“You seem too… calm. And disciplined. Unafraid of fighting. My guess is, you’re in Terran Exo-Intelligence.”
“Academics have to be disciplined, since they have no boss. And archeology is intelligence. Of course you can see that.”
Bria had nearly crossed the distance to the entrance. Tarkos pulled up on the line above, and then slowed the line that pulled Bria from the pulley he’d arranged in the vent. Tiklik struggled forward, and then pulled Bria’s unconscious form over the edge and safely onto the stone floor of the tunnel. Tiklik released the cables. Tarkos would have preferred to secure Bria himself, but he couldn’t afford the time to climb across the ceiling twice more. He reeled the free lines in.
“OK, Harmonizer,” Eydis said softly. “I will at least grant that I have certain… contacts and relationships.”
“With Terran Exo-Intelligence.”
“With Exo-Intelligence. Now my turn,” Eydis said.
“No,” he said. “Wait. First, we get you over.”
When he climbed back to the boat, he found that Eydis had rigged a fair climbing harness out of straps from the ships tackle. He latched two cables on them. She used more of the straps to tie the big Ulltrian book to her chest. He winched her over to the tunnel. Finally, he climbed over himself to attach lines to the hurricane ship. Its long black form creaked and protested as he let its cables down, and reeled the pulley lines in, making the dark craft swing slowly toward the entrance to the vent tunnel, like a pendulum being pulled up to one side. After long, careful minutes, the ship sat, balanced, on the edge of the sloping vent hall, the wood crackling and creaking as it scraped on the stone.
As he climbed down the dome, toward the balanced ship, Tarkos heard a low growl in his helmet. Bria, over radio, on their private line.
“Commander,” he called. “Are you conscious?”
“Where is ship?” she muttered.
“Commander? Which ship?”
“Hammer,” she said.
“What? What?”
Bria sighed.
“Commander, stay with me. I think you should stay conscious.” He hurried his descent, abandoning the careful one-limb-at-a-time method he had been using. “Commander, Commander? Tell me something. About Preeajitala.”
That made Bria grunt, as he had hoped. The mere mention of the Special Advisor made duty call to her fading consciousness.
“Tell me this, Commander,” Tarkos said. “Why did Preeajitala insult us, and then insult us, and then insult us some more by telling us that we’re not the best team for any part of this mission? I’m a Harmonizer. She has to accept that. If she distrusts all humans then—”
“No distrust of humans,” Bria said, her voice almost a whisper. “Speaks no insult. Truth.”
“OK, it’s nice that you’re humble,” Tarkos said in English.
He climbed now into the narrow gap of stone left between the hurricane ship and the wall. The ship teetered, leaning slightly forward on the edge of the vent’s entrance, when he pushed against it to secure his position. The black nose of the craft, polished and shining, pointed down at the dark below. Eydis stood before him, talking on open audio to Tiklik as the two bent over Bria’s reclining form. Tarkos checked the feed from the camera he’d left by the open entrance and saw the robots were only meters above. In a minute they would get into the tunnel. He suspected they would not be slow once they walked on a flat surface.
“Bria, I’m going to slave your armor and tell it to move you into this boat. Sorry if it hurts.”
Bria said nothing. He sent the commands, and the armor stood, moving with mechanically, with none of the elegance that Bria had. She let out a moan of pain. Tarkos knew she hated to show pain, so he quickly spoke, hoping to help her avoid any shame.
“So Preeajitala spoke the truth, you say. But why bother to tell us we are not the best, even if it’s true?”
“Said,” Bria’s voice came breathless, as if she were carrying the armor under her own power. “Said: not most experienced, not most trained, not most effective.”
The armor climbed up the boat, the clawed tips of the gloves digging savagely into the polished, ancient wood.
“Exactly,” Tarkos said. “That’s what Preeajitala told us.”
Bria huffed. Tarkos knew she would close her top eyes, if she were looking at him.
“I’m sorry Bria, because I know you are saying I’m missing something here, but I’m just missing it. So go ahead and close your eyes and then just tell me.”
“Not most experienced, not most trained, not most effective,” she repeated.
