Dryland's End

by Felice Picano

  “Might we speak alone, Ma’am.”

  “How private could it be, Lill? You’re in Lord Kell’s apartments in Hesperia.”

  Even so, Mart Kell bowed slightly and backed out of the holo-chamber.

  Once Lill was sure he was out of hearing: “Ma’am, begging your pardon, but how do we know all this isn’t some Hesperian trick?”

  “Because, my dear Lill, I’ve been expecting exactly this offer for several days now. Don’t worry, Lord Kell wouldn’t dare harm you. Or Me.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Lill said, not completely persuaded.

  “By the way, I’m having you bumped up to Vice Admiral. Arrive there dressed just as you are when you take command. There’s far too much laxness among those forces.”

  Lill felt a flutter of joy and tried not to show it, but it came through her voice when she saluted and said, “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “And Lill, I don’t know if you’ve been sterilized like many of Our officers or whether you were infected by the microvirus or what, but if not, I personally wouldn’t hold it against you if you happened to need maternity leave sometime in the future ... and a bronze-haired neo. emerged.”

  Laughing at Lill’s embarrassment, Wicca snapped off the holo.

  “Must be like old Ed. and Dev. times for you, Helle, being back here at Groombridge XXXIV,” Mart said.

  His Fast yacht had just come out of a jump from Hesperia, and the three of them, Mart, the Environmental Engineer, and Commander – now Vice Admiral – Lill were relaxing, in orbit around the fourth moon of the seventh planet of the binary red giant star system, known the galaxy over for being home to the MC Security Forces Academy.

  “Don’t know why Herself chose Groomby as an intermediate Jump,” Lill grumbled. To Mart, she didn’t seem to be enjoying herself today; Mart wondered if he had anything to do with that.

  “Wicca selected Groombridge XXXIV because it has complete untapped military comm. to any spot in the MC,” Mart said with characteristic candor. “Especially to Carina Fornax.”

  Lill’s face read: “How did you know?” Aloud she said, “I’ve always thought the Matriarchy underrated Hesperian intelligence.”

  The Fast’s mind reported that Lill’s credentials had been accepted by the Groombridge net. “Whom did she want to contact?”

  “Flower Cult Fast 98CLFL088,” Lill said. “Captain – or by now she’s probably Commander – Wang’Un.”

  “Going through,” the Fast commented, then added, “This is a pretty fancy network the MC has.”

  “Don’t look too hard,” Mart teased, “or our guest might think we’re here only to peek at Matriarchy secrets.”

  The Fast’s mind didn’t respond. Nor had Mart expected it to.

  Lill was wearing the same soiled and blast-torn uniform she had worn arriving at O’Kell UnLimited yesterday afternoon City Time. She had changed it for the brief formal meeting with the Quinx and the more private dinner for ten that followed it. Mart wondered why she was wearing it now: as a sort of badge or medal, he supposed. He wondered if Lill knew how sexy she looked in it. Not that Mart had ever found the ubiquitous MC red uniform or clashing purple Cult cape alluring before. It must be Helle Lill herself.

  “Before they appear on holo, tell me again who your assistant is,” Lill all but whispered.

  He hadn’t told her at all who the third passenger was. They had simply met at the Fast and strapped in for the jump. Partly because they had all been occupied almost to the moment they’d left Hesperia: “Di’mir” locating a miniaturized Cyber-system with the fullest relevant programming. Helle and Mart having a final impromptu and completely satisfying bout of sexual intercourse. He had approached her again the moment she had put the old uniform on and, of course, she had begun by fending him off, saying, “Don’t! You’ll rip it!” Until he had ripped it, and they had both laughed and fell onto his air-bed again, not caring a bit about the uniform’s condition.

  “You may introduce him as Vla’di’mir Jones,” Mart said. “He’s a Class-A Environmental Engineer with a full panoply of degrees from Hesperia University. He was the City’s discoverer of the Cyber-virus at Vulpulcella. He’s studied both it and its serum in more detail than anyone else we have. He’s also a bio-Cyber.”

  That last phrase stopped Lill, just as it was supposed to. “I’ve never heard that term before. Explain!”

