Asimov's SF, June 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "Not bad for a hundred and five."

  Even as I bragged about my age, my hand began to shake. It reminded me that despite the rejuv treatments, I wasn't fifteen. This was going to be my final expedition.

  A couple of small taas made a dash for the safety of the hills. Sleep buried the sharp end of his club in the back of a yearling's head. I plugged the second one.

  The noise flushed five more. I missed them all. A couple of kids were in the way of the animals’ flight. Both brought down a taa. Watching them chortle and swing their trophies made me feel all the older.

  "What is that?” asked Grandfather. His actual statement was “that” with his dancing hands completing the sentence.

  I raised my binoculars. Two doughboys were dragging a sled, racing as if hell itself had opened behind them. I checked their wake, expecting a hungry duck. Nothing. Firing twice into the permafrost, I caught their attention. They turned toward us.

  "They are scared,” said Grandfather, assuming the stiff pose of authority.

  Although I had eight bullets left, I changed the clip. Wished I had brought my rifle. Nine millimeter wasn't a good caliber for a pack of angry ducks.

  The sled hit a patch of rock. Its bone rails bounced, then one shattered. As the sled flipped and rolled, it yanked the harnessed doughboys like toys. One ended up beneath a rail, pulped.

  We raced to the wreck. After I scanned for ducks, I stared at the wrecked sled. The aliens had packed their lives—harpoons, spears, and throwing clubs; their tent with extra seal hides; coils of rawhide rope; winter capes and blankets; two bowls made from seal skulls; and their engraved stone lamp that acted as a stove. Half a dozen seal bladders had ruptured, spraying the oil stored within them everywhere.

  Their economy of lifestyle was impressive. I had fetched ninety tons of goods for my stay on this world. A doughboy could go to Mars with sixty kilos on their sled and never miss a lick.

  Iron knives hung from their belts. They were prosperous doughboys.

  The crushed doughboy gasped, “Kab."

  The other battered alien, fighting to untangle himself from the harness, moaned, “Kab."

  I had never heard the word. But a blind man could sense the fear exuding from the hunting party. Grandfather Swim swallowed air like a drowning man, his body puffing up.

  Thumbing back the hammer of my weapon, I slowly turned, squinting intensely at the turf. There weren't many spots that could hide a creature of size.

  "Looks like they outran whatever was after them."

  "You cannot outrun a kab,” whispered Grandfather.

  Sleep leaned over the crushed alien, looking to Grandfather, whose right hand fisted. Pulling the doughboy's knife, Sleep stabbed him. Alas, that was state-of-the-art medical treatment for the aliens.

  Grandfather barked orders. Throw dashed toward the camp in the company of the six youngest kids. Sleep organized the larger children, who uprighted the sled. The stranger loaded his companion atop their possessions. Whereupon, the five of them picked up the sled, carrying it like a litter.

  It stunned me how quickly they could jog with that much weight. Maybe, I thought, I should call them muscleboys.

  Grandfather gazed south, throwing clubs trembling in his hands.

  "What's a kab?"

  "One of the Unspoken,” he replied.

  Doughboys had a rich mythology, but I had yet to crack that nut because tales of the gods could only be related from parent to child. Their gods were collectively called the “Unspoken.” To speak of them otherwise risked summoning the gods whose infinite whimsy spelled ill luck all too often.

  The myths had eased my way into their society. Their deities were constantly visiting, constantly exposing doughboys to no end of weirdness. So they simply assumed my team was a gaggle of the Unspoken when we landed at their camp.

  "Wait a min, you spoke its name. How can it be Unspoken?"

  "Climb says the kab slaughtered his clan."

  "Kabs are evil?"

  "Only a furball would ask."

  "Should we check their camp? See if there are other survivors?"

  Suddenly the unusual prosperity of the fugitives roused my suspicion. “Could they have robbed their clan? Could the kab just be a lie to hid their crime?"

  Grandfather Swim grunted. “To lie about a kab.” He shook his head. “Only a furball...” He flicked at my hair dangling below my cap. “But there might be others who need our help."

  "Where is their camp?"

  "Near a lake. Two, three days."

