Up a Tree (p.21)
“Why can’t we have one of the cranes lower us down?” Rory asked, pointing at one of the industrial cranes that was even now hauling up a container loaded with ore.
“Because the last time we did that, one of the Iguanadons climbed up the cable and nearly got into the community. Abseil lines aren’t strong enough to hold them.”
Rory’s head juttered in a nervous nod. He could understand that. But he still didn’t like it. He looked back over the edge, it was 300 feet to the tops of the trees below, not even all the way to the ground. He stepped back, trying not to hyperventilate.
Amy stood beside him staring down the trunk with bright eyes, bouncing on her toes. “This will be fun!”
Rory glared at her.
The Doctor came up and clipped an abseil line to the parachute harness in Rory’s jacket. “Relax.” he said, as he attached a brake wheel to the line in front of him and clipped the rope dispenser, like a huge old film reel box, to his belt. “We’re going to pair up experienced abseilers with the newbies. You’ll be fine.”
Amy was avidly listening to Darvish as the brutish hunter clipped equipment to her with deft fingers and instructed her on its use in his teacher’s voice.
Rory tried to ignore the fact that they were standing on bark. The wood under his feet was dark brown and spongy, he looked over and could see the line where the lighter, harder grained wood of the inner tree started. The railings had been taken down here, to allow them access to the edge, and a flight crew was standing by, making sure they were all tied off to the thick metal eyelets that were driven into the wood back beyond the bark line. But Rory still felt a distinctly queasy rippling in his stomach.
The sun was bright on the landing field, the breeze was comfortably cool. Everyone else seemed to be calm. Bill and the other hunters were double checking that the supplies were tied down in the trams. The Trelwins had already gone over the edge, climbing down by hand.
Erik came along, checking everyone's lines and equipment. The Doctor looked up and looked around. "Where's Janet?"
Erik gave Amy's brake wheel a tug and grunted in approval. She still wasn't sure how he felt about her wearing his dead sister's clothes. Or if he knew she'd seen Janet kiss him. He gave her a level, unreadable look and turned to the Doctor.
"She's decided to stay behind and take the next courier out to Bayside, she thinks she can be more help there. And if we need a scientist, we've got you and Darvish. He's qualified in botany, geology, and zoology.”
Erik moved to check the Doctor's harness. The Doctor’s hands kept getting in his way as the Doctor clipped clips and explained how he knew how to do it all. Erik finally slapped his hands away and the Doctor pulled them up, like a little boy having his belt checked.
Erik glared at him, then moved on to Rory. He handed the brake wheel to Rory and pulled his belay line through, clipping it to the rings in the trunk. He tugged it, then checked all Rory’s harness clips and buckles.
“Keep calm. Stay focused. Take your time. Ignore the hot shots,” he jerked a thumb at the Doctor and Amy who were leaning over the edge oohing and awing at the height. Rory jerked a nod. Erik clapped him on the shoulder and moved on.
Rory rotated his shoulder and grimaced. But oddly, felt better. He jerked on his belay rope, then jerked again just to make sure. He played it out a bit and backed up, walking toward the edge, jerking himself to a halt every few feet by squeezing on the wheel lock grip.
He could do this.
“Isn’t this great?” Amy demanded, looking up, eyes shining, grinning, the wind blowing her red hair in her face. She stared out over the huge vista, the jungle looking like a cushion of broccoli below.
Rory stared at her. “I’d have you committed if I could find a sanitarium that would take you,” he said with calm conviction.
“Awww!” she bounced forward and gave him a smooch on the cheek. “You’re so sweet.”
He rolled his eyes.
“Right!” Darvish bellowed with a trollish set of lungs, his voice carrying over the wind. “Tram teams first.”
The Doctor, Amy, and Rory turned their attention farther down the line. The rest of the hunters had doubled up. One on each side of a loaded tram. They tipped the trams over the side.
Rory yelped a bit, his stomach freefalling, until he noticed that each of the trams was tethered, front and back, to a hunter on each side.
Bill and Jute, Pickles and Erik, Eula and George, and the other Brothers, all backed over the side of the cliff, a tram suspended between each of them.
The antigravs were apparently strong enough to keep the weight from pulling the hunters off the stump, they belayed down, jockeying the trams between them. Darvish stood overhead, watching until he was satisfied.
“Right, now the rest of you. I’ll take end point.” He trotted over and clipped his line to the end anchor loop. He nodded to the flight crew which was standing by to watch over the lines. He stepped back and then over the edge, tilting out backward, line taught.
