Dryland's End

by Felice Picano

  “Could those be the Aldebaran Five Seedlings?” Alli Clark asked, unable to hide her curiosity.

  “They’re Humes,” Ay’r confirmed.

  “Observe them closely,” P’al warned. “We’re going to have to look like them if we’re to go there and locate Ser Kerry’s father.”

  “Not me!” Alli Clark declared. “I’m going only to the ocean!”

  “You still will have to make the cosmetic ’xchange, to look like them,” P’al said. “Although I concur in your distaste. I believe the archaic idiom is ‘Count me zero’!”

  “It’s ‘Count me out’!” Ay’r corrected, realizing at the same time that it was the first time he had corrected his companion about anything. Of course, no one was perfect. But why then had Ay’r felt that P’al might be perfect? He had felt exactly that, he now realized.

  “They’re Hume, but the most unattractive Humes I’ve ever seen,” Alli Clark said. “So ... colorless! And the way they dress. It’s ludicrous! Their Cyber guardian must have been damaged in the landing of the seed pod and remained deranged afterward.”

  “They don’t look that bad to me!” Ay’r said.

  “Well, I’m not surprised,” she responded, unable to keep herself from touching one of her own honey-brown thighs with relief. “You’re almost as light-skinned as they are. I was prepared for a ghastly mutation. But this! And even Ophiucan Kells have brown hair.”

  “Bronze hair, to be precise,” Ay’r corrected her.

  “At any rate, not yellow. Not that you’ll need a great deal of cosmetological disguise with your skin pallor. For all we know, all these might be your half siblings!”

  She’d meant it as an insult, but Ay’r ignored the comment. He was watching two Hume adolescents at work, stacking what seemed to be heavy stalks of some sort of cellulose. They both had pale eyes, white skin, undeniably flaxen hair. They were gaunt and large-boned. Their long torsos and legs were barely hidden under close-fitting garments that oddly accentuated their long arms, their huge shoulders, their narrow lower torsos.

  “Many important Metro.-Terrans were of that same coloring,” he said.

  “Name four!” Alli Clark challenged.

  “Eric the Viking. Christiaan Barnard, Lisbeth Sallinen, and, of course, Aare Turik, inventor of the SLp.G”

  “He’s right!” P’al concurred. “In the early centuries of space travel, a disproportionate number of such physical types were dominant in all areas.”

  “Before the so-called Great Homogenization took place,” Ay’r added, “which left everyone – except maybe Kells – with more or less the same hair, skin, and eye coloring.”

  “You know as well as I that the Hume race’s ancestors were exactly my coloring!” Alli Clark insisted.

  “What about the inhabitants’ language?” Ay’r asked the Fast. “Can we get sound?”

  The sonics below proved to be too muffled by the dense watery atmosphere.

  “We’ll probably have to alter our skins cosmetologically for all that moisture,” P’al muttered, sounding long-suffering.

  The Fast confirmed that.

  “I’ve checked our pods,” P’al said. “T-pods for ourselves, Ser Kerry,” he said. “They’ll attract less attention and can be hidden easily.”

  “I’ll need the big pod,” Alli Clark said, allowing Ay’r to win a little bet he had with himself. “I’ll do the ’xchange, but only because the Fast insists on it. There is a minuscule possibility that I might encounter maritime-faring seedlings on the ocean. Otherwise ... I do not plan to go near that dreary little continent with its primitive social life!”

  Alli Clark insisted on getting her cosmetological disguise first.

  “I thought you were supposed to help me find my father,” Ay’r said.

  “When I’m done with my survey. Fast will give you a frequency tone. We’ll lock on those. But don’t expect me to see you again for a few days Sol Rad.”

  When she emerged from behind the ’xchange wall, she warned, “Now if either of you laugh at how I look ...”

  In fact, Ay’r thought Alli Clark looked extraordinary. Her short black hair was now a curled ash-blonde cap, and her new pale face held two green eyes.

  P’al was next for the disguise. He emerged a few minutes later a paler blond than Alli Clark, with light blue eyes. His skin was redder than hers. It looked as though it might hurt.

