by Larry Niven
With the coil of rope in his hand he felt better.
Altogether it was perhaps fifty feet. With a label on one end. This was Godson rope, abandoned somewhere on their journey in the caves.
He gazed up at the ceiling. Another of the creatures arrived, carrying more rope. And then another. They gazed at him with expressionless black eyes.
Smiling, breathing more easily than he had in days, he tied the ropes together and hefted them. Over a hundred feet, yes it was.
“Thank you,” he said to them, hoping that they could understand words, or tones, or what was in his heart. “You are good, good friends.”
No response. None was needed. “Well,” he said. “Climbing time. Let’s see what I remember. Upsie.”
Joanie burst up out of the water into a breathing bubble, blowing hard. “Oh, Joanie. What are you doing?” she whispered, aware that no one was listening. She dove back down into the water. She was tired by the time she reached what she had already begun to call “Water Cave” and it took a minute of deep breathing for her to recover. She was fit, even for a Starborn, but the last stressful days had taken more out of her than she’d reckoned.
She needed two more bubbles to reach the first cavern. When she crawled up on the land, they gave her a minute to catch her breath, then peppered her with questions. “What did you find?” Shaka asked.
“Everything. Maybe a way out.”
“Outstanding. We’d almost given up.”
“No way. I’m harder to kill than that.”
“The tunnel connects to an ice chamber.”
“Ice chamber?” Tsiolkovskii asked.
“Don’t ask. Here’s the thing: there’s a hole in the roof, right?”
“A hole . . right!” Shaka asked.
“What does this mean?”
“It means we hit the jackpot,” she answered. “Tsiolkovskii, I need one of your men.”
“Sergeant Lindsey,” the Russian called. “On the double.”
♦ ChaptEr 61 ♦
climbing
Cadzie had tried three different routes by the time Sergeant Lindsey emerged from the water, armor dripping, like some kind of ancient knight of an underwater round table.
He dropped to the ground from twelve feet, landing in a crouching whoof, slipping on the icy ground then catching his balance.
“What is the situation?” Lindsey asked.
“I’ve been trying to free-climb and not getting far. I’m scaling the inside of a frozen bowl. But we’ve got rope!”
“I can do this,” Lindsey said, and Cadzie was treated to the sight of Lindsey’s armor shaking like a dog on two feet, water spraying in all directions.
Confident, Lindsey approached the curving wall. He bent his armored legs and jumped twelve feet into the air, his hands digging into the rock wall. He punched his right hand in with a karate-like spear hand, and Cadzie heard the servos as he pulled himself up to punch in his left. It was looking pretty damned impressive when the rock itself crumbled, and Lindsey tumbled to the ground.
Oof.
Lindsey pulled himself up, and began a more conservative climb. Again, he only got up a dozen feet before the rock crumbled and he fell.
Oof.
Lindsey looked at Cadzie. “What the hell?”
“I . . um . . how much do you weigh in that suit?”
For the first time, Lindsey seemed to grasp the problem. “Twelve hundred pounds,” he said. “Give or take.”
“The rock won’t hold the weight,” Cadzie said.
“So . . what stopped you from making the ascent?” he asked, looking up at the ceiling, and the sky that now seemed impossibly far away.
“I can’t free-climb that distance on a negative incline. I’d need pitons to connect the ropes to.”
Lindsey did a quick scan of his suit, the schematics playing on his face plate.
“What are you doing?” Cadzie asked.
“Seeing if there is anything in this suit that might work. I mean a part, something we can disconnect.”
But there was nothing. They were running out of time.
The water thrashed again: three cthulhus appeared. Cadmann held Lindsey back as they climbed out of the water, octopoid limbs moving with an almost absurd delicacy as they first brushed the humans’ torsos and then crossed the cave to the wall, hauling ropes behind them.
Avalon factory-made ropes, scavenged from the caves.
