Midworld (3 page)

Ruumahum brightened at the thought of food. He would have preferred to sleep, but … pium, now. A last stretch, extending forepaws out in front of him and pulling, digging eight parallel grooves into the alloytough dead base of the gall. Persons, he had to admit, were sometimes useful to have around. They had a way of finding good things to eat and making the very eating more enjoyable. For such rewards Ruumahum was willing to overlook Born’s faults. His triple pupils brightened. Humans flattered themselves with the idea that they had done an awesome job of domesticating the first furcots. The furcots saw no need to dispute this. The reality of it was that they had stuck with the persons out of curiosity. Human persons were the first beings the furcots had ever encountered who were unpredictable enough to keep them awake. One could never quite predict what a person might do—even one’s own person. So they kept up the pact without really understanding why, knowing only that in the relationship there was something worthwhile and good.

Keeping hearts of pium in mind enabled Ruumahum to arrange the grazer carcass on his back without falling asleep more than once in the process. So Born lost little of his precious time.

Either no scavenger had blundered into their camp, or else they had elected not to risk those deadly interlocking thorns. Born recovered all the vine-entwined jacaris, reset the poison darts in the bottom of his quiver, looped the vine around his belt, and started off again.

“Close Home,” Ruumahum muttered that evening, pausing to send a thick curving tongue out to groom the back of a forepaw.

Born had been recognizing familiar landmarks and tree blazes for over an hour. There was the stormtreader tree that had killed old Hannah in an unwary moment. They gave the black and silver bole a wide berth. Once they had to pause as a Buna floater drifted by, trailing long stinging tentacles. As they waited, the floater let out a long sibilant whistle and dropped lower, perhaps to try its luck on the Fourth Level where scampering bushackers were more common.

Born had stepped out from behind a trunk and was about to remove his cloak when above them sounded a shriek sufficient to shatter a pfeffermall, more violent than the howl of chollakee hunting. So sudden, so overpowering was the scream that the normally imperturbable Ruumahum was shocked into a defensive posture, backing up against the nearest bole despite the restrictive mass of the grazer, fore-paws upraised and claws extended.

The scream dropped to a moan that was abruptly subsumed by an overpowering, frightening roar of crackings and snappings. Even the branch of the nearby Pillar tree shook. Then the branch they stood on rocked fiercely. With his great strength, Ruumahum was able to maintain his perch, but Born was not so secure. He fell several meters, smashing through a couple of helpless succulents before he hit an unyielding protrusion. He started to bounce off it before he got both arms locked around the stiff fom. The vibrating stopped, and he was able to get his legs around it, too.

Shaking, he pulled himself up. Nothing felt broken, and everything seemed to work. But his snuffler was gone; its restraining tie had snapped, sending it bouncing and spinning into the depths. That was a severe loss.

The crashing and breaking sounds faded, finally stopped. As he had fallen, Born thought he had seen in the distance through the green an impossibly wide mass of something blue and metallic. It had passed as swiftly as he had fallen. As he stared that way now there was nothing to be seen but the forest.

Peepers and orbioles came out of hiding, called hesitantly into the silence. Then bushackers and flowerkits and their relatives joined in. In minutes the hylaea sounded and resounded normally again.

“Something has happened,”

Ruumahum ventured softly.

“I think I saw it.” Born stared harder, still saw only what belonged. “Did you? Something big and blue and shining.”

Ruumahum eyed him steadily. “Saw nothing. Saw self falling to Hell and gone. Concentrated on staying
here
with grazer weight pulling
there.
No time for curiouslooking.”

“You did better than I, old friend,” Born admitted, as he climbed up toward the furcot. He tested a liana, found it firm, and started off in the direction of the murderous sounds. “I think we’d better—”

“No.” A glance over his shoulder showed the furcot with his great head lowered and moving slowly from side to side in imitation of the human gesture of negation. Three eyes rolled toward the path they had been following.

“So far, lucky be we, person Born. Soon though, others grazer to smell will begin. We will fight have to every step to Home. To Home go first. This other”—and he nodded in the direction of the breaking and crashing—“I would talk of first with the brethren, who know such things quickly.”

