Текст книги "Dark Ararat"

Автор книги: Brian Stableford

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THIRTY-THREE

Some of the equipment is definitely missing,” Lynn said, as soon as Ike had freed the cable and allowed Matthew to complete his descent to the sticky black ground. The downside of using the flamethrower to dispose of the tentacled slugs was that the enigmatically transfigured masses on which they had set themselves had been devastated. Only a handful of the bulbous protuberances remained intact. The probability was that their contents had been damaged, if not thoroughly cooked.

“What’s gone?” Matthew asked, tersely.

“Nothing absolutely vital to the reassembly, although we might be a couple of hull plates down and some leg elements are definitely gone. Some machetes are missing—three, unless one or two are still packed away where I can’t find them. Some rope. A bale of bubble-fabric. A canister of fuel oil—fuel for the inorganic motor, that is.”

Matthew’s heart leapt with exultation, even though he’d fully expected some such news. “Did they take Bernal’s artifacts?” he asked, swiftly.

“I don’t know,” Lynn confessed. “I can’t find them—but I don’t know where Dulcie packed them.”

“Can we get by without the hull plates and leg parts?” Ike wanted to know.

“We have patches to replace damaged hull plates,” Lynn said. “We weren’t carrying enough spares to fix all the legs, but the loss isn’t critical. It certainly wasn’t any kind of worm that mounted the raid. It couldhave been monkey-analogues, but …”

“It was the humanoids,” Matthew told her, firmly. “They know we’re here—and we know they’re curious. Maybe curious enough to …”

That was when his phone began to beep. His first assumption was that it was Tang or Vince Solari, impatient to know how the night had passed, but it wasn’t. This time his heart seemed to leap all the way into his throat.

“Dulcie!” he exclaimed, raising his voice to make sure that Ike and Lynn would respond without delay. They immediately picked up their own phones and tapped into the call.

“Can you hear me?” Dulcie asked, anxiously. She was whispering, but Matthew knew that wasn’t what was worrying her; she was afraid that she might have gone so far into the glassy forest that her signal could no longer get out.

“Yes,” he said, tersely. “Go on.”

“Sorry to worry you all,” she said. “I didn’t want my phone beeping in case it alerted them. I thought I could follow them without them knowing. It seemed plenty dark enough, and I felt sure they hadn’t spotted me when I first caught sight of them—but I guess they were stringing me along all the time. They probably wanted to lure me away from the bubble. I didn’t even know how many of them there were. Stupid.”

“What’s your situation now?” Matthew asked, as waves of nauseous fear stirred in his empty belly.

“Under observation, I suppose. They haven’t made a hostile move—yet. They seem to have quite a lot of our stuff, including some very wicked steel knives as well as Bernal’s things. They have spears of their own too. I can count twenty-two, but there might be a few I can’t see. If they do attack, I don’t stand a chance, but they still seem wary. They know I’m doing something now, but they seem more intrigued than alarmed. They know they have me surrounded, and they know that I know, but they’re holding back, still half in hiding.”

“ Which way?” Lynn demanded—then realized that the answer wouldn’t mean anything. “We’ll be there with the gun and the chain saws as soon as we can,” she added, ignoring the fervent gestures Matthew was making in the hope of shutting her up, “but you’ll have to guide us in—there’s no way we can triangulate your position until we spread out.”

“Don’t be stupid!” Dulcie retorted, with even more scorn than Matthew could have contrived. “I have to try to make contact, now. I phoned you first because you need to listen in—to know what I’m doing in case it goes horribly wrong.” She didn’t have to ask whether the call was being recorded—all the phones would do that automatically.

“Absolutely right,” Matthew said, swiftly. “What do they look like, Dulcie?”

Lynn Gwyer was obviously still in a devil-may-care shoot-anything-that-looks-at-me-sideways mood, but Ikram Mohammed put a hand on her arm to clam her down. “We’d never find her,” he whispered, holding the mouthpiece of his phone away from his face. “Not quickly enough …” He broke off as Dulcie began answering Matthew’s question.

