‘What’s that?’ he asked when he had recovered enough to point at the horrible baggy bird-thing clinging to one of the phallic flowers.
‘Lung bird,’ Erlin told him. ‘They’re about the only creatures here that other creatures won’t eat. They stink worse than their food, and are full of toxins. No one’s figured out how they manage to stay alive. But no one’s really wanted to get close enough to find out.’
‘And those.’ Janer pointed again.
‘Frogmoles. Don’t step on one. They’ve got barbed spines that’ll go through just about anything, and you’d need surgery to have them removed,’ said Erlin.
‘Charming.’
Beyond the peartrunk trees and stands of putrephallus, yanwood trees reared into the sky. Below them the ground was clear of new growth, though thickly layered with oily oval leaves that smelt of kerosene. With the vegetation now thinning sufficiently for Ron to put away his machete, they picked up their pace and soon came to a place where ahead of them reared something like a grassy slope. What was growing on it — though the same green as ordinary grass — consisted of small translucent spheroids that popped when trod upon and let off a smell like coffee and curry powder combined. They were also slippery underfoot when burst, so climbing the slope became hard going.
At the crest of the slope, bare rock jutted up like bones flayed of flesh. Here they halted, mainly to let Janer rest, him being only a newly made Hooper. Sitting on one of the rocks he gazed down another incline into dingle like a green and blue sea resting between mounds. This landscape beyond stretched on into a haze of distance and was lost. Strange hootings and squeals came up regularly from this tangle of vegetation.
‘Bigger island than I thought,’ said Janer. ‘How’d they expect to find the Skinner here… if he is here?’
‘He’s here,’ said Erlin.
Before she could go on, Peck muttered, ‘Bugger’ll find us, I’ll be buggered.’
‘That’s a comfort,’ said Janer, standing up and shrugging his pack into a more comfortable position on his shoulders. Ambel and Ron glanced back at him for a moment, then set off down the slope towards the dingle, Ron already drawing his machete in readiness.
‘Another point to note is how easy we’ll be to track, if Rebecca Frisk does come here,’ said Janer.
‘If?’ said Erlin.
‘Well, Keech might have solved that problem for us.’
‘Emphasis on the “might”,’ muttered Erlin.
They continued on down the slope, after the others.
For most of the afternoon, Ron hacked a trail for them, and Ambel took over thereafter. He did not take over the chore because Ron was tired, but because he was bored with the task and Ambel had got bored with just walking behind him. They slogged on until it was getting too dark to easily dodge the leeches falling from the peartrunk trees. Then Ambel hacked out a clearing in an area with few overhanging branches, and marked its perimeter by jabbing sticks into the ground.
Pland lit a fire of peartrunk wood while Anne prepared rhinoworm steaks to roast over it. They ate in silence as the moon, Coram, rose into the sky like a mouldy pearl, and then laid out their bedding.
‘You take first watch, Janer. Don’t let any leeches past the perimeter. If anything comes that’s too big for you to handle, wake me or Ron,’ instructed Ambel.
Janer patrolled the perimeter with his carbine held ready. With this weapon he doubted there would be anything too big for him to handle. The smaller leeches — the ones about the size of his arm — he kicked back into the undergrowth. Frogmoles kept well clear, their eyes glinting from the firelight out there in the darkness. No one warned him about anything else.
Keech found the best way to keep himself out of the water was to use what power the remaining thruster possessed to drive down towards the sea, then up again and away in one burst. Thereafter he drifted along fairly levelly until the thruster cooled down enough for him to use it again. A problem was the scooter’s tendency to try to flip over whenever he applied thrust. Further problems consisted of the failing AG, which was taking him closer and closer to the surface despite his use of the thruster, the fact that the thruster was taking longer and longer to cool down each time he used it, and also that there were some horrible noises and occasional sprays of sparks emerging from under the cowling. His burnt back and mauled arm now seemed of secondary importance. And all these hindrances were of less importance than the fact that he had miscalculated.
Both missiles aimed at him had been of the EM-burst variety. Not only did they have the capability of turning an enemy vehicle into a disperse spray of molten metal, but they released a burst of radiation that scrambled any electronics in the vicinity of the explosion. The thruster had burnt out after taking in a cloud of ionized gas; the EM had not been kind to the AG coils, and com was completely out; the screen had melted and buckled.
Keech had been in worse situations than this — after all, he wasn’t dead yet, and he’d been in that one before. So he nursed the scooter along, using manual and jury-rigged controls and a modicum of prayer, wondering if he was imagining seeing eager movement in the sea whenever the scooter dropped lower.
15
The giant whelk’s immediate response to the presence of the heirodont, was to spit out the last leech-covered turbul body it was chewing, and attempt to clamp itself down against the bottom. But up here the bottom was comprised of a thick layer of stones and silt and broken shell, so that there was nothing firm to hold on to. With a flick of its tale the heirodont drifted forward, eyeing the desperate creature as it struggled to find purchase, then cruised round it in a slow circle. The whelk turned as it did this, stalked eyes keeping its nemesis in view. The heirodont finally seemed to comprehend its luck, and suddenly drove into the whelk and tipped it over. Flailing its tentacles, the whelk opened huge wounds across the heirodont’s head, but to a creature quite used to being fed upon by leeches every day, these were as nothing. With its mandibles the heirodont gripped the rim of the whelk’s shell and twisted it over so it was forced upside-down into the treacherous surface it had been unable to grip; driving its snout into hard flesh with teeth admirably suited to the purpose, the heirodont began to chew.
The heavy resinous yanwood of the ship was not buoyant. Like a steel hull holed in the same manner, it started to go down, water breaking through smashed timbers and gouts of steam blasting from the deck hatches. Boris emerged from one of those hatches, hauling up two sprine carboys on a rope behind him. Once on deck he danced about and swore as he beat out his smouldering clothing. When the ship suddenly lurched and tilted he grabbed the carboys and slid them to the edge, pounded the corks to make sure they were secure, then tossed both containers over the side, down to where the drone floated below. Lying by the shattered rail, to which he had crawled, Roach peered down into the water.
‘This a good idea?’ he queried.
‘The only one,’ confirmed Boris as he helped him to his feet.
Roach was about to say something more when the ship lurched again. Without more ado, they leapt into the sea and splashed towards the carboys. Near the fizzing seahorse the water tingled with an electrical charge and was warmer than expected.
‘Aargh, that smarts,’ yelped Roach.
Boris just grunted an acknowledgement and stared at all the creatures swarming beyond an invisible perimeter. He looked beyond them to where the water swirled occasionally as a large rhinoworm cruised by, snapping up stray leeches.