Encounter With Tiber

by Buzz Aldrin

  The other great news of that autumn was that Otuz and I won the sweepstakes: our daughter, Diehrenn, was born about a week before Mejox and Priekahm’s Weruz. The first son—and the only nonhybrid—among our second generation showed up two eightdays later, when Captain Osepok gave birth to Prirox. All the births went without trouble, but just to be on the safe side, Soikenn flew each mother up to Wahkopem Zomos when her time was due. The babies were healthy, and they too could process Seteposian proteins. They gained weight and got strong.

  The winter was mild and a little dryer, but only a little. Still, it was chilly enough so that there was not much pleasure in being outside. There was nothing to do but play with the babies (a limited amount of fun; it was hard to believe that on the time scale of this planet, with its faster orbit, it would be six more winters, not five, before they were fully conscious) and prepare the spring campaign (which took little preparation, really; it was after all a project for forty Seteposian males with axes, torches, and spears).

  Whenever the thin sun would work its way through the clouds, I would usually sit outside with Kekox or Mejox, just to have something to do and not to have to talk about babies. After Soikenn had delivered Osekahm, she too had focused most of her attention in the nursery. It was true that babies needed a lot of attention; it was also true that our females really enjoyed giving it.

  On one unusually fine but quite cold day, Kekox, Mejox, and I sat watching Rar drill the troops. Locally battles were a matter of one-on-one duels, which was a good way to settle who was bravest, but a poor way to win. We had introduced the idea of using spears as a unit, overwhelming the individual fighters on the other side. Today they were practicing with untipped spear shafts, and doing pretty well. “Not the best troops I’ve ever seen, but they should cut through the neighborhood pretty fast all the same,” Kekox said. “With luck the first wave of conquest can be over before the second planting of wheat. And I’ve got an idea; if we penned up goats and pigs regularly, instead of the occasional way they do it now, I would bet we can add a lot more meat to our side’s diet. Make them bigger and stronger in another generation.”

  Mejox yawned. “The number of things we have to do for the next generation. You know, every so often I think we’re not quite the impressive gods we used to be. They’ve really seen a lot of us, and we’ve really been very fair and nice. I don’t think they have quite the same … uh …”

  “Terror,” I said. “I think I prefer it this way.”

  Mejox started to answer, but then he had the strangest expression I had ever seen, and quite suddenly he made a hideously unpleasant noise and spat blobs of mucus all over the ground, some of them narrowly missing me. Without even apologizing, he did it twice more. As he sat back up his eyes were filled with panic. “What—”

  Kekox groaned. “I see Soikenn was right. Mejox, what you just had—” and he made the same hideous noise and mess. “Oh, wonderful. What we’re having is a cough, my young raised-in-sanitary-conditions friend. I predict that very shortly we will all feel perfectly lousy. I am going to go to bed—after I tie a cloth over my face, so I don’t spread this, as if we don’t probably all have it already.” He got up and went inside.

  I had watched in some amazement, and was about to ask what it felt like, when abruptly there was a horrible pain in my upper chest, I felt a sharp spasm around my blood mixer, and I erupted with the same awful noise and results. “Sorry about your foot,” I said to Mejox.

  Two eightdays later, all of us, the babies especially, were coughing constantly. Every one of us had a headache and fever as well. Soikenn, face wet with mucus most of the time, was working frantically on a specific to kill the new virus, with very little luck. Mejox, drugged almost silly with painkillers and fever suppressants, had taken the Rumaz to Wahkopem Zomos and gotten some drugs that seemed to be helping the babies, but when he returned he went to bed and stayed there for two full days. Hardly any of us could move much without acute pain in the chest.

  One morning much like the others, the babies were coughing softly, and there were occasional groans from everyone else. Kekox was up getting water for us. Rather than deal with whatever might be living in the local water, we were using the water system of the Rumaz, pouring local water into its sanitary system and letting the lander’s still produce potable water. As we had gotten worse, Otuz and I had rigged a connection so that a hose carried water from the Rumaz into our cabin; this meant that it was only necessary every couple of days for someone to carry chamber pots over to the Rumaz and dump them into the sanitary system.

