Rork! (10 page)

She said, “We maybe could.”

“And get through before Cold Time is over and the rorks really begin to stir?”

She said, “We maybe could.”

He scrambled to his feet. “Then let’s get going.”

She took an ember from the fire and cased it and wrapped it and kicked dirt over what was left. “I’m ready,” she said. They went down, as they had come up, the far side of the hill. Nothing moved as far as eye could reach, not even a daybat fluttered against the leaden sky. All seemed cold. All seemed dead. Far behind them, against a snow-free black bill, lay a patch of something thin and white. It might have been smoke. It might have been mist.

“Well, Ranny,” he said aloud, but to himself, “you wanted to explore the continent. And now you’re damned well going to.”

They moved north, into the dread heart of Rorkland.

• • •

Sometimes their drink was snow, sometimes when it melted they stooped and drank from the puddles, sometimes they had to break a film of ice and suck the shattered shards. Now and then they were able to bring down small game with rocks. Occasionally a rip was seen slinking away, but offered no menace beyond the mere unease caused by its presence. Certain places Norna led him around rather than across, indicating by finger on lips and waggling hand that it was the sort of place rorks preferred to nest in. Here and there they found a tree around whose base a few withered fruits still lay, their usually astringent flesh nipped by the frost into edibility. For the first time in his life Lomar became familiar with hunger. He remembered, ruefully, the comment of Old Guns that this was the constant condition of many of the Wild Tocks.

Periodically he and Norna scouted the landscape (the brown of withered redwing the predominant color motif now) for signs of pursuit. They saw no files of men, no mists that they were not sure
were
mists.

They had been awhile on their way, guiding themselves by the infrequent sun alone, when they began to feel that they were being followed. Or, perhaps, not so much followed, as observed. They heard an occasional faint noise when there was no wind, no sign of any animal. Now and then they saw something flicker out of the comer of an eye. These things did not happen often. But they continued to happen. And once he chanced to turn quickly around, prompted by nothing he was able to name, to see something vanish in that instant over the crest of a not too distant hill. Something too large for any animal they knew of … something too small for a rork.

“What do you think, Norna?” he asked. “Any of Flinders’ men?”

She was emphatic that it was not. Flinders or any of his had no notion of subtlety. They would have been set upon long before this. No … not Flinders. Not any of the Wild Tocks. Had she any idea at all what it might be? No. She had none. They concluded that whatever it was — assuming there to be an actual It and not a mere series of naturally explainable and insignificant coincidences magnified by their nerves and imaginations — it was not dangerous; had it been capable of harming them, it would already have done so.

That night they slept in a cave on a downward slope of land. He was awakened by an internal pressure, and made his way silently past her sleeping form to the mouth of the cavern. His astonished and marvelling cry brought her to his side in a second.

“The city!” she cried. “The city of the rorks!”

Far, far ahead and far, far below, near the horizon, it lay, shimmering and flickering with constant light, myriads of lights in an infinite variety of colors, spread out for a great space. It could not be an aurora, could not appear toward the center of the landmass and not at either extremity of it; an aurora capped and cloaked the sky, it did not appear as points of light upon the ground. The appearance utterly baffled him, he did not know what to say.

Norna did, though, or thought she did. There was no doubt in her mind, only dismay. This was certainly the city of the rorks. They would have to go very far from the direct route which they intended in order to avoid it. But he would not agree.

“Whatever it is,” he said, “it can’t have anything to do with rorks. Did anyone ever see rorks there? Did anyone ever see anything at all there in the daytime? No. There, you see … And even if it should have something to do with them, there is no reason to think that they are more dangerous there — at this time — than anywhere else. We don’t dare, I think, go that far out of our way to avoid it. We cannot spare the time. We don’t dare get caught here when the winter ends.”

Reluctantly, she conceded his point. But … she wanted to know … if the lights did not indicate a habitation of rorks … what then?

