A Covenant of Justice (15 page)

He sealed up his pants again, jumped down off the berm, and returned to the others. Zillabar looked offended; he'd expected nothing less. Lee had a scornful expression on his face. Three-Dollar remained unmoved. Sawyer made himself comfortable at the head of the medical cabinet and waited.

He didn't have long to wait. Very shortly, a sound came from the leaves above. The others didn't notice it at first, it sounded like the wind. But Sawyer knew what to listen for and he recognized the steady rustling of something moving through the canopy above. So when the
thing
came screeching down from the trees, he betrayed no surprise. He did enjoy watching Lee-1169 flinch. He noticed with annoyance, however, that Zillabar had not reacted at all. She had heard the creature's steady approach as surely as he had.

The beast had silvery fur, almost blue. The sheen of color glittered even here in the shadowy gloom. Large and flat, the creature had no head. Its eyes—all six of them—stared out from the center of its body, spaced equidistantly around its puckered mouth. It had long, ungainly arms, one at each corner; each arm ended in a bony claw-like hand. Breathing slits opened and closed along its sides. The creature looked like the hybrid progeny of an ape, a spider, and a nightmare.

It had dropped down from above, swinging on a leathery brown vine. It scuttled along the berm until it came to the depression that Sawyer had urinated into. It lowered itself over the remaining puddle as if sniffing. It hissed and backed away several steps, turning itself around and elevating that part of its body that Sawyer assumed operated as its hindquarters. It opened its cloaca and aimed a jet of oily dark fluid at the offending puddle of Sawyer's urine.

Sawyer glanced over at Lee. The clone-man's eyes had gone wide—with terror or amazement, Sawyer couldn't tell. He took a step sideways and whispered, “Don't move. Don't say anything. Put your gun away. The natives call it a spiderman. It won't hurt you if you don't hurt it—and believe me, you
don't
want to hurt it.”

The creature finished its task and backed away, whirling again and raising itself up on three of its legs to glare at the humans and the Vampire, as if waiting.

“My turn again,” Sawyer said, and climbed back up onto the berm. He walked around to the entire arc of the woody gnarl, all the while making snarling and snorting noises at the silver spiderman. “Kiss my rose red behind, you feeble excuse for a frightwig. Eat my shit.” He made horrible noises and waved his arms around in the air. He knew the creature couldn't understand how he maneuvered on two legs only—the silver spiderman hissed, but took two cautious steps backward.

“Don't you scream at me! I don't believe in you either!” Sawyer bellowed. As he approached the disputed depression, he stamped each footstep as hard as he could. “I claim this territory. Not you! You can't pee here! I pee here! Your pee smells like flowers! MY PEE SMELLS LIKE PEE SHOULD SMELL!” He knew the beast could not possibly understand his words, but it certainly understood his intent. It scuttled away another ten steps.

Sawyer opened his trousers again and finished the job he had started earlier. He forced the urine from his bladder so that it spattered away all traces of the darker oil of the spiderman. Then he took a few steps back to allow the other to sniff the depression again.

The spiderman approached cautiously, periodically pausing to raise itself up to look at Sawyer. At last, it reached the fresh urine and lowered its face close enough to sniff. It started to turn itself around, as if to repeat its previous performance, but at that point, Sawyer, charged three steps forward, shouting, “Don't you even think of it, or I'll have your silvery pelt for a rug, you stinking slime-bag excuse for a primate!”

It worked. The creature scuttled away, startled. It raised itself up, stared, blinked, then rolled over on its back and waved its long bony arms in the air for a moment.

“Good,” said Sawyer. “You have enough intelligence to see it my way.”

The spiderman folded itself into a sitting position and waited.

Sawyer stepped away from the stinking depression and faced Three-Dollar and Lee. They both looked amused. Sawyer returned their looks with a cockeyed grin. “Sometimes, you just gotta speak to them in their own language.” Abruptly, catching the motion of the spiderman out of the corner of his eye, he whirled and advanced again, stamping his feet, waving his arms, and screaming, “Oh, no, you don't, you filthy little, flea-bitten, bag of hair! You come near my hole and I'll feed you to the nearest Vampire, and if you don't believe me, I've brought one with me!”

