The Fall of Tartarus

by Eric Brown

  Three days ago he had pitched his dome and set up his equipment, and it was while he was working in the intense heat of the early morning that his hopes were confirmed. According to the fisher-folk now evacuated from the islands of the chain, the last remaining Vulpheous on the planet had emerged from the sea a year ago, scaled the incline of the volcano, and disappeared over the side in search of its aeons-old spawning lake. Connery had taken their stories lightly - he’d been disappointed too many times in the past - but, while installing his monitors beside the water, he was alerted by a bubbling disturbance on the surface of the lake. He turned in time to see the grey bulk of the creature’s huge head break the surface, water cascading from its hide in scintillating cataracts. He stared in awe and exquisite relief for a minute while the Vulpheous took in air to sustain it in its submarine lair for four to five days. Then the creature ejected a spume of water like a cockade from its cranial blow-hole, and submerged, leaving the lake serene and undisturbed. For the next three nights Connery worked hard erecting his equipment in preparation for the creature’s next appearance.

  Now he stepped from the air-conditioned coolness of his dome and was enveloped by the cloying evening heat. He wore only shorts and boots, and within seconds his exposed skin was covered with an irritating film of sweat. He walked down the incline, through a rattling scree of pumice, towards the water’s edge.

  These days the sun was so huge and emitted so much light that it was no longer discernible as a sphere: it filled the sky during the day with a pure white glow, blinding to look upon. During the pulsing hours of night, the heavens were a gaudy, beribboned display of magenta and tangerine strata, and this was when Connery preferred to work. It was hot, even then, but not as hot as the flesh-burning, furnace heat of day.

  He stepped beneath the sun-reflective canopy where he stored his equipment, found the air-tanks and strapped them to his back. He exchanged his boots for flippers and picked up the underwater flashlight, then fitted his mask and stepped from the canopy into the water.

  It was a thick, warm soup that offered no relief from the twilight humidity. As he waded further into the lake, the gradient of the slope quickly taking the water level past his knees and groin, the algae seemed to suck at his flesh. Suppressing a shiver of disgust, he switched on the flashlight and kicked out from the shore. Within seconds he had penetrated the mat of algae and was swimming through an aqueous, jade-green realm, the water becoming cooler as he descended.

  For ten years after Madelaine’s death he had lived alone, the first five spent exploring many of the Thousand Worlds - less, he realised later, through a genuine curiosity than a desire to fill his time and thoughts with anything other than his grief. Then, after something told to him by a physician on Solomon’s Reach, he had come to Tartarus in search of the Vulpheous. Once more his life had a reason, a goal.

  When he reached the area where he judged the creature had risen three days ago, he turned his flashlight into the depths and swam after its widening beam. It had occurred to him that the Vulpheous might not surface for a second time in exactly the same position. If it re-emerged at another part of the lake, then all his preparations would be in vain. It would be a tragedy if he wasted valuable time chasing the creature around the lake after assuming it to be so captive a target. The last TWC evacuation ship left Tartarus in three months, and Connery planned to be on it.

  In the illumination of his flashlight, tiny silver fish turned as one like a million scintillating components of some larger, gestalt creature. The Vulpheous was not occupying the lake bed directly beneath the place where it had surfaced.

  Connery manoeuvred himself into a standing position, moved his right flipper and turned the flashlight in a great probing circle. He was almost back where he’d started when the cone of light picked out what appeared to be a colossal boulder. He started, shocked, despite himself. He’d seen pix of the creature, even seen its great head in the flesh the other day, but nothing had prepared him for the fact of its size. Physically it resembled a sea elephant, though Connery estimated the Vulpheous to be fully twenty times bigger. It reposed on the lake bed in dolorous obesity, something tragic in its isolation. According to the islanders it was a female which, unable to be impregnated, had returned anyway to the place of its birth, not to spawn young but to die in the imminent supernova. Amid the piled flesh that was the creature’s head, Connery could see two tiny, bright yellow eyes, staring out at him. He felt a great sadness then, almost a regret at what he was doing.

  He switched off his flashlight and rose quickly to the surface of the lake. The water warmed as he swam, and when he broke through the raft of algae he felt the heat of the night hot on his skin. From the pouch in his shorts he pulled an inflatable buoy, activated it and left the bulbous red and yellow marker on the algae above the creature’s position. When he returned to camp, he would recalibrate his equipment to the position of the buoy.

  As he swam towards the shore and his camp, he thought of Madelaine. Upon his arrival on Tartarus, he had made a promise to her memory - a ridiculous and romantic thing to do, which his younger self would never have understood, but which somehow seemed right in the circumstances. That promise was close to being fulfilled.

  He was wading from the lake, his limbs suddenly heavy, when he caught a glimpse of movement perhaps half a kilometre away to his right. At the narrow defile in the encircling crater, though which he himself had entered, he made out a small, human figure. It was moving slowly down the incline towards the lake. After assuming he was the only person on the island - perhaps even on the entire archipelago - it came as a shock to find that his triumphal arena had been invaded.

