Dreamsongs. Volume II

by George R. R. Martin

  A dead thing was lying on a beach, rotting on indigo sands.

  It was a still picture, this one, not a tape. Haviland Tuf and Guardian Kefira Qay had a long time to study the dead thing where it sprawled, rich and rotten. Around and about it was a litter of human corpses, lending it scale by their proximity. The dead thing was shaped like an inverted bowl, and it was as big as a house. Its leathery flesh, cracked and oozing pustulence now, was a mottled gray-green. Spread on the sand around it, like spokes from a central wheel, were the thing’s appendages—ten twisted green tentacles, puckered with pinkish-white mouths and, alternately, ten limbs that looked stiff and hard and black, and were obviously jointed.

  “Legs,” said Kefira Qay bitterly. “It was a walker, Tuf, before they killed it. We have only found that one specimen, but it was enough. We know why our islands fall silent now. They come from out of the sea, Tuf. Things like that. Larger, smaller, walking on ten legs like spiders and grabbing and eating with the other ten, the tentacles. The carapace is thick and tough. A single explosive shell or laser burst won’t kill one of these the way it would a fire-balloon. So now you understand. First the sea, then the air, and now it has begun on the land as well. The land. They burst from the water in thousands, striding up onto the sand like some terrible tide. Two islands were overrun last week alone. They mean to wipe us from this planet. No doubt a few of us will survive on New Atlantis, in the high inland mountains, but it will be a cruel life and a short one. Until Namor throws something new at us, some new thing out of a nightmare.” Her voice had a wild edge of hysteria.

  Haviland Tuf turned off his console, and the telescreens all went black. “Calm yourself, Guardian,” he said, turning to face her. “Your fears are understandable but unnecessary. I appreciate your plight more fully now. A tragic one indeed, yet not hopeless.”

  “You still think you can help?” she said. “Alone? You and this ship? Oh, I’m not discouraging you, by any means. We’ll grasp at any straw. But…”

  “But you do not believe,” Tuf said. A small sigh escaped his lips. “Doubt,” he said to the gray kitten, hoisting him up in a huge white hand, “you are indeed well named.” He shifted his gaze back to Kefira Qay. “I am a forgiving man, and you have been through many cruel hardships, so I shall take no notice of the casual way you belittle me and my abilities. Now, if you might excuse me, I have work to do. Your people have sent up a great many more detailed reports on these creatures, and on Namorian ecology in general. It is vital that I peruse these, in order to understand and analyze the situation. Thank you for your briefing.”

  Kefira Qay frowned, lifted Foolishness from her knee and set him on the ground, and stood up. “Very well,” she said. “How soon will you be ready?”

  “I cannot ascertain that with any degree of accuracy,” Tuf replied, “until I have had a chance to run some simulations. Perhaps a day and we shall begin. Perhaps a month. Perhaps longer.”

  “If you take too long, you’ll find it difficult to collect your two million,” she snapped. “We’ll all be dead.”

  “Indeed,” said Tuf. “I shall strive to avoid that scenario. Now, if you would let me work. We shall converse again at dinner. I shall serve vegetable stew in the fashion of Arion, with plates of Thorite fire mushrooms to whet our appetites.”

  Qay sighed loudly. “Mushrooms again?” she complained. “We had stir-fried mushrooms and peppers for lunch, and crisped mushrooms in bitter cream for breakfast.”

  “I am fond of mushrooms,” said Haviland Tuf.

  “I am weary of mushrooms,” said Kefira Qay. Foolishness rubbed up against her leg, and she frowned down at him. “Might I suggest some meat? Or seafood?” She looked wistful. “It has been years since I’ve had a mud-pot. I dream of it sometimes. Crack it open and pour butter inside, and spoon out the soft meat…you can’t imagine how fine it was. Or sabrefin. Ah, I’d kill for a sabrefin on a bed of seagrass!”

  Haviland Tuf looked stern. “We do not eat animals here,” he said. He set to work, ignoring her, and Kefira Qay took her leave. Foolishness went bounding after her. “Appropriate,” muttered Tuf, “indeed.”

  FOUR DAYS AND MANY MUSHROOMS LATER, KEFIRA QAY BEGAN TO pressure Haviland Tuf for results. “What are you doing?” she demanded over dinner. “When are you going to act? Every day you seclude yourself and every day conditions on Namor worsen. I spoke to Lord Guardian Harvan an hour ago, while you were off with your computers. Little Aquarius and the Dancing Sisters have been lost while you and I are up here dithering, Tuf.”