  “He’s flesh and blood like ourselves. Completely mammalian tissue. But his brain, autonomous system, involuntary nervous system, and everything related to it was preprogrammed and constructed in vitro. The chromosomes for all his axonary and synaptical tissues were cloned – from myself,” Mart said, enjoying first her puzzlement then her growing wonder.

  “Which makes him ... what?” she asked.

  “My son. I’m very proud of him.”

  “Why does he look different? His hair, his eyes?”

  “Temporary cosmetology,” Di’mir now spoke for himself. He began to remove one of his eye lenses. “See! Underneath it’s the same green as his!”

  “My son didn’t want to have to grow up dealing with the stigma of being an Ophiucan Kell.”

  “You know that’s not so! I didn’t want all of the fawning and –”

  “Just teasing!” Mart retreated quickly. One pleasure was noticing exactly how adolescent his son’s emotional network remained.

  “The reason he’s with us, Helle, isn’t mere nepotism. As a bio-Cyber – and, yes, they’re terrifically rare – my son is more alert than any Hume. He uses about three-quarters of his brain, where even the most efficient of ourselves uses only about one-quarter, despite millennia of evaluation and training. I expect him to double-up anything we can discover, and to monitor and check the Fast’s mind continually.”

  “And here I thought you were treating all this as a pleasure jaunt,” she said.

  Which was exactly how Mart had been treating it, and how he hoped to continue to treat it: a break of a few days Sol Rad. from all the sudden responsibility and executive decision making at the Inner Quinx he had been embroiled in lately.

  “I’ve gotten your comm.,” the Fast’s mind said. “Unusually quickly, if I say so myself, considering how distant Carina Fornax is.”

  “You’re wonderful!” Mart commented. Again the Fast didn’t reply.

  “Put it on holo,” Lill said with a tiny smile. Evidently she’d had her share of dealing with Fast minds, too.

  Wang’Un appeared in their midst.

  “Is that really you, Commander Lill? We never thought we’d see you again.”

  “Thanks, Wang. It’s Vice Admiral now, by the way. Or hasn’t the word come through?”

  “It has. I’ve been bumped up, too. I just keep forgetting.”

  “No problem. I’m arriving there at Carina Fornax on a Fast yacht with two males from Hesperia. Special guests of Herself. We’re on a sort of research mission. Have you heard anything about it?”

  “Word came down earlier from the Admiral’s Fast, although it wasn’t worded very nicely.” Wang’Un allowed herself a smile, and suddenly her long-distant Metro.-Terran Asiatic background showed through. “Admiral Thol probably busted the one tit she has left when she heard of your promotion.”

  “Probably,” Lill replied. “Now make certain you ladies remain completely trim there. She’ll be annoying you as much as she can to make me look bad.”

  Wang’s same small smile, “I warned the crew of exactly that already. So, when can we expect you?”

  “Let’s synchronize. It’s Krishna-Barnes 2, 1800 hours. Say K-B 3200 hours or so. Your exact coordinates at Carina Fornax will be ...?”

  The coordinates were set and the holo snapped off. The three on the Fast yacht got ready for the jump to Carina Fornax.

  Just before it began, Lill looked at Di’mir carefully.

  “Yes?” Mart asked.

  “I was just thinking, leave it to a Hesperian to find a new way to kick the Matriarchy in the fallopian tubes!”

  “Mean
ing?”

  “Having a kid without benefit of a mother,” she added and began to guffaw as the Fast initiated the jump.

  They came out of it at the selected coordinates and one minute Sidereal Time earlier than planned.

  “We have a problem,” the Fast’s voice greeted them.

  “What is it?” Mart and Lill asked in unison.

  “Flower Cult Fast 98CLFL088 is not anywhere in the area.”

  “Check the coordinates,” Lill said.

  “I already did. I’m sweeping the area. And I’m getting some odd readings.”

  “Specify!” Di’mir spoke.

  “Well, Flower Cult Fast 98CLFL088 was in the area until quite recently. And, in fact, so were another two or three other military Fasts.”

  “Perhaps an emergency came up?” Mart suggested.

  “More likely sudden maneuvers,” Lill replied. “Thanks to Admiral Thol.

