Lords of the Seventh Swarm

Chapter 29

Two days earlier, when Lord Felph had piloted Gallen down into the tangle, he’d simply plummeted, letting the ship use phased gravity pulses to pond the tangle beneath into pulp.

The technique had a certain brutish simplicity to it, but Gallen opted now to pilot his ship down by skill, diving into crevasses, following side tunnels as far as possible before battering through the deepest layers of growth, using his antigrav only as a last resort before skirting sideways into some new pocket. By doing this he hoped that he would not leave a visible trace as to the path he took into the tangle.

Certainly, a ship flying overhead would not be able to see where he’d landed. But the tactic also allowed him to deive far deeper into the tangle than he had on his first little excursion, taking him closer to the city, with its legendary Waters of Strength.

And by penetrating farther into the tangle, he hoped the vegetation might permanently shield his ship from dronon sensors.

He hoped it would be safe to travel in the morning. The sfuz should be sleeping, and Gallen suspected that his ship could descend into their territory faster than he could ever go on foot.

When he got five hundred meters beneath the tangle’s canopy, Gallen felt confident that his exhaust would no longer show up on infrared scanner. He stopped the craft let it hover a moment.

He addressed the others. “I think before I go any farther, I should let you know: I won’t force anyone to come with me. It’s Maggie and me the dronon want. I’m going into the tangle, but I’m willing to go alone. The rest of you can stay on the ship.”

“Och, what are you saying, Gallen?” Orick asked “Don’t try to get noble on me, you’ll just muck it up. I’m coming with you.”

“I’ll follow Orick, wherever he goes,” Tallea said.

Gallen said, “Zeus there’s no reason for you to come.…”

Zeus said nothing merely watched the bears, brow furrowed. Gallen expected Zeus to leave, despite Orick’s bold facade. If he wanted to return to Felph’s luxuries, he had only to ask. Gallen was fully prepared to give him control of the ship.

Zeus smiled wanly. “I couldn’t leave you out there alone. I don’t know much about the tangle, aside from what Athena has told me, but I should be of some help.”

Gallen hadn’t anticipated this. Half an hour earlier, Zeus had seemed ready to attack them almost without reason. Now, he wanted to help? “You really don’t need to come” Gallen said.

Zeus laughed nervously. “My friend, if anyone else were going into this tangle intent on reaching the bottom, I’d part company in a most decisive manner. But you’re a Lord Protector, seeking the Waters of Strength. You believe if you don’t find them, you’ll die. While others have sought the Waters from greed or fascination, your motives are purer. I think … you could make it. I want to be there if you do.”

Gallen said, “You’re taking a great risk.”

“Smaller than you take,” Zeus said. “The life of your wife, your child, your friends all hang in the balance.” Zeus’s eyes went unfocused, though his lips held a smile.

Gallen was forced to wonder. He went back to the pilot’s seat, began talking with the ship’s Al, letting it help pilot them down into the weave of bizarre trees, cluttered with odd growths-vines and parasitic flowers that would soon fail so far from light. Still, here in the upper branches of the tangle, life flourished-strange batlike creatures fluttered about the ship’s lights on translucent wings, eating insects, while other creatures danced away, racing along vines, leaping from one branch to another. They feared the ship.

And everywhere was water. Up above there had been rain, but the water from it ran down narrow leaves or along vines till it collected in streams or pooled in strange scallop shaped bowls-some type of parasitic plant-that grew along some of the larger tree trunks. With so much water streaming down, waterfalls cascaded through the tangle, punching holes to the realms below.

Though in places the detritus collected, creating false floors in the tangle, Gallen found that if he followed some larger rivers, he did not need to use his gravity drives topuncture holes through the ground. Nature had done the job for him.

Gallen piloted the ship for hours, picking a path deeper into the tangle, till the living plants and vines faded. The ship’s lights began to display creatures of darkness-blind animals clinging to trees, living off debris that fell from above. In spots, when Gallen’s lights brushed the path ahead, hordes of dark insects shaped like the halves of a walnut shell would die, dropping from tree limbs as if torn away; apparently they were so sensitive to light, his lanterns shocked their nervous systems.

Gallen took a torturous path down, and at five hundred meters, discovered the detritus had become so thick, he couldn’t find any more holes the size of his ship. He would either have to break through, or they would walk.

He asked Maggie’s opinion on how to proceed, and was surprised when Zeus answered, “Don’t try to take the ship any farther. The mistwives sleep down here. They might feel the struggles of the ship.”

Gallen considered. Zeus knew more than he spoke. If the giant mistwives, with their long pale bodies, were as blind as other creatures down here, they probably would have a strong sense for motion. The ship’s pulsing gravity waves would vibrate the trees. The ship would be like a fly in a web, its death throes calling the spiders.

“All right then, we land,” Gallen said. He picked a spot among the branches where humus was thick, docked the ship.

He got out to check the landing site. He didn’t see any of the long, two-toed tracks of the sfuz, yet the ground here was soft and thick. It had not been disturbed in years. On their initial voyage, he’d spotted sfuz spoor early.

But this time Gallen had landed far away from the ridges where he imagined Teeawah would have been, farther out toward the center of the valley. With all this rain, Gallen imagined that beneath them the tangle would give way to lakes and rivers. Certainly the roots of the great dew trees would block the streams, choking them like beaver dams. The mistwives would be in those waters. The thought gave him a chill.

The ship’s lights showed vapor hanging in the air like tattered cobwebs, air so still Gallen could hear his heart thump. In the distance, a strange noise echoed through the tangle-the crashing of falling detritus, then a thundering boom. Gallen didn’t know if it was a natural cataclysm-a log breaking-or if the gravity waves his ship emitted had dislodged something. More frightening was the concern that a living creature had made that noise-a mistwife, moving aside whole trees?

Gallen returned up the gangplank into the ship. “This is a good place to camp,” he told the others. “I think we should get some rest, do some packing.”

“Camp? In the middle of the day?” Orick asked. “What are you after thinking, lad?”

“If I’m right, the dronon don’t know we’re here yet,” Gallen said. “But eventually they’ll find us. Our ship will detect any sensors they use to search for us. Once they find us, they won’t give us much rest. I think we should take what we can get.”

“What about the sfuz?” Zeus asked. “Won’t they discover the ship?”

“Not likely. I’ve parked us out over the water, about even with the tops of the cliffs where the sfuz live. I didn’t exactly plan this, but there’s no sign of sfuz here-no sign that they ever come here. So now I’m thinking that maybe the fox doesn’t hunt where the wolf is on the prowl.”

“Meaning?” Orick asked.

“The sfuz won’t come searching for us-not with the mistwives about. No sfuz has been through here in months, I’d wager.”

“But, it’s still early morning. The sfuz are sleeping,” Orick said. “Shouldn’t we make tracks while the sun shines?”

“I didn’t say we’d sleep all day,” Gallen said. “You’ve got two hours to rest, then we leave.”