by Stephan Wul
As the Oms were transmitting his order by telebox, he looked at his friends with a serious look on his face.
‘No sphere ever comes this way’, he said. ‘These Traags came here with a specific goal. Their breakdown was staged.’
Valiant protested:
‘How can you be so sure?’
Terr continued without answering directly.
‘Have you ever seen a Traag eating lying down on his side? Have you ever seen one take an hour to empty a can of food? He was playacting! He was fiximaging the ruins!’
Char leapt up.
‘Are you sure?’
‘As sure as the other was casually sticking something in the sand’, said Terr.‘As he pretended to take a walk he surrounded the city with detectors or the likes. Follow me to the dunes; let’s take a closer look’.
They came down the watchtower and ran towards where the Traags had been. It did not take them long to pull from the sand a round object topped by a metal antenna.
‘What is it?’ asked Valiant.
‘I’d like to know myself, said Terr. ‘Have all this brought carefully to our laboratories’.
He looked at his friends and added:
‘Oms! Time is pressing. We will go ahead with the Exodus tomorrow night. The Traags are too slow to make a decision by then.’
‘But the third vessel isn’t ready!’
it will be. Weil triple the pace. We’ll put it in the water without any trials. No more final rehearsal. Char! I want the third ship loaded right now, before it’s even finished. In case there’s any delay, we’ll tow it with the other two.’
‘How come the networks didn’t give us any warning?’
‘The fake luxury Oms can’t sneak everywhere. Besides the Great Council isn’t held on this continent!’
‘The pillage units won’t have time to get back.’
‘I know. This hurts more than you can imagine, gut we can’t sacrifice the Exodus for a few Oms’ lives. And yet we’re still taking a risk. Valiant, use the telebox to get as many as possible to come back. I just hope your calls won’t be picked up. Tell those who are too far away to stop all normal activities and seek refuge wherever they can.’
Terr was frowning as he went back towards the ruins.
‘I just hope they didn’t detect the three ships’, he said. ‘Do we have thin sheet metal?’
‘I’ll ask the storeroom’, said Char. ‘I expect we’ve got loads left… Why?’
The Aedile waved vaguely.
‘I’m conjuring up a little trick to deceive the Traags.’
4
A tone vibrated on the desk of the First Councillor A South. He pressed a button and said ‘yes?’
‘The “Old Port” operation is finished. The fiximages are in the laboratory, First Councillor’, a voice said.
The Councillor quivered.
‘Send them up as soon as they are done’, he ordered.
He contacted someone else and said:
‘Master Singh should arrive at the intercontinental spherodrome in a few minutes. Do what you can to bring him to me as soon as possible.’
The first fiximaged prints fell into the drawer reserved for urgent mail. The Councillor grabbed them and spread them out on his desk. He examined the blown up shots of the abandoned city. He chuckled. Small clues revealed a high concentration of Oms in the ruins. He highlighted in red an old gutter full of bare footprints and three small silhouettes standing out against the sunlight in an old wall’s crack. He also noticed the odd presence of a stack of new tins badly concealed behind a curtain of grass.
Master Singh’s arrival was announced. They did away with hollow courtesy. The Councillor showed the pictures to the old scientist. He glanced at them and said:
‘That’s hardly interesting. We already know there are Oms in this city. Did you just work at the surface?’
‘Not only, Master’, said the Councillor.
He leant over the box and pulled out more prints.
‘We also have transfiximages’.
‘What depth?’
‘Look, it is written on the corner: 50 millistadia.’
Master Singh looked satisfied. He bent his wrinkled head over the desk and placed his wiry finger at the top of one of the images.
‘Look here,’ he simply said.
The print was clear. The rays had gone through the first layers without setting them onto the film. One could see inside the ruins nearest to the camera.
‘Oms!’ said the Councillor.
‘Of course Oms!’ echoed the old man. ‘What I am interested in is this! Those black shapes around which the Oms are grouped in threes.’
