Authors: Grant Hallman
IronStar (7 page)
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she tongued, and groaned with
relief as her limbs were released from their painfully twisted positions.
Slowly, slowly, she eeled her way toward the shoreline and solid ground.
Looking down into the water, it was easy to see the green strands, lying like a
fishing net among the plants and reed roots. It seemed to cover the entire
bottom of the pond. About ten meters from the bank and with the water’s depth
down to twenty-five centimeters, she cautiously planted a knee and hand in the
squishy bottom and rose, a little shakily, to her feet. One step, two steps…
with a surge and a froth of water, the Green Web again responded to her motion.
Much easier when you know the
drill.
Kirrah gazed up at the sunlit ripples on the surface of
the pond a meter above her faceplate.
No point in struggling this time, just
get comfortable and do the rock-imitation
. More time passed.
Hmm,
thirteen minutes thirty - you may run on instincts, Mr. Green Web, but it seems
you
can
learn.
Kirrah bobbed to the surface for the second time.
This was beginning to be a real nuisance. Any motion or pressure seemed to set
off its grab-reflex, and while it apparently couldn’t harm her, this was not
how she had planned to spend the rest of the day.
Or month
.
Was there
anyplace
the bottom wasn’t covered with Green Web? Let’s at least swim
back to where we came in…
and there, standing nervously on the bank twenty
meters away, was her young friend, looking anxious but unharmed.
Any idea how to leave this party?
Kirrah
thought at him.
The locals probably don’t have much practice getting out of
Green Web’s grip - that is one efficient predator. Hmm, I wonder how it’d
respond if I used the beamer set on low, just kind of stewed it in its own
juice… where did that boy go? He was there just a second ago…
“Kallala! Dathan marathka irwua!
Gaelae!”
Damn, I’m going to have to learn that language
, she decided, as
her suit’s audio brought in the boy’s voice clearly. There he was, fifteen
meters around the bank, carrying a big chunk of what looked like the Grass
Weasel she had blasted earlier.
“Gaelae! Gaelae! Marathka Irwua!”
he repeated insistently, then spun on his heel and did a perfect discus-toss
with the,
Yes! I get it, little fellow! What a bright lad! Thank you!
The
gobbet of meat landed a dozen meters out in the pond in front of the boy. Again
the water surged, Green Web responding even more vigorously to the presence of
bloody juice in the water than to her earlier ill-advised footsteps. Under her
barely-floating body, the pond bottom
flowed
in the direction of the
free lunch. Within seconds, the last green strands passed by, rushing to join
the rapidly-growing ball around the bait. Kirrah stood and ran through the
shallows, reaching the solid bank in six great splashing strides.
The boy stood, wide-eyed, obviously
ready to bolt.
Oh yeah, the helmet
… touch, touch, twist, the clear
polycorundite bubble slid back into its roll at the back of her collar. Even
more wide-eyed, but less apprehensive, he watched as she holstered her beamer,
knelt and opened her arms wide, palms up, in what she hoped was a universal
peace gesture. In response, his face crumpled, and he ran into her open arms,
sobbing like the end of the world, wiry little arms gripping her fiercely as
his body spasmed and shook.
“A good listener is not only
popular everywhere, but after a while he gets to know something.” - Wilson
Mizner 20
th
century A.D. writer and gambler; Terra
This is getting to be a problem
, Kirrah
reflected ruefully as she held the sobbing boy.
Everyone has their own
personal agenda, and none of them include lunch. I wonder what spooked him so
badly? Possibly the attack of the Grass Weasel? The shot from my beamer? The
Pond Monster? So many choices
… Her arms held him close, one hand stroking
his hair. His scent was a complicated brew of swamp, Weasel’s insides, and a
faint aromatic little-boy spice… a dash of old loincloth, and… sniff… was that
just a hint of putrescence? As his sobs tapered off and his grip loosened, she
held him at arms length and inspected her small rescuer. He inspected her right
back. A hundred ten centimeters tops, she judged, and under thirty kilos but
tough, wiry and apparently in general good health. Intelligent light brown eyes
in an open, tanned face, narrow chin, curly dark-blond hair (currently matted
filthy), light golden eyebrows and long, graceful eyelashes to kill for… yes, a
heartbreaker in the larval stage, no doubt about it.
And what
was
that subtle, putrid smell?
Kirrah sat back on her heels and
mimed turning around, her hand making a flat circular motion. Looking confused,
the small boy turned and scanned the horizon behind himself, giving her the
backside view she had intended. Yes, there, on the back of his left calf, two
distinct days-old puncture wounds, raw and angry red at the edges, one an
unhealthy bubbly gray at its center with faint purple streaks running ten
centimeters up his leg.
Won’t you be glad I’ve got meds, little fellow. Not
just this minute though, you’re probably close to the edge of …whatever that
was you were just feeling, and a probe from my suitpack could mean anything at
all to you right now
.
The boy had completed his scan of
the horizon, and was staring gravely at her, studying her in turn. His eyes had
the most disconcerting beauty: come back in twelve years, Kirrah, and meet
Apollo…
“Eetah!” he said. “Sasstha kiros
irwua,” big smile, pointing at the pond.
No
, she realized,
pointing
at his victory over the Pond Monster… or was it
her
victory over the
Grass Weasel?. Damn, time to make introductions and get down to language
lessons. And lunch
, her stomach reminded her, not very gently.
Holding her left index finger
vertically at eye level got his attention. Deliberately she pointed to herself,
and said “Kirrah”. He flinched sharply, crouched, and anxiously scanned the
sky.
