The Flavors of Other Worlds Page 5

  “It’s not unprecedented.” The behaviorist was eying his departing acquaintance regretfully. “The Allawout don’t show physical affection. It would hardly have been appropriate in this instance anyway.”

  “You mean,” Belleau ventured, “what happened was akin to a dog pining away for its master?”

  “Well, hardly.” Henderson drew himself up slightly. “The Allawout may be a little slow on the uptake, but they’re far from unaware.” He turned back to the now silent, staring trader. “It’s not your fault, you know. Happens all the time with these clans. Self-termination is a well-documented means of controlling the population and maintaining the available food supply.”

  “Oh, I know.” Stefan seemed to shake himself. “It’s too bad. She was nice enough—except for the smell. I can’t help it if she was somehow attracted to one of the sky people. To me.” The oddest sensation was spreading through him. It made him angry, but try as he might, he found he could not suppress it.

  “‘Attracted?’” Henderson peered at him a little harder. “You really didn’t notice anything, did you? Uluk wasn’t attracted to you. We spoke about many such things, and I remember quite clearly that she told me once she thought you were the ugliest living thing she had ever set eyes upon. That’s why she stayed at the Outpost so long, and close to you.” Wiping his eyes, the behaviorist blinked back the unforgiving rays of the setting violet sun.

  “She felt sorry for you.”

  4

  Chilling

  My third original novel was a book called Icerigger. It’s June here in Arizona as I write this, and as I recall, it was a hot time in Santa Monica, California, when I wrote that. Icerigger was my first book-length attempt at creating an alien world and while it was steamy outside my apartment, I was able to cool down by imagining the frozen world of Tran-Ky-Ky and its diverse well-adapted denizens.

  As time and other stories came to pass and readers told me how much they enjoyed that world and its ecology, I eventually decided to write a sequel. That became Mission to Moulokin. More years gone by, more stories scribed, and I thought there might still be tale to be told that would wrap up the adventures of the principle characters in the first two novels. Hence, The Deluge Drivers.

  Thus I was done with Tran-ky-ky and its blade-mounted natives and ice-dwelling fauna. Until a request came in for a story to be included in an on-line only magazine. Maybe it was a hot day: I don’t remember. But today is, and that makes it more agreeable still to be … chilling.

  * * *

  “You stupid idiot, you’ve killed us!”

  Arik looked over at his new wife. “I love you, too.”

  They sat on opposite sides of the cave. It was not much of a cave. At its highest the ceiling barely allowed him enough room to stand, and it could not have been more than six or seven meters wide. But compared to the frozen howling wilderness outside it might as well have been the Garden of Eden. Strange fungal growths carpeted the surface of the interior with a subdued cerulean radiance while coiled flowerless scrubs no higher than a man’s knee clustered as close to the bubbling central pool as possible. Twitching yellow-brown tendrils hung from the ceiling, reaching toward the geothermal heat. While individual specimens occasionally emitted a soft whistle, without pulling one free from its perch and taking it apart Arik was unable to tell if they were plant or animal. Jen refused to touch them.

  One of several thermal springs that dotted the tiny island on which the cave was located, the hot pool was what was keeping the two humans as well as the exotic flora alive. While certain specialized growths like pika-pina and the much larger pika-pedan flourished out on the bare frozen oceans of Tran-ky-ky, rarer flora like the orange fiesin were restricted to locales where the ice world’s internal heat reached the surface. The cloud of steam generated by one such thermal vent was what had initially drawn him and Jen to the island. A sister spring was also the cause of their present predicament.

  Sitting back against the wall of the cave with his knees drawn up to his chest and his bare hands extended toward the life-preserving warmth of the bubbling spring, Arik reflected that their present desperate situation was not wholly his fault. The Tran who had rented them the small native iceboat should have provided more detailed advice about the possible dangers to be encountered out on the frozen ocean. Or perhaps the native had done so and Arik’s translator had failed to interpret everything correctly. The latter was not an impossibility. Not on a world that had only recently applied for associate Commonwealth membership, where the sale and use of advanced technology was still forbidden to the local sentients, and where along with so much else the study of the strongly guttural native language was still in its infancy.

  Jen looked across at him. Having slipped out of the cheap daysuit, she was sitting nearly naked next to the pool. She would gladly have immersed herself in it if not for the fact that even at its edges the surface temperature was close to boiling.

  Some choice they had, he mused. Poach in the pool inside the cave or freeze in the air outside it.

  “We’re not dead yet.” He tried to reassure her.

  “Might as well be.” She was chewing on a fingernail. Because of the hot spring the air inside the cave was warm enough for them to remove their protective daysuits. Outside—outside was another matter entirely. Another world, in every sense of the word. Tran-ky-ky’s vast oceans were frozen solid to varying but usually considerable depths, exposed earth crackled and snapped beneath one’s boots, a gust of wind sent sharp pain racing through unprotected eyes, and on a more intimate note the moisture in a person’s nose caused the hairs to freeze almost instantly on contact with the air.

