Outies

by Pournelle, J. R.

  And indeed they did. He stopped before a door just outside the cargo bay, marked only by a small plate that read “Maintenance Access.” He tapped softly. Barely a tap, even. More like stroking the door with his fingertips. It opened, silently. “Twenty minutes to Fling,” he murmured. Asach Quinn nodded, stepped into the corridor, satchel in one hand, a sealed hard case in the other. Fox pulled the door shut noiselessly, and led the way.

  Inside the cargo bay, they skirted two enormous, white, blunt-nosed cylinders cradled in Fling racks. Each bore a square red cross, half-encircled by a bright red crescent. They stopped at a double-walled safety lock beside the bay door. Quinn knelt on the floor, and unlocked the case. Three objects were lodged in form-fitting impact foam inside. The first was cylindrical, the size of a man’s fist, with several fittings around a collar at one end. The second was a spider of tubing, laced through a solid tubular framework with quick-connectors at either end and couplings at the ends of each hose. Third, there was a sphere, small enough to be enclosed by a woman’s hands cupped fingertip-to-fingertip, made of a tough, flexible composite compound.

  Asach locked one end of the frame to the cylinder, then dogged a set of couplings to the collar fittings. Next, from the satchel came a tough, turgid, multi-celled, doughnut-shaped bladder, with more fittings ringing one base. Asach slipped it over the hose assembly, fitting side away from the cylinder, dogged down the other end of the hose couplings, and snapped the sphere to the top end of the frame. The whole thing—sphere, upon toroid surrounding the frame assembly, upon cylinder—was little longer than the distance from Asach’s elbow to wrist, and light enough to lift easily with one hand.

  Fox tapped a code sequence, then pressed his thumb into the pad beside the safety lock. The door slid open. Coils of retractable lifeline were stowed neatly at four anchor points on the inner walls; it was otherwise empty. Asach slid the assembled contraption inside. It fit, just. Fox closed the door with another key sequence. It was still air-filled; still pressurized. It would not be for much longer.

  A disembodied voice echoed in the quiet. “Commander Fox?”

  “Present.”

  “Cargo Bay cycle commencing, 60 seconds. Clear, or abort?”

  “Clearing.”

  “Aye-aye, sir. Clear to commence in fifty-nine. Fifty-eight. Fifty-seven…”

  It took only a few moments to traverse the bay, exit the hold, and seal the door. Fox remained at the view panel. The faint hum as air was sucked from the bay and recompressed somewhere in the bowels of the ship was audible for a few moments, then faded as the hold neared vacuum. The fling racks began sliding along their rails. The bay doors opened to space. A few stars glittered. Most were obscured by the Coal Sack.

  Fox put the readout on audio. “…Three. Two. One. Cargo Bay cycle complete. Commencing Fling sequence. Fling in F minus…”

  The rail extender arms rolled the medical supply canisters out the doors, injected them into the Flinger, then folded back inside. The bay doors closed. The faint thrum of the charging Flinger pulsed through the hull.

  “…Five. Four. Three. Two. One.”

  The ship shuddered slightly as the linear accelerator shoved twenty tons of medical supplies toward the Sorting Station in the Oquirrh foothills outside Saint George on New Utah. As Nauvoo Vision slowed and prepared to drop into geosynchronous orbit, the cannisters would blaze down through the atmosphere, ablating heat from their noses, drogue chutes jerking them to drop to the ground, spilling their contents like Santa’s reindeer making a clumsy chimney-top landing.

  And, unnoticed alongside the Flinging, the safety lock cycled. Or rather, failed to cycle. Instead, its outer door merely opened, and the donut with its ball-nose and soda-can tail puffed out into space like so much jetsam. Floating alongside Nauvoo Vision, the assemblage coasted in toward New Utah for awhile. Then, as the medical cargo raced off to its mountain rendezvous, and as the ship dropped into its parking space, the little ball sailed on by itself, a speck, alone with its own thoughts in the vastness.

  Its own thoughts were simple. They went something like this:

  “…Four. Three. Two. One.”

  And then the tiny rocket fired.

