Midworld (25 page)

This burl had been cut neatly down the middle. The halves had been separated. One lay propped up against the back wall of the lab, while the other was vised firmly to the bench. A plethora of shining instruments of metal and plastic were scattered on the table and around the halved sections like a swarm of silver spiders. Portions of the burl’s interior had been excised and placed in containers of varying sizes. The scene itself conveyed the impression of a frenetic yet studious scientific activity, which had suddenly been halted.

In cross section one could easily see the outer layer of black bark, followed by the first woody layer, which was dark like mahogany. Then it lightened to a deep umber and turned eventually as light as redwood. But after the first half-meter it became something that looked like no wood born of Earth. Weaving black lines ran through a horrid reddish-yellow pulp. Peculiar nodules of gray formed where clumps of the winding black threads joined. At the center of the burl lay several ovoid lumps of brownish-pink, like the seeds of an apple. Here the concentration of jet-colored webbing grew thickest. Most bizarre were the numerous irregular lengths and humps of some pure white substance, which lay scattered throughout the interior of the burl, seemingly at random. Some appeared hard and smooth; others on the verge of powdery dissolution.

Born knew exactly what the burl was, though not its puzzling interior. So did Losting. “This is what you take your lifedrug from?” Born asked.

“That’s right,” Hansen admitted. “Have you seen these kinds of growths before anywhere?”

“We have.”

Chittagong and Celebes were immediately and simultaneously all over the hunters with their questions. “Where … How many…You mean you’ve found more than one on the same tree … How big were the ones you saw … What about the color … You’re certain they’re the same shape … The fibrosity of the bark …?”

“Easy, easy. I’m sure our friends can find such trees for us whenever they want. Couldn’t you, Born?” Hansen broke in.

“We know of such trees and growths. Some have no burls, as you call them. Others have many.” The two scientists whispered between themselves. “How many such burls would you wish?”

Now it was Hansen’s turn to stumble in his excitement. “How many? As many as we can find! We can derive a great deal of the drug from one, but there are a lot of aging people in this galaxy, and I doubt enough burls exist to satisfy more than a fraction of them. All you can locate for us we’ll make use of. You’ll have just about anything you want in return, Born.”

“We will not do this thing for you!” Losting shouted suddenly. He put a hand on the axe slung at his hip and took several steps backward. “Born is mad and may do anything, but not I.”

“Nor I, Losting,” Born muttered bitterly. “And it’s true I’m subject to spells of madness. Especially with those who do not choose to think.”

“What does he mean by that, Born?” Hansen asked, his manner far from fatherly now. “
You
can understand my position.”

Born spun around and tried a last time to make the giant chieftain understand. “And you must understand it is we who live with this world. Not on it, but with it.” He was struggling with barely comprehensible concepts. “We take nothing from this world that is not offered freely, even joyously. We take only when time and place is right. You cannot live with a world by taking when and where it suits only you, or eventually your world dies and you with it. You
must
understand this, and you must leave. We could not help you even if we wanted to. Not for all your light weapons and other wonders. This world is not a good place for you. You do not emfol it, and it does not emfol you.”

Hansen sighed deeply. “I’m sorry, too, Born. Sorry because you see, this isn’t your world. You didn’t evolve here, despite all your carefully nurtured superstitions about emfoling and everything else. Your whole ancestral line here reaches back only a few hundred years at most. You’ve no more claim here than we do. No, you’ve less than we do. When the time comes we’ll file correctly for possession and development with the proper authorities.

“As long as you don’t interfere with our operations here, we won’t trouble you or your people. We’d prefer to keep relations between us as friendly as possible. If that’s not feasible”—he shrugged—“we’re quite prepared to do whatever’s necessary to ensure felicitous working conditions. I’d hoped we could work together, but—”

“You’ll not find any more of these burls. Not without our help.”

