Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 109

by Neil Clarke

  Professor Lieutenant Farfronds came over to me and touched me with a limb. It was the gesture of an equal and a friend, and without his saying anything, I realized my status had changed. “The General survives, for now. But we are all in great danger; we have lost our lightstone and our fall toward home is too rapid. There is no tension on the tether. Indeed, it trails behind us now. We shall have to do something desperate, and soon, and we may not survive. I wanted to talk to you a moment first.” He raised a pair of limbs. “I speak to you as one who, despite my professor title, has always been more of a military person. I have fought the bandits in the countercurrent reaches, and I have witnessed courage, so I know it when I see it. Some will judge this expedition a failure, for the loss of lightstone. But I think we have found a good and courageous soldier.”

  “Thank you, sir,” was all I could think of saying.

  He nodded, touched me again, then swam over to Goodmother Quickfronds and the General.

  Some time passed, then Professor Colonel Threeclickson called us to attention, the first time he has said anything for some time. While he was the ranking officer after the incapacitated Sharpfronds, he’d let Lieutenant Farfronds, who must have been far more experienced in emergencies, take charge of details. But apparently there were responsibilities of leadership and rank that one does not duck.

  “Companions . . . ” He hesitated.

  I clenched my pincers. It would, I thought, be so like Threeclickson to make some kind of acerbic, imperious, cautionary speech or lecture now, putting us all on notice. But there was no time for that. I had always feared him more than respected him, and now when a greater fear ruled, I had little confidence in him.

  “Companions, if we stay with the sphere until it falls to the ice, we shall be crushed. Therefore, we shall have to abandon it. Lieutenant Farfronds, tell what must be done.”

  Short and to the point? While his logic remained, the manner did not seem to be that of the Threeclickson I’d known.

  Farfronds crawled quickly up to the hatch, then dropped toward the drum, spreading his limbs and fingers as he did so. He did not fall rapidly.

  “See,” he said. “The more area you present to the water, the slower you fall. And, after a certain amount of time, no matter how long you fall, you do not fall any faster. Our bomb-throwers call this ‘terminal velocity.’ If you spread yourselves wide enough and so fall slowly enough, you should land on the ice uninjured. You must only have the courage to do it.”

  Neither I, nor anyone else, had the instincts of a floater or a swimmer. It was our nature to cling to the surface, anchored by our weight, to not be swept away by currents. I grabbed my bench all the more tightly as I listened to what Farfronds said. I saw the glow the walls of our sphere emitted from its too-fast passage and could easily imagine the crunch as it hit.

  “How much time?”

  I could barely hear that voice, but I recognized it immediately. General Sharpfronds was back with us.

  Farfronds raised his upper arms. “Soon, sir. We have no idea of how far back we’ve come. We could strike at any moment.”

  “Very well. Open the hatch.”

  “General, you aren’t ready yet . . . ” Goodmother Quickfronds said.

  “Am I ready to be crushed?” His voice seemed a bit stronger. “I will lead us out. You will come next.”

  “Me!” Quickfronds exclaimed.

  There was a moment of quiet. Then Sharpfronds said, “I may have need of you when I hit the ice.”

  There was some nervous clicking of pincers at the General’s small joke, but it seemed to break the tension. Farfronds motioned to me, and I joined him in undogging the hatch. But when we were done, we couldn’t budge it.

  “Pressure,” Threeclickson said. “The sphere is at the pressure of high above. We must let it out to open the hatch.”

  Lieutenant Farfronds scrabbled down from the hatch, reached into the cabinet below his bench, and pulled out a military spear. Then he stabbed the tip directly into the communications drum. The sound of its ripping almost blinded me, and I felt an immediate and terrible discomfort all through my body, as if I were about to explode. Groans filled the sphere, but gradually the pain got less. Also, I suddenly realized I was back to my normal weight, and almost fell from my hand-hold near the hatch. What did pressure have to do with how much I weighed? Compression, I remembered. As my body expanded and gained more volume, it fell more rapidly.

