Emile and the Dutchman (13 page)

IV

"River. A fucking
river
."
Inside the bubble helmet of his environment suit, the Dutchman, chewing on an unlit cigar, shook his head. "Ridiculous. Who ever heard of a forest canopying over a whole fucking river?"

Well, that explained the inversion layer—it was the cool air flowing over the river and its banks.

He turned up the floodlight and pointed it toward the river.

"I've seen ugly," the Dutchman said. "But this is fucking
ugly
."

Off to port, the river undulated gently in the light from the floods. The carpet of green microorganisms layering it was unbroken from bank to bank, and for as far upriver as our lights reached. The trunks of the trees rooted on the riverbanks were white as freshly cleaned bones. There seemed to be several different species, but the leaves of each were variations on the same theme: pale filaments waving from slightly thicker stalks.

By the time sunlight reached down here, it was about as strong as moonlight.

"
Look
at this place," the Dutchman's voice came over my headphones.

"I've got a bad feeling about this," I said, kicking at the mud against the scout's side.

"I've heard that before," the Dutchman said, standing beside me. "Biogel looks okay, though," he said, tapping at his compboard.

"Then you want to do without seals?"

The Dutchman snickered. "No, thanks." Biogel is, chemically, a very close approximation of human tissue, and it is subject to damage by almost all biological and chemical contaminants that can hurt you and me. But the key word is "almost."

"How are we fixed for takeoff?" he asked, as though the notion of fix-it-or-else was gone.

"Not good," I said, lifting myself up into the airlock and holding out a hand to help the Dutchman grunt his way in. "Not good at all."

The lock closed; the Dutchman punched the wash button and jets of blue soapy water, amply laced with biocides, dissolved our oversuits and washed them and the dirt away, leaving our E-suits and his compboard gleaming.

"Except from my point of view—the belly jets are badly clogged." If they were free, a light blasting might clear them, but with all the weight of the scout pressing them into the mud, trying to blast free was just asking, begging for a backblast explosion.

There was another choice. "I can flip up to vertical by blowing away the landing pods, and then fire off the main engine."

"Yeah? So what's the problem?" The soapy spray ended and the first rinse cycled quickly on. I felt like a pair of pants.

I closed my eyes as the UVs and IRs came on, killing, I hoped, any residual bugs from outside. Even through the insulation of the suit, I could feel the heat waves play across my skin.

"Well, Emmy?"

I shrugged. "I've only done it in practice; I don't know of anyone ever using the panic button to do it. I could check the program, I guess."

The inner door swung open, and we stepped into the scout, slapping away the residual water, removing our bubbles and backpacks and enjoying the smell of sweet, conditioned air.

"I see what you mean about how that's good for you. You just became about as expendable as the whole Team." The Dutchman considered it for a moment, patently thinking of trying to force Bar-El into going out. "Well, lucky for you the whole fucking Team's expendable; wouldn't want you to feel left out. How far away do you say we are from Second's shuttle?"

Since my hands were busy, I nodded to N'Damo; he tapped a query on his keyboard. "About eighty klicks from the scout. About two from the heat source."

Taking a bulb of coffee and putting it in the heater, I glanced at the screen. Right now, the only clear and present danger to us seemed to be dying of depression. Nothing was moving out there but the river's algae carpet and the occasional falling leaf. The birdlike creature I'd seen lived up above, where it was green and the sun shone very bright.

Donny opened the heater and handed me the bulb.

"Thanks." I sipped it. Presugared and precreamed, it tasted like it was predrunk. "You getting anything?"

Donny scratched his head. "Just a trace, off that way." He pointed; I glanced at the inertial compass. South.

He gestured vaguely. "Animals sound like that, sometimes."

"That where the heat source is, Emmy?"

"Emile. And yes, sir."

"All right, we'll take a walk that way. Have the skimmer—" The Dutchman stopped himself. The ground-effect skimmer with its mounted recoilless was a finicky piece of hardware; it was too likely to get its fans caught up in the muck outside. Besides, it was Bar-El's job to run the skimmer.

"Okay," the Dutchman said. "N'Damo, get three lifters and three cutters."

He thumbed the weapons case open and pulled out his forty-four and a utility belt filled with plastic quickloaders.

"I'll get them. Major," I said. "I want to get a pair of floating lamps and a sample kit."

"What do you want all that shit for?" The Dutchman took two oversuits out of the disposables locker and tossed me the smaller one.

"Because we don't have a Second Team report and I don't like working totally blind." I shrugged into the olive-drab oversuit, then reclaimed my pack and let Donny help me on with it.

"Fine. Long as you carry it."

My point.

I walked into the middle compartment. The curtains to Bar-El's cubicle were open, and he was stretched out on his bunk. He sat up and looked at me.

