Nor Crystal Tears Page 11

  Though the module was equipped with automated food service, from time to time they varied their diet by pulling out of line to sample the distinctive regional cuisines of hives scattered along the route. Meal concluded, they would slip back to the main track and link up with the next cluster north.

  Gradually the stack clusters marking the locations of subterranean industrial complexes gave way to taller, thinner pipes belching treated gases, each above a well-developed mine. Hives became smaller, were set farther apart, and the jungle began to thin out. In clumps and on shady hillsides grew vegetation Ryo did not recognize.

  “It makes one appreciate Willow-wane all the more,” Wuu observed one day as they sat watching scenery fly past their module’s right-side port, “when you realize that the mother world itself is a harsher place.”

  “I’ve thought that many times these past several days.” Ryo didn’t take his eyes from the passing landscape.

  Days later found them climbing through a rugged mountain pass. Jungle assaulted the lower elevations, but higher up the rocky slopes they could just discern tall, symmetrical growths. Scrapers, Wuu said they were called. Trees that had thin, sharp excuses for leaves instead of the broad, flat variety they were familiar with. The exteriors of such plants were hard and rough, not like the smooth skin of normal vegetation. The covering was tougher and thicker than the bark enclosing the toughest jungle hardwoods. Vines and creepers turned thin and sickly, though lichens and mosses seemed to thrive. It was very strange.

  Three days before endmonth, they came downslope out of the mountains. On their northern flanks the jungle had vanished completely. Plants were still cultivated, but sparsely. Only a few vegetables flourished on the frigid northern plain. Hardship made locally grown vegetables terribly costly, but the price was high enough to encourage their planting.

  On endmonth, twenty-two days after leaving Daret, they reached Ghew, the northern hive city. But Ryo and Wuu did not pause; as soon as the transport computer switched them through they were hurrying north toward the first of the six hives that were links in an irregular chain leading to distant Sed-Clee.

  It was when they were traveling between Ublack and Erl-o-Iwwex, ascending through a stretch of open hilly country at just forty kilometers an hour, that Ryo woke to the nightmare. He was lying on his right side, preferred for sleeping, near the rear of the module. Only two units traveled in tandem with them now, both ahead of their own. He’d once studied the nightmare he now lived, but the shock of seeing it just outside the window was enough to make him cower on his lounge and pull the cocoon wrap practically over his antennae. “Wuu!” The poet raised himself sleepily and stared across the module at his companion. “What’s the trouble? What is? …” Then he noticed the direction of Ryo’s motionless gaze and turned to stare at the same window.

  Wuu climbed down from his sleeping lounge and walked over to the window. He pressed a truhand against it, felt an odd tingling sensation which he didn’t identify until he touched the tips of his antennae to the glass. It was Cold. Deep Cold that seeped even through the sealed port.

  Moving to the module’s self-contained climate controls, he turned up the interior heat and humidity. When the room had warmed further, Ryo, not wishing to appear the larva, slid from his own lounge to join Wuu in inspecting the phenomenon dominating their view.

  “It looks like rain,” he whispered in amazement. “I remember studying it briefly, long ago. During Learning Time.”

  “I’ve seen recordings of clith myself,” Wuu said in grim fascination, “but never thought to see in person. It is rain. Perfectly ordinary, everyday rain such as falls every morning in Ciccikalk. Except—this is frozen.”

  “Frozen,” Ryo echoed, not savoring the modulation of the strange term.

  Little white flakes continued to beat and smear themselves against the module window, reminding Ryo of nothing so much as white blood falling from a cracked and bleeding sky. Cracked wide open like the body of an unwary traveler such as himself, much as he might be if he were trapped outside in such a region for more than a few minutes.

  The frozen rain continued to fall. Once the immediate novelty wore off, Wuu rushed to dictate into his recorder, to record several lines that he intended to incorporate into a long narrative poem of delicious horror, to be completed and refined after their return to Willow-wane.

