The Flavors of Other Worlds Read online

  Jen picked up a rock and threw it. It produced a reverberant thunk as it struck the intruder, the same kind of dull sound she had heard when she had once been forced to slap an over-amorous dolphin.

  The stone bounced off the carnivore exactly as if it had hit a hunk of solid rubber. Hacking up another eager moan, the creature continued to drag itself deeper into the cave. Its bulk scoured gravel and rock dust from the walls. There was no possible way they could get around it.

  “Keep the pool between it and us!” Arik had retreated to join Jen and take her hand. He squeezed it firmly and she replied in kind. “It’s adapted to permanent cold, so it might avoid the hot water. If it comes at us from the left, we go right. If it comes right, we make a run for it around the other side of the pool.”

  “Great,” she commented dryly. “Then what?”

  Then—they would be outside, he realized. In their failing daysuits. Could the creature run them down? And if so, would it start to consume them before they froze and died?

  Arching back its head, the intruder bellowed sharply. It was a completely different sound from the enthusiastic moaning it had been emitting thus far. The source of the cry soon became apparent.

  First one spear, then a second, then two more struck the animal from behind, the sharp points driving deeply into the thickly-insulated flesh. As the beleaguered creature roared and bellowed in pain it rocked back and forth against the walls of the cave. Stone shards and ice crystals broke loose. The creature’s dying cacophony was awful to hear. A dust cloud of pulverized rock filled the cavity that housed the pool, causing both humans to break out coughing.

  It took twenty minutes for the embattled carnivore to die. Then all was silent except for the hot spring’s persistent gurgling and the lonesome whine of the wind outside.

  Waving dust away from his face, Arik advanced cautiously toward the exit. Something he could not see was pulling the now deceased beast backwards and out of the cave. He strained for a better look.

  “It’s okay,” he told Jen. “I can count spears sticking out of it.” His heart leaped. “It has to be the natives. We’re saved!”

  There were half a dozen of them; tall, densely furred, dressed in heavy, well-made clothing fashioned of wind-breaking leathers and the cured skins of lesser fauna. Large furry ears stuck out from the sides of their heads while oval cat-like eyes gazed into the wind from behind double lids. Two of them boasted beards that blended without a break into the fur that covered their elongated faces. The membranous dan that formed wind-catching wings hung limp from wrists to waists.

  Sharp knives emerged from scabbards and flashed in the brilliant sunlight as they began to cut up the dead carnivore. Sunlight glinted off the extended, backward curving claws on their feet. Called chiv, these remarkable evolutionary adaptations allowed the Tran to skate on their bare feet across the endless expanses of ice.

  Arik was so relieved to see them that when he hurried outside he did not even bother to snap down his protective face shield. “Hello, hello! O’Morion, are we glad to see you! We’ve been stuck here for …”

  The fist that struck him was as unyielding as it was unexpected. When his momentarily blurred vision cleared again it was to reveal two of the natives standing over him, swords drawn. Piercing eyes that were feline yet alien bored into his own. He ignored the chill that was creeping over his face.

  “Hey, what’s the idea? What …?” He started to rise.

  One of the Tran put a foot on his chest and shoved. Gently, so that the triple razor-sharp chiv on the bottom of his foot would not slice into the human’s daysuit. The pair of armed locals began chattering animatedly among themselves. Though Arik knew nothing of the local language, the tone of the natives’ conversation did not strike him as cordial.

  “Arik!”

  Looking to his right he saw that two more of them were dragging Jen out of the cave. She’d had the foresight to flip down her face shield. Behind her the remaining pair of Tran continued to work on the carcass of the dead predator.

  “Keep calm!” He struggled to remember what he had read of this world. Despite its recent application for associate Commonwealth membership, many of the natives of Tran-ky-ky lived in a semi-feudal society. It was said that there still remained a number to be convinced of the benefits of Commonwealth membership. Not all had voted in favor of it.

  Could it be, he found himself thinking uneasily, that those who had landed on the island might just possibly fall into the latter social group?

