Dryland's End

by Felice Picano

  “Not me!” Ay’r said, “I want to watch you do more astro.-sewing.”

  “Not me either!” Alli Clark said, taking up the challenge. Then, so it didn’t look like that: “I want to monitor that little world. If it is Pelagia ...”

  “Well, fasten your seat belts!” P’al said, explaining to Alli Clark, “A Metro.-Terran archaism! Ser Kerry is fond of them.”

  “And you’ve been reading up on them while we snoozed!” Ay’r laughed.

  “A week is a long time.”

  The holo remained focused on the bubble, although as they neared the system’s ice moon shield, it lost its odd glamour and strangeness and was replaced by a far more awesome sight – the quickly approaching and seemingly random meshwork of billions of giant icebergs swirling and diving into one another, occasionally crashing with fearsome results: huge explosions that lighted up the area and emitted sheets of blinding blue-white hydroxyl. As Ay’r looked, he noted that one such crash involved four such icebergs. When he mentioned it to P’al, his companion reported calmly, “A collision involving thirteen of them over a sector several hundred cubic kilometers was noted just before I awakened you.”

  Ay’r noticed that Alli Clark was unable to keep from shaking her head and turning away from the holo to check into her wrist connection screen.

  Having nothing to do for the moment, Ay’r tuned into what she was doing.

  “Is it Pelagia?”

  "Do you mind?”

  Let me look. I’ve got some interest in the place, too. After all, my father’s supposed to be there.”

  “I believe it is Pelagia. And, for your information, it’s showing up filled with water. Real water.”

  “But not at a ratio of a hundred to one to land. That must have been the hydroxyl as seen from afar.”

  “It’s hard to tell,” she admitted. “The hydroxyl bubble seems to be distorting any finer details these instruments would ordinarily pick up.”

  “It would really mean a lot to you if you discovered a water world, wouldn’t it?”

  “It would be a great boon for the Matriarchy, not to mention the species.”

  “Come on! For you, too! I’m a Spec. Eth. I know how important discoveries are. And it’s not just ego gratification, either.”

  “It’s not?”

  “No, it means that, of the trillion intelligent creatures in the galaxy, you’ve done something unique, that your name is attached to some discovery, to some accomplishment throughout time.”

  “And that’s not ego gratification?” she asked. “In fact, that’s the same male-dominated attitude which brought the Metro.-Terrans to their doom. ‘Every man for himself’ was the motto of the time, I believe. The Age of Star-Barons – isn’t that what the 23rd to 26th Centuries are called in Ed. and Dev.? Every male out to grab his own star-system, his own world, which he would then rape and pillage until it was a smoking slag heap of polluted wasteland. Before he moved on to another system, another world, and started all over again? And for what? Money! Their puerile concept of power! Their ridiculous masculine sense of accomplishment! All those males thought they were making names for themselves, didn’t they? Well, they’d be surprised how infamous their names have become.”

  “There were women among the Star-Barons!” Ay’r said defensively.

  “Sure. Women who played according to the male system of rape and exploitation. Women who were tired of being left out. Who wanted to get some of what the males had. Fools that they were. And yes, some of them were worse than the men. Vanessa von Gelber, Sonia Montefiorre. They’re as infamous as any of the men, and a lesson to all women!”

  “I still say there’s a place for names to be made in nonexploitive areas by both males and women!” Ay’r declared. “In science and discovery and knowledge.”

  “And I still say, it’s a good thing we have the Matriarchy, so that males will never again be able to range free to destroy our galaxy!”

  “What about Hesperia?” Ay’r asked. “There’s an entire population that lives by non-Matriarchy rules and customs. By what you would call the outmoded male-dominated ideas. Yet Hesperia is responsible for the major scientific advances of the past millennium: without Plastro-Beryllium, we wouldn’t be able to communicate across enormous distances, or travel in Fasts or –”

  "Luck!” she broke in. "Sheer chance that they and not the Matriarchy discovered that dead star.”