Born stood thinking on the woody bridge. His intense curiosity—or madness, if one believed many of his fellows—pulled him toward the source of the sounds, however threatening they had been. For a change, reason overcame. Ruumahum and he had been through much in the killing and carrying of the grazer. To risk losing it now for no good reason was unsound thinking.

“Okay, Ruumahum.” He hopped back onto the bigger branch and started toward the village again. A last look over his shoulder still showed only speckled greenery and no unnatural movement. “But as soon as the meat’s disposed of, I’m coming back to find out what that was, whether or not you or anyone else comes with me.”

“Doubt it not,” Ruumahum replied knowingly.

THEY REACHED THE BARRIER
well before darkness. In front of them, the hylaea seemed to become a single tree—the Hometree. Only the Pillars themselves were bigger, and the Home-tree was a monstrously big tree for certain. Broad twisting branches and vines-of-own shot out in all directions. Air-trees and cubbies and lianas grew in and about the tree’s own growth. Born noted with satisfaction that only plants which were innocuous or helpful to the Home-tree grew on it. His people kept the Home-tree well and, in turn, the Hometree kept them.

The vines-of-own were lined with flowers of bright pink, with pollen pods which sat globelike within them. These pods were akin to the yellow tank seeds that made the snufflers such deadly weapons, but far more sensitive. A single touch on the sensitive pink surface would cause the paper-thin skin to rupture, sending a cloud of dust into the air that would kill any animal inhaling it, whether through nostril, pore, or other air exchanger. The vines entangled and crossed the tree in the middle of the Third Level—the village level— forming a protective net of deadly ropes around it.

Born approached the nearest, leaned over and spat directly into the center of one of the blossoms, avoiding the pod. The blossom quivered, but the pod did not burst. The pink petals closed in on themselves. A pause, then the vines began to curl and tighten like climbing vines hunting for a better purchase. As they retracted, a clear path was formed through which Born and Ruumahum strode easily. Even as Ruumahum was through, the outermost vines were already relaxing once again, expanding, coming together and shutting off the pathway. The bloom into which Born had spat opened its petals once more to drink the faint evening light.

A casual observer would note that Born’s saliva had disappeared. A chemist would be able to tell that it had been absorbed. A brilliant scientist might be able to discover that it had been more than absorbed—it had been analyzed and identified. Born knew only that carefully spitting into the bloom seemed to tell the Home-tree who he was.

As he walked toward the village proper he tried to whistle happily. The song died aborning. His mind was occupied with the mysterious blue thing that had come crashing down into the forest. Rarely, one of the greater air-trees would overreach its rootings, or overgrow its perch, and fall, bringing down creepers and lesser growths with it. But never had Born heard such a smashing and shattering of wood. This thing had been far heavier than any air-tree. He knew that by the speed with which it had fallen. And there was that half familiar, metallic gleam.

His thoughts were not on his expected triumph as he entered the village center. Here, the enormous trunk of the Home-tree split into a webbing of lesser boles, forming an interlocking net of wood around a central open space, before joining and growing together high above to form once more a single tapering trunk that rose skyward for another sixty meters. With vines and plant fibers and animal skins the villagers had closed off sections of the interweaving trunklets to form homes and rooms impervious to casual rain and wind. For food, the Home-tree offered cauliflorous fruits shaped like gourds, tasting like cranberry, which sometimes grew within the sealed-off homes themselves.

Small scorched places lay within the houses and beneath the canopy in the central square. These minute burns did not affect the enormous growth. Each home also possessed a pit dug into the wood itself. Here, many times daily, the inhabitants of the tree offered thanks for its shelter and protection, mixing their offerings with a mulch of dead, pulpy plants gathered for the purpose. The mulch also served to kill strong odors. When the pits were full they were cleaned out. The dry residue was thrown over the side of the Home-tree into the green depths, so that the pits could be used again. For the tree accepted and absorbed the offerings with great speed and matchless efficiency.

