The Wave and the Flame

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The Wave and the Flame Page 8

by Marjorie B. Kellogg


  At the back of the niche, carved from the natural stone, two larger figures dominated the composition. The clay grotesques bent toward them in a shared gesture of obeisance. Megan often joked that this particular Sawl art form had been inspired by a malicious muse who bore a grudge against anthropologists. Stavros, irritatingly, found the friezes resonant with meaning, though even he was willing to admit that it was frequently elusive. In the odd dancing light, the little statues seemed to be dancing too.

  Danse Macabre. Megan shivered and turned her back on them.

  “No sign of them as yet, Dr. Levy?” Commander Weng came silently down the inner stairs followed by a grandmotherly Sawl bearing a steaming jug and a small stack of clay drinking bowls. A sweet scent of boiled herbs invaded the tunnel’s damp. Tyril smiled but continued with her knitting.

  Megan shook her head dispiritedly.

  Weng poured hot tea and set the bowls on the bottom step. “Mr. Ibiá has managed to explain the situation to that tall woman who never speaks.”

  “Aguidran? The master of the Ranger Guild, yes?”

  Weng nodded gravely. There is a lot of Tyril’s calm about her, Megan thought. “She is willing to mount a formal search, but most of her workers are occupied down at the Lander.”

  Megan stared into the howling grayness at the tunnel mouth. “I suppose we should be out there searching for them ourselves.”

  “An inefficient solution, Dr. Levy. It does no good to indulge our survivor guilt in such a fashion. I have already had need to resort to orders to keep Lieutenant McPherson from rushing out there herself.”

  Megan shrugged. “Well, you know how she feels about Taylor…”

  “The Ranger woman is far better prepared to direct a search around her own countryside.” Weng turned to leave, then paused and said over her shoulder, not unkindly, “Food is being prepared in the Meeting Hall, Dr. Levy, if you could see fit to leave off your vigil for a spell.”

  “Thanks, Weng. I’ll keep it in mind.”

  “As you wish.” Weng remounted the steps as silently as she had come.

  As Megan resumed her pensive pacing, Tyril laid aside her knitting. She reached for the steaming jug and poured two bowls of pale green liquid, then unfolded a cloth bundle stuffed with bread and a cold cheese pie. She held a bowl out to Megan, who remembered in time her own dictates on the etiquette of food. She accepted the hot herbal tea and a chunk of bread. She would have preferred the cheese pie, but she was unwilling to break her penance completely, noting that Weng’s remark about survival guilt had been well placed. Penance was a habit borrowed from her second husband, a Nee-Catholic psychiatrist. They had not renewed the contract beyond the first year, partly because Megan had begun to see Neo-Catholicism and psychiatry as inherently contradictory and could not understand why he did not.

  But the rite of private penance she had taken into herself like a drug, to tranquilize the guilt that often assailed her so unaccountably that she wondered if guilt might possibly be gene-linked. What other than genetic habit could make her feel guilty for Susannah’s being lost in the storm?

  She sipped her tea, smiled at Tyril, and continued to pace.

  With a final screech and fall, the lift cage jarred to the ground. Stavros and his Sawl companions jumped off as efficient hands reached to snatch the cargo to safety. The winch crew locked their machine and swarmed up over the cage. Stavros allowed himself a moment to stop shaking.

  The Underbelly was in an uproar. Shouts and chanting and the clatter of loading and carrying competed with the throb and yowl of the storm. The air was chill at ground level, and smelled of soot and wet wool and the strong herb tea brewing on the cookfires.

  The crate partitions had been dismantled to be repacked and carried up to the Caves. A few smaller metal boxes remained, scattered about open, half filled. Two hastily strung emergency lights swung overhead, casting mobile shadows across the milling crowd. Stavros noted with relief that the entry cylinder was still firmly encased in ice, though the ice wall enclosing the perimeter had shrunk severely since he had gone uplevel. A leaden band of twilight interceded between the Lander’s heat shield and the top of the ice that held back the floods outside. The rain lashed in, melting the wall unevenly into a circle of blunt teeth. Tongues of dirty froth licked up into the spaces between the teeth. The water noise was deafening. Stavros eyed the ice dike with foreboding. Moisture was weeping through in several places. He longed for the protection of the force field. The cylinder was funneling a two-way stream of traffic in and out of the tunnel to the Caves. The ice must hold. The tunnel was their only escape route.

