Outies

by Pournelle, J. R.

  The wind blew steadily across the rim, and eventually Asach worked out why the meerschaum seemed so polished: in a sense, it was. The prevailing wind passed over the lip at a nock, sending it into a swirl through the bowl. The heavier particles had long since piled up in the lee corner; only the lightest dust was blown across, sweeping and polishing the stone smooth before it. The rim was far from solid: Asach could see nooks and caves riddling the face. Some whistled spookily as the dust devils blew past, or in.

  As the sun passed overhead, then sank, high cirrus played tricks with the light. A rosy glow suffused the dome, feathering like wisps of smoke. Abandoning the particle-picking effort, Asach stood and peered again, eyes squinted. Translucent light was dancing across the stone in milky swirls. Asach looked around in vain for a source; peered again. But the light was clearly coming from within the dome itself: swirling, pooling, blue and green for an instant, then winking out. Agitated, Asach looked to the others. They were smiling; clapping, waving: “He wakes!” they called. “Here come the Seers, now!”

  As Laurel topped the crest, another singing band in tow, dusk fell with that sudden plummet of the sun felt only in the mountains. The pilgrims now stood hand-to-hand in an enormous semicircle around the rim, their Seers spaced behind them. The colors showed up stronger in the gloam, and the dome itself glowed brighter: now milky; now cloudy; now clear.

  “Now!” screamed Laurel, “Now! Avert Your Gaze! He Wakes!”

  In that instant, Asach became intently aware of standing on the top of a volcano. Of the implications of a magma surge close enough, and hot enough, to excite that much meerschaum beyond playing at iridescent halos, and into emitting clear, incandescent, light. Of themselves, Asach’s eyelids clamped shut; of itself, Asach’s head snapped down. But like looking at the sun, mere eyelids were not enough to block the dazzle of brilliant green that bathed the dome, or the long green line that shot from the crater’s core straight up into the sky.

  Carefully, face pointed resolutely downward, Asach opened and blinked one dazzled eye. The ghastly glow painted the little carved figure at Asach’s feet in ghoulish light. Blinking furiously to erase the retinal image, Asach opened the other eye and tried to focus. Made out the odd little noseless face, with its floppy hood and twisted grin, two arms folded across its chest and—and—and... And, Asach realized, as the enormous laser winked out, plunging the figure into darkness, a third arm stretching downward, three fingers extended, in the Motie signal for: “Halt!”

  Involuntarily, still staring at the ground, Asach blurted: “Oh. My. God.”

  “Yes!” shouted Laurel. “Yes! Who among us could revel in His Gaze and not believe!”

  But all Asach could think was: Vacation’s over. Time to get organized.

  The vermin crawled over almost every route leading into Beacon Hill, but never used this morning side face, because their cattle could not climb. From a distance, the cliff appeared to be sheer, but even one echo-chirp showed it to be a porous mix of tufa and tuff: easy to grip, and easy to climb.

  Side Captain Enheduanna led the assault, with two hand of Warriors in column behind, the slight wind erasing their file of tracks even as they moved on. On crossing the final line of dunes before the base they spread in a horizontal array, so that no fall by one could take down another. The Warriors kicked, then stepped, then kicked, then stepped their sharp-toed, horny feet into the face and passed the time with a marching ditty, chanted down the rank one line per trooper.

  Her song sung

  With joy of heart

  In the plain

  With joy of heart

  She sings and she

  Soaks her mace

  In blood and gore

  And smashes heads

  And butchers prey

  With eater-ax

  And bloodied spear

  All day

  They barked the final words in unison, then began again, on and on. Of course, the chant did not merely pass the time. It enabled each to know, at any moment, exactly where the others were.

  It was not usual for a Master to accompany so small a Warrior detail into the field, but Lord Sargon had been quite explicit: “We would know the Enemy. Bring one to us. Unharmed.”

