Nor Crystal Tears Read online

  “I think you’ll like this,” she said, taking a deep suck from her own spout.

  The drink lightened his thoughts and lifted his worries. The sensation was not unlike being tossed by the Southern Jhe, though the fear of drowning was absent.

  “You’re right, it’s marvelous. What is it?”

  “Masengail wine. I’m glad you like it, since you’re paying for it.”

  “I am?”

  “I introduced you to it. Isn’t that enough?” Again the trilling laugh.

  “Fair enough.” He sipped more deeply. It made him feel lovely.

  V

  He’d been wrong about many things in his life, but never so wrong as he’d been about the wine. It had lightened his thoughts and lifted his worries, and while it couldn’t drown him like the Southern Jhe, it did help him bash his head against something. Or bash something against it.

  He leaned against the wall and gingerly felt of his head with a foothand. The chiton was not cracked, for which he was grateful. However, his head did feel as if someone had unscrewed it from his b-thorax and then replaced it backward and upside down. Improper orientation seemed to afflict the street too, though the longer he stared at it the more it seemed to right itself. But the pain intensified as the view solidified.

  He took a couple of steps and nearly toppled over. Eventually he succeeded in reaching a corridor corner where the standard direction plate was imbedded in the wall. He read it several times before he could understand it.

  It informed him that he was on Level 40, Subannex 892. Vaguely it occurred to him that he was not where he ought to be. Squatting down on the street, he tried to order his thoughts.

  Slow inspection revealed that in addition to the lightness between his eyes, his body had been lightened in several other places. His single remaining credit chit was gone, along with his pouch tools and anything else of value. Gone were identification, personal effects, and the credit stick that he now would not have to worry about alerting Servitors with. He’d been left his vest and pouch, and that was all.

  Patiently he reconstructed the far-away-and-long-ago events that had left him on an unknown burrow corridor with an aching skull. There had been the Masengail wine and the lovely stranger. Teah, her name had been. She never had given him her full name. Conversation and more wine. A lot more wine, and then the suggestion that since he had no place to stay that night he spend it with her. There were implications of nonprocreative sex.

  A walk through some unusually dark and ill-maintained streets, then darkness descended. The dim feeling of being moved. Waking up dazed, in pain, and on his side on the left-hand corner of burrow street marker Level 40, Subannex 892.

  I’ve been robbed, he thought hysterically, and started to laugh, his whistling filling the narrow corridor, bouncing off nearby walls. Our carefully planned, wonderful society, every Thranx knowing his or her place and obligations, laws firmly laid down and adhered to, led to this.

  He wondered what old Ilvenzuteck, so steeped in tradition and custom, would have thought of the situation. Such a thing could never have occurred in the isolated, neat little hive of Paszex. The old wreck would probably faint from shock. Inside him a small sane fragment of self was aghast at the insult he’d just composed. His own sisters and family would have shunned him had he said it in their presence.

  Amazing how reaching part of your goal only to be relieved of the rest of your dream as well as your possessions and nearly your life can enlighten you as to the true nature of the world, he thought wildly. He continued to laugh.

  A couple of Thranx coming home from late-night work passed him on the other side of the corridor, keeping their eyes averted. He yelled and screamed at them and they scuttled a little faster.

  The laughter faded, the ill-modulated whistling died out. He was alone on the dimly lit corridor between two silent shopfronts.

  For two days he wandered aimlessly through the hive. Without planning it, he eventually found himself back in the central transport terminal.

  If nothing else, he thought dully, he could charge a communication back to Paszex. He suspected his family would reaccept him and hoped that possibly Fal might as well. The dream that had driven him to Ciccikalk, that had pushed him so far, had faded to a persistent ache centered somewhere along the back of his neck, where the robbers had struck him.

  He no longer bothered with his appearance. The reaction of other citizens to his presence was evidence that he’d become something less than presentable. He’d had nothing to eat for two days, but water was available from public fountains. His stomach contorted inside his abdomen, and he was growing faint from hunger.