  The climb leveled off and soon they were descending. As they did so the frozen rain thinned and blue sky showed through—not the familiar pale blue of home or Ciccikalk or even Daret, but a sharp, terrifyingly brilliant blue that seemed only one step removed from the blackness of empty space.

  Oddly enough, Ryo was more afraid of such Deep Cold here, on the surface of the mother world, than he’d been while traveling from Willow-wane to Hivehom. Deep Space was supposed to be deadly. But to see rain—ordinary, friendly lung-moistening rain—falling in hard little chunks on the surface of the center of the Thranx race was far more horrifying than the cold of interstellar space ever could be.

  The scraper trees continued to grow tall but not quite as thickly as they had on the other side of the hills; undergrowth was dense and dark. Clinging to branches and accumulating in mounds and drifts was the omnipresent white, frozen rain.

  Ryo stood back from the window. Surely, he thought, even if the rumors are true, even if there is something to the tale of alien monstrosities being held at Sed-Clee, nothing could be more alien or frightening than this awful, sterile, white land.

  VIII

  The fourth hive in the chain of six was well behind them and they soon hummed through the fifth. Then they were alone save for a couple of passengers in the single small module ahead of them.

  Eventually, with the frozen rain still falling slowly from the sky, the module mercifully dipped underground again. Ryo was unreasonably thankful for the familiar warmth of confining earth. Lights soon intensified around them and they pulled into the dirtiest terminal he’d ever seen.

  Every carrier station he’d ever passed through had centered on a switching circle, a nexus of repulsion rails that fanned out in different directions. Not in Sed-Clee. The track simply curved up against an unloading platform before arcing back the way they’d come.

  End of the rail, Ryo thought. No travel, no transport beyond this point. Nothing lay beyond Sed-Clee. He helped Wuu with their bulky baggage, whose contents he fervently hoped would never have to be unpacked. They ambled out of the module into the chill but reasonably comfortable air of the station.

  The two who’d occupied the module ahead of them could be seen talking with several other citizens. Other than that the terminal was largely devoid of activity.

  As Wuu and Ryo walked past the small module-servicing section Ryo overheard terms and words as unfamiliar as ancient Thranx hieroglyphs. The locals displayed a slowness of movement and an irritability that bordered on the discourteous. That was probably understandable in light of the harsh life they had here. He wondered at the reason for establishing such a hive.

  “Experimental perhaps,” he suggested to Wuu. “Surely a formal hive isn’t required simply to aid in support of the military base.”

  “I did some research prior to our departure, my boy. A small chromite mine lies nearby, and some cobalt as well. The ore bodies lie directly beneath the town, of course. Both minerals are sufficiently important to justify the establishment of a small hive. Ah, there, you see?” He pointed to his left.

  So small was the terminal that the passenger and freight lines ended in the same chamber. Ryo noted the huge hopper modules, some already loaded with ore. Machines could be heard, working behind the modules, though it was hard for Ryo to imagine operators who could function efficiently under such isolated and depressing conditions.

  With considerable effort and much grace they managed to wangle the location of the hive’s two small hotels from a passing terminal worker. The one they selected was hardly appealing, but at least they didn’t have to worry about attracting attention by cho
osing accommodations too luxurious—none such were to be had.

  The hotel was located on the sixth of the hive’s twelve levels. Actually it was the eleventh level because there were five “zero” levels above the first, a phenomenon neither Wuu nor Ryo had ever encountered before. The five were of the same dimensions and were filled not with homes and work areas but with insulation, to help shield the comfortable climate below from the heat-sucking surface.

  Upon inquiring, out of morbid curiosity Ryo thought, Wuu was informed that the surface temperature was currently – 5° C and that even in midseason summer it rarely rose above 15°.

  To Ryo, zero degrees, the solidifying point of water, seemed cold enough to freeze the blood in his body. The idea of being somewhere where the temperature was actually below that was like visiting hell itself.

