The stream was deep, about a fathom, swelling over rounded rock between mossy, fern-festooned banks near full flood. A man tossed into that current would be swept away.
Bing-Ham had tripped off his shirt slacks and tie to expose his bronzed stoutness in a savage loincloth. He stopped and took his left hand, the right forever holding the tomahawk and drew aside some moss to expose a black earth, a rich ashen clay which looked like potting soil. He used this to smear his body. He then took that sheet of moss and scrubbed his face, staining it, then streak his face with the black soil. This strange tableaux held for a minute as they all looked nervously about at their new primeval setting.
Something darted across the stream ahead of Bing-Ham, a large ostrich with an ax-like beak, much heavier than an ostrich, splashing through the from west to east, then looking north down the trail at they the invaders. This thing seemed entirely flightless, its wings used for balance only. In the eyes it demonstrated a brute, reptilian ferocity, a crimson red like the Phoenix, but without that keen intelligence. What intelligence there was there did denote a ravenous need to feed.
The thing keened like a horn stepped forward and Richard drew his revolver, raising is other hand to hold fire, and realized, once again it was not there. The Sergeant noted this and raised his. Something about that tall man raising his hand set the bird in a fury. It was perhaps nine or ten feet as it reared, then blew its horn like call, and strode off in a lumbering gait to the east, through the thick crackle of fallen boughs and the rustle of brushing ferns.
Bing-Ham breathed a sight of relief, as did they all and the pace was regained, a slow walk, that permitted the scout to check the trail and pick his way, the officers to look ahead and behind and the NCOs to the side, the soldiers following their leaders gaze for quicker action. Richard notes noted that his men LaFano and Pope were armed each with Colt 0.45 caliber revolvers on their right hip, a German trench knife on their left hip, and that a boarding ax, a wicked modern take on Bing-Ham’s Indian ax, rode easily, even criminally in their left hands.
Along a gentle rise they traced the east bank of the river among the ferns, giant ferns, cedars and willows. One gigantic alder, a great almost white tree, was hollow on its north-facing base, between two great roots. There, looked out upon them an armadillo that must have been as large as a prize hog. It backed further in and blinked its dull glassy eyes at them.
In the trees, parrots flocked, ravens stood off alone or in pairs, like witnesses to eternity. The river was inhabited mostly by trout and sturgeon. Where the birds spied upon them attentive to their presence, the fish, who could have been threatened by men, seemed unconcerned with their passage and even their drawing of water. This water was the coolest, most pure and satisfying water Richard had ever tasted.
‘Do Phoenix Kind dip into our habituation zone to feed on our minds, our souls, like we draw water and even fish from their life’s stage?’
‘Yes,’ came a thought into his mind, from a source he had not since been contacted in this way.
Svetlana was a telepath. Bing-Ham’s savage genes somehow permitted him to intuit his thoughts… and required close proximity. The terror bird that had somehow transferred to him this ability required one to hear its song or gaze into its eyes.
‘Who or what is this?’
‘Come closer,’ came the thought, ‘you know the way.’
“Yes,” he muttered, “300 paces ahead…”
“No,” cautioned Bing-Ham, placing is hand on Richard’s shoulder and breaking the spell, “Sir, do not muse or mull over thoughts. As men use traps, wire, mines to protect our fortresses, Phoenix Kind target the mind.”
Richard shook himself, and found he was being regarded by LaFano in a brash way. Richard snorted, “Why, of course you are immune!”
“To what, Boss?” answered the little old goon.
Richard, sighed, lowered his head, and asked, “Honorable footman, please, take the lead, just behind Bing-Ham, and let not a thought upon the fate of humanity trouble you passage.”
“Yez, Boss,” obeyed the brute, and jaunty as a cock took up the trace, Pope second, Richard next, and Color Sergeant Major fourth in the depleted Barrett contingent.
‘It is hard not to wonder in such a place of wonder.’
‘Yes, indeed Outer One,’ came the alien thought.
Barrett stopped and looked at Bing-Ham, hissing, “I am cursed with a rampant mind.”
