Midworld (23 page)

Cohoma and Logan weren’t too tired to be shocked. “Popi killed himself?” Logan whispered, using the biochemist’s nickname.

“That’s the chat they’re handing out. Nearchose—you know, the security whale who was a friend of the prof’s—was the last one to see him alive. Report from Nick was that the guy was depressed about something, but hardly suicidal. Went vibrato and blew up everything in his lab. ’Course, when a guy gets as dependent on the silly stuff as Tsing-ahn was, you can’t tell what he’s liable to do. Company assumes a calculated risk hiring guys like that. This time it didn’t pay out.”

“Too bad, I liked the little joe,”

Cohoma muttered.

“Everybody did.”

An awkward silence followed, each absorbed in his own thoughts and fully aware that he or she was on this world because of some serious weakness of their own—money, drugs, or something best not mentioned. Whenever the subject surfaced, it was quickly dropped. Discussion of such things was avoided by mutual consent.

They walked in silence halfway to the station when the something that seemed to be missing finally surfaced in Logan’s mind. She looked behind them, then over at Born. “Where are Ruumahum and Geeliwan?”

“Both said they would feel uncomfortable away from the forest,” Born replied truthfully. “They do not like open space. You didn’t say you wanted them to come with us.”

“Well, it’s not important.” She stared longingly back toward the emerald, flowerspeckled rampart. To parade the pair of omnivorous hexapods like a couple of lap dogs before the excitable Hansen was a pleasure she had been looking forward to. But she was halfway to that bath and steak, and she was not going back into the jungle now. That could wait.

Omnivorous—she had assumed the furcots were omnivorous. Come to think of it, she had never seen either of them eat anything. Oh well, as Born said, they felt uncomfortable in certain situations. Probably they liked to eat in private as well as make love away from prying eyes. Still, it seemed odd she had never seen either of them take a bite out of anything.

Further speculation was interrupted by a cry from Born. He spotted the demon first. “Losting! ’Ware zenith!” Again she felt that shock at words which didn’t seem to fit Born’s way of life.

Losting looked overhead, reaching simultaneously for his snuffler. Then she saw the tiny brown spot circling far above. There were many such spots, always clear of the station. Apparently, Born had somehow detected belligerent motion in this one. He was right. The spot became a recognizable shape, one she had hoped never to see at close range again. Broad wings, clawed feet, long jaw armed with razor-sharp teeth.

She could not entirely repress a faint smile of superiority as she noticed them hurriedly going for their primitive airguns. “Don’t worry, Born, Losting. Relax and watch.” Born eyed her questioningly, but managed to force down his natural inclination to load and set.

Logan studied the diving demon. It drew nearer in a tightening spiral, mouth agape.

She could not see which of the weapons on the perimeter had turned to cover that particular section of sky until the red beam lanced out and up from one of the gimbaled turrets. The sky-demon disintegrated in a brief flare of carbonized flesh and powdered bone.

Born and Losting stared quietly at the sky where the demon had been plummeting toward them only seconds before. Equally silent, Logan watched them. So did Cohoma and Sal and the other two.

“It’s something like a very advanced kind of snuffler, Born,” she explained finally. “How to make you see … Well, it uses a kind of light to kill with.”

Born turned and pointed to the spherical turret which housed the cannon. “In there?”

“That’s right,” said Cohoma. “There are others placed around the station. With them and the electrical shielding on the supporting trunks, we’re quite safe here.”

“Remember, Born,” Logan told him excitedly, as they resumed the walk to the station, “how your people arrayed themselves to meet the Akadi? A system of weapons like that one,” and she indicated the motionless turret, “could be set up around your village to protect the Home. You’d never have to worry about the Akadi or silversliths or anything else again.”

“Have to fire very fast, and move it quickly at such close distance,” Losting commented.

“Oh, that’s no problem,” a self-assured Cohoma explained. “Once you’ve cleared a space around the Home like we have here and set up a decent detector system, a predator couldn’t even get close without being spotted.”

“Clear space?”

