“But what can we do?”
“I bungled our best chance. When the Liana is young you can sometimes cut it down, but it would just grow again. I wanted to get it out of its pot—”
“Can’t we try that?” Prestin eyed a long tendril that wormed over the concrete searching for them, thrashing around like a super-speeded bindweed. “We can’t just stand here and let it strangle us to death!”
“You felt the strength of the stems—these swords will cut the smaller tendrils, but the big ones…” Dalreay shook his head.
Slowly then he said, “I know the story of King Clinton, of how he killed a Narwhal Liana—that’s five times as tough and vicious as a Lombok. We learn that story during English classes; it’s always a favorite, and the kids scramble to read it and show-off their English—but—but—we’re not King Clinton,” he finished depressingly.
Now the flower pot was lost among writhing vines that divided and spread, creeping to snuff out their lives. The Liana was a killer, Prestin knew, for he had clearly seen the immature mouth nestled at earth level in the pot. If that mouth grew with the same ferocious fecundity as the rest of the plant, it would be able to digest an entire man.
“King Clinton explained the parasite and the vine systems of your earth,” Dalreay said, speaking a shade too fast, but speaking, Prestin guessed, to keep his mind occupied and to stop from screaming. “This isn’t quite the same as Rafflesia, which is pretty rare by all accounts. This is more like the more common Nepenthes, which is used to poor soil. But the spines in the mouth, and the sheer muscular strength of the lid, are truly frightening in the Lombok…”
“If we get in too close, and that mouth snaps shut—”
“Precisely.”
Prestin hefted his sword. The nearest tendril crawled over the concrete three feet away. The continuous shouting from the stands during their brief engagement with the vine had ebbed to a spatter of shouts, jeers, catcalls and cries of encouragement: “Get in there with your swords, cowards,” and the like.
“I figure we can settle this another way.” Prestin moved slowly around the arena. “Are you game to chance everything on a gamble, Dalreay?” He laughed. “We haven’t any other choice, really.”
“I’m ready to chance anything.”
“We’ll jump the fat toad, that Melnone. If they want him alive, they’ll talk terms.”
“But the barrier, Bob!”
“I’ll go up on your back. I can haul you over by my belt and together well hold that slug at sword point. They might not like him, but if he’s the boss—”
“I’ll go up, Bob. I’m the hunter.”
Prestin, sensibly, did not answer. They circled, slashing if the vine came too close, watching with revulsion and awe as the thing grew like a genie from its pot.
Opposite Melnone, they became aware of his hoarse laughter, his jeering advice.
“It’s no use running, my fine friends!” His Italian was as bad or worse than Dalreay’s; he was no native Italian born. “Why don’t you stand and fight like men?” He gurgled coarsely, hugely enjoying the joke.
Prestin bent down. Dalreay put his sword between white teeth and went up Prestin’s back and over the top of the plastic anti-vine screen like an Olympic hurdler. As Prestin caught the dangling belt and began to punch and kick his way up, he heard the arena erupt into a bedlam of yells and screams. Dalreay leaped down on the seats, slashed into two cringing Valcini, kicked the woman out of the way and wrapped his left arm around Melnone’s fat throat—all in one smooth motion. He poised the sword dramatically at Melnone’s ear.
Tumbling after him, Prestin kicked a man in the stomach and ducked as another swung wildly at him. He did not realize that his sword had gone in and out until he ran on, staring stupidly at the bright red blood smearing the tip. He didn’t think he would feel like this when he killed his first man—he had never thought there’d be a first. He was far too busy to worry over the implications now.
The woman screamed shrilly, “He’s got the chief! He’s going to kill Melnone! Help! Help!”
The uproar became intense. Prestin shoved up alongside Dalreay and smelled Melnone’s foul odor. He wrinkled his nose.
“It’s working so far, Bob.” Dalreay shoved the sword tip closer to Melnone’s ear. “Tell ‘em!”
“If you harm us” shouted Prestin in his strongest Italian, “Melnone dies!”
A tendril of the vine looped up to the screen. A Honshi guard stood near it with drawn sword, too petrified to lop it off as was his obvious duty. Prestin laughed. “Here!” he shouted, and slashed. The vine fell away and the tip dropped into the seating. The guard ran.
“You fool!” gobbled Melnone. “Don’t let it lie in here! Throw it back on the concrete! For Anna’s sake, throw it back!”
Dalreay leaned down and backhanded the sword pommel across Melnone’s face. The fat man winced and groaned.
“By Amra! Don’t ever speak that foul name again! By Amra, I’ll edge your guts out!”
Obviously opposing religions, Prestin noted, and then forgot it as a second vine sprang up, inside the seat!
“The Lombok Vine is free!” screamed a man nearby. A rush ensued, an ugly rush as men and women screamed and fought to get away. The vine rose and at once Prestin saw the difference in size and ferocity. The Lombok in the arena had been controlled by the size of its flower pot. This new one, growing with unbelievable speed from that severed tip, had no restraints. Feeding on the muck and broken concrete shielding beneath each tier, it grew and looped around. One Honshi guard who ran too slow was caught and dragged neck first into the base of the plant under the seats. He screamed until his screams ended in a loud and squashy crunching.
“Get—away—” grunted Melnone past the arm around his neck.
“We’d better get out, Todor! Bring Melnone! He’s our hostage.”
They ran down the rows with Melnone dragging between them and the vine writhing and swaying behind them. The first vine was now over the barrier at a dozen places and sending down fresh roots. Soon the whole arena right up to the transparent roof would be one solid mass of liana.
Prestin had no idea where to go. He headed for an arched doorway where a crazed mass of Valcini struggled to get out. He could see no other exit. No one paid them the slightest attention when they went through at the end. The vine lashed at their heels. No one stopped to slam the door.
“That shows you what the Valcini are, Bob. They don’t try to rescue their chief, they don’t even shut the door!” Dalreay slammed it back with his foot. Prestin hit Melnone as he tried to run. They glared at all the corridors.
“Anyway, I suppose that if we keep this fat slug we can dicker with them when they get their senses back.”
“Yes.”
They had gone about ten yards, down the first corridor when Melnone gave a loud, harsh laugh. Six men appeared from a side turning directly in front of them. Each man carried a weapon, five of them had modern automatic rifles, Belgian FN’s by the look of them, and the sixth, obviously the leader had a Mauser nine mm automatic pistol. He dangled the pistol negligently, affectedly, and the immediate impression he conveyed was of decadence and vice. His too-smart fawn slacks and tunic, his thin face, thin black hair, thin moustache, and thin rat-trap lips, all repelled Prestin.
Melnone suddenly thrashed back against Dalreay’s arm.
“Please,” Melnone said. “Talk—” He tugged with frenzied helplessness against Dalreay’s arm. “Please, Cino. Talk.”
Cino said, “Are you Robert Infamy Prestin?”
Prestin, accustomed to astounding events, nodded.
“You will not, I think,” said Cino carelessly, “need your hostage. You are an important man, Prestin, in your own right.” Cino lifted the Mauser. Melnone screamed. Dalreay pushed him away, baffled.