Poul Anderson: New America

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.