  Enheduanna shook off a wave of disgust. The notion of vermin owning cattle was anathema. Vermin they were: they slept in the field with their cattle; they drank the fluids of their cattle; they clad themselves in the hair of their cattle; they burned the dung of their cattle, they trekked without regard to the ar of their neighbors, even as they laid waste to their own fields. Like vermin; like scavengers, that swarmed on the outskirts of Houses, fashioning bowers of baubles stolen from trash-piles, consuming the garbage carefully layered for compost by the Farmers, and stripping the ground around them to bare dirt. In such a case, absent their Master’s Voice, Warriors could hardly be expected to show restraint. They were what they were.

  They cleared the softer rock, and now took greater care as they made their way up weathered laterite. A pair of Warriors flanked their Captain, each alternately driving home a chrshnar, the eater-ax, the razor-sharp and tungsten-tough Warrior’s fighting claw, to serve as living pitons for the clawless Master.

  They paused on a step, where the baked surface peeled away from a crumbling granite core. This would be the tricky part: from there, they would move laterally, to a large cave mouth called Esker’s Tongue, named for the line of sand and gravel that poured from it to the plain below. There were almost no holds for the last post’s span: the Warriors would have to leapfrog where needed as a living chain for the Master. So, to prepare, they rested for a very short while.

  The night was dark, but the cave was black. It would be better to have a Miner. Enheduanna did not bother to think too late now. It was what it was. The Warrior’s vision would get them most of the way. The rest, Enheduanna knew by heart.

  Just shy of the exits, as a greenish glow made visible the porous walls around them, the hand leaders barked once. Enheduanna’s nictitating membranes snapped shut, as did all the others’, shielding their eyes from the dazzling glare as they sprinted out.

  It was not Enheduanna’s job to get them to their prey. The hand leaders knew their mission. They hurtled up the rim, jerking to a halt just as the green beacon light winked out. They crouched among the rocks, two Warriors covering Enheduanna’s white fur with their black. The opal meerschaum glow etched the bowl with stark shadows. They listened. The vermin had begun their hideous noises again. They waited, counting silently: digit…thumb…palm…hand… Then, just before they’d counted to five side, with their third eyelids again clamped tight shut, they burst upwards over the lip, their black shapes haloed, like demons shot from within the beacon.

  The leaders snarled, and Enheduanna heard a clack as both posts spread their chrshnar in unison. “Hold!” barked Enheduanna, and strode forward between them, white fur glowing in the backlight as the beacon winked out again.

  They opened their eyes for clearer vision, fully prepared to lunge, but a bizarre sight greeted them. They had expected—something. Stunners. Piercers. Shock-bolts. Poisons. Gas. Something from the centuries of recorded armed resistance. But these vermin merely—faced them. Some standing, some on their knees, but facing them, arms wide, palms forward, reaching overhead, bodies swaying side to side—some even swooning in their tracks, without a hand laid on them. Then one separated from the group, stepping forward slowly.

  “Hold” snarled Enheduanna again, as the figure sank to its knees, clasping its hands in some incomprehensible gesture.

  It Spoke; its voice reverberating for all to hear. “Behold! The Revelation of His Angels! It is the Prophesy! They are here!”

  Enheduanna looked down at the jabbering thing. It had the strangest eyes. They were brilliant aquamarine, like manna in the early morning sun. How odd, thought Enheduanna, that this—thing—should bear the color of ar. Enheduanna gestured to the Warriors. “Take this one.”

  The vermin parted, making no
move, as the remaining Warriors guarded their retreat. All save one. It made no threat, but it dogged their steps. Its face was white as a Master’s in the opal glare; odd folds of skin draped and furled around it. One Warrior made to cut it down, but Enheduanna waved it off. “It’s only the vermin’s cattle. Let it come.”

  They trudged down the slope, finding the path in time to shield their eyes as the beacon flared again. They listened to the vermin on the rim screech and wail their animal gibberish.

  “It is the prophesy! It is the Revelation! Seer Laurel is born away by Angels!”