  He shrugged off his air-tank and set to work on the equipment beneath the canopy.

  * * * *

  After her arduous, zigzag climb up the side of the volcano, Leona arrived exhausted at the gap in the rock overlooking the lake. She sat and stared down at the perfect circle, sudden tears blurring her vision. She wiped them away with the back of her hand, telling herself that she was no longer a child: she was a woman, now, and women didn’t - not even after spending three days canoeing from her island and climbing the volcano to the lake considered holy by her people.

  She could have rested for longer, but decided to press on. Once she had pitched her tent beside the lake, and said her prayers to the healer, then she could rest for as long as she liked. It would be a reward for the hardship of getting this far. She had never really believed that she would succeed in crossing the straits, still less be able to scale the volcano. She had expected her boat to sink, or that she would collapse exhausted halfway up the mountainside. That she had made it this far was an omen: her pilgrimage would be a success.

  She climbed to her feet and adjusted her pack, its leather thongs biting painfully into her shoulders. The ground on this inner rim of the crater had absorbed the heat of the setting sun, and the rock was griddle-hot beneath her bare feet. She picked her way carefully down the incline, trying to step in the shadows cast by the rocks that littered the slope. She wondered if her tribe would be thinking of her now, if her mother was wondering whether she had reached the holy lake. She glanced into the sky, at the colourful display that reminded her of the feathers of a belcher-bird, and tried to imagine the stars her mother had told her were once visible at night. It was hard to believe that her people were being carried to a new star aboard the great TWC ship - even though three weeks ago she had concealed herself behind a bush on her island and watched fearfully as it ate up her tribe and left Tartarus forever.

  Now she was here, and perhaps if all went well she would one day be joining her people in their new home among the stars.

  She was standing at the water’s edge, on a flat shelf of rock she thought would be a good place to erect her tent, when she saw that she was not alone. Three stone throws around the lake was a man. More than just his impressive height told her that he must be an off-worlder. There was a lot of machinery beneath a silver canopy, s
trange devices that Leona had never seen before, and farther up the slope was a silver living dome. The man was crouching beneath the canopy, working on his machinery.

  She wondered if he was here for the same reason that she was - she could think of no other - and the thought worried her. She occupied herself by building her tent. She tied together the canes that had doubled as the frame of her pack, forming the outline of a pyramid. Then she unfolded the animal skin cover of the pack and draped it over the pyramid. She ducked inside, unrolled her sleeping blanket across the rock, and set out her scant possessions beside it: her comb, her eating bowl and cup, and her five important powders. It was dark inside the tent; she hoped that it would be as dark when the sun came up in the morning, affording her cool shade.

  She left the tent and walked to the water’s edge. She sat cross-legged and said a prayer, paying her respects to the healer, telling it that at last she had arrived. Later, she would chant the mantra that her people’s holy-man had taught her, the ritual of the Summoning.

  After prayers, she stripped off her dress and washed it in the lake, having to wade in to her neck to get past the plant-life. The water was like a balm on her hot and tired skin. She felt soothed by its warm envelopment, and at the same time blessed that she was sharing the lake with ultarrak. She fetched her cup from the tent and strained a quantity of water through the material of her dress. This she drank, slaking her thirst. She strained another cupful and carried it carefully to the tent for later. She laid her dress out on the hot rock, and then scraped the water droplets from her body. Within minutes she was dry, and not long after that so was her dress. She stepped into the garment, tied the laces up the front, and then stared along the shore of the lake to where the off-worlder was still busy beneath the canopy.

  What was he doing? Why would a man from the stars camp beside the lake and set up his complicated machinery?

  Once, when she was a girl, a small tribe of off-worlders w earing blue unifor ms had come to her island in flying machines. The elders greeted them, and shared food and drink with the strange men and women, and then told the rest of the tribe that the off-worlders were people of honour and could be trusted. For days Leona had watched the strangers move around the island - counting people for the eventual evacuation, according to the elders. She had come to trust the tall men and women of the TWC, had even accepted fruit from a woman with hair the colour of blood-grass. Now she felt no fear of the off-worlder who had arrived at the lake before her, just a slight apprehension as to what he was doing here.

  Refreshed after her ablutions, and comfortable in her clean dress, she walked along the shore towards the off-worlder’s camp.

  He was still busy working with the machinery, his back to Leona, when she arrived at the canopy. She hitched up her dress around her knees, squatted, and hugged her shins. In silence she watched as he worked. He was doing something to two long, pointed mechanisms that were directed at the centre of the lake. As he worked, he talked to himself in a language unfamiliar to Leona.

  He was even bigger than she had originally thought. His skin was a lighter shade of brown than hers, a copper tone that glistened with sweat. She watched his muscles as they slipped and tightened beneath his skin. The sight of his naked flesh reminded her of Yarta, a boy who had gone with the rest of them into the TWC ship, and how she had felt for him in those hopeless days before the evacuation.