“Either we looked at the rock drawings with an optimistic eye or these aren’t the same folk,” the anthropologist said, her voice so unemotional and matter-of-fact that it seemed almost parodic to Matthew. “They’re all shorter than I am, none taller than a meter and a half, and they’re thin. Disproportionately long limbs, very odd hands. Looks to me like seven longish fingers, or five fingers and two thumbs, and the way they grip their spears and the stolen goods is very weird, always leaving at least a couple of fingers spare. Slender torsos. Purple skin, of course, not scaly but not hairy either. No clothes. No hair on the head or anywhere else. No breasts, no balls, no navels, no babes in arms, no toddlers, no kids at all. Like plastic dolls, in a way—except for the faces. We—I—always thought of them as having faces vaguely like ours, but they don’t. Very large eyes. Even larger noses—snouts might be a better term. Complicated mouth parts, almost insectile but soft—and real teeth. Bigteeth, but not sharp. No ears that I can identify with confidence, although I’m pretty sure they can hear. Something like a double crest lying to either side of the head, mostly collapsed but occasionally raised– mightbe ears but probably not. Other flaps of flesh under the arms, probably capable of extension—function unclear. They make noises, but nothing like human speech. Clicks and groans.”

She paused, but no one interrupted. Matthew was holding his breath.

“They’re clicking and groaning away like crazy right now,” she went on, “presumably holding a conference to decide what to do next. The discussion seems pretty democratic—no obvious signs of a pecking order. I’m showing them my open hand, and they seem to be reacting, but whether they recognize it as a peaceful gesture or think it’s a joke because it’s only got five stubby fingers I don’t know. They’re creeping a little closer all the while, but none of them seems anxious to take the lead. They all seem very nervous, even though they’ve got all the weapons, not to mention the advantages of height, reach, and home ground. Even if they didn’t see us with the chain saws they must have seen what the chain saws did. I’m trying to seem unthreatening, but I’m not sure they’d recognize anything I said to them as speech, let alone appreciate a soothing tone. I’m standing in the open, looking as harmless as I possibly can, but they don’t seem convinced. They don’t seem to have a clue what to do, although they’re going to have to do something when they come within touching range, if not before.”

She paused again. The silence on the line would have been profound had it not been for a faint background crackle. The microphone could not pick up the clicks and groans of the humanoids.

“Maybe it’s lack of imagination,” she continued, “but the only friendly gesture I can think of right now is to turn my smartsuit purple, matching the shade as closely to theirs as I can. It’ll have to run through a pretty wide spectrum before it gets there, but it won’t take long—wow! That got their attention. Everybody’s stopped. Lots of blinking. If anything, they’re more scared than they were before, but I’m there now. Short of growing a snout like an ugly bat with a mouthful of worms, there’s nothing more I can do to try to fit in. I’m going to try an approach, nice and slow. I’ll pick one that doesn’t have a spear—one that’s carrying some of our stuff.”

Matthew had to let his breath out, but he let it out slowly and silently. “I wish I had something I could offer as a gift,” Dulcie went on, “but I’m certainly not going to unfold the clasp knife from my belt or offer them my notepad or phone. I’m not sure they’d be able to decipher the gesture anyway. I’m still relying on the empty palm. The one I’m moving closer to doesn’t know what to do, but at least it isn’t making any hostile move. I’m reaching out now, palm first, inviting a peaceful touch, but I can’t tell whether it knows—oh no! They’re coming at me, Matthew. They’re com—”

Although the sound of her voice was cut off, the link was still open. Matthew could hear other noises, but very faintly. Either Dulcie had dropped the phone or it had been snatched from her hand.

Ike cursed; Lynn seemed utterly numb. Matthew had known before that there was no time to waste; now he had a giddy sensation of having been overtaken by events. He groped for crumbs of comfort. “If she’d screamed,” he said, keenly aware of the hammering of his heart and the difficulty of drawing further breath, “she could have made herself heard. She didn’t scream.” He didn’t lower his phone, and neither did Ike or Lynn. They all continued listening, while the faint susurrus of background noise taunted them.

“If they’d killed her,” Matthew said, stubbornly, “she’d have screamed. She didn’t scream. All they did was take the phone out of her hand.”

“We have to call the Base,” Ike said. “I should have done it before. I should have done it just then, to let them hear it.”

“No, you did right,” Matthew said. “It’s all on tape. You call the base. Tell Tang and the others. Lynn—you call Milyukov. Tell him we need that drop now. We have to have a camera with enough power to punch a signal through the canopy. Don’t let him stall.”

“Who are you calling?” Lynn asked, as she saw Matthew’s left thumb call up a directory.

