by Neil Clarke
Originally published in Chinese in Science Fiction World, 2007.
Translated and published in partnership with Storycom.
About the Author
In 2002, Hao Jingfang was awarded First Prize in the New Concept Writing Competition. She gained her undergraduate degree from Tsinghua University’s Department of Physics and her Ph.D. from the same university in Economics and Management in 2012. Her fiction has appeared in various publications, including Mengya, Science Fiction World, and ZUI Found. She has published two full-length novels, Wandering Maearth and Return to Charon; a book of cultural essays, Europe in Time; and the short story collection, Star Travellers. Her fiction has appeared before in English translation in Lightspeed and Uncanny.
War, Ice, Egg, Universe
G. David Nordley
I shall start four cycles before the Westerian invasion, the threat of which I then appreciated only as a source of support for my research into the source of lightstone.
My third-molting-father, Professor Colonel Threeclickson, had come to express his worries about my slow field work in the deepest part of the long valley that gave our land its name, some eight-to-the-fourth body lengths from the University. His fronds drooped toward the ice and he glowed with white noise as all the hairs on his four long legs vibrated in disharmony. Reaching over with a long arm, he lifted up my head.
“Up there,” he said, waving his three remaining arms upward. “The answers lie above.”
I could not nod agreement with his pincer under my mandible like that, but managed a polite “Yes, sir,” from my spiracles.
He let go and I brought my head down again, but only to the level of my upper thorax.
Threeclickson’s spiracle covers clapped. “You are always staring at the ice, Loudpincers. Elevate your ambitions.”
I bent my neck up again so my head was at the level of his. “Sir. The ice is where we find the lightstone that takes our instruments up there. If we knew where lightstone came from, we might be able to find more of it, and, perhaps, even ascend ourselves, without dying first.”
Threeclickson seemed mollified; the hair on his legs settled down and assumed their normal texture. “Your logic is right, but be wary of becoming too indirect. You know that Professor General Icescriber has proposed building an ascent sphere of ice?”
I shivered with the thought of such an adventure as well as from lingering fears from larvahood myths about the eater of disobedient souls in the land of the dead. “Yes . . . uh, sir . . . I’ve seen drawings of it. It’s one arm thick all around with polished areas to see through; it should resist crushing and let us get really high—if we can find or make enough lightstone to lift it.”
Threeclickson laughed with staccato slaps of his spiracle valves, which made his upper thorax sparkle. “I rather supposed that would appeal to you. At my third molting, I shared that ambition. There is some promising related research that, however, must be held among the staff for now . . . ” He trailed off. “But the water above is not friendly to life. As a body goes up, its heavy parts are compressed and we cannot breathe easily above eight to the fifth body-lengths. It is, after all, the realm of the dead . . . Well, Loudpincers, have you looked at the latest lightstone research?”
“Goodphaser thinks it works its way up from further below.”
The professor huffed currents out of his spiracles. “So much is obvious.”
“Softtipspawn has a theory that lightstone might be connected with the periodicity of icecover plant growth,” I ventured.
“Pure speculation. I know she is a friend of yours, but biology isn’t Softtipspawn’s field. Major Lecturer Tightpincers is a zoologist, however, and she is pretty sure that lightstone is excreted by an unknown species of giant iceworm—little iceworms have long been known to feed on concentrated minerals released from warmfall water as it freezes.”
I tried to imagine a huge worm tunneling through solid ice and couldn’t, so I maintained a respectful silence. Threeclickson and Tightpincers were thick, and if rumors were to be believed, might spawn together next feasting season.
“I can tell you don’t think much of that one,” Threeclickson said, accusingly.
“Sir . . . it’s very difficult to observe anything in a warmfall,” I said. “The warm water makes one slow or even unconscious.”
“She surrounds herself with ice before going in and is usually conscious for long enough to note what happens. I must admit there has been a problem getting others to replicate this. Well, what else have you found out?”
I recited my research. “Lightstone comes in many varieties and varies in lifting power per unit volume, though it takes a sensitive balance to see the difference. Lightstone with the most inertia lifts most strongly. Some people have timed the rise of lightstone through the ice to the surface by protecting the surface over them from variations and taking measurements every feast cycle. They drift upward at varying rates, usually less than one over eight-to-the-fourth body lengths in a cycle.”
“Brightpincers and Loudlegs,” Threeclickson replied. “They’re visiting from Great Warmfall. And they’ve also shown that solutions of ground lightstone are the same as found in iceworm excrement, by the way. Well, what conclusion do you draw from all of this?”
I hesitated, not sure I should tell Threeclickson all my cosmological speculations, but vanity spoke. “I think they might be concentrated by living things, not living in the ice, but rather on the other side of the ice. There could be another shell of water beyond this one, further out from the center. Like an egg of ice with many shells. But that’s just speculation,” I hurried to add.
“And not original. There is a long history of stories about beings from the underworld. Unfortunately, they are tales to make larva more attentive.”
I opened my pincers. I could not help that. “I need more data. Since I’ve covered almost all of the base’s allocated research area, the only way to get more is to go, well, deeper. Lightstone comes from somewhere.”