  1

  Visitation Rights

  Sargon came, to fill the sanctuary like a cargo-ship; to fuel its great furnaces; to see that its canals spew waters of joy, to see that the hoes till the arable tracts and that barley covers the fields; to turn the house of Kish, which was like a haunted town, into a living settlement again.

  —The Legend of Sargon, Segment A

  Farmer Moties tend crops, which grow on whatever land is not covered by buildings or roads. They ignore anything except plants and anything that seems to threaten the plants, being essentially agricultural relatives of Engineers. Their hands and feet are adapted for digging and tamping down soil. They can operate machinery such as tractors.

  Runners are employed carrying messages and are much taller than other Moties, but the Runner is mostly leg. One variety of Runner has multicolored layers of erectile hairs that allow it to camouflage itself while delivering messages.

  —Wikipedia

  The Barrens, New Utah, 3049

  Laurel stopped. Rather, Agamemnon stopped, eyes bulging, a thousand purring cats roaring in his nose, shoulders quivering, hunched down on his hunkers ready to whirl, or bolt, or spring Pegasus-like straight up into the sky.

  But Agamemnon did none of those things. He waited, trembling and snorting, anchored like lichen to a rock, because Laurel told him to. Not in words, but in body: a faint flinch of her shoulders, and he would have whirled fast as a wind devil; a faint rock of her seat, and he would have crossed the plain as a flaming chestnut rocket. Given an almost imperceptible scrunch-and-release of all her muscles at once, he would have imploded upward, coiled as a springbok, lashing backwards with steel-shod heels and screaming a battle roar.

  But Laurel froze stock-still, not breathing, not blinking, paralyzed with shock. Because before her, spanning from rim to rim of what should have been the prickly scrubland of the Borrego Valley, stretched a shimmering haze of aquamarine. It rippled like a gentle sea. And, lurching upright, staring straight into Agamemnon’s white-rimmed eyes, was the most enormous mole she’d ever seen. A disfigured mole. A deformed mole. Not a cutesy, myopic mole in a children’s storybook, but a brute of a thing, with hands big as garden spades, tipped with claws strong as the tangs on a bucket loader, muscles thick as bridge cables locking its head to its arms.

  For its part, the mole leaned forward, glared, and let loose a low-pitched chittering whirr, like the scolding of an angry wren. This proved too much for Agamemnon who, teetering among left, right, forward, and up, lurched backward in a valiant attempt to do what was demanded of him, while nevertheless exercising prudent equine judgment. At this, the giant mole paused, turned, trundled back to the field’s edge, and disappeared into the aquamarine sea of wire-grass. Laurel blinked, then rubbed sweat from her eyes. A gap remained where the stalks had parted, and an iridescent shimmer streaked toward the horizon, trilling like a hummingbird, answered by a buzzing wren-whirr from deep inside the reeds.

  Laurel winced left, and Agamemnon whirled and blazed toward home.

  Farmer John felt the danger well before he heard it, and heard it well before he saw it. Both “felt” and “heard” being misnomers for what he sensed, but the best translation possible for what was transmitted to his brain by two specialized sets of bones.

  The first, dense as tusk and capped with a claw hard as dentine, articulated to the knobkerrie that passed for a wrist, and thence up his arm directly to his skull. With hands buried in earth, Farmer John Felt the regular plonk-plonk-plonk-plonk of Agamemnon’s hoof beats, far in the distance, reverberating through his skull like timbales on tympani.

  The second, a cluster of tiny, moveable pitot tubes surrounded by a pliable sail of skin, concentrated whispers of air-propagating frequencies well above the range of human hearing. When standing e
rect, Farmer John could bend the sail at whim, absorbing sounds as faint as the squeak of grating sand or air turbulating past nose-hairs. So having Felt the ground tremble in his hands, Farmer John stood up, and Heard wind whistling far away in Agamemnon’s nose and Laurel’s ears, beyond his line of vision.

  He then crouched low again, two fingers thrust into the ground, his ear bending the shape of the wind. His leathery face, incapable of expression, did not register his horror as a flame-red, six-limbed obscenity topped the small rise not ten paces before him, then lurched to a stop, quivering and whistling, but saying nothing that he could understand.