“Frans Leitz.”

“Who the hell is Frans Leitz?”

“He’s a medical orderly on Hope,” Matthew told her. “Next best thing to a cabin boy. This is the only chance he’ll ever have to get the first shot at a really hot rumor. By the time Milyukov can make a start on putting his own spin on the news it’ll be all around the ship and leaking down to Base One like spring rain. When I go on air I want everybody watching. Everybody. Frans? Hi—this is Matthew Fleury. I’m uploading an audiofile—it’ll just take five or ten minutes to play back. Play it to Dr. Brownell, will you? And anyone else who might be interested. Got to go now.”

Lynn looked as if she wanted to ask more questions, but she decided instead that she ought to get on with her own part of the deal. Ike had already stepped to one side so that he could talk to Tang Dinh Quan. “Tell Base One,” he was saying. “Tell Andrei Lityansky. Tell everyone you can. They’re not just apes. They’re intelligent. They’re real aliens. No more doubts. They make tools, they talk, they steal, they don’t quite know how to react to alien invaders, and when their hands are forced they leap into action. They’re just like us in every department that really matters. And they’ve separated Dulcie from her phone. From now on, nothing else matters. Matthew and I are going after her.”

“Not yet,” Matthew was quick to say. “We can’t go in without the cameras. We should be able to get a fix on Dulcie’s phone ourselves, but we can’t go any further in without a reliable means of getting information out.”

Matthew’s phone beeped. The person on the other end was Godert Kriefmann. The news was already spreading, and the doctor obviously wasn’t content to wait for Tang to relay everything.

“You’ll know as much as we do when you’ve played the recording,” Matthew told Kriefmann. “Call Nita Brownell, and any crew member who can grasp its import. Tell them we need TV cameras. We need a rig that one man can carry, but it has to have enough clout to transmit loud and clear to Milyukov’s comsats. They have to drop it on the next overhead pass, because every second counts. Any delay might cost Dulcie her life and ruin our best chance of making a healthy contact.”

He closed the connection without leaving space for a reply. Then he switched off his phone. “You stay on the line, Lynn,” he said. “Ike and I have things to do.”

“They might not play ball,” Ike said, anxiously. “Milyukov might be spaceborn, but he’s got access to the library. He knows Earth history, and understands it well enough to have done his best to keep a tight stranglehold on the information passing between surface and orbit. He didn’t want you here in the first place—he won’t want to let you spin the story.”

“He doesn’t have a choice,” Matthew said. “His authority over his own people is going to vanish overnight if he tells them that they can’t hear thisnews because he doesn’t trust the messenger. The story’s too big, and he’s already been sitting on it for too long. He’s been able to deflect attention away from the ruins, and he was able to dismiss the weapon that killed Bernal as a malicious hoax, but all that’s going to rebound on him now. The shit will be hitting the fan all over the microworld. From now on, I’m in charge.”

“You?” Ike queried. “What happened to us? Don’t Lynn and I get a say in anything?”

“I’m the one who knows how to play the game,” Matthew told him, bluntly. “No matter what you used to think of my TV prophet act, it’s the only way we can turn this whole business around. It has to be me. Maybe it should have been Bernal, but he’s not here, so it has to be me.”

“You’re an arrogant son of a bitch, aren’t you?” Ike said—but he didn’t say it like a man who intended to put up a fight.

“Yes I am,” Matthew said. “But you have to take charge of putting the boat together, because you know how and I can only follow orders. We have to reassemble it so that Lynn can stay safe. She can’t come with us because she’d slow us down—and somebody has to stay here to feed those basketball things to the robots, so that they can start letting us in on the secrets of esoteric chimerization.”

Having said that, Matthew became aware of the fact that Lynn Gwyer was also looking at him with an expression of profound annoyance.

He shrugged his shoulders, and said: “Sorry, Lynn. Luck of the draw. What did Milyukov have to say?”

“He said he’d do his best,” she told him.

“He’s a lying bastard,” Matthew opined, “but he’ll have to make good on the promise anyway. He really will do his best, up to and including targeting the drop to within a hundred meters. As soon as the dandelion seed settles, Ike and I will be on our way. It won’t be so bad—if I’m right, the wreckage of this little population explosion really will help us figure out how emortal chimeras cope with the arithmetic of the sex-death equation, and how they keep evolution going in spite of the unhelpful frame in which they have to operate. It won’t be as big a story as the first contact, but Dulcie’s already pocketed that one. The best Ike and I can hope for is to be heroes of the rescue dash.”

