Part 21 (1/2)
It seemed to attract the plants, as if they couldn't tell the difference between the light and sun. First roots, then more tendrils dropped from the roof, opening leaves as they slid.
This shouldn't be happening, Satok thought. This couldn't be happening! The Petraseal should have impeded any new growth, reduced it to dust. Where he had painted so industriously, he now realized that the Petraseal was marbled with cracks, fine in places, broadening in others to allow the plants to burgeon forth. Even the swath he had just painted had opened to emit tendrils.
And all of them seemed to be sliding toward him. From its sheath on his belt, he took his machete and hacked himself free, running to the rear of the cave as fast as he could without tripping over the vines.
He found Reilly first, hanging upside down by his ankles, which were pinned to the upper part of the wall. The vines twined down his legs and wrapped his arms tightly to his sides. His machete lay useless on the floor. The end of the vine-or maybe the first part to catch him-had wrapped around his neck five or six times, very tightly. Tender green shoots grew out of his mouth, nose, and ears.
Satok wasted no more time looking for Soyuk or Clancy. He didn't even worry about why the Petraseal hadn't worked. He jumped, hopped, and ran for the entrance, hacking and slicing.
He went at such a speed that he dropped his flashlight. That's why he didn't see the root looping down from the ceiling, to lash itself around his throat while another knocked him to the floor.
He didn't scream for long as the stinging, s.n.a.t.c.hing vines overwhelmed him. As the sound died in his throat, he seemed to hear from the cave a low grumbling hum. As oxygen was cut off from his brain and optic nerve and his sight failed, the light from the setting sun pierced the leaves, lighting the greenery in the cave's entrance like the watchful eyes of a thousand gloating cats.
Marmion and her entourage had returned to Kilcoole, bringing with them Luka and an injured cat for the attention of Kilcoole's fat witch doctor, leaving Rick O'Shay's bird available to fly Torkel to Savoy to meet Satok.
Torkel was not actually rubbing his hands together with glee, but he felt like it. O'Shay had received a radio message that Matthew Luzon, his a.s.sistant, and an unspecified pa.s.senger had just cleared the coast at Harrison's Fjord. Torkel considered Luzon his staunchest ally, and he quickly sent a message asking Matthew to meet him and the McGee's Pa.s.s shanachie at Savoy.
''Hope they got that clear, Captain,' O'Shay said, shaking his head. ”Terrible amount of static lately.”
When they circled the Savoy settlement, Torkel thought nothing of the brambles growing some distance outside the town until he saw the gleam of metal beneath them. Even then he thought it was some piece of cast-off machinery a local had allowed the vines to overgrow.
When he inquired in the village for the shanachie, he was told that the man had been conferring with his fellow shanachies for days and yesterday had made a visit to the cave and had not yet returned.
”Important gentlemen such as yourself should be sittin' and restin' and havin' a cuppa, and not go worryin' after the shanachies. Sure they was all together and they'll be after makin' powerful decisions and discussions and such like out to the cave. I shouldn't like to be the one to interrupt them.” This advice came from a middle-aged woman in raggedy clothes.
Why did Torkel get the feeling that there was something spurious about her rustic humility? Perhaps it was because he had lately had occasion to hear many Petaybeans speak. They seemed to use that broad colorful accent only when addressing company officials.
So he was uncharacteristically curt with her as he said, 'Take me to this cave at once. Shanachie Satok's business is with me and I've come to meet him.”
”Ah, well, sir, I'm too old a woman to take you on that sort of a hike, sure I am. But my son now, he'd be after takin' ya on his way up to the fields with the sheep like.”
”Then let him take us, but let's go,” Torkel snapped.
A boy appeared abruptly, a human island in a white woolly sea. He shook his head when Torkel wanted to use the copter to get them there. ”Coo-berries'll take that, too. C'mon!”
It irritated Torkel no end that Rick O'Shay had the time to relax, drink tea, and exchange gossip with the woman while he traipsed after the boy. About a mile from the end of the vil1age, the boy started swinging in a wide arc around the lake of weeds.
”Just where is this cave, son?” Torkel asked him, panting slightly at the uphill climb. He'd have to get back into working out again at the station.
”Over there, sir, but you won't want to go there, sir. Only shanachies go there.”
”Are all you people nuts? I already told your mother I have business with the shanachies. Now then, how do we get through this shrubbery and into the cave?”
”Ah, sure and I couldn't be doin' that, sir. Coo-berries is dead poison to sheep, and they've not sense enough to keep from eatin' them. Worse, I'd never get the stickers and thorns out of the wool.”
