“Is the idea to escape from those who followed? Who may follow?” The theoretician seemed only mildly interested in the answer to this question.
“No,” said Mercald firmly, surprising them all. “The idea is to stay out of reach, but not out of touch. We need proof they are murderers, and for that we must remain within distance to see and hear what they do, but I’d just as soon not fall into their hands.”
“Hurrah,” said Mavin, laughing a little. “Mercald, you put it cogently. We don’t want to lose them, Thinker. Only avoid them. Which means I must go up yonder and leave a few clues or whisper a few rumors indicating we’ve passed them by, don’t you think? I suggest the rest of you curl up on the steps – they’re rather wide along here – and sleep if you can. I’ll return before light.”
“Couldn’t we go all the way to the Bottom on the rootsap?” Beedie had enjoyed the drop, once she had quit bouncing. Even that had been interesting. Now she saw with disappointment that the Thinker was shaking his head.
“Limits,” he sighed. “Surface to volume, temperature changes, weight a factor, of course. We came about as far as one blob will allow. And now it’s too warm.”
Beedie hadn’t noticed, but the midnight cool had passed. The winds which swept down the chasm each day from mid-afternoon to midnight had stopped, and now the warm mists were rising once more. “What would happen if you tried that in the day time?” she asked.
“Plop,” said the Thinker, making a vividly explanatory gesture. “Plop. Nothing much left of you, I should think.”
Mavin had already gone. They settled themselves upon the step, backs against the stair risers. Knowing Mercald’s fear of heights, Beedie planted pitons and belted him to them. Knowing Roges’s pride, she did not do the same for him. Instead, she placed herself between him and the edge, as though unintentionally, a little dismayed at his quiet, “Thank you, Bridger.” They settled, not believing they would sleep, but falling asleep almost at once out of sheer weariness.
In remembering it afterward, Beedie was never sure quite what had wakened her. Was it a scratching sound from the stair root itself? Something moving in the root wall? A slight shaking of the stair they rested upon? As though tugged by something pulling at it from below? At first she thought it a dream and merely dozed in it, without concern, waiting to see what odd thing would happen next. Then her eyes snapped wide against the glow of Nextdown, and she felt Roges stiffen behind her, his foot kicking at her involuntarily as he awoke.
“What is it?” he hissed.
“Mnn, um,” said Mercald. “Wassn. Morning?”
“Unlikely to be volcanic or tectonic,” said the Thinker calmly. “Biologic in origin, I shouldn’t wonder. Probably zoologic, though there’s too little evidence to be sure.”
The mists were rising around them, bringing the odors of Bottom, a rich, filthy smell, of rotted things, a soupy odor of growth. Suddenly a miasma struck them, a stench, foul as decaying flesh, sweetly horrible, and they all gagged and gasped in the moment before a rising draft of air wafted it away. The root trembled again, purposefully.
“Something climbing on it, I should say,” said the theoretician. “I can compute the probable bulk, knowing the modulus of the root stair we are on, and the degree of movement … say something on the order of a thousand two hundred man weights, give or take a hundred.”
“How big would that be?” gasped Beedie as another wave of stink flowed over them.
“Oh, something roughly six or seven men long and a man height and a half through.”
Seeing her look of incomprehension, Roges said, “Put another way, something about as long as a four-story building is tall, and as thick through as the Bridgers House living room.” The root shook beneath them, a steady, gnawing quiver accompanied by aching vibrations of sound.
The noise covered the sound of Mavin’s return, but they heard her voice as she said, “Gamelords! How long has this been going on?”
“Just started,” said Roges through his teeth. The smell had grown worse in the last few moments.
“Stay here,” she hissed at them in a voice of command. “Don’t move. I’ll be back in a moment.” They had not seen her leave, or return, or leave again, but Beedie’s mind flashed quick images of the white bird, and she thought she could hear the whip of air through feathers. They clung to the stair, waiting. It was not long before Mavin returned, calling urgently, “Up. We’ve got to get off the stair. Either back into the root wall or up onto Nextdown, one or the other. There’s something eating the stairs, something too big to fight.” They heard a frantic fluttering among the roots along the wall, exclamations, expressions of fury, a quick hammering, water falling. “Beedie, light a bit of deadroot and get over here.”