  Kekox went to the pitcher, which should have been full of water dribbled in over the night, only to find it was as empty as when it had been set there. He was so weak that I saw him stumble and catch himself on the table. I thought of volunteering to go out and fix it, but when I tried to push myself up from my sweat-soaked bed, I became too dizzy even to speak.

  Still, I saw what happened next. Kekox opened the door to go outside and see what was wrong with the water line. At once the door flew open, and Rar stepped in, pushing Kekox back, and swung a small ax up. Any of the rest of us would have died right there, unaware we were attacked, but Kekox was still the old Imperial Guard. He deflected Rar’s ax arm, swept his foot, and hurled him back through the door, ramming it closed with his shoulder and latching it as the Seteposians outside began to beat on it.

  Mejox and Priekahm fell out of their beds, going for the steam rifles beside the door. As axes began to thump on the door, Mejox, Priekahm, and Kekox fired through it; there were screams from the other side, and then it got very quiet.

  We had no window, so we could not see what was happening outside, but the appalling din suggested that they had turned their attention to the Rumaz. There was a rhythmic chant like they used when they dealt with heavy objects, and then a long, savage crash that told us they had tipped it over, followed by the crash of more stone axes against its door. “It’s not built to take that,” I said, and Osepok added—“If they force the door with it lying like that, they’re likely to trigger the antimatter safety jettison, and then—”

  There was a wild roar, the walls shook, and we had just time to realize that the Rumaz’s computer, sensing breach everywhere and immense damage, had fired the little package that took the antimatter containment right out through the hull and far off into space before the antimatter container could breach. Somewhere very high above us there was a great fireworks display; down here the power of the takeoff meant our house had been washed in flames, and though many Seteposians were dead or badly burned outside, to judge by the crackling sound and the thickening smoke, we had just a minute or so to get out.

  We formed up as best we could, sick, coughing, almost passing out, many of us cradling babies. Kekox kicked the door open and we rushed, trying to get off the porch and head for the Gurix, but we had staggered only a few feet, spraying those near us with our steam rifles, when a thrown ax took Kekox from behind, and then the rush of them was on us. I started to shout something, began to cough in the icy outside air, and then either the coughing—or a blow from the fist of one of the soldiers—knocked me unconscious; I barely kept Diehrenn cradled in my arms as I fell.

  14

  “HE’S COMING AROUND, I think,” Otuz said. “Come on, Zahmekoses, wake up.”

  I blinked hard, trying to see, realized it was dark, opened my eyes wider, and slipped back into unconsciousness. A while later—I’m not sure how long—I stirred again, tried cautiously opening my eyes. I could feel Soikenn’s hand on my arm. “Zahmekoses? Zahmekoses, can you hear me?”

  “I—” My throat was parched. “Water,” I managed to croak.

  “We don’t have any right now,” Soikenn whispered. “I’m sorry. They took all our things and they haven’t given us food or water yet.”

  Memory was coming back—not that I wanted it to—through the fog of pain. “Kekox?”

  “Dead.”

  “I … thought so.” It was hard to focus, hard to thi
nk, and then when I had something to say, it was hard to make my lips and throat form the sounds. “The others—”

  “Mejox has a broken leg from when they wrestled him down. A compound fracture; it looks pretty bad. Otuz and I are just bruised and shaken up. And …” Even through the fog of pain I could tell that Soikenn was worried—“Priekahm’s fever is so high that I’m afraid she’ll get brain damage from it. And Osepok doesn’t seem to be hurt physically, but she doesn’t seem to know where she is or what is going on. Maybe she’s just in shock—or maybe she’s lost her mind, Zahmekoses. She just sits there and won’t respond when we say anything, except once she asked about the regular shipboard duties and whether we’d done those.”