  I won’t make that communication, he thought weakly. I won’t admit defeat and return home. I’ll die in Ciccikalk first. Better a fool dead trying than a living failure. Yet he retained enough sense to realize how foolish that declaration sounded. If something did not happen very soon he knew he would send that communication. He would abandon the absurdity that had bothered him since Learning Time, and return placidly to his proper home and work.

  The Thranx in front of him was exceedingly well dressed. His body vest and neck pouch were woven of rich but unostentatious imported fabrics. His chiton was just turning from blue-green to violet. The inlays on his upper and lower abdomen were alternating insets of blue and silver metal arranged in simple patterns. Everything about his posture and attire bespoke intelligence, breeding, and wealth.

  There was a slight bulge in the elder’s neck pouch. Probably carries a fat packet of credit chits in there, Ryo thought coldly. A nice, heavy roll of eighty-credit pieces that he can boast about to the less fortunate. The elder’s credit stick would be useless to Ryo, of course, but the loose chits might be enough to buy him a one-way passage to Hivehom.

  But how? He couldn’t beg an eighth fraction of a chit here in a public facility and certainly not eight hundred. Talk to him, quick, before he goes on his way, came the sudden crazy thought! Ask him for directions, for sympathy, ask anything so long as it will get him over here. No, over there, behind that great pillar, out of sight.

  A quick blow to the neck just beneath the skull, enough to knock him out and if you break his b-thorax, so what? Parading about the terminal as if he owned it! Does he have any dreams? Doubtful, that. Probably inherited his wealth from the maximum bequest allowed by law. Doesn’t deserve it anyway, has no real use for it. Unlike those of us who still have the courage to dream, even if such dreams are unhealthy and involuntary because they drive us, compel us, force us—

  “Excuse me, sir,” he found himself saying politely, “I wonder if I might talk with you a moment?”

  “Most certainly, friend.” The voice was perfectly modulated, an imperceptible blend of whistles, clicks, and syllables. A voice accustomed to conversing in High, not Low, Thranx. Not like us simple country folk, thought Ryo.

  “I’m new in the hive.”

  “I can tell that,” the elder said sympathetically.

  I’ll bet you can, Ryo thought grimly. In a few moments you’ll be spared the necessity of thinking.

  “Just over here, sir, if you would be that kind. I have my map there.” He pointed to the huge pillar. Around them modules whined and people talked loudly, intent on their own business. It would only take a second, just a second, and no one would notice. “It’s with my luggage.”

  “I’d be happy to assist you, youth.” The elder dipped antennae politely. “Let’s have a look at your map.”

  They were very close to the pillar now. “That’s odd,” observed the elder, peering in apparent confusion at the floor. “Where did you say your luggage was?”

  “Just there,” Ryo told him encouragingly, “just back in the shadows.”

  Desperately he tried to swing the ready foothand at the elder’s neck, but his quarry was far away now, far away on the other side of the jungle, across the raging Southern Jhe, looking back at him curiously and making sad sounds as he faded into the distance.

&nbs
p; Then someone threw the terminal floor at him. Very unfair, he thought, damnably unfair to throw an entire floor at a drowning soul. The floor pressed him down, down into the depths of the thundering, roiling river …

  The one thing he would not have expected to feel on a return to consciousness was sunshine. It warmed his eyes and forced him to turn away from its brilliance. He was suddenly sick, but there was nothing in his gut for him to throw up.

  A gentling voice said, “You slept an entire day and night. About time you woke up.”

  Ryo sat up very slowly, rolling onto his side and raising his upper torso. At once he became aware of several things that in combination nearly overwhelmed him: an impression of subdued wealth, morning sunshine, and the wonderful, throat-rending aroma of freshly cooked food.

  “I would ask if you’re hungry, but the answer is clear from the moisture at your mandibles.”

  Ryo searched for the source of the voice. Standing close on his right was the old Thranx he’d encountered in the transport station. For an instant Ryo froze. But the elder didn’t seem at all concerned. Slightly amused, if anything.