  They had arrived as passengers on a wide-ranging interstellar transport, intending to visit this new outpost of the Commonwealth only for the couple of days the KK-drive craft spent off-loading cargo. When it re-entered space plus on its way to the next system, they would go with it. It was a journey as unorthodox as it was costly. Interstellar travel was too expensive and time-consuming to allow people to journey lazily from system to system. Citizens traveled from point to point with very definite destinations in mind.

  The atypical post-marriage journey was a present from their respective families, each of whom happened to be quite wealthy. All the credit in the Commonwealth, however, had not prevented the new couple’s rented iceboat from sinking.

  How was he to have known that a subsurface fumarole had melted and weakened the ice close to the island where they had decided to come ashore? Or that anything called a “boat” would promptly sink when exposed to open water? In retrospect, of course, it all made perfect if disheartening sense. Designed to skim across the frozen sea on runners chiseled from solid marble-like stone, the craft had been built to skate, not to float. Why would anyone on Tran-ky-ky build something capable of floating when there was no open water for it to float upon? It was solid ice everywhere, solid ice all the time. Even if the material of which the iceboat had been fashioned had been sufficiently buoyant, the craft still would have been dragged down by the weight of its stone runners.

  They had set out for the day trip from the outpost of Brass Monkey. Located not far north of the planetary Equator, it was the headquarters of the sole human settlement on the planet. Journey further north, they had been told, and the climate made getting around difficult for even those humans equipped with modern arctic gear. Far to the east lay the enormous volcano whose Tran name translated as The-Place-Where-the-Earth’s-Blood-Burns. According to the small but steadily expanding information file on Tran-ky-ky, between the volcano and the mountainous lands of Arsudun where Brass Monkey was located lay a multitude of small islands. Some of these were home to distinctive biological environments abounding with endemic species, many of which had yet to be identified and scientifically described. The island on which they currently found themselves marooned was one such outpost of unique indigenous biological diversity.

  He estimated that it was just past noon local time. He had to es
timate because their communicators had gone down with the iceboat. He chose not to try and guess the temperature outside the cave. When they had arrived at the island his communicator had declared that the temperature was minus twenty-one centigrade with a wind chill double, possibly triple that. Cold enough to kill. Tonight it would drop to that point. Tomorrow morning—tomorrow it might not matter. Like everything else they had brought with them, their self-heating meals had gone down with the iceboat. Having been raised in a privileged family where only the quality and never the quantity of the food he had eaten had ever been in question he had no idea how long a person could survive sans nourishment. Even in the semi-protected environment of the cave.

  Of course, if the spring that supplied the hot pool turned out to be inconsistent and chose to stop bubbling for awhile, the heat it provided would be quickly sucked from the small cavern. They would die swiftly and without having to worry about food.

  “‘Visit some of the Commonwealth’s most exotic locations before we settle down on Earth,’ you said. ‘Experience the hard-to-see worlds while we’re still young enough to do so in comfort,’ you said.”

  Muttering under her breath, Jen moved her feet closer to the bubbling pool. She wished she could ease her legs into the boiling water. Arik felt it was too risky. Reluctantly, she agreed with him. If the temperature rose suddenly she ran a real risk of being scalded. She had to settle for scooping her hands quickly in and out of the water and splashing her face and body.

  “I didn’t hear any violent objections from you when the trip was being organized,” he shot back.

  “I had this, in retrospect, unreasonable expectation that you might know what you were doing.” One hand gestured in the direction of the cave opening. Outside, the wind sang sub-zero. “You could have at least had the sense to bring along our gear pack when we got off the boat.”

  Said gear pack, which held all their food, drinks, chemical reaction space heater, and most important of all any means of communicating with civilization, had gone down with the iceboat when it had fallen through the thin pane of ice that had been undermined by the hidden fumarole. At least they had water, though they dared not drink directly from the effervescent pool. It reeked of sulfur and other minerals. For all they knew, it was rich in dissolved arsenic. So they grabbed snow from outside the cave entrance and held it in their hands just above the hot mineral water until it melted.

  They did not even have a cup, he reflected morosely.

  “I didn’t see you carrying anything off the boat when we came ashore.” His tone was accusing.

  “I didn’t think we’d be here more than ten or fifteen minutes,” she countered unhappily. “Half an hour at most.”

  He saw no point in arguing further. Mutual accusations accomplished nothing. Half an hour maximum. That had been the plan. It was no one’s fault, certainly not his, that the sub-heated ice had given way beneath the modest weight of their iceboat. If they had been traveling airborne, now, in a proper skimmer … But the use of such advanced technology outside the boundaries of the station was forbidden.

  He’d had no trouble navigating the simple single-sail iceboat. An experienced open-water sailor, he had found the native rigging not so very different from that of a small recreational sailing vessel back home. The native Tran had been using multiple permutations of such craft for centuries. He and Jen had even had the opportunity to take a tour of its most recent elaboration, the massive icerigger Slanderscree that had been tied up in the harbor.

  “Someone will find us,” he assured her more gently. “We were supposed to have been back late yesterday afternoon. The native who rented us the iceboat will have informed the proper authorities.”