  Oh crap, thought Asach, hood pulled down against the blinding green, so that only the faintest view of the treacherous way was visible, here we go.

  11

  Communications Update

  What can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence….Everyday language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it….Language disguises thought. So much so, that from the outward form of the clothing it is impossible to infer the form of the thought beneath it.

  —Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

  Somewhere East of The Barrens, New Utah

  They approached a city, and Asach paused in awe. It was not large. Perhaps two hundred hectares in all. It shimmered above the fields of reed, glowing green and gold in the morning sun. It appeared to be one enormous, integral structure, pockmarked with entryways: a sponge of ochre brick and glass, carpeted with green fuzz. No roads appeared to lead into it, save the one they were on: a narrow pavement of laterite, barely two hands wide, disappearing fore and aft into a tunnel of arching reeds. Asach realized that there could well be dozens of such tracks; hundreds even, hidden within the surrounding marsh and invisible to the ground-level eye. The others did not stop. Asach hurried to catch up.

  But a city, indeed, it was, and had Asach’s sixth sense of that needed confirmation, it was soon to come. As they drew near, the paved track widened, and became lined with—industrial stalls, as best Asach could tell. The construction was the same: a low rise in ground, covered with young crop; one or more entryways; the doorways and, so far as Asach could see inside, the domed interior walls fashioned of what looked like glass; the floors and surrounds of laterite paving. Some forecourts included knee-high laterite benches with green-stained tops. Others had large, smooth, slightly concave, bluish-white circular surfaces, a double-arm span wide and a hand’s-breadth deep. Still others had stacks and stacks of pottery bowls, the size of two cupped hands, inverted beside laterite stair steps leading nowhere.

  As they walked, some of these stalls were empty; others alive with activity, and Asach became aware of an industrial process. Enormous, silent versions of the white-haired creature that seemed to be in charge of Laurel’s progress delivered stacks and stacks of the fresh-cut reed to the work-bench stalls. There, wielding stone cudgels, others like them shoved and pounded the stalks until limp. The workbenches actually included narrow gutters at the top and base, which drained into larger versions of the bowls, that had one edge pinched into a pouring spout. Next, the now-limp reed was passed to the stone circles, where it passed under what looked like corrugated rolling pins that circled the dish, reducing the reed to pulp. Again, narrow channels drained juices into large spouted bowls. Then, bearers brought racks of bowls. Each bowl was filled, the pulp pressed flat to the rim. The racks of full bowls were then taken to the stair steps, where they were set out to dry in the dazzling sun. When partially dry, the reed-patties were turned out onto drying mats until they were hard. Lastly, the collected juices were poured into enormous ewers.

  Reed-like, thought Asach, trudging along. Not reed, exactly. More like Spartina—salt grass. Or something else entirely. That intense aquamarine color—like blue-green algae. A giant algae? A fruiting algae? Like seaweed, perhaps, only on land? Absent-mindedly, lost in thought, Asach reached out and broke off a stalk with an audible snap. The hindmost Warrior swiveled at the waist in a shocking one-eighty-degree turn like an owl’s head, then leapt. Within three bounds its clawed fist dug into the small of Asach’s back while—something—scratched a thin line of blood at Asach’s throat. In sheer desperation, arched so far backward that the only thing visible was the vault of the sky, Asach shouted, as loud as possible with a hyper-extended neck, a bad imitation of the hairball-hacking sound the white one had used twice before to order restraint.

  Unfortunately, what Asach actually shouted was an obscenity, but it so startled the Warrior that he took a half step back, even as Enheduanna called back “Hold!” This time, Asach caught the variation in inflection, repeated it perfectly—and then repeated it again with the error. The Warrior froze a moment. Then, suddenly, it leaned forward, eyes locked on Asach, and began hissing like a steam kettle. The other Warriors turned as one in that back-wrenching pose.

