It was a constant struggle to push their pace to more than a slow walk, and the unrelenting rain beat down on them like a feeble but persistent bully. After a while Owen took off his jacket and draped it over his head in an improvised hood. It meant he was now cold as well as wet, but it was worth it for the simple relief it offered. The others soon did the same, except for Moon, who didn’t seem at all bothered by the rain, and couldn’t understand why everyone got so surly when he said so.
The jungle stretched off in every direction for as far as they could see into the driving rain. Dark-boled trees soared hundreds of feet up into the sky, their branches weighed down with curling leaves the color of blood. Owen reached up to touch one of the leaves, and then swore mildly as the serrated edge opened his fingertip like a razor. He gripped the leaf more firmly, and was surprised to find it thick and pulpy, and unpleasantly warm to the touch. He let go, and sucked thoughtfully at his lacerated finger, ignoring Hazel’s acerbic remarks with the ease of long practice.
Owen was becoming increasingly convinced that on some level the jungle was aware, if not actually sentient, and knew intruders were passing through it. Leaves rustled as the party approached, and fell silent after they were gone. Vines circled slowly on tree trunks like dreaming snakes, and tall stalks would turn to face the party as they passed, quivering agitatedly till they had been safely left behind. Owen also couldn’t help noticing that at least half the vegetation seemed to be slowly but determinedly stalking the other half.
The first attack caught them all by surprise. Long, flailing tendrils with inch-long thorns lashed out at them from every side at once, striking with unexpected strength and speed. The barbs drew blood, and the tendrils sought to wrap themselves around their prey with springy tenacity. But they parted easily under the keen edge of a steel blade, and the oozing remnants sprang away again. More tendrils struck down from above, but the party stood their ground, hacking and cutting about them till the tattered remnants were forced to retreat. Owen drew his disrupter and blasted one of the areas where the bloodred tendrils had seemed to spring from. The others followed suit, and soon there were a half dozen small fires burning around them. There was a certain amount of quivering and rustling in the surrounding foliage, but what was left of the tendrils showed no signs of further aggression.
Owen put his gun away and looked at the others. “Anyone badly hurt?”
“Just scratches,” said Hazel. “Damn, those things were fast.”
“Should we do something about the fires?” said Moon. “They could spread—”
“Let them,” said Midnight, wiping away blood from a cut on her face that had come dangerously close to an eye. “Treacherous bloody things. Let them all burn.”
“The rain should take care of the fires,” said Owen. “And the surrounding foliage looks too drenched to catch sparks. But let’s try to remember, there could be colonists’ settlements not that far away, so if you have to use your guns, aim carefully.”
“Yes, leader,” said Bonnie. “I’m sure that would never have occurred to us. How ever did we manage till you came along?”
Owen ignored that and gestured for Moon to lead off again.
The slow march continued, slogging through deepening mud until their legs ached from the strain. Moon continued to treat it all as a casual ramble, stopping every now and again to pull up some unfamiliar piece of plant life, compare it against his data banks, and announce happily that since it wasn’t officially identified, he had the right to name it. Unfortunately, this tended to involve very labored puns in Latin, which no one but Moon understood or appreciated, so after a few pointed death threats from certain members of the party, he kept his enthusiasm to himself, silently studying everything that didn’t shrink away fast enough.
Given the general denseness of the jungle, and the way all the plant life fought for every square inch of light and rain, Owen had expected to spend most of his journey hacking a path with his sword, but after the incident with the barbed tendrils, the jungle seemed to be going out of its way to slowly open up a path before them. Owen thought some more about how aware the jungle might be. He raised the subject with Oz, who responded with a running commentary on what was known of Lachrymae Christi’s plant life. Most of this was monumentally boring, and Owen tuned it out until something odd caught his attention.
“Hold it, Oz, back up. No insects at all here? Are you sure?”
“Quite sure. Like animal life, they just never caught on here. The plant life is so aggressive on all levels that all other kinds of life never found an ecological niche to prosper in.”
“But if there’s no insects, and as far as I can see no flowers . . . how do the plants propagate? How does fertilization occur?”
