“Turnover,” the taflak commented as if he fought for his life every day in this manner, “goes as deep as where the leaves begin, about thirteen hundred body lengths down. Further below, in the eternal darkness, something which is the essence of ugliness reigns in their place. Perhaps this is what we disturbed, and it disturbed the rats. Be quiet, now, my Stranger friends. It is not ever good to speak of such things, and here and now is a worse place and time than most.”
Mac looked down between his feet, imagining the black and horror-filled depths below them, and shuddered.
Something warm, furry, and fast-moving dropped onto his smartsuited shoulders.
Heart racing, he seized it and twisted, feeling bones crackle before he threw it away.
Sweating all over, Mac ordered his heart to slow. He turned his attention forward, curious about how Middle C was creating the short-lived tunnel they moved through.
The taflak was neither cutting nor boring his way through the vegetation. Instead, as he turned, his forward tentacle insinuated its way between the leaves, stems, and branches, feeling out a path of least resistance, while his pair of trailing tentacles, so quick-moving they blurred into one another, widened the spaces by tucking, almost weaving or braiding, the vegetation away into the walls.
On Earth—and on Sodde Lydfe, the boy guessed—such an arrangement would have been permanent. Here, it took the plants a few minutes to untangle themselves and resume their earlier position, or another which couldn’t be told apart from it.
Even some of the rats Middle C had braided into the vegetation would be able to return to their old, wild ways, as he didn’t take time to kill most of them.
Each in his own peculiar way, Middle C turning like an auger, Pemot tiptoeing on six three-toed feet, Mac shuffling along on his moss-shoes, the three trudged onward.
Dozens of hard-fought yards and hundreds of dead—or, at the least, inconvenienced—rats later, they came at long last to the dark at the end of the tunnel.
They were beneath the shadow of the hovercraft.
Chapter XXI: Well-Chosen Words
Burrowing up through the covering of leaves while Middle C and Mac did their best to keep the rats from bothering him, Pemot raised an arm and thrust a sensitized smartsuit finger up over the bullet-riddled fuselage of the inert machine.
He yanked it back down.
“Here’s where all our rats are coming from, gentlebeings.”
The lamviin whispered, rolling his large eyes upward, toward the hovercraft, as he did so. “They’re flattened against the windows. The thing’s jammed to the scuppers with them!”
In the comical squeak which served his species as a whisper, Middle C wanted to know how Pemot could say that without—apparently—looking. Also, what scuppers were.
Keeping his own voice low, Mac explained the various optical capabilities of smartsuits, which could be programmed to look like weather-beaten jeans or any other kind of clothing. The more accomplished and expensive models could also receive light on any portion of their surfaces and retransmit it to the inside of the hood, which Pemot had pulled up over his eyes before surveying the car.
Mac also confessed he didn’t know what scuppers were, annoyed that an alien should have a better command of the English language than he, a native speaker, had.
“Never mind that,” Pemot insisted. “We’ve got to get those rats cleared out. Any ideas?”
Middle C admitted he had none.
“Unfortunately, I do,” Mac offered, hesitating, “but I sure don’t like it much.”
He told them what it was.
They didn’t like it much, either, but, lacking weapons appropriate for dealing with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of voracious rats—Pemot’s pistol would do until he ran out of ammunition, Mac’s was too powerful, Middle C’s spears were the best they had, but even he admitted they were inadequate—it was the only idea they had.
This time, when Pemot stuck a rubberized finger up through the leaves, it was from beneath the machine. This one, although it was an electrostatic impeller model without fans or other moving parts, was an early example of its kind. It still retained the deep, skirted plenum cavity and wide-mouthed topside intake funnel of a propellor-powered hovercraft, for much the same reason many automobiles continued to look like carriages much longer than they had to.
The cavity was deserted: nothing down here to eat, Pemot theorized, and nothing else to interest the rats. The three companions climbed and burrowed back toward the surface of the leaves, taking care to be as quiet as they could about it.
