Jack Vance - Big Planet

Glystra pointed across the glimmering water to the island—a feathery pyramid sharp on the mauve sky to the southeast. “We won’t miss that island far—if at all. And there’s not a damn thing we can do about it!”

“Look,” said Bishop in a soft voice. Heads turned as if activated by cams, eyes went to the object inching over the edge of the raft—a flat glistening thing, solid and muscular. It quivered, jerked up on the raft another six inches, becoming round in cross-section.

Another six inches… Pianza laughed. Bishop moved forward. “I thought it was the end of a tentacle.”

“It’s a big fluke—some sort of leech or sucker.”

“Disgusting thing.” Bishop kicked it back into the river.

The raft gave a sudden lurch, swerved, twisted. Domes of water boiled up around them.

“Something below,” whispered Glystra.

Motta and Wailie began to whimper.

“Quiet!” snapped Glystra. They stifled the sound to a thin whining in their throats.

The motion ceased; the water subsided.

Bishop touched Glystra’s arm. “Look up on the Edelweiss cliff.”

A torch had appeared. It shone, went out, shone, went out—time and time again for varying intervals.

“Code. They’re talking to someone. Probably across the river to Swamp Island. Hope no one cuts the cable at that end.”

“Cloyville could swim ashore with a message,” suggested Corbus. Cloyville snorted indignantly, and Corbus chuckled.

From behind the island came the griamobot, its head high, questing. The dark concealed its features; evident only were big segmented eyes. Water swished and gurgled past the black hulk of its body, from which came a visceral growling sound.

The head wove, swayed back and forth, suddenly darted forward.

“It sees us,” muttered Glystra. He drew his ion-shine. “Perhaps I can damage it or scare it away… There’s not enough power here for real effect if the brute is determined…”

“Knock the head off,” said Pianza tremulously. “Then it won’t be able to see us.”

Glystra nodded. The violet beam touched the head. It snapped off like a kicked paper bag. But the neck continued to weave, back, forth, back, forth, and the beast never slowed or changed direction.

Glystra aimed at the body, fired. There was a thin ripping sound and a black ragged hole appeared on the dark hide. White objects like viscera seemed to boil up.

Glystra stared, fired again, at the water line. The monster cried out—in a babble of human voices.

The hulk wabbled, wallowed; long white shapes poured out through the hole.

“Duck!” cried Glystra. “They’re throwing at us!”

Thud! A pike plunged quivering into the wood beside him. Another—another—then a sound unlike the others: a shock and a long throaty gasp.

Glystra raised up. “Ketch!”

Ketch tore feebly at the shaft in his chest, fell forward on his knees, inched yet further forward, bowed his head, with the shaft grasped between his hands, and in this position he froze quiet.

“They’re boarding us!” yelled Cloyville.

“Stand aside!” cried Pianza. He elbowed past Cloyville. Lavish plumes of orange flame issued from the heat-gun, wreathed the thin shapes, who threw up their arms, fell backward into the river.

The griamobot hulk had settled low in the water, drifted down-current, past the raft and away.

Glystra gently lay Ketch on his side. His hands were locked on the shaft.

Glystra stood up, looked across the dusk toward Town Edelweiss; then after a moment, turned back to Ketch. “Cloyville—help me.”

He lay hold of Ketch’s lax ankles. Cloyville bent, took the shoulders, hesitated. “What are you going to do?”

“Drop him in the river. I’m sorry. We can’t afford emotion.”

Cloyville opened his mouth, stuttered, stammered. Glystra waited.

Cloyville finally said in a subdued voice, “Don’t you think we should—well, give him a burial? A decent burial?”

“Where? In the swamp?”

Cloyville bent to the body.

Ketch was gone.

Glystra stood looking up at Town Edelweiss. “The griamobot was a hoax. A commercial enterprise, to frighten people off the river, to funnel them through the Edelweiss high-line”

Night lay heavy over Big Planet, and the shores were dark. There was silence aboard the raft. Little black waves lapped at the timbers. Down-stream they floated, borne by the current; cross-stream, pulled by the tether of the one-time high-line.

The spines of Swamp Island towered above them. The chirping and rasping of myriad small insects came to their ears. No lights were visible.

The raft bumped gently into a ledge of mud, halted.

“We’ll have to wait for light,” said Glystra. “Let’s try to get some sleep…”

But all sat staring across the black water, feeling the loss of dour Ketch as a tongue feels the gap left by a drawn tooth.

The River Oust moved quietly past in the dark, and somewhere now to the south was Ketch.

Dawn came to the water, seeping in from nowhere, moth-colored, the softest luminosity conceivable. First the forest was black and the water black and the sky only less black, then the sky was charged with dimness and the river shone like oil; and then the mother-of-pearl light spread from sky to the air to the river, where it reflected back in odd-shaped leaden plats and planes.

There was more air and water and sky than a man’s awareness could encompass. The river’s far shore was a low black mark and Town Edelweiss a nubbin on the bluff. The air was still, held in an immense cool quiet, smelling of mud and water and a smoke, spice, early-morning scent, which in all the universe was individual to the one spot here on the shore of the River Oust on Big Planet.

To the east the sky flared orange, yellow, behind the black spines of the Swamp Island forest. They were two hundred feet tall, crowding till in some instances the trunks touched.

Motta screamed, a mindless piping. Glystra swung around; his heart expanded, his blood caked. A tremendous black body blotted out the river, overhead swung a barrel-size head, split by a bony mouth. The head swung down, the eyes stared, the neck looped, the head plunged into the water, returned laden with sodden yellow fiber. It gulped, belched, sank out of sight into the river.

Life returned to the raft. Hysterical women…

Calmness was restored. Glystra released a great pent sigh. “Evidently the griamobots exist.”

“I will vouch for it at any time,” declared Cloyville.

“But—they’re vegetarians. The Magickers arranged that they should be thought carnivorous, and that was all that was necessary to confine river traffic to the high-line… Well, let’s get moving.”

The raft floated flat and vacant on the river. The zipangotes stood loaded and ready on the spongy black humus, raised their feet up and down, swinging their long necks close to the ground.

Glystra walked a little way into the swamp, testing the footing. The round boles, ash-gray overlaid with green luster, prevented a clear vision of more than a hundred feet, but so far as Glystra could see, the ground was uniformly black peat, patched with shallow water. If sight was occluded horizontally, vertically it was wide open; indeed, the upward lines of the trees impelled the eyes to lift along the multitudinous perspectives, up to the little blot of sky above. Walking gingerly across the black bog, Glystra felt as if he were two hundred feet under water, an illusion heightened by the flying creatures, which moved along the vertical aisles with the ease of fish. Glystra saw two varieties: a long electric-green tape with filmy green wings along its body, rippling through the air like an eel, and little puffs of foam drifting with no apparent organs of locomotion.