A Princess of The Linear Jungle

side. That woman with all the tattoos, and the old guy with the big cock. She had to get up! Chambless was urging her! Get up, or be cut up! Slicedopen and gutted while still alive! Yun and Adams had her! Words so hard to get out—
    “Help….h Help me….”
    Merritt felt strong hands grip her under her armpits and shift her to her feet. She cracked open gummy eyes.
    The middle of Vayavirunga’s grassy Broadway.
    Daysun higher in the sky than when they had been attacked.
    The next day then?
    A single file of charabanc-sized roaches, companioned by ratmen, ambled unconcernedly down the trail, every second pulling away further from the static tableaux of which she formed a part.
    And holding her up, Arturo Scoria. Hovering close by with concern, Ransome Pivot and Durian Vinnagar.
    But where were all the others?
    Merritt looked back over her shoulder.
    A giant roach stood patiently, an imperturbable ratman gentling its head. Atop its chitinous back lay Dan Peart and Cady Rachis, with a gap separating their bodies where Merritt had reposed. They still had not recovered their wits.
    But had Merritt truly recovered hers? This was all so strange.
    Arturo hugged her so tightly all her bruises and sore muscles winged. Riding the hard back of the cockroach had done her body no good.
    “You’re awake, and sound!” Art exclaimed. “Thank Manasa! We thought maybe you wouldn’t recover from that blow.”
    “Blow?”
    Durian Vinnagar spoke. “In the final stages of the battle, despite the mortal damage we did to them, the ratmen took pains to knock us unconscious with the shafts of their spears. None too gently though. Yet it’s as if they had orders….”
    Vinnagar considerately left off his theorizing, evidently to allow Merritt a chance to re-establish her bearings further. She detached herself from Scoria, clapped the shorter rival savant on his shoulders, fiercely kissed both of Vinnagar’s unshaven cheeks, then turned to Ransome Pivot.
    The ex-student’s familiar face, wearing a brave grin, plucked at her heart.
    “Hello, Mer. Good to have you back. Let me check your pupil dilation for concussion, will you please?”
    She embraced Ransome fervently, causing him to wince and yelp. Only then did Merritt register the wounds her companions bore.
    Ransome Pivot cradled his left arm in a sling fashioned from his ripped shirt. Arturo Scoria wore a bloody rag around his forehead. Durian Vinnagar employed a stick as a clumsy crutch, to aid a swollen ankle.
    She supposed she looked a sight too, bruised and caked with ratman blood. Cady and Dan doubtlessly would exhibit their own battle damage.
    “The bike boys! Where are the bike boys?”
    “All dead, alas,” said Scoria, “and visiting their ancestors on the Wrong Side of the Tracks or the Other Shore. The ratmen made the boys an exception to their mercy, perhaps because they caused the most deaths among them. It’s just the six of us left, I fear. No supplies either. At the mercy of these creatures.”
    A storm of hissing sounded, and Merritt saw that their temporary immobility had brought to a halt another dozen or so roaches and twice as many ratmen making up the back portion of their Jungle train. The ratman in charge of the roach bearing Cady and Dan now chittered in a complex fashion, both at the humans and the roach, and the caravan got underway.
    “Definite semantic structures,” mused Vinnagar. “I’m sure with a little time I could begin to translate….”
    Merritt found she could walk all right, and in fact continued exercise seemed to improve her initial stiffness.
    The humans said nothing amongst themselves for a time, until, by some mild trotting, they had rejoined the forepart of the slow-moving caravan.
    Merritt noticed then that some of the other roaches bore supine, incognizant riders as well: ratmen injured in the battle.
    “They show some human qualities,” said Merritt. “Caring for their injured and all.”
    Ransome laughed with an edge of hysterical bitterness. “Oh, yes, they’re really quite human. In most ways.”
    Merritt looked inquiringly at Arturo, but he defered to Professor Vinnagar.
    “Those ratmen are not merely injured, Miss Abraham. They are thoroughly dead. Corpses, in other words. The Pompatics, it appears, hold no dominion over their empty vessels.”

    Both Daysun and Seasonsun were descending, minting paired purple viridian shadows aslant the treetops, when the caravan came to a stop. By curt but no hostile