Had the situation not been so tense, Matthew thought, Lynn might have allowed herself a wry laugh. As things were, her voice remained level and earnest. “Do you have any idea how big this plain is?” she said. “I suppose you think we were lucky because they came to meet us rather than letting us follow the river for a few hundred kilometers more, hunting all the while for scraps of evidence, but there’s half a continent out there. You’ll never find her. You’ll find the phone, and maybe enough of a trail, to tell you which way they went, but you’ll never find herif they don’t want you to.”

“They were close enough to know when we arrived,” Matthew pointed out. “They didn’t have to trek across half a continent to get here, and no matter how scared they are they won’t run away that far. We’re lucky they found so much to steal, luckier still that they had the courage and intelligence to steal it, and luckiest of all that Dulcie caught a glimpse of them while she was in a reckless mood. If they were interested in us before, they’re absolutely fascinated by us now. If we’re really lucky, they’ll come to us again—but if we have to go looking for them, we can be sure they’ll eventually let us find them, because that’s what they’ve already done. Whatever they’ve done with Dulcie, their tactics are already on show. Sex or no sex, in every respect that really matters, they’re just like us.”

“That’s way too many assumptions,” Lynn complained. “And whatever else you’ve achieved, you’ve certainly set up a context of expectation. When your cameras get here, you’d better have something to put out. You’ve promised breaking news, and you’ll have to deliver. Have you even paused to consider what this will do to the argument about whether we can and ought to stay here? You do realize that the entire future of the colony may hang on what happens next?”

“I’ve been stuck in a basket halfway down a cliff for a day and a half,” Matthew reminded her. “I’ve done nothing butpause for consideration. I know exactlywhat hangs on what happens next—and I certainly wouldn’t trust anyone but me to report it responsibly. Would you?”

“Less than a fortnight ago,” she pointed out, “you were still in the solar system, so far as subjective time is concerned. Do you really think you’re the man best qualified to put an informed and considered commentary together?”

“Yes I do,” Matthew said. “If not me, who? If not now, when?”

“It shouldhave been Bernal,” Ike put in.

“Maybe it should,” Matthew retorted, “but Dulcie killed him in a fit of rage, because he couldn’t respond to her need the same way twice, so I’m here instead. Would you rather have Tang Dinh Quan telling the world and the microworld alike that this is final proof of the fact that we need to let the world alone for a hundred or a thousand years, and maybe forever, lest we interfere with the indigenes’ right of self-determination?”

That threw Lynn slightly. “Is that what you’re going to say on air?” she asked. “In thattone of voice?”

“Of course not,” he told her. “I’m going to be sweet reason itself.”

“But which end of the argument are you going to support?”

“How do I know, until I find out more?”

She wasn’t buying that. “Don’t pretend to be any better than the rest of us, Matthew. You know full well that almost everyone else is in a better position to make an informedjudgment. I know you’ve already made up your mind. You’re grabbing the platform before anyone else does because you never could be content to wait in the wings. I want to know, Matthew. I want to know how you intend to play it.”

“This is a complete waste of time,” Ike told her. “Matthew’s right about one thing—we have work to do. We have to put the boat together, and put the cargo in the boat, and make the whole thing safe from attack or pilferage. We have to do it now, before we have another plague of worms to deal with, or an army of purple people. His bad arm and your bad ankle will make it difficult enough, without falling out with one another. We have to take this one step at a time.”

Lynn backed down easily enough. “Maybe we all need a pause for consideration,” she said. “This really has changed everything, hasn’t it?”

“For the better,” Matthew told her. “Yesterday, we were still alone in the universe. Today, the universe might be full of thieves like us. Where there’s two, there’s probably a legion.” But he was getting to work even as he said it, and he knew that he had to reserve his strength. He didn’t bother to add: And if we’re so far ahead of these guys, somewhere out there is a race of thieves that will make our little venture in interstellar colonization look like a playground game, whether we get it right or not.

