Law of the Jungle Read online

  The blip wavered and hopped from one side of the screen to another. It was supposed to remain steady between the crosshairs.

  “Controls don’t respond like they should,” Archangel reported. “Too much ice and wind.”

  Ororo opened her mouth and thought, Hear me, sister wind. Be calm. Let us ride the sky gently, happy in each other’s presence. The mantra helped her focus her weather-manipulation powers.

  Gusts whipped up the nose of the jet. Archangel roared an unintelligible curse and forced the stick back into its proper position. Calm, sister, Storm begged. Be at peace.

  Snowbound cliffs rose to starboard. A dark wall of mountain loomed ahead. Somewhere down there was a spot flat enough to land, but the swirling ice and snow concealed it.

  “Oh, God,” Psylocke said.

  Storm felt a warm caress deep inside, behind her heart, at the core of her weather sense. The attunement came, so clear that it truly was as if she were communicating with an entity. Be it a wind sister or Mother Nature, she smiled at the vivid familiarity. She reached upward.

  The winds steadied. They were still blowing hard, but only from one direction and at a consistent rate. The snow seemed to lose its animosity. The view ahead cleared. A narrow strip of level mountainside appeared straight ahead. The beacon confirmed it as the landing site.

  Sweat poured down Archangel’s blue forehead. His arm muscles quivered from the strain of holding the controls firm. He was murmuring to himself. Still, for the others, it seemed to be a quick, safe touchdown on the slab of rock and snow. Only the final, sharp bump showed that anything was less than optimal.

  “Goddess, that was close.” Storm heaved a deep sigh, unbuckled, and stood up. Something crunched beneath her booted feet.

  “What are these yellow-green crystals on the floor?” the windrider asked.

  Psylocke groaned.

  “Betts wasn’t kidding about throwing up,” Iceman explained. “But don’t worry. As you can see, I froze it before it touched anything.”

  “Super heroes don’t dribble-vomit,” the Beast declared. “Strictly projectile all the way. Very impressive, Ms. Braddock.”

  “I warned you not t’take that last stack o’ pancakes this momin’,” Cannonball added.

  “Be quiet now,” Betsy said in a voice so tiny it resembled thoughtspeak. “Or next time I’ll take aim.”

  Warren stood up from his pilot’s chair. “She was probably reading my mind as we landed, and knew how little control I actually had over the aircraft.”

  “I was calming your thoughts, helping to keep you focused,” Psylocke said. “I forgot to do the same for myself.” ‘ ‘I vote that we debark before anything thaws, and remember to set the self-cleaning cycle,” Hank said. “And let’s not forget to think well of Forge for making our vehicle so entirely user-friendly.”

  “Everybody for the exit,” Logan called. “Don’t forget to zip up your parkas.”

  Bone-cracking cold, made all the worse by the region’s katabatic winds, assaulted them as they descended the ramp. Storm deflected as much of the blizzard as she could, but the temperature was beyond her ability to mitigate. They needed every last bit of the insulation afforded by their clothing.

  The ramp retreated as they walked away, and the exit portal sealed itself shut. The outside lights blinked out. Their transport had not gone idle, however. In addition to the cleaning apparatus, power continued to flow through several major systems, keeping the polar air from crippling it, maintaining its readiness to fly the moment the X-Men returned. And all the while it would remain invisible to the detection equipment of the various UN bases hidden elsewhere in the icy desolation.

  Storm had been deprived of the sight of snow for many years during her childhood. In the warrens of the Nile delta, imprisoned by the desert tones of ochre, tan, and rust, she could only dream of its cold, ivory purity. One of her first weatherworking tricks had been to chill a cloud and stand beneath it, letting the icy flakes fall on her outstretched tongue. Now it was the desert she missed, with its blessed heat. She rejoiced when they slipped beneath an overhang of rock arid out of the gale. At last, she could cease expending energy just to make conditions manageable.

  Before her stood a cavern.

  “Goddess,” she whispered.

  This is not a tomb, she reminded herself. The cavern had survived for millennia; it was stable. At the other end, they would emerge through a waterfall into the Savage Land. No traps. For most of its length, the walls did not crowd any closer than a hallway in the Xavier Institute. Knowing her phobia, Ka-Zar would not have let Shanna suggest a route that would have her screaming for the open sky.

