Midworld (16 page)

Any of Born’s older associates, Reader, for example, or Sand, would have been openly shocked at this thought. But Born’s mind did not work like those of his friends. He merely regarded the question thoughtfully. “I had not imagined such a possibility. Is that how you dispose of those among you who change?”

“If by change, you mean die,” Cohoma responded, “yes, it is, sometimes.”

“How strange,” Born murmured, more to himself than to the giants. “We come of the world and believe we should return to it. I guess there are those among you who are not of the world and therefore have nothing to return to.”

“Couldn’t have put it better myself, Born,” Cohoma admitted.

They walked on in silence several minutes more, until the column began to spread out onto a slightly wider section of branch.

“We’ve come to the place?” Logan asked softly. “One of the places,” Born corrected. “Each has his place. A proper one must be found for every man.” He looked upward, considered the black branches in the sky. “Come. You will see better from above.”

After several moments of ascending the ever-present stairway of vines and lianas, they found themselves looking down on the wide section of branch below. Everyone was bunched tightly around a deep crack in the branch. It was several meters across and not many more long. The feeble light from the torches shielded against the rain made it impossible to tell how deep it went into the wood.

The shaman was murmuring words too fast and soft for either Logan or Cohoma to interpret. The assembled people listened in respectful silence. One of the men who had died fighting the Akadi and a dead furcot were brought forward from the heavily laden litters.

“They’re buried together, then,” Logan whispered.

Born studied her sadly, a great pity welling up in him. Poor giants! Sky-boats and other miraculous machines they might possess, but they were without the comfort of a furcot. Every man, every woman had a furcot who joined them soon after birth and went with them through life unto death. He could not imagine living without Ruumahum.

“What happens to those furcots whose masters die before they do?” Cohoma asked.

Born looked at him quizzically. “Ruumahum could not live without me, nor I without him,” he explained to the attentive giants. “When half of one dies, the other half cannot long survive.”

“I never heard of such a severe case of emotional interdependence between man and animal,” Logan muttered. “If we hadn’t observed any sign of it, I’d probably suspect some kind of physical symbosis had developed here as well.”

Their attention was diverted from this new discovery by the actions below. Sand and Reader were now pouring various smelly liquids over the two bodies, which had been lowered into the split in the branch.

“Some kind of sacred oil, or something,” Cohoma ventured. But Logan hardly heard him. Emfol … mutual burial…half of oneself … Thoughts were spinning around and around in her head without forming any pattern, refusing to mesh, to reveal … what?

The furcots pining away for their dead masters she could understand. But for a man to die of loneliness for his animal, probably Cohoma was right. Born’s people had been forced backward along the path of development by the sheer necessity to concentrate on surviving. This emotional entwining was a symptom of that sickness. One of the pounding thoughts swamping her brain suddenly demanded clarification.

“You said men and women,” she whispered, staring downward. “Do furcots and people match up by sex?” Born looked puzzled. “You know, female furcots to women, male to male? Is Ruumahum a male?”

“I do not know,” Born replied absently, involved in the ceremony playing to its conclusion below. “I never asked.” As far as he was concerned, that was the end of the question. But it only stimulated Logan’s curiosity further.

“And Losting’s furcot, Geeliwan. Is it a she?”

“I do not know. Sometimes we say ‘he,’ sometimes ‘she.’ It matters not to a furcot. A furcot is of the brethren of furcots. That is sufficient for them and for us.”

“Born, how do you tell whether a furcot is male or female?”

“Who knows, who cares?” This woman’s persistence was irritating him.

“Has anyone ever seen furcots mating?”

“I have not. I cannot vouch for what others may have seen. I have never heard it discussed, nor have I desire to discuss it. It is not meet, or seemly, somehow.”

The thought suddenly went out of focus again. It was something to be pursued later. Her attention was directed downward once again. “What are they doing now, Born?” Leaves, humus, dead twigs, and succulents were heaped on the bodies, filling the crevice.

“The Keep must be sealed, of course, against predators.”

“Naturally,” Cohoma agreed approvingly. “The oils and mulch speed biological degradation as well as masking the odor of decomposition.”