  Fast, comm. me my Fast wherever it is in this sector.”

  “I believe I have located that band. Wait one minute.”

  They heard an earsplitting shriek through the comm. Mart yelled for the Fast to tune it down or shut it off.

  “What in Eve was that?” Lill demanded.

  “That was the comm. on Flower Cult Fast 98CLFL088,” the Fast answered.

  “Tune it again,” Lill commanded. “But don’t raise the volume if it sounds like that.”

  Mart had come out of Fast jump into the awareness of a problem and then that horrible wailing sound, and all he could think was: What if somehow, just now of all times, this Fast’s mind was going on the blink on them? What a nightmare that would be, stuck out here in Carina Fornax – if, in fact, that’s where they actually were.

  He turned to his son. Would he check to see if the Fast had put them in the wrong place?

  “If we’re anywhere near where we’re supposed to be, I can,” Di’mir said. Evidently he was thinking that same thing: the Fast had put them in the wrong sector.

  Di’mir pulled up a small holo-screen attached to his jump lounge, called up star maps for the sector, and began perusing them as they flashed by.

  “Now give me external views!” he instructed, and the main holo-screen showed views from outside the Fast: front, aft, top, bottom, and side.

  “Fast?” Lill asked. “What’s happening with that comm.?”

  “Same as before. It sounds ... well, tampered with or –”

  Mart was studying the full-sized holos. “Stop!” he said. “Grid it!”

  A grid appeared over the holo, which showed mostly stars with a distant band of reddish cosmic dust.

  “That looks right!” Di’mir commented. “Increase grid number thirty-five.”

  A binary star system appeared: one giant blue sun, one smaller white sun.

  “That looks like Persephone and Demeter to me,” Di’mir remarked. “Now increase grid number eight on that.”

  At the farthest edge of the blue’s corona, they made out a bulbous dot.

  “That should be planet Nepenthe,” he went on. “Increase grid number seventeen on that.”

  The tiny dot became a huge, red-and-white-striated, gas planet orbited by a silvery pink-edged ring and satellites of differing sizes.

  “Increase grid forty-one.”

  The striations enlarged and became a whirling background to a small, dark, perfect spheroid.

  “And that’s Erebus. An artificial satellite in orbit around Nepenthe. Increase grids four to nine.” Di’mir was checking the moon, suddenly enlarged to fill the screen, so he might make out identifying physical features.

  “That’s it!”

  “Well, we’re in the right place,” Mart said for all three of them.

  “Eve’s armpit!” Lill swore. “I’d hoped your Fast was tryked! Fast, can you locate any other Cult Fast comm.s open? Use this code.” She moved to the wall unit and connected her wrist plate into it. “If anyone’s there, they’ll comm. back. I’ve got more clearances than Thol’s got lady friends.”

  Mart knew she was worried about her Fast and crew. If the comm. was damaged, that could mean Lill’s craft was, too.

  “I’ve found one,” the Fast reported. “Flower Cult Fast 67CLFN221!”

  Evidently Lill didn’t know that particular Fast: “Get me a holo with the Commander.”

  “Trying!” it said. “Holo on.”

  The woman who appeared was reclining in a Fast lounge, facing the wrong direction.

  “Commander! This is Vice Admiral... Commander! Would you face the holo?”

  The woman slowly turned the lounge around. She was wearing an MC uniform, but she had cut or torn out the front of the tunic so that the bottoms of her smallish breasts and her stomach down to her navel were revealed. Her MC top-swirl had been undone, and her hair fell across half her face. Stuck into her hair as well as along the ripped-open placket at her throat were tiny crushes of different-colored paper-alloys, which Mart immediately thought were supposed to represent flowers.

  “Commander?” Lill tried again. “Are you the commander of Fast 67CLFN221?”

  The woman tilted her head and seemed about to ask Lill to repeat the number. But she instantly had another idea and instead asked, “Are you the new Vice Admiral? The Fast said you were. You’re a heroine, aren’t you? I didn’t know you’d be so handsome.”

  Lill and Mart exchanged quizzical glances.

  “Soldier!” Lill barked out. “Come to attention! Right now!”

