by Paul Lucas
Yet I had to admit the presence of megaraptors on either side of us made me far less willing to attempt an escape I would have been otherwise on this tour Kalen had insisted he give me. My injuries at the claws of the Xique three years ago were still too fresh in my mind for me to take on such similar creatures. The armored Myotan guards bearing ultra-tech rifles did not help, either. They were different from the ones the guards back at the castle had carried. These were all metal, with glowing electronic displays and a half-melted, alien look to their overall design.
Kalen caught me staring at our escorts. “You are wondering about their weapons. You think they might be Builder relics.”
“Are they?”
“Truthfully, I do not know. They are gifts from our sponsors. They may be of Builder origin, or they may be of recent manufacture.”
“You have mentioned these ‘sponsors’ before. Who are they?”
“I assure you, Searcher Gossamyr, you will formally meet their representative soon enough.” Ever since they discovered that ‘Lerner’ was a human-adopted name, they had dropped it when they addressed me. Instead, they have given me the title of Searcher, an honorific of sorts.
I gestured at the castle fading away in the distance, as well as the small hamlets and towns we slowly passed. “Is all this from your sponsors also? Did they give you the knowledge to build your civilization?”
“We built all of this ourselves. Our sponsors have only given us the technology we needed to overthrow the old, corrupt order that held the provinces a generation ago. They continue to give us technical help, not only to maintain our new social order but to defend ourselves against hostile foreign threats.”
“Like the helistat.”
“Like the helistat, yes. They have warned us about your Known Nations, about how the sky-devil humans use their airships to conquer and pillage. They appear friendly at first, but only to ferret out weaknesses for their eventual attack and conquest.”
I laughed. “You do not know the humans at all, do you, Kalen? Didn't you have captive humans from the helistat? You never questioned them about their motives?”
“Yes, extensively, just before the remaining crew died in a badly advised escape attempt. But what they told us only colluded with what our sponsors had said about the humans’ Known Nations all along.”
I decided to let the matter drop. He would believe what he wanted to believe, and my credibility as a human collaborator would be near zero. For the moment, any way.
I scowled as we passed workers toiling in a broad furrowed field. They were naked except for loincloths and catch-baskets slung over their shoulders. “What is so special about your so-called new order? It seems to me that you and your fellow Councilmembers are little more than technologically-elevated dictators.”
“Pardon?”
“A Known Nations term, from their science of Sophontology. You use your advanced tools and weapons only to hold onto power, yet do not contribute work of your own. You do not share the benefits of your technology and your knowledge with those you rule.”
“We have only had these tools for fifteen years, and for three of those years we had to use them to fight against the old autocrat and his armies! Do you think it is so easy to turn the four hundred thousand peasants in our provinces into literate scholars in so short a time? We are still trying to just rebuild from the war. Do you expect us to give fusion stills and plasma rifles to people who can barely pilot one of those new steel plows correctly? We are doing what we can, educating them as best we can. Perhaps in a decade or two...” He looked out at the workers in the field, and Spirits help me if his expression did not seem genuinely pained. “My mother and father died working the fields under the old autocrat. Neither one of them lived to see the age of thirty. Worked to an early death. They were far from unique, in the old order.”
“I am sorry to hear that. I, too, lost my parents. But that still does not excuse you for leaving your people in such a state. Surely there are many intermediate technologies you can give them.” I tried to think back at all the schemes the humans had proposed to my own people. “How about windmills, to pump irrigation water farther and to mill better wheat? Or how about showing them how to make compound bows, to help them hunt? I can imagine dozens of ways that you could improve their dwellings and storage houses. Show them how to make ash-concrete bricks, for example. I also saw many of your subjects with facial lesions and pox scars. The humans showed my people how to make penicillin for ourselves. The process is complex, but it is something that can be taught to the healers here, I am sure.”
Kalen frowned. “I do not know of the things you are talking about. Our sponsors have not taught us about them.”
“What have they taught you, then?”
“How to improve our defenses, how to build better weapons, mostly. Our fortified settlements are stronger now than they have ever been. We also have catapults and ballistae now, and we are just beginning to learn to make our own guns and cannons. That is in addition to the many marvelous machines they have given us, including our weapons and communication equipment.”
“But nothing that can benefit your people as a whole.”
“Three years or so ago they showed us how to create gliders.”
That took me aback. The timing of that sounded odd, since it closely coincided with gliders being introduced to my people. “Really?”
His pale gray eyes looked wistfully up at the Shards. “Your companion, Cloud, told me that all your people fly until you lose the ability naturally. Do you know that when I was three years old, officials from the autocrat came and held me down while one of them cut the tendons from my wing-fingers along my arm.” He held up his elbow and pulled aside his fur so I could see the old scars. “After that, my wings could never support my weight, even as a youngster. Flying was a special privilege reserved only for the families loyal to the autocrat and his pet nobles.”
I blinked at him, shocked. “You mean you have never flown?” Flying was at the very heart of being a Myotan. I thought of Brightwind and his crippling, of how heavy his denial of the skies had weighed upon my heart. But to be Myotan and never fly...
