Children of the Comet

by Donald Moffitt

  His neighbor had managed to restore tentative helmet contact. His voice was like a buzzing insect. “It’s the end of everything, as the priests have always predicted,” he said.

  Torris didn’t answer right away. He could feel the slight tug of the force that resembled gravity and a shift of bodies within the net caused by inertia. Chu had fired his engines to close the gap. He craned his neck to see between the packed bodies. They were headed toward the wide slot in the side of Time’s Beginning that marked the huge airlock, where lifeboats and cargo landers could dock. Those with an outside view could see it too, gaping like some gigantic mouth waiting to gulp them. The mass of trapped men was writhing with their hysterical attempts to struggle.

  “It’s the end of everything,” his neighbor repeated.

  “No,” Torris said. “It’s the beginning.”

  CHAPTER 27

  “They still have their weapons,” Joorn said. “It’s too dangerous for Torris to go in alone. Initial contact is a job for Irina’s specialists.” He’d hurried down from the bridge to join them, so he was still a little out of breath.

  “All the fight’s gone out of them,” Chu demurred. “Both sides are terrified. They’ve separated themselves into two groups, huddled on opposite sides of the auditorium.”

  “Besides,” Martin added, “they’re more or less pinned to the floor by the quarter-gravity. They’re not used to it the way Torris is. They’re not inclined to move much, and besides, they don’t know how to use their bows when they’re not in free fall.”

  “One of them, brave fellow, tried to shoot at my travel pod when I rolled out of the lifeboat,” Jonah piped up. “But he couldn’t even get his arrow nocked. It kept falling to the floor. When I lifted the lid and showed myself, he threw away his bow and prostrated himself to me. And here I thought I had a nice smile.”

  “Torris will know how to talk to them better than any specialists,” Chu said. “Sorry, Irina.”

  “I agree,” Irina said.

  They were gathered outside the barred doors of the main auditorium on Level Two, only a stone’s throw from the boat lock, waiting for Ryan to give them the all-clear signal. It had been a daunting job herding the demoralized mob even that short distance after they’d been released from the net, but Ryan’s security force had been up to it. Some of the Tree people couldn’t walk at all, even in the light gravity, but after Ryan’s hefty cops had physically carried the worst cases out, the rest had bowed to the inevitable and dragged themselves along under escort. Torris, with a nod from Ryan, had slipped out in the confusion.

  Ryan had wisely not tried to disarm them. The fight had gone out of them, and they were more docile hanging on to their weapons. Besides, they were thoroughly cowed by their fantastic surroundings: a cave not constructed of ice, where the air pressure made breathing easy and where there was warmth with no visible fires.

  “Ryan was right,” Martin said. “Give them a chance to get used to each other. At last report, he said some of them on the fringes of their groups were actually exchanging a few cautious words.”

  Jonah gave a chirp of dolphin mirth. “And why not? They’re all in the same boat.”

  The others responded with pained looks.

  Martin said earnestly, “They have nothing to fight about anymore. They’re just a bunch of young jocks starting to bond after the game.”

  “Let’s help the bonding along,” Joorn said. “When I was a young jock six billion years ago, we played a game called football and had hamburgers and beer afterward. Irina, what would be the equivalent?”

  “Torris eats hamburgers,” Nina put in eagerly. “With ketchup.”

  She gave Torris a sideward glance. She and her mother had come to assure themselves that he was all right, but other than the initial greeting, there hadn’t been any attempt at conversation. He had been silent through all the talk, his face unreadable, his thoughts elsewhere.

  “They have alcohol,” Irina said. “And they eat a sort of minced meat, usually raw, with a kind of fermented sauce on it for when they can’t cook.”

  “Perfect,” Joorn said. “The off-duty cafeteria on this level ought to be able to handle it.” He turned away and spoke for some minutes into his portacom, then turned back to the others and said, “It’s all fixed. Two hundred hamburgers and four hundred beers, and whatever crunchies the manager can think of. We’ll have a covey of waitpersons to lay out a buffet when we go in with our team. You don’t get into a fight when you’re scarfing food down.” He turned to his daughter-in-law. “Irina, you better brief your people.”

