studied in Irian Jaya.
“Keep your eyes peeled for me: I’m going to take a look.”
Corrie twisted so that her legs dangled through the opening, and then she wriggled her torso through the gap and dropped into the gloom.
The thing in the far end of the cell made a slight peeping sound, but otherwise showed no reaction to Corrie’s intrusion. She approached it, hesitantly. The thing was just a mound of flesh, fully two metres round, almost a perfect sphere. Somewhere, near the summit, there was a protrusion that may have been a head, and to either side were folds of blubber that may have served as some kind of limbs.
She touched it.
Its flesh quivered, was cold, its surface slick with exuded oil. What it reminded her of most was some kind of bizarre cross between a seal and the oily, fleshy trees of the dry jungle.
And also, it reminded her of the men they had left behind, although clearly this thing had not the slightest trace of humanity about it.
She snapped herself out of her reverie. It was as if the musty scent in the air was doping her. In the gloom, she searched about the cell, found a few meagre scraps of food: discarded, shrivelled rinds, a few rubbery, dried up gobbets of fruit-flesh, dropped out of reach of the cell’s occupant.
She stepped from the cell, into another similar one. Its occupant, too, wallowed at one end of its filthy domicile, and here she found more scraps of food, even a small number of untouched dopefruit littering the floor.
She swallowed the juices welling up in her dried out mouth. She knew she must fight the desperate urge to bite into one of these discarded fruit. She had to keep her wits about her, had to get back to the others.
Gathering her booty into a fold in the shirt knotted at her waist, Corrie passed through the cell’s narrow opening.
There was a sudden, high-pitched shriek and cool fingers closed around her arms. Chitinous mandibles flashed before her face, and the red ember glow of Gargoyle eyes.
Then she was on her rear, feet kicking feebly, as the Denebian dragged her through the cavern, one long-fingered hand wrapped around her arm, another tangled in her hair.
A sudden glare of sunlight, and then her feet lifted clear from the ground and she was, briefly, flying through the hot, dry air.
Then she struck the dirt in a crumpled, bone-shocked heap.
She drew breath, nearly choking on the dust kicked up in the air around her. She peered through slitted eyes, and through the settling dust clouds she could see a Gargoyle, poised statue-like a few metres away. She couldn’t be sure if it was the one that had ejected her from the cavern. She looked around, and worked out that she was in the clearing she and Tanya had observed from the top of the embankment. There were other Gargoyles nearby, some in frozen repose, others flitting about, yet others lying spread-eagled, basking in the sun.
And then she realised that some of the figures they had taken for sun-bathers were, in fact, withered, almost mummified corpses. These figures were smaller than the Gargoyles with which she had become familiar, their bodies stocky and short-limbed. There was something about them that recalled the grossly bloated figures occupying the cells.
She rolled onto her side and slowly rose to a squatting position.
None of the Gargoyles appeared to be paying her any attention. She jogged across the clearing to where a trail climbed the edge of the embankment and soon she was back in the jungle fringe, working her way across to where the others would be waiting.
“Don’t you see?” she said to Tanya, Rachel and Sue, when they had retreated into the jungle and she had described what had happened. “This is the Gargoyles in their natural state. This is how they would have been if we hadn’t somehow interrupted their natural cycle.”
“But what are they – these creatures in the caves?”
“Their society has two castes,” Corrie said. “They lay out the foodstores in the
“Keep your eyes peeled for me: I’m going to take a look.”
Corrie twisted so that her legs dangled through the opening, and then she wriggled her torso through the gap and dropped into the gloom.
The thing in the far end of the cell made a slight peeping sound, but otherwise showed no reaction to Corrie’s intrusion. She approached it, hesitantly. The thing was just a mound of flesh, fully two metres round, almost a perfect sphere. Somewhere, near the summit, there was a protrusion that may have been a head, and to either side were folds of blubber that may have served as some kind of limbs.
She touched it.
Its flesh quivered, was cold, its surface slick with exuded oil. What it reminded her of most was some kind of bizarre cross between a seal and the oily, fleshy trees of the dry jungle.
And also, it reminded her of the men they had left behind, although clearly this thing had not the slightest trace of humanity about it.
She snapped herself out of her reverie. It was as if the musty scent in the air was doping her. In the gloom, she searched about the cell, found a few meagre scraps of food: discarded, shrivelled rinds, a few rubbery, dried up gobbets of fruit-flesh, dropped out of reach of the cell’s occupant.
She stepped from the cell, into another similar one. Its occupant, too, wallowed at one end of its filthy domicile, and here she found more scraps of food, even a small number of untouched dopefruit littering the floor.
She swallowed the juices welling up in her dried out mouth. She knew she must fight the desperate urge to bite into one of these discarded fruit. She had to keep her wits about her, had to get back to the others.
Gathering her booty into a fold in the shirt knotted at her waist, Corrie passed through the cell’s narrow opening.
There was a sudden, high-pitched shriek and cool fingers closed around her arms. Chitinous mandibles flashed before her face, and the red ember glow of Gargoyle eyes.
Then she was on her rear, feet kicking feebly, as the Denebian dragged her through the cavern, one long-fingered hand wrapped around her arm, another tangled in her hair.
A sudden glare of sunlight, and then her feet lifted clear from the ground and she was, briefly, flying through the hot, dry air.
Then she struck the dirt in a crumpled, bone-shocked heap.
She drew breath, nearly choking on the dust kicked up in the air around her. She peered through slitted eyes, and through the settling dust clouds she could see a Gargoyle, poised statue-like a few metres away. She couldn’t be sure if it was the one that had ejected her from the cavern. She looked around, and worked out that she was in the clearing she and Tanya had observed from the top of the embankment. There were other Gargoyles nearby, some in frozen repose, others flitting about, yet others lying spread-eagled, basking in the sun.
And then she realised that some of the figures they had taken for sun-bathers were, in fact, withered, almost mummified corpses. These figures were smaller than the Gargoyles with which she had become familiar, their bodies stocky and short-limbed. There was something about them that recalled the grossly bloated figures occupying the cells.
She rolled onto her side and slowly rose to a squatting position.
None of the Gargoyles appeared to be paying her any attention. She jogged across the clearing to where a trail climbed the edge of the embankment and soon she was back in the jungle fringe, working her way across to where the others would be waiting.
“Don’t you see?” she said to Tanya, Rachel and Sue, when they had retreated into the jungle and she had described what had happened. “This is the Gargoyles in their natural state. This is how they would have been if we hadn’t somehow interrupted their natural cycle.”
“But what are they – these creatures in the caves?”
“Their society has two castes,” Corrie said. “They lay out the foodstores in the
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