Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #217

by TTA Press Authors

  I looked back at the cumulus, wondering about both the ship and the people inside. Why did cumulus ships always pursue the much smaller mares’ tails? Why did the people inside occasionally pound us with dangerous storms? The histories described the weather patterns on old Earth—the clouds and rains which recycled that world's water—and how early humans believed gods and demons created their planet's storms. Despite my years of study, it pained me to admit that I was little better than those ancient humans. The ships might as well be gods or demons for all I knew about them.

  My thoughts were interrupted as a single ball of light fell from the ship. It hurled through the dark skies and exploded into the ground two kilometers from us, sending up a mushroom explosion of dirt.

  I grabbed the telescope and tried to make out what the light was, but the rain already splattered around us and the wind swayed the tower too much to focus on the impact site.

  "We have to get below,” I yelled. “The tower isn't safe in a storm this big."

  Cres, though, ignored me as she plotted the impact through the rangefinder. She wrote something down on the rain-splattered weather log and shoved the paper under my nose. “That's the third impact I've seen,” she said. “They're all in a straight line."

  Before I could ask where the line was leading, another ball of light shot from the ship and hit just outside town. The impacts were walking themselves right toward us. Not needing to see more, I rang the warning bell again—for all the good it would do—then grabbed Cres and pulled her down the ladder. We bolted into the house's safe room, but when I tried to shut the door the wind blew so strong the locking bar wouldn't catch. I yelled for Cres to get under a desk as I tried to force the door shut.

  The last thing I remembered was a loud whining, followed by an explosion of dirt and rain which threw me into blackness.

  * * * *

  I woke to dried blood caking my face and dried mud stiff on my clothes. I lay on my cot in my bedroom, the sun shining through shattered windows. As I sat up, I saw that my room was a shambles. Even though this was the second story, the flood waters had reached this high. Water and muck coated the floor. As I stood up, I plucked several of my sketches from the mud. One, a detailed look at the high altitude mackerel ships which were hard to see even with the best telescopes, had been a particular favorite of mine. I dropped it back in the mud and walked outside.

  In my sixty years of life, I had never seen the town so hard hit. Of the five hundred homes and buildings in town, at least a hundred were damaged. In addition, there were gaps along the streets where houses had once stood. I wasn't surprised to see that Les the tailor's house was gone. His house had needed repairs for so long that everyone knew it wouldn't stand up to a strong blow. I muttered a silent prayer that he'd died quickly, and wasn't lying entombed in some runoff tunnel dozens of meters beneath our feet.

  What shocked me most, though, was the number of strong homes that had also disappeared. During big storms, flood waters usually raced straight through our town before washing into the drainage tunnels which continually opened and closed in the loose soil. This time the ripples left in the mud suggested the waters had swirled about in unusual circular patterns.

  I discovered why when I walked two blocks south of my house. A number of buildings there were gone, replaced by a large sink hole fifty meters across. Cres and the mayor stood next to the hole with a group of townsfolk. I walked over to join them.

  The mayor was thrilled to see me. “Glad to see you up and about,” he said, hugging me, an embrace I grimaced through. “I was worried our hero wouldn't get to tell me what the hell happened here."

  I nodded, embarrassed at the mayor's calling me a hero. Several other townsfolk also thanked me, grateful for the warning I'd been able to give.

  Once Cres had a moment, she filled me in. The explosion that knocked me unconscious came from one of the balls of light, which crashed into town and created the hole before us. Cres assumed the hole had breached some cavern or tunnel under the town because the flood waters had swirled down the hole as if into a drain. The waters had also carried about forty houses away, along with over a hundred people. But as the mayor kept telling me, it would have been far worse without my warning.

  "What do you think's down there?” Cres asked, trying to get close to the crumbling edge without falling in. Already the hole was collapsing. Within a few days, nothing would be left in the loose soil but a large depression.

  "We'll never know because it's forbidden,” I said, eying the mayor, who nodded in agreement as I reminded Cres of the only absolute law on our world. “Anytime people try to dig underground or explore sinkholes like this, ships come and kill them. Come, we need to salvage what we can from our house."

  Cres didn't seem convinced by my words, but she followed me back home without argument as she stared with longing at the ships passing in the sky.

  * * * *

  The next two months were tough, but the town pulled through. Most of the crops stored at the harvest festival had been destroyed, along with many of the chickens and pigs, and none of us had much food to fill our bellies. But crops grew fast here. They had to—anything which grew too slowly would be buried by the continual rain of organics and other materials. Soon the wheat and rice were ready to harvest, the vegetables were ripe, and the fruit was only weeks from being picked.

  As I'd predicted, the sinkhole quickly collapsed under the weight of the loose soil. Several townsfolk petitioned the mayor to allow new houses to be built near there, or at least a memorial park. However, I advised against both options. The ground could still collapse if another storm blew through. Because of my hero status, the mayor actually agreed with me.

  In more mundane matters, Cres couldn't keep her head out of the sky. While this was usually a good trait in a weatherman, she blew off all her studies, only doing just enough work to keep me from yelling at her.

