Critical Threshold (12 page)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The next day, we moved on toward the lake.

We came into a strange region where the trees seemed to vary exceptionally greatly in age and health. Instead of the vast majority being giants of incalculable antiquity, with polished bark inviolate, we found a large number in stages of decay, with their solid structure infested by mites, accompanied by many more younger trees which obviously had not attained anything like the average age of their companions. This seemed a curious kind of imbalance in such a controlled and homogeneous environment. It was undoubtedly local, but how local we could not tell.

My mind, which had for some days been inclined to use the analogy between ecosystem and individual in thinking about the forest, immediately classified the area as a kind of “wound”—a place of sickness. And yet it was no less full of life than any other part of the forest—perhaps even more so, in that here were the signs of change.

I wondered why. Here, it seemed, the stable forest environment was tainted by a hint of the random. Could regions like this form some kind of reservoir in which the actual
capacity
for change was maintained by the forest? That seemed to be inadequate as an explanation. I considered, instead, the possibility that what had happened here might be some kind of a blight—the result of some interference with the natural processes of the forest at some time in the past.

That seemed more likely. Here, as in the areas outside the boundary wall of the settlement, the forest might be regenerating in the wake of a disaster: a disaster wrought perhaps, by human hands. But if that were so, I quickly decided, the interference had ended long ago, fifty years and more, at least.

As we pressed on into the area, however, it occurred me that there might well be another explanation. This cycling of the life of the forest—the death of old trees and the growth of new—might be a localized effect caused by the combination of a thousand lesser cycles. There was, on Dendra, no
season
of rapid change and regeneration. If there was springtime here it was a geographical factor, not a temporal one. It occurred to me that
this
, perhaps, was spring, where insects and animals mated, where eggs were laid and change moved faster than elsewhere.

Once I made up my mind that this might be the likelier explanation I began to see the superabundance of fungi and other strange parasitic growths on the trees not so much as symbols of decay but as symbols of health.

Here, in this part of the forest, things were happening quickly, immediately, and in profusion, whereas elsewhere the tempo of existence was sedate and cautious.

There was no way to know for sure. The others noticed the change in the aspect of the forest but hardly bothered to comment, let alone ask for explanations. They were both tired of seeing new things, finding ever more kinds of living organism. For them, it was just a chaotic mess of forms and structures. They could not perceive the vital patterns within.

When we stopped to rest in the middle of the day Karen was determined to catch up on the bath which she had missed out on the previous evening. Mariel, possibly feeling that her own swim had been unfairly cut short, supported her in the demand that we spare an hour or so. I bowed to the will of the majority for once, not that I could have denied them if I'd tried. In fact, I wanted to take a look around, to examine more closely the new state of affairs. I left my pack with theirs, at the river bank, and walked away into the forest. Prudently, I picked up the rifle and took it with me.

I felt more relaxed than I had at any time since we had first begun the long walk. I had the feeling of being near to a destination of sorts. I no longer felt the need to go on, to force the pace. And neither, obviously, did Karen and Mariel.

I found a sudden great interest in tiny, intricate detail. I peered closely at flowers. I watched insects as they went about their purposeful daily routines. I watched birds in the crowns of the trees. I looked at the clustered growths on the boles of dying trees, and found—as I'd half-expected—tiny clusters of insect eggs between the cracks in the disintegrating waxen coat. There were millions of them, and there were larvae crawling over the leaves, and pupae clustered in hollow spaces beneath the boughs. It was impossible to say whether the concentration of the forces of insect reproduction were causing the death of the tree, or being permitted by its dying. Both factors worked in complicity. There was no real need for cause and effect.

I sat down, by the bole of a tree, half-hidden by a twist in the gnarled trunk, and was perfectly still. By remaining so for ten minutes or a quarter of an hour I hoped to tempt back some of the creatures which might hide from movement and ostentatious human presence.