  “Chance, nothing! You know as well as I that they went looking for that particular dead star, following Tomas Lin-Yang’s hypothesis, which said it must exist and that it would provide the fuel for faster-than-light travel. A theory that, I remind you, had already been completely discredited by the Matriarchal-dominated Astrogation and Astrophysics Institutes of the day. It was even called a ‘Male Power Fantasy’ by Wicca First.”

  “That was the Old Matriarchy,” she reminded him. “No woman ever said the Old Matriarchy was perfect. If it had been, it wouldn’t have ended.”

  “Whereas the New Matriarchy is perfect?”

  “Never before in the history of any of the Three Species have there been so many continuous years of peace, prosperity, and growth.”

  “And stagnation.” Ay’r sounded the main theme of the Oppos. Movement he’d toyed with so briefly when he was a university student. "Because stagnation is the price we all pay for the Matriarchy’s so-called ‘Eon of Peace and Prosperity.’ The only new things that ever happen, happen because of the Hesperians.”

  “Who are always looking for new ways to make money and extend their stranglehold over the rest of us.”

  "Stranglehold? Considering their possessing the material that keeps the Matriarchy from falling apart, I’d say the Hesperians have behaved not only with astonishing restraint – given their allegedly intractable male hormones! – but that their particular gifts have allowed the Matriarchy to better secure its own stranglehold."

  "We both know that was a trade-off, solidified by the Treaty of Formalhaut. The Hesperians would be free to sell their Plastro-Beryllium anywhere and to anyone, and in return they would guarantee that the Matriarchy was their primary customer. It was all money! It’s a wonder the MC didn’t just take over the greedy rebels and their tiny dead star.”

  “They tried!” Ay’r said. “Oh, you didn’t study that in Ed. and Dev. did you? But I did. It’s documented, if anyone cares to look. There were two attempts by the Matriarchy to take over Hesperia and its ultraprecious resources. Once in the Old Matriarchy and once in the New!”

  “That’s not true!” Alli Clark said.

  “Dial it up on your chrono-scope. It’s listed under Hesperia, City-State, Early Settlement and Development, Inter. Galactic Relations. Section C.”

  “Later,” she said, sulking.

  “You’ll find it,” he assured her. “The first time was a desperate shot that resulted in the fall of the Old Matriarchy. The second was right after the Treaty of Formalhaut and was about as deceptive as anything could be.”

  “There was no reason why males should hoard the stuff.” she defended.

  “That’s exactly what Wicca Third thought. She ordered the Matriarchy’s fleet to surround Hesperia, and she ordered immediate surrender and evacuation of the City. The Hesperians simply held the dead star hostage. They had placed anti-Beryllium bombs within the entire core of the place during the first standoff a few years Sol Rad. earlier and so they were prepared. The population got into its two million Fasts loaded with Plastro-Beryllium, all prepared to skip right past the slower MC warships if they gave chase. Then they told the fleet commander the price they would pay to leave the City: they would destroy Hesperia as soon as they were gone.”

  “Utterly barbaric!”

  “Evidently Wicca Third thought so, too. The idea of a few million homeless Hesperians able to gad about the galaxy at faster-than-light speed, while Her own supply of Plastro-Beryllium went up in ashes was a bit much for Her. Naturally, She pulled Her Fleet out. And the Matriarchy has sensibly left the City a
lone ever since. Now, as a hormone-dominated male, I would have wanted at least a little revenge for such deception. But the Hesperians pretended it didn’t happen. Now tell me who are the great benefactors of the Three Species?”

  “They may well be getting their revenge now!” Alli Clark said darkly. “Not that it will do them much good.”

  Before Ay’r could ask what she meant, P’al announced in his usual indifferent tone, “If you two are done bickering about ideology and ancient politics, you might be amused by the fact that the Fast will reach the hydroxyl bubble’s outer edge in four seconds.”

  His last two words were punctuated by a thump.

  “Make that minus three seconds,” he corrected himself.

  “You have found a way in, haven’t you?” Alli Clark was staring at the holo – now a solid glittering wall of incredibly mobile ice.