“Or blessed,” hissed the man of science devolving to his savage ancestry before his eyes, “The footmen and I will stand watch, Sir.”
The Color Sergeant signaled for a watch of the line, to which the Germans crouched and faced in all directions, at the grim ready. The two Russians hurried to his side.
Richard hissed, “Are you getting the thoughts?”
“Captain,” whispered the Russian, “my mind is impenetrable. I am a duelist; what to others is empathy is to me an anatomy of my foe’s weakness. I, am a psychopath. Only honor and duty keep me from the monstrous path.”
“An intelligence is beckoning me to come to it 300 paces ahead. A trap, an ally, a ruse?”
The thin mustache of the Commander mimicked his narrowing eyes as he determined a course, “We are headed there, in any event—beating the bush will run us into one of those terrible flightless birds.”
Richard looked to his sergeant with a nod and the tall man signaled ‘Line ahead,’ and they marched, warily, deeper into the meadow which did decline and become moister before rising again some 300 paces ahead.
Levsky hissed, “Something on the first low bench, look at the size of those trees where the game path winds.”
“A grove, a circle of great cedars.”
Savage Bing-Ham was creeping up the incline ahead, LaFono and Pope spread out behind foot-padding their way through mossy deadfalls, waving ferns of an enormous size, the coppery trunks of cedars. A great variety of fungi sprouted in all colors. Something like morning glory, in great profusion, crept its ivy way up the certain trunks of the circle of great trees up and ahead about which no four men could link hands.
He was glad to see butterflies doing their work. Bing-Ham arrived at the grove and skirted it. The Footmen stopped at the base of two great trees upon which the white flowered morning glories, the bane of any a gardener worked their vampiric way.
In a mere minute Richard arrived between his footmen, who stood like sentinels, nervous ones as afraid to be afraid as they were of entering this ring of trees, trees that were so vast in size, that despite being fifty paces apart, but little sunlight filtered down to the meadow, a meadow absent grass yet lush with ground cover: heather, trumpet vine, clover and deep green moss clinging to the southern side of the trunks and large glassy rocks that seemed to have been placed between the tree trunks.
There was this one path entering up the slight rise, and then bisecting the grove, making a trodden circle around a purple dotted mushroom of unfathomable size.
Richard stopped, shocked at the sight of such a fungi. More shocking yet was the thought that came to his mind, ‘Welcome Outer One. Would you prefer a face after your form?’
He heard the men lining up behind him and forming a small cordon.
‘That would be nice, I suppose particularly for my friends.’
‘Enter, Please, Richard, the Outer One.’
Richard noted that the meadow was become profuse with large mushrooms. These were in kind like this five foot fungi with a round cap of purple dotted white, which grew to six feet, to these ankle-height attendants. As he walked in, the rest stayed back. The meadow floor fairly sprang to life with myriad tiny versions of this mushroom. The spongy under section of the cap, spotted with inky dots, gradually formed into something like a human face, giving the appearance of a large-nosed, narrow-faced man with alabaster skin spotted in purple. There was no mimicking of teeth in the mouth.
Standing before the giant mushroom, with a manlike face, he announced this weird audience, “Captain, Sir, Richard Barrett, In Service to The British Empire, in Association with Various Parties with grievances against the Phoenix, who have attacked us in our country, who we have traced to the valley at the head of your river. I seek permission to pass with my party.”
The mushroom was unable to make sounds, though the face mimicked his speaking mechanics, even the tilt of his head to the left for emphasis, which he did not think was so pronounced.
The thoughts were not harsh like those of the Phoenix:
“They feed upon We This One, fallen here as colonists when their kind where driven from your world by the extra solar body that brought We This One.”
Understanding something about gardening and foraging from his youth above Loch Raven, and knowing mushrooms to be clones, Richard responded, “Do you grow beyond this grove?”
‘We This One do not desire to propagate beyond.’
‘Richard, the Outer One, you and yours may pass. Thank you for not feeding upon us.’
“Do not eat the mushrooms—they are sentient, telepathically so,” so Richard waved the party onward through the grove, staying to the last as he was advised by We This One.
