Moving closer, she saw metal stakes holding up another form of vine from which thick pods hung: a series of thorny bushes bore huge red berries, then another stand of trees and beyond the trees, against a low retaining wall were smaller plants, weed vines choking them and, on the wall, tucked into niches as if by design, a curious feathery purple moss.
Purple was not her favorite shade after the mold, Varian realized, even as she had to admit that she was looking at an overgrown garden. She turned then to the long hut and observed what she had failed to notice at first—it had no windows. A storehouse for the garden’s produce? Yes, for now that she was closer, she could see the carved panels in the door.
Vines, trees, and plants were each so carefully delineated on that door that even someone with little botanical knowledge would be able to identify the specimens once the carvings had been memorized. What had Aygar said? They had learned a long time ago to balance their diet. Varian recognized the carotene-rich grass from the Rift valley which the giffs as well as Tyrannosaurus rex had needed. Turning constantly to check against the door’s carvings, Varian found each of the plants growing in rows in the neglected garden. Divisti, the expedition’s botanist, must have been responsible for that catalog of Ireta’s edible flora.
Varian pushed her way through the overgrowth, gathering fruits which she recognized, until she reached the vine with pods. One split with ripe readiness as she touched it, exposing large pale green beans. The bean had a wholesome smell. She bit, taking the smallest possible morsel to roll about in her mouth, tensing to spit out an unwelcome flavor. But the taste was mealy, the flesh of the bean crisp, but so satisfying that she consumed the contents of the entire pod greedily. She ate as she gathered the beans, as much as her arms could hold. Then she strode back to the sled, depositing her harvest. She had wheeled back toward the garden when she exclaimed in exasperation. Climbing into the sled, she guided it to the garden.
As she picked and plucked, she was careful to take samples from each row of Divisti’s garden, including the caves or tufts of the various wall plants. She wondered if Divisti had ever thought her garden would one day succor those the Heavyworld botanist had once tried to kill. At the foot of the garden, held back by thick staves, Varian came at last to a fine stand of the thick-fuzzy leaves that the giffs had brought her for Kai’s wounds.
“So, the bloodsucker got to you, too, huh?” Varian was subtly pleased that one denizen of this planet caused the heavyworlders more pain than pleasure.
When the sled was as full as possible, she checked once more that she had a sample of each variety carved on the door of the storage barn. Elated by the unexpected dividend, she set a straight course for the giff palisades, cutting due south and speeded on her way by a smart tail wind.
She was astonished, then, no more than five minutes in the air, to see the recognizable figure of Aygar trotting along a twisting ravine.
Two thoughts occurred to her at once and she diverted the sled to come up behind him.
“Aygar, I must speak with you,” she said, and sighting a ledge beyond him, settled the airsled, waiting until he came up to her before she slid down to his level. “I’ve been trying to find you.
Base reported to me. One of our party has been attacked by some—some—thing …”
“Which sucks blood?” he asked quickly.
“You know it?”
44
Anne McCaffrey – Dinosaur Planet II – The Survivors
“We call them fringes.”
“Fringes?” Varian masked her shock with an understandable curiosity. Surely those aquatic life-forms that Terilla had named “fringes” had not been amphibious. She shuddered with revulsion.
“They come in a variety of sizes,” Aygar went on, “are warmth seekers and fasten onto their prey, preferably lying on it, otherwise enveloping it between their two halves—”
“Their what?”
“I don’t know what your training is, Rianav, but surely you have seen strange life-forms before Ireta.” Aygar knelt, taking one of his knives to draw a fringe in the dust. “They move by collapsing the parallelograms of the side: they have two digits here and here, and can use them to clasp their envelope tightly about the victim, if it is alive. If not, they settle on it, and eat away!” He shrugged with indifference. “One can usually smell them coming but, of course, you haven’t been here long enough to know, have you?”