Part 17 (1/2)

She gazed at him without speaking for a moment. ”Then she knows,” she murmured.

”I guess so. I have to tell Mid, and get Cyrano to see her.”

”But Cyrano is here to kill the monster.”

He nodded, and went to the special phone that was only for Mid. none hesitated, then went to the kitchen.

He got the answering machine, as expected. ”May Flowers has been raped and savaged by her husband,” he reported. ”She is in the cabin. She won't see a doctor, but we fear for her. We think Cyrano might help her.” Then, after a pause, he added, ”She is a good woman. none and I are going out to see her tonight, and Frank Tishner tomorrow. We want to help her. She put us together. We hope you will send Cyrano.”

He set down the phone. That was as close as he could come to asking a favor of Mid on his own.

Then he went to check on none. She was busy packing a bag with groceries that May had brought her. ”And does she have water there?” she asked.

”Yes.”

”And anything to read?”

”No.”

”Find something Mid won't mind.”

He checked Mid's shelves. It was all right for him to read the books, because he was careful, but he wasn't sure about removing a volume from the house. Still, May worked for Mid too. He found a novel, The Shattered World by Michael Reaves; that was old enough to be expendable, he hoped, if she liked fantasy. If not, he would try another.

He returned with the volume to the kitchen. none was ready. ”Now we go,” she said.

They went. Before long they were at the cabin. ”It's so much quicker by car!” none exclaimed. She had not complained, but he knew she was stiff from her arduous ride around the ranch. He watched covertly as she walked, to see whether any of that stiffness showed, but all he saw was how well formed her legs were in the jeans.

Inside they found May lying where he and Tishner had left her. none went immediately and knelt beside the mattress. ”May, it's me, none!” she said.

May stirred. ”Who?”

none evidently realized that she had slipped. ”Jade Brown.”

May blinked. ”none-the way he's Geode?”

”Yes. Please, you are hurt and we want to help you. How do you feel?”

”Awful. I need to-” She broke off, looking at Geode.

”Take a walk, Geode,” none said without looking at him.

Oh. The bathroom. He fetched a carrot and went out, but the ponies were gone. He walked out along the earthen pier, gazing at the slow gray curve of the Withlacoochee River, and at the stand of cypress trees growing at the verge. There were giant stumps of bygone cypress further in, five and six feet in diameter, but the current ones were hardly more than a foot at the point their trunks narrowed.

The river was divided here, with a series of marshy islands on which more cypress trees grew. Actually, the islands might be because of the cypress and the communities of creatures their ma.s.sive root systems supported. Cypress knees projected from the water, long a mystery to man. It seemed that the knees started as ordinary roots; if they were in aerated soil they grew downward, but if they were in water they grew upward until they found air, then grew down again. People had conjectured that they served as sources of air for the roots, or that sunlight on their surfaces signaled the seasons for the tree, but there was no conclusive evidence.

Geode had no problem with it. It was obvious to him that the primary purpose of the knees was to brace the tree in insubstantial soil. Ordinary trees could grasp the firm soil with their roots and be strongly anch.o.r.ed against their primary challenge, the wind. Wind put a lot of force against the extensive surface of a tree, and it was usually wind which finally brought down a tree, after it was dead and could no longer defend itself. They eased it by making their leaves flexible or needle-shaped, so that they offered little resistance to the pa.s.sing air, and their branches and even their trunks had enough give to allow them to bend with the wind and spring back undamaged after it pa.s.sed. But the heart of it was their root system, which held their vulnerable upper sections in place. Except when the soil was not solid, but muddy, or even covered by open water. That represented a challenge which defeated most trees. They could get oxygen down into the roots, just as they could get water up to the leaves; that wasn't the problem. But the anchorage had to be below, and mud was no good. Cypress reduced the surface it presented to the wind by being thin, almost like furred sticks growing up. But that wasn't enough. So the cypress used the outrigger system, sending its roots first out and then down, spreading them wider to gain leverage. Then the anchorage of the mud sufficed; the membrane of the rootlets themselves firmed it, and the leverage of their spread braced the tree despite the softness of the soil. How did they know when to do this, and how far to reach out? That was where the genius of the system showed: the farther underwater a root started, the farther it had to grow to reach the surface. Since it grew at an angle, that meant it went farther out. Once it was high enough so that the seasonal fluctuations of the water level never covered it entirely, it made its turn and grew down until it found the soil. Then it made the best anchorage it could, in the manner of any tree, reaching deeply and spreading out its feeder rootlets. It had become a flying b.u.t.tress whose placement provided the leverage the larger tree required.

Geode liked all trees, but he had special respect for the cypress. Trees were not smart in the manner of men, but they were geniuses in the manner of trees. They could grow in terrain that excluded other trees, so they had little compet.i.tion. They could grow in dry soil too, and did, without their knees, but there they were competing with the myriad other species adapted more perfectly to that dry land, and were at a disadvantage, and tended to be squeezed out. So, in the larger sense, they owed their prosperity and perhaps their survival to their knees. If the water rose, owing perhaps to a s.h.i.+ft in the river or the pattern of rainfall, other trees would die, but the cypress would survive. That deserved respect.

If the cypress were lost, the ecology of the waterfront and swamp regions would change. All the species of fish and insects that existed in the protection of those knees would perish. There might be types never discovered by man, hiding there, that would be rendered extinct if their habitat were eliminated. Geode didn't need to know exactly what they were, he just needed to know they had their fair chance to live their lives and do their things. His mission in life had come upon him slowly, but now it was clear: to protect the wildlife that remained on the planet, any way he could. Mid gave him that chance, here at the Middle Kingdom, and he would carry through.

