The Wave and the Flame

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  The great beasts threw gigantic lunging shadows on the wall. Susannah was confused, thinking she had not seen them before. She pulled herself out of the flow to study them and realized that these were the hjalk, the heavy draft animals. During his tour of the stable level, Liphar had shown even less of a fondness for the hjalk than he had for the somewhat smaller dairy beasts, or hekkers. He had been disinclined to hang around while she observed them more closely. She had assumed them to be just oversized members of the dairy herd, but now, in the open tunnel, they loomed far larger than when she’d glimpsed them stamping and steaming in their chill dark stalls. They were several hands taller than the average hekker and much more muscular. Their bulky withers were level with their herdsmen’s heads. Their coats were a mass of short tight curls that lengthened into golden ringlets gathering in a thick mane around the neck.

  Like a cross between a goat and a camel, thought Susannah. And maybe an elephant. But she had used the goat-camel cross before, to describe the little hakra, and it could apply to the dairy beasts as well. In fact, given the differences between the three in size and musculature, the similarities were remarkable.

  The same low rounded rump, the same high-boned shoulders, those same fleshy, horn-bottomed camel feet.

  She studied the golden giants as the crowd jostled around her. A loaded two-cart moved into her line of sight. A little cart hakra stood side by side with a towering hjalk.

  Hakra, hekker, hjalk… even the names sound alike. More coincidence? You could interpret it as the same basic morphology overlaid with adaptations for specific function. Phew! If I didn’t know where I was, I’ d congratulate them on some very efficient gene engineering!

  Susannah resolved to have a long chat with the herdsmen about their breeding program, which she was beginning to think she had underestimated. But that would have to wait until they got their celebrating out of their systems. Meanwhile, she would check with Stavros about the apparent similarity of the names.

  If I can find him.

  She backed away as one of the hjalk in its excitement swerved its rump toward her. She jumped to avoid being trampled or kicked, but the herdsman at the beast’s head laughed. He gestured to several of his apprentices, who threw down armloads of leather harness to slap the huge animal’s behind or bounce their slight bodies against its giant shoulders. The harness was draped across its back and several squealing children were tossed up to dig their hands and feet into its golden curls. The hjalk settled down the moment it felt their weight, and rolled itself forward like a slow furry wave.

  The herdsman let it go off on its own and, still laughing, dusted his hands on his tunic. His FoodGuild insignia was faded behind layers of dander and golden hjalk hair. He grinned at Susannah and dove into the nearest stable corridor to bring out another eager beast.

  Susannah rejoined the throng. As they passed the entries to the dairy caverns, the deserted hekkers lowed their complaints. Squawkings and crowings echoed out of the poultry warrens. The tunnel darkened, and Susannah stumbled along with the help of strangers to either side of her until at last the cave mouth registered as a faint glow far ahead.

  The inflowing draft was chilly but overlaid with a promise of warmth. Susannah gratefully inhaled the scent of wet earth. Out of the company of midnight and downpour, it was a fresh and hopeful smell. The rough walls brightened as the tunnel dipped toward the cave mouth. The pace slowed at the inner stairs. The laughter and singing quietened to a more businesslike excitement. Rake handles and cartwheels clanked against stone. A hakra balked at the shallow steps, then compounded his offense by trying to descend them two or three at a time, his cart rattling behind him. Sawls scattered to either side of him until he finally reached the bottom and halted just inside the overhang, looking confused and shamed.

  This lowest cave mouth had a large open terrace protected by the overhanging rock. It was still cool and in shadow. Guildsmen milled about, unhitching carts. The lighter ones were being carried down the long outer stairs by hand. The heavier loads were parked along the edge to be lowered by winch. The animals were set loose to negotiate the precarious flights by themselves. The triangular seal of the Engineers’ Guild was everywhere in evidence as they manned the winch ropes, loaded the pallets.

  Crowds filled the inner cavern and massed along the wide ledge outside the overhang. Brown-tunicked rangers directed traffic and kept the crowd moving down the stairs three abreast. A deep musical bellowing resounded from somewhere out on the cliffs.

