Starquake

by Robert L. Forward

  The glide-cars at the garage were piled into a heap in one corner of the compound, so she had to make the trip by her own tread. The streets were deserted and the crust was silent except for the low rumbles coming up from deep in Egg. She passed by compounds with cracked walls. Through the cracks she saw nothing but death. Flattened cheela bodies that had flowed through partially opened doorways, many with eyes cooked and hide blistered. Pet Slinks imitated their masters in death, their hairs singed off.

  Any plant of any size had either toppled or been sheared off at the root, while the smaller plants and ground cover looked limp and lifeless. It took her a while to find the compound for the peace officers, for there was little need for them in this exclusive resort area. The peace officers were dead too, and none of the equipment in the office seemed to work. She finally left and returned to her flyer. When she turned on her communications set, a voice blared through the deck.

  "... anyone on Egg. Please reply on Channels 1, 12, 36, or 144. West Pole Space Station on an all-band call to anyone on Egg. Please reply on channels…" The voice sounded squeaky and hurried since time moved faster on the orbital space stations than it did on the surface of Egg.

  She switched her set to channel 36 in the flyer band. "This is Qui-Qui in Flyer 7. I have landed at West Pole Mountain Resort near the West Pole Rejuvenation Center. Everyone in West Pole Mountain Resort seems to be dead. All the video links are gone, too. I'd appreciate it if you would call Bright's Heaven and have them send a mechanic to service my flyer. I've got to get back by next turn to start rehearsals for my show."

  She then waited for the long two-grethturn interval while the signal traveled the 400 kilometers or so up to the West Pole Station and back.

  "Flyer 7," came a voice. "This is Lieutenant Shannon-Capacity. You are coming in weakly. Did you say your name

  was Qui-Qui? The Qui-Qui? I'm sorry, but I can't call anyone for you. As far as we know, you are the only one on Egg with a working free-space transmitter."

  Qui-Qui became concerned. "Do you see any signs of life anywhere? If it isn't too far, I could fly there and find them." She had two grethturns to worry as she waited for a reply.

  "Wait. I'll check with the Space Operations Commander," he said. A few sethturns later a harsh harassed voice rasped through the deck.

  "You there! This is Admiral Hohmann-Transfer, Commander of Space Operations. We have an extreme emergency. As of now, I am commandeering your private flyer in the name of the government of the Combined Clans. We will need it to restore contact with the remaining authorities on Egg and start the recovery process. Let me speak to your pilot."

  "I am the pilot," she said and waited for the reply.

  "Bright has cursed us all!" Hohmann-Transfer shouted. "Here we are in the middle of the biggest catastrophe to hit Egg, and I get stuck with a stupid, big-lidded entertainer" Suddenly the admiral's voice shifted to panic.

  "We've got to find somebody else on Egg," she said. "If we can't find somebody to rebuild a jump loop or a gravity catapult, we'll be stuck here in space until we die! We've got to find somebody else. We've got to find somebody else."

  Qui-Qui turned off the communication set. "Well, Quick-Quieter," she said out loud to herself. "It looks like you're through with acting for a while. This is the real thing. As the admiral said, 'We've got to find somebody else.' "

  She thought about using the flyer, but decided against it. Until she found a way to recharge the accumulators, she would save the energy for the communications set. There were a number of towns nearby that she could check out on tread, including the home town of her clan. She hoped she would find someone alive there. Subconsciously twitching the clan totem in her heritage pouch, the thought of all her close friends in the clan—the elders, the hatchlings, the eggs! The thought of her clan's eggs and hatchlings lying unattended moved her to instant action.

  Within sethturns she had the flyer skimming along the surface to White Rock City, the home of the White Rock Clan. She knew exactly where the clan hatchery was, since she had left an egg there only two greats of turns ago.