"This is ridiculous," he said.

"Get me three lifters," I said, walking to the blades locker and pulling out three wirecutters. They looked like broomsticks with griphandles, but when the wire was running along their sides, they could cut through brush and light wood as though it wasn't there.

Bar-El had the lifters ready when I got back to the airlock. Take one each monocrystal-iron lox and hydrogen tanks, add a rocket nozzle, belt controls, a packframe, and a few integrated circuits: instant, if very short-range, air power.

"I should not have let you talk me into this," he said, helping me into one, then handing me the other two packs. Theoretically, lifters are made to be used with E-suit backpacks and filters.

Theoretically.

"I didn't talk you into anything. You wanted to come." After a while, we sorted the lifter straps and the suit straps out and got everything reasonably tight. "Or maybe you didn't, eh?"

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing."

"You'd have had the most to lose if we Dropped this one, sir. Even more than Norfeldt. He already has a reputation, a TL ring. But you're a bit of a jinx, aren't you? On your First Assignment, you lost half your team."

"It happens. But it wasn't my team. Not exactly. Since we're into personal revelations, just maybe up there you were just plain scared." I jerked a thumb skyward. "Maybe you still are. But you're a hotshot weapons officer from Metzada who can break board and bones with your bare hands, and everyone you care about would shun you if you turned coward, so you can't afford to admit that you're just plain chickenshit
scared
of a new world, Akiva." I

I kicked the door that led to the compartment housing the skimmer with its recoilless. "Which is why I've got to slog through the mud instead of riding that. Doesn't exactly thrill me."

I walked back into the forward compartment. For a moment, I was sure that I'd played it right, and that he'd ask me to wait.

But the door closed, and he hadn't said anything^

Like the Dutchman says, don't make assumptions.

V

We had been working our way along the river, hacking a crude path in the direction my radiocompass indicated, when it struck me, and I chuckled.

"What's so fucking funny, Emmy?"

"Nothing." I shook my head. I had been thinking how, with the white trunks and rattling leaves, the twilight and diffuse shadows, this looked like a ghost forest . . . but that we were the spooks, clattering our way along the mucky forest floor.

It would have lost a lot in the telling, and it wasn't funny to begin with. Not really.

But for a few moments it chased the realization that Second Team was down here, and had been for a while.

Idly, I wondered if Bar-El was listening on the open circuit I maintained with the scout. If we got into trouble, maybe he'd decide to bring the skimmer out and pull us out of it.

Maybe. But that would take time, even skimming along the algae-covered surface of the river. Too much time, probably. Trouble is usually on a quick schedule.

"Hold up for a second." The Dutchman's cutters whirred, as he carved himself and N'Damo a relatively clean place to sit on a rotting fallen log.

I did the same for myself. It was good to get off my feet.

"How do you figure it, Emmy?" I could hardly hear the Dutchman above my own panting. Even with the wirecutters to hack a path, the ground was still soft and squishy; each step was heavier than the last.

Of course, we could have used our lifters, but those were supposed to be for emergencies. I had only about three minutes of flight time—Donny had a bit more, the Dutchman had quite a bit less.

"Sir?"

The Dutchman's gesture took in the whole of the surroundings. "This shitheap."

"I think I know what it is, but I'm damned if I can figure out how it got this way." My headband was soaked; I reached down to my belt and turned up my helmet blower to push the sweat away from my eyes.

"I don't see how this could be a balanced ecology. We're in some kind of transition phase, maybe a real short one. These sickly plants down here look like they've lost the battle for sunlight. When they die, they fertilize the winners, the giants. But how they've kept going for more than a few generations I can't figure. And it must take more than a few generations to grow some of the giants. We hit the first level of vegetation a hundred meters up."

"I don't give a rat's ass for the fucking plants," the Dutchman said. "It wasn't anything we've seen that killed Second Team."

Donny swallowed hard. It was the first time the Dutchman had admitted out loud that Second Team was dead.

"What about animals?" the Dutchman asked.

I shrugged. "Sarcophages down here, maybe. But I doubt it—plants do that better. Up above, sure. We could find a pretty diverse ecology in the treetops, where there's light to drive an ecology. Down here's a dead-end street."

"Hmm. This is the bottom of the heap and not the base of the pyramid, eh?"

"It feels that way."

Using a pale tree as a crutch, the Dutchman got to his feet. The trunk bent and compressed like wormwood where he leaned against it, and a pale sap oozed out. "But tell me, how do you explain the heat concentration?" He glanced down at his wrist. "Up ahead about two hundred meters."

Donny got gingerly to his feet, as if he wasn't used to using them for walking.

Opening up the sample kit, I used a scoop and a siphon to get a few cc's of the tree sap.