THIRTY-FOUR

Matthew was right, as he had known he would be, about Captain Milyukov having to make good on his promise to do his best. Not only did Hope’s technicians manage to land the mini-shuttle within 400 meters of the reassembled boat, but they even contrived to put it down on the right side of the river and to miss the kinds of vegetation that might have suspended it out of reach. Ike and Matthew raced to the spot, worrying that the aliens might get there first, but it proved easy enough to recover the TV camera and the emergency food supplies. The replacement parts for the boat were a bonus, which they loaded on an improvised sled so that they could drag them back to the boat without too much difficulty. Matthew was able to do his share of the haulage by looping the towrope over his left shoulder.

“I told you so,” Matthew said to Lynn, who was waiting for them on the hastily reassembled boat, ready to extend a gangplank to the shore. “Everybody wants in on this now,” he added. “Everybody’s heard Dulcie’s final phone call, and everybody wants to know what happened to her. We couldn’t have a better story if we’d hired a scriptwriter.”

“If we’d hired a scriptwriter,” Ike pointed out, “we’d know how it was going to come out. This way, we don’t even now ifit’s going to come out. You and I could march for days through that wilderness and find precisely nothing. How long do you think it will take for your audience to get impatient? Who do you think they’re going to blame if we can’t deliver?”

“Not you,” Matthew assured him. “You’ll be the one pointing the camera. I’ll be the talking head. If I can’t keep them in suspense until we can contrive a punchline, I’ll be the one they go for. But you don’t need to worry. The aliens are as curious as they’re anxious, and they’re acquisitive too. They’re not going to let us wander around their forest indefinitely. If Dulcie’s still alive they’ll bring her back, because it’s the only unambiguous gesture of amity they can make.” While he was speaking he was already assembling the pack that he’d have to carry on his back for the next few days. Ike was doing likewise.

“ Ifshe’s alive,” Lynn echoed, dubiously, “and iftheir reasoning works the same way as ours.”

“Reasoning’s reasoning,” Matthew told her. “Two and two always make four. Now that they’ve had a chance to test our machetes, they’ll want to find a way of getting more. Bernal was right to think that the best first offering would be stuff they already have—or had, when they were city-builders—but it’s too late now to worry about explosive cultural pollution. Their thievery’s cut right through that kind of crap. It’s make-do time now, whether we like it or not … and whether theylike it or not.”

“Why do I have this nagging feeling that you like it way too much?” Lynn came back.

He smiled, in what he hoped was a reassuring fashion. “Okay,” he said. “I’m all set. Ike?”

Ike nodded, but Lynn was still hesitant. “Aren’t you taking Rand’s gun?” she asked. “They couldbe dangerous.”

“ “We’ve got too much to carry as it is,” Matthew told her. “If they kill us, we’ll just have to go down shooting with the camera. Don’t worry about it. However it goes, it’ll be an epoch-making event in human history—at least as significant, in its way, as the development of true emortality back home on Earth—and it’s ours. Rumor has it that there are billions of people in the solar system who have just about everything they ever wanted now, but they don’t have this and we do. The one thing we can trade for the attention and support we need and deserve is first contact, and a text message saying Eureka!isn’t going to inspire anything like the same engagement as the coupling of Dulcie’s last phone call and TV coverage of our rescue mission. However it comes out, it’ll grab their guts, and if it comes out well, it’ll prove to everyonethat notwithstanding the crew’s revolution and the abject failure of the would-be colonists to get a grip on anything, Hopereally has lived up to her name. This is our chance to establish Hope’s quest as the heroic enterprise we all signed up for. Whatever loss of faith you’ve suffered in the last three years, that dream is still fresh in my mind.”

Lynn shook her head, but all she said to Ike was: “He’s in rehearsal already.”

Ike shrugged his shoulders. “We have to get going,” he said. “Will you be all right?”

“Sure,” she said. “If you don’t come back, I’ll be the sole survivor. And if there are any interesting formations in that unholy mess we made on the shore, I’ll be the one to find them. Just make sure you find Dulcie, if it’s humanly possible.”

Matthew and Ike had already triangulated the location where Dulcie’s phone still lay, and it only took them a few minutes to reach it. The battery was still active and the line was still open, but Matthew turned it off as soon as he had picked it up. It was less than a kilometer from the place where the bubble-tent had been pitched, but they were already in the depths of the so-called grassland.