  She blushed when she realised that the man was watching her. She felt embarrassed, as if he had been able to read the run of her thoughts.

  In her own language, more to divert his attention from her blushes than to elicit any reply, she asked him what he was doing here.

  The man smiled gently, and shrugged his shoulders. He said something in his strange, soft language, and then returned to his machinery. From time to time he glanced from his work, his eyes lingering on her in a way Leona found at first invasive and then complimentary. She knew she was blushing again, in confusion: she had never before had the attentions of a grown man, and she was unsure how to respond.

  She decided that his presence beside the lake had nothing to do with the healer. Off-worlders were ignorant of important things of the spirit - her people had laughed when the TWC off-worlders claimed they knew nothing of the sun god whose anger was causing the sun to explode - and clearly this man was more bothered about his machinery than about ultarrak.

  She stood quickly and retraced her steps around the lake, increasing her pace when he called something after her. When she looked over her shoulder, he was standing beneath the canopy, wiping his hands on a rag and watching her.

  Back at her tent, she mixed her powders in the bowl of water. She was careful with the white powder, thefehna - the right amount would bring relief, but too much could kill her. When the mixture had turned the water blood-red, she raised the bowl to her lips and drank the concoction in one long draft. She felt its heat coursing through her, and told herself that she could feel its restorative powers working already.

  Later, when she felt the time was right, she left her tent. Her stomach fluttery with apprehension, she sat cross-legged before the lake, bowed her head and began the mantra of the Summoning.

  * * * *

  Connery saw the girl as she approached hesitantly around the curve of the lake. He watched her covertly until she was wi thin a few metres of the canopy, then b ent to his work. So is not to scare her off, he would let her initiate conversation. He’d had contact with the tribal people of the southern seas: they were an insular, shy people who were easily frightened by the brusque and confident ways of outsiders.

  After perhaps an hour of silence, he glanced across at the girl. She was squatting on her heels, her brown arms hugging her shins. She seemed miles away, lost in her own thoughts. When she noticed him looking at her, she blushed and spoke so hurriedly that he was unable to catch the meaning of her corrupted French dialect.

  He smiled and shrugged and returned to his work. From time to time he stole glances at her. She was tiny and dark skinned, with long black hair and a thin, high-cheekboned face.

  She wore a short dress made from animal skins, sleeveless and laced up the front. He guessed her to be on the cusp of womanhood, perhaps sixteen or seventeen Earth years old.

  He wondered what she was doing here, why she had not left the planet with the rest of her people. He wanted to ask her, but she seemed as shy as a bird - as if any sudden word or movement from him might frighten her away.

  When she did finally leave, jumping up quickly and hurrying around the shore, he called to her to come back soon, then stood and watched her go. Something turned in his stomach, not a physical pang at the sight of her slim back and quick brown legs, but a more fundamental sense of longing and loss represented by her hurried retreat.

  He did another hour’s work on the machinery, then retired to his dome. He showered in the recycled lake water, then sat in the air-conditioned luxury of the dome’s main section. He heated one of the pre-packed trays he’d bought from the TWC surplus stores at Baudelaire, and slowly ate the tasteless meal.

  Beyond the transparent wall of the dome, he could see the sky losing its colour as the merciless sun rose on another day. In an hour or two the temperature would increase by forty degrees, by which time he would be asleep and oblivious to the hellish conditions outside. And when he woke, in approximately ten hours, he would be ready for when the Vulpheous next chose to surface.

  He darkened the wall of his dome to shut out the heat and light of the day, then stepped outside and peered along the shore to the small, triangular irregularity of the girl’s tent. Already the heat was sapping, and the sun had not yet fully risen. He returned inside, filled a container with two litres of cool, sparkling water, picked up a food tray and left the dome.

  The girl sat by the water’s edge, her back straight, her head bowed. As he walked along the shore, she uncrossed her legs, stood and ducked into her tent. He wondered how she hoped to exist here with no source of renewable foodstuff
s and only the brackish water of the lake to drink.

  He knelt outside the tent. ‘Hello,’ he called.

  Almost immediately she drew aside a flap and peered out, her expression neutral. She ducked from the tent and sat cross-legged before him. He matched her posture, then held out the food and water.

  She looked at him, her face radiant. She spoke in her singsong French patois. ‘For me?’

  ‘For you,’ he replied.

  She stared at him. She spoke quickly, and though he caught only every other word, he was able to make out what might have been: ‘You can speak my language?’

  ‘A little - if you speak very slowly. Do you understand?’

  She nodded, her eyes on the tray of food and container of water.

  ‘I thought you might like these. A present. Do you have rood of your own?’

  Her eyes were big and brown, the whites very white. They w idened as she said, ‘None, only water.’

  He tried not to smile. ‘Then how do you hope to survive?’

  She stared at him, her head on one side. Finally she shrugged, then cast her eyes down to where her fingers worried the imperfect hem of her animal-skin dress.