Midworld (7 page)

Strange and fascinating these giants! Yet it was they who were calling him strange.

“If your people developed here,” the woman was concluding, “despite your coloring and size and grabby toes, it has to be the most unlikely case of parallel evolution on record. And you speak Terranglo. What do you say, Jan?”

The man looked up briefly at Born, then sighed and made a gesture of helplessness toward the board he had been working on. “I don’t know why I’m fooling with this. It’s hopeless. Even if we could fix the drive without the aid of a full machine shop, that flying beast chewed up the controls like so many worms in a paper bag. We’re stuck here. The tridee’s in no better shape. And all that talk about dying’s probably still appropriate.”

“You give, up too soon, too easily, Jan,” she admonished him. She looked at Born. “Our small friend here appears to have unpredictable resources. I don’t see why he couldn’t—”

The man whirled, confronting her with outrage barely held in check. “Are you crazy? It’s hundreds of kilometers to the station through this impenetrable morass …”

“
His
people seem able to negotiate it,” she said quietly.

“… and if you’re thinking of hoofing it, guided by some ignorant primitives—!” he continued.

The language of the giants was peculiar, high and distorted, but Born could make out the meaning of many of their words. One word he recognized clearly, despite the twisted accent, was “ignorant.”

“If you are so much the smarter,” he interrupted sharply, “how come you to be here like this?” And he kicked the blue skin of the skimmer.

The giant called Kimi smiled. “He’s got you there, Jan.” The man uttered another disgusted sound and made a related gesture. But he didn’t call Born ignorant again.

“Now then,” the woman said formally, “I think introductions are in order. First off, we’d like to thank you for saving our lives, which you most surely did.” She glanced at the man. “Wouldn’t we, Jan?”

He made a muffled sound vaguely intelligible as “yes.”

“My name,” she went on, “is Logan … Kimi Logan. This sometimes buoyant, occasionally depressed associate of mine is Jan Cohoma. And you?”

“I am called Born.”

“Born. That’s a fine name. A fitting name for one so brave, for a man who’d tackle a meat-eater like that winged monster single-handed.”

Born expanded with pride. Strange the giants might be, but this one at least could be properly admiring. Maybe one day Brightly Go would regard him as well as this peculiar giant did.

“You mentioned a village, Born,” she continued.

He turned, pointed up and southwest. “The Home lies that way, a fair walk through the forest and two levels higher. My brothers will greet you as friends.” And admire the hunter who had braved the sleeping blue demon and killed a sky-devil to rescue them, he thought to himself.

He jumped up and down several times on the blue metal, then noticed that both giants had drawn away and were watching him. “I’m sorry,” he explained. “I mean you no harm. Of all who came here only I had the courage to descend and find you out. I guessed this … thing … was not alive, but something carved.”

“It’s called a skimmer,” Cohoma told him. “It carries us across the sky.”

“Across the sky,” Born repeated, not really believing the words. It seemed impossible that anything so heavy could fly.

“We’re glad you did, Born. Aren’t we, Jan? Aren’t we?” She nudged him and he muttered assent. His initial antagonism toward Born was weakening rapidly as he realized that the small native posed no threat to them. Quite the contrary, it seemed.

“Yes, it certainly was a brave act. An extraordinary act, now that I think of it.” He smiled. “You’ve come this far, Born. Maybe you could help us at least try to get back to our station—our home on this world.”

“We got a last fix before we went down,” Logan told him. She hesitated, then pointed in a direction toward the Home tree. “It’s in that direction, about … let’s see, how can I get some idea of the distance across to you?” She thought a moment. “You said something about levels in the forest?”

“Everyone knows the world is made of seven levels,” Born explained, as though lecturing a child, “from the Lower Hell to the treetops.”

“Figure the average height of one of the big emergents,” she murmured. “Say a little over seven hundred meters.” She engaged in some mental computation, translating meters into levels, and told Born how far away the station lay.

Now it was Born’s turn to smile; he was too courteous to laugh. “No one has ever traveled more than five days’ journey from the Home,” he told them. “I myself only recently went two, and that proved dangerous enough. Now you are talking of a journey of many seven-days. It cannot be done, I think.”