“Right, so why choose us?”
“What remains?”
Tarkos frowned. “After experience, training, and effectiveness?” He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
But suddenly his mouth fell open, and his eyes grew wide. He did know. In the Academy, each candidate for the Harmonizer Corp was told that a Harmonizer required experience, training, a disciplined commitment to effectiveness, and trustworthiness.
“Trust,” he said.
“Trust,” Bria hissed.
“You cannot mean….” But Bria did mean it: Preeajitala had been trying to convey, without saying it, that they were the most trusted team that she had. “I don’t understand,” Tarkos muttered.
Tarkos heard a slight slurp, the sound of Bria sticking her huge tongue out—a gesture that was the closest thing she had to a laugh. “Now who doubts humans?”
He climbed up after her. They stood before the hatch in the top of the ship. “Commander, I have to lower you inside.”
But Bria did not answer. She had slipped out of consciousness again.
_____
“This is insane,” Eydis whispered. “That’s what this is. Even the Ulltrians thought it a sign of bravado to actually sail one of those ships into a hurricane.”
Tarkos frowned. It did seem insane. But his solution had elegance. They couldn’t climb down and call the ship. The cruiser wouldn’t fit into this passage, and so even if he were to climb down alone, survive the pounding surf and then the robots in his armored suit, Eydis and Tiklik and the book might not survive, and Bria surely would not survive. This way, if they could drift out away from the cliffs, the cruiser could tie to this boat, and they could then climb, one at a time, into the airlock.
Eydis and Tiklik scaled atop the ship. The wooden hatch in the center of the top of the ship was large enough to pass two Sussurats. Along both sides of the smooth deck were rows of metal hooks and other riggings.
“They mounted sails on those,” Eydis said, pointing at the hooks. “Very small sails. Not safe to hang out more than a handkerchief in those winds.”
“We’ll need you to rig one.”
“What?”
“We need to get away from this cliff.” He seized a rope that stuck up from the hatch and pulled. It required full power assist from his suit, but finally the wood creaked and protested, and the stuck seam gave way with a snap. The hatch rose up, revealing a yawning dark interior. He pushed the hatch over, till it lay back on the deck.
“Do you know how to sail?” Eydis asked him skeptically.
“No,” Tarkos said.
“Well I do, and I’ll tell you that it’s—”
“Excellent,” Tarkos interrupted. “You’ll pilot this ship.”
Using his suit’s controls to override Bria’s armor, Tarkos made it climb down into the dark cabin. Tarkos leapt down after her, and then told her suit to emit light. Her armor suddenly blazed. He turned down the wattage of her lights as he looked around the interior. It was simple, empty but for ropes, heaps of cloth he took to be sails, and wood instruments that looked like giant insects. He imagined it had only been meant to hold a single Ulltrian, in tight quarters.
He crouched and checked Bria’s vitals again. Her blood pressure was dangerously low. The suit issued continual protests and warnings.
“Hang on, Bria,” he whispered. “We’ll get you in that brand new autodoc befor
e you can growl that I’m an incompetent.”
Eydis lowered her legs through the hatch, and dropped down to the cabin deck, crouching to absorb the impact. She dropped the Ulltrian book at her feet, then gathered some of the cloth heaped on the floor and slung it over her back. “I’ll rig the sail,” she said, “the way I think it goes. I can’t promise it will work.” Two columns flanked the hatchway, with notches just about convenient for a human to use either as a ladder. She started to climb one.
“Hurry,” Tarkos said. “The robots have made their way to the entrance. I— oh, I just lost my drone. Cutting laser at close range. They’re armed.”
Tarkos turned on his radio. “Tiklik, can you hear me?”
“Your radio is strong, like a pulsar just light years away.”
“I’m coming to help you into the cabin.”
“I can come without assistance. I have developed new climbing and walking algorithms suitable for three limbs.”
“Hurry.”
Tarkos turned in place until he found some loose straps and rope. He dragged Bria to the edge of the hull, and then strapped her to two round holes in a pair of thick hull beams. Eydis appeared as he positioned her limbs, and helped hold them while Tarkos tied the straps. Tarkos’s eyes met hers as he tightened down on a knot, pulling as hard as he could, confidant he could not hurt Bria through her armor.
