Dancing in Dreamtime (40 page)

Graham watched uneasily as his brother shuffled in a lumbering, triumphant dance.

Twice in the night Carl wriggled out of his sleeping bag, hissed, “Relax, I got this,” disappeared outside, and in a few minutes returned, breathing heavily. Come daylight, Graham found two ring-watchers sprawled near the entrance of the tent.

“They got too curious,” Carl explained. “I could hear the pack of them nosing around. These two crossed the flare.”

Graham set his mouth. Death, always more death. This, too, he must absorb. He turned over one of the carcasses, revealing a cluster of many-jointed legs surrounding a hole that was lined with spikes, a lethal opening large enough to swallow a man's head. A knobby skeleton bulged under the pelt, which was silvered like that of an aged gorilla. It smelled like rotting fruit.

“Pretty, eh?” said Carl. “I figured you'd want a look.”

“Did they attack you?”

“Not what you'd call attack. Moseyed up. Wouldn't stop. I hit them with about the right dose for a dog. And thump, down they went. Not a kick.” He grasped one of the ponderous sacks of bones with gloved hands. “Here, grab hold of this thing.”

They heaved the bodies out through the barrier of light, which still blazed yellow against the orange dawn. While the brothers ate breakfast, the humpbacked scavengers dismembered the carcasses, then withdrew under the shadowy roots, gorged and swaying, leaving behind only a solitary bone.

“Six minutes flat,” said Carl. “Hide and hair and giblets.”

“I'm going to look at what they left.” Putting on gloves and slipping out through the light-barrier, Graham squatted beside the bone. It was hammer-shaped, the color of old piano keys, dimpled with sockets. He lifted it gingerly, testing its weight and hardness.
Suddenly there was a frantic scuffling and a wave of scavengers came rushing at him and tumbled him flat under their swarming weight. The bone turned in his grasp and jerked violently away. A moment later he was sitting up dazed, Carl beside him with gun at the ready, and not a beast in sight.

“You hurt?” Carl asked.

Graham shivered. He felt as though twenty fists had landed on him, but landed gently, as if tapping a message. “No, no.”

“Did they bite you?”

“I don't think so.”

The brothers inspected Graham's suit, but could find no rips in the tough fabric.

“God damn,” said Carl, “they were all over you before I even saw them. I thought they'd tear you to pieces.”

Rubbing his neck, remembering the furious weight, the bone twisting from his grasp, Graham said, “I bet they could have, if they'd wanted to. But all they seemed to want was that bone.”

“What in hell for?”

“Who knows?” said Graham, his voice quavery.

“Don't mess with their booty, man, that's the lesson.”

“Maybe they won't eat anything unless it's already dead.”

“Which is what I figured you were. Lunch meat.”

They broke camp in silence. Pathfinding came hard for Graham that day. The more he thought about the attack, the more his fear tainted every other sensation. Again and again he found himself at a standstill, up against a river or thicket or swamp, uncertain how to proceed.

By mid-morning he realized he must overcome his dread and climb up into the canopy to get a fresh bearing on that mountain. Leaving his pack with Carl, he shinnied up a tree, grabbing vines
for handholds. A scampering broke out overhead, then receded. As he rose, the light grew brighter, and as he surfaced above the web of limbs the full dazzle of daylight made him squint.

“See anything?” Carl shouted.

Graham blinked water from his eyes. “Oh, my Lord, yes.” Strewn with those blue and yellow flower-like growths, the canopy spread away in undulating plains. In the distance, dark, shaggy herds were grazing, with here and there a lone beast skulking around the edges. He thought of bison and wolves. The only break in that rolling prairie was the mountain, gleaming against the horizon. “There it is,” he called down to Carl. “We're right on course.”

“Good. Now move it,” Carl hollered. “I've got company.”

Before Graham could put away the binoculars, from below came the stungun's whine. He gave a shout and scrambled down through the branches and hit the ground with pistol drawn.

A few paces away, Carl stooped over a gray hairless mass of flesh. “Check it out, bro,” he said. “Another ugly brute.”

Graham studied the body. It had a bear's bulk and a segmented torso, with a dozen or more legs jutting from the sides, each one ending in a pad of flesh as broad as a dinner plate. The skin was ash-gray mottled with black, like the tree bark, and it was perforated with hundreds of slits that oozed a sweet-smelling liquid.

“What are these holes for, you figure?” Carl pried open one of the slits with his knife.

Graham winced. “Don't. I've seen enough.” He scanned the woods. “Was it alone?”

“Naw, they're all over.” Carl stood up from the ashen body. “See the bulges halfway up that tree? Greasy shine on them? The whole bunch came at me. Not fast, kind of like trucks in low gear, grinding along. When I nailed this one, the others split.”

The descent from the flowered canopy, with its glimpse of the shining mountain, to this grisly scene left Graham shaken. He slid the pistol into its holster, without fastening the flap.

“Come on,” said Carl, hefting his pack. “I don't expect they'll stay scared for long.”

All that afternoon the ashen creatures trailed them, slinking along the fretwork of limbs. The brothers made good time, because Graham now had a clear sense of direction. But no matter how fast they walked, the shadow-creepers—as Carl named the beasts—never fell behind.

That night, relieved to be inside the tent with the light-shield arching overhead, Graham said, “Maybe they're just curious.”

“Want to interview us, you think? Or see how we taste?” said Carl from his sleeping mat. “You volunteer to find out?”

