Killer Plants Of Binaark

Chapter 2

Blade got the worst headache he'd had in several trips into Dimension X, but that wasn't the fault of the KALI capsule. He landed at the top of a steep bank, lost his balance, rolled down, and banged his head against the tangled roots of a large tree at the bottom. The world danced around him, and he wasn't sure if the singing he heard was from birds in the tree or from inside his own skull.

Blade crawled deep into the damp, musty shadows under the tree, lay down on a mat of leaves and needles, and breathed deeply until he could sit up. Then he tested all his limbs and joints to make sure they were working, and propped himself up against a root until the headache began to fade. When he felt his head there was a tender spot, but no swelling, no bleeding, and definitely none of the symptoms of a concussion. That was good news. A mild concussion could have disabled him for a couple of days. A bad one could have left him defenseless for weeks. Blade had always accepted the fact that a disabling injury on his way into Dimension X might be the end of him. Since there was nothing he could do about it, he stopped worrying. He'd learned very early in his career with MI6A that unnecessary worrying was a dangerous luxury.

Now that his worst problem was solved, he checked the wire. It was still in place on his thigh. Gently he peeled it loose and wound it around his left wrist like a bracelet. Where it had been was nothing except a red mark from the glue. So far Lord Leighton's experiment seemed to be working.

Blade saw that he'd landed in a sort of tropical rain forest. Except for the steep bank where he'd fallen, there were trees everywhere, with moss hanging from their branches and flowering vines wrapped around their trunks. The spreading branches overhead made such a thick canopy that the ground was clear of everything except dwarfed ferns and bloated blue-white fungi the size and shape of soccer balls. Blade picked up a rotten branch and experimentally prodded one of the fungi. It promptly disintegrated into a cloud of foul-smelling powder. He hastily stepped back and mentally wrote off the fungi as a source of food.

In spite of this unpromising start, Blade doubted that a forest so heavily overgrown would be short of food or water. He'd never landed in a Dimension where the biochemistry was so different that he couldn't eat and drink enough to keep alive. He also hoped he never would. It was difficult enough encountering hostile aliens and managing to return intact to Home Dimension, without worrying about starving to death, or growing so weak that somebody or something could kill him.

The branches overhead did let in enough light to tell him that the sun was shining, but not to let him tell directions from it. However, unless the law of gravity didn't apply in this Dimension, water still flowed downhill. If Blade also went downhill he'd be more likely to find water. With water and a reasonable amount of almost any sort of food, he could survive as long as he had to.

Blade stretched his arms and legs to their limits and shadowboxed briefly, then did karate exercises until his head started complaining. He didn't want to lose water by working up an unnecessary sweat. He might not find a stream or pond for at least a couple of days.

Blade laughed. He'd come to take surviving under improbable conditions for granted, because the skills that made this possible were now so much a part of him that he seldom had to think about them. How would an observer have looked at him, casually marching as naked as Adam through something that didn't look much like the Garden of Eden?

How would he have looked to Zoe Cornwall, even if he'd been able to tell her how he made a living, instead of being gagged by the Official Secrets Act?

He'd met some women who had all the survival skills he had, and it was possible they might have been able to travel with him to other Dimensions, but Zoe hadn't been one of them. She was lovely and warm and intelligent, but definitely someone who could survive only in the heart of modern civilization.

Blade was different. He could survive on the fringes of civilization as a spy or far beyond it in Dimension X. In fact, he was more at home in such places. That was a big difference between Zoe and him. In the end, would it have been too big a difference for a happy marriage? Blade wondered.

Then he put the question firmly out of his mind. It was both depressing and supremely irrelevant. Zoe had died a grim, lonely death in a far Dimension, killed by the monstrous Ngaa, and Blade had never seriously contemplated marrying anyone else. By now, it was more likely than not that he'd die a bachelor. In the improbable event of his living long enough to retire from Project Dimension X, he'd be too old and set in his ways to make any woman a good husband.

Blade picked up a stout branch to use as a club, then studied the forest for the best way to go. «Downhill» was away from the slope, but otherwise there didn't seem to be much reason to choose one direction over another. He shouldered the club, picked the widest gap between the trees, and started walking.

Blade must have arrived in this Dimension no later than mid-morning of a long day. His mental clock was fairly accurate, and he guessed it was a good eight hours before the light started to fade. By that time he'd found a stream that widened at one point into a clear, deep pool. He drank until he was no longer thirsty, then examined the mud on the bank of the pool for signs of any animals large enough to be dangerous. One kind of footprint showed unmistakable claws, but it was small. That didn't completely reassure him-Home Dimension leopards were no more than half his size and weight, but one of them could tear him to pieces. Blade plunged into the pool and swam around until all the sweat was washed away and the itching and stinging from thorn pricks and insect bites faded.

