Jonathan Strahan - The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year. Volume 10

Then the call came: Janthar-sign! An asjani had seen a fresh path through a speargrass meadow five miles to the north of us. In a moment we were mounted and tearing through the high Stalva. The Earl rode like a madman, whipping his graap to reckless speed. Damn fool: of all the Stalva’s many grasslands, the tall pike-grass meadows were the most dangerous. A janthar could be right next to you and you wouldn’t see it. And the pike-grass disorients, reflects sounds, turns you around. There was no advising the Earl of Mar and his chums. His wife hung back – she claimed her mount had picked up a little lameness. Why did I not say something when Arthur went back to accompany the Lady Mar! But my concern was how to get everyone out of the pike-grass alive.

Then the Earl stabbed his shock-goad into the flank of his graap and before I could do anything he was off. I got on the radio to the others – form a gunline! The mad fool was going to run the janthar himself. Moments later his graap came crashing back through the pike-grass to find its herdmates. My only hope was that he would lead the janthar right into our crossfire. It takes a lot of ordnance to stop a janthar. And in this kind of tall grass terrain, where you can hardly see your hand in front of your face, I had to set the firing positions just right so the idiots wouldn’t blow each other to bits.

I got them into some semblance of position. I held the centre – the lakoo . Your brother and the Lady Mar I ordered to take jeft and garoon – the last two positions of the left wing of the gunline. Finally I got them all to radio silence. The ’thones teach you how to be still, and how to listen, and how to know what is safe and what is death. Silence, then a sustained crashing. Most terrifying sound in the world, a janthar in full pursuit. It sounds like its coming from everywhere at once. I yelled to the gunline; steady there, steady. Hold your fire! Then I smelled it. Clear, sharp: unmistakable. Curry. I put up the cry: Vindaloo! Vindaloo! And there was the mad earl, breaking out of the cane. Madman! What was he thinking! He was in the wrong place, headed in the wrong direction. The only ones who could cover him were Arthur and Lady Mar. And there, behind him: the janthar. Bigger than any I had ever seen before. The Mother of All Janthar. The Queen of the High Stalva. I froze. We all froze. We might as well try to kill a mountain. I yelled to Arthur and Lady Mar. Shoot! Shoot now! Nothing. Shoot for the love of all the stars! Nothing. Shoot! Why didn’t they shoot?

The ’thones found the Thirtieth Earl of Mar spread over a hundred yards.

They hadn’t shot because they weren’t there. They were at it like dogs – your brother and the Lady Mar, back where they had left the party. They hadn’t even heard the janthar.

Strange woman, the Lady Mar. Her face barely moved when she learnt of her husband’s terrible death. As if it were no surprise to her. Of course, she became immensely rich when the will went through. There was no question of your brother ever working for me again. Shame. I liked him. But I can’t help thinking that he was as much used as user in that sordid little affair. Did the Lady of Mar murder her husband? Too much left to chance. Yet it was a very convenient accident. And I can’t help but think that the Thirtieth Earl knew what his lady was up to; and a surfeit of cuckoldry drove him to prove he was a man.

The janthar haunted the highlands for years. Became a legend. Every aristo idiot on the Inner Worlds who fancied himself a Great Terrene Hunter went after it. None of them ever got it, though it claimed five more lives. The Human-slayer of the Stalva. In the end it stumbled into a ’thone clutch trap and died on a pungi stake, eaten away by gangrene. So we all pass. No final run, no gunline, no trophies.

Your brother left when the scandal broke – went up country, over the Stalva into the Palisade country. I heard a rumour he’d joined a mercenary javrost unit, fighting up on the altiplano.

Botany, is it? Safer business than Big Game.

PLATE 5: V trifex aculeatum : Stannage’s Bird-Eating Trifid. Native of the Great Littoral Forest of Isharia. Carnivorous in its habits; it lures smaller, nectar-feeding avios with its sweet exudate, then stings them to death with its whiplike style and sticky, venomous stigma.

Cutpaper, inks, folded tissue.

THE PRINCESS IS brushing her hair. This she does every night, whether in Tonga or Ireland, on Earth or aboard a space-crosser or on Venus. The ritual is invariable. She kneels, unpins and uncoils her tight bun and lets her hair fall to its natural length, to the waist. Then she takes two silver-backed brushes and, with great and vigorous strokes, brushes her hair from the crown of her head to the tips. One hundred strokes, which she counts in a Tongan rhyme which I very much love to hear.

When she is done she cleans the brushes, returns them to the velvet lined case, then takes a bottle of coconut oil and works it through her hair. The air is suffused with the sweet smell of coconut. It reminds me so much of the whin-flowers of home. She works patiently and painstakingly and when she has finished she rolls her hair back into its bun and pins it. A simple, dedicated, repetitive task, but it moves me almost to tears.

Her beautiful hair! How dearly I love my friend Latufui!

We are sleeping at a hohvandha, a Thent roadside inn, on the Grand North Road in Canton Hoa in the Great Littoral Forest. Tree branches scratch at my window shutters. The heat, the humidity, the animal noise are all overpowering. We are far from the cooling breezes of the Vestal Sea. I wilt, though Latufui relishes the warmth. The arboreal creatures of this forest are deeper voiced than in Ireland; bellings and honkings and deep booms. How I wish we could spend the night here – Great Night – for my Carfax tells me that the Ishtaria Littoral Forest contains this world’s greatest concentration of luminous creatures – fungi, plants, animals and those peculiarly Venerian phyla in between. It is almost as bright as day. I have made some day-time studies of the Star Flower – no Venerian Botanica can be complete without it – but for it to succeed I must hope that there is a supply of luminous paint at Loogaza; where we embark for the crossing of the Stalva.

My dear Latufui has finished now and closed away her brushes in their green baize-lined box. So faithful and true a friend! We met in Nuku’alofa on the Tongan leg of my Botanica of the South Pacific. The King, her father, had issued the invitation – he was a keen collector – and at the reception I was introduced to his very large family, including Latufui, and was immediately charmed by her sense, dignity and vivacity. She invited me to tea the following day – a very grand affair – where she confessed that as a minor princess her only hope of fulfillment was in marrying well – an institution in which she had no interest. I replied that I had visited the South Pacific as a time apart from Lord Rathangan – it had been clear for some years that Patrick had no interest in me (nor I in him). We were two noble ladies of compatible needs and temperaments, and there and then we became firmest friends and inseparable companions. When Patrick shot himself and Rathangan passed into my possession, it was only natural that the Princess move in with me.

I cannot conceive of life without Latufui; yet I am deeply ashamed that I have not been totally honest in my motivations for this Venerian expedition. Why can I not trust? Oh secrets! Oh simulations!

PLATE 6: V stellafloris noctecandentis : the Venerian Starflower. Its name is the same in Thent, Thekh and Krid. Now a popular Terrestrial garden plant, where is it known as glow-berry, though the name is a misnomer. Its appearance is a bunch of night-luminous white berries, though the berries are in fact globular bracts, with the bio-luminous flower at the centre. Selective strains of this flower traditionally provide illumination in Venerian settlements during the Great Night.