The Valley of the Flame, Henry Kuttner [ready player one ebook .TXT] 📗

by an intrusive finger. A dozen grayish, irregular little balls hugged the ground, blending with it in protective camouflage.

Beyond them lay the Garden of Kharn, a sickly, yellowish tangle of vegetation blocking Raft’s view. He could see the guarding wall marching to left and right, curving in to form what must be an enclosure. There were none of the giant trees within the wall, though their columns loomed above and beyond it.

Raft moved on, keeping to the river bank. The bushes were strange to him, though he was no botanist. They seemed a rather impossible hybrid of fungus and true plant. They were fern and mushroom in one.

Oddly he thought of them as vampires, draining life from the very ground.

That forest was not normal—no. The cyclopean trees outside were friendly by comparison. They, at least, were as immense and aloof as gods.

But these plants, these sickly hybrids, grew with a rank luxuriance that was in itself unhealthy. Movement crawled through the yellow jungle, not the wave-motion of wind, but secretive, stealthy movements which made Raft’s scalp prickle.

Very faintly, scarcely noticeable, he felt a presence in the Garden. And he knew, then, why Janissa had not wanted to speak of Kharn.

For that intangibly sensed presence was not malignant. It was worse. It was cold and distant and alien.

And, intrinsically, it was very evil.

Raft moved even more cautiously now. There was menace here, the more ominous because he could not define it. It was a brooding, enigmatic presence which was sensed by the cat-people as well as by himself. This added up to significance.

Felines and simians react in different ways to the same stimulus. Cats are notorious for their acceptance of the supernatural, which meant simply the supernormal, vibrations and radiations too subtle to be sensed fully by mankind. Psychic menaces that would give a man cold chills would rouse a cat to purring ecstasy.

Similarly, cats react violently to a canine menace—a wolf—whereas a man simply reaches for the nearest weapon.

This malignancy, therefore, was a presence alien to both feline and simian.

Perhaps, it was alien chiefly because of the altered evolutionary standard in this hothouse valley of forced growth. There was an old sort of familiarity about that unseen presence. Raft felt certain that he had encountered something of the sort before, and often. Yet never had his living flesh shrunk from the mere nearness of any creature as it did now. Whatever dwelt in the Garden of Kharn, it was nothing remotely normal or healthy.

He stepped beneath the broad leaves and mushroom-caps of the forest. A sulphurous yellow light filtered through from above, lacking in the cool clarity of the atmosphere outside the Garden.

The ground underfoot was spongy, a moist, slippery muck into which his sandals sank mushily, with an unpleasant sucking sound. It was not silent here. There were furtive, quick movements all about him, hidden in that yellow jungle.

He was an intruder and felt it. A fleshy stem bent slowly toward him, sticky juice exuding from its surface. The sweetish odor of the liquor was sickening. Raft stepped away, and the branch rose slowly toward the perpendicular, as though it was dragging itself painfully upright against the fetters of gravity.

Yes, the forest was conscious of him. But there were no cannibal trees here, no gigantic Venus fly-traps that could swallow him whole. There was something horrible about the straining, awkward motion of those heavy leaves and stems.

The place was alive with insects. The forest crawled with them, flies, moths, butterflies, a myriad varieties crept and buzzed and fed on the ichor the trees sweated.

Some of the fungi had hollow caps like huge bowls, and the stench that rose from those liquid-filled basins was overpowering. Yet it was not entirely unpleasant.

Attar of roses is sickening in quantity, but the merest suggestion of attar has the opposite effect. Had the forest not sweated their perfume till the very air was saturated with it, Raft might not have objected. As it was, his clothes were moist and stinking with the stuff before he had traveled more than a few yards.

The trail of Parror and Craddock was well marked. There were other tracks in the soil, ambiguous prints Raft did not recognize. But he ignored these to follow his quarry. Parror had headed directly toward the center of the Garden.

One of the pink webwork creatures crept slowly into view. A filament of raw nerves, it crawled up the stem of a fungus and pulled itself into the liquid-filled cap. It immersed itself, floating motionless, its tendrils spreading out like the hair of a drowned woman.

A little creature, plated like an armadillo, rolled into view. Raft watched it warily. All over the armored body sharp spines struck out.

It rolled toward Raft, but he avoided it easily. The spines looked dangerous. They might be toxic. Luckily the creature could not move fast.

It rolled into the jungle and was gone.

Raft went on. He saw another of the armored animals, but it was licking the stem of a fern-mushroom, and did not notice him. Then a clearing opened ahead, and it was—carpeted.

That was Raft’s first impression. Patterns of flowers, arabesque and exotic, blazed with a riot of color within a circular expanse twenty feet in diameter. But they were not flowers. A queer, smooth glaze seemed to overlie that expanse—and it was a carpet, after all. The meaningless, twisting pattern was the first touch of vivid color he had seen in the saffron forest.

Raft stood scowling, sensing more strongly now that dim pulse of a living presence in the Garden.

Slowly there crept into his mind the thought of a voice—whispering.