  With only primitive blades at their disposal two of them were rapidly reducing the remains of the dead carnivore to chops, steaks, and the equivalent of local prime cuts. Steam rose from the gaping, disemboweled corpse. Would he and Jen be next?

  After cleaning his blade in the snow and then wiping it dry against his gray jerkin, the tallest Tran scabbarded it and walked over to gaze down at the humans. As the alien approached, Jen edged sideways until she was standing behind her new husband. They eyed the natives warily. After inspecting them both, the knife wielder focused yellow eyes on Arik. At a gesture, the Tran with a foot on the human’s chest stepped back and allowed him to stand.

  “I hight Signur Draz-hode.” Though he sounded as if he was talking with a mouthful of gravel, the Tran’s terranglo was quite intelligible. With a clawed hand he indicated his companions. As he raised his arm, his right dan unfurled like a translucent cape. “We are kurgals of the Virin Clan.” Leaning forward, he studied the two humans more closely. “Though you have not the look of invaders, that does not absolve you.”

  “Invaders?” Behind her face shield, Jen blinked. “We’re not invaders.”

  “We’re tourists,” Arik added helpfully.

  “‘Tourists’?” The Virin Signur Draz-hode’s command of terranglo was not perfect.

  “Visitors,” Jen explained. “Sightseers. Casual travelers who are here for only a day to see some of your unique world. To enjoy its ice oceans and snow-covered mountains, its plant and animal life.” Maintaining a smile, she nodded in the direction of the gutted, steaming carcass nearby. “Like that.”

  Straightening, Draz-hode turned into the wind to eye the corpse. Fully adapted to the unrelenting climate, he needed no face shield. “A sodj? There is nothing unique about a sodj. Even in taste it is ordinary. But it was the best we could find on this hunting journey.” He looked back at her. “Until now.”

  “Until …?” She swallowed hard. “You’re—you’re going to eat us?”

  It took a moment for the Tran to dissolve the human words in his mind. When understanding finally came, he howled with laughter. At least, Arik assumed it was laughter. It certainly was a howl. When the Tran translated for his hunting companions, they promptly mimicked his vocalization. To Arik it sounded like a chorus of tenors warming up for a concert by engaging in a coughing contest.

  Eventually Draz-hode recovered sufficiently to regard the female human once more. “We might—later. For now, we have the sodj. You are invaders. You come to our world and turn everything upside town. You insist we make a government not of peoples and clans but of all mixed together without regard to history or honor. You trample tradition under your soft, chiv-less feet!”

  “We don’t,” Jen argued as forcefully as she dared. “We don’t trample anything. We’re not politicians. We’re just tourists.”

  “You’ll be better off as citizens of the Commonwealth,” Arik could not resist saying. “You’ll have modern conveniences, medicine, technology, exposure to the arts and culture of other races …”

  Draz-hode interrupted him roughly. “Who asked for the things of which you speak? Not I. Not the Virin. Yet your allies and our traditional enemies try to force them upon us. So be it. The Virin can adapt to new circumstances without foregoing the old. You wish to see some of our ‘unique’ world? You will be given that opportunity.” He added something in the guttural yet attractive local tongue.

  His companions came forward. Using cord woven from strips of pika
-pedan they secured the prisoners’ arms behind their backs. One of the natives automatically started to furl the dan he expected to see running from Arik’s waist up to his arm before remembering that humans did not possess the tough membrane that allowed the Tran to speed across the ice with only the wind at their backs to propel them.

  “What are you going to do with us?” a worried Arik asked their captor.

  Draz-hode did not hesitate. “Ransom. It is an old and venerable custom among our kind. We will find out if it operates similarly among your people.” He exposed sharp teeth. “Call it cultural exchange.”

  “We’ve traveled here on our own,” Jen put in. “It would take a long time to work out the details of such a trade.”

  Walking up to the female human, Draz-hode bent forward so that his face was close to hers. For a second time, he showed his teeth. “In that eventuality we will find out how you taste. If it turns out that you are not worth money, you will still be valuable as food.”

