Big Planet

9 The Griamobot

There was a sound behind them; Ketch hauled himself over the wall. “Thought I’d see what the place looked like.” He looked over the flat roofs. “Pretty dingy.”

“Notice the wall,” said Glystra. “It’s lashed along the top with rope, secured along the middle by dowels. If we cut the rope, break the dowels—there, there, there—” he pointed up a vertical crack where the dowels showed through— “and if a man were to shove at each corner, I think we could drop the wall right over into the river.”

“How about those sea-serpents—the griamobots?” Ketch asked.

“They’re an unknown quantity. We’ll have to take a chance.”

“They might come up under the raft.”

Glystra nodded. “It’s a chance. Would you rather stay here?”

“No.”

Corbus stretched out his long arms. “Let’s get busy.”

Glystra looked at the sky. “An hour of light. Enough to get us across, if things go well. Ketch, you go back down, take the whole party, zipangotes and all, down to the beach under the bluff. Naturally, keep clear when things start coming. We’ll send the wall down; if it lands in the river, make it fast to the shore, so it won’t float away.”

Ketch swung himself back down to the ground.

Glystra turned back to the wall. “We’ve got to get this over before they figure out what we’re up to.” He looked over the side. Twenty feet below was the edge of the bluff, then another fifty feet, almost straight down, to the beach.

“There won’t be any toe-hold to the wall. It should go over almost of its own weight.”

“Fifty feet of it ought to be enough,” said Corbus. “The wood is light stuff.”

“It’s not how much we need, it’s how much we can get. I don’t think they’ll stand still when we get to work.”

Along the beach below they saw the string of zipan-gotes, with Ketch, Pianza, Bishop, Cloyville and the three girls.

Glystra nodded to Corbus, drew his knife, slashed at the fiber rope binding the top of the wall. A sudden outraged screeching came from behind. Apparently from nowhere appeared four old women, white creatures with straggling pink-gray hair, howling and gesticulating. A number of Magicker men, lean, white-skinned, daubed around their shoulders with green paint, appeared behind them.

The coarse rope parted. “Now,” said Glystra. He aimed his ion-shine, squeezed the button. Once—twice—three times. Three holes down the vertical crack took the place of the pegs. Setting their shoulders to the top of the posts, they pushed out. The wall leaned, creaked, moved no further.

“Below,” panted Glystra. “There’s more lashings halfway down.” He crouched, peered into the dimness under the roof. “We’ll have to shoot blind… You break your side, I’ll do mine.”

Two shafts of pale purple light, crackling power. A tongue of fire licked up the punky side of the timbers, died in a charred smoulder.

The wall sagged, creaked. “Now,” panted Glystra, “before they get their army up here… Don’t go over with it!”

The wall lurched, swept grandly out, fell, landed top-down on the beach, stood a second, sagged outward, slapped into the river with a smash of foam.

Glystra caught a glimpse of Ketch scrambling out with a bit of line, then turned to meet the onrush of a line of the Magickers—gaunt men, naked except for the G-string at their loins. They chattered furiously, but danced back like nervous prize-fighters when they met his eye.

The women screeched, bawled, bellowed, wailed, but the men only made tentative movements forward. Glystra threw a glance down to the river. The wall—now a raft— floated free, pulling at the rope Ketch had made fast. Cloyville and Pianza stood on the shore looking up. Glystra yelled down, “Lead the animals aboard, tie them in the middle.”

Bishop called up something Glystra did not catch; he had been distracted by the scene in the room immediately below the roof where he stood, a room now open to the air where the wall had fallen away. Glystra’s throat contracted, his stomach twitched… Twenty children hung by their hair two feet off the ground. Stone weights were suspended from their feet. Wide-eyed, silent, the children stared from bulging eyes into the new openness, silent except for a hoarse breathing.

“Making tall ones out of short ones,” came Corbus’ cool voice.

“Look farther down,” said Glystra in a low voice. “In the room next lower.”