“Well, it certainly doesn’t involve the birds and bees. Take a look over to your right, about four o’clock.”
Owen looked, and saw two large masses of foliage moving together, rocking back and forth. “Wait a minute. Are they doing what I think they’re doing?”
“I’m afraid so. You should think yourselves lucky you didn’t arrive in the rutting season. Do you want to know how the trees do it?”
“No!”
“Suit yourself. You’ve led a really sheltered life in some ways, Owen.”
The AI went back to talking about how the rain drained away through the ground, and ended up in vast subterranean lakes that fed the jungle’s great root system, and Owen went back to not listening.
They trudged on for another hour or so, getting even wetter and more miserable, before the jungle moved against them again. They’d fallen into a plodding routine, following the path that opened up before them, until Oz suddenly pointed out that the path was slowly but surely turning them off course. Owen yelled for everyone to stop, and they all snapped out of their half daze, guns at the ready. Owen calmed them down and explained the situation, and took the point so he could follow Oz’s directions more exactly. But when he tried to turn aside from the path, the red foliage clumped stubbornly together before him, forming a thick, ragged wall. Owen drew his sword and cut the wall with all his strength, but just as before, his blade clung stickily to the foliage, limiting the amount of damage he could do. He pulled his sword free, stepped back, and opened fire with his disrupter. The energy beam blasted a narrow tunnel through the plant wall, lined with blackened and burning edges. But as soon as Owen moved forward, the scorched sides just closed together again, like a slow-moving man trap.
“Stubborn, isn’t it?” said Hazel. “The jungle really doesn’t want us deviating from the path it’s chosen.”
“Maybe it’s hiding something,” said Midnight. “Some vulnerable part of itself.”
“Little baby jungle things?” said Bonnie. “Could we be trespassing on a nursery?”
“How long would it take us to go around whatever it is?” said Moon, looking at Owen.
Owen consulted with Oz and then shook his head. “Depends on how large an area the jungle is protecting. Let’s try curling around it. If it looks like it’s taking us too long, we’ll see what high explosives will do. You do have some, don’t you, Hazel?”
“Never without them,” said Hazel cheerfully.
Owen led the way cautiously around the blocked-off area, gun in his hand, and looked carefully about him for possible traps or ambush points. For the first time he was forced to consider the possibility that parts of the jungle might not just be aware, but actually sentient. He tried to visualize what kind of drowsy, sluggish thoughts a plant might think, and wasn’t surprised when he couldn’t.
He led the way for a good half hour before realizing something was wrong. Apart from the foliage drawing slowly back in front of him to form the path, nothing in the jungle was moving. Not a vine or a branch or a leaf. He stared about him into the endless twilight, straining his eyes against the denseness of the jungle and the never ending rain, but all was still and silent. The only sound was the heavy squelching of his party’s boots diving in and out of the mud, and the steady patter of the rain. Owen hefted his disrupter. His instincts were screaming that he was walking into a trap, but he couldn’t see anything dangerous or even threatening. If anything, the path ahead seemed wider than usual. But he was haunted by a sense of imminence, of something about to happen. Hazel moved up beside him.
“You feel it too, don’t you?” she said quietly.
He nodded. “The jungle’s watching us. It’s planning something.”
“Intelligent plants,” said Hazel. “Spooky. Would it help if I apologized for all the salads I’ve eaten?”
Owen smiled briefly. “I doubt it. You see anything? ”
“Not a damned thing. What do we do?”
“Keep moving, and be ready to react whenever whatever it is hits us. We’ve fought Hadenmen and Grendels. I doubt there’s anything a bunch of plants can throw at us that we can’t handle.”
“Getting cocky again, Deathstalker.”
While they were busy talking, the ground dropped out from under their feet. Owen’s stomach lurched as he plunged down into the mud and just kept going. He scrabbled about him for something to cling onto, but all the surrounding vegetation had drawn back out of reach. There was only the mud, thick and confining, sucking him down. The others were yelling all around him, and from what he could see were just as badly off as him. The mud began moving, circling like a slow-motion whirlpool. The mud was already up to Owen’s waist, and he was still sinking. He fought to stay upright, and tried to remember what he’d heard about dealing with quicksand. You were supposed to be able to swim in it, if you kept your nerve, but when Owen tried to move his legs, they barely responded at all. The mud smothered his movements easily, thick and clinging and bitterly cold.