“Keep an eye open for gun placements,” he said. Then stepped back and disappeared with a zizz of uncoiling rope.
“Cool!” Amy walked backwards and bounced over the edge. Rory swallowed a scream. But he stared fixedly at her ropes, they bounced once, twice. He released a breath.
“Come on, Rory,” The Doctor said, gripping him on the shoulder. “Just back up. Lean back. Let the rope take your weight. All you have to do is walk backward. Once you get used to it, you can start to belay longer jumps. Just ease up on the brake and let gravity work.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Rory said.
The Doctor grinned a laugh. That happy little boy grin that said nothing could be wrong in the world. “Don’t worry. And remember, if worst comes to worst, we still have our chutes.
“Come on. On the count of three. One, two...”
Rory walked back, his toes unconsciously gripping at the bark through his soft boots. He leaned back on his rope, felt the corner of the bark bite into the ball of his foot and leaned back.
“Three!” the Doctor said. And disappeared below him.
Rory ignored the fact that his larynx was clutching his throat like a monkey in a tree. He stepped down, slipped, screamed, slammed his foot back against the bark and staggered backward, downward, three steps.
Don’t panic. Be cool! Don’t look down. Think of something else.
He tried desperately to ignore the wind rushing past him. The empty sucking feel of nothingness below him. The almost fluorescent blueness of the sky overhead. I’m just walking. I’m just walking backward, sitting in my harness. Nothing important.
He stepped backward, again, again.
Gradually the lip rose up over him, and the world became nothing but a panoply of dusty gray bark.
This would be so much easier and faster if they could have just taken the Tardis. His mind had been nagging at him all day, he knew that people were dying, even as they played cards on the shuttle, even as he took time out to play a volleyball game, for goodness sake!
Step. Step.
Yet, now that he thought about it. They’d only got back from their first safari yesterday.
Step. Step.
They were actually making pretty good time. Yeah, the Tardis would be faster. But, with the zone causing electromagnetic disruption, he had no idea if it could even materialize at the source.
Step. Step.
Besides, who knows how long it would have taken to haul the Tardis out of that pool. This way might actually have been quicker.
“Hey, Doctor!” Amy yelled, from somewhere off to his right. “Is this one of them?”
Rory looked down and to the side. The “ground” he was standing on, was a totally vertical cliff. His hand spastically gripped his brake wheel harder. He jerked to a stop. He calmed his breathing, and relaxed his grip on the brake slightly.
Off to his right the Doctor swung over to see what Amy was pointing to. She’d found something sprouting out of the bark.
-----
The Doctor released some slack on his rope and ran horizontally, in an arch, over to Amy’s rope. He grabbed her belay line and anchored himself.
“Is that one of them?” Amy asked, slightly below him.
He grinned down at her. She grinned back, her hair streaming downward like lipstick in the rain.
“Yeah, good spotting.” He pulled out the sonic, and keeping a good grip on it (he eyed the hundreds of feet drop below him, he didn’t want to lose it up here) he flicked it open and scanned the CCT camera and dual laser placements sprouting out of the bark.
The CCT camera swiveled to look at him, and he waved cheerily into the lens, careful not to point the sonic into the monitor. He checked the connectors and studied his sonic. “This one seems to be in good working order guys!” he yelled into the camera. “Energy levels good and the laser crystals are intact.”
The CCT camera nodded at him, then swiveled back outward and downward. The gun stalks rotated like a man limbering up his arms.
“Why have they got CCT cameras on a tree stump?” Amy yelled up to him. Her eyes cut sideways to check on Rory’s progress. He was walking downwards, slow but steady. She grinned. That’s her man.
She looked back up at the Doctor, to see he’d been checking too. They shared a fond smile.
“It’s not like anyone’s going to be jaywalking out here,” she added, waving at the camera.
He flipped the sonic screwdriver, completely forgetting his caution of earlier and pocketed it. “Defensive measure,” he yelled back down, the wind snatching at their voices, even as close as they were. “Lots of the jungle animals can climb. So they have a bolewatch here too. Wouldn’t want anything to get up top and climb down into the community.”
Amy nodded. Then jerked on her belay line, causing a ripple up to where he was holding on. “Race you down!”
“Only to the red zone!” he yelled back.
She whooped and took off her brake, she zizzed down with a bound.
He released her rope and swung back to his own lane. He released his own brake, the wind whipped at him as he kicked back, leaning into his harness.
“Come on, Rory!” he yelled up.
Rory stared down, to see his wife and his friend disappearing below him. “Maniacs!” he yelled down.