  He shouted to McPherson through the cooksmoke and bedlam. She finished lashing a plastic crate to a wooden Sawl handtruck and sent the child who manned it on his way with a quick pat. Stavros thought she looked tired, strained, but enviably in control for one so young. The crowd eddied around her as she made her way toward him like a small freighter steaming upcurrent.

  Behind him, the winch crew gained the top of the cage and picked frantically at the great knots attaching it to their machine. The ropes were as thick as a wrist. A woman called out, and passed up a lantern with a jug of water.

  A Sawl backed into him with a cart piled high with seismic equipment. Clausen’s stuff. Stavros considered telling the woman to leave it behind. He wondered if he would have to answer for the loss of CONPLEX property. Besides, who knows what we’ll need in the days to come? He helped the woman jockey the cart about, then noted as she dragged it toward the tunnel that the wheels bumped sharply along the ground.

  Stavros frowned. Two months earlier, when the Lander’s descent engines had seared through several meters of snow and ice, the top sandy layer of soil had been fused into flawless glass. A flat floor had been created under the Lander’s belly, perfect for setting up the base camp.

  Now that perfect floor had developed cracks and slants. Stavros pointed this out to McPherson as she joined him. She shrugged and nodded. He wanted to object, to badger her into sharing this new worry, but had to admire her pure and uncomplicated refusal to bother herself with problems she could do nothing to solve. While he faced crisis torn between terror and relish, McPherson got on with business.

  “Cleaned out upstairs,” he reported, trying to echo her efficient solidity. His voice was hoarse above the din. “Much more to go down here?”

  “Nothing much we need,” she replied. “ ’Cept her.”

  Stavros followed her gesture toward the perimeter. Fresh, ragged freeze blocked a Sled-sized hole in the ice wall. The remaining Sled waited like a beached whale. Stray clothing still decorated its windscreen; a damp lab coat, a lone thermal sock. McPherson’s intent blue eyes blinked in frustration.

  “How’re we gonna get her outta here?”

  He had given up on the Sled and should have known that she would not. Perhaps the decision was not his to make, but Weng had directed him to recover what he could safely. He glanced up at the smoky, slanting belly of the Lander, thought he saw its maze of pipes and wires and hatches wheel above him. “We’re not,” he stated quietly.

  “What?”

  “We’re not!” he snapped. The irritation flared so suddenly that he wondered why he’d thought he had the taste for command. In his imagination, he was never faced with this constant questioning of his authority.

  McPherson flinched into a fighting posture. “Whadda ya mean, NOT? We got two crewmen to rescue!”

  “Three,” he reminded her.

  “You wanna tour this damn planet on your feet?” yelled McPherson.

  Stavros shook his head furiously. “I’m thinking about now, Ron, and how we’d better get ourselves and all these people out of here!” He jabbed a finger at the wrinkled floor, at the melting ice wall. “Now!”

  With a cheer, the winch crew got the big knots loose and hauled the ropes free of the top of the cage. A woman jumped down, calling to the others to clear the shaftway. The weathered cross-timbers of the winch towered over her as s
he bent her back to the crank handle.

  “Where’s Weng?” Stavros asked, drawing calm from the steady rhythm of the crank.

  “Up in the Caves, keeping tabs on where they’re stowing all our stuff. Stav, about the Sled, we could…”

  His voice gentled as the winch and its crew won his full attention. “Ronnie, forget the Sled.” His shoulders tensed as the ropes jerked up and’ rumbled through their pulleys at the shaft head, then thundered into a heap at the bottom in a cloud of mist and hemp shreds. A second handle was fitted to the opposite side of the crank. Manned by four groaning Sawls, the big slatted drum began to roll, winding the rope around itself. Stavros left McPherson’s side to help feed in the tangled ends. The braided fibers grated across his blistered palms. He loved the secure tightness of the weave. The sinuous coiling onto the drum made him smile with sensuous pleasure. The winch gleamed with a polish of hard use and age. It spoke to him of history. I am a treasure, it said. I am the finest of my kind.