  The sight at the clan hatchery wrung her brain-knot into

  knots. In the hatchling pen were the tiny bodies of innocent, defenseless hatchlings that had been thrown against the wall to burst and fall to the crust like overripe singleberries. Those bodies that had been cushioned by the dying Old Ones were covered with fatal blisters, while the juice in the blisters was cooked until it was nearly solid. Hoping against hope, she went to the egg-pen and laboriously rolled the dead Old One off the eggs he had been tending. It was only two turns since the starquake, so the eggs should have survived without being tended. She looked the eggs over carefully, then, awkwardly forming a hatchling mantle, she tucked them under her. There was no damage and no blisters, but no life. She twitched the clan totem in her heritage pouch and went out to search the rest of White Rock City.

  Marooned

  06:58:07.3 GMT TUESDAY 21 JUNE 2050

  The hunger-twinges in Speckle-Top moved from one eating pouch to another. They got so bad she began to think about the old days in the dump when the garbage sleds from the centertown eating places would come. It was long past turnfeast and she had to get something to eat. The trouble was, the crust around her was too quiet. The clankers would hear her for sure when she pushed the rock away from the end of the tunnel. So she moved to the tunnel entrance and stuck one eye through a crack between the rock and the wall.

  "Bright's Curse!" she whispered as she pulled her eye back in—a clanker was out there. But there was something wrong with her. Putting her eye back out to watch the reaction of the clanker, she moved the rock slightly. A rasping sound radiated out through the crust, but the clanker didn't move. Growing bolder, she pushed the rock aside and flowed out into the still sparkling atmosphere.

  Keeping her eyes half-shielded under their flaps, she went over to the clanker. The large body had flowed into a wide oval. A few dull yellow-red eyeballs hung out over their fleshy eyeflaps and the large clanker badges had fallen from their holding sphincters.

  "Too tender to stand a little crustquake, you slink-treading egg-sucker?" Speckle-Top picked up a clanker badge and stuck it onto her decorationless hide. The badge was heavy, but felt good.

  "It looks better on me than you, you eye-ball-sucking father-lover," she said as she flowed up on the carcass of the clanker and took the rest of her badges. In one pouch she found an

  electronic lash. Speckle-Top's hide had tasted the lash the first time she had been caught and had been foolish enough to try to run away. Ever since, the just let the clankers lead her away when they caught her doing something wrong. She flowed off the dead clanker and turned on the lash. High voltage currents flickered across the crust. She swept the lash under the tread of the clanker. The first sweep produced some reflex reaction in the edges of the tread, but even that stopped as the lash played its aura over the dead body.

  "Just let any clanker try and get me now!" she bragged, waving the lash around. "I'll fry their treads and eat them for a 'tweenfeast snack!" She pouched the lash and moved on toward the center of town, the huge badges almost dragging in the crust. The silence bothered her. Ever since she had hatched in the dump on the other side of town, her tread had felt the constant rustle of tread and hum of machine coming through the crust. Now there was nothing, not even the high-pitched whine of the Jump Loop. She finally thought to look up to where the Jump Loop should be, hanging in the sky. It was no longer there.

  "That must have been a slider of a quake!" she whispered to herself as she moved slowly on, her street-wary tread alert.

  When turnfeast came again, she was no longer hungry. She had loaded her pouches full of strange-tasting foods taken from shops guarded by flowed shopkeepers. Her stuffed hide now glistened with badges of every kind, including the two-star admiral badges she had stolen from the space-trooper. Her speckles were covered with splotches of fluorescent body paint inexpertly applied, and around each eye-stu
b was one or more expensive glow-jewel eye-rings stolen from a jewelry shop. Her tread felt a sound off in the distance.

  "A clanker!" She moved quickly to a narrow alley between two store compounds. Once in the alley, she took off the heavy badges, hid the eye-rings in a pouch, and listened carefully with her tread. There seemed to be only one thing moving and it sounded like a Slink. Feeling a little lonely, she moved off to find the source of the noise. As soon as she started to move, the noise changed direction and headed straight toward her, moving rapidly. Soon, down the road, she could see a Slink, moving as fast as its tread could ripple.

  "Hello, Fuzzy-Pink." Speckle-Top greeted the Slink as it came up to her, its furry top turning reddish-white from exertion. Speckle-Top liked animals and she formed a tendril to

  reach out and pat the fuzzy hide. The Slink dropped a small scroll on the crust and, avoiding her pat, moved off away from her and waited, its eyes looking first at her, then at the scroll. Speckle-Top moved by the scroll to pat the Slink, but it circled around behind her, picked up the scroll, and put it down next to her tread again.

