The Jester at Scar

Chapter Seven

Dumarest looked at the instrument strapped to his left wrist, studying the needles beneath the plastic cover. One held steady on the magnetic pulse transmitted from the station, the other swung a little as it pointed to the right. He said, "To the right eight degrees. Got it?"

Clemdish bent over a map as he squatted on the ground. "That will be number four," he said, his voice muffled a little as it came through the diaphragm of his suit. "The next will be on the left and then two more to the right." He rose, folding the map and slipping it into a pocket. "We're on course, Earl, and making good time."

"So far," said Dumarest. "Let's hope we can keep it up." He lifted his shoulders, easing the weight of the pack on his back, and checked the rest of his gear with automatic concern. "All right," he said. "Let's get moving."

There was an eeriness about Scar in late summer, a stillness, as if nature were preparing for something spectacular, gathering its energies before erupting into violence. The air was oppressive with heat and tension; there was no sound other than that they made as they walked through the weird forest of monstrous fungi.

It was, thought Dumarest, something like walking under water. The suits were envelopes designed to shield the wearer from harmful spores; they were sealed and fed by air forced through filters, trapping body heat until they drenched the wearer in perspiration. Absorbent packs soaked up the excess moisture, but nothing could be done about the heat.

The terrain added to the illusion. The ground was hard, uneven and crowded with delicate growths as though with coral. The towering plants cut off the light from the sun, allowing only a crimson twilight to reach their swollen boles. Fronds of red and black, yellow and puce, deathly white and sapphire blue hung from gigantic mushrooms; there were also buff extensions like the spread ribs of a ladies' fan and warted lumps looking like naked brains. Growth lived on growth and others were deep in the soil.

Through this colorful fantasy they walked, miniature men crawling among nightmare shapes.

"It's hot!" Clemdish halted, face red and streaming behind the transparency of his suit. "Earl, can't we take a break?"

Dumarest maintained his pace. "Later."

They passed their markers on the left and right, Dumarest checking their position as the detector picked up the signal from their slender rods. Once something exploded high above, an overripe cap releasing its spores and sending them in a dust-fine cloud to settle through the heavy air. Finally, when Clemdish was stumbling, his mouth wide as he gasped for air, Dumarest called a halt.

"We'll rest for a while," he said. "Find us something to eat, while I set up the tent."

Safe within the transparent sack Clemdish tore off his helmet and scratched vigorously at his scalp. "I've been wanting to do that for miles," he said gratefully. "I don't know what it is, Earl, but every time I get suited up I want to scratch. I've bathed, used skin deadeners, the lot, but I still want to scratch. Psychological?"

"Probably." Dumarest picked up a piece of the food Clemdish had gathered! He ate, chewing thoughtfully and examining the green-striped fungi. "Candystalk," he said. "Too ripe for good eating. It must be later than we thought."

Clemdish shook his head. "I don't think so. There was some deadman that was really immature." He picked up a fragment of brown and black. "Try this brownibell, it's real good."

It was good to the taste but low in protein and almost devoid of vitamins. The fungi had bulk and flavor but little else. It could be collected and dried for food and fuel, but those who ate nothing else quickly showed signs of degeneration. Those who deliberately selected the caps containing hallucinogens died even sooner, from starvation, parasitical spores, even simple drowning during the winter rains.

Dumarest leaned back, feeling the hot stickiness of his body against the confining walls of the tent. Clemdish had fallen asleep, his flat-nosed face red and sweating and his mouth open to emit a gurgling snore. Dumarest leaned over and placed his hand over the open mouth. The small man grunted, rolled over and settled down in silence.

Thoughtfully Dumarest studied his map.

The sites where they had left the markers were dotted in red, their path was a thin line of black. The place where he had found the golden spore was deliberately unmarked. The detectors were supposed to be foolproof, each instrument able only to pick up a matching signal, but it was wise to take no chances. At harvest time Scar lived up to the savagery of its name.

Putting away the map Dumarest took a sip of brackish water and tried to relax. Sleep was a long time coming. It was too hot and too stuffy, despite the mechanism humming as it circulated clean, filtered air. The ruby twilight was too reminiscent of the interior of an oven. It pressed around the tent giving rise to a claustrophobic irritation.

Finally he drifted into an uneasy doze in which a laughing jester danced around him with a jingle of bells on cap and shoes. The wand in his hand bore an inflated bladder and he kept thrusting it toward Dumarest's face. Then, suddenly, the wand was the glinting metal of a knife and the jester wore the face of Heldar. He snarled and opened his mouth to spit a gush of blood.

To one side a figure cloaked in flaming scarlet watched with burning eyes.