“We were having a conversation, Harmonizer,” Eydis said. “And it was my turn. Tell me what little it is that you do know about the Ulltrians.”
“I’ve not been holding out on you,” he said. “All I can add is that this discovery has leadership in the Alliance very scared. And some… like Bria… take it personally.”
“Well,” Eydis said, looking at the huge form of the unconscious Sussurat. “The Ulltrians did attack their homeworld, five thousand years ago.”
“It’s worse than that,” Tarkos said. He tested the last knot. It seemed tight.
“It is?”
Tarkos pursed his lips together. Should he talk with Eydis about the character of his own commander? And yet, the feeling of talking to another human being, after his years in the Corp, suddenly overwhelmed him. It seemed that they understood each other totally, nearly instantly. He had forgotten how every gesture, every nuance of face and hand, could say so much—and that he could actually understand it, understand it without having to struggle to remember some rule or theory, and then he could respond in kind. He wanted to talk to Eydis, to continue this flow of human-to-human contact.
Besides, he decided it might matter, if they were going to fight together. “Bria’s not usually this abrupt and quiet. She’s furious, I think.” Tarkos found himself whispering, “It’s as if this is terribly personal.”
“You’re a sympathetic young man,” Eydis said, her voice quiet also. “That’s what you are.”
Tarkos stood, and walked over to the open hatch. He looked up, waiting for Tiklik. Eydis followed him. “Female Sussurat are famed for their—what’s the word?—roughness. But this one seems to trusts you. And, as for the panic of the rest of the Galaxy, they are right to be afraid.”
She put a hand on Tarkos’s shoulder. He wished he could feel the touch, through the armor.
“The Ulltrian word for live is the same as their word for fight. We see evolution as a balance of competition and cooperation, parasitism and symbiosis, with the balance for sentients moving ever more towards cooperation and symbiosis. As a result, Galactic Civilization is radically democratic. The Ulltrians, they see evolution wholly as competition and parasitism, and they think that’s right and good. And, most importantly, they believe they are evolution’s instrument. Evolution’s commandos. They’re on a holy mission, to spread and combine the ecosystems of the galaxy, so that all the organisms can fight it out. And they’re confidant that in such a battle, the Ulltrians will always come out on top—on top of a hierarchy of stronger over strong, rulers over ruled.”
One of Tiklik’s thin legs lowered tentatively through the hatch. It reached around and grabbed at the ceiling. Tiklik climbed around the edge, reaching with another leg for the floor.
“I always dreamed of seeing an Ulltrian,” Eydis continued, watching the robot. “Of talking to one. But that’s a silly fantasy. Because it would only want to kill me, or make a slave of me.”
“Why were there humans in that sculpture?” Tarkos asked. “Back at the, what did you call it, palace of state?”
“Yes, terrifying, isn’t it? Well, they knew about humanity thousands of years ago, while we were still quarantined by the Galactic Alliance. And they planned even then to dominate us, to consume us, to make us part of their plan. They probably assume we’re an easy target.”
“Well, we’re sure as hell not going to let that happen, are we?”
Eydis smiled at him ruefully. “Sure as hell not.”
Tiklik thumped down onto the floor and, wobbling, straightened up onto its three legs.
“Secure yourself,” Tarkos said. “We’re about to slide out of here.” He climbed up one of the columns by the hatch, and reached for the edge. He stopped, however, with his hand on the hull, and looked back at Eydis.
“Can I ask you something, seeing as how you really are an archeologist?”
“Of course.”
“Did humans have fire, thirty thousand years ago?”
“Yes. Of course. And stone tools and weapons. Perhaps also the bow. Why do you ask?”
“Something a Rinneret said to me. And I was dumb enough to believe it.”
“Will you see this Rinneret again?” she asked.
Tarkos shrugged, a gesture lost in his armor. “Maybe. When this is all over—which, I’m starting to suspect, might take a hundred years. But maybe.”