CHAPTER XI. CREEPING MENACE

IT CAME SO slowly, so imperceptibly, that eerie voice, that Raft could not tell when it took form and shape in his brain. Yet it was not exactly a voice nor a thought. Rather, it was something akin to each, but with a difference. Communication is aimed at what psychologists call empathy—the transference of the senses from one mind to another, so that perfect understanding may be approached. It is rapport, never complete, always groping —

Till now.

Because the Intruder understood Raft. With its ancient wisdom it knew the very structure of his soul. Like ivy sliding through crevices in a wall, the thing permeated Raft, as though he stood bathed in a light that flowed into his body. As though he were a living sponge through which tidewater stole.

The slow tide mounted.

The heavy scent of the forest was not so unpleasant now. Raft could sort out the component elements which made up the perfume, the sharp, pungent fluid that the armadillo-creatures liked, the warm, oily, sweet ichor that fed the nerve-things. Other juices, musk-heavy, eucalyptus-keen, salty and sour and pungent were present. It was oddly fascinating, this business of analyzing the odors and recognizing each one.

For they were, in essence, food-odors. Not human food.

But nevertheless those smells stimulated the purely physical part of Raft and, through that, struck deep into his mind.

Feeding was an integral part of the life-cycle, the purpose for which all things were created. Dulled senses could not appreciate the pure ecstasy of absorbing nourishment. Only specialized beings could understand the delight which went through every cell of the body.

The nerve-things. They lay immersed in their warm, steaming liquor, tingling with electric pleasure as they absorbed the fluid mat was food and drink to them. The armadillo-beasts. The feeling of taste on the taste-buds of a tongue. Cool liquid slipping down a dry throat, sharp and refreshing. The pleasure of taste, and taste alone.

You have always known hunger, Brian Raft.

He was standing in the center of that patterned carpet, he noticed. It did not matter. He was trying to concentrate on that message, that inviting whisper which spoke to him of delights so purely physical that they transcended anything else.

Not only animal-beings, but plants as well, knew hunger and satiation. For plants fed through their root-sytems, set deep into the breathing earth that is the primal source of all life. Something utterly unimaginable crawled through Raft, the physical sensation of having roots, of feeling himself absorb nourishment through vegetable tissue. Plant-cells. He was part of the earth itself, and it fed him.

He sank to his knees on that smooth, vivid carpet.

Now he was looking up at a shimmering dance of faint light. He was on his back, arms flung wide, and a tingling, delightful warmth was saturating him. He was on quicksand which very slowly, very gently, settled beneath him.

Or it was not settling. It was he who was dissolving, being absorbed into that alien substance on which he lay. He was becoming part of the composite, hungry life that beat distantly all around him, murmuring in the slow motions of the trees, shuddering through the very earth.

You have always known hunger, Brian Raft. You are one. I am many.

Therefore feed and be content, the silent voice said. Sip the sharp, tingling essence that nourishes the armored beasts. Steep yourself in the warm smoothness of the liquor in the fungus-cups. Thrust roots into the soil, and know the subtle delight of a feeding which permeates all of you, body and mind.

Brighter grew the swirling mists. They blotted out vision. But there was no need for eyes. The trees were blind, yet they thrilled with ecstasy as their roots sucked up food.

The trees?

No, they could not feel. And yet they could. Something bound them to all other life here, by an unbreakable cord.

The Garden of Kharn hungered and was fed.

Memories flashed through Raft’s mind. The Intruder was questioning, seeking, probing for what? He remembered the sharp catnip taste of beer, the peppery spiciness of curry, the fresh hot taste of newly-baked bread. The sweet juice of tangerines was in his mouth, and the heavy richness of cocoa. The aromatic tickling of old brandy.

Eagerness touched Raft. The probing grew more violent. He half roused himself from his trance.

Still the memories were dragged into the forefront of his consciousness. The tastes of things he had known once, elsewhere.

Where, then?

In a world where brandy was sipped from sleek glass inhalers, where bread was baked in ovens, where cocoa was served in cups, on tables upon which white linen was spread. Association clicked in Raft’s brain. He remembered more than food now.

He remembered civilization. And with that thought came realization of himself, of Brian Raft. He was not a sensuous machine for sucking up nourishment.

The bright mists swept down like a shrouding blanket. The Garden of Kham sent its heavy perfume like a tide over Raft. But he remembered, very suddenly and chillingly, another Garden, and a Tree which had borne strange fruit A command that said, “Ye shall not eat of it.”

You have always known hunger, Brian Raft. Feed as I feed. Know ecstasy as I know it.

A still, cool, distant voice, infinitely alluring, impossible to resist, although it, too, aroused memory. That indefinable familiarity was stronger now. The presence that infiltrated the Garden was one that Raft had known before, in different form.

Then he remembered.

And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die.

The blind shock of realization stabbed through Raft with abysmal violence. His muscles jerked into tenseness. He attempted to spring up, and found that he could not.

That gelid carpet had flowed upon him, over him, as he had lain motionless.

Yet it was possible to move. With infinite effort he dragged his arm down till his hand closed over the hilt of the dagger. He could feel the treacherously pleasant embrace of the thing all around him. A winding sheet that would have absorbed him, he thought, as he lay helpless.

He stabbed up, claustrophobia bringing