  Farmer John had no Warriors. He had no Master within earshot. He had no idea what the far moon he was looking at. So he did what best he could. He stood bolt upright, leaned forward, and screamed “get the far moon off my land, you mooning pest of a herbivore!”

  Of course, Farmer John did not really say “herbivore.” He said something probably better translated as: “you brainless, gluttonous progeny of vermin.” Further, he had no way of knowing for sure whether the thing was an herbivore, but if it wasn’t, he didn’t want it plonking through his fields, and if it was, he didn’t want it chomping through them, either.

  In any event, it backed away. He kept his ear on it, but turned and trudged down to his concession, maintaining full height to connote his full authority. The two Runners at Post 10 shifted uneasily, their colors rippling in tune with the shimmering field behind them. “Hey Longshanks,” he barked. “Go tell Lord Sargon that we’ve got company.”

  Actually, it took him a lot longer to say this, because he barked orders until the runners were out of earshot, and conveyed rather a lot more information than that, including the height, color(s), number of (apparent) limbs, eyes, nostrils, and other various protuberances demarcating his unwanted visitor; plus his best assessment of sentience (none) and numbers (one). Also, as the Runners sped toward the far horizon, he made them repeat back every line of the report, to ensure that they’d gotten the full message, and that correctly.

  Then, immediate danger past, and duty done, he got back to soil testing. He had to figure out how best to cope with all those toxins.

  Longshanks Watched Farmer John and his sweet field of blue-green manna. It was not their job or duty to Watch anything else. It was their Right and Duty (the two words better being combined into an indivisible whole that meant both things at once) to stand like gateposts, their iridescent hair rippling with the breeze, rendering them all but invisible. They Watched Farmer John closely, for Farmer John bore immense responsibility, including the (to them) paramount responsibility of feeding Longshanks.

  Actually, their name was something more like: “Longshanks, Post 10, Concession John, Eanna House, Sargon Protectorate, Mesolimeris, Mannaworld.” As a pair, they’d Watched Farmer John faithfully their entire lives, inheriting their post from their parents, never falling into land debt, and never aspiring to any other Post. For his part, Farmer John might address all Longshanks as if interchangeable, but Longshanks 10 John had been Mentioned in Dispatches for their speed and accuracy, and Sargon himself had appointed them to that Watch.

  There was no better posting. Runners in Farmer John’s employ always ate. They were never sent on spurious missions. They were never beaten or tortured. They were given clear orders and drilled to succeed. So when Farmer John bellowed “Hey, moonbrains, get moving!’ what happened at Post 10 ceased to be their responsibility, and from that moment, poised on tiptoe, they cared only for four orders: Speed. Direction. Recipient. Message. When they heard the code most dreaded by any Runner: All Due Haste, they did not pause to flinch. They lit out like silent typhoons, catching and repeating the remaining orders on the fly, burning every last reserve to maintain near-invisibility as they streaked toward the horizon.

  Other Runners might have held something back, terrified of being left like gasping fish at the end of that most dreaded journey’s end, too depleted even to stand, used up in a final dash for an employer’s whim. But their great race anchored on one end by Farmer John’s meadows, and on the other by Sargon’s fealty, Longshanks sped toward the certain knowledge that, at day’s end, they would Eat. Along the way, they repeated and drilled one another on The Message, as insurance, should either fail The Mission.

  Agamemnon stood spread-eagled, head hanging, chest heaving, sweat steaming from every pore, air blasting through his nostrils with the force of bellows. A stock tank stood within five paces, and his belly ached with longing. But, throwing herself from his back before he’d even staggered to a lurching halt, Laurel had shouted “Stand!” So he stood, heaving and gasping, a Good Boy, doing as he was told.

  There were significant benefits to being a Good Boy. Chief among them was Laurel. When Laurel was there, he knew Everything. He knew his Purpose. He knew his Rank. He knew that Nothing would harm him. He knew that there would be Hay. He knew that sometimes, if he was a Very Good Boy, there might be Treats. Agamemnon did not always understand why there could not be Hay now (or, for that matter, Water), but if Laurel said No, she meant No, and Hay or Water would have to wait. In any case, at the moment Agamemnon was chiefly preoccupied with Air, so even though he was fairly sure that he had been a Very Good Boy, he was willing to gasp and fix his rolled eyes on the ranch house door, through which Laurel disappeared with a bang that made him jump a little.