  “Loudpincers, the hatch!” Farfronds shouted. I pulled with as much strength as I had, and it opened, grudgingly at first, with a bright hiss of water jetting through the crack. Then it opened more easily. I reached down, to take the General’s hand—he was too weak to climb up to the hatch.

  Before he left, he gave what might be his final command, “Follow quickly, all of you.” Then he was gone.

  Goodmother Quickfronds quickly leaped up and followed him. After a moment of hesitation, Professor Colonel Threeclickson followed. Mr. Eightfold Longtail, however, stayed clinging to his bench. Lieutenant Farfronds went over to him.

  “Go, now! You must.”

  Longtail shuddered in denial.

  Farfronds tried to pry his pincers from their grip, but got nowhere.

  “Get out of here, Loudpincers,” he told me.

  Again, I disobeyed orders, dropped from the hatch and tried to help pry Longtail loose. But it was hopeless. I touched Farfronds and drooped my fronds.

  He nodded. “Go. I will follow.”

  This time I did go, leaping for the open hatch and pulling myself out and through almost in one move. The scream of the water passing by it made the falling sphere below me visible, if in a wavy, uncertain way. Below, to my right, I could make out the courtyard of the university—too close, I thought. I spread my arms and legs as Farfronds had told me, and my fall slowed immediately.

  I stared at the sphere, receding below. Where was he? There! A dark shadow appeared in the glowing slipstream, and began sliding off to the right.

  The sphere suddenly exploded in a million frequencies of sound and went dark. I chirped, and saw the ice below me, coming up too fast. Now my height and fall were very real; every muscle in my body tensed with terror. I struggled for control and stretched myself as much as possible and flailed at the water with my claws, trying to swim back. At the last moment, I put all eight limbs down to break my fall.

  The landing was an anticlimax; I didn’t hit any harder, I thought, than if I’d landed after jumping as high as I could. Terminal velocity, Farfronds had said. I had learned, I thought, a great lesson of mind over instinct. Feeling myself whole, I chirped in the general direction of where the sphere hit, saw it, and headed that way to see what I might do to help poor Longtail.

  On my way, I saw a bright crunch, chirped, and recognized Colonel Professor Threeclickson. Of course, having left the sphere before I did, he would have had longer to fall. I went over to him, and ascertained that he had come through the fall as well as I had.

  Then I told him the bad news. “Sir, Longtail wouldn’t leave the sphere. I was headed over to see what I could do.”

  “You should stay back, Loudpincers. You would not want to see what must . . . Forgive me. You have already . . . I . . . Yes, let us go see what we can do.”

  Threeclickson had asked me to forgive him. I sensed again that whatever happened now, my life had changed greatly.

  Goodmother Quickfronds landed just then and scuttled over to us. We told her what had happened. “Threeclickson, tend to the General when he comes down. Rest should be all he needs, and a little cleaning off. Loudpincers, you’re young and strong. Come with me.”

  We were halfway to the wreckage before I’d realized how easily Quickfronds had given orders and how uncomplainingly Threeclickson had obeyed. Five cycles ago, he had been the terror of my life. An act for the benefit of the student, I surmised, by one whose real nature was to defer to others. Yet I almost felt sorry for him.

  We reached the crumpled sphere and found our way
in through a hole in the wreckage. Lt. Farfronds, of course, had gotten there before us, but there was nothing to be done. A jagged section of the hull had neatly severed Longtail’s abdomen from his thorax. He had, uselessly, extricated himself and tried to hold his severed half against the wound, but that, Quickfronds said, only hastened his death, as certain fluids from the nether part should not mix with those in the thorax.

  Quickfronds turned to us. “Should you ever find yourself in such a situation, do what you can to stem the bleeding from the thorax. You will still die, but may have as much as a cycle or two to say and do whatever last things you have to say or do.”

