Killer Plants of Binaark.

byJeffrey Lord.

Chapter 1.

In a white-painted room two hundred feet below the Tower of London, three men looked at a piece of wire.

The piece of wire was about three feet long. It was curved into an S and lay on a scarred wooden table. The three men looking at it were an odd trio.

The man who seemed to be in charge looked like a cross between a gnome and the mad scientist in a cheap horror movie. He limped, his skull was bare except for a few wiry tufts of white hair, his unnaturally long arms ended in blotched and gnarled hands, and his filthy laboratory smock didn't conceal his humpback. The eyes peering out at the world through thick-lensed gla.s.ses seemed to miss very little.

The second man was elderly, gray-haired, flawlessly dressed, and held himself as straight as a soldier. He had a look of gentle melancholy on his long face, and his wide gray eyes hinted they'd looked on more secrets than most men.

The third man sat on a rickety wooden chair turned back to front, which creaked under his weight. He was dark almost to the point of being swarthy, with thick black hair and bushy black eyebrows which met over a large nose which had been broken more than once. He wore an expensively tailored suit, but something about him would have made armor and a broadsword more appropriate. He was over six feet tall but so solidly built that he looked shorter, and there was enormous power in him. Now it was controlled and leashed, but it was always ready to be released at the command of the brain behind his two large, deceptively sleepy eyes.

The first man was Lord Leighton. His humpback, polio-twisted legs, and eighty years didn't keep him from being one of the most creative scientific minds alive.

The second man, known only as J, was head of the secret intelligence agency MI6A. Whenever professionals in the intelligence business talked about the great spymasters of the twentieth century, they mentioned J.

The third man was Richard Blade. He was the only living man who could travel into other Dimensions and return alive and sane.

Richard Blade hadn't always been a traveler into the unknown world they'd appropriately named Dimension X. He began his career as a field agent for MI6A. J picked the young Blade straight out of Oxford and saw him become one of the best men in his demanding and often deadly profession. He'd also seen Blade become the only man in the profession of inter-Dimensional Travel, even more demanding and much deadlier.

Blade's new career began as the subject of one of Lord Leighton's experiments. If a powerful human brain was linked to a powerful computer, what would happen? Leighton expected a combination of human and electronic intelligence able to work marvels.

What he got was Richard Blade shot off into nowhere. Fortunately Blade came back, then and every time since. He'd come back with his share of scars, of course, and sometimes by the skin of his teeth. He still came back alive and sane, and no one else had ever done this.

Unfortunately, about all he could do was take expensive round trips into the unknown. This wasn't for lack of trying on the part of Lord Leighton, or for lack of money and cooperation from the British government. Prime Ministers knew perfectly well that a new British Empire might come into being if Dimension X travel was perfected. They'd provided millions of pounds to finance Lord Leighton's successive brainstorms and protect the secret of Dimension X. So far the return on all this money and effort had been rather modest. If you caught him off his guard, even Lord Leighton would admit this.

"We're worse off than Alexander the Great," the scientist had often grumbled. "He only had one Gordian knot to undo. We've got two. We have to find somebody besides Richard who can survive the trip. We also have to learn how to send our people to the same Dimension more than once."

"Yes, and Alexander ended up cutting the Gordian knot with his sword," J had replied. "I rather doubt if we'll be able to adopt such a straightforward method."

When Leighton said over the telephone that he might have part of the solution to both problems, it brought J and Blade to the Tower of London as fast as Blade's car would carry them. "Not that I expect miracles," said J as Blade's Rover sped through the foggy streets of London. "But he did sound rather more excited than usual."

The Special Branch men on guard at the Tower pa.s.sed them at once. They, then rode down in the elevator and walked along the main corridor of the Project complex, past the electronic monitors that guarded its secrets. At the end of the corridor was the white room where Lord Leighton waited for them with three feet of blue-gray wire.

Now Blade and J stopped looking at the wire and looked at each other. Blade picked up the wire, straightened it out, and tested it against the edge of the table. It cut easily into the wood.