  Agamemnon did not like Banging. In his memory, Banging went along with Screaming, which was of itself unpleasant, but where there was Banging and Screaming there was generally also an aching insufficiency of Hay, Water and Air, and the dread possibility of Biting and Kicking. However, at the moment, nothing unpleasant seemed to be happening, except for his thirst and the absence of Laurel, so he relaxed a bit. As he caught his breath he nickered once, in a low, snuffley, hopeful way, but the door remained steadfastly closed. So Agamemnon sighed, cocked one hip to rest the opposite leg, pricked his ears to listen for her return, and settled in to Wait.

  Collie Orcutt sat, elbows before him, head in hands, hunched over accounts, the remaining litter of paper shoved to one side of his desk, near tears.

  Beyond the window, through which he could not bear to look, sprigs of dead grass extended in neat rows from doorstep to horizon, crunchy with the heat. He had slaughtered or sold most of his stock. His wells were nearly dry. His stores were depleted. What had once been a mountain view was ground down to dust and slag, the line of haulpaks gone, the boom over, with nothing to show for it all but debt. He was in too deep to leave, he was in to deep to stick it out, and he was long past imagining real solutions.

  So there he sat, silently damning the Land Man, staring numbly at the unrelenting columns of terrible news, listing to the terrible, drying wind, mourning for his dream, with no idea how to tell his friends, let alone his creditors.

  He started from his chair at the sudden banging of the back door, followed by bootsteps thundering across the porch and through the kitchen. He had no time to react before his office door flew open, cracking against the wall behind, and a dust-caked Laurel, stinking of horse-sweat, burst in, shouting.

  “They’ve come! They’ve tapped the Aquifer at Borrego Springs! There’s salt meadow growing from Butterfield Station to Ocotillo Wells! “

  Orcutt stood stupidly, frozen in place. The Borrego seep was a pathetic trickle of alkaline water, supporting nothing but poisonous crustaceans. The aquifer beneath its ancient soil was a hell-worthy soup of sulfurous brine. Nobody went there. Nothing grew there. Nothing could grow there. It was a wasteland: a waste of space, and a waste of time.

  “Uncle Collie!”

  He looked at her, still uncomprehending.

  “They’re making hay!”

  Which was followed by a sharp whinny, accompanied by emphatic banging at the back door that made Orcutt jump.

  Then he burst into tears of joy.

  Then he plunked back into his chair, sobbing, “Praise Him for Salvation!”

  A ripple wavered up the vast, mu
d-brick staircase as Longshanks, now a pall of matted grey fur, blurred past and upward, their chittering All Due Haste code preceding and following in a Doppler blur. Behind the ripple, Warriors snapped back into present-and-lock-arms position, rumbling in a dull roar, “Make Way, the Protector’s Courier!”

  Their message delivered even as they ran; their encrypted Code for Lord Sargon’s Ears Only; the great Lord was roused from his accounting chambers and met them where they collapsed, spent, on the glassy floor of the entry hall.

  Doctors converged, hovering without acting. Sargon clenched the gripping hand.

  “Let them Eat!”

  A sharp prick, and the Runners felt the sheer bliss of Manna, flooding calories, electrolytes, antioxidants, analgesics, and blessed, pure water into what passed for their bloodstreams.

  Sargon bent over them, emoting so softly that only they could hear, and enwrapped each small head with two gentler, softer hands. Longshanks wriggled slightly.

  “Let them Rejoice!”

  The Runner’s eyes rolled, the only expression of which they were capable. Their bodies arced in unison as a new substance, sweet as pure euphoria, flooded every pore of their being. Their hair pulsed with all the colors of shattered light as they rolled upright, springing to their tiptoes as daintily as if they had spent the day merely Watching, and faced one another in ecstatic disbelief.

  Holding light hands steady upon them, raising the gripping hand still clenched, Sargon roared or screamed sounds lower and higher than all hearing. In frequencies felt (or heard) by every caste, The Sacred Words poured from Sargon’s very head and feet:

  “Let them Marry!”