The Chronicles of Mavin Manyshaped (34 page)

“And Beedie. I get to ask Beedie, Dah. That and a few games, huh? She’s one I’ve been wanting to play a few games with for a long time ...” The voices faded away into silence, footsteps echoing up the stair for a time, then nothing.

“Ah,” whispered Mavin. “So we are not only expected below, but followed after as well.”

“They won’t find us down there,” said Beedie. “But they’ll know we have to be somewhere.”

“It’s all right, sausage girl. They won’t come searching back up the stairs until morning. Well, Birder. Was their conversation proof enough for you?”

Mercald gestured impotently. “What did they say? They would ask me questions. They would play games with Beedie. Can I prove dishonorable intent?”

“Rootsap,” said the theoretician. “I’ve been thinking about rootsap. The way down, you know. Rootsap.”

“Poisonous,” said Beedie. “Eats through your skin.”

“Not at the temperature of the chasm at this altitude at this time b efore midnight,” said the theoretician. “Which is the coolest time of the daily cycle in the chasm. A phenomenon which awaits explanation but is undoubtedly the result of a warming and cooling cycle on the surface.” He stood up and patted himself, as though taking inventory, though he carried nothing at all. “Knife,” he said. “Or hatchet. We need several good sized blobs.”

“Knife is quieter,” commented Mavin. Beedie nodded. Mavin took a knife from her hip and went out of the cave, Mercald following her silently. The theoretician merely sat by the coals, his eyes unfocused, staring at the stone around them, muttering from time to time. “Suitable viscosity. Alpha helix. Temperature dependent polymerization. Glop. All local.”

Beedie dumped her pouch on the ground and re-packed it, taking a moment to put her hair in order, coiling the dark wealth of it neatly into a bun when she had finished. She caught Roges looking at her, and he flushed. “You have lovely hair,” he whispered. “I’ve w anted to say that, you know.”

“That ... that kind of talk isn’t customary, Maintainer,” she s aid stiffly. Then, seeing the pain in his face, “Roges. You embarrass m e. I’m sorry. Nobody ever said I had nice hair. Aunt Six always s ays I’m a scatter-nonny.”

“You’re not a scatter-nonny,” he said. “Don’t be embarrassed. It’s just ... just, I’ve never had anyone trying to do me harm before. If anything happens, I wanted ... I wanted to have said ...”

“I don’t think they’re going to do you harm, Roges. I think it’s m e they’re after. And Mercald, maybe. They don’t even know Mavin is here.”

His face darkened in a kind of remote anger. “Harm to you, Beedie, is harm to me. Maintainers are not mere servants. We are a good deal more than that.”

“Polymer,” said the theoretician, loudly. “About now.” Mavin reentered the cave, carrying a huge milky blob of rootsap o n a piece of bark, Mercald just behind her similarly burdened.

They put the blobs down where the theoretician could see them.

“Well, Thinker?”

“Cooler,” he directed. “Wherever it’s cooler.”

Beedie rose, moved around the cave. “It’s coolest just at the e ntrance, Mavin. There’s a draft there.” They put the rootsap down and waited as the theoretician w andered about, examining roots that came through the cave top, smiling at rocks. At last he came to the cave entrance and peered at the blobs. “There,” he said with considerable satisfaction. “You can see the polymerization beginning.” They looked at the whitish blobs which were turning transparent. “Cut it,” he suggested in his mild voice. “Into four pieces. No. Five. I’ll go with you.”

Mavin shrugged, took her knife and cut the blobs into five parts. They resisted cutting, piling up around the blade. She pushed the blobs apart, for they seemed to want to rejoin.

“That’s funny,” said Beedie. “I’ve never seen it behave that way before.”

“Nighttime,” said the Thinker. “You’d have to have seen it at nighttime, when it’s cool.”

“You’ve seen it at nighttime before?”

“Well, no. But I thought about it.”

“Now what?” asked Mavin. “We’ve got five blobs, rapidly turning transparent. What now?”

“When they are totally clear, you’ll need to pull it through a hole of some kind. Lacking any method of precise measurement, I would say something roughly finger size. Small finger size.” He watched with interest as Mavin carried the blobs and the fish lanterns out into the dark. There she found a chunk of tough rootbark and drilled a hole in it with her knife.

“So?” she asked. “Why don’t you do one.”