  “Dithering?” said Haviland Tuf. “Guardian, I do not dither. I have never dithered, nor do I intend to begin dithering now. I work. There is a great mass of information to digest.”

  Kefira Qay snorted. “A great mass of mushrooms to digest, you mean,” she said. She stood up, tipping Foolishness from her lap. The kitten and she had become boon companions of late. “Twelve thousand people lived on Little Aquarius,” she said, “and almost as many on the Dancing Sisters. Think of that while you’re digesting, Tuf.” She spun and stalked out of the room.

  “Indeed,” said Haviland Tuf. He returned his attention to his sweet-flower pie.

  A week passed before they clashed again. “Well?” the Guardian demanded one day in the corridor, stepping in front of Tuf as he lumbered with great dignity down to his work room.

  “Well,” he repeated. “Good day, Guardian Qay.”

  “It is not a good day,” she said querulously. “Namor Control tells me the Sunrise Islands are gone. Overrun. And a dozen skimmers lost defending them, along with all the ships drawn up in those harbors. What do you say to that?”

  “Most tragic,” replied Tuf. “Regrettable.”

  “When are you going to be ready?”

  He gave a great shrug. “I cannot say. This is no simple task you have set me. A most complex problem. Complex. Yes, indeed, that is the very word. Perhaps I might even say mystifying. I assure you that Namor’s sad plight has fully engaged my sympathies, however, and this problem has similarly engaged my intellect.”

  “That’s all it is to you, Tuf, isn’t it? A problem?”

  Haviland Tuf frowned slightly, and folded his hands before him, resting them atop his bulging stomach. “A problem indeed,” he said.

  “No. It is not just a problem. This is no game we are playing. Real people are dying down there. Dying because the Guardians are not equal to their trust, and because you do nothing. Nothing.”

  “Calm yourself. You have my assurance that I am laboring ceaselessly on your behalf. You must consider that my task is not so simple as yours. It is all very well and good to drop bombs on a dreadnaught, or fire shells into a fire-balloon and watch it burn. Yet these simple, quaint methods have availed you little, Guardian. Ecological engineering is a far more demanding business. I study the reports of your leaders, your marine biologists, your historians. I reflect and analyze. I devise various approaches, and run simulations on the Ark’s great computers. Sooner or later I shall find your answer.”

  “Sooner,” said Kefira Qay, in a hard voice. “Namor wants results, and I agree. The Council of Guardians is impatient. Sooner, Tuf. Not later. I warn you.” She stepped aside, and let him pass.

  Kefira Qay spent the next week and a half avoiding Tuf as much as possible. She skipped dinner and scowled when she saw him in the corridors. Each day she repaired to the communications room, where she had long discussions with her superiors below, and kept up on all the latest news. It was bad. All the news was bad.

  Finally, things came to a head. Pale-faced and furious, she stalked into the darkened chamber Tuf called his “war room,” where she found him sitting before a bank of computer screens, watching red and blue lines chase each other across a grid. “Tuf!” she roared. He turned off the screen and swung to face her, batting away Ingratitude. Shrouded by shadows, he regarded her impassively. “The Council of Guardians has given me an order,” she said.

  “How fortunate for you,” Tuf replied. “I kno
w you have been growing restless of late from inactivity.”

  “The Council wants immediate action, Tuf. Immediate. Today. Do you understand?”

  Tuf steepled his hands beneath his chin, almost in an attitude of prayer. “Must I tolerate not only hostility and impatience, but slurs on my intelligence as well? I understand all that needs understanding about your Guardians, I assure you. It is only the peculiar and perverse ecology of Namor that I do not understand. Until I have acquired that understanding, I cannot act.”

  “You will act,” said Kefira Qay. Suddenly a laser pistol was in her hand, aimed at Tuf’s broad paunch. “You will act now.”

  Haviland Tuf reacted not at all. “Violence,” he said, in a voice of mild reproach. “Perhaps, before you burn a hole in me and thereby doom yourself and your world, you might give me the opportunity to explain?”

  “Go on,” she said. “I’ll listen. For a little while.”

  “Excellent,” said Haviland Tuf. “Guardian, something very odd is happening on Namor.”

  “You’ve noticed,” she said drily. The laser did not move.

