The barren wasteland before us was frightening enough. Up here, in the far north, glaciation was omnipresent—the whole thing was a massive ice sheet—with jagged ice ridges piled up making anything except foot travel impossible, and foot travel itself difficult. The air was crisp and clear, but there was a steady wind blowing small, localized ice-crystal storms all over.
Our period of danger from the “demons” would start now, since under all this stuff was a jagged and irregular coastline that you simply couldn’t tell from the frozen ocean. The last day we would be almost literally walking on water, which posed real dangers, since underneath all this ice the ocean was being whipped into a frenzy by thermal currents. The ice right above them might be thin enough to cause a human to fall through. The wonder was that anybody had ever found and crossed this desolate, frozen horror in the first place.
We used hand-made snowshoes provided back at the citadel and strapped our feet into boots made from the skin and hair of tubros and quite literally woven into the snowshoes themselves. Yet, amazing as it might seem, the windy cold that probably approached minus 60° C. was only slightly annoying. What sort of internal changes had been wrought inside us by the Wardens to keep us and them alive I couldn’t guess, although I noticed our appetites had greatly increased as it grew colder and we had all built up noticeable amounts of fat all over our bodies. It seemed amazing that we could survive such cold, but I realized that on many worlds other animals, including a large number of mammals, survived conditions at least this extreme and even thrived in them. I doubted if any of us would ever thrive in such a place as this, but we endured.
The Mount of God was not difficult to find in this expanse. Its glacier-covered slopes rose up as a white monolith before us, dwarfing surrounding mountains that were pretty high themselves. Just looking at it was to experience a strong sense of awe and wonder. It was easy to see how the mountain came to be known as Medusa’s backbone. Weathering and glaciation had worn and shaped the top so that it did sort of resemble the backbone of some great four-legged beast.
Our Wardens had to work overtime to keep us warm and comfortable, and to protect our eyes and other exposed areas. Two weeks earlier, all of us, male and female, had begun sprouting hair all over our bodies including on our faces—and now that hair and our skin was turning to milky white against the white landscape. The most interesting and occasionally irritating change was that our eyelids grew quickly transparent. So soon we walked across the ice with our eyes shut against the wind and ice crystals and still saw perfectly well.
It was hell, however, to try and sleep that way no matter how dark it became. Not that any sleep was really comfortable on that icy landscape, or very long. It was just something else in the way of hardships to get used to, and I was doubly impressed with the dedication of those who made this pilgrimage out of faith or to confront and allay their doubts, instead of out of foolish curiosity, as I was doing.
On that last, cold trek, it took only a few hours for our first casualty. One of the group simply walked over an area that looked for all the world like the rest of the frozen landscape, and it gave way beneath her, swallowing her instantly. By the time we reached the spot and were arguing over whether or not we could do anything the water had already started to.refreeze.
We lost two more just getting to the final inlet before the mountain itself, a second to another hidden soft spot in the ice, a third to a crevasse that suddenly opened up as two ice packs shifted subtly, then closed in again, crushing the woman to death.
Now we were nine for the final stretch, and I could only shake my head and look back at the horrible landscape we had already traversed. “And, just think, we have to cross that stretch again to get back.”
Almost as I said those words the ice gave way beneath my feet and I felt myself falling, as if through a trapdoor. I screamed out and raised my hands, but I was in over my head before I felt strong hands grip mine and hold me, attempt to pull me up, and not quite make it. I knew in that instant that I’d had it—I was going to drown—but almost as I reconciled myself to that fate I felt myself being lifted back up out of the hole and onto the ice.
I wasn’t very lucid for a while there, but I remember seeing a stricken and anxious-looking Ching—and also Quarl and Sitzter—fussing over me. I drifted in a fog as my body fought the one enemy the Wardens could not overcome so easily—shock. It was some tune before I came out of it. It was dark, and I was in a wapti—one of the portable skin tents—covered by fur and skin. A serious-looking Hono entered and glanced at me, then smiled when she saw I was awake. “Welcome back.” I coughed. “Thanks… How long was I out?”
“A couple of hours. You’ve been rambling something fierce, but I think you are self-repairing nicely now. You should be all right by morning, I think, if you made it this far.”
“I’ll make it,” I assured her. “I’m not going to spend one more day on this stuff than I have to.”
She nodded and seemed satisfied, then pointed near me. I turned my head and saw Ching, out cold and snoring slightly, alongside me. “She was the one who saved you,” Hono told me. “I never saw anybody move so fast whose own life wasn’t at stake. She was on you, grabbed hold of your arms, and held you while yelling at us until we could reach you. She used up a lot of strength, but she actually got your head above water herself.”
I looked over at her, sleeping so soundly, and felt an emotional tide rising within me. “And I tried so hard to talk her out of coming.”
“She loves you very much. I think she would give her life to save yours. In fact, I know she would. You have something very rare and valuable and important, Tari. Cherish it.”