  Susannah pulled to one side to watch the procession descend. Wary now of the depth of her impulse toward open space, she forced herself to make a slower contact with the outdoors than she had on her first outing on Fiix. She noted that the Sawls did not pause, as she did, to exclaim over the ringing turquoise clarity of the sky or the salmon glow of the sun just peeking in a startling half-moon over the distant mountains to the east. Sawl eyes were focused on the dangers of the still-damp steps, or if they bothered to look at the sky, it was in brief glances of assessment and speculation. But Susannah stared unabashedly, counting lingering stars, and wondered what new surprises the Sisters might be preparing for them.

  She saw McPherson standing to one side with Aguidran. She snaked through the crowd, between the stalled carts and bleating animals, to join them. The Master Ranger was a giant by Sawl standards, taller than her twin Ghirra, taller by two handbreadths than Susannah, and rangy and brown as a weathered tree. Her thin body was cased in well-worked leathers more closely cut than was the usual fashion in the Caves. She nodded a sober greeting as Susannah came smiling toward them, then returned to watching the procession move down the steps as if her will alone could prevent a stumble.

  McPherson was buckling on a huge field pack. A fresh coil of Clausen’s nylon rope swung at her waist. The solid bulk of the pack weighing down the little pilot’s back was sobering. Without comment, Susannah tightened the rear lacing and helped to adjust the load. Then she stood aside to gaze out into the impossibly slow dawn. The coming light revealed a devastated plain, all gullies and canyons choked with rock and yellow mud as far as her eyes could see. The tall needle shape of the Red Pawn rose against the greenish sky just to one side of the half-moon sun. It echoed the blunter shape of the Terran vehicle stalled below it on the plain. The Lander waited bravely at its incongruous tilt, reflecting a glimmer of pink dawn from its scoured nose.

  “What a mess,” Susannah murmured. Her ballooning giddiness deflated rapidly. She watched McPherson zip up the front of her therm-suit. The suit was no longer remotely white, after two weeks of venturing out into the storm. “You’re going out again?” she asked, trying not to sound disapproving.

  McPherson’s cherub face hardened as she prepared to defend yet another of her hopeless forays into the treacherous sodden hills. “First decent search weather we’ve had,” she began tightly.

  Susannah kept her tone sympathetic. “Hope it stays that way.”

  McPherson’s jaw relaxed. “Aguidran’s coming with me.”

  Susannah backed against the rock wall to make room for a giant hjalk as it lumbered past toward the outer stair. She trailed a hand through the golden curls on the beast’s flank and found them surprisingly soft. She also felt what was not so easily seen, that beneath the thick ringlets, the animal was bone-thin. So food rationing extends to the herds as well, she mused.

  “Glad you and Aguidran have finally made friends,” she said to McPherson.

  The pilot drew her shoulders together with more hope than a shrug would have had. “Yeah. It’ll be just the two of us out there, since they can’t spare any more hands from the planting. But that’s okay—we’ll move faster that way.”

  “Planting?” Susannah looked incredulously at the devastation of mud below.

  McPherson tossed an impatient gesture at the crowd armed with its tools and the carts loaded with bulging sacks. “Whadda you think this is all about?”

  “Well, I thought…” Why not just celebrate the daw
n? Maybe Meg is right. Maybe I am a hopeless innocent. “They don’t waste any time, do they?”

  “Smart,” nodded McPherson.

  At the far end of the ledge, an Engineers’ apprentice swung out on a set of winch ropes, using his weight as an anchor while his guildsmen positioned a load. The taut ropes hummed, dark against the brightening sky.

  “How long will you be out?” asked Susannah.

  “Long as it takes, lady,” McPherson drawled with a hint of her old mischief. She swaggered a step or two, then sighed. “That or a little under two earthweeks, what Aguidran calls ten throws. That’s all we got supplies for, and she tells me we can’t live off the land.”

