The Wind Whales of Ishmael

The animal was two feet high and, in the light of the red sun, its two insectlike pincers were revealed as outwardly curved double noses. The lips underneath were quite human; the teeth were those of a carnivore. After it had emptied the pod, it squatted immobile so long that Ishmael thought it had gone to sleep. The lidless eyes became dull, and a film crept over them. Ishmael, feeling it safe to approach, discovered that the film was a semiopaque liquid, not a lid. He also saw that a thin, pale green creeper had lifted itself and moved up the beast's back and entered its jugular vein. The creeper became a dull red.

After a while, the creeper delicately and slowly removed its tip, reddened with blood, from the vein. It withdrew snakishly down the creature's back and slid into a hole in the stem out of which it had come.

The eyes of the beast lost the milky film, it chirruped feebly and then it stirred. Becoming aware that Ishmael was standing so close, it ran into the jungle. But it had not moved as swiftly as before.

Ishmael had been about to imitate the creature and stick his finger into a dark spot in a pod and drink from it. But now he feared to do so. Was there something in the water that temporarily paralyzed the drinker? And did a creeper come out and tap the drinker's vein every time? Was this a strange symbiosis, sinister to him but only natural in its ecology?

There was, of course, nothing to prevent him from tearing off a pod and ru

But what if the water contained some drug which would paralyze more than his body? What if it were a sort of lotos, which would so influence him that he would return to the jungle and invite the bloodsucker to feast on him?

While he stood in indecision and his body ached for the water so available yet so remote, he saw a number of creepers slide out from many holes in stems. They converged on the pod, covered it, exuded a greenish slime which cut through the shell of the pod, and presently each creeper withdrew with a section of shell held in a coil at its end.

No wonder the earth was so bare. The plants ate of their own substance. No doubt they also ate anything else that was dead. And the food they needed over and above their own detritus was provided by blood.

Acting quickly, so that he would not get to thinking too much of the possible consequences, he tore a pod loose. He turned and ran until he was standing in the sea up to his thighs. He tilted the pod above his head and let the water run out into his mouth. The liquid was cool and sweet but there was not enough. There was nothing else to do but return and break off another pod.

As he started back, he saw a shadow flash by him, and he spun around and looked upward.

In the distance was still another great red cloud with its devouring attendants, the wind whales.

But the shadow had come from something much nearer. An air shark had sped over him at about thirty feet from the ground, and behind it were three more.

The first two had made a surveillance pass, but the last two in line had decided that it was safe to attack him.

They dived toward him, the wing-fins changing their angle, and their great mouths open.

He waited until the first was within six feet. It was then only a foot above the water, and it was hissing.

That mouth looked as if it could not miss biting off his head, which must be what it pla

Ishmael went completely under, his eyes and mouth closed and his fingers pinching his nose. He counted to ten and emerged just as the lower tail-fin of the last air shark trailed by him, dragging in the The beasts had lifted slightly and were sailing close-hauled to the wind. They cut at an angle away from him out over the lake for a quarter of a mile. Then they turned and sailed at an angle toward the west, and then turned again, their wings rotated to catch the wind in full.

Ishmael tore off a pod and punched a hole with his finger and drank. The excitement and danger had made him forget his caution, and that, he thought a minute later, was his undoing.

The first time he had drunk, he had not felt the paralysis he'd expected. He had been braced to step forward so that if he became so paralyzed he fell, he would fall with his face out of water. He had felt nothing. But this might have been because he was so much larger than the double-nosed beast; much more of the narcotic in the water would be needed. Also, the excitement from the sharks may have counteracted the effect he should have felt.

But two drinks in such rapid succession did their work. He immediately felt numbed and could not move. He could see, though through a twilight, and he could feel the creeper slithering up his back and a dull pain when the sharp end penetrated his jugular.

The air sharks swept over him, having spotted his head projecting above the vegetation. He had made a mistake by picking this place to drink when he could have chosen one with much higher and much more dense plants.

However, the beasts were necessarily cautious. They came close the first time but did not try anything. Doubtless they were trying to estimate the chances of ! getting caught in the vegetation if they tried for a bite.

He did not fully understand how they operated. Bladder gas made them buoyant, he was sure of that. And it seemed to him that they could not lose much altitude without discharging gas. That might be the hissing noise which had come from the first shark.

To gain any altitude, they would have to use the same tactics as gliding birds. And if they were to stay aloft they would have to generate more gas. To do this, they would have to use something in their bodies. Fuel was necessary, and to get fuel, they had to eat. That much should be certain, if anything in this world was certain.

Theorizing was fine, in its place. What he needed was to act, and he could not move.

It seemed a long time before the sharks appeared again far to the windward and turned onto the final leg of their maneuver. The heat had built up; the vegetation cut down most of the wind. He was sweating, and the first insect he had seen scuttled out on a branch a foot away.

It was the representative of an ancient and successful line, a breed that had learned to live with and off man. It even put out to sea with man and was much more successful at its parasitism than the rat.

It was a cockroach, at least nine inches long.

It crept out cautiously, its ante

He could not feel its legs on his skin, but he could feel a dull pain on the lobe of his right ear.

He should have drowned with the crew of the Pequod.

There was a rustle -- his hearing wasn't dulled -- and he was staring at a face that had appeared from behind a mass of leaves.

The face was as brown-ski

The language she spoke, however, was none that he had ever heard, and he had heard most of the world's languages.

She stepped forward and batted at the cockroach, which sprang onto a branch and disappeared.

At the same time, he felt the end of the creeper withdrawing.

He had expected her to pull the creeper out, since she had rescued him from the insect. She, however, went after the huge thing with a stick and in a minute returned holding it by several of its legs. Ishmael had forgotten, though only for a moment, that the sharks were swooping at him. Now he tried to open his mouth to shout a warning. Perhaps she could push him over so that the plants would keep them off him. Or she could...