  “This is our path!” On the holo, P’al presented a rather jagged-looking red line three-dimensionally entering the ice wall.

  “And we won’t be hit?”

  “On the contrary. We’ll be hit only six times.”

  “Six times!”

  “We’ve already been hit once. Ah, there’s a second one showing up.”

  “You mean they’ll all be that light?” she asked.

  “Unfortunately, random permutation doesn’t say how hard they’ll hit. Only that they’ll hit a certain number of times.”

  “Plastro this thick is the hardest material ever ...” Ay’r began.

  P’al looked unconvinced. “It’s not completely indestructible. There should be one more hit soon, then nothing for a while. Then another one, and finally one or two.”

  They felt another thump, this time from a different direction.

  “We’re moving at SLp.G,” Alli Clark said, evidently controlling her voice. “If we moved into Fast?”

  “Torn to shreds. It couldn’t maneuver. So! That’s three. We can rest awhile. Do you see why, Ser Kerry?”

  The holo was now turned in a cross section of the ice bubble.

  “The hydroxyl shell seems to be in three layers,” Ay’r explained. “A wide chaotic layer, an inner and far more orderly layer, and a second thinner chaotic layer. Orderly as this area is, why do you posit a hit while we’re in it?”

  “Because we’re operating under a different set of laws. Those of random permutation actually are more useful, since all the rules we have about orderly systems merely say that they’re orderly, whereas you and I know very well that disorder can erupt at any second, even in the most orderly system.”

  Ay’r almost laughed at the explanation, although he couldn’t deny it.

  “I thought, we weren’t going to talk about ideology and politics,” Alli Clark said.

  “Ice, Mer Clark. Nothing but ice is my subject.”

  Ay’r couldn’t help asking P’al a question. “Were you really awake for a week Sol Rad. while we just lay here?”

  “If I’d awakened one of you, the other would have complained bitterly the rest of the voyage.”

  Alli Clark merely said, “Hmmm.”

  “Given the small space and the not-unlimited supplies we possess, it seemed the wisest course,” P’al concluded.

  Ay’r had a question for Alli Clark now. “If Pelagia’s so important, why is the Matriarchy sending only one woman?”

  “The Fast was programmed to take every known test possible of the planet, before, while, and after we’re on it. It should fill in any gaps my own findings may require.”

  Talk about arrogance, Ay’r thought.

  She asked P’al, “Regarding those supplies, would a hit –”

  “Destroy them? Unlikely. Unless of course it tore open the Fast itself in which case supplies would hardly matter,” P’al said. Then to Ay’r: “See, it registered a hit! In this orderly area. It’s some time to the inner ring. Perhaps this would be a good time for a Stelezine cocktail.”

  “You of slush!” Ay’r said. But he thought it was a good idea too and ordered three of them. He noticed that, after some minutes, even Alli Clark was sipping surreptitiously.

  After a while, Alli Clark said, “I’m getting clearer pictures of the little planet. Much clearer, and, yes, it is Pelagia, and it is water. Gigatons of water!”

  A few minutes later the Fast was thumped hard twice in rapid succession on either side. The holo showed decreasing ice ahead, then scattered ice, then almost no ice.

  “We’re through,” P’al reported. “The Fast will take us to the planet in an hour. I think I’ll conk out for a bit.”

  “Conk out?” Alli Clark recognized that it was an archaism. “It’s no surprise at all that that particularly inelegant idiom fell out of use.”

  Ay’r awakened P’al before they’d begun to orbit around the planet.

  “We’ve got a few surprises,” Alli Clark said.

  “What kind of surprises?” P’al asked.

  “Take a look.”

  The holo placed the silver-blue world in the middle of its three-dimensional picture area, and it was a pleasant enough sight. Ay’r watched his usually indifferent companion to see how quickly he would respond to their discovery. There! The first shadow was across the almost-unbroken surface, and there, the next one.

  “Satellites!” P’al said. “Are they artificial?”

