Dryland's End

by Felice Picano

  The canyons below the T-pod were getting longer and wider, but they were filled, not with the valleys and vegetation Ay’r had expected to see from the holo he had stared at so long, but instead with fog. Before him, the mountains fell away, brown-ridged fingers clawing at a swirl of thick cloud, grayish white, but with a glistening top, a rainbow of colors as the nearby star began its descent from meridian. Not only before him, but on all sides, and as far as Ay’r could see in all directions, except perhaps straight ahead, where brightness glinted: he guessed from the icecap.

  Of course there would be clouds. He’d forgotten: a giant cloud covered the landmass perpetually, collecting there because of the land’s constantly greater warmth compared to all that surrounding water. He wouldn’t be able to handle the landing manually, as he would have preferred. Too bad. T-pods sometimes had bizarre ideas about what constituted a good landing spot.

  “Descent imminent,” he heard the Fast’s voice say.

  The pod began to drop instantly.

  “Have you got a fix on what’s in this cloud?” Ay’r asked.

  “We need fear no flying insect or avian life,” it replied. “None could possibly fly in this density.”

  “Can we?”

  “T-pods are equipped for all-density flight from the thinnest of atmospheres to the heaviest liquid metal. Especially this newest series, which –”

  Suddenly the Fast’s voice was gone, as though cut off.

  The pod continued to drop. It was deep in cloud, the topmost layer replaced by a thicker mass. Ay’r hoped that it thinned out closer to the ground. He wondered if during the ’xchange his optic nerves had been adjusted to see through such fog. The Fast didn’t answer his thought. And the pod continued to drop straight down.

  “I’d like manual control now.” Ay’r reached out his hand for the control to fold out of the pod’s inner wall.

  Nothing happened.

  Outside was fogged so thickly that he couldn’t tell if the pod was falling faster or slower. Ay’r repeated his command twice, to no response.

  What was going on?

  Suddenly it stopped, seemed to hang there, long enough for Ay’r’s sight to adjust and make out what appeared to be a thicket of huge leafless pale gray tree trunks. At least he was near the ground. Then the T-pod zipped about in various directions, stopping and starting off again so quickly that Ay’r couldn’t orient himself.

  “That looks like a good spot! There, directly below,” he said, in what he assumed would be an unheard command, but which he had to attempt anyway, when something seemed to zip by the upper right side of the pod not ten meters away and so rapidly that it left cuts through the cloud.

  “What was that?” Once more he got no answer.

  However, the pod dropped suddenly, as though equally startled – directly into what Ay’r had said looked like a good spot to land: dense underbrush. Dense enough to slow down and finally stop the T-pod, which settled and remained suspended about a meter from the ground. Well, fine, Ay’r thought, less chance of anyone finding it.

  Now he wondered if that had been a fluke and if the Fast would respond to his next command: “Open!”

  The T-pod split open. Which meant he was still in contact with it. But why had the Fast gone silent? Perhaps lacking the finer shadings of judgment, a “personality” usually conferred on Cyber intellect and overworked through its secondary intelligence circuits, the Fast had followed his earlier instructions to the letter and was keeping silent.

  Ay’r touched the branches gingerly. They were deep green and seemed hollow stemmed and intricately laced. No fruit, no buds, no flowers, no leaves. Below, they appeared to meet in a simple root, like a succulent.

  The fog was less dense here. Ay’r could make out the tall trees he had passed descending, their thick trunks weathered and folded vertically, shooting high into the cloud. Giant mosses and what looked like sphagnum ferns seemed to decorate them, extruding from their trunks and hanging down at the oddest angles. At his feet spread what seemed to be grass, or, at least, from its oddly shaped blades, a lichen much like grass. He climbed down out of the succulent branch, being careful not to bend the stems until he had gotten out, so the T-pod’s location wouldn’t be given away. When he landed on the springy lichen groundcover, Ay’r bent back three of the branches, knotting them and watching to see whether they would bend back or retain the new shape. The knot remained. Now to get a visual fix on this location for future reference.