“Yes, you know, cut away the close-in vegetation like I originally proposed to stop the Akadi. Just leave a few cubbles or vines to serve as a kind of drawbridge. It would be easy. We can give you tools similar to these light weapons, which would make the cutting a simple job. You could obtain them for the asking, and for helping us find our way around your world and locate certain substances, you’d earn the goodwill credits in no time.”

“Cut away,” Born murmured. “Clear space.”

“Yes, Born.” Logan looked puzzled. “Is something the matter? Can’t you just emfol first and then—?”

“Nothing’s the matter.” The hunter’s expression brightened. “So many wonders all at once. I’m a little overwhelmed. I would like very much to learn more about such things as light weapons and defensive systems and what we must do to get them.”

“The details of the last part aren’t for us to decide, Born. We’re only minor employees of a great concern, of the people who established this station here. A man named Hansen will decide those particulars. You’ll meet him soon. But I don’t see any trouble working out an arrangement that will be advantageous to both our peoples. Especially after what you’ve already done for Jan and me.”

There was a lift waiting for them. It took them through a gate in the underside of the charged grid and up into the lower floor of the station. As they passed the grid, the ever curious Born asked again about the principle behind it. Cohoma had a hard time making him understand, but references to lightning seemed to satisfy both hunters.

The lift pulled Born and Losting into a world of new wonders. First among them was the sudden, almost physical shock of color change. The all-pervasive green, flecked with bright colors and every shade of brown, was abruptly replaced by a stiff, straight-angled world of silver and gray, white and blue. The only touch of green in this section of corridor was provided by a row of parasitic bushes growing in a long deep planter, which served as a divider between sections of corridor.

Born saw that the chaga was not well. The flowers were big and colorful, but the leaves were not straight and were not reaching for the sun the way they should be. He had time for only a quick glance. There were too many new things here to see and try to understand. More giants, engaged in various inexplicable tasks, hurrying on alien errands, filled the corridor. Some were clad in garb even stranger than the gray suits worn by Logan, Cohoma, and Sal.

A man saw them, came over to speak in a whisper to the one called Sal. Born heard him clearly. “Hansen wants to see the two natives immediately. He’s up in his office.” He looked over at Logan and Cohoma. “You two also.”

Logan groaned. “Can’t we at least get cleaned up a little first? Andre, what we’ve been through, these past months—!”

“I know. You also know Hansen. Orders.” He shrugged helplessly.

“Hell, let’s get it over with,” Cohoma grunted.

“This Hansen person,” Born asked as they walked toward an interior lift, “he is chief of your tribe?”

“Not chief, Born, and not tribe,” Logan explained with a hint of irritation, which was caused by the order, not Born’s question. “This station houses people who are engaged in similar hunts. But it’s not the same kind of organization as you have in the Home. You might regard the people in this station as a hunting party, with Mr. Hansen the leader. That’s the best I can do. I’m not sure I could explain what a corporation is if I had a month.”

“It is enough,” Born replied as they turned a corner and started down a white, brightly decorated tunnel. “He is the one we must ask for light guns and other wonders for our people.”

“You understand, Born. I knew you would,” she declared cheerfully. “Help us in exploring your world and finding a few things you don’t use yourselves, and wonders will be granted gladly in return. It’s an old principle among my people. Among your own ancestors.” And just a touch illegal in this one instance, that’s all, she thought, but did not say to him.

“What sort of man is your hunting party leader?”

“That depends on where you’re coming from,” Logan told him enigmatically. She seemed ready to explain further, but they had reached a door, and Sal beckoned them to be silent. He held it open for them and then remained behind while the other four entered.

Hansen sat behind a narrow, curved desk which he managed to give the appearance of wearing, like an enormous plastic belt. The desk was piled high with tape spools, cassettes, reams of paper, and dozens of separate reports bound in simulated leather binders. The walls were given over to shelves lined with books and tape holders. The rear of the room was filled by a floor-to-ceiling window which offered a panorama of the Panta and the suffocating forest beyond.

As they entered, Hansen was staring at the screen of a tape viewer mounted on a flexible arm. “Just a moment, please. Jan, Kimi, good to find you alive.” He spoke without turning, his voice mellow, reassuring.