  She gave up trying to pat the Slink and used her tendril to push down on the scroll as she had seen done on the video in the holovid shop displays. The scroll flattened out on the crust. There was some writing on it. A few of the words she knew, like "IN" and "OUT," but the rest she couldn't read. The Slink moved restlessly back and forth as she tried to decipher the message. Suddenly she recognized another word. It was "HELP." She paused. Whoever she helped would probably wonder where she got all the expensive body paint and call the clankers.

  "Sorry, Fuzzy-Pink," she said, letting the scroll roll up on the roadway. "Get someone else. I got to take care of me."

  She started off to enter a food shop along the road. The Slink picked up the scroll, raced ahead of her and put it down in her path, its twelve eyes looking intently at her every motion. She tried to go around, but the Slink moved quickly to block her way. She stopped to rumble a laugh into the crust and reached out again to pat the animal. It dodged and started making quick trips off down the road in the direction it had come, stopping to see if she followed, then running back to repeat the motion. It made anxious little chirps in the crust as it moved.

  "All right, Fuzzy-Pink, I'll come." She followed the Slink off down the roadway, her tread alert for the sound of a clanker.

  The Slink led Speckle-Top toward centertown. When they came to an entrance of a large compound it entered one of the gates in the compound walls. Speckle-Top hesitated, because this was where all the big-badge thinker types worked. A few times she and her gang had thought of sneaking in to see if there was something to steal, but the clankers had kept them out. Seeing her pause, the Slink came back to fetch her, its chirps becoming more and more anxious sounding. She moved inside the compound and heard a faint voice off in the distance, calling. Something was wrong. The voice sounded as if it were coming from inside the crust. She scrubbed her tread hard and waited for the next call. The direction to the voice

  was definitely downward. Feeling very insecure, Speckle-Top followed the Slink toward the voice until it stopped some distance ahead and intensified its chirps. They were answered by a voice.

  "Rin-Tin-Tin! You're back!" Zero-Gauss said as she spotted the pink ball of fuzz at the top of the ramp. "I do hope you found someone to give the message to." She placed part of her tread against a side wall and raised the level of her tread vibrations. "Hello out there! Help! I'm trapped in a hole! Help!! Help!!!"

  Rin-Tin-Tin raced away and soon was back. This time a young cheela eyeball was peeking over the back of the Slink. The eyeball quickly retracted.

  "Bright's Spew-hole!" Speckle-Top said as she drew her eye in under its flap and tried to forget the terrifying image. With the rest of her eyes she looked at the nice flat crust all around her and tried to calm herself. She tried to talk to the grown-up in the hole but found her tread was clenched tight to the crust. She loosened her tread and, keeping her eyes from looking too often at the missing place in the crust, she finally was able to answer.

  "Hello, there," Speckle-Top said, her tread still shrill from tension. "How did you get down in that hole?"

  "By elevator," Zero-Gauss replied.

  "Elevator?"

  "It is a machine for going up and down. But it won't work without power, so I guess I'll have to stay here until they get the power fixed. Could you please tell your creche-teacher or some adult I'm down here and have them send some help?"

  "I don't have any spew-wiping creche-teacher." Speckle-Top said in an annoyed tone of voice. "I take care of myself!"

  "I'm sorry." Zero-Gauss was a little shocked at the vulgar language. "I couldn't see you, and I thought you were a youngling. I'm stuck down here with some hungry research animals and I need to get power restored to my elevator in a hurry. Could you please find a peace officer or someone to notify the authorities?"

  "I'm not finding no spew-licking clanker for nobody," said Speckle-Top. "Besides, they're all dead. Everybody is dead. You and Fuzzy-Pink are the only things alive I've seen anywhere in Bright's Heaven."

  As they talked, Speckle-Top slowly lost her fear of heights and moved over to one corner of the square hole in the ground

  until she and Zero-Gauss could see each other while they were talking.

