Free Howling Stones by Alan Dean Foster Page A

control basic functions from here. If somenative were to start monkeying around with it, I’d just send it scooting out into the lagoon. Believe me, any intruder would abandon it in a hurry. The Parramati are brave enough, but they have a healthy respect for our technology, even if they don’t want any of it for themselves.” She grinned and pushed aside the branch of a succulent that had grown across the trail.
    “Also, they have a healthy respect for ghosts and spirits, and I’ve told them that one sleeps in the skimmer at all times.” She eyed him appraisingly. “You managing okay?”
    “I’m fine,” he replied irritably. “Just lead on and I’ll be right behind you.” Which, he decided, even though he did his best to focus his attention on the surrounding alien jungle, was not a bad place to be—provided he could get her to stop patronizing him. He might not be able to match her stride for stride, but he’d run marathons and could hike all day without stopping.
    The jungle was an extraordinary place, frantic with motion and sound, brilliant with exotic colors and shapes. Surrounded by dwarf trees and gigantic flowers, it was often hard to tell which was which. In contrast to the great Terran rain forests, which boasted a thousand different shades of green, the jungle on Torrelau was painted with all the colors of the rainbow. Alongside blue-black branches and silver stems, red roots and yellow bark, some of the flowers looked positively intimidated. He mentioned his observations to his companion.
    “Many of the plants here have the ability to concentrate specific minerals in their phylose.” She indicated a brace of brilliant red-and-yellow bushes. “Colekoli. Sucks up cinnabar like a sponge. I hear that in the Puralyra Archipelago north of Ophhlia there’s scrub that concentrates platinum.” She grinned. “Makes me wish I had time to do a little gardening.”
    He stepped over a protruding root. “What about the rare earths here that have the commercial interests so excited?”
    “Nice thought, but so far I haven’t been able to find a flower with a passion for niobium. Too bad. Wouldn’t stop the mining interests, though. They’d still want to dig the place up. Picking flowers would be too slow. Insufficiencies of scale.” He reached for a loop of vine to help pull himself over a steep spot. “Don’t touch that.”
    He withdrew his fingers. “Why not?” He studied the ropy liana. It looked innocent enough.
    After she’d given him a hand up, she found a dead stick and carefully gave the section of vine he’d been about to grab a sharp whack. Instantly hundreds of small, hooked thorns that had lain flush with the smooth bark of the vine snapped erect, exactly as if she’d pulled a trigger. Which, effectively, she had.
    She tossed the stick aside. “Not deadly, but extremely painful and difficult to shake off. Each thorn is lined with backward-curving barbs. If you’re not careful or you don’t know what you’re doing, the harder you struggle to free yourself the more seriously entangled you become. The plant itself isn’t carnivorous—the thorns’ design is entirely defensive—but there are plenty of scavengers in the forest ready to take advantage of any critter that gets hung up in them and exhausts itself trying to fight its way free.”
    Pulickel leaned over to examine the vine, careful not to touch it. “I can see that you haven’t been devoting
all
your time to studying the Parramati.”
    “They’ve taught me the characteristics of many plants. The teriasti vine is just one of them. Others I’ve learned about on my own.” Grabbing the hem of her shorts on her left leg, she pulled the fabric up almost to her waistline, adding to the enormous length of thigh that was alreadyvisible. Each roughly eight centimeters long, two parallel stars were etched into her flesh, pale white against her deeply tanned skin. She let the hem fall back.
    “Those haven’t healed completely