  Great, there were hundreds of lakes. Doughboys had an irritating habit of not naming places. They could travel a thousand klicks in a blinding snowstorm and end up a centimeter from their target, but it would take them a century to tell you how to get there.

  "If you show me the way, I could fly us there and back before nightfall. Besides, if this kab has an evil deity kinda attitude, I'll need my rifle. I have this lucky ‘prayer’ that requires armor-piercing ammunition."

  "Quick would be best."

  * * * *

  A hundred klicks from our own home, the strangers had remained in their winter camp, blocks of ice mounded over their tents to protect them from storms and the incredible cold. It was one of the larger lakes; no doubt the good fishing had kept them there. The ocean was only twenty klicks away, giving them further access to resources.

  I landed in the center of the settlement. Clicking the safety off, my gloved hands gripped the rifle all the tighter. Between the four largest mounds, the pebbly soil was a frozen pond of blood.

  Grandfather pointed at a drying rack. Wood, not the usual bone. The fugitives had not been the only prosperous members of their clan. The rack was rare enough, but what caught Swim's attention was a strip of meat that had been dropped at its foot. Blubber, grey on one side. Seals were lime green.

  "Somebody flensed these doughboys like frigging seals. Cannibals?"

  "I don't understand,” whispered Grandfather. “Kab kill. They don't eat us."

  "Could other doughboys have done this?” Their mythology was full of tales of cannibalism forced upon them by winter famine.

  "Not in spring. What have the Unspoken released upon us?"

  Grandfather muttered over the slice of flesh as I walked in ever-widening circles. Seven tents would have given the clan a population of twenty-five to thirty, minus the two who escaped. Could the duo have been a hunting party who came home to find the slaughter? I checked inside one of the tents. A broken spear was on the hide-covered floor. A spray of blood showed where someone had been whacked. The hint of a familiar scent tickled my nose.

  Where were their sleds? I found a set of tracks and followed them. Just outside the settlement, they led to a whole slew of tracks, thirteen sleds. And bootprints.

  "Doughboys don't wear boots.” I swallowed hard. “Neither do gods nor demons."

  The tracks led northeast toward the ocean.

  "Hell has finally arrived."

  * * * *

  Therov IV was unique among the thousands of inhabited planets in our galaxy. The upper rung on the evolutionary ladder occurred when a dominate species wiped out the competition for the apex of the food chain. Therov alone had two apex species due to its geography.

  On an Asia-sized continent in the northern hemisphere evolved a species of arboreal creatures, not unlike orangutans, who had built a civilization technologically equal to early nineteenth century Earth. The fractious Raken had never developed politically beyond the city-state. A hundred Spartas on steroids—war was their national sport. Fortunately for the doughboys, heavy-boned and low fat Rakens didn't float. Their penchant for sinking like rocks did not inspire them to explore the 12,000 klicks of ocean separating the northern and southern continents.

  Three different university teams were killed while studying the Raken. Some had been tortured for technical knowledge. Thus both the Sol and Nok Trade Commissions had banned further xenopological studies of the Raken.

  The writing
was on the wall. It was simply a matter of time before the Raken sailed south. Their technology wed with the Raken's love of war spelled the doom of the doughboy culture.

  * * * *

  "But why in hell would they make jerky out of them?” I kept asking myself.

  The Raken were infamous for mutilating their captives, but I had never read of them dining on a foe.

  I returned to the camp. Upon further exploration, I discovered there wasn't a scrap of food left behind, save for that strip of doughboy.

  Grandfather Swim had not moved a centimeter.

  I dropped a hand on his shoulder. “We have to get back home. You have to get your clan moving toward the interior, away from the sea. That's where these bastards are coming from."

  The tracks headed away from the Swims’ camp, but there could be any number of Raken units scouring the land.

  "No, I've got a better idea.” I bent to get in Swim's face, hoping to snap him into action. “We'll load the clan into my lander. The damned Raken've been here already, so they won't return. I—"

  "Ra-ken? You know these ... these monsters?"

  "The ones who did this aren't Unspoken. They aren't kab. They are just killers. The clan'll be safe here. The lake must have prime fishing. The clan can survive here until I deal with the damned Raken."