  So it was that one fine, hazy day, I found her daydreaming in the weather tower instead of recording the passing ships in the log. When she saw me, she jumped off her stool, knocking the log from the railing. I barely caught the book before it fell six stories to the ground below.

  "Master Tem, I'm so sorry,” she began to stammer.

  I waved for her to be quiet. “What deep thoughts are you pondering?” I asked.

  Cres looked at me like this was a trick question and she'd be smacked for a wrong answer. “The ships,” she said with hesitation.

  I nodded. “When I was your age, I spent all my free time watching ships pass in the sky and praying that I was special enough to attract their attention. I didn't care what ship it was. Massive universe jumper. Slim star hopper. Dimension slider. I wanted to leave this mudball of a world and see the universe."

  From the way Cres nodded, I knew I spoke for her own feelings.

  "There's nothing for us here,” she said. “I mean, humans are exploring the universe, all the universes, and we're stuck in a pre-industrial cesspool. It's not right."

  I sighed because Cres was saying the very things I'd said at her age. Above us, a large ship, of a style I'd never seen before, puffed lazily across the sky while a gentle drizzle of rain fell from its body. I knew that Cres wouldn't be staying here much longer. She had so much potential. All that had saved me was my sister's death. I'd been so determined that no one else die like my sister that the ships avoided me. Cres, though, wasn't determined to stay. Eventually one of the countless ships passing by would descend and take her, leaving our world for sights I couldn't begin to conceive.

  Still, I owed it to Cres's parents to at least try and keep her here.

  "Give me a month,” I said. “There are things I want to teach you about our world. If after that you still want to leave, I'll give you my blessing."

  Cres hugged me and muttered her thanks, no doubt knowing—just as I knew—that nothing I could teach her would keep her here.

  * * * *

  Over the next few weeks, Cres and I traveled by horse a
round the countryside, visiting several towns with decent libraries. I showed her numerous histories of our world, including restricted volumes speculating on how our world stayed the same size despite the constant mass being added, and why everything continually sank toward the world's core. I also showed her ten thousand years’ worth of observations about the ships which continually visited our planet and kept us alive with their offerings.

  In one library, I pulled out a worn leather tome detailing three ship crashes over the last few millennia. In each case, our people had rescued humans from the downed ships. While strange differences had been noted—alterations to the head, bizarre tints and glows around their bodies—they had been able to speak with us. One account even briefly described the interior of a ship, which had been merely empty space. That account also swore that the crash's two survivors had somehow formed out of the ship's very skin. Unfortunately, all of these accounts were frustratingly vague and sparse. In each case, rescuing ships had quickly arrived and taken away the survivors.

  "See,” Cres said as we rode back to our town. “They're keeping us in the dark. Anyone who knows anything is removed from our world."

  "Only one way to find out,” I said, nodding at several large hoppers passing above us dropping large, wet drops of fermented material from their bellies. “Unfortunately, once you go that route you can never come back."

  As we rode our horse over the speckled green and brown hills and through the thin, straggly forests, I tried to explain to Cres that we had a duty to each other. No matter how much technology the rest of humanity possessed, we were all human. Unless one worked for each other, there was nothing worth living for. Just as the trees and grass around us only survived by growing to the sky faster than they were buried, so too did we survive because we helped each other.

  However, my heart wasn't in my words. I thought of my little sister, Llin, who'd died when she was six. We'd played endless ship games—imagining the worlds we'd visit; searching the sky for the ship we'd eventually travel on. Our mom should have punished us for saying such things, but she'd merely nodded and pointed out her own favorite ships when they passed by.

  But Llin died before she could find her ship. We'd been walking home from the park—where we'd spent the morning throwing folded paper ships into the wind—when a massive cumulus passed over the town, sending floods raging through the streets. As the waters tore at our bodies, I'd grabbed Llin's hand and struggled to hold her above the current. She screamed and cried, begged me to hold on, but the flood snatched her away.

  My mother had held me all that night, telling me I'd done the best I could and that Llin would still find her ship. But I no longer cared about the ships. If the people who flew the damn things could so easily kill my little sister, I'd never join them.

  As if knowing my desire, the ships left me alone.

  * * * *

  The next morning, Cres was gone. At first I assumed she'd gone to market, or to check our instruments. But when she missed dinner, then supper, my gut climbed to my throat. I stopped by her parents’ house and discreetly inquired about her, but they hadn't seen her. She also hadn't spoken to them in days, but if she was going to try and attract a ship I strongly doubted she'd tell her parents.

  When Cres didn't return that night, I knew she was gone. I prayed she'd found a good ship and was enjoying her life.

  The next morning I was cooking breakfast when I realized the jar of strawberry preserves was empty. I walked into the root cellar to get a new jar, only to be confronted by loud curses. In the cellar's far corner, I found a large hole in the wooden floor.

  "About time you heard me,” Cres said from the hole. “I've been yelling since yesterday."

  I quickly lowered a rope and Cres climbed out. She then explained that she'd gone into the root cellar for supplies and fell through the floor. Evidently the storm several months ago had washed away a lot of the ground under the house.