The circling speed of the mud was increasing all the time, a whirlpool now of mud and grasses and loose vegetation a good twenty feet in diameter, churning remorselessly in a widdershins motion, pulling in everything around it like a slow, determined meat grinder. Owen tried to see how the others were doing, but the mud held him firmly, creeping up his stomach toward his chest. He held his arms above him, but there was nothing to cling onto. A great sucking sinkhole appeared in the center of the whirlpool, pulling everyone toward it. Owen could hear the others shouting, but they didn’t seem to be making any sense. His constant struggle to stay upright and keep his face out of the mud was tiring him out, and getting him nowhere. His heart pounded frantically, and panic threatened to overwhelm his thoughts. Drowning in mud was supposed to be a really bad way to go.
He could almost feel the thick, soft weight of it forcing its way down his throat as he sucked for air that never came. . . .
Owen took a deep breath and forced himself to be calm. He had to work through his options, think of a way out of this, or he was a dead man. He craned his neck and saw Hazel fighting the mud with all her strength. The mud was already over her chest. Moon had stopped struggling, his face calm. Owen couldn’t see Bonnie or Midnight. He hoped they hadn’t already been swallowed up. The point was, none of them could help him. He was going to have to do it himself. The mud was getting colder all the time, sucking up his body heat. His teeth had begun to chatter. He was being carried inevitably closer to the sinkhole, the churning mud and grasses moving faster and faster. Owen didn’t know where the mud ended up after it had been through the sucking hole, but he didn’t think he’d enjoy finding out firsthand.
He tried to summon his Maze powers, but he couldn’t calm his mind enough to call them up. He tried to reach out to the surrounding foliage, looking for something to grab onto, but it was all well out of reach. Think, think. If he couldn’t go to the foliage, maybe he could bring it to him. . . . He still had his disrupter in his hand, held up out of the mud to protect it. He aimed carefully and shot a nearby tree dead square at the bottom of its wide trunk.
The energy beam punched straight through the trunk, and the tree toppled slowly forward across the whirlpool, the splintered remains of its lower trunk and heavy roots holding it in place. The surging mud brought Owen sweeping around and slammed him hard against the black trunk. The impact knocked the breath out of him, but he clung to the trunk with both hands, and it held him in place, even against the steady pull and pressure of the mud. The others also hit the trunk as they came around, and clung to it and each other. After that it was only a matter of strength and determination to drag themselves along the tree trunk and onto firmer land. They crawled a safe distance away and then collapsed on their backs, letting the rain slowly wash the mud off them. They lay there for some time, getting their breath back, until finally Owen forced himself back onto his feet. He beat away some more of the mud from his legs and waist, and glared at the slowing whirlpool.
“That was no accident,” he said flatly. “We were herded here. The jungle wanted to be rid of us. On some level it must be aware, capable of cooperating against anything it sees as a threat.”
Hazel sat up slowly. “So how are we going to get to Saint Bea’s Mission if the whole damned jungle’s determined to stop us?”
“We just have to be more determined than it is,” said Owen. He consulted Oz to make sure he’d got the direction right, and then blasted an opening in the foliage with his disrupter. He waited till the crimson vegetation had closed together again, and then borrowed Hazel’s disrupter and blasted it open again. “From now on we take it in turns to keep blasting a trail, using our guns in sequence as they recharge, backing it up with explosives as necessary, until the jungle learns to respect us and allows us to go where we want to go.”
In the end, it was as simple as that. The jungle eventually got fed up with being incinerated, and went back to opening up a path in the direction the party wanted to go in. The scarlet and purple vegetation shook angrily around them for a while, but made no further moves to threaten them. Owen continued on point, weapons at the ready, carefully checking the way ahead for booby-traps. The rain kept falling, and they were all shuddering from the cold. Any normal human would have been in serious trouble by now, sliding into shock as their core body temperature slowly lowered, but all five of the party had been through the Maze. And Moon was a Hadenman.