Priam's Lens

by Chalker, Jack L

  The other offworlders, though, were surprised and fascinated by every gesture and every bit of knowledge that the young people displayed. It was somewhat startling for them to watch some of the middle-sized beetle-like insects and flying things be picked out of the air and just popped into the mouth. The women also showed a pretty fair knowledge of basic chemistry, whether preparing a dried cake from mixed stone-ground grasses and ground-up insects, or salves that could numb and perhaps do more on wounds and bites. Clearly it wasn’t just the physically fit and ruthless who survived; some very smart people had created a system that worked, and had done so from scratch while trying to survive themselves. Of them all, only Kat Socolov seemed less surprised than impressed. A good anthropologist always knew the difference between tribal knowledge and superstition, and the first thing you had to do in that field was get it out of your head forever that ignorance meant stupidity.

  Still, only Colonel N’Gana was willing to try the insects à la carte. He prided himself on his survival training. The cakes, however, were palatable, and filling, if not exactly delicious.

  The day of mutual discovery ended with wonder on both sides, but no clear answers. The one thing that Kat Socolov couldn’t help thinking was how fragile and vulnerable human beings had made themselves by being so dependent on technology. If these descendants of the survivors of conquest had known how to harvest and process and weave cotton, for example, they would have had no problems with clothing and blankets and the like, they would have had fabrics that did not dissolve in the engineered rains. But nobody really knew how to do that, or plow a field with human power, or to do any of the thousand and one things ancient humans had taken for granted.

  They had sunk so far and so fast because nobody was left who knew how to do those things. Nobody had needed to do them for centuries.

  Sergeant Mogutu was restless during the night, and at one point cried out in his ancient mother tongue. In the morning, he was dead.

  Father Chicanis did what he could, and together that morning at the insistence of the priest and the colonel, they managed to bury him in a shallow grave.

  “I’m next, I suspect,” the priest said. “I don’t mind, really. I will at least die on the world of my birth in a good cause and serving God.”

  “Don’t talk like that! It is self-fulfilling!” Kat Socolov snapped.

  He sighed. “Look, there’s infection in the arm and it’s not going to get better or stay where it is. You know it and I know it. And there’s no way anybody here can do a competent amputation. We don’t even have a sterile blade.”

  It was the two young women who came to his aid. They found and mixed a paste of some local herbs that really did seem to lower the inflammation on his arm; at least it eased the pain.

  Still, looking now at the river, Chicanis said, “I can’t come. You and I know I can’t get across that. I’m going to move north by east and see if I can contact another of the Families. At least try to be of some use.”

  The young people were upset at the idea. “You don’t have to do that! We will all go your way!” Littlefeet told him. “Look, we have a new Family here. We have a priest, guards and scouts who can take on and beat Hunters, three women to bear more children, and we can become one!”

  It was Harker who shook his head and told them, “We are not here to start a family, Littlefeet. We’re here to do a job. Over there, beyond the river, beyond the hills, is a weapon that might drive the demons out. We are here to get it and make sure it gets used. We must do this even if we all die as a result.”

  “But the demon city is over that way! I looked upon it from the high mountains and it took a part of my mind! No one can gaze upon it and not be changed for the worse! And going right there—they will capture you and you will become their slaves!”

  “We have to take the risk. It’s the same as the guards of a Family in your lives. They must be willing to give their lives for the greater good. You have no idea how many people are depending on us.”

  “He’s right, Littlefeet,” Kat Socolov agreed. “And we must begin today. You do not have to come. Stay with Father Chicanis, help him, and save him if you can from his wounds. The rest of us must cross the river.”

  Littlefeet didn’t want things to go that way, but he was also torn. To stay behind was weakness; he could not bear for them to think him less willing to face the demons than they. But he didn’t understand what they were trying to do, and he sure didn’t want to go that way.

  Spotty realized the situation and tried to suggest a middle ground. “Froggy can stay with the Father,” she suggested. “They will be good support for each other. Littlefeet and me will go with you.”

  N’Gana wasn’t all that sure he liked that. “Now, hold on! You said yourselves you don’t know what you’re getting into but it’s all bad. I’m not sure I want to worry about you two when we’re this close.”

  Littlefeet drew himself up to his full height, even though he barely came up to the colonel’s neck, and said, “We have survived all our lives on this world. You have not. We know the dangers and how to stalk the tall grass and dark groves. We will be no burden!”

  None of them really thought that they would after that. Still, one problem showed up almost immediately.

  “You mean neither of you can swim?” Harker was amazed. That seemed such an obvious survival skill.

  “Nobody knew how,” Littlefeet replied. “There were tales that people could swim in the water in the old days, but there was nobody to teach us.”

  Time was far too limited to give them lessons, but a variation of Littlefeet’s own idea of river travel wasn’t all that hard, as it turned out. Very near were some good-sized pieces of wood that had been blown down in the storms long ago, and with a little work and trimming here and there they made a serviceable float. And the log did float, a bit awkwardly, with Littlefeet and Spotty clinging to it for dear life as Harker and Socolov took turns guiding and pushing it.

