Dryland's End

by Felice Picano

  Diad was trying to piece it all together. Finally he said, “You think that it has something to do with Ferrex Sanqq’? That’s why his son was sent? To find him?”

  “In what other way could Wicca Eighth possibly get near a man whose career She destroyed?”

  That made sense. “But what could Ferrex Sanqq’ have that the Matriarch wants so badly?”

  “It’s just a guess,” Mart Kell said with his usual ironical tone. “But given what we know of Ferrex Sanqq”s experimental work in mammalian reproduction techniques before he was discredited, we’re led to think that he may possibly save Humekind from the Cyber-virus.”

  “At least, we think, that’s what Wicca Eighth believes,” Llega Todd explained. “So we’ve decided to monitor the expedition.”

  “How?” Diad asked, not expecting an answer.

  “Oh, there are all kinds of ways.” Mart Kell was as enigmatic as Diad expected. “Ever try to corrupt the mind of a Fast which has had its personality modified?”

  “So if there is a discovery,” Diad said, “we’ll have it at the same time as the MC.” Yes, that made sense.

  Mart Kell continued, “To answer the question you began to ask before, we shall want your services as much as possible from now on. To stay in contact with Councilor Rinne, for one thing.”

  “She told me was that she was going to Deneb XII, to check into the Alpheron Spa. I assume that if anyone can get in, she’ll be able to.”

  “Good, then so shall you be able to ... if needed,” Mart Kell said. “But we’ll also need you to help us develop battle strategies.”

  “Do you actually think so?” Diad asked. “That now that we’ve broken off relations with the Matriarchy, the MC will attack Hesperia?”

  “Unlikely.” Llega Todd spoke now. “But Hesperia might certainly attack the Matriarchy.”

  And before Diad could absorb that statement, Ole Branklin said, “We understand that battle planning is one of your avocations.”

  “Well, sure. On Cyber-boards connected to PVNs,” Diad admitted. “But I’ve never actually been in a battle.”

  Mart Kell laughed. “There’s probably not a Hume alive except for a handful of Se’ers who have been in a battle. But that doesn’t mean one won’t happen.”

  “Indeed, we must prepare ourselves for the unpreparable by thinking of the unthinkable,” Llega Todd said.

  She had weighed her words carefully, and they had fallen like stones into Diad’s consciousness with their portentousness. Even so, he was unprepared for his sense of extreme shock when she added, “We must be ready for ... war!”

  All of them were silent.

  Finally Mart Kell broke the silence by asking some mundane question. In a few minutes, as the four of them took up the conversation, speaking about details of organization of the coming effort, Diad found that even though he remained shocked to the core, he could actually think about the possibility of war. He also found himself thinking about that conversation between himself and Rinne as they had dropped in the long lift down from the Spoorenberg Tower. If only he had suspected how prophetic his words would be! Yet he now knew that he would see Gemma Rinne again, and that cheered him. More than cheered him, it excited him; it made him actually look forward to the future. He hadn’t truly done that in decades.

  Chapter Five

  The ride back down Monosilla Valley the following Pelagian day proved uneventful until the three Drylanders and two strangers reached the plateau. As he had said he would, ’Harles had borrowed another giant beetle for transport. Ay’r joined Oudma and ’Dward riding inside the wingfold and sometimes astride Colley. ’Harles and P’al rode atop the second, borrowed coleopteroid. No one discussed the Truth-Sayer’s prophecies; in fact, no one discussed anything that morning but what was of immediate interest: provisions, clothing, etc.

  At the edge of the great plateau that overlooked the New River Valley, ’Harles reined his mount, not toward the right, which led to Monosilla Village and beyond to the Truth-Sayer’s house, but left, onto a path that eventually began to zigzag downhill. Given their great height, Ay’r assumed that this winding road was the way they would take down to the valley floor, time-consuming as it might be. The first animal had sped ahead, and through the elaborately winding path, the three riders atop Colley had begun to lose sight of it for longer and longer periods of time.