The Home-tree was the greatest discovery made by Born’s ancestors. Its unique characteristics were discovered when it seemed that the last surviving colonists would perish. At that time no one wondered why a growth unutilized by native life should prove so accommodating to alien interlopers. When the human population made a comeback, scouts were sent out to search for other Home-trees, and a new tribe was planted. But in the years since Born’s great-great-great-great-great-grandfather had settled in this tree, contact with other tribes had first dwindled and then stopped altogether. None bothered to reopen such contact, or cared. They had all they could do to survive in a world that seethed with nightmare forms of death and destruction.

“Born is back … look, Born has returned … Born, Born!”

A small crowd gathered around him, welcoming him joyously, but consisting entirely of children. One of them, ignoring the respect due a returning hunter, had the temerity to tug at his cloak. He looked down, recognized the orphan boy Din who was cared for in common.

His mother and father had been taken one day while they were on a fruit-gathering expedition, by something that had coughed once horribly and vanished into the forest. The rest of the party had fled in panic and later returned to find only the couple’s tools. No sign of them had ever been found. So the boy was raised by everyone in the village. For reasons unknown to anyone, least of all to Born, the youngster had attached himself to him. The hunter could not cast the youth away. It was a law—and a good law for survival—that a free child could make parents of any and all it chose. Why one would pick mad Born, though …

“No, you cannot have the grazer pelt,” Born scolded, as he gently shoved the boy away. Din, at thirteen, was no longer a child. He was no longer pushed so easily.

Following at the orphan’s heels was a fat ball of fur not quite as big as the adolescent. The furcot cub Muf tripped over its own stubby legs every third step. The third time he tripped, he lay down in the middle of the village and went to sleep, this being an appropriate solution to the problem. Ruumahum eyed the cub, mumbled disapprovingly. But he could sympathize. He was quite ready for an extended nap himself.

Born did not head directly for his home, but instead walked across the village to another’s.

“Brightly Go!”

Green eyes that matched the densest leaves peeked out, followed by the face and form of a wood nymph supple as a kitten. She walked over to take both his hands in hers.

“It’s good that you’re back, Born. Everyone worried. I … worried, much.”

“Worried?” he responded jovially.

“About a little grazer?” He made a grandiose gesture in the direction of the carcass. Beneath its great mass Ruumahum fumed and had unkind thoughts about persons who engaged in frivolous activities before considering the comfort of their furcot.

Brightly Go stared at the grazer and her eyes grew big as ruby-in-kind blossoms.

Then she frowned with uncertainty. “But Born, I can’t possibly eat all that!”

Born’s answering laughter was only slightly forced. “You can have what you need of the meat, and your parents, too. It’s the pelt that’s for you, of course.”

Brightly Go was the most beautiful girl in the village, but sometimes Born found himself thinking unflattering things about her other qualities. Then, he would eye her thin wrapping of leafleather and forget everything else.

“You’re laughing at me,” she protested angrily. “Don’t laugh at me!” Naturally, that encouraged him to laugh even more. “Losting,” she said with dignity, “doesn’t laugh at me.”

That shut him up quickly. “What does it matter what Losting does?” he shot back challengingly.

“It matters to me.”

“Huh … well.” Something had suddenly gone wrong somewhere. This wasn’t working out the way he had imagined it would, the way he had planned it. Somehow it never did.

He looked around the silent village. A few of the older people had stared out at him when he had returned. Now that the novelty of his survival had worn off, they had returned to their household tasks. Most of the active adults, naturally, were off hunting, gathering edibles, or keeping the Home clear of parasites. The anticipated adulation had never materialized. He had risked his life, then, to return to a cluster of curious children and to the indifference of Brightly Go. His earlier euphoria vanished.

“I’ll clean the pelt for you, anyway,” he grumbled. “Come on, Ruumahum.” He turned and stalked angrily off toward the other side of the village. Behind him Brightly Go’s face underwent a series of contortions expressing a broad spectrum of emotions. Then she turned and went back inside her parent’s compound.

Ruumahum let out a snort of relief when the deadweight was finally untied and he could shake it from his back. Whereupon he walked directly to his corner in the large single room, lay down, and entered that region most beloved of all furcots.