  Stavros envied its builders. Their hands were schooled to work more than computer keys. The winch belonged to the Engineers’ Guild. Stavros saw it as the apex of their art, which he honored with a romantic’s blind nostalgia. It was constructed of thousands of small lengths of wood pegged together into stout beams. The wooden wheels were a foot thick, five layers laminated at cross-grain to each other. The Sawls’ response to a metals-poor environment was the creation of miracles with a nearly as inadequate supply of trees. Not a single nail or bolt had been used throughout the entire frame. Wooden dowel alone held piece to piece.

  “Just think what they’d accomplish with iron available to them,” Stavros murmured.

  “Huh?” demanded McPherson, coming up to dog his shoulder.

  Stavros lingered by the machine, stroking its oiled beams as if it were a faithful draft animal. The crew scrambled over each other to pull fat stone wedges out from under the wheels, then braced themselves to start the winch rolling toward the exit.

  McPherson grabbed his arm. “They taking that away?”

  A shuddering crack like a volley of pistol shot rang out. The glassy floor vibrated. Stavros shook McPherson off and waved at the winch crew to hurry.

  “Stav, we could use that winch to haul the Sled out! Shit, at least we gotta try!”

  Before he could answer, the ground wailed and shook again. The floor buckled at his feet. Black water shot up through the cracks. The sudden cold and deadly gurgle around his bare ankles lanced a buried nightmare. Now Stavros paid dearly for hunting the thrills to be found along the edge of the abyss. His grasp on reality, ever encouraged to be fragile, gave way to an upwelling of panic. His worst imaginings took hold. He foundered in a vision of shattered ice floes and dark frigid seas.

  “Out!” he shouted. “Everybody out!”

  He whirled on the Sawl nearest him and pushed her toward the exit cylinder. Her bundle of plastic dishware went cascading across the floor. Ignoring her astonishment, Stavros turned to gesture wildly at McPherson.

  “Get them out! Now! This thing’s gonna come right down on top of us!” He ran at a group of Sawls dividing a crate of tools into smaller loads. “Out! OUT!” he bellowed. The Sawls gazed back at him unblinking.

  McPherson charged after him. She planted her stocky little body firmly in his path, arms outstretched.

  “STAVROS!” She whacked him hard across the jaw.

  He stopped dead, stunned. His eyes widened, then slid past hers as clarity returned. He withdrew into himself like a turtle into its shell.

  McPherson dropped her hands to her hips. “For god’s sake,” she muttered.

  Stavros averted his head with a shamed growl. “Aren’t you going to say ‘Get a hold on yourself, man’ or something military like that?”

  McPherson eyed his naked wet torso and feet. “I’m going to say, get some proper clothes on and help get these folks out of here quietly. I ain’t got the language, Stav, so if you crap out on me, we’ve had it.”

  Shaken, shivering with the cold, he nodded, but could not make his tongue form the angular Sawlish syllables. The Sawls who had witnessed his outburst glanced at each other and went back to work of their own accord. As cold water washed around their feet, and the towering alien hulk swayed above them, each resumed his burden and joined the now orderly stream toward the exit. The empty-handed picked up the nearest object they could handle and followed.

  I have become a liability, thought Stavros wonderingly. He was used to being a danger to himself, but not to others. This panic was neither thrilling nor romantic anymore. He was grateful that Susannah had not been there to witness his unmanned behavior.

  “Susannah,” he murmured, remembering the floods raging on the other side of the ice.

  “Stav? Stav!” McPherson shoved some clothing at him, his boots and woolen Sawl tunic. She watched him carefully as he rolled up his wet pant cuffs and pulled the boots onto his muddied feet.

  “Serve you right if you get frostbite,” she observed evenly.

  “Not cold enough.” He wrung water out of his tunic, then returned her measuring stare. “Leave me alone, Ron. I’m all right now.”