  "We cannot stay here. It is cursed."

  This explained why the doughboy culture advanced so slowly. Humans would have looted the camp. This clan had been ten times richer than Swim's, yet doughboys would deem all these articles cursed, and a century from now a traveler would find not an item touched.

  * * * *

  Turned out it took three trips to ferry the clan and their possessions to the north side of the lake. And they stole all my fish and the mattress from my bunk.

  Even ten klicks away from the killing zone, the doughboys were nervous about catching a terminal case of bad luck from the bloodbath on the opposite side of the lake.

  I cruised the coast, thinking to find the Raken fleet with my ship's radar. Nothing. I zoomed a thousand klicks in either direction. Nothing. After dark, I went with infrared and thermal imagery. Nothing. I circled the continent at Mach Six. Nothing. How could they hide a fleet?

  The obvious finally occurred to me. It wasn't an invasion fleet. A Raken ship had been caught in a storm and hurled halfway across their world. Unprepared, unsupplied, starving ... That explained the cannibalism. They were sun-drying meat for the trip home.

  In a tiny inlet I finally found a fishing smack, barely fifteen meters long. It amazed me that such a tiny ship could sail so far on such a hostile sea. Then again, a hide and bone canoe could travel hundreds of klicks.

  The boat had been hauled onto a pebbled beach. Copper sheeted the hull. Twin booms hung over either side of the ship; draped with nets, they gave the illusion of wings. Their large rudder was hinged, so they could raise it when hauling their vessel ashore. Quite cunning.

  I was tempted to blast the ship, but reason asserted itself. By inspecting their vessel, I could find out how many Raken there were. Then I would know how many I needed to kill. Destroying the ship prematurely would merely scatter them to wreak havoc on the doughboys until the winter came.

  As fierce as the Raken could be, the winter of this nameless land was a thousand times fiercer. The Raken wouldn't last a month.

  I landed near the ship. Before I exited I donned an envirsuit. Kevlar fibers made to resist micrometeors during short spacewalks would also stop bullets. Rifle in hand, I left the airlock.

  Half a dozen aliens formed a firing squad between me and their ship. Their language was sung by solid tenors. It was simple to glean their message for me to surrender. Raken rifles were single-shot muzzleloaders, impossibly long due to their arms which stretched from their humped shoulders to their feet.

  I cooked off a clip at the range of ten meters. Two of the Raken got off accurate shots before I hamburgered them. The first bullet smacked my helmet. It was a glancing blow, no big deal. The second caught my stomach. Though it failed to penetrate my envirsuit, it was the most powerful punch I had ever suffered.

  Puking inside my helmet was worse than the punch.

  I swapped clips before removing my helmet. Basalt shattered in front of me. Stone fragments slashed my cheek and ear after a bullet missed. The Raken sniper ducked behind the gunwale to reload. I hosed the bow of the vessel; armor-piercing ammunition was as alien to him as doughboy jerky was to me. The Raken screamed like a defective car alarm as he stood, holding his big round face, trying to staunch the gushing blood. I drew my sidearm. Missed twice before I got a solid hit.

  Returned to my lander to clean my helmet. A few antacids helped my fluttering gut; its bruise grew to the size of a plate. I reloaded clips, biding my time. From what I had read about the Raken, they weren't the patient type. They would run.

  I knew this arctic hell. They didn't. Time was on my side.

  An hour later, I charged aboard the fishing vessel. The survivors had fled, though someone had taken the time to grab the rifles from the late firing squad. There was a captain's cabin the size of a closet. Nineteen hammocks were swayed in the forward cabin. What a crowded, miserable prison it must have been during the months it would have taken for them to sail here.

  Minus the seven I had already killed, only thirteen remained.

  Their trail was obvious, littered with doughboy jerky and dried fish, pouches of gunpowder and cloaks. At the top of the ravine that led from the beach, ten sleds were parked in a tidy row. The Raken had scattered a ton of stuff, trying to reload the sleds with only the most vital supplies for their flight.