Sifting in through the translucent hull, the light beneath the disabled machine was dim and filtered, like that of a shaded greenhouse. It was so hot inside—or damp—even the lamviin had trouble breathing. Pointing upward, toward the metallic mesh which would have been a coarse air filter on a propellored hovercraft, but which, in this one, constituted the primary lifting mechanism, Mac got a boost from Pemot, seized the woven wires above his head, and began cutting through them with the lamviin’s saw-backed survival knife, assisted from below—the boy had to be watchful to keep both thumbs—by Middle C, the lamviin, and the taflak’s pair of long-bladed spears.
In a few moments, the mesh had been opened, and they were standing on top of the machine.
“All together now!” Pemot’s voice was no longer soft. “One, two, three!”
He and Mac and Middle C began jumping up and down on the battle-scorched body of the car, screaming as loud as they could and banging on it with whatever implements they had. The hovercraft bounced on its resilient skirt, sinking a trifle deeper into the leaves. A dark, furry, squeaking torrent issued from the broken windows, vibrating the machine as the thousands—or, as it seemed to Mac, millions—of rats it was composed of jostled one another where the frame constricted the flow, and leaving a thick, rich, nauseating smell in its wake.
Mac’s eyes watered. He coughed and went on jumping, landing hard on both heels, firing his plasma gun into the air, burst upon burst. Even in full daylight the five megawatt flash was dazzling, and he felt deafened by its sharp-edged roar.
Pemot’s eyes watered. He sneezed through all six nostrils and continued jumping, as well—six feet to Mac’s two—banging on the already dented roof as he did so with the butt end of the spear he’d borrowed from Middle C.
Middle C’s eye turned a slight yellow, but, although he only had one leg to jump with, he followed Pemot’s example, relying on his other spear and the end of his spear thrower to contribute to the terrifying racket they were trying to make.
They went on with the performance until they were all three hoarse and exhausted, the hovercraft had sunk to its scuppers—whatever they might be—in the Sea of Leaves, and what they hoped was the last rat had squeaked with indignation at its tormentors, lashed its pink and naked tail, and abandoned the damaged car.
Mac sat down on the roof of the Trekmaster, elbows on his knees, trying to catch his breath. Refilling its reservoir, he kept his Borchert & Graham handy against the return of the rats, having decided “too much gun” was a contradiction in terms.
Pemot and the taflak rested as well, but as the minutes passed and they regained strength, they recalled more trouble was on the way and their time was limited.
This time it was Middle C who preceded them into harm’s way—they seemed, with no particular design in mind, to be taking turns at it—both razor-edged spears poised. Pemot followed with the taflak’s thrower raised like a club.
Mac followed the lamviin with a pistol in each hand, hoping he wouldn’t have to use either one. “Too much gun” or not, he realized his own would be about as useful in an enclosed space as an atomic flyswatter, and Pemot’s seemed to have been constructed upside down, to fit his peculiar three-fingered hand.
The Sodde Lydfan, having an appendage to spare, turned the recessed metal T-handle in one of the Trekmaster’s gull-wing doors and waited a moment with the panel open a few inches for any lingering rodents to depa
rt. When none took the opportunity, he lifted the door the rest of the way and let Middle C pass by.
The Preble Trekmaster was a fair-sized hovercraft, intended for rough country and bad weather, the Confederate equivalent of an ancient four-wheel Rover or Landcruiser. Between the doors lay a cargo area behind the passenger seats, with a flat floor like one of the antique English taxicabs which sometimes carried tourists around one shopping deck of the Tom Edison Maru, or the back of a small truck. Although the taflak and the lamviin weren’t cramped, Mac, the tallest of the three, didn’t have quite enough space to stand up in.
Inside the hovercraft, everything edible—by rat standards, which meant everything softer than aluminum—had been stripped out by the gnawing teeth of the thousands of rodents which they’d driven away. The floor carpet had been eaten down to perforated chrome-magnesium and fiberglass. The wall fabric and headliner had vanished. Even the four seats were no more than skeletons of steel.
And on one of them sat a skeleton of bone.
“MacBear…” Pemot’s voice was as gentle as he could make it. “Was this your grandfather?”
Mac looked across the seat backs at the skeleton.
