Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 109

by Neil Clarke

  As we went, I reminded myself of who was below. It was the third shift; Sergeant Raspyclaws, Mr. Icefronds, the water jet technician, and able soldier Larvasaver. None were evident as I reached the level of my suspected giant lightstone. The shaft went further down; the plan had been to approach the lightstone from the bottom.

  Only a half body-length or so of ice separated me from it and I could easily see it by holding my fronds and mandibles against the ice and chirping. It certainly looked like a lightstone; its rugged surface was full of shiny pits and sharp edges. But it was huge—several body lengths across, at least.

  I felt warm water at my abdomen. My first thought was that it was the cutting water, but that had been turned off some time ago. The warmth was enervating; I wiggled my abdomen to increase water flow, then switched my body around, hanging upside down so my spiracles would be in higher, cooler water.

  The warm current was issuing from the horizontal shaft. I moved down further so my fronds could see through it. The warmth made me forgetful and fatigued, and I had to fight to concentrate on moving each limb, but I persisted in descent.

  Finally, I was level with the shaft, chirped, and saw the thing hanging below the giant lightstone. It was long, rounded at each end and unnaturally smooth, as if turned from a lathe.

  On the ice in the shaft beside it lay the bodies of my crew. If I went to them now, I would probably suffer the same fate. I turned and began to climb up the cutter’s suspension ropes, but could only move a little at a time. I had to get to colder water.

  “Betterthinker. The ropes. Pull me up.”

  I was incredibly tired. If I let go right now, I would literally fall asleep. A very pleasant . . . .

  The ropes jerked upward, again and again. I should let go. No, I should hang on. It was getting cooler. I was thinking again.

  I resumed climbing, and spotted my savior amidst a jumble of rope and tubes. “Good, Betterthinker. I’m awake now.”

  “Handholds, sir. On the wall. I need to let go.”

  I saw the notches in the ice and grabbed onto them with two claws as I let go of the ropes with the others. As soon as I had detached myself from the ropes, they slid back down. Betterthinker had, I realized, pulled up not just me but the whole cutting apparatus as well, weighted as it was with superheavy fluid tanks. Well, Sergeant Shinyclaws had said he was strong.

  I looked at the tubes and ropes, straightened out again. If they were to pipe down cold water instead of warm, I might stay awake long enough to rescue my colleagues. But I would need something to keep the cold water around me. I scrambled back up the shaft as fast as my legs and arms would take me.

  Tailoring is a skill the career military know well, I found out. We took one of the woven flatweed covers and made a rough tube of it for my body, cutting slits to allow my limbs to stick out and tying it around my neck and around a heavy fluid tube just beyond my abdomen. We knew how much tubing the cutter had used, and coiled twice as much for me. The tube served two purposes; to give me cold water to keep me awake, and, in an emergency, they would be able to pull me back with it. I also took the end of a coil of rope, in case something or someone else would need to be pulled back.

  With Sergeant Shinyclaws and Ordinary Soldier Bristlelegs pumping cool water around me, I headed down again. It seemed to go more quickly this time, despite my encumbrance. Though I could feel the heat on my head, I had not the slightest loss of energy. The cloth tube that surrounded me, however, puffed up and deflated with each push of the bellows above in a way that would have caused amusement, had the mission not been so serious.

  I traversed the horizontal tube quickly and reached the bodies of my comrades. Asleep or dead, I could not tell, but I dragged each one back to the shaft and harnessed each to the spare line. Then I called for Betterthinker to haul them up.

  Then, alone, I encountered the wondrous object that had apparently followed the lightstone up through the ice. It was as wide as the shaft, and its warmth had melted a path all the way up to the lightstone. The thought of the lightstone reminded me of how much we needed it, and how quickly. The entire crew, I realized, would need cold suits like mine. No matter how curious I was, there was no time to investigate. We could work around the thing, whatever it was.

