Stardogs, page 18
“He’s wasting the water!” Jarian squalled.
“It’s his ration.”
“If he doesn’t want it, I do!” Jarian reached for the cup.
The Dagger of the Goddess knocked him down, but gently, before he could defile the sacrament that had arisen from a blend of alien nano-technology, twisted Catholicism and a murderous Hindi sect. The holy assassin’s head was full of dust and shadows. Many times he had taken the sacrament in the rite of cleansing. He did not remember anyone daring to try and interrupt it. Remember? Why? It was actually happening… wasn’t it? Or was it? He stared, confused, at the boy with blood on his lip and fear and murder in his pallid blue eyes. Almost, almost he knew the face. But it was gone, ignis faatus. Devil’s work. Denaari demons sent to lead the believers from the true way. Turning away, he continued with the rite.
“What are we going to do about him? He’s a dangerous man, you know,” Tanzo asked quietly.
“He’s off his head.” Martin Brettan was himself puzzled by the strange behaviour of the man. He’d seen his dossier. Amadeo Cerros came from an unassuming background, with no strong religious overtones. What he was doing was distinctly odd. Also the dossier had rated his weapons skills as moderate, and noted that he had failed the unarmed combat module of his training. That didn’t gel with what he’d seen.
Shari shook her head, and said with confidence she was far from feeling, “He’ll be fine, I’m sure. He’s just suffering from that knock on the head.”
Martin Brettan shrugged. “You may have to make hard decisions about him, if he doesn’t recover soon. A man like that could be dangerous to all of us, you know. No use putting past loyalties in front of our survival.” He was still pointedly avoiding using her name.
Shari shrugged. “Tell that to our little Prince over there.” She shook her head again, and then raised her voice. “We should adapt ourselves to the conditions in which we find ourselves, Ladies and Gentlemen. We’ll rest in the heat of the day and move when it is cool. Also we must give up walking out here on the soft sand. It’s too tiring. We’ll have to risk walking on the rock.”
“And hope it doesn’t all fall on us,” grumbled Johannes. But he said it very quietly.
Most of them slept. Shari worried instead. When the sun began to send spiky dragon-shadows off the ridge, they got up and walked on. On the rock. Soon they would have had no choice, for another shallow ridge rose up from the sand to their right and they found themselves in an ever-narrowing valley.
They’d crash-landed in the tropics of the Denaari-motherworld, a harsh area, always poorly populated because local geological stability meant mineral-nutrients were scarce. It meant that the party did not encounter any other native lifeforms. There was no water in this valley so they did not encounter any of the zoo-biolab escapees from the colony worlds. It also meant that when they rounded a corner and found themselves in a bowl surrounded by vast cliffs, that night fell abruptly. The twin moons weren’t up yet and the darkness was deep. The stars shone down from an alien heaven, innumerable and clear.
“Look! That’s the Salamander!” Lila pointed at the stars. “It’s not quite the same as from New Texas…” She choked up, remembering a boy who’d taken her out into the soft night to show her the stars, and a great many other things. She hurt. It was just… the stars had suddenly been so familiar she could almost have been at home, without the passage of the intervening seven years of hell.
The star-formations meant a great deal to three other people. Martin Brettan, Johannes Wienan, and the girl who had been called Una Quail all knew now almost exactly where they were. How close to the Empire. The first two were intensely frustrated by it. The girl was just afraid. But then, she was usually afraid.
“Yes. I’m sure that as the Stardog flies we’re near your homeworld. Unfortunately, we’ve no way of ever reaching it, as far as I can see. Right now, I’m more concerned about these cliffs. I don’t see any possible way up them either. Point is, do we wait for daylight or start walking back now?” enquired the Viscount, frustration putting a snappy edge on his voice.
Several of the party groaned. Shari realized yet again that leadership was fraught with unpopular decisions. Yet… it had seemed a choice between riding the tiger or being eaten by it. “We might as well start back now. The ridge must be lower in the other direction.”
“Then why did you bring us this way in the first place? You are supposed to be leading us.” Shilo Kadar was tired, thirsty and irritable in the extreme.
“Very well, Leaguesman. You show us the way back down then,” she said with careful evenness.
He snorted, and led off too fast in the darkness. Inevitably he fell down a small rock-slip. After that he was a lot more cautious.
Eventually, when the last after-tremors had died away, Juan had resumed his walk. There was a spring in his step now. There was a way out of here. As he got hotter and thirstier his steps became less eager. He wondered about going back to the pool Rat had led him to. His mouth was terribly dry. It was late afternoon before he came to a place of choices. The valley forked. To the left lay a steep, narrow canyon. The other valley was wider, easier going and also lead, it seemed, directly in the direction he needed to go.
The space-born and reared boy didn’t recognize the signs of water-erosion that were present on wall of the steep canyon. They were absent from the valley he chose. His valley was merely the byproduct of an intrusive dyke of volcanic rock, and a fold in the sedimentary stuff through which the canyon cut.
It took the other party two days to reach this point. They had passed the hidden pool where Rat had found water without an inkling of it having once been there. The tremor had cracked the dolerite sill that had held the water in its impermeable grip. There was nothing there now.