It was clean and polished. Here and there a tooth-mark showed where the rats had been trying to get to the marrow. No doubt they’d been interrupted by the noise on the roof. Still held together by their drying tendons, the bones looked like a schoolroom demonstration model. Nothing whatever remained to identify them.
“I don’t know.” The boy’s answer wavered, his stomach feeling uncertain. “I—hold on, what’s this?”
He leaned forward and picked up the tattered spine of a hard-backed book. Nothing was left of the pages, but the rats hadn’t cared for the plastic cover.
“The Confession of Frater Jimmy-Earl. It’s my grandfather, all right—Dalmeon Geanar.”
Inside himself, Mac wondered, not for the first time, why he couldn’t feel anything: love, hate, sadness, glee. It was as if all of this were happening to someone else, someone—
“Hey! Where’s his smartsuit? Has it been eaten? Do you suppose they got to the Brightsuit?”
In the same instant, Mac felt guilty for thinking about anything but his grandfather, who’d died a horrible death. He shook his head. What else should he have been thinking about? Dalmeon Geanar had been a criminal, at least twice a murderer, and had gotten everything he deserved. He—Mac—had come here to rectify one of the old man’s crimes, and this was all that mattered.
Middle C reached out with a spear butt and tapped the side of a long crate lying between the front and rear seats. Preoccupied with the remains of his grandfather, Mac hadn’t noticed it before. It, too, had been gnawed and nibbled around the corners and along the edges but was otherwise intact. Perhaps it had been impregnated with some repellant or preservative when it had been warehoused by Laporte Paratronics, Ltd., or even at A. Hamilton Spoonbender’s museum.
It was, in absolute fact and without a doubt, the same crate he’d seen the workmen take out of their plant-filled Lindsay Arms apartment aboard the Tom Edison Maru.
Padlocked cables had been wrapped around the crate the last time Mac had seen it. They were gone, now, although he doubted the rats had eaten them. The seams of the container looked as though they’d been sonic welded. Mac borrowed one of Middle C’s spears and set to work, trying to pry one end open. He was soon joined by the curious taflak, but Pemot declined when invited to take part.
“If I recall aright, MacBear, the man fancied himself a religious being, did he not?”
Worried more about the Brightsuit and the safety of the immediate neighborhood—those rats wouldn’t stay away forever—than Pemot’s memory, the boy paused and scratched his head, wondering what his lamviin friend was leading up to. “Yeah, I guess so.”
Pemot blinked affirmative. “I thought as much, and it seemed to me simple respect for the beliefs of another sapient being requires that we acknowledge those beliefs in some manner.”
Mac frowned. “Even when those beliefs are stupid?”
Pemot handed Middle C the extra spear he’d been carrying. “I daresay it would be the decent thing, before we go on, at least to utter a few well-chosen words over what the animals have left of him, wouldn’t you agree?”
Mac shook his head. “Whatever Dalmeon Geanar believed, I’m afraid he neglected that section of my upbringing. If any words should be said here, Pemot, you’ll have to do the saying.”
“Nor, sretiiv Pah,” the lamviin replied, “did such matters occupy a high priority in my own education. On Sodde Lydfe, particularly in Great Foddu, we’re still involved in some controversy over Ascensionism—what you Earth folk call ‘evolution by natural selection,’ with my family taking the part of the Huxleys.” The lamviin chuckled.
“If only my Uncle Mav could see me now. Nevertheless, I shall give it my best.”
Pemot removed his monocle, polished it with a handkerchief, and replaced it. He clasped all three hands together in a complicated-looking knot, closed his eyes, and spoke. “Doehodn: Yl uai’bo sevot sro weyt sa siidetniimeso sryn, giidyso fo, vedo al sro wikmynrod—Y gymm noth uai et eisapdewroh mekom sa wis yt sro liidats al uaid kaav.”
He opened his eyes. “Na faso ys ko.”
Mac cleared his throat, grateful he didn’t have to wipe his eyes, as well. There were limits, after all, to how forgiving a person ought to be for his own good.