I should have been happy, proud, overjoyed at something like that. Why then did I feel so much like a heel? This is it, I told myself, and meant it this time. Having come this far we’ll go the rest of the way, and back again, but this is it. Sorry, you bastards, my job stops with this one. No more. When we leave here we will return to the citadel, bear and raise those babies and make more, and carve out a new life for all of us. They had let me go because they loved me. Ching had come along because she loved me. And me, good old selfish me, had I given them anything other than mere sperm in return? For the first time, really, I took a good, hard, objective look at myself and I didn’t like what I saw. It took something like this to make me realize my egomania, my selfish drives, my all-consuming love affair with myself. But I wasn’t above love—I needed it. I needed them. And love, I now understood, wasn’t just something you received as a matter of right, but something you gave in. equal measure.
I was no longer the most important person in my life. Three others were now paramount, and I swore that I would never forget that again. And, with that sincere vow, I managed, finally, to drift back Into a fitful and uncomfortable sleep.
The next day dawned ugly. Gray clouds had moved in with relatively warmer air and there was the possibility of snow. Hono didn’t like it any more than the rest of us, but she was pragmatic about things.
“We have two choices,” she told us in a small group meeting that dawn. “Either we stay here another day or we press on to the Mountain. What do you say?”
Tyne, who usually said little, really decided for us. “That’s hard weather coming, perhaps a front of some kind. It’s been known to storm for days, even weeks, up here, once conditions are right. If that’s so, our chances are better on the solid mountain than staying here—no matter how lousy things may seem.”
“Then we go,” Hono declared. “Anyone want to do otherwise?” She looked around, but nobody else responded. Frankly, by this time we just wanted to get this thing over with. Even some of the most faithful could be heard muttering that morning that sacred places should be easier to get to.
As for me, Ching sensed the change inside me. I think I was successful in convincing her it wasn’t any back-from the-dead conversion but a genuine reassessment. My thoughts on the sacred mountain, however, were still all business. Hard to
reach, yes, and terribly dangerous—a fluke that anybody on this planet ever found it. A perfect place for an alien base, perhaps an entire hidden alien outpost or city.
We started out under thickening clouds and were soon encrusted with ice particles, although the snow remained aloft for the moment. The last crossing was relatively smooth compared to the previous two days’ worth, but considering the landforms, its smoothness said that the ice was relatively thin, the water beneath warmer, and thus, far more dangerous.
Still, it was midday and the first snowflakes had begun to fall before anything happened.
It looked for all the world like another one of those damned holes, and we might have just put it down to that, except this time it happened right in front of me and I had a clear view.
What pulled Yorder down through the ice was not any natural soft spot, but something below. One moment she was walking there, then she stopped and turned to look back at me—and something, I couldn’t tell what, broke through right beneath her and just sucked her down with tremendous force.
The others came running, but there was nothing any of us could do. Nonetheless, I brought out my primitive bronze sword and crouched, looking around. “They’re under the ice!” I called. “Let’s keep moving! Don’t stop for anything or they’ll break through and grab us! Those suckers are fast!”
They sure were—I had no sooner pulled myself up and started on when the ice exploded around us in the building wind and snowstorm. The eight of us fixed our weapons and assumed a protective formation while continuing to move.
“They’re striking at random!” Hono shouted. “Tari’s right—move! And don’t stop for anything unless you can killit!”
We made our way across the ice as the enemy started playing a psychological game with us. Using the now swirling snow as a cover, they would pop up and break the ice at random points all around us, again and again, ahead and behind and on all sides, occasionally even showing large, dark shapes looming in the whiteness for brief periods.
They don’t like to be hurt…
They were really playing games with us, and I think we all knew it, A patrol, most likely, just a small roving guard detachment; they were bored, and now they had something to play with.
Several times the dark masses would hold on the surface long enough for one of our three remaining archers to get off a shot or two, but hitting anything under these conditions was nearly impossible.
Of course, game or not, these wretched conditions certainly didn’t help the “demon” patrol, either. I doubted whether they could see any better in this crap than we could, and if they had any kind of tracking devices below us they either didn’t work on us or were too scrambled by the weather conditions to allow any accurate mark. They were also, obviously, forbidden to use modern arms—almost certainly because such a report would eventually get back to others in the Free Tribes and blow their demonic cover.
Still, I wanted to see one. No wonder all our surveillance and all our monitoring hadn’t detected them—and no wonder they required a life zone very close to human requirements yet were physically unable to move among us without bulky suits. Air-breathing, water-dwelling mammals! How I’d like to see one!
I got my wish as the ice erupted just ahead of me and one overconfident creature pushed up halfway through the surface with a roar. It was so close I made a slash at it with the sword, and struck the tip of a waving tentacle. The air was suddenly filled with a terrible high-pitched scream of agony that echoed across the ice as it dropped back into the water with blinding speed. And I almost regretted getting my wish.
