Golden Age of Science Fiction Vol X

by Various

  There were many things to be done now that Big Winter was past and they could have the chance to do them. They needed a larger pottery kiln, a larger workshop with a wooden lathe, more diamonds to make cutting wheels, more quartz crystals to make binoculars and microscopes. They could again explore the field of inorganic chemistry, even though results in the past had produced nothing of value, and they could, within a few years, resume the metal prospecting up the plateau--the most important project of all.

  Their weapons seemed to be as perfect as was possible but when the Gerns came they would need some quick and certain means of communication between the various units that would fight the Gerns. A leader who could not communicate with his forces and coordinate their actions would be helpless. And they had on Ragnarok a form of communication, if trained, that the Gerns could not detect or interfere with electronically: the mockers.

  The Craigs were still white and impassable with snow that summer but the snow was receding higher each year. Five years later, in the summer of one hundred and thirty-five, the Craigs were passable for a few weeks.

  Lake led a party of eight over them and down into the chasm. They took with them two small cages, constructed of wood and glass and made airtight with the strong medusabush glue. Each cage was equipped with a simple air pump and a pressure gauge.

  They brought back two pairs of mockers as interested and trusting captives, together with a supply of the orange corn and a large amount of diamonds. The mockers, in their pressure-maintained cages, were not even aware of the increase in elevation as they were carried over the high summit of the Craigs.

  To Lake and the men with him the climb back up the long, steep slope of the mountain was a stiff climb to make in one day but no more than that. It was hard to believe that it had taken Humbolt and Barber almost three days to climb it and that Barber had died in the attempt. It reminded him of the old crossbows that Humbolt and the others had used. They were thin, with a light pull, such as the present generation boys used. It must have required courage for the old ones to dare unicorn attacks with bows so thin that only the small area behind the unicorn's jaws was vulnerable to their arrows....

  * * * * *

  When the caves were reached, a very gradual reduction of pressure in the mocker cages was started; one that would cover a period of weeks. One pair of mockers survived and had two young ones that fall. The young mockers, like the first generation of Ragnarok-born children of many years before, were more adapted to their environment than their parents were.

  The orange corn was planted, using an adaptation method somewhat similar to that used with the mockers. It might have worked had the orange corn not required such a long period of time in which to reach maturity. When winter came only a few grains had formed.

  They were saved for next year's seeds, to continue the slow adaptation process.

  By the fifth year the youngest generation of mockers was well adapted to the elevation of the caves but for a susceptibility to a quickly fatal form of pneumonia which made it necessary to keep them from exposing themselves to the cold or to any sudden changes of temperature.

  Their intelligence was surprising and they seemed to be partially receptive to human thoughts, as Bill Humbolt had written. By the end of the fifteenth year their training had reached such a stage of perfection that a mocker would transmit or not transmit with only the unspoken thought of its master to tell it which it should be. In addition, they would transmit the message to whichever mocker their master's thought directed. Presumably all mockers received the message but only the mocker to whom it was addressed would repeat it aloud.

  They had their method of communication. They had their automatic crossbows for quick, close fighting, and their long range longbows. They were fully adapted to the 1.5 gravity and their reflexes were almost like those of prowlers--Ragnarok had long ago separated the quick from the dead.

  There were eight hundred and nineteen of them that year, in the early spring of one hundred and fifty, and they were ready and impatient for the coming of the Gerns.

  Then the transmitter, which had been in operation again for many years, failed one day.

  George Craig had finished checking it when Lake arrived. He looked up from his instruments, remarkably similar in appearance to a sketch of the old George Ord--a resemblance that had been passed down to him by his mother--and said:

  "The entire circuit is either gone or ready to go. It's already operated for a lot longer than it should have."

  "It doesn't matter," Lake said. "It's served its purpose. We won't rebuild it."

  George watched him questioningly.