  “My head …”

  “You got hit hard from behind—one of them clubbed you. I think that’s all. Do you hurt anywhere else?”

  “No. But my head hurts.” Then I fell back asleep again.

  The next time I woke up, the world wasn’t spinning as badly, and the first things I noticed were that I must have vomited and urinated where I lay. Probably if they had no water no one had been able to clean me. The second thing I noticed was that there was light, though it didn’t quite resolve into an image just yet. There seemed to be several bars of light too brilliant to look at, surrounded by complete blackness, occasionally crossed by shifting shadows. Finally I realized that one other thing was strange: I had no fever and I could breathe.

  I made a croaking noise—I was terribly thirsty—and this time Otuz came over to me. “Zahmekoses? Are you awake?”

  “Kind of.”

  “What do you remember?”

  “Everything, I think. Have I been out long this time?”

  “All night. It’s morning. They just brought us water, from the external port on the Gurix—that’s how they tricked us, they cut the water hose on the Rumaz, but they understand that we can’t drink their water—and a little food—would you like a drink?”

  “Yes.”

  She made me take small, careful sips. The water was warm and tasted flat, but if she had let me I would have gulped it all down.

  “The others?” I asked, after a while.

  “Soikenn is asleep. She and I have been taking watches to take care of the rest of you. Priekahm’s fever broke. Soikenn is … she’s not good, Zahmekoses, even though she’s holding it inside. We lost her child; the baby died earlier today, maybe from the cough or disease, Diehrenn and Weruz seem to be better, and Prirox isn’t any worse. We’ve done what we can for Mejox—everything wrong, by the standards back home—pushed the bone back into the wound and set it as best we could. It seemed to pop together, and the strange thing is there’s no sign of infection, so just possibly none of the Seteposian bacteria that infect wounds have learned any new tricks yet. Did Soikenn tell you about Osepok?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, she’s more alert, and she doesn’t want to talk, but she does say she remembers what happened. She nurses Prirox and cuddles him, so we think she’s coming out of the shock of Kekox’s death.”

  “And Diehrenn is getting better?”

  “She’s fine, really. In fact she seems to have stopped coughing and be on the mend.”

  “I think I’m the same way,” I said.

  Otuz sighed. “If we’d all just gotten a little better a little faster … well, nothing for it. I guess we have to see what they’ll do with us. Unfortunately we’ve already taught them a lot of things … like slavery and control by terror.”

  I sighed, and then winced because the change in breathing hurt my head. “I think I have a concussion.”

  “I’m sure you do. Your reflexes were a mess last night, but they’re much better this morning. I’m glad to see you getting better.”

  “Do you know what they’re going to do with us?”

  “Not yet, but I think we’ll learn. Rar, by the way, is now called Nim Rar. Nim is a title, I think—I get the impression a Nim is like a king or a priest, but a bit better than either. I guess in a while when we can talk, he can tell us what he’s planning to do. If they haven’t already done it by then.”

  “At least if they didn’t do it right away they probably aren’t planning to kill us. What would be the point?” I said. My head still hurt terribly, but it felt good to be able to form an idea again.

  “At least they aren’t planning to kill all of us, or not all at once. I’ve been doing a little watching through the door, Zahmekoses—have you been able to see at all yet?”

  “It’s coming back,” I said. I had figured out that the bars of bright light were daylight showing between the logs, and now I knew that the shadow bending over me was Otuz, but I still really couldn’t make out her face, though I was sure it was light enough in our little prison.

  “Well, they’re rebuilding the temple. They dragged the burned out shell of the Rumaz to it and set it back up on its two legs, with a log propping the third corner; that seems to be acting as the back wall. In front of that they’re putting together a log and stone two-story thing, with a statue of the Mother Goddess in it, not too different from what we saw when we came here. So I’d say it’s a conservative movement to restore traditional values. … Anyway, if you want my guess, I think that what’s in store for us is slavery at best and being sacrificed at worst. I don’t know what good we’ll be as slaves, but I suppose they’ll find something to do with us. Though Mejox—well, he’s still mostly unconscious. It could be a long time before he’s well. I guess what happens to him depends on how fast he gets better and how much patience they have.”

