Lankar of Callisto
- Автор: Картер Лин Спрэг
- Серия: Callisto #6
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Lankar of Callisto». Краткое содержание книги:
...in the mysterious and treacherous domain of the insidious Mind Wizards. Searching for him is a fearless armada of his loyal friends, and a stranger who knows him better than anyone on Callisto. The stranger, Lankar, is none other than Lin Carter, accidentally transported through the Gate Between the Worlds to the land of the Thanatorians. Aware of Jandar's plight, Lankar joins the search beyond the world's edge and suddenly finds himself battling for his own existence against the most nightmarish creatures on the planet - the gruesome flesh robots of Kuur and the fiendish Mind Wizards of Callisto themselves...
I guess there is a lot more pure unadulterated Dog in the genus othode than ever Jandar guessed. He wrote somewhere that they are occasionally domesticated for tracking purposes, just like hunting dogs, although they are not used as pets. Well, maybe so; and maybe the human natives of Callisto have yet to discover the pleasures of keeping pets. When they do, the othode will be ready.
I looked down into his sleepy eyes, wondering at the ease with which I had won his faithful heart. Was it possible he had been a hunting―othode, one already rudely half―domesticated, one already more or less accustomed to the presence and the smell of men? Possibly. I would never know his story, any more than I would ever know the story behind most of the stray dogs Noel or I had rescued from the wintry streets and adopted because they needed a home and ours was open to such as them.
McGurk himself had been a stray, I remembered with a smile. So perhaps Bozo, so McGurklike in many ways, was just another stray. He wore no collar; I would never know.
But we had found each other, and we had made friends. And I would not be alone in the jungle, ever again. Not so long as the loyal, fighting heart of Bozo still beat, strong and true, and those terrible jaws, that now chomped gently and wetly on my wrist because I was no longer petting him and he wanted more, could crush and maim and kill whatever challenged us in our jungle domain.
We spent our second night beside a roaring bonfire that was almost too warm for comfort. And rose, well rested at dawn, to feast on elephant-boar vastodon steak―his raw, mine cooked but cold.
All that third day we continued on our way through the jungles of the Grand Kumala.
Everywhere I looked, I was reminded of the fact that I was on a strange and alien world. If for a moment I forgot it, the next moment would remind me of the fact. I would turn and watch a strange red flower the size of an easychair ripping asunder an immense, ungainly dragonfly-thing the length of my arm with hairy muscular tendrils. Or a long, dragoncrested lizard-creature, green as jade, sunning its fantastic self upon a fallen log, like something in a painting by Roy Krenkel.
Towards midday I turned into a long jungle aisle that stretched dimly before me―only to find Bozo pushing in front of me. I could not understand his curious behavior and admonished him sternly.
“What’s the matter with you? It will be a whole lot easier going down this way, than trying to squeeze through those thorny bushes. Get out of the way, now, Bozo, come on―move!”
Again the great brute interposed his body between me and the way that stretched before me, open and unencumbered. I tried to shove him aside; he turned huge liquid eyes upon me, filled with silent pleading. I began to get bad-tempered with him. Looking back in retrospect, I am ashamed of myself; but my back teeth were aching again, and my nerves were on edge, probably due to the fact that I had been going two days now without fresh coffee or cigarettes, to both of which I am heavily addicted.
Finally, snarling a cuss-word he certainly did not deserve, I got past him and darted into the tunnellike aisle that ran for some distance between regularlyspaced trees. It was dim and cool here in this tunnel of trees, and I enjoyed the relief from sweltering jungle sunlight and moist, humid air thick with the reek of rotting flowers.
Almost at once I ran into the spider-web.
I guess it was a spider-web, but if it was, then the spider who spun it must have been the size of a St. Bernard. Because the web was woven of sticky, glassy-looking strands as thick around as my little finger.
My knee was caught in the web, and, because it was my bad knee, the one I had hurt in the battle with the vastodon, I had to be careful about extricating it from the sticky meshes of the web. So I reached down and pried the web off my skin―or tried to. Because now my fingers were gummed shut, closed on the sticky web. Cursing and struggling a little, I tried to push myself away―and my elbow went through the web, which parted and then snapped back, imprisoning my arm. I kicked and fought to free myself, but to no avail. Finally, I hung there, panting and exhausted, in the grip of the monstrous web.
Bozo waddled forward on his six short bowlegs. He sniffed the sticky strands carefully, not touching them. Then he turned upon me a mournful, commiserating took which said, as plain as words, “If only you had listened to my warning.” He was right, of course; I felt like a fool.
Then the giant othode turned about and waddled into the brush without so much as a backwards glance. And I felt very much alone. I did not blame Bozo for deserting me, for, after all, what could he do to help me out of this predicament? Any attempt to get me free of the sticky embrace of the giant web would only serve to entrap Bozo, as well. But I missed him, and, after a while, growing angry with frustration, began to kick and struggle against the gooey stuff which now enmeshed me from head to foot.
Suddenly, without the slightest warning, a human voice spoke up from some place behind me!
‘S’ringa tuar d’ iorndt adara je ximchakadar.”
I started violently as the youthful voice said these words wearily. Craning my neck about painfully, I saw another web behind me, further up the tunnel of trees, deep in shadow. Therein hung imprisoned a young boy of eleven or twelve, helpless as was I. He was the first human being I had met on this strange world, and I was amazed to see how utterly prosaic, how perfectly ordinary he appeared. Put him in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and he could walk down any street in America without attracting any special attention. He looked, as I have said, to be about eleven, perhaps twelve. He was slimly built, with long coltish legs, a bare chest and sturdy shoulders. His face was boyish, with wide, slightly slanting emerald green eyes under thick lashes, and a full-lipped mouth whose softness was belied by the resolute, manly set of his jaw. He had a thick mop of wild, tangled hair of pure reddish gold, and his skin was a dusky shade of golden tan, rather like a Korean or Vietnamese boy.
He didn’t have much on, a loincloth wound about his middle and hanging down fore and aft, leather thong sandals, and a baldric across his chest from shoulder to hip. From this hung an empty scabbard. Behind him, some feet away, a boy-sized long-sword lay fallen in the matted leaves. From the looks of him, the boy had been enmeshed in the web for many hours-perhaps even a day or two. His bare arms were grimy, and there were dark circles of exhaustion under his bright green eyes, and the stain of tears had dried on his cheeks. His lips looked parched and cracked with thirst.
In a listless, hoarse voice he again repeated the mysterious phrase with which he had first caught my attention.
‘S’ringa tuar d’ iorndt adara je ximchakadar.”
The language in which he spoke was unfamiliar to me―or was it? Among the sequence of incomprehensible sounds one word stood out that made sense to me ximchak. Wasn’t that the Thanatorian word for a species of giant spider which infested the jungle country? Of course―then we were in the web of a ximchak!
I guessed, correctly as it turned out, that what the boy had said to me was “it is useless to struggle against the ximchak-web.”
“I’ve got a hunch I know pretty much what you mean, young fellow,” I said, “but I’m afraid I can’t reply in the same lingo.”
The emerald eyes widened to hear these incomprehensible words pour from my lips. Now the weary listlessness vanished, as he examined me with eyes filled with astonishment, noting my bare skin, paler and pinker than his own dusky golden tan, my blue gray eyes, which must also have been strange to him, and my brown hair and short beard, such an ordinary, unremarkable shade back on Earth, but so rare and unusual here on Callisto.