Dumarest jerked awake, sweating, heat prickling his skin. A red glare stabbed into his eyes. From one side the sun shone with baleful fury, the unmasked disk huge as it spread across the sky. Against it drifted a black shape and noise came from men working beneath.

Clemdish rolled, muttered, and was suddenly awake. "Earl! The sun! What's happening?"

"Harvesters," said Dumarest.

As he watched, another towering growth fell with a soggy crash and exposed more of the naked sky. Men grappled with it, hooking lines to the cap and cutting it free so that others could draw it up to the loading well of the raft. As it lifted, sweating, unsuited figures flung themselves at another fungus, their machetes flashing as they hacked at the base.

"Zopolis's men," said Clemdish. "The crazy fools."

They were pieceworkers, risking infection for the sake of easier movement, paid by the load and racing against time to make a stake for the winter.

"Look at them," said Clemdish. "What's to stop them jumping a marker if they find one? They could strip the site and who would be the wiser?"

No one would; but harvesting took time, the teams were large and it would have to be a concerted effort. Dumarest shrugged.

"Well stay here until they've gone," he decided. "There's no point in arousing their curiosity. What they don't know, they can't talk about. Well eat and rest while we've got the chance." He looked at Clemdish. "If the harvesters have got this far the rest won't be far behind," he reminded. "Some of them could be looking for us."

"The rope," said Clemdish. "Don't rub it in."

"I wasn't, but we've got to move fast and get to the hills before anyone else. Once we start to climb we'll be at a disadvantage." He smiled at the serious face close to his own. "So you'd better get your scratching done while you've the chance. Once we start moving I don't want to stop."

"Not even for sleep, Earl?"

"No," said Dumarest, remembering his dream. "Not even for sleep."

* * *

The hills had changed. Now, instead of a scarred and crevassed slope leading up to jagged peaks, a colorful mass of disguising fungi stretched in disarray. There was no possibility of standing back, selecting a route and checking to see alternatives and difficulties. They would have to climb it the hard way, testing every inch and praying they would meet no serious obstacles.

Dumarest flexed his arms. His shoulders ached from the weight of the pack and the necessity of cutting a path. He turned, looking back the way they had come. They had left a trail but how obvious he could only guess.

A growth fell and opened a wider window towards the hills. Clemdish called from where he stood with his machete, "That enough, Earl?"

"That should do it. Find some stones now so we can make a couple of mallets."

Despite their size, the growths were weak. With care it was possible to climb one, but only if it was the the right kind and buttressed by others. As Clemdish moved off, questing like a dog for the required stones, Dumarest chopped a series of steps in a warted bole and eased himself upwards.

Halfway up he paused. The tiny clearing they had made gave him a fair field of view. Carefully he studied the slope ahead.

The ground itself was impossible to see but the fungi provided a guide; some grew thicker and taller than others of the same type. Stony ground? Bared rock inhibiting the smaller growth's development? Water would have been trapped in shallow basins, cups scooped by the action of rain and probably ringed with rock. Such places would provide fertile ground for moisture-hungry rootlets. Certain of the molds and slimes preferred a smooth surface on which to spread. Exposed boulders would provide such conditions.

Clemdish looked up as Dumarest climbed down from his vantage point. He was crouched over a couple of rocks, lashing a cradle about each so that they could be carried slung over a wrist. Each stone weighed about ten pounds.

"The best I could find," he said, handing one to Dumarest. "But they should do the job. Do we share the stakes?"

"Stakes and rope, both," said Dumarest. The stakes were rods of metal two feet long; the rope was of synthetic fiber, thin but strong. He took a deep breath, conscious of his fatigue, the sticky interior of the suit and the soreness of his sweat-softened skin. They had slept on reaching the hills, but the rest hadn't done much good. "All right," he said. "Let's get at it." The first part wasn't too bad. The lower slope was gentle and it was merely a matter of walking uphill; then, as the gradient became more pronounced, the fungi itself acted as a ladder. Clemdish lunged ahead, fatigue ignored now that he was so near a fortune. He clawed his way around swollen boles, kicking free masses of fragile growth as he dug the toes of his boots into the spongy material. For a while he made good progress then, abruptly, he came to a halt.

"I can't get a purchase up here, Earl." Slime coated his gloves and glistened on his suit and boots. "This damn mold's all over the place."

Dumarest frowned, remembering. "Try moving to your left," he said. "About ten yards should do it."

Clemdish grunted and obeyed. Again he forged upwards, his boots sending little showers of dust and fungi down at his partner, the showers ceasing as he came to a halt again.

Dumarest looked up at an overhang.