“Well, if you do, you tell him: we apes start slow, but we finish fast. We ride a hockey stick curve of progress.”
Tarkos smiled. “I’ll tell it just that.”
_____
Tarkos climbed through the hatch and immediately his armor howled in protest. He fell to the deck. The black robots, so slow on the cliff face, came quickly now down the vent tunnel above, moving steadily on their thick limbs. They fired cutting lasers at him, the beams careening wildly as the robots walked while shooting. Black smoke hissed off the prow of the hurricane ship as the beams cut into the hull.
Eydis stuck her head up through the hatch.
“What are you doing?” Tarkos demanded. He moved to shield Eydis and extracted lasers from each of his arms. He painted targeting dots on each of the robots, then told the weapons to fire automatically.
“We need to warn Ruinreader,” Eydis said.
“The Thrumpit? Radio him.”
“He doesn’t have a radio,” she said. She pulled off her oxygen mask. “Ruinreader!” she shouted. A laser beam hissed across the wood to her left. “The robots are attacking! Hide!”
After a long moment, the Thrumpit’s voice echoed back. But the chorusing triple voice was lost in piling echoes. All that Tarkos could make out was the word “life,” reverberating in the flooding library.
Tarkos pointed his arm down the slope of the vent tunnel. The lasers on his arms still fired up at the robots on the tunnel sloping up to the vent, but his armor now opened another panel on each forearm, where a barrel snapped up. Each fired a small missile that left a trail of white smoke as it shot down into the dark. A second later two explosions roared up the tunnel, followed by a spray of salt water. The missiles had breached the lower petal door, hopefully enough to let the ship through.
“Get inside,” he told Eydis. She dropped into the hull. Tarkos grabbed the open hatch, where it lay on the deck. He had to turn away from the horde of robots to do it, and his suit screeched warnings as lasers cut into the shielding along his back. He raised the heavy door, his armor’s power assists whining with effort, until it balanced unevenly straight up. He risked letting go with one hand, lifted his arm again, this time targting in the opposite direction. He cut the two remaining cabl
es that held the back of the ship and he dropped into the open hatch.
The door slammed closed behind him with a deafening boom. He held his breath, waiting and listening. But nothing happened. For a moment the ship tottered, still balanced. A thud sounded out, then two more: robots were jumping down onto the ship.
Tarkos wondered if he would have to get out and push. Then he got an idea: he walked to the very front of the ship. Eydis, understanding his intent, followed close behind. At the very prow, she jumped in place twice.
The ship slowly leaned forward. Then it began to slide, the hull scraping loudly over the stone.
“Hold on!” he shouted.
The scraping became a roar. The wood emitted sounds of cracking and tearing, as the rough stone floor abraded the hull. With his feet spread apart, Tarkos thought he felt the hull flex and bend. Would it crack open before they even reached the sea?
But the scraping suddenly stopped. They were airborne. A quiet second stretched, seeming to last for two. And then the ship slammed into water. The impact threw them all to the floor. The prow of the hurricane ship bit into the waves, and dove.
CHAPTER 11
Tarkos climbed to his feet, but immediately the tossing ship threw him again down onto the hard deck. The gecko grip in his boots simply tore the varnish off the wood hull, unable to hold his heavy weight. Water poured in thick streams through cracks around the hatch. The ship bucked, and then for a moment was almost still: they had surfaced. The roar of the storm surrounded them, and the water stopped sheeting down through the hatch.
“Put up the sail!” he shouted.
It was impossible to walk in the bucking ship. Eydis crawled forward, scrambling on all fours. She grabbed a large wood lever near the prow and shoved it down. It levered a rod upward.
The ship lurched, wind grabbing its low sail. The hull slapped loudly at the waves, tossing the ship rhythmically as it drove forward.
Tarkos closed his eyes. He concentrated, radioing for the cruiser both through the suit and through his implants. The ship pinged back immediately, on both channels. He demanded emergency airlift. Protocols protested, warning him of the unreasonable air speeds of the storm, but he overrode the warnings. He told the cruiser also to prepare the autodoc for a Sussurat.
Well of Furies Page 14
