New America Page 2

  Coffin was quiet for another space, until he said, “Let’s go inside,” squared his shoulders and trudged toward the house.

  Within lay firelit cheeriness, books and pictures, more room than any but the mightiest enjoyed on Earth. Teresa had tea and snacks ready; this household did not use alcohol or tobacco. (The latter was no loss, O’Malley reflected wryly. Grown in local soil, it got fierce!) Seven well-mannered youngsters greeted the visitor and settled back to listen to adult talk. (On Earth, they’d probably have been out in street gangs—or enslaved, unless barracked on some commune.) Six of them were slender, brown-haired, and fair-skinned where the sun had not scorched.

  Danny differed in more than being the oldest. He was stocky, of medium height. Though his features were essentially caucasoid — straight nose, wide narrow mouth, rust-colored eyes—still, the high cheekbones, blue-black hair, and dark complexion bespoke more than a touch of Oriental. O’Malley wondered briefly, uselessly, what his gene-parents had been like, and what induced them to give cells for storage on a spaceship they would never board, and whether or not they had ever met. By now they were almost certainly dead.

  Small talk bounced around the room. There was no lack of material. Three thousand pioneers didn’t constitute a hamlet where everybody knew day by day what everybody else was doing, especially when they were scattered across an area the size of Mindanao. To be sure, some were concentrated in Anchor; but on the whole, High American agriculture could not yet support a denser settlement.

  Nonetheless, an underlying tension was undisguisable. O’Malley felt grateful when Teresa suddenly asked him why he had come. He told them. Their eyes swung about and locked upon Danny.

  The boy did not cringe, he grew rigid, in the manner of his stepfather. But his answer could scarcely be heard: “I’d rather not.”

  “I admit we’ll face a bit of risk,” O’Malley said. “However”—he grinned—”you tell me what isn’t risky. I’m mighty fond of this battered hide of mine, son, and I’ll be right beside you.”

  Teresa strained her fingers together.

  Danny’s voice lifted and cracked. “I don’t like it down there!”

  Coffin hardened his lips. “Is that all?” he demanded. “When you can carry out a duty?”

  The boy stared at him, and away, and hunched in his chair. Finally he whispered, “If you insist, Father.”

  Hours passed before O’Malley left the house, to go home and prepare himself. Meanwhile full night had come upon the highland. The air was cold, silent, and altogether clear. Raksh, visibly grown in both size and phase, stood low above the cloud-sea, while tiny Sohrab hastened in pursuit; both moons crossed the sky widdershins. Elsewhere, darkness was thronged with stars. Their constellations weren’t much changed by a score of light-years’ remove. And though it was a trifle more tilted, Rustum’s axis did not point far from Earth’s. He could know the Bears, the Dragon —and near Bootes, a dim spark which was Sol—

  More than forty years away by spaceship, he thought—human cargo cold-sleeping like the cells of their animals and plants and foster children, for four decades till they arrived and were wakened back to life. But did the spaceships still fare? It had been a nearly last-gasp effort which assembled the fleet that carried the pioneers here: an effort by which the government, with their own consent, rid itself of Constitutionalist troublemakers who kept muttering about foolishnesses like freedom. Had any of those vessels ever gone anywhere else again? Radio had not had time to bring an answer to questions beamed at Earth. Nor would man on Rustum be prepared to build ships which could leave it for a much longer time to come. Quite possibly never… O’Malley shivered and hastened to his car.

  Roxana was a large continent, and this trip was from its middle to the southern edge. Time dragged for Danny. They were flying high, for the most part very little below the normal cloud deck. Hence transient nimbuses, further down, often cut them off from sight of land. But then they would pass over the patch of weather and come back into clear vision—as clear as vision ever got, here.

  O’Malley made several attempts at cheerful conversation. Danny tried to respond, but words wouldn’t come. At last talk died altogether. Only the hum of jets filled the cabin, or a hoot of wind and cannonade of thunder, borne by the thick atmosphere across enormous distances.

  O’Malley puffed his pipe, whistled an occasional tune, sat alertly by to take over from the autopilot if there was any trouble. Danny squired in the seat beside him. Why didn’t I at least bring a book? the boy thought, over and over. Then I wouldn’t have to just sit here and stare out at that.