‘They are…’
‘Pocket weapons, ray guns! These Oms are armed, my dear First Councillor! Do you realize! Of course, due to their small size three are needed whereas we just need to press the trigger with a finger. Look at that, they have modified these weapons to their advantage. Each ray gun is mounted on a spring carriage. They soldered levers for each trigger.’
He quickly pored over other prints, pointing out strategically placed batteries.
‘Look here! And there… here! Three more! Considering their size this amounts to heavy artillery! Do you realise that at the slightest offensive move your Traags would have been killed at point-blank range?’
‘How frightening!’
The Master nodded pensively his large head wrinkled by age.
‘Let’s see the rest’, he said grabbing hold of the prints piling up in the drawer. ‘Here, we have… four centistadia deep… let’s see… Oh! There! Look at this, First Councillor. Corridors, stairwells… What can this be?’
‘Lights, I think.’
‘Yes, a network of lights for this… labyrinth! They are not economising. They must have numerous batteries… and there?’
He was scanning through more prints. Ten centistadia, thirty, forty. The prints were more fuzzy as it got deeper. Each shot showed the outline of the previous ones.
Yet the two Traags could make out warehouses teeming with weaponry, supplies and tools; there were dormitories, nurseries, instruction rooms full of headsets over which students were leaning in groups of ten.
‘This really is dangerous’, said Master Singh. The rest is nothing. These headsets divulge all our techniques and the science we have perfected over the years.’
‘Your last sentence is reassuring’, argued the First Councillor, if it’s taken us aeons…’
‘No, you just don’t get it’, the Master interrupted. ‘Remember we’ve left our ready made science to be plundered! All they have to do is take what took us years to build. Look how far they’ve gone in a few months! Woe to us if we don’t intervene. They will overtake us! They possess fantastic assimilation faculties. Besides, this only half surprises me. When I found out they were communicating through telenetworks I came to the conclusion they were capable of manufacturing teleboxes that could be carried easily. If they can do that, they can do the rest too… let’s see the latest pictures.’
The last prints were practically indecipherable. Any reasonable interpretation was blurred by the superimposition of shots.
‘I’ll get the laboratory to clarify this’, said the First Councillor.
Acting on his words, he threw the pictures in a drawer and dictated his orders by telebox.
‘When will they be done?’ enquired the Master.
‘Not before tomorrow, unfortunately.’
The scientist sighed and cracked his old parched membranes.
‘I took other measures’, said the Councillor. ‘I already mentioned them to you.’
‘Yes, I know. A telebarrier!’
‘The city is almost encircled. If they have motor vehicles or spheres they will not be able to use them.’
The old man waved dishearteningly at the fiximages spread out on the table.
‘Having seen all this’, he said, ‘I wonder if they have not spotted your agents’ ploy. They are capable of unearthing your el
ements and change the wavelength for their own use.’
‘Come on! My Traags were discreet.’
‘Discreet at our scale. But the slightest gesture can become a major blunder in the eyes of an observant small Om. I think more decisive and brutal measures will have to be considered.’
‘Crushing it all without any warning?’
‘Perhaps. I don’t think they can fight us on equal terms. Not yet. But we have only located one city. What if there are others?’
The Councillor’s red eyes darkened with indignation.
‘I should be very surprised. The rare telemessages we’ve picked up…’
‘The rare telemessages!’ said the Master bitterly. ‘This proves you have not picked up all of them. What if they have a code? Imagine dozens of similar cities operating secretly on each of the four continents!’
‘Nothing leads us to draw such assumptions. The Councillors on the other continents have detected nothing more worrying than wandering Oms’ uncoordinated activities. The deomisations…’
‘I am wondering whether deomisations actually contribute to their evolution by giving them the need for a defensive organisation!’
The First Councillor raised his arms in the air, stretching out his membranes:
‘But it was yourself, Master, who was the first to advocate this preventive measure to my colleague in A North!’
