Stardogs, page 17
He got the sort of look this sort of idiotic question deserved. “How in the hell do you expect us to know, sonny-boy,” said Sam, eyeing the fur wall warily.
“Look!” Caro pointed. A part of a metal sheet they’d used as a sled had been half pulled into the cave. Now only the inside half of it remained. Cilia from the bear-rug clung to it. Digesting.
“Gods! Shoot it! It’ll eat us all!” yelled Lila almost hysterical, forgetting she had a weapon.
Martin Brettan’s heavy automatic came out. He held steady, but shook his head. “I don’t see that it’ll do a damned thing to something big enough to block the cave. Still… better take cover behind that stuff in case it ricochets.” He waited, and when they were ready, and Otto had been called off guard, he fired. The sound in the closed off cave was terrifyingly loud. After a few moments he walked closer. Peered into the circle of focused torchlight. “I hit it, but it’s… it’s like I never shot.” He studied the fur without quite touching the waving cilia. “There’s not even a mark.” His voice too showed the edge of panic.
“Perhaps it will go away.” Tanzo got up from behind the bags and rocks and peered at the cilia. She sounded more curious than alarmed. “It’s a bit like Stardog belly cilia isn’t it?”
Her pragmatism steadied them. “Maybe it will go away, as quietly as it came. How could something that big get here without us even noticing it?”
“How are we for air?”
“Enough for a good few hours yet.”
Sam looked at the gently moving fur-clad wall. “It doesn’t feel bad,” he said slowly.
“You touched it?”
“No. I mean… it won’t… harm us. It’ll go away.”
The lean Leaguesman snorted, irritated. “How could you know? Stupid Yak bastard.” He picked up a rock from the back of the cave, where, as it happened, sheeters couldn’t normally reach. The fragment was pleasantly mineral rich, unlike the accessible material which generations of sheeters had already probed for minerals. Kadar flung it with all the might of his sinewy arms.
It struck the fur. The fur-wall indented with the force of the blow. Then the wall bounced back. The rock, however, stuck. Cilia clung hungrily to it.
“Brilliant. That has of course made the huge creature so sore it’s bound to scamper away. Of course a rock flung by you would be more effective than a mere bullet.” Shari hadn’t slept much after the water-theft and Deo’s strange fit, and her tiredness and worry were coming out in knife-edged words. Actually, she was more concerned by Deo’s robotic obedience of her orders, on being woken from his unnaturally heavy sleep, than about the alien behemoth sealing off the cave. She had so desperately hoped he would be well when he woke up. You don’t rely almost completely on someone for nearly twenty years and then find it easy to suddenly have them reliant on you. She was nervous, worried… and resentful. The last emotion upset her, and she felt guilty about it, but that didn’t make the resentment go away.
Tanzo was so absorbed in studying the cilia and the rock that she failed to take in the sarcasm. “Actually I would guess that rather than driving off the creature, Leaguesman Kadar has just fed it. It’ll probably stay longer.”
The little ridergirl shivered and began to sob, huddling in on herself. Otto went across to her and began licking her conveniently placed face. She enfolded the small fur-ball in her arms. For some reason this seemed to incense the older harsh faced Leaguesman. He’d stood glowering, tight-lipped while Shari’s sarcasm had slashed at him. He’d smouldered at Tanzo’s comment. Now he exploded and rushed at the wide-eyed Una. “Leave it alone you useless little slut-slave! LEAVE IT, I say!” He kicked out at her. His fists were balled and he bent to strike. The frightened girl dived away. She rolled, with her arms still around the dog, toward the rippling cilia of the fur-wall.
“NO!” Screamed Shari, frozen, seeing the rage-crazed man kick Una, with the dog in her arms, toward the hungry cilia.
Deo leaped. His “KIIIIHAI!!” strike-scream tore at the fur wall as the wavy blade in his hand slashed at it ahead of the rolling girl and dog. It parted like tissue paper. A sheeter is, after all, rarely more than a quarter inch thick. Heat and light smote in at them as the girl and dog rolled straight through the slash. Then, within a second, before the surprised people had a chance to react the slash began to knit.