“Why not?” Cohoma objected. “You’re not afraid, are you? Not,” he added quickly as Born took a step toward the bigger man, “an exceptional hunter like yourself?”

Born relaxed slightly. He had already decided that of the two giants, he liked the man far the less.

“It is not a question of fear,” he told them, “but of reason. The balance of the world is delicate. Each creature has its place in that balance, takes what is needed, and returns what it can. The further one moves from one’s own niche, the more he disrupts the order of things. When the balance is upset severely, people die.”

“I think what he’s saying, Jan,” Logan said to her companion, “is that they believe the further they go from their home village, the more the chances of successfully returning to it are reduced. An understandable feeling, but the explanation is interesting. I wonder how they came to that world-view way of thinking. It’s not natural.”

“Natural or not,” Cohoma objected, “I still don’t see why—”

“Later,” she cut him off. He turned away, muttering to himself. “I think the first thing we should do,” she suggested, “is get out from under this open space before a relative of the monster you so smoothly dispatched, Born, gets curious and comes round to investigate.”

That was the first sensible thing the giants had said. He beckoned for them to follow. Cohoma filled his pockets with small packages from various compartments, then let Born lead the way into the trees.

Despite the comparative openness of this level and the absence of accustomed vines and branches, Born was startled to see how clumsy the giants were and how hesitantly they advanced. He inquired about their obvious difficulty as tactfully as possible and was glad when neither seemed offended.

“On the world we come from,” Logan explained, “we’re used to walking on the ground.”

Born was shocked. “Can it be that you live in Hell itself?”

“Hell? I don’t understand, Born.”

He pointed downward. “Two levels below us lie the Lower and True Hell, the surface Hell of mud and shifting earth. It is the abode of monsters too horrible to have names, so it is said.”

“I understand. No, Born, our home’s not like that. It’s solid and open and light— not full of monsters. At least,” she said with a grin, “not any monsters we can’t live with.” Like the Church Bureau of SupraCommonwealth Registry, she reflected.

Born’s head was swimming.

Everything the giants said seemed to go against all reason and truth, yet their very presence and the solid evidence of their sky craft hinted that yet greater wonders might exist.

For now, though, he must restrain his curiosity in favor of more immediate concerns. “You both look tired and hungry, and you must be exhausted by your ordeal.”

Cohoma added a heartfelt “Amen!”

“I will take you to the Home. We can talk further there, and more easily.”

“One question, Born,” asked Logan. “Are the rest of your people as receptive to strangers as you are?”

“Think you we are not civilized?” Born asked. “Any child knows that a guest is as a brother and must be so treated.”

“A man after my own heart,” sighed Cohoma. “I’ve got to apologize, friend Born. I had some wrong ideas about you, at first. Lead on, short stuff.”

Born pointed upward. “To the Home level first—a fair climb.” Both giants groaned. Judging from what he had seen of their climbing ability thus far, Born could understand their reaction. “I will try to find an easier route. It will cost us some time—”

“We’ll risk it,” said Logan.

Born located a spiraling branch root, descending in a tight double helix from an air-tree somewhere far above. They would have several dozen meters of simple ascent. He started upward, and as he did a scream sounded behind him. He reached for the snuffler, relaxed when he saw it was only Ruumahum. The fear displayed by the two giants at the sight of the affectionate furcot was amusing.

“It’s only Ruumahum,” he informed them. “My furcot. He’d no more harm you than me.”

“Persons,” grunted Ruumahum sardonically, sniffing first at the waist of a frozen Logan, then Cohoma. Neither giant moved, relaxing only when that great fanged head moved away.

“My God,” Logan muttered, staring in awe at the massive form as it bounded into the canopy overhead, “it talks. That’s two sapient forms Survey missed.” She looked at Born with new respect. “Carnivorous hexapod—how’d you ever tame
that?
” she asked wonderingly.

Born considered in confusion, then understanding dawned. “You mean,” he said in amazement, “you have no furcots of your own?” He looked from a stupefied Logan to Cohoma.

“Furcots of our own?” echoed Logan. “Why should we?”

