across. They shimmered in the treetop breezes, their colors shifting between red and electric blue. Somewhere down there was a fossil streambed, the remains of a small river Marta had followed on one of her last expeditions out of Peacer Lake. He remembered what the land looked like then: kilometers of grayness, the water and wind still working to break through the glassy surface. She would have carried whatever food she needed.
Ahead, the forest was splattered with random patches of kudzu. Display webs were scattered everywhere. There was more blue and red and silver than green.
Della supplied an explanation. 'Marta's plantings spread outward from her signal line. This is where the new forest meets the old; sort of a jac civil war.'
Wil smiled at the metaphor. Apparently the two forests and their spiders were different enough to excite the kudzu reflex. He wondered if the display webs were like animal displays at territory boundaries. The colorful jumble passed slowly below, and they were over normal jacs again.
'We're way beyond Marta's furthest trip in this direction, Wil. You really think anyone's going to believe we're doing a serious search here?'
He pretended to ignore the question. 'Follow this line another hundred kilometers, then break and head toward the lake where she got the fishers.'
Thirty minutes later they were floating above a patch of brownish green water, more a swamp than a lake. The jacs grew right to the edge; it looked like the kudzu web stretched into the water. Fifty thousand years ago there had been ordinary woodland here.
'What's our defense situation, Della?'
'Cool, cool. Except for the suppressor thing, no enemy action. The NMs and Peacers have buttoned up, but they've stopped shouting accusations. We've discussed the threat with all the high-techs. They've agreed to keep out of the air for the time being, and to isolate their forces. If anyone strikes, we'll know his identity. The bottom line, Wil: I don't think the enemy has been bluffed.'
There was no help for it, then. 'Exactly which way is north, Della?' Damn this flier: no command helmet, no holos. He felt like the inmate of a rubber room.
Suddenly a red arrow labeled NORTH hovered over the forest. It looked solid, kilometers long; so the windows were holo displays after all. 'Okay. Back off eastwards from lake.
Come down to a thousand meters.' They slid sideways, near in free fall. Most of the lake was still visible. 'Give me a gin around the original lake site. Mark it off in degrees.' He studied the lake and the blue circle that now surrounded it. 'I war to get into the forest about ten klicks from the lake on a bearing
of thirty degrees from north.' They were close enough to the forest canopy that he could see leaves and flowers rushing by The cover looked deep and dense. 'Are you going to have an problem finding a place to get through?'
'No problem at all.' Their forward motion ceased. The were just above the treetops. Abruptly, the flier smashed straight down. For an instant, negative g's hung Wil on h harness. Sounds of destruction were sharp around them.
And then they were through. The spaces beneath were 1. by the sunlight that followed them through the hole they ha punched in the canopy. Beyond that light, all was dark an greenish. Junk was drifting down all around them. Most of was insubstantial. The underweb carried centuries of twigs an insect remains, flotsam that had not yet percolated to the surface. It was coming down all at once now, swinging back an. forth through the light. Some debris-branches, clusters c flowers-was still in the air, supported by fragments of the web More than anything else, Wil felt as if they had sudden? plunged into deep water. The flier drifted out of the light. H eyes slowly adapted to the dimness.
'We're there, Wil. Now what?'
'How well can the others monitor us down here?'
'It's complicated. Depends on what we do.'
'Okay. I think the cairn is southwest of us, near the bearing we took from the lake. After all this time, there won't be au. surface evidence, but I'm hoping you can detect the rocks
'That should be easy.' The flier glided around a tree. The were less than a meter up, moving at barely more than
walking pace. They drifted back and forth across the bearing the sunlight from the entrance hole was lost behind then Della's flier was five meters tall, and nearly that wide, yet the had no trouble negotiating the search path. He looked out the windows in wonder. Much of the ground was absolutely smooth, a gray-green down. That was the top of fifty thousand years' accumulation of spider dung, of leaf and chitin fragments. The abyssal ooze of the Jac forest.
The forest floor was as Marta described, but much gloomier. He wondered if she had really thought it beautiful, or said so to disguise a melancholy like he felt here.
'I-I've got something, Will' There was real surprise on Della's face. 'Strong echoes, about thirty meters ahead.' As she spoke, the flier sprinted forward, dodging intermediate trees. 'Most of the rocks are scattered, but there is a central cluster. It-it could really be a cairn. My Lord, Wil, how could you know?'
Their flier settled on the forest floor, next to the secret that had waited fifty thousand years for them.