Together, Cadzie and one cthulhu climbed, the alien’s mucilage-tipped limbs giving it peculiar purchase. It reached something Cadzie had not seen, some kind of protrusion on the wall, masked by the darkness. It fiddled there a while, and when it was done, the rope hung secure. Cadzie climbed. As he did, the cthulhu went on to the next spot on the dome, and anchored a rope there.
When he reached the top of the first anchor point, he found a declivity with a curved piece of sculpted rock. Had it been intended for ropes? Why would creatures who could climb like this need ropes?
He was able to crouch there and catch his breath, braced with one foot on the ledge, a leg on a crack, and his hands pressed against rocky protrusions for balance. He waited, and as he did, he examined the way the cthulhu had anchored the rope. Some mass of mucilage, combined with a crazy knot that looked as if the rope had been chewed and regurgitated into place. Before he could examine more closely, the next rope was ready, and he climbed.
That process repeated three times, and by then there were no more ropes, but Cadzie was in the chimney, able to brace arms and legs and shimmy up.
He looked down. Trudy had appeared, and was climbing up as strongly as Cadzie had, very efficient and disciplined. Greg Lindsey was next, climbing in his armor, below Trudy in case he pulled something free.
Everything held.
One grueling foot at a time, Cadzie, Trudy, and Greg made the climb up the chimney. Trudy had perfectly decent technique, and better hand-grip endurance.
Greg Lindsey was having a hard time of it. He’d pulled muscles in his legs and ribs, in the fight. Even with the armor, the awkward angles were a strain. Cadmann kept him just behind him anyway, in case he needed a man in armor.
Greg saw light filtering down past Cadmann. Daylight?
And a muted roar. Lindsey asked, “What’s that sound?”
Cadmann listened. “Buzzing.” A moment later, “It isn’t bees.”
Lindsey and Trudy behind him, both said, “Good.”
They climbed another dozen feet. Daylight grew brighter. And sound. “It can’t be a lawn mower,” Lindsey said.
“A what?” Cadzie’s head lit up, rising into open air and sunlight.
“Never mind, it’s too loud. A harvesting combine? How could—”
“How could a freezing Harvester get up this high? But I’m looking at a mile of blue wall. Cadzie blue. Give me room, I’m coming back down.” Cadmann backed up a few feet, crowding Lindsey, and hunched his back.
The roar reached a crescendo. Shadow fell, and a shower of dirt and chopped grass. Then a beast’s long blue lip slid over the hole, and onward, and passed. Cadmann said, “Scribe.”
“My armor has cameras,” Lindsey said.
“Okay, slide past me, but watch it. Big Shaka says there’s a thriving ecology under one of these. No grendels, though.”
Lindsey slid up into shadow, into dusk and a smell like his grandfather’s farm. Cadmann’s head and shoulders followed.
A narrow line of light was all around him, blocked by massive . . those pillars must be legs, four thick legs. Something not quite so huge, like a giant flattened crab, stopped eating long enough to stare at him with tiny eyes.
Rats. That was the only way he could describe them. Rats burst from a pile of . . that must be the smell of . . scribe dung. The bottom of the scribe’s shell was just above his arms’ reach, and sliding forward at a lazy stroll. The rats ran for the scribe’s trailing edge and stopped abruptly at the edge of daylight.
The roar of a scribe chewing veldt grass and shamboo cont
inued.
Lindsey turned on his armor’s lights. Suddenly there was action everywhere. A ghost-white snake twenty feet long was coiled around a nest of a dozen smaller snakes, all crawling forward. Four more great flat crabs . . baby scribes . . shied away from the light. Cadmann yelled, “Turn it off! Lindsey, they came under here to hide from sunlight! You’ll drive everything crazy!”
Lindsey turned off his light. There was enough daylight to see . . creatures, some limbless, some eyeless, settling down now. “Come on up,” Lindsey said. “I think we’re safe. Let me go first under the aft edge. I want to see what’s out there.”
“Good. Trudy, you next. Keep your grendel guns ready. This thing is going to have parasites. Lindsey, did you look up?”
He hadn’t, not enough. There were bulges scattered across the undershell, pretty much at random.