  “Not unless you can learn to eat mud.” Susannah was encouraged by the new respect that colored McPherson’s tone when she spoke of the Master Ranger. She suspected that the pilot had found herself a new role model. “That ground will take a week of drying before anything will grow in it.”

  “Nah, she says the stuff out there’s poisonous, even when it does grow.”

  “Oh?” Susannah wanted to hear more of this, but decided she would ask Ghirra instead. His answers were willing and precise, even if they didn’t always seem to make scientific sense. Like planting? she wondered to herself. Planting now?

  A shadow slipped across her face, falling from above to cast its elongated plow shape on the sunlit wall behind her. The winch ropes sang. The image of tossing good seed into a plain of ocher mud struck Susannah as movingly optimistic. Devastation and fertility, death and birth, loss and renewal. She pictured the lost Sled lying bright and broken on some muddy rockslide, with new green shoots poking up around it. She regarded McPherson more gently. “I hope you’re prepared for what you might find out there.”

  McPherson looked at her oddly. “You really do think I’m a baby, don’t you?”

  “No, Ron, I…

  “Look, I just gotta know I did my best, that’s all. If they’re dead, they’re dead. But we need that Sled.”

  “Even what’s left of it?”

  “Even that.”

  Susannah shuffled a booted foot against the rock. It seemed that the subject was closed. They stood in silence for a moment, using a close attention to the winch operations as a cover for their private thoughts. Finally Susannah roused herself, remembering.

  “Did you see Stavros come by this way?”

  McPherson’s nod was more like a shake of the head. “Sure did. He came charging out here, stood gawking up at the sky like a moron, glanced over at the Lander, then zipped around and took off back into the Caves. Looked in his usual panic, but my guess is he’s gonna try raising CRI now the weather’s cleared. Won’t work, though. Look.” Her hand knifed the air in a neat diagonal as she pointed to the Lander where it was firmly settled in the mud. “Main antenna in the nose was sheared right off. The dish probably wound up in the next county.” She glanced into the crowds still streaming out of the shadowed overhang. “Shit, here comes the Commander. Gotta get going or she’ll want me to climb right up there and fix the damn thing with my bare hands and her silver chopsticks.”

  “If you did fix it, CRI’s scanners could find the Sled in less than an hour.” But Susannah understood that this was not the real issue.

  “Let Stav do it,” McPherson fired back. “He can scavenge parts as good as I can.” She was already moving away. “Besides, if they’re mobile, they’d be back by now, so even if CRI did find ’em, somebody’d have to go out there on foot to bring ’em in anyhow. If I start now, I’m ahead of the game.”

  “But you don’t even know which way they went.”

  “I know where Aguidran and me ain’t looked yet!” McPherson held up a banded wrist. “I’m hooked in, ’case we do get back on line. You call me, eh?” She adjusted her pack again and nudged the Master Ranger’s arm. Aguidran took a last quick look around, then led the way up the narrower flight of stairs that climbed from the cave mouth to the top of the cliff.

  “Rhe khem,” Susannah called softly after they had disappeared, and thought it interesting that the phrase should so readily leap to mind. Though she had not considered going with them, she felt absurdly left behind. They’ll need more than two to bring the bodies back…

  She shivered. The air was still cool. Suddenly the Caves looked warm and inviting. She contemplated going back up into the tunnels to search for Stavros, but could not convince herself that anything was worth being inside again, no matter how threatening the outside might seem. She took advantage of the transitional area of overhang and ledge, no longer dark and closed in but not yet out in the open. Susannah sighed. She had always been fond of weather, happy to indulge in pathetic fallacy, let the weather reflect her mood. It saddened her to have to think of it as the Enemy.

  She leaned against the slowly warming rock, stealing a moment to bask while the touch of Fiix’s sun was still gentle. She would need dark-lenses when the sun rose to its full height later in the week.

