Seeds of Destiny

by Thomas A Easton

  The starships were there too, four of them, positioned to surround the ruins of Worldtree Center and command the valley.

  “What are they doing?”

  Armed humans directed captive Racs into the Center’s ruins and set them to bending, lifting, sorting, finding. That much was clear even from a distance. What was not clear was what they found.

  Periodically a flurry of ringing blows told of steel striking stone.

  “What are they smashing?”

  The silence that followed that question suggested that everyone knew what was being destroyed.

  “Why?”

  No one asked, “What have we done?” The Rac religion was not one that insisted disaster was divine retribution for one’s sins.

  “They don’t even know what they’re doing,” said Sunglow.

  “Yes, they do,” said Gypsy Blossom. “Make no mistake. What they have done so far was no accident.”

  “They are the Enemy,” said Dotson. It seemed so clear now. “The Enemy the Founder warned us of. Destroying the Gypsies’ works. Destroying the Gypsies themselves if they ever find them. That’s why our Remakers fled their own world.”

  “Is it why they left us?”

  “Did they know this was coming?”

  “How could they? So long ago!”

  “We had to develop on our own,” said a young priest. “If they had stayed, we would forever have been as dependent as little children.”

  “To learn and prove worthy of their return,” said a second, older priest.

  The first priest glared. “To go forth and find them.”

  Dotson sighed. So many of the onlookers were watching him, not the priests, not Senior Hightail, not any other elder, more experienced Rac. Did stealing a seed and raising a bot, a remnant of the Gypsies who had Remade them all, make him a leader? He hoped they would not expect that of him, for he felt entirely inadequate.

  But they did. He could not escape that truth. He said, “First we have to survive the Enemy.”

  “We can’t fight them off.”

  “They’re too strong, too well armed, too powerful.”

  “We’re not defenseless.”

  “We take out military targets first. You can bet they do too.”

  “Then we should tell those humans,” said a voice from behind the crowd. When Dotson tried to see who spoke, he could not penetrate the darkness. “Go and speak to them, tell them we are not their enemies, not to be feared or hated, not to be smashed like dumbos in a hail storm.”

  “Yes!” cried the velvet-pelted Skin. “Shame them with moral force, as when the Farshorn blackbrows offered the slavers their entire tribe.”

  “The blackbrows are extinct,” someone said. “The slavers sterilized them.”

  “The humans are just as shameless,” said Gypsy Blossom. “They will not listen.”

  “We should try anyway.”

  “What else can we do?”

  “They’ll destroy you. Or turn you into slaves like those.” The bot gestured toward the Racs who were picking through the rubble while humans stood aside, holding guns.

  “We have to try!”

  “Yes!” said Sunglow, and when Dotson grabbed her arm as if to keep her from leaving his side for the sunlit, cloud-rimmed valley outside, all ruination and death, she twisted free. “I’ll go!”

  “No!” cried Dotson, his hand still stretched toward her, the fingers working as if he could bind her with the air itself. How could he let her go outside and confront the slaughterers? They had no tolerance, no mercy, no compunction, no reason, no love for the strange and different.

  “You will die,” said the bot.

  “We have to take that chance,” said the voice from the rear.

  Other voices sounded agreement, eagerness to grasp whatever hope they could, desperation, and yet a note of resigned awareness that their chances of success or even survival were nearly nil.

  Yet were their chances any better if they stayed within the caverns?

  How could Dotson refuse to let his mate go forth? Her life would be at stake, yes. But it would be no less at stake if she remained with him.

  And how could anyone possibly consider him a leader when he could not sway them on this?

  “The bot should go with us too.”

  Dotson began to shake his head, but Gypsy Blossom was already speaking. “No. That would only inflame them.”

  By the next dawn, someone had positioned a small truck at the end of the Turnstone tunnel. Dotson Barbtail stood on its flat bed instead of the rock, and now there was room for others to jostle beside him, all eager to see what happened. Gypsy Blossom stood just before him, the perfume of her petals swamped by the stench that rode that fraction of the valley’s damp air that floated over the pile of rubble.