The Dagger of the Goddess, shook his smoke-filled head. What had he done? Why was he here? Everything swam confusingly about his mind. Why did he have the holy dagger in hand? What was it about a woman and a dog? He couldn’t remember. He shook his head again. It hurt. The dagger was not supposed to be used for lesser purposes than human blood. He fed it, traced the cross in red, and cleaned it on the insignia he had cut from the sleeve of the commander of the Imperial garrison on Arunchal. Strange. There were other rusty brown marks on the patch he had cut only yesterday. He looked in puzzlement at the people in the ill-lit cave as he put the blade away.
“Well. At least we can get out and we know we won’t suffocate,” said the dumpy woman with glasses. “Quick thinking, Deo.” She seemed to be talking to him. Then the Dewa appeared at his side, and took him to sit down. He was grateful. His muscles hurt.
They could hear Otto barking. Then the dog came running back into their midst, flinging himself at Shari. The far corner of the cave was now exposed as the sheeter continued its flatworm progress across the sun-side of the rocky ridge. Soon they were able to scramble out. Down the length of the ridge were a score or more sheetlike black creatures, moving slowly down-valley, their thin bodies clinging and taking on the contours of the rugged terrain beneath them. They appeared to have no interest whatsoever in the small motile bits that had just emerged from under the rear mantle of one of their number. Even that creature simply went on moving steadily and smoothly with the pack, as if nothing had ever happened.
Una was huddled in a foetal ball in the sunlight. Tanzo hastily went to comfort her. Sam stepped over to the tall Leaguesman who was looking decidedly wary. “Listen good, shit-for-brains,” he said quietly, “Do something stupid like that again and you’re going to get killed, see.”
The Leaguesman was too cowed by the sequence of events to do more than stare uneasily at him.
Shari clapped her hands, calling their attention. “Hear me, everybody. I spent a lot of last night thinking. This incident this morning just reinforces it all. We need to talk. We need to decide on how our group can work together. We need to decide who will lead us, and what the ground-rules are. We’re a small group, and we have a limited amount of resources. We can’t hope to survive unless we do this.”
“The structure of command was set out clearly in Coda de Gotha five centuries ago,” said Prince Jarian stiffly.
Shari took a deep breath. “Jarian. Besides the fact that I personally would rather take my chances on my own than take orders from you, do you think you have the experience to lead us? I think this is the first time you’ve been off Phillipia, if not the first time you’ve been outside the palace.” She shook her head. “You might know more about murder and intrigue than the rest of us, but that won’t help us in dealing with those creatures. No. I’m afraid you’ll temporarily have to suspend your rank, as I’ve done. If, as I suspect, we stay here forever, Jarian, the Coda de Gotha will never mean anything again. No. Let’s all agree on someone.”
His plump-petulant face crumpled. “It’s not fair. You sterile old hag, you always spoil everything!”
Shari showed her teeth. “I’m not sterile. Old for childbearing maybe, but not too old.”
“Hah! That’s what you think! Grandfather had you tested! You’re as barren as… as this place!” he snarled, spitefully pleased.
Shock wrote itself over Viscount Brettan’s face. She noticed it. So… he’d been that ambitious, even then? But surely he’d realized that a child would be killed, preferably even before it could be born, along with its father and mother?
She smiled pure malice at both of them. “Yes. The Emperor had to be deceived, didn’t he? Otherwise I’d have been killed, wouldn’t I? When, if, my child is born, I’ll call him Senn, if it is a boy, or Lea, if it’s a girl. In honor of the two brave people, my childhood bodyguard and my nursemaid, who fooled even the Emperor for me, and kept me alive.”
It was very sweet indeed to watch the parade of expressions across their faces. Shari noted that her supposed sterility had been no secret to the Guildsmen. “Now that we’ve dealt with that little aside, perhaps we can get back to discussing leadership,” she said crisply.
Leaguesman Kadar grimaced. “What basis will we use to choose a leader? The League has steered human affairs for time out of mind. I suppose you would have us reject that too.”
Sam burst out, suddenly agitated. “We need to get away from here.” Nobody paid him any attention. The various parties were too intent on how to lay claim to the power they saw as theirs by right.
“Given the circumstances, I think we should consider individuals and their abilities rather than groups or histories,” commented Tanzo dryly.
The horizon rippled, and then the ground shook itself like a wet dog. People tumbled and fell to the ground as if they were marionettes whose strings had just been scythed. “RUN!” screamed Sam. “Away from the cliff!”
