Analog SFF, December 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  There was, of course, no response, and the group had a nervous laugh.

  * * * *

  The winter passed, if not comfortably, with much less difficulty. They had enough food. Jacques rigged a system to keep the top entrance open, and they even managed a few trips to the first two stage camps, bringing more provisions and creating more living room.

  On one trip, they saw a megabat crash into the snow. Why it did so, they couldn't guess, but its carcass yielded a fresh supply of batskin and more meat than they could eat in years. What they brought back to the cave with them became frozen steaks and jerky for next summer's expedition.

  Finally the snow melted and Jacques finished his carved stone marker, following their names with: Eagles Nest. Days 72-195

  They had to travel light, of course, and left countless things they had made over the two winters. They told themselves they would be back again someday, knowing it would be unlikely. They imagined tourists going through their cave in some ten thousand years, looking at their carvings, primitive furniture, stone kitchenware, and all.

  Helen had tears in her eyes as she left. She had hoped to raise a child there. Soob touched her arm. He walked well enough, now, but still could not talk. What memories Eagle's Nest must have for him! But with last looks back, they were on their way, with full packs, along a now well-beaten trail to Tree Line Camp.

  They reached the maintenance entrance a week later, quite prepared for it to not open for them. But it did, and in they went, with Collette, Doc, and Soob making appropriate sounds of wonder at the network of roadways, braces, and catwalks between great vertical tubes that climbed from far below to far above. Here and there, Jacques thought he could see robots moving around on huge catwalks on the inside of the mountain surface, many kilometers away. The place was obviously being actively maintained.

  They had, nominally, forty days’ provisions with them; Jacques thought two weeks would get them through the 1,000 kilometers to the other side. If they found no exit at the other end, they could conceivably retrace their steps on short rations. Shortcut though it might be, it was a long, cold, hard walk through a complete desert. There was nothing to be done about disguising their presence and they had to litter the clean roadway with hirachnoid limb shells and worse.

  On the flat, hard surface, however, they found they could half walk, half jog in a kind of long loping stride that saved their feet and ate up the kilometers. They took turns holding Soob's hand—his legs were strong enough, but his coordination wasn't fully back yet. It was a bit embarrassing for him, but he bore it with good grace. Going by the increase in signal strength, they managed between sixty-one and seventy-two kilometers the first day, and between fifty-five and sixty-seven, the second.

  On the first break of the third day, Helen announced, “We're going downhill!"

  They all looked at her. The road had seemed level when they started, but now, though it was hard to tell in the low gravity, they indeed seemed to be leaning back a bit.

  Doc groaned. “Of course, of course. This is a brace as well as a road. To be in compression—not supported by the vertical members, it has to come closer to the planet at its center than the ends—as an interior buttress, it's almost straight."

  "Downhill!” Collette exclaimed, “Then we'll need to push it a little more now to compensate for being slower later on. But we'll get more oxygen as we go lower."

  So they took to loping a little faster—almost a low-gravity jog—and covered around eighty kilometers in two seven-hour sessions that day. The next day was close to eighty kilometers as well, but the apparent downward slope gradually lessened, and by the fifth day they were more or less level and probably approaching the lowest point of the road. From then on, it would be uphill.

  Soob's balance was improving every day, and by the time they started going uphill, he'd felt comfortable without a hand-holder, though he kept his flute plant walking stick.

  They made camp on the fifth day on the road, in good spirits. They each carried a double-thickness batskin sack.

  On the sixth day, they noted that their road was joined on the right from below by an arch, the top of which was another road.

  "That looks like a constant-radius road,” Helen said. “With its own support system. It's not hanging from a shell support column. “It would be nice to avoid the climb and end up somewhere that wasn't an Antarctic dry valley."

  Collette shook her head. “How would we get to the surface? It's covered with rock. We'd be risking too much."

  They were about to give up when Jacques remembered the network of catwalks just under the surface that he'd seen when they entered. “If we can't get out, we can climb up on the inside. We'll have saved enough time for it, I think."