His stature enhanced his middle-aged pudginess. He was not much taller than Born. Hair started halfway back on a forehead that seemed to be made from dark putty and fell to his shoulders in long waves. Save for the thick brush mustache which clung to his upper lip like a hibernating insect, his hair had turned completely gray.

He was sweating despite the airconditioning. Indeed, that was the first thing Born had noticed upon entering the station—an apparently deliberate, abnormal chill. Even on cool nights in the world, it rarely got this cold.

Neither hunter minded the extended wait. They were fully occupied with studying the room and its contents. Born did not miss, however, the respectful silence with which the tired, impatient Logan and Cohoma waited.

Hansen touched a switch on the side of the viewer, then pushed it back and away on its arm. It locked into place out of his way as he turned to eye his visitors. His right arm rested on an arm of the chair and he rubbed at his perspiring forehead with the other. He looked tired, and he was. Running this station had prematurely aged as experienced and toughened an old hand as Hansen. If it was not something breaking down that he could not get replacements for because of the risk of a supply ship running afoul of a Church or Commonwealth warship, it was some nonmechanical crisis. It seemed like every time one of his people put a foot on this world they were promptly stung, bitten, punctured, nibbled at, or otherwise set upon by the local flora and fauna.

Nor had he recovered from the loss of the life-prolonging burl extracts, the burl itself, and Tsing-ahn, the man who knew most about them. If only that poor madman had not been so thorough in the destruction of his notes and records! The news of the biochemist’s suicide and concurrent destruction of everything relating to what had come to be called the immortality extract had not gone over well with Hansen’s superiors—not gone over well at all.

He did manage a slight grin as he examined the two returned members of the skimmer team. The mental lift provided by their miraculous survival had come at a badly needed time.

“We’d given you up for sure, for sure,” he told them. “Couldn’t believe my ears when Security reported four people standing at the edge of the forest.” A corner of his mouth twitched at the remembrance. “You two’ve caused me no end of trouble, you know. Now I’ve got to recall all the paperwork detailing your deaths, the requests for replacements, everything. Somebody in Budgeting’s not going to like you two.”

“Sorry, Chief,” Logan said, smiling back.

“Now,” Hansen puffed expansively, leaning back slightly in the chair and folding his hands over his slight paunch, “tell me about your aboriginal acquaintances, here.”

“They saved our lives,” she replied, matter-of-factly, “and I doubt they’re aborigines, sir. Near as we can figure, they’re the descendants of the populace of a colony ship that lost its way and wound up here. They’ve lost the memory of that origin, all Commonwealth and pre-Commonwealth knowledge, and nearly all their technology. They have developed a rudimentary tribal social structure. As a result, our friends Born and Losting are convinced that they are in truth natives of this world.”

“And you’re pretty certain they’re not.”

“That’s right, sir,” Cohoma chipped in. “Too many similarities, an axe made of ship alloy, other things. Same language, although they’ve developed a dialect all their own, family structure is—”

“Yes, yes,” Hansen cut him off with a casual wave. “Saved your lives too, did they? And brought you all the way back through that rooted Hades out there—how far did you say you’d come?” He cocked a querulous eye at Logan. She named a figure and the chief of station whistled. “Just the four of you then, that many kilometers through that?” He gestured over his shoulder toward the window.

“Yes, sir—and a couple of very domesticated animals.”

“It was a very gutsy thing for them to try, sir,” Cohoma added. “Up until this trek none of their tribe had been more than a couple of kilometers from their home village.”

“All of which is most gratifying—and utterly implausible. How the Churchwarden did you survive?”

“Sometimes I wonder myself,” Logan responded. “Chief, could I sit down, please. I’m a little worn.”

Hansen shook his head dolefully. “I forget priorities. Excuse me, Kimi.” He called and Sal appeared at the door.

“Salomon, bring in some chairs for everyone.”

The chairs were brought. Born and Losting imitated, rather hesitantly, the sitting motions of their two giant companions.

“We pulled it off with a combination of good luck and the skill of these two.” She indicated the hunters. “Born and his folk know their forest world. They live with it in the truest sense. Their village is set in a single tree. The adaptations on both sides exceed anything I’ve ever heard of.