"We'll use a stake," he decided. "Slam one in to your right. I'll anchor a rope and try to climb higher. If I make it, you can knock the stake free and use the rope to join me."

It was elementary mountaineering made difficult because they couldn't see what lay ahead. It was doubly difficult because the crushed fungi coated the ground with slippery wetness. Dumarest clawed his way upward, his fingers hooking before he dared to shift the weight from his feet and his toes searching for a hold before he could move his hands.

With a final effort, he dragged himself onto a narrow ledge. A boulder showed at the base of a fungus. He reached it and, using the rock dangling from his wrist, hammered a stake into the ground Hitching the rope around it, he tugged and waited for Clemdish to join him.

"Made it," said the little man as he caught his breath. "No trouble at all, Earl. I'll tackle the next one."

Slowly they moved upward. Once Clemdish slipped and fell to hang spinning on the end of the rope. Dumarest hauled him up, changed places and tried the climb himself. His extra height gave him an advantage, and he managed to find a shallow gully running up and to one side. It led to a boulder, to a hidden crevasse into which they almost fell, to a gully filled with a spongy mass of slimy growth through which they clawed, and up to an almost clear area from which they could see back over the plain.

Dumarest sprawled on the shadowed ground. "We'll rest," he said. "Cool down, and replace our filters while we're at it." He looked sharply at Clemdish. "Are you alright?"

"I'm beat." Clemdish scraped a mass of crushed fungi from his suit's diaphragm. "This is knocking the hell out of me," he admitted. "We ought to get out of these suits, Earl, sleep, maybe. Have something to eat at least. Much more of this, and we won't be much good when we hit the top."

Clemdish made sense. Dumarest leaned back, conscious of the quiver of overstrained muscles, the jerk of overtired nerves and knowing that he had driven them both too hard. The worst part of the journey was still before them: the steep, treacherous slope on the far side of the hills and the cliff falling to the sea. Tired men could easily make mistakes and one could be fatal.

"All right," he said. "Well set up the tent, check the suits and have something to eat."

"Something good," said Clemdish, reviving a little. "I've got a can of meat in the pack."

It was good meat. They followed it with a cup of basic, spacemen's rations, a creamy liquid thick with protein, laced with vitamins and sickly with glucose. Moving awkwardly in the limited confines of the tent, Clemdish stripped and laved his body with a numbing compound to kill the irritation of sensitive skin.

As he worked, Dumarest looked back over the plain. The sun was swinging down to the far horizon, past its zenith now, but still with a quarter of the way to go. Already he thought he could see a tinge of growing cloud on the skyline. He thought it his imagination, probably, for when the rain clouds gathered, they came rolling from the sea to hang in crimson menace before shedding their tons of water.

In the distance, he could see the tiny motes of rafts as harvesters gathered their crop. As he watched, one seemed to grow, almost swelling as it rode high above the plain.

"It's coming towards us." Clemdish finished wriggling back into his clothes and suit to be fully protected aside from his helmet. "What's it doing this far out from the station?"

"Scouting, probably." Dumarest frowned as the raft came steadily closer. They were a long way from the harvesting sheds, and scouts worked in a circle rather than a straight line. Distance equaled money when it came to collecting the crop, and never before, to his knowledge, had they ever harvested close to the hills.

Clemdish scowled at the nearing vehicle. "It's a scout, right enough," he admitted. "One of Zopolis's machines. But who the hell ever heard of a scout carrying three men?" He looked at his partner. "Are they looking for us. Earl? Is that what you think?"

"They could be."

"That rope." Clemdish bit his lower lip. "I must have been crazy, Earl. I'm sorry."

Dumarest didn't answer. It was too late for regret. If the men in the raft were searching for them, they would either find them or not. Nothing else really mattered.

He watched as the raft came closer, then veered along the line of the hills, the men inside using binoculars to examine the terrain. It rose, circled and returned, dropping towards the plain as if those inside had seen something of interest.

Clemdish sighed as it turned and went back the way it had come. "They didn't see us, Earl," he said. "They didn't find what they were looking for."

Dumarest wasn't sure.

* * *

Wandara glowered at the pilot of the raft. "Come on!" he yelled. "What you waiting for?"

The man scowled but lowered the vehicle carefully to the weighing plate of the scale. He cut the anti-gravs and sat, waiting.

The overseer checked the weight, made a notation on his clipboard and climbed up to the open control bench. Behind a low seat, the loading well of the raft was open to the sky. He looked at the mass of fungi, then glared at the pilot.

"You're cutting too far down the stalk," he said. "We want the caps and don't you forget it. Return with a load like this again, and I'll knock it off your pay. Understand?"