  She drew in a deep breath, braced herself, and continued forward.

  Storm did not need to announce to the group precisely when they crossed into the influence of the weather nexus that contained the Savage Land. Everyone could feel it. On one side of a passageway laced with stalactites and stalagmites, the frosty breath of Antarctica nipped at their extremities. On the other side, a moist, tropical draft warmed the cave walls, eradicating any trace of ice. The threshold was that distinct.

  They shucked off their cold-weather gear and left it piled neatly on a ledge to slip into on the return hike.

  The roar of the waterfall filtered down the twists and turns, becoming thunderous as they approached. Muted light appeared. Soon they were able to douse their flashlights. One final turn, and they faced a cascade of warm water.

  “Last one through’s an ankylosaurus,” Hank shouted, and leapt into the spray.

  The others flung themselves after him, falling a mere ten feet or so into a broad, deep pool. With the cool, refreshing liquid around her, Storm’s burden sailed from her shoulders. No, more walls. She kicked exuberantly, surfacing into an atmosphere as warm as her homeland.

  Wolverine gave her a hand onto the bank. She summoned a zephyr to dry her uniform, regarded the verdant foliage on every side, and sighed gratefully.

  “Bright as an equatorial afternoon,” Hank said, scratching his pointy ears. “I’ve always wondered how the Savage Land manages that. It must be four p.m. by now. At this latitude, at this time of year, the sun’s already below the horizon. Manipulating the climate is a feat in itself, but where does the place get its light?”

  “It’s made from ozone,” Iceman joked. “That accounts for the hole in the ozone layer over the South Pole.”

  Hank chuckled. “What you don’t realize, Mr. Drake, is that you could be right.”

  “Let’s take a look around, Warren,” Storm said.

  He nodded, spread his intimidating biometaHic wings, and flapped aloft. She summoned winds to follow, but found herself nearly colliding with a cypress tree on the way up.

  “You okay, Ororo?” Archangel called.

  “Fine now,” she said. “I had forgotten how unusual the wind is here. I have to ‘speak’ to it carefully.”

  The terrain sprawled beneath them. Warren whistled. “Oh, man, what a sight!”

  Ororo had no words for it. The Savage Land filled a huge valley rimmed by the Eternity Mountains. Above, a glorious umbrella of mists held in the tropical air. At times, the cloud bottoms whirled and puffed into phantasmagorical shapes, brushed with the tones of sunset and rainbows. All without, as Hank had pointed out, an actual sun to generate the colors.

  Though the highest ridges were lost to the inversion layer, foothills and lesser peaks thrust up from the jungles, some so distant the humid air rendered their slopes indistinct and almost illusory, like the creation of some faery artist. On the valley floor spread a carpet of green, green, and more green. Cycads, ferns, palms and other relics of the Mesozoic Era filled dells where dinosaurs and protomammals reigned. Elsewhere, flowering plants, broadleaf trees, and elephant grass hid a riot of other animal species.

  Humans were here, too. Tendrils of smoke from wood fires rose from river banks and clearings, marking the sites of the villages of the United Tribes—the Fall People, the Lake People, the Sky
People, and others under the guidance of Nereel. Storm hoped to see Nereel, recalling wistfully the smile that used to light up Colossus’s face whenever he spent time with the warrior woman.

  Aside from the smoke, the traces of the indigenous people were well hidden. Just a few scattered fields, a watchtower on stilts, or the carved points of a log stockade. No paved roads, no buildings of concrete and steel, only the most primitive dams and bridges. The residents of the Savage Land lived close to nature. The rare outsider that came to live here, such as Ka-Zar and Shanna—even Karl Lykos, when he had been able to maintain his human shape—observed that covenant as well.

  Not a trivial thing, Storm knew. Many times the land had withstood attempts at exploitation, from within and from without. There, down on an island in the center of a vast lake, stood a remnant of one such blasphemy—a citadel created by Sauron and his mutates, in imitation of one built by Magneto. Only a shell was left, but it was a reminder that the Earth, for all its size, had no wildernesses left that were unscarred.