It only took a slight effort of imagination for Matthew to recover the impression of being very tiny, lost in a wilderness made strange by inflation. For the first time, he could see why the crew’s mapmakers had decided to favor this place with such an odd label. Although the structures surrounding him were certainly high enough to be considered elements of a forest, the “tree trunks” really were remarkably reminiscent of wheat stalks and blades of lawn grass. Some were rounded and very smooth, others spatulate and barbed. When he looked up into the canopy he could see structures reminiscent of corncobs and structures reminiscent of barley heads, although there were others that looked, quite literally, like nothing on Earth. From above, the canopy had looked like an ocean stirred by waves and littered with flotsam, but from below it seemed as if he were staring up into the vaulted ceiling of an infinite crystal cathedral, lavishly decorated with all kinds of sprays and chandeliers, droplets and honeycombs.

The light that crept through this bizarre prismatic array was by no means bright, but it was strangely even. Such undergrowth as it supported looked more like a slightly undulant carpet of vitreous tiles than the mossy leaf litter of an Earthly forest but it did seem to be alive. It was easy to walk on, and the supportive stalks and blades were far enough apart to allow perfectly comfortable passage for Matthew and Ike. Forewarned by experimental forays, they had not troubled to bring a chain saw although they both had machetes dangling from their belts in case they ran into different conditions in some future phase of their journey.

“I think they went this way,” Ike said, having examined the ground around the spot from which Dulcie had made her final call. “The ground doesn’t take footprints very well, but you can see where junctions between the platelets have cracked. If we follow this heading and keep an eye out for more signs, we’ll probably be moving in the right direction—unless you have a better idea.”

“First things first,” Matthew said. He had always intended to make his first broadcast from the place where the phone had fallen—or, as he represented it, the very spot where the momentous and long-anticipated first contact between humankind and intelligent aliens had taken place.

He explained to his audience that he and Ike were going to keep on walking in the direction in which the aliens had been heading before they paused to capture their inquisitive pursuer, on the assumption that whatever destination they had had in mind must lie that way. He played back a recording of Dulcie’s last message in order to establish a “picture” of the aliens in the minds of his audience, and he asked Ike to pan the camera over the canopy and the ground, pointing out the salient features.

He refrained from mentioning that Dulcie had killed Bernal Delgado, and silently hoped that Vince Solari would have the sense to do likewise. Having made the computations necessary to convert Earthly hours into the metric hours that had displaced them aboard Hope, he promised to make further twenty-minute broadcasts at regular intervals, whenever he and Ike paused to rest—every two ship-hours, approximately, except for one longer interval that would allow him to get some sleep.

“What are you going to tell them?” Ike wanted to know, once the camera was off and they had started walking. “The scenery’s not going to change much, so there isn’t a lot to show them except for your face.”

“I’m going to give them a grand tour of the enigmas of local genomics,” he said. “I’m going to offer some intelligent speculations about possible solutions to those puzzles. It doesn’t matter whether I’m right or not as long as I keep pumping out food for thought and material for discussion. You’re probably right about the scenery, but its very constancy might be a useful talking point. I suspect that interesting changes happen veryrarely, barring episodes like the one we precipitated with our blundering, but it’s not impossible that we might come across bigger versions of the formations you had to scorch in order to get rid of the stinging slugs. I’d really like to see a pyramid, although my gut feelings tell me that they’re once-in-a-century or once-in-a-millennium constructions in these parts.”

“You think the thing in the drawing really was a pyramid?” Ike queried.

“Not a stone pyramid. Glass, maybe, or something similar. But not a tomb. Almost the reverse, in fact—but not a straightforward baby factory either. If Lynn can get enough live samples out of the mess we left behind she’ll lay the foundations for a more accurate understanding, but it doesn’t matter much that she won’t be able to feed the information through to me. I’ll have to make the most of my guesswork regardless.”

“But you’re not going to give me a preview?”

“I’m still working on the script. Trust me, Ike—if you hold the camera, I’ll improvise the show.”

Privately, Matthew wasn’t nearly as confident as he seemed, but he didn’t have any alternative. Now the stakes had been laid—and how could he possibly have refused to play or demanded a lower level of risk?—he was committed. If the world would not deliver an adequate story on cue, he would have to make one up.

Ike’s suspicions about the constancy of the environment were fully justified; it changed so little that its wonders soon became tedious. They heard other creatures, but rarely saw them. Most of the animals that lived hereabouts lived in the canopy, and those that did not fled their approach.