  Ay’r moved forward over the lichen cautiously, until he seemed to be in the midst of a small clearing. He was looking for a landmark. That bluff over there, perhaps.

  Where was P’al? Why hadn’t he landed nearby?

  Ay’r was looking up, scanning the highest reaches of the cloud, when he heard something whiz by overhead. It moved too quickly for him to see what it was, but it left cuts in the mist where it had gone. Just like whatever had startled the pod.

  A noise behind him made Ay’r turn to a sight he would never forget: coming right at him, the gigantic polished ebony head, proboscis, and antennae of a insect perhaps four feet taller than he was. He staggered back.

  “Down, Colley!” he heard a voice command.

  The insect’s giant head dropped almost to the ground, its antennae, several meters in length, still waving around, brushed against Ay’r legs.

  “Don’t be afraid, stranger. He’s tame.”

  With the insect’s huge head bent down, munching at the lichen, Ay’r could make out the source of the voice. Astride the curved back of the enormous beetle, holding on with reins, was an astonishing Hume female. She wore a halter of some unknown skin or material around her upper torso, another about her lower torso. Her arms and legs were bare. Her features were modeled distinctively, her eyes gray-blue, her hair long and streaming and, in this mist, yellow as a beam of G-class star sunlight.

  “I don’t know who you are, stranger, but if you value your life and liberty, you’d better come up and hide inside Colley’s wingfold.”

  Ay’r was so stunned by her appearance – so casual upon the back of the enormous insect – that he could only stare at her.

  “Are you mute? They’ll be back in a minute!”

  “Who’ll be back?” he asked.

  Her head turned left. “They’re here. Colley! Grab him!”

  Before Ay’r could do anything, two legs from within the beetle’s armored underside had shot out, clasped him around the waist, and were tossing him over its back. They were met by other legs, evidently located more in the middle, which held him dangling while a large panel of the creature’s back slid open, exposing a huge fan of filmy wing. Ay’r was dropped into the opening.

  He didn’t tumble far. Ay’r was within a shallow, oddly shaped chamber, just finding his feet as the wing began to close over him.

  He grabbed at the opening. “Wait!”

  “Don’t be silly!” the female said. “You’ll be perfectly safe inside.”

  Ay’r suddenly fell back against the glossy walls of the chamber – the wingfold she had called it. They were moving forward.

  “I’ll suffocate!” he called out, trying to pry open the closed wing.

  “Quiet – or we’re both doomed!”

  The new voice came from somewhere inside the creature. But where?

  One side of the chamber seemed to flex forward, as though it were a folding screen. When it was open, Ay’r could see even in the dim light, a strong, curved, ebony beam, which must have been the insect’s carapace support. Beyond it, in what must be a second wingfold, Ay’r made out a Hume face.

  “Sit down,” the face whispered urgently. “Talk softly.”

  Ay’r did as he was told. With his legs folded under him, he was more comfortable, feeling the giant insect’s forward motion as a flow rather than as a series of jolts. He also noted that what he had taken for smooth walls were in fact ciliated so finely, so glossily, they seemed molded.

  “I’m ’Dward,” the Hume face said. “I h
ave to hide too. That’s my sib Oudma reining Colley. She’ll give us the clear.”

  “Why do we have to hide?” Ay’r asked.

  “Otherwise they’ll take us. Me, certainly. You too, probably, as you’re still young. How old? Twenty-one? Twenty-two?”

  He meant in Pelagian years, Ay’r supposed. He’d have to remember that.

  “Yes.”

  “Like Oudma. Though she’s still unbonded. She says not till the initiation will she even think to bond. Have you been to the Great Temple for initiation?”

  “No. I –”

  “Me either. But I’ll be eighteen this double-month. Father will take both Oudma and me soon.”

  Ay’r heard a sharp rap from above their heads.

  “Quiet!” ’Dward instructed, although he’d been doing most of the talking.

  The creature continued to lumber forward awhile. ’Dward remained silent, then began to whisper again. “Oudma’s never even been affianced. No one in our valley, or in fact in any mountain valley, will bond her. She’s too headstrong, the other teens all say. Do you like her?”