  Much of the crossing turned out to be less swimming than navigating through river muck. This was a brand-new channel and a delta that was still forming. It was shallow in most places but had a sticky mud bottom that threatened in turns to drag them down or pull them under if they walked the bottom.

  By the coming of darkness they hadn’t quite made the opposite shore and were pretty well stranded on a wet, muddy bar a few meters out of the water. Their meager rations were long since exhausted; it would be a hungry and desolate night.

  The storm didn’t help, either; it put a huge amount of water into the river in a very short period of time and threatened to wash them off their precarious refuge. Finally, the storms passed as they always did and the sky began to clear.

  They were all covered in mud, and there wasn’t much that could be done about it in the dark. So, they just lay there and mostly stared up at the stars or dozed uneasily.

  “The grid is easy to spot tonight,” Harker commented to Kat. “Maybe it’s just being out here with nothing obscuring my vision for a couple of kilometers, but it’s a lot clearer.”

  She nodded. “I think if we can break one of the anchors, that whole thing will collapse, and with it their immediate hold on this continent. I wish I knew how to do that.”

  “You still think the grid’s more than just a surveillance system?”

  “I’m sure it is. I think it’s managing the whole continent and everybody on and in it. Their precious giant flowers, maybe even the way the so-called survivors are developing.”

  “Huh?” He was interested.

  “The more I think of those Hunters, and the more I talk to the two here, the more certain I am that the Titans are allowing the Families to survive, at least for a while, for some purpose. Maybe breeding stock for pets or guards or whatever. Hard to say. I’ve felt it since a few days after we arrived. Felt my own body respond to it. Talking with Spotty only confirmed it.”

  “You’ve felt it?” He knew that she’d been talking about this in some kind of nebulous ter
ms, but this was the first time she was willing to articulate her feelings.

  “Yes. You know, like most girls, I had the implant at fifteen and since then I haven’t worried about pregnancy or suffered more than a very mild and almost forgettable period. But a few days ago, I could feel it being canceled out. I started to have feelings I hadn’t had very strongly in a long time, and hadn’t particularly wanted, and I became aware of going on a fairly strict cycle. Spotty says that her periods are bloody and one’s due in a couple of days, and I’m beginning to suspect that I’m going to face the same thing. That’s going to be bad enough, but after Sergeant Mogutu and Father Chicanis’s arm I can handle it, I think. It’s—after that. From talking to Spotty, I get the impression that for most of their cycle the women had little or no sex nor much urge to do so, and that the men didn’t push it. That’s unnatural in that kind of primitive setting. But every month, they had a period of time when that’s all they wanted to do. Gene, that’s like animals in heat.”

  “Well, that could have just developed along with their other oddball notions,” he suggested.

  “No, I don’t think so. It’s more specific than that. And since, as we said about the Hunters, these kinds of mutations—in this case a throwback characteristic—would be unlikely in large numbers in so short a time, it had to be deliberate. But the Families weren’t ever captives of the Titans, nor did they spring from there. Conclusion: they are being kept in the mud deliberately. And that is the mechanism. It doesn’t have to be specific. If they’ve identified the latent genes, they could just turn them on. It’s a lot easier than engineering creatures like the Hunters, which may just be out there to keep the ‘normal’ population numbers under control.”

  “I liked it better when we thought they ignored us completely,” Harker said.

  “Yeah, me too, now. But I don’t think they have any sense of us as individuals, let alone equals. I don’t think they think that way at all. I think they’re just playing games or experimenting or whatever with whoever and whatever they happen to have around. And that now includes us.”

  That thought was always on his mind. And, he now realized, it was even more on hers. If she was right, they had very little time to complete their mission before the grid introduced some compelling and inconvenient distractions.

  • • •

  It wasn’t a big deal to make it the rest of the way once morning arrived, and all concerned were more than happy to get underway. They were hungry, thirsty, and exposed.

  Kat didn’t want to talk about it, but she’d slept very little overnight and had been nervously watching fuzzy egg-shaped balls of light dart back and forth in the distance, coming from and going to the very area they were headed for. Many times she worried that one would change course and notice them, all in the open on the mud bank, but, thank God, none did.

  Littlefeet had had the same kind of night. He didn’t wonder about the grid, which had always been there, or about the effects it might be having on him and Spotty. He did, however, worry about those fuzzy eggs speeding back and forth. Something in a corner of his mind sensed them. He could even, to some extent, link with them or with whatever was driving their craft and see a bit of what they saw and hear a bit of what they thought. Of course, none of their thoughts made any sense at all. It was just images and confusion, but it had an ugly, unclean feel to it every time. Like the anthropologist, he was very happy to get off that bar and back onto land.

  Finding some squash and melons was relatively easy; there were also several pools of reasonably clear water that was useful for washing off the mud, although none of them felt they would ever get all the stuff off.

  Having Littlefeet and Spotty as scouts proved very valuable, although somewhat embarrassing as well. Both of them were able to vanish and blend into the tall grasses and groves almost at will, and then reappear with barely a sound to report on what was ahead.

  What was ahead now was the ruins of Sparta.