  Lightstone! It must be after the lightstone just like my compatriots and I had been after lightstone in our ill-fated expedition less than three cycles ago. Less than a three cycles? It seemed like a greatcycle ago. The thing seemed like more proof of layered cosmology—but, the layers were different. Alien. My mind was dizzy with change and happenings.

  No time, no time to investigate. I turned to leave the shaft and get help.

  “We’ve struck water—meltwater, not seawater. Great central heavens!”

  I turned back. It was Sergeant Raspyclaws’ voice, much more clearly than I had heard it at the top of the shaft, but it came from the object. There must be beings inside the thing, I thought, from the next layer; it seemed obvious; the large object was their version of the sphere I had ridden to the land of the dead. They were trying to talk to me, but all they knew of my language was what Sergeant Raspyclaws had shouted—so they were repeating that. Could they see me, somehow? I saw nothing from them but that burst of language.

  Time, I had no time. But maybe they could help. Help us in our war? How. Perhaps they could carve lightstone—they were apparently after it themselves.

  Perhaps they wanted it for themselves.

  Where did my greatest hope lie? I decided to invest a few moments and pointed to myself. “Loudpincers.”

  “Loudpincers,” it repeated in a golden burst.

  I showed them my body parts: pincers, claws, fronds, arms, legs, and mandibles. I shouted LOUD and whispered soft. I backed up for go and went forward for come. I showed them ice, water, and lightstone. I tried “cold water” spilling some from my suit, and “warm water” waving my arms around. It repeated everything correctly and I said yes. I wished it would make an error so I could teach no.

  I curled up in a chrysalis posture. “Sleep,” I said. I unfolded myself. “Awake.”

  “Hot water sleep.” It said.

  “Yes.” I was getting somewhere.

  “Cold water sleep.”

  “No, no. Hot water makes sleep.”

  “Cold water makes awake.”

  “Yes. Cold water makes awake? Question. Yes. Answer.” Would it understand inflection? “Cold water makes awake. Statement. Hot water goes down? Question.”

  “Come Loudpincers up?”

  “Yes.” It was quick, picking up everything, forgetting nothing.

  But I was getting tired and running out of time. How could I ask them to help?

  I chipped some ice and showed them “take” and “move.” They understood.

  “Loudpincers take lightstone up.”

  “Lightstone go up?”

  I moved my arms frantically, upward as fast as I could.

  “Yes, up. Loudpincers take lightstone up fast!”

  The effort wore me out. I felt warm. Then I noticed that the pulses of cold water in my tube had stopped. That could only mean the empire had arrived. I had only moments of consciousness left, time for one last plea. I took my ice chipper and swung it at my head, stopping just short.

  “Kill. Kill above. Cold water stop.”

  Silence greeted that. What an idiot I was. What could our problems possibly mean to them?

  Unable to stand any longer, I collapsed to the floor of shaft.

  “Help,” I said. How does a person alone act out help? “Help.” I tried to move an arm . . .

  I woke with cold water flowing into my tube again. My first thought was relief—perhaps we had won above. My next thought was that the Westerians had figured out that I was down here and were on their way to enslave me. I found strength enough to chirp. My tube, I saw, was now running into a squarish hole in the alien thing and providing a steady stream of cold water. Hovering around me, swimming, were tiny circular things wit
h little claws. One of them stopped in front of my fronds.

  “SEEN-DEE,” it said, pointing to itself with one of its tiny claws. “Cyndi help?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Cyndi help.” Then I remembered the situation above. What hope for them there’d be now, I had no idea. But I had to ask.

  “Cyndi help kill above?

  “No, no, Cyndi no kill.”

  They could not understand, not yet. They could not understand my nation being raped and enslaved, its heroes and my friends rising to the land of the dead. They would understand in time, but too late, too late.

  “Cyndi help above sleep?” it said.

  “Great center, that would work! Yes. Help above sleep. Stop kill. Stop war.”

