by neetha Napew
Scary, nightmarish protruding teeth. “What are those ugly jagged black things?”
Hawk peered through the viewport beside mine. “Part of the mountain, perhaps?”
Reever looked, too. “Too symmetrical. They’re artificial, whatever they are.”
The launch touched down on a small flat plateau just beyond the all-encompassing wall, and Xonea signaled Ortsac of our arrival. There was no response for several minutes, then a crackling relay came through, audio only.
“Present yourselves at the ingress,” I heard the Taercal say.
Xonea requested directions, and the impatient official snarled, “Look for Sadda’s Maw!”
“The Welcome Wagon sounds real jovial.” I picked up my sojourn pack and nudged a frowning Hawk with my elbow. “I’m just kidding. Once they know we’re not here to invade and raid and scorch everything into dust, I’m sure they’ll be much more neighborly.”
Climbing out of the shuttle made me retrieve my jacket from my pack. The outside air temperature was a frosty degree or two above freezing, and our breath made white puffs in the air as we hiked across the plateau toward the city wall. A foot of mist lay over the ground, and swirled up in sluggish drifts as we moved through it.
“Ugh.” Something slid under my footgear, and I lifted it to see a wide, flat smear on the bottom. On the ground lay the writhing remains of an equally attractive worm. “Sorry.”
The air incongruously seemed very damp for such a high altitude, and after several hundred feet my face was wet and my hair dripping into my eyes, which should have frozen, but for some reason didn’t. The frigid dampness quickly invaded my jacket and garments and increased my discomfort exponentially.
“No wonder your people are feathered,” I muttered as I pushed my soaked hair back and watched enviously as water beaded and rolled harmlessly off Hawk’s wings. “This place is like one big cleansing unit on continuous cold rinse.”
Xonea and Reever were keeping at opposite ends of the sojourn team, with the Captain in the lead and my husband bringing up the rear. I dropped back to see if our portable translator was being affected by the humidity.
“The housing is designed to withstand immersion in most fluids,” Reever said. “Did you notice the sky?”
I looked up. There wasn’t much to see, besides thick foggy clouds and a couple of patches of gray beyond that. “What’s wrong with it?”
“There are no Taercal flying in it.”
That was a little weird. “Maybe they went back to the city to welcome us.” Even as I said that, a chill inched down my spine, one that had nothing to do with the water dripping down from my hair into my collar.
Reever examined the lethal wall again. “Welcoming strangers does not appear to be a social habit.”
The ground, while shrouded in mist, was heavily populated by worms like the one I’d stepped on, and the sound of them squashing under our footgear only added to the ambience of the planet. Which, to me, was basically icky.
“Are these parasites?” I asked Reever as I scraped another one off my footgear.
“No, they are like Terran earthworms, I believe.”
“Then why don’t they stay in the earth?”
By that time Xonea had located “Sadda’s Maw,” which turned out to be some kind of stone door recessed in the wall. A huge sculpture formed the entrance, with outcroppings that made me think of a toothy Sword of Damocles. Each of the stylized teeth had been hewn from curved, white stone carefully shaped and polished to appear like the real thing.
Worms were one thing; fangs were another.
“Duncan, what kind of animal has a mouth the size of three launches stacked on top of each other?” I murmured to my husband as I watched the white sun’s faint light glitter on the points of the stone fangs.
“One we should avoid.”
I shuddered. “Amen.” I stepped closer to see the painted pattern on the stone, then reached out to touch it. Flecks of sticky purple came off on my fingers, and a pungent, unpleasant smell hit my nose. “This isn’t paint. It’s some kind of plant.”
“Fungi,” my husband said.
“It stinks.” I took out a sterile wipe and cleaned off my hand. “Maybe we should leave them a couple of vats of disinfectant and fungicide.”