The wind whipped his voice away.
-----
He bounded back and down, ten feet at a jump. His line played out blue, hypnotic, whizzing through the wheel. Then it suddenly flashed red.
Rory immediately clamped down on the wheel lock. He bumped forward into the bark. He grabbed a handhold. Fortunately, the bark on this tree was smoother than the one on the other home tree, otherwise it would be like trying to climb down vertical gulleys.
Chitchi stopped above him. The Trelwin, crawling upside down like a squirrel, had been accompanying him the last several bounds.
Rory stopped and looked sideways. All the other climbers had stopped as well. When he looked down, he could see why.
The tree was undercut just below them.
Past this point there wasn’t any trunk to bounce against.
Farther along, he could see the hunter teams lowering their trams down past the cutoff point. Going straight down. He saw Bill and Jute settle into their harnesses, sitting, and slowly lower themselves down, guiding the tram between them.
Farther along, the other teams were starting to do the same.
Before he could wonder what to do next he felt a hand on his shoulder. He jumped. Fortunately the wheel lock stayed locked.
“Sorry,” the Doctor said beside him.
Rory turned to look over his shoulder and was surprised to see the Doctor standing beside him, with Zeke’s face sitting on his shoulder.
He reared back in surprise. His foot slipped, but he slammed it back against the tree in a spurt of panic. “Don’t do that!”
“Sorry,” the Doctor said again. Once he fully turned, Rory could see that Zeke was actually wrapped around the Doctor’s back like a speckled gray backpack, the suedy monkey-face looking over the Doctor’s shoulder.
“What’s going on?” Rory asked.
“I forgot about the undercut,” the Doctor said. He waved a hand at the artificial canyon just below them, raw smooth wood, running horizontal as far as the eye could see, cut straight back into the trunk a good 70 meters.
“It’s like the lowest platform on the tree,” the Doctor explained, wiping his hair out of his eyes as the wind buffeted them.
Rory realized his butt was getting sore. All this pressure on the harness was a real pain. He shifted.
“It’s a defensive measure,” the Doctor continued. “It’s meant to keep jungle animals from climbing up. But it means the Trelwin can’t climb down, either. No handholds. We have to help them down,” the Doctor said.
Rory nodded, he could see past the Doctor where Darvish was helping Amy start to inch down past the undercut, both of them sitting in their slings, ropes looped together. Nelda on Amy’s back.
Rory looked up at Chitchi. “Need a ride, buddy?”
The Trelwin looked down at him with blank, curious, animal eyes. Yet Rory knew he understood more than he seemed to. The Trelwin perched above him, gripping upside down on the bark like a chipmunk, his overlong limbs giving him the unsettling look of a spider.
The Doctor and Zeke must have smelled something to him, Rory got a waft of something before the wind blew it away. He felt Chitchi’s strong hand grip his wrist. He looked up.
The Trelwin looked at him hesitantly. His hide was soft, like a velvet teddy bear, but as strong as cable. Rory nodded and leaned closer to the wall.
It was a creepy feeling, like something out of a monster movie, as the Trelwin crawled down over his back. He felt the wiry body settle against his backbone, the back legs wrapped around his hips and both back hands grasped the rope in front of his stomach.
The Trelwin’s upper arms wrapped around his chest. Strangely not strangling him, or cutting off his breathing, for all he could feel they were strong enough to crush him with a hug. Maybe it was how they learned to hold on as babies.
Rory shrugged at the thought, and felt the Trelwin settle more firmly against his back. The suedy face settled on his shoulder. The weirdly soft cheek next to his own.
Okay, that was creepy, in a sort of cuddly way. He looked over at the Doctor. The Doctor was grinning at him with approval.
“I’m going to wind my rope around yours, like Amy and Darvish have done,” the Doctor yelled over the wind. “I’ll lock my rope into the loop on your brake wheel, so we don’t spin apart. Get ready to brace your feet against mine.”
Rory nodded, then held still as the Doctor crawled under him, then back up and over to the other side, he watched as the Doctor slipped his rope into the extra clip on his brake wheel that he hadn’t known the use for. Then felt awkward for a moment as it felt like the Doctor was playing footsie with him, until they could get their boots braced against each other.
And all that time he was trying to ignore the fact that they were doing it all halfway up a cliff.
They lowered down, until Rory could see the roof of the undercut, over them, laser smooth, 70 meters deep, stretching all the way around the tree. He supposed it didn't matter if they cut around the whole tree, since it was already dead.