"How many of those do you have filled?" Donny asked.

"About half." I thought he was going to offer to take over sampling for a while, but he didn't, and I didn't feel like asking. He turned his radio off and butted his membrane helmet against mine.

"What do you think?" he asked, in a whisper.

I didn't bother shutting my mike off as I looked around. "I think I'm going to advise my father not to open up a spa here."

"No. Second Team."

I shrugged and turned my mike off. "Dead."

"How?"

"You're the esper. Mmm, lift your hand up. That looks interesting." He lifted his hand from where it had been, out behind him, taking his weight.

The plant across the back of his glove was star-shaped and about five centimeters across. I picked it up with a long pair of tongs and dropped it into a sample bag.

Donny was still looking at his hand.

"Donny?"

"
Listen
," he said. "Listen,
listen,
listen."

I cocked my head. The bubble was a good transmitter of sound—a bit better than air, in fact—but all I heard was rattling leaves, my own breathing, and the quiet whirring of the Dutchman's cutter.

"No. Not here, here." He tried to touch his head through his membrane helmet. Then his eyes widened, and he smiled.

"I . . . hear them upsides. They're coming."

"Major."

The Dutchman was holding his cutter in his left hand, and his Colt & Wesson forty-four Magnum in his right. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that the cutter might make a decent hand-to-hand weapon. "Intelligent?"

"I'm . . . getting words, words, words," Donny said dreamily. His eyes closed, and he started to slump down, so I gripped the back of his lifter to steady him. "But not . . . like us. Everything is . . . together. Everything is now. Everything is here, part of here, now, upsides, here."

I shook him. "Easy, Donny." He straightened, which gave me the chance to let him go and draw my wiregun, all the while wishing that Bar-El and the skimmer were here, together with its recoilless.

"No, togetherhere, togetherhere, they're
friendly
," Donny protested. He put his hand on the wiregun; I jerked the pistol away. "Friendly."

"You sure, N'Damo?"

"Positive. Major, I am. Togetherhere.
Upsides
," he insisted.

"Just tell the buggers to keep their fucking distance," the Dutchman said.

He squinted through the gloom. He was probably thinking the same thing that I was, that as a tactical situation this absolutely, unconditionally sucked—that's a military term for when you have only hand weapons, no support, and lousy terrain. Except when I looked up and down the river, I couldn't see more than thirty meters in any direction, and the muck underfoot hampered my movements.

The Dutchman reached over and snapped a switch on Donny's belt, slaving Donny's lifter to his.

"You sending?"

"Trying, trying." Donny shrugged. "Trying. I am."

The Dutchman's mouth worked for a moment, then he gestured with his cutter. "Make a clearing, Emmy." |

I thumbed my cutter on and had started to cut through the brush when a black shape flitted overhead. Then another. And another and—

"Easy, Emmy."

They settled in low-hanging branches. Three, four dozen of them.

"They are . . . very glad to see us," Donny said. "Glad to see us."

They looked like bone-white bats.

They eyed us from the spongy limbs of the surrounding trees. When one shook its wings out I saw that the wing-span was three, maybe four meters, but they kept them tightly folded, accordion-style, against their backs.

Their vaguely canine heads were comically large, as were their taloned feet. The claws were hooked, some blunt as though more for grasping than tearing, some sharp enough to sink into the wood as they hung there. They were each about a meter high and massed maybe fifteen, twenty kilos, max.

"They dangerous, N'Damo?" the Dutchman asked.

"No."

"You sure?"

"You can't lie with your mind, your mind, Major Norfeldt, the Dutchman."

Their faces were broad, with huge eyes and large cupped ears; the eyes were a fathomless, solid black. It felt like they were following my every move, but there was really no way to tell.

"How intelligent are they, Donny?"

"They are aware, aware." He opened his eyes, and his body stopped its weaving.

I didn't like this, not at all. "What say we lift out of here and try again later, Major?"

"Look up, krauthead. We aren't going anyplace right now."

I looked up. The canopy formed by the branches laced together over our heads bent with the weight of the things. And beyond, above them, were hundreds more; at least a thousand, all together.

If the Dutchman had had a cigar in his mouth he would have chewed on it. As it was, he just grunted, reflexively fondling the butt of his pistol.

It was an archaic device, lacking the sophistication and spraying power of my wiregun. But one Glaser Safety Slug spewing out of the barrel of that ancient piece of steel had more immediate stopping power than all the wires in my gun.

Trouble was, it was a six-shooter, which looked to be at least nine hundred and ninety-four fewer shots than a combat situation would call for.

"We'll stay a bit, Emmy," the Dutchman said calmly.