  “Like her?” Ay’r asked. What did this seedling mean?

  “Her looks, I mean.”

  “She’s very striking. Beautiful,” Ay’r corrected himself, remembering the appropriate word. This seedling variant of language was so close to what he was used to speaking, yet also so filled with Metro.-Terran archaisms, that Ay’r was surprised how difficult it was to respond instantly. Even with his Universal Gal. Lex. implant, he couldn’t handle all the shadings so rapidly.

  “I think so too,” ’Dward said. “Although we are taboo.”

  Two raps from above them stopped Ay’r from asking the exact nature of the taboo. The wing flap was suddenly lifted enough for him to see his companion’s face in the new light – virtually identical to his sibling.

  “You two can come out now,” Oudma said. Then to her brother: “There were three of them.”

  “Three of who?” Ay’r asked.

  Brother and sister exchanged glances. ’Dward climbed over the carapace support to ride atop, behind Oudma, a long arm thrown over her hips to hold on to a sort of bridle.

  “You’re not from Monosilla Valley!” ’Dward said.

  “Silly!” Oudma slapped her brother’s long, beefy, bare thigh. “Listen to his accent. His words! He’s from a distance. The Delta Lands?” she asked Ay’r.

  He shook his head.

  “From up north, then!” she guessed. “Look how much clothing he’s wearing. Aren’t you warm in all that?”

  “Actually, I am warm.”

  “Take it off,” she gestured. Ay’r unbelted the Fast’s version of the Drylander singlet. That was better. “Take it off!” she insisted. “And the bottom piece too.”

  “I have no undergarment,” Ay’r said. He wrapped his singlet around his biceps as ’Dward had done. “Who were we hiding from?”

  “Didn’t you hear them?” Oudma pointed up into the cloud cover.

  “I thought I saw something moving very fast.”

  “The Gods,” ’Dward said darkly. “Out hunting for Dryland males. If they’d seen us, we’d have been kidnapped. Who knows what would have happened to Oudma!”

  “Nothing!” she asserted. “They take only males.”

  “Who are they?” Ay’r asked.

  “The Gods. Don’t you have the Gods up north?” ’Dward asked. “We have them here. Father said they weren’t always evil. When he was a child, Father said, the Gods always gave and never took. But now they take our people.”

  “Why?”

  “We don’t know why. None taken have ever returned to tell.”

  “What do they look like, the Gods?”

  “No one’s ever seen them.”

  “No one we know,” Oudma corrected. “There’s an old saying here in Monosilla Valley: ‘See the God, paralyzed as though by a chillip’s sting!’ Don’t tell me you don’t have chillips up north either?”

  “We have very little up north. But, surely, at one time your ancestors saw the Gods.”

  “If so, they don’t admit it.”

  “Are there no stories of the Gods? No legends that say what they looked like?” Ay’r asked.

  “’Imothy is our Legend-Keeper,” ’Dward said. “He’s collected legends from all over, traveling the valleys to ... Are you a Legend-Collector too?”

  “The Gods are no legends,” Oudma said. “Unfortunately.”

  “We’ve already lost our brother, ’Nton to them,” ’Dward explained.

  Ay’r had been watching the passing landscape as best he could from his vantage point, standing and barely holding on to the wingfold edge of the giant beetle’s back as best he could. What he had seen wasn’t reassuring. To begin with, it all more or less resembled where he had left his T-pod: acres of grasslike spots surrounded by stands of tall, colorless trees, their tops hidden in the cloud, their trunks festooned with hanging moss, ferns, and other cycads. The chromatics were also limited, ranging from the occasional deep green of the least-frequent succulent bushes through tones of brown, graybrown, and gray, itself ranging from charcoal to near white. It was both dreary and fatiguing to look at, almost impossible to locate anything in.

  Perhaps that was why Ay’r almost jumped when he thought he now saw directly ahead of them tiny glints of deep red and purple and violet that seemed like the richest jewels in the galaxy.

  “Here we are!” Oudma pointed ahead. “This is our farm.”