"Why tell me?" The man was overtired, jumpy and quick to take offense. "I just drive this thing."

"That's why I'm telling you," snapped Wandara. "You tell the others. Now get unloaded and remember what I said."

He jumped down as the raft lifted and rose above a hopper. The under-flaps opened and the mass of fungi fell into the chute. Two men with poles rammed it down as the raft drifted away, under-flaps closing as it went.

Zopolis came out of the processing shed, a blast of cold air following him into the sunshine. He looked at the raft and then at the overseer. "I heard you shouting. Anything wrong?"

"Nothing I can't handle, Boss."

"They trying to load us up with stalk instead of caps?"

"The usual. Boss. Nothing to worry about. They're just getting a little tired."

Tired and greedy, thought Zopolis, but that's to be expected. The five-percent cut hadn't been popular and the men were probably trying to get their own back by careless work. Up to a point it could be tolerated, but beyond that he'd have to clamp down.

"How's the new man, the one on the scout," he said.

Wandara didn't look at the agent. "No complaints as yet, Boss."

"I hope there won't be any," said Zopolis. "I didn't like putting a brand-new worker on a job like that. You sure he knows what it's all about?"

"I checked him out good." Wandara was sullen. "Tested him on twenty-three types, and he could name them all; knows about harvesting, too. He did the same kind of work on Jamish."

Zopolis frowned. "That's an aquatic world."

"That's right, Boss," agreed Wandara. "He was scouting for fish and weed. Underwater work, but the same in principle: hunt and find, find and report, report and lead. Only here he doesn't have to lead, just send in the coordinates."

"As long as he does that," said Zopolis. "I don't want the men to be idle. They won't like losing pay, and the company won't like losing produce." He dabbed at his sweating face. "How are we on bulk?"

"On schedule, Boss."

"Let me see your board." Zopolis took it and pursed his lips as he read the figures. "We're running too high on candystalk. Better cut down and concentrate on bella-pellara. Get that scout of yours to locate it for us." He looked up as the raft came drifting towards the weighing plate. "What the hell's happened there?"

A man sat slumped beside the pilot. He whimpered as the overseer jumped up beside him. A tourniquet was bound about his left arm above the stump of his wrist. His left hand had been neatly severed.

"What is it?" demanded Zopolis. "What's wrong with him."

"Hand gone, Boss." Wandara looked at the pilot. "Quarrel?"

"Accident. They were chopping a bole and someone took one cut too many. That or he didn't move fast enough. Do we get another helper?"

"You just wait a while." Wandara helped down the injured man, his face shining with sweat and exertion. "Take it easy, man, you'll be all right," he soothed. "You got insurance?"

"That's a joke."

"Any money at all?" With money he could buy a new hand, but who in Lowtown had money? "Any friends? Someone to look after you?"

"Just fix my hand," said the man. His eyes were dilated and he was still in shock. "Just fix me up and let me get back to work."

"Sure," soothed Wandara. "Next year, maybe. Now this is what you do: go and find the monks, tell Brother Glee that I said to fix that stump." He looked at Zopolis. "That right, Boss?"

Zopolis shrugged. "Why not? It's the best thing he can do. Better pay him off so he'll have something to buy drugs with. Count in this load." Then, to the pilot of the raft, he said, "Well, what are you waiting for?"

"Weigh me in," snapped the man, "and forget that other helper. We'll split between those that are left. Hurry," he shouted as Wandara watched the injured man walk away towards the portable church. "We've got a living to earn."

It's started, thought Wandara as he checked the load and gave the man the signal to go ahead. A lopped-off hand and who could tell if it's an accident or not? Most probably it was, but who was really to blame, the man who had swung the machete, the man who had left his hand in the way, or the man who had cut the rate and so made them work all the harder?

It's all right for Zopolis. He can linger in the processing sheds where it's nice and cold and he doesn't have to check each load, sweating in the sun, driving men to the limit of their tolerance. There would be fights before the harvest was over, more men with "accidental" wounds, others who would come back screaming with the pain of searing acid or not come back at all with parasitical spores taking root in skin and lungs. They should wear their suits at all times, but how could they work like dogs dressed like that? So they took a chance and some of them paid for it.

Too many paid for it.

They paid for the greed of a company that didn't give a damn what happened as long as they made their profits.

"Don't forget what I said about that new scout you took on," said Zopolis. "Keep him at it."

"I'll do that," said Wandara. "Leave it to me, Boss."

Leave it all to me, he thought as the agent vanished into the cold interior of the processing shed. The hiring, the firing, the lot. But don't ask me to get rid of the new man, not when he paid me more than his wages to get the job.

In this life, a man's a fool not to look after himself.