Roges had it ready, even as Beedie wondered why they had forgotten the fish lantern. Sparks flew, went out, flew again, as Roges cursed at them. Then they caught and the deadroot flared up, centering them in a weird, shadowy dance of light. They saw Mavin along the root wall, perched on a water-belly, a round hole carved into it and another at its bottom draining the water away.
“Tie something to Mercald and I’ll haul him over. Roges, help the Thinker. Beedie, put your spurs on.”
“I already have them on,” she said. “I put them on when the shaking started.” She tied Mercald to her with a safety belt and thrust him along a side root, hissing at him. “Close your eyes and crawl, Birder. Crawl, and don’t look at anything. Pretend you are crawling under Birders House to check for wall rot. It is very quiet and unexciting, and you’ll get to Mavin in just one moment. There.” She turned to find Roges at her heels, teeth clenched, eyes fixed ahead. Behind him the Thinker walked along the root, examining the bark as though he had been a Bridger since birth.
“Do you know, the formation of water-bellies occurs at precises intervals dependent upon the diameter of the root involved. I’ve been thinking…”
“Later,” snarled Mavin. “Get in here with the rest of us and think about it silently.” They slithered together into the water-belly just as the last of its contents drained away, piled untidily in the spherical space, still wet, feeling the tickly brush of little capillary hairs as they huddled, each trying to see out. Mavin had gone out as they came in, and she was perched well above them now, holding the burning deadroot to cast a light upon the quivering stair. The light blinded them; they could not see what shape she had, and only Beedie knew enough about Mavin to wonder. The thought distracted her, and she did not see what the others did until their indrawn breath drew her attention.
It was vast and gray, covered with scabby plaques of hardened ichor or flaking skin, oozing between the plaques thin dribbles of greenish goo which stank. It had an upper end, but no head that they could see. Still, from beneath the upper end came the sound of chewing, gnawing, the rasp, rasp, rasp of hardness biting into the stair root. The thing moved up, up, not seeing them, not looking for them, merely chewing blindly as it came. Then the chewing stopped. The thing quivered obscenely. Its top end began to rise up, sway, a horrible tower of jiggling jelly ending in a circular mouth which sucked, chewed, sucked – and somehow sensed them. The terrible head moved in their direction, cantilevered out from the root stair toward the water-belly, toward the place they crouched, staring, unable to breathe.
Then something flew at the creature’s head, something bearing flame, beating at it, burning it. The monster screamed a hissing agonized sigh like a kettle boiling dry. It lashed itself upward, striking blindly, without a target. The torch darted upward, back, down once more, striking at the mouth, again and again. With a last, horrible scream, the mass began to withdraw down the stair, faster than it had come, folding in upon itself, sliding on its own slimy juices, a trail it had laid as it climbed up, going now away and down and out of sight.
Beedie shuddered and then embarrassed herself by beginning to cry. Roges held her tightly, and she could not tell if the wetness on his face was from her or from them both. Mercald was beneath them, hi
s face hidden at the bottom of the water-belly, half suffocated, and she could not imagine how he had come there. The Thinker had withdrawn a pad from among his rags and was making notes, murmuring to himself as he did so.
“Lignivorous. Purulent dermatitis. Unlikely to be a survival trait, therefore pathological. Recently invaded areas would indicate a newly arrived natural enemy perhaps? Or, possibly, use of a toxic substance…”
“What do I understand you to say, Thinker?” demanded Mavin, arriving at the opening in the water-belly, panting, holding the torch high so that she could see them. She wore her own shape, or one Beedie thought of as hers.
“The thing is sick,” said Thinker, putting his pad away. “If not dying, at least not at all well. That skin condition is not normal to the species. So much is evident.”
“It wasn’t evident to-me,” muttered Beedie with some hostility. “Does he know everything?”