  Now Asach froze. Slowly, palms forward Asach knelt, placed the broken stalk on the ground, then just as slowly stood. At this, all the Warriors began hissing. The white one was watching Asach intently. Asach was watching Laurel. The girl’s upper arm was bruised to pulp by the gripping hands of her rotating guard. She looked pale and terrified.

  Asach decided to gamble all or nothing. It needed only one move to bend down, snatch up the broken stalk, and take the first two steps forward. Looking squarely at the first Warrior, Asach shouted again, in its own tongue, “Hold!” and started walking. The Warrior made to grab, but the white one waved it off. Asach kept walking, looking directly at the white one, then directly at Laurel, then directly at the white one again, the green stalk thrust forward.

  “Hey Top,” called the one closest to Asach, “D’ya think it knows what it’s saying?”

  “Nah,” answered the hand leader, “it’s just copyin’ the sounds. Like A Meat.”

  “Yeah?” answered the first one, “I ain’t never met dinner before what said ‘hold off, asshole!’”

  All the Warriors began laughing again, their hisses pulsing in unison. The thing was no threat—any one of them could cut it down in an instant—and Enheduanna was cautiously curious. Mimicking like a Meat? Or mimicking like a child? It seemed purposeful. Before bringing it before the Protector, its status must be known. It approached; it stopped, its bizarre skin hanging about in folds. It looked directly at Enheduanna. Like a Farmer at a Post, it took a bite of the stalk; chewed, swallowed. Then it touched the manna-eyed one. It made noises. Exasperated, Enheduanna turned to move on, but the thing spoke again, this time softly: “hold?”

  Enheduanna’s disgust overflowed. The Warriors reeked of anger. How dare it? Thought Enheduanna. How dare it? And then thought, well it dares, either because it knows nothing, or because that’s the only word it knows. Enheduanna decided to err on the side of child, and waited. The thing reached inside its folds of skin. It pulled out a packet of something. It removed a wrapping. It took a bite, and chewed. Strange, but plain enough. Then it handed the packet to the manna-eyed one who, one-handed, began to devour it, like the vermin that it was.

  Enheduanna was about to order them onward, when a file of tray-carrying Porters approached. There was no choice but to make way, lest they drop their load. The creature raised its hand in a rude gesture, and made a noise. It did it again, and again, and again. It finally dawned on Enheduanna that it was indicating manna drying-bowls. Enheduanna said: “khkhkh!” the aspirated “k” rolling three times, followed by a click.

  The creature replied: “khkhkh! Bowls,” its mouth making an odd lip-pursing movement as it spoke.

  Nearly-lipless Enheduanna replied: “Muuulls. khkhkh!”

  The creature reached inside its skin again, and removed a small ewer. It touched the manna-eyed one. It pulled a stopper from the ewer, and held it to the manna-eyed one’s mouth, tilting the ewer. But the ewer was empty. It held it inverted, then shook it, to show that. One drop of water splattered and alighted on the creature’s hand. It raised the hand. It made a noise. It touched the manna-eyed one, and sa
id: “khkhkh! [noise] khkhkh! [noise],” all the while making the same rude gesture at the water drop as it had used to indicate the bowls. It offered the ewer, then made the noise—no, said the word—again. Enheduanna thought, then said “Ater. [drip].” The creature replied instantly: “khkhkh! [drip].” It had to use one of its hands to say [drip], flicking its face with one finger, but it said it nonetheless.

  On impulse, Enheduanna called to one of the crushing floors: “Dip me a bowl of manna juice.” The worker’s posture looked skeptical, but it did so. Enheduanna waved it aside, and with a twitch of posture indicated the creatures. They drank strangely. The manna-eyed one tilted its head back and drained the liquid in three large gulps. Enheduanna called for a second bowl. The skin-draped one sipped more slowly, but drained it as well, with that same lip-pursing, back-tilting gesture, then handed back both bowls. If the worker was surprised or intrigued by these beings, there was no way to tell. Enheduanna was amazed that they seemed to require sustenance after so short a time. They had only marched two days, and that slowly.