“No, but I can't help thinking—”

“Thinking what?”

“About those scavengers, the way they snatched that bone, then let me go. Like they were being careful not to hurt me.”

Carl laughed. “You didn't smell dead enough.”

“But what about those others—the ring-watchers and branch-weavers and that gray bag of guts you shot. If they meant to kill us, why did they creep up in full view instead of charging? Maybe they're only trying to drive us away, or find out what sort of animals we are.”

“Next time I'll give them a questionnaire,” Carl said.

“You don't hear what I'm saying,” Graham muttered.

“I hear, I hear. You're saying, don't snuff the bastards. But I was only trying to stun them. How was I to know they'd die so easily? A little poof, and their circuits go haywire.”

“That's the problem. That's what eats me up. We don't know anything. We're pig-ignorant. We never stay in any wild zone long
enough to learn the first thing about it. We're always pushing on, out and back, soaking up new sensations.”

Carl fixed him with an amused glare. “You tired of the wilderness, nature boy? Want to pack it in? Live in the cities?”

“No, it's just—”

“You rather live in a box, ride around in a box, work in a box? Count me out, chum. I want to keep seeing things I never saw before, go places nobody's ever been.”

“But every time we land, we're like babies waking up, without names for anything. It's all a buzzing, swirling mystery.”

Carl sat up on his mat and said earnestly, “If you couldn't budge until you understood everything, you'd never get out of bed. You'd sure never get away from Earth. Never see that roadway of limbs up there, or your white mountain.”

“Or the butchered animals.”

“What's the big deal? A few beasts dead?”

“There's more of them every trip,” Graham said sharply.

“That's because we keep going to wilder places. What do you expect, a picnic?” Carl seized a boot and slammed it on the tent floor. “All you've got to worry about is filling your senses and watching the trail. Fine. I couldn't do it. I'd get lost in an hour. But I've got to protect your ass. You're the star. I'm the bodyguard.” He loomed over Graham, gesturing with the boot. “And if you wandered off by yourself, something would get you, no matter what your tender heart tells you about the wilds.”

Graham did not answer. He stared through narrowed eyes at the luminous barrier that arched above the camp. Would it keep out beasts? He lulled himself to sleep by summoning up his vision of that pale, tranquil mountain.

Whenever the brothers paused for a rest, for a drink, for Graham to climb up through the canopy to scope the mountain, the beasts closed in. What did they want? There was no way to find out, no language for putting the question, no time for asking. Usually Carl shot the boldest animal, and the others drew back. Sometimes he had to shoot several. The scavengers, following in droves, pounced on the kills.

“I don't see how they can still be hungry,” said Graham on the morning of the third day, watching a band of scavengers at work on a carcass, remembering how the pack had swarmed over him with that odd gentleness.

“I expect there are fresh ones coming along all the time.” Carl watched the ferocious feast with stony eyes. “The news gets out through the woods. Like sharks sniffing blood.”

Despite the frequent kills, the number of pursuers kept swelling. At night the beasts were visible outside the light-dome as a shadowy crowd encircling the camp. They might have been ambassadors gathering for a parley, or warriors defending territory. Or like moths they might simply have been drawn to light. Staring out at them, the brothers rarely spoke, and then only in whispers. Graham kept doing his job, soaking up sensations, remembering the path, but understanding little.

“So much for your peaceable kingdom,” said Carl, after a day of almost constant battles.

There was nothing Graham could answer to that. Weary and appalled, he was trying to hold himself together, keep the doors of perception open, until he reached the mountain and could turn
back. The glistening peak seemed so out of keeping with this dark and murderous jungle that it had become in his imagination a kind of mecca, a reassurance.

On the fourth day they encountered an even larger beast. They could hear it coming, for its weight set off a sharp crackle through the woven branches as it swung ponderously toward them. Its body was like a huge jackknife with pincers at each end, the sullen red skin gleaming as if smeared with oil. It held on by one set of pincers, snapped forward until the other end could seize hold, and so whipped along like a trapeze artist. In face of this newcomer, the lesser animals beat a hectic retreat.

“Trouble with a capital T,” said Carl, shrugging free of the backpack and bracing himself to fire.

For once he was too slow on the trigger. The creature swung over them and dropped, its body spreading like a fan, heavy ribs unfurling. Graham leaped clear. Carl fired a burst, and was smashed to the ground and buried under a thick blanket of flesh.

Graham cried out, and began tugging furiously at the greasy hulk. But the muscle was rigid, the ribs would not give. Too heavy, too damn heavy. The thing was dead weight. Again he shouted. No sound from Carl, no motion, a lump under the smothering blanket. Spots of panic danced in Graham's eyes. He drew his knife and began chopping a hole through the stinking flesh, hacking away until he could see a boot. Then cautiously, to avoid cutting his brother, he sliced the muscle and pried the ribs apart. Carl was stunned, but he managed with a tug from Graham to crawl out through the raw sopping hole.

The brothers caught loud gobs of breath without speaking. Then Carl raised his battered face. “You can put that away.”

Graham stared at the fist holding the knife as if it belonged to a stranger. The knuckles were still blanched from the fierceness of his grip. His sleeve was smeared black with the creature's juices. Slowly he relaxed his fingers, cleaned the blade against his pants leg, and sheathed it again. A darkness of utter revulsion came over him. “Let's turn back,” he said, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice.