Titan

CHAPTER TWELVE

Two days after their exploration of the cable interior, the crew of Titanic found themselves leaving the tropical forest. The land had never been hilly except in the neighborhood of the cable; now it turned flat as a billiard table and Ophion sprawled for kilometers in every direction. There was no longer a shoreline as such. The only things to mark the end of the river and the begi

The trees in the region came in three varieties, growing in widely scattered clumps. The kind that appealed to Cirocco looked like glass sculpture, with straight, transparent trunks and regular branches in a crystalline arrangement. The smallest branches were filaments that could have been used in fiber optics. When the wind blew, the weakest branches broke off. Re- covered and wrapped with chute cloth on one end, they made excellent knives. From the flashing effect when the filaments

moved, Gaby named them xmas trees, pronouncing it "exmas." The other major vegetation was not so much to Cirocco's liking. One plant--it seemed wrong to call it a tree, though it was large enough -resembled a pile of what can be seen on the ground at any cattle ranch. Bill named them dung trees. on their closest approach to one they could see that there was an internal structure, but no one wanted to get too near because they smelled all too much like what they appeared to be.

Then there were trees that did a better job of looking the part They had something of the cypress and a little of the willow in them, growing in untidy tangles festooned with creepers that struggled to pull them down.

It was alien in a much more unpleasant way than the high- lands had been. The jungle they had left behind was not too different from the Amazon or the Congo. Here, nothing looked familiar, everything was misshapen and threatening.

Camping was impossible. They began tying the boat to trees and sleeping in it. It rained every ten to twelve hours. They rigged chute cloth tents over the bow, but water always leaked in and pooled in the bottom. The weather was hot but the humidity was so high that nothing ever dried out.

With the mud, the heat and dampness and sweat, they grew irritable. They were short on sleep, often managing no more than a fitful doze while off duty, doing even worse when all three tried to sleep and ended up competing for the limited space an Titanics sloping bottom.

Cirocco awoke from a nightmare of being unable to breathe. She sat up, feeling the cloth of her robe peel away from her skin. She felt sticky between her lingers and toes, under her neck, and in her lap.

Gaby nodded to her as she stood up, then turned her attention back to the river.

"Rocky," Bill said. "There's something you'll want to-" "No," she said, holding her hands up. "Dammit, I want coffee. I'd kill for coffee."

Gaby smiled dutifully, but it looked like an effort. They knew by now that Cirocco was a slow starter.

"Not fu

looked as decayed and rotten as she felt. "Just give me a minute before you start asking me things," she said. She struggled out of her clothes and jumped in the river.

It was better, but not much.

She bobbed, treading water and holding the side of the boat and thinking about soap until her foot touched something slippery. She didn't wait to find out what it was, but pulled herself over the edge and stood with water pooling at her feet.

"Now. What is it you wanted? "

Bill pointed toward the north shore.

"We've been seeing smoke over that way. You can see some of it now, just to the left of that bunch of trees."

Cirocco leaned over the edge of the boat and saw it: a thin line of gray sketched against the backdrop of the distant north wall.

"Let's beach this thing and take a look."

It was a long, grueling slog through knee-deep mud and stagnant water. Bill led the way. They began to get excited as they came around the big dung tree that had obscured their vision. Cirocco caught a whiff of smoke over the stronger stench of the tree, and hurried over the slippery ground.

It began to rain just as they arrived at the fire. It was not a hard rain, but it wasn't much of a fire, either. It looked as if all they would get out of it would he black soot on their legs.

The fire was an irregular smudge covering a square hektometer, smoldering fitfully at the edges. As they watched, the gray smoke began to turn white as the rain fell. Then a tongue of flame licked the bottom of a bush a few meters away.

"Get something that's dry," Cirocco ordered. "Anything at all. Some of that marsh grass, and some sticks. Hurry, we're losing it." Bill and Gaby ran off in different directions as Cirocco knelt by the bush and blew on it. She ignored the smoke in her eyes and kept blowing until she felt dizzy.

Soon she was piling on reasonably dry wood. Finally she could sit back and feel sure it would keep burning. Gaby shouted and threw a stick so high it was nearly invisible before it started to come down. Cirocco gri

it was a small victory, but it could be an important one. She felt great.