‘I could have been mistaken; I am not infallible. I still did not know the extent of the danger… believe me, the time has come to wonder if the Traags are still Ygam’s master race.’
‘You are looking on the dark side of things’, said the Councillor in a shrill voice which sounded like laughter.
‘Oh! Don’t laugh’, protested the Master. ‘I have been studying the Oms for a long time. The faculties of this… animal never cease to amaze me… We face a terrible danger. A Council is being held in a week. I’ll have you know I intend to propose immediate and total deomisation.’
‘Don’t even think about it! The public has not been informed of our concern. You will provoke a general outcry. Many people are very attached to their Oms!’
‘Once they are informed…’
‘But no, Master Singh. There is another reason for opposing such a plan. If the truth was to be trumpeted everywhere, the organised Oms would hear about it. They will react and find a way of countering our offensive, or at least weaken its scope. We must take them by surprise!’
The Master thought for a while.
‘You may be right’, he said finally. ‘We could give an epidemic as a pretext and make it compulsory to vaccinate the Oms against a bogus disease. With this lie we wouldn’t have to kill the Oms, but just destroy some of their cerebral centres and remove all intelligence. What do you think?’
it seems clever. I’ll have the matter looked into…
Happiness onto you, Master Singh, you still managed to scare me! As early as tomorrow I will hold a Continental Select Committee to envisage large-scale policies.’
The Master stood up.
‘Happiness, First Councillor. Be quick about it, trust me!’
He looked at his axillary dial.
in one hour I will be in Torm’, he said. ‘I will talk to your A Northcolleague. But it is getting late. Would you be so kind as to inform him of my visit.’
5
Beneath a topaz sky darkened by the sunset, a vast sea tinted like fresh blood was gently moving back and forth across the horizon. Currents filled with plankton drifted haphazardly with the winds.
Lost dots in a great poem, three vessels were obstinately following their course. They were sailing in an ocean of colours, impervious to the nonchalant charms and languid enchantment of the waves gleaming with a thousand facets as they strutted about in their splendour.
Heading east, the Oms were carrying all the hopes of a race that had broken free from its chains. They formed a triangle, the first two vessels towing the other, its hull teeming with roped up Oms.
Whipped by the spray, their sweat washed off by the rosy foam, the Oms were weighing in clusters on the last ship’s glistening hull. Muscles taut with effort, like flesh sprawled tightly on a metal vice, they kept in place giant bolts on the last plate’s lips. The ship was being finished as it travelled.
The Oms had left behind all personal worries. Individual suffering did not count anymore. They were one soul striving for one goal only. Occasionally, knocked out by a wave’s splendid slap, some lost consciousness, the others hardly taking notice. Having lost their balance, others were hanging strangled by their rope, like trinkets around the sides of the hull. The whims of the roll finished them off as it soaked them sporadically. The ship dragged in its wake at least twenty inert puppets skimming on the ocean’s muscular back.
Inside, others were labouring symmetrically and suffocating beneath the iron sheets as the animal scent of effort mingled with the smell of heated metal. Strong backs were bleeding, pressing up for hours beneath a screwdriver operated by countless arms.
The water periodically filtered through the slits, harshly spraying the wounds caused by the exertion. Other workers were pumping relentlessly, throwing back in the sea the brine of oxides and urea which rolled around their legs. All this in the shadowy and sticky false light of vapours and in a great murmur of swearing and effort giving rhythm to the screeching of the grating thread; an insane symphony punctuated by the sea striking the vessel like cymbals.
***
When all was finished, the night had long drowned the sunset’s splendours.
Exhausted, the outside teams went through the hatch one by one. The workers were relieved as engineers started to fit the last reactor. The worst was over.
The foreman informed the quartermaster who immediately announced the good news to Terr. This was done thanks to a telecable stretched between the two ships.