By the time he climbed out of the pool, the fading light told him it was time to find a safe place to spend the night. There was still nothing edible in sight, but he could safely go several days without food as long as he had enough water. Remembering those claw marks, he studied the trees on the far bank, then swam across the pond and started climbing the largest one. The rough bark gave him plenty of foot- and hand-holds, and also did some work on Blade's skin. Before long Blade felt as if he'd been rubbed all over with fine sandpaper.

The tree was a giant, taller than its neighbors, with the crotch between its main branches at least a hundred feet above the ground. The last light of sunset showed Blade a sea of treetops, stretching away endlessly almost everywhere he looked. Toward the west and southwest the treetops seemed to change color. They looked golden-orange instead of green, but that was probably a trick of the sunset light.

To the northwest a cliff nearly a mile high leaped straight up out of the trees, with a range of rugged mountains curving away into the distance beyond it. Blade studied the mountains, and his brief thoughts of climbing over them rather than tramping through the jungle vanished. The cliff would be impossible without rock-climbing gear, and most of the summits beyond it showed snowcaps. Climbing over those mountains in his bare skin would mean nearly certain death from frostbite or exposure.

The sun had dipped below the horizon now, and seemed to be sucking the rest of the light after it. Blade pulled down all the leaves within reach and spread them out to make a thin cushion between his skin and the bark. Then he stretched out and fell asleep.

The bird chorus which greeted the dawn jerked Blade awake so violently he nearly fell off his perch. Some birds whistled, others screeched, whooped, boomed, or chattered. There was even one that sounded so much like a London fire engine that Blade found himself looking around for signs of smoke.

When he looked west he stared. It hadn't been a trick of the light! The trees there blazed golden-orange in the dawn. Were they flowering trees, like Home Dimension's dogwoods or cherry trees? Blade doubted it. The color was too solid and there was too much of it. Blade tested his muscles, then crawled off his perch and began climbing down the tree.

By the time he reached the ground the bird chorus was dying away. There was still a long day ahead of him and he could be sure of hitting the golden-orange trees sooner or later. They'd stretched halfway across the western horizon.

Five hundred yards brought him to a small spring. He drank, then set off again. He was so eager to satisfy his curiosity about the trees that he had to force himself to slow down, so he wouldn't work up a sweat or lose his direction. He remembered one of his early instructors in MI6A telling him, «Mr. Blade, you've got enough bloody curiosity for half a dozen cats. I only hope you've got as many lives!»

Blade tramped past an endless succession of gnarled trunks. At last he came to a trunk that was thick and smooth, and he was sure that he had found the trees he'd been looking for. The gold-orange color was definitely in the leaves-and what leaves! Most were at least six feet long and half that wide, and some were twice as big. All of them stuck out from the branches as stiffly as if they'd been made of solid wood. The canopy they made overhead was so dense and so brightly colored that Blade felt as if he'd stepped into a vividly dyed circus tent.

Once he'd got used to the spectacle of the leaves, Blade started noticing other details. The branches and trunks of the trees seemed to be covered with blue-black rubber rather than bark, and they twisted and curled in ways Blade didn't like. Hanging from some of the branches were immense seed pods, larger than the KALI capsule. They seemed to be completely covered with short, bright green hair.

From the bases of the blue-black trunks, a dense mass of creepers stretched toward Blade. They didn't have any seed pods, but otherwise they looked like a ground-dwelling version of the trees. Halfway to Blade they thinned out and disappeared among the ferns and grass, but Blade suspected they stretched considerably farther.

Suddenly he was very careful where he put his feet. There was something unnatural about the plants here. The colors, the leaves, the seed pods, the creepers Blade could have accepted any one of them, but together they gave him the impression of something dangerous.

Something went chirrr among the creepers, and three shiny green beetles the size of Blade's hand crept out into view. He took a cautious step, relieved to see something living among the trees. His relief vanished as he saw more beetles crawling over a whitened skeleton and chopping off pieces of bone with their pincers. The skeleton looked like a huge bird's. Blade saw a curved beak and a four-clawed foot.

Blade held out his club and prodded the undergrowth. He would almost have preferred something jumping out at him, but nothing happened. He took a step forward, prodded again, step, prod, step, prod…. He found each step a little harder than the one before, but he'd be damned if he was going to turn aside from a bunch of circus-colored plants!

Seven steps, eight, nine. The club came down again-and with the speed of striking snakes, three of the creepers reared out of the undergrowth. They wavered in mid-air; then, before Blade could pull the club back, two wrapped themselves around it. When Blade pulled, the creepers pulled harder. The wood split with a sharp crack, the creepers curled back with half the club, and Blade lurched backward holding the other half.

As he fought for balance, he couldn't watch where he stepped. His foot came down on another of the creepers. It writhed like a drunken boa constrictor, then wound itself around Blade's left leg. Another creeper lashed the air, then curled around his right thigh. Blade tried to pull free, but it was like trying to pull free from a pair of steel cables.

Whatever came next, it would not be a quick escape.