The spiderman scuttled back away again, this time farther than before. It made a rude noise and settled itself down to wait. Sawyer glanced down to Lee. “I gotta do that. I haven't any piss left. Sooner or later, it'll get the point.”

Lee spread his hands in a gesture of confusion. “You wanna explain it to me? I don't get the point.”

“He has to claim this as his territory,” Three-Dollar said.

“But why?”

“Because he has to.”

Sawyer strode back and forth on the wooden crest of the gnarl, strutting and posturing for the watching spiderman.

“Does that thing have any intelligence?” Lee asked.

“Just enough to know that it shouldn't try to pee in my hole,” Sawyer called back.

“I don't get it.”

“Don't worry about it,” Sawyer reassured him. “I know what I have to do.”

Sawyer's pacing took him away from the depression in the wood and then back again; each time he went a step farther away from it than before. The spiderman watched him warily. It folded itself and refolded itself and finally folded itself a third way. It made funny little snuffling noises that sounded vaguely unhappy.

At last the spidery creature gave up. It unfolded itself and leapt off the gnarl at a nearby vine. It caught the vine, swung in mid-air for a moment, then swung up into the leafy canopy above, where it disappeared.

“I win,” announced Sawyer. He dropped down into the center of the gnarl and rejoined the others.

“Now what?” asked Lee.

Sawyer scratched his cheek. “We wait and see if the little bastard believed me.”

For a long while, nothing happened—long enough for Sawyer to begin to wonder if perhaps he had failed to convince the spiderman of his sincerity in the matter.

Then suddenly, everything happened at once. Silvery spider-things began dropping out of the canopy all around them, dropping down on vines, swarming down tree limbs, and just plain falling down out of the branches above. They shrieked and screamed and snorted; they scrambled and scuttled and scrabbled around the humans, the Vampire queen, and the medical cabinet, touching, probing, exploring, pinching, sniffing, and generally making the most hellacious nuisances of themselves.

But even in all the confusion, a pattern of activity began to emerge. Dropping down out of the leaves above came a hand-built platform, a rough basket of interwoven vines and planks—a crude gondola with a wooden floor and netted sides. Despite its crude appearance, it hung from silken strands and Sawyer could see the glint of metal in its fastenings.

The spidermen surrounded them, pushing them, pulling at them with their narrow bony fingers, tugging them toward the basket. At first, Lee reacted with a measure of revulsion, Three-Dollar with curiosity, Zillabar with annoyance, but at Sawyer's urging, they relaxed and let the silvery spider-things guide them to the rough-looking craft. When they came for Sawyer, he stood by the medical cabinet and refused to move. Instead, he switched on the levitators and began pushing it along toward the hanging basket. Almost immediately, the hairy spiders got the idea and helped him along.

As they lifted it up onto the planks of the platform, they appeared to express surprise at its light weight. They chittered and chattered among themselves, but if they had a language, Sawyer couldn't tell. He couldn't recognize any meaning in their sounds. Sawyer climbed up into the hanging gondola with the others and hooked one arm through the woven net enclosing it. “I think you'd all better find something to hang onto. This ride has some rough moments.”

A handful of spider-things climbed onto the net of the gondola with them, another handful climbed up to the top of the rigging and began worrying at the cables. Almost immediately, the gondola jerked and swung—it hesitated, swinging backward and forward for a moment with a sickening motion—and then swung away from the gnarl, across the branch, and out over the edge of nothingness.

Lee-1169 screamed.

The gondola dropped down diagonally into the blackness of the forest for the longest moment, spider-things clambering all over the netting, screeching and moaning as the basket slid and rolled, bucking through the air. They seemed to drop forever.

Lee stopped screaming long enough to catch his breath. He clutched at the netting and held on as tightly as he could; his eyes bespoke his terror. Three-Dollar looked a little pale himself. Only Zillabar seemed able to maintain her poise. Sawyer looked up and saw a near-invisible cable running rapidly through a set of silvery wheels. The gondola raced down along the wire at a terrifying rate. It seemed faster even than the airboat that had brought them racing across the roof of the jungle. Sawyer recognized the illusory quality of the experience, but it did not mitigate the lump climbing up into his throat.