  “Indeed. You are being destroyed by an infestation of creatures that we must, for want of a better term, collectively dub sea monsters. Three species have appeared, in less than half a dozen standard years. Each of these species is apparently new, or at least unknown. This strikes me as unlikely in the extreme. Your people have been on Namor for one hundred years, yet not until recently have you had any knowledge of these things you call dreadnaughts, fire-balloons, and walkers. It is almost as if some dark analogue of my Ark were waging biowar upon you, yet obviously that is not the case. New or old, these sea monsters are native to Namor, a product of local evolution. Their close relatives fill your seas—the mud-pots, the bobbing freddies, the jellydancers and men-of-war. So. Where does that leave us?”

  “I don’t know,” said Kefira Qay.

  “Nor do I,” Tuf said. “Consider further. These sea monsters breed in vast numbers. The sea teems with them, they fill the air, they overrun populous islands. They kill. Yet they do not kill each other, nor do they seem to have any other natural enemies. The cruel checks of a normal ecosystem do not apply. I have studied the reports of your scientists with great interest. Much about these sea monsters is fascinating, but perhaps most intriguing is the fact that you know nothing about them except in their full adult form. Vast dreadnaughts prowl the seas and sink ships, monstrous fire-balloons swirl across your skies. Where, might I ask, are the little dreadnaughts, the baby balloons? Where indeed.”

  “Deep under the sea.”

  “Perhaps, Guardian, perhaps. You cannot say for certain, nor can I. These monsters are most formidable creatures, yet I have seen equally formidable predators on other worlds. They do not number in hundreds or thousands. Why? Ah, because the young, or the eggs, or the hatchlings, they are less formidable than the parents, and most die long before reaching their terrible maturity. This does not appear to happen on Namor. It does not appear to happen at all. What can it all mean? What indeed.” Tuf shrugged. “I cannot say, but I work on, I think, I endeavor to solve the riddle of your overabundant sea.”

  Kefira Qay grimaced. “And meanwhile, we die. We die, and you don’t care.”

  “I protest!” Tuf began.

  “Silence!” she said, waving the laser. “I’ll talk now, you’ve given your speech. Today we lost contact with the Broken Hand. Forty-three islands, Tuf. I’m afraid to even think how many people. All gone now, in a single day. A few garbled radio transmissions, hysteria, and silence. And you sit and talk about riddles. No more. You will take action now. I insist. Or threaten, if you prefer. Later, we will solve the whys and hows of these things. For the moment, we will kill them, without pausing for questions.”

  “Once,” said Haviland Tuf, “there was a world idyllic but for a single flaw—an insect the size of a dust mote. It was a harmless creature, but it was everywhere: It fed on the microscopic spores of a floating fungus. The folk of this world hated the tiny insect, which sometimes flew about in clouds so thick they obscured the sun. When citizens went outdoors, the insects would land on them by the thousands, covering their bodies with a living shroud. So a would-be ecological engineer proposed to solve their problem. From a distant world, he introduced another insect, larger, to prey on the living dust motes. The scheme worked admirably. The new insects multiplied and multiplied, having no natural enemies in this ecosystem, until they had entirely wiped out the native species. It was a great triumph. Unfortunately, there were unforeseen side effects. The invader, having destroyed one form of life, moved on to other, more beneficial sorts. Many native insects became extinct. The local analogue of bird life, deprived of its customary prey and unable to digest the alien bug, also suffered grievously. Plants were not pollinated as before. Whole forests and jungles changed and withered. And the spores of the fungus that had been the food of the original nuisance were left unchecked. The fungus grew everywhere—on buildings, on food crops, even on living animals. In short, the ecosystem was wrenched entirely askew. Today, should you visit, you would find a planet dead but for a terrible fungus. Such are the fruits of hasty action, with insufficient study. There are grave risks should one move without understanding.”

  “And certain destruction if one fails to move at all,” Kefira Qay said stubbornly. “No, Tuf. You tell frightening tales, but we are a desperate people. The Guardians accept whatever risks there may be. I have my orders. Unless you do as I bid, I will use this.” She nodded at her laser.

  Haviland Tuf folded his arms. “If you use that,” he said, “you will be very foolish. No doubt you could learn to operate the Ark. In time. The task would take years, which by your own admission you do not have. I shall work on in your behalf, and forgive you your crude bluster and your threats, but I shall move only when I deem myself ready. I am an ecological engineer. I have my personal and professional integrity. And I must point out that, without my services, you are utterly without hope. Utterly. So, since you know this and I know this, let us dispense with further drama. You will not use that laser.”

