Though in that, as Colt and Sharol were soon to find out, the colonists could not have been more wrong …
“So, brother,” Yaro said. “What do you have for me?”
They were in her house. It was simply but tastefully decorated, and a fire burned violet in the hearth, sending plumes of scented smoke into the air. Sharol opened the string and drew the dead man’s head from the bag. “It stinks,” Colt said. The head looked bad. The Venusian weather had not been kind to it, and it was beginning to decompose. Yaro said, “You should have brought it to me sooner.”
Sharol shrugged. “Can you speak with it, still?”
“I can try.” She took the head from him. She was dressed now, in a plain shift that rippled around her. She held the head in both hands, staring into its dead, glassy eyes. At last, Yaro shook her head. “Perhaps,” she murmured. “Though he is long gone down the Dark Path.”
She gestured for them to follow her. Colt moved sluggishly, the smoke making his senses dull and pleasant. Yaro opened the door to a second room. The air was colder there. A curious contraption stood in the middle of the room. It was as if it had grown out of the ground, a blunt trunk surrounded by many twisting branches that spread out and in again upon themselves like tentacles. Yaro placed the dead man’s head on the trunk. She began to bend the branches, attaching them, one by one, to the head, pushing them deep into the melting skin and reluctant bone. Colt gritted his teeth but did not look away. When it was done, the head had been penetrated multiple times by the branches, and Yaro took a position in the tangle of branches. This time it was as though the tree itself was responding to her. The branches moved, snaking under Yaro’s shift, attaching themselves to her. She began to murmur words in a language Colt did not understand. Her eyes closed and a faint blue light began to glow along the branches of the tree, spreading out from Yaro to the disembodied head. Colt stared in horrified fascination as the air began to fizz and hiss with a powerful discharge. Yaro began to shake, engulfed by cold fire.
The dead man blinked.
Colt stared. This could not be happening, surely.
The head blinked again. Then it opened its mouth and screamed.
Colt took an involuntary step back and bumped into Sharol, who held him steady. Yaro made a sharp gesture and the dead man immediately fell silent. “There is not much there,” Yaro said.
“Try,” Sharol said, gripping Colt’s arm. Yaro closed her eyes. The head opened its mouth again. It began to speak.
“Drowned. In the swamp. Roog. Roog! See him come. The man from the stars has a whip for a heart. Heart of a star! The fire burns, he promised us wealth but made us into slaves. I alone escaped, but they follow, they follow! Untold treasure, all you desire. But the treasure is death. Do not seek your fortune! On the steps of the temple, north by northwest.”
“Make it focus! Give us a route!” Sharol cried, his excitement infecting Colt. Treasure! he thought. He pushed out of his mind the dead man’s warnings. Dead men could not be trusted at the best of times. Yaro was shaking, sweat pouring down her face, turning her shift damp. It clung to her body. Colt was aware of the curve of her backside, of her nipples, small and hard like her brother’s. The blue flames shot upward, and over the dead man’s head a picture began to form, hazy at first but gaining definition. It showed the volcanic peaks of the nearby mountain range, and beyond it, a mighty river snaking through marshland and swamps. Here and there, through the thick canopy of the trees, Colt could see smoke rising from unseen villages, Venusian settlements no Earthman had ever seen. The picture rushed forward, and suddenly he saw an ancient temple rising out of a clearing in the jungle, on the banks of a great swamp into which the river fed as it passed. “There!” Sharol said. At the sound of his voice, Yaro dropped her arms. She fell to her knees, the branches making slick wet sounds as they detached from her. The image faded away, and the disembodied head was silent once more.
“Yaro!” Sharol went to her, kneeling by her side. Yaro shuddered. Her eyes fluttered open, but what horrors she saw neither of them could see.
“Roog …” she said, and her voice was a pitiful howl of pain and rage and fear. “Roog …!”
4.
THERE IS A SPECIAL MONOTONY TO TRAVEL ON VENUS. YOU who have sampled, perhaps, the volcanic isles of Earth’s South Pacific Ocean, or the thick jungles of that planet’s interior, may think you understand something of its nature, but you would be wrong. There is something crushing to the soul in the ever-present cloud cover, never a release from the humidity and heat, never the sight of blue skies or the rolling green hills, of which the blind poet Rhysling famously wrote. He had not been fond of Venus, if Colt correctly recalled, writing of it as rotten, wretched, foul, and filled with death.
Well, what do you expect from a drunken old poet? was Colt’s take on it. For, traveling for days through jungle and swamp, and sailing the majestic river, which the Venusian swampmen call the Mukhtar, and some worship as a god, Colt began to see Venus through his companion’s eyes.
This was not the planet that the Earthmen, God-fearing administrators and colonists, ever saw. Through Sharol’s eyes, Colt saw the beauty hidden in the interaction of clouds, for which the Venusians have as many as fifty or a hundred different names; he saw the swirl of hidden currents in the river and smelled the smoke of hidden villages, and that earthy, if unearthly, stink of the swamps, which the Venusians savor like a fine wine. Venus was a planet of secrets and hidden depths, of mysteries beyond recall. And as they traveled, their affinity deepened, his and Sharol’s, and in the privacy of their small, leaflike boat, they consummated that special bond that only men can share with other men.
Sometimes, in the dark hours, it seemed to Colt that he saw a brightness in the sky, like a false sun in the distance, followed by the inevitable sound of a distant explosion. He did not comment on it, and neither did Sharol, but he had noticed it, ever since they had left Port Smith, and it made him think of the Sun Eater that he had inadvertently saved.
“Sharol?” Colt said. It was night, and in the distance the Dwellers called to each other across the swamps. The night was thick with humidity and the buzzing of flying insects, drawn to the boat’s dim light.
“Yes?”
“What is that sound?”
Sharol went very still. His small, keen ears moved in a manner no Earthman’s could. Scanning. Colt listened, too. The sound of the water had changed. It was deeper, quicker. A rumble in the distance, growing closer—
“Rapids!” Colt cried, just as Sharol’s smaller body hit his, sending both of them overboard. The water was surprisingly cold, sending a shudder up Colt’s spine. Sharol was a shadow beside him. “Hold on to me!” Sharol called. The current took their boat away. Ahead, white foam rose into the air and a roar entered Colt’s ears. The falls were close—too close!
The current dragged them, fast. Colt began to panic when he felt Sharol’s hand tightening on his arm, pulling him with force. They had stopped! He turned and saw a thick tangle of dark roots rising out of the water, Sharol a shadow amidst them. They were the roots of a natongtong tree, which spread out underwater. The current pulled, pulled at them! Colt held fast to Sharol’s hand, then on to one of the roots. They began to drag themselves, laboriously, along the thick, slimy roots, holding on for their lives.
At last, they made the bank. They lay on the wet mud, breathing deeply and hoarsely. Colt stared out at the thundering smoke overhead. A mere hundred feet farther and they would have plunged to their deaths. He smiled, weakly. “Well, that was a close call,” he said.
Sharol said nothing.
“Sharol?”
He turned his head, but Sharol wasn’t there.