Midworld (2 page)

He watched the creature steadily. Grazers had a way of playing dead until their attacker came close, when they would unexpectedly reach out to clutch and rend with limb-tearing violence. But this one didn’t even quiver. The thorn had pierced its brain and killed it instantly.

Born sighed, put the snuffler down and stood up, stretching cramped muscles. The green fur cloak fell freely from his neck. Taking his bone skinning knife from his belt, he stepped free of the sheltering crevice and walked down the broad vine toward the limp shape. Easily five times his mass, Born mused, and almost all of that edible! But tasting it in one’s mind and cooked over a hot fire were two different things. There was now the small matter of getting the prized carcass back to the village and dealing with hungry scavengers along the way. The sooner they left here, the better.

Bending over the edge of the cubble, he got busy with the knife. Muscle and tendon parted as he cut at the hands and tail which held it fast. The grazer fell into the foliage just below.

A voice like an idling locomotive sounded suddenly behind him. Born leaped instinctively, sailed out and down before grabbing a branch of the cubble and jerking to a muscle-biting stop. Panting, he turned and looked back up. He had recognized the rumbling even as he jumped, but too late to stay the reflex action.

Ruumahum stood looking down at him from the main bole of the cubble. The furcot moved closer, all six of his thick legs gripping the wood. The ursine face peered at him, the three dark eyes set in a curve over the muzzle staring down mournfully. Great claws scratched at the branch.

Born shook his head and swung himself onto the vine.

“I’ve told you often, Ruumahum, not to sneak up on me like that.”

“Fun,” Ruumahum protested.

“
Not
fun,” Born insisted, making use of a herbaceous stalk to return to his former level. A short jump and he was back on the cubbleway. Grabbing Ruumahum by one of his long floppy ears, he pulled and shook by way of making his point.

The furcot was as long as the grazer, though not quite as massive. He was also incredibly powerful, quick, and intelligent. A furcot pack would be the scourge of the canopy world were it not for the fact that they were lazy beyond imagining and spent most of their lives engaged in fulfilling a single passion—sleep.

“Not fun,” Born finished, with a last admonishing yank. Ruumahum nodded, walked around the hunter, and sniffed down at the grazer below.

“Too old not,” he rumbled. “Good eating … much good eating.”

“If we can get it back Home,” Born agreed. “Can you manage?”

“Can manage,” the furcot replied, without a moment’s hesitation.

Born bent over the edge, studied the corpse. “It struck a pretty solid branch, but it could easily slip off. Do you want to pick it up, or circle beneath and catch it when I shove it free?”

“Circle, catch.”

Born nodded. Ruumahum started downward, making a wide circle to take him below the grazer. Once positioned, Born would move directly down until he could push it off. Neither of them wished to descend after a tumbling carcass to unpredictable depths, to levels unknown.

There were seven levels to the forest world. Mankind, the persons, preferred this, the Third. So did the furcots. Two levels rose above this one, to a sun-bleached green roof and the Upper Hell. Four lay below, the Seventh and deepest being the Lower and True Hell, over four hundred and fifty meters below the Home.

Many men had seen the Upper Hell. Born had seen it three times and lived. But only two legendary figures had ever made their way to the Lower. To the surface. To the perpetually dark swamp, a moist land of vast open pits and mindless abominations that crawled and swam and ate.

Or so they had claimed. The first had not been of whole mind when he returned and had died soon after. The second had returned with several important parts of himself gone, but had confirmed the ravings of his companion, though he, too, screamed almost every night.

Not even the furcots, hunting back through ancestral memories, could tell of one of their kind who had ever descended below the Sixth Level. It was a place to be shunned. Understandable, then, that neither man nor companion desired to go hunting there for fallen prey. Ruumahum appeared beneath the grazer and growled. Born shouted an answer and started down. The grazer was still hanging from the branch when he reached it, but a single shove was enough to dislodge it. Bracing himself, Ruumahum dug the claws of rear and middle legs into the hard wood of the cubble. Reaching out slightly, he slammed both fore-paws, either of which could crush a man’s skull with much less effort, deep into the body of the grazer, just below the tail.