That led him to thought of the monster, the firefly. Was it a wild creature? If so, he should protect it too. But his news of it had summoned Cyrano, who was here to kill it. Was this right? Yet if the monster lived, and continued preying on people, there would come a ma.s.sive monster hunt, and they could burn down the entire forest and dredge the river and fill the swamp, just to get rid of the monster. Then the firefly would truly have brought the fire! The Middle Kingdom would become a wasteland. So it seemed that if the monster wouldn't go away, it had to be killed, to protect the ranch and all the natural creatures it harbored. Geode didn't like it, but he appreciated the logic of it.

He saw a ripple at the verge of the water. There was an alligator, moving smoothly in quest of prey. One thing about the alligators: they made intruders cautious. Except for the poachers, who wanted their hides for expensive shoes. Geode would prefer to see the hides of the poachers made into shoes, or stretched out on boards in the fas.h.i.+on of rattlesnake skins. He visualized an alligator talking to a rattlesnake in front of a board and boots: ”You should have seen the fight he put up!”

In a sense, the firefly was doing that, turning the tables on the poachers. A hunter had sneaked onto the property and become the prey. It was simple justice. Geode couldn't help liking the firefly, some.

He walked back to the cabin. A pair of wrens poked in the gra.s.s beside it, indefatigably looking for bugs. He liked wrens too; they were bold little birds, almost tame, and if a door was left open they would come in and explore. Once one had been caught inside; he had had to explain to it that this was an accident, and it had forgiven him. When he split wood, preparing it for the fireplace at such time as Mid might arrive, the wrens would poke about the billets, seeking the bugs dislodged from the bark. That was just as well, because bugs were no good inside the house. They had no way to forage or hide, so they died. It was better that they live or die cleanly, nature's way.

He knocked on the door, in case the women weren't finished. none came to let him in. ”I don't know how much is physical and how much psychological, but she's not well. We must do something for her.”

Geode was willing, but had no idea what to offer. He followed her into the main chamber, where May now sat up on the mattress, propped against the wall. It was true: she did not look good.

”We brought you a book,” he said, knowing this was inadequate. ”It's a good fantasy novel.” He had been carrying it all this time, unconscious of it. ”The Shattered World.”

Her dull eyes swiveled to cover him. ”Thank you, Geode. It sounds appropriate.”

There was a silence.

”Maybe I could tell you a story,” none said. ”If you aren't up to reading.”

Surprise lighted May's features momentarily. ”You tell stories?”

none was embarra.s.sed. ”No one ever cared to listen.”

”I am a captive audience,” May said. But she smiled.

”I will tell you of none.” none reached up and loosened her hair, shaking it out into an auburn ma.s.s.

Geode was interested. He sat on the other mattress and watched her. And was duly impressed.

* 20 - NONE WAS A nymph of Mount Ida. Like a hamadryad, who was a spirit of a particular tree, she was a spirit of the mountain, immortal as long a she remained with it but unable to live apart from it. Mount Ida was, in an overwhelming sense, her mother.

Mount Ida, as none knew it, was a many-splendored region. a.s.sociated with it were misty glens and ridges covered by pines and flower-covered slopes. A stream coursed down it, felling through cataracts toward the aegean Sea. For centuries none roamed the protective recesses of the mountain, knowing neither joy nor sorrow, for she had no experience of the mortal realm.

Then a small party came to Mount Ida. A nurse brought a wrapped parcel and laid it on a ledge, exposed to the sun. The party departed. none, curious, went to see what they had left-and was astonished.

It was a mortal baby boy! Apparently he had been left here to die, unwanted. But he was a marvelously pretty baby, and she had ruth on him, and picked him up and carried him to the home of a shepherd who lived at the foot of the mountain. She could not let herself be seen by an adult, for adults did not believe in mountain spirits, so she left the baby at the door and faded away. But she watched from cover, and saw the shepherd's wife come out and find the baby.

”Oh!” she exclaimed. ”It is the answer to my prayers! Zeus has granted me a baby!” Then none knew that she had done the right thing, for the woman would take good care of the foundling.

Thereafter none watched, for she had touched a mortal person and thereby a.s.sumed a bit of mortality herself, while yielding part of her immortality to the baby. She had not realized that this would be the case, for she had been innocent of the ways of mortality, but gradually she came to understand. The baby had been fated to die, and she had saved him not merely by carrying him physically to the shepherd's home, but by yielding part of her immortality to him, counteracting his fate. That part of her nature which enabled him to live also attached her to him, for he was now part of her as much as she was part of him.

The shepherd called him Alexander, and he grew in due course to handsome manhood. This happened quickly, by none's terms, for to her twenty years was but an instant. He became a shepherd, and spent much time on the mountain slopes, and she watched him constantly, drawn by the part of her that was him. She saw that though he was breathtakingly handsome, he was shallow of character, having little interest in anything other than his immediate pleasure. She a.s.sumed that this was normal for his kind, and this did not surprise her. It was, after all, the way of mountain spirits, for they had no souls.

One day he was injured in an accident occasioned by his own carelessness, and his leg was bleeding. none came then and put her hand on the injury, and it healed.

”Who are you?” he inquired.

”I am none, nymph of the mountain.”