He could only theorize. Perhaps, anciently, before the arrival of man on the planet, there had been a settlement by another race. Perhaps — presumably — this race had died off or simply moved elsewhere. It was hardly likely that if any members of it remained that nothing should have been seen, heard, or otherwise known of them all these centuries. He theorized that the lights, powered by an unknown source, continued to burn eternally; “eternally” in comparative terms, for even the once eternal pyramids, undermined by the irrigation of the Egyptian desert, had eventually crumbled into rubble. But Norna, who had never heard of Egypt or of pyramids, shook her head in incomprehension. The only argument that weighed at all with her was that the rorks were likely to be as sluggish among the lights as those anywhere else.

While Cold Time lasted.

• • •

The so-called Plain of Lights was dull and blear enough in the daytime, stretching flatly on ahead. There was no sign of a city, and indeed it differed, aside from its flatness, from the rest of the country they had passed through, chiefly in the type of vegetation. Vaguely, the plant forms reminded him of those still surviving in the World Park at what was once called the Mountains of the Moon in Africa, on Old Earth. Predominating over every other kind of flora were fleshy stalks, leafless, branchless, bearing only. … He hesitated how to describe them. Bulbs? Nodes? Cones? They still had some food with them, but it was not much.

Gingerly, he tore off one of the protuberances and touched it to his tongue. It tasted faintly bitter, and he threw it away. Later, perhaps, if their food gave out and could not be replenished, if starvation menaced them directly, they might be obliged to risk poisoning or illness: try the strange fruit (if fruit it was) raw or baked…. But not now and not yet.

As the day went on with no sign of any city, no sign of any landmark, no sign of either observation or pursuit, senses dulled by the monotony of the landscape, they began to walk more slowly. And, finally, by mutual consent some while yet before sunset, they curled up and went to sleep, Ran’s stolen pelt beneath them, Norna’s over them.

It was deep dusk when they awoke and stretched. There was no sense in trying to travel by night, but they thought to look for water before settling down for further sleep. On their feet, peering through the twilight, they saw the last rays of Pia Sol dwindle behind the horizon. And then, suddenly and without warning, it happened.

One moment a faint tinge of sunset was at the edge of the sky. The next moment it had vanished. For scarcely a second the world was utterly dark. And then, as if someone had touched a master switch, the world sprang into light, into a blaze of brilliant and fantastically variegated colors. They both cried out, turned and turned to see around them. Everywhere, the same thing. Every one of the strange plants was pulsing and glowing with the light of its nodes; each one displaying one general class of color, but each color varying within its type. Here one saw orange shading into pink, pink into rose, rose into scarlet, scarlet into crimson; there one saw violet and lavender and aquamarine and turquoise and lapis lazuli. He had no words for all the colors and shades and tints, had not known that yellow and green possessed such infinite variety, that purple was not merely one purple but a hundred different purples, each one rich and luminous.

For hours and hours, thought of food and drink for gotten, Ran and Norna wandered on through the incredible luminescent forest of the Plain of Lights. This, then, was the “city” which Wild tradition had ascribed to the rorks — a guess no wilder or more erroneous than his own. She needed no explanation, a wonder was a wonder. But his own mind groped and sought, in the end coming up with nothing better than recollections of luminiferous bacteria found on the skin of certain sea creatures; and the cold, cold light of phosphorescent wood and water.

For endless ages this glory had been here, and no human eye ever saw it close before. It was worth hunger, thirst, discomfort; flight, cold, pain, and the fear of death. Hand in hand at first, arm in arm, later; at last, embracing, side by side, they walked on into Eden. It had been inevitable that, sooner or later, sometime on this flight together, flesh should join with flesh in the holy act of love. But they had been preoccupied with other things — simple survival — and their bodies had been taut with fright and cold. Presently, still dazed with visible joy, their faces turned to one another, and they kissed, and then kissed again. He spread the two pelts upon the ground. Some mild warmth seemed to emanate from the brilliant, light-giving plants as he uncovered her breasts and kissed them; and then, her arms around and her hands upon his back, he sank down upon and into her. And all the morning stars shouted together for joy.