Another spiracle flap. “Well, I haven’t seen any giant iceworms either, so maybe. But be careful who you say that to; I would not want to see my molt-son ridiculed.” He waved his fronds. “Going down to go up! The Mystical Church would love it. But your logic seems unassailable.”
He waved an arm toward the west; a dim glow of noise marked the direction of our neighbors in Crossvalleys. “I wish our Long Valley were likewise unassailable. But Highfronds’ Westerian Empire draws nearer. They are absorbing Crossvalleys—see the glow of their war machines? We are getting refugees daily.”
I shivered. Crossvalleys was but a thirty-cycle hike from Long Valley, and only Lushole lay between them and us. “We are no match for the empire in population,” I said.
“Aye, but do we just allow ourselves to be eaten or enslaved? Our one hope lies in better weapons, and that means better research. So, do your research, but keep in mind the needs of defense; the research must pay off soon, Loudpincers. There is not much time. Goodcycle.”
“Goodcycle, sir.”
He scrabbled off among the hillocks and ridges of the research field, lit in sparkles by the myriad sounds of nature. Pompous as he was, it was good for him to journey so far and take so much time with me. The bottom of Long Valley was very isolated; it was too prone to enervating warmfalls to be settled, so he’d come some distance from the comforts of civilization.
I wanted to find more lightstone, of course, but that was only part of the ancient question that had gripped my imagination. How deep could I go? The bottom of Long Valley’s eponymous rift was by all accounts as far from the center and the land of the dead as one could get in the ice. It was kept clear by a periodic warmfall, so I had a good head start.
What was below the ice? Theology had long held that our universe was a bubble in an infinite volume of ice, and academic cosmology had no better suggestion, so the question itself was a minor heresy, but priests did not have the standing in Long Valley they had in Westeria. Some radical geom
eters had offered the idea that the ice was finite but unbounded; if I could dig down forever I would end up coming up on the other side of the universe, just as if one kept going west with the current from Long Valley, one would eventually reach Long Valley from the east side. That closure was of two dimensions and required three, the greater closure would be in three dimensions and require four.
The idea made my head ache. I didn’t believe it, anyway. Something came up through the ice to make the plants grow. That something did not come down from the center, because you could cover the plants and they would still grow. And they would still grow according to the regular cycle. To me, this meant that something different had to lie below, something that changed with the cycle.
I took my prized lightstone axe from my thorax pouch and carefully tied its tether to my abdomen belt against its tendency to fly upward. I followed the path back to my pit, contemplating the universe. Icesplitter’s model of weight held that water pushed things less dense than it out from the center, giving us weight and keeping us firmly on the ice.
It seemed to me that unless there were something pushing the ice toward the center, the universe would explode. Therefore, there should be a layer of water, or something, beyond this one. Perhaps more. The “layer” that lay beyond our layer must generate, or at least transmit, lightstones. And if I could find it, my people might have what they needed to defend themselves.
I checked my surface stores and rappelled down a knotted rope to begin again my painstaking routine: thirty swings of the axe, then wait for my body to recharge itself as the ice chips settled back down. Then do it again. It took me a demicycle to lower the pit floor by a quarter arm.
With each new level reached, I gently laid my ear fronds on the hard, cold ice-viewer, chirped a command to my vibrators, and watched for the dull fuzzy spots that would signify lightstones.
A quarter-cycle went by. Then I noticed something strange; not a dark, hard reflection spot that would signify a lightstone, but rather that half of my field of view seemed dimmer than the other half.
I raised my body on all four legs and directed my attention to the viewer itself. Designed from Valleyscraper’s sonic wave theory of vision, it had eight-squared cones, each widest at the bottom and narrowing to a small plunger and plate arrangement at the top, on which one laid one’s fronds. It multiplied by two times eight squared the slight motion of the waves emerging from ice in contact with the wide ends of the cones to those fronds in contact with the narrow ends.
The fluid in each cone was under a slight pressure, and if it leaked, the amplification would be somewhat less intense; and I would perceive that part of the wave front as being dimmer. But I could not think of anything that would cause half the cones on one side to leak.
The viewer was anchored to the ice by a heavy tube frame; if the pressure on one side were not the same as on the other, there might be a difference. With effort, I braced all my legs and lifted the viewer off the ice; it did not seem unbalanced.
Still, I examined it at a wide range of frequencies—and nothing looked wrong.
I might, I realized, be sounding the edge of a huge object buried deep beneath the ice, its faintness due to depth, or softness. I went to the viewer and chirped for illumination. The dark half was still there. I moved the viewer slightly and chirped again. The edge stayed where it was—so it lay in the ice and not in the viewer.
Was it, I wondered, the edge of a physical change in the ice at that level? A field of soft ice? I thought I would have to expand my pit to test that hypothesis, and that would take cycles of work. But as I went to move the viewer to make room for digging, I tilted it and had an inspiration.
Suppose I dug my pit with a slightly concave bottom? I could move the viewer around scanning through the ice at various angles, looking thus in a different direction in each place and greatly expanding my field of view. I hastened to work.