  “Well, are you hungry or aren’t you?” He turned away, his back presented fearlessly to the figure on the lounge. “Of course if you’re not I can have it thrown—”

  “No, no.” Ryo scrambled off the sleep lounge. “I am hungry.”

  “Of course you are,” the elder said pleasantly as he led Ryo into the eating area.

  It was beautifully appointed, with that same clear eye for good taste that had been evident in the sleeping chamber. The central table was of laminated hardwoods that were a rainbow of natural colors. The walls were compacted natural earth, glue-bonded and inlaid with crosswise metal strips to form an ocher and silver dome overhead. No natural light penetrated here.

  Ryo attacked the waiting banquet with utter lack of shame. His belly screamed its needs at him and they would be satisfied at the expense of etiquette. The elder looked on interestedly.

  When his insides finally signaled enough and he leaned back in the comfortable saddle, Ryo thought to study his host. Yes, he was the same Thranx who’d nearly met an early end in the terminal. The inlays on his abdomen were the same, as was that peculiar forward inclination of the skull. At first Ryo had thought the cranial tilt an affectation. Now he saw that it was a permanent part of the elder’s physiognomy.

  His stare was noted. “I broke my neck—oh, six or seven years ago,” the elder said pleasantly.

  Embarrassed at having been caught, Ryo looked away.

  “I was climbing a tree, if you must know,” the elder finished.

  Ryo was startled. Yaryinfs climbed trees. Muelnots, shrins, and ibzilons climbed trees. Thranx did not. They were not built for it. Not their legs or their truhands. Only the foothands were properly constructed for such an effort, and you could not haul yourself up a woody trunk with only two limbs.

  “Why were you trying to climb a tree?”

  The elder whistled softly. “Wanted to see what it was like from the top, of course.”

  “But you could have been lowered into the treetop by a hoverer or raised on a picker arm.”

  “You don’t understand—but neither did anyone else. You see, I am a poet.” He stepped forward, touched antennae to Ryo’s across the table. “My name is Wuuzelansem.”

  “Ryozenzuzex,” he replied automatically. He thought back to a bit of recreational reading, or perhaps it was part of a conversation on current aesthetics. “The Eint Wuuzelansem?”

  The elder executed a third-degree declamatory gesture. “I am the same.”

  “I have heard of you. More than that, I recall some of your poetry.”

  “Well, that’s not necessarily a good thing.” Wuuzelansem let out a deprecatory chuckle. “Nevertheless, I suppose I am gratified. What is your profession?”

  Ryo immediately went on guard.

  The poet noticed the reaction. “Oh, never mind. You needn’t tell me if you don’t wish to. I know one thing. You’re not a professional mugger.”

  Ryo was startled a second time.

  “That was your intention in central station, was it not?”

  After an instant’s hesitation Ryo performed a gesture of embarrassed agreement.

  “Well, I suppose hunger can make one do anything.”

  “How did you know I wasn’t a mugger?”

  “Because of the way you went about it.” Wuu spoke matter-of-factly, as if discussing the plumbing. “You see, I know many muggers and robbers. They live in a state of perpetual danger and constant conflict. That can provide the basis for some interesting poetry. I document in rhyme. I am also fair with them, so many are my friends.

  “The hive authorities frown on that relationship, of course. Such individuals are not supposed to exist in the wondrous capital of Ciccikalk.” Whistling laughter rose from the experienced throat. “My boy, the universe is full of things which are not supposed to exist but continually confound us by doing so. Places in space where reality disappears, suns that rotate not around one another but among dozens, Nullspace where things that are too small to exist suddenly become real, muggers and robbers—all difficult to believe in, all subjects for poetical discourse.

  “Now then,” he settled himself into the saddle opposite Ryo, “since I’ve hauled you back here and cared for you, you can at least be honest with me. If I’d wanted to turn you over to the Servitors I could have done so earlier, more safely, and at considerably less personal expense.”

