Fall of the White Ship Avatar (27 page)

"
Yiii
!" the proteus translated as Pokesnout bucked straight-kneed into the air with a bawl to split the sky, one great hoof cocked up close to his barrel belly. Several little things were clinging to the gawk's hock, Alacrity saw in the moment before it slammed down again with a jolt that almost knocked Floyt from its back, even though the Terran's knees were under the surcingle. The gawk's frantic low-frequency signals pounded.

Suddenly Treeneck reared and caracoled, a couple of the things hanging from his hock, too. Paloma was shouting advice or orders, fighting to stay mounted on Rockhorn, as the glittering pink sand seemed to come to life.

Alacrity, lurching against his surcingle-hold, abrading his hand, didn't see how so many of the things could live so close together in the lean environment of the high desert, didn't see how it could support them. Gawks were rearing and bucking, amazingly limber and deft. The midair maneuvers weren't planned as a way to unseat riders, but felt like a good bet to do it. Hordes of the little things closed in, the color of the sand, and the air was filled with a sharp, corrosive, mephitic smell.

The scuttle-death, insofar as Floyt could make out, were rabid little sand dwellers about mouse-size and build, with some tarantula influence. But the front third of their bodylength was fishhook teeth in file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20krui...%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (136 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:13

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snapping jaws.

And they weren't made for climbing; that much was plain because the ones on Pokesnout's leg couldn't improve their purchase at all or do much of anything else except hold on. The things' attack concentrated on the lowermost parts of the gawks' legs; the teeth were penetrating, though Alacrity wouldn't have believed gawk leg-hide would be vulnerable to a sheetmetal screw.

Still, the scuttle-death fangs did it somehow, Gawk efforts to stomp the little terrors into the sand did no good; the scuttles' carapaces protected them. They were sand hunters, after all.

"Back to the rocks!" Paloma shouted over and over into her proteus, pointing it at Rockhorn's ear and Pokesnout's and the others'. Alacrity, hauling at Tree-neck's mane, did the same.

Somehow, in the throes of excruciating pain, Pokesnout ignored his own suffering and acted as leader.

He turned and got the other gawks moving with butts of his head and vicious nipping and kicking.

Treeneck somehow reasserted himself enough to help. The party curvetted and bucked into retreat, the few scuttle-death that were on the scene trying for a grip but failing, the legions of reinforcements not close enough yet. The riders barely kept their seats; if Floyt and Alacrity hadn't had instruction from Paloma and practice under her coaching, they'd both have died. The gawks ran, the two riderless males picking up more of the tiny furies. Then, somehow, the whole group was back on the stone trail that led to the gawks' grazing lands.

On the trail, things were different. Some of the scuttle-death had dropped off along the way; those that were left clung savagely but were eventually wrenched off or batted loose by the humans, or simply jarred loose by the gawks then dashed and mashed. No attackers were clinging above the hock level; the scuttle-death were diggers, not good at jumping and lacking any effective means to advance their grip.

They were also very poor at making their way over rock.

"Rocks aren't their place. We're all right," Floyt said, crushing a last squirming scutter under his heel and then bending to examine Pokesnout's wounds. The frightened gawks were starting to settle down. "But if they caught a gawk out there on that desert, they'd bring it down in time, and strip it at their leisure."

Alacrity's proteus picked up the words and translated them; the behemoths trembled.

"Sand devils!" Paloma spat. "I should've thought of it!"

"You knew about those things?" Alacrity snapped at her over his shoulder, trying to reassure Treeneck and the others.

As she gave him a hand she explained. "They're not supposed to be cold-climate animals. And you hardly ever heard about them; people wiped out most of them over the years—blew up every hive they file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20krui...%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (137 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:13

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saw. Besides, who'd have thought a sand devil could bother something the size of a gawk?"

"Well, they can," Floyt said grimly. "Look at the blood on Poke's legs. And that's just from a minute of it. He's been tapped like a rubber tree."