  Two sled tracks went south, one west. During my search, I had seen a doughboy encampment to the west, scarcely twenty klicks distant. There would be ample tracks to guide that solitary sled of killers right to lambs ripe for slaughter.

  Returning to my lander, I flew high, beyond their ability to see. But my sensors had no problem detecting their thermal images as their fear sweat rained upon the trail.

  Landing, I found a comfortable rock and sat. The Raken jogged right up to me in the darkness. One voice sang, perhaps asking what sorcery was that tiny red light on his chest. Five shots, four corpses thanks to my laser sight.

  "Nine left."

  I took to the air again. It took me hours to find the other two Raken sleds. No Raken, just their sleds. And a dead duck with three bullet holes in it. And another dead duck with Raken fingers stuck in its teeth. I killed a wounded duck after being guided to it by its bellowing pain.

  Rutting season. How the male ducks loved to gather in the moonlight to battle each other for the beak of their lady love.

  Even the dullest doughboy knew better than to travel at night during the spring.

  * * * *

  The next few days, I worked the landing site. I buried the remains of the doughboy jerky under a stone cairn. (Most of the meat. A kilo I wrapped and stashed in the freezer for future genetic research.) After removing all the ornamentation on the sleds, I sanded them until they looked like they had just rolled off an assembly line.

  I toyed with the idea of passing the Raken muzzleloaders along to the clan. The Cave Doughboys could probably manufacture gunpowder, but their crude metalworking couldn't construct more rifles. What was the point? They'd be more likely to kill each other than to kill ducks. I dumped the rifles into the sea.

  Returning to Swim's clan, I wove a campfire fantasy about ducks killing all the invaders. Predator ex machina.

  Under the pretense of beachcombing, I took Swim and Run to the Raken ship, hoping the latter's ambition might outweigh that stodgy doughboy superstition.

  "How lucky is this?” I said when we encountered the sleds.

  Run shrugged, seemingly uninterested. Nonetheless, he approached them with the posture of a guy shopping for his first used car.

  Swim asked, “Are these from the cursed lake home?"

  "Would the Unspoken steal sleds? They ride on fire, not sleds,”
I replied.

  "You called them Raken."

  "Maybe I was wrong. Look, none have harnesses. I know why. The Unspoken carried them here. It must've left these sleds here for some lucky doughboy to find."

  Lame, but it was the best I could do.

  Run inspected a sled's runner. “Well made."

  "Gifts from the Unspoken. They'll come in handy when the clan divides."

  "Only a furball would say that,” replied Swim.

  "Grandfather, there are no harnesses. There are no carvings on them. Maybe the Unspoken did leave them for us. And it would be lucky for our clan,” said Run.

  "What is that?” Swim pointed at the sea.

  I could have screamed. A high tide had launched the fishing smack. As we watched, the ship bobbed atop a frothy wave and impaled itself on jagged rocks a hundred meters from the shore.

  So much for my plan to teach Run how to sail the ship. With its cargo capacity, the fishing boat could have brought back tons of wood and food from those distant islands, instead of the fifty kilos a canoe could hold. It would have changed their world.

  "It is a big canoe."

  "Nonsense, there is not that much wood in the world,” declared Grandfather.

  I pointed at a pile at the base of the ravine. “Let's see what that is."

  I had unloaded all the spare rope, a bucket filled with knives and axes, a tool box, and a cask of nails. The weight of the metal, I gambled, would help decide them to take the sleds, regardless of the luck issue. Those ten kilos of nails and thirty kilos of tools equaled years’ worth of iron produced from the meteorites collected by the Walker clans. The knives and axes alone now made them the richest clan on the continent.

  "Great luck,” the doughboys agreed.

  Grandfather added, “Truly the Unspoken have blessed us.” Though he glowered at me while he spoke.

  * * * *

  After the summer festival, I witnessed the clan split. Swim led his sleds to the southeast while Run went southwest. Ironically, their newfound wealth had attracted ten doughboys from less fortunate clans to join the two clans. Overpopulation was again a problem with my old friends.

  Trouble was, the prestige of outsiders joining their clans blinded Swim and Run to next winter's starvation. Then again, if the new doughboys were good providers...