  "You are a youngling." Zero-Gauss felt her protective instincts rising as she saw the skinny, besmirched young cheela. "What happened to you? You are all covered with paint. Are any of your clan left to take care of you?"

  Speckle-Top hesitated a little before answering. "No."

  "Then I'll be responsible for you until we can find a member of your clan. My name is Zero-Gauss. I am a professor at the Institute. But first we've got to get me and the animals out of here. They are getting awfully hungry, and I don't want them eating my research plants."

  She ducked back under one of the massive leaning roof-plates and came back with an empty animal cage. Then she pushed her body up the sloping ramplike intersection between two fallen roof plates at one corner of her devastated underground laboratory and added the cage to the row already there. Holding onto the cages with part of her tread, she stretched herself out until she had one eye perched up above the top of the hole right next to Speckle-Top. Now that she was close enough, she could see that Speckle-Top was one of those dump-hatchlings from West-heaven. That explained the filthy language. Rin-Tin-Tin pushed its way between them to get a pat, now that it had done its duty.

  "I can't get any more than one eye up here," said Zero-Gauss. "I've tried and tried for the last two turns, but I can't get enough of me out to pull the rest of me up. I need more cages or something to climb on. You should be able to find more cages in that compound over there next to the elevator building."

  "I don't know." Speckle-Top patted the top of the Slink and drew it close to her for a hug. "It sounds like a lot of work."

  "Rin-Tin-Tin's friends are getting awfully hungry," said Zero-Gauss as she pushed the bottom portion of her tread through some cage bars and poked Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottonball, and Poofsie to make them chirp.

  "Well," Speckle-Top said reluctantly. "Can't let Slinks starve. Come, Fuzzy-Pink. Show me the cages."

  Zero-Gauss and the animals were up on the crust before the next turnfeast. Zero-Gauss found the laboratory food supply for the animals and reluctantly agreed to let Speckle-Top feed the animals while she explored the compound of the Inner Eye

  Institute and the surrounding city. It was worse than she had thought. Not only were all the rest of the cheela dead, but all the plants and animals, too. She had gone to the zoo and visited the cages of the giant north hemisphere Flow Slows and Swifts. All dead. The only Flow Slows and Swifts left were her hybrid miniaturized pets. She found a few seeds in some gardening stores, but wondered if they had survived the blizzard of penetrating radiation that seemed to have cooked everything else. Fortunately, the packaged food in the food stores was edible. They and the animals could survive on that
until they could get some crops planted and harvested.

  When Zero-Gauss returned to the Inner Eye Institute she found that Speckle-Top had arranged the cages and some boxes to make a compound for the animals and was happily playing with them.

  When the big-badge professor came back, Speckle-Top's sharp eyes noticed that she had taken off the cheap plastic badges she had been wearing in the hole and had replaced them with expensive metal ones. Speckle-Top shook off the pile of Slinks that had been clambering all over her and, shoving back an inquisitive mini-Swift, she left the compound she had made. The eye-waves on the big-badge grown-up had a twitch that showed she was worried about something.

  "Whole species gone. Wiped out!" said Zero-Gauss. "All we have left is the collection from my laboratory, and it is so limited"

  "Looks to me like we got lots of everything," said Speckle-Top. "The stores are full of food, and when we want something special, we can eat one of your food Slinks. What is the taste of the striped ones?"

  "No!" Zero-Gauss was nearly panic-stricken at the thought. "We must not eat them. They are the last ones on Egg. I must breed them to keep the species alive. The plants, too. They are the only ones left. I have to save the plants, too."

  She went to the edge of the hole and looked down at the dozens and dozens of plants many millimeters below. They would survive there for a time, but they or their seeds must be laboriously hauled up on the crust if they were to be available for future generations, if there were any future generations.

  Speckle-Top had come up beside Zero-Gauss as she peered down the hole at the plants. The feeling of the immature body next to hers caused the collapse of Zero-Gauss's last defenses

  against the Old-One syndrome. She spread out a hatching mantle and covered the scarred, paint-smeared, speckled topside of the ugly youngling.