Julian May - The Many-Coloured Land

The amphicyon ranged closer and closer to Felice’s chaliko. It whimpered and snorted when it realized that it had lost control of itself, shaking its ugly head as though trying to dislodge pesky insects. The heavy jaws clashed, scattering slobber; but still it came closer, pacing together with the chaliko in the dust cloud that swirled about the mount’s clawed feet. The amphicyon glared in helpless rage at the small human sitting high above it, the human that was forcing, bending, compelling. It growled its fury, curling its lip above discolored teeth almost the size of Felice’s fingers.

She let it go.

The effort had dimmed her vision, and her head ached abominably from the resistance of the stubborn carnivore mind. But…!

“You did that, didn’t you,” Amerie said.

Felice nodded. “Damn hard, though. The things aren’t on light auto-pilot like the chalikos. It was fighting me every minute. Bear-dogs must work by training-conditioning. That’s harder to crack because it’s well bedded in the subconscious mind. But I think I’ve got it figured. Best to go after them when they’re worn out, at the end of the day’s travel. If I can hang onto two, or even more…”

Amerie gave a helpless gesture. It was incomprehensible to the nun, this direct impact of mind upon mind, this operation of a power beyond her own mental capability. What would it be like to be a metapsychic, even an imperfect one such as Felice? To manipulate other living things? To move and reform inanimate matter? What would it be like to really create, not merely the ghost of a hiking boot, as she had done with the aid of Epone’s device, but a substantial illusion, or even matter and energy themselves? What would it be like to link in Unity with other minds? To probe brains? To enjoy angelic powers?

A bright planet shone in the east near the rising sun. Venus… no, call it by its other, more ancient name: Lucifer, bright angel of morning. Amerie felt a tiny frisson of fear.

Lead her not into temptation, but forgive us as we warm ourselves at Felice’s fire, even as she burns…

The caravan marched down into the lowland, off the plateau into another river valley that opened westward through the Monts du Charolais. The scattered dwarf palmettos, pines, and locust trees of the heights gave way to maples and poplars, walnuts and oaks, and finally to a deep humid forest with sour-gum, bald cypress, thickets of bamboo, and huge old tulip trees more than four meters in diameter. Lush shrubbery abounded, making the landscape seem the very exemplar of a primeval jungle. Amerie kept expecting dinosaurs or winged reptiles to appear, knowing at the same time that the notion was idiotic. The Pliocene fauna, when you came down to it, was very similar to that of the replenished Earth six million years in the future.

The riders caught glimpses of small deer with bifurcated horns, a porcupine, and a gigantic sow followed by cunning striped piglets. A troop of medium-sized monkeys swung through the upper storey of the woods, following the caravan and shrieking but never coming close enough to be seen clearly. In some places shrubs and small trees had been uprooted and stripped of green. Piles of droppings smelling of elephant identified this as the work of mastodons. A feline roar of uncanny power caused the bear-dogs to howl back defiantly. Was it machairodus, one of the leonine sabertooth cats that were the commonest large predators of the Pliocene?

After the prison-like environment of the castle and the numbing transition of the night journey, the time-travelers now became aware of a new feeling that overcame even their fatigue and soreness and the memory of broken hopes. This forest, pierced by the slanting rays of morning sunlight, was unmistakably another world, another Earth. Here in vivid reality was the unspoiled wilderness they had all dreamed of. Blot out the soldiers and the chains and the exotic slave mistress, and this Miocene woodland could still be apprehended as paradise.

Dew-strung giant spider webs, incredible masses of flowers, fruits and berries shining like baroque jewels in settings of many-hued green… cliffs with thin waterfalls dropping into pools in front of mossy grottoes… throngs of fearless animals… the beauty was real! In spite of themselves, the prisoners discovered that they were scanning the jungle for more marvels as eagerly as any pack of thrill-seeking tourists. Amerie’s pain faded before visions of scarlet-and-black butterflies and gaudy tree-frogs chiming like elfin bells. Even in August the birds sang their mating songs, for in a world without true winter they had not yet begun to migrate and could raise more than one brood a year. An improbable squirrel with tufted ears and patches of greenish-and-orange fur scolded from a low tree limb. Another tree was draped with a motionless python, its body as thick as a beer barrel and as gorgeously colored as a Kennanshah rug. There went a tiny hornless antelope with legs like twigs and a body no larger than a rabbit’s! There flew a bird with a raucous crow voice, feathered in a splendor of violet and pink and darkest blue! By a stream stood a huge otter, poised on hind limbs and seeming to smile amiably at the prisoners riding by. Farther down the creek-bed were wild chalicotheres somewhat smaller and darker than their domesticated cousins, ripping up bulrushes for breakfast and managing to look dignified in spite of their mouthfuls of dripping greenery. In the short grass beside the trail grew crowds of mushrooms, coral, red with white spots, sky-blue with magenta gills and stems. Creeping amongst them was a many-legged millipede the size of a salami, looking as though it were freshly enameled in oxblood-red with cream racing stripes…

The horn sounded its three notes.

Amerie sighed. The echoing reply set off the wild things farther along the trail, so that the caravan met its escort in a tangled voluntary of bird and animal voices. The forest thinned and they came into a parklike area beside a slow-flowing river, some western tributary of the Saône. The trail led over a lawn beneath venerable cypresses and through the gate of a large palisaded fort almost identical to the one they had stopped at during the night.

“All you travelers!” Captal Waldemar bellowed, when the last of the caravan had entered the gate and the wooden doors were swung shut. “This is our sleeping stop. We’ll rest here until sunset. I know you’re feeling pretty used up. But take my advice and soak in the big hot-tub in your bathhouse before you fall into the sack. And eat, even if you think you’re too tired to be hungry! Take your packs with you when you dismount. Anybody sick or gotta complaint, see me. Be ready to remount this evening after supper when you hear the horn. You feel like trying to escape, remember that the amphicyons are outside and so are the sabertooth cats and a really trick orange salamander the size of a collie dog with venom like a king cobra Have a nice rest. That’s all ”

A white-clad hostler helped Amerie from her saddle when she was unable to get down on her own.

“You want to give yourself a good soak, Sister,” the man said solicitously. “It’s the best thing in the world for trail soreness. We heat the water with a solar setup on the roof, so there’s plenty.”

“Thank you,” she murmured. “I’ll do that.”

“You could do something for us here at the fort, too, Sister. If you’re not too tired and stiff, that is.” He was a short, coffee-colored man with graying kinky hair and the preoccupied air of a minor civil servant.

Amerie felt that she could fall asleep standing up if only there were something to lean against. But she heard herself saying, “Of course I’ll do anything I can.” Her racked leg muscles spasmed in protest.