“Old one,” Muf queried softly, “why are you not at rest like the others of the brethren?”
Ruumahum turned his gaze back to the distant leafleather canopy and the chanting humans beneath. “I study Man,” he murmured. “Go to sleep, cubling.”
Muf considered, then crept up close to the massive adult and likewise stared down toward the fire. After a pause, he looked up questioningly. “What are they doing?”
“I am not certain,” Ruumahum replied. “I believe in some ways they are trying to become like the brethren … like us.”
“Us? Us?” Muf coughed comically in the rain and sat back on his several haunches. “But I thought we strive to become like the persons?”
“So it is believed. Now, go to sleep, shoot!”
“Please, old one, I am confused. If Man is trying to become like us and we are trying to become like Man—then who is right?”
“You ask many questions, cub, you do not fully understand. How can you expect to understand the answer? The answer is … That-Which-Is-Sought, a meeting, a conjoinment, a concatenation, an interwoven web.”
“I see,” whispered Muf, not seeing at all. “What will happen when that is achieved?”
“I do not know,” Ruumahum replied, looking back to the fire. “None of the brethren know, but we seek it anyway. Besides, Man finds us interesting and useful and believes himself master. The brethren find Man useful and interesting and care not about mastering. Man thinks he understands this relationship. We know we do not. For this contented ignorance we envy him.” He nodded in the direction of the assembled persons below. “We may never understand it. Revelation is never promised, only hoped for.”
“I understand,” murmured the cub, not understanding at all. He struggled awkwardly to his feet and turned to go, then paused to look back. “Old one, one more question.”
“What is it?” Ruumahum grumbled, not turning his gaze from the prayer gathering.
“It is rumored among the cubs that we neither spoke nor thought till the persons came.”
“That is no rumor, budding, that is truth. Instead, we slept.” He yawned and showed razorlike teeth and tusks. “But so did Man. We wake together, it is thought.”
“I know,” Muf admitted, not knowing at all. He turned and rambled off to find a sleeping place for the night.
Ruumahum turned his attention to the persons once more, considered how fortunate he was to have a person as interesting and unpredictable as Born. Now there was this new thing they would go out to find tomorrow. Well, if the world was to change tomorrow, he thought as he yawned, it was better to face change having had a good night’s sleep. He rolled over on his side, tucked his head between fore- and midpaws, and went instantly and peacefully to that country.
Born was all for starting before the morning mist had lifted, but Reader and the others would not hear of it. Losting viewed the originator of such a preposterous, dangerous idea with pity. Anyone who would even consider moving about the world in mist, when a man could not see what might be stalking him from behind or above until it was right on top of him, had to be more than a little crazy.
There were twelve in the party—six men and six furcots. The men traveled in single file through the treeways, while the furcots spread out above, below, and on both sides, forming a protective cordon around the persons. Born and Reader shared the lead, while Losting, by choice, guarded the rear. The big man had mixed feelings about this expedition and was striving to stay as far away from its originator—Born—as possible. Besides, as much as he disliked Born for the other’s interest in Brightly Go, Losting was not so stupid that he failed to recognize Born’s skills. As such, Born belonged in the lead. But then, Losting told himself comfortingly, the mad are always clever.
Their progress through the sunny Third Level branchings was rapid and uninterrupted. Only once did distant warning growls, from the left of their course and below, cause the party to pause and set snufflers. Taandason, who had made the warning sounds, appeared a short while later on the cubble running parallel to the persons’ path. He was panting slightly and puffing with anger.
“Brown many-legs,” the furcot reported. “A mated hunting pair. Saw me and the she spat, but her mate turned her. Gone now.” The furcot turned, leaped to a lower branch, and disappeared in the undergrowth. Reader nodded with satisfaction and waved the column forward. Thorns were returned to quivers, tank seeds to pouches.
