Fall of the White Ship Avatar (23 page)

"What it boils down to," Alacrity said slowly, "is Nosey was treating us like kin. Or, at least, neutrals—

not enemies."

"So?" Paloma prompted. "He's only one young male and not a very important one at that. In fact, some of the dominant bulls seem to have it in for him."

"So maybe he's just the errand boy," Alacrity reasoned. "Maybe they're all curious, and we can finesse

'em."

Floyt, unconvinced, shook his head, feeling that some sort of contact had taken place when Nosey stared at them.

"All right now, Alacrity." Floyt got back to more fundamental matters. "Don't you think it's time for you to let us in on your idea? How do we treat with them without being flattened by some three-ton isolationist?"

"The only smart way, of course. Like I said: from a distance."

"Sure," Paloma cut in, "only the volume of my proteus doesn't go loud enough for the gawks to hear a translation at anything like a safe remove, and neither does yours or Hobie's."

"Ahem." Alacrity looked a little tentative. "Well, yeah, that's true … as long as somebody's
wearing
the proteus."

That took a second to sink in. Then Paloma clapped a protective hand over her jeweled instrument/

bracelet. "I will
not
risk having this thing tromped on or eaten up! It cost me too dearly, and besides, it contains things I just won't sacrifice. Toss your
own
bloody proteus out into the middle of those honking bloody tanks!"

Alacrity was elaborately disingenuous. "Gee, I thought your heart went out to them."

"That's all right, Paloma." Floyt stopped her as she was about to sail into Alacrity, at least verbally.

"Your proteus isn't compatible with mine or Alacrity's for commo, remember? And this will require a conversation, not a recorded message."

He looked to his friend. "And I know you're not about to hazard your own. But what about the things file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20krui...%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (115 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:13

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I've stored in
my
data files, Alacrity? They're as important to me as yours are to you."

Alacrity was nodding vigorously. "I never said they weren't. But we can transfer it all over into mine for safekeeping. Mine's got megastorage galore; that one the Earthservice issued you—it's just not as much of a loss."

Floyt was slipping off his proteus, exhaling deeply. "You're right; you win."

Alacrity took it and began matching with his own for the transfer. "When we get out of this we'll get you a new one, I swear. Something really top end, good as mine or better."

He hesitated. "Or at least, good as we can afford."

Floyt barked a laugh. "You're hedging! Now I
know
you're confident we'll make it!"

"
Curnutie
! Wouldn't you think they'd move a
little
faster? Even grazing?" Paloma fumed under her breath at the distant gawklegs. She popped another ripe green wheyberry into her mouth.

"They move fast enough when they want to do the Antarian Handkerchief Dance on somebody's spinal column," Alacrity agreed softly.

Sure enough, the main herd of gawk was wandering in the general direction of the tree in which Floyt's proteus had been secured, but the approach had taken most of the day, with a lot of reversing field and digression. As the three humans watched, a scare-flare showed its webbed mantle, scuttling out of the way as a dominant bull backed from it in swift reverse. That started a general repositioning away from the wired fractal tree.

When Alacrity selected the tree at the edge of the grazing area that morning, he'd figured the herd would be in the vicinity fairly soon; they ate huge amounts of vegetation and moved almost constantly. Now he swore in a whisper at the perversity of all species that hadn't evolved to the level of civilization where there were saloons and taxi stands.

"Maybe what we need's a little come-hither," Floyt reasoned, shifting his whittled toothpick and trying to readjust his Inheritor's belt so that it didn't dig into him as he lay on the great-girthed limb where they'd been perched all day. "What about that sound they make when they get romantic?"

"Give it a try, Alacrity," Paloma said, groaning and stirring uncomfortably on blistered, convoluted bark, vigilant against any more of the biting and stinging things that inhabited it. "Anything's better than this."