  Not that they missed it, or the others, they were so busy interacting. Following the silence that the Truth-Sayer’s omens had imposed on them, the ride and the new terrain seemed to offer some kind of mental release. Oudma began to sing, and ’Dward accompanied her with a rhythmic slapping of his hands and legs. Ay’r joined in, and had Oudma explain the song – an old prebonding romance – then sang it along with the two young Drylanders.

  They had been enjoying themselves, descending the zigzag path about an hour Sol Rad. when Ay’r became aware that they were talking and singing louder, to overcome some approaching sound that seemed to grow with every few meters that Colley trod. Finally they emerged onto what looked like a sort of runway, the first straight path in kilometers, when Ay’r saw the source of the, by now, all-encompassing sound, an astonishing sight.

  The path ended in sheer edge. Around it on all sides was an enormous waterfall, or rather a series of waterfalls in the shape of a semicircle. At the very rim of the cliff, ’Harles and P’al had dismounted from their coleopteroid and were awaiting the others.

  “What is it?” Ay’r shouted to ’Dward, whose ear was a millimeter away.

  “Maspiei’s Falls!” the boy shouted back.

  “How do we get down?” Ay’r shouted back.

  “You’ll see!” ’Dward yelled back with a mischievous smile.

  Once they, too, had arrived at the edge of the path, Ay’r was even more amazed by the roaring noise and the incredible energy of the water descending all around them. From where they stood, the water dropping nearest them was hundreds of meters distant, yet they were surrounded in a spray so dense and constant that it formed an atmosphere as humid as a sauna.

  They dismounted, and Ay’r tried to understand ’Harles’s gestures and shouted words to figure out what he might mean. After some time, he thought he understood what the older Drylander was saying: they would get inside Colley’s wingfolds and huddle down. The giant beetles would then run off the path and drop down in the mist and roar of the falls to that tiny bit of land below.

  “This is insane!” Ay’r shouted into P’al’s ear.

  His companion only shrugged, then allowed himself to be grasped by the first Colley’s forelegs and lifted into the insect’s wingfold, where he assumed a tensed kneeling position. ’Harles did the same. The big beetle backed up a few meters, then rushed forward and up into the air. As it did, its wingfolds flapped open – Ay’r could see P’al looking over the edge of one – and a huge pair of almost transparent wings emerged and began to slowly flutter. Instead of dropping, the beetle slowly settled down, down, down until, looking from over the rim, Ay’r could scarcely make out its wingspan, colored multiply iridescent with the conflicting rainbows of surrounding cascades.

  ’Dward was pulling Ay’r back, gesturing for him to get ready. Before Ay’r could ask whether the others had landed, Colley had grasped him and he was inside the wingfold. Oudma was in the other wingfold. Where would ‘Dward fit? Kneeling on either side, he’d overbalance the giant insect. Ay’r was looking over the rim of the wingfold shouting his question to the Drylander youth who, for his part, was more intent on backing up Colley to get a good head start on his run.

  “Isn’t he coming?” Ay’r asked Oudma, having to shout even inside the insect’s carapace to be understood.

  “’Dward’s riding Colley down!” she shouted back.

  Now Ay’r could see that ’Dward had looped some type of hempen rope all around the body of the insect, in addition to the leatherlike reins and harness generally used. ’Dward gestured for Colley to pick him up and, once mounted atop the carapace, he kn
otted the ropes around himself. He seemed in high spirits.

  “Has he ever done this before?” Ay’r asked Oudma.

  “No, but others have.”

  “And lived to tell of it?” Ay’r shouted the question.

  Before Oudma could answer, ’Dward had begun to slap his heels against Colley’s sides. The wingfolds closed, so that Ay’r had only a small space out of which to watch. He concentrated upon ’Dward, knotted all around, whooping and shouting and urging the giant beetle forward.

  “This is suicide!” Ay’r shouted. But no one seemed to hear.