  “And look!” ’Dward gestured, as the big beetle lumbered through the brush. “Father’s waiting for us. And he also is with a stranger!”

  Ay’r didn’t have to get very close to recognize the stranger: P’al!

  “You’re both from the Northlands, and you both traveled together, yet you don’t look to be kin,” ’Dward said, not unkindly, as he passed around what looked like a hollowed gourd filled with a thickish liquid that smelled to Ay’r like a particularly redolent mushroom soup.

  “Kerry is one of my companions,” P’al said with his usual composure. “Our other companion is still missing. No, we are not related by blood.”

  Oudma had warmed the broth on top of what seemed to be a large ceramic stove, heated from below by charred peat. The soup smelled good. When the gourd reached Ay’r and stopped, he supposed he was to sip it.

  “You’re really from the north?” Oudma asked.

  “They said so,” ’Harles, their father, replied succinctly. Evidently he didn’t want too many questions asked. Ay’r wondered whether that was because of traditional hospitality rules which declared that guests might offer information but not be asked.

  “You’re not bonded together, are you?” she asked.

  “Oudma! Mind your manners!” her father chided.

  “I’ve heard there are so few females up north that unrelated males bond there.”

  “We are not bonded,” P’al said with equanimity. He had received his own bowl – although gourdlike, it also proved to be ceramic – and now began to sip it, without making a face. It couldn’t be too bad. Ay’r prepared himself for a Spec. Eth. “quick swallow,” but he was curious about what might be in the soup, so instead he let the liquid sit in his mouth. Not quite a broth, nor yet a consomme, it tasted of different flavors: some smoky, some sweet, one even a bit peppery. Yet the consistency was all alike. Were all these mushrooms? Was there such a variety of edible types here on Dryland? Why not?

  “Curiosity is normal, especially in the young,” P’al said. “We don’t mind answering questions.”

  ’Dward immediately took up the challenge. “If you really are from up north, what’s even farther north?”

  “’Dward!” his father warned.

  “Ice!” P’al said. “Frozen water in cliffs high as these mountains and extending as far as the eye can see.”

  But the adolescent wasn’t quite satisfied. “Only ice? What about the Old Port?”

  “It’s still there. Under the sheet of ice,” P’al
replied. “It’s visible at certain times and seasons when the ice face is clear.”

  Ay’r wondered how his companion knew that. He must have seen it on one of the Fast’s probes.

  “How were you separated?” Oudma asked, and before her father could warn her, she added, “It must have been upsetting in a strange country.”

  “They’re Legend-Collectors, silly!” ’Dward said. “They’re used to traveling to strange country and becoming separated.”

  Ay’r supposed that the youth must have already formed his own image of their adventurous life. But this spelling out of what they were supposed to be was evidently news to P’al, who glanced at Ay’r quickly enough for the others not to notice. And who received a shrug in return.

  “This is our first time so far south,” Ay’r said quickly. “Once we find our other companion we’ll –”

  “Have you legends?” P’al interrupted him. “Legends that we may collect.”

  ’Harles looked up from his soup. “This is newly settled land. Our legends aren’t very different from those in the great New River Valley.”

  “We’re not familiar with those either. We’re especially interested in legends of the beginning of things. The creation,” P’al added.

  Ay’r wondered what he was getting at. Did P’al hope to locate Ay’r’s father this way? Or was he going after something different? For example, the location and influence of the Cyber guardians who had accompanied these seedlings to Pelagia and who might be responsible for their surprisingly advanced state of linguistic and cultural development.

  “The creation of Dryland?” ’Harles asked. He had finished his soup and was reaching for a long piece of ceramic mold that Oudma removed with green branched tongs from within the burning peat itself. “All we have are children’s tales!” ’Harles tapped on the ceramic mold and it cracked open lengthwise, releasing a savory aroma. Within were what looked like tubers and what seemed to be a cooked joint of meat. ’Harles offered the meat to his two guests, who both held up their bowls to show that they were still occupied, the better to find out what kind of meat it might be and to watch him eat it – which ’Harles did, after saying to ’Dward, “Tell them a story, ’Dward, which you learned as a lad.”