  They settled in, taking the evening meal at the hotel’s own small restaurant. The fare was simple, devoid of dressings or gravies. The meat was pungent and tough, but edible. The following morning they started to explore the hive and ask questions.

  Seeing no reason to conceal it, Wuu announced himself to be the well-known colonial poet, but was disgusted to learn that none of the citizens they questioned had ever heard of him.. “We don’t have much time for poetry or any other kind of entertainment here,” one informed them. He was a middle-aged male whose body looked like it had been run through the ore crusher a few times. “I’m afraid what few pleasures we have are of the less refined variety.”

  Ryo had never thought of poetry as being particularly refined. It was just something any moderately aware intelligence paid homage and attention to. But the principal recreation in Sed-Clee appeared to consist of various forms of strenuous physical activity, surprising in light of the hard work required in the two mines.

  Several days’ indirect questioning failed to elicit the location of the military-complex entrance, so they decided to chance asking one of the citizens directly, rather than risk a formal information terminal.

  “The base?” The stunted, old female did not appear suspicious of the question. “It’s sixty kilometers north of town, of course.”

  “Sixty north? …” Ryo was momentarily confused. “But the transport line ends here in town—at least, the one we came in on did. Is there a separate, special spur that runs from here to the base?”

  The old lady responded with a gesture of second-degree negativity. “No, there’s no other transport rail, youth. All traffic to the base moves on the surface, in individual vehicles.”

  Like my dependable old A24 crawler back home, Ryo thought, but something much tougher. “Isn’t there any kind of general transport?”

  “The workers and soldiers from the base come into town often enough,” she told them. She didn’t have to. Both Ryo and Wuu had seen military personnel, circles and stars shining from their shoulders, wandering around the hive since their arrival.

  “But they come on military transport at regular intervals. Very few hivefolk ever go out to the base. No one wants to.”

  “Who does travel out there?” Ryo inquired.

  “A few do special work and have permits and special clearance. They use the same military transportation. I don’t know why you’re so anxious to go out there. You don’t look like fools. But if you’re determined to try, I can help you a little.” She gestured past them, back down the corridor.

  “Third cube, second level, is where the information office is located. Go and speak to them. Perhaps someone at the base will be in the mood to indulge idiots. Perhaps you’ll be lucky and they’ll turn down your request.” She cocked her head to one side. “Tell me, why do you want to subject yourselves to such a journey?”

  “I’m a poet,” Wuu said, not bothering to give his name. “I’m doing a long spiral poem on the military.”

  “Well, I don’t think you’ll raise much material out there, if you get that far,” she replied. “They’re an uncommunicative bunch. Can’t say as how I blame ’em. I can’t imagine a worse place in the civilized worlds to be stationed. I’d leave here myself if I could, but I’ve two unmated daughters working in the mines and they’re all the family I’ve got.”

  Having always been surrounded by family and clanmates, Ryo found her confession particularly touching. “I am sorry.”

  “We all have our place,” she said philosophically.

  “So all nonmilitary visitors have to be cleared through this information station?”

  “I would think so.” She preened at a badly damaged left antenna where some of the feathers were missing, then glanced around and whistled softly. “If you’re as determined as you are crazy, however, you might have a flagon of juice in the first-level public eatery and ask for an individual name of Torplublasmet.”

  “Why—could he help us?” Ryo asked eagerly.

  “He could if anyone could.”

  Wuu made a gesture of wariness mixed with lack of comprehension. “I don’t understand. Even if this person were capable of doing so, why should he?”

  The ancient one let out a delighted, wheezing whistle. “Because he’s crazy too!” And she turned and waddled off down the corridor.

  “What do you think?” Ryo asked Wuu as soon as she was out of sight.

  The poet considered. “I made up that story about seeking material for a poem to allay any suspicions she might have had and to answer her question as to our purpose, but why should we not continue with that? My credentials can be verified. We are traveling outside official channels because such interference would inhibit artistic inspiration.”