  “There’s the village of the Fall People,” Warren shouted. “Right where Shanna said to look.”

  Storm spotted it, near the banks of the crystalline stream that flowed from the waterfall through thick jungle on its way toward the lake. It was not in the same locale as last time. The Fall People were largely hunter-gatherers, and moved between several different sites as game grew scarce.

  “Good,” Ororo said. “Let’s start transporting the others.”

  She and Archangel swooped back to the pool. Warren, not surprisingly, chose Psylocke as his passenger. Storm wrapped her palms around Wolverine’s wrists and vaulted skyward. Cannonball prepared to follow with the Beast, and Iceman generated an ice slide to follow along on. In this humidity, Bobby Drake would have plenty of moisture to convert to ice.

  No pausing to admire the scenery this time. She raced in Warren’s wake. She couldn’t catch him. Once Archangel hit his cruising speed, she would have to whip up a gale force wind in order to keep up. Disturbing the environment to such a degree would be irresponsible.

  “One of these days you have to learn to fly,” she told Logan.

  “Hope not. Yer the cutest taxi I know, ’Roro.”

  “Thank you, old friend,” she said with a smile. The banter reassured her that, despite their disagreements over how to deal with Sauron, Logan wouldn’t let it get in the way of his performance as an X-Man. More importantly, he wouldn’t let it interfere with their friendship.

  Ororo glided beyond a towering stand of eucalyptus trees and suddenly found herself over the fields and community grounds of the village. She dipped toward the center of a ring of bamboo-and-grass huts and teepees, where Psylocke was already engaged in conversation. Storm recognized Shanna by her lithe body and long blonde tresses, and Tongah by his remarkably tall body and Mohawk haircut, a style not unlike the one she had affected for a time, though hers was never cropped as closely.

  A well-muscled blond man was ambling gingerly toward the group. Beside him walked a huge sabretooth cat.

  “Ka-Zar’s still hurtin’,” Logan said. “He usually moves as smoothly as Zabu.”

  As if he had heard his name, the great feline lifted his head and coughed a greeting.

  Storm dipped between the crowns of the huts and dropped Wolverine the last few feet to the ground. Compact as his body was, she murmured thanks that she was free of the weight. Unburdened, she was able to flutter to a dignified landing.

  Cannonball roared down with the Beast, Iceman bringing his ice slide down behind them.

  Shanna and Psylocke slipped off to the side, into a knot of village women, babies, and toddlers. Wolverine strode between the huts, obviously needing to assess the village’s security before he could endure standing and talking. Ororo chose to remain on the packed-dirt storytelling circle where

  SI

  Ka-Zar, Zabu, and Tongah stood. Iceman, Archangel, Beast, and Cannonball shadowed her.

  “Welcome, wind-rider,” stated Tongah. As chieftain, he was the official host. Etiquette required that he speak first.

  “I am happy to see you looking well, my friend,” Ororo replied. He was looking particularly healthy considering that he had been dead prior to the High Evolutionary’s resurrection of the Savage Land. “We are grateful for your hospitality.”

  Ororo was acutely conscious that the native and his people were the true custodians of the Savage Land. It was all too easy to ignore their contribution, as if Ka-Zar, Shanna, and those bom in the outside world were somehow inherently superior. She vowed not to fall into that habit. It resembled too much the way European colonists had treated her beloved Kenyans, barely two generations ago. She wished she could have answered in his own tongue—he had used English in honor of his guests.

  “As we are grateful for your aid,” he said. He clasped one of her hands between his palms, bowed, and released her.

  Only then did Ka-Zar step forward, with his faithful sabretooth at his side. “On behalf of Shanna and our little family, hello to you all.” He reached out and patted the head of a small boy who had climbed on Zabu’s back.

  “He has your nose,” Ororo said, smiling at the child.

  “And Shanna’s temper,” Ka-Zar chuckled. He checked behind to see if his wife was listening, but luckily she was still to the side next to Psylocke, who appeared to be conversing with the cluster of tribeswomen.

  “You are well?”