  It was not done simply. The Iceprobe, for that was what they called it, had to back off and come back at an angle to intercept our shaft. There was no room in it for me; I clung to the lightstone while all this happened, and nearly fell asleep again. But before I did, Cyndi brought me a small squarish pack, which she fixed onto the back of my tube. It took water in and pumped it out, cold, into the tube feeding my cold suit. For this reason, I was the only one awake to witness much of the defeat of the Westerian army, for Cyndi’s artificial warmfall put our soldiers asleep as well.

  It was not done instantly. The Iceprobe could swim on jets like a daggershell, but it was alone and the Westerians had overrun almost everything. But they had bypassed the University after Crushpincers stopped their effort to breech its walls, intending to starve it out later. And they had been slowed by the deeply cracked area in the far east where General Sharpfronds had planned Long Valley’s last stand. The terrain and our deployment had broken the massed Westerian armies into smaller groups, and Sharpfronds’ creative engineering had worsened the obstacles.

  There was time to talk; Cyndi learned our language quickly, forgetting nothing and able to understand more and more of my descriptions. I learned that Cyndi was not the tiny machine, nor in it, but existed far from it and talked to us and the machine as Crushpincers had talked on the drum, but without a tight line. She is female—indeed she told me that should she reproduce she would retain the egg in her body and a larva would emerge from her abdomen. Horrifying, but natural to them—and having been in the land of the dead, I am no longer squeamish. She did everything quickly; she came from a place, she said, which had cycles called “DAZE” that were only a fifth of a real cycle.

  “How long such wars repeat?” she asked.

  I gave her Quickfronds’ assessment of great-greatcycles and thickening ice.

  She was quiet for some time, then said. “That long be eight to the fourth times our notched history maybe. Stop war cycle now be good. Possibly”

  We went to the university first, putting asleep the army that besieged it. Crushpincers had ascended, but the university walls were still held by students and old professors. I was acclaimed a temporary general by the chancellor, and under my command, the university folk made cold suits and sortied out. The line that had tethered the sphere on its journey to the land of the dead was put to another use, shackling a Westerian army. We left eight to guard eight-cubed.

  There was no rest. Each Westerian battalion we encountered presented its own problems. We ran out of lines and had to come up with new ways of shackling. Cyndi at first objected to the threat of violent force in restraint. But as she heard the tales of rape and dismemberment and saw the evidence, she exhibited fewer qualms. We ran soon out of Long Valley guards for captured Westerians and had to change our strategy to find more of our own people. In this, my senses proved superior; I spotted and recognized the glow of a battle. We went there and put both armies to sleep.

  That was the end of my generalship; the army we found was commanded by Goodmother Quickfronds, whom I was very glad to see. But the fact that she was in charge of an army spoke volumes on how many had floated above while I had been teaching Cyndi our language.

  I expressed my sorrow and apologies that I had not succeeded more quickly.

  “You have saved us,” she told me. “You must not berate yourself for not dying uselessly.”

  “Colonel Goodmother, I could have argued more strongly to dig for the lightstone first.”

  “The center seemed like a better idea at the time,” she said. “What was done was done.”

  Cyndi interrupted this. “Colonel Goodmother Quickfronds . . . your title . . . healer? Know bodies?”

  Quickfronds turned her attention to the tiny machine. “I did research at the University. In better times, I healed. Now I bring death.”

  “No longer. Teach me. We end this less time.”

  After a long talk, Cyndi asked for as much inedible vegetation as could be found or spared. We put it in the hole in the Iceprobe’s side. An eighth of a cycle later, a cloud of very tiny machines issued forth. Two cycles later, all the Westerian soldiers that remained marched home in shackles.

  Such is my history. Of those of us who ascended to the land of the dead, only Goodmother Quickfronds and I survived the war. General Sharpfronds died at the front even as his contingency plans were being executed, even as I remembered his leadership style. He has a large and deserved memorial outside the university.