  I was extremely irritated, imagining the house I'd built upon my mother's house, and her mother's before that, in danger of collapse. Cres, though, was ecstatic. “You don't understand,” she said. “The water didn't just wash the ground away. It exposed a number of underground tunnels. And there's a faint glow coming from somewhere down there."

  I started to remind Cres that it was forbidden to explore underground; that if the ships didn't kill us, the mayor definitely would. Tunnels on our loose-soil world were also dangerous because of the potential for the loose soil to collapse. But as I stared into Cres's excited eyes, I realized that if I said no to exploring beneath the house she would probably give up any remaining desire to stay on our world. Once that happened, she would be gone on the first interested ship.

  I sighed and grabbed a jar of strawberry preserves. If I was going to risk my neck, it would at least be on a full stomach.

  * * * *

  The red glow Cres had seen came from a ship. Gleaming like new and wedged in the old foundations of my house thirty meters below the ground.

  The ship appeared to be a dimension slider, although that was merely a name from a book and didn't tell much about what it could actually do. To get to the ship, Cres and I climbed and dug through the ruins of my ancestors’ houses. Ancient rooms half filled with dirt; walls ruptured and split by pressure and water. Even though it was nerve-wracking seeing how much of my house's foundation had washed away in the recent flood, it was also fascinating to climb through my family's history. My grandmother had often talked about the bright red kitchen of her childhood and sure enough, the walls of that room two levels down still showed a faint red ocher beneath the dirt and grime. Four levels down, I ran my fingers along a cracked ceramic oven and wondered about the meals my ancestors had cooked here.

  But the ship was the centerpiece of the ruins. A perfect sphere ten meters across, with the lowest timbers of my house merging into the ship's skin as if they'd always been one.

  "How old is this ship?” Cres asked.

  I calculated how many levels of the house reached down to this point. “Maybe three hundred years. Give or take a generation or two."

  Cres shook her head. “That can't be right. The history of the town goes back a thousand years. There's no record of a ship crashing here."

  That was indeed a puzzle.

  * * * *

  Over the next week we cleared away more dirt and debris around the ship. To make our work easier, I built a simple pulley system to lower ourselves into the hole. We also took care to only work on days when the passing ships indicated good weather, and only after locking the front door against visitors. After all, if the mayor or town constables discovered that we were exploring an underground ship, not even my hero status would save us from a quick drop and a sudden stop.

  One strange thing we discovered was that the waters which had surged through my house's foundation appeared to have drained into the ship, with the runoff tunnels radiating out from the ship like spokes on a wheel. Cres and I debated whether the ship had somehow called the water to itself.

  When Cres and I weren't clearing around the ship, we attended to our regular duties. We also explored my volumes of weather history.

  "The histories are wrong,” Cres said one morning when I climbed up the weather tower to check on her. In her lap sat my oldest volume of histories, dating back a millennium to the town's first weatherman. “This volume says your family has been building up this house for nine hundred years. But there's no way the ship has been around that long."

  I sighed, knowing Cres was right, but also not having an answer. As we'd cleared away the dirt from the ship, we hadn't found any evidence of older houses under it. The ship appeared to support my entire house. “Maybe my ancestors’ houses disappeared into the ship like the water did?"

  Cres considered this for a moment, then discounted it with a snort. “That would mean there's a ship supporting every house in town. I find that hard to believe."

  While I was glad that Cres had given up thoughts of leaving our
world—even if the reason she wanted to stay was putting us at risk of death—I refused to let her disrespect me. I closed the history book and told her to keep an eye out for bad weather.

  * * * *

  The next day the weather changed and, much to Cres's irritation, we had no time for the ship. Mares’ tails began to blow in from the west, always followed by the cumulus ships which endlessly chased them. While none of these ships were anywhere near as large as the cumulus which damaged our town earlier in the year, they were still big enough to issue warnings. Because of the danger to the town, either Cres or myself stayed in the tower at all times. While Cres hated to be torn from her examinations of the ship—she was frustrated that we still hadn't found a way inside—she understood our duty. In addition, the runoff from the storms now ran through the underground tunnels beneath my house. Being caught down there during a downpour would mean certain death.

  A few days into the storm cycle I woke around midnight to wind and rain howling outside my window. I grabbed my robe and ran to the top floor, irritated that I'd slept through the warning bell. I could just make out the glow of a large cumulus above the town as it pelted us with rain. This was the biggest storm to hit town since the blow months ago. I opened the roof hatch and tried to climb the tower, but the wind was too strong. I yelled for Cres to stay where she was, then closed the hatch and waited out the storm.

  The cumulus passed in ten minutes. I opened the front door to survey the damage and was almost run over by the mayor.

  "What happened to the warning?” he yelled. “I was walking back from the pub and nearly got washed away."

  I glanced up at the weather tower, which I could now see was empty. I frowned. “The storm wasn't that bad,” I said. “Stop complaining.” Before the mayor could protest, I slammed the door in his face and ran to the basement. Below the hole I could hear rushing water. Worse, the pulley's ropes descended into the maelstrom. I'd always detached the rope and pulley when we weren't using it so there'd be no evidence we were going underground. That meant Cres had gone down there before the storm hit.