He and the Doctor synchronized the releases on their wheel locks, lowering down together into an alien jungle. A monkey literally on each of their backs.
Leadworth was never like this.
-----
About 20 feet below treetop level, the trunk had angled out far enough again that the Trelwins leapt off of them and continued down the bark on their own.
The Doctor and Rory were the last ones down.
“Bout time you two made it!” Amy said, bouncing up to them, red cheeked with excitement. She punched Rory on the shoulder and helped them unbuckled their coupled wheel locks.
He and the Doctor stumbled backward from each other, like two drunken sailors getting their land legs.
All around them, other ropes were fluttering down from the top, being sucked back into their cartridges like tape measures.
Darvish walked up, a com unit to his ear. “10 and 9 ready to detach,” he said into the device.
“You better stand back,” he said as the Doctor and Rory’s lines suddenly went slack, then started spiraling down like snakes. Hundreds of feet of ribbon rope flopped down with snakey grace. Darvish hit a button on each of their reels. They started sucking up the rope, even as it landed.
“Better take those off before their done,” he said. “The recoil at the end is a killer.”
He stomped off and the Doctor and Rory hastily scrambled to unclip the containers from their belt harnesses.
-----
“Dang, I’m bushed.” Rory staggered to the side and sat down on the sawed off stump of a sapling. Comparatively speaking. He looked up at the gray-barked wall of the tree towering above them. It wasn’t like being at the the base of a tree so much as like sitting outside the wall of Alcatraz. He couldn’t even see any buttress roots from here.
It had been a long day, he and Amy had only gotten about 4 hours of sleep the night before, before they’d left in the shuttle, and none of them had got much sleep the night before that.
“Here,” the Doctor said, holding out his hand. There was a bean in it.
“What’s this?” Rory asked, taking it. It was an unremarkable brown bean, looking a bit raisiny, like it had been dried.
“Cola bean,” the Doctor said.
Rory stared. Then stared some more. “Are you telling me, that you,” he put emphasis on the word, “are walking around with a concentrated form of caffeine in your pocket?”
“Yeah, why?” the Doctor said, popping a bean in his mouth. Rory stared in horror.
"Right!" Darvish clapped his hands like a thunderclap, gaining the attention of everyone in the clearing. George and Garon were just towing in the last of the trams.
Amy walked up and the Doctor handed her a cola bean. She took it without comment.
"Erik, I expect your team to follow the leads of my crew," Darvish said. "This isn't your usual area, and we know the local geography and fauna."
Erik nodded. The other hunters all looked at each other and rearranged their mental pecking orders.
Darvish pointed at himself with one large hand. "I'm in charge of the trek." He pointed at Erik. "Erik's in charge of the mission." He pointed a long finger at the Doctor. "The Doctor's in charge of the technical end.
"You all know the drill," he concluded. "Keep your eyes peeled, your weapons primed, and your feet dry." The others all nodded, as if this was a familiar litany.
"Normally we'd be walking. But since this is an emergency, we'll be riding the carts whenever possible. We've outfitted them with mining lasers to cut through the undergrowth. George, Garon, you're in charge of those." The two brothers nodded.
Darvish looked up at the sky. It was darker here in the trees, the sun seeming lower than it had from the landing field. "I know a lot of you haven't gotten much sleep since this all started. That's why I let my guys sleep late this morning. We can cover the first shift and let you catch up. We'll still be camping in familiar territory tonight. But until then, we push it. People's lives are depending on us.
"Check the gear and get stowed. We move out in ten." Everyone broke up, Darvish waved George and Garon over to the armed trams. Bill and Pickles headed for the piles of supplies. Eldon and Jute started gathering up the rope cartridges.
Erik walked over and handed Rory a machete. He handed the Doctor and Amy water canteens.
That's when Amy realized. "It's not hot!"
The Doctor grinned at her and slung his canteen over his shoulder. "Not all jungles are tropical jungles, Amy."
She grunted at him, and he laughed, they wandered off to help Jute gather up the last of the rope cartridges.
Rory looked up at the jungle trees at the edge of the clearing, wondering where the Trelwins had got to. He hoped they hadn't wandered off.
He found Zeke up on a branch, taste testing the local food. He couldn't tell if it was a bug or a berry from this distance, and didn't want to know. He could still remember the unnerving feeling of Chitchi's breath in his ear as they'd descended the last stretch.
If Zeke was here, Chitchi wouldn't be far off. And he doubted Nelda would abandon the Doctor now, although he didn't see her white hide anywhere.
