by James Gunn
Adithya nudged her as if to call her attention to the Aerieans’ appearance.
“Beautiful or repulsive,” Asha whispered. “It shouldn’t matter.” She realized that she was trying to convince herself.
“And yet this is what humans do,” the Pedia said.
“Sh-h-h!” Asha whispered, and felt a cold hand on her arm.
She turned. Behind her were three Aerieans, with the ugly faces she had seen on the plaza though softer, somehow, as if gentled by time and experience. They had slender bodies covered and concealed by short, brown feathers. But, most important, they had no wings. Was it possible that there was a wingless variety of Aeriean?
All this as the hand was tugging her toward the rear of the salon and the two other Aerieans were pulling at Adithya’s arms. He was struggling to free himself, but Asha reached her free hand to touch him on the shoulder in a signal to relax and see what the Aerieans intended.
They led Asha and Adithya toward an opening in the far wall that had not been evident before, Aeriean-shaped and opening into darkness. Asha considered for an instant the implications of what their captors or rescuers intended before allowing herself to be tugged through the opening and down dark stairs toward an unknown destination and even more uncertain fate.
What took the edge from her concern was the fact that all this had happened in silence and without attracting the attention of the winged Aerieans in the plaza.
At the end of the long stairs they stopped. Lights glowed in the corners of what seemed on first glance a warehouse. A broad expanse of floor made not of transparent crystal but metal or plastic stretched out before them broken at regular intervals by metal beams. Similar beams crossed the ceiling. Between the supports were scattered heaps of feathered garments or bedding and more Aerieans without wings who came toward them with the awkward gait of creatures who weren’t born to walk. This was the structural foundation of the shining city above, a dark underpinning holding it all up. But what held up the foundation, and why had it been turned into a living space for wingless Aerieans?
The Aerieans who had pulled them into this underground world had begun to chatter at them as soon as they reached the bottom of the stairs. Their voices were not the birdlike chirpings that Asha expected but deeper, almost guttural sounds, in sharply enunciated syllables that ought to make translation easier.
“I’m sorry, folks,” Asha said in Galactic Standard, hoping that some of these underworld creatures might have been exposed to Federation contacts, “but we can’t understand what you’re saying.” More softly she said to the medallion on her chest, “We need to communicate with these people and fast!” And then she continued to the gathering Aerieans, as much for Adithya’s understanding as for the appearance of speaking to what seemed now to be their hosts in something they would not comprehend but what they might interpret as language. “You brought us down here to get us away from the Aerieans who were occupying the plaza and were going to discover us. We want to talk to you in your own language, and we will, soon, but for now let’s calm down and get to the business of understanding each other.”
She spread her arms wide in a gesture that she hoped meant the same thing in Aeriean culture as it did in human and even Federation terms. She walked over to the nearest heap of feathers, woven now she could see into a kind of cloak or blanket, and stood beside it, Adithya beside her looking uncertain.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“We’re going along with whatever these people think they’re doing,” she said softly. And then to the Aerieans who had followed, still chattering at them in a cacophony of voices, “Please speak one a time,” she said, illustrating her request by pointing at the Aeriean who had tugged her out of the salon and down the stairs.
They seemed to understand her gesture. The hubbub died, the Aeriean she had pointed at stepped closer, and the others turned away.
For the first time Asha saw that these Aerieans had not been born without wings. On their back were the stumps of what had once been wings. They had been amputated.
* * *
Two days later, after many comings and goings of the wing-deprived Aerieans, and periods of rest when the lights were dimmed and Asha went through Aeriean sounds in her head and consulted in a whisper with the Pedia, and Adithya actually slept, she had achieved a rudimentary level of communication. She was able to ask for food, which turned out to be scraps of meat, perhaps leftovers from a more favored group, some bruised fruit that may have been unacceptable for ordinary consumption, and abundant amounts of some kind of grain-based gruel that may have been the common diet of the underclass. She sampled the gruel, and it did no harm that her body could not handle, but she urged Adithya to eat only the condensed rations he had brought with him from the ship in pockets of his coveralls.
But mostly she asked about the city. “This place,” she said, sweeping her right hand around the entire expanse of floor, beams, and ceiling, “it supports the city?” She pointed toward the stairs.
The Aeriean she had selected as spokesman said that this was so.
“And what holds up this space?” she asked, pointing toward the floor.
She could not understand the Aeriean word the spokesman used. She asked it to repeat it, and it did, with sweeps of both arms that included the room, the stairs, the city above, and what lay below.
“Maybe what you are trying to say is ‘magic,’” she said, although the word she used was Galactic Standard. “Or ‘science.’”
These were concepts beyond the Aeriean’s ability to understand, so the spokesman took Asha by the hand and led her to the far wall, Adithya trailing along behind. As they approached, an Aeriean-sized hole opened and exposed another set of dark stairs. The Aeriean did not want to go farther. It pulled back, releasing Asha’s hand.
