by Jack Conner
Men screamed and retreated, firing and reloading, as the huge shape drove at them. Outlined against it, they were tiny stick-men with pop-guns.
Sheridan pulled herself to her feet, snow and ice falling off her furs. “Fall back! Fall back!”
They obeyed, but in every direction, no one sure which way to go.
“That way,” Avery told her as he climbed to his feet, pointing. Ice clung to his cheeks and nose, but adrenaline rushed through him. He barely felt the cold.
“Follow me!” Sheridan shouted, and led the way, pushing Risiglon before her—not Avery.
Of course. The anthropologist was necessary for the mission, not him. Avery stumbled after. Men screamed and shouted behind. The whale moaned, and the sound sent shivers down his back. There was something insane about that sound. The Atomic Sea often inflicted madness on its denizens, and whales were notoriously prone to the affliction.
Alternately flopping, crawling and slithering, the furred animal pursued the men across the ice, what few were left of them. It could propel itself faster than they could, though, and as they ran their shots grew wilder and less accurate. Avery heard a brief scream as the creature snapped one man up. A burst of erratic gunfire—Avery saw bullets kick up ice nearby—denoted the demise of another. Avery ran as fast as he could, but feared it would not be enough. Janx, where are you when I need you? He could really use the veteran harpooner’s help right now.
More screams behind him. These didn’t cut off abruptly but kept going ... and going, rising and falling and rising again, staying at a steady distance behind Avery. Unable to help himself, he glanced over his shoulder. He slipped and nearly fell, hastily turning the right way round again. But in that one moment he’d seen something that made him ill; the whale had skewered a man through the middle on one of its tusks, and the spitted man could only writhe in agony, jouncing up and down with each flounder of the animal that had doomed him, his blood and guts slicked on the ivory grain of the tusk.
Something snapped beneath Avery’s feet. He tottered, righted himself. Kept running. Looking around, he saw darkness through the ice. It was thinner here. Ahead of him one of the soldiers yelped and listed, losing his balance as a sheet of ice broke—tilted—pitching him to the side, where black water rushed, a small blast of lightning leaping up from it. Avery reached out, but he was too far away, and the soldier vanished below the bubbling surface in a heartbeat.
Avery wished he could go slower, more carefully, to avoid weak sections of ice, but there was no way. The sounds of the whale, and the screaming man impaled on a tusk, were drawing ever nearer. Ahead Sheridan, Risiglon, and two other soldiers fled through the all-encompassing grayness—no, not entirely all-encompassing, Avery realized. Shapes reared ahead, grand and dark, then vanished in a curtain of skirling ice. The mountains. They had reached the mountains at last, or at the least the glacier that ran between them.
Several other surviving men came behind Avery, firing their weapons, though Avery doubted they even took time to look over their shoulders at what they were firing at. Whether they hit the whale or not he didn’t know, but they certainly didn’t strike the man on the tusk, who kept screaming hideously. The number of shooters dwindled at a steady rate—Avery could hear the chomps and the according reduction of gunfire—until at last there seemed to be only one or two men behind him—between him and the whale. It didn’t seem to be having any trouble with the ice; at its velocity and with its ability to distribute its weight more evenly, it might never go through. And if it did, it could just swim.
Avery cursed the blizzard. If it hadn’t started up, they would have seen the mountains and not needed to consult the map. It had only been when they’d stopped that the whale had struck.
Ice-covered thrusts rose up around him, and the ground lifted under his feet. The layer of snow thickened, and he had to shove his way through it. They were on land now, or the ice-covered skin of it. They’d left the frozen ocean behind.
Trudging through the snow, he saw Sheridan and Risiglon eyeing the dark masses that reared before them, around them. Avery hadn’t even seen it, but they were passing a great shape to his right. Another to his left. They had entered the icy valley created by the glacier. Sheridan and Risiglon were searching for the cave.
