kroth: the drop

8: hudgung

When your body dives through atmosphere at two hundred miles per hour, you sense the air-blast as dense as liquid and your eyes are slapped shut by the stinging speed; nevertheless primal reflex urges you to open them again because while you are still alive you cannot help but want to look; therefore, though my mind remained in abeyance, animal curiosity caused me to blink around as though it made sense to be wary – as though, even during my plunge towards certain oblivion, there could be some point in watching out for intermediate perils. So, ridiculously, I made efforts to scan the passing world-wall and its sidelong sky.
    My alertness sprang from a relic of my Earthly upbringing, whereby “I am falling” meant “I must eventually impact onto something or other” because (on Earth) every fall sooner or later is broken.
    This stupid worry could be refuted by a moment’s glimpse downwards. Underneath me was nothing but sky, blue-lit by the morning Sun. No chance of interruption of my fall. If my dumb brain ought to have known anything, it ought to have known that much. The whole point of The Drop is that you drop forever. Or, at least, you drop down the whole shaft of the Nadiral Light which, as far as a human body is concerned, might as well be forever. (And presumably, when your remains hit the polarized crystalline ether at the end of it, you contribute to eroding it a bit further, so you do your bit towards making the shaft longer still...)
    Meanwhile, as yet in the first few minutes of The Drop, while the world was still close to me, perhaps a mile off, with the shaggy wall of Kroth covering half my field of view, for moments on end I stared in dull fascination at that wallscape, while its knobs and cracks and runnels flowed upward past me with a steady motion that promised, falsely, to be perpetual. I was not really fooled by this look of permanence. Sufficiently soaked with the arithmetic of the situation, I knew that within minutes the planetary surface must visibly curve away. Within a day and a half, at the speed I was dropping, Kroth would no longer be beside me at all – even its South Pole would be far above me – and then I would really be alone. The few other plummeting dots around me, the loose cluster of my falling companions, were as lost to me as the world. If I yelled, they would not hear me.
    These observations came in flurries, while I borrowed the mindless character of a snowflake, or an autumn leaf, or a meteor that falls too slowly to burn.
    It was better this way, better to plummet heedlessly – but I never was much good at “leaving well alone”.
    Part of the sticky pull of my gaze towards the flank of the world was a sense of peril averted. A lucky traveller in Transylvania who has managed to swerve past Dracula’s castle might look back at it with macabre satisfaction as it receded along the road; similarly I stared in strange relief at Hudgung as it slipped by. It was at least good to know that I was speeding past the notoriously mysterious Southern Hemisphere of Kroth. In a flash of unusual wakefulness I told myself that my destiny might have been much, much worse. I had grown serious about my theory regarding the Slimes. They had taken over (or rather ‘taken under’) Hudgung, and with a bit more bad luck I might have been handed over to them. The mere thought of that was a glob of nightmare which at all costs must be left untouched; so in that sense I ought to say happily, “Here I am, falling safely past them, for ever.”

My guess is that I had dropped for about a quarter of an hour when, without conscious purpose, I blinked straight downwards through half-closed lids, and - for the instant allowed before my eyes were stung by the air-blast into blurry tears – was able to snatch a glimpse of what was below me.
    What imprinted itself on my brief vision seemed quite unacceptable, and so I chose to endure the sting of another look.
    To my vast dismay, the second glance confirmed the first one. Blue sky was no longer the only thing. A vast dim object appeared to have condensed out of the void, an object that threatened to block my fall.
    A third glance revealed that the shape onto which I must smash was assuming the appearance of a blue-grey circle as it emerged from the haze. Smaller circles became discernible, like specks of dew around its edge, the entire apparition stretching like a misty hand to catch me and my companions. Hope and terror were reborn and my mind began to gabble: “A hand? Woe – joy – I am being handed over – I am going to live –”
    Oh no I’m not, this is ridiculous, I am dumb, I am dumb, I am dumbelly dumb. The impact is bound to kill us all. That thing down there can only be a gigantic variety of trung, a trampoline-fungus more immense than anyone could have believed, and it will catch us, but the fact will be of no interest to me since, at this speed, physical destruction awaits me within seconds –
    This, the only sensible conclusion, wrenched me into the resolve to fling myself into death’s embrace gladly at last, like a struggling branch manager who is relieved to relinquish his responsibilities as he is recalled to head office.
    I was wrong. The first wallop did not come close to stunning me. The next blow was rougher. Then another, worse. I was falling through a series of membranes, thrashing my speed out of me. I passed out at the fifth.

From the fresh cleanness of a pyjama collar at my neck, my awareness oozed to encompass the softness that sandwiched me between mattress and duvet, to reveal the amazing fact that I had awoken in a real bed.
    An oddness of the room I was in – it swayed and clanked from side to side – made little impression at first. With my entire body virtually one big bruise, I was dulled by aches and pains, as well as baffled into a stupor by my impossible survival.
    So, more or less an imbecile, I lay weltering in dull confusion. I was actually daft enough to feel petty irritation at my physical discomfort, as though I really had the right to better service than this at the hands of fate.