  "It's served its purpose," he said again. "It didn't let us forget that the Gerns will come again. But that isn't enough, now. The first signal won't reach Athena until the year two thirty-five. It will be the dead of Big Winter again then. They'll have to fight the Gerns with bows and arrows that the cold will make as brittle as glass. They won't have a chance."

  "No," George said. "They won't have a chance. But what can we do to change it?"

  "It's something I've been thinking about," he said. "We'll build a hyperspace transmitter and bring the Gerns before Big Winter comes."

  "We will?" George asked, lifting his dark eyebrows. "And what do we use for the three hundred pounds of copper and five hundred pounds of iron we would have to have to make the generator?"

  "Surely we can find five hundred pounds of iron somewhere on Ragnarok. The north end of the plateau might be the best bet. As for the copper--I doubt that we'll ever find it. But there are seams of a bauxite-like clay in the Western hills--they're certain to contain aluminum to at least some extent. So we'll make the wires of aluminum."

  "The ore would have to be refined to pure aluminum oxide before it could be smelted," George said. "And you can't smelt aluminum ore in an ordinary furnace--only in an electric furnace with a generator that can supply a high amperage. And we would have to have cryolite ore to serve as the solvent in the smelting process."

  "There's a seam of cryolite in the Eastern Hills, according to the old maps," said Lake. "We could make a larger generator by melting down everything we have. It wouldn't be big enough to power the hyperspace transmitter but it should be big enough to smelt aluminum ore."

  George considered the idea. "I think we can do it."

  "How long until we can send the signal?" he asked.

  "Given the extra metal we need, the building of the generator is a simple job. The transmitter is what will take years--maybe as long as fifty."

  Fifty years....

  "Can't anything be done to make it sooner?" he asked.

  "I know," George said. "You would like for the Gerns to come while you're still here. So would every man on Ragnarok. But even on Earth the building of a hyperspace transmitter was a long, slow job, with all the materials they needed and all the special tools and equipment. Here we'll have to do everything by hand and for materials we have only broken and burned-out odds and ends. It will take about fifty years--it can't be helped."

  Fifty years ... but that would bring the Gerns before Big Winter came again. And there was the rapidly increasing chance that a Gern cruiser would at any day intercept the first signals. They were already more than halfway to Athena.

  "Melt down the generator," he said. "Start making a bigger one. Tomorrow men will go out after bauxite and cryolite and four of us will go up the plateau to look for iron."

  * * * * *

  Lake selected Gene Taylor, Tony Chiara and Steve Schroeder to go with him. They were well on their way by daylight the next morning, on the shoulder of each of them a mocker which observed the activity and new scenes with bright, interested eyes.

  They traveled light, since they would have fresh meat all the way, and carried herbs and corn only for the mockers. Once, generations before, it had been necessary for men to eat herbs to prevent deficiency diseases but now the deficiency diseases, like Hell Fever, were unknown to them.

  They carried no co
mpasses since the radiations of the two suns constantly created magnetic storms that caused compass needles to swing as much as twenty degrees within an hour. Each of them carried a pair of powerful binoculars, however; binoculars that had been diamond-carved from the ivory-like black unicorn horn and set with lenses and prisms of diamond-cut quartz.

  The foremost bands of woods goats followed the advance of spring up the plateau and they followed the woods goats. They could not go ahead of the goats--the goats were already pressing close behind the melting of the snow. No hills or ridges were seen as the weeks went by and it seemed to Lake that they would walk forever across the endless rolling floor of the plain.

  Early summer came and they walked across a land that was green and pleasantly cool at a time when the vegetation around the caves would be burned brown and lifeless. The woods goats grew less in number then as some of them stopped for the rest of the summer in their chosen latitudes.

  They continued on and at last they saw, far to the north, what seemed to be an almost infinitesimal bulge on the horizon. They reached it two days later; a land of rolling green hills, scarred here and there with ragged outcroppings of rock, and a land that climbed slowly and steadily higher as it went into the north.

