Loath to let such a fine meal escape but unable to get past the murderous flying creature circling protectively above it, the rest of the flock gradually fell away, letting wind fill their wings to lift them higher as they sought easier prey elsewhere upstream.
It was not necessary for Flinx to say thanks aloud. His constant companion could read his emotions even if he could not quite decipher hers. It was also possible that she recognized the significance of the smile that now transformed his expression. Turning away from the patrolling minidrag, he looked down at the Tlel he had dragged clear of the skimmer’s rapidly filling interior. Ignorant of the location of Tlel lungs—or even if the natives of Gestalt possessed analogous organs of respiration—he could not tell if she was still breathing. Beneath the sodden, transparent upper garment, however, her torso was still warm. The feeding appendages beneath her jawline quivered like semi-invalid eels. He hesitated at gripping her cilia lest in their chilled condition he inadvertently damage one of the delicate digits.
His attention diverted by a rising roar, he looked up- and downriver. The sound arose from an as yet unseen source. It took him a moment to identify it. Alas, it was not the rumble of an approaching rescue craft. Instead, the source of the thunder was entirely natural.
Unable to gain a more elevated perspective, he could not tell the height of the waterfall the helpless skimmer was fast approaching. From the increasingly deafening rumble he estimated it to be at least twice the height of the worst rapid they had so far run. That being the best-case scenario, he knew it was time to abandon the skimmer and strike for the nearest shore no matter how difficult the route or inhospitable the potential landfall.
At first he started to slip his right arm around Bleshmaa’s neck, much as he might have done in preparing to tow a human. After taking into consideration the extreme slenderness and unknown carrying capacity of that particular Tlel body part, however, he decided instead to try a chest carry. Fortunately, his arm was long enough to reach around the entire upper portion of the escort’s conical shape and beneath both long arms.
In the river these trailed beside her like seaweed. By now he was too numb, mentally as well as physically, for the cold water to affect him. He was less worried about becoming chilled than he was about growing drowsy. Increasing lethargy would be a sure sign that hypothermia was beginning to set in.
Though he swam hard for the heavily vegetated shore, the force of the current increased as the river drew closer to the falls. For every meter he gained shoreward, he felt he was slipping twice that far downstream. The roar of the still-unseen cataract was loud enough now to reverberate in his ears. Trying not to think of how high it might be or what unyielding rocks lay jumbled at its base, he concentrated on kicking and paddling.
Azure undergrowth, dark and promising, grew steadily larger in his vision. His grip on the trailing, dragging body of Bleshmaa was so tight that his fingers had cramped into a hook. Judging by the unrelenting thunder of it, the threatening cataract was very near now. But so was the shore.
The physical feeling of something giving way as he banged into and off a submerged rock was matched by a sudden lightness. Momentarily bewildered, he saw that he still had his unbreakable grip on the female Tlel. Something else had been lost to the implacable current, then. With a start, he realized what it was. His service belt was gone, ripped off by the formidable flow. Belt, pistol, communit, firstaid apparatus and medicinals, emergency food rations—everything gone, gone, all gone, swept away in the dark, fast-moving water like a dead serpent. Without the aid of the belt’s gear he had little hope of survival, let alone rescue.
Going after it would mean abandoning Bleshmaa to the current and to the approaching cascade. Furiously treading water, he debated for perhaps ten seconds. By then it was too late. The belt had surely been swept beyond immediate recovery now. Maybe he could retrieve it later, somewhere downstream. It might be rolled and pushed to shore. More likely, he realized despondently, it would wrap itself around an underwater rock or snag, never to greet the anxious eyes of its owner again.
He resumed digging water. If he didn’t make it to shore very soon, the matter of his belt’s destiny would be rendered moot. He and Bleshmaa would expire within the river, or go over the looming falls to be broken on the rocks below. Only Pip would know of the time and manner of their passing, and be left to mourn.
His flailing right hand contacted something hard and unyielding. No attacking predator this time, but a protruding branch, so dark blue it was almost purple. He grabbed for it gratefully.
It pulled away from him.
His one exhausted thought was that he had no time for any more surprises. A second branch or root bobbed in the water slightly farther downstream. As he drifted toward it, he reached out anew. For a second time, the promise of safety drew away from him. Some kind of instinctive, reactive defense mechanism on the part of the parent plant, he found himself thinking, unable to keep from analyzing his surroundings even with death stalking him by, literally, degrees. Maybe the river was full of aquatic herbivores that liked to gnaw on water-loving tree limbs. Maybe, the inopportune line of thought logically continued, the river was full of creatures that liked to gnaw on other things.
The realization caused him to expend his remaining energy in a sudden burst of effort. Exerting all his strength, he kicked hard, simultaneously paddling frantically with his free hand. The effort thrust him forward through the water just enough to push his chest out on land. The fragment of beach was cold, it was hard, and it most certainly was not dry, but it was solid beneath him. Half pulling, half kicking, he willed himself out of the river, dragging the dead alien weight of his escort behind him. Water sloughed away from his body, leaving behind only the chill that was its shadow.