  Some of Irina’s specialists in aboriginal customs had already drifted in. She took them aside and began to speak to them.

  What Torris was thinking was impossible to guess. Perhaps he was irritated by the sight of the people who had been annoying him for so long with childish questions.

  But he shook himself out of his reverie and turned to someone who was easier to talk to, his little friend Nina. “Nina, you must tell them. I must go inside now and speak to my people.”

  She didn’t know what to say to him. “I know, Torris. You will go, but we will go with you, to see that you are safe.”

  “I must go now,” he said with unshakable obstinacy.

  She turned uncertainly to her brother. “Tell him, Martin,” she appealed.

  Martin tried to reason with him, to no avail. “Torris, you are under sentence of death from your own people!”

  “They will not harm me,” Torris said obdurately. “They will see that I have not been swallowed by the big dark.” Then, with unexpected humor: “But that I have returned with peculiar little friends who can perform miracles. They will say that surely it must be the will of the Tree.”

  “But to the others, the bride raiders from the other Tree, you’re their enemy.”

  “They are like frightened children now. They will listen to what I say.”

  In an amplified voice meant to reach Joorn and the others, Jonah added: “Particularly when they see that you command the very beasts.”

  Chu laughed and said, “Shouldn’t it be ‘beasts of the deep’? But then, they don’t have any concept of the deep, do they?” He turned to Joorn. “Torris has a point, Skipper. Strike while the iron is hot.”

  Joorn made up his mind. “We’ll go in as a group. Torris will be the point man. We’ll back him up. Ryan’s security men will be there in case there’s any trouble, but they’ll stay out of the way. Irina’s people will be there to help if there are any difficulties, but they’ll be in the background. Communication will be chain of command. In other words, everything goes through Nina.” He smiled at his granddaughter. “You up to it, sweetheart?”

  She smiled bravely back. “Torris is used to talking through me, Grandfather, but it’ll work the other way too.”

  “I’ll be there with my dictionary,” Jonah said. “Don’t worry, Nina.”

  “It’s settled then,” Joorn said. He called Irina over and conferred briefly with her, then called Ryan on his portacom and worked out the arrangements.

  Chu stepped over to Torris and looked up into his spare, narrow features. “Did you understand all that, Torris?” he asked.

  “Too much talk,” Torris said, and strode past Chu and Martin to the auditorium doors. Joorn and the two of them looked at one another, shrugged, and followed, with Jonah’s travel pod rolling behind and Irina’s contingent bringing up the rear.

  The fighters were segregated into two cohesive groups, about a hundred feet apart on opposite sides of the stripped auditorium, with a dozen of Ryan’s security guards loosely arranged between them as a buffer. The buffer looked to be unnecessary, as no one was showing any tendency to leave the comfort of his comrades. Another twenty or so security men were watching from their raised position on the stage. They’d been able to separate their despondent wards without the need to question the
m or communicate verbally. One group wore suits painstakingly decorated with embroidery, like Torris’s, while the other group used beads, denoting some kind of cultural difference.

  The packed groups stirred when Torris’s entourage entered, particularly when they saw the dolphin tank, apparently moving of its own volition. But nobody got up. They were all sitting, or slouching on the bare floor with their legs sprawled out in a tangle, obviously made miserable by the mild pseudogravity.

  Ryan met them halfway across the floor. “He’ll want to address his own people first,” he said, looking askance at Torris, who was walking right by him. “We thought of using the stage for that, but these people have never seen anything like a stage or lectern. Close up is better. My boys are watching, but believe me, nobody’s going to move if they can help it.”

  Torris had stopped between the two groups. Something had caught his eye among his former enemies.

  A tall warrior rose from the mass of fighters, standing erect and unbent despite the drag of the artificial gravity.

