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mined." She studied Bom openly. He bore her exam-
ination because he was engaged in one of his own.
"You're nearly a whole foot shorter than an average
adult, but you've got the arms and shoulders of a
weight-lifter." Her gaze lowered considerably. "And
what look like awfully long, probably prehensile toes.
You're dark as old redwood and with hair to match
. . . but green eyes. Altogether, the most remarkable
specimen I've seen in a long time. Though not," she
added in an odd tone, "for all that, unappealing." The
man made a sound which Born interpreted as one of
distaste, though for what reason he could not imagine.
Strange and fascinating these giants! Yet it was
they who were calling him strange.
"If your people developed here," the woman was
concluding, "despite your coloring and size and grabby
toes, it has to be the most unlikely case of parallel evo-
lution on record. And you speak Terranglo. What do
you say, Jan?"
The man looked up briefly at Born, then sighed and
made a gesture of helplessness toward the board he
had been working on. "I don't know why I'm fooling
with this. It's hopeless. Even if we could fix the drive
without the aid of a full machine shop, that flying
beast chewed up the controls like so many worms in
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a paper bag. We're stuck here. The tridee's in no
better shape. And all that talk about dying's probably
still appropriate."
"You give up too soon, too easily, Jan," she ad-
monished him. She looked at Bom. "Our small friend
here appears to have unpredictable resources. I don't
see why he couldn't"
44
The man whirled, confronting her with outrage
barely held in check. "Are you crazy? It's hundreds
of kilometers to the station through this impenetrable
morass..."
"His people seem able to negotiate it," she said
quietly.
". . . and if you're thinking of hoofing it, guided
by some ignorant primitives!" he continued.
The language of the giants was peculiar, high and
distorted, but Bom could make out the meaning of
many of their words. One word he recognized clearly,
despite the twisted accent, was "ignorant."
"If you are so much the smarter," he interrupted
sharply, "how come you to be here like this?" And
he kicked the blue skin of the skimmer.
The giant called Kimi smiled. "He's got you there,
Jan." The man uttered another disgusted sound and
made a related gesture. But he didn't call Bom ig-
norant again.
"Now then," the woman said formally, "I think in-
troductions are in order. First off, we'd like to thank
you for saving our lives, which you most surely did."
She glanced at the man. "Wouldn't we, Jan?"
He made a muffled sound vaguely intelligible as
"yes."
"My name," she went on, "is Logan . . . Kimi
Logan. This sometimes buoyant, occasionally depressed
associate of mine is Jan Cohoma. And you?"
"I am called Bom."
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"Bom. That's a fine name. A fitting name for one
so brave, for a man who'd tackle a meat-eater like
that winged monster single-handed."
Bom expanded with pride. Strange the giants might
be, but this one at least could be properly admiring.
Maybe one day Brightly Go would regard him as
well as this peculiar giant did.
"You mentioned a village, Bom," she continued.
He turned, pointed up and southwest. "The Home
lies that way, a fair walk through the forest and two
levels higher. My brothers will greet you as friends."
And admire the hunter who had braved the sleeping
blue demon and killed a sky-devil to rescue them, he
thought to himself.
45
He jumped up and down several times on the blue
metal, then noticed that both giants had drawn away
and were watching him. "I'm sorry," he explained. "I
mean you no harm. Of all who came here only I had
the courage to descend and find you out. I guessed
this . . . thing . . . was not alive, but something
carved."
"It's called a skimmer," Cohoma told him. "It car-
ries us across the sky."
"Across the sky," Born repeated, not really believ-
ing the words. It seemed impossible that anything so
heavy could fly.
"We're glad you did. Born. Aren't we, Jan? Aren't
we?" She nudged him and he muttered assent. His
initial antagonism toward Bom was weakening rapidly
as he realized that the small native posed no threat
to them. Quite the contrary, it seemed.
"Yes, it certainly was a brave act. An extraordinary
act, now that I think of it." He smiled. "You've come
this far, Bom. Maybe you could help us at least try
to get back to our stationour home on this world."
"We got a last fix before we went down," Logan
told him. She hesitated, then pointed in a direction
toward the Home tree. "It's in that direction, about
. . . let's see, how can I get some idea of the distance
across to you?" She thought a moment. "You said
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something about levels in the forest?"
"Everyone knows the world is made of seven lev-
els," Bom explained, as though lecturing a child,
"from the Lower Hell to the treetops."
"Figure the average height of one of the big
emergents," she murmured. "Say a little over seven
hundred meters." She engaged in some mental com-
putation, translating meters into levels, and told Bom
how far away the station lay.
Now it was Bom's turn to smile; he was too cour-
teous to laugh. "No one has ever traveled more than
five days' journey from the Home," he told them. "I [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]