"New alloy, I suppose," he said in a carefully neutral voice.

"You don't recognize it, Richard?" said Leighton. "Of course you wouldn't. Perhaps this will refresh your memory." He pulled a crumpled sheet of notepaper out of the breast pocket of his smock and handed it to Blade.

Blade read it. "This is the formula for one of the alloys from Englor."

"Yes. Our scientists haven't been able to produce it in large quant.i.ties-too expensive. But they've managed to produce thirty pounds or so that are well up to specifications."

One of the strangest Dimensions Blade ever visited was one where an alternate England called Englor fought for its life against alternate Russians called the Red Flames. This Dimension was a mixture of the completely familiar and the weirdly different. One of the most notable differences was in metallurgy. Englor used a number of alloys that made most of the ones in Home Dimension look like plastic. Blade came back from Englor with the formulas for three of those alloys. Metallurgists had been breaking their tools, budgets, and hearts ever since trying to reproduce them.

"It's good news, of course," said J. "But precisely what does it mean for the Project?" He was always a trifle more ready to talk back to Leighton than Blade.

"We discovered something about the metal the formula didn't show," said the scientist. "It's not affected by electricity. Something about the molecular structure lets electrical currents through as if the metal wasn't there. It can't possibly disturb an electrical field."

Blade's eyes lost their sleepy look. "Then I could wear anything made of this metal without disturbing the electrical fields during the transition to Dimension X."

"Precisely," said Leighton. His voice took on something of a lecture-room tone. "As you know, the basic problem of the transition has always been creating a completely even, completely identical electrical field over and around Richard for each transition. We solved part of the problem by building the KALI capsule, after we eliminated the initial failings of the system."

J and Blade looked at each other again. Those "initial failings" had in the end killed thirty-two people, let a deadly peril into the world from Dimension X, and very nearly destroyed the Project. As it was, most of the new self-programming KALI computer was so much junk, and only the seven-foot capsule that enclosed Blade like a coffin remained from that particular experiment.

"But wearing something into the capsule-that would disrupt the electrical field all over again," said Blade.

"Unless it was made of this new alloy. I've got here-" Leighton rummaged in all his pockets "-no, I forgot it. But I made a sketch of a suit of the wire you-or another traveler--could wear, reinforced at the crotch, joints, and soles of the feet. We'd start off with a coa.r.s.e mesh, then tighten it up until you'd be going through practically wearing a suit of armor. After that we could start adding equipment-a knife, a folding bow, fishing gear, a slingshot."

Leighton had obviously been thinking matters through quite systematically. Blade nodded. "It sounds very much worthwhile, sir. But I can see at least two problems.

"First, the suit is going to have to be easy to take off and put on without help. Second, it's going to have to be cheap enough so that I can afford to lose it or even throw it away if necessary."

Leighton frowned. "I don't imagine either will be impossible. But may I ask why these are problems at all? Do you like romping naked through strange Dimensions?"

Blade laughed. "Hardly. But consider that the suit is going to be centuries ahead of the technology of most Dimensions. They may think technology that is too advanced to understand is magic. Magicians sometimes get an unfriendly reception. I've had better luck with my 'traveling warrior' or 'exile' cover stories. I'd like to be able to strip off the suit and hide it any time it would spoil my cover."

"I see your point," said Leighton. "In any case, I wasn't proposing to suit you up for this trip. Nor are we yet ready to try sending another person into Dimension X. It will take a few weeks to make the alloy into enough wire-the stuff's fiendishly hard to work, as you might expect. I was thinking of starting this time by gluing this piece onto your skin and sending it through with you."

Again Blade and J looked at each other. Both minds held a single thought: Leighton becoming cautious and conservative? Either he's gone round the bend or the age of miracles isn't over yet.