• • •

For Norna the past had now ceased to exist and the future had yet to take shape. She was Ranny’s woman, now. It was all very natural and uncomplicated for her. But Lomar hardly felt that way. The natural exultan ce inevitable to the male who has been a woman’s first male existed side by side and somewhat apart from a growing but not particularly deep affection for her. Then, too, there was the question of what would happen to Norna when they got to the Guild Station. Could he keep her in his own quarters as his mistress? Surely she could not go and live among the shameless and squalid Tame Tocks! What would the Station’s attitude be; how would she be treated? For her to return alone to her own country now seemed impossible.

And, not urgently, not constantly, came the last question — and came again — and again: What about Lindel?

They had passed on with great reluctance through and from the Plain of Lights and up onto the more rolling hill country beyond it. The first night away, they could still see the wonders, like a table spread with jewels, from the distance; but after that, no more.

Rorks now began to appear more numerously, nesting in less cover and concealment than before, perhaps because no human feet were known by them to pass this way. The two of them continued to give wide berth to the creatures. Now and then a low, dull grumbling and clicking was heard from the somnolent things, but if they were ever noticed by them, they saw no signs of it. That is, no rork ever seemed to move more or “speak” more because of them. But once again, passing through the frostbitten and sered ranks of redweed, they began to have the feeling that they were being watched.

By Lomar’s calculations, inexact as they must be, he and Norna were just about at dead center in Rorkland. The next landmark, assuming that they passed near enough to see it, would be Hollow Rock; after that they could sooner or later expect to see Last Ridge up ahead of them. The storms and other bad weather that had beset them at the start were now seen no more, and a series of several days of calm, dry cold succeeded one another; the entire arc of the ascent and descent of Pia Sol clearly visible in a clear and cloudless sky.

In the shelter on Tiggy’s Hill, just before leaving it, Ran had noticed something half-buried in the dirt and rubbish of the floor. It was an old pikehead, dull for most of is edge, but sharp enough in one place to make him wonder if it had not been in process of being sharpened when some sudden alert (or slow drunk) had caused it to be dropped and forgotten. He groped and prodded and was rewarded with the find of the whetstone. Both had been popped by him, yawning, into his pockets, and had stayed there. He was not reminded of them until, during a pause for a rest on one crisp morning, he noticed a dead sapling on the ground which seemed just about the right size and weight for a pikestaff.

The work required to fit the wood into the socket was not considerable, and, while Norna, sitting with knees drawn up, looked on and laughed, he lunged and feinted with it as he had seen the Wild Tocks doing. And, in so doing, lost his footing, and tumbled, crying out in mock alarm, sliding down the slope of ground. He was scrambling to his feet with the aid of the staff when he heard her scream.

“Behind you — behind — kill it —
kill it —
!”

The rork was huge, and, somehow, he got the impression that it was very old. It squatted in its nest, leaning a bit to one side. He could see its flanks moving with the slow breath. Something shriveled and dirty clung about in folds, and the surface of its flesh where this tattered something met the body was sore and broken and oozing. The thing was shedding its skin.

With a movement so sudden that he felt his arms almost snap in their sockets, he raised the pike up above his head, holding it with both his hands. In another second he would have brought it down into that alien and fearful flesh before him — but that second never came. His motives were not clear to him — horrified fascination, perhaps, mingled with a measure of compassion for the now helpless creature — he refrained. Norna did not scream again, but he could hear her terrified whimper as the rork slowly, and surely painfully, lurching and scrabbling, turned itself around.

It smelled — pungently, and hideously unfamiliar. It resembled nothing he knew — and the nonresemblance was terrifying. It was not even to be identified with the supposedly harmless rork of the old 3Ds, for the yellow outlines of the mask were crumpled and distorted by the process of the shedding of the skin. The talons now digging into the ground with the weight of the body and the effort of turning were long and sharp and hideous. The noises coming from the thing had the quality of nightmare.