“It will take longer, cost more, but we’ll find them, Born. They’re worth whatever it takes, you see. And I’m not yet convinced we’ve lost your cooperation either. Some additional argumentation remains to be tried.” He shook his head sadly. “More paper work, more delays. They’re not going to be pleased.” He turned and called back to the single doorway. “Santos … Nichi?” The two guards entered immediately, sidearms drawn. “There must be an empty room in the new quarters—that wing’s still not up to strength. See that our two new associates are set up comfortably there. They’ve had a long hike and need a good rest, something to eat. Program something nice for them.”

Losting had his knife out. “I am tired of this place and the giants. I’ll stay here no longer.” He eyed Hansen. “I’ll talk to you no longer.” As the knife was drawn, Born saw one of the guards point a transparent-tipped handgun at the big hunter.

“No, Losting. We must, as the Hansenchief says, have time to think reasonably on this.”

“Madman! Defiler!”

“This is not the time for muscle, Losting!” he said sharply. “It is difficult to make decisions when dead. Consider the sky-demon and the red light.”

Losting looked at the two men blocking their exit, then questioningly at Born. His expression shifted, his eyes dropped. “Yes, Born, you’re right. This needs thinking on.” He put the knife slowly back in its leafleather scabbard.

Hansen managed a grin of reassurance. “I’m sure everything will be clearer after you’ve had some time to consider all that’s been said and shown to you. You’re both excited, Born, Losting. A strange place like this station. You’ve seen more new things in this past half-hour than all your people have seen in the last hundred years, I’m sure! No wonder you’re reacting emotionally instead of rationally! Relax, eat yourselves full.” He peered hard at Born. “Then I’m sure we can talk about all this again.”

Born nodded, smiled back. It was good the Hansen-chief could not see into his mind as his machines could see into the Upper Hell.

The two armed giants led them to a room which was spacious and comfortable—comfortable by the standards of the giants. To the hunters the chamber and its furnishings were hard, angled, and oppressive. Born tried the bed, the chair, the single narrow desk and finally settled himself cross-legged on the floor. Losting looked up from where he had been staring at the crack under the door.

“They are still out there. Why did you stop me? Red light or not, I still think I could have killed them both and slit the fat one’s throat.”

“You would not have lived for a second step, Losting,” Born countered softly. “You might have killed one, but—”

“I remember the sky-demon, I remember,” Losting shot back irritably. “That is why I did not act as I felt though I think we are destined to go the way of the sky-demon eventually. I know this—I will die before I will aid these monsters.”

“As would I,” his smaller companion confessed reluctantly. “The giant called Logan was right. She could not explain this all to us. We had to see to understand. And I do understand, but not the way she and the others would have us understand. I am saddened, in a way. A part of them is missing, Losting. They are incomplete. The great pity of it is they are ignorant of their own deficiency.”

“They will do great harm in their ignorance.”

“Perhaps. We must think hard on this. We cannot fight the red light of the giants. Soon the Hansen-chief will desire to talk with us again. He may not be so courteous this time. The giants have strange ways of killing. The Hansen-chief hinted they have equally strange ways of persuading. If they do not persuade us—and they cannot—I cannot see them permitting us to return to the Home.”

“I have held myself back out of respect for you,” Losting rumbled. “And because you so often seem to be right in such matters. Why then do you hesitate now?”

“Give me some time, Losting, some time. This must be carefully and rightly done the first time.”

Losting mumbled something inaudible and sat down with his back against the door. Pulling out his bone knife, he began steadily to sharpen it against the metal floor.

“Very well, thinker-tinker enemy mine. Take your time. But when they come for us again, if all your madness suggests nothing, I will kill the Hansen-chieftain first, though they make a stew of me with their red light.”

Born slowly shook his head. “Can you not see beyond the first rage, Losting? Killing the Hansen-chief will do no good. When Sand and Joyla return to the world, another couple will be chosen. The giants will simply chose a new Hansen-chief.” The syllables flowed sharply now. “No, somehow we must kill them all and destroy this place.”

Losting’s seething anger was temporarily displaced by total bewilderment. “Kill them
all?
We cannot even kill one to save ourselves. How can we kill them all?”

“Kill the giants’ machines and the giants will die. First we must get out of here.”

“I will not dispute that,” Losting snorted. “The doorway is latched and this”—he stabbed at the floor with his knife and it skidded away with a whine—“is tougher than ironwood.”