  Many of those gathered in the tunnel were watching Dotson and the bot, some overtly, some more cautiously, pretending to stare into the valley but shifting their eyes toward the pair whenever they thought they would not be noticed. One was the representative of their gods. The other was that representative’s foster parent. Perhaps he was an intercessor for them all. Certainly their minds equipped him with an aura of potency.

  The bot hardly seemed to notice. Dotson squirmed beneath the weight of all the attention and forced his own mind outward, to where Sunglow, his mate, risked her life, his sanity, on a reckless gamble.

  The night had thinned the ranks of the demonstrators. Hours of reflection and talk and anxiety had dimmed their hope that the humans could simply be told what evil they were doing, shown that Racs were no threat to their lives or world, persuaded to depart what was left of this world. Yet enough remained, and in the hour before dawn small groups of Racs had stepped or crawled from the mouths of each of the many tunnels that pierced the bluffs, leaving the safety of the caverns to protest in the only way they thought they had.

  Now they walked toward the center of the valley, picking their way through mist and drizzle and over the rubble that had been their homes two days before, converging slowly on the four starships and the ruins of Worldtree Center.

  “Idiots,” Dotson breathed. He wished he could have stopped them all, certainly Sunglow but not just her. All of them. For all of them would…

  The humans knew they were coming. The starships closed their entrance ports. Men appeared on the edges of the ruins that had been the center of the Rac civilization. They wore broad-brimmed hats and long coats from which the water dripped. In their arms were guns of unfamiliar shape.

  “The size of those magazines,” someone said. No one objected that she had to be guessing what the curved projections from the guns were. Function and form never went together more obviously than with weapons.

  When the Racs within the ruins paused in their labors to see what was going on, one of their guards fired into the air. The slaves obediently returned to sorting through the rubble. One crew seemed to be clearing the floor of what had been the Great Hall. To one side was a stack of wet-glistening metal, the antique armor that had been on display there, more battered now than ever.

  The rhythmic sound of steel on rock paused and resumed.

  Was that Sunglow drawing near the humans and their guns? But there were several golden blonds out there in the valley, some of them tailed, some tailless, and every pelt looked darker when it was wet. He could not tell.

  He squeezed Gypsy Blossom’s shoulders in his hands until she squirmed in protest.

  The demonstrators now formed a thin, defenseless line just beyond the exposed foundations of Worldtree Center. An even thinner line of humans, each one standing on some stub of wall or block of fallen masonry, faced them, their guns leveled.

  A Rac stepped forward from the line of demonstrators. Who was it? Not Sunglow. Wrong color. But who? The one called Skin? Someone else?

  Was he speaking? Or she? Were the humans answering? Dotson could hear nothing. He wished he had binoculars or a telescope. Then he would at least be able to see moving lips and expressive
faces.

  The tableau did not hold long enough for anyone to fetch such things, even if they were available.

  The speaker for the demonstrators jerked, flung up his hands, and toppled. An instant later, the barking burst of gunfire reached the watchers in the tunnel. Most gasped. A few screamed. More guns added to the noise. Gypsy Blossom said, “I warned…”

  Now more of the demonstrators were falling.

  The rest were fleeing.

  The humans were leaning forward, raising their guns to their shoulders to improve their aim, running in pursuit.

  The sound of gunfire was constant, abrading the ears even as it brought down the Racs.

  Few reached the safety of the tunnels.

  None reached the Turnstone tunnel, where Dotson Barbtail waited for his Sunglow to return.

  Dotson did not leave the back of the parked truck all the rest of that day. For hours he stood still, staring through the narrow gap between the mound of rubble and the roof of the tunnel. His hands remained on Gypsy Blossom’s shoulders, as tight as ever, tighter, and the bot no longer protested.

  A few of his fellow Racs remained, staring alternately at the valley outside the tunnel and the pair that stood so still.

  The light rain had stopped. The clouds were still there, though they broke from time to time to let the sun shine through. When that happened, the valley steamed.