What? No, no, pay attention!
She waved her hand in front of him,
and when she had his attention again, repeated the gesture. More slowly and
very calmly, she said “Kirrah”. His eyes widened (in recognition, hopefully,
that that was her name), and he repeated it:
“Keee-rrraugh!” His light soprano
drew the word out, tearing the “r” sound almost like ripping cloth, and putting
almost a cough into the final syllable. She smiled at him, nodded. He seemed to
get the idea. He raised an index finger, pointed to himself, and said:
“Akaray” – not drawing out the “r”
as he had done with her name. He stood straighter, waiting…
“Akar-ay”, she repeated as closely
as she could, pointing at him.
Hmm, so far, so good
…
“Keeraaa”, he said, pointing
carefully at her. She smiled again, nodded. Closer sounding the second time.
This
lad is sharp as a nanoprobe!
He took a step backward, stood even
straighter, and again pointed to himself. Kirrah belatedly and, she hoped,
unobtrusively, turned on her wristcomp in Learn mode. When he had eye contact
again, he said carefully,
“Akaray shu’Malafoth
sho’Malamethsha”. He then pointed off to the southeast and said, “Malame’thsha”
again, quite distinctly.
This is going to take a while
, she sighed
inwardly,
and lunch is overdue, and Akaray looked like his people have solved
the problem of human-compatible nutrition on this planet. Hmmm, worth a try
…
Holding up her left index finger
again, she put the tip in her mouth. Akaray watched solemnly. Finger out. In
again. Chewing, lip smacking, swallowing. Pick a tuft of
not-grass
,
touch it to her lips, scowl, toss it away. Walk three steps to where the
truncated body of the Grass Weasel lay soaking its juices into the
not-grass
.
(
Was it really that close when she’d nailed it, or did it crawl around while
she was playing submarine? And how long
is
this thing? Later!
) Pick
up a small bit of Weasel, touching it to the wristcomp’s probe at the same
time, pass it toward her lips…
“Eeyu!” Akaray’s hands raised in
…alarm?
Scowl, throw it down, covert glance at the wristcomp… yes, digestible,
and laced with the same toxin as the slug she’d tested earlier, oho! So that’s
what little Grass-Weasels looked like… Ok, Kirrah, put some feeling into this…
Sad, hungry, (that’s an easy one!), finger back to lips, c’mon, you’re such a
bright lad… there!
Kirrah could almost see the light switching on behind
her little friend’s clear grave eyes.
Ten minutes later, she was munching
greedily on her eighth or ninth peeled bulb. They seemed to grow at the base of
every one of the thousands of reeds around the swamp.
Tastes like a garlicky
hardboiled egg yolk. The
best
garlicky hardboiled egg yolk she’d ever,
ever
tasted. How long would she have walked around on top of dinner, Kirrah
wondered, testing one unlikely substance after another? Thank you, Akaray, and
thank you, whatever ancestor of yours first risked his life making this
culinary discovery, without benefit of bioassay. And
hosannas
to the
discoverer of those tart juicy white berries hiding in pods under that low
bushy plant, I’ll remember that leaf shape
.
With stomach appeased, if not fully
satisfied, Kirrah was able to review their earlier verbal exchange in light of
the wristcomp’s analysis. While scarfing another few pods of white berries.
Several options scrolled up its small screen, to Akaray’s intense but dignified
interest:
· tribe name (14)
· “male child” (8)
· “human” (6)
· unknown (3)
· “child of” (22)
· “from” (19)
· part of other structure, or unknown (12)
· tribe name (20)
· family name (17)
· location name (13)
· mother’s name (9)
· other (9)
· “son of” (25)
· “child of” (13)
· part of other structure, or unknown (5)
· location name (22)
· family name (19)
· tribe name (17)
· father’s name (12)
· mother’s name (3)
· other (27)
· “stop” (23)
· “poisonous” (9)
· unknown (4)
Yeah
, thought
Kirrah,
I’d go with those choices… or possibly “eeyu” means “Look out for
the Swamp Monster, you stupid tourist!”. Hmm, come to think of it, I bet
“Irwua” is the local name for the Big Green Net out there
. The pond was
quite calm at the moment, almost inviting: reeds swaying gently, bird-analogs
piping and chuckling, that low clucking sound was coming intermittently again,
from somewhere in the dense lower bushes.
“Okay, Akaray, let’s have a closer
look at that Grass Weasel you tangled with”, she muttered, packing a dozen
reedbulbs and several handfuls of white berry pods into a small mesh bag.
Akaray watched closely as she flagged the location of the pond in the
wristcomp’s Inertial Nav screen, then folded the photoelectric sheet she had
carefully recovered from the site of her recent baptism, and checked her
weapons and equipment. Kirrah paced back along the length of the decapitated
Grass Weasel, her lips pursing at twenty meters, eyebrows rising in amazement
as she reached the apparent nether end, some thirty-five meters from the ruined
neck. The thing’s skin was tough and rubbery, and it sported a three-centimeter
coat of curly green… hair, she supposed, an exact match for the faintly
yellowish green of the
not-grass
, right down to the lighter, yellower
tips and edges of individual strands. The aft five or six meters of the thing’s
body was flattened like an empty coat sleeve, still nestled into invisibility
among the dense strands of not-grass. Stubby ten-centimeter legs every meter
and a half gave it purchase in the ground cover. What remained of the head
sported a dozen tiny eyes arranged in a circle around the mouth, a thirty-five
centimeter circular cartilaginous opening set with three-centimeter
meat-shearing teeth.
Yeah, and its flesh is toxic, too
.