  There wasn’t much to say after that. Otuz sat by me and held my hand until I fell back asleep.

  I woke again toward late afternoon, feeling much better. They had left more water, and I tried a little of the food: boiled mashed grain, the sort of thing we fed to infants. It wasn’t wonderful, but it was edible, and since Otuz and Soikenn and our three surviving infants seemed to be doing fine on it, probably it wouldn’t kill me.

  Nim Rar looked in briefly. He had a swagger about him I had never seen before, and there was something about the practical, simple way he lifted my chin, stared into my eyes, and poked at my abdomen that told me he did not have the slightest concern with how I felt about anything—he was going to do what was best for him, as he saw it, and it would be a bad idea to get in his way.

  He left abruptly. “Maybe he had a full calendar of appointments,” I said to Otuz.

  “You’re feeling better,” she said. “Can you stand up?”

  I tried; I was weak but not dizzy. “I seem to be okay.”

  “Good thing. I want you to take a look at Mejox’s leg. Soikenn is still grieving for poor little Osekahm, and I’m not sure she’s always paying the best attention to what she’s doing.”

  Soikenn had been my teacher. But that thought didn’t bear examining, so I asked the immediate question instead. “They took our medical kit?”

  “They took everything. And I wouldn’t count on getting anything back in good condition. One of our guards is wearing one of the land navigation units around his neck, on a string, driven right through the center. Probably our communicators have all been pulled apart for jewelry.”

  “Doesn’t sound good,” I said, “but chances are that anything the computer told me to do, I wouldn’t have the stuff for anyway. Let’s have a look at Mejox. Has he been conscious?”

  “Just muttering now and then. Usually calling for Soikenn or Priekahm, even though they’re right there. Sometimes for Kekox, which is pretty hard to take. I don’t think he knows where he is or what’s happened.”

  My eyes were focusing fine now, and although I thought a few of my teeth might be a little loose and one ear seemed to be crushed and a bit bloody, I was in pretty good shape, considering. “Well, then let’s look.” I glanced around and saw Osepok sitting in her corner and Soikenn curled asleep on the floor.

  Mejox was lying on his back. Priekahm, still coughing slightly, was sitting beside him, holding his hand; he
r other arm cradled Weruz.

  His breathing was shallow and his heartbeat elevated; his skin was cool to the touch, his nose was dry, and most alarmingly part of his crest was crushed. “I think they hit him on the head at one time or other,” I said. “Hope his crest took up enough of the shock, because that’s going to add to the problem. He seems to have lost a lot of blood, but if that was going to kill him it would have done it by now.” I drew a breath and let it out slowly; memory was rushing back. I did have some considerable abstract knowledge about crushing injuries and compound fractures.

  The trouble was, it was mainly useless. I couldn’t do a brain scan, give him a transfusion, or administer a mild electric shock between his lower jaw and crest to revive him, all standard therapies in this case. I didn’t even have a stick to splint his leg with.

  I bent to examine the leg. “You all did right,” I said, looking at it. At least the bone was no longer exposed to the air, and the guide membrane that allows new flesh to grow beneath it had formed normally—always assuming I remembered what “normally” was accurately. As Otuz had said, there was no sign of infection; given what it smelled like around here, I figured that was a good sign that most of their normal septic germs couldn’t touch us yet.

  I put a hand where I judged the bone break might be.

  “Is it safe to touch his wound with your hands?” Otuz asked.

  “Usually, yes. The guide membrane seals it. And we need to find out if his leg is set right before the permanent matrix starts to regenerate. And we really hope it is, because breaking the temporary matrix to reset it is a nasty, dangerous job.” I put my other hand under the sole of his foot and said, “Mejox, my friend, I’m glad you’re unconscious, because this would hurt a lot if you weren’t.”