A single brown many-leg wouldn’t hesitate to charge two or three men, Born reflected. A mated hunting pair would take on almost anything in the hylaea. But a group of man and furcot in such numbers would cause even the greater forest carnivores to think twice before attacking. Whether a demon would think likewise remained to be seen.
They must be nearing the place. Born recognized a distinctive Blood tree, its pitcherlike leaves filled with crimson water caused by the plant’s secretion of tannin. Soon after passing the Blood tree they found themselves walking into a steady breeze. A responsive murmur sprang up among the marchers. Within the forest world the wind rarely blew steadily in any single direction. Instead, gusts of air came and went like wraiths, darting and curling around branches and boles and stems like living things. But this breeze was steady and purposeful and warm. Warm enough, Born reflected, to come from Hell itself.
Reader brandished his axe, defying any evil spirits in the area who would dare to come near. Each man pulled his green cloak more tightly and protectively around him.
Born motioned the party to slow and spread out. Ahead of him the world seemed suddenly to change perspective. He took another couple of steps along the cubble, pushed aside a drooping whalear leaf, and cried out at what he saw, one hand tightening convulsively around a supporting liana. Similar cries sounded nearby, but he was momentarily paralyzed, unable to look for his companions.
Not a hand’s breadth away the thick wood of the cubble he stood on had been shattered like a rotten stem, as had that of other lesser and greater growths nearby. A vast well had been opened up in the world. Born looked up, up, to a circle of strange color two hundred meters overhead. A patch of deep blue flecked with white cumulus—the blue of the Upper Hell.
Below—he gripped the liana ever tighter—below and down an equally great distance, somewhere at the Fifth Level, lay a brilliant blue object that caught the sun like the axe. In its center was something even more shiny, something that made rainbows from sunlight, an uneven half-globe of material like a flitter’s transparent wings. Its top was ragged and open to the air.
Already vines, creepers, cubbies, tuntangcles, and other growth were destroying the smooth sides of the well, pushing outward in furious competition for the wealth of unaccustomed sunlight.
Born studied the spreading epiphytes and rampaging growers and estimated that in another twice seven-days the new vegetation would cover the well completely. They would have to avoid this area for some time, however, until some denser growth filled it in.
“Here, Born!” a voice called.
He turned to see Reader standing on the broken-off limb of a Pillar, leaning out as far as he dared and gesturing with the axe. It flashed like lightning in the greenish light. In a few minutes every member of the party had assembled on the meters-wide broken branch. The furcots had gathered to themselves and sat silently on one side to see what the persons would do.
“It is a demon for sure, and it sleeps,” began one of the twins—Talltree, Born noted.
“I still do not think it is a demon,” Born countered firmly. “I believe it is a thing, an object that has been fashioned,” and he nodded toward Reader, “like the axe,”
Various exclamations greeted Born’s blasphemous opinion. Reader held up a hand for quiet. “People, this is no place for loud noises. The demons of the Upper Hell could surely come down to this place through the hole the larger demon has made. We will discuss this matter further, but I say, quietly.” Conversation and argument continued, but in whispers. “Now then, Born,” continued Reade
r, “what makes you so certain this blue thing below us is not a demon, but an object made like the axe?”
“It has the look of it,” Born replied. “Notice how regular are its outlines and the way it throws back the light.”
“Might not a demon do this as well? Does not the skin of the orbiole throw back the light? Are you certain, Born?”
Born found himself looking away. “There is no way to be sure, shaman, save,” and he stared across at the older man, “to go down to it and see for oneself.”
“But if it is a demon?” Drawn wondered loudly, “and it sleeps, and our pokings awaken it?” The hunter rose from his squatting position, holding his snuffler firmly. “No, friend Born. I respect your guessings and honor your skill, but I will not go with you. I have a mate and two children and I’m not ready to go knocking on the skull of a demon to see if anyone is home. No, not I.” He paused, thinking. “But, I will consider what the shaman and my brothers say.”
“What say the hunters, then?” asked Reader.