Behind Avery came tremendous cracks as the whale burst through the thrusts of rock and stone that marked the beginning of the continent of Kabrost. A man screamed—briefly—and another fired a burst at the creature. Likely he was the last one between it and Avery.
“There!” Risiglon cried, pointing, and without waiting darted toward a rise, then up it, nearing a wall of ice. A dark hole waited at the end of the slope.
Sheridan, after sparing a glance—regretful?—back at Avery, ran after him. Over her shoulder, she screamed, “Run faster, you fool!”
Avery did so. Behind him the whale grunted and groaned, the great rasp of its body sending vibrations through the snow that rose halfway to Avery’s shins. The beast must be navigating the white stuff with much greater ease than himself. He also heard the panting of the last soldier between him and it. The man didn’t fire his gun anymore. Either he’d run out of bullets or realized it was futile.
The soldier impaled on the tusk had fallen silent, but with the added floundering the whale had to do to press through the snow, he was jounced up and down again, likely widening the hole through him, and the agony made him sound off again.
Ahead the cavern-shape grew larger, and Avery could see that it was large and well-formed, surely just what they were looking for ... and just out of reach.
The icy slope that led to it had sunk over the years, or the glacier had risen—either way a space of white separated the end of the slope from the cave mouth. It was only a gap of eight or nine feet, though, and even as Avery watched, Sheridan cupped her hands, giving Risiglon a boost, and sent him into the cave. Then one of the other soldiers. Once up, they lowered their hands and helped her up. Just as Avery dashed up they were lifting the second soldier—the only other one between Avery and sanctuary.
Breathless, waiting for them to finish, he twisted around.
The whale pursued the final member of the band up the slope. The fellow was haggard with terror, Avery could see it even with only half a face visible. He could also see why the man had stopped firing. He must have flung the submachine gun aside to lighten his load, as he no longer carried it.
The whale drove on, beak snapping senselessly—madly. Skewered on the tusk, the doomed man clung to his instrument of pain with both hands, trying to stop it from jouncing, screaming through clenched teeth. Blood wept down his chin from where he’d bitten his lips.
“Now!” Sheridan screamed. “Give us your hand!”
Avery turned back. The second soldier had been lifted up and was even then lowering a hand toward him, side by side with Sheridan. Avery leapt for them—missed.
“Jump!” Sheridan said, and as if the command carried physical weight, Avery leapt, higher this time. He felt their hands slap his, then slide out of reach. He was almost dashed to his knees when he fell.
Behind him the doomed man screamed. The last running man panted. They would be on him in moments.
Summoning all his strength, Avery leapt—
He found their hands, or they found his, and he held on tight. A tremendous wave of relief washed over him as they lifted him toward the lip of the cave. He was free! He was safe. Dear gods, he was sa—
A hand grasped his ankle.
Avery looked down. The last running man had reached the wall of ice and had latched onto his leg. Face a mask of desperation, the man started to reach another hand up, meaning to grasp Avery’s other leg and use Avery as a ladder to haul himself to safety. Avery couldn’t really blame him. There wouldn’t be time to save the man after Avery was brought up, the whale was too close. It was either him or Avery.
The man was Octunggen. Avery felt little guilt in evading his grasp, but the motion almost caused his handlers to le
t go of him.
“Leap off the slope!” Avery said. “Find shelter! Hide!”
The man ignored him, continuing to try to grab Avery’s other leg and pull himself up.
A gun cracked.
The hand fell away.
Ears ringing—the bullet had passed very close to his head—Avery glanced up to see Sheridan holding a smoking gun with the hand not clutching him. With a final grunt, she and the other soldier pulled Avery up and over the lip of the cave.
The whale reached the hole and gored it with its tusks, sending chips of ice flying in every direction. The man on the tusk screamed even louder than before, if that were possible, and Avery was close enough now to see the horror stamped on his face. For a moment the hate Avery felt toward Octunggen in general fell away, and he knew pity. When Sheridan took aim, squared her jaw and fired again, the man went limp, and Avery breathed out. Thank you, Jess, he thought. She was capable of mercy, after all.
