Promised Land Page 6

  Naturally, we complained bitterly. We tried bluff in the same style as Charlot. We ranted and we threatened. But they had made the crucial move when they had restricted Charlot to the ship and refused to let us use our own call-circuit. We weren’t big enough to cut any ice. I often wondered what they were telling Charlot about our progress, or lack of it. Probably nothing but inconsequentialities. What could he do but wait, unless he had something definite to complain about?

  By the time we actually left the capital (by train) and made tracks toward the forest where the White Fire had come down, the Chao Phryans must have had time to check with New Rome. They must have found out more or less where they stood. I don’t know how sure they were of their own situation, but they sure as hell didn’t give us any better treatment than we’d already come to expect. On the other hand, they didn’t leave us to rot in the capital while they did everything themselves. They let us carry on.

  The train carried us for one day, and then we took a hovercraft. We covered a lot of miles, travelling all night as well as all day. But it was not until noon of our sixth day (local) on Chao Phrya that we finally reached the edge of the Zodiac Families’ colonial surge, and actually got a sight of the edge of the rain forest.

  We rested that afternoon in a kind of half-town, half-camp. There were more Anacaona around than humans. The Anacaona were still doing a lot of the construction work, though slavery had been abolished forty years before. I wondered how much they were being paid.

  Max pointed at the high line of colour which marked the horizon. ‘That’s it,’ he told me. ‘Your ship came down somewhere in there. The Anacaona will have picked up anybody who got off. All we have to do is get to the Anacaona.’

  ‘How do we do that?’ I wanted to know. I felt sure there had to be another catch.

  ‘Easy,’ he said. ‘We’ll pick up a couple of the tame goldens to guide us. It shouldn’t take more than a week.’

  ‘A week?’ I protested. ‘How come?’

  ‘We have to walk,’ he said.

  ‘What’s wrong with the hovercraft?’

  ‘No good in the jungle.’

  ‘What about helicopters? You do have helicopters here, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ he said, ‘we have helicopters here. But they’re no good in the jungle either. Can’t see through the canopy from up top. Besides which, the Anacaona can only guide us along the floor. They wouldn’t know what to make of it from upstairs.’

  I didn’t know whether he was giving me real answers or whether he was still being difficult for the sake of it. I didn’t really care. It came to the same thing in the end. If Max said we walked, then we walked. No argument.

  Unlike some people, I don’t exactly feel naked without a gun. On the other hand, I didn’t exactly relish the thought of tramping around in a jungle for a week or more without any kind of protection. Max had a gun, of course, and a call circuit, and a medical kit. But Max wasn’t what I called protection. I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw a feather into a headwind. The prospect of what was to come was far from enchanting.

  Linda spent the afternoon talking to the Anacaona, looking for information about the search and trying to persuade individuals to act as guides. Apparently, everyone knew about the White Fire coming down, and they also knew where. Anybody and his cousin could have taken us to the spot, but that wasn’t quite what we needed. We wanted to find two people, not a patch of burnt ground. Most of the natives didn’t know anything at all about the forest nomads—they’d been brought here as a labour force by the colonists. But Linda was nevertheless confident that we could find exactly what we needed in the Anacaon village.

  While Linda was handling her end of the operation Max found other things to do as well, and for much of the time Eve and I were at a loose end. It was a familiar feeling.

  ‘How much longer is it all going to take?’ Eve wanted to know.

  ‘Max reckons a week yet before we find them’ I told her. ‘Figure another week to get back home. Then refigure in standard instead of this local quicktime. It still comes to a fair number of days’

  ‘Charlot will be angry.’

  ‘Sure he will,’ I said. ‘So what?’

  She didn’t feel the need to answer that one.

  ‘Surely it would be easier to locate the forest people using a helicopter,’ she said.

  I shrugged. ‘If they don’t give us a copter there’s not much we can do except walk,’ I said. ‘But don’t be too quick to put it down to natural cussedness. Take a look at the trees around you.’