  Alli Clark was doing a final Fast check on her big pod when Ay’r was done with his ’xchange and looked into the wall-sized reflector. He wasn’t tall and muscular and Adonis-handsome, as P’al was to begin with, and so didn’t have P’al’s stature as a blond. Nor was he frail and petite like Alli Clark, and so didn’t have her elfin pertness. Instead, Ay’r – with his head of thick honey-blond hair and pale green eyes and only slightly lighter-than-usual skin color – looked ... well, he couldn’t help thinking that he finally looked “right”!

  “I may retain this coloring after we leave Pelagia,” Ay’r said to himself.

  “You’ll be laughed off the conveyances of Melisande,” Alli Clark said. Not an unexpected comment coming from her. What was unexpected was that she had responded to what he had meant purely as a private, personal statement. Why had she even bothered?

  “May I suggest, Mer Clark, that you arm your pod!” P’al said.

  “You may not!” she reacted instantly, as behavior modes numbers one, two, and three went into action. “Arm it! Just like a male! Are you arming your transparents?”

  “No. We’ll be wearing force-fields.”

  “So will I! Are you expecting me to do battle with marauding algae? That’s what’s mostly down there, when there is anything but water!”

  She turned back to her Fast screen. Ay’r looked at P’al, who shared the same expression on his face as Ay’r knew he must have: predictable, yet completely unpredictable Alli Clark! She might as easily have demanded to be armed and found a reason to chastise them for not suggesting it first.

  “After all,” she continued, “I’m surveying, not interacting!”

  “As you wish,” P’al said.

  “Aren’t you two ready to go yet?” she demanded.

  Ay’r began to say he was but was interrupted.

  “Not yet!” P’al said.

  “Well. I’m not waiting!” She undid her wrist connection to the vehicle and strode to the end of the lounge, which opened to admit her. Without a farewell, she was in a chute, into her pod, and out.

  Ay’r was puzzled by P’al’s hesitation. “Are you ready now?”

  P’al had fitted on his own wrist connection, and a holo opened up in front of them. It took Ay’r a few seconds to understand the perspective he was viewing. He saw something deep blue moving away very fast; he recognized it as the Fast’s underside. Then the big pod’s “eyes” found their reference points, and he was now looking from a more usual, “false,” three-quarters view as Alli Clark’s pod hurtled through a chasm of high clouds, down through other, even more magnificently towering clouds, into a sunlit opening that extended hundreds of kilometers in circumference, revealing the aquamarine surface of the ocean.

  “Surely, P’al, you aren't expecting her to be attacked by algae?”

  “Anything is possible, Ser Kerry. This is a strange planet, even for a Seeded World.”

  “But the Fast already sent down dozens of probes in the past hour. Not a single probe remarked any hint of interference.”

  “Perhaps the probes were too small.”

  They were only the sized of a balled-up Hume fist.

  “They’re too big to get through any defense system I ever heard of,” Ay’r said.

  “A short wait won't overdelay our search.”

  “You mean because we’re three months before the time we actually met on Melisande?”

  “Approximately. But who knows how the time distortion will work for our return.”

  So Ay’r waited and watched the holo with P’al. But he soon lost interest in it, as the holo – at lea
st in its visual mode – was tediously the same minutes at a time: ocean surface for kilometers at a stretch, then subocean surface, and finally deeper underwater, although not by any means near the bottom.

  The Fast itself seemed to be bored. It added in a pale blue topological chart along with the holo of Alli Clark’s pod, as she rose to the surface again.

  "It’s fascinating!” Ay’r said sarcastically. Then he turned and looked at the wall reflector at what was, oddly enough, truly fascinating to him: at how – “right” seemed to be the only word for it – he looked.

  “About those force-fields, Ser Kerry,” P’al began. “Do you think it a good idea to utilize them? As a Species Ethnologist, you would naturally have more experience with Seedlings.”

