Midworld by Alan Dean Foster Page A

her eyes, stared at him.
    “Drink it,” he advised simply, She started to take it and recoiled at the feel of the mushy stem. Then she put her lips hesitantly to the rim and drained half of it, despite Cohoma’s warnings. She passed the remainder to him.
    Cohoma studied it warily. “How do we know he’s not trying to poison us?”
    “If he wanted to kill us,” she sighed, “he could have left us for the flying meateater, Jan. Don’t be a fool. There’s nothing harmful in it.” Cohoma sipped at it reluctantly, but finished what was left.
    “Your foot … how does it feel?” Born inquired solicitously. Logan drew her knee up, pulled it in to where she could see the bottom. The wound was not as deep as she had feared, certainly not as deep as it had felt when Born was cutting it. It was already beginning to heal. Around the multiple punctures, though, the skin had turned a dull red.
    “Like someone took a knife to it,” she shot back. “How should it feel?”
    “You feel nothing besides the cut?” Born pressed.
    She considered. “A slight tingle, maybe, around where I stepped on the thorns … like when your foot goes to sleep. But that’s all.”
    “Tingle,” Born said thoughtfully. He started searching the brush again. Both giants watched him curiously. He paused before one plant, then plucked a pale yellow fruit from a branch far above, where it hung in neat clusters of three. “Eat this,” he instructed Logan when he rejoined them again.
    She examined it doubtfully. Of all the fruits and edible vegetation Born had introduced to them, this appeared the most formidable. It was shaped like a squat barrel, with brown riblike extrusions running around its circumference. “Skin and all?”
    “Skin and all,” Born said, nodding, “and quickly. It will be better for you.”
    She brought it to her mouth. So much of the foliage on this world was deceptive— maybe this tough-looking specimen, would have a … then she bit into it. Her face screwed up in disgust. “It tastes,” she told Cohoma, “like spoiled cheese seasoned with vinegar. What happens,” she asked Born appealingly, “if I don’t finish this thing?”
    “I believe—I think, I got all of the poison out of your system. If not, you have a few moments left before the remaining poison spreads to your nervous system and kills you. Unless it is countered by the antitoxin in fruit.”
    Logan finished the yellow pulp with speed that belied her nausea. Still, she found time to wonder at how words like “antitoxin” and terms like “nervous system” had lasted in these people’s vocabulary down through the years of their fall from knowledge. Undoubtedly, she reflected, these expressions were constantly used in this ever-threatening environment. As she reached this conclusion, her eyes widened, her cheeks bulged, and she turned and retched, with such violence that Born and Cohoma had to move fast to keep her heaving body from falling off the cubble. Minutes later she was lying on her back gasping for air and running a forearm slowly across her mouth.
    “Holy orders!” she wheezed. “I feel like I’ve been turned inside out.” She put both hands to her abdomen and felt around gently. “Still there—you could have bet me it wasn’t.”
    Born ignored her gasps and complaints. “How does your foot feel now?”
    “Still tingles a little.”
    “Just your foot?” he persisted, staring intently at her. “Not your ankle, or your lower leg, here?” He touched her calf. She shook her head. Born grunted, got to his feet. “Good. If your leg tingled, the poison would have spread past my ability to halt it. Then it would have been too late. But you will be all right, now.”
    She nodded and started to get to her feet with Cohoma’s help. Then she stared sharply at Born. “Hey—if it was so vital that I eat that fruit right away, Born, why did you hesitate before picking it and bringing it down? According to what you just said, I could