Dryland's End

by Felice Picano

He shouted again.

  But before his words of revenge and vindication could reach Her, the lethal ball had smashed into Wicca’s forehead and ripped through the mind that only a minute before had been dreaming of an unlimited future, of endless Matriarchies to come.

  “Your air-car is waiting, Lord Kell,” Vel’Crane said,

  Mart felt like sending it away again, but he couldn’t. An invitation from Vinson Todd was the same thing as an invitation from Vinson’s mother. If Mart refused to show up tonight, it might raise suspicions that he was making a political statement. Or worse, that he was breaking one of the City’s unspoken rules – never to let one’s avocation interfere with one’s socializing.

  He’d never done that before. He had always smiled and played the game of diplomacy, sheathing intention with the expected mastery of etiquette. And, after all, it would be giving a false impression; what had occurred at the Inner Quinx today was only partly the source of his irritation and malaise.

  The real problem was that Mart Kell – Hero of Groombridge, Savior of the Three Species, Destroyer of the Cyber Rebellion – was depressed.

  Tomorrow would be Independence Day; tomorrow, right there in the lotus-shaped chamber, nearly a thousand women from the Center Worlds would hand over their offices to members of the Quinx and the Orion Spur Federation, ending the Matriarchy and beginning the Third Democratic Republic. He ought to be overjoyed. Perhaps a sip of Eleveine? No. He had never relied upon it before. Why begin now? The real problem was that Mart Kell had come to believe during the six hours Sol Rad. since he had returned to Hesperia, that somehow or other he had fallen off the great wave.

  It was a terribly depressing belief, an awful feeling.

  He stood up and headed for the terrace that ringed the sphere.

  “You look particularly striking tonight, Lord Kell,” his valet said.

  “I’m glad you like it, Vel’Crane,” Mart said, not adding the obvious: he had been so depressed, he had allowed Vel’Crane to bathe him, select his clothes, and dress him.

  Hesperia’s star-dazzled night and his own artificial atmosphere did nothing to cheer Mart up. The air-car hovered, its door open.

  “Tell it where to go!” Mart said as he stepped in – he didn’t even want to speak to an air-car. What good would he be at a party? The most select party in the City on this night of a million parties to celebrate Independence.

  “Have a splendid evening,” his valet said, evidently looking forward to his own party, once Mart was on his way.

  The air-car closed, pulled away from the sphere, hovered, then took off.

  Mart didn’t look up, down, or to the side. He thought about Kri’nni Des (‘xx’). He had arrived back here in Hesperia to several unpleasant surprises, the first of which had been a holo.ed message from Ckw’esso on Deneb XII. Congratulations and all that.

  Then the Bella=Arth. had said, “Our new queen has been accepted by the nest with guarded jubilation. It should only be a few more weeks Sol Rad. before we can wean our queen from her long-standing drug habit. She remains inert, naturally, and we have been forced to keep her somewhat netted, but she has made no real attempts at escape. In only the past few days, she has absorbed large quantities of beneficial Vespid alkalais donated by the nest, and her lower body has quadrupled in size. Also, her egg-pouch has begun to show excellent signs of future fertility. We are cautiously optimistic that she will provide all that is needed for a complete renaissance of the nest. We trust that, at that time, you will be kind enough to pay your diplomatic respects.”

  Mart couldn’t stop thinking of Kri’nni all trussed up and dumped in some egg-chamber a half kilometer below the surface of the planet: doused in nest fluids, her precious drugs taken away, her equally precious freedom a memory, her most precious mobility gone, as her body grew enormous with ova until she could be moved only by a hundred of the strongest Bella=Arth. drones. Would she ever wake up completely? He hoped not, because if she did, she would know the full horror of her situation – and of his own treachery.

  Kri’nni would never return to her beloved City. Already rumors traveled at Fast jump speed: she had overdosed and her carcass had been floated out of Hesperia; she had been caught by the Customs Police and completely wiped; she had almost been caught and instead fled for the Outer Arms. It would be only a matter of days before others moved in to claim her territory, the crime empire she had built up with such cunning, ruthlessness, and sardonic good humor.

  Poor Kri’nni!

  Of course, that couldn’t be counted a surprise. Yet somehow it felt like one. He had acted speedily, out of necessity, as he saw it at the time. But now that it had come to pass, it felt like some terrible accident he’d had little or no part of, instead of being its instigator.

  More of a true surprise had been the second message he had received upon his arrival. He was barely out of his ion-relaxation unit when Llega Todd comm.ed and congratulated him, then asked him to attend an emergency meeting of the Inner Quinx. Mart had rushed right over, fearing some awful hitch in the plans for the transfer of power.

  There, waiting for him, had been the other members of the Inner Quinx: Premier Todd, Truny Syzygy, Kars Tedesco, and Helmut Aare Dja’aa. And with them four other people: Gemma Guo-Rinne, another woman who until recently had been an important scientific official from the MC; P’al Syzygy, Truny’s bio-Cyber son; and a startling-looking yellow-haired male Hume who seemed familiar to Mart but not quite, and who was even more startlingly introduced as Ay’r Kerry Sanqq’, someone who had been at the university around the same time as Mart.

  It hadn’t taken Mart long to realize that his arrival had interrupted the four newcomers in the midst of a presentation of some length and complexity.

  “Sit down, Lord Kell, and listen to what they have to say.” Llega Todd smiled her most charming smile and added, “You’ll catch up soon ... I’ve no doubt.”

