Under the Green Star
- Автор: Картер Лин Спрэг
- Серия: Green Star Rises #1
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Under the Green Star». Краткое содержание книги:
Niamh uttered a cry of delight and hovered entranced over the fantastic blossom. She confessed that her people seldom ventured far from the Jewel City, and that such flowers were unknown. She stroked the satiny petals, drinking in the heady perfume in an ecstasy of wonder.
The blossom sprouted from a tangle of rootlets like an air plant, and seemed to be parasitic. A thousand hairy green tendrils were insinuated between interstices of bark, anchoring the immense flower to the tree. The petals were half-open, like a trumpet lily or a morning glory, and from the deep center, where creamy white deepened to a ruddy hue, filaments of feathery scarlet floated limply. I stood, leaning on a branchlet, entranced at the mysterious beauty of the scene—the lovely, exquisite, elf-like girl hovering over the colossal flower: it was like an illustration from a fairy tale, and it would have demanded the genius of an Arthur Rackham or a Hannes Bok to capture the delicate nuances of the scene.
Suddenly Niamh shrieked in horror, and a scene of dreamlike loveliness turned upon the instant into a tableau of terror. For the feathery scarlet filaments suddenly lashed out at the entranced girl like striking vipers. They coiled snakily about her wrists, holding both arms pinned in a grip of surprising tensile strength. I sprang forward, grasping her about her slim waist, and sought to pull her free of the cannibal blossom, but to no avail. The tentacles that slithered from the core of the monstrous blossom had a steely resilience that was astonishing.
As I fought and tore at the writhing tendrils, more and yet more coiled about the helpless girl. At the terminus of each scarlet length a clubbed anther hung. This organ was furred with minute spines and now that Niamh was tightly enmeshed in the coils, the anthers sought out her bare flesh. One pressed flatly against the rondure of her shoulder, another flattened against the small of her back—a third settled on her thigh.
She hung limply in the tenacious embrace of the giant flower as if in a swoon. As I grimly fought against the slithering tendrils, I felt a sudden dizziness cloud my brain. It was the heady perfume which hovered about us like a cloud of overpowering sweetness! My vision blurred; my heart thumped erratically. I fought on, senses dimming.
I had called the immense flower a parasite, not dreaming how close to the horrible fact my guess had gone. In truth, the colossal thing was a cannibal—a vampire—for now I saw, with a thrill of unbelieving horror and revulsion, that the furry anthers pressed like great sponges against the naked flesh of the dazed and swooning girl gleamed wetly of a sudden and in the next instant I realized that the creamy pallor of the huge petals was flushing pinkly. The vampire blossom was drinking her blood!
I went mad with berserk rage, ripping at the hideous flower in a spasm of killing fury. Now I had cause to thank whatever shadowy and mysterious gods had guided me to this planet that I had honed that bit of copper into a crude dagger the night before. For the strength of my hands was as nothing against the rubbery constriction of the scarlet tendrils—but that sharp edge of copper cut like a saw blade into the flower flesh. In a few seconds I had managed to sever one of the anthers from its trunk, and I plucked the obscene thing from the small of Niamh’s naked back, hurling it from me, turning my attention to the anther that pressed her shoulder, sucking her blood through a hundred hollow spines. All the while she hung limp and unprotesting in the net of scarlet tendrils: the narcotic fragrance of the vampire blossom had bemused her and she had drunk too deeply of the cloying, drug-like perfume.
I slashed through another filament and pulled the anther from her flesh. It pulled clear with a loathsome sucking sound, and where it had been pressed tightly against her skin it left a minute pattern of pinpricks, beaded with blood. I flung the wet thing from me, roaring.
But now tendrils lashed about my limbs as well, and I felt a sudden stinging sensation on my leg and, looking down saw a great spongy anther pressed against my thigh just above the knee. It stung me like nettles, but the bitter kiss of the vampire blossom soon faded to a numbness. I ignored the thing fastened to my flesh, as I hacked away at the third of the anthers that yet clung to Niamh. But as I fought desperately, my head was swimming groggily and I knew the narcotic perfume of the horrible flower was overcoming me.
The monster blossom, I now knew, was no innocent and lovely flower but a grisly abnormality—a hideous plant-animal hybrid, whose blood-lusting nature was cunningly masked with nature’s mimicry. Doubtless the loathsome thing was designed to resemble an ordinary flower, thus to lure the immense insect creatures of the World of the Green Star, the great dhua, the giant zaiph. Drawn by the sweet sorcery of its perfumed breath, the unsuspecting creatures would flutter near, either to be drugged into somnolence by the narcotic odor or to be caught by the hairy tendrils as they sought to rape away the sweetness hidden in the flower’s honeyed heart.
But now the hybrid monstrosity had caught an unexpected treat in its silken trap. Human blood must have been a rare delight, for the now-crimson petals trembled with eager lust and the snaky tendrils lashed about the two of us in frenzied hunger. I sawed and slashed through the rubbery filaments with the dregs of my strength as the last flicker of consciousness waned. As my mind faded toward the twilight of drugged slumber, my last thought was that at least Niamh was unconscious, lulled by the narcotic fragrance, numbed by the anesthetic venom of the anthers, and endured no pain as the loathly vampire drained her blood. From that dim sleep she would never wake; her slumber would but deepen until she drifted over the dark portals of life and death, into a sleep from which there was no awakening …
Then as my hands faltered, as my grip loosened, as my eyelids drooped, something caught and held my waning attention.
A strange thing suddenly flicked into being, transfixing the stamen of the enormous blossom. I blinked at it, vaguely, without comprehension.
It was a scarlet arrow.
Chapter 13
OUTLAWS OF THE TREE
My vision obscured by a darkening haze, I blinked uncomprehendingly at the scarlet arrow which had so inexplicably appeared transfixing the core of the vampire blossom as if conjured into being by an act of magic.
A blink of the eye, and another arrow—and another!—flicked into being, pinning the heart of the flower through and through!
And the flower screamed! A high, unearthly squeal of rage and pain and terror, so shrill as to be almost inaudible. The blossom petals shivered—the root tendrils convulsed—the filaments that bound Niamh and myself tightened in a spasm, then relaxed. I tore free, and, although I staggered on unsteady legs, still half-drugged from the narcotic perfume I had inhaled, I lurched to where Niamh’s limp body dangled in the flower’s obscene embrace, and tore her from the relaxing grip of the tendrils.
Men melted into being all around us, merging into sunlight from the gold-green gloom. They were taller, leaner, hardier-looking than the softer men who dwelt in jeweled Phaolon. They wore trim tunics and tight leggings of dark earth colors, umber, forest green, fawn, and russet. They wore peak-brimmed caps from which long feathers trailed, short cloaks of mottled suede, calf-high boots of supple leather. They were tanned and fit and hard-faced, with strong bare arms and bold, alert eyes. They looked, in fact, like Robin Hood’s merry men, stepped from a painting by Howard Pyle. This resemblance was enhanced by the longbows and quivers of scarlet arrows they wore, although most of them were armed with glass cutlasses and light javelins as well.
Like magical apparitions they melted out of the gloom. Without a word they helped me carry the half-conscious Niamh to a place of safety while their comrades hacked the flower to death with their curious crystal swords. The vampire blossom shrilled, lashed, and bled from a thousand wounds, its petals shredded; it lapsed into oozing ruin.