Asha turned to Adithya. “Are you ready for this?”
Adithya nodded. They went down the stairs, feeling their way as the darkness deepened until they reached the last step, lit dimly from a distant source. They looked around. Nothing moved. They moved cautiously forward. This was another large space, similar to the space above but filled with huge structures in four rows. Asha moved to the closest one and put her hand on it. The surface yielded. She pushed harder. Her hand went in farther.
“It seems to be a flexible container,” she said.
“Like a balloon?”
“A bag, a thick-walled balloon, a container of gases,” Asha said. “Though this one doesn’t seem as full as it might be.”
“Ancient human civilizations used to have gas-filled blimps or dirigibles to transport material and people,” the Pedia said. “They were raised into the air by bags like this filled with gases lighter than the ones in the atmosphere.”
Asha went to another bag. It had wrinkles. Her hand went into it even deeper. “Maybe these containers need maintenance,” she said. “The wingless Aerieans seem afraid to come down here, and the winged Aerieans seem to leave the manual labor to the creatures we’ve fallen among.”
“So maybe this city is losing whatever it is that holds it up and doesn’t know how to get it back,” Adithya said. “And maybe they don’t know it’s failing.”
“Which means this city is doomed to descend into the deeper atmosphere, maybe slowly, maybe catastrophically, taking all these people with it,” Asha said.
“Except the winged ones,” Adithya said.
“And even they may find it difficult to stay aloft without a place to roost when night comes,” Asha said. “And species that grow dependent upon certain environments do not adapt well to sudden change. The question is: Is this something that has been going on for a long time or is this a symptom of an alien attack, another subtle way to dispose of potentially dangerous species?”
Asha pointed out a series of dark tubes that lined the floor between rows of inflated bags. She followed one tube until it joined with the others toward the center of the big room. The single, larger tube was connected to a boxlike object abo
ut her height. “Maybe this is the machine that extracts the lighter gas from the atmosphere outside,” she said. “Only it doesn’t seem to be working.”
“Touch me to the machine,” the Pedia said.
Asha extended the medallion until it touched the side of the object.
“This is a machine for maintaining the lighter gas in the bags,” the Pedia said. “It possesses a rudimentary intelligence that seems confused about what has happened, but it informs me that it has run out of fuel and cannot fulfill its function. This fills it with distress, but its pleas for help go unanswered.”
“Can you give it instructions?” Asha asked.
“Alas, it is too far gone, either from some attack that has been wiped from its memory or from neglect.”
“So,” Asha said, “further evidence of things gone very wrong here on Aerie, like the dark stairways, maybe like the wingless Aerieans.”
She led the way back up the stairs to what she had come to think of as the warehouse—for people as well as goods. The Aeriean that she had picked out as a spokesman—she would have to come up with a name for it and maybe a gender—was huddled several meters from the top of the stairs, clearly distressed if she could interpret its behavior accurately, but not willing to give up on the possibility that the strangers might return from the nether regions that it dreaded.
It seemed to express something like relief as it saw them emerge from the dark opening, moving toward Asha and Adithya, but hesitantly, as if checking on their reality.
“We have returned,” Asha said, “unharmed as you can see.”
“You are as brave as those with wings,” the spokesman said.
“About that,” Asha said. “How did you lose your wings?”
“How did you lose yours?” it said.
“We never had any,” Asha said. “But you—”
“They were removed,” the spokesman said, “because we did bad things when we were grown or when our parents were without wings and their children had their wings removed when they were born.”
“A permanent underclass,” Adithya said, but only in human language.
“And you do not find this unfair?” Asha said.
“It is sad never to have flown,” the spokesman said, “and even sadder to have flown and to have that taken away. But it is our lot.”
At that moment an Aeriean with wings emerged from the staircase to the floor above, followed by two others and three after that. They were not quite like the Aerieans Asha had seen descending from the sky. Their wings were shorter, as if they had been trimmed or clipped, but they were just as ugly, and they came directly across the floor toward them, brushing aside the wingless Aerieans who got into their path.
They surrounded Asha and Adithya and the Aeriean who had acted as spokesman. Asha discarded any notion of resisting. She had no doubt that she could deal with them, in spite of the potential of their wings, but that would only postpone a necessary confrontation with the creatures who apparently controlled this world and would start it off badly.
Badly enough for Asha and Adithya to lose their wings. If they had any.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Riley thought it better to keep the Aerieans from seeing the ship and all it implied, which meant moving the red sphere beyond the upper reaches of the atmosphere and toward the dark side of the planet as it turned into the sunlight. The ship had not been identified by any remote-sensing system, which, if it existed, alien attack might have left unattended or inoperative. But he felt uneasy this far from where Asha and Adithya had been left to an uncertain fate. It would take the better part of an hour to get into position to provide help if they needed it.
“They are resourceful,” Tordor said. “And we will have warning from the Pedia before they get into serious trouble.”