  Ryo gestured hesitant concurrence. “I accept that, but will the authorities at the base?”

  “A poet’s palate can accomplish miracles, my boy. And perhaps our friend Torplublasmet—”

  “He’s not our friend yet.”

  “—will have a suggestion or two.”

  They ambled off uplevel and located the eatery, but two days passed before the enigmatic Torplublasmet chose to show himself. As soon as he did, Ryo found ample reason to agree with the old matriarch’s assessment of him.

  Tor was a solitary trapper, one of the few Thranx courageous or foolhardy enough to brave the howling, arctic wilderness above ground. He wore the skins of dead animals instead of proper clothes, and it was some time before Ryo could face him without experiencing nausea.

  Wuu, on the other hand, seemed to find something kindred in this bucolic spirit, and by promising the chance to see something “no one else even suspects may exist,” he succeeded in convincing the trapper to convey them to the distant base.

  A faintly voiced hope turned out to have substance when the resourceful Tor did indeed propose a reasonable excuse for their presence. They would be fellow trappers, visitors from far-off trapping grounds, come to sound out the opportunities for peddling some merchandise among the isolated citizens of the base.

  Days of wandering on the hunter’s loosp cart through frozen forest eventually brought them to a place where the last tree shrank to a stunted embarrassment and the land stretched into the windswept horizon, white and completely barren.

  It looked like a moonscape to Ryo. He’d never been anywhere plants didn’t flourish the year ’round. To find such a blasted landscape here, atop the mother world itself, was shocking.

  Before long they could see the familiar silhouettes of ventilators ahead, misty in the cold fog. A fence seemed to spring from the ground before them. It was three meters high and ran to east and west as far as the eye could see. No signs hung from the fence, no identification.

  Ryo forgot the cold, the dry, and the desolation as he struggled to recall the cover story that Tor had tried to drill into them during the frigid days of travel from Sed-Clee.

  I am a hunter-trapper, he told himself slowly: I’ve marched over from the western bulge of the Jezra-Jerg to visit my old friend Torplublasmet. My old associate and I usually sell our pelts and rare meats in Levqumu because it lies in warmer territory than Sed-Clee.

  We have a
few exceptionally fine mossmel skins with us and we might sell them at the base. Our old friend Tor is escorting us over so we can check out the prospects ourselves, as is only right and proper.

  Such was the tale that Tor strove to impress on the hapless guard who emerged with great reluctance from the angular entryway. Moist, warm air roared from the opening like the breath of a gleast. After more than a quarter month of dry cold, Ryo nearly swooned when the blast reached him. He was careful, however, to control his reactions lest the guard notice something not in character for a back-country trapper.

  After some polite exchanges and minor formalities between Tor and the guard, they were waved inward. “Enough talk of this miserable weather, friends,” the guard said disgustedly as they strolled in. “Come inside and moisten your spicules.”

  As they entered, the door closed quickly behind them, the three triangular sections meeting tightly in the center. The whisper of the outside vanished.

  Following Tor’s example, Ryo kept his furs on but unstrapped the belly latches and shoved the hollowed-out skull and clith goggles back off his head. He wiggled his newly erect antennae gratefully, glad to faz and smell once again.

  The hunter led them down a winding ramp. Before long they exited into a modest, busy avenue. Not far above them lay the frozen, clith-coated wastes of Hivehom’s hostile arctic. For the moment, though, it was as if they were back in Daret.

  Military personnel scurried everywhere, emerald and crimson insignia sparkling from shoulders and foreheads. Only rarely did they espy a civil worker. The three oddly garbed strangers drew only occasional stares, testament to Tor’s frequent visits.

  Their guide knew precisely where they were headed. From time to time he stopped to chat briefly with passersby he knew. Soon they stopped for a drink at a concession. From his observation of the crowd and the size of the corridors they’d already traversed, Ryo guessed that the base was much larger than Sed-Clee itself.