Turning her eye further, to study her shell, she observed that the split in it had nearly closed up. With luck it would be fully sealed before the rhinoworms started chewing pieces out of her, for if those things found their way in there, to her softer parts, it would all be quickly over. However, if she remained trapped here like this, she would still die. It might take them longer to munch away her harder extremities, but they would never give up. She struggled again, the harpoon wounds aching in her flesh and the trees around her shaking. Some of them did loosen a bit, but the taut ropes binding her to immovable outcrops of rock prevented her getting the leverage to pull the looser trees completely free. Then, vibrating through the ground from the ocean bed, she heard a familiar thumping.
The male whelk was out there. If she could attract him in he might be able to free her, but to do that she needed to free at least one tentacle. She struggled again, some of the ropes definitely slacker now, but every effort left her weaker. She focused her attention on one tentacle only: the one from which the fishing line depended. There was a harpoon driven right through it, a metre back from the tip of it. Folding that tip up, she could just touch the thick rope stretching taut from the harpoon’s shaft to a nearby tree. That was all she could manage, but remembering how the fishing line had cut so easily through heirodont flesh and gristle, she now had an idea. Flipping the free extremity of tentacle, she whipped the line up from the sandy soil. It looped up and touched the rope, before dropping down again. After five attempts she got part of it up and over the rope, but it slid off again. On her fourteenth attempt it went over, and she finally caught hold of the line’s loose end with her tentacle tip, wrapping it round securely. Just then pain messages began to register from some of her other tentacles. The rhinoworms were beginning to tentatively gnaw on her flesh.
Pulling on the line itself only tugged the rope down, making the harpoon tilt. It was only by accident, when her grip slipped for a moment and she drew the line across the rope, that she observed a few severed fibres spring up. Urgently, she began sawing the line back and forth.
By now some of the rhinoworms, finding she was not retaliating, were biting a lot harder, and the commotion they were making was attracting many more who were heading rapidly up from the beach.
Finally, the rope parted, and the giant whelk twisted her tentacle to snap off the harpoon haft. Then reaching over to snatch up the most persistent rhinoworm, she raised the writhing creature and used it like a rubber drumstick to beat a tattoo on her shell. The male whelk out at sea responded with an excited drumming. The rhinoworm, its skull now shattered, she fed under her skirt, to her beak, and quickly devoured. Now she reached round to tackle the next harpoon, trying to tug it out. But it was stuck solid and, with its rope still attached, she could not get enough leverage with just one tentacle to break the haft. At least there was less urgency now the rhinoworms had retreated a little way. Realizing that once she freed another tentacle things would get very much easier, she looped the line over another rope and again began to saw. She was about halfway through when the waiting rhinoworms began running for cover. A crusted shell had broken the ocean’s surface and begun to head ashore.
Extending her remaining eye rearwards, the female giant whelk watched the male approach. She did not like the look of his shell for, encrusted like that, it looked untidy, and meant he spent most of his time on the bottom. He was smaller, as all males were, but it struck her that this one was particularly scrawny. He oozed onto the sand, moved up to the edge of the clearing and halted, focusing both eyes down to where a rope was tied around a rocky outcrop. He tracked the rope up to the harpoon embedded in her body, then his eyes swung apart to take in the other ropes. She tugged briefly on a couple of them to be sure he got the idea. He paused, mulling the situation over, then reached out a tentacle and plucked the nearest rope like a guitar string. She wondered if he was particularly thick when he moved aside and chose to slide towards her up the lane between two ropes, careful to avoid dislodging any of them. When he reached her and reared up, extruding the long, tubular, glassy corkscrew of his penis, she realized he had certainly assessed the situation here.
Angrily the giant female thrashed back at him with her one free tentacle, which was larger and more powerful than any of his. But, having all his free, he caught hold of it and held it down against her shell. His penis partially unwound, probing under the back lip of her shell. At this point, instinct took over in her, and she extruded some of her softer body from underneath her shell. His penis felt this, and snapped out straight, stabbing deep inside her. Feeling something that was both pain and pleasure she emitted a hissing squeal. Letting loose a series of whistling hoots, he began rocking back and forth, his penis groping around between her internal organs. One organ reacted, opening with a ripping feeling inside her, and he soon found it. She bucked hard in reaction, and observed a couple of trees go crashing down. His flailing about dislodged one rope so its looped end snapped up free of the outcrop to which it was secured. This constant rocking motion loosened a harpoon embedded near his entry point, and the growing mass of slime there lubricated its progress out of her body. Then, with a final long-drawn-out hoot he filled her up, and with a gasp came to rest flat and limp against her. Screwing itself back out of her, his penis dropped flaccid into the sand.
The female felt strangely invigorated by this mating. Peering at the male, she observed his eyes blinking tiredly, and felt his grip slackening. Pulling her tentacle free, she snatched up the loose harpoon and drove it deep between his eyes. He squealed and retreated, becoming entangled in a fallen tree. Turning, she brought more trees crashing down and snapped two more ropes. Now with four tentacles unrestrained, she used them to snap harpoon shafts one after another, till finally breaking free. Her assailant meanwhile crushed his way over foliage and began heading back for the shore. She surged forward, picked up the relevant rope and waited. As the rope drew taut, he was jerked to a halt. Gradually she began to reel him in, clacking her beak the while. The reversal would have been lost on her: he’d had his way with her and now, dinner.
20
Lung Bird:
this creature seems to be an abortive attempt by the life of Spatterjay to get into the skies. They appear to be perpetually on the point of coming apart and possess a sparse covering of long oily feathers, between which is exposed purplish septic-looking flesh. Seen stationary on a branch, a lung bird looks like a half-plucked crow that has been dead for a week or more. But they are a fascinating oddity. On close inspection it can be seen that their beaks are extensions of a light carapace that entirely covers them, as are their feathers, for these birds have no internal skeleton. They are in fact closely related to the glisters, being crustaceans that took to the air. However, close inspection of lung birds is not something to be enjoyed by any human, and most investigation into these creatures is conducted by telefactor or by the planetary Warden, for the creature’s body is heavily laden with putrescine, which comes from their main diet of putrephallus weeds—
Erlin gazed back at the Prador spaceship, hovering just out from the island which the Sable Keech was now rounding. It was itself a metal island, clouds forming around it as sea water boiled off hot cowlings then recondensed in the air.
What’s it waiting for? she wondered, and as if in response to her silent query its fusion engines sputtered and sent the leviathan slowly drifting away. She pursed her lips. At least now, with every second that passed, the chances were reduced of them being caught in the middle of some bombardment from orbit.