  She looked. She didn’t see anything significant.

  ‘They don’t have leaves,’ she said finally.

  ‘Too true they don’t,’ I told her. The trees were equipped with membranous drapes mounted on rubbery branches. To increase their photosynthetic activity they extended the drapes like the pages of a book. ‘That trick wouldn’t work if the trees were more densely packed,’ I pointed out. ‘This is open country, but it’s probably as close as those trees can grow without having things get in their way. In a jungle, things have to be done differently. All available space has to be used to maximum effect. I think we’ll find that inside the rain forest those membranes will be arrayed horizontally rather than vertically. The trees will be like giant umbrellas. The canopy will be just that. I’ll lay odds that from up top the jungle is just an expanse of solid green.’

  She tried to visualise it.

  ‘What will it be like inside,’ she asked. ‘On the ground?’

  ‘Dark,’ I said.

  ‘And we have to walk around in there for more than a week?’

  ‘Probably be more comfortable,’ I said. ‘You sleeping well?’

  She shook her head, knowing already what I was about to say.

  ‘Circadian rhythms disturbed by the short day,’ I said, going ahead anyway. ‘In there we might be able to get back to a twenty-four-hour cycle.’ This was distinctly optimistic. For one thing there’s dark and there’s a pitch black, and there’s a big difference. For another, all the rest of the party were attuned to a seventeen-hour day, and wouldn’t appreciate our wanting to switch to twenty-four for our own convenience.

  ‘Anyway,’ I continued, ‘I wouldn’t worry about little things like walking around in the dark if I were in your position. I’d be much more disposed to worry about all the difficulties which this lot might yet think to throw at us.’ And that, of course, was sheer pessimism, just to even the score.

  ‘I don’t like this world,’ she said feelingly.

  ‘That’s the expanding civilised universe for you,’ I said, with my customary fatalism. ‘This is what worlds are like these days. What do you expect? Your brother didn’t like it either. He always used to prefer the rim, and he always liked to deal with the natives direct. He wasn’t a man-hater by any means, but he despised the second-stage invaders—the exploiters and the moneymen and the politicians. He liked things simple, not packed and predigested to some fancy recipe. You know the syndrome—primitive man against the elements. The archetypal Western hero.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I know.’

  I didn’t often talk to her about her brother. It was an uncomfortable issue, ever since the charming discussion we’d had in New York Port about whether or not and to what degree I’d been responsible for his death.

  ‘You felt the same way,’ she said, after a few moments’ silence.

  ‘Not a lot,’ I claimed. ‘Mythical man was never my type. I’m no romantic—the hell with Rousseau and the back-to-the-trees boys. I like to spend what I make, and make what I spend. We couldn’t do either very well while we were bouncing around on the rim. Sure, sharks bite and I don’t like them. But they swim where the pickings are and they’re just a hazard of the waters. There’s no point in hating them for it. These days, the universe is shrinking so fast that you have to live with everybody whether you like it or not. You can’t find a garden world on which to live out your days. Paradise is a marketable commod
ity now, and the companies move in, slap on a hefty slice of cosmetic streamlining and start the auction. They’re so good at it, it doesn’t even take them a year any more. Instant fairyland—just add money. Sure it’s in lousy taste—who ever made money out of aesthetic sensibilities? You can’t hide any more. Not anywhere. You have to live where the people live. Compared to the companies the Zodiac mob are a bunch of stone-age savages. They haven’t anything like the technology that someone like Caradoc can bring to bear. But how long do you think the rain forests are going to last? How long before the colonists have it all? Do you seriously think that the human race is going to leave a single galactic stone unturned? Like hell. So that’s the way it is. And you have to live with it. I don’t hold it against anybody, and I’m sure as hell not going to spend my time running away from it all to find skinny patches of sand where I can bury my head and pretend to be an ostrich. Okay?’

  ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Just fine. You really love people and the great human dream. You’re a part of it all. I bet you just love New Alexandria too.’