  “Ning!” Torris blurted out. No one had ever heard him raise his voice before.

  He lurched toward the apparition, but before he could take two steps, a couple of security men reached him and grabbed his arms.

  They looked ridiculous trying to hold him, but their muscular strength was overwhelming compared to his, despite the advantage of his height. It didn’t look as if he were fighting them, but rather that he was held immobile by some natural force.

  More security men rushed up and formed a protective ring around Torris. Others turned their attention to the tall figure making its way through the jam of sprawled people.

  It paused short of the perimeter of the group. The security men relaxed but stood ready.

  “Tor-ris,” a voice said.

  It was unmistakably a woman’s voice, a rich and resonant contralto.

  Joorn and the others stopped short. Nina tugged at her mother’s sleeve. “It’s her!” she said. “The one Torris keeps trying not to talk about.”

  The spacesuited woman stayed put. Her posture was not threatening. You could almost say it was relaxed, despite the obvious effort to stand straight in the unfamiliar gravity.

  The security men relented and allowed Torris to drag them to within six feet of the group’s perimeter, a distance that even the long arms of the Tree dwellers could not bridge. Like the others, she still clung to her bow, but with her casual stance, the security men, though wary, didn’t seem to consider her a threat to Torris.

  With her hood and faceplate thrown back, it could easily be seen that it was indeed a woman, and a striking one at that. There was manifest strength in her chiseled face, with its prominent cheekbones and the huge eyes of the Tree people. Her pitch-black hair, chopped carelessly short, only enhanced the exotic effect.

  “She’s beautiful!” Nina whispered to her mother.

  Joorn’s party tried to press forward, but they were stopped by the security guards. Ryan shot Joorn a cautionary glance that clearly said that he wanted to see how this would play out.

  Torris and the woman were jabbering fervently across the gap between them, the words pouring out in a torrent. It was too fast and too distant for the aboriginal language specialists with Irina to keep up with it.

  “I wonder what they’re saying,” Nina said.

  “What were you doing with the bride raiders?” Torris managed, almost choking with the effort.

  Ning’s lips parted in the familiar half-smile. “Perhaps I was coming to capture you and carry you away, Tor-ris,” she said.

  “Are you mocking me?” he said angrily.

  “I would not do that, Tor-ris.”

  “Because of you, I was branded a heretic and thrown into the dark to die.”

  “So you could not keep your lips sealed after all. I’m not surprised.”

  “Instead of being sentenced to death, I might have joined our own bride raiders and perhaps captured you.”

  “Or died in the attempt,” she returned.

  He ignored that. “But because of you, I did not get the chance to join our raiding party,” he said bitterly.

  “And yet here you are.” She looked around, first at the huddled group of warriors from Torris’s Tree, then at the cluster of strange little people gathered between the two groups. “Who are your new friends, Tor-ris?”

  He could not stay angry, no matter how he tried. “They come from a star very far away,” he said. He struggled with the fantastic concept that Alten and Chu had tried to introduce him to. “So far away that it is beyond the sky itself.”

  Ning had a quick mind, and she’d had time to think. “Are we in a sort of Tree, then? And do these little people live inside their Tree instead of in its branches or in the World it carries in its roots?”

  “We’re not in a Tree,” he said. “It’s a made thing.”

  “So big?” she said. “But how can that be? Where would they stand to make it?”

  He didn’t understand that himself. He tried to make sense out of what Alten had told him. “On something called a planet. I don’t know exactly what it is, but it’s bigger than a Tree, and everything is heavy on it.”

  “As we are now?”

  “Yes.” He became aware of the strain in her expression, the lines etched by the pain of standing upright. He was feeling it himself, but he, at least, had had time to strengthen the muscles in his spindly legs. Yet Ning, as always, was determined not to show weakness, not in front of him or her failed cohorts. Those nearest to her had started to try to follow the conversation, probably with little success.