Rory levered himself up and wandered over to where Darvish and the brothers were inspecting the lasers. He may as well learn how to be useful.
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“Because the last time we did that, one of the Iguanadons climbed up the cable and nearly got into the community. Abseil lines aren’t strong enough to hold them.”
Rory’s head juttered in a nervous nod. He could understand that. But he still didn’t like it. He looked back over the edge, it was 300 feet to the tops of the trees below, not even all the way to the ground. He stepped back, trying not to hyperventilate.
Amy stood beside him staring down the trunk with bright eyes, bouncing on her toes. “This will be fun!”
Rory glared at her.
The Doctor came up and clipped an abseil line to the parachute harness in Rory’s jacket. “Relax.” he said, as he attached a brake wheel to the line in front of him and clipped the rope dispenser, like a huge old film reel box, to his belt. “We’re going to pair up experienced abseilers with the newbies. You’ll be fine.”
Amy was avidly listening to Darvish as the brutish hunter clipped equipment to her with deft fingers and instructed her on its use in his teacher’s voice.
Rory tried to ignore the fact that they were standing on bark. The wood under his feet was dark brown and spongy, he looked over and could see the line where the lighter, harder grained wood of the inner tree started. The railings had been taken down here, to allow them access to the edge, and a flight crew was standing by, making sure they were all tied off to the thick metal eyelets that were driven into the wood back beyond the bark line. But Rory still felt a distinctly queasy rippling in his stomach.
The sun was bright on the landing field, the breeze was comfortably cool. Everyone else seemed to be calm. Bill and the other hunters were double checking that the supplies were tied down in the trams. The Trelwins had already gone over the edge, climbing down by hand.
Erik came along, checking everyone's lines and equipment. The Doctor looked up and looked around. "Where's Janet?"
Erik gave Amy's brake wheel a tug and grunted in approval. She still wasn't sure how he felt about her wearing his dead sister's clothes. Or if he knew she'd seen Janet kiss him. He gave her a level, unreadable look and turned to the Doctor.
"She's decided to stay behind and take the next courier out to Bayside, she thinks she can be more help there. And if we need a scientist, we've got you and Darvish. He's qualified in botany, geology, and zoology.”
Erik moved to check the Doctor's harness. The Doctor’s hands kept getting in his way as the Doctor clipped clips and explained how he knew how to do it all. Erik finally slapped his hands away and the Doctor pulled them up, like a little boy having his belt checked.
Erik glared at him, then moved on to Rory. He handed the brake wheel to Rory and pulled his belay line through, clipping it to the rings in the trunk. He tugged it, then checked all Rory’s harness clips and buckles.
“Keep calm. Stay focused. Take your time. Ignore the hot shots,” he jerked a thumb at the Doctor and Amy who were leaning over the edge oohing and awing at the height. Rory jerked a nod. Erik clapped him on the shoulder and moved on.
Rory rotated his shoulder and grimaced. But oddly, felt better. He jerked on his belay rope, then jerked again just to make sure. He played it out a bit and backed up, walking toward the edge, jerking himself to a halt every few feet by squeezing on the wheel lock grip.
He could do this.
“Isn’t this great?” Amy demanded, looking up, eyes shining, grinning, the wind blowing her red hair in her face. She stared out over the huge vista, the jungle looking like a cushion of broccoli below.
Rory stared at her. “I’d have you committed if I could find a sanitarium that would take you,” he said with calm conviction.
“Awww!” she bounced forward and gave him a smooch on the cheek. “You’re so sweet.”
He rolled his eyes.
“Right!” Darvish bellowed with a trollish set of lungs, his voice carrying over the wind. “Tram teams first.”
The Doctor, Amy, and Rory turned their attention farther down the line. The rest of the hunters had doubled up. One on each side of a loaded tram. They tipped the trams over the side.
Rory yelped a bit, his stomach freefalling, until he noticed that each of the trams was tethered, front and back, to a hunter on each side.
Bill and Jute, Pickles and Erik, Eula and George, and the other Brothers, all backed over the side of the cliff, a tram suspended between each of them.
The antigravs were apparently strong enough to keep the weight from pulling the hunters off the stump, they belayed down, jockeying the trams between them. Darvish stood overhead, watching until he was satisfied.
“Right, now the rest of you. I’ll take end point.” He trotted over and clipped his line to the end anchor loop. He nodded to the flight crew which was standing by to watch over the lines. He stepped back and then over the edge, tilting out backward, line taught.
“Keep an eye open for gun placements,” he said. Then stepped back and disappeared with a zizz of uncoiling rope.