“Within certain limits, yes,” replied the Thinker. “Your attitude of irrelevant hostility is one I have encountered before.” He sniffed.
“It’s not sick enough that it wouldn’t have eaten us, is it?”
The theoretician cocked his head, ruminated over this for a little time, then pronounced: “No. It was eating voraciously. I imagine it will eat almost anything it can get at, though my guess would be it prefers flesh, moist roots and whatever small creatures live upon them.”
“There are places not far from where I grew up where they domesticate things like that,” said Mavin thoughtfully. “Not exactly like that, of course. Not so big. Rock eaters. There are said to be smaller ones that eat plants further north. I’ve never seen them…”
“Quite possibly the same genus,” said the Thinker.
“What did you think made the thing sick?”
“A natural enemy, or some accidental ingestion of a naturally toxic substance, or some purposeful contamination by a toxic substance. In other words, something is eating it, it ate something which disagreed with it, or someone is trying very hard to kill it.”
“Whoever it is, I’m for them,” said Beedie. “I don’t blame them a bit.”
“Whoever?” asked Mercald, slightly dazed. He had burrowed his way up from the bottom of the water-belly and was now one of them once more, though slightly slimy in aspect. “We would have heard! Where? Even on Bottommost, we would have heard! If anyone had seen one of these things, we would have been notified!”
“Something was destroying the roots, the verticals, Mercald. Rootweaver told us. It’s just – no one supposed anything like this.” Beedie fell silent, suddenly aware of the implications. “You mean … someone is trying to kill those things … besides the people on the bridgetowns? Thinker? You mean someone else?”
“My dear person, I have no idea. The who is unimportant. I merely recited the possibilities. If you want me to extrapolate probabilities, it will take me a few moments.”
“I don’t think we need to belabor our ignorance,” Mavin said, heaving Beedie out of the water-belly. “One reason that we came upon this journey was to find this thing – these things. So. We’ve found it. One. Perhaps there are more. But to find the cause of peril was not the main reason for coming; the main reason is to put an end to that peril, and we are a very long way from knowing how to do that. That we are not alone in the attempt changes nothing, really.
“A thing I do know, however, is that the creature didn’t climb all the way up here in one night. That means it didn’t go all the way back down, either. I think I saw it ooze itself into a hole some distance below. It’s probably been working its way up, night after night, for a long time. It’s likely no other of them, if there are more of them, has worked up this high until now, which would explain why they have not been seen or smelled before.”
“But now that we have seen, we must send word,” said Roges. “The Bridgers must be told.”
“Yes, we must send word,” agreed Mavin. “We can leave a note nailed to the stair. The first group up from Potter’s bridge this morning will find it – and word will be sent. The chewed stairs alone would probably be enough, but we’ll describe the creature for them.”
“Tell them it fears fire,” said Roges. “They’ll need to know that.” He fell silent, thinking in horror of a bridgetown invaded by such a monster, or monsters, the crushing of little houses, the shrieking of children, the steady rasp, rasp, rasp of its teeth, the stink.
“Light,” said the theoretician. “The thing avoids light. It shrank not only from the heat of the torch, but also from the light of it. At least, so I think.”
“We will say fire, certainly, and light, possibly,” agreed Mavin. “Now. It is written. Do you have a spare piton, Beedie? So. Nailed fast. No one could possibly miss it. I see light above, green light through the leaves. It’s time for us to move on before the Banders arrive. Like it or not, we’re going to cross the root wall.”
“Madam,” said the Thinker, “Is it your desire to reach Bottommost?” At her nod he continued, “Bottommost is almost exactly beneath us now.”
“Down,” said Beedie indignantly. “Three days climb down. Past that thing. Maybe dozens of them. And I’m the only one of us with spurs.”
“Down,” agreed the Thinker. “With warm updrafts and otherwise calm air, and Bottommost precisely below. I suggest we float.”
The others in the group turned to Mavin, exasperated, annoyed, yet despite their annoyance sure that the weird creature had thought of something. “Mavin…” Beedie pleaded. “I don’t know how to talk to theo – theor-whats-its. Will you talk to him? He makes me tired.”
