The Wind Whales of Ishmael v4.0 - rtf Page 4

  This was the second sleep for them that night. He awoke suddenly, feeling a dull pain in his neck. He knew at once that a creeper had inserted its hollow tooth into his jugular. Namalee had told him that the plants went into a semihibemation during the night, but that some awoke enough to search for a victim, just as a sleeping person, half-awake, feeling thirsty, may stumble to the bathroom to get a drink of water. Nama­lee had advised him that, if this happened, he should submit. It was better to lose some blood than to jerk the tooth free and so fully awaken the plant.

  He had asked her why it mattered if the plant was denied its drink. She had replied that it was best to cooperate with the earth growths. She was vague about what might happen if he did not. All she knew was that she had been taught that one should always go along with the arrangement. It was true that a person could avoid the creepers, if one had not drunk the paralyzing water, but it was better to submit.

  Ishmael, thinking of the endless miles of jungle through which they would have to travel before coming to the mountain city of Zalarapamtra, decided to submit. He lay with his eyes closed and imagined the drain of blood. The red fluid was oozing through tiny capil­laries of the creeper into the body of the parent stem. And then --

  He started as he heard a very faint whistling sound somewhere above him. Something bent the tops of the plants, and something shook the vegetation. The rus­tling he now heard was not the never-ending motion of the plants quivering to the movements of the earth. The rustling was heavier and more prolonged and undoubtedly caused by some great body.

  He managed to turn slowly on his side and reach out and swing Namalee's hammock-leaf. The creeper ex­tended itself to compensate for his motion and so leave its tooth in his vein.

  Namalee awoke suddenly and sat up, but she did not say anything. Moonlight filtering through spaces here and there enabled him to make out her body as a dim shape, and she could see his hand clearly in a shaft of light. She rolled over to the edge of the leaf very slow­ly and whispered, "What is it?"

  "I don't know," he said. "Something big is out there."

  He pointed upward at an angle.

  The rustling had increased, and then, straining his eyes, he saw something snakish glide through a lake of moonlight about forty feet away. Namalee, seeing it also, gasped, and said, softly, "The shivaradoo!"

  The tentacle, which was a dark gray and about an inch thick, was blindly probing. But it was coming closer, sniffing for heat. The shivaradoo was blind, like most of the predatory beasts that came out at night, but its sense of heat detection gave it eyes and it had a strange hearing sense that enabled it to pin­point its victims.

  Ishmael plucked the creeper's tooth from his vein, hoping that the forcible ejection would not result in heavy bleeding. He rolled over and eased himself down from the leaf while Namalee did the same from hers. They had to drop a few feet and so could not avoid making some noise. About four seconds later, he heard a sound as of air escaping from pressure, and something pierced a leaf by his shoulder.

  Namalee made a strangling sound, and both dropped flat on their faces to the ground. There were about six or seven hisses, and the thud of several objects striking the hard skins of stems.

  Immediately after, the two got to their hands and knees and crawled swiftly to a fallen plant with a diameter of two feet. They went over and behind this just in time to escape three more missiles.

  Ishmael reached over the trunk and groped until he found a tiny arrow-like thing embedded in the semi-wood. It was a needle-pointed shaft of bone about two inches long and one-sixteenth thick with four featherish growths at the other end. He did not test the sharp end, since Namalee had told him that this was coated with a poison.

  According to her, the shivaradoo had thirty tentacles, all hollow. The beast grew the bony missiles in its own body. When they were fully developed, they dropped out into a pouch on the underside of its pan­cake-thin, sixty-feet-diametered body. The shivaradoo plucked the missiles out of the pouch with one ten­tacle and inserted them into the ends of other hollow tentacles. When the shivaradoo was close enough to a victim, it expelled a missile with air forced from a bladder-like organ on the top of its body. The range was about sixty feet.

  The shivaradoo, like most of the creatures of the air, had large bladders of lighter-than-air gas to buoy it. These grew on top of its body.

