Gladiators Of Hapanu

Chapter 2

Blade woke up in the middle of such a din that for a moment he thought he'd landed in the middle of a busy city. Then he recognized the chattering of birds and apes, the drone of insects, the rustle of leaves. Now he thought of a jungle instead of a city.

He opened his eyes-or at least he tried to. The world stayed dark. For a moment that seemed hours long, Blade was frozen by a gruesome question. Was he blind? If the KALI capsule had somehow destroyed his sight

Before these thoughts could go any farther, Blade realized what was wrong. His face was covered from hairline to mouth with something like half-melted tar. It smelled and tasted like rotten vegetables, but it wasn't doing anything except completely covering his eyes. He raised one arm and began carefully scraping the muck off his face with his fingers.

Slowly the world around Blade came into sight. The noises hadn't lied-he was in the middle of a jungle. Above him the vine-grown trunk of a massive tree soared up until it vanished into a canopy of shaggy green leaves which left the ground in a sort of greenish twilight. In every direction the ground was covered with a nightmarish tangle of thorny, bushes, creeping and climbing vines, and small trees, most of them bearing vividly colored flowers. It was impossible to take a breath without being half-choked by the smells of flowers and decaying vegetation.

It was also going to be difficult to move more than a few yards in any direction without getting caught in the undergrowth. This jungle was about the last place Blade would have chosen to land naked as the day he was born. He would have considered selling his left hand for a machete to wield with the right, as well as something to protect his feet and skin from thorns and insects.

He sat up and finished cleaning off his face. Then he realized that his chest and left arm and leg were also covered with the same saplike liquid. It seemed to be getting stickier, as if it were congealing on his skin. It was also beginning to itch. He started scraping it off as fast as he could, pulling handfuls of leaves off the vines to help him.

Eventually Blade got himself as clean as he could manage. There were streaks and strings of drying liquid all over his skin, itching like a mild attack of poison ivy. A good deal of it was also clinging to his hair, which now stuck out in all directions like the quills of a porcupine. Blade suspected he looked more like the Thing from the Bottomless Swamp than a human being, and hoped any natives he met wouldn't decide to shoot first and ask questions afterward.

Blade stood up and did a series of exercises to loosen up his muscles. He decided that his body had come through the transition into Dimension X in first-class condition. In fact, he'd never felt nearly as good this soon after the transition. Everything was in place, everything worked, and he didn't have the faintest trace of a headache.

The twilight seemed to be getting brighter. Blade looked up and couldn't tell whether the sun was rising or just coming out from behind some clouds. At least right now he had enough light for traveling.

He'd have to travel, unless he wanted to stay here by the tree until he took root along with it. Never mind the vines and thorns in his path. There was no water in sight, no fruits or fleshy plants, no birds large enough to be worth trying to catch. There was life all around him in the jungle-the up roar proved that. But he wasn't going to be able to get much use out of it here.

He also wasn't going to be able to find the human life of this Dimension, if there was any. Not that moving on would necessarily bring him to civilization, of course. In this jungle an army might pass half a mile away without his seeing it, and he might wander around until the computer drew him back to Home Dimension. A bloody lot of good that would do for the Project!

Or there might be no people at all-nothing but dinosaurs and birds. In that case Blade would finally end up, as he'd put it, «Playing Tarzan without any apes to help me.» Pointless, certainly uncomfortable, but hopefully not too dangerous unless the wildlife was too wild! That was another thing to find out by doing some exploring.

So it was time to move out. Find water and food, get a weapon, then go hunting for the natives. It was almost a routine for Blade, but not boring. Each new Dimension held too many surprises to ever let Blade become bored, and more than enough to kill him if he left anything out of this «routine.»

Blade broke a branch off a nearby bush to use as a flyswatter. He pulled a few leaves from the branch, tasted one, then started chewing it slowly for the moisture. Waving the branch ahead of him, Blade started off.

It was an hour before he was out of sight of the big tree. In another hour he couldn't have said how far he'd come, and only occasional glimpses of the sun told him he was traveling roughly northwest. Since he couldn't see that one direction was much better than another, he kept on in that direction. Sometimes he was even able to travel in a straight line for a whole five minutes.