Already, some of the members of the party had dropped into distinct roles. Lila and Sam walked a scouting prowl ahead. Already both had proved their worth, Sam in refusing to allow them to go into a narrow steep walled section of the lower valley. He’d insisted on climbing laboriously around that part, and despite the rash of protest, Shari had backed him up.
“Oh please, not out into the sun again!” Caro found the heat debilitating.
“I can’t see why.” Back at the rear of the party Kadar was once again flexing his muscles.
“You’ll do it because we have a leader.” The big-framed Brettan was also finding the heat exhausting. Kadar’s constant sniping was getting to him. “If you want to go on you’ll have to go through me,” he said, positioning himself across the valley. Nobody had tried it.
The detour took two hot, difficult clambering hours to skirt the narrow section of shady, even-floored valley that would have taken them ten minutes to walk.
When they’d got back to the valley floor a shouting-match had ensued. The noise alone had been enough to trigger a thunderous rock-slide into the section they’d avoided. The quarrel had stopped abruptly.
Lila had produced the first food the castaways had taken from the Denaari Motherworld. She could throw rocks with some skill. Some of the party had balked at raw snake, even if the creature was not a true reptile but merely pseudosnake. Mark Albeer had then produced a number of small pieces of long-ago-flood debris he had been steadily and methodically collecting as they walked. Nothing big had washed down this far, but he had a good three double handfuls of fragments. They were dry and burned well, if rather fast. Half-cooked snake, Shari told herself as she ate her piece, carefully avoiding any sign of distaste, was still a big step up on raw snake.
When they walked on the next morning, she had them all looking for and gathering fragments of wood. There was no protest at this. It seemed she wasn’t the only one who thought half-cooked snake was better than the alternative. Besides, the sight of those small flames had been deeply comforting at a primal level.
“You can see how the water has cut into the rock here. Look at those stones piled up on that bank there. They’re rounded. Water comes down that canyon” said Lila.
“But the main valley’s bigger. Surely that means more water?”
“I don’t see any sign of it myself.”
Shari sighed. She looked at Sam. He shook his head. Shrugged. “The canyon looks as steep as hell. Let’s all search the next hundred yards or so of the main valley. If we find any water-borne debris then we’ll go on up it.”
They spread out in a long skirmish-line, Deo being positioned with a gentle push. She doubted he even understood what was happening. In the last day he seemed to have retreated deeper into a sort of melancholia. They pushed on up the wider valley, without finding any sign of anything which could have been carried there by a flood. A geologist would have found the change in the nature of the material on the valley floor obvious. The xeno-archaeologist had also trained herself to spot detail. “I don’t think this is a water-cut valley,” she said, peering at walls. “Everything is too angular.”
Shari had managed to inconspicuously take up station next to the small Yak soldato. “What do you think, Teovan?” she asked quietly
He gave her the benefit of his wry grin. “This ain’t the streets or the dumps, lady. What do I know? Both feel bad.”
She took a deep breath. “All right. Back to the canyon.”
As usual this produced a rash of protests from Kadar. Johannes, in whom the latent Wienan political strain was beginning to assert itself, said nothing. Kadar’s other supporter, Prince Jarian, was oddly silent too. His eyes were narrowed, focused on the water bottle that protruded from the bodyguard’s rough pack. It was a fairly distinctive bottle, with the apple-green glass deeply etched in a grape-vine pattern.
The ridergirl, who certainly never questioned or protested, also stared intensely at something. It wasn’t the water bottle, but a clear footprint left in the fine ashy-dust on the section of sheet-rock in front of her. Another human had walked here, going up-valley, recently. Very recently. The wind had not even blurred the dust-edges. But as was her habit, she said nothing. Just turned and followed the rest of them, leaving her own even smaller footprints beside it, pointing back to the canyon.
Canyon was an inadequate descriptive term. Semi-vertical polished chute would have done better. For a leisurely scramble with a swim and a large supply of cold beverages at the end of it, the water-cut winding slash through the ruddy layers of aeolian rock would have been beautiful. Thirsty, hot, and knowing the canyon took them off at right angles to their destination the friable group found it another version of hell. The nature of the terrain split them into various fractions based on the clambering skills and determination of each person. Walking was made even more difficult by the newly fallen debris. In places there were huge new chocks across the valley that had to be climbed over or squeezed around or under.
Shari found herself chivvying tail-enders along and then trying to catch up with the front-runners to tell them to slow down. It was an exhausting and unrewarding pastime. Somewhere along the way on one of these jaunts the man she called Deo detached himself from the rest of them and disappeared. It was nearly twenty minutes before she realized he was missing.
There was only one possible place he could have left the party. She struggled back down. Jarian was keeping up well, she noticed. He was just behind Caro and the bodyguard, who, just per chance, was travelling at the same speed as the well-endowed Countess. The bodyguard should be careful, she thought. The lean leaguesman could easily try to murder him at this rate. Caro and the bodyguard had just climbed up a narrow crack at the side of a new chock-stone, and he was just reaching down to take the packs from the Prince when she reached them. The Emperor’s eldest surviving son was struggling to lift Mark Albeer’s pack. Shari noticed the apple-green bottle protruding from it. It didn’t seem well stoppered.
