn it.”

There was nothing more to be said. They left the tunnel, Logan and Cohoma trailing.

“But Born,” Logan persisted, “surely the presence of you two will not make any difference in the defense of the tree! Two men more. Take us on to our station. We have devices there which could halt this carnage before it reaches the Home, devices you can’t imagine or conceive of.”

“That may be so,” Born conceded, “but we are uncountable days from your stationHome. At their normal rate of march the Akadi will reach the Home well before we could reach your station. We must warn the others and help prepare. You will help, too.”

“If you think,” Cohoma shot back, “that we’re going to hang around while—”

“Of course we’ll do what we can, Born,” Logan said soothingly, after a sharp glance at her partner. “We’ll be honored to help after what you’ve already done for us.” She put a hand on Cohoma’s shoulder and held him back. They dropped behind Born.

“What the hell’s the matter with you, Kimi?” whispered Cohoma angrily. “If you’d just let me argue with them a little more I might have convinced them that we’re of no use to them. They could leave us on the nearest branch and we’d—”

“You shortsighted idiot! We’ve no choice but to cooperate. We might as well. If this defense of the tree fails, we’re as dead as if the Akadi had eaten us. Or do you think we can make it through this greenhouse Hades without help? You’ve seen what it’s like. We’d be dead a dozen times over by now if it weren’t for Born. Remember the false bromeliad I thought was full of water that turned out to be full of acid? We’ll fight, sure. If it begins to look as hopeless as Born makes it sound, why, then we’ll have plenty of time to skip clear.” She stepped carefully over a magenta and blue fungus. “Until then, we’d better do our best to see that they survive. Unless you’d prefer to strike out on your own.”

“Okay, I wasn’t thinking,” Cohoma admitted. “I’ll go along as long as they’re able. But I’m not dying for any damn tree. I’d rather take my chances in the hylaea.”

Born would have wondered at this strange talk, but at the moment his mind was filled with thoughts that drowned out any other sound. The Akadi were marching toward the Home, marching toward Brightly Go. He suspected the giants would not fight to the death, if it came to that. He did not bother to tell them that once the Akadi had their scent, they would follow the smell of an enemy until it dropped. Once the conflict was joined and the Akadi senses heightened, all within range of their olfactory sense were doomed to death, unless the Akadi died first. If they somehow managed to stop the ravaging column and the giants discovered this information, they could berate Born all they wished.

Brightly Go had hurried back from gleaning the Home when word of Born’s return reached her. She saw him talking excitedly with Sand and Joyla and started toward him, pleased and surprised at his sudden, unexpected safe return. Then she noticed that Losting was with them and talking easily with Born as well as with the elders. She slowed, stopped, stared for a long moment. Then she whirled and began walking slowly back toward the house of her parents. Now and then she would glance back over her shoulder, talk quietly to herself, and shake her head.

“How long?” asked Sand solemnly.

“Two days march for a man,” Losting told them, gesturing back into the forest.

“No chance they will pass to one side or the other?”

Born shook his head. “I think not.”

“They’ll cut right through the middle of your village.” Born turned as they were joined by the two giants and Reader. “You’re all seeing this cockeyed,” Cohoma continued. “You’re going to sacrifice yourselves trying to save a
tree?
Listen, how long would it take for the tree to die when the Akadi have finished with it, eaten their way through?”

It was Reader’s turn to respond. “By the old calendar, perhaps a hundred years.”

Cohoma’s face mirrored his feelings. “You could raise two or maybe three more generations here, be searching safely in small armed groups for a new tree. But if you stay and fight these Akadi, you’ll all die, it seems. What’s the point of that?”

“The Home will live,” explained Joyla with dignity.

“Right,” commented Cohoma bitterly. “Throw away your lives for a damned holy vegetable.” He directed his words to Logan. “They’re not human enough to be repatriated to the Commonwealth any more. They’ve regressed too far. The normal survival factor’s been bred and cut out of them by this dunghill.”

The chief shook his head sadly while both hunters simply studied the giants as they would a new variety of Chollakee.

“Giants who claim to come from another world, I do not understand you. It may be as you say, we are more different than we appear.”

“And it’s going to be left at that?”

Joyla and Sand nodded in unison.

“We don’t pretend to understand you completely,” Logan admitted in a conciliatory tone, while Cohoma cursed softly. “But some of our ways might be of some help to you.”

“We certainly will consider any suggestions you would like to make,” Sand replied politely.

“Okay,” she said enthusiastically, “the way I understand it, the only thing these Akadi will turn for is to defend themselves against an attacker, right?”

“That is so,” Born told her.

“Well then,” she continued brightly, “why not hit this column from the side. Once they turn to defend themselves, won’t they continue on the new pathway?”

Sand smiled, shook his head. “The Akadi remember. They would pursue and kill any creature foolish enough to assault them, then return to their original line of march.”

“Oh,” Logan murmured, crestfallen. “I’d wondered why nobody suggested a diversionary attack. All it would gain would be a little time.”

“A very little time,” Losting added.

“Swell, terrific,” a frustrated Cohoma put in. These people were getting on his nerves. Here they had actually found someone to guide them back to the station and safety, and now this ridiculous bit of logic demanded they kill themselves off trying to save a tree for the fourth generation, instead of simply picking up and moving for a day or so. It went against reason!

But despite his earlier outburst, Cohoma had no illusions about their chances in the jungle by themselves. They would end up in the grip of some cyanide-spitting cabbage, or something equally bizarre.

He took a deep breath. It was essential, then, that these Akadi be destroyed. To that end, both he and Logan were vocal in volunteering their full cooperation. If the fight was won, they would get credit for great bravery and comradeship. If it were lost, well, they would take their chances in the forest. Neither knew of the Akadi’s ability to follow the scent of their enemy down to the last straggler.

The two giants willingly helped raise the ramparts of sharpened ironwood stakes. These were wedged and then tied with woven vine into place on the side of the Home where the Akadi assault was expected to come. The bristling poisoned stakes and spines would blunt, not halt, the Akadi surge. The latter would overwhelm such pedestrian defenses by sheer weight of numbers, the living using their dead and impaled cousins as a bridge.

But the inhabitants of the great tree had other defenses, defenses which, despite their considerable experience in researching the vegetation of this world, Cohoma and Logan were unfamiliar with.

What, for example, was the purpose of the large nuts twice the size of a terran coconut that had been gingerly suspended over the cubbies the Akadi would use to enter the tree? Unlike the mountain of deadly jacari thorns and tank seed pods which had been gathered, there was nothing in the nuts to hint at concealed deviltry.

Cohoma came up with what he thought was an obvious, yet brilliant, solution. He overlooked something Logan did not—the fact that while Born’s people were primitive, they were not stupid.

“Why not,” he suggested to a small group of busy men, “just cut away all the vines and cubbies and lianas leading into the Home tree? Unless these Akadi can fly, too, they’ll be forced to go around.”

By way of reply, Jaipur, an elderly craftsman, handed Cohoma a finely honed bone axe and directed him to try it on the nearest big liana, which was about as big around as a man’s thigh. Cohoma proceeded to do just that, hammering away at the incredible substance for a good ten minutes. The axe blade was finally dulled to the point where it would no longer cut. All he had achieved was a notch barely a couple of centimeters deep in the protective bark.