No eyes. “Something like remoras? I’m going to—” Lindsey walked under one of the bulges, ready to reach up. The parasite struck first, with one long multi-jointed pincertipped arm. Lindsey jumped, then wrenched the arm loose and threw it aside. A toothy mouth gaped futilely.
“Good call, Cadmann. Stay away from bulges overhead. They must feed on whatever wanders under them.”
Trudy asked, “Did you miss anything else?”
Cadmann said, “Never mind. Get outside and tell us what’s there, Lindsey. The channel will be outside in two or three minutes.”
The beast’s trailing edge was close. Lindsey had to duck.
Dung rained on him until he was wading through it. “Shit,” he called back. “Seriously.” Then he was outside, in dung and close-cropped grass and a scatter of wiggling things, like flat-shelled snails. A pterodon buzzed him, then three more.
“Your winged lizards are all over me,” he called.
Trudy and Cadmann were emerging from under the shell. The Starborns’ leader crawled out onto the surface, through a hole only twice man-sized. He was tired, but hopped to his feet with admirable energy. Looked around, found a boulder and fastened the rope around it. Lowered the rope down the hole.
Greg Lindsey was a walking antenna and broadcasting studio. He immediately began sending to Messenger, which relayed his message to Avalon . . and the rescue ships already on their way.
“Easier down than up,” Cadzie said.
The three ropes dangled from the ceiling at different levels, each one third of the way to safety. Cadzie jumped down from the last one, a short ten feet, landing in a crouch. “Right.”
Now all they had to do was survive until help came. There was no way in hell all their people could climb those ropes, or be pulled up. That meant wait. And possibly fight. He could have stayed up top, with Greg. But that would have been cowardly as hell. Some of these people had followed him from loyalty. Others from vengeance.
But no matter how he sliced it, this situation was his cross to bear.
♦ ChaptEr 62 ♦
feeling god-ish
Joanie’s first group surfaced in the air pocket between Water and Ice caverns, spitting water and gasping for air.
“Only a minute’s rest,” she called. “We have to keep going. Move!”
The first of her charges arrived in the frozen cave just eight minutes later: the Russian Tsiolkovskii. He took a deep breath, and shivered. “Feels like an icehouse.”
“Yes. Come on.” The Grendel Scouts and Godsons climbed up on the land, two by two, rolling over on their backs to spit water, and then there were twenty-two of them.
“There’s another rope,” Cadzie said. “Get it over here. Boost me up.”
Standing on the rock, he got a position and jumped up to the dangling rope. He attached the last rope, and now they had a way out.
“Nice,” Joanie said.
“It’ll work. Now. What we have to do is get out as fast as we can.”
Stype glared at Joanie, barely able to restrain her blue-lipped fury.
Joanie, damn her, was oblivious to the daggers. “Thank God. You blew the tunnel?”
“Damned straight.” Stype said.
“What is this place?” Joanie asked.
“Feel how cold it is?” Cadzie asked.
“Freezing,” she said.
“I could be wrong, but this might be a classic ice chamber,” Shaka said.
“Making ice? In the middle of the desert?”
“A high alpine meadow, actually. Above the desert.”
“It’s sophisticated, but not that hard. The Romans would put water into a pit that was well-insulated with straw. The pit would be covered with highly polished shields during the day, to reflect the heat of the sun, while at night the pit would be uncovered so that the water within could lose the maximum thermal energy to the black sky. Ice often began forming in the evening, and would typically be ready for harvesting by three or four a.m. Once harvested, the ice would be taken to the nearest icehouse for storage.”
“I will be damned. Why would the cthulhu want ice?”
“I don’t know. But we have seen symbols that suggest ice,” Nnedi said.
“Those scribbles on the walls? Some kind of hieroglyphs?”
She nodded, and drew their attention to a irregular lump of ice-frosted rock. Only . . under more careful examination, what initially seemed like rock was some kind of worked metal. “Look at this. We are looking at prototypes, maybe?”