  As he and Jen were marched down the uneven slope toward the hunters’ waiting iceboat Arik noted that their captors did not bind their legs. There was no need. If they did somehow manage to escape they could not possibly walk all the way back to Brass Monkey. They could not walk, period. Unlike the Tran whose razor-sharp chiv protruded from the undersides of their feet, the boots he and Jen were wearing would find them slipping and sliding all over the ice if they tried to hike more than a few meters.

  Their captor’s iceboat was considerably bigger than his and Jen’s day rental. It had a higher mast, a crude bowsprit equipped with a foresheet, a pika-pedan railing, and a much larger central cabin. Essentially an arrowhead-shaped raft mounted on runners of cut and polished stone, it also featured a pointed stern to which a fourth runner was attached. Unlike the three forward runners that were fixed in position, the one aft was attached to a tiller that served to steer the craft.

  With proportionately longer arms than a human, the lean and muscular virin had no trouble hauling their prisoners up onto the open raft. Once all were aboard, the single square sail was let out. As soon as the boat cleared the lee of the island and encountered a steady breeze it began to rapidly pick up speed.

  “Don’t worry,” Arik whispered to his new wife. “One of the search parties will find us.”

  She glared moodily back at him. “First, you’re assuming there are search parties out looking for us. Second, you’re assuming at least one of them will have some idea where to look. Third, at the speed we’re making now we’ll soon be far from any hypothetical area where any hypothetical search party might choose to hypothetically search. Fourth, you’re an idiot.”

  Lying on his side on the rough-hewn deck of the iceboat, hands bound behind him, he pondered her reaction. “Do you want a divorce?”

  “You really are an idiot,” she snapped. “Or maybe just a man. I know that you love me, really and for certain. I’d rather be married to an idiot who I know truly loves me than a genius who thinks of me as little more than an ornament to his own brilliance. Or,” she added, “just because I’m beautiful and rich.”

  “I’m rich, too,” he protested.

  “Lot of good it does us now.” She ruminated. “Both of our families have the means to ransom us. That won’t matter because it’s likely we’ll freeze to death before the necessary arrangements can be made.” It was not necessary for her to see the color-coded heat-sensitive readout that was part of the fabric of her daysuit’s left arm to know that the integrated chemical reaction that kept the suit warm would have run the last of its reactive course by morning. Then they would find themselves clad in suits that kept out the wind but not the bitter cold. If the temperature hovered a few degrees below freezing they might still be able to survive.

  This, however, was Tran-ky-ky—not some comfortable ski resort on one of the developed worlds. Native clothing—a lot of native clothing—would certainly help. How distant lay the abode of the Virin? Could they get there before they froze?

  By evening they were far from the little island of the hot springs—and presumably also well beyond the area likely to be checked by any wandering search parties. Within the failing suits a cold-induced lethargy had begun to take hold. In this reduced state of awareness they were barely able to appreciate the stunning sunset as Tran-ky-ky’s star, warm and bright as Earth’s but more distant, began to set in a sky as stridently blue as cornflower sapphire. The glare of sunlight ricocheting off the surface of the ice ocean forced them to look away.

  Leastwise it did until one of their captors left his position aft and walked forward to the starboard railing. Halting there he squinted into the distance, toward the setting sun, before letting out a roar that made even the two humans jump. In response, his comrades flew into a frenzy of action. Racing back to the stern, Draz-hode joined the steersman in leaning hard on the tiller. The iceboat heeled over dangerously, its starboard runner actually rising up off the ice. Running to that side, two of the crew grabbed pika-pina ropes and heeled out, lending their weight to the ascending side of the craft. Slowly, gradually, the runner in the air dropped down until it once more was in contact with the ice.

  The rest of the crew was racing to break out a second triangular sail. It was not quite a spinnaker, but it did allow the iceboat to put on additional speed. The sturdy craft was traveling with the wind nearly full behind it now. Draz-hode’s intent was clearly to make speed as opposed to maintaining his original course. The reason for this soon became apparent.

  They were being chased by a mountain—and a forested one at that.

