The Valley of Thunder

  They paced themselves, trotting for a quarter of a mile, then walking, then trotting again. The distance fell away behind them, but they were all worn out now. Annabelle knew that they wouldn't be able to maintain this pace very much longer. She clutched the stitch in her side, waiting for her second wind to cut in. All she wanted to do was throw herself down and collapse where she lay. The heat and humidity made her mind dull and sapped the strength from her limbs.

  Ahead of her she could see Tomàs lagging. Shriek, still recovering from the effects of the shark people's treated dart, had little of her usual resilience left either. Only Sidi seemed able to keep up the pace forever, if need be, but he held himself back, matching his speed to that of his slower companions.

  There was no sign or sound of pursuit yet—neither on the trail behind them, nor in the occasional glimpses of the river they caught where the jungle's dense growth cleared for a moment. But they'd BE coming. None of them doubted the tenacity of the shark people. They just had that look about them. Annabelle thought. They weren't the kind to give up.

  Yeah, well, neither are we.

  But a half-hour later her legs simply gave out from under her, and she went toppling to the ground, only just saving herself from a bad fall by grabbing onto a low-hanging vine. She lost her grip on it almost immediately, but it had been enough to break her fall. When she hit the ground, she didn't hit hard.

  She tried to get up. but her calves and thighs were locked with cramps. When the others turned back to help her, she tried to wave them on.

  "Go on." she said. "Get outta here."

  Sidi shook his head. While Tomàs and Shriek literally collapsed where they stood, he knelt by her and began to massage her legs with his quick, long fingers, kneading the muscles through her leather jeans until they began to unlock. Her eyes teared with pain, but she didn't complain. The relief was profound as Sidi worked out the cramps, even though the muscles continued to throb.

  "Anybody ever tell you that you're a godsend?" Annabelle asked him.

  Sidi grinned. "Keh. Not recently."

  Annabelle smiled back at him, but her moment of good humor was short-lived. "I don't know if I can go on right away." she said. "I'm mean. I've always been in pretty good shape—you go on a tour that's lasting a few months, and you'd better be in shape—but the old bod's been taking too much abuse lately."

  "We'll rest here for a little while—a half-hour."

  "Those shark guys..."

  "I observed them carefully when they caught us." Sidi replied. "Though they have a very liquid style of movement. they don't appear to have a great deal of speed on land. I think we're well ahead of them, for the moment."

  "What about on the river?"

  The Indian shrugged. "We'll face that when the time comes. Shriek's stopped them for a while. I think. Rest now. Annabelle, while I see to the others."

  "I'm too wound up to rest." Annabelle told him, but she dozed off before Sidi had taken the two steps to where Shriek was lying.

  By nightfall they'd put at least six more miles behind them. Exhausted, they sprawled around a small campfire set well east of the game trail—on the side opposite from the river. Twice they had thought they'd heard the grating chica-chic rattle of the shark people on the trail behind them. Both times they hid alongside the path, clutching the spears that Sidi had cut for each of them; both times they were false alarms. The second time they found the source of the sound—a small, scorpionlike creature about eleven inches long, with a rattlesnake rattle on the end of its tail in place of a stinger.

  For supper they had baked fish that Sidi had speared in the river after he'd set up camp for the others. Now he was hardening the points of their spears in the fire. When he finished the last one, he covered the fire with dirt and they sat in the darkness.

  Annabelle had gotten her second wind. Supper had helped, and she felt stronger now, but guilty that so much of the day's decisions and work had fallen on Sidi's slender shoulders. She was determined to pull her own weight the next day—if she could find the energy to get up in the morning, that is.

  Tomàs sat by himself, away from the rest of them, muttering to himself in Portuguese for a time, then lapsing into a sullen silence. Shriek was grooming herself, carefully working at her hair spikes. The faint rustling of the spikes was the only unnatural sound to be heard against the noise of the jungle until Sidi came to sit beside Annabelle.