“Better push that cork in a bit more.” Her voice startled them. The bodyguard nearly dropped the pack on Jarian’s head, as he attempted to stand hurriedly, years of habit reasserting themselves. “Er… Yes, your Highness. I don’t know how it got like that. I’m sure it was much deeper in.” He rammed the cork in to flush with the neck of the bottle with one of his big hands.
Shari had a good idea how it got like that. The man she was looking for had trained her in the minutiae of observation. There had been teeth-marks on the cork. So that was why the little skiver had caught up.
“You haven’t seen Deo, have you?”
Caro shook her head. “Not since we left the big valley. He’s not lost, is he?”
Shari bit her tongue and avoided raising her eyes to the narrow strip of pale-blue heaven far above. There was no doubt that the countess meant well.
“Only place he could have gone was into that cave we passed about three bends back,” said Mark slowly. “Do you need some help, Princess?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so right now. It didn’t look deep. He’s probably just asleep. He is confused and seems to want sleep a great deal. He never seemed to ever sleep… before. Well, if I have a problem I’ll come and fetch someone.”
“Don’t you want a drink before you go, Aunt?”
There was a greasy sheen to the little Prince’s eyes, as he looked at her attempting to drip sincerity. So he had been stealing water, again. Little toad.
“No thank you. I will manage with my ration, the same as everyone else,” she said evenly, trying to refuse him the satisfaction of letting him see how angry she was.
“Really, you should, Aunt Shari. You deserve it. Go on. Perhaps a bit for Otto? Good dog.” The good dog growled at him.
The damned slimy little snake! Trying to suck up to her when he’d been stealing again! She shook her head, too angry to speak to him. Instead she said to the others “I’ve left my pack further up. I’ll pick it up on my way back. I should be back within an hour.”
A hundred yards or so back she passed Tanzo toiling along steadily, then Kadar, and finally Johannes. She wondered how he would manage the obstruction with his injured arm. Oh well, she could always help him on her way back up, she thought tiredly.
The cave was a narrow slit into the canyon wall. It breathed coolness into the hot mid-day air. She could quite understand why Deo might have gone into it. It was tempting to step inside and collapse for a few minutes herself. Instead she put on the head-torch she’d brought along from her pack, and stepped into the cave. “Deo!” Her voice echoed. It must be bigger than she’d guessed. She flicked the torch on. The yellow beam stretched into the darkness. It didn’t shine on a back wall.
The cave was not wide, but it was deep. She walked on, following the faultline, downwards. There were occasional cracks and fissures off to the sides, but fortunately the floor was smooth and water polished and dusted with fine sand. It was easy to see Deo’s footprints. Otto could have followed the man by scent, but instead stuck close at her heel. He did not like this place. That in itself was odd. At least one of Otto’s varied ancestors was a terrier, and he was partial to holes normally.
Something soft brushed past her shoulder. She screamed. Otto barked furiously. Briefly, in the torchlight she caught a glimpse of something black, fluttering. “There Otto. It’s only a bat. Just a bat.” She was, of course, entirely wrong. There were bats here on the Denaari-motherworld. Like the others they were escapees from one of the biosphere-genepool-zoos that the Denaari had made for the offworld treasures they collected. But no bat would be stupid enough to come in here.
On she walked. The cave twisted and wound down to where the pressurized water had eaten away at the fault-breccia. She heard a distant groan. It was followed by a breeze from deeper in. It carried a distinctly sulphurous-smell. And it was warm and damp. At first the cave had been cool…
“Deo!” she called yet again.
“Deo-o-o-o.” Only the cave answered. Yet that must have been him groaning surely? But it had seemed such a huge distant sound. Well the echoes did strange things to noises. She pressed on into the stygian depths.
The Dagger of the Goddess knew that he had arrived in hell. He had walked down an endless dark corridor. He had come out of the darkness and into a region of sickly green, glowing luminescence. He walked now amid the steams and smokes. He had seen demons flutter and cluster about these fumaroles. In front of him were a series of fissures from which the groans of the damned issued along with the fiend’s reek of sulphur. The caverns of Hell sighed and thin screams echoed. Surely this was the place to which those who were denied even the lowest rebirth were sent.
The pressure in the cavern dropped abruptly, with a sound like a carillon of kisses. His head throbbed angrily again. Within his skull the nanomech control centre sent out yet another hasty string of orders. The pressure change had been enough to start subdural bleeding yet again. Repair. Repair. The organism needed to be rested. But the damage to the brain was such that the nanomech control over the organism was severely impaired. When the humans had been dumped on the Sil colony world nearly a thousand five hundred years ago, the last of the colony-born Sil were dying. The world that men called Arunchal lacked certain essential trace elements that the metal-rich Silur-homeworld had provided in abundance. The Sil grasp of biological matters had been rudimentary. The only species which survived on Silur were the Sil themselves. The Sil’s energy and genius had instead gone into mechanisation, and then micro-mechanisation.