With Born’s aid, the grazer was then balanced evenly on Ruumahum’s back. Forepaws steadied the dead weight while Born tied it securely with unbreakable fom from the loops at his waist, passing the line several times round the carcass and under the furcot’s two bellies. He knotted it and stood aside.

“Try it, Ruumahum. Any shifting?”

The furcot dug all three pairs of claws into the wood and leaned experimentally to the left, then right. Then he shook deliberately, raised his head, and lowered his hips. “Shift not, Born. Good rest.”

Born studied the huge bulk with concern. “Sure you can make it all right? It’s a long way Home, and we may have to fight.” The load was considerable even for a mature furcot as big as Ruumahum.

The latter snorted. “Can make … not sure of fighting.”

“All right, don’t worry about it. Kill or no kill, if we get into any real trouble I’ll cut you free.” He grinned. “Just don’t go to long sleep on me halfway between here and Home.”

“Sleep? What is sleep?” Ruumahum snorted. The furcots possessed a peculiar sense of humor all their own that only occasionally coincided with that of persons. As Born was a bit peculiar himself, he understood their jokes better than most.

“Let’s go, then.”

Back to the hiding place to retrieve the snuffler and sling it snugly across his back. Then there was only one more thing to do. Born walked back past the heavily laden Ruumahum and stopped at the brim of the bromeliad which had attracted such excellent prey. He ran his hands caressingly over the broad leaves and strong petals. Hands cupped, he bent to drink deeply from the clear pool that the unlucky grazer had sought. Finishing, he shook the droplets free and wiped wet palms on his cloak. He stroked the nearest leaf again in silent tribute to the plant, and then he and Ruumahum started the arduous trek Homeward.

It was a green universe, true; but its stars and nebulae were brilliantly colored. Cauliflorous air-trees growing on the broad branches of the Pillars and emergents bristled with fragrant blossoms of every conceivable shape and color, some exuding fragrances so pungent they had to be avoided lest olfactory senses be smothered forever. These perfumed blooms Born and Ruumahum avoided assiduously. Their localized miasmas were as deadly as they were sensuous. Vines and creepers put forth flowers of their own, and in places aerial roots bloomed with their own flowerings. There were color and variety to make Earth’s richest jungles seem pallid and wan in comparison.

Although plant life held dominance, animal life was also abundant and lush. Ornithoid, mammaloid, and reptiloid arboreals glided or flew through winding emerald tunnels. They were outnumbered by creatures that swung, crawled, and jumped along gravity-defying highways of wood and pulp.

The steady cycle of life and death revolved around Born and Ruumahum as they made their way over crosshatched tuntangcles and cubbies and winding woody paths back toward the village. A drifter with helical wings pounced upon an unwary sixlegged feathered pseudolizard, was swallowed in turn when it chose to land on a false cubble. The false cubble looked almost identical to the thick wooden creepers Born and Ruumahum strode across. Had Born stepped on it he would have lost a foot at the least. The false cubble was a continuous chain of interlocking mouths, stomachs, and intestines. Both drifter and pseudolizard vanished down one link of the toothed branch.

It was close to noon. Occasional shafts of light reached the Third Level, some digging even deeper to the Fourth and Fifth. Mirror vines shone everywhere, their diamond-shaped reflective leaves bouncing the sun and sending life-giving light ricocheting hundreds of meters down green canyons to places it otherwise would never reach. Noontime was the crescendo of the hylaeal symphony. Comb vines and resonators formed a verdant vocal background for the songsters of the animal kingdom. They would have astonished a curious botanist, as would the mirror vines.

Born was no botanist. He could not have defined the term. But his great-greatgreat-great-great-grandfather could have. That knowledge had not kept him from dying young, however.

Eventually the damp night mist slid about them with feline stealth. The cheerful raucousness of the creatures of light gave way to the sounds of awakening nightlings, whose grunts were darker and deeper, their cries closer to hysteria, the booming howls of the nocturnal carnivores a touch more menacing. It was time to find shelter. Born had spent much of the last hour searching for a wild Home tree. Such trees were rare and he had encountered none this afternoon. They would have to settle for less accommodating temporary quarters. One such lay ten meters overhead, easily reached through the interwoven pathways of the forest canopy.