Rolling over, he sat up, breathing hard. Settling on a bush nearby, Pip watched her master intently. Faint burbling noises came from Bleshmaa. He hoped she hadn’t swallowed a lot of water, because he did not have the faintest idea how to go about performing emergency resuscitation on a Tlel. After sitting for a while as his thermotropic clothes slowly shifted away the tiny beads of water adhering to them, he crawled over to sit closer to his unconscious escort. If not exactly warm and dry, neither was he in imminent danger of freezing to death. Silently, he thanked the unseen, unknown manufacturers of the high-quality attire he wore. In ancient times, he knew, anyone who had undergone a similar icy submersion would have perished as the primitive fabric of their water-soaked garments turned to a frozen cocoon around them.
Damp and cold, his translator necklace still hung around his neck. That was fortunate, because his weary brain was having enough trouble forming coherent thoughts in his native terranglo. For the moment, at least, venturing anything in the throat-twisting Tlelian language was beyond him.
“We’re clear of the river,” he murmured to her. Only when he spoke did it strike him that there was absolutely no other sound to be heard in the immediate vicinity of the beach beyond the erratic snarl of the nearby waterfall. “How do you feel?”
“Not—gud.” The words emerged feebly, like a failed effort. “Something brokebroke—inside.”
He would have disregarded propriety even if he had known the physiological intricacies of the Tlel. Taking his time, he examined her from flat head to broad feet. At first nothing seemed amiss, or missing. Pulling aside the battered poncho-like outer garment, he lifted up the right half of the transparent vest beneath. That was when he saw that her entire left side had been caved in. In the absence of blood he had not noticed it earlier.
“Excuse me” was all he could think to mumble as he began, ever so gently, to feel of the flesh beneath the short, glass-like fur. Her skin quivered under his touch. He could not tell for certain, but the partial collapse of the upper body cavity seemed quite extensive. Maybe even, he told himself, too extensive. He sat back, gazing down at her.
“Sit me up,” she wheezed weakly.
“I don’t know if that’s such a good
—”
“Upup.” When she started trying to push herself into a sitting position, bracing her weight with arms that threatened to give way at any second, he leaned forward to help her.
She sat that way, staring. First at the forest, then at the sky. She asked questions. Some of them he was able to answer; others he could not. A number of them had to do with which way the river into which they had crashed was running. After a while, she raised one arm and pointed. All the manipulative cilia were lined up and pressed together to form a single thick digit.
“That way. Nearest civilization lies…that way. Yu go fur help. I cannot walk. Will stay here and wait yu return.”
She did not know about the lost service belt, he realized. How could he tell her that without it and the equipment it held, his chances of reaching anything remotely resembling civilization, much less in time to return and save her, were minuscule? Not that he intended to leave her, anyway. She was being more than disingenuous if she thought that in her present injured condition she could survive the forest for more than a few days. He started to remind her of the obvious.
She did not respond. When he put a hand on her upper right arm and squeezed, she still did not react. His next breath was long and drawn out. Surviving the forest was not something she would have to worry about. She would not, in fact, have to worry about anything any longer. She could wait for his return without trepidation.
She had no eyes to close, but he noted that her formerly moist and bright eyeband had both dimmed and dried out.
A weight settled on his shoulder. Seeking warmth, Pip had left her bush. Pulling his collar out away from his skin, he waited while she slithered down under his inner shirt. Her flesh was cold at first, but warmed quickly.
He recalled the nature of the rugged, forbidding country they had overflown before they had been attacked. High mountains, sheer precipices, raging rivers, ice and snow, alien forest inhabited by hungry predators, and who knew what else. He had nothing left in the way of equipment except his translator, which would not help him in dealing with famished carnivores. He had that, and Pip, he reminded himself. Pondering his situation, he decided that any reasonable person would concur that he had no chance of getting out of this alive.
Certainly not if he continued to squat by the riverside feeling sorry for himself, he mused. Mother Mastiff would have been appalled. He could almost hear her berating him for such fatalism. Berating him, and boxing his ears. He promptly proceeded to do something else he thought he could not do. He smiled.
It was a start.
Climbing to his feet, he considered his surroundings. Cold, inhospitable, growing dark, starting to snow lightly. Pink snow. He needed warmth, hospitality, light, shelter from the harsh weather. He would not find it here, muttering to himself and bemoaning his misfortune. “Therefore,” he declared aloud, “I had better get moving.”
He started hiking in a southwesterly direction, as Bleshmaa had recommended. Very quickly she faded into and became one with the pink snow and blue growths behind him. Soon the forest swallowed her up, and she then was gone altogether.
CHAPTER 7
If the great northern Gestaltian forest had seemed quiet by day, the nocturnal silence bordered on smothering. Before daylight vanished completely, Flinx managed to raise a feeble palisade of fallen branches and clumps of an odd, thorny bush the color of lapis that gave off a disconcerting scent of burned meat when he pulled it out of the ground by its roots. Settling himself back against the tree he had chosen to serve as the rear wall of his temporary shelter, he ruminated that he would already be dead of hypothermia if not for the thermosensitive clothing that not only kept him warm but by now had almost dried itself out. How long the heavily stressed specialty garb would continue to do so under such difficult conditions he did not know.