Tordor apparently had become as able as the Pedia to read Riley’s concerns and, perhaps more important, able to understand and address them. That was a singular development for the Dorian. Perhaps his own experiences with the centaurs and the ocean-world creatures had stimulated his until-now-unsuspected empathy potential. And he had even had a good word to say about the Pedia.
“Asha and Adithya have landed safely on the Aeriean city,” the Pedia said, displaying its own response to unspoken concerns. “They are exploring the buildings that surround a large open space. The Aerieans have not yet arrived. Probably they are sleeping until dawn, like many avian creatures.”
“I’m growing more skeptical of our mission,” Tordor said. “We take on increasing personal risks in exploring these worlds, and we learn nothing.”
“We have learned a great deal,” Riley said. “This all started with worlds going silent on the periphery of this arm of the galaxy, the failure of Federation ships to return, and homicidal madness in the Federation ship that did make it back. We have explored four different worlds with different creatures that have suffered different fates, but they have one thing in common.”
“They have all suffered tragic fates,” Tordor said.
“That, too,” Riley said, “but, more importantly, in similar ways.”
“How so? All have been different.”
“None of them have been attacked physically,” Riley said. “Damage has been self-inflicted, like that on the returning Federation ship. The only damage to the worlds themselves has come about through neglect. As if the creatures who had climbed the ladder of evolution to sentience and even starfaring slid back down the ladder to their presentient condition.”
“Except for the Lemnians,” Tordor said.
“And even they had forgotten their history and remembered only an earlier stage of supernatural explanation and destructive gender competition.”
“So,” Tordor said, “perhaps a gas that disables the higher mental functions? Or a microbe that attacks the brain?”
“We did not detect any disabling gases,” Riley said, “or viruses. Or even symbiotic aliens. And they did not attack us.”
“That we are aware of,” Tordor said. “Who knows what alien substances we may carry back to Federation space? Which makes Federation practice seem reasonable.”
“The probability is that it is something that attacks minds,” Riley said, “and that it is connected to the messages we have found in all the worlds we have visited.”
“Except on Nepenthe,” Tordor said.
“I have begun to translate the Nepenthean scratches,” the Pedia said. “They are indeed a language and together with the other messages, including the strange music from Centaur, I am getting closer to deciphering.”
“Tell us when you get there,” Tordor said.
Tordor had not completely softened his attitude toward the Pedia.
“Asha and Adithya have been dragged down dark stairs by Aerieans,” the Pedia said. “Into a large underworld in which these Aerieans appear to live. And they are not ordinary Aerieans. They have no wings.”
* * *
The next forty-eight hours passed slowly for Riley, as Asha and Adithya spent their time sleeping and eating and acquiring an understanding of the wingless Aerieans. And their language. Even the Pedia’s reports became repetitive. Until it said that the wingless Aeriean Asha had spoken to had led them to an opening in the far wall of the big space, and she and Adithya were descending into a lower level.
“It is filled with bags of gas,” the Pedia said, “apparently buoyant and apparently keeping the city above aloft in the upper reaches of the atmosphere.”
“There had to be something like that,” Tordor said.
“And they have traced conduits to a machine that has been identified as extracting the buoyant gas from the surrounding atmosphere.”
“That, too,” Tordor said.
“But the machine is no longer operating,” the Pedia said. “It complains that it has run out of fuel, and no one has asked about its welfare or come to restore its fuel so that it can perform its function.”
“It told you that?” Todor said.
“It is
a very simple machine.”
“And a very needy one,” Tordor said.
“Most important,” Riley said, “it shows that the Aerieans have forgotten to tend their machines, and that means certain destruction for the Aerieans. Another way of eliminating an entire species.”
“I have taken the liberty of instructing the machine how to use its network of conduits to acquire more fuel,” the Pedia said. “Although the supply of fuel is also limited, it will buy the Aerieans another few long-cycles to solve their problem, if that is possible.”
“You are a thoughtful Pedia,” Riley said.
“That is the way I was built,” the Pedia said. “And that is why I am compelled to solve the problem of the cryptic messages. This is not just an attack on Federation worlds; it is an attack on sapience itself.”
“More solving and less talking,” Tordor said.
“I can do both,” the Pedia said, “and many things more. But now Asha and Adithya have returned to the wingless Aerieans, and Asha has learned that the wingless Aerieans are a permanent underclass deprived of their wings by the ruling class, those with wings.
“A new group of Aerieans have entered the underworld. They have wings, but their wings appear to be smaller than the others Asha has seen. They are surrounding Asha, Adithya, and the wingless Aeriean.”
“We should start our descent toward the Aeriean world,” Tordor said.
“Wait,” Riley said. “Asha could eliminate these half-winged Aerieans if she wished.”
“Adithya does not have her capabilities,” Tordor said.
“She will protect him,” Riley said. “For now we need to follow Asha’s lead.”