“Madam, I am not an experimentalist!” The theoretician turned his back on her, as offended as Mercald had been earlier.

Mavin snorted. “Well, if you won’t soil your hands, you won’t. Have you any suggestion what I should do next?”

He turned, very dignified in his rags. “You’ll need to push the blob through the hole. You’ll need to fasten that chunk to something that will hold your weight.”

She found a convenient fork in a root and wedged the chunk behind it after pushing some of the blob through the hole with a stick of deadroot.

“That should do,” said the theoretician, taking a firm hold on the part of the blob which protruded from the hole and leaning outward into space. “Be sure to make all the holes in the bark just that size. The yield at that diameter will be approximately one hundred man heights ...” The blob stretched. He grasped it f irmly. It stretched further. He stepped into air, and the blob stretched, becaming a thick rope, a line, a line that went on stretching, bobbing him gently at the end of it like a child’s balloon as he sank down below the light of the lantern into darkness. “I thought it would do that,” his voice came plaintively up. “I could theorize, but does anyone know what’s down below?”

“For all our sakes, I hope it’s the stair to Potter’s bridge,” muttered Mavin, leaning out into the chasm. “Well, let’s make another chunk with a hole in it, sausage girl. However, let me try it first. What works for our strange guest might not work for us. He’s fond of saying everything is local.”

After another session with knife and bark chunk, Mavin stepped into the chasm and dwindled away at the end of the stretching line, bobbing as she went. The sapling made a thin humming noise as it stretched, a kind of whirring. After a time, when the blob had shrunk almost to nothing, the whirring stopped, and Beedie heard a muffled call from below.

“I guess we try it,” she said to Roges, wiping her hands up and down her trousers.

Mercald was dithering at the edge of the drop, peering down once more. “I ... I ... can’t ... let ... I can’t …”

“Oh, foof,” she spat. “He’s got the down-dizzies. I might have known. Mercald. Don’t look. I’m pushing some of it through, now take firm hold of it. Wipe your hands, ninny. They’re all slippery and wet. Here. I’ll use my belt to fasten you to it so you can’t drop. Now. Roges and I are going to hold you by the hands. Shut your eyes. Now! I mean it. Do what I say, or I’ll call the Banders and let them have you. We’re holding you. Now. I’m going to let go. You’re going down. Just keep your eyes shut. Shut!”

She checked the straps of her pack, wiped her hands once more. “Are you ready, Roges? Roges?”

“Hnnn,” he whined through his teeth. “As ready as I’m likely to be, Bridger. I, too, suffer from the down-dizzies, but I suppose it’s time to get over it.”

She surprised herself, and him, by touching his face, stroking it. “Honestly, Roges. You can get over it. It just takes getting used to. Do what I told Mercald. Just don’t look down.” She watched as he eased himself over the edge, teeth gritted tight, sweat standing out on his face. He began to drop, and she took firm hold of her o wn blob, jumping outward with a strong thrust of her legs, stretching it abruptly, so that it twanged, bobbing her up and down in midair. She clung for dear life, cursing her own stupidity.

When she stopped bobbing, she was beside him, falling down the side of the wall in a dream drop, the hairs of the roots tickling her face, occasional small creatures fleeing with squeaks of alarm. She could see only the light of the fish lantern above them, fading into distance, and the lights of Nextdown which came nearer and nearer on her left, until she and Roges were bathed in their glow. He still gritted his teeth, but his eyes were open, darting this way and that, and she knew that he searched for danger to her even as he fought fear for himself.

Then the lights of Nextdown were above them, becoming only a glow against the root wall as the bulk of the bridgetown eclipsed the lanterns. From below she could hear the voice of the Thinker raised in complaint.

“They would never have thought of that. Their systems have no surfaces, and it’s totally dependent upon surface ...”

“I think I’m going to get very tired of that voice,” she said to Roges plaintively.

“I’m tired of it already,” he agreed. “Still, we’re past Nextdown. We didn’t get captured or tortured or held for ransom. We’re all alive. And I’m confident we’ll find out what’s eating the roots, and then we can go home.”

Beedie was silent, watching the glow of Nextdown fade above her. “I’m not sure I want to think about ... home, Roges. Not just yet. I know you get the down-dizzies, but ... isn’t it exciting? Aren’t you enjoying it at all?”

There was no time for him to answer. Mavin’s voice came out of the blackness nearby. “The stairs are to your right, sausage girl. I’ll toss you a line.” Then they were drawn down onto the stairs, and she forgot she had asked the question.