She didn’t fire again at the creature. Likely she was conserving her ammo, which only made Avery appreciate her one wasted shot all the more. The animal raged and gored the cave mouth for a time. Then, sated on seven or eight men, it turned about and slither-flopped away, leaving a trail of blood in its wake.
Panting, Avery turned to find Sheridan eyeing him strangely.
“What is ... ?” he started, but then she was pressing her lips against his, and her body too. Surprised, he responded.
In moments it was over, and she left him more breathless than before.
“Fuck!” one of the soldiers was saying. “It killed them all. It killed them all.”
“Roth is gone,” the other soldier said. “Millec, too.” The idea seemed to leave him crestfallen. “We fought in Galindrig together. In Cavi.”
“I can’t fucking believe it,” the first soldier said.
“We’ll mourn later,” Sheridan said. “Let’s move.”
“But—but—” Risiglon stammered for a moment, collected himself and started over. “Y-you killed that man. He was only trying to save himself.”
She gave the archeologist a look that might have been annoyance, or even pity. “This? Really?” She made a sound that was part sniff, part snort. Not even bothering to justify the murder—its need was apparently self-evident—she said, “Did you lot hear me? I said let’s move!”
* * *
“So this is an old smugglers’ route?” Avery said.
He and Sheridan strode side by side, one of the soldiers ranging ahead, another behind. Risiglon, glancing nervously all about, strode a few paces ahead.
Lighting a thin black cigar, Sheridan only nodded. After breathing out her first fragrant plume, she explained, “The Xlacans may be civilized now, but they have the same vices as anyone. These are the tunnels their drug dealers and whatnot have built over the years. We’ll have to go through the glacier to get to the mountain and just hope the ice tunnels still line up with the stone ones; over time the glacier moves and they have to carve new passages to link up with the mountain caves.”
Ice glimmered around them, smooth and even. The tunnel that had been fashioned through the glacier was perfectly round—unnaturally so, Avery thought.
“This was carved?” he said, noting the way his breath frosted in the air. Inside the cavern it wasn’t whipped away by the wind like it had been outside. Also, it was a shade warmer in here, and it was a pleasure to be able to see more than two feet in front of him. Even so, it was dark, and their flashlights had to shine the way before them, reflecting wetly on all the ice. “But with what?”
Professor Risiglon answered. “The Xlacans have special sonic instruments, Doctor. Handheld vibro-borers. They aim them like a rifle and use sound waves to melt the ice. As you can see, it works marvelously.”
“How could they invent such things? As I understand it, just a few generations ago they were nomads. Barbarian ngvandi who lived off hunting seals and the like.” That was why they were all mutants, Avery knew, because they had only eaten food from the Atomic Sea for hundreds of years, ever since the ocean’s corruption reached this far north.
Half looking back, Risiglon smiled. “One of the animals they hunted, the lion walrus, has a tusk that’s prized by the people of Kzai, who grind it up and drink it in a potion. Supposed to make their men more virile.” He chuckled, a strange huh-huh sound. “The tusk by itself, I should mention, does not carry infection. Anyway, the Kzain merchants would send hunters out to collect the tusks, but this was problematic, as the lion walruses only lived in the regions controlled by the Xlacans, and the Xlacans are fiercely territorial and killed anyone they found entering their land. So eventually the Kzain worked out a deal with them. Trade for the tusk. Kzai is huge–”
“And apparently mostly impotent,” Sheridan added dryly.
“Anyway, so the Xlacans grew wealthy enough to become civilized. Stationary. They built cities. In time they learned of the vast oil deposits throughout Xlaca and how to drill for it, making them richer still.”
“Oil,” Avery mused. “That must have been what drew Octung.”
“Yes,” Sheridan said, “and once here we heard rumor of the ruins buried below the ice deeper in the continent.”