  For a moment, Kefira Qay’s face looked stricken. “You…” she said in confusion; the laser wavered just a bit. Then her look hardened once again. “You’re wrong, Tuf,” she said. “I will use it.”

  Haviland Tuf said nothing.

  “Not on you,” she said. “On your cats. I will kill one of them every day, until you take action.” Her wrist moved slightly, so the laser was trained not on Tuf, but on the small form of Ingratitude, who was prowling hither and yon about the room, poking at shadows. “I will start with this one,” the Guardian said. “On the count of three.”

  Tuf’s face was utterly without emotion. He stared.

  “One,” said Kefira Qay.

  Tuf sat immobile.

  “Two,” she said.

  Tuf frowned, and there were wrinkles in his chalk-white brow.

  “Three,” Qay blurted.

  “No,” Tuf said quickly. “Do not fire. I shall do as you insist. I can begin cloning within the hour.”

  The Guardian holstered her laser.

  SO HAVILAND TUF WENT RELUCTANTLY TO WAR.

  On the first day he sat in his war room before his great console, tight-lipped and quiet, turning dials and pressing glowing buttons and phantom holographic keys. Elsewhere on the Ark, murky liquids of many shades and colors spilled and gurgled into the empty vats along the shadowy main shaft, while specimens from the great cell library were shifted and sprayed and manipulated by tiny waldoes as sensitive as the hands of a master surgeon. Tuf saw none of it. He remained at his post, starting one clone after another.

  On the second day he did the same.

  On the third day he rose and strolled slowly down the kilometers-long shaft where his creations had begun to grow, indistinct forms that stirred feebly or not at all in the tanks of translucent liquid. Some tanks were fully as large as the Ark’s shuttle deck, others as small as a fingernail. Haviland Tuf pa
used by each one, studied the dials and meters and glowing spyscopes with quiet intensity, and sometimes made small adjustments. By the end of the day he had progressed only half the length of the long, echoing row.

  On the fourth day he completed his rounds.

  On the fifth day he threw in the chronowarp. “Time is its slave,” he told Kefira Qay when she asked him. “It can hold it slow, or bid it hurry. We shall make it run, so the warriors I breed can reach maturity more quickly than in nature.”

  On the sixth day he busied himself on the shuttle deck, modifying two of his shuttles to carry the creatures he was fashioning, adding tanks great and small and filling them with water.

  On the morning of the seventh day he joined Kefira Qay for breakfast and said, “Guardian, we are ready to begin.”

  She was surprised. “So soon?”

  “Not all of my beasts have reached full maturity, but that is as it should be. Some are monstrous large, and must be transshipped before they have attained adult growth. The cloning shall continue, of course. We must establish our creatures in sufficient numbers so they will remain viable. Nonetheless, we are now at the stage where it is possible to begin seeding the seas of Namor.”

  “What is your strategy?” asked Kefira Qay.

  Haviland Tuf pushed aside his plate and pursed his lips. “Such strategy as I have is crude and premature, Guardian, and based on insufficient knowledge. I take no responsibility for its success or failure. Your cruel threats have impelled me to unseemly haste.”

  “Nonetheless,” she snapped. “What are you doing?”

  Tuf folded his hands atop his stomach. “Biological weaponry, like other sorts of armament, comes in many forms and sizes. The best way to slay a human enemy is a single laser burst planted square in the center of the forehead. In biological terms, the analogue might be a suitable natural enemy or predator, or a species-specific pestilence. Lacking time, I have had no opportunity to devise such an economical solution.

  “Other approaches are less satisfactory. I might introduce a disease that would cleanse your world of dreadnaughts, fire-balloons, and walkers, for example. Several likely candidates exist. Yet your sea monsters are close relatives of many other kinds of marine life, and those cousins and uncles would also suffer. My projections indicate that fully three-quarters of Namor’s oceangoing life would be vulnerable to such an attack. Alternatively, I have at my disposal fast-breeding fungi and microscopic animals who would literally fill your seas and crowd out all other life. That choice too is unsatisfactory. Ultimately it would make Namor incapable of sustaining human life. To pursue my analogy of a moment ago, these methods are the biological equivalent of killing a single human enemy by exploding a low-yield thermonuclear device in the city in which he happens to reside. So I have ruled them out.