Meritorium (Meritropolis Book 2) (3 page)

Well, he would at least make sure he was the first one into the Bramble. He looked up, ready to take his first step.

“Hey, it’s working!” Hank called out. He was already darting his way into the Bramble, sprinkling jerky on either side of his path, with Sandy right behind him, a carnivore’s Hansel and Gretel. Charley gritted his teeth and watched wordlessly as people streamed by him.

Grigor parceled out strips of dried meat to the groups taking up the rear. “Let’s go, quickly now.” He patted Charley on the shoulder, the same shoulder he had grabbed to restrain Charley earlier. “Here you go, Charley, the last of our food. Use it wisely—as small of pieces as possible, and only as needed. Let’s follow this nice path they are cutting for us. Nothing wrong with taking up the rear, right?”

Charley detected a small light of humor in Grigor’s bright eyes. “Nothing wrong with that at all,” Charley said, and finally took his first step into the Bramble.

The path, while free of the thorny rattan vines as they slithered back from the walkway in search of meat chunks, still housed slender lianas of new green shoots. These young tendrils would someday sprout and climb upward to join the intertwined latticework of plant life that held together the jungle canopy. Walking on the teeming undergrowth felt to Charley like he was walking on a bed of baby snakes; the plant life wriggled and bunched under his feet, seeming to press upward against the soles of his boots. And the ground wasn’t the worst of it. Charley looked upward, slowing. It was dark around him—the canopy of the Bramble was immense, stretching hundreds of feet, or even more, into the sky, and so thick with plant life that it blocked the sun. They were surrounded on each side, below and above. Charley’s pulse quickened; he felt like he was in a cocoon that was slowly shrinking in on him.

“Let’s keep it moving.” Grigor looked back at Charley, motioning onward, the muscles in his arms bunching and rippling.

“I’m coming.” Charley quickened his pace. He didn’t like it in here at all; the sudden plunge into near-darkness during the middle of the day unnerved him.

Shouts broke out ahead.

Charley and Grigor raced to catch up to the pack. “What is it?” Charley called out.

Sandy turned, eyes wide, and pointed to an enormous tree looming before them. Its trunk was thick, like an oak, but there any similarity to trees Charley had ever seen before stopped. Its branches of sorts writhed in slippery knots of delicate stamens that trembled in a weird sort of humming delight at the scent of the meat, and presumably of the humans below.

“It—it’s like a tree made of snakes or something …” Charley said, feeling revolted, yet not able to turn his eyes away.

Orson slipped beside them, not taking his eyes off of the tree either. “It’s a Medusa Tree. Well, Madagascar Tree, if you want to get technical …” His voice trailed off. “But you can certainly see why they would call it a Medusa tree …”

Charley peeled his eyes away from the writhing tree and looked down. He was surprised to see that the group had all clustered behind him again. He was back in front.

Sandy sidled up to him. “Do you think those tentacles can reach us down here?”

“I’m not sure. But we have to get past it somehow,” Charley said gruffly, turning away from her.

“I was just asking.”

Grigor turned to them. “We need to go under it, through it, or over it somehow. Going under its branches, if that’s what you want to call them, seems like the best bet. There isn’t really any way to go around it; the undergrowth is too thick.”

Orson continued to stare, transfixed, muttering to himself. “Definitely a Medusa Tree. It doesn’t look like it’s actually a man-eater …”

“Did he just say what I thought he said?” Sandy asked, looking over at Charley and Grigor.

“That it’s not a man-eater?” Charley looked back at the tree. “Well, if it’s not carnivorous, what is it? Why is it so aggressively straining toward us?”

Hank and Sven ambled over, disgusted looks on their faces. “You won’t believe this,” Sven began. “But, this tree-thing up ahead is kind of, well, in heat, I guess you might say …” Sven curled his lip in embarrassment.

“Of course! Those aren’t little mouths, they are actually stamens!” Sandy looked excited. “You know, the reproductive organ of a plant—like pollen, and all of that, you know?”

“Yes, yes, stamens. That’s why it’s called the Medusa Tree—it’s luring us closer,” Orson said a little louder this time, though still with a strange expression.

Hank looked over at Orson, and then back to the tree. “What’s with him? So, basically, we just need to creep underneath the tree without getting snagged by one of the, um, stamen-thingies, or whatever, and getting ourselves romance-attacked.”