  But perhaps as great a story was how blustery, inadequate Professor Colonel Threeclickson and a student battalion held off an entire Westerian brigade at the entrance to the northern crack into Long Valley with warmdrills and bombs hastily made from daggershells and tricks of chemistry for half a cycle. Most of our population was able to flee in that time he bought with his life.

  What remains is another story. It is the story of contact with the outer shell, where down is up and up is down; of many eggs, some of ice, some of lightstone, some of heavyfluid. It is the story of the beings who exist around other centers at vast distances that circle great hot centers of heavyfluid producing an energy we can only vaguely sense as heat. It is the story of meeting Cyndi in person, standing on the top of a cave of ice, head down and telling me how she thought I was upside down. She is tiny for so powerful a being, only an eighth of a standard body length, even in the lightstone covering she must use in our water. It is the story of her ‘STAR,’ ‘SOL’ and her center ‘URTH,’ which she assured me had places here and there where I could exist quite comfortably. It is the story of all that has changed us so much and of which so many have written about with much more grace and elaboration than I.

  Was my meeting with Cyndi an incredibly lucky coincidence? Certainly it was to me, but it was less so from other views. She was coming anyway. Given our species, she would likely have come during a war; it happened to be the Westerian invasion. She found the thinnest ice to seek inward, I found the thinnest ice to seek outward; the location of our meeting was no coincidence. Yes, the survival of the Long Valley nation was determined by mere fractions of a cycle, but, patriotism aside, that is probably not crucial to the greater story. Cyndi’s people are explorers. Contact was going to happen in some random way; it went this way.

  Now, nothing can ever be the same. Between war and contact, it will be a long time before our scientists catch up to the standards of Cyndi’s people. Our academics are as new larvae in learning and our military traditions but an unfortunate history. But this is not without promise.

  Allow me but two items of postwar personal interest. The first is that, a greatcycle after I returned to the University, I had a visitor I had never expected to see alive again. A female veteran with a half-regenerate arm appeared in my door with a military click.

  “Colonel professor, do you remember me?”

  “Shinyclaws?” I was astounded.

  “The same. I was captured, but they didn’t think a female would sacrifice an arm to escape. I linked up with General Highthorax in defense of the southern cracks. We were winning when your alien girlfriend came along and spoiled the game.”

  “Oh?” I’d heard the story. “Casualty ratio?”

  “Maybe ten of them to every one of us. Defense versus offe
nse, and we had a prepared position and daggershell archers.”

  “And how many of you were left before sleep came?”

  Spiracles flapped in amusement. She knew she’d been caught. “Two eights of us. Against eight to the fourth of them.”

  “I’m proud to have known you.”

  She came up to me. “How much do you mean that?”

  Suddenly I realized that I was the one who had been caught. “Well, a lot.”

  “Enough to give me your sperm?”

  It wasn’t, by any means, the first offer I’d had. But it was the first one I accepted.

  The second and last thing I have to say was that, before Doctor Cynthia Lord Mallagues left to explain her actions to others of her kind—which I gathered would take some explaining—she made an appearance in the Westerian capital that will not be forgotten for a long time. As a result, the Westerian empire is no more, for they no longer have emperors there.

  The Westerians executed Highfronds themselves. They have a unique method in that land; the abdomen and the limbs are severed and the thorax is tied off. What remains is lightened by pressed flatweed and ascends, still conscious, up and into the land of the dead.

  I am, perhaps, the only one alive who can truly appreciate what that means.

  Story notes:

  This was inspired by Europa, but isn’t specifically set there. At the time of its writing, the Europa ice layer is estimated to be too thick, and Jupiter too far from the sun, for any significant transmission of light through the ice, or hopes of penetrating it with something like the “iceprobe” above. It was rather conceived to be a satellite of what we now call a “warm Jupiter,” at an unspecified (in Earths frame of reference) distance and time from here and now. But just recently (December, 2013), we have received word of the discovery of geysers on Europa’s southern pole. So the ice may not be so thick, after all at least in some places. Time and exploration will tell.