  Arik could see Jen’s eyes widen behind her face shield. He wondered if she could see his. Were they as reflective of the shock he was feeling at the sight of what was bearing down on them? The alarm evident in the actions and expressions of their captors was hardly a consolation. If those sailing the iceboat died, so would their involuntary passengers.

  One of the reasons he and Jen had come to Tran-ky-ky was to observe the local wildlife—but not like this.

  Closing on the fleeing iceboat was an enormous lump of ivory-hued flesh. Slashes of gray and pale blue streaked its deeply ribbed flanks. What at a distance had appeared to be trees turned out to be wind-blown growths of another kind. Evolution had caused a dozen or so huge fins to grow wider, higher, and thinner. No longer required by nature to push water, they now caught air like so many macrobiotic blades. The monster had no limbs. It had no eyes or ears. What it did have was a dozen or more integral “sails” protruding from its back and sides. Also a cavernous mouth large and dark enough to swallow the fleeing iceboat whole.

  Projecting forward and out from the top of the blunt-headed alien atrocity was a distinctive fleshy organ the size of a bus and the color of an irritated blister. Eyeing the bizarre growth, Arik found himself wondering how the creature could locate prey without eyes to see, ears to hear, or nostrils to smell. What senses were left?

  This was Tran-ky-ky, he reminded himself. Where everything was frozen solid except for isolated areas of volcanism and—living, organic beings. Not being versed in the tenets of exobiology he could not be certain, but it seemed to him a reasonable assumption the massive protuberance that dominated the head of the oncoming creature might have evolved to detect the heat given off by living things.

  Ironically, while the energetic kurgal of Virin were radiating heat like mad, the predator might not be able to sense either him or Jen because their body heat was bottled within their daysuits. Under different circumstances, it might utterly ignore them.

  Despite the best efforts of Draz-hode and his crew the gap continued to close between the fleeing iceboat and that enormous mouth. It seemed impossible that something so massive, florid, and alien could travel so fast. What on earth—or rather on ice—enabled it to do so? It was not until it was almost upon them that the fading daylight allowed him to make out the layer of glistening liquid that bubbled and frothed around the creature’s underside.

  He remembered what little he and J
en had been able to learn about Tran-ky-ky’s remarkable fauna. The key to survival of many species was the presence in their blood of highly evolved complex glycoproteins. These naturally occurring organic antifreezes kept the bodily fluids of everything from the lowliest ice-burrower to the Tran themselves from freezing when temperatures dropped precipitously. He could now see for himself that when exuded from special organs located in the monster’s underside, they could also be employed for purposes of lubrication. The monster produced and secreted a glycoproteinetic fluid that provided a continuously replenished low-friction liquid cushion between itself and the ice. Or at least it did so when it needed to make speed to capture food.

  Some predators relied on venom to snare their prey, others on natural glues, others on extensible tongues or claws. This was the first he had seen that relied on slime.

  Realizing that despite their best efforts they were about to be overtaken, two of the crew disappeared into the central cabin. They re-emerged moments later bearing armfuls of spears. Arik could not imagine the metal-tipped shafts having much effect against the looming monster. He wished only that his and Jen’s hands were not bound. Not that it really mattered. Even if the creature did not eat them, even if it smashed the iceboat but subsequently ignored them, they would be marooned out on the vastness of the open ice ocean, unable to walk to a destination even if one happened to be in sight.

  Then, abruptly and unexpectedly, the gargantuan predator veered off to the right. Spears in hand, the two Tran looked on in bewildered silence as the predator pulled up alongside them. It made no move to swallow, crush, or otherwise attack the iceboat. Holding onto the tiller for dear life, Draz-hode and his steersman maintained their present course. They did not want to do anything to startle or disturb the speeding hulk that had inexplicably drawn harmlessly alongside. In any case, changing direction would have meant losing wind and therefore sacrificing speed.

  The monster began to drift away to port. On board the iceboat the baffled but relieved Tran allowed themselves to relax ever so slightly. It was then that the giant landed in their midst.