  What was he looking for? Dotson hardly knew. The dead Racs would never rise and walk again. The humans were making sure of that.

  One of the fleeing protestors had nearly made it to safety before he fell. Now he lay on a scrap of bare pavement, legs twitching uselessly, blood pooled around his waist, watching as two humans stalked across the rubble.

  One of the humans trained his rifle toward the nearest tunnel. The other kicked the dying Rac in the head. When that drew no response, he put the muzzle of his own rifle to the Rac’s right eye and pulled the trigger.

  When they were gone, a single half-grown Rac dashed from the tunnel and fell on her knees beside the body.

  A moment later, she too was dead. Perhaps her scream of grief and pain had drawn the humans back, or perhaps they had simply been waiting out of sight.

  What was Dotson looking for? Sunglow was out there somewhere, wasn’t she?

  He wished he dared go hunting for her, but there was no sense in that. He would only die as well.

  Some of those who shared his vigil left and returned and left again. Someone brought him and Gypsy Blossom food. He ate, and dimly he was aware that the bot needed sunlight as much as food, sunlight that was hardly to be had where they were forced to hide.

  Voices murmured behind him and to the sides.

  “What can we do now?”

  “It’s hopeless.”

  “We can’t even get out of this hole.”

  “The tunnels are plugged even worse up top. Buildings fell in them.”

  “I heard someone tried to make it out past the landing field.”

  “Tried, huh.”

  “Yeah. They’re as dead as those idiots out there.”

  When Dotson stirred at that, Gypsy Blossom seemed to read the protest in his mind. “They were idiots,” she said. “So was she. Most people are smart enough, when they burn one hand, not to stick the other in the fire. And you called them that yourself.”

  He knew he should feel something, anything. He should glower and grieve and rave. He should seize a weapon and charge out of the tunnel, assault the humans single-handed, bare-handed even, and die in raging honor. He should join Sunglow, wherever she now was, idiot or no, as soon as he was able.

  But he didn’t. He let himself subside at the touch of the bot’s hand. He watched the valley floor as tendrils of vapor rose and the ground dried. He wished that he could see the bodies more closely. Was that a blond? It was hard to tell, for it was shadowed by a piece of rubble. So was that one, and that other was so stained by mud and gore that he could not tell.

  That one? No. The color was right, but its abdomen was bloated by rot. It had been dead too long, ever since the initial bombardment.

  “They’ve found a hole in the city. Working on it now, clearing it, making it larger.”

  “Are there— ”

  “Yeah. But they won’t be able to see much after dark. And there’s plenty of cover.”

  A hand fell on his shoulder as firmly as his own still lay on Gypsy Blossom’s. “You’re Dotson Barbtail? The guy with the bot? C’mon. You’re wanted.”

  He tried to ignore the hand, the voice, the tug away from the view of the valley where he had last seen Sunglow, but then “Why?” sprang into his mind, and he turned.

  “C’mon.”

  The other Rac’s pelt was scorched bald in spots, and his eyes seemed as glazed as Dotson’s own. Yet that did not keep him from leading Dotson and Gypsy Blossom down the tunnel at a trot. They rounded a bend and passed through a blackout curtain to find bright electric lights. The power came from the same underground stream that filled the reservoirs. They turned left and entered a cavernous room packed with refugees. Beyond that was a narrow corridor. They passed a chamber that still retained curtains of flowstone, and then they came to a low-ceilinged garage whose walls were lined with emergency vehicles.

  “The infirmary,” said his guide. “Where the medical supplies already were. She’s over here.”

  They rounded an ambulance whose polished surface was filmed with dust lofted by all the explosions and fires outside. Dotson let his fingers follow the trails someone else had left across the vehicle’s windows. When he reached their end, there was the storeroom, a walled-off portion of the room, an open door, Racs moving efficiently in and out with bandages and intravenous bottles and folded stretchers.

  “Where?”

  “Not many made it, you know. But she did. Got to Skyclaw, three tunnels over.”

  A few feet more. A row of unfolded stretchers on the floor, some of their occupants quite still, others shifting in obvious pain, that one staring. Staring at him.