He shook his head. Suddenly his pale eyes pierced mine. He was no longer Kalen, the stern Councilord, but simply a fellow Myotan. “You said to me a few days ago that you flew all the time as a youngster. Tell me about it, Searcher Gossamyr.” His voice became quiet, with an unmistakable tinge of pained longing. “Tell me what it is like to fly with your own wings.”
His request took me aback. Lerner had asked the very same thing of me, long ago. With my Mate, it had been just idle curiosity. But with Kalen, it was an intense hunger for something his very blood cried for but had been forever denied him.
I told him, hesitantly at first. It occurred to me that this might just be a ploy to gain my sympathies, but then I noticed that the driver and the guards all seemed to lean toward me ever so slightly, ears perked high, so they, too, could hear what I described. Councilord Kalen’s experience at the hands of the autocrat’s minions must not have been unique.
Kalen listened with rapt attention, like a youngster hearing of the Sky Spirit for the first time. With that little bit of vulnerability showing, I also began to notice that he was fairly attractive. Fine, smooth fur, expressive eyes, a noble, short muzzle. And he was genuinely listening to what I said, a trait rare in any male, no matter the species. Perhaps I had spent so much time appreciating human features that I forgot how pleasing a Myotan’s could be.
A pang of guilt stabbed hard at my gut, bringing my words to a halt.
Kalen canted his head to one side. “Is something wrong?”
I shrugged. “I was just thinking of my Mate.”
“The human?”
“I have only had one Mate.”
He held up his tool fingers placatingly. “I did not mean to offend. Cloud told us you were Mated to a human.”
“That does not seem to surprise you.”
“Inter-racial a
ffairs are not unheard of. My own cousin once had a fling with an Aquan female that passed through with a nomad clan. But I must admit it is unusual to find such a couple in any kind of long-range commitment.”
“We fell in love. And, believe me, no one was more startled by that than we were. Yet it all seemed to work out, at least until...” I suddenly found I could not finish the sentence.
“Until he died,” Kalen finished for me. “You said as much before the council. What happened?”
I wondered briefly if I should bother telling him. But the words began pouring out of me almost on their own accord. In truth, I had never told anyone all of what had happened, not in my own words. Cloud, Louis and Amethyst had lived through the ordeal with me, and D’Artagnan would just get confused at all the subtleties of the emotions us bipedal mammals seemed to indulge in.
It was a catharsis of a sorts, even though I had to back-track many times and explain things to Kalen he did not understand, either culturally or technologically. I did not fear giving away any secrets, as their mysterious sponsors obviously already knew a great deal of where we came from.
I felt strangely at peace as my words finally wound down. The story had taken so long that we now found ourselves surrounded by the block-like UTSite buildings on the outskirts of Llexa proper.
“That is quite a tale,” Kalen said. “You are quite an extraordinary female, if all that is true.”
“Extraordinary?" I laughed. "Only in that I bring misery to those around me.”
“So I should watch myself, eh? But your claim of not having arrived in a sky devil helistat is holding up very well, especially after hearing your story in full. That tale would be difficult to make up on the spot. I am truly sorry you lost your Lerner. You must have looked very beautiful, when you smiled for him.”
My ears starched straight up in surprise.
He laughed. “A mysterious, exotic beauty from out of our legends ends up in my carriage, and I am not allowed to flirt, even a little?”
I was blushing. “Flattery will not addle my head as it might other females, Kalen.”
“Does that mean I should never compliment you again?”
“I...did not say that.”
He seemed pleased with the answer. The wagon came to a halt beside a large UTSite pylon over five meters tall and twice that wide. Two-meter tall rectangles that I immediately recognized as closed UTSite doors were splayed around it at thirty degree angles. “We are here,” Kalen said.
“What is it?” I asked.
The Councilord slid off the wagon and helped me off. His mood suddenly darkened as he stepped into the shadow of the structure. “The next phase of your tour.”
FIFTY-SEVEN
The Underworld seems like the most likely theater of exploration to yield the answers we're looking for. But it is the one that by far receives the least amount of funding and support.
In a way its understandable. No majestic airships or Builder spacecraft here, no PR-friendly natives or topless Outland females to entice the public. Only cramped pressurized crawlers in claustrophobic tunnels thousands of miles long, huddled against the hard vacuum and oppressive darkness that permeates most of the Underworld. More than one explorer has been driven mad by spending a bit too long in such conditions.
Pay for Underworld explorers is almost twice that of Outland explorers or space crew. And yet the OEC receives not even a tenth of the volunteers for it.
--Xerxes Gallo, newspaper columnist and retired explorer, in an interview to Explorer magazine, August, 544
* * *
Kalen seemed disappointed when he caught me suppressing a yawn as we descended into the depths of the Underworld. I had undertaken such journeys before, first on Malachon Island when I visited the KN and then numerous times after the Lab was exposed in the Tower. The seemingly endless array of corridors and featureless rooms below seemed only depressingly familiar to me.