Mavin sighed. “Well, Thinker. Explain yourself. In short and sensible words.”
“Well, in layman’s terms, there are flattree leaves lying in the Nextdown nets, which are slightly above us. Climbable, I should think. By the young woman with spurs. Or even reachable from the stairs, for that matter. There are half a dozen of them there, at least, very large, tissuey things, soft, pliable, almost like fabric. It has occurred to me that they might be used to manufacture a kind of hyperbolic air compression device … let me see, ‘wind catchers’. Then, we leap off, one by one, and after an interesting float, we arrive at Bottommost.”
“Splashed into a puddle on the commons, no doubt,” said Beedie. “Going about a million man heights every heart beat.”
“Dropping at about one man height per heart beat,” said the Thinker, annoyed. “Please do not dispute scientific fact with me. It is annoying enough when qualified people do it.”
“Would it work?” Beedie pleaded to Mavin. “We could always work along the root wall to the stairs to Midwall. If we take it carefully…”
“If we take it carefully, it would take us five days,” sighed Mavin, muttering almost inaudibly. She knew that she could solve the problem in a number of ways, all of which required that she gain bulk and Shift into something large, crawly or winged, which would involve her in endless explanations. She preferred to remain only a messenger from the Boundless, bird or woman, nothing more than that. It would be safer for Handbright if her sister was not thought to be a devil of some kind even by this friendly group. “Look, I’ll test the Thinker’s idea. I can always become a bird, so there’s no danger. If it works for me, then the rest of you can try it.”
“Become a bird?” asked the theoretician. “Is that metaphorical?”
“Never mind,” said Beedie, irritated. “Just explain to Mavin what this ‘wind catcher’ thing is!”
By the time she had climbed to the net, folded and extricated five of the flattree leaves and returned them to the stair, light was shining clearly through the flattrees high above. Rigging the wind catchers seemed to take forever, and Beedie kept reminding herself how long a traverse of the root wall would have taken. Mavin had more or less figured out what the Thinker had in mind and had drawn a little diagram of the way the cords should be strung, from the edges of the leaves to a central girdle. When the first one was done, Mavin fastened the cord girdle around herse
lf then spread the folded leaf along the railing as she climbed over.
“This should be very interesting. It would probably help to jump out as far as possible.” The Thinker had observed all this rigging with great interest but without offering to help. “It should unfold nicely, if it doesn’t catch on the railing.”
“If it doesn’t tear, if the ropes hold, if the leaf doesn’t rip in the air, if Bottommost is really straight down,” muttered Beedie. “Mavin, are you sure you want to do this?”
“It’s all right, sausage girl. Besides, I think you can rely on the white bird to help out if anything goes wrong. Now, if it works well for me, rig the others in the same way. You come last. That way you can help the rest of them.” And with that she leaped out into the chasm, the faded green of the flattree leaf trailing away behind her. The leaf was small as flattree leaves went, only large enough to carpet a large room, and it caught the air, cupped it, turned into a gently rounded dome that seemed to hang almost motionless in the air as it dwindled slowly, slowly downward.
“Lovely,” came Mavin’s voice. “Toss Mercald over.”
They had already decided that Mercald would have to be tossed. He had turned up his eyes and gone limp at the thought of being dropped into the chasm and was now completely immobile. It was Roges who heaved him over, out into the chasm like a lumpy spear, and they all held their breaths until the leaf opened above him.
“I thought that would work,” said the Thinker, tying himself to the girdle. He waited with no evidence of impatience while Mavin spread the leaf behind him, then stepped far into the chasm.
“All right, Roges,” she said, knowing without looking that he was sweating again. “Don’t look down.”
“Beedie.” He reached out to touch her shoulder. “You’re very pretty, did you know that? Ever since you were little, when you first came to Bridgers House on Topbridge. Even then, you were pretty.”
She stared at him, disconcerted again. “I always had skinned knees,” she said. “And Aunt Six said my face was never clean from the time I was born.”