“Go on and touch them,” the baron urged the crowd. “Feel the pool’s majesty.”
When Ryan, Krysty, J.B., Mildred, Jak, Dean and Leeloo laid hands on the tentacles, they uttered gasps of delight The carny chillers had exactly the same reaction.
Doc touched one, as well, to satisfy his scientist’s mind. He got no particular thrill from the contact. He found the tendril moist to his fingertips, either from something secreted through its pores or from the water dripping down the wall, and the outer skin was coarse, like shark hide. When he pressed on the tendril, the flesh beneath yielded, but it didn’t contract or in any other way respond to his touch. From this, he concluded that it was either vegetable or fungal in nature.
The baron brandished his wooden flensing knife and said, “This is how we tend the bounty.”
Carefully he used the edge of the knife to pry a thigh-sized tendril free of its grip on the rock. He lifted it up and draped it over his shoulder in order to show his audience the thousands of tiny, hairlike, adhesive-coated fibers on the underside that allowed it to cling to and grow along the solid surface. Thin strands of clear liquid drooled from the broken fibers, soaking through the back of his shirt. At the place where the tentacle exited the rock there was a large nodule. Doc recognized it as one of the globs.
“For the bounty to form and fully ripen,” Kerr continued, “the filament must be freed. Part of your work is to search the caverns for mature filaments of this size and loosen them from the rock.”
Heads nodded all around.
“The other part of your work is to harvest the bounty,” the baron said. “In doing this, you must be careful not to damage the filament. The edge of the blade should slide in this way.” He placed the knife along the underside of the tentacle he had freed, then pushed its edge against the join of nodule. “If the bounty is ripe,” he continued, “it will come off easily. Like this.”
With a wet pop, the glob separated from the tendril and Kerr caught it in his free hand.
A sudden waft of highly concentrated urea filled the antechamber. Doc averted his head and smothered a cough with his fist, but the sharp, unpleasant stench brought smiles to the faces of the others. Clearly, Doc thought, something had altered their most basic perceptions.
The baron held up the tentacle and showed the throng how the circular wound seeped the same viscous, clear liquid, then gradually puckered closed, sealing itself.
“Take only one ripe bounty for yourself,” Kerr told them. “It is your ration. Spend the rest of your time in these caverns identifying and tending the filaments.”
That was the end of the training session.
The baron didn’t invite questions from the floor. He simply turned and walked away, leaving companions and chillers to fend for themselves.
Though there were many things Doc wanted to ask him about the pool, the snow and the tendrils, he knew better than to open his mouth and draw attention to himself.
His hard experience at the hands of the predark whitecoats, and at hands of Jordan Teague, told Doc how to lay low until the right time came.
If it ever came…
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Ryan’s face hurt from smiling as he listened to Trader’s explanation of how things worked in the caverns. Trader had been like a second father to him. He had taught him leadership, discipline and how to surpass his own limits.
Now Trader was teaching him the way. The way that answered all questions. It was so clear. So clean. So simple.
Even as Ryan took in the details of the harvesting, of his responsibilities to the burning pool, the shrunken, the virtually incapacitated part of him— Ryan Cawdor the indomitable fighter, the hard-eyed realist—insisted that the Trader he knew and loved was lost to him, mebbe chilled. Trader and Abe. That diminished Ryan insisted that he couldn’t be seeing him or hearing his voice.
But the evidence of his single eye told him that he was.
And the light that shone from Trader’s face was like a beacon in the darkness.