  “As a rule, Spec. Eth.s carry neither arms nor force-fields on a Seeded World,” Ay’r admitted. “They’re inexplicable to most Archaic peoples. And they might give us a pseudostatus as sorcerers, which could be quite troublesome. Worse, should they fall into the wrong hands, the Seedlings might advance suddenly, at a time when they’re still too primitive to control the tools. Which might lead to self-annihilation.”

  “Then we carry no shields and no weapons?” P’al concluded.

  Ay’r looked at the holo: Alli Clark’s pod floating over square kilometers of algae; stemlike fronds connected by small spheres, probably containing reproductive material. Why was P’al so hesitant about leaving the Fast?

  “Do you have an uneasy feeling about her?” Ay’r asked.

  “Don’t you?”

  “I don’t know. She is impulsive and determined. But in a way I pity anyone who tangles with her.”

  As the two looked on, the pod over the surface of the vast kelp ocean rose, turned sharply, and made a steep ascent.

  “Is that Mer Clark’s frequency tone?” P’al asked.

  The Fast said, yes, it was receiving a message.

  “... not believe what I just” came her voice. Then: “... mirage! must be ... rage. Forget they would be ... mon here!”

  “A mirage?” Ay’r tried to make sense of her half-broken comm.

  “Over a trillion kilotons of ocean, naturally,” P’al said.

  The holo showed her pod turning suddenly again, flattening its ascent, skimming over the surface.

  “Where’s she going?”

  “She appears to be following something,” P’al mumbled.

  “Can’t we get a picture of it?”

  “Not if she won’t allow the pod to transmit it,” P’al said. “Fast. Open up complete verbal communication.”

  “Not possible! Too much interference on all but the lowest of microwave frequencies,” it reported. “And Mer Clark’s instructions forbid the use of low microwave frequencies until we know their full effect upon local biota.”

  “Why would she chase a mirage?” Ay’r asked.

  “Unless she isn’t certain it is a mirage. She’s turned toward land. That’s a sure way to discover if it is an illusion. Once the ocean surface is broken, the mirage will be too. Even a sandbar would destroy it.”

  On the holo, below the horizon, low-lying brown masses flew at Ay’r. He had time enough to think – islands, the archipelago, but which one? east or west? – when the holo snapped off.

  “Contact is lost,” the Fast declared. “I’m receiving an automatic distress signal on, yes, it must be, a frequency modulation channel.”

  “Relay it!” P’al stood right at the open space where the holo had been so vivid a second before, as though he were waiting for it to come on again.

  “Verbal only,” the Fast reported. Then they heard Alli Clark’s voice shout: “I’m hit!” And again. “I’m hit! I’m going in! I’m making a screw-maneuver! Plot me from ...” She listed her coordinates, which crackled through static and were almost finished before even her verbal message was snapped off.

  The Fast said, “I suggested the screw-maneuver as having the greatest potential for eluding most weapons.”

  “You’re wonderful!” Ay’r said acidly.

  “I’m now plotting the pod’s curve of descent in the maneuver.”

  “Give us a holo of the curve!” P’al ordered. “Global, then enlarged.”

  What did she mean, she was going in? Ay’r wanted to know. “Into the ocean?”

  “The trajectory is direct west from the twenty-sixth line of longitude, at the forty-eighth line of latitude north,” the Fast said, showing Alli Clark’s descent in a flashing red line against an orbital photo as she approached the largest continent.

  “She’ll hit that mountain range!” Ay’r said.

  But her path continued and went out just west of the mountain range, in what they had already decided was one of several large mountain valleys containing a sparse population of Seedling inhabitants.

  “That’s where we’ll also land,” P’al said.

  “What about whatever attacked her pod?”

  “Whatever it was, it did so over open water,” P’al answered. “We’re going to dry land.”

  Although it was called a transparent, the pods they stepped into minutes later, were in fact externally opaque and entirely mirrored, the better to reflect the environment – a strategy long ago discovered to possess the highest probability of protection. T-pods were known to have landed softly in occupied gardens in broad daylight without being noticed. An organism would have to actually bump against the T-pod, or step on it, to note its presence. Of course, more than one organism had noticed a T-pod through one sense or another, and several had attempted to eat one. Since it was over two meters tall, astonishingly hard, and purposely bad tasting, they seldom succeeded. As a result, T-pods were planetary exploration’s greatest tool. Even better, they were inexpensive to manufacture and a dozen of them could be easily stored inside even a small Fast.