What disease or parasite had caused the great woody galls to form on the branch of the Pillar tree neither Born nor Ruumahum could guess, but they were grateful for their presence. They would serve to gentle the night. Six or seven of the globular eruptions were clustered together on the branch. The smallest was half Born’s size, the largest more than spacious enough to accommodate man and furcot.

He tested the biggest with his knife, found it far too tough for the sharpened bone—just as he had hoped. If his skinning blade could not penetrate the woody gall, the chances of some predator coming in on them from behind were small. He untied the dead grazer—it was already beginning to smell— from Ruumahum’s back, slid the hulk onto the branch. Ruumahum stretched delightedly, fur rippling as the muscles in his back popped. He yawned, revealing multiple canines and two razor-sharp lower tusks.

Under Born’s direction, the furcot went to work on the gall with both forepaws, ripping open nearly all of one side. Together they wrestled the carcass into the cavity. Working carefully and smoothly, Born tied his remaining jacari thorns into the length of vine until they formed a crude barricade across the opening. Any scavenger who tried to sneak in now risked a fatal pricking. The barbed thorns crisscrossed the opening neatly. An intelligent scavenger could work around them easily, but they would stop anything that was not a man.

Their kill safely secured for the night, Ruumahum went to work on the gall next in line, cutting a smaller opening in it for them to enter. Born knelt, peered inside. It was long dead—dry and black. As he entered, he pulled a packet of red dust from his belt; Ruumahum was already scraping some of the dust-dry gall lining into a pile near the opening they had made. Born poured a little of the red powder on a thin scrap of wood and pressed his thumb into it. A few seconds of contact with his body heat was enough to cause the dust pile to explode in flame just as the hunter withdrew his thumb. The incendiary pollen served as an especially effective form of defense for a certain parasitic tuber. Born’s people had discovered its usefulness the hard way.

He built the tiny blaze into a modest fire that burned freely on the smooth, dead floor of the gall. Its dance and crackle was a great comfort in the blackness of night. Only one more thing to do. He had to shake Ruumahum violently to awaken him long enough to cut a tiny hole two-thirds of the way up the far side of the gall. Circulation and smoke exit assured, Born took a piece of dark jerky from his belt pouch and chewed at the spicy, rock-hard meat.

The evening rain began. It would rain all night—not an occasional downpour, but a steady, even rain that would cease two hours before dawn. With few exceptions, it had rained every night Born could recall. As sure as the sun rose in the morning, the rain came down at night. Water drummed steadily on the roof of the gall, flowed down its curved sides to drip away to depths unseen. Ruumahum was fast asleep.

Born studied the fire for several minutes. Putting the rest of the jerky away for the next night, he nestled himself into Ruumahum’s flank. The furcot stirred slightly in sleep, pressing against the inner wall of the gall, his head curved into his chest. Born sighed, stared at the solid wall of blackness beyond the fire. He was satisfied. They had met no scavengers on this first day of return, and Ruumahum had handled the massive load of the great grazer without falling asleep even once. He stroked the furcot’s fur appreciatively, running his fingers through the thick green coat.

A warm, dry shelter for the night, too. Many nights spent in wetness made him appreciate the dry gall. Pulling the green fur cloak tightly about him, he turned on his side. His knife was close to his right hand, the snuffler ready at his feet. Relatively content and more or less confident of not waking up in the belly of some nightcrawler, he fell into a sound, dreamless sleep.

It had been a fairly hard rain, Born reflected as he stared out through the hole cut in the gall. Behind him, Ruumahum slept on oblivious. The furcot would continue to do so until Born woke him. Left to his own devices, a furcot would sleep all but a few hours a day.

Droplets still fell from the green sky above, though the rain had long since ceased. A couple struck Born in the face. He shook the tepid moisture away. Walking would be slippery and uncertain for a while, but they would start immediately anyway. He was anxious to be Home. Anxious to see the look on Brightly Go’s face when he dumped the grazer at her feet.

Rising, he booted Ruumahum in the ribs a couple of times. The furcot moaned. Born repeated the action. Ruumahum got to his feet two at a time, grumbling irritably.

“Already morning …?”

“Long day’s march, Ruumahum,” Born told him. “Long rain last night. There should be red berries and pium out before midday.”