The other twin spoke. “Truly, it may be as Born says. Be it only a made thing, with no life in it, then it seems to me no threat to the Home. Or it may be, as Drawn says, a sleeping demon waiting only for some careless person to stumble blindly in and waken it. If we leave it alone it may sleep forever, or go peacefully on its way. Myself, I think it is a demon of a new kind, one injured in its fall from the Upper Hell. We must leave and not disturb it, but let it die in peace, lest it arise in anger and destroy us.”
Tailing and Talltree rose together and offered further opinions. Sometimes one of the twins would begin a sentence and the other would finish it. They did this without looking at one another, which was not surprising, for in the forest does one branch of a tree have to consult with another before putting out leaves? Some thought the twins were more of the forest than of Man.
“Whatever it is, shaman,” Talltree concluded, “it seems we have nothing to lose by leaving it undisturbed and everything to gain by returning Home quietly the way we came.”
“Don’t you care about it at all?” Born asked openly. “Aren’t you at all curious? Do you not care if it is a benign demon?”
“I’ve never heard of a helpful demon and I care only about surviving,” Drawn responded. The others listened attentively. After Born, Drawn was the most skillful hunter in the village. “As it lies”—he nodded toward the world-well—“it threatens us not, nor the Home. I do not see a close inspection improving that. I vote to return Home.”
“I also … and I … and I …”
The word passed around the little circle of persons in the trees, and it was all against Born. Always against Born, he thought, furious.
“Go back, then,” he shouted disgustedly, moving from the circle to a higher branch. “I’ll go down alone.”
The other hunters muttered. Reader and Drawn, the eldest among them, looked sympathetic, but they agreed that Born had not yet acquired caution to match his other abilities. The village would miss him if he failed to return. If he would go, then let him go, but do not match madness with him.
So Born crouched alone on his higher limb and pouted while his companions made themselves ready. Their furcots fanning out around them, they started down the cubble toward the Home.
Despite his feelings, he was half tempted to join them and try further talk. Only Losting’s barely veiled grin steeled him. Nothing would please that overripe pium fruit more than to see Born vanish forever, leaving him a clear path to Brightly Go. But Born would not vanish so conveniently. He would learn the truth of the blue monster below and return to tell of it to all. The others who had left would be ashamed, and Brightly Go would smile favoringly on him.
Still, it was to be considered that there had been only brave men in the little group, and that wise Reader was not an idiot. There still existed the chance he was wrong and everyone else was right. He put aside this unpleasant possibility and whistled once, softly.
Ruumahum appeared in a minute, the small branch sagging under their combined weight. The furcot eyed him expectantly, promptly crossed all four front paws and went to sleep. Born studied the massive form absently before turning his attention to the right. There, past a few thick fronds and several dangling vines, lay the pit open to the Upper Hell. At the bottom of the pit lay an enigma he would have to resolve alone. Well, not quite alone.
He whacked Ruumahum along one side of his head, a blow that would have jolted a large man. The furcot merely blinked, yawned, and started preening itself with a forepaw.
“Up and out,” Born said firmly.
Ruumahum stared at him drowsily. “What to do?”
“Come, good for nothing. I want a close look at the blue thing.”
Ruumahum snorted. Didn’t the person have two perfectly good eyes of his own? But he conceded that Born was right. Someone would have to watch the open spaces above and to the sides while Born was exposed in the clearing.
Born crawled, alone, without loaded snufflers to back him up, without ironwood spears to reinforce his confidence, to the edge of the pit and stared downward. The glistening blue circle lay as before. It had not moved and showed no sign of moving. Even as he watched, a loud crackling sounded, and the object appeared to drop a little lower. The well it had made was ample testament to its great weight, and it seemed to be sinking deeper, branch by shattered branch, cubble by overstressed cubble. It might continue to sink, falling to the Sixth Level and eventually to the Lower Hell itself. Born would not seek it at that depth for all the meat in the forest, not even for Brightly Go. He had to proceed now, before the chance was forever denied him.