CHAPTER SIX

“Where are we?” asked Mercald, his voice still trembling.

“On the stairs to Potter ‘s bridge. Which is not where we particularly want to be,” said Mavin. “Nextdown is slightly above us on one hand, Potter’s bridge a long way below us on the other hand. Midwall, which is where I need to go in order to reach Bottommost, eventually, is beyond Nextdown, quite the other direction.”

“We can work our way along the root wall under Nextdown,” said Beedie, not looking at all sanguine about it. “That will bring us to the Midwall stairs.”

“I think not,” said Mavin. “At least two of us, possibly three, would find such a traverse difficult. I’d rather find another way, if possible.”

“Is the idea to escape from those who followed? Who may follow?” The theoretician seemed only mildly interested in the answer to this question.

“No,” said Mercald firmly, surprising them all. “The idea is to stay out of reach, but not out of touch. We need proof they are murderers, and for that we must remain within distance to see and hear what they do, but I’d just as soon not fall into their hands.”

“Hurrah,” said Mavin, laughing a little. “Mercald, you put it cogently. We don’t want to lose them, Thinker. Only avoid them. Which means I must go up yonder and leave a few clues or whisper a few rumors indicating we’ve passed them by, don’t you think? I suggest the rest of you curl up on the steps—they’re rather wide along here—and sleep if you can. I’ll return before light.”

“Couldn’t we go all the way to the Bottom on the rootsap?” Beedie had enjoyed the drop, once she had quit bouncing. Even that had been interesting. Now she saw with disappointment that the Thinker was shaking his head.

“Limits,” he sighed. “Surface to volume, temperature changes, w eight a factor, of course. We came about as far as one blob will allow. And now it’s too warm.”

Beedie hadn’t noticed, but the midnight cool had passed. The winds which swept down the chasm each day from midafternoon to midnight had stopped, and now the warm mists were rising once more. “What would happen if you tried that in the day time?” she asked.

“Plop,” said the Thinker, making a vividly explanatory gesture. “Plop. Nothing much left of you, I should think.”

Mavin had already gone. They settled themselves upon the step, backs against the stair risers. Knowing Mercald’s fear of heights, Beedie planted pitons and belted him to them. Knowing Roges’ pride, she did not do the same for him. Instead, she placed herself between him and the edge, as though unintentionally, a little dismayed at his quiet, “Thank you, Bridger.” They settled, not believing they would sleep, but falling asleep almost at once out of sheer weariness.

In remembering it afterward, Beedie was never sure quite what had wakened her. Was it a scratching sound from the stair root itself? Something moving in the root wall? A slight shaking of the stair they rested upon? As though tugged by something pulling at it from below? At first she thought it a dream and merely dozed in it, without concern, waiting to see what odd thing would happen next. Then her eyes snapped wide against the glow of Nextdown, and she felt Roges stiffen behind her, his foot kicking at her involuntarily as he awoke.

“What is it?” he hissed.

“Mnn, um,” said Mercald. “Wassn. Morning?”

“Unlikely to be volcanic or tectonic,” said the Thinker calmly. “Biologic in origin, I shouldn’t wonder. Probably zoologic, though there’s too little evidence to be sure.”

The mists were rising around them, bringing the odors of Bottom, a rich, filthy smell, of rotted things, a soupy odor of growth. Suddenly a miasma struck them, a stench, foul as decaying flesh, sweetly horrible, and they all gagged and gasped in the moment before a rising draft of air wafted it away. The root trembled again, purposefully.

“Something climbing on it, I should say,” said the theoretician. “I can compute the probable bulk, knowing the modulus of the r oot stair we are on, and the degree of movement ... say something on the order of a thousand two hundred man weights, give or take a hundred.”

“How big would that be?” gasped Beedie as another wave of stink flowed over them.

“Oh, something roughly six or seven men long and a man height and a half through.”

Seeing her look of incomprehension, Roges said, “Put another way, something about as long as a four-story building is tall, and as thick through as the Bridgers House living room.” The root shook beneath them, a steady, gnawing quiver accompanied by aching vibrations of sound.

The noise covered the sound of Mavin’s return, but they heard her voice as she said, “Gamelords! How long has this been going on?”

“Just started,” said Roges through his teeth. The smell had grown worse in the last few moments.