I waited, and became slowly entranced in watching a group of small golden birds involved in some strange ritual interaction in the branches of a young tree whose foliage was insufficiently developed to hide them.

In appearance, they seemed absurdly like canaries. But I never heard them sing.

I am not one of those people who lay claim to any extra sense which informs them when they are being watched. For all I know, I might be under near-perpetual surveillance and I would never suspect—never, at least, as long as my other senses were engaged elsewhere.

I watched the birds. They paid no attention to me. If I'd known that somewhere up in the branches a pair of eyes was watching me just as steadfastly as I was watching the birds I probably wouldn't have cared. I have a sense of justice. I was observing the forest and it had a perfect right to observe me.

I probably never would have found out if the observer hadn't become as entranced in watching me as I was in watching the aerial display of the fluttering yellow birds. He could easily have stolen quietly away without ever betraying his presence.

But he didn't. His fascination, apparently, blinded him. He didn't hear or see Mariel coming through the trees, looking for me. Nor did I, for that matter, and she didn't see me even when she was within twenty feet.

Then, in order to aid her search, she yelled, at the top of her voice: “Al-ex!”

I jumped.

And so did he.

Only he was up a tree, and he fell out. He didn't fall far, and he reacted quickly enough to have fallen on his feet. But all I heard was a sudden rattling of leaves away to my right that told me something heavy was close at hand, and a kind of cough: an exclamation of surprise.

It was the cough that really jerked me into action. I had heard the cough before, or something very like it, the night the panther—or whatever—had come into the camp. I had the rifle leveled instantly, and as he struggled to loose himself from the bush which had broken his fall, before the sight of him had really registered in my brain—I fired.

The dart took him in the back, under the edge of the shoulder blade. The impact knocked him down, and as he tried to get to his feet again I realized what I had done.

It was only a light dart—meant to knock out something with the body weight of a small dog. He was only a boy—Mariel's age or younger—and he was anything but stoutly built, but the dart wasn't enough to put him to sleep. He made it to his feet. He took a couple of steps, without glancing back. Then he tripped and fell again. The fall must have dizzied him, and the way his heart was pounding after the shock must have dragged the drug around his bloodstream very quickly.

He didn't get up after the second fall.

We ran over to him, and helped him sit up. His head was bowed, and he was covering his face with his hands. He was shaking his head slowly, almost drunkenly. I took hold of his arm, and was surprised by the lack of flesh on it.

I passed the rifle back to Mariel, and she stood away a pace or two. I let his head droop while I took hold of the dart still embedded in the muscle covering his ribs. I wrenched it out as cleanly as I could. He went rigid with the pain, and his head came up, the hands dropping away.

His eyes were glazed, and his mouth hung open. He stared sightlessly into my face.

I picked him up, cradling him in my arms. He weighed no more than sixty pounds. I carried him three or four paces to the bole of a tree and sat him down there, with the tree supporting his torso. When his head sank forward again I grabbed it and tilted it back, shaking it slightly to try and wake him up.

He was high, but he was still conscious.

Mariel was standing back, waiting. She was holding the gun uncertainly. I wondered whether it might be better to carry him back to where we'd dumped our packs, so that I could use the medical kit. While I hesitated I looked him over.

He was naked and dirty. His skin was very pale, not tanned by the sun. The edges of his feet were heavily calloused. There were scars on his body, on his thighs and around the knees in particular. Not only wasn't he in the habit of wearing clothes but he obviously spent a lot of time scrambling around in places where he was likely to get cut. Trees, and thorn bushes. He lived wild. But his teeth seemed quite healthy and his limbs were not distorted by rickets. He was thin, but not suffering from malnutrition.

I slapped him lightly on either side of the chin, trying to help him recover his presence of mind.

“So much for the impossibility of Adam and Eve,” I said to Mariel, with heavy self-directed sarcasm. “I wonder whether this is young Cain or young Abel.”

Young Cain or young Abel looked me in the eye, and for the first time the dullness of his stare gave way slightly. He
saw
me.

