CHAPTER 19
Dennis didn't have a clear idea of what his companion might mean by 'road'. A wider track beaten into the jungle by scaly feet, perhaps; or, just possibly, a herringbone surface of stone pavers like those King Hale had ordered a few years before to clothe the streets of Emath.
The road to which Chester led him, only twenty yards from where the pair of them had weathered the night, was amazingly more durable than either of those.
The road was soft pink and a little more than ten feet wide. The surface was pebble-grained for the sake of traction, but it was so dense that the last night's rain beaded on it with no hint of sinking in.
And it was old. The root of a great tree knobbed on one side of the roadway and sprang to the surface again on the other, bracing the trunk and sucking nutriment from the thin jungle soil. The enormous hydraulic pressure swelling the root had been unable to crack the pink surface—and the tree it fed was at least a century old.
Chester's limbs clicked on the roadway, just as they had in the halls of Emath Palace. Dennis followed him gingerly. The road was slick despite the grain of its finish... but the youth's concern was for other things than merely his footing.
"Did the first heroes build this road when men came here to Earth, Chester?" he asked.
"The road is older than men on this planet, Dennis," the robot replied. In the same neutral tone, he added, "The road is older than Man."
"Then—" Dennis began; but if the road was that old, he wasn't sure he wanted to know who had built it. He didn't finish his question.
The trees to either side of the pavement closed overhead in a canopy gorgeous with flowers, fruits, and the lizards which darted to snatch up metal-glistening insects. The air was a steam-bath, even though the light that reached the ground was filtered yellow-green by the leaves through which it poured.
Dennis' boots squelched at every step. Finally he stopped and took them and the socks off, wringing the latter dry and giving all the paraphernalia to Chester to carry in the embroidered shopping bag.
"I thought I threw that away," the youth said suspiciously. Had the dream started—
"You threw the bag away, Dennis," the little robot agreed. "And I retrieved it before I followed you."
The warmth of the pink pavement felt good to Dennis' bare feet, but he needed to walk with some care. He had a habit of banging his heels down as he strode along. The road had no resilience at all. He'd bruise himself badly if he tramped that way here without wool and leather to cushion the shock.
He was getting very hungry. That was probably a sign he'd recovered from the events of the night—both real and imagined.
Dennis looked at an overhanging branch, heavy with fruit of an enticing scarlet—
A color similar to that of the poisonous frogs of the night before. Or was that only dream, too?
"Chester," he asked, pausing, "can we eat any of these?"
"Eat freely, so long as food is available," Chester quoted. One of his limbs snaked up to remove a globular fruit and offer it to his companion.
Dennis bit down. The pulp beneath the bright rind was mauve and succulent; juice dribbled off his chin as he resumed walking.
It tasted delicious, but he didn't remember ever eating the type in Emath. Forty yards further on, as he was finishing the fruit, he realized why the lizardmen didn't bring this variety in to trade. Even in that short time after picking, the pulp had softened further and begun to sour. It was a delicacy for jungle-dwellers alone.
Jungle-dwellers like Dennis, Prince of Emath.
Chester continued to pluck fruits and berries for Dennis as they strode along. The youth noticed a cluster of thumb-sized translucent fruits and said, "These, Chester?"
"Not these, Dennis," said the little robot, guiding Dennis' hand away with one of his tentacles. "For you would die, and your bones would rot before your flesh."
Dennis lost all concern over the wholesomeness of what his companion offered him.
The fruits were tasty and interesting in their variety, but they didn't satiate Dennis' appetite even after he'd eaten all his stomach could hold. "Ah, Chester?" he asked, embarrassed that he might sound ungrateful. "Is there a place we could get meat? Ah, or fish?"
"There is a pond ahead of us, Dennis," the robot said. "It may be that there are fish in it that you can catch."
That I can try to catch, Dennis thought; but he was looking forward to the chance.