  So Ryo told him, the whole story pouring out through his broken confidence. When he’d finished, Wuu pondered silently for several minutes. Then he led Ryo wordlessly from the eating area back into the sleeping chamber. A wide pane of acrylic looked out of the side of the hill. The sun was just below the horizon and rain clouds rose slightly above it, their pink underbellies glowing as brightly as faceted kunzite.

  “Alien monsters, hmm?” Wuu turned from the view to face Ryo. “It sounds like a lot of garbage to me.” Ryo said nothing. “Garbage strong enough to drive you to leave your premate, your family, your clan, and your hive, to make your way to a city like Ciccikalk. To some, I suppose, garbage can become an obsession.”

  “It’s not garbage,” Ryo declared angrily. “It’s part of a dream.”

  “Ah yes.” Wuu sounded amused. “Very overrated, dreams. Nonetheless your persistence and natural intelligence mark you as something more than a mere fanatic. It strikes me you may have fallen into something worth pursuing. It should be fun, anyway. What say that you and I make our way to Hivehom and see if we can’t find out?”

  Ryo could not have been more startled had Fal suddenly rushed into the room to throw herself wholeheartedly into the journey. Fal—he found himself thinking of her frequently, but always the dream surged into his brain, overpowering thoughts of anything else, goading him, guiding him, inexorable in its demands, unrelenting in its mental pressure.

  “Are you sure … do you know what we may be getting into if my suspicions turn out to have grounds, sir? There could be danger.”

  “I would hope so! Otherwise there would be no fun in this. If there were no fun and danger, there’d be no poetry to it. And if there was no poetry in it, there would be no reason for me to go. Now, would there?”

  Ryo did not know how to answer that.

  “Look, out there.” The Eint turned and indicated the hillside window, from which the view extended across the valley of the Cicci.

  On the far left towered silver tubes that belched the scrubbed emissions from immense manufacturing complexes. To the right were the intake stacks that supplied fresh air to the millions swarming below. In the distance, slightly to left of center, a tiny bright spot rose cloudward at a speed too extreme and angle too sharp for it to be an aircraft.

  “Yes, it’s a shuttle. The port is that way.” Wuu stood alongside Ryo, contemplating the rising dot of light. “No telling where that one’s going, with its queen ship. To Hivehom perhaps, or Amropolous or another
world. We could be on such a ship very soon, if you’re agreeable.”

  Ryo said nothing, simply stared at the distant reflection until it vanished into the cloud layer. When it was gone he turned to stare at his benefactor, hardly daring to believe.

  “It’s not possible. You could follow the tale to its end, could return and tell me about it. I cannot go with you. I have no access to credit.”

  Wuu executed a gesture not favored in polite society. “Credit is nothing. I am showered with it for doing that which I would do for nothing.”

  “Well then, there is the matter of identification,” Ryo continued stubbornly. “Mine was taken. Even if it had not been, I’m not sure I could reach a ship before the Servitors contacted it and had me held in confinement. I must be listed in every computer terminal on the planet by now.”

  “Then we must fashion a safe identity for you, my boy.” Wuu considered the problem, then explained, “I have been widowed twice. Both times through unfortunate accidents. There are no natural offspring, but it would surprise no one were I to announce that I had adopted several. You can pose as my adopted offspring, which I suspect you are already, in spirit if not legally.

  “I told you that I know much of the underlife of Ciccikalk. In addition to those who prey upon the unwary I am also conversant with many engaged in other forms of extralegal activity. Some of them are writers. Such writing is never particularly inspiring, but their limited editions are masterpieces. You will retain your personal name, which is common enough not to arouse suspicion, I think. We will give you a new clan, family, and hive. You will become Ryozeljadrec. How does that strike you?”

  “Heavily enough to make me a candidate for a long stay in an adjustment burrow, but if you really think it will be believed …”

  “Knowledge and money combined can work miracles, my boy. Alien monsters, monstrous aliens—I feel a poem coming on already,” and he rattled off a string of singsong High Thranx whistle words, harmonically arranged and lovely to hear.