Alacrity heard the emotion. In his friend's voice and realized just how fond Floyt had become of the runt bull.

"Something is not right," Pokesnout informed them, through the translators. He was beginning to shake and shiver. "I feel unwell." A quick look around showed the other males were ill, too, even the doughty Treeneck.

"Toxin!" Alacrity hissed. "Quick, get over there in the rocks! Prop yourselves up!" Gawklegs never lay down for long, naturally. Even in Lebensraum's lesser gravity the pressure of their own bodies on their lungs could suffocate them.

The big creatures lumbered unsteadily over among the rocks of the washes feeding into the trail, with the humans chivying and encouraging and picking spots, directing and even shouldering them along.

The gawklegs tried to rest their weight in notches that would help keep them upright. The three younger males were successful, but Treeneck couldn't find a small enough place. Poke-snout managed to worm in next to him and braced himself, the two keeping one another upright. They throbbed and lowed mournfully to each other.

"This won't do for long," Paloma said worriedly, glancing back at the desert. "And what if those little horrors come after us to eat a la hoof?"

"They don't appear to be doing so," Floyt observed, pulling his lower lip between thumb and forefinger,

"and they looked rather specialized to me. That notwithstanding, you're quite right: we cannot remain here. Perhaps we can get a rescue party up here from the herd, to support these ones on the trip back down?"

He used Alacrity's proteus to ask Pokesnout about it. The gawk was still grunting and blowing in pain, but when Floyt got his question across the answer was reassuring.

"No, we are feeling better—a little," Pokesnout said. "And now I know why the herd's losses were so terrible on the Long Trek and why the Verities tell us to shun this place."

"And the company just blew up the sand devils' hives? That finishes them?" Floyt asked Paloma.

"Well, you can just dust them with pesticide, and most of your problems are over," she said. "Or you can throw out poison bait so that the hive queen ends up eating some, but basically you have to wait around file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20krui...%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (138 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:13

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for the hive to die out afterward, and that can take quite a while. Yeah, beam weapons, nervefields—

they're plenty of ways of getting rid of them, but none we can use."

"Is the hive close by, then?"

"Probably not. As I recall it, those little warrior-workers are hatched and move out across the desert, find a spot and burrow in, waiting. They lie dormant for years, sometimes. When they sense food they come awake, get it and bring it back to the hive. Sand devils hunt and communicate pretty much exclusively by olfaction. I don't know, Hobie; if the hive's been here all this time, that stretch of desert could be pretty much carpeted with them by now."

Floyt gnawed a thumbnail. Paloma sighed then covered her proteus with her right hand while shielding Alacrity's proteus, which Floyt held, with her left.

"We'll have to find some other route. We can't ask the gawks to march into a slaughter."

Floyt shook his head resignedly. "The maps don't look very promising, but I agree. What do you think, Alacrity?"

Floyt looked around and saw that, as he tended to do, Alacrity had gone off without saying a word. Floyt found it an irritating habit.

They glanced around and saw him strolling back down the trail toward them. He'd obviously trotted back up to the very edge of the desert for another look at the sand devils. It was obvious because several of the tiny animals still clung to his pathfinders.

Those boots are even tougher than I thought,
Floyt thought. His own boots were already showing signs of advanced deterioration.

Alacrity came down the trail, stamping loose one of the sand devils, which squirmed around for a moment before flopping over the edge of the trail and disappearing. He held a pliabamboo food-storage jar, examining the marks of sand devil teeth that had failed to penetrate it.

"Okay; no problem," Alacrity said, hooking a thumb to indicate the high desert.

"What'd you do, bribe them to look the other way?" Paloma asked tartly.

Alacrity kicked another sand devil loose and crushed it to jellied shapelessness under his heel. "No, although that's not a bad idea, in a way. Anyhow, the desert's our garden path, if we're careful about it."

He grinned at them. "Technology's about to come to the gawks—from the ground up."