It took another quarter cycle, but there was definitely something down there. It was huge, it was distant. It, I dreamed, might be a giant lightstone, more than enough for thousands of weapons. But I would never get to it before the Westerian armies got to us; I would need help to dig down quickly. I went off to find Threeclickson, snacking on local iceweed as I went; no time to stop for a meal now!
I found Threeclickson in his office with General Councilor Sharpfronds and four others.
“Loudpincers! Just the young body we need. You have saved me the trouble of sending for you. You know the general. I would like you to meet as well Professor Lieutenant Farfronds, Mr. Crushpincers, Mr. Eightfold Longtail, and Goodmother Quickfronds.”
“Goodcycle, all. Need? I have just come to tell you I’ve found something of potentially immense value, what is possibly a huge lightstone buried deep in the ice.”
Spiracles flapped in humor. “What would you say, Loudpincers, if I told you we have gained access to where we shall not have to dig for lightstone?”
I waved my pincers upward in a questioning posture.
“Precisely. If you come into the courtyard, we shall show you. Are you curious?”
I decided to set my news aside for a moment; I had delivered it and need not argue or expound on its importance, and the possibility of a journey to the center excited me. I nodded agreement and followed the Colonel and the General.
The university offices form a hexagon, the center of which is an open area twenty bodies across. Much of the military development that we would rather others not hear was done there, and as such an invitation to enter was a mark of great trust—something I even more greatly appreciated as I approached its entrance, secured by three military personal and two sets of woven stiffplant doors.
We negotiated this gauntlet one by one and found in the open space beyond, with sonic beams illuminating it from all sides, a vast sphere, fully three bodies across. A windlass even larger than it was stood next to it. A small fortune in netterbug web fiber must have been wound around it.
“Young Loudpincers,” Sharpfronds’ said. “There is a steady rain of lightstone skyward; it all must collect in the center. But how far is that? Now Prof. Major Crossfronds has received an echo from his instrument.”
“An echo?” Were there layers above as well as layers below?
“Almost three times eight-to-the-fifth body-lengths above us is a reflection.”
“Not a temperature ghost,” Threeclickson added. “Something real that does not move. The center itself, or at least something that might stop lightstone on its way to the center.”
I looked at the sphere and the windlass. Then I spotted its propulsion system: a small net filled with a fortune’s fortune of lightstone waving gently in the current above the sphere, straining to drag the sphere upward.
My leg hair vibrated in spite of myself. “You mean to go where the dead go to reclaim the lightstone?”
“Exactly,” Threeclickson said. “And you must come too.”
It was said gently, as if in invitation, but it was an invitation, I realized, that I dared not refuse now that I knew what technology would accomplish this trip. Besides, if I had been told everything with a free choice, I would have begged to go.
“When?” was all I asked.
They were all still for a moment, and in the dark silence, the thumps of distant war machines made the horizon glow. Threeclickson waved an arm in Sharpfronds’ direction.
“There must be no delay,” Sharpfronds said. “We go as soon as provisions are loaded, in about thirty clicks. What you need will be on board, so there is no need to gather anything; however, I should not dismiss the danger.”
He cupped his fronds toward each of us in turn. No one wavered that I could sense.
“Good. If you have affairs to settle, you, I, and all of us should do what we can in the time we have to resolve them. There are sonotube cubicles around the perimeter which you may use.”
“You are going yourself, General?” I asked, not knowing then how impertinent that was.
Sharpfrond
s turned, then waved an arm, dismissing any idea of offense. “My style is to lead from the front, Loudpincers.”
With that, he departed.
I stood and looked in wonder at the sphere for a few clicks, then proceeded to the perimeter.
From the standpoint of few affairs to complicate things, they had chosen me well. I had only my eggmother to tell and my project for an inheritance. Eggmother was away, so I called the university recorder, who took my message for her and recorded my will. For the project, there was nobody but Softtipspawn. Because she was an early teacher of mine, our relationship was still a bit spiny and for her to consider spawning with a student was to mix things better not mixed. But I would be a student no longer in a few cycles, and her eggs carried an intelligent heritage. We were of similar age, three moltings each, and this was thought best for reproductive success. If she would not get my seed, at least she would get my data; that in itself was seed for something.
The next step was the hardest. One wants, more than anything, for one’s existence to have meaning. My discovery would, perhaps, cause my name to be immortal. But if it fell into the hands of the Westerian Empire, every being in the universe would be in jeopardy. With great reluctance, I told the recorder to place my will among the things that would be destroyed should the university fall to the empire. Not until that moment had the impending invasion really hit home.
A horn pulsed deep long waves. Our departure signal, probably, though I had not been told that. I left the cubical and headed for the sphere. There, Mr. Crushpincers directed me toward a hinged section of the sphere. He was, despite his name, quite small.
“It is a hatch. Pull it outward,” he said.
I did as he said and it opened easily, almost pulling itself from my fingers as it swung hard toward the ice. “It seems too heavy to be strong,” I said.
“It has many layers of fiber joined with a glue made from iceworm skin. It is both stronger than ice itself and heavier; this is a secret which you must keep now.”