They studied the burial procedure while a steady chant rose from the assembly, oddly soaring and unlike a dirge. Reader made several passes with his hands over the tightly packed, filled crack, bowed once, then turned and walked toward the trunk, heading for another, slightly higher, branch. The rest of the tribe followed. They had many, many such interments to perform this night.

The subsequent burials grew repetitious, and the drenched Cohoma and Logan used the opportunity to study the design of seemingly crude torches, which burned steadily despite the unceasing rain.

Torches of slow-burning deadwood were cut and then treated with the everpresent incendiary pollen. The globular leaf of a certain plant was then punctured through, and the pulp inside cleaned out with a knife. This left a stiff-sided sphere about thirty centimeters in diameter. The sphere was then slid over the top of the torch and a small hole cut in the side. Contact with a finger through this hole served to ignite the powder and then the wood, while providing an exit for smoke and soot, although the wood appeared to burn almost smokeless. The tough fiber of the leaf was highly resistant to heat and flame.

The procession wound through the damp darkness like a chanting, glowing snake spotted with flickering dots of yellowgreen iridescence. Everyone who could walk, from small children to some older than Sand, joined in that twisting, spiraling column. None complained, none argued when the column turned upward, none wished for a rest or return.

Something came out of the forest piercing the normal night-chitters and the lullaby of falling rain. Born came back to them. “Stay here with the column. Whatever happens, do not leave the light.”

“Why not, what’s—?” Logan began, but Born was already gone. The chlorophyllous sea swallowed him and the six-legged bulk that shadowed him.

They waited with the others in the rain. Then a great crashing and moaning sounded above the column and to the right, echoed by the sound of many voices. The moan rose in pitch, became a screeching, deep-throated laugh. It rose and fell in a succession of thunderous whoops.

It ended with a gurgling, choking sound. Something massive and distant fell to their right with the sound of shattering branches and torn vines. The light from the torches penetrated the forest only faintly.

Though given only the briefest glimpse of whatever had stumbled on the column in the dark, neither explorer had any desire for a closer look at that monstrous outline.

The crashing faded, dimmed, as the gigantic bulk vanished into the dark depths like a pebble down a dry well. There was no definite final crash. The breaking and tearing merely faded to a whisper, then a memory of a whisper, until the rain replaced it. Born returned to their side as the column started forward and up once more.

“What was it?” Cohoma asked softly. “We had only the faintest sight as it fell past.” He was startled to notice that his hands were shaking. “Another species new to us.” It made him feel better to see that not all of the moisture on Logan’s brow had fallen from the sky.

“One of the big night-eaters,” Born informed him, his eyes never straying from the coal-black walls on all sides of them. “A diverdaunt. They will not come near the Home because of the pods, but a man or two who meet one in the forest will not come Home. It was crossing our line, and hungry. Otherwise it would never have attacked. They are very powerful, but slow—no match for a band of hunters and furcots this large.” This last was uttered with an unmistakable hint of satisfaction.

“Couldn’t we have waited till it went past?” Logan wondered.

Born was shocked. “This is a burial march. Nothing can be allowed to interrupt a burial march.”

“Not even a nest of Akadi?” Cohoma murmured.

Born looked at him sharply, eyes flashing in the torchlight. “Why say that?”

“I’m evaluating your parameters,” the research scout explained, knowing full well Born would have no idea what that meant, and reminding him that there were things not even a great hunter could understand.

Logan cursed silently at her partner’s lack of tact, hurriedly asked, “I was just wondering how all these creatures came by their names, if they were originally classified by your ancestors?”

Born smiled, back on familiar ground. “When one is young, one asks. An adult points and says, that is a diverdaunt, or that an ohkeefer, or that the fruit of the malpase flower which is not good to eat.”

“According to the reports of the first colonists trapped here,” Cohoma muttered to Logan, “who were in no mood to engage in standard scientific classification. So the names that stuck were colloquial rather than generic.”