”Then don't take the sheep, son. Did that ever occur to you?”
”But like, what would I do with 'em then, sir?”
Torkel was about to make a suggestion when he heard the engine of another copter. Seeing it over fly their position and head for the village, he abandoned the boy and sprinted back down the hill to intercept it.
He arrived winded, back where he'd started from, in time to see the pilot shut down the copter and jump down, followed by the imposing figure of Vice-Chairman Matthew Luzon; one of his entourage, who looked a bit pale; and an individual dressed in ragged leather and fur. As Torkel approached, his nose twitched at the rancid stench that exuded from the creature.
”Dr. Luzon, thank you for coming. I'm afraid there's been a bit of a delay, however.”
Luzon smiled knowingly. ”Ah, yes, the vines. I encountered the same problem when I serendipitously ended up at McGee's Pa.s.s on my way to meet you. It's a small problem, but a bit tricky, Captain. You simply enlist the aid of the villagers to throw boards and stones on top of the weeds to form a path. We found that worked fine when we landed in the middle of a patch ourselves.”
'You went to the cave at McGee's Pa.s.s?”
”Cave? Ah, was that what the locals were singing about? No, we didn't examine the cave. When we discovered that you were, in fact, here, we came as soon as that . . . ah . . . song was over. I did, however, make a quite satisfying discovery during our brief stay which I'll discuss with you later. Now then, where's this fellow we were supposed to meet?”
”He's in the cave,” Torkel said. ”Beyond the weeds. Though I'm d.a.m.ned if I know how he got through.”
”Easy enough if you think about it,” Matthew said superciliously. He turned to the villagers who had gathered to watch the company men confer. ”I want a work party to gather boards, stones, sheets of plasglas, anything that can be thrown across the weeds for a path. Now, step quickly, will you! We must reach the cave.”
”Sure, carryin' enough things to get back there, that's a week's work you're talkin' about, sir,” said a local man with the broad weathered face of an Eskirish cross, scratching his head at the prospect.
”We've used all that sort of stuff we had building bridges across the streams when they flooded,” the woman said. ”There's not a sc.r.a.p left hereabouts.”
”Then we'll send back to s.p.a.ceBase,” Torkel said with a curt nod to O'Shay. ”You radio for a team.”
O'Shay got on the radio, and in a moment he emerged and said, ”None of the other copters are at s.p.a.ceBase, sir, or even available later today.”
”Then one of you fly back and pick up help and material,” Torkel said, vastly annoyed at all of the delays and rather surprised that Satok, who'd had twenty-four or more hours to work ore, had not been on hand to guide them.
”It will have to be your pilot, Captain Fiske,” Luzon said. ”I require the full time services of my own.”
Torkel nodded to O'Shay, who climbed back aboard and restarted his engine. By now it was well into the afternoon.
”Why do you suppose we haven't heard from your shanachie?” Torkel demanded of the woman as the noise of the copter faded in the distance.
”Cave's a powerful ways back, sir.”
”How did he and the others get there, then?” Torkel demanded. ”We could try the same thing.”
”Ah, sure, sir, shanachies has their ways as wouldn't be known to others.”
Matthew Luzon nodded to Braddock, who hastily made a note of that remark.
”Yet more misguided souls in league with the Great Monster,” wailed the unwashed man.
”Ah, Captain Fiske, this is a particularly valuable . . . acquaintance. From the southern continent. Brother Howling, meet Captain Torkel Fiske, who has spearheaded the effort to have this planet fully investigated. Captain Fiske, the Shepherd Howling, a major spiritual leader from the Vale of Tears. A most influential man.”
Torkel gave the scruffy man an impatient look and limited his response to a mumbled ”Delighted.”
While they accepted the dubious hospitality of the village, Torkel gave the commissioner the details of his meeting with Satok and the ore samples he had himself handled and identified. To his relief, Luzon did not appear at all skeptical about the authenticity of the ores. He knew the planet was ore-rich: every s.p.a.ce probe had verified that, even pin pointing the exact sites from s.p.a.ce. Finding the precise locations on the surface had proved to be impossible.
Howling had apparently been listening carefully and now he nodded wisely. ”The monster is treacherous. Perfectly capable of transforming gold into stone, winter into summer, harmless plants into murderous serpentine weapons. Time and again I have warned my flock they must rise up and subdue the monster with no hint of capitulation, but they were weak and faltering.”
Torkel glanced at Luzon, appreciating what merit the lunatic could provide in discrediting the Kilcoole interpretation of the planet's behavior. He smiled at Luzon. ”We need a few more new . . . acquaintances like this good and wise Brother Howling, don't we?”