She was good to look at, even after days in the wilds, though her hair was more matted than windblown and with smudges on her face instead of makeup. That made it that much more frustrating to Alacrity that she'd kept him at arm's length, showing him no more cordiality than she did Floyt. She'd continued file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20krui...%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (116 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:13

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to pull her weight, though, and treat them both as teammates, even sharing her few remaining sweetspeck candies.

Alacrity checked to make sure the gain on his proteus was set to max. Floyt's cheap instrument's reproduction might be far from ambient—distorted, in fact—but they were hoping for the best. The hookup seemed adequate when they'd tested it at the cave.

Alacrity fiddled with his heavy black-green wrist-torc of a proteus and began transmitting the lowing, curious sounds that preceded many gawkleg exchanges and nonverbal interactions. It was B-flat, a sound the cows, in particular, made when they wanted a little attention. It was a synthesized, amplified lure.

Floyt gripped his shoulder and pointed; Nosey had his head up, at his usual place on the outskirts of the herd, looking straight at the tree where the proteus was fastened.

The undersize gawk male trotted for the tree as Alacrity sent another call echoing from Floyt's proteus.

A few of the herdmembers watched indifferently.

Nosey moved up close to the tree. The humans knew enough about gawkleg body language to see that he was neither belligerent nor aroused, but simply inquisitive. The gawks, being an intelligent species, demonstrated a fair degree of curiosity, but Nosey much more so than the rest. The runty nonbreeding male spoke to the sound-source in his language, and the hookup sent a translation back through Alacrity's proteus, using the linguistic program copied from Paloma's data files, giving a running translation.

"I find this puzzling. How can a tree be in need of sexual easement? You smell all wrong," Nosey told the tree.

"Yes. That is, you're right," Alacrity responded.

Nosey snorted, the loud blast taking a little longer to reach them through the open air than it did through the proteus hookup. He dug in a hoof to fling a bucketsize hunk of soil arcing back into the air. "So, this is some (untranslatable white noise) of the two-leggers, then?"

"A what? Try again."

"A trick, a boogum of the—humans. Those three who have come
are
humans, aren't they? I notice this voice comes from a strange, shiny fruit up there in the branches. I have never seen one like that before, but it looks tasty."

"It's not, it's not!" Alacrity hastened. Nosey huffed a strange sound that the proteus rendered as laughter.

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"Well, what do you know?" Paloma chuckled. "He's clowning on us."

"The Verities tell us that the humans could speak to us once," the thing said. "Is that who's speaking through this horny tree? Humans?"

"You're smart," Alacrity conceded. "What's your name?"

The thing huffed and snorted, but there wasn't much of the body-english the gawks often used among themselves. The hookup translated, "I have a name, Meadowbreeze, but my use-name has gotten to be Poke-snout."

"Oh. What're the Verities?"

"Lore/History/Law/Legend." (The proteus did a surprisingly good job of overlapping it, to make the castaways understand that the Verities were all that.) "Haven't you heard us recite and discuss the Verities?"

Nosey/Pokesnout made the dirgelike droning the humans had listened to every night since their arrival.

The century-old linguistic program turned it into "The First Ones called to the Herd, and the First Ones were the Light, and the First Ones gave to the Herd a smaller Light of their own, in each and every one … "

Precursors
! Alacrity wanted to hear more about that but Pokesnout was already on to other things.

"Question! What do you want? It better be no danger to the herd! This skulking about and talking through trees makes no sense to me."

"I guess that's no surprise," Alacrity responded, wondering just how the program would translate it. "But you heard what we tried to say to the herd leaders?"

"We all did. This Long Trek that you have in mind for yourselves is more arduous than you know. But it will be interesting. You will see many strange things. That is intriguing."

"Good, because we want you and the others of the herd to carry us."

Pokesnout snuffled and honked laughter. "Say more; I hope to hear all I can before the others make you part of the ground."

Alacrity covered the sound pickup with his hand. "We got a droll one here." To the pickup, he added,

"You wouldn't like to go?"