While in the utter absence of light he could see very little, his singular Talent allowed him to perceive a great deal. Though largely devoid of sound, the forest that surrounded him and Pip was raucous with the ragged, rampant, primitive emotional broadcasts of creatures anxious to eat and those desperate to avoid being eaten. Less intrusive than the more powerful, fully formed emotions of sentient beings, these primal transmissions nevertheless generated a soft buzz in his brain that was impossible to ignore. The occasional brighter flash of shock or surprise was easily recognizable even though the species involved were alien to him. They invariably indicated something about to be killed or devoured.
Thanks to his unique ability, he could sense presences all around him where any others of his kind would have been left literally in the dark. The same was not true for the Tlel, however, or for many of the creatures that inhabited the forest. In the absence of light their individual electrical fields, or flii, would stand out clearly to any creature possessing the ability to sense them. Including his own, he realized. From time spent as a childhood thief he knew how to move silently to avoid being heard, and later years had taught him how to utilize whatever camouflage was available to conceal himself from sight, but how did one veil one’s personal electrical field? Certainly not with branches, or piles of snow, or thick clothing. Albeit to a lesser extent, Pip must also be generating flii, he knew. Any Tlel engaged in a search for the downed skimmer should be able to locate them by identifying their distinctive alien emanations.
So, too, he realized, would prowling predators.
Snuggling back against the tree and its oddly spongy exterior, he wondered if one’s individual flii grew stronger or weaker in proportion to exhaustion. If the former, then he ought to be broadcasting a signal all the way back to Tlossene. He was left pondering the possibility even as sleep overtook him.
He awoke warmer and more refreshed than he would have believed possible. Fatigue had certainly played a part in his sound sleep, but there was more to it than that. He was almost comfortable, as if some thoughtful passerby had draped him in a spare blanket or two. Blinking sleepily, he brushed at whatever was batting against his face. At first he thought it might be falling leaves. Then he remembered that the tree-like growths of Gestalt did not have leaves.
It was Pip, beating frantically against his forehead, nose, and cheeks, trying to rouse him from the comfortable but dangerous stupor into which he had fallen. Perceiving her concern, he smiled encouragingly as he projected a feeling of reassurance.
“Easy, long lady. Not only am I not dead, I’m feeling a little better, actually.” Scales gleaming metallically in the morning sun that was sifting down between the tall boles, she backed off. He moved to stand up.
He could not. No warm blankets enveloped him—but something else had.
It was the tree. He had spent an hour or so the previous evening wedging himself between the odd, rippling folds of its exterior, seeking as much shelter and warmth as such minimal sanctuary might provide. A Terran tree would have ignored his efforts. One on Midworld might have seeped acid to dissolve the interloper, or used flexible vines to throw him aside. Here on Gestalt, it seemed that at least one species of tall growth was able to respond accommodatingly.
During the night, folds of its blue-gray exterior had expanded up and around him. Like the irritant in an oyster, he was in real danger of becoming completely encased by the tree’s outermost layer. He might not be transformed into a pearl, but a burl was no better destiny.
It took a good half an hour of squirming and twisting to free himself. Had Pip not awakened him he might have eventually awoken only to find himself irrevocably locked within the tree, able to see, breathe, and scream but unable to free himself. Though the tree had reacted to his presence without malice, its actions would have resulted in a slow, horrible death nonetheless.
Brushing fragments of pithy, malleable fiber from his jacket and pants, he took stock of his surroundings. Sunlight bouncing off patches of snow forced him to squint. He had nothing with which to improvise a set of goggles to mute the glare. He struggled to remember. In what direction had the dying Bleshmaa pointed? Unable to recall exactly,
he settled on following the river. As he started out, he tried very hard not to think of hot food, hot drink, or, for that matter, anything that emitted heat.
Before the day was done, he had learned to avoid one especially graceful, willowy tree. As if slapdashed by an artist in a hurry, it flaunted streaks of bright yellow on its trunk. Instead of a crown of expanding branches, bush-like clusters popped out of its entire length. From these exploded feathery dots with barbed points. Pulling one after another from his clothing after passing too close, he suspected that they were not poisonous. Parasitical, but not poisonous. The projectiles contained the tree’s seeds, which it sought to plant in anything soft, organic, and motile. Had the growth detected him because of the heat he was generating, Flinx wondered, or by sensing his flii? It was a known fact that plants as well as certain animals were sensitive to electrical emanations.
In any case, the stickery seeds were harmless enough—so long as none struck him in the face.
Following the river and without any definitive destination in mind, he tried his best to keep descending. If nothing else, the lower he went, the warmer it would become. Eventually and with luck, a continuous descent might even lead him to a village, if not back to distant Sluuvaneh. Thinking of that community reminded him of poor Bleshmaa. He wondered how the Tlel mourned their departed.
Water was no problem, but if he did not find something to eat within a day or two, the inhabitants of that town would be given the opportunity to perform a unique double funeral.