  “That is,” she murmured, “If the weather holds…”

  Stavros raced along an inner corridor as if demons were chasing him. He slowed only when he reached the unlit newer section of tunnel where the floor had not been smoothed by generations of use. He stubbed his bare foot against an invisible lip of rock, but only briefly considered turning back for a lantern. The nearest light station was several hundred yards back in the main corridor. He picked his feet up higher and continued his plunge into darkness with his hands outstretched.

  Embriha Lagri! Liphar’s words echoed in his brain.

  “Even if the dish is gone,” he muttered to fill the black silence, “the omni might still be working. No power maybe, but at least we could get the comlink reestablished.”

  Embriha Lagri!

  When the tunnel narrowed, he eased sideways to guide himself along the wall. The blackness was as suffocating as his dreams of night drowning. It sent a worm of panic burrowing through his gut. But almost instantly, he knew it for an old reflex, a habit of imagined fear that he would no longer indulge. He was in the Caves, he knew he was safe, and he was not afraid, though once he would have been, uncontrollably.

  “Then why am I in such an immortal hurry?” he growled.

  Embriha Lagri! his brain replied, and Stavros pushed the thought away until he had time to deal with its implications.

  His probing fingers found an end to the rough wall. He felt for the overhang of the narrow entry to the Black Hole and ducked instinctively as he turned in, although he himself had helped the Sawl masons hammer away enough stone to raise the opening to Terran head-height. The darkness ahead took on a reddish cast.

  Good. They’ve left a fire burning. He would not have to feel his way to the terminal like a blind man. He had not used it since he had set it up over two weeks ago, nor could he remember where in the cavern he had last left a lantern.

  The coals were ruby, nearly spent. He crossed to the firepit and placed several dung cakes in a careful pyramid around the brightest coals, blew gently and waited, blew again, squinting impatiently into the shadows, hoping for a lantern to appear. The dung popped and flared, then died, but he had seen a brief glimmer on the edge of the sleeping platform, He stumbled toward where he guessed it to be and was rewarded when his hand touched ceramic and glass.

  He grasped the lamp triumphantly. It was one of the largest sizes the potters made, and it weighed full. He felt around the bowl and found flint and tinder in a recess below the handle. He struck a spark into the tinder and lit the wick, a recently learned local skill that gave him uncommon satisfaction. He carried the lamp to the nest of plastic crates in the rear of the cavern where he had set up the least portable of the scavenged terminals. It was Danforth’s terminal, but Stavros was sure that the planetologist was in no condition to care. He set the lamp on a tall crate, checked the cable to the emergency battery and pulled up a smaller crate to perch on as he powered up the terminal.

  When the screen glowed ready, he tapped in CRI’s call code and held his bre
ath.

  Nothing. His own inquiry glared back at him unchanged.

  He tried again, a routine repeat. But his fingers trembled.

  Again, no reply.

  He stared for a moment at the screen. Then he put the call on repeater and sat back to wait, while he pondered what to do with the anticlimax that was seeping through him like a soporific.

  “Well, the relay’s out,” he explained to his own words on the screen. “And the omni’s gone, too. But no problem. Easy enough to fix.”

  The oil lamp flickered. He jerked as if out of sleep. He had been staring at the screen mesmerized by its refusal to respond. Meanwhile, Liphar’s voice in his brain still whispered its refrain.

  Embriha Lagri!

  Stavros roused himself and shut down the terminal. CRI would pick up the homing beacon and know at least that someone was still alive down here. That would have to do until he got the antenna fixed. Reaching for his lamp, his arm dislodged a stack of printout from the top of the monitor. Damp papers fluttered in the lamplight. Stavros stooped, gathered and came up with more of Danforth’s notes. Scrawled across a charted data sheet he read, “Venus model run outputs nominal Venus data,” followed by a numbered list headed “Possible Tinkering.” Venus, again. He wondered why Danforth was so concerned with Venus all the way out here on Fiix. Down in the corner was a tighter scribble. Stavros held the paper up to the lamp. Danforth’s impatience snarled at him from the page.

  It read: “Explore possibility of large-scale dynamic instability mode-probe data resolution too low?”