The door beneath it swung outward, scraping stone against stone as it abruptly divided itself in half and slid sideways, parallel to the wall. A small group of beings emerged, stopped several feet away, and said nothing. Their garments were a cross between robes and togas, and since their heads were shrouded with odd, cowl-like drapes, there was no way to know what they were thinking. Finally, one of them, the largest, said something.
My vocollar didn’t translate the clipped, toneless words, but Duncan translated at once. “They wish us to present ourselves to them.”
On closer inspection, I saw more of the purple mold staining their toga-robes, and worm-splatters around the hems. Didn’t these people understand the concept of laundry day?
Xonea stepped forward to make the introductions, which he kept brief and businesslike. “I am Xonea Torin, Jorenian, Captain of the Sunlace. This is Healer Cherijo Torin, Linguist Duncan Reever, and hataali Hawk Long Knife, all of Terra.”
Reever translated that into Taercal, but I noted his accent was far softer and more melodic. As the officials listened, a couple of them shuffled back a step. I could tell from the squashing sounds.
Could it be that he was interpreting this whole thing wrong?
When my husband finished speaking, the biggest Taercal pulled back the shrouding hood of his toga-robe, and revealed himself as Tadam Ortsac, the official who had contacted the ship. He looked even fatter and wartier than he had on the vid.
Large and In Charge snapped something that Duncan translated as “Why do you come here?”
Hawk stepped forward, arching his wings for the first time. “Tell him I am the son of Fen Yillut, born of Charla Long Knife.”
Reever obliged, but I don’t think any of the Taercal were listening. Every single one of them, including Ortsac, were staring at Hawk’s powerful wings. Which made me notice the bulges under the back of their robes. I’d seen that before, when Hawk had concealed his alien blood on Terra by binding them down and pretending he was a hunchback.
Could it be that his father’s people also had to disguise their own wings? Why would they, on their own world?
Xonea picked up the sudden shift in mood as well. “Duncan, what say you? What disturbs them?”
“You’re intimidating them.” Reever went up to Hawk and put a hand on his arm. “Fold back your wings, hataali.”
“I mean no disrespect.” The crossbreed looked perplexed. “I don’t understand why my wings would frighten them.”
“Neither do I, but fold them back anyway.” Reever had picked up on the same thing I had, because he added, “Do not attempt to fly until we can learn why these people do not use their wings.”
Once Hawk had folded his extra appendages, Ortsac uttered something short and went back through the door. After a momentary hesitation, so did the rest of the group. A trail of dead worms led to the door, which remained open.
Not much of an invitation.
“Reever, I’m getting a bad feeling about this place.” I glanced back at the launch, then at the growing misery on Hawk’s face. “Then again, I’ve been known to be wrong. Frequently.” I put my arm through his. “Come on, let’s go see if we can locate your dad.”
CHAPTER NINE
Among the Faithful
Within the walls were some of the starkest, most unattractive structures I’d ever seen. Built from the same stone as the outer city walls, they hadn’t been polished, and seemed almost heaped together. Worms and mold were everywhere, under our feet, on the walls, and seemed to increase in quantity the farther we moved into the city.
“Think they’re allergic to architecture and cleanliness?” I asked Reever in a low voice.
He stopped to scrape off the bott
om of his footgear. “Evidently they have other priorities.”
Aside from the swirly mold, the only architectural ornamentation were crude pictographs hacked in the stone above each open doorway. They were all the same thing-an image of a stick figure with two bumps on its head. Nothing else softened the bare walls, and the ground beneath our feet was simply soil carpeted with thousands of squashed worms.
Not a drone or a glidecar or so much as a public access terminal lay anywhere within sight.
“Where’s their tech?” I unbuttoned the front of my now-saturated jacket. “They have to have something, or they wouldn’t have been able to signal us.”
Xonea peered around. “It may be kept inside the buildings, to protect it from the environment.”
Where the dirt streets intersected, triangular trenches had been dug around groups of large stone blocks. There were holes in the top of the blocks, but I wasn’t tall enough to see if they went all the way through. Behind them rose the towering black edifices we’d seen from the air. Each one had four splinter-shaped towers at each corner, and only a single open entrance at the base.