‘Excellent’, said Terr. ‘How long will it take?’
The quartermaster hesitated:
it’s hard to tell precisely, Aedile. Between ten and fifteen hours, according to the foreman. Drying the coils will take time, not to mention the trouble caused by the swell. If we had to do it again…’
‘Yes, I know’, said Terr. We should have fitted the coils before leaving. Drying will last longer than the time saved fitting them. Improvising is bound to lead to errors. But let’s not dwell on the past.’
Terr turned to quartermaster 1 standing by his side.
‘How long until we reach the Siwo?’
‘Twelve hours, at a steady pace.’
‘Did you hear your colleague from vessel 1?’ said Terr leaning over the telecable. In twelve hours we’ll reach the Siwo current. Everything must be done by then.
Quartermaster 3’s voice hesitated once again:
‘I think it’d be wise not to count on it, Aedile.’
‘Do your best. Keep me updated on your progress in ten hours. If you’re late we’ll reduce our speed.’ ‘Right.’
Terr hung up and paced up and down his cabin.
‘We’ll gain a lot of time by taking advantage of Siwo’s speed,’ he said. ‘This detour is shortening the journey. But to keep towing at this rate is out of the question. What gap are you planning between each ship?’
‘Prudence imposes a minimum of half a stadia.
But I’ve just spoken about this with the engineers. They’re worried the ships will not bear up at one hundred stadia per hour.
‘What’s Siwo’s speed?’
in this latitude: thirty stadia. But the rate doubles at the southern confluence. Besides, the current is strewn with egg-islands. The hulls will suffer. We’ll have to reduce our own speed to fifteen stadia. Fifteen plus sixty, we’ll still do seventy five. But our speed will remain at fifteen compared with the eggs. We’ll break them as we’ll pass them. If we go faster, we’ll end up breaking our hulls.’
Terr frowned.
‘What about the prongs?’ he said
The quartermaster made a reassuring gesture.
<
br /> ‘According to the specialised headsets, the eggs will not hatch there, especially in this season. The incubation is still not over.’
He pointed to the map, in the middle of the seas tinged with red:
‘This is where the hatching begins, right by the equator. We’re not heading that way.’
‘What about induced hatching?’
it’s rarely dangerous. Of course the prongs are alive inside the eggs, but they die as they break.’
‘I’ve heard cases of survival.’
it’s very brief. They drown very quickly. Perhaps we should mention it to Sav if you wish, Aedile.’
Terr rested his hand on the telecable, hesitated and said:
‘I’ll go find him myself.’
The quartermaster saluted and climbed up the ladder leading to the gangway. Terr went out to the corridor. He made his way to the lower deck, crossed the side holds where Oms were checking the cables holding the cargo, and reached the left hand side gangway. A few hundred steps led him to the living quarters. He entered and was greeted fondly by everyone.
‘Where’s Sav?’ he asked.
‘Third room’, someone said.
He went through the crowd, dispensing here and there a friendly word or some encouragement, warmly touching the shoulder of a female Om bent over with nausea. In the third room he found Sav sitting in a corner, sprawled amongst maps of the wild continent.
The naturalist raised his greying head.
‘Well, the Aedile! Do you need me?’
‘You don’t have to be so formal in private,’ said Terr. I’ve come to speak to you of prongs.
‘Yes?’
‘Are they dangerous?’
‘As dangerous as can be!’
Terr shook his head:
is it dangerous to induce explosions?’
Sav pinched his nose.
âIt depends’, he said. ‘They’re too weak. Not as weak as premature Oms, however. Due to their weight, their movements can be “heavy” in consequences.’
He winked, commenting:
âI know how to pick the right words, eh!’
‘You’re very funny!’
‘Thank you. As I was saying, according to the headsets a new born prong can move clumsily as it dies. Last month a pillaging unit brought back some old headsets where I picked up more information on the matter. Nine times out of ten there’s no danger.’