Joanie frowned. Looked more carefully. Rust, ice, ages in darkness? Could that have rendered a machine into a nearly shapeless mass? “A sled? Ice? Pulled by grendels?”
“I can’t think of any rational reason to do this,” Shaka said.
“But?” Joanie said. “I can hear a ‘but’ in there.”
“But . . we don’t know much about them, why they would do something as insane as build a city under an alpine meadow, requiring artificial canals. Why?”
They hadn’t noticed before now, but Trudy had been thinking deeply, as if coming to some kind of unwieldy decision. “What if it isn’t logic?” she asked.
“What else would it be?” Shaka asked.
“What if it was spiritual?” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean . . .” She began laughing. “Of course you can’t see it. You have no idea what it is to have a dream so powerful it drives you across the stars.”
“And you do?” Cadzie asked, a little irritated.
“Yes, I do. You were born here. I chose to come here. Competed for the privilege. I can see it.”
“See what?” His exasperation was growing.
“You told us, Shaka. The magnetic map. They saw things . . see things we don’t. They were attracted to the dam, right?”
“Well, yes . . .”
“And it was the magnetism. They built these dipole rooms. What if . . they were building temples?”
Shaka blinked. “Temples?”
“Look,” she said. “Look. Aaron brought grendels into the chamber where we found the map. He was killed. We’ve been thinking it was a place of worship, yes? They were offended? Look here.”
“What?”
“If the dam attracted them, what in the hell would magnetic north look like to them?”
“You’re . . .” Joanie looked like someone had slapped her. “Oh my god. It would look like heaven.”
“Like heaven. I think they wanted to meet God.”
Almost a minute of stunned silence as they absorbed the implications.
Joanie was the first to speak. “They . . think magnetism is divine? And humans create huge magnetic fields . . .”
“The dam,” Cadzie said.
She nodded. “The dam. I have to wonder what they think of us.”
“They could think we’re gods,” Toad said. “I’m feeling kinda god-ish today.”
Cadzie managed a smile. “So . . they built a city in the middle of the desert . . halfway to the north pole. Ran out of rivers.”
“These are aquatic creatures,” Shaka said. “How do they get the rest of the way across the desert?”
Cadzie said, “We haven’t seen wheels, but they know how to make spheres. Big ball bearings? A sled, maybe?”
“How far?” Joanie asked. “I mean . . how far could they go?”
“I don’t know.” Trudy said. “I really don’t. This is all guessing. But a thousand miles of desert?”
“We have no idea the limits of their technology,” Joanie said. “How it worked or what it could do. None. I don’t think they could . . could they?”
Tsiolkovskii found Cadzie sitting against the wall, resting from the muscle-cracking climbs. The Russian squatted down next to him. “I knew of your grandfather, of course. We both served in the 105th U.N.”
“You knew him?”
“No, but we fought in the same theater. Tanzania, when the Chinese tried to move against the Pan Africans for minerals, using surrogates. There was a real breakdown of supplies, and a last stand at Ngorongoro crater. One of the last such military actions on Earth, as of the time I went into suspended animation.”
“What happened?” Cadzie asked.
Tsiolkovskii closed his eyes for a moment, as if sorting through memories. “U.N. versus rebels trying to overthrow a democratically elected state. The Pan Africans were deliberately destabilized, with breakaway Asian and corporate entities scratching for wealth. It had happened before in South America and Australia. Corporates against governments. Anyway, the U.N. stood with the Pan Africans, and there were a flood of mercenaries from all over the world. It was tragic, really, because in many ways they were lied to. Lots of words like ‘freedom’ and ‘fair play’ came into it, but the reality was that the Pan Africans were simply saying they had the right to their own resources.”
Fascinating. Stype had overheard and wandered over. “What happened?”
“Major Weyland was ambushed, his supply lines cut, and the air support was just crushed. He retreated across five hundred miles of territory until reaching Ngorongoro. A natural bunker, the volcanic bowl that had been a nature reserve in the previous century. The elected government of the central Pan Africans was in his protection, and he refused to give them up. The corporates threw everything at them, wave after wave. You understand?”