The motor propelling Ikram Mohammed’s chain saw sputtered and died a moment later, but he was further away from the bank and more determined to protect Voconia’s cargo. He continued using the saw, not so much as a weapon of mass destruction as a spade or a scoop, trying to clear the creatures away without doing overmuch damage. He knew that he had to stay clear of stinging tentacles and avid mouths, but he obviously thought that he could do it. He was, after all, much stronger and nimbler than any individual in the crowd he was fighting to deter.
Matthew continued to pump the useless button, but whatever had got into the cable mechanism was wedged good and hard, and the cable could not slide past it. He felt doubly helpless, because he could not see what difference the two of them could make even if the basket were to complete its descent. Shooting might help to clear away the bigger and more responsive creatures, as much by noise as by bloodshed, but the elongated slugs were everywhere now, and he could not imagine that theirtide could be turned with a few loud bangs.
Dulcie thrust the rifle into his hands, briefly tapping the fingers that were clutching the control.
“What….?” he objected
“I’m going to dive,” she told him. “But first we have to increase the amplitude of the swing. We have to get the turning point far enough out over the water. You have to help me.”
Matthew’s first instinct was to protest, but he knew that there was no point in staying where they were. Lynn was still visible in the water, seemingly unhurt and swimming freely, despite having to fight the current. If Dulcie could dive into the deep pool at the foot of the waterfall she would have a great deal of turbulence to contend with, but a strong swimmer ought to be able to cope.
Matthew knew, on the other hand, that a man with an injured arm could not be expected to succeed in such a venture, no matter how good a swimmer he was when fully fit.
“Help me!” Dulcie demanded, as she grasped the cable and began to use her body to exaggerate the basket’s pendular swing.
“Oh shit!” said Matthew—but he dropped the gun and the control box into the bottom of the basket, and gripped the cable with his good hand, forcing himself to complement the insistent movements of the anthropologist’s body.
It was surprisingly easy to increase the amplitude of the basket’s swing, and it only required a couple of minutes to extend the far point into the spray of the falls. The pressure of the water immediately began to confuse their efforts, but Dulcie let go then and grasped the edge of the basket, ready to hurl herself over on the next pass.
Matthew was tempted to call her crazy, but hardly any time seemed to have passed since she had stood on the ledge and thought seriously about casting herself down on to the rocks. This time, she was aiming for the water; to call the effort suicidal would have been a ludicrous insult.
She jumped.
Given her starting position, there was no way that Dulcie could contrive a dive as neat as Lynn’s, and she didn’t even try to adjust her attitude as she fell, preferring to cartwheel her legs as if she were trying to run in midair. She was, indeed, attempting to gain a little extra distance, to make sure that she fell into the calmest and deepest water she could possibly reach.
Droplets from the almighty splash she made would probably have dashed against Matthew’s face had the movement of the basket not become so wild. He ducked down and did what he could to protect his injured arm as it threatened to dash him against the rock face. He sat on the control box, and his coccyx managed to do what his thumb had not. The cable groaned as the basket tried to spin, and suddenly jerked free—but only for a moment. It only dropped him two or three meters before it was snagged again.
When he came back to his feet Matthew saw Dulcie’s head in the water, well clear of the cataract, and saw that she was as safe as could be expected. He could no longer see Lynn Gwyer, but that was presumably because she had attained the purple shore and was even now pulling herself back on to dry land.
Ike was still standing, still using the dead chain saw as a crude device for sweeping long flat worms and bulkier creatures this way and that, but not making much of a difference to the sum of the confusion. He did not seem to have been stung, as yet.
Now that he was using his weight to quell the swinging of the basket rather than to increase it, Matthew was quite prepared to let it bump against the cliff face, provided that it did so without bruising him. He wanted to steady it sufficiently to let fly with the rifle, not because he thought he had the slightest chance of hitting anything but because he wanted to make use of its deterrent clamor if there was any such use to be made.
He fired one shot into the air, holding the gun in his left hand, but he had grossly underestimated the force of the recoil. For a moment he feared that he had lost effective use of both his arms—but his overstrained IT eliminated the pain and no serious physical damage seemed to have been done.
The sound of the gunshot made very little difference to the confusion below, although the more agile of the second-wave invaders did indeed respond to it, several of them deciding that the game was not worth the candle. Unfortunately, that left the tentacled stingers with no obvious target for their armaments but Ike. He was using the chain saw two-handed now, like a broadsword, but his muscles had almost reached the end of their energy reserves and his strokes were becoming slow and ponderous.
“Give it up, Ike!” Matthew shouted to him. “Take to the water!”
The water still appeared to be safe in spite of the turbulence near the cataract and the undertow further away from it, but Matthew could not think highly of his own chances of diving directly into the pool, let alone swimming strongly enough thereafter to steer him out of trouble. He felt that he had only one option before him, which was to slit the fabric of the basket with his knife, if the blade was sharp enough, to turn it into a dangling blanket from whose trailing edge he could hang—two-handed if he could possibly manage it—and then drop to the ground.
It would still be an uncomfortable drop, even if he could manage the preparatory maneuver, but his bootless feet would be slightly cushioned by the biomass that had accumulated on the rocky apron. It seemed to be the only possible way that he was ever going to get down. But whenshould he attempt it? To do it now seemed dangerously akin to leaping from a frying pan into a fire.
Ikram Mohammed had not taken his advice. Whether it was because he had formed a better idea of the situation or because he didn’t think he was a strong enough swimmer, he had decided to go the other way, through the remaining bushes and into the shelter of the grass canopy. By going that way, he had avoided the necessity of dropping the chain saw, and he had even managed to select a route that took him to the particular supply dump that held the fuel necessary to give its motor a new lease of life.
Matthew knew that Ike had got out in one piece when he heard the power tool’s roar again, By that time, Dulcie was also out of view, and he felt awkwardly alone.
Down below, the “killer anemones” seemed to be in the process of taking possession of the battlefield, although a few reptile-analogues were still prepared to dispute it. The tentacled slugs were moving back and forth with considerable speed and purpose, apparently mopping up the awful mass of pulverized branches, spilled boatfood and sliced flesh with an appetite that was positively awesome. The stench was appalling. Matthew decided that any plans for further descent ought to be put on hold for quite some time, if not indefinitely. He waited, forcing himself to watch even though the spectacle was so appalling. He chided himself for having lulled himself into the tacit expectation that this seemingly quiet world was incapable of producing events as ferocious and as feverish as this one. He chided himself too for having provided the probable trigger when he carelessly allowed the box of biomotor-fuel to tumble over the edge.