  "Just barely,” Helen said. “We'd be putting our contingency plan in jeopardy."

  "But if it works,” Doc said, “we'd save several days and end up where we can forage. We'd be in much better shape."

  "The shuttle is powered and active,” Jacques said. “We must assume someone is using it. We must also assume that someone saw us go in the mountain. If we come out at a different altitude, that could be a surprise. It could be our only advantage."

  "We were put here by an ideology-blinded fanatic,” Collette said. “The bad guys aren't usually geniuses—we need to be wary, but let's not fail to give them a chance to make a mistake."

  "I think we should give it a shot. What do you think, Soob?” Doc asked.

  Their hunter smiled and pointed down the curved path.

  * * * *

  Longer and gravitationally level, it took them six days to traverse the constant radius path. It ended in a T intersection with a straight catwalk, four meters wide, on the inside surface of the mountain. Jacques could see nothing that looked like an entrance.

  Soob grunted and pointed above them. A tube hung down from the inside surface of the mountain, like a stalactite, with what looked like a flat, black circular face. It was about ten meters above them, and there was no ladder. A robot on top of one of the big machines that rolled around the catwalks wouldn't need one, of course.

  So near yet so far, Jacques thought. But then he spotted an interior catwalk passing near the upper end of the tube.

  Jacques imagined a line running from that catwalk to their catwalk at just the right angle to touch the tip of the downward-projecting tube. He quickly explained what he had in mind to the group. They had two long lines, and tied them end-to-end. Jacques found a brace that led to the upper catwalk and pulled himself up, hand over hand, careful not to look down until he was securely on the walkway. There were no rails, of course, for infallible machines.

  But the catwalk had to be supported. He found a brace projecting from the inside surface of the mountain and managed to loop the line around that, then threw the other end down to Collette. She walked the end of the line along the lower catwalk until the middle of the line touched the end of the projecting tube. Secured with a loop of tanglegrass rope, Jacques wrapped his legs around the line and eased himself down, sloth-style, until he was below the tube.

  It was about a meter wide and remained resolutely closed. He put a hand on it and pushed. Solid. Just for the hell of it, he shouted “Open!” at it. That did nothing.

  Something had to make it open. The other door had responded to their presence, not some external computer demand. That bespoke a distributed, semi-autonomous systems approach to Cube World—far more efficient and robust than a top-down control pyramid. The door-opening trigger should be local.

  Maybe they would have to wait for a maintenance robot to roll by. That could be a long time—things seemed to last in here. Or maybe they could simulate one.

  "Everyone!” he shouted. “I want you to walk directly beneath me and jump up and down. I'm hoping there's a mass or weight sensor on the catwalk."

  "Say again,” was Collette's distant response.

  He yelled again, louder, and got an okay back. The group walked beneath him and, in a surrea
l sort of dance, jumped up and down in time. Nothing happened.

  In frustration he slammed the palm of his hand at the surface above him.

  And it vanished, rewarding his effort with a shower of dust. There was a circular shelf a few centimeters wide around the opening. He grabbed that with one hand and held on, hoping that would keep the door open, and then pulled his head inside. Inside the tube was a robust skeleton of truss work and tracks; apparently some fairly heavy equipment could use this passage. Boring machines? If so, he hoped they had done their job.

  "I'm in!” he shouted down to the rest of the party. He used a length of green twine to tie his line securely to the inner framework of the tube. In the low gravity, the rest of the group would be able to pull themselves up, hand over hand. But first he needed to make sure there was an exit. “I'm going to see if there's a way out.” He estimated the length of the tube. “I'll be back in about an hour."

  Jacques climbed up the inner bracing of the tube. Up and up, he went, mostly by feel. Just before he thought he would need to drop back to the opening to make his self-imposed deadline, he emerged in what appeared to be a lava tube cave, not unlike the one they'd used for Eagle's Nest. He could feel a slight breeze and smell fresh air.