  The woman tried to, or at least she sat up a bit more, which made her paper-alloy flowers fall off. She bent over to retrieve them.

  “Where’s your Commander?” Lill demanded.

  “She’s somewhere here. I saw her here just a while ago. I really can’t say.”

  “Who else is on that deck?” Lill asked.

  “No one but me. They all went down to the lower decks.”

  This time Di’mir and Mart exchanged looks; Mart’s asked his son to do something, anything.

  “Why did they go down there? Has there been an incident?” Lill asked. Meaning, Mart knew, a battle, an accident, some emergency that required all of their attention.

  “An incident?” the soldier asked naively. “Oh, you know, there was an incident. Noras Peyer and this other airwoman, I think her name is Hava, or is it Haver? Well, anyway, they got into this fight. I don’t mean an argument, but an out-and-out fight, pulling hair and punching each other. All over who’d get to sit at the weapons chair. Well, naturally –”

  “Soldier!” Lill barked again. “Stop right there! I’m releasing you from duty. Go down to the lower deck and bring up the Commander! Or, if not the Commander, then any officer in charge.”

  The soldier looked baffled. “But” – she looked about to cry – “I’m the officer in charge.”

  “And I’m your superior. Leave the deck and get someone else up to this holo-screen. Now!”

  When the woman was gone from the holo, Mart took over. “Fast, did you record all that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you contacted any other Fasts in the area?”

  “Three more are responding.”

  “Put one on, and cut in this one if someone else appears!” Lill commanded.

  “You’re certain you want holos of them?” the Fast asked.

  “What now?!” Lill asked. Then: “Yes.”

  The second holo comm. with a Cult Fast proved much shorter than the first. Two women faced the holos. Both had removed their uniforms and were wearing sleeping shifts. Both stood with their arms crossed, their legs spread, as though ready for a fight. Both were furious. They immediately told Lill they didn’t care who she was or what her command was because they had taken over the Fast and had seceded from the MC Fleet. They were tired of the service, tired of the Cybers, tired of this sector. They were bored with waiting around and with being soldiers, and they wanted to return to the peaceful crafts of real women: raising neo.s, planting flowers, designing clothing. They continued to rave at her before s
napping off the holo from their side.

  In the third contact, there was no one left at the holo-chair when Lill reached the holo. In the fourth, there was a single woman who seemed to be a blessed sight: a well-groomed, fully uniformed MC Officer, at attention. But the minute that Lill began to ask her questions, the soldier broke down into tears, couldn’t or wouldn’t answer, and finally fell to the floor and thus out of holo-range, still sobbing her heart out.

  “Would you like me to try another?” the Fast asked.

  “Keep trying that comm., the wailing one,” Lill said. “And inform me when someone appears at the unattended holo.”

  She turned to Mart. “Something is terribly wrong.”

  He wanted to go to her, to comfort her, but how?

  “Fast,” Di’mir said, “I want six of your probes sent out. With nets. Have them initiate analysis of anything they catch. Anything at all, no matter how small. Contact us as soon as anything unusual is found.”

  “I’ve already taken the liberty of sending out two probes, searching for wreckage.”

  “Oh, Eve!” Lill said. “Did you find any?”

  “I believe so. But no remnants of radiation from the use of weapons.”

  “I don’t understand any of this,” Lill groaned.

  Mart went to her now and held her by the shoulders, “There’s an explanation for it. All of it. Mad as it sounds. Di’mir, what are your probes looking for?”

  “The ones already out there seem to have found it,” Di’mir reported. “Fast. Give us a visual on that little probe.”

  The holo-screen took out a small section to show one probe, its delicate tea-strainer-sized netting holding a tiny sphere, which it reported to be barely half a millimeter in diameter.

  Microscopic enlargement showed the sphere was speckled. Further enlargement showed the speckles to be a distortion: the entire sphere was formed of tiny interlocking parts, each one angstrom small.

  The probe was now unsheathing its narrowest needle point to insert into one area where the parts seemed separated. As Mart watched, the visually large and blunt-looking point was approaching contact with the sphere’s surface when the whole thing seemed to fly apart.