Farmer, Philip Jose - The Empire of the Nine omnibus

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Philip José Farmer's revolutionary impact on science fiction was felt immediately

with the appearance of The Lovers, a novella which was published in Startling

Stories in 1952, and which won a Hugo Award the following year. Since then,

Philip Jose Farmer's work has been noted for its open-minded thought,

compassion and superb craftsmanship. He has written more than twenty books

to date, including the renowned Riverworld and World of Tiers stories. He won a

second Hugo Award in 1968 with Riders of the Purple Wage and a third for To

Your Scattered Bodies Go in 1972.

Mr Farmer was born in Peoria, Illinois in 1918, and lived for many years in Los

Angeles. He has now returned to Peoria, where he lives with his wife.

Two classic works available now in a single-volume edition

Also by Philip José Farmer in Sphere books

THE WORLD OF TIERS VOLUMES 1 AND 2

THE EMPIRE

OF THE NINE

Lord of the Trees

Keepers of the Secrets

Philip José Farmer

v1.0

Scanned and Proofed

by Neugaia (#Bookz)

[22/04/2002]

SPHERE BOOKS LTD

Published by the Penguin Group

27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England

Viking Penguin Inc., 40 West 23rd Street, New York, New York 10010, USA

Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia

Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 2801 John Street, Markham, Ontario, Canada L3R

1B4 Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

Lord of the Trees first published in Great Britain by Sphere Books Ltd 1983

Keepers of the Secrets first published in Great Britain by Sphere Books Ltd 1983

Originally published under the title The Mad Goblin

This single-volume edition first published in Great Britain by Sphere Books Ltd

1988

All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons,

living or dead, is purely coincidental.

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

LORD OF THE TREES

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Although the editors of this book insist upon publishing this work as a novel

under my by-line, it is actually Volume X of the Memoirs of Lord Grandrith, as

edited by me for publication. The spellings and anglicisations of Lord Grandrith

have been changed by me for an easier understanding by British readers.

The location of the caves of the Nine and several other places have purposely

been made inexact. This is for the benefit of any reader who might try to find

these places.

The Nine must have marked me off as dead beyond doubt.

I don't know whether or not the pilot of the fighter jet saw me fall into the ocean. If

he did, he probably did not fly down for a closer look. He would have assumed

that, if the explosion of my amphibian did not kill me, the fall surely would. After

hurtling twelve hundred feet, I should have been smashed flat against the surface

of the Atlantic off the coast of the West African nation of Gabon. The waters

would be as hard as Sheffield steel when my body struck.

If the pilot had known that men had survived falls from airplanes at even greater

heights, he might have swooped low over the surface just to make certain that I

was not alive. In 1942, a Russian fell twenty-two thou-sand feet without a

parachute into a snow-covered ravine and lived. And other men have fallen two

thou-sand feet or higher into water or snow and lived. These were freak

occurrences, of course.

The pilot would have reported that the twin-engine propellered amphibian I was

flying to the Pare National du Petit Loango had gone up in a ball of flame at the

first pass. The .50 calibre machine guns or rockets or whatever he had used had

hit the fuel tanks and burning bits of wreckage had scattered everywhere. Among

the bits was my body.

I recovered consciousness a few seconds later. Blue was screaming around me.

My half-naked body was as cold as if the wind were ripping through my

intestines. The explosion had ripped off most of my clothing or else they had

been torn off when I went through the nose of the craft. I was falling toward the

bright sea, though, at first I sometimes thought I was failing toward the sky. I

whirled over and over, seeing the rapidly dwindling silvery jet speeding inland

and the widely dispersed and flaming pieces describing smoky arcs.

I also saw the white rim of surf and flashing white beaches and, beyond, the

green of the bush jungle.

There was no time or desire to think ironic thoughts then, of course. But if there

had been, I would have thought how ironic it was that I was going to die only a

few miles from my birthplace. If I had thought I was going to die, that is. I was still

living, and until the final moment itself that is what I will always tell myself. I live.

I must have fallen about two hundred feet when I succeeded in spreading out my

legs and arms. I have done much sky diving for fun and for survival value. It was

this that enabled me to flatten out and gain a stable attitude. I was slowing down

my rate of descent somewhat by presenting as wide an area as possible to the

air, acting as my own parachute. And then I slipped into the vertical position

during the last fifty feet, and I entered the water like a knife with my hands

forming the knife's tip.

I struck exactly right. Even so, the impact knocked me out. I awoke coughing

saltwater out of my nose and mouth. But I was on the surface, and if I had any

broken bones or torn muscles, I did not feel them.

There was no sign of the killer plane or of my craft. The sky had swallowed one

and the sea the other.