  ‘Best of all,’ I assured her.

  ‘But you like aliens?’ she probed. ‘You really do like aliens?’

  ‘Sure I do. Some of them. But it’s only prejudice. Hell, everybody has prejudice. Ninety percent of people are as proud as can be about their prejudice. Can’t I have a little bit as well? I’m only human, when all said and done. I like aliens. I can approach an alien with a clean slate. I don’t know anything about him, and I can judge exactly what I see. I can estimate him as I find out what he does and says. But I can’t approach a man that way. I know far too much about him already to take him as he comes. Whatever he says, I daren’t take on the level. Whatever he does, I have a whole range of possible motives for him. I know men too well, because I am one. I don’t like that. I’m a simple man, and I like to be dealing with what I’m seeing and feeling at a particular moment. I don’t like to be carrying around a whole bibleful of preconceptions and qualifications that I have to dump on every moment that passes. It squashes the moments dead, see?’

  ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ she said.

  ‘It makes sense to me,’ I told her.

  ‘Do you like the Anacaona?’ she asked.

  ‘How do I know?’ I complained. ‘Do I have to tag everything I see with plus or minus? I don’t know anything about the Anacaona. I gave one a ride in my car once. That’s all.’

  ‘What about the Zodiac people?’

  ‘You have to be joking. The Zodiac bunch are completely unlovable. They’re going to extremes to make themselves that way. Who am I to argue? If they want to be the biggest bastards in the galaxy, who am I to stand in their way? I think they’re making a good job of it. I don’t say I haven’t known worse people, because I’ve known people who tried harder. But I concede the Zodiacs the proper fruit of their labours. No, I don’t like them and I don’t want anything to do with them. Now wouldn’t they just love that?’

  ‘You don’t think that their idea of Promised Land makes sense?’

  ‘Sense?’ I queried. ‘I didn’t say anything about sense. Certainly it makes sense. It’s one of the most sensible things I’ve ever come across. You tell me that the great human surge of conquest, civilisation and culture isn’t the Promised Land syndrome. You tell me that New Alexandria isn’t playing Promised Land with all creation. You tell me that New Rome isn’t playing ideological Promised Land. You tell me that Penaflor and the company belt aren’t playing commercial Promised Land. You tell me that the Engelian Hegemony aren’t playing Communist Promised Land. The Zodiac people are by far and away the most sensible of the lot. They don’t want the whole universe. They only want one world. Isn’t that more sensible? You always stand a better chance with a narrow mind. It’s a fact of life.’

  ‘But you don’t hate,’ she said, with more than a trace of sarcasm. ‘All that and you don’t hate. You can mix your venom with all kinds of assurances that you have to live with it all, that it’s the way of things and you have to like it.’

  ‘I don’t have to like it,’ I said. ‘I don’t have to like it at all.’

  ‘And you don’t,’ she said. ‘Sure, you don’t hate people. You have to live with them, don’t you? But you hate having to live with them. What’s the difference?’

  ‘The difference,’ I said, ‘is where the hate goes. Nobody else gets hurt by mine. Not by the hate, nor by any crazy ideas I might have like Promised Land.’

  ‘You get hurt,’ she said.

  ‘No I don’t,’ I told her.

  ‘You’ve set yourself up all alone,’ she persisted. ‘You’ve cut yourself off from the whole universe just because other people think it’s their playground.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘I’m the original alienated man.’ I spat out the vital word as if I were spitting acid.

  And I’m not alone, I added. Silently. Never again alone.

  Two years on Lapthorn’s Grave had turned me right off the galaxy and life in general. I never was one for the joys of spring and the spirit of adventure, unlike Lapthorn, but I really had sat fairly comfortably in my chosen slice of life. It was only since coming back that things had achieved their present dark conformation.

  Not since you came back, said the wind. Since you went away. You’re still living in the shadow of Lapthorn’s Grave. If you want to come out of it, you can.