“You’re disgusting.” Sandy frowned at Hank. “It’s just a plant. A big scary aggressive plant, but just a plant nonetheless. And, besides, unlike Medusa, at least looking at it won’t turn us to stone, right? That’s a positive.”

Grigor was restraining Orson gently but firmly by the arm. “It’s doing something to Orson, though, some pheromones or something. We need to get moving right away.”

“Let me go, you dolt!” Orson commanded, before staggering as if inebriated.

“Okay, who’s going to be Perseus and defeat Medusa?” Sven asked, looking over at Charley hopefully.

Even Hank was looking at Charley helplessly, his usual brashness noticeably absent. “What?” Hank said. “I’m not going to be the first to be sacrificed to some plant that wants to mate or something.”

At that, Sandy rolled her eyes, and looked to Charley.

Charley ruefully thought back to his earlier desire to lead. Sometimes it’s easier to wish you were in charge than to actually be in charge, he thought. But he knew it was up to him.

Charley looked at the Medusa Tree and began to walk toward it head-on.

Crouching low, he picked up speed in his easy Hunter’s lope. He aimed to approach the tree about halfway between the trunk and the furthest length its branches extended horizontally. As he drew close enough to see the dark purple stamens, he gulped, but forced himself to continue. The stalk-like filaments writhed and twisted, straining toward Charley as he ran beneath them. He ducked his head down even lower, the deep indigo stamens trembling above his head, their anthers poised to release what looked to be yellowish flakes of pollen.

Charley could hear Hank yelling, “Eww, that’s disgusting! Look at Charley.” He didn’t realize what Hank was talking about until he reached the other side of the tree. He was covered in granules of the pollen. It was next to impossible to brush off the yellow snowflakes, so Charley resigned himself to his new pollen-encrusted coating.

Charley motioned to the others. “Well, come on! Just stay low to the ground—and hurry!”

The others made it through, and, unlike Charley, who had received the majority of the unfortunate pollination, they were relatively pollen-free. Charley took a deep breath. It was nice when things turned out to be easier than expected. He was pleased to be back in the lead.

Sandy caught up to him, breathing hard. “Well, look at you.” She picked a fleck of yellow pollen off of his chest and giggled. “You just look, quite literally, like the bee’s knees.”

He shook his head, trying to fight back a smirk, and motioned back to the others, attempting to regain the serene and composed look that would inspire confidence—the perfect picture of a calm, confident leader, trailblazing the way forward. Then he turned to face the path ahead.

A massive tangle of viny undergrowth parted to reveal an enormous swelling stalk that lifted like a snake off the jungle floor. Charley took a step back, awestruck. It rose to twice Charley’s height and throbbed with a strange kind of kinetic energy, its purple-splotched body, thicker than a man’s waist, pulsed and swayed, moving closer to Charley.

Eyes widening, Charley watched as the top of the stalk unfurled its head. Spiky thorns jutted like teeth from a deeply pink-flushed mouth that yawned open, trembling: a man-sized trap ready to spring. He hurriedly unsheathed his blades, falling backward in the process. Quickly jumping up, he chanced a look behind him.

Sandy looked up at the monstrous plant, not commenting on Charley’s fall. “Now this thing has got to be carnivorous—look at those pincer-like spines. It’s like an enormous Venus flytrap.”

Hank rushed up, skidding to a stop. “It’s a Venus mantrap!” He looked over at Charley and snorted. “Maybe once Charley is done falling on the ground in fright, we can take it on.”

Charley, turning almost as pink as the plant’s saucer-shaped mouth that gaped open at them, retorted, “I’m not scared of a plant!”

“You should be,” Grigor said, still keeping a wild-eyed Orson restrained, while Sven and the others clustered behind him. “Many of the plants in the Bramble are likely poisonous; this one is no different. Look at all of that fluid flowing through that stalk.” Grigor collared Orson with one hand and gestured with the tip of an outstretched blade in his other hand. He too had drawn his weapon.

Charley looked closely at the stalk. It was a translucent light green with delicate little prickly hairs tickling outward. He could see a kind of fluid traversing through the plant’s veins.

“Well, we can’t go back.” Sandy looked over her shoulder. “The vines are closing in on us, and we are almost out of meat.”

“We
are
the meat now,” Charley muttered.

Sven moved from behind Grigor, a strange glint in his eyes. “We could use Orson as bait,” he piped up. He motioned toward Orson, seemingly in the throbs of an unnatural fever. Grigor kept him in a firm grip.