Both Blade and J realized that an alloy-wire suit and equipment would increase Blade's chances of survival in Dimension X without making it more dangerous to get there, and it would also increase the survival chances of some other Dimension traveler. However, such a man or woman, even if he or she was as tough and sane as could be, would still lack Blade's positive genius for surviving bare-handed, bare-skinned, and bare-witted in the strangest environments. Thus, Leighton's caution was admirable.

"Very good, sir," said Blade. "I'll have no objection to being wired up."

It was a feeble pun, but Leighton seemed to think it called for a drink. In fact, they eventually decided it called for quite a few drinks. However, Leighton served excellent brandy, which didn't leave even the faintest trace of a hangover. Blade was entirely clear-headed the next morning when he glued the wire to the inside of his left thigh and climbed into the KALI capsule for his thirty-third journey into Dimension X.

Chapter 2.

Blade got the worst headache he'd had in several trips into Dimension X, but that wasn't the fault of the KALI capsule. He landed at the top of a steep bank, lost his balance, rolled down, and banged his head against the tangled roots of a large tree at the bottom. The world danced around him, and he wasn't sure if the singing he heard was from birds in the tree or from inside his own skull.

Blade crawled deep into the damp, musty shadows under the tree, lay down on a mat of leaves and needles, and breathed deeply until he could sit up. Then he tested all his limbs and joints to make sure they were working, and propped himself up against a root until the headache began to fade. When he felt his head there was a tender spot, but no swelling, no bleeding, and definitely none of the symptoms of a concussion. That was good news. A mild concussion could have disabled him for a couple of days. A bad one could have left him defenseless for weeks. Blade had always accepted the fact that a disabling injury on his way into Dimension X might be the end of him. Since there was nothing he could do about it, he stopped worrying. He'd learned very early in his career with MI6A that unnecessary worrying was a dangerous luxury.

Now that his worst problem was solved, he checked the wire. It was still in place on his thigh. Gently he peeled it loose and wound it around his left wrist like a bracelet. Where it had been was nothing except a red mark from the glue. So far Lord Leighton's experiment seemed to be working.

Blade saw that he'd landed in a sort of tropical rain forest. Except for the steep bank where he'd fallen, there were trees everywhere, with moss hanging from their branches and flowering vines wrapped around their trunks. The spreading branches overhead made such a thick canopy that the ground was clear of everything except dwarfed ferns and bloated blue-white fungi the size and shape of soccer b.a.l.l.s. Blade picked up a rotten branch and experimentally prodded one of the fungi. It promptly disintegrated into a cloud of foul-smelling powder. He hastily stepped back and mentally wrote off the fungi as a source of food.

In spite of this unpromising start, Blade doubted that a forest so heavily overgrown would be short of food or water. He'd never landed in a Dimension where the biochemistry was so different that he couldn't eat and drink enough to keep alive. He also hoped he never would. It was difficult enough encountering hostile aliens and managing to return intact to Home Dimension, without worrying about starving to death, or growing so weak that somebody or something could kill him.

The branches overhead did let in enough light to tell him that the sun was shining, but not to let him tell directions from it. However, unless the law of gravity didn't apply in this Dimension, water still flowed downhill. If Blade also went downhill he'd be more likely to find water. With water and a reasonable amount of almost any sort of food, he could survive as long as he had to.

Blade stretched his arms and legs to their limits and shadowboxed briefly, then did karate exercises until his head started complaining. He didn't want to lose water by working up an unnecessary sweat. He might not find a stream or pond for at least a couple of days.

Blade laughed. He'd come to take surviving under improbable conditions for granted, because the skills that made this possible were now so much a part of him that he seldom had to think about them. How would an observer have looked at him, casually marching as naked as Adam through something that didn't look much like the Garden of Eden?

How would he have looked to Zoe Cornwall, even if he'd been able to tell her how he made a living, instead of being gagged by the Official Secrets Act?

He'd met some women who had all the survival skills he had, and it was possible they might have been able to travel with him to other Dimensions, but Zoe hadn't been one of them. She was lovely and warm and intelligent, but definitely someone who could survive only in the heart of modern civilization.

