Lords of the Seventh Swarm

Chapter 15

“Lord Felph, I cannot condone another display like the one I saw this morning,” Gallen said as he stoof on the bridge of the Nightswift. They skimmed Ruin, crossing pewter-colored mountains that wrinkled the planet’s surface. At this altitude, the thick air left a blue haze over most of the ground, baffling the eye.

Felph watched out the window, Athena by his side. He stared at Gallen’s words. “Cannot condone it, eh?” Felph grunted. “Hmmmph. What will you do next time?”

“Stop you,” Gallen said.

“Fair enough,” Felph replied. “Since I don’t have any more clones to kill, it’s all academic.” He chuckled softly to himself. “Ghastly business, wasn’t it?”

Gallen said, “Such things are best done in private.”

“You think so?” Felph said, raising an eyebrow. “You don’t know Zeus.”

“No one should have to look upon his own murder,”

Felph glanced back at Athena, and Gallen followed his eyes. The girl sat quietly in one corner, her back to the wall. She was the most beautiful child Gallen had ever seen, both stronger than a Tharrin, and more sensual. Felph asked, “Athena, my child, has Zeus ever discussed his desire to murder me in front of you?”

She looked at her father and scrunched back toward the door a bit, unwilling to answer. Felph told Gallen, “She listens far more than she speaks.”

He waited; finally she said, “Yes.”

“Do you think it prudent of me to strike first?”

Felph’s withering gaze drew the next word from her.

“Yes!”

Felph smiled victoriously, said to Gallen, “You see? I did only what I had to. Zeus is dangerous. I’ve bred him to dominate. He resents those who hold authority over him, and he thought himself immortal. I wanted to disabuse him of that notion. Now he will feel the pains of mortality.”

“But it wasn’t fair!” Athena shouted. “It wasn’t fair to kill me, too! I didn’t do anything!”

Felph looked back to the sweet, strong girl, smiled in apology. “I couldn’t very well kill the others and leave your clones alive. How would that look?”

“You’re always wasting my clones,” Athena said. “You make me camp out in the tangle, where I get killed.”

“No more,” Felph said. “I won’t make you go anymore. Now that your Guide is gone, I can’t take chances with you. You’re too precious.”

“What about today? You’re making me go with him-” she pointed to Gallen.

“You don’t have to leave the ship,” Gallen told her. “I’m a Lord Protector. I can handle myself.”

She studied him with a calculation, as if measuring the thickness of his biceps, the girth of his legs. “You don’t know what you’re getting into.”

Athena’s skintight pullover, a camouflage suit in shades of black and purple, revealed her every muscular curve.

Though Athena’s face said she was thirteen or fourteen, her figure was that of a mature woman. Shapely, strong, graceful. Gallen said, “It does not matter if you think I’ll live or die. If you’re afraid of going into the tangle, I won’t force you.”

But Felph interrupted. “Of course she’ll come. Athena has lived in the tangle longer than anyone. I’ve been acclimatizing her to it for years. You’ll need her cunning.”

“Six times this year-I got killed in the tangle six times this year,” Athena said. “You call that cunning?”

Felph said, “Who else has ever lived more than a week alone in the tangle? You’ve survived for weeks at a time.”

Athena lowered her head. “Teeawah isn’t just any tangle. You can’t just walk in.

Felph nodded to the viewscreen that covered the front wall of the cabin. “Ah, here it is.”

In the past fifteen minutes they had traveled well over two thousand kilometers. Ahead, something strange showed on the viewscreen: all over the face of Ruin, the skies had been clear. When clouds appeared at all, they were high cirrus clouds, thin bands of white strewn like cobwebs over the blue sky. But ahead of the ship a storm raged, a storm unlike any Gallen had ever seen. Thunderheads loomed thousands of kilometers in the air, billowing in hues of darkest slate. At cloud top, lightning forked and darted like the tendrils of anemones as they feed from their rocks. In their lower region the clouds lost form, became a nebulous haze as torrential rains poured from the storm.

As for the tangle-Gallen could see the dark purples of Ruin’s vegetation, but the trees and vines themselves were hidden in the shadow.

As quickly as Gallen saw the storm, the ship hurtled into it, smashing against clouds as if they were a wall. The ship shuddered in response, slowing, then everything outside the viewscreen darkened.

Felph motioned to the pilot seat. “This is your expedition. Gallen. You should take us down.”

“Ship, stop forward progress, then begin gradual derive.” Gallen commanded the Al, walking up to the controls.

Brilliant flashes of actinic light struck the ship, and some crackled inside. Gallen felt the ship list, buffeted by strong winds.

The ship lowered. The storm pelted the exterior with huge liquid droplets. Icy crystals broke apart on contact with the hull, sliding down the viewscreen windows. For long moments this was all Gallen could see, then the tangle appeared.