  Not a century before, this had been home to perhaps half a million people. What remained were the grooves for the roads, and, here and there, the remnants of a building made of stone or brick or adobe mud, substances that the rain dissolved more slowly. There were also expanses of twisted metal and cracked concrete. It looked and felt like the ruins of a truly ancient place abandoned for thousands of years, not fewer than a hundred.

  Here and there were also very regular-looking holes in the ground, rather evenly spaced along the old boulevards.

  “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings,” Kat muttered, looking at the barren remnants of the city. “Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair.”

  “Eh? What?” Colonel N’Gana asked, startled.

  “Oh, just an ancient poem that stuck with me,” she told him. “It was supposedly on a stone marker in the middle of the desert in an ancient empire. The punch line was that only the marker remained. Every trace of the king and his awesome works was gone. This place reminds me of that. This city, or what’s left of it, and even this lonely, empty shell of a once vibrant world and civilization. How thin it all is! Our civilization, our institutions, beliefs, laws, comfortable ways of life. How fragile.”

  Harker looked around and understood her point. The colonel ignored it; it was irrelevant.

  “The pattern indicates a subway system,” N’Gana noted. “Of course, there wouldn’t be any trains left, nor power for them or for lights down there, either, but I wonder just how much survived below?”

  “The rains would run down into the tunnels and dissolve most of the stations and track bed,” Kat Socolov noted. “Besides, it would be darker than pitch down there and we have nothing to create light.” She sighed. “What a weird world this is! Some deep buried things from the past have a residual power supply so the looter could broadcast his warning before he died, and we have a crack at the codes, but just lighting a fire anywhere on the surface would ring alarms and bring the Titans. Crazy.”

  “Well, we’re going to have to work out some way to light our way once we get to Ephesus,” Harker noted. “And there has to be some way. Our original freebooter got down as far as he could until he was blocked by a cave-in. I wonder what he used for light? He faced the same bare-assed situation we do.”

  “It might be time this evening to see if our young natives have any ideas on how to light up the darkness,” Kat said thoughtfully.

  But they didn’t. Their entire lives had been devoted to making no signs, no impact at all that would draw attention to themselves and those around them. The humidity was so high in the region that wildfires were virtually unknown, but they associated fire with lightning and local blazes and were terrified of it. There was no way to know short of finding and joining a Family and watching the process, but Kat suspected that one aspect of training from the time when these people were very small was an absolute terror of fire.

  The only other possible source wasn’t that useful in the end, either. There were swarms of flying insects that gave off white and yellow light as they flew, probably to attract mates or perhaps to recognize one another as friends or signal poison to enemies. The stuff did glow, and held its glow for a while, but it was so weak and the quantity was so small that it wasn’t viable.

  “The Dutchman’s man found a way,” N’Gana pointed out. “If he did, then we will find one, too.”

  Through the night, and the next three nights, they heard a good deal of clicking from Hunters about in this region, which also implied that one or more Families also roamed the area and thus provided prey for them, but none of them, Hunters or Family members, came near, and all eventually faded into the darkness.

  There was one last river to cross as well. They could see the low rounded mountains of the coastal range ahead, just beyond it. This river was more difficult to handle, being old and deep, but Harker, using the knowledge of the two natives, was able to gather enough wood and strong vines to lash together a basic raft that, he hoped, could be steered with two poles. Not only the young native
s, but also Hamille was very happy to have this, even though it would not hold all of them. At least the river at this point was no more than a kilometer wide.

  “Two of us will have to swim it,” Harker told them. “One of us should be up there as the captain and handle one of the poles.”

  “Don’t put yourself out on my account,” Kat told him. “I can swim this.”

  “I Wasn’t even considering being gallant,” Harker replied. “I’ve handled these rafts before, although ones that were better made with stronger materials. I know how it handles. Colonel, are you up to a swim?”

  “I defer to you in this,” he replied. “I believe this sort of a swim would be easier than all the walking we’ve done.”

  There were some quick lessons on how to use the poles—logs chosen because they were somewhat flattened on one side—and particularly how to manage them when in the channel and it was too deep to reach bottom.

  “We’ll shove off in the raft first,” Harker told them. “Give us some time to get clear and some sense of how it handles, then follow. If anybody falls in, your job is to keep them from going under. If the raft comes apart in midriver, then each of you take a target of opportunity and I’ll take the one that’s left!”

  It didn’t come to that, although it was a pretty hairy operation. The raft was not really navigable; the logs slipped, opening and closing gaps that caused some considerable danger to those aboard. In the center channel, Harker used his pole alone as a makeshift rudder to allow the current to take them across without also sweeping them down to the ocean. Littlefeet looked scared to death, but he did his job, obeying Harker’s commands exactly, and they made it, having drifted a good two kilometers south while crossing.

  Once on the other side, the raft was quickly abandoned. Just in case they had to return this way, Harker and the two natives pulled it completely up onto the bank and then just into the thick trees beyond.

  They jogged back up to try and join the two swimmers as quickly as possible and made very good time. Harker was both pleased and amazed at how effortless this had become. He felt he was in better shape now than he’d been in training all those years ago.