“Why,” Born recited without thinking, “every person has his furcot and every furcot its person, as every flitter its blossom, every cubble its anchor tree, every pfeffermall its resonator. It’s the balance of the world.”

“Yes, but that still doesn’t explain how you tamed them,” pressed Cohoma, staring after the departed carnivore.

“Tame.” Born’s expression twisted. “It’s not a question of taming. Furcots like persons and we like the furcots.” He shrugged. “It is natural. It has always been so.”

“It talked,” noted Logan aloud. “I distinctly heard it say ‘persons.’ ”

“The furcots are not very bright,” Born admitted, “but they talk well enough to make themselves understood.” He smiled. “There are persons who talk less.”

For some reason this caused both giants to launch into a long discussion between themselves, full of complex terms Born did not understand. This made him uncomfortable. Anyway, it was time they started Home, time he received the adulation and accolades due him.

“We must go now, but there is a condition.”

That veiled threat was enough to cause the giants to break off their argument and stare at him. “What condition?” Logan asked apprehensively. Born stared at Cohoma. “That he no longer calls me short stuff. Otherwise I will call him clumsy-cub every time his foot slips on a pathway.”

Cohoma managed a tight smile, but Logan guffawed openly. “He’s got you there, Jan.” The latter just grunted, muttered something about getting on their way, and started up the root after Born. “No time to waste,” he added gruffly.

As they moved upward, Born considered Cohoma’s last remark. The concept of “wasting time” was personally intriguing, since in the Home it usually had been applied only to him. Was it possible there were others who felt as he did about the way time was spent? If so, there was another reason for getting to know these giants better. He already knew of several others.

THE FOREST HAD BEEN
burned back to leave a clear zone around the armored, domed station which sat in the largest open space— for that matter, the only open space—in the hylaea, a silver-gray bubble rising from an ocean of green, like the exhalation of a colossal diver swimming far below.

The circular, domed structure rested on the sheared-off trunks of three Pillar trees, whose neatly trimmed branches formed a system of braces and struts as strong as any artificial supports the builders could have provided. Eventually the cut-off giant trees would die and topple over, but by then the station would no longer be necessary, having been supplanted according to the master plan by much larger, more permanent structures built elsewhere.

The cleared zone around the station was designed to prevent any further deaths from the local sawtooth, hook-clawed predators, who had killed three of the station’s builders before its major defenses were installed and powered up. Discovering that no creature of the forest cared to cross an area open to the sky—and to the skyborne killers—the construction engineers had burnt back the green ramparts many meters from the station, as well as several meters down below its bottom level.

Two occupants of the station had been carried off by aerial predators while walking along the peripheral strollway. Again the station’s defenses were strengthened, until it resembled a small fortress. The lasers and explosive guns were hardly fitting to a structure dedicated primarily to research and exploration. The less lethal instrumentation was located within the gray building. It was that nexus of inner laboratories that the wall of weapons was erected to protect.

Scouting parties went out in armed skimmers to search the endless forest for useful products. They brought back one revelation after another—the forest proved to be an inexhaustible source of surprises— which were metamorphosed into commercial possibilities within the labs. These findings were relayed to other men who in turn relayed the information to a deep space beam operator, who by various devious means—since the presence of the station was illegal, as it had neither been registered nor inspected nor officially approved—passed it on to a distant world. There one man with a machine transcribed the myriad discoveries into figures, relayed them to a second, who took them to a third, who laundered them for a fourth, who laid them carefully on the desk of a person withered in body but not in mind. That person studied the figures. Every so often she would smile crookedly and nod, and then orders would go back along the carefully concealed chain of command until eventually they were disseminated within the dome on The World With No Name.

So closely guarded was the location of the world with no name that few of those who worked within the dome had any idea where it was, and no pilot was sent to it twice. Pilot relayed information to successor, for the coordinates could not even be trusted to mechanical safekeeping. This was chancy since the coordinates could be lost forever, but the advantage of absolute secrecy made it worthwhile. Since no one knew its location, no one could divulge it voluntarily or otherwise to agents of Commonwealth or Church. Anyone questioned on the subject could admit freely to what he knew—which was nothing.