The familiar disgust with Orson’s former role as Commander and administrator of the System burbled up in Charley, but he choked down the bile. “As tempting as that is, we can’t. We need him to get to his father.” He knew that his desire for vengeance for Alec could only be slaked by the blood of Orson’s father; settling for Orson was too shortsighted, even for Charley.

Plus, he wouldn’t dare get past Grigor, Orson’s protector.

Grigor looked at Sven, the usual smile gone from his broad face. “No,” he said simply.

“Well, the only way forward is forward.” Charley creaked his neck from side to side, and twirled his blades in a fancy pirouette designed to display a lot more confidence than he actually felt.

He looked at Hank and Sandy, then down at his pollen-encrusted body, and sighed. “Well, I guess I’m the bait.” Looking to Grigor and Sven, he motioned to those milling behind. “We will keep it busy, just get everyone past.” Grigor nodded his assent, as did Sven, his eyes still on Orson.

Charley threw himself into the task. He zigged and zagged, twirled and whirled, a dervish of loopy disjointed movements that caused the Venus mantrap to snap and interlock its spines, shutting on empty air time and time again. As Charley approached the tree, he found that the closer he came to the stalk, the less in danger he was from the gaping mouth. Standing next to the tree, he was surprised to find that the mouth was unable to strike him; the thick fibrous stalk wasn’t flexible enough to twist and bend straight down on itself.

Sandy loosed a bolt from her crossbow straight into the pink mouth. It was a direct hit.

“Nice shot!” Charley called out. But his celebration was short-lived.

“Aww, great,” Hank moaned. “Look, it’s just digesting the arrow in some kind of plant acid.” He looked over at Sandy. “Don’t shoot anymore. We can’t afford to waste arrows.” He turned to Charley. “Do something! Climb up and cut off its head or something.”

Charley hesitated; the little hairs on the stalk stretched outward toward him, seeming to sense his every movement. Gently, he reached out with his blade and stroked along the tips of cilia. The plant rotated into a frenzy of snapping, its toothy spines gnashing in vain at the base of the trunk where Charley stood just out of reach. “Umm, I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”

“Uh, Charley you might have to. Look!” Sandy called out, a slight note of panic rising in her voice. She pointed frantically to a fast-moving snarl of six more mantrap heads, all much smaller than the first, but each intently scrabbling along the jungle floor in Charley’s direction. “Climb! Start climbing, Charley—now!” she shouted, joining Hank in hacking ineffectually at the massive tangle of roots extending outward, while they tried to get to Charley.

Charley rotated his two blades into an overhand grip, hesitated a moment, jumped up, and stabbed directly into the side of the stalk. He alternated staking left then right, swinging his legs back and forth while climbing up the stalk purely with the strength of his arms, as if assailing a green twitching pegboard climbing wall. Sticky, noxious fluid oozed out of the gashes Charley’s blades made.

The stalk’s circumference slimmed as he rose, climbing higher and higher. The head continued to snap furiously, unable to twist in on itself to reach Charley. Just below his feet, the smaller mantraps gaped open, straining upward like young birds hungry for meat from their mother’s mouth. If he fell, he knew he would be mauled from seven directions: six below and one above.

He was almost to the top.

Up close, the mouth was a bright pink that sloshed with sticky goo. Dozens of spines protruded outward like little fangs, each straining to pierce into Charley and ingest him. Charley watched in amazement, still dangling precariously, as the mouth opened and closed rapidly, the spines snapping shut as perfectly interlocked as a zipper. It was surreal to be up close to what was essentially the plant’s desperately ravenous mouth.

Charley was high enough on the stalk that he could wrap his legs completely around it and hold on. For a moment, a vision of jumping on the bion outside of Meritropolis flashed through his mind. He jerked his two blades out of the stalk, careful to slither away from the ooze, and then began to vigorously hack just under the thing’s head.

It jerked and bucked. After his earlier encounter with the llamabill, Charley couldn’t help but hesitate briefly, as his thoughts spiraled.
Could the thing feel pain? It was just a plant, wasn’t it? Just an intracellular chemical reaction, a simple action potential that was a cause and effect triggered by the hair-like cilia, right? Then again, wasn’t human pain an intracellular chemical reaction, too?
Charley pushed the thought from his mind, squeezed his knees even tighter, and continued with his blades, now in a sawing motion.