Watson, Ian - Novel 08 by The Gardens of Delight (v1.1) Page A

Captain Van
der Veld can guide you.” Austin was already addressing Sean, Denise and Muthoni
as though who should compose the party of three was already a foregone
conclusion—chosen not by him, but by the world, a choice which he
rubber-stamped with as good a grace as possible.
                 “You
will try to find this man called Knossos, and make some sort of contact with
the God or alien superbeing who presides over things. I’d recommend your
heading, in the first instance, towards one of those peculiar stone towers with
the ‘aerials’ on them. Those who remain behind can conduct local forays to
gather data ...”
                 Austin,
for his part, had no wish to become another dispossessed, wandering Van der
Veld.
                 While,
for their part, Tanya and Paavo clove to the skirts of Schiaparelli as though they had just been whelped by the ship and
were as yet unweaned. Though Paavo did look up and rub his hands at the
prospect of gathering very local data . . .
     

 
SIX
                 The land rolled greenly toward misty
blue hills where it appeared to evaporate into the aqueous sky. In Earth terms
it did just that, for the horizon was closer than any Earth horizon. However,
this didn’t mean that they hadn’t a long way to walk; the land merely seemed to
change more rapidly than any Earthland. Soon the spire of the starship was lost
to sight.
                 Sean,
Muthoni and Denise strode along easily, led by Jeremy the once-Captain. Though
the newcomers’ feet were newly bare, as indeed were their bodies, turf and moss
were as soft as the soles of their feet still were. Briar patches and hedge
tangles were easily skirted; and as they skirted them, veering now left now
right, thickets and tree clumps seemed to form the plan of a vast open maze
with many alternative paths running through it.
                 Down
one curving pathway, lined by orange trees laden with ripe glossy fruits
waiting apparently for ever to be plucked by hands or claws or beaks—and with
no carpet of rotten, molded rind beneath—strode a snooty camel with a great
blue concave metallic leaf balanced like a scallop between two woolly-thatched
humps. The boat was full of people. Bare arms and legs stuck out, waving and
kicking, as though they were trying to unbalance the leaf-boat to escape from
it, or perhaps the opposite: to keep it from sliding from its precarious
eminence.
                 Along
another bridlepath, between osiers and golden broom, they saw a brown bear
lurking. The bear stood up promptly on its hind legs and squinted at them,
swaying about, then it turned and ponderously began to
dance. It danced slowly away down the grass path, waggling its rump as though
inviting them to join in a conga.
                They chose another way, unbeset by
beasts, at least for a little while.
                 “Tuck-tuck -tuck!’ ’
                The frantic clucking came from a
mossy dell. A rill ran through the dell into a fat green pool and out again as
though the stream had swallowed a bottle that had stuck in its neck.
                 A
red hen, as large as a sheep, was shifting to and fro fussily on a clutch of
football-size eggs. One of the eggs had just hatched. A full-grown mallard
drake was waddling away, quacking, to the water. While the mother hen clucked
in consternation, a second eggshell erupted underneath her and a second
mallard—a brunette female, this one—squirmed her way out. She seemed more
inclined to stay with the mother, though the drake had already launched himself
clumsily into the bottleneck pool.
                 “How
can a hen hatch a duck?” cried Denise.
                 “A
duckling,” Jeremy corrected her. “I agree that the drake already has his adult
plumage—but you just wait till he’s full grown!”
                 “It’s
impossible!”