  Naturally, over the centuries, Antrom’s design had been modified. Transparent within except for a “floor,” T-pod interiors possessed a flexible body netting for holding a Hume in virtually all positions, and they were connected to the Fast’s computerized mind with a set of independent circuits capable of manual override. In the gravest on-planet situations, T-pods could be arranged to “cryo.” whoever was inside the pod in a severe emergency until rescue could be effected. In less serious cases, they contained nutrient-producing abilities for a week Sol Rad., air- and water-producing abilities up to a month. Also standard were manual controls for atmospheric drive, as well as simple laser-based weapons of limited range and force, mostly for scaring off annoyances.

  Ay’r had learned how to handle a T-pod at the Spec. Eth. Institute. Now, as they dropped down the Fast’s chute to the landing bay, he wondered where P’al had learned – probably where he had learned everything else he seemed to know.

  Two of the fragile-looking craft were set up, split open for them to enter. “Let’s try to stay more or less together!” P’al said.

  “Not too close!” Ay’r got into his pod and fell back into the netting, which immediately encircled his body.

  “See you on Pelagia!” he said and told the T-pod to close.

  He was amused to receive an old Metro.-Terran “OK” signal from P’al’s fingers.

  “Let’s go!” he told the pod. The floor below him opened up, and the T-pod dropped out.

  For beginners, these fourteen seconds of straight drop while the T-pod aligned itself magnetically could be gut wrenching. Ay’r had come to enjoy the drop, and as he located the other T-pod dropping after him, he wondered how P’al was taking it. Had he ever been in a pod before, or simply found out from the Fast how the pod worked?

  Ay’r’s pod stopped falling and rocked a bit as it established a bearing.

  “Excuse me for asking, passenger three” – the Fast’s voice suddenly came on inside the T-pod – “but since neither of the other passengers would explain, could you tell me why we shall not be in communication during your planet stay, as is normal?”

  “First, we don’t know how long we’ll be gone,” Ay’r
said.

  “Yes ...”

  “Second, we don’t know where we’re going, exactly.”

  “Uh-huh ...”

  “And, third, you would scare the stuffing out of the Humes we encounter if you did communicate.”

  “Then you’re planning to visit the seemingly primitive Humelike inhabitants?” the Fast asked.

  “You bet!”

  The T-pod had dropped to a spot over water quite near the continent that the Fast had calculated would contain the least turbulence. Ay’r was approaching a headland of rugged brown rock.

  “On what kind of mission, may I ask?” the Fast went on.

  The T-pod was over the shore mountains, some cut sharply into peaks, others mere slabs of titanic rock.

  “You may ask. I’m not going to answer.”

  From this close, the mountains were truly enormous, looming, deeply crevassed.

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s none of your business,” Ay’r said. “I thought your higher personality functions were modified out.”

  “They were. My questions are directly relevant to the situation at hand.”

  Below, the mountains seemed to stretch away far in two directions, and even to Ay’r’s northeast, along the coastline, as far as he could see.

  “We’re on a secret mission for the MC,” Ay’r said finally, hoping to end the discussion.

  “Ah. Now I understand,” the Fast said.

  Now the crevasses below, highlighted so sharply before, seemed to lose all depth. Ay’r wondered what time it was on the planet. Midafternoon, the Fast told him. He also wondered if Pelagia had seasons, although he was certain their epiderma had been temperature adjusted during the ’xchange.

  The Fast confirmed the latter and said it was unsure whether there were seasons on the planet. “You didn’t mind my asking that other question?” the Fast added.

  “You were just trying to do your job most effectively.”

  “You do understand.”

  Ay’r changed the subject. “You realize that if any of the pods are opened, you are to respond only to a direct communication from us. For all three pods. But only one of us,” Ay’r clarified.

  “Each pod is equipped with a memory trace of your voices and molecular structure.”