  Ishmael reached over the fallen trunk again to get some more missiles, and he heard hisses, followed by the dancing of leaves through which shafts pierced and the faint thud of more striking into the plant. One had plunged in only an inch from his hand.

  Hastily he pulled several out and, holding them care­fully, crawled after Namalee.

  "It will follow us until it finds usl" Namalee gasped. "And we can't do a thing!"

  "You said it could be killed with its own poison?"

  "That is what the old tales say!"

  They increased their speed on their hands and knees as a crashing noise came from behind them.

  "O, Zoomashmarta!" she said. "It's smashing the plants to get at us!"

  "It can't come down too far!" he said. "Otherwise, it'll spear itself on the plants! Some of them have pretty sharp points, you know!"

  An animal leaped out in front of their faces and caused them to cry out and stop. But it was only one of the kwishchangas, the antennaed twin-nosed monkey-bears, as Ishmael called them. Squawking and chirruping, it raced through the middle terrace of the plants and then suddenly fell.

  Ishmael could not see what had happened to it, but he supposed that a poisoned dart had killed it.

  The jungle was a series of vast snappings and whip­pings as plants broke or, released of the weight of the passing monster, sprang back to their original positions.

  "Zoomashmarta, help us! Zoomashmarta, help us!" Namalee whispered.

  The jungle ahead of them was boiling out with life. A horde of the nine-inch-long cockroaches erupted and raced off in all directions. A family of the double-nosed beasts fled up a pole-like plant, each leaping off the end to a branch of a larger growth.

  The two, without a word between them, leaped up at the same time and raced through the jungle. They stumbled and fell, helped each other up, and Ishmael dropped his missiles and did not have the time to look for them. But he did take Namalee's stone knife from her.

  Suddenly, Namalee stopped. The smaller life was still making its bedlam. But the greater noise of the heavy body smashing its way through the vegetation was gone.

  "What is it?" Ishmael said.

  "It's lifted and is going slowly now," she said. "Lis­ten!"

  Ishmael forced his breathing to slow down and to become quieter by opening his mouth wide and draw­ing in air in large bagsful. He could make out a susurrus behind them, but it was difficult to hear it through the shrieks and crashings of the smaller animals.

  "The shivaradoo has no wing-sails, if you will remem­ber," Namalee said. "It travels by seizing the plants with its tentacles and pulling itself along just above the top of the jungle."

  Ishmael, who considered this world to be a Pacific of Air, thought of it as a bottom-feeder. "It intended to flush us out by making a great noise, and so it tried to crash through to us. But now it will skim just above the roof of this jungle, pulling itself along, and it will go swiftly. More swiftly than we can run through this tangle."

  Ishmael had not asked her how the shivaradoo ate its prey, but he did so now.

  "Why do you want to know?" she said, shivering. "If you are dead, what difference. . .?"

  "Tell me!"

  She moved her head from side to side as if she were trying to locate the beast. It must have stopped to lis­ten, because it no longer made a sound.

  "It drips an acid on the kill," she whispered, "and this turns the flesh and the bones into a mush which it sucks up through the tentacles."

  Ishmael had had a wild idea of throwing some of its poisoned darts into its mouth and so killing it. But this idea was no good now, though it prob
ably would not have been even if the beast had possessed a mouth large enough to have swallowed a man.

  "It will drift over us as silently and lightly as a cloud," she said, "its tentacles probing here and there for the heat of our bodies, and its hearing organs alert for the slightest sound. And if we don't run, it will pinpoint us and shoot a dozen darts at once. And if we run again, it will follow us until we are exhausted and then will kill us."

  "I wonder how strong those tentacles are?" he said so softly that she could not catch the words. He re­peated them and got the expected question, "Why do you want to know?"

  "I don't really know myself," he said, and he put a hand on her cold and perspiring skin. "Let me think."

  He knew now how a whale must feel. He was down on the bottom, sounding, as it were, while the killer, moving on the surface, waited and watched. Sooner or later, the hunted must make a break for it, and then the hunter would pounce.