  He winced. “Bruised from the fight. I’m hoping another long night’s sleep will wipe out some of the fatigue. There’s nothing quite like having an energy vampire suck half the life out of you. It’s early to bed for me tonight, dosed with another of the tribe shaman’s herbal remedies. It worked wonders last night, and I can’t afford to be below par at a time of crisis like this.”

  “What happened to the Ka-Zar of old who always charged into danger, without an ounce of caution in his skull?” she said with a laugh. “Always pushing past the limit?”

  “I’m an old married man now. A dad. I’ve had to get smarter.” Ka-Zar looked around. “Seven of you?” he asked. “Yes.”

  “I will miss saying hello to Scott and Jean and the others. But seven is a good number.”

  Storm cocked an eyebrow. “Why do you say that?”

  He cleared his throat. “Perhaps you’ve heard some of what the Savage Land has gone through lately?”

  “You have my sympathies. The incursions from the civilized world have, from all I’ve read, been outrageous.” “And devastating. We’ve had a record number of births among the village women this season, but it will take many more like that to bring the population back to old levels. Too many dead, Ororo. Sauron, Terminus, Zaladane, Garokk, Stegron—it’s becoming hard to count the number of ravagers who’ve tried to destroy the habitat or its inhabitants. You heard about Roxxon Corporation trying to flood us out in order to come in and drill for oil?”

  “Yes. I’m told their lawyers have convinced the courts the floods were all the work of a renegade employee. A man conveniently deceased, of course.”

  “Yeah. The corporate board of directors covered their tracks. That incursion made me particularly angry, Ororo. I can’t do much to stop gods and aliens from turning up, but Roxxon’s agents were human. They were just one more ex-

  x-Mm

  ample of outsider prospectors trying to get at the gold or the oil or the vibranium in our soil. I can and will see that their kind find the door to the Savage Land bolted shut in their faces. In the past few months the only people we’ve let in have been journalists, and that was only so that the plight of the Savage Land remains in the news back in the developed world. Shanna says we should go so far as to kick out the anthropologists. We have only five of them in the whole habitat, keeping a low profile and living right with the indigenous tribes, as adopted members.”

  “The policy of ‘no outsiders’ has long been in force,” Storm commented.

  “More or less. We eased off more than we should have. We now
follow the restrictions to the letter wherever possible. We could have asked the UN for help this time, but if we let S.H.I.E.L.D. agents crawl around here, it would set a precedent of intrusion we’d never be able to back away from. They’d bring in armored vehicles and helicopters, they’d need roads and causeways to get around. Before long they’d be rolling right over burial grounds without even the decency to say, ‘Oops’.”

  “Peace, my friend,” Ororo said, stepping back from the vehemence in Ka-Zar’s tone.

  “Sorry.” He relaxed his fists. “The X-Men are old allies. Friends. We’ve been through a lot. But right now, Shanna and I didn’t want to have to call anybody from outside. You could say inviting you was a compromise. No bulldozers and corps of engineers. Just a few super heroes, keeping the damage to a minimum.”

  “I...” Storm struggled to think of the correct response. “Hey, bub, you did ask us to come.” Logan was suddenly standing beside Storm, having slipped forward in his inimitable, quiet way. He had acquired a tobacco leaf from the

  drying racks at the end of the row of tee-pees and had rolled it into a makeshift cigar. He lit it, puffed, and raised his eyebrow at Ka-Zar.

  Stonn, murmured Psylocke telepathically. Storm glanced back to the other female X-Man, who was still with the group of tribal women. Shanna had turned away and was approaching.

  Yes, Psylocke? Storm asked silently.

  Serious turf issues here, Psylocke sent.

  So I’ve noticed.

  I’m not reading all that much ambivalence from Ka-Zar, actually. It’s our She-Devil over here. She doesn’t like it that I’ve already established a rapport with the villagers.

  Leave it to Psylocke to be digging up dirt mere minutes after arriving on scene, Storm mused. Why on Earth not?

  I think it’s more a general paranoia about outsiders than anything personal toward us. Also, I think Shanna figured they were “safe” from us “interlopers” because, aside from Tongah, they don’t speak English. She wasn’t taking into account that my telepathy enables me to communicate with them directly.

  Storm answered, Thank you for the warning.