"Alan Dean Foster - Humanx 1 - Midworld" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

branch.

It was close to noon. Occasional shafts of light
reached the Third Level, some digging even deeper

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to the Fourth and Fifth. Mirror vines shone every-
where, their diamond-shaped reflective leaves bounc-
ing the sun and sending life-giving light ricocheting
hundreds of meters down green canyons to places it
otherwise would never reach. Noontime was the cres-
cendo of the hylaeal symphony. Comb vines and
resonators formed a verdant vocal background for the
songsters of the animal kingdom. They would have
astonished a curious botanist, as would the mirror

vines.
Born was no botanist. He could not have defined

the term. But his great-great-great-great-great-
grandfather could have. That knowledge had not kept
him from dying young, however.

Eventually the damp night mist slid about them
with feline stealth. The cheerful raucousness of the
creatures of light gave way to the sounds of awaken-
ing nightlings, whose grunts were darker and deeper,
their cries closer to hysteria, the booming howls of the
nocturnal carnivores a touch more menacing. It was

time to find shelter.

Bom had spent much of the last hour searching

for a wild Home tree. Such trees were rare and he
had encountered none this afternoon. They would have
to settle for less accommodating temporary quarters.
One such lay ten meters Overhead, easily reached
through the interwoven pathways of the forest canopy.

What disease or parasite had caused the great woody
galls to form on the branch of the Pillar tree neither
Bom nor Ruumahum could guess, but they were grate-
ful for their presence. They would serve to gentle