  The noise of plants bending and of plants being re­leased as the beast started to pull itself along was re­newed.

  Namalee clung to Ishmael and whispered, "We must run! And if we do. . .!"

  "It can't chase us in two different directions," Ish­mael said. "I am going to run northward, north by northwest, actually, to take me away from it at an angle. You will count to fifteen after it starts to chase me -- not before -- and then run southward."

  "You are sacrificing yourself for me!" she said. "But why?"

  "In my world, where similar situations occur, the male is expected to defend the female in the best manner he knows. That is the principle, at least," he added, "though the practice is often enough the contrary. I haven't the time to discuss the principles or their rea­son. You do what I say."

  Impulsively, he kissed her on the mouth and then he turned and ran as swiftly as he could through the heavy growths.

  The noise of the shivaradoo's passage increased.

  He ran on until his feet were caught in a tangle of creepers and he pitched headlong onto the ground. In front of him was an especially dense complex of creep­ers and vines strung over two large fallen plants. He crawled into it, worming and pulling until he was be­tween the logs. He hoped that none of the creepers was in a mood to dine.

  The sound of the shivaradoo had lessened; it appar­ently was going more slowly, knowing that its prey had stopped.

  Ishmael reached up and snapped off a pod from a stalk. He punched a hole in it but did not drink. He set it by his side and stared through the tangles until he saw the shadowy mass of the shivaradoo appear above the jungle top.

  The enormous moon glittered on the many minute mica-like particles encrusting its skin. It was indeed as Namalee had described it, a pancake-thin creature with bulges of skin on top which enclosed gas blad­ders. Its many tentacles moved about, sniffing for heat, while other tentacles clung to the plants beneath it.

  After a few seconds, it pulled itself closer. It stopped while the feelers probed around, and then it moved closer again.

  Ishmael flattened out even more but kept his head raised. He had to see what it was doing. His heart thudded so hard that he was sure the monster could hear it, and his throat and mouth were as dry as the leaves of an old manuscript in a desert monastery.

  And soon as dead -- perhaps, he thought.

  The beast, having located him, extended six tenta­cles which, one after the other, shot darts. Each thunked into the log behind which he lay. He counted each and then quickly reached over and jerked two loose before the second barrage came from another six ten­tacles.

  The shivaradoo waited for several minutes during which time seemed to be gold-beaten out into a tissue as thin as the film over a snake's eye.

  Perhaps it was waiting to determine, by the loss of heat, if it had struck and killed its prey.

  Apparently deciding that it had failed, it pulled it­self downward until it bent two dozen stems beneath it and then it pulled itself forward. The poles scraped against the lower side without injury to the creature. Poles sprang up and swished leaves and creepers and vines around as it passed them. About twenty feet from Ishmael, the monster was no longer able to force passage. This was to be no deterrent, since it could ex­tend the tentacles on the part nearest Ishmael not only up to him but past him if it wished.

  It was cautious now, however. Perhaps because it could detect that its prey was hiding behind a log. Sev­eral tentacles lifted and moved out into the air at a height about ten feet above him. Several others slid along the ground, their fore parts raised. Ishmael waited, not sure what he could do. In a minute, both worlds, the ancient -- his natal world -- and the present -- the fu­ture -- would be lost to him.

  Namalee had said that the monster could not expel its darts with any force unless it was through a straightened-out tentacle. A bend considerably decreased the force of the air. This may have explained why it did not shoot immediately. It wanted to be able to use its tentacles as perfectly straight tubes.

  Ishmael could hear the whoosh of indrawn air into the bladder which served it as an air tank. It gulped again and again, as it compressed the air.

  One tentacle, looking in the moonlight-edged dark­ness like the trunk of a starved elephant or a headless cobra, moved along the ground ahead of the others. Ishmael had raised his head swiftly, seen it, and then ducked back behind the log. He estimated how soon it would glide over the log and held between two fin­gers of one hand a dart and in the other hand the stone knife.