  * * * *

  The cave exit proved to be a three-kilometer scramble over rocks in the dark. About halfway, they encountered a stream and a hundred meters or so down from that, enough dry silt that they could lie down. With nobody making an objection, they simply made camp there and slept for twelve and a half hours. Feeling optimistic, they decided to make breakfast double rations, and didn't start out again until they all felt ready.

  Helen was in the lead as they reached the mouth of the cave. She scrambled over some rocks that partly blocked the exit and vanished from Jacques’ view.

  "Oh my God!” she yelled from somewhere outside. “They're alive!"

  * * * *

  Chapter 16

  The Other Side of the Mountain

  Everyone else started forward, but Collette held them back. “Weapons,” she said. “Whatever we have."

  Jacques and Collette strung their bows while Soob and Doc pulled the covers off their spears.

  "Helen,” Jacques yelled, “are you okay?"

  There was a pause. “Yes. No danger so far. I don't think they've noticed me.” The last was choked out in a kind of hysterical giggle.

  The rest of the party climbed out, one by one. Little rock was visible in a forest of plants that had stems like blackwood trees but had huge, fleshy, triangular yellow leaves. Over them, a sparse canopy of trees of some unimaginable height dominated the landscape. Some of these were vaguely palmlike while others seemed to be more stalklike, with only a hint of foliage around the upper stem. They were spaced far apart in the near field but merged in the distance to look like a solid line of wood. They swayed in the soft breeze.

  Rather, some of them swayed, mainly the ones absent luxuriant palmlike crowns.

  "Oh my God!” Collette echoed Helen.

  "I don't think that's possible,” Helen said. “Even as I see it, it can't be! The heat-rejection problem..."

  Confused, Jacques scanned around at the distant waving stalks and watched one of them touch the crown of a leafy tree and, apparently, come away with some of the leaves. A sense of disquiet rose within him. Plants feeding on other plants?

  He scrambled up higher on the rocks of the cave mouth to where he could see down slope over three terraces, a distance of about eleven kilometers, at least, on the other side of the ridge. If that held here—he was looking at trees almost two hundred meters tall.

  He craned his head up to find one of the nearer stalk trees and started to follow it down.

  It moved as he did so, not swaying, but moving laterally with slow, infinite patience. A massive leg swung ponderously clear of undergrowth forest, tall as any of the triangle-leaf trees.

  "Oh my God!” he said.

  The beast, for that was what it was, moved with what seemed a glacial pace, an illusion of scale, he realized. It may have taken seven seconds for that leg to swing forward, but the footprints would be something like eighty meters apart. He could not have outrun it. The foot set down gently, not thunderously.

  "Its head must be 160 meters high,” Jacques said, a touch of awe in his voice.

  "I'm not sure it's a head,” Doc answered. “It may be more like a trunk with sense organs. I think that bulge above the shoulders is more likely the true head."

  The skin on the creature's sides seemed loosely hung, like overlapping drapery. As it moved, there was a whooshing sound Jacques could hear, even a third of a kilometer or so away.

  "It has gills?” Helen said softly, in wonder.

  "Exhaust,” Doc said. “It's about eight times the dimension of a large sauropod dinosaur from Earth's past. Everything else being more or less to scale, it would have some 500 times as much volume and mass, but only...” he laughed at the irony of “only,” “...about sixty-some times the surface area with which to reject heat. It must blow a tremendous volume of air through itself with every step."

  Soob scratched on his slate and gave it to Helen.

  Don't/do want see what eats it.

  Finding what they could eat was the first order of business. Nothing looked familiar to Jacques, or rather some of it did; the grasses were uncannily terrestrial looking. The triangle-leaf trees had a pulpy pumpkin-sized fruit that was either out of reach, or hit the ground with a forceful splat even in the low gravity. They found a bamboolike middle canopy plant; young shoots were an acceptable substitute for flute plant, but the fernlike fronds were inedible. In sunny patches of ground, they found a low plant with leaves shaped like pentagonal snowflakes.

  Making a virtue of necessity, Doc made a kind of pudding of fall-mashed triangle-leaf tree fruit. It proved to be a good diuretic. Cooking it didn't improve matters.