Blade was different. He could survive on the fringes of civilization as a spy or far beyond it in Dimension X. In fact, he was more at home in such places. That was a big difference between Zoe and him. In the end, would it have been too big a difference for a happy marriage? Blade wondered.

Then he put the question firmly out of his mind. It was both depressing and supremely irrelevant. Zoe had died a grim, lonely death in a far Dimension, killed by the monstrous Ngaa, and Blade had never seriously contemplated marrying anyone else. By now, it was more likely than not that he'd die a bachelor. In the improbable event of his living long enough to retire from Project Dimension X, he'd be too old and set in his ways to make any woman a good husband.

Blade picked up a stout branch to use as a club, then studied the forest for the best way to go. "Downhill" was away from the slope, but otherwise there didn't seem to be much reason to choose one direction over another. He shouldered the club, picked the widest gap between the trees, and started walking.

Blade must have arrived in this Dimension no later than mid-morning of a long day. His mental clock was fairly accurate, and he guessed it was a good eight hours before the light started to fade. By that time he'd found a stream that widened at one point into a clear, deep pool. He drank until he was no longer thirsty, then examined the mud on the bank of the pool for signs of any animals large enough to be dangerous. One kind of footprint showed unmistakable claws, but it was small. That didn't completely rea.s.sure him-Home Dimension leopards were no more than half his size and weight, but one of them could tear him to pieces. Blade plunged into the pool and swam around until all the sweat was washed away and the itching and stinging from thorn p.r.i.c.ks and insect bites faded.

By the time he climbed out of the pool, the fading light told him it was time to find a safe place to spend the night. There was still nothing edible in sight, but he could safely go several days without food as long as he had enough water. Remembering those claw marks, he studied the trees on the far bank, then swam across the pond and started climbing the largest one. The rough bark gave him plenty of foot- and hand-holds, and also did some work on Blade's skin. Before long Blade felt as if he'd been rubbed all over with fine sandpaper.

The tree was a giant, taller than its neighbors, with the crotch between its main branches at least a hundred feet above the ground. The last light of sunset showed Blade a sea of treetops, stretching away endlessly almost everywhere he looked. Toward the west and southwest the treetops seemed to change color. They looked golden-orange instead of green, but that was probably a trick of the sunset light.

To the northwest a cliff nearly a mile high leaped straight up out of the trees, with a range of rugged mountains curving away into the distance beyond it. Blade studied the mountains, and his brief thoughts of climbing over them rather than tramping through the jungle vanished. The cliff would be impossible without rock-climbing gear, and most of the summits beyond it showed snowcaps. Climbing over those mountains in his bare skin would mean nearly certain death from frostbite or exposure.

The sun had dipped below the horizon now, and seemed to be sucking the rest of the light after it. Blade pulled down all the leaves within reach and spread them out to make a thin cushion between his skin and the bark. Then he stretched out and fell asleep.

The bird chorus which greeted the dawn jerked Blade awake so violently he nearly fell off his perch. Some birds whistled, others screeched, whooped, boomed, or chattered. There was even one that sounded so much like a London fire engine that Blade found himself looking around for signs of smoke.

When he looked west he stared. It hadn't been a trick of the light! The trees there blazed golden-orange in the dawn. Were they flowering trees, like Home Dimension's dogwoods or cherry trees? Blade doubted it. The color was too solid and there was too much of it. Blade tested his muscles, then crawled off his perch and began climbing down the tree.

By the time he reached the ground the bird chorus was dying away. There was still a long day ahead of him and he could be sure of hitting the golden-orange trees sooner or later. They'd stretched halfway across the western horizon.

Five hundred yards brought him to a small spring. He drank, then set off again. He was so eager to satisfy his curiosity about the trees that he had to force himself to slow down, so he wouldn't work up a sweat or lose his direction. He remembered one of his early instructors in MI6A telling him, "Mr. Blade, you've got enough b.l.o.o.d.y curiosity for half a dozen cats. I only hope you've got as many lives!"