After the first couple of hours, he'd learned to tell the places where he could push through from the places where he had to go around. He'd learned the hard way, and his skin showed a fine pattern of thorn gouges and pricks. The scent of blood attracted a swarm of insects, a few of them with stingers.

After another hour Blade was able to move faster, because the underbrush was thinning out. In places the ground was bare for fifty yards at a stretch, except for dead leaves and patches of moss and ferns. It was easy to see why. Overhead the trees now made such a perfect canopy that sunlight could barely reach the ground. Blade realized that he might be moving faster now, but without the sun to guide him he might also be moving in a circle. It still didn't matter too much, as long as he didn't have the foggiest idea of the best way to go. Meanwhile it was a great relief not to have thorns jabbing him every few yards.

There were plenty of the vines whose leaves Blade had chewed first. Every time he passed one he plucked a fresh handful of the leaves, to keep his mouth and throat moist. They didn't stop him from sweating buckets, though, or replace the water he lost in that sweat. By the time he'd been on the move for half a day, he knew he'd have to slow down if he didn't find water soon.

Only a few minutes later Blade came around a clump of bushes and found something almost as good as water. Along with it he found something else that sent him diving for the nearest cover.

On the other side of the bushes was a tall red-barked tree, with an unmistakable campsite at its base. The tree was half hidden by a thick vine winding up and around it like a boa constrictor. The vine was heavy with yellowish fruit. All around the base of the tree lay rinds, skin, seeds, and half-eaten fruit. That was about as good as a doctor's certificate for proving the fruit was edible.

Unfortunately the people in the camp had done more than eat fruit before they left. Two of them hadn't left at all. They lay on the ground, one on each side of the tree. Both were male. One lay on his back, legs stretched out and arms crossed on his chest, with leaves covering his eyes and piled on his stomach. Clotted blood swarming with insects covered one side of his face.

The other man was sprawled like an abandoned doll, arms and legs twisted and bent at impossible angles. Blade looked closer and swallowed hard as he realized large chunks of flesh were missing from the body. They'd been roughly hacked out — or perhaps bitten out?

Blade examined both bodies more closely. It became obvious that they were of two different peoples-possibly even two different species. The neatly laid-out corpse was almost completely covered with hair, the eyes were large, the ears set close to the narrow skull, and the arms and legs unnaturally long. Were this man's people even fully human? To Blade he looked more like an ape than a man.

The other seemed completely human, as far as Blade could tell from what was left of him. He was square-bodied, with thick-boned arms and legs heavy with muscle. One hand was missing, but the other was heavily callused, and so were his bare feet. His skin was unmistakably a dark blue, and in places Blade saw traces of whitish tattoos.

So there were human beings in this Dimension, and even in this jungle. Not just one race, either, but two-and apparently not on particularly friendly terms, either. For the hundredth time Blade wished he could see and hear in all directions at once. Both bodies were swarming with insects, but neither of them smelled particularly bad. In this damp heat decay would set in almost at once. Either or both peoples could still be too close for comfort. Blade didn't look like either one, of course, but would they be able to see this before they speared him or hit him over the head?

At least he could get food and liquid from the yellow fruit, and worry about the rest later. He walked over to the vine and plucked a fruit, then peeled of the skin and bit out a chunk. The juice dribbled down his chin as he chewed. The flavor wasn't entirely pleasant-rather like overripe pineapple with a faint hint of sulphur-but he'd lived for days on things tasting far worse. A dozen or two of the fruit would hold him for several days.

Blade started picking, noticing that most of the fruit close to the ground was still on the vine. Higher up it was stripped almost bare. Either the fruit up there was better than lower down or else somebody liked climbing trees for the fun of it.

Blade collected fifteen of the fruits, then pieced together a rough sack out of fern leaves and lengths of vine. He made himself an even rougher hat out of more fern leaves, then looked around for a weapon of some sort. Not far off he found a fallen branch the size of a small tree. Much of it was rotted, but one chunk was still sound enough to make a good club.

Blade saw no sign of any trail, and his hunter's sixth sense told him that no one was watching or listening from cover. He picked up the club, slung the sack of fruit across his shoulder, and moved on. He was not afraid, for Blade was about as incapable of fear as a sane man could be, but he would have liked a loaded pistol in his belt as well as that machete and some bug repellant.