  They camped that night in a little vale. The floor of it was white with the bones of woods goats that had tarried too long the fall before and got caught by an early blizzard. There was still flesh on the bones and scavenger rodents scuttled among the carcasses, feasting.

  "We'll split up now," he told the others the next morning.

  He assigned each of them his position; Steve Schroeder to parallel his course thirty miles to his right, Gene Taylor to go thirty miles to his left, and Tony Chiara to go thirty miles to the left of Taylor.

  "We'll try to hold those distances," he said. "We can't look over the country in detail that way but it will give us a good general survey of it. We don't have too much time left by now and we'll make as many miles into the north as we can each day. The woods goats will tell us when it's time for us to turn back."

  They parted company with casual farewells but for Steve Schroeder, who smiled sardonically at the bones of the woods goats in the vale and asked:

  "Who's supposed to tell the woods goats?"

  * * * * *

  Tip, the black, white-nosed mocker on Lake's shoulder, kept twisting his neck to watch the departure of the others until he had crossed the next hill and the others were hidden from view.

  "All right, Tip," he said then. "You can unwind your neck now."

  "Unwind--all right--all right," Tip said. Then, with a sudden burst of energy which was characteristic of mockers, he began to jiggle up and down and chant in time with his movements, "All right all right all right all right----"

  "Shut up!" he commanded. "If you want to talk nonsense I don't care--but don't say 'all right' any more."

  "All right," Tip agreed amiably, settling down. "Shut up if you want to talk nonsense. I don't care."

  "And don't slaughter the punctuation like that. You change the meaning entirely."

  "But don't say all right any more," Tip went on, ignoring him. "You change the meaning entirely."

  Then, with another surge of animation, Tip began to fish in his jacket pocket with little hand-like paws. "Tip hungry--Tip hungry."

  Lake unbuttoned the pocket and gave Tip a herb leaf. "I notice there's no nonsensical chatter when you want to ask for something to eat."

  Tip took the herb leaf but he spoke again before he began to eat; slowly, as though trying seriously to express a thought:

  "Tip hungry--no nonsensical."

  "Sometimes," he said, turning his head to look at Tip, "you mockers give me the peculiar feeling that you're right on the edge of becoming a new and intelligent race and no fooling."

  Tip wiggled his whiskers and bit into the herb leaf. "No fooling," he agreed.

  * * * * *

  He stopped for the night in a steep-walled hollow and built a small fire of dead moss and grass to ward off the chill that came with dark. He called the others, thinking first of Schroeder so that Tip would transmit to Schroeder's mocker:

  "Steve?"

  "Here," Tip answered, in a detectable imitation of Schroeder's voice. "No luck."

  He thought of Gene Taylor and called, "Gene?"

  There was no answer and he called Chiara. "Tony--could you see any of Gene's route today?"

  "Part of it," Chiara answered. "I saw a herd of unicorns over that way. Why--doesn't he answer?"

  "No."

  "Then," Chiara said, "they must have got him."

  "Did you find anything today, Tony?" he asked.

  "Nothing but pure andesite. Not even an iron stain."

  It was the same kind of barren formation that he, himself, had been walking over all day. But he had not expected success so soon....

  He tried once again to call Gene Taylor:

  "Gene ... Gene ... are you there, Gene?"

  There was no answer. He knew there would never be.

  * * * * *

  The days became weeks with dismaying swiftness as they penetrated farther into the north. The hills became more rugged and there were intrusions of granite and other formations to promise a chance of finding metal; a promise that urged them on faster as their time grew shorter.

  Twice he saw something white in the distance. Once it was the bones of another band of woods goats that had huddled together and frozen to death in some early blizzard of the past and once it was the bones of a dozen unicorns.

  The nights grew chillier and the suns moved faster and faster to the south. The animals began to migrate, an almost imperceptible movement in the beginning but one that increased each day. The first frost came and the migration began in earnest. By the third day it was a hurrying tide.

