Land Beyond the Map

“Oh? If this is a million years in the past the most recent Ice Ages won’t have started yet, so I’d expect this sort of climate — the climate we’re experiencing at this moment,” he added with unnecessary explanation, “and vast herds of animals. But—”

Very seriously, Polly said: “I don’t think we’re in the past, either. We’re in some — some other world.”

“And if we were sensible people we’d get out of it — quick.”

“Must you keep on?”

“Sorry.”

“Look — there’s something beyond those trees.”

Crane took one look, leaned across the girl and wrenched the steering wheel around. The car left the white road in a tortured shriek of tires, jounced across yielding grass and came to an outraged stop beneath the trees. Shadows fell from the branches. Crane opened his door and clutching his bag of grenades to his side leaped out and darted back the way the car had rolled, crouching, taking cover behind the boles of trees. He peered out and along the road.

“What is it, Rolley?” Her clear voice reached him, no hint of panic there.

“Quiet!” he said softly, waving her down. She walked up behind him with the selfconscious stealth of a lioness on her first kill.

Together they stared out from the trees, taking good care to remain well-hidden in the shelter of the trunks.

“The Moving Heath,” Crane whispered. “I never thought to see that come true.”

Moving from one side of the road to the other in a steady and unhurried stream marched lines of ambulant bushes. Each bush had grown perhaps five or six feet in height and as broad across, bearing many tiny leaves glittering silver and olive green as they flashed and fluttered in the light. Concealed within that fairy foliage lay clusters of glistening golden berries, delectable at first sight, bringing the sting of anticipatory saliva to the mouth. The trunks rose stocky and solid, dark gray, seamed with a cracked bark, ancient. Crane concentrated on one bush and looked hard and carefully.

The thing extended a long pinkish root before it, secured a firm anchorage — the root could not have penetrated much more than six inches or so into the ground, like a worm — and then up-anchored other roots to the rear and moved forward again with the slightest of trembles until the first root was again freed to probe forward. The bushes moved at about two miles an hour, Crane judged, although assessment of speeds that low was always difficult.

The roots twisted as they went into the earth, like drills, twisting up on themselves, their length adequate for the number of turns required to bore down six inches. Caught up beneath the center of each bush and looking like the bundled and wrapped roots of roses and bushes sent from nurserymen back on Earth, a globular mass of earth interpenetrated by matted fibrous roots obviously provided locomotive sustenance.

“I don’t believe it,” Polly said indignantly.

“See how they move — purposeful, determined, unyielding.”

“I read an article in some magazine saying that fictional anthropomorphic plants were quite impossible. Absolutely nonsensical. I don’t remember the reasons why, now; but the writer said they just couldn’t be.”

“He hadn’t been into the Map Country.”

“But it negates all our biology!”

“Agreed. It has been proved impossible by biologists. But I expect these bushes only move now and again; they don’t keep on the prowl all the time.”

“You think they move to escape the living earth?”

“Possibly, One reason why perambulating plants are said to be impossible is the slow absorption rate of nutriments from the soil. But if they carry a whole knapsack full of soil around with them, feeding on that, and then dig down deep with their thick roots when they lay siege — well, it could be done, I suppose. Don’t forget, this chaotic country has tossed the rule books out of the window.”

“I’m ready to believe anything now.”

“And me.” Crane stiffened. “Look! There in the sky! Swooping on them!”

“Good Lord!”

All the bushes turned from silver and olive green to a solid silver mass. Leaves curled and rolled into silver thorns. A perceptible increase in speed surged through the mass of bushes. There must have been two hundred or more. The leaders were already across the road, hurdling the strip of unproductive barrenness, their roots probing the soil beyond and taking them into the shelter of the trees.

And on them, from above, dived the birds.

Birds?

“Well, then,” said Crane. “Animals with wings and tails and feathers and wide reptilian heads and jaws, and yet nothing like the museum reconstructions of Archaeopteryx or Archaeornis, and they’d be a hundred and seventy or so million years ago. And if we were that far back in time there’d be no grass or trees like this — no angiosperms. I doubt we need to worry about dinosaurs yet.”

“Thanks,” Polly said sarcastically. “But I’ll believe that when we’re out of here without meeting a friendly Allosaurus or Tyrannosaurus Rex.” Still her voice was firm and controlled. Crane felt like standing up and running, screaming blue bloody murder.