Blade didn't get a pistol or a machete, but before nightfall he did find all the water he could possibly use.

The twilight was deepening steadily as Blade tramped along. It was time to start looking for a safe place to spend the night. Should he climb a tree or risk staying on the ground? Most of the trees here were solid and climbable, but their lowest branches were far overhead and he didn't know what might hide up there in the green-tinted shadows. On the ground he'd be vulnerable to anything that wandered by, but he'd seen no traces of anything large enough to be dangerous, not even snakes.

As he walked, Blade argued with himself and listened for the slightest sound that might help him decide one way or the other. The noises of the jungle now seemed to be fading away along with the light. The creatures of the day were falling asleep, and the creatures of the night weren't awake yet.

In this near-silence Blade suddenly heard the unmistakable splashing of water off to the left. He stopped, listening carefully. Gradually he recognized the sound as a stream running over stones, rather than some large animal splashing in the water.

Blade turned toward the sound and moved forward, darting from one tree to the next, listening from behind each one like a soldier sneaking up on an enemy camp. He suspected he might be exactly that. If the hunting parties hadn't left this stretch of jungle entirely, the bank of a stream was the most likely place to find them camped for the night.

Finally glade came out from behind the last tree onto the bank of the stream. What he'd heard was a short stretch of rapids, as a stream flowed out of one pool, plunged down a thirty-foot bluff, and spread out into another pool. Dead leaves and twigs covered the water close to the banks, but in the center of the pools it was clear, dark, and almost still. There was no sign that anything human had ever passed this way.

Blade felt like cheering. He could not only drink all he wanted, he could even bathe. The dried tree sap might not come off with just water, but the sweat and dirt certainly would. Tomorrow he could head downstream, sure of a water supply. If the stream widened enough, he might be able to build a raft of branches tied together with vines. Even if it didn't widen, following it would give him a much better chance of meeting the jungle tribes. In this kind of jungle, people lived by the water or at least traveled on it or along it.

Blade stepped forward, then halted. On the far side of the lower pool an animal was peering out from under a bush. It was about the size of a large dog, but it looked more like a pig with a faintly scaly skin, large ears, and a thick straight tail. It blended in with the bushes and ferns so well that it was hard to tell its color.

It was obviously coming to drink, and Blade tried to think of some way of catching it. If it was edible at all, it would give him a couple of solid meals and perhaps some strips of hide to protect his feet.

The animal's nose twitched, then it lowered its head to drink. As it took its first swallow, two scaly knobs popped out of the middle of the pool. Blade froze as a pale eye opened in each knob. The animal raised its head, then squealed in sudden fear and tried to hurl itself backward away from the water.

The animal's desperate effort only made its fate certain. Its hind feet slipped on the muddy bank and went out from under it. Before it could do more than squeal again, the creature in the water was upon it. Six-foot jaws tipped with horns opened like a pair of scissors, then clamped down on their prey. Half the animal disappeared into those jaws with a final agonized squeal. The creature in the pool rose higher out of the water, showing a reptilian head with a second pair of horns jutting up behind the eyes. Its victim's hind legs thrashed wildly in the air, then there was a faint splash and nothing but spreading ripples and a little blood on the surface of the pool.

Blade decided that it might not be such a good idea to bathe in one of the pools after all.

Instead, Blade climbed halfway down the bluff, then slipped into the water. He'd underestimated the force of the current, and was promptly swept off his feet and down toward the pool. Rocks bruised him and scraped skin off his arms and legs, and for a moment he was afraid he was going all the way down into the pool and what waited there. Then he caught a projecting root and with a desperate wrenching of all his muscles heaved himself out of the water.

At least he could drink safely from the rapids, and he drank until he could almost feel the water sloshing around inside him. Then he ate two of the fruits, scrambled up a tree and made himself as comfortable a bed in its branches as he could manage. Blade didn't know how far the reptiles were willing to come out of the water, and didn't want to find out the hard way. At least he could be fairly sure they didn't climb trees.

His tree-bed wasn't really comfortable, but after his day's exertions Blade didn't care. He was asleep within minutes, drifting off as the night chorus of the jungle rose around him. The last sound he heard was an uproar of splashing from the direction of the stream.