    All the time I continued to ignore the significance of the room’s motion, until, as I came alert to it at last, my doubts presented themselves all at once.
    Let it not be true, I suddenly prayed. Let it not be true about the kingdom of the Slimes.
    I fought the third and (who knows?) perhaps the most profitable battle of my life so far, as I sat up and peered, swaying, to assess the latest fix I was in – and found grounds for hope in the design of the room. It had obviously been built by humans. For the most part, it looked ordinary. Its only curious feature was that the ceiling was criss-crossed by a grid of what looked like metal hand-rails. Apart from that, the place was just a cabin of wooden planks, of sparse, clean furniture and a single window which looked out into blue sky. In the wall adjacent to the window – and opposite my bed – there was a closed door.
    I was less encouraged by the fact that the room was rocking. Same old story: excessive mystery. Here we go again, I thought. Once more a requirement that I cope, mentally and physically, with an assortment of pressures and challenges – as if the Drop had not been enough.
    But then, you fool, what did you expect? To saunter down the world on holiday? You don’t change universes without a heap of bother. But – yes, I’ll go for this, I thought – maybe The Drop can be regarded as the turning point.
    Ha – “The Drop”, indeed! Don’t know how they did it, don’t know who they are, but they certainly made a fraud out of that particular doom. Which tends to discredit all dooms… No use now expecting me to believe in any other. Not even this next, unspeakable thing. I propose to take it with a pinch of salt... for I am a three-battle man. In the Battle of Neydio I faced down doubts and fears to do my bit. With mind intact I faced and survived The Drop. Thirdly and lastly, I can out-face the notion of capture by...
    No, no, no, that’s the wrong way, Dunc you dope –
    If you take it seriously you’ve had it –
    Now then: calm down and listen: here’s the way. Jettison every suspicion which leads to despair. You know, after all, that if they turn out true, you’re sunk anyway. So you might as well bet that they are not true.
    Instead, say this for a start: The room sways only because I am on a train. This is a carriage of some sort. And you can guess how it is suspended, can’t you, Dunc? From an overhead rail, which weaves its sinuous way under the overhang of Hudgung, for we’re now below Udrem, aren’t we? You can picture the kind of terrain. From this upside-down land, all loose stuff must have long since dropped into the void, leaving an inverted wilderness of rocky bumps. You can bet on that picture.
    “I shall also suppose,” I added, unaware that I had begun to speak aloud, “that my companions are in other carriages on the same train. That will be neat.”
    All this betting was the way in which I won my third battle.
    Then a sputtery hiss, like a faulty platform announcer, prompted me to twist my head. I faced a grille in the bedside wall. It coughed out a few more sounds, and then murmured something. I put my ear to it and heard a curiously flat, nasal voice speak a few indistinguishable words.
    Then the motion of the room lessened and, within a half-minute, ceased.
    I gathered that the train had stopped. What happens at stations? Doors open; people come in; I could expect to be met, at any moment, by my rescuers, and upon me there came a reluctance to let them meet me as I was. I decided to make an effort to stand up. At first I wasn’t sure I would be able to do it, but at the cost of some moments of sick dizziness I duly stood up, put on slippers that had been placed ready for me, and faced the door.
    Loud and clear this time, the nasal voice addressed me out of the grille.
    “Are you awake?”
    “Yes.”
    “Name?”
    “Duncan Wemyss.”
    “Ready to meet your hosts, Duncan?”
    “Yes, I’m ready.”
    “You sound like a smart cobber. Listen: the three of us will enter the room, one after the other. We like to do it this way. Dr Stoom will enter first.”
    Decide now that you’re going to like them, I instructed myself. The voice was all right, after all. Though there’s still time for fate to do the dirty, you are nevertheless going to assume that no unspeakable slime-stuffed bolsters with parodying mouths will wobble into view; you want to believe, you will believe, most importantly you’ll have to believe, because the alternative is –
The door opened and I scrubbed the alternative. Fate – as I immediately saw – was going to behave.
    A woman in a spotless cream-coloured outfit walked in. Nice-looking woman, compact, with wide face and decisive jaw, far from beautiful yet smart and attractive. Rank, power and competence shone from her formidably uniform clothing (jacket with wide lapels, smooth knee-length skirt, gleaming shoes, all exactly the same expensive hue). The dignified effect was not spoiled, or, at least, it was hardly at all spoiled, by what she was doing with her arms...
    I lowered my eyes. The truth was, The Drop had been a turning point, and I was learning wisdom at last. The proof of it was my easy acceptance of Dr Stoom’s alternatingly upstretched arms. I was doing quite well. I might have messed up my equilibrium by thoughts such as, the room is not as unsteady any more, and never was as unsteady as all that; she surely doesn’t need to clutch the overhead rail. Yet she never lets go of it. What does this imply?
    She strutted to a stop a couple of yards from me and looked me in the eyes with remote compassion. I was the taller and yet such was her authority, it was as if I had still been lying helplessly on the bed and she were gazing down upon me.
    “Pleased to meet you, Duncan,” she said with bland, flawless pronunciation.