Blade tramped past an endless succession of gnarled trunks. At last he came to a trunk that was thick and smooth, and he was sure that he had found the trees he'd been looking for. The gold-orange color was definitely in the leaves-and what leaves! Most were at least six feet long and half that wide, and some were twice as big. All of them stuck out from the branches as stiffly as if they'd been made of solid wood. The canopy they made overhead was so dense and so brightly colored that Blade felt as if he'd stepped into a vividly dyed circus tent.

Once he'd got used to the spectacle of the leaves, Blade started noticing other details. The branches and trunks of the trees seemed to be covered with blue-black rubber rather than bark, and they twisted and curled in ways Blade didn't like. Hanging from some of the branches were immense seed pods, larger than the KALI capsule. They seemed to be completely covered with short, bright green hair.

From the bases of the blue-black trunks, a dense ma.s.s of creepers stretched toward Blade. They didn't have any seed pods, but otherwise they looked like a ground-dwelling version of the trees. Halfway to Blade they thinned out and disappeared among the ferns and gra.s.s, but Blade suspected they stretched considerably farther.

Suddenly he was very careful where he put his feet. There was something unnatural about the plants here. The colors, the leaves, the seed pods, the creepers Blade could have accepted any one of them, but together they gave him the impression of something dangerous.

Something went chirrr among the creepers, and three shiny green beetles the size of Blade's hand crept out into view. He took a cautious step, relieved to see something living among the trees. His relief vanished as he saw more beetles crawling over a whitened skeleton and chopping off pieces of bone with their pincers. The skeleton looked like a huge bird's. Blade saw a curved beak and a four-clawed foot.

Blade held out his club and prodded the undergrowth. He would almost have preferred something jumping out at him, but nothing happened. He took a step forward, prodded again, step, prod, step, prod.... He found each step a little harder than the one before, but he'd be d.a.m.ned if he was going to turn aside from a bunch of circus-colored plants!

Seven steps, eight, nine. The club came down again-and with the speed of striking snakes, three of the creepers reared out of the undergrowth. They wavered in mid-air; then, before Blade could pull the club back, two wrapped themselves around it. When Blade pulled, the creepers pulled harder. The wood split with a sharp crack, the creepers curled back with half the club, and Blade lurched backward holding the other half.

As he fought for balance, he couldn't watch where he stepped. His foot came down on another of the creepers. It writhed like a drunken boa constrictor, then wound itself around Blade's left leg. Another creeper lashed the air, then curled around his right thigh. Blade tried to pull free, but it was like trying to pull free from a pair of steel cables.

Whatever came next, it would not be a quick escape.

Chapter 3.

Creepers were writhing and twisting toward Blade from all directions. They seemed to move faster the more he struggled with the ones holding him. He tried standing still. The new creepers also stopped. Blade gave an experimental heave, and they came on again. This time he not only stopped moving but held his breath. The creepers stopped, and by the time Blade had to breathe again some of them were lying down. He stood motionless until all the creepers except the two wound around his legs were limp and quiet. Those two, however, still clung as if they'd been glued in place.

Apparently the creepers judged their prey by the amount of resistance it put up. The more it struggled, the bigger it was, and the more creepers came to hold it. Hold it for what? If it was something that came at the prey so fast they had no chance to avoid it, there wouldn't have been a need for the creepers. The creepers themselves were tight enough so that they might cut off his circulation if they held him long enough, but otherwise they weren't particularly uncomfortable. Blade carefully kept his arms crossed high on his chest. The creepers didn't reach more than four feet into the air, so his hands and arms were free.

Out of the corner of one eye he saw ripples and twitches in the trunk of the nearest tree. Cautiously raising his head, he saw a branch as thick as his body starting to curve downward, lowering a seed pod at least eight feet long. As the pod descended, the leaves in its path moved out of the way. Some folded themselves double, others tilted up on edge or bent back.