The pear-shaped head was ringed with extremely long tentacles, perhaps three meters or more, covered with thousands of tiny little suckers. Below the tentacles were two huge heart-shaped pads of some wet, glistening material that must have been eyes. Where the head met the body, there were at least two visible pairs of stalklike arms or legs or whatever that terminated in scissorlike claws from elbow to end. The skin itself looked almost like a thing separately alive, a mottled, sickly yellow and purple that seemed to me to be constantly in motion, although, I told myself, that could just be water draining from it. The creature certainly earned its demon reputation—it was the most grotesque living horror I’d ever seen. Whatever evolution had produced such creatures had been brutal indeed, and if they weren’t killing machines nothing in nature ever was.
Although I saw only a bit of the upper torso, there was no question that the old Elder had been right—the torso, at least, was covered by a metallic-looking suit of some kind, which resembled a chitinous exoskeleton. But I’d never seen an exoskeleton with a metal ring at the top and obvious vacuum connectors around it.
I didn’t stop to question the thing, or shout my impressions to anybody else, but all of a sudden I knew I was glad of the side I was on. I had seen no sign of a mouth or nose, but the roaring when they broke through indicated to me that they had a lot of their equipment elsewhere.
Their mouths are on top……
After I’d struck a glancing blow to the one, though, they stopped playing their game. Obviously they were not going to take any more risks now that their self-confidence was shaken a bit. That scream may have been just a normal yelp of pain to them, but if it translated at all into human terms, the emotion in it was unmistakable. They sure didn’t like to be hurt.
The attacks became more cautious and intermittent now, and, therefore, easier to fend off. At the same time the snow seemed to slack off for a moment, and we saw how close we were to the first outcrop of the mountain itself. With a shout we broke and ran for it, taking our chances, but running a cautious, zigzag pattern that gave the creatures less opportunity to preplan an opening. More than that, the ice was becoming thicker now as it packed up against the rock wall of the mountainside, and that made following us even more difficult. I wondered if the things could move on land at all, but finally decided that they must be able to do so.
When the last of us reached the solidity of the mountain itself, even though its ice-encrusted side was not distinguishable from the pack ice, we all dropped in sheer exhaustion from the tension of the run. “Safe!” Ching sighed.
A sudden buzzing sound, impossibly loud and ugly, came from the direction of the ice. Wearily, Hono and I crawled up to see what was making it.
“Archers!” Hono screamed. “They’re coming for us!”
All the tension flooded back as the archers jumped up and moved forward. There was still snow falling, but it was light, and we had about a kilometer’s visibility. Out there, on the ice, we could see four of the creatures rise from the ice and into the air, where they grouped, suspended as neatly as a neg-grav car or copter.
Ching joined us, saw them, and gasped. “Are they using some kind of flying belt or what?”
I shook my head in wonder. “I don’t think so, honey. The bastards have wings!”
She frowned. “Where are the tentacles? Those huge things.,.?”
Hono pointed. “They’re still there—see? But they retract, somehow, into the head, making a short ring of horns. Demon’s horns!”
“They’re well out of range of my bow,” Quarl said in frustration. “Are they coming on, or not?”
“I’m not sure,” Hono responded, “but this is getting on my nerves. I wish they’d do. something.”
“They are,” I said softly. “They’re showing us what they can do, more or less. I don’t think they are coming—I think they’re just giving us a demonstration that they’ll still be there when we come back.”
Hono shook her head in wonder. “What creatures can these be that are so insane? Part creature of the sea, part insect that flies and crawls, and is that thing hanging down a tentacle or some sort of tail?”
“They’re all of it, and probably more,” I responded. “They’re living, breathing, thinking creatures that look as if they were put together by a committee, but put together for every environment, every weather or climactic condition, every land form or sea type
. Given the kinds of air and temperatures within our broad range, I think they could live on any world I’ve ever seen. They sure scare the hell right out of me.”
“Those are no demons,” Hono said flatly, surprising me. “I don’t know what they are, but they are no demons.”
I nodded. “You’re right on that. They’re a smart, tricky, clever race from out there in the stars somewhere.”
Ching looked at me in mixed shock and surprise. “Then those are the aliens we were told of?”
“Some of them, anyway. I suspect these are bred for just this kind of job. Manufactured to survive up here and kill anybody who comes along. If we can genetically breed what we need, there’s no reason they can’t go one step further.”
“But then they should have the city weapons, or worse,” Sitzter noted. “If they have such things, why do they not just sit back where they are and blast us off of here?”
I was wondering that myself. It didn’t make sense for them to expose themselves like this and yet have no backup of their own equivalent of laser pistols and whatever, which would make short work of us. “Maybe—I know this sounds crazy, but just maybe it isn’t allowed around here,” I suggested. “It looks like they don’t like to come on the mountain for some reason, either, so I think we’re safe for now—until we start back, anyway.” I turned and looked at the imposing Mount of God, most of it hidden in cloud. “Shall we see what’s so special about this mountain, then?”
Hono grinned. “As long as we are in the area, why not?”
We climbed up and away from the aliens, and soon the buzzing faded then stopped altogether. What they were going to do I had no idea, but I had new respect for those Free Tribesmen who’d made it here and back. No wonder most of them became highly respected priests and shamans of their tribes.
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