    “Pleased to meet you, Doctor,” I echoed, and, impatient to hear the worst, added: “What happens now?”
    “We have an induction ceremony for those whom we save by means of the Redakka.”
    “What –” I stopped myself; I was talking too much.
    “The “hand” that caught you.”
    I nodded. “I see. I see.”
    “The induction is nothing to be alarmed about. It is necessary for the integration of immigrants into our society.”
    “Yes, sure. I want to fit in, and I’m grateful for the gift of life, believe me.”
    “Good. You will find that life is good, Down Under. To keep it that way we must maintain good relations with the omong...”
    “Gonomong?” – I said, just a bit tremulously – not that I really minded; if some Gonomong had strayed down this far, over the ages, it wasn’t really surprising...
    “Omong. You misheard me. ‘Omong’ without the ‘Gon’, that is to say without the ‘half’…”
    While she was speaking, a man walked in through the door and took up position beside her. He, like Dr Stoom, never let go of the overhead rail; one hand always held it, so one arm always had to be stretched above his head. In his case, it seemed more in keeping with his casual posture. He was a tall, gangling, lantern-jawed red-head who grinned lopsidedly and said, “No half-measures down here, cobber.” His had been the voice over the intercom. “Not with their head start on us.” (He pronounced “head” as “hid”.)
    “Quite,” said Dr Stoom crisply. “An omong is a whole Antipodean.”
    “Not bad krunkers when you get to know them,” commented the man. “I’m Les Bucklaw, by the way. Call me Les. I’m here as a representative of the Biris – the newcomers.”
    “Representative,” I parroted.
    “Yeah, a descendant of someone like you, who Dropped. And who like you was caught and saved in the Redakka’s net. Sometime during the past two or three hundred years, I reckon. Like you, they were all knocked about a bit, but soon recovered. And my job,” he grinned, “is to see to it that Dr Stoom doesn’t frighten you with her jargon.”
    “Jargon?” My uncertain smile felt grafted on permanently by this time.
    The doctor said, “I referred to an induction ceremony.” Her eyes scanned me hesitantly, “But maybe I should have just called it a test. I represent the Aboriginals, a much older culture than the Biris, and we make ceremonies out of tests, you see.”
    They were both watching me as closely as cats watch prey. I wondered what the “test” was but a hunch told me that to ask was to fail. I did risk one question, though.
    I probed, “Just for me?”
    “And for everyone else in your betch, of course,” said Les, implying the confirmation of my hopes, that my companions had survived the same way I had. “No worries, mate, you’ll all get treated the same.”
    Next, while I breathed in my relief, I saw, entering the room, the third member of the reception committee: the omong. He entered the room, pulling itself towards me by the ceiling rails, and at that moment I knew what the test was, and knew that I could pass it, indeed that I was passing it right now simply through the fact that I did not cry out or flinch or evince any horror.
    I had, indeed, learned wisdom.
    How fortunate – I told myself – that I’d suffered from dread of the mythic Slimes. It stood me in good stead now, when the truth dangled before me. All four of the omong’s limbs were arms, that grew up from his back. He must therefore clutch and hang four-handed, but the sight made me no more than slightly queasy. No matter how outlandishly misshapen the thing was, he was as far as I was from being Slime.
    A veritable spider-man, the omong jutted his face at me and spoke in an English as perfect as Dr Stoom’s..
    “I am Farambolank.” Prognathous jaw chomped out the words, while under his mop of dark hair, tousled atop a neck that grew out of the back of his head, his eyes shone with confident mischief. “On behalf of the First People, I bid you welcome to Birannithep.”
    “Is that the name of this country?” I asked in polite wonder. I had to say something as I stared at the human face of the misshapen being. No, not misshapen at all – I corrected myself – for the omong form was perfectly adapted; a race certainly much older than any so-called “Aborigine”...
    In response to my question, Farambolank gaped and flashed his gleaming teeth. “Birannithep is all the land from here down to Naos,” he declaimed proudly. “It is the only country you will need to know from now on.”
    Les intervened to say, “Birannithep’s the country in Hudgung. The lucky country, we call it.”
    The reason I had had to believe in the Slimes had not quite gone, but it had paled; I hoped it might pale further in the luck of the lucky country. A wave of optimism, with its spume of joy and hope, surged within me, and would have overwhelmed me, had it not been for the way in which these people all clutched their overhead rails. That did put a bit of a downer on things. Oh well, I shrugged, what did I expect from life?
    I caught an exchange of glances between the chic so-called Aborigine woman doctor and the spider-man.
    Then they both turned their eyes, appraisingly, back to me. As for Les, his amused stare had not wavered, so now all three of them were lined up in silent examination of their latest catch. During some further breaths, nothing happened, except for one tiny tremble of Dr Stoom’s lip, which made me guess, wrongly, that she would be the first to speak. I thought of several wisecracks and discarded them unspoken...
    “Time,” chomped Farambolank.
    “To take a peep outside,” Dr Stoom hastened to explain.
    Les added invitingly, “It’s never too early to start your training.”
    I raised my arm, felt for the overhead rail, and moved forward.