The seed pod was ten feet above the ground and twenty feet from Blade when it started to open like a pair of jaws.

The stench of acid and rotten meat hit Blade like a blow. His eyes watered and he blinked. Then he saw that the edges of the pod's jaws were lined with folding six-inch spikes, barbed and dripping with foul-smelling juices. As more and more of the spikes unfolded, the pod began to remind Blade of a shark's mouth.

He would rather have been facing the shark. Now he knew what the plants' technique was: immobilize prey with the creepers, then bring the pods down to kill, swallow, and digest. He wasn't sure he was going to survive to use this knowledge.

Cautiously Blade flexed one leg. Four creepers jerked spasmodically. One lashed out and struck him in the chest, inches below his crossed arms. Obviously the pod's being on the way wasn't affecting the creepers' reflexes. Even more obviously, the last thing he could afford to risk was having even one hand immobilized. If he could hold the jaws of the pod open long enough....

The branch writhed, then thrust the pod slowly toward Blade. He wondered how many of the plants' victims had sealed their fate at this point by panicking and arousing the creepers again. He forced himself to stand completely motionless, not blinking, barely breathing.

As the pod drew closer, Blade wouldn't have wanted to take a deep breath anyway. The stench from the open jaws was like that of a sewer crossed with a chemical plant. Blade was afraid he'd vomit and trigger more of the creepers into action.

Still closer. The inside of the pod was lined with slimy gray-green tissue, speckled with whitish patches and gobbets of half-digested flesh. Blade couldn't see anything like a throat. Apparently the nutrients were absorbed from the prey directly through the walls of the pod.

If the pod continued its slow approach, Blade was now sure he could grip the jaws. If it dropped on him suddenly, he would need precise timing and also quick movement, which might send the creepers into action again at the worst possible time. Either way he needed to be ready. A joint at a time, Blade uncurled his fingers. A finger at a time, he raised his hands. A muscle at a time, he stretched his arms out to either side. Some of the creepers twitched faintly, but none of them went into action. Slowly he raised his arms above his head. He hoped the pod didn't have any way of learning that its prey was abnormally large and quite ready to defend itself to the last.

Apparently the pod depended completely on the net of creepers. It came on steadily, until it was no more than a yard out of Blade's reach and a foot above him. A drop of its digestive juice fell on the back of Blade's hand, stinging like a bee. The ghastly stench was all around him. Now the lower jaw was within reach, but Blade still waited. Grabbing the lower jaw alone might simply snap the upper jaw shut on his hands.

Then the pod began a slow-motion lunge toward its prey and Blade went into action. With one hand he gripped the upper jaw and with the other he felt for a hold on the lower one. He found one of the spikes and snapped it off. The empty s.p.a.ce gave him a firm handhold on the lower jaw, and just in time. The branch holding the pod jerked, but the slimy lining of the pod rippled and the jaws tried to snap shut.

It took all of Blade's strength to hold them open. Fortunately his two hundred and ten pounds was all muscle and bone, trained and conditioned, and his endurance was something of a legend even among the hardened field agents of MI6A. The jaws of the pod closed about four inches, then stopped. The sweat popped out on Blade's forehead and chest. His muscles rose in ridges, but he held the jaws. His lungs cried for air until he had to inhale even the foul air from the pod, but he held it open.

The jaws quivered and jerked, still trying to close, with more strength than Blade could have imagined in any plant. They still didn't close, and finally the pod gave up the fight. The plant must have discovered that something wasn't going right. Blade had won his first victory. He also realized that it was a temporary one. He had to get free of the plant before it found some new way of attacking him. It might pull the pod back, then bring it in again where he couldn't turn to face it without triggering the creepers. It might order the creepers to drag him down, or bring in a second pod.

He wondered if he was overestimating the intelligence of the plant. He also decided that even if he was, he was doing himself no harm. The combination of trunk, creeper, and pod was unlike any plant he'd ever seen or heard of, and so was its behavior. It was better to a.s.sume nothing.