“Thank you, Pemot. Maybe you’re right. But I’ve been listening to you whenever you spoke Fodduan, building up a translation file in my implant. If you were going to say something religious, how come I didn’t hear you mention Pah?”
“This is intriguing,” mused the lamviin. He indicated the dashboard of the vehicle, where a steel-doored glove compartment with a combination lock had been retrofitted by the rental company for the convenience of their tourist customers and the security of their valuables.
Mac shrugged. It was a common practice in the fleet and all over the Confederate galaxy. The boy asserted as much.
Pemot splayed his hands in a gesture of contradiction. “Notice, however, these wires, leading from the door edge of the compartment into the telecom panel. Have you ever seen anything quite like them?”
Mac shook his head. He hadn’t noticed the wires—a lot was happening he didn’t notice. The insulation had been eaten from them, down to the braided, outer conductor, where the rats had stopped. Against the dashboard of the hovercraft, similarly denuded of paint or any other finish, they’d been almost invisible.
Pemot pried at the glove compartment door until Mac was afraid he was going to break Middle C’s spear point. The lamviin, however, seemed to know the limits of taflak metallurgy. The compartment lock popped and the door fell open.
Inside lay Dalmeon Geanar’s portable radio transceiver, a museum piece with crude alterations to make it run on a compact modern power cell. Beside it, connected to the old-time walkie-talkie with a fine cable which still retained its insulation was a palm-sized bubble recorder, its minuscule pilot lamp still burning.
Pemot reached in and flipped a switch, routing the recording through a speaker.
“…has always made inevitable.
“I’ll connect this to both the electronic and paratronic communications systems and seal it away from the vermin. I only pray it produces the effect I wish for it.”
It was the voice of Mac’s grandfather, recorded on a memory bubble and programmed either to start when the compartment was opened or to repeat itself at intervals, and plugged into the hovercraft’s conventional ’com as well as the radio.
After a pause, it began again.
“This is Dalmeon Geanar speaking. I am treacherously attacked and mortally wounded. My machine’s disabled, proving once again the folly of relying on technology or material possessions of any kind. I resign myself that I’ll not survive this night. Something evil and hungry in the grass is stirring, coming to get me.
“This, therefore, constitutes my last
will and testament.
“To any sapient being within hearing of these signals, including the Hooded Seven, for whom I feel nothing but contempt, I leave the Brightsuit, here aboard this vehicle with me now. Whoever wins the fight to keep it can have it, and welcome to it. It’s worth its weight or more in precious metals, a fitting token of that self-destructive insanity which compels men to throw away their spiritual well-being in the pursuit of profane knowledge and illusory progress.
“I only regret I’ll not witness the hideous carnage which will result from this broadcast. Those of you who suffer in it will know I’ve had my revenge.
“To the grandson who betrayed me, Berdan Geanar Bear, if he lives, I leave all the other worldly goods remaining to me, knowing full well that, like his grandmother, father, and mother before him, he’s already been corrupted by a preoccupation with the trivialities of the mundane universe, and that, by my last act, perhaps I can hasten the undoing which his bad blood has always made inevitable.
“I’ll connect this to both the electronic and paratronic communications systems and seal it away from the vermin. I only pray it produces the effect I wish for it.”
Pemot shut the recorder off before it could start again. He reached for the dashboard panel. “Well, at least we’ve half a chance now of summoning help. Since this vehicle’s paratronic telecom served Geanar’s purposes, it should—good heavens!”
Sparks flew from the ’com as missing insulation, eaten away by the rats, allowed the device to short and burn.
“So much for that idea,” Mac told him, “and so much for summoning help. Too bad they pulled the ’com gear out of the Brightsuit, but they did, and that’s that.” Mac shook his head.
“Well, I guess there’s no need to ask where all our trouble’s coming from anymore. Surely the First Wavers have telecommunicators somewhere, of some kind. In any case, the word’s out. Too bad about your radio, too. We might’ve had an earlier warning.”
Without bothering to turn around, the trilaterally-symmetrical being reversed his steps, heading away from the skeleton and the rat-stripped seats toward the door, where he peered out of the wrecked hovercraft, back toward his sand-sled.