And he didn't like what he saw. An expression came over his face, more than fear—something like horror. He struggled, but I caught hold of his arms. He tried to move back, but the tree wouldn't let him. He cringed, averting his face but flicking his gaze back and forth. I could understand his being frightened but I was at a loss to explain the fact that he seemed to be physically affected by what he saw—almost nauseated. No human being had ever looked at me that way before.

“I'm sorry,” I said, feeling very stupid.

I knew the script for this kind of meeting, but I wasn't about to use it. Never in my life had I been trapped in the Me-Alex-Who-You/Take-Me-To-Your-Leader syndrome, and I didn't intend to start now.

I turned round to beckon to Mariel. She was still standing six or seven feet away, but she was watching closely. The moment my eyes met hers she was shaking her head. There was fear in her eyes, too—and
more
than fear.

“No Alex,” she said. “I can't....”

I was at a loss. I didn't know what was going on. I was concerned about Mariel. I let go the boy and rose, turning to the girl. But she misinterpreted my action, somehow. She dropped the gun on the ground and put her hands to her face.

“No!” she repeated, vehemently. It was half a scream. She turned, and she started to run.

But it was too late.

Reinforcements had arrived. And they weren't ours.

There were five of them. And they were coming from the direction that Mariel was trying to run. She would have run right into them. But the moment she became aware of their presence she turned on her heel and ran just as hard the other way—towards me.

For a moment, I didn't know whether she'd run
to
me or right past me. I put out my arms to intercept her and she ran into them. She looped her own arms round my waist and she held on tight enough to force the breath out of me. Her face was buried in my shirt, pressing into my flesh. I knew her eyes were shut. I put a hand on her shoulder, trying to ease her grip a bit. She was shaking. She was literally quaking with fear. Fear and....

I glanced briefly at the rifle that lay on the ground a couple of yards away. Then I looked up at the advancing savages.

They
were
savages. They were stark naked. They carried bows and arrows in their hands. Two of them also carried something else—large globular structures that looked like baskets woven out of some kind of plant fiber. They couldn't be baskets because the only way into them were small trapdoors set in the side. I couldn't immediately decide what they were for.

They were all male, three fairly young, two rather older, but by no means ancient. None of them was tall or heavily built but they were wiry. Two of the younger ones were chewing something, their jaws moving steadily to an unconscious rhythm.

They were looking at me from where they had paused ten or twelve feet away. Even at that distance, I could tell that the effect was working. They didn't like the look of me—not in the least.

I was aware that the boy had moved away from the tree trunk behind me. He was making his way to join his fellows, by a slightly roundabout route.

While the situation remained crystallized I tried desperately to work out what was so absurdly wrong.

The boy had watched me, from above and to the side, for some time. Not until he had actually looked into my face—perhaps into my eyes—had the shock set in. And whatever effect I had on him, he had on Mariel.

We didn't need any Me-Alex-Who-You garbage. We had already opened communication. But the messages that were getting across weren't exactly ‘Hail fellow well met.'

I felt Mariel's heart beat against my solar plexus. Instinctively, I put my arm protectively around her head.

I had to break the silence.

“It's okay,” I said, fixing my attention on the oldest of the group. “It was an accident. The boy's all right. If....”

I don't know how I would have continued the sentence. But I didn't have to. The man came forward, his eyes fixed on mine. The fear was gone from his face, now, but the expression on his face was weird. I just couldn't decipher it. It hardly seemed like a human emotion at all, hardly a human face. It was the face of a madman.

I wished that I could go for the gun, but he was already too close. I couldn't make out for a moment or two what he was going to do, but when he threw his bow and the three arrows he carried with it away to the right I knew he wasn't getting ready to shake hands. I thrust Mariel away roughly, trying to get her out of my way. She clung on just long enough and just tight enough to stop me getting into position. Although she got out from between us and away to one side I was taken by the naked man's rush and thrown backwards. I lost my balance and fell, sprawling.