  His footsteps were muffled, but sounded very loud to her, all wired up as she was. listening to the sounds of night, waiting for the jungle noises to cease at the chica-chic of the shark people. She shifted a little to give him room to lean against the tree trunk she'd claimed for a backrest. Their shoulders touched companionably.

  "Tomorrow." Sidi asked, "we go on to Quan?"

  "Christ, I don't know anymore. I'm tempted to backtrack and try to catch up with Clive and the rest of them."

  "The veldt is wide. Annabelle—we could easily miss them."

  "Yeah. And spend the rest of our lives wandering around out there. What do you think we should do, Sidi?"

  "Go on."

  "I suppose." She sighed. "Do you think they're still following us—the shark people?"

  "I think so, yes,"

  "We need some defense against their blowguns. I mean, these spears of yours are good and all that, but we gotta get in close to use them. By the time we do, they could've taken us all down."

  She wondered about the spear lying there on the ground beside her. Could she stick it into somebody— even one of the shark people? She supposed she could, if she had to, but she wasn't really sure. She just wasn't really cut out for this kind of thing.

  "I could make us shields," Sidi said. "If we had the skins, the wood for the framework, the time."

  "Time. Yeah. Maybe heading for Quan's a big mistake. Sidi. What if the people there are no better than what we've got tracking us down right now? And didn't Finn say something about there being ghosts or something there? Maybe we're just walking into more trouble."

  "Unfortunately, from our experiences in this Dungeon so far, that seems quite likely."

  "I wonder how Clive's doing."

  "Surviving, I hope. But the veldt will have its own dangers. Annabelle."

  "I suppose. Okay. We go on to Quan. How far do you think it still is?"

  "Three and a half, four days."

  "I don't know if I can take another minute of this frigging jungle. I feel like one huge mosquito bite."

  "You attract them to you by the tension you project— your irritation with them. Ignore them, and you will find they trouble you less."

  "Easy for you to say—they're not bothering you."

  "Because I—"

  Annabelle laughed. "I know. Because you ignore them—like you do the heat. It's a cute trick. Sidi. Wish it could work for me, you know?"

  "It works. Annabelle," he insisted. "Just try it."

  "You can't teach an old dog new tricks," she said. "They say that where you come from?" "No. We say. 'The cautious seldom err.' It's not really the same thing."

  "Same things are boring." she told him. "They gotta be different if they're gonna spark."

  She turned toward him and could just make out the shadow shape of his head next to hers. His closeness gave her a warm feeling, made her forget the bugs and the heat.

  "I like you. Sidi." she said softly. "I like you a lot."

  She started to lift a hand to his cheek, but then the sounds of the jungle night went still all around them. Annabelle and Sidi moved apart, reaching for their spears. Tomàs sat up suddenly, his own weapon clutched in sweaty palms. Shriek froze, then swiftly plucked hair thorns—one to hold in each of her four hands.

  Chica-chica-chica-chica...

  The sound seemed to come from all around them. The night was filled with it. Annabelle felt her chest go all tight, then realized she'd been holding her breath. She let it out slowly, tried to regulate her breathing to a slow rhythm, but all her lungs wanted to do was hyp
erventilate.

  They rose to their feet, each of the four facing a different section of the jungle.

  Chica-chica-chica...

  "Been nice knowing you. kids," Annabelle said softly.

  Her skin crawled with tension. Any moment she expected to feel one of the shark people's darts hitting her. She kept changing the way she held the spear, trying to find a comfortable way to hold it, settling for a Little John/Robin Hood kind of grip, where she could use the thing like a staff.

  Silence fell suddenly.

  "What the—" Annabelle began, but then she realized that there'd been another sound behind that of their pursuers' shaking uvulas.

  A drumming. It seemed to come from the trees above them—a booming, hollow sound from all sides.

  Now what? she wondered.