Corbus threw a glance toward the prancing Magickers, peered down under the roof. “Can’t see too well… It’s confused… Oh—”

Glystra turned away. The Magickers were stealthily sliding closer. “Get back! Back!” he said flatly. “Or I’ll cut your legs out from under you.” In a lower voice he said, “I guess it wouldn’t make any difference to you if you’ve all gone through—that…”

But his words were not heard, or if heard, not heeded. Goaded by the frenzied calls of the old women, the Magickers, lips drawn back from their long teeth, were prancing forward, a step at a time. One began to scream—a quavering fierce screech—which the entire line picked up. Suddenly they all were brandishing four-foot pikes tipped with black horny barbs.

“Looks like we’ll have to kill a few,” said Glystra between tight lips, “unless they’ll scare…” He aimed the ion-shine at the roof, blasted a hole in the roof at the feet of the nearest Magicker.

The Magicker never shifted his gaze. His eyes had become fixed, saliva bubbled at his mouth.

“They’re crazy—hysterics,” muttered Glystra. “Poor devils, I don’t like it”

Step by step the Magickers advanced, jerkily, one motion at a time. Behind came the hoarse shrieks of the Hags, and behind—the far glory of Big Planet sunset. Orange, flaring gold.

Too close. Suddenly desperate, Glystra called in a deadly voice, “Two steps more, I’ll kill the lot of you”

One step—two steps—pikes raised in gangling arms.

Glystra squeezed the button. Gaunt forms flapped on the roof.

Hags screamed horror, leapt across the roof to the stairs, black warlock silhouettes, with tatters of cloth flying behind.

Glystra went to the edge, looked over. He yelled down, “Get a line ready, and make it fast to what’s coming down next.”

Corbus was looking up the pole. “We’d better drop the whole works, pole and all. Otherwise the cable will snap past so fast they won’t be able to see it. Notice—three of those guy-lines run to the top, three to the buckle-point at the middle. If we cut off the three at top, the pole should snap off nice and neat.”

Glystra examined the magazine of his ion-shine, squinting in the failing light. “Got to go easy on the power. There’s not too much soup in this one.” He aimed, squeezed the button.

Three gray cables sang, fell twisting like snakes over the roofs of Edelweiss. The pole snapped like a carrot. From the cupola came wild shrieks of fright. “God!” said Glystra. “I’d forgotten all about them”

The pole crashed almost at their feet; the crying stopped abruptly.

Corbus called over the side, “Here it comes… Heads up!”

The tension of the cable dragged the stub across the roof, over the edge of the bluff.

“Lay hold of it!” Glystra yelled. “Make it fast to the raft!” He started to scramble down the wall, past the strung-up children, past the first floor, where he would not look. Corbus was at his heels. They ran along the bluff, found a place to scramble down to the beach.

“Hurry,” yelled Pianza. “Our shore line can’t take all the strain; it’ll go in a minute.”

Glystra and Corbus waded out into the river, scrambled up on to the cool soft timbers. “Let ’er go.”

The raft drifted free. Behind them the bluff made a black smear across the afterglow, and perched high was Edelweiss, bereft and forlorn with the stump of its broken pole. “Poor devils,” said Glystra.

The raft floated out on the river, carried downstream by the current but tethered to the opposite shore by the cable of the broken high-line.

“Ah,” sighed Cloyville, dropping his heavy posterior to the logs. “Peace—quiet—it’s wonderful!”

“Wait till you get to the other side before you rejoice,” said Ketch. “There’s still the griamobots.”

Cloyville rose swiftly to his feet. “I’d forgotten about them. My Lord! Where are they?… If it’s not one thing it’s another”

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.

Glystra returned to the river. The zipangotes had been arranged in line, each long dog-like head under the hindquarters of the beast ahead. “Let’s go,” said Glystra.

The river fell behind, was quickly lost to sight. The caravan wound like a snake in tall grass—now left, now right, twisting, side-stepping, detouring the puddles of water.

The sun rose, and they rode through shafts and bars of heavy light, and zebra striping lay along the tall spines.