The shore was about a mile away. Between it and me were the fins of at least

two sharks.

There wasn't much use trying to swim around the sharks. They would hear and

smell me even if I made a wide detour. So I swam toward them, though not

before I had assured myself that I had a knife. Most of my clothing had been

ripped off, but my belt with its sheathed knife was still attached to me. This was

an American knife with a five-inch blade, excellent for throwing. I left it in the

sheath until I saw one of the fins swerve and drive toward me. Then I drew it out

and placed it between my teeth.

The other fin continued to move southward.

The shark may have just happened to turn toward me in the beginning, but an

increase of speed showed that it had detected me. The fin stayed on the surface,

however, and turned to my right to circle me. I swam on, casting glances behind

me. It was a great white shark, a species noted for attacking men. This one was

wary; it circled me three times before deciding to rush me. I turned when it was

about twenty feet from me. The surface water just ahead of it boiled, and it turned

on its side just before trying to seize my leg. Or perhaps it only intended to make

a dry run to get a closer look at what might be a dangerous prey.

I pulled my legs up and stabbed at it with both hands holding the hilt of the knife.

The skin of the shark is as tough as cured hippo hide and covered with little jags

- placoid scales - that can tear the skin off a man if he so much as rubs lightly

against it. My only experience in fighting sharks was during World War II when

my boat was sunk in the waters of the East Indian Ocean. The encounter with a

freshwater shark in an African lake is fictional, the result of the sometimes over-

romantic imagination of my biographer. Fortunately, my arms were out of the

water and so unimpeded by the fluid. I heaved myself up to my waist and drove

down with the knife and rammed it at least three inches into the corpse-coloured

eye. Blood spurted, and the shark raced away so swiftly that it almost tore the

knife loose from my hands.

Its tail did curve out enough to scrape across my belly, and my blood was

mingling with its blood.

I expected the shark to come back. Even if my knife had pierced that tiny brain, it

would be far from dead, and the odour of blood would drive it mad.

It came back as swiftly as a torpedo and as deadly. I dived this time and was

enclosed in a distorted world the visible radius of which was a few feet. Out of the

distortion something fast as death almost hit me, and went by, and I shoved the

knife up into the belly. But the tip only penetrated about an inch, and this time the

knife was pulled from my grip. I had to dive for it at once; without it I was

helpless. I caught it just before it sank out of reach of eye and hand, and I swam

to the surface. I looked both ways and saw a shadow speeding toward me. Then

another shadow caught up with it, and blood boiled out in a cloud that hid both

sharks. I swam away with as little splash as possible, hoping that other sharks

would not be drawn in by the blood and the thrash of the battle.

Before I had gone a half-mile, I saw three fins slicing the water to my left, but

they were intent on following their noses to where the blood was flowing, where,

as the Yanks say, the action was.

It was a few minutes to twelve noon when my plane blew up. About sixteen

minutes later, according to my wristwatch, I reached the shore and staggered

across the beach to the shade and a hiding place in a bush. The fall, the fight

with the shark, and the swimming for a mile at near top speed, had taken some

energy from me. I walked past thousands of sea gulls and pelicans and storks,

which moved away from me without too much alarm. These would be the great-

great-great-grandchildren of the birds that I had known when I was young. The

almost completely landlocked lagoon on the beach was no longer there. It had

been filled in and covered over years ago by the deposit of sand and dirt from the

little river nearby and by the action of the Benguela Current. The original shore,

where I had roamed as a boy, was almost two miles inland.

The jungle looked unchanged. No humans had settled down here. Gabon is still

one of the least populated countries of Africa.

Inland were the low hills where a broad tongue of the tall closed-canopy

equatorial forest had been home for me and The Folk and the myriad animals

and insects I knew so well. Most of the jungle in what is now the National Park of

the Little Loango is really bush. The rain forest grows only on the highlands many

miles inland except for the freakish outthrust of high hill which distinguishes this

coastal area.

After resting an hour. I got up and walked inland. I was headed toward the place

where the log house of my human parents had once been, where I was born,

where the Nine first interfered with my life and started me on that unique road,

the highlights of which my biographer has presented in highly romanticised

forms.

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摘要：

PhilipJoséFarmer'srevolutionaryimpactonsciencefictionwasfeltimmediatelywiththeappearanceofTheLovers,anovellawhichwaspublishedinStartlingStoriesin1952,andwhichwonaHugoAwardthefollowingyear.Sincethen,PhilipJoseFarmer'sworkhasbeennotedforitsopen-mindedthought,compassionandsuperbcraftsmanship.Hehaswritt...

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Farmer, Philip Jose - The Empire of the Nine omnibus

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