“Albeer. Carry that rider,” Shari yelled. “Brettan. Lila. With me! Fetch the water! Go on, the rest of you, run!” She pushed Deo, who had staggered confusedly to his feet, in the direction of the sandflat in front of the dune. She and the two she’d nominated ran into the cave amid the groaning of rocks, grabbed packs, and more by luck than judgment managed to run clear before a huge slab of roof-rock came down. They pelted down-slope with new scree-fragments and pill-bug rolled sheeters bouncing around them. When they were nearly at the group on the sandflat an aftershock breakdanced the ground beneath them, and they had to fall. Above them the ridge itself seemed to sway. Shari fought her way to her knees. The ground still quaked. “Keep going! Crawl!!”
They fought their way to the middle of the sandflat, where Sam was trying to hold the group. He’d had to resort to knocking the Prince down, threatening Johannes with his chisel, and shaking the screaming Caro. “We’ve got to keep away from that dune too, you crazy woman!”
He was quite right. The huge dune was slipping, flattening, and cascading with wild plumes of excited dust swirling about it. That was nothing to what was happening to the ridge. Small rocks had fallen. Now the big ones, the office block sized ones were coming loose with a slow grinding, and then falling with ground-shaking thunder. The group, amid the giant beachballed sheeters, watched as the perpetual tectonic renewal of the Denaar-motherworld’s resources occurred. They were on the edge of a particularly stable and ancient plate. Most of this world could not be described as stable. The creatures who had evolved here needed it that way. Their food sources were sunlight and raw minerals. Raw surface minerals. Any form of mining would have been a non-survival evolutionary strategy. Mobility, particularly flight, was a distinctly advantageous trait.
The ground drum-rolled, and those who had been foolish enough to stand up fell over again.
On the other side of the ridge, up-valley, Juan was wishing desperately that he too could fly. It was what Juan-Denaari would have done if he could, rising high, being careful of the turbulence these events always caused, riding the potentially unstable thermals away over to the less disturbed sand-fields. As it was he huddled beside a huge rock, which had vibrated like a gong and shifted alarmingly a few seconds ago. Juan-Denaari had been philosophical and unsurprised by the quake. They happened all the time. They had to. It was a pity, and a tragic major killer of nestlings, which is why they had to learn to fly so early.
Juan-human, on the other hand, had been stunned and shaken in every way by the seismic event. He cowered closer to the megaton boulder. A slab of rock guillotined past him. He balled himself still tighter, trying to make himself small. He wished with every fiber of his being that he could be elsewhere. The parts of him were divided as to where ‘elsewhere’ should be. One part wanted to be aloft, heading for the memory-repositories. The other part also wanted to be aloft. A lot further aloft. Outside this damnable atmosphere which wasn’t controlled, away from ground that shook and quivered beneath your feet. It was bad enough that the ground wasn’t corridor-flat, and hurt your feet, but this! He desperately wanted to be back in his own cubicle. Even his father chewing him out would be sweet.
The part that wasn’t Juan-human seemed to think his going home feasible. After he’d returned the crown to the vaults, of course. The flood of bio-images nearly stunned the boy. So that was how it had worked!
The gigantic beachballed sheeters unrolled. They eagerly undulated back toward the ridge on their millions of cilia pseudo-feet. They were keen to begin feeding again, on all the lovely new mineral traces that would be exposed. Even in their haste they weren’t dangerously fast, just very big. The castaways had no trouble dodging them.
Mark Albeer scanned the rocky ridge carefully. “Well, the animals seem to think it’s over. But I can’t even see our cave now.”
Sam grunted, rubbing his ribs where the Prince’s flailing fist had caught him. “There’s a new section of cliff where we got across the ridge yesterday. We’ll have to try for another spot to cross.”
The broad bodyguard nodded, being glad that it hadn’t happened while they were up there. “We’d better see if any of our stuff survived first.”
“We’ve got seven packs, at least.” Martin Brettan had somehow managed three. The Viscount, his once elegant blue-black uniform torn, and his face bloody from a touch of a passing rock, didn’t look like a lady’s gentlemanly officer escort any more. He looked big and tough. And grim. Decidedly grim. “I’ll come along with you. We’d better go careful among that new-fallen stuff.”
“And the leadership race?” said Tanzo also getting to her feet, obviously intent on going along, but, as usual, tenacious.