  Thanks a lot, I said. Everybody wanted to welcome me back to humanity. I wondered why.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Linda found us again about dusk. She had an Anacaon with her. I was still at the stage where they all looked pretty much alike to me, but when I subjected this one to close scrutiny I figured that I would have little enough difficulty remembering him. He had sharp eyes and a lantern-jawed hungry look that seemed quite out of place in a member of such a delicately formed people.

  He was slender, like all of his race, and almost seven feet tall, which was a shade above the average for the adult male. He wore a kind of skirt of soft grey material, and an undergarment of similar cloth which was visible at the shoulders. Instead of a jacket he had a strange rigid garment like the breastplate from a suit of armour, made of something hard and chitinous. It was basically grey in colour, but it had some kind of a weird pattern on it—a sulphur-yellow cloud with an uneven purple border. It didn’t look like a work of art—more like one of nature’s accidents.

  ‘This is Danel,’ said Linda. ‘He knows the forest as well as anyone, and he says that he can contact the wild Anacaona without any trouble.’

  ‘Good,’ said Eve. ‘We’ll be very grateful for his help.’

  Danel was looking around absently while this exchange was going on.

  ‘Does he speak English?’ asked Eve, observing his lack of attention.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘But I can make myself understood in his dialect. He says that his brother and sister must come with us—his brother speaks good English and his sister can manage simple conversation. I don’t know how much Danel understands of what we say, but he never speaks any English.’ She glanced sideways at the alien as she made this last remark, as if she mistrusted his claim to speak only his own language.

  Danel didn’t bat an eyelid.

  ‘Why should he lie about it?’ I asked.

  ‘He wouldn’t,’ said Linda. ‘Anacaona don’t lie. He just doesn’t say anything at all about it, and one can never be sure how much to assume. The Anacaona are a very difficult people to understand.’

  I thought at the time she was making excuses for her own failure to understand, but I misjudged her. The Anacaona really were a very difficult people to understand.

  Linda and Danel exchanged a few chopped phrases in the click-and-whisper of the Anacaon tongue, and then Linda redirected her attention to us.

  ‘Danel is a spiderhunter,’ she said. ‘He wants you to know that you will be safe in the forest with him. Otherwise he would not take his sister.’

  This calm pronouncement caused me a twinge of fe
ar. This was the first official indication we’d had that the forest wasn’t a nice place to go walking. I’d expected it, of course, but it was still not very nice to be right.

  ‘He hunts spiders,’ I said calmly, knowing that there was more to come. ‘What sort of spiders?’

  ‘They weigh about two tons,’ she said.

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ I said. ‘Common, are they?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s a relief.’ This interjection came from Eve.

  ‘But I’ll bet they eat people,’ I said.

  ‘If they get the chance,’ said Linda.

  ‘Yet the powers-that-be still insist we go in there without weapons?’ I said.

  ‘I’m afraid so. But you’ll be in no danger.’

  ‘Thanks for the promises,’ I said. ‘I only hope your people at the top realise how annoyed Titus Charlot will be if two of his hirelings end up cemented to a spider web.’

  ‘They don’t build webs,’ said Linda.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said again. ‘I was speaking figuratively.’

  ‘Danel has a gun,’ said Linda. ‘He also carries an axe, which is the approved instrument for killing them. Max will be armed as well. I don’t think you need worry too much.’

  ‘What about the others?’

  ‘Micheal usually hunts with Danel. He carries a musical instrument—’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ I interrupted. ‘Music has charms to soothe the savage breast. He’s a small-town Orpheus, right?’

  ‘Very much so,’ she countered serenely. ‘The music can attract the spiders or hypnotise them. Micheal holds the spiders in thrall while Danel kills them with the axe. It’s almost a ritual.’

  ‘What part does little sister play?’ I asked. ‘Is she the live bait?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Linda. ‘Danel and Micheal aren’t hunting this trip. Mercede wants to go with them and they see no reason why not. That should reassure you with regard to spiders.’