When the rain stopped, the fire was still going.

The problem was how to keep it going.

They discussed it for hours, tried and discarded several solutions.

It took the rest of the day and most of the next to make their plan work. They made two bowls from the swamp clay, fired them carefully, then dried a large quantity of the wood which burned most slowly. When that was done, they made small fires in both of the howls. It seemed wise to have a spare. The scheme would require someone to tend the fire at all times, but they were willing to do that until they found a better solution.

When they were through, it was nearing time for a sleep period. Cirocco wanted to see if they could make it to dry ground, not really trusting their arrangements for the fire, but Bill suggested they make a kill first.

"I'm getting pretty tired of those melons," he said. "The last one I had tasted rancid."

"Yeah, but there's no smilers. I haven't seen one in days." "Then well knock over something else. We need some meat." it was true they had not been eating well. The marsh had

nothing like the profusion of fruit-bearing plants they had found in the forest. The me native plant they had tried tasted like a mango and gave them diarrhea. on the boat that was comparable to an i

They decided the big mudfish were the most obvious prey. Like all the other animals they had encountered, the fish took little notice of them. Everything else was too small and quick, or, like the giant eels, too big.

The mudfish liked to sit in the ooze with their snouts buried, moving by flipping their tails.

She and Gaby and Bill soon had one surrounded. It was their first close look at one. Cirocco had never seen a creature so ugly. it was three meters long, flat on the bottom, and bulged in the

middle from its blunt snout to a wicked-looking horizontal tail fluke. There was a long gray ridge along its back, soft and loose like a rooster's comb, but slimy. It swelled and deflated rhythmically.

"Are you sure you want to cat that?" "If it'l hold still long enough."

Cirocco was stationed four meters in front of the mudfish while Gaby and Bill approached from the sides. All three carried swords made from broken xmas-tree branches.

The mudfish had one eye the size of a pie plate. One edge of the eye elevated until it was looking at Bill. He froze. The fish made a snuffling sound.

'Sill, I don't Ue this."

'Don't worry. It's blinking, see?" A stream of liquid spurted from a hole above the eye, producing the snuffling she had heard. "It's keeping its eye wet. No eyelids."

"If you say so." She flapped her arms, and the fish obligingly looked away from Bill and toward her. She wasn't sure that was an improvement, but took a step forward m the balls of her feet. The fish looked away, bored by it all.

Bill moved in, braced himself, and put his sword through the flesh just behind the eye, leaning m it. The fish jerked as Bill re- leased the sword and danced back.

Nothing happened. The eye did not move, and the organs on its back no longer swelled in and out. Cirocco relaxed, and saw Bill gri

"Too easy," he said. "Men is this place going to give us a challenge " He took the hilt of his sword and pulled it out. Dark blood spurted over his hand. The fish bent, touching its snout with its tail, then swung the tall sideways and down on Bill's head. It scooped deftly under his motionless body and hurled him into the air.

Cirocco did not even see where he came down. The fish arched again, this time balancing on its belly with both snout and tall in the air. She saw its mouth for the first time. it was round, lamprey-like, with a double row of teeth that counter- rotated and clattered. The tail hit the mud and the fish jumped at her.

She dived flat to the ground, ploughing up a wake of mud with

her chin. The fish plopped behind her, arched, and flipped fifty kilos of mud into the air as it lashed madly with its tail. The sharp fin sliced the ground in front of her face, then rose for another try. She scurried on her hands and knees, slipping every time she tried to stand.

"Rocky! jump!" She did, and narrowly missed having her arm taken off as the fish's tail hit the ground again.

"GO, go! It's coming after you! A glance behind showed only rotating teeth. All she could hear was their terrible buzz. It meant to eat her.

She was in mire up to her knees and heading toward deeper water, which did not seem like a good idea, but every time she tried to turn the tail flashed out of the mud. Soon she was blind from the constant barrage of filthy water. She slipped, and before she could get up the tail hit the side of her head. She was conscious but her cars were ringing as she turned over and groped for her sword. The mud had swallowed it. The fish was a meter away, curling for a leap that would crush her, when Gaby came ru