  Threeclickson and General Sharpfronds arrived next. We removed the unfortunate Longtail from the wreckage and all stood vigil for an eighth of a cycle as his body became light and ascended to the land of the dead, to become part of that slime in which I had been briefly immersed. I shivered, thinking about what I had touched. I thought of my conversation with Quickfronds as I watched Longtail ascend. If our universe was an egg with a single shell, what lay outside? What laid it?

  We were a sober group back at the University, arms at sides, fronds still. General Sharpfronds, now much recovered, addressed us along with several military commanders and university staff.

  “Gentlepeople, we took our best shot at it. We learned much of cosmological and perhaps theological interest, though the eater of souls we encountered seemed a very physical creature. Looking at echoes, I might have worn a rope and been pulled back with much less bother. But such an encumbrance could itself have been risky. Again, we took our best shot.

  “Now we are in a very grave situation. Lushole has fallen; nothing remains between Long Valley and the empire. Highfronds has delivered an ultimatum: we should submit peacefully as inferiors to his superior government, or be crushed by his armed forces. We have five cycles to reply.” The General snapped a pincer in contempt. “He has that little respect for our ability to improve our defenses significantly in that time. Hubris may be his undoing. Highfronds is a charismatic leader—do not underestimate him. But the juices of his abdomen run his mind, and we shall make that our advantage. We will do the unexpected, the unanticipated. We will fight creatively.

  “The good news is that our war floaters are ready. With enough lightstone to float a dozen of them, we should be able to even the odds and make advance against us too expensive for them. If we can float all thirty, we may be able to repel them without significant loses of our own; a result that might guarantee our independence for some time. But that is a still-sealed chrysalis; we need more lightstone, for we can float only one as things stand.

  “Lieutenant Lecturer Loudpincers has found a possible source of lightstone deep within the ice.”

  There were murmurs in reaction to this news, creating far more of a stir when it came from the General’s voice holes than it when it had come from mine only a few cycles or so ago. But I barely noticed: Lieutenant Lecturer Loudpincers, he had called me. Graduation eight times eight cycles early and a field commission, too! If only I proved worthy of it.

  The General continued. “It will take some time to dig it out, six to seven cycles. We will move civilian population and the war floaters deep within our territory, back in the cracks where they will be hard to find and may easily defend themselves. The University hexagon we shall turn into a citadel, capable of holding out for a hundred cycles against any attack machines we have heard of the Westerians possessing. They may yet come up with some new weapon to save, or revenge, our people—but that is a very faint hope indeed. Our best chance lies with the war floaters.

  “General Highthorax and General Stronglegs have prepared maneuvers and delaying actions which might give us three cycles or so beyond the ultimatum date. In that time, which will be purchased with the lives of the brave, we must find Loudpincers’ giant lightstone, section it and launch the war floaters. Unless someone has a better idea.”

  Dark silence covered the gathering.

  “The sacrifice will be great and the timing very, very tight. So we had best start digging.”

  Later, when I happened to be close to the General, I told him, again, that what I had was a theory, a speculation, at best a good idea. “Now soldiers will lose their lives on the idea that it is true.”

  “So you tell me now that you think you’ve oversold your idea,” he said this with cold stillness.

  I trembled; I had never been so frightened.

  But General Sharpfronds rested a pincer on my arm, the reassuring touch of a father on a larva. “I am not so molt-damaged that I did not recognize the risk; nor did you mislead anyone by stating possibilities as certainties. The one certainty, which everyone in this country knows now, is that without some miracle, we are all slaves or dead. Well, miracles occur in combat as well as in craft, but they are done by soldiers who have hope. If we had not had your lightstone find to give them hope, we would have had to invent something of less substance.

  “But I would prefer not rely on miracles of any kind, so let us get about the digging. We have some equipment here that will be useful; my people will take care of it. Refresh yourself and be out there in an eighth cycle.”

  I nodded, then, remembering my new status, clapped my pincers, military style. “Yes, General.”

  I headed for my student quarters, perhaps for the last time. I tried to contact Softtipspawn, but she had already been evacuated. Whatever happened, nothing would be the same. I gathered a few mementos to fit in a pouch, then lay on my bench and rested.