Something screeched nearby, and I jumped. “What was that?”
Xonea pointed to a small, darting shadow moving around the jagged points of one black structure. “Some sort of animal.”
Some sort of bloodsucking animal, I’d bet. Or worm eating. The white mist rolling around the base of those black things made me expect to hear wolves howling at any moment.
“These must be communal centers.” Reever looked in through one of the entrances, but the interior was as black as the outside. “Perhaps meeting places for the local population.”
I didn’t know who would meet there. The city seemed completely deserted. The only sound we heard was the damp wind, the trickle of condensate running down the stone walls and, as we walked on, the regular squish of the worms we stepped on. There should have been voices, music, kids running around, whispers, something,
“Look at this.” Xonea knelt down beside a stone channel at the base of one of the houses and waved away the mist. Condensate dribbled into the primitive gutter and was funneled toward one of the black structures. As we followed the aqueduct, I saw the water draining into regular-spaced holes in the black rock base. Worms caught in the streams slid into the holes, too.
“Maybe it’s some kind of pest control.” I went to step into the narrow entrance to have a peek inside.
Tadam Ortsac appeared again, this time alone, and wearing a standard League wristcom. “You will not trespass upon the ziggurat that is Sadda’s abode.”
“We will not.” Water ran down my husband’s face like tears. “However, we are ignorant of your boundaries, and request your guidance.”
The official jerked his beak to one side. “Our monitors shall provide instruction.” Tadam pointed behind us to another group of four Taercal. Their toga-robes had silver markings on the sleeves, and were stained purple. They moved to stand beside each of us, and smelled so moldy that I started to mouth-breathe. “Accompany your instructors to the felling circles. Until you are educated, enter no ziggurat.”
“We would like to contact one of your people,” Xonea began to say, but the official only turned and waddled away.
My eyes narrowed as I noticed the official seemed to be hobbling. So far, I hadn’t seen anyone as hefty or as warty as Ortsac. Maybe Big Bird was ill. “Reever, ask them what’s wrong with Ortsac. Aside from obesity and being covered in verrucae.”
Reever relayed my question, but the monitor merely pointed to a narrow alleyway beside the nearest ziggurat. “I believe we must take instruction before we can ask any further questions.”
The felling circles were a group of stones set in a circular pattern on a flat, cleared piece of ground. For some reason, the mist and the mold didn’t trespass beyond the triangular boundary encompassing the circles. Neither did the worms.
If the worms didn’t like it, I didn’t like it. I wasn’t armed, but I knew Duncan was. He was always armed. “Okay.”
As soon as I stepped over the stones and stood inside the circle, I felt very strange-as if something invisible tugged at me. At the same time, my monitor lifted his thin arm and activated a wristcom.
“I am north-seventh monitor.” He pulled back his shroud, showing a thin, worn face. “Address me as ‘monitor’ at all times.”
“Sure, monitor.” I tried to step in another circle, but he stopped me with a hand. “I can’t move around?”
“Stand and receive instruction.”
I spotted some dark stains in the dirt near me. “You know, I’m not really good at taking instructions.”
North-seventh monitor removed a thin stick from his sleeve and slapped it across the back of my hand. “Remain silent.”
“I don’t think so.” I went to grab the stick, and he hit me in the same place again. “Ouch! Knock it off with the stick!”
Xonea’s claws were out, and Reever poised to jump, but it was Hawk who stepped into my circle and blocked a third swat. He said something in the native language that made the monitor shuffle back a step.
Reever took my arm. “Shield the monitor, quickly.”
“I shield this Taercal male,” I said loudly, to stop the Captain from attacking. “Look, friend, you’d better put your little stick away.”
The monitor seemed aghast at our behavior, until Hawk said something else. With great reluctance, he put the stick away.
The hataali stepped out of the circle. “Cherijo, he won’t hit you again as long as you don’t talk.”