  “That would be a slap in the MC’s face, wouldn’t it?” Ay’r said. "Having to deal with a people already developed in early space travel.”

  “Not artificial,” Alli Clark assured him.

  “How many are there?”

  “We’ve counted four. But look there!” she pointed the holo off center, so that a slice of the silver-blue world could be seen, and in the foreground what looked like a cloud of debris.

  “Asteroids!” P’al said. “Or icesteroids?”

  “We think it was a fifth moon, and that it was smashed in a major collision,” Alli Clark said.

  “And there may be another, even older moon that also got smashed,” Ay’r said.

  “We’ve picked up a much less cohesive, much more scattered pattern shaped roughly like a ring. It would have had to have happened a while ago, for the spread to have gotten into that pattern.”

  “Two of the moons are largish,” Alli Clark noted. “The innermost and outermost. A hundred thousand kilometers radius. The two between the asteroid belt and the inner moon are about one-third that size. I’ve calculated the asteroid belt would have made a moon midway in size between the two. All in all, it’s a sizable mass orbiting Pelagia.”

  “And their composition?” P’al connected his wrist to the console nearest where he’d sat up. “I see. No atmospheres. Rocky debris. Not much ice. Heavily cratered.”

  As they were looking, a flash of brightness occurred from the slice of the planetary disc visible on the holo.

  “We’ve seen two of those so far,” Ay’r said. “We believe they’re icesteroids from the inner ring of the hydroxyl shell. Collisions within the ring knock them loose, and before the shell’s gravity can recapture them, they’re already headed in toward the sun. Some vaporize. About four per hour appear to be captured by the gravity of Pelagia and its moons and end up vaporizing over the planet or, if large enough, crashing into the ocean.”

  “We’re presuming that large ice moons from the same catastrophe which destroyed the gaseous giant and formed the shell are also responsible for the destruction of two moons,” Alli Clark said. “But we’re not certain. There may be ice moons orbiting as comets.”

  “It would be surprising if there weren’t,” Ay’r agreed. “We’re having the Fast do a widespread search of the entire inner system now.”

  “Pelagia may have been an oceanic planet before the catastrophe, or perhaps only after it,” Alli Clark said. “But two things are certain. If hydroxyl icesteroids keep falling, the water can only rise.”

  “Although given how much water mass it has, and given the rate of fall of icesteroids, it would take a decade for the water to rise more than a millimet
er,” Ay’r added.

  He watched P’al as he checked through all their calculations, looking pleased and perhaps even a tiny bit impressed.

  “It appears to be a stable system. And a closed one. Closed by its location in this outer arm of the galaxy, by its rate of speed, and by the history of its violent neighboring stars. However, there don’t seem to be any stars near enough now to go nova and upset the system.”

  “I’ve checked with our astrogation file and can’t find any system quite like this one!” Ay’r said. “It’s completely unique.”

  “What’s the second certainty you postulate?” P’al asked Alli Clark.

  “Four moons and an asteroid belt means the tides on the planet below must be very, very complicated. I’m working on them right now.”

  The holo returned its focus back onto the silvery planet in front of them. Now Ay’r could make out a second color, a deep blue that looked to be of greater depth somehow than the silver. The actual ocean, he supposed.

  He was about to ask P’al, but his companion now had the personal link to the Fast’s mind directly in front of him and was concentrating on something, checking it constantly with his wrist connection.

  “Are you doing that?” Alli Clark asked P’al sharply.

  “If you mean putting us into orbit around Pelagia, yes,” P’al said. “Don’t you like my choice?”

  She didn’t respond, which in Ay’r’s opinion meant a grudging acceptance of the situation. So far, grudging acceptance was one of Alli Clark’s less-frequent modes of behavior. Other, more-frequent, if less-pleasing, modes of her behavior could be summed up as

  1. barely restrained irritation;

  2. open condemnation, with an overlay of patronizing dismissal at such irrational (i.e., male) thinking;

  3. arrogant tolerance;

  4. honest curiosity and real enthusiasm (always over something to do with Pelagia – never about her companions); and