"Hold still," Alacrity chided Pokesnout, wrestling with the hollow segment of pliabamboo. "If this thing file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20krui...%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (139 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:13

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doesn't fit right you'll probably take a spill and it'll be all over for ya, tiny." He rapped the creature's poised, trembling leg.

"This I cannot understand," Pokesnout said. "How can I walk the Long Trek this way?"

The pliabamboo, unlike its Terran namesake, was actually more a tree than a grass. It was flexible, nearly elastic, but Alacrity was beginning to doubt that it was flexible enough.

"Not the whole Trek," Alacrity corrected, cheek contorted in concentration as he tried to shove the prototype gawk boot into place. "Just the desert crossing."

He got it lined up and rammed it partway into place. "Okay; you can put your foot down easy."

Pokesnout did, very tentatively, balancing gingerly on his other five legs. With the gradual increase in pressure, the improvised footwear seated surprisingly well. It looked like the stem-joint partition at the segment's base would hold the weight, but for how long? Alacrity was resigned that the project would be all experiment and guesswork. Pokesnout tried to walk on the booted foot but instinctively favored it.

It had taken Alacrity a full morning to select, cut, measure, and adjust the pliabamboo joint to fit Pokesnout, even with the gawk's-full cooperation.
Let's see: six legs per gawk, times the number of
gawks, divided by a couple of boots per day each from me and Ho and Paloma, presuming there're no
complications …
The answer was very depressing.

Nevertheless, the boot looked like it would work. Pokesnout gained a little confidence and put his full weight on it. Paloma and Floyt were watching from the sidelines.

"What if he loses footing up there?" Floyt asked worriedly, inclining his head toward the high desert.

"Can't you guess?" Alacrity grunted, not caring that his proteus was translating to Pokesnout's attentive ears. "He'll probably die. Just like the herd will die if it doesn't cross that desert and mix with new stock."

Pokesnout was experimenting, putting more and more weight on the boot. He looked to the humans.

"And we would only need to have these on us long enough to make the crossing?"

They nodded, then Floyt realized the gesture meant nothing to a gawk. "Yes," he clarified.

"This is a very difficult idea," Pokesnout declared. "It drives the thought from my head! An answer so strange and so simple."

"Welcome to the Archimedean Universe," Floyt told him.

"It may work, it must work," Paloma said, "but we've still got Lake Fret waiting for us, our worst problem."

"We'll figure something," Alacrity said. "We've got to. It's an old tradition here in the Archimedean file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20krui...%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (140 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:13

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Universe."

Floyt came walking along with Paloma; both were burdened with netvine bags of scare-flare eggs wrapped in leaves. The scattered family groups of the herd had been summoned together. Gathering food was the least of their troubles, what with gawks uncovering eggs and butting fruits and nuts down from the trees and trampling paths through thorny undergrowth to the best of the berry plants.

In a similar way, the big locals had quickly become adept at knocking over pliabamboo and snapping off individual boot segments by means of their enormous strength and weight, with a little human help.

Bone-wearying work by Floyt, Alacrity, and Paloma, from sunup to drillbug time, had gotten the preparations for the Long Trek more or less complete in just nine days. Scattered family groups of the herd had been summoned together; tomorrow they would begin.

Paloma and Floyt came upon Alacrity, who was sitting on a rock and working away. He'd cut and patiently woven a rough square of netvine and weftweed, and sawn forearm-length pieces of young pliabamboo. He was patiently lashing it all together in some obscure fashion.

"Camp stool," he explained.

"And don't forget the mobile robobar," Paloma scoffed.

Alacrity made a vaguely dismissive
phui
! sound and went back to what he was doing. "You're laughing now, but think about how sore your ass gets sitting on logs and rocks and whatnot
here.

"What about out
there?"
He gestured to their route of march with his chin. "Not even a stump or a dry patch of ground, maybe. I know what it's like to squat on haunches for dinner or get my landing gear wet and cold in the mud. Laugh away; just don't ask to borrow this collector's item of modern design once we're on the road."