"Not enough to be burned by sky-flame. And then, too, it goes against the Verities. Not the Old Verities, but the New Verities, which were chanted after humans cut the herds from many to few, with fire."

Alacrity looked to Floyt and Paloma, who watched him wordlessly. "The thing is," he said, "we have a file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20krui...%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (118 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:13

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reason the herd should come along, for its own sake."

"Even to listen to this runs counter to the Verities," Pokesnout announced.

"But you're already doing that!" Floyt put in.

"I don't always agree with the Verities, but then I will probably be outcast soon. But there is no reason that will make the herd listen to you."

Paloma leaned over the voice pickup to say "We can tell you why the herd is growing smaller and smaller, and how to save it from dying out."

"Wait, while I gather the others," Pokesnout said, trotting off at urgent speed.

It took an unholy amount of honking, squealing, and bellowing on Pokesnout's part to get even a few others of the herd to approach the proteus tree. The infrasonic impulses stormed.

The humans watched from their spying place, eating wheyberries and sipping from a canteen improvised from a hard vegetable suggesting a tubular gourd, and scratching their various bites, rashes, and sores.

More than one male seemed inclined to batter horns with Pokesnout rather than listen to what they considered an amorous plant. But it turned out that the survival-of-the-herd argument was, as Paloma's info indicated it would be, powerfully persuasive, even in the face of the Verities. At last one of the big, dominant bulls approached the tree while hundreds looked on.

"I have to speak with you," Alacrity said. The male immediately lowered his head and charged the unoffending talking tree. The tree trembled to the blow, several fractal-veined leaves shaken loose.

They'd chosen the sturdiest tree feasible, yet the bull had nearly tilted it.

Pokesnout reacted at once, charging the bigger male. The male turned to give battle. The humans expected to see one of the gawks' highly ritualized combats, with the usual posturings and protocols.

But Pokesnout altered the rules at the last moment, sheering off and avoiding a horns-to-horns collision.

It was the first time the castaways had seen a gawk use such a trick. But then, as they were starting to understand, Pokesnout wasn't like other gawklegs.

The bull stood his ground, straddle-legged, confused by the unauthorized change in procedure. But at least Pokesnout had made him forget his determination to bring down the strange talking tree. The runt male stood off a way and harangued, bending his head back so that he could give full throat to it.

"We should at least listen to the amorous tree!" the proteus interpreted. "For the sake of the herd!"

"What can a rutting tree tell us?" the bull lowed.

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"I can tell you this," Alacrity intervened. The gawklegs turned to hear out the tree. "I can tell you you haven't got many generations left before there's no more herd, and you already know that yourselves.

This herd used to number thousands, and there're barely three hundred of you left!"

Several bulls dropped their heads combatively, pawing and braying. A few of the cows, though, were moving closer and paying attention to the proteus, calves keeping close to their mothers' flanks.

Even the translator program's pseudo-AI couldn't sort out what was going on; there were overlapping snatches of outrage and animosity. "What does a horny tree know?" … "teat-biting liar!" … "fix this up with a good knock of the head" … "driven Pokesnout out of the herd a long time ago!" The uproar kept the hummingbird vermin eaters from alighting.

"You're having fewer and fewer calves, and fewer of those live!" Paloma yelled into the pickup. "A disease that affects one of you affects all!
You're too inbred
! You blithering numbskulls, you're dying out!"

Hearing that, the bull who'd attacked the tree did so again, joined by several others. Pokesnout shifted undecidedly; trying to stop them would probably get him trounced and driven from the herd, outcast or perhaps even killed. But just then the herd's alpha-male, the top bull, trotted for the tree, lowering his head. Pokesnout held his place.

The other bulls hit the tree one after the other, from different angles. On the third hit the tree heeled over, dragging up roots clotted with red-gray soil, pulling and snapping taproots. Two more charges and it went down.