  A shape moved in the corner of her vision. She turned toward it, sighting on the shadowy, streamlined head that was there above the shadow of a dorsal fin. She lifted up her spear, ready to strike, when something dropped out of the trees above her. landing directly on her attacker.

  Thirteen

  Except for the wind in his face and the faint vibration of the machine between his legs, Clive could feel no sense of motion, of traveling—at least, not of a manner with which he was familiar. There wasn't the sway of a ship's deck underfoot, the jolting of a carriage seat, the rhythm of a horse's gait. Instead, he was carried along, like a leaf on the wind, or like a kite, floating just above ground that sped by so quickly it was a blur.

  The entire concept was decidedly disconcerting, but while he grew used to it in time, he wasn't sure he would ever like it. In that sense he sided more with Finnbogg than with Smythe and Guafe, both of whom appeared to be enjoying the ride—the one immensely, as one does a pleasurable new experience, the other as a convenient method of locomotion, far superior to that of placing one foot before the other. For Clive, it remained too unnatural.

  They darted across the veldt, following the track of the brontosaur herd until the trail of flattened grass that marked their route turned to the south, back toward the mountains. The flyers continued straight, rising above the height of the tall, mauve-yellow vegetation that was here unmarred by the behemoths' passage. The grasses whipped against each other as the flyers rushed by above them.

  Their party was made up of five of the small hovercraft—one each to bear the members of Clive's company, and a fifth that scouted ahead, keeping in touch with the other flyers through something Keoti called radio contact. Clive assumed it was a variation of a telegraph system, and was startled to learn that actual words could be transmitted in this manner.

  When they made camp that evening, the ground seemed to sway under Clive's feet for the first ten minutes or so, but he soon recovered his land legs. From compartments under the seals of the livers, the Dramaranians brought out tents that appeared almost to set themselves up. Provisions followed, and small portable stoves to cook them with that had no source of heat Clive could perceive. The term microwave meant nothing to him.

  "Explain to me," the cyborg Guafe asked of their hosts, after they had all eaten, "these flyers of yours. Why do you not use larger craft? Surely your technology is such that you could manufacture larger and quicker airships—ones that ride higher in the atmosphere?"

  "Keoti's lieutenant." Abro L'Hami, replied. He was a tall, black-haired man with a day's growth of beard and startling dark eyes. Like the other Dramaranians, he had become much friendlier to Clive's party as the day progressed.

  "Most of what you see above," Abro said, "is not true sky. While there are patches that rise straight up to the upper levels of the world, most of what is above is actually a thin layer of some sticky substance that we have yet to identify. We have managed to force ships into that layer, but inevitably their engines become gummed up with the substance, causing the ships to crash."

  Guafe looked up at the night skies, dotted with unfamiliar constellations. The sliver of a moon was rising in the east.

  "Curious." he said.

  "But what about the stars?" Smythe asked. "The sun we've seen each day, and the moon just rising now?"

  Abro shrugged. "If we knew everything about the Dungeon, we would rule it. But we don't."

  Keoti nodded. "Mostly, we believe that there are some things men were never meant to know. Travelers between the levels, such as yourself, are not merely rare— we find it difficult to understand why anyone would assume such a dangerous undertaking."

  "We want to go home." Clive said. "It's that simple. We're not here by our own will, and we wish to return to our own world."

  The Dramaranians regarded him curiously.

  "This is a good world." Keoti said finally, "so long as one avoids the jungle."

  Clive and Smythe exchanged worried glances.

  "The jungle?" Clive asked, fear rising inside him. "Why would that be?"

  "The jungle holds many strange and primitive tribes—they grow stranger the deeper one fares. They make constant war with each other, and against any strangers who trespass on their lands. Why do you look so worried?"

  "We have... companions who entered the jungle."

  Keoti gave him a sympathetic look. "They will not survive. Major Folliot."

  "Please, call me Clive," he said absently. His worry for Annabelle and the others was intensifying. "With these flying ships of yours—could you take us into the jungle to rescue them?"