He wouldn’t be able to do anything if he hit me again, I thought, then nodded.
The monitor folded his hands in his mold-stained sleeves before addressing me again. “Vanity is a sin against Sadda. You will cover your head before you enter the ziggurat that is his abode.”
Terran Catholics and Muslims once required women to do the same. Apparently their gods didn’t like seeing female hair, either. I remembered the no-talking rule and nodded.
“Conversation outside of prayer within Sadda’s abode is a sin against Sadda. You will not speak there unless you have prayer for the ten thousand gods.”
I could respect the sanctity of a church.
“Coitus is unseemly and a sin against Sadda. You will not offer temptation to the gods’ scourges.”
No sex. Possibly the reason why there were only three hundred and forty-two of them. I sent out a mental S.O.S. to my husband. I don’t know about you, but I think we should go now.
Look. They are coming out to see us.
Other natives began emerging from the speckled stone buildings. These were not as silent and sober as the monitors, or as fat and warty as Ortsac. Gaunt, careworn faces inspected us as they exchanged low comments. A few kids pushed up to the front to see, and their toga-robes seemed cleaner.
“Cute kids.” I smiled at a little girl about Marel’s size. “Hi, there.”
She cowered back against an older female, who grabbed her and hurried away.
The stick reappeared as my monitor stepped in front of me. “You will not engage the gods’ scourges in idle conversation.”
“Can I ask you something without getting whacked?”
He nodded like a gracious host. “You are permitted questions regarding Sadda.”
I used his metaphors. “Do the gods’ scourges fast for Sadda?”
“To suffer is the price of Sadda’s Promise. The gods’ scourges abandon all pleasures of the flesh and earth for the coming of the great one.”
“Are we”-I indicated myself and the rest of the sojourn team-“expected to do the same while we’re here?”
“All must bend to Sadda’s whip.”
“And if we don’t?”
“You wish to bring down Sadda’s wrath?” Obviously horrified, he stepped out of the felling circle. That acted like a signal, and the crowd abruptly dispersed and vanished.
“No, not at all. I didn’t mean to-“ I stopped and swore under my brea
th as the monitor hobbled away. “Captain?”
I turned to see Xonea snatching the stick from his monitor and breaking it in half. White-within-white eyes met mine as the native escaped. “I dislike this world.”
By then all the other monitors except Duncan’s had gone. I wiped my dripping face with my sleeve. “So much for being educated.”
Hawk stepped into my circle to examine the two fading red marks left on my hand by the monitor’s stick. “Are you all right?”
“I’ll live.” I was watching my husband, who had his hand on the Taercal’s shoulder. A few minutes later, Reever released him, and the native stumbled away to disappear into the fog. He looked really worried as he came over to us.
“Xonea, these people are extreme fanatics. They spend most of their time cloistered in prayer.” Duncan reached over and blotted the eye I was rubbing with the edge of his sleeve. “Their speech, culture, and daily behavior is strictly governed by thousands of complex ritual laws. It would take years to learn simply how to speak to them without giving offense.”
I sighed. “Maybe we should leave.”
“Did that one know of my father?” Hawk asked him.
“He dwells within this city.” Reever nodded toward the western quadrant. “I can take you there, but we should keep our visit brief.”
The hataali’s face clouded. “Why?”
“If I am interpreting his warning correctly, a visit to your father could disrupt his daily prayer rituals. For that, he will be beaten. Along with us.”
I heard another of those sporadic, eerie screeches, and heard a faint splash. I walked toward the sound until I came across an open pit filled with water. I wouldn’t have noticed it, but for a single, decomposing object sticking up out of it. Mold had turned it a fuzzy purple, but it was still recognizable.
“Guys.” It was a hand, and something had been gnawing on it. “There’s a body over here.”
When the men came over, their movements scattered the fog and I saw not one but dozens of bodies in the murky, shallow water. I took out my scanner and passed it over the surface before handing it to my husband. Then I rolled up my sleeve and plunged my hand into the water.