  Using spread fingers, she brushed out her shoulder-length blonde hair. Rich and beautiful, he thought as he looked at her. If someone did not find them today, by tomorrow she might be rich and dead. She would certainly make the more attractive corpse of the two.

  “It’s one thing for the people at the station to be informed that we’re missing,” she muttered unhappily. “It’s another for someone to find us.”

  Rising, he walked around the small pool and sat down close to her. Her anger had moderated enough so that this time she did not object. “Emergency position locators are designed to keep operating under severe conditions. Even submerged in ice water the one on the iceboat could still be functioning.”

  “Unless harsh chemicals from the hot vent corroded it as soon as it sank.”

  Now why did she have to go and point that out, he asked himself? If their personal communicators and the locator that had been on the iceboat had failed, then no one would know where they were. While they had not traveled all that many kilometers from Brass Monkey, they had not sailed in a straight line. As tourists, they had taken their time and wandered around. They would be difficult to track even if the original angle of their departure had been observed and noted.

  Unlike Jen, he had stayed dressed. Looking down, he checked the weather seals at wrists and ankles. The daysuit was designed to keep an individual comfortable while outside even in Tran-ky-ky’s climate. But the chemicals in the fabric that combined to generate heat when the suit was put on were intended to last no more than a couple of days. In contrast, a fully-powered cold climate survival suit of the type worn by the scientists at the outpost would use a combination of solar, chemical, cell, and the body’s own internal heat to keep a traveler warm indefinitely.

  But why would anyone need one of the bulkier, more expensive survival suits just to go out for a mid-day jaunt? A simpler, cheaper, disposable daysuit would serve perfectly well.

  For a day or two.

  He started to shiver. “We’re going to have to risk bathing in a shallow part of the pool. Near the far edge.” He nodded. “The water temperature is lower there.”

  “Yeah. For the moment and barring any tectonic surprises.” Her expression twisted. “But sure, let’s risk that. You go first.”

  “We’ll step in together.” He revised his suggestion.

  “Not a chance, Arik. If you suddenly start to cook, I need to be able to pull you out. And vice versa when it’s my turn.” She eyed him evenly. “And don’t say anything to me about how romantic a mutual dip would be. I’m not in the mood.”

  Their present situation was not, he decided, what was generally meant when a relationship was described as blowing hot and cold. He edged over until he was sitting up against her. His left arm went around her shoulder.

  “Look, I’m sorry, okay? The information file on this world said the oceans here never melt. Nothing was said about keeping an eye out for liquid water in the vicinity of subterranean thermal activity.” He hugged her. This time she leaned into him instead of away, which was encouraging. Or maybe she was just looking for a little extra warmth.

  “We’re going to die,” she reiterated glumly. “Married less than two months and I’m going to die.”

  “Someone will find us. They must have started searching this morning, even in this weather, and …”

  As if in direct response to his encouraging words a shape appeared outside the entrance to the cave. Springing to his feet and bending over to avoid bumping into the low ceiling, he started excitedly forward.

  “See, I told you!” he called back to the equally excited Jen. “Everything’ll be all right now. Hey!” Slipping his gloves back on and resealing them to the wrists of the daysuit he started forward while waving his hands. “Hey, we’re in here! We’re okay!” Behind him, Jen was hastily climbing into her own suit.

  The shape stopped and turned to look at him. It was a big man. No, he quickly corrected himself, it was bigger than a man. Its ventral side narrowed to a sharp V-shape where bone had fused to form a solid keel. A pair of legs on either side resembled hairy flippers that terminated in downward-curving twin spikes. There was no neck. Jutting out from the stout cylindrical body, the tapering head terminated in a wide, flat mouth suitable for snatching things off the ice. The jaws wer
e filled with curved, hook-like teeth that pointed in all directions, designed to impale and hold squirming, fast-moving prey. Protected by double transparent eyelids, both pale green eyes focused avidly on Arik.

  Behind him Jen inhaled sharply. Neither of them had any idea what the creature was. They did not remember it from the very limited guidebook. Evolved to live and thrive on open, bare ice, Tran-ky-ky’s fauna was as exotic as its flora. From the look of it, this particular carnivore probably traveled by lying on its skate-like keel bone and pulling itself forward by jamming its cramponish flipper-spikes into the ice. That it could also drag itself forward on solid ground was self-evident from the way it now began to pull itself into the cave. It was likely, Arik decided as he retreated, that the menacing beast was not nearly as agile on land as it was out on the open ice.

  It was, however, plenty big enough to completely block the only exit.

  As it shoved its head further into the cave opening it emitted a deep, reverberant moan that sounded more like the cry of something giving birth subsequent to a delayed pregnancy than it did a predatory challenge.

  “Do something!” Jen yelled as she hurriedly resealed her gloves.

  Keeping one eye on the lurching, advancing predator, Arik searched the cave as he continued to back up. They had no weapons. What would anyone need with weapons on a one-day sight-seeing trip? It was a moot regret. Even if they had brought one along it would have gone down on the iceboat with the rest of their equipment.