Some of the tension went out of my shoulders when I saw him holster his Magnum. I did the same with my wiregun. But while the Dutchman thonged the weapon into place, he had left the flap open, and so did I.

One of the chiropterans dropped off the tree, wings outfolded to break its fall, then shuffled and splashed forward until its head was under N'Damo's hand. Donny rubbed the broad head absently, as though he was idly petting a cat, that distant look on his dark face again.

"I'm waiting for word on how smart these chiropterans are, N'Damo," the Dutchman said, looking down distastefully. One of them was rubbing up against his thigh. "They sure as hell don't look bright enough or vicious enough to have taken out Second Team."

"I see a nest, a nesting place, a nest," Donny said. "But they look at us and see them, overthem."

"What the fuck?"

Donny shook his head violently. When he spoke again, he sounded awake. "There's no . . . perception that we're alien. Major, just different. A new, a new species in the forest. They know the trees, the water, themselves. But no abstract concepts—I think they've got a leg up on chimpanzees, but it would be a close call."

"No hands," I muttered.

"Huh?"

"No hands, Major." All the brains in the universe don't do you any good if you can't alter you environment. So there's only a slim evolutionary edge in becoming intelligent if you don't have hands or equivalents. It doesn't take much brains to sneak up on a leaf; it takes a lot more to sneak up on a leaf-eater.

"I noticed." The Dutchman paused. "So where the fuck are they, eh?"

Donny leaned closer to me. "They?"

"Whoever killed Second Team, asshole." To the Dutchman, the threat was always a
them.
Like the other old saying goes: personifiers of the universe, unite—you have nothing to lose but Mr. Dignity.

"They've got a village, Major," Donny said.

"What? You said they were stupid."

He looked embarrassed for a moment, but then his eyes went glassy as he retreated into communion with the locals. "Not a village, really, not a village, Major, village. Not really—"

"Go easy on him, Major—"

"Shut up."

"—more of a rookery? A rook, rook, rookery." He pointed. "Over there, it is over there."

"That's where I spotted the heat concentration. Major."

"Thank you. Lieutenant von du Mark. Take two brownie points out of petty cash."

He stood silently for a moment, eyeing the creatures, who were busy eyeing him eyeing them.

I shrugged, and eyed all of them. It seemed to be the thing to do.

The Dutchman nodded. "Okay, let's go." He pulled his hand controls off his belt. "Airborne, after me. First the spook, then the kraut."

His lifter started with a loud roar. Kicking up mud and leaves, he rose into the air like a fat balloon. In a moment, Donny followed him.

The noise and rush of heat didn't seem to bother our local audience. A few dozen flapped after each of the other two, but the rest stayed to trade stares with me. I didn't like that, not at all. There's only two possible explanations for a wild creature that doesn't run at a strange loud sound: either it's dogshit stupid, or it's the toughest bastard around.

I hoped the chiropterans were stupid.

I stowed my cutter and triggered a beep on the scout's freak. "Bar-El? You catch any of this?"

No answer.

"We're going to check out the village now."

I pulled on my lifter controls, thumbed them on, and rose into the air.

We came down in a bona fide clearing surrounded by real trees. None of the pale, spongy, phony trees grew within twenty meters of the woody giants which thrust upward, vanishing into the canopy, into the gathering twilight.

Pale vines laced the trunks, which were thirty to fifty meters around. Woven baskets hung from the grassy strands. Hundreds, thousands of pairs of beady eyes peered at us, from tree limbs all around us.

"Some village," the Dutchman said, snorting.

Donny looked very uncomfortable.

"It's all right, N'Damo. You're doing fine." Norfeldt turned his back on Donny, so he missed the pleased and surprised look on the kid's face.

Like a puppy patted on the head. Espers can be like that.

I went over to the Dutchman. "What now, Major?" I

"Damned if I know. So far, so good, eh?"

"We're alive, if that's what you mean."

"That's it, Emmy. Take some samples—then we'll hit the air and get back to the scout, have a good night's rest, and check out Second's scout tomorrow."

Beyond the circle of light, all I could see was shadows and eyes, watching. The tree bulked comfortably at my back.

When I poked at one of the woven-basket nests, one of the chiropterans flittered out and took to the air almost silently. I shook the next to be sure nobody else was home; it rattled like a bag full of sticks.

When I poked my flash inside, it gleamed against dry bones.

They were split lengthwise, and the insides were still faintly wet. Feathers lined the nest. It looked as though one of the brightly colored flyers from up above had come down, slumming, and paid for it.

I checked another nest. Same procedure, except that this time there was nobody home. More bones, though, and more feathers, and parts of a pelt from a creature I hadn't seen before. It had died sloppily, and the chiropterans weren't done with it yet. The brain was still in the skull, and some of the viscera were still present, uneaten.