“Cool!” Amy walked backwards and bounced over the edge. Rory swallowed a scream. But he stared fixedly at her ropes, they bounced once, twice. He released a breath.
“Come on, Rory,” The Doctor said, gripping him on the shoulder. “Just back up. Lean back. Let the rope take your weight. All you have to do is walk backward. Once you get used to it, you can start to belay longer jumps. Just ease up on the brake and let gravity work.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Rory said.
The Doctor grinned a laugh. That happy little boy grin that said nothing could be wrong in the world. “Don’t worry. And remember, if worst comes to worst, we still have our chutes.
“Come on. On the count of three. One, two...”
Rory walked back, his toes unconsciously gripping at the bark through his soft boots. He leaned back on his rope, felt the corner of the bark bite into the ball of his foot and leaned back.
“Three!” the Doctor said. And disappeared below him.
Rory ignored the fact that his larynx was clutching his throat like a monkey in a tree. He stepped down, slipped, screamed, slammed his foot back against the bark and staggered backward, downward, three steps.
Don’t panic. Be cool! Don’t look down. Think of something else.
He tried desperately to ignore the wind rushing past him. The empty sucking feel of nothingness below him. The almost fluorescent blueness of the sky overhead. I’m just walking. I’m just walking backward, sitting in my harness. Nothing important.
He stepped backward, again, again.
Gradually the lip rose up over him, and the world became nothing but a panoply of dusty gray bark.
This would be so much easier and faster if they could have just taken the Tardis. His mind had been nagging at him all day, he knew that people were dying, even as they played cards on the shuttle, even as he took time out to play a volleyball game, for goodness sake!
Step. Step.
Yet, now that he thought about it. They’d only got back from their first safari yesterday.
Step. Step.
They were actually making pretty good time. Yeah, the Tardis would be faster. But, with the zone causing electromagnetic disruption, he had no idea if it could even materialize at the source.
Step. Step.
Besides, who knows how long it would have taken to haul the Tardis out of that pool. This way might actually have been quicker.
“Hey, Doctor!” Amy yelled, from somewhere off to his right. “Is this one of them?”
Rory looked down and to the side. The “ground” he was standing on, was a totally vertical cliff. His hand spastically gripped his brake wheel harder. He jerked to a stop. He calmed his breathing, and relaxed his grip on the brake slightly.
Off to his right the Doctor swung over to see what Amy was pointing to. She’d found something sprouting out of the bark.
-----
The Doctor released some slack on his rope and ran horizontally, in an arch, over to Amy’s rope. He grabbed her belay line and anchored himself.
“Is that one of them?” Amy asked, slightly below him.
He grinned down at her. She grinned back, her hair streaming downward like lipstick in the rain.
“Yeah, good spotting.” He pulled out the sonic, and keeping a good grip on it (he eyed the hundreds of feet drop below him, he didn’t want to lose it up here) he flicked it open and scanned the CCT camera and dual laser placements sprouting out of the bark.
The CCT camera swiveled to look at him, and he waved cheerily into the lens, careful not to point the sonic into the monitor. He checked the connectors and studied his sonic. “This one seems to be in good working order guys!” he yelled into the camera. “Energy levels good and the laser crystals are intact.”
The CCT camera nodded at him, then swiveled back outward and downward. The gun stalks rotated like a man limbering up his arms.
“Why have they got CCT cameras on a tree stump?” Amy yelled up to him. Her eyes cut sideways to check on Rory’s progress. He was walking downwards, slow but steady. She grinned. That’s her man.
She looked back up at the Doctor, to see he’d been checking too. They shared a fond smile.
“It’s not like anyone’s going to be jaywalking out here,” she added, waving at the camera.
He flipped the sonic screwdriver, completely forgetting his caution of earlier and pocketed it. “Defensive measure,” he yelled back down, the wind snatching at their voices, even as close as they were. “Lots of the jungle animals can climb. So they have a bolewatch here too. Wouldn’t want anything to get up top and climb down into the community.”
Amy nodded. Then jerked on her belay line, causing a ripple up to where he was holding on. “Race you down!”
“Only to the red zone!” he yelled back.
She whooped and took off her brake, she zizzed down with a bound.
He released her rope and swung back to his own lane. He released his own brake, the wind whipped at him as he kicked back, leaning into his harness.
“Come on, Rory!” he yelled up.
Rory stared down, to see his wife and his friend disappearing below him. “Maniacs!” he yelled down.
The wind whipped his voice away.