Born heard this clearly; he heard everything when the giants engaged in their odd, secretive, soft-speak. But as usual, he gave no indication that he had heard. It would have been impolite. Though there were many times when he wished he could
understand
more of what he heard.

The column continued onward. Once a series of spits and squeals sounded from directly above. Another time something that thrummed like an unmuffled navigational computer approached from below and to their left. Hunters were sent to ferret out the sources of these threatening sounds, but found nothing. The people were not attacked again.

Eventually the last who had fallen to the Akadi were returned to the world. The final words were chanted; the penultimate song sung. They returned to the Home. By what method or signs Born’s folk found their way through the forest neither Logan or Cohoma could determine. And they were more relieved than they cared to admit when the first flowering vines with their multitude of pink blooms and leathery spore sacs came into view.

It was only later, when the entire troop had reentered the comforting trunklets of the Home, when the last slow-burning torches had been extinguished, when the last leafleather curtain had been drawn tight, only then did muffled sobs and the lonely sounds of weeping become audible, held in check throughout the Longago. Night closed around the village, a moist black blanket, and brought the mindlessness and comfort of sleep.

So there were none to see the movement at the fringe of the trees, none to see the long shapes stir from apparent sleep to gather by the topmost curve of webbed branches.

A lazy cuff to the side of the head brought a sleeping cub awake and squalling. Triple pupils blinked in the near-absolute darkness. Ruumahum stood before Suv. On Muf’s passing, this new cub had been assigned to his care. There was no twinge of regret, no lingering sadness at the death of the other. He was with his person, and that was the Law.

“Old one, what have I done?” Suv pleaded.

“Nothing, as you will doubtless continue to do.” Ruumahum snorted and started to pad up toward the gathering place. The cub started to follow, stumbled over his middle legs, then got all six working together and shuffled along behind.

“Then what is it?”

“You will see. Be quiet for now, and learn.”

Suv detected an unusual solemnity in his new old one’s voice and decided that this truly was a time for cubs to keep tongue close to palate until otherwise instructed. Already he was used to this new elder, though not knowing the Law as well, he still felt an ache for Toocibel, who had died in the great fight.

When Ruumahum and Suv arrived, all were gathered. In a column of twos they filed out from the Home, moving through the hylaea with a stealth and silence that belied their bulk. Sensitive nocturnal carnivores on the hunt detected the mass movement and slinked near, till they smelled or saw what was pacing purposefully through the treepaths. Then they froze motionless, or crept away, or tried to become one with the forestscape until the column had passed.

Other meat-eaters in their lairs stirred at the noise of many feet moving and prepared to defend their territories and dens against whatever dared approach. A chance gust of nightwind rustled leaves and petals and brought the scent of furcot to flaring nostrils. Whatever their size or number or species, no matter how terrible, those who caught that pungent scent gave up their territories, their dens, and took themselves elsewhere. Occasionally a living cloud of luminescent flitters, all growing crimson and green and azure, would float down between the branches and cubbies to hover curiously over the column.

The furcots looked neither left nor right, nor up at the dancing motes performing their chromatic choreography. Now and then a flitter would dip close, brilliant wings flashing gemlike in the night. Colors would dance in triple cat-eyes.

A certain tree was reached, monarchical in size, a veritable goliath among local growths. But it was not its bulk which made it significant to the furcots, who arranged themselves according to age around a broad series of interlocking lianas.

Leehadoon, who was furcot to the person Sand, took the place in the center of the semicircle. He paused to meet eyes with each of the assembled brethren in turn. Then he threw back his head. From between machete-sharp canines and upthrust tusks came an unearthly sound that was part cry, part mewling, and part something undefinable in human terms. The rest of the group joined in without instruction—just as Suv and the other cubs were able to participate without knowing how or why, or the meaning of what they howled in the dark.

Most animals within range of that nerve-tingling caterwaul fled. But some crept near, curiosity overpowering fear, to stare and wonder animal thoughts at the rite that was at once old and new. It was different this time, more complex than Ruumahum or Leehadoon or any could remember. It would be different the next time and the next, the chorus always building, growing toward some inexplicable, unimaginable end.