  The white part of the grass roots could be nibbled, but it would take a huge amount of grass to make a meal. None of the leaves would stay down.

  "We're just damned lucky we haven't seriously poisoned ourselves,” Doc said on the morning of the third day. We need to think about going back."

  "We'll be starved by the time we get there,” Jacques said.

  Doc nodded. “Uncomfortable to be sure, but we should survive. Another day or two and one or more of us might not make it."

  "We can try for the shuttle now,” Jacques said. “At least take time to get a fix. It may be near."

  The shuttle, if they could gain control of it, would solve the food problem. But taking any time away from exploratory foraging now could put them in severe difficulty later.

  Soob wrote: “Go for it."

  "Come on, Collette, let's find some food,” Helen said.

  Doc patted Jacques on the back and went with them.

  Jacques and Soob found a gap in the tree cover where sunlight fell and set up the solar cells and plugged in. The shuttle signal was very strong. He looked around and saw trees and a few “dinotowers."

  "It's around here somewhere, Soob. Maybe we can get one of those guys to tell us,” he joked, pointing at a dinotower a few hundred meters away.

  Soob nodded, seriously it seemed, and motioned to Jacques that he wanted to go to the dinotower. Soon they were at the rear leg of one of the monsters. Soob tried to climb it, but the thick skin proved impossible to grip.

  Jacques went to the tail and back along it until he reached where it rested on the ground. It was as thick as he was tall, but with measured jump, he was able to land on top of it. Soob followed him. They began walking up the giant's back; its head was actually lost in a low mist.

  "I hope it doesn't decide to swat a fly, just now,” he said back to Soob.

  Soob gestured for him to keep moving, faster, and Jacques picked up the pace.

  The huge body moved under them as they reached its hips and they fell, spread-eagled on its rump. Jacques looked over to Soob, who looked back at him, wide-eyed. He poin
ted to something behind Jacques.

  Jacques turned and saw a huge head descending from the mist. It was vaguely frog-like, and almost two meters wide, with eyes as big as basketballs, and a small central crest. As it came toward him, the mouth opened, revealing broad, sharp teeth that looked like human incisors as much as anything.

  He thought about jumping, but they were too high—even in the low gravity, the fall would lead to serious injury. He tried waving at it.

  "Hi."

  The head stopped. He could see the long neck now; the mists were clearing. The huge eyes focused on him. Scale matters, Jacques thought. While the head in front of him was a ridiculously tiny part of the dinotower's bulk, it probably contained a brain several times the size of the one on his shoulders.

  Jacques tried to pantomime looking. Soob got up and joined him. The creature watched them for a while, then laid its head on its back in front of them.

  "I think,” Jacques said, with more than a little awe in his voice, “that we're being offered a ride."

  He and Soob hopped up on the broad, flat head and hung onto the narrow crest as the dinotower's head whooshed back up through the mist to its usual height.

  Then, with a gentle rocking motion, the beast began to move out toward the edge of the terrace, about as fast as a man could run, in Jacques estimation. In the denser Cube World air, this made for a significant wind of passage, and he had to hang on tightly.

  They hadn't gone far when the head began to drop down through the mists again, down and down, like a huge, fast elevator. Suddenly, in front of them, about fifty meters through the trees, was the shuttle.

  "It must have seen men before, with it. It's putting us back where we belong,” Jacques said.

  The head reached ground, and they hopped off. For a moment, human and dinotower stared at each other, then the dinotower raised its head through the clouds and began to glide back to its feeding ground.

  Jacques turned his attention to the shuttle, a big, blunt upside-down ice-cream cone, its gray lines blending in with the triangle-leaf tree trunks like it was designed to do so. Soob immediately gestured for him to get down. Of course. If they could see it, it could see them, and it probably had instructions of a kind not anticipated by its AI programmers. Jacques thought furiously. No, there was nothing to do but try contacting it and go from there. It would better be a collective decision, but there it was now and it might fly away. He touched the transmit icon on his wristcomp screen and began talking.