  “Grand, isn’t it?” O’Malley had said once. Danny barely kept from yelling back, “No, it’s horrible, can’t you see how awful it is?”

  Above, it was pearl-gray, except in the east where a blur of light marked the morning sun. Mountains reared beneath: so tall, as they climbed toward the homes of men, that their heads were lost in the skyroof. They tumbled sharply downward, though, in cliffs and crags and canyons, vast misty valleys, gorges where rivers gleamed dagger bright, steeps whose black rock was slashed by waterfalls. Ahead were their foothills, and off to the west began a prairie which sprawled around the curve of the world. A storm raged there, swart bulks of cloud where lightning flared and glared, remorseless rains driven by the great slow winds of the lowlands. Hues were infinite, for vegetation crowded all but the stoniest heights. Yet those shades of blue-green, tawny, russet were as somber in Danny’s eyes as the endless overcast above them; and the wings which passed by in million-membered flocks only drove into him how alien was the life that overswarmed these lands.

  O’Malley’s glance lingered upon him. “What a shame you don’t like it here,” he murmured. “It’s your kind of country, you know. You’re fitted for it in a way I’ll never be.”

  “I don’t, that’s all,” Danny forced out. “Let’s not talk about it. Please, sir.”

  If we talk, I won’t be able to hide the truth from him, I’ll start shaking. I’ll stammer, the sweat that’s already cold in my hands and armpits, already sharp in my nose, it’ll break out so he can see, and he’ll know I’m afraid. Oh, God, how afraid! Maybe I’ll cry. And Father will be ashamed of me.

  Father, who followed me down into yonder horror and plucked me free of death.

  Fear didn’t make sense, Danny told himself. His mind had stated the same thing year after year, whenever a dream or a telepicture or a word in someone’s mouth brought him back to the jungle. That was what had branded him. Not heat and wet and gloom. Not hunger and thirst (once his belly had lashed him into trying fruits which were unlike those he had been warned were poisonous). Not rustlings, croakings, chatterings, roar and howl and maniacal cackle, his sole changes from a monstrous silence. Not the tusked beast which pursued him, or even—entirely—the gigantic bird of prey whose beak had gaped at him. It was the endlessness of jungle, through which he stumbled lost for hours that stretched into days and nights, nights.

  Sometimes he thought a part of him had never come back again, would always grope weeping among the trees.

  No, I’m being morbid, his mind scolded him before it sought shelter at home on High America.

  Skies unutterably blue and clear by day, brilliant after dark with stars or aurora, the quick clean rains which washed them or the heart-shaking, somehow heart-uplifting might of a storm, the white peace which descended in winter. Grainfields rippling gold in the wind; flowers ablaze amidst birdsong. Wild hills to climb, and woods which were open to the sun. Rivers to swim in—a thousand cool caresses—or to row a boat on before drifting downstream in delicious laziness. The reach of Lake Olympus, two hours’ airbus ride whenever he could get some free time from school or farm work, but worth it because of the sloop he and Toshiro Hirayama had built; and the dangers, when a couple of gales nearly brought them to grief, those were good too, a challenge, afterward a proof of being a skilled sailor and well on the way to manhood, though naturally it wouldn’t be wise to let parents know
how close the shave had been…

  This I’ve had to leave. Because I’ve never had the courage to admit I’m haunted.

  Am I really, anymore? That wasn’t too bad a nightmare last sleep-time, and my first in years.

  The eon ahead of him needn’t be unbearable, he told himself. Honestly, it needn’t. This trip, he had a strong, experienced boss, radio links to the human world, proper food and clothing and gear, a quick flit home as soon as the job was done, the promise of good pay and the chance of an even better bonus. All I’ve got to do is get through some strenuous, uncomfortable days. No more than that. No more. Why, the experience ought to help me shake off what’s left of my old terrors.

  Not that I’ll ever return!

  He settled into his chair and harness, and fought to relax.