  “It must be a powerful charm then,” she said.

  “It’s only the same force that we use when we whirl something around in a sling when we want to throw it a distance.”

  She looked alarmed. “Is that going to happen to us?”

  He tried to reassure her. “No, they mean no one any harm. That’s why they stopped the fight.”

  “It was not a giant web beast, then, as some of these ignorant fools are suggesting. It was only a net, like one we might make ourselves but inconceivably bigger.”

  She was interrupted by gasps and cries of fear coming from both sides of the auditorium. Jonah had emerged halfway from his tank of water and was regarding them with a toothy dolphin smile.

  Ning was doing her best not to show any fear. “So even the animals do their bidding,” she said. “What do they intend for us?”

  “They will return us to our Trees. They talk of bringing peace between us. How they will do that, I do not know.”

  “They cannot force peace on us, no matter how we may fear them. We can only bring peace ourselves. Their priests, if they have them, must convince our priests that they are doing the will of the Trees—all Trees. And they must allow the priests to pretend they knew it all along and let it appear that the God-Trees have sent their little star people to back their authority.”

  Jonah had tried to approach but was blocked by Ryan’s watchdogs. He emitted a string of dolphin chirps in the mixed-language patois that he and Torris had devised between them.

  “What does your animal say, Tor-ris?” Ning said.

  “He says that you have a fine Machiavellian guile and that I should listen to you. The word that I did not know how to translate is the name of one of the star dwarfs, a sort of adviser to priests who knows how to manipulate people. And yet he is admired for his duplicity. I have not met him yet.”

  “Well then, Tor-ris, I will tell you that you must work with this Claz of yours. If he is like all priests, he knows where power lies, and that is with you. You are the chosen go-between of the little star people. You speak to their animals and command the great web beast that ensnared the warring bride raiders. No one will ever believe otherwise. When you and I are long gone, you will be remembered as the bringer of the message. You must use
their awe of you before it dissipates.”

  “I’ll speak to your people,” he said.

  He made a move toward her but was checked by the security guards.

  Ning shook her head. “I will speak to them. They have seen us together, and they have seen the beast talk to us. You had better talk to your own people first.”

  From where Ryan’s guards had him boxed in, Jonah said in intelligible English, “Good idea, Torris. Play prophet for all it’s worth. We’ll help you along with a miracle or two.”

  CHAPTER 28

  The priest’s name was Shamash, and he came with two ceremonial guards armed with spears. The spears were serious weapons, tipped with the precious shiny hard stuff that the little men had brought, a sacred material that was reserved for the use of the priestly class.

  But Claz had been gracious and had not objected to the guards’ presence, though he had not allowed them to be admitted to his inner sanctum. They were waiting outside in the communal chamber, being treated to a feast of roasted meat and fermented sap and enjoying the chance to boast to strange women.

  Torris studied Shamash, taking his measure. Ning’s priest was a big, overbearing man with a peremptory manner, and he showed the strain and fatigue of his crossing, though it wasn’t as daunting a leap as it once had been. Even an older man could make the crossing in half a day now, thanks to the man-slinging catapults that the artisans of the other Tree were turning out under Ning’s direction.

  It also helped that the Trees had stopped their slow drift apart and were now locked in a gravitational embrace. Chu had explained it to Torris. It had something to do with the presence of Time’s Beginning, which now rose and set every day, a distant speck in the sky that the people of both Trees made sacrifices to. The traffic between the two Trees had become almost routine.

  “It’s settled then,” Shamash was saying ponderously. “You may not hunt in the upper branches of our Tree, and we may not hunt in yours, not even Ning the Huntress. In times of need, as now, you will send us gifts of meat in return for things we can supply, like the catapults that Ning has shown us how to make. In your own times of need, we will do the same for you. Our elders will decide together what goods are acceptable. Private goods may be traded freely. There will be no bride raids, but young men of both Trees may visit peaceably to choose brides. They may not be carried off by force but must give their consent.”