The Octunggen had been investigating pre-human ruins for years, Avery had learned, seeking some sign of the Ygrith—the so-called Lost Race. Gods, supposedly, revered even by the R’loth. The Octs had only found it after the launch of the Starfish, when some islanders had fled their home and allowed Octunggen troopers access to a certain Ysstral monastery whose centerpiece had been an Ygrithan relic. The relic wasn’t of importance by itself, but it allowed the R’loth to manufacture a weakness in the Starfish, a sensitivity to a range of extradimensional phenomena associated with the relic’s particular resonance, with some modifications, such that only by finding one of two truly important Ygrithan artifacts could the enemies of Octung defeat the onslaught of Starfish. They had motivated their enemies to do what they could not. Avery and his friends had unknowingly accomplished this, allowing Sheridan to seize one of the artifacts: the Key.
“Are you finally going to tell me what the Key is used for?” Avery asked.
“Is that why you came?” Sheridan said, and there was something wry in her tone.
Frustrated, he said, “I didn’t leave my home, my friends and my daughter simply to have sat in the comfort of the zeppelin while you did whatever you’re supposed to do—which is what exactly? Why are we here?”
“To rendezvous with our contacts in Xlatleb.”
“Which is currently under blockade by Segrul’s navy—and I still can’t believe we’re dealing with pirates—hence the reason we’re having to go through the back door. I understand all that.” Significantly, allowing his pique to show, he added, “You know full well what I’m saying.”
Sheridan frowned. “We told you what you needed to know the day we brought you aboard the Valanca.”
“All you told me was that the only way to save humanity was to use the Key to fulfill its function, and you hinted at some other Ygrithan artifact. Is that why we’re here? Does the Key open some door here?”
She inhaled on her cigar. Its tip flared, casting fire in her eyes. “Oh, there is a door, but the Key won’t open it.”
“Then what—?”
“It’s not a key in that sense, Doctor.”
He started to ask the obvious question, then saw the conflict playing across her mostly-shadowed features.
“What is it, Jess?” he said. “Why won’t you tell me?”
In a lower voice, she said, “Just whose side are you on, Francis?”
Francis now. He didn’t answer, at least right away. He’d suspected this was the reason they’d kept him in the dark. The Octunggen didn’t trust him. And why would they? He had done everything in his power to thwart them, and, indeed, it was because of his actions regarding the Device that they were driven to this extremity at all.
In the end, he said simply, “I will do what’s right.”<
br />
“What you think is right. You’ve been wrong so far.”
“Stopping Octung wasn’t wrong.”
“It only provoked the R’loth. Unleashed the Starfish. You’re just lucky that first artifact was found or you would have the deaths of more tens of millions on your head. As it is, you have plenty.” There was genuine anger in her voice, and bitterness. She meant what she said.
He let that go. He still dreamed of cities burning and leveled by the Starfish. He supposed he always would. “What is the Key, Jessryl? It’s time. I need to know. You allowed me to come with you on this excursion for a reason.”
“You proved useful on your own misadventures. You might prove useful on this one.”
“Then at least tell me what I’m risking my life for.”
For a moment she said nothing. Risiglon looked back, as if about to speak, but Sheridan glared at him and he shut up.
Finally, she said, “The Key has a counterpart—the other artifact you mentioned. We were able to use the Key’s specific extradimensional frequencies to locate its general whereabouts.”
“And the other artifact is ... ?”
“The Codex. Encrypted with some extradimensional cipher. The Key is the key to the encryption. They are two parts of the same whole. Combined, they will open the secrets of the Ygrith to us, or that’s the hope.”
“Does this have something to do with the Sleeper?” The guardians of the Key had told them that whoever found the artifact must wake the Sleeper.
“I assume so,” she said.
“You know or you wouldn’t be here.”
She didn’t reply.
“Is the Codex locked away in some great dome like the Key was?” he pressed. “If it was, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but shouldn’t we have a Collossum with us? To open the door, I mean?”