  Tip was strangely silent that day. He did not speak until the noon sun had cleared the cold, heavy mists of morning. When he spoke it was to give a message from Chiara:

  "Howard ... last report ... Goldie is dying ... pneumonia...."

  Goldie was Chiara's mocker, his only means of communication--and there would be no way to tell him when they were turning back.

  "Turn back today, Tony," he said. "Steve and I will go on for a few days more."

  There was no answer and he said quickly, "Turn back--turn back! Acknowledge that, Tony."

  "Turning back ..." the acknowledgment came. "... tried to save her...."

  The message stopped and there was a silence that Chiara's mocker would never break again. He walked on, with Tip sitting very small and quiet on his shoulder. He had crossed another hill before Tip moved, to press up close to him the way mockers did when they were lonely and to hold tightly to him.

  "What is it, Tip?" he asked.

  "Goldie is dying," Tip said. And then again, like a soft, sad whisper, "Goldie is dying...."

  "She was your mate.... I'm sorry."

  Tip made a little whimpering sound, and the man reached up to stroke his silky side.

  "I'm sorry," he said again. "I'm sorry as hell, little fellow."

  * * * * *

  For two days Tip sat lonely and silent on his shoulder, no longer interested in the new scenes nor any longer relieving the monotony with his chatter. He refused to eat until the morning of the third day.

  By then the exodus of woods goats and unicorns had dwindled to almost nothing; the sky a leaden gray through which the sun could not be seen. That evening he saw what he was sure would be the last band of woods goats and shot one of them.

  When he went to it he was almost afraid to believe what he saw.

  The hair above its feet was red, discolored with the stain of iron-bearing clay.

  He examined it more closely and saw that the goat had apparently watered at a spring where the mud was material washed down from an iron-bearing vein or formation. It had done so fairly recently--there were still tiny particles of clay adhering to the hair.

  The wind stirred, cold and damp with its warn
ing of an approaching storm. He looked to the north, where the evening had turned the gray clouds black, and called Schroeder:

  "Steve--any luck?"

  "None," Schroeder answered.

  "I just killed a goat," he said. "It has iron stains on its legs it got at some spring farther north. I'm going on to try to find it. You can turn back in the morning."

  "No," Schroeder objected. "I can angle over and catch up with you in a couple of days."

  "You'll turn back in the morning," he said. "I'm going to try to find this iron. But if I get caught by a blizzard it will be up to you to tell them at the caves that I found iron and to tell them where it is--you know the mockers can't transmit that far."

  There was a short silence; then Schroeder said, "All right--I see. I'll head south in the morning."

  Lake took a route the next day that would most likely be the one the woods goats had come down, stopping on each ridge top to study the country ahead of him through his binoculars. It was cloudy all day but at sunset the sun appeared very briefly, to send its last rays across the hills and redden them in mockery of the iron he sought.

  Far ahead of him, small even through the glasses and made visible only because of the position of the sun, was a spot at the base of a hill that was redder than the sunset had made the other hills.

  He was confident it would be the red clay he was searching for and he hurried on, not stopping until darkness made further progress impossible.

  Tip slept inside his jacket, curled up against his chest, while the wind blew raw and cold all through the night. He was on his way again at the first touch of daylight, the sky darker than ever and the wind spinning random flakes of snow before him.

  He stopped to look back to the south once, thinking, If I turn back now I might get out before the blizzard hits.

  Then the other thought came: These hills all look the same. It I don't go to the iron while I'm this close and know where it is, it might be years before I or anyone else could find it again.

  He went on and did not look back again for the rest of the day.

  By midafternoon the higher hills around him were hidden under the clouds and the snow was coming harder and faster as the wind drove the flakes against his face. It began to snow with a heaviness that brought a half darkness when he came finally to the hill he had seen through the glasses.