  The wingfold opened suddenly, and from within its upper edge, an enormous sheet of living lace seemed to expand in all directions overhead. He held on tightly, felt them dropping, then stopping as though in midair, as the wings’ motion began to gather momentum. Even with Colley fluttering his wings, they continued to plummet. Ay’r could tell from tiny landmarks – striations of rock, a single bush – amid the waterfalls that they passed going down, in what seemed to be a dangerous rapid spiral. It wasn’t flying as he knew it from T-pods, and though beautiful to see, it was anxiety provoking. Atop Colley, ’Dward’s image was fractured by the mist and fluttering wings into a prismatic mirage as he shouted soundlessly amid the roaring cascade.

  Suddenly, Ay’r became aware that the insect was no longer spinning around quite so rapidly. Looking outside in another direction, he could see the meters-high cushion of watery mist from the confluence of all of the waterfalls, which Colley seemed to land in. The beetle appeared able to navigate through this mist with slower and more rhythmically regular fluttering of his wings. Despite the denseness of the mist, Ay’r could tell they were now headed in a single direction, away from the pool where all the falls met. After a while the wings slowed down enough for ’Dward to be heard shouting, urging Colley on.

  They landed with a jarring thud, and the enormous wings suddenly collapsed inward, so rapidly that Ay’r had to duck down into the wingfold to avoid becoming entangled in a netting that might look like lace, but which felt hard as Plastro. When he was convinced that they were stopped, Ay’r peeked out and saw ’Harles and P’al standing next to the glistening black coleopteroid they’d descended in.

  He threw himself out of the wingfold and slid down the wet sides of the mount. They were some 500 meters distant from the falls, on a spit of bleak-looking ground. The cascade’s pool was already channeled into a deeply carved, fast-moving tributary. It was far less noisy here, and Ay’r could hear ’Harles speaking to P’al, pointing out something ahead, before the two of them turned back to join Ay’r and his children.

  ’Dward landed at Ay’r’s feet still partly wrapped in the hempen ropes, his entire body soaked, his long blond hair darkened and almost straight with wetness, his bright, handsome, open face exulting as he hugged Ay’r, almost lifting him off the ground, shouting, “That was wonderful! Wonderful! The most exciting! The most heart stopping! The most … !” Until he backed off, seeing he was wetting Ay’r, and grabbed his sister, who had just descended from the wingfold, and lifted her off the ground and spun her around in his excitement.

  By the time that ’Harles and P’al approached them, ’Dward was still not calmed down. But his father simply kept his distance to avoid getting wet himself, and let the youth narrate in detail his ride down the cascade, until he was through.

  “It will be something to tell your children,” ’Harles concluded. “These Legend-Collectors no doubt will recall it some day in the future. For us, however, there is a long day’s journey ahead. Stay atop Colley so that you can dry off.”

  All remounted the animals that – also thrilled by the unusual descent and the rare use of their wings – were still glistening blackly wet and shivering with excitement, but not so excited that they weren’t also nibbling furiously on whatever gorse they could find on the ground.

  Soon, the roar of the half-moon cascade grew fainter and fainter, replaced by another roar, from where the tributary joined the main branch of New River in a giant shallow rapids. They had landed on the near side of the tributary and remained on that side as the two Colleys moved forward, progressing from a slow lumbering gait – until they had rested from their descent – to a galloping scuttle.

  ’Dward had laid himself out on Colley’s back, half tied down, to dry himself in the air, which was warmer and far less humid down in the great valley than it had been up in the mountainous ravines of Monosilla. Every once in a while, Ay’r turned around from his position – mounted behind Oudma, who was reining the animal – to look at the half-asleep youth, and to make sure that ’Dward’s ropes were secure.

  Ahead and on all sides, the landscape seemed almost perfectly flat. On the left it was flat to where it reached the great escarpment up to the plateau. On the right, it was flat all the way to the horizon, broken only by a thin line that Oudma told him was the New River itself, slicing through the land. The unbroken ceiling of cloud cover, which had been so close and colorless up in Monosilla that it seemed part of the landscape itself, was now quite distinctive – high above their heads, enormous, tinted slightly differently, now a pale yellow, now beige, now gray. Yet withal it managed to appear untouchably high and even somehow solid. No wonder Drylanders referred to it as “the canopy” – from here that’s what it most resembled.