-----
He bounded back and down, ten feet at a jump. His line played out blue, hypnotic, whizzing through the wheel. Then it suddenly flashed red.
Rory immediately clamped down on the wheel lock. He bumped forward into the bark. He grabbed a handhold. Fortunately, the bark on this tree was smoother than the one on the other home tree, otherwise it would be like trying to climb down vertical gulleys.
Chitchi stopped above him. The Trelwin, crawling upside down like a squirrel, had been accompanying him the last several bounds.
Rory stopped and looked sideways. All the other climbers had stopped as well. When he looked down, he could see why.
The tree was undercut just below them.
Past this point there wasn’t any trunk to bounce against.
Farther along, he could see the hunter teams lowering their trams down past the cutoff point. Going straight down. He saw Bill and Jute settle into their harnesses, sitting, and slowly lower themselves down, guiding the tram between them.
Farther along, the other teams were starting to do the same.
Before he could wonder what to do next he felt a hand on his shoulder. He jumped. Fortunately the wheel lock stayed locked.
“Sorry,” the Doctor said beside him.
Rory turned to look over his shoulder and was surprised to see the Doctor standing beside him, with Zeke’s face sitting on his shoulder.
He reared back in surprise. His foot slipped, but he slammed it back against the tree in a spurt of panic. “Don’t do that!”
“Sorry,” the Doctor said again. Once he fully turned, Rory could see that Zeke was actually wrapped around the Doctor’s back like a speckled gray backpack, the suedy monkey-face looking over the Doctor’s shoulder.
“What’s going on?” Rory asked.
“I forgot about the undercut,” the Doctor said. He waved a hand at the artificial canyon just below them, raw smooth wood, running horizontal as far as the eye could see, cut straight back into the trunk a good 70 meters.
“It’s like the lowest platform on the tree,” the Doctor explained, wiping his hair out of his eyes as the wind buffeted them.
Rory realized his butt was getting sore. All this pressure on the harness was a real pain. He shifted.
“It’s a defensive measure,” the Doctor continued. “It’s meant to keep jungle animals from climbing up. But it means the Trelwin can’t climb down, either. No handholds. We have to help them down,” the Doctor said.
Rory nodded, he could see past the Doctor where Darvish was helping Amy start to inch down past the undercut, both of them sitting in their slings, ropes looped together. Nelda on Amy’s back.
Rory looked up at Chitchi. “Need a ride, buddy?”
The Trelwin looked down at him with blank, curious, animal eyes. Yet Rory knew he understood more than he seemed to. The Trelwin perched above him, gripping upside down on the bark like a chipmunk, his overlong limbs giving him the unsettling look of a spider.
The Doctor and Zeke must have smelled something to him, Rory got a waft of something before the wind blew it away. He felt Chitchi’s strong hand grip his wrist. He looked up.
The Trelwin looked at him hesitantly. His hide was soft, like a velvet teddy bear, but as strong as cable. Rory nodded and leaned closer to the wall.
It was a creepy feeling, like something out of a monster movie, as the Trelwin crawled down over his back. He felt the wiry body settle against his backbone, the back legs wrapped around his hips and both back hands grasped the rope in front of his stomach.
The Trelwin’s upper arms wrapped around his chest. Strangely not strangling him, or cutting off his breathing, for all he could feel they were strong enough to crush him with a hug. Maybe it was how they learned to hold on as babies.
Rory shrugged at the thought, and felt the Trelwin settle more firmly against his back. The suedy face settled on his shoulder. The weirdly soft cheek next to his own.
Okay, that was creepy, in a sort of cuddly way. He looked over at the Doctor. The Doctor was grinning at him with approval.
“I’m going to wind my rope around yours, like Amy and Darvish have done,” the Doctor yelled over the wind. “I’ll lock my rope into the loop on your brake wheel, so we don’t spin apart. Get ready to brace your feet against mine.”
Rory nodded, then held still as the Doctor crawled under him, then back up and over to the other side, he watched as the Doctor slipped his rope into the extra clip on his brake wheel that he hadn’t known the use for. Then felt awkward for a moment as it felt like the Doctor was playing footsie with him, until they could get their boots braced against each other.
And all that time he was trying to ignore the fact that they were doing it all halfway up a cliff.
They lowered down, until Rory could see the roof of the undercut, over them, laser smooth, 70 meters deep, stretching all the way around the tree. He supposed it didn't matter if they cut around the whole tree, since it was already dead.
He and the Doctor synchronized the releases on their wheel locks, lowering down together into an alien jungle. A monkey literally on each of their backs.