  Above him, three tentacles curved downward, look­ing with the blind eyes which saw only the heat of his body. Then one dipped down as if to get close enough so that, even with a considerably reduced charge of air, it could still flick a bone-shaft deep enough to drive its poison into him.

  A tentacle curved over the log and stopped. Sniffing for the heat of a living body, it moved back and forth. Then it began to straighten out.

  Ishmael rammed the needle point of his dart into the open end of the extension.

  Immediately after, he rolled back across the log be­hind him and into the net of vegetation in back of it.

  The tentacle with the dart lodged in it jerked, and Ishmael thought that it swelled. But if it had intended to jet out its own dart, it found itself obstructed. The tentacle jerked this way and that and then coiled back and then straightened out with a snap. This time, both darts were blown out, but they failed to fly more than three feet.

  Ishmael rolled back between the two logs, picked up a dart with one hand, leaped up and jumped at the emptied tentacle.

  The tentacle retreated, but slowly, as if it were not accustomed to reacting defensively. Ishmael grabbed the tip and this time drove the point of the dart into the soft fleshy part just inside the opening.

  The tentacle did react violently then. It dragged him back under the huge disk of the beast, past the fore tentacles. The aft tentacles, which had been facing the other way, perhaps to act as a rear defense, began to turn around toward him.

  Ishmael went up the tentacle as if he were climbing a line on the Pequod.

  His weight pulled it downward hard against the trees.

  A dart struck the tentacle just above his head.

  The beast was turning its tentacles inward and shoot­ing at him but striking itself.

  Ishmael released his hold, fell back about five feet, and crashed into a plant leaning at a forty-five degree angle from the ground. It bent under him until it snapped, and he fell the rest of the way.

  The monster abruptly soared, then settled, wobbling, and grabbed a number of plants and pulled itself away.

  Ishmael rolled as far as he could, got to his feet, and ran forward until he was stopped by a net of creepers. He bounced back, fell, got up, and ran around the creepers.

  He stopped to look behind him.

  A huge mass was settling like a cloud upon the tops of the plants. It seemed to lose its outline and to melt over and down into the jungle.

  Ishmael could not clearly see the underside of the shivaradoo, but he could d
etect no movement of the tentacles.

  Suddenly, a long torpedo-shape with an enormous head and teeth gleaming whitely in the moonlight shot out of the night.

  It bit once at one of the humps on the back of the sagging pancake creature, and the hump exploded. The air shark, scenting death, had come in swiftly. Another appeared behind the first and anchored itself by biting into the loose skin of the destroyed hump. It also rotated its wing-fins to eliminate the pressure of the wind on them.

  Ishmael wondered if the poison which had killed the shivaradoo was strong enough to spread through the body and also kill the air sharks.

  He had no time to watch for such a development. He turned around swiftly at a noise behind him. It had sounded as if a large body was trying to move stealth­ily through the jungle. He got down on his knees and waited with the stone knife. Then he heard a deep and familiar breathing, and he said, softly, "Namalee."

  "I could not allow you to sacrifice yourself," she said. "I wanted to help, so. . . oh!"

  She had seen the shivaradoo, draped over the tree-tops like a cloth.

  He told her what had happened, and she took his hand and kissed it.

  "Zalarapamtra and Zoomashmarta will thank you," she said.

  "I could have used their help a moment ago."

  They continued walking, skirting the dead beast, which was now being torn at by half a dozen sharks. They walked for hour and then lay down again to sleep. Though very tired, Ishmael kept waking up be­cause of the cold. The end of the night was on them, and the temperature, he estimated, was down to about forty above zero, Fahrenheit.

  He tore off a huge leaf and climbed into Namalee's hammock-leaf, wrapped his arms around her, and cov­ered himself and her with the leaf. She did not object, though she did turn her back to him. He went to sleep at once and dreamed of that first night in the Spouter-Inn in New Bedford when the giant savage, Queequeg, had shared his bed. Queequeg, whose bones had turned to dust and become flesh and plant again and again and again. . .