Gallen had imagined a leafy canopy, like that of some deciduous forest, but the tangle of Ruin was bizarre. Enormous grasslike plants spiraled above the canopy hundreds of meters, like twisted fronds of ribbon, while other trees sent out feelers, like enormous stamens that clutched the air-grasping, grasping. Gallen knew enough to stay away from them. One towering vine wrapped around itself, looking as if it were made of giant bells, welded side by side.

Lower in the tangle, huge growths had formed on the sides of plants, enormous lips of fungus in shades of orange or brown. Gallen could barely distinguish the shapes, the rain pelted the viewscreen so hard.

On one lip of fungus, a creature squatted. It had enormous black eyes that stared up at him menacingly. The creature had antlerlike growths on its head, a short trunk like an elephant’s, a long dark neck with greenish splotches that might have been some froglike parasite gripping fiercely to it, and on its leaf-shaped body, it had enormous wings like those of a bat, filled with ragged holes, as if the creature had been blasted by lightning many times.

For a moment the creature gazed at Gallen’s ship, as if trying to decide whether it was predator or prey. In that moment, the beast seemed old and powerful.

It backed up on its perch, opened its wings. Enormous claws extended from the apex of each wing. With these, the beast raked the air, warning the ship away. Then it leapt from its perch and dived into the tangle, a wriggling horror, an escapee from the regions of darkness.

Gallen had never seen a creature so odd, had never even faintly imagined such a thing might exist. Gallen looked at icy tangle. Climbing down would be nearly impossible. He asked Felph, “How do we get in?”

“Easy enough,” Lord Felph said. “We drop the ship into the canopy, then pound the brush with phased gravity waves, breaking through the upper foliage. When we’ve gone as far as the ship can go, we have to get out and make our way down. Any ruins will be down on the ground.”

“Upper foliage?” Gallen asked, concerned by the tone of Felph’s voice. He’d imagined this wall of purple vines was the upper layer, and the ground would be a hundred meters beneath it.

“The tangle is at least two thousand meters deep here,” Felph said. “The upper plants you see are mostly parasites, growing on the old-growth dew trees. But it’s the ground we need to reach. Down deeper, the dew trees have grown for thousands of years, so that now their trunks are petrified by constant seepage. Storms rage almost perpetually over this tangle-they’re caused by some rather odd geography, cold winds sweeping down from the arctic, clashing with wet air from the seas under the great tangle. Twenty thousand years ago, this area would have been warmer, dryer. A perfect Qualeewooh nesting site.

“But it’s a mess, now.” Gallen considered. “There has to be a way to get some view of the ground. We need a topographical map, something that shows the features under the tangle. If the Qualeewoohs built here, they would have built above ground.”

“Of course,” Felph said. “I’ve done some echolocation, but the results are confusing. As I’ve said, the lower trunks of the dew trees tend to become petrified, so they show as stone. What on the map looks like a tower is usually just the trunk of a dew tree.”

Gallen asked, “But people have found towers here?”

“One or two,” Felph replied. “But no one has found Teeawah, the city itself.”

“Do your maps show where ruins have been discovered?”

“Indeed,” Felph replied. “But it’s not the ones that have been discovered that we want. No one has reached the ruins of Teeawah. I’ll get the map, and let you tell me where to look.”

Gallen agreed. Felph ordered the ship’s AI to radio the palace, download copies of the maps, then display them on the ship’s holo.

The lights lowered; one viewscreen displayed an image in grays and reds. The map showed an area roughly four hundred kilometers wide and six hundred long, a wriggling, serpentine valley between the hills. Thrusting upward from it, like myriad hairs, were thousands of petrified trunks from dew trees. The five successful treks into the tangle had all been in the same general area, a great central plain here a few steep bluffs jutted from the foothills.

Yet as Gallen studied the map, he did not think the area looked promising. The bluffs weren’t large enough to support a city like the one he imagined.

“Why do you think the Qualeewoohs built here?” Gallen asked Felph, not because he needed an answer, but because he wanted the old man to confirm his own ideas.

“A rookery,” Felph said. “Aside from holy places which are more historic sites than anything else, I don’t see that the Qualeewoohs ever built anything except as a rookery.”

Gallen considered what little he knew of Qualeewoohs’ habits. At Felph’s palace the Qualeewoohs had built rookeries into the face of the cliffs-and this whole valley was ringed with such cliff faces.

“The Qualeewoohs like to set their rookeries high,” Gallen said.

“And far from water, to avoid predators,” Felph agreed.