“I think it resolved itself, back there. Who gave the orders when the crisis struck? Princess Shari. She’s the only one who kept her head, and organized. My fleet commander couldn’t have done it better,” said Martin Brettan, still shocked enough to be absolutely honest. Besides, if things were hopeless, a part of his mind said, it would be better to have a scapegoat. He could take over, by force, if things panned out well.
“I agree. Does anyone have any other ideas?”
“I do,” said Kadar softly. “But I don’t suppose anyone will listen.”
It appeared that nobody else did, or at least nobody was prepared to come out with them. They were all still too shaken up by the earthquake, and the potential loss of all that had not been rescued from the cave, to play politics now. Now they were like children, wanting someone else to provide direction.
Shari shrugged. This hadn’t been quite how she’d intended it to come out. What she’d had in mind was using Martin Brettan as a stalking horse to enforce what would be unpopular orders. But right now they needed steering. Instinctively she turned toward Deo. But he was lost in a soft-crooning, wide-eyed trance. No use thinking he could help her now with his almost imperceptible eye-signals. She took a deep breath. “Well, my first comment is that it is a poor idea for all of you to go to the cave. Sam… you go and have a look.”
He grinned his wry half-grin, without looking her in the eye. “Best if you lose the Yak, huh?” But he turned to obey.
She walked after him, and caught up with him once he was away from the rest. She took him by the shoulder. Turned him to face her. Looked him straight in the eye. Spoke quietly. “No. But I noticed you cried warning before anyone else. That’s the third time I’ve noticed you’ve known of trouble before it happened. I think you’re probably better at staying alive than the rest of us. If I’m right I’m going to use that. I’ll use that to keep us all alive. It will improve your chances too, if more of us survive. I haven’t forgotten that you saved Deo’s life.”
It was one of the few times in his life that Sam Teovan had been truly amazed. He looked at her expressionlessly for a moment. Then he nodded, slowly. “First time I work for a woman Capo. Bit of a shock, see. You a steppin’ razor, lady. Your old man musta taught you real good.”
“My father, God rot him, let my brothers practice their assassination skills on me. In a way that taught me, all right. It taught me the value of the loyalty that kept me alive. Now go, and be careful.”
He bowed, with respect, as to a Yak Capo, and left at a dogtrot. Privately he admitted to himself, as he approached the cliffs, that she’d earned his respect already. And respect is major requirement for loyalty.
“What was that about, Princess?” Martin Brettan asked, his suspicions rising.
“Reassurance,” she said offhandedly. “Now let’s see what we’ve actually got in the packs we grabbed.”
As they unpacked and counted stock Sam Teovan edged cautiously through the new-fallen boulders, and up towards the cave. It was still there, to his surprise. Had his survival instincts been wrong? A second look told him they hadn’t. A huge slab had peeled off the ceiling. Anyone who had stayed in the cave would have been jam. The supplies they’d carried so laboriously from the wrecked ship lay under 70 tons of rock. Squashed flat.
CHAPTER 14
THE HOT BREATH
The long road to heaven is made of many small, steep steps. So is the road to hell, the steps are just shallower, wider and go the other way. So, when the walking’s easy, don’t believe the road signs.
From the parable of the highland pot-mender, The Gospel according to St. Gopal.
The radio-unit had survived. It had been in one of the packs that had been snatched in haste. The decision that they must go through with the plan to go to the source of the radio-signals, or at least follow the next valley up to a possible water-supply seemed inevitable now. The few remains of the ship had vanished beneath the sand during the tremor, and there seemed little to be gained by remaining here. The rough packs were divided up, and they began to walk parallel to the ridge. Although nobody said it, nobody was keen to walk too close to it. After nearly two hours of plodding, the ridge simply grew higher and steeper, and walking in the endless soft sand just grew more exhausting, Shari realized that the searing heat and walking on the sand would kill them all just as certainly as a rock-fall. It would just take longer. She pointed to an outlier-boulder. “Let’s rest in the shade a bit.” Deo was worrying her particularly. He was… so robotic. Even the small water ration so eagerly consumed by the rest, after they’d collapsed in the small patch of shadow, had to be pushed towards his mouth. He hadn’t savored it slowly or gulped it. Instead he had sniffed it, then tasted it, cautiously. And then he had poured a tiny libation of a few drops onto the ground with muttered Ghurkali words.