  “Better be.” She gazed over his shoulder. “Crowd’s backing up at the cylinder. You ready to go back to work?”

  “I’m ready.”

  “Then let’s do it. I wanna get outta this joint alive!”

  I might have had a clue about the weather, Megan mused, if I hadn’t been so preoccupied with my fortress theories. She turned her mind from wild images of Susannah’s body battered by the torrent.

  The theory had been a strong one, on the whole, but an understanding had come to her during her vigil, one so obvious that she was shamed to have missed it before. She stared gloomily at the stone depressions flanking both sides of the entryway. The probe data had led them to expect a desert planet. But these are obviously gutters, and I didn’t even notice them until they were awash with rain!

  She had developed the fortress theory to explain why the Sawls lived high up on the cliffs. There were lower, more accessible caves. And why the steep entry tunnels, with their long flights of steps that led upward to where the warren of living quarters nestled deep in the rock? Megan climbed the curving tunnel to where Tyril sat at the bottom of the stairs. Beyond there, the cave mouth was hidden from view and the rough-hewn walls were dry. A draft flowed downward, laden with the musky odors of the upper caverns. Out of the circle of lamplight, it was dark and comforting, like a womb.

  Taylor did suggest climate as an explanation, but I put that down to professional bias. Defense. I said! Peoples choose inaccessible dwellings for purposes of defense! Even Susannah had been unable to shake her loose from that, try as she might to point out the apparent lack of large predators.

  “And the gift you all seem to have for settling your differences peacefully.” she added to Tyril, as the woman offered her a final corner of the cheese pie. “You have no armies, no uniforms, no police. The guilds all seem to discipline themselves.” Megan stared at her with genuine curiosity. “How do you do that, Tyril? We Terrans can’t even keep the peace within a community of seven!”

  Tyril offered a smile of patient commiseration, having understood nothing more than the misery in the other woman’s tone. Megan felt a rush of warmth. They were women together, separated by a vast cultural rift, yet joined in waiting. Perhaps later in mourning? Megan rejected that horror and resumed her monologue.

  “The Sawls, said I, have gone to a lot of trouble over what would appear to be a very long time to carve out these caves—what else but defense could encourage such an effort? Well, defense it is, but it just didn’t occur to me that the real enemy might be Nature. I invented a fierce past for you, Tyril, out of which, I proposed, you are just now maturing. When we fully grasp the language, I said, throwing the ball neatly into Stavros’s court, we will find such a history hidden in the legends of the Warring Gods.” Megan paused, dropped her arms heavily to her sides. “i had myself quite convinced.�
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  She slouched back toward the cave mouth with a ponderous sigh, to let the rain batter her face and punish her unscientific rush to judgment. “ ‘Now,’ Susannah kept saying, ‘remember the pueblos.’ ” Her shrug was a wave of both arms, like a big bird trying not very hard to fly. “Built above the spring high-water mark, shaded in summer, sheltered from wind, rain and snow by the canyon walls, placed to catch most of the low winter sun…”

  Her hound-dog face drooped as her chatter ran out of steam. Weather, she mused. Did I say that the enemy might be only Nature? What more formidable enemy could one wish? Man at his worst cannot match Nature’s ferocious unpredictability. Wind and water, heat and killing cold. Taylor thought to reduce it to a formula, but it had him baffled here. Here. WE are reduced to the humble state of our ancestors: at Nature’s mercy in our ignorance of her. No wonder the Sawls find gods in the weather—better to endow the storm with intention, however cruel, than to believe it random and face intimations of a chaotic universe…

  Megan shook her head. The gray void outside was a long shade darker than before. She envisioned the expedition come to ruin, worn down by hostile weather, like sand dunes, like eroded rocks. I am getting morbid, she declared. She turned back to Tyril, for even a one-sided conversation was Jess depressing than her private thoughts.

  But Tyril had set her knitting aside. Her head was cocked, listening. Megan could hear only the roar of the storm, but suddenly, Tyril smiled and rose. The edged contours of her body softened as she stared at the cave mouth with expectant relief.

 

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