Leadworth was never like this.
-----
About 20 feet below treetop level, the trunk had angled out far enough again that the Trelwins leapt off of them and continued down the bark on their own.
The Doctor and Rory were the last ones down.
“Bout time you two made it!” Amy said, bouncing up to them, red cheeked with excitement. She punched Rory on the shoulder and helped them unbuckled their coupled wheel locks.
He and the Doctor stumbled backward from each other, like two drunken sailors getting their land legs.
All around them, other ropes were fluttering down from the top, being sucked back into their cartridges like tape measures.
Darvish walked up, a com unit to his ear. “10 and 9 ready to detach,” he said into the device.
“You better stand back,” he said as the Doctor and Rory’s lines suddenly went slack, then started spiraling down like snakes. Hundreds of feet of ribbon rope flopped down with snakey grace. Darvish hit a button on each of their reels. They started sucking up the rope, even as it landed.
“Better take those off before their done,” he said. “The recoil at the end is a killer.”
He stomped off and the Doctor and Rory hastily scrambled to unclip the containers from their belt harnesses.
-----
“Dang, I’m bushed.” Rory staggered to the side and sat down on the sawed off stump of a sapling. Comparatively speaking. He looked up at the gray-barked wall of the tree towering above them. It wasn’t like being at the the base of a tree so much as like sitting outside the wall of Alcatraz. He couldn’t even see any buttress roots from here.
It had been a long day, he and Amy had only gotten about 4 hours of sleep the night before, before they’d left in the shuttle, and none of them had got much sleep the night before that.
“Here,” the Doctor said, holding out his hand. There was a bean in it.
“What’s this?” Rory asked, taking it. It was an unremarkable brown bean, looking a bit raisiny, like it had been dried.
“Cola bean,” the Doctor said.
Rory stared. Then stared some more. “Are you telling me, that you,” he put emphasis on the word, “are walking around with a concentrated form of caffeine in your pocket?”
“Yeah, why?” the Doctor said, popping a bean in his mouth. Rory stared in horror.
"Right!" Darvish clapped his hands like a thunderclap, gaining the attention of everyone in the clearing. George and Garon were just towing in the last of the trams.
Amy walked up and the Doctor handed her a cola bean. She took it without comment.
"Erik, I expect your team to follow the leads of my crew," Darvish said. "This isn't your usual area, and we know the local geography and fauna."
Erik nodded. The other hunters all looked at each other and rearranged their mental pecking orders.
Darvish pointed at himself with one large hand. "I'm in charge of the trek." He pointed at Erik. "Erik's in charge of the mission." He pointed a long finger at the Doctor. "The Doctor's in charge of the technical end.
"You all know the drill," he concluded. "Keep your eyes peeled, your weapons primed, and your feet dry." The others all nodded, as if this was a familiar litany.
"Normally we'd be walking. But since this is an emergency, we'll be riding the carts whenever possible. We've outfitted them with mining lasers to cut through the undergrowth. George, Garon, you're in charge of those." The two brothers nodded.
Darvish looked up at the sky. It was darker here in the trees, the sun seeming lower than it had from the landing field. "I know a lot of you haven't gotten much sleep since this all started. That's why I let my guys sleep late this morning. We can cover the first shift and let you catch up. We'll still be camping in familiar territory tonight. But until then, we push it. People's lives are depending on us.
"Check the gear and get stowed. We move out in ten." Everyone broke up, Darvish waved George and Garon over to the armed trams. Bill and Pickles headed for the piles of supplies. Eldon and Jute started gathering up the rope cartridges.
Erik walked over and handed Rory a machete. He handed the Doctor and Amy water canteens.
That's when Amy realized. "It's not hot!"
The Doctor grinned at her and slung his canteen over his shoulder. "Not all jungles are tropical jungles, Amy."
She grunted at him, and he laughed, they wandered off to help Jute gather up the last of the rope cartridges.
Rory looked up at the jungle trees at the edge of the clearing, wondering where the Trelwins had got to. He hoped they hadn't wandered off.
He found Zeke up on a branch, taste testing the local food. He couldn't tell if it was a bug or a berry from this distance, and didn't want to know. He could still remember the unnerving feeling of Chitchi's breath in his ear as they'd descended the last stretch.
If Zeke was here, Chitchi wouldn't be far off. And he doubted Nelda would abandon the Doctor now, although he didn't see her white hide anywhere.
Rory levered himself up and wandered over to where Darvish and the brothers were inspecting the lasers. He may as well learn how to be useful.
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