They slid through darkness, through shafts of silvery-blue light, through great empty spaces and narrow corridors of vegetation, over the broad stretching branches of the black trees, between the huge upright curls of the sub-limbs, through the veils of greenery and vines—they slid down the wire so long that Sawyer began to doubt that they would ever find a bottom. He leaned sideways to see if he could see the bottom of the forest, but he saw only branches and limbs, leaves and vines, extending all the way down, disappearing finally into a blue hazy gloom.

And then—at last—the descent began to ebb and they careened along horizontally through a great open vault of emptiness. Blacktrees above, blacktrees below, blacktree limbs all around—and yet they flew through an impossible cavernous green realm. Birds soared beneath them—and above them as well. Sawyer grinned with glee, enjoying the view. Lee abruptly turned to the side and heaved the better part of his recent meal out into the air; it spewed away in an impressive arc. Sawyer suppressed a laugh; he'd done the same thing once. Three-Dollar reached over and gave Lee a sympathetic pat on the knee. Zillabar just snorted.

Now their momentum began swinging them up and up and up. The little car climbed steadily up through another realm of blacktree limbs; their speed began to slowly burn off as they rose up the wire. Ahead, the giant wall of a stupendous blacktree loomed like an impassable barrier. Sawyer eyed it diffidently; he knew they couldn't hit it, but the sense of impending impact gave this part of the ride an alarming flavor.

The gondola jerked slightly as the motors connected to the pulleys kicked in. They lifted steadily toward the tree, toward an outstretched limb—the gondola rattled as it passed close under the limb and then, just as abruptly, they began dropping away again—this time in a new direction. They dropped only a little ways this time and began rising again almost immediately.

Gradually the ride assumed its own mad rhythm of sudden drops, long free swoops, the momentum of the fall ebbing into gentle rises, then sharper rises and motorized acceleration, followed by the rattling of the pulleys as they rode across the supporting structures. And then, once more, they would drop away into the deep gloom below. The wire zigged and zagged its way through the forest and the riders of the cable-car soon lost all sense of direction. They held on tightly and plunged out of the darkness behind into the darkness ahead. Most of the time, gravity pulled the gondola along the wire, but every time the rate of travel fell below a certain speed, the motors kicked in—especially every time they rose toward another supporting blacktree arm.

They rode along this way for what seemed like an eternity. The forest around them grew darker and closer and ever more menacing. Things howled in the distance, other things hooted in reply, and once—just as they passed beneath a great overhanging limb, something very close by
grunted
with a distinct sense of annoyance. The spider-things clambered around the gondola, seemingly oblivious to the comfort of the passengers. Several of them hooked their claws into the nets, folded themselves into sacklike things and appeared to fall asleep.

Sawyer envied them. If he remembered correctly, this part of the journey would take the better part of a day. He had no idea how far they had to travel from Dupa's easternmost wart. He had no idea where they would eventually end up. He wondered if perhaps M'bele had the cables periodically restrung and moved himself about the forest at will.

Eventually, the last light of day drained out of the jungle around them. The reflected glow of giant ringed Burihatin provided no relief. They raced on in utter darkness. Sawyer tried aiming a light ahead, but the narrow beam of the spotlight revealed little of use, only a flickering of leaves; when he set the spread of the beam to a wider dispersion, the light became dissipated and worthless. And so they rocketed on through unseen terrors and possibilities, with nothing but intermittent noises punctuating long empty silences to give them any clue to their surroundings.

Sawyer must have slept. He didn't remember falling asleep, or even waking up again, but when the light began returning to the Burihatin gloom, it didn't seem to him as if enough time had passed to make a full night. He glanced around the gondola. Three-Dollar seemed lost in meditation. Lee slept fitfully. Zillabar—wide awake—studied him with evil cunning.

“You will die soon,” she said softly. “Already, your aura has turned black. Death enshrouds you. It follows in your wake, taking all who travel with you, creeping ever closer with every new life it feeds upon. Soon, it will have taken everyone but you—and then it will take you as well.”