  "Impossible. We do not go into the jungle... Clive. To do so is certain death. We leave the tribes alone, as they do us. We have no need to enter their jungle. We have our veldt and our own forests beyond Dramaran. We have the porten for meat—Walking Mountains of protein. All else we need, we raise for ourselves.

  "It is not a bad life, Clive, and because of your relationship with our savior, you will be well treated there."

  "Just how did Sir Neville become your savior?" Smythe asked.

  "I told you earlier about our Long Sleep," Keoti replied. "Our seasons are long here, summer and winter each lasting for many—" she paused, as though searching for a word "—of what Father Neville calls centuries. When the portens migrate and the ice comes, we retire to our Long Sleep. It's a form of mechanically induced hibernation. Last spring, the mechanism that rouses us failed, and we slept on through the spring and well into summer.

  "It was Father Neville who woke us once more."

  "How long ago was that?" Clive asked.

  It seemed odd to him that Neville could have accomplished so much in such a short time on this level. To begin with, how had he reached Dramaran so quickly?

  "Almost five years ago now," Abro said.

  "As you reckon time," Keoti added.

  The shock of that statement struck Clive and the others of his party profoundly.

  "Five years?" Clive asked slowly.

  The Dramaranian lieutenant nodded.

  That was impossible, Clive thought. Unless there had been some flux in time that had sent Neville here years before his own party had arrived, even though they had left the previous level within moments of each other. Was such a thing possible? In the Dungeon, who could tell?

  "You've been looking for us all that lime?" Smythe asked.

  Keoti shook her head. "Oh, no. It's only been a few weeks now since Father Neville told us you would be coming."

  Later, when Smythe and Clive lay in the lent they were sharing, they spoke of that.

  "There's another possibility, sah." Smythe said after both had run out of speculations and they had lain in silence for a time. His voice floated toward Clive from the darkness, a disembodied sound. "It might not lie Neville waiting for us in Dramaran. It wouldn't be the first time he's played that trick on us."

  "But the Dramaranians know me—and you. It has to be my brother. How could a stranger BE expecting us?"

  Neither man had an answer. Eventually, they let silence fall between them again. Smythe's breathing grew more regular and he fell asleep, but Clive lay awake for a long lime, staring up at the darken
ed roof of the tent.

  He was thinking of Annabelle now, wishing he'd been more forceful in convincing her to stay with him.

  She had been a small, nagging worry in his thoughts, ever since the two parties had gone their own ways, but while he'd worried, he'd held firm the knowledge that she was a resourceful woman, with—barring the Portuguese—trustworthy companions. He'd been able to hold out hope for their survival. But now, with the finality of Keoti's tone as she spoke of the certain fate of any who dared the jungle ringing in his mind, hope had fled.

  The hard truth lay like a rock in his stomach. He would never see Annabelle or any of her companions again. It was a bitter realization, made worse by the sense of guilt he felt for letting them go off on their own. As leader, it had been his responsibility to keep the company together, yet he had failed to do so, sealing their fate.

  I should have tried harder, he thought unhappily.

  But now it was too late.

  Not one of Clive's party—not even Chang Guafe—was prepared for the sheer immensity of the ruined city of Dramaran when they reached it late in the following afternoon. They flew over acre upon acre of abandoned buildings, pillars that lay fallen across roadways, collapsed walls that had scattered their enormous stone blocks willy-nilly wherever they might land, floors that had fallen through to shadowed basements. Here and there tall towers still remained, but most of the city had the look of a child's toy village, flattened by a large boot.

  They saw no people until they reached the center of the city, where the work of reconstruction was being undertaken. Hundreds of Dramaranians bustled like ants about the building they were repairing. Strange mechanical devices were being used to lift the stone blocks and set them into place. Clive could have watched the curious work for hours, but then their flight took them to a docking area near a huge, upright thrust of rock, where the flyers landed, one after the other.