  After they were all dry, and ’Dward was sound asleep, ’Harles called a halt to their trek. When Oudma came up to the other Colley, ’Harles pointed ahead to what appeared to be yet another slight rise in the otherwise flat ground.

  “Arach molting spot,” ’Harles said. “We’ll find what we need there for camouflage.”

  In a few moments, ’Dward was awakened and untied from Colley, and all of them dismounted. What had appeared to be merely a rise in the land, more closely seen turned out to be several Hume-high, ecru-colored succulents – each a single thick chunk of leathery-skinned, thorned plant, doubtless with roots driving deep down into the sere land to some hidden pool or underground rivulet of New River. More interesting to the Drylander trio than the fact that, tapped with a thorn, these plants released a sweet liquidlike water, was the abundance of ultrathin material scattered all around the cacti.

  “What is it?” Ay’r asked.

  “Nymphs come here to scrape their skins against the thorns so they may molt into full Arachs,” Oudma explained.

  ’Harles added, “We’ll need this if we don’t want our Colleys spotted from within the canopy. This molt-skin is the same color as the land – not black like our mounts.”

  Ay’r was about to ask why, when he remembered: the Gods. Evidently they rode the clouds searching below for Drylanders to kidnap.

  The five Humes gathered large plates of the dried skin and attached them atop the two giant beetles, making sure that wingfolds were most firmly connected, since these would be in motion more than the rest of the carapace. The two beetles began to sniffle and sneeze as soon as the molted Arach skin was anywhere near their heads, but Oudma was able to shape the material so that it never actually touched their eyes or antennae.

  “What about us?” Ay’r said. “Don’t we need to be camouflaged?”

  “We already are,” ’Dward said. “Look!” He ran a short distance away, then bent down. And virtually disappeared. Ay’r realized that with their tan and brown clothing, their light skin and hair, all five were already disguised. He had forgotten that he and P’al had ’xchanged in the Fast and were no longer dark haired and dark skinned.

  Once the two coleopteroids were sufficiently well disguised, the group mounted again and took off. ’Harles began guiding them nearer to the New River’s edge. Ahead, Ay’r made out what appeared to be a natural rock bridge across the river. From close up, the flat rock of the surrounding land seemed to have been suddenly, violently torn, virtually broken in two by the force of the rushing river.

  ’Harles confirmed Ay’r’s supposition. “According to the Legend-Collectors of the people of The Bog Way, before Maspiei’s murder,
only one great river ran through Dryland, what we call the Old River, which lies north across the valley floor. But so great were the torrents of the God’s black blood, so great the cascades of his brothers’ tears, that they formed another river, this one, which is called New River. So bitter and strong was its water that it burned right through soil and rock to dig out this channel.”

  After crossing the river, they continued on their way, eating provisions while atop the quickly striding giant beetles. Ay’r was delighted to discover that he had become so used to the uneven motion of the creatures, which initially had unbalanced him, that he could eat and even drink without fear of spilling.

  The landscape on either side remained as flat as before. Flatter, since their path took them farther away from the great plateau from which they had dropped down until soon it was no more than a line on the southern horizon. Oudma taught Ay’r several more songs and legends while ’Dward slept in the Colley’s wingfold. When her brother awakened and she began to doze, ’Dward placed himself behind Ay’r astride the coleopteroid and showed him how to rein the animal. Ay’r had found himself becoming sexually excited riding so closely, so rhythmically in contact behind Oudma. Now, sitting in front of ’Dward, the low level of sexual excitement didn’t ease up, but merely changed direction. When Oudma had rested, Ay’r was relieved to fall into the wingfold himself for a nap.

  Ay’r awakened long enough to hear ’Harles’s voice saying, “This looks like fairly safe ground. A thistlebush wood is ahead. We’ll camp there for the night.”

  After the five had eaten and washed themselves, and the two coleopteroids had been fed on the dry fernlike growth that constituted the lower foliage of the tall, pale gray thistlebushes surrounding them, the beetles folded their legs and – like tortoises – drew their heads, antennae, and limbs within their rock-hard carapaces to sleep.