  The vehicle, a bulky cargo bus, almost filled the open space on which it had set down. Tall, finely fronded blue-green stalks—plants of that varied and ubiquitous family which the colonists misnamed “grass”—hid the wheels and much of the pontoons. Trees made a wall around. They were mostly ruddy-barked goldwood, but among them stood slim feathery soartop, murky fake-pine, crouched ant thorny gnome. Between the trunks, brush and vines crowded like a mob waiting to attack. A few meters inward, the light-lessness amidst all those leaves seemed total, as if to make up for the lack of any noticeable shadows elsewhere. Insectoids glittered across that dusk. Wings beat overhead, some huge in this upbearing pressure. None of life closely resembled what dwelt on High America, and much was altogether unlike it. Those environments were too foreign to each other.

  The air hung windless, hot and heavy. It was full of odors, pungent, sweet, rank, bitter, none recalling home. Sounds came loud—a background of trills, whispers, buzzes, rustles, purling water; footfalls; above everything else, the first incautious words of human speech.

  Danny took a breath, and another. His neck felt stiff, but he made himself stare around. No matter how horrible a bush looks, it won’t jump out and bite me. I’ve got to remember that. It helped a little that they’d let their craft pressurize gradually before venturing forth. Danny had had a chance to get used to the feel of it in lungs and bloodstream.

  Jack O’Malley had not. He could endure the gas concentration for a while if he must, with no consequences afterward worse than a bad headache. But let him breathe the stuff too long and carbon dioxide acidosis would make him ill, nitrogen narcosis blur his brain, over-much oxygen begin slowly searing his tissues. Above his coverall, sealed at the neck, rose a glassite helmet with a reduction pump, an awkward water tube and chowlock for his nourishment, a heavy desiccator unit to prevent fogging from the sweat which already studded his face.

  And yet he’s spent his years on Rustum exploring the lowlands, Danny thought. What could make a man waste that much life?

  “Okay, let’s unload our stuff and saddle up.” O’Malley’s voice boomed from a speaker, across the mutterings. “At best, we won’t get where we’re bound before dark.”

  “Won’t we?” Danny asked, surprised. “But you said it was about fifty kilometers, along a hard-packed game trail. And we must have, uh, twenty hours of daylight left. Even stopping to sleep, there shouldn’t be any problem.”

  O’Malley’s smile flickered, wistful. “Not for you maybe. I’m not young anymore. Worse, I’ve got this thing on my head and torso. The pump’s powered by my chest expansion when I breathe, you know. You’d be surprised how the work in that adds up, if you weren’t so lucky you’ll never need the gadget yourself.”

  Lucky!

  “However.” O’Malley continued, “we can hike on after nightfall, and I guess we’ll arrive with plenty of time for preliminary jobs before daybreak.”

  Danny nodded. Sometimes he wondered if men wouldn’t do best to adapt to the slow turning of Rustum. Whatever the medics said, he felt it should be possible to learn to stay active for forty hours, then sleep for twenty. Could it be that efficient electric lanterns were the single reason the effort had never been made?

  “Come dawn, then, we can start constructing what we need to haul the salvage back here,” O’Malley said.

  “If we can,” Danny mumbled.

  He hadn’t intended to be heard, but was. Blast the dense atmosphere! O’Malley frowned disapproval.

  After a moment the man shrugged. “Maybe we will have to give up on the heaviest stuff, like the engine,” he conceded. “Maybe even on the biggest, bulkiest instruments, if my idea about the wagon doesn’t work out. At a minimum, though, we are going to bring back those tapes—Huh? What’s wrong?”

  Danny hugged the metal of a pontoon to himself. “N-n-nothing,” he pushed forth, around the shriek that still struggled to escape him. He couldn’t halt the shudders of his body.

  Above the meadow soared a spearfowl, not the big raptor of the highlands but its truly immense cousin, eight meters from wingtip to wingtip, with power to carry a little boy off and devour him.

  Yet boughs overarched the trail. Nothing flew beneath that high, high ceiling of bronze, amber, and turquoise except multitudinous small volants like living rainbows. And when a flock of tarzans went by, leaping from branch to branch, chattering and posturing, Danny found himself joining O’Malley in laughter.