Gallen imagined himself winging through the cliffs that ringed the valley. As he did, he whispered, “They want shelter from wind. It keeps their clooes warmer, and it makes it easier for the chicks to learn to fly-fewer drafts and crosscurrents.”

Gallen traced his finger along the cliffs. Felph began pacing beside him.

“They need some running water.” Gallen considered. “It’s too heavy to carry easily.” He reached the very mouth of the canyon at the far north. Two arms of the mesa jutted out, each running a northeast, northwest angle. At the very lip where the mountains met, lay a deep defile. A river would be there.

“Between the arms of these mountains,” Gallen whispered. “This is where I would look for Teeawah.” Gallen felt almost certain he was right.

“Congratulations,” Felph said. “Your very first try, and you have found it. Do you know how many hundreds of men have lost their lives in expeditions to this region? In all the Great Tangle, there is not a more treacherous pit than the one you pointed out. The place is crawling with sfuz who have tunneled their warrens around there for kilometers. I’ve tried to make the bottom of those cliffs many times.”

“What are sfuz?” Gallen asked.

“Hunters, like giant … monkeys,” Athena answered. “Or maybe more like spiders. They hunt in so many ways.”

Gallen could see that to describe them would be pointless. What was the winged creature he had just seen? A dragon? That name perhaps best described the beast, yet it seemed woefully inadequate. What name would describe a florafeem? A giant flying half a clam?

No words sufficed.

“The sfuz set snares for unwary animals.” Felph tried to be more helpful. “And they’re just as likely to track you down while you’re sleeping. But they can be far more canny: they train other animals to do their bidding. The word sfuz is a Qualeewooh word. Though we often translate it as hunter, it also means relentless.

“How do they kill?” Gallen asked.

“Nothing elaborate,” Felph said. “With tooth and claw, which may be painted with poisons extracted from other animals. But the sfuz are very strong. They’re adapted to an environment where they must climb up and down as easily as we move across the earth. And like other animals on Ruin, they’re fast-much faster than most. In the tangle, quick reflexes seem to be the preferred adaptation. The sfuz walk more quickly than we run. In close quarters, in short bursts, they run almost faster than the eye can see.

“If I am right, the ancient ruins are home to the largest single nest of sfuz on Ruin.”

Gallen said, “You mentioned that they train other animals, use snares-are these creatures sentient?”

Felph seemed to consider. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “The sfuz never talk to you, never seem to reason, but they know a hundred ways to kill you. Are such creatures sentient?”

“He is not telling you everything,” Athena said. »The sfuz here in the tangle of Teeawah are fearsome. I have fought sfuz in other areas-but none like this! They regenerate. They can’t be killed!”

Felph laughed. “Don’t get the man excited. That can’t be proved. They may regenerate, but we don’t know that they’re immortal.”

“It’s true,” Athena said. “I killed one near my campsite. A few hours later, it roused and slew me!”

“There was a Glitch in the transmission your Guide sent,” Felph argued. “I’ve explained it before: when that version of you died, the Guide it wore sent the downloaded memories. The Guide must have been damaged in the attack. That’s all. A simple transmission error.”

Gallen felt skeptical. Immortal predators? Felph had said that no one had ever reached Teeawah, that the predators here were unusually nasty. Yet this seemed too much to believe. Still, he knew it would be dangerous. A question lodged at the back of Gallen’s mind, something he feared to ask. “Is there a reason why so many sfuz nest here? Does this jungle provide more prey?”

Felph shook his head. “We are talking about a region deep within the tangle, without light, where few animals can survive. I don’t think the tangle here could provide enough food for the population. The sfuz must be transporting food for hundreds of kilometers.”

“That would take a great deal of effort,” Gallen said. “Such effort doesn’t make sense for predators.”

“Agreed,” Felph said.

“So what if these aren’t just warrens under there?”

“What do you mean by that?” Felph asked.

Gallen stared at the topographic map. Everything suddenly seemed to make sense. “Imagine man has made a great discovery, the Waters of Strength, something that-I don’t know-transforms him into something more than human. It lets him conquer self, nature, time, space. So he drinks the Waters, and all the men on earth leave.

“But then baboons come, and they too drink of the Waters. Only the Waters weren’t made for them. Maybe they’re not bright enough to understand what they’re for. When they drink the Waters, they find themselves able to regenerate. How important would those Waters become? Would you want your enemies, or your prey, to find them? Would you simply nest in that region, or would you fortify it?”

Lord Felph’s eyes grew wide at the implications.

“A fortress’?” Athena asked. You think they’ve built a fortress?”

Felph in contemplation. “Interesting.” He said. “I must admit I’ve never considered that possibility. Obviously you have a military mind. A fortress, to protect something of value …”

Gallen stared down at the map, pointed to an abutment on the side of the mountain. “This is where we’ll go in.”