  He almost collapsed as the tension left his muscles. “You made it.”

  “I’ll leave you here.” He hardly noticed the pat on his shoulder.

  Sunglow held up an arm engulfed from wrist to shoulder in a cast. She also wore a heavy bandage, stained red with blood, on one thigh. “I was lucky.”

  “Luckier than you deserved,” said Gypsy Blossom.

  Dotson only knelt in the narrow space between her stretcher and the next and seized her other hand. He could say nothing more for many minutes.

  “Where’d they all go?”

  Dotson Barbtail was once more on the bed of the truck, once more watching the valley and the humans. But now Sunglow was with him, perched on a high stool to take the strain off her leg, her arm in a sling. Gypsy Blossom paced behind them.

  The sky was clear. There was no sign of the Racs who had been searching through the rubble. The smashing clang of steel on rock had ceased.

  Humans stood on high points of the ruins, rifles in their arms. Half a dozen were clustered around a boxy, yellow-painted machine near the base of the Worldtree. Two more were on the flange near the Worldtree’s top, anchoring a triangular derrick from which dangled a pair of cables.

  They had already pushed the bodies of First-Stop’s heroes over the edge.

  “Yesterday. While you were gone,” said a Rac whose gray pelt was marked with swirls of brownish green. He was pointing toward one of the starships, the one with Saladin painted on its side. “They herded them together beneath its tail. Then they fired the engines. Just a burp, really, but…” His voice cracked.

  Dotson shuddered.

  “They must have found whatever they were looking for,” said the other. “They didn’t need them anymore.”

  “What are we going to do?” Sunglow’s shoulders slumped, and she spoke in a thready whine. She no longer showed any sign that she doubted the humans were indeed the Enemy.

  Dotson shook his head. He had no idea.
<
br />   “We’ve got a tunnel open to the top,” said the other Rac. “We can escape.”

  “There’s nowhere to go,” said Sunglow.

  Gypsy Blossom stopped her pacing and leaned toward the opening at the end of the Turnstone tunnel. “Outside,” she said, and her roots uncurled from the ruff around her shins. “There isn’t any dirt in here.” She pointed at the pile of rubble between them and the light of day. “That’s all, and it’s no good. It tastes of blood.”

  “There’s light,” said Dotson.

  “It’s not the same. Not right.”

  “It has to do.”

  “Couldn’t I go out after dark?”

  “They’d see you.” Humans patrolled the valley at night now, watching for Racs who might be gathering to attack, or merely to protest. Gunfire punctuated the darkness, and in the morning there were more bodies. Some of the bodies were those of wild Racs. “And then— ”

  “I’d hide!”

  One of the humans at the top of the Worldtree grasped the cables hanging from the derrick and swung off the flange. The derrick didn’t twitch. He swung back, leaned over the edge, and waved and yelled at those below. They grabbed their end of the cables and attached them to their machine.

  “That’s a pulley at the top,” said Sunglow. “A cable loop. And that’s the motor.”

  A small truck appeared from behind the Toledo, its bed stacked with orange canisters. It approached the Worldtree and the humans. It stopped, and the humans began to unload it. A few minutes later the first of the canisters had been attached to the cable and was rising into the air.

  “That’s one of our trucks.”

  “What are they doing?”

  Dotson shook his head. He had no idea except for the certainty that the humans could be doing nothing good. They were the Enemy.

  The blackout curtains kept every hint of light contained. There were no reflections off the tunnel walls, no dim glow about the tunnel mouth, no hint that the bluffs hid within them a host of Racs.

  Nor did Dotson and Sunglow and Gypsy Blossom carry any light as they groped toward the dim skyglow at the mouth of Turnstone tunnel, banged her cast on a truck fender, shushed each other urgently, crawled over the mound of rubble and through the narrow opening, and stared into the darkness that engulfed the valley. The only lights came from the viewports of the starships and the windows of those surviving buildings of Worldtree Center the humans had occupied. The sounds were a scrabble of claws on stone, a distant footstep or cough, a rattle of equipment.