  Astonishing, too, was the airiness of the forest. “Jungle” was a false word. Roxana wasn’t in the tropics, and no matter how much energy Rustum got from its nearby sun, the Ardashir coast was cooled by sea breezes. The weather was not so much hot as warm, actually: a dry warmth, at that. Brush grew riotously only where openings in the woods provided ample light. Elsewhere, between the boles, were simply occasional shrubs. The ground was soft with humus; it smelled rich.

  Nor was the forest gloomy. That appearance had merely been due to contrast. Pupils expanded, the human eye saw a kind of gentle brightness which brought out infinite tones and shadings of foliage, then faded away into mysterious cathedral distances.

  Cathedral? Danny had seen pictures and read descriptions from Earth. He’d always thought of a big church as hushed. If so, that didn’t qualify this wilderness, which hummed and sang and gurgled —breezes in the leaves, wings and paws, eager streams, a call, a carol. Where was the brooding cruelty he remembered?

  Maybe the difference was that he wasn’t lost; he had both a friend and a gun at his side. Or maybe his dread had not been so deep-rooted after all; maybe, even what he had feared was not the thing in itself, but only memories and bad dreams which for some years had plagued a child who no longer existed.

  The trail was easy, broad, beaten almost into a pavement. He scarcely felt the considerable load on his back. His feet moved themselves, they carried him afloat, until he must stop to let a panting O’Malley catch up.

  Higher oxygen intake, of course. What an appetite he was building, and wouldn’t dinner taste good? What separated him from his chief, besides age, was that for him this atmosphere was natural. Not that he was some kind of mutant: no such nonsense. If that had been the case, he couldn’t have stood the highlands. But his genes did put him at the far end of a distribution curve with respect to certain biochemical details.

  I don’t have to like this country, he told himself. It’s just that, well, Mother used to say we should always listen to the other fellow twice.

  When they camped, he had no need to follow O’Malley into sleep immediately after eating. He lay in his bag, watched, listened, breathed. They had established themselves off the trail, though in sight of it. The man’s decision proved right, because a herd of the pathmaking animals came by.

  Danny grabbed for his rifle. The plan was to do pothunting, wild meat being abundant. Rustumite life didn’t have all the nutrients that humans required, but supplemental pills weighed a lot less than even freeze-dried rations—

  He let the weapon sink, unused. It wouldn’t be possible to carry off more than a fraction of one of those bodies; and it would be a mortal sin to waste so towering-horned a splendor.

  After a while he slept. He fell back int
o a tomb silence of trees and trees, where the spearfowl hovered on high. He woke strangling on a scream. Although he soon mastered the terror, for the rest of his journey to the wreck he walked amidst ghastliness.

  The last several kilometers went slowly. Not only did compass, metal detector, and blaze marks guide the travelers off the game path, while a starless night had fallen, but many patches were less thickly wooded than elsewhere, thus more heavily brushcovered. None were sufficiently big or clear for a safe landing. O’Malley showed Danny how to wield the machetes they carried, and the boy got a savage pleasure from it. Take that, you devil! Take that! When they reached the goal, he too could barely stay on his feet long enough to make camp, and this time his rest was not broken.

  Later they studied the situation. The slender shape of the car lay crumpled and canted between massive trees. Flashbeams picked out a torn-off wing still caught among the limbs above. There went a deep, changeable pulsing through the odorous warmth. It came from the south, where the ground sloped evenly, almost like a ramp, four or five kilometers to the sea.

  Danny had studied aerial photographs taken from the rescue car. In his troubled state, he had not until now given them much thought. Now he asked, “Sir, uh, why’d you head inland, you and Mr. Herskowitz? Why not just out onto the beach to get picked up?”

  “Haven’t got a beach here,” O’Malley explained. “I know; went and looked. The bush continues right to the edge of a whacking great salt marsh, flooded at high tide and otherwise mucky. Wheels or pontoons would too damn likely stick fast in that gumbo. If you waited for flood, you’d find the water churned, mean and tricky, way out to the reefs at the bay mouth—nothing that a pilot would want to risk his car on, let alone his carcass.”

  “I see.” Danny pondered a while. “And with Mr. Herskowitz injured, you couldn’t swim out to where it’d be safe to meet you…. But can’t we raft this stuff to calm water, you and me?”