I struggled to my knees and looked toward the tree. It seemed to be reeling and, as I watched, began to topple. I wiped the dust out of my eyes and watched as it came farther and farther out of plumb. It fell slowly at first, reluctantly, as If it were fighting to stay erect. Then it picked up speed, coming down out of the sky, rushing toward the ground.
I got to my feet and wiped the back of my neck, and the hand, when it came away, was bloody.
The tree hit the ground and beneath me the earth bounced, as if it had been struck a mighty blow. Above the place where the tree had fallen a geyser of dust and other debris billowed up into the sky.
I took a step to get turned around, headed back toward the door, and stumbled. My head ballooned and as it ballooned, was filled with fuzziness. I saw that Hoot stood to one side of the open door, but that the way through it was blocked by a perfect flood of the ratlike creatures. They were piling up over one another, as if a wide front of them, running hard, had converged upon the narrowness of the door and now were funneling through it like water through a high-pressure hose, driven on by the press of their frantic need to gather up the fallen seeds.
I fell-no, I floated-down through an eternity of time and space. I knew that I was falling, but not only was I falling slowly, but as I fell the ground seemed to draw away from me, to surge downward, so that no matter how I fell it always was as far away, or farther, than it had been to start with. And finally there was no ground at all, for night had fallen as I fell, and now I was plunging down through an awful blackness that went on and on forever.
After what seemed an endless time, the darkness went away and I opened my eyes, for it seemed that I had closed them as I fell into the darkness. I lay upon the ground and when I opened my eyes I found that I was looking up into a deep-blue sky in which the sun was rising.
Hoot was standing to one side of me. The ratlike things were gone. The cloud of dust, slowly settling back to the ground, still stood above where the tree had fallen. To one side of me the red stone wall of the great building reared up into the sky. A heavy, brooding silence hung above the land.
I rose to a sitting position and found that it took all the strength I had to lever up the top half of my body. The rifle lay to one side of me and I reached out and picked it up. It took no more than a single glance to see that it was broken. The shield of the tube was twisted out of shape and the tube itself had been knocked out of alignment. I dragged it to me and laid it across my lap. I don’t know why I bothered; no man in his right mind would ever dare to fire that gun again and there was no way I could fix it.
“Drink your fluids I have done,” Hoot honked cheerfully, “and put them back again. I hope you have no anger at me.”
“Come again?” I croaked.
“No need to come again,” he hooted at me. “Done it is already.”
“What is done already?”
“Your fluids I have drunk...”
“Now wait just a goddamn minute,” I said. “What is this fluid drinking?”
“Filled you were with deadly substances,” he said, “from being struck by seeds. Deadly to you, but deadly not at all to me.”
“So you drank my fluids?’
“Is only thing to do,” said Hoot. “Procedure is approved.”
“Lord love us,” I said. “A walking, breathing dialysis contraption.”
“Your words I do not grab,” he complained. “I empty you of fluids. I subtract the substances. I fill you up again. The biologic pump you have inside you scarcely missed a pump. But worry worry worry! I think I was too late. Apparently now I wasn’t.”
I sat there for a long moment-for a long, long moment-and it was impossible. And yet I was alive, weak and drained of strength, but still alive. I thought back to how my head had ballooned and how I’d fallen slowly and there had been something very wrong with me, indeed. I had been hit by seeds before, but only glancing blows that had not broken skin. This time, however, there had been blood upon my hand when I wiped my neck.
“Hoot,” I said, “I guess I owe . . .”
“No debt for you,” he hooted happily. “I the one who pay the debt. My life you saved before. Now I pay you back. We all even now. I would not tell you only that I fear great sin I had committed, maybe. Perhaps against some belief you hold. Perhaps no wish to have body tampered with. No need to tell you only for this reason. But you undismayed at what I do, so everything all right.”
I managed to get to my feet. The rifle fell from my lap and I kicked it to one side. The kick almost put me on my face again. I still was wobbly.
Hoot watched me brightly with his eyed tentacles.
“You carry me before,” he said. “I cannot carry you. But if you lie down and fasten yourself securely to my body, I can drag you. Have much power in legs.”
I waved the suggestion off.
“Get on with you,” I said. “Lead the way. I’ll make it.”
NINE
Tuck tried to play the man. He and Sara got me hoisted up on Dobbin’s back and then he insisted that Sara ride the second unladen hobby and that he lead the way on foot. So we went down the ramp and up the trail, with Tuck striding in the fore, still with the doll clutched against his chest, and with Hoot bringing up the rear.
“I hope,” Dobbin said to me, “you have failure to survive. I yet will dance upon your bones.”
“And the same to you,” I said.