He leaned out further over the abyss, tightening his grip on the seemingly unbreakable liana nearby. The liana might have been unbreakable. His grip wasn’t. Something clutched him around waist and neck and yanked hard. The yell in his throat turned to anger as he disengaged himself from the gentle grasp of Ruumahum.
“What the—?”
Ruumahum glanced significantly upward, rumbled softly. “Devil comes.”
Born peered up through a crack in the well wall. At first he did not see the dark speck against the sky, but it grew rapidly larger. When the shape became recognizable, Born retreated another meter into the forest and loaded the snuffler.
The sky-devil had a long streamlined body suspended between broad wings. Four leathery sacks, two to a side, inhaled air and expelled it out rubbery nozzles near the monster’s tail. It moved in gaspy jerks as it circled lower and lower. A long-snouted reptilian head weaved atop a snakelike neck. Two yellow eyes stared downward, and needlelike teeth flashed in the pale green sunlight. Ideally equipped for skimming silently across the treetops hundreds of meters above and picking off careless arboreals, the sky-devil found itself drawn to something deep in the well. Three-meter wings left it little room for maneuvering within that crude cylindrical gap, but it managed, circling, spiraling lower and lower in tight circles, examining each section of the green wall as it dropped.
Born sat very still on his branch, concealed behind a broad leaf taller than Losting, wrapped tight in his green cloak. The devil reached his level, circled, and passed on. Staying close to the branch, Born edged his way to the precipice once again. Far below he saw the scaled back and wings winding down toward the blue object. Eventually it reached bottom, folded its wings, and stopped. The devil walked clumsily on the blue surface, making its way awkwardly to the half-dome at the object’s apex. It poked at the globe with its toothed beak, stabbed again. Born could hear it yelling, a distant, muffled croak.
Another sound drifted up to him. One that penetrated above the normal din of comb vines and resonators and chattering chollakees. It was a human scream, and it came from somewhere near or in the object!
IV
BORN STARTED DOWNWARD WITHOUT thinking, plunging recklessly from branch to branch, shoulder muscles straining at the shock, taking meters at a jump. Ruumahum followed close behind. They were making enough noise to attract half the afternoon
forest predators, and the furcot told him as much. Wrapped in other thoughts, Born ignored the furcot’s warnings.
Once he nearly dropped square onto the back of a Chan-nock, the big tree-climbing reptile’s knobby back the perfect imitation of a tuntangcle vine as it lay stretched between the boles of two air-trees. Born’s foot hit the armored back. Instantly he was aware he had met flesh and not wood. But he was moving so fast he was meters below as the Channock whipped around to crush the interloper. Furious at missing its prey, the blunt snout swung round for a stab at Ruumahum. Not even pausing in his downward rush, the furcot stuck out a paw in passing and crushed the flat, arrowhead-shaped skull.
If Born had stopped to think about what he was doing, he might have fallen and hurt himself seriously. But he was traveling on instinct alone. Unhindered, his reflexes did not fail him. Only when Ruumahum put on an extra burst of speed, got in front of him, and slowed down, did Born become conscious of how fast he had been moving. He nearly dislocated a shoulder as he slowed to a halt behind the furcot. Both were panting heavily.
“Why stop now, Ruumahum. We—”
The furcot growled softly. “Are here,” he muttered. “Air-devil is near. Listen.”
Born listened. He had been so excited he had nearly shot past the level at which the blue thing lay. Now he could hear the horrible half-laugh, half-coughing of the devil and a scratching sound, a sound similar to the one Reader produced by running his nails over the axe blade during the invocations. Then he was right about the composition of the blue thing! He had no time to bask in his own brilliance. A moan sounded now, not a scream; but it was no less human.
“There are people there and the sky-devil is after them,” Born whispered. “But what people live on the Fifth Level? All persons known live on the Third or Second.”
“I do not know,” Ruumahum answered. “I sense much strangeness here. Strangeness and newness.”