Only when we stepped into a broad, semi-circular chamber did I perk up. Before a huge curving transparent window-wall stood Cloud, the first familiar face I had seen since waking up in my cell four days before. He was accompanied by Councilmember Skel and her retinue.
“Gossamyr!” he exclaimed as soon as he saw me. Our two groups merged, with he and I at the epicenter, and before I knew it he swept me up in a powerful hug.
I was glad for it. Cloud may be a complete ass at times, but he is nothing if not sincere about how he feels. It felt good to know that here at least was someone who genuinely cared about me in a sea of utter strangers. After all, we had been the best of friends once, long ago. I hugged him back, briefly, and for not the first time since coming through the Node I ached for home.
He had an odd smell on him, one I could not place. I pulled back to look him over. “Are you all right?”
He nodded enthusiastically. “They have treated me very well.”
“And the others?”
“They have not told me much other than that they are unharmed.”
So he had been treated much the same as myself. As Myotans, we obviously had much more status among them than the humans, enough to at least be let out of our cells and shown around. My gaze briefly locked with his, and an understanding passed between us that though we had much we wanted to ask each other and discuss, we had to hold off on that for now with so many of the others around us.
Instead, Cloud gushed. “Gossamyr, is not all of this amazing? A Myotan society, almost as advanced as the humans!”
Councilmember Skel, who had been watching us with narrowed eyes, frowned. “‘Almost as--?’”
Cloud looked at her apologetically. That puzzled me. Why would Cloud, of all people, care what a stranger like Skel thought? Unless...
I inhaled deeply through my nostrils. The trace was very faint, as Cloud had bathed in the last several hours, but it was Skel’s scent that could still just barely be detected on him.
I could not suppress a surprised gasp that thankfully went unnoticed by the others. Cloud and Skel had been intimate the night before!
Poor Cloud. So proud, so arrogant, and yet so vulnerable. Sunwing had bluntly seduced him years ago after I was Mated with Lerner and was no longer a rival. Cloud as a hunter may have been able to wrestle rustalumphs to the ground bare-handed, but all a determined female had to do was wiggle a smooth-furred tail in front of him and all his steely resolve dissolved into a mushy puddle.
My eyes narrowed on his new lover. Skel met me gaze for unblinking gaze. I could see how he could be attracted to her, despite her being at least a decade and a half older. She was still striking, with a compact frame and a steely fire in her eyes. But Skel was obviously just using him, to what end I could not guess. I could only imagine that our arrival had caused a bigger upheaval in their society than we had been led to believe, and she was determined to have one of us on her side.
I could not help but goad the haughty female. “It is true that your society is much smaller than the Known Nations and lack their industrial and research base, so of course you would lag behind in many areas.”
Skel drew herself up straight, her eyes burning into me. “We did not have the benefit of tripping across a vast store of technical knowledge, as the sky-devil humans did! We created most of our technology on our own, without outside help, the hard way!”
I sneered. “And that only got you enough to build castles and roads and maybe even create some primitive firearms, maybe. Certainly not enough to build those sophisticated rifles your guards carry about. Obviously you got those from your so-called sponsors.”
Skel snapped her wings in irritation. “And what would a primitive outlander such as yourself know of what we can or cannot make ourselves?”
“I was Mated to one of those ‘sky-devil humans’, one whose specialty was studying and classifying aspects of other cultures, including technology. As soon as I could understand their language I read voraciously any book from the KN I could lay my tool-fingers on. I am far from being an expert, but I do kno
w that if the KN, with all their vast numbers and factories and scientists could not produce weapons such as those, than neither could you. They are Builder artifacts. Bones your sponsors have tossed to their favored pets, to keep them docile and obedient.”
Skel snarled. “You ignorant seller of sexual favors!” Some of her retinue and Kalen’s stirred, disturbed as the female Councilmember by the insult.
“Gossamyr--” Cloud hissed.
Perhaps it was not the smartest strategy, but something about Skel starched my fur. How dare she judge my people or my husband’s! “It is true!” I continued before she could interrupt me again. “I do not know who your sponsors are, but as obvious as the sun in the sky they must be using you.”
Kalen stepped between us before Skel could loose the angry retort on her tongue. “Enough,” he urged. “This is an argument for another time.” Skel shot him an acid scowl, but acquiesced.
“Councileader, Councilmember,” one of their retinue said, pointing out the windowall. “Our sponsors have arrived.”
For the first time, I focused on what was beyond the transparent surface of the window-wall. An enormous chamber stretched away for what must have been a kilometer on either side and ten kilometers straight ahead. Even with such distances, there was no atmospheric fuzzing; every detail was crisp and clear, even at the far-end of the chamber. I realized total vacuum must exist beyond the glass.
The chamber also rose several kilometers above us, the impossibly vast visage of the sky-ceiling broken in three places by what looked like enormous doors five hundred meters on a side, directly over a large, open floor space of equal size. One of these doors was sliding aside, to allow a large, wedge-shaped craft to slowly ascend from the floor into the inky blackness beyond. Another entered after it, slowly descending on blasts of bright rocket fire.