  When I arrived at my dig the next day, General Sharpfronds’ people had spread a great panoply of cloth and pipes around my hole. After a moment, I recognized it—a warmdrill. If one seals a certain flatweed against the ice so that water cannot flow through it, in time a heavy compressible fluid will collect at its roots, against the ice. This fluid, if allowed to flow into a container of dead plant material, will displace the water with its very heavy essence. Such heavy fluid makes plant material grow very hot, and water is pumped through that heat. The hot water, forced down by means of bellows, cuts through the ice rapidly. As a mere student, I had never had access to such inner University wonders. As the chief of a potentially nation-saving emergency project, I had as much special equipment as could be conveniently placed in the area.

  We drilled cylinders, a body length deep at a time. First we carved a circle in the ice and made it deep, then, with a special sideways-facing nozzle, we cut in horizontally and so detached the cylinder from the ice. Ropes were frozen into each cylinder, and it was hauled up. Then the process was repeated.

  In the distance, the glow of the battle of the University had began to light the sky.

  Down the shaft went, just spinward of the large mass I so fervently hoped was lightstone.

  “Water,” someone yelled. “We’ve struck water.”

  My first thought was multishell cosmology. My second was about how wrong that first thought had proved far above.

  “Melt water, not seawater,” the person in the bore shaft yelled, as if he could read my thoughts.

  “Great central heavens!”

  There was silence. “What is it? Can you see it?”

  No answer.

  I turned to one of our draftees, Premother Longlegs, a first-molt apprenticed to a sweettree farmer, now a refugee. “Longlegs, go tell General Sharpfronds that we’ve reached the objective, but something strange has happened.”

  Someone had to go down. There were only four of us above. Who to send?

  At that moment, for some reason, I thought of General Sharpfronds and his pronouncement: “My style is to lead from the front.” The organizing had been done; what remained to be done was below.

  “Tell him that I’m going down to investigate. Platoon Sergeant Shinyclaws will be in charge, up here, until I get back.”

  Like most officers who rose via the academic rout, I’d taken special pains to learn the names and procedures of the pure warriors; but was still uncomfortable. A seasone
d troop might be holding his spiracles in amusement at how I did things, but Longlegs was as new to this as I was. She snapped a claw as if she were at drill, turned, and was off.

  “Sir!” Shinyclaws said. She was a veteran, and there was a sharpness to her voice that made me worry that she resented my rapid rise; she perhaps didn’t take in the three moltings of academic training that had preceded my one act of physical courage. I should, I thought, deal with it now.

  “Sergeant Shinyclaws? I’m new to this, I know, but we’re very pressed for time. If you’re unhappy, I’m sorry. I didn’t choose the circumstances.”

  “Oh, sir. Not that at all. Well, not with you at any rate. I’m maybe a little unhappy because I’m not at the front. I’m still of egg-laying age, I’m afraid, and the General Professors are looking ahead to replenishing the population. But if we don’t . . . I mean there won’t be any point.”

  I thought about that. Both positions had a logic to them. I thought it through. “Shinyclaws, the work behind the lines still has to be done. By having that done by females of egg-laying age, the Generals cover two needs with one action. Personal happiness is secondary in such times. Sorry.”

  “Yes sir. I understand. But I would rather die fighting them now than be overwhelmed here and forced to bear their eggs later.”

  I could only nod. I had not realized the full implications of her assignment.

  “Anyway, Lieutenant, ah . . . ”

  “Loudpincers.”

  “Loudpincers, sir. You’ll be wanting to take a runner down with you, sir. Betterthinker would be my choice.”

  “Right, thank you. Carry on, Sergeant.” The optimistically christened Betterthinker was actually one of the slower troops on the uptake, but he was fast and strong. “Betterthinker!” I shouted. “Come on. You’re with me.”

  We’d built a tripod over the hole and a tube of rope netting hung down from its apex, enclosing the hot water tubes. The netting also functioned as a ladder of sorts, and on these we descended.