“You still do not think beyond your guts, hunter.” Born crossed his legs and commenced evaluation of the floor. “Give the world time and it makes its own solutions.”

“Mad,” whispered Losting.

It was quiet at night within the station as its occupants dreamed away the long wet night outside. Nothing moved save the security personnel who manned the. scanning and detection monitors which kept the forest at bay. Outside the station proper, eight of Salomon Cargo’s staff manned the gimbaled guns. With the automatic alarms quiet, these isolated representatives of corporate enforcement found nonlethal diversions to pass the time.

In one turret the crew amused itself with another round of cribbage, using a board carved from beryl wood by thranx artisans on Hivehom. Nearby, another pair lost themselves in manuals detailing the joys of vacations to be had on a certain ocean world many parsecs away. In the third, gunners of opposite sex engaged in active dereliction of duty.

While their function was quasimilitary, the station was not a military operation, though their superior, Cargo, regarded it as such. Yet no invading squadron of punishing peaceforcers was expected; no armada mounted by a sly competitor was anticipated overhead. And nothing could approach across the cleared treetops without triggering half a hundred alarms.

So the eight marksmen remained at easy readiness and enjoyed the somnolent casualness of night duty, secure in the knowledge that angels with guts of silver and copper watched over them.

From within, mechanistic atheists plotted to deny these gunners’ gods the homage due them.

Homesickness electronically assuaged, the last idler dropped off to sleep within the station. No footfalls echoed in the corridors. Only the occasional click of a relay closing, the hum of untiring machinery, the soft susurration of the vital air-conditioning broke the reign of silence.

There were none to grow curious when a small hole appeared in the middle of a corridor floor. Even if anyone had been passing nearby, chances were they would have passed off the noise as the echo of thunder that somehow penetrated the station’s soundproofing. The gap grew larger as the metal floor was peeled up and back like foil. A close observer would have been able to see the hole that extended below the floor through a meter of ferrocrete.

Two massive paws emerged from the gap, widened it until it was big enough for more than a man to pass. A blocky, thick skull protruded, upthrust tusks gleaming in the dim nighttime illumination. Triple orbs shone like lanterns as they made a slow inspection of the empty corridor. The head vanished and a low snuffling that sounded like muffled conversation came from the cavity. It was cut off by a single grunt. Two massive, furred forms squeezed like paste from the hole into the station.

Geeliwan contemplated the alien surroundings and shivered slightly at the unaccustomed chill in the air, while Ruumahum sampled it for something other than temperature.

“Hear no giants, see no giants,” Geeliwan murmured in the gentle guttural rasp of the furcot folk.

“Many are near, behind these walls,” replied Ruumahum in a cautioning tone. After a final, thorough sniff to pinpoint a very faint, but unmistakable scent, he said, “This way.”

Hugging the metal walls and cloaking themselves in shadow, the furcots padded silently down the corridor they had entered, turned a corner into another. A last corner turned, and they drew back at the sight of the single giant seated before the final door. The giant was not moving.

“He sleeps,” Geeliwan murmured tightly.

“Behind him the scent is steady,” agreed Ruumahum.

Leaving the corner they padded toward the portal. Ruumahum located the crack at the door’s base. Triple nostrils breathed in the smell of person.

Inside the door, Born had not moved from his sitting position on the floor. At the gentle snuffling from outside, his eyes came fully open again. Losting was stretched out asleep on the far side of the chamber, but came awake as Born moved.

“What is—?”

“Quiet.” Born made his way to the door on hands and knees. Dropping his face to the floor, he sniffed once, then whispered cautiously, “Ruumahum?” There was an affirmative grunt from the other side. “Open the door. If possible, quietly.”

The furcot growled. “There is a guard.”

The low conversation finally woke the man in question. Despite the nap, the man was good at his job. He came awake instantly, already prepared for the fantasized jailbreak. What he was not prepared for was the sight of a grinning Geeliwan, massive tusked jaws opened to display a formidable array of gleaming cutlery, breathing into his face. The man fainted.