Somehow the Mantis was not here. He had escaped into a wedge of time that might end at any instant. Why?
He slipped by huge, taut webs, wondering what got caught there. And what came to harvest the prey. Bright fruit swelled in the chinks of the canopy, dabs of color congealing like blobs, in air so thick it looked green.
—and back came the Mantis, rushing hard against his mind.
I lost you. Something—I do not know—something—is making it difficult—
In Toby’s sensorium he now sensed the Mantis far above in the esty tube of this Lane. He felt also around him the stresses that cut and frayed the Mantis’s speech.
Vagrant tensions working, blunt and voiceless. Converging.
SIX
Eating the Storm
The violence began as a flicker.
Down the long bore of the tube eased a sun-yellow trickle. At the vanishing point where the green tunnel narrowed into misty confusion the ray ebbed, flowed, seemed to Toby like a distant campfire. Yet something prickly crept into his mind.
He stood in pale darkness. No good to run anymore.
Clouds thinned above and showed the naked other side of the Lane. A bowl of clay-red timestone suddenly beamed down remorseless heat. Spirits seemed to edge forth from the green around him. Snaps and wriggling noises.
His sensorium jumped, alert, sweeping the area.
Nothing. The silence was empty. He probed the thick, moist forest to his right. It curved up into a misty distance, curling into the sky. When it became simply a filmy green it broke at last on outjuts of brown rock halfway up.
A bird landed on a limb nearby. Toby glanced at it and it said, “Help.”
Toby blinked. “Uh . . .”
The bird had wings and feet and a beak but was not a bird. Its face held huge eyes and a fleshy, pouting mouth below the beak—which was more like a nose, lemon-yellow and pointed. Even as he registered this the face worked with fevered intensity, shifting from a frown to a grimace to a fleeting smile. “I need help,” the mouth said with a perfect Bishop accent.
“Who—what—are you?”
“This place, this time, which is urgent to your needs.” The whole bird fidgeted, feathers twitching, wings vibrating like thin sheets, feet quickly shuffling on the rough branch.
“Urgent to . . . ?” No time for mysteries. “Look, there’s a Mantis up there. I need a place to hide.”
“The opposite is needed.” The bird’s beak pointed to the ground. “You must open, not close.”
“Open what?”
“A door. Essences need entrance to this esty. Quickly!”
“Uh, how?”
The bird took a step on its branch, wings fluttering. “Do not think we are neglectful of you. We do hope you live to help.”
Toby snorted. “Thanksay, friend. But what the hell—”
Into his sensorium cascaded a wash of sensations. Images. Instructions. The sense was so vital and full that he moved instantly, unbuckling his tools with one hand while he scuffed up leaves, looking for the right spot. There. Exposed esty.
Abruptly, the furnace glare above clicked off. Solid night. Where was the Mantis?
He worked in the utter solid black.
Torch, laser, microwave bursts. He could not tell how the esty responded, except for a momentary red glow.
But he felt a pulse of wrenching energy come from the spot he worked. A stab of gravitational energy released, a wave like a tide twisting at his guts.
Beneath him, a throb of energy. Mute, restive.
“Not enough,” the bird’s voice came. “Sad.”
“What more—”
“Too late.”
It came. A fever of probing energy rained around him. Sheets of pearly light shot along the great axis of this Lane. Toward him.
Something countered it. He felt without truly seeing a massive, blue-black presence. It reared up, thunderhead-thick. Bulky and bristling.
Like a top-heavy animal, head towering to the high roof of the Lane. It struck teeth of stone there and snapped at them.
The sheets of pearly light forked around this. Then they were on him, before he could believe something could move that fast. Shards of quick hotness struck down from the axis.
It attacked not merely him but the forest. Thousands of volts dropped their potentials along snaking paths in the sheared air. They struck, their transaction enacted.