  About an hour Sol Rad. later, Mart did “catch up,” to what they were presenting, and shortly afterward, when the other members of the Inner Quinx began to ask questions of the four, Mart recognized that not one of these extremely intelligent rational Hesperians upon whom he had depended to bring about the enormous historical changes that they would celebrate tomorrow were questioning the validity of what Rinne, Syzygy, and Sanqq’ – above all, the once-methodical, dull, head-in-his-Spec.-Eth.-holos Ay’r Sanqq’! – were attempting to foist on them.

  So Mart had. He had begun by asking how they knew it would work. And had gotten almost sick at the answer: Ay’r Kerry Sanqq’ himself was the result of the procedure they wanted to make universal – Relfian Viviparturition. Not only was he merely the result, but Ay’r was the very first result ever: the yardstick, the standard by which all future births would be judged. And his mother was that Hume male right over there, one Creed Lars’son, Ferrex Baldwin Sanqq’’s associate and lover.

  Naturally, there had been many more such births since Ay’r – close to five hundred, they added. All perfectly safe, all perfectly healthy, all perfectly male. In fact they’d brought one such infant with them from Pelagia. Did Mart want to see the little tyke?

  So he argued against it. With no success. They had heard all of his arguments before, used those same arguments themselves at some earlier time, and even Rinne and the other MC scientist – who, if anyone, Mart would have thought, should have supported him – were quick to counterargue.

  What it all came down to was the sheer pressure of numbers. Aside from the monsters born at the Alpheron Spa on Deneb XII, the birthrate of all the reporting galactic worlds in the past eighty-one days since the appearance of the Cyber microvirus had been – three! When it should have been something like three million. No cure appeared possible. In fact, it might take decades just to unravel the new science of Cyber-viruses, with no promise that it could be fully comprehended, or, once comprehended, that it would be easily manipulable. Especially since it had already proven to be so incredibly dangerous to living species.

&n
bsp; What about those women not yet infected who had received the serum, Mart asked? And surely the MC had their own numbers of the uninfected hidden away somewhere.

  Rinne and P’al and Llega Todd brought out holo-charts and rapid calculations to show that the uninfected women would never come close to reaching the necessary numbers to restock the population of the City, never mind the Center Worlds or the rest of the populated galaxy. In fact, if one followed that scenario, it was projected that at the time at which the youngest child born in the City before the microvirus infection died, there would be something like a few hundred – maybe at best a thousand – Humes left. No more. Meaning that, although themselves defeated and destroyed, the Cyber rebels would have won the war, even though they were no longer around to enjoy the fruits of their victory.

  Simple – chilling – mathematics. Drastic measures had to be taken.

  Mart Kell felt that he had fallen off the great wave, and that Ay’r Kerry Sanqq’ – who had not even joined the Oppos. at the university! – was not only riding the great wave, but indeed was the wave itself!

  The discussion had finally been adjourned to be reconvened after the Independence Day festivities.

  Llega Todd had turned to Mart and said, “The rest of us of the Inner Q believe that we should be unanimous in presenting this to the full Quinx Council. We also believe that given your well-earned reputation, and how closely your activities and opinions are watched and reported on by the holo-media, that your support, Lord Kell, is crucial. We beg you not to deny us another opportunity to persuade you.”

  In effect, turning him, Mart Kell, into not only the “opposition” but also the hidebound ultraconservative opposition. It was an intolerable position to be in, and he couldn’t shake it, going over the arguments one by one in his mind in the air-car back to his sphere and afterward, when he should have been resting, bathing, selecting what to wear.

  “Excuse me, Lord Kell,” the air-car spoke.

  Mart came out of his thoughts as depressed as ever.

  “Are we there?” He looked out. No, this looked like the Cerdher Town sector, not the once-tawdry and now spiffily renovated Domenica Heights area where Vinson Todd had relocated recently.

  “I’ve intercepted an Inter. Gal. News holo of some importance. I think you should view it.”

  “I told you I didn’t want to... . Oh, what is it?”

  “The security service at the Inter. Gal. Diplomatic Corps building has just reported the disappearance of Wicca Eighth.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll replay the entire holo,” the air-car said.

  There wasn’t much to the news holo, naturally, but of course important, possibly crucial news. And after viewing it twice and looking carefully at the various participants said to be involved in the Matriarch’s disappearance – Wicca’s Aide (definitely guilty of aiding Her), the owner of the Atlantica Boutique (possibly guilty of complicity), and the guards themselves (too embarrassed to be guilty) – Mart sat back and felt even more depressed.

  What exactly was that Woman up to? Mere escape? Some scheme to completely wreck the Independence Day ceremonies at the Quinx Chamber?

  No one knew as well as Mart how cunning and relentless Wicca Eighth could be. Her capture had seemed so easy, but he had been anxious every minute Sol Rad. until She had not only left Regulus Prime but also arrived in the City. And he had been too busy rushing off to Carina Fornax to complete the job of total rebel destruction to be aware of how lightly guarded Wicca would be. Left in a damn Diplomatic Corps hotel!

  She should have been trussed up and drugged and dumped in some great hole.

  Like Kri’nni. Kri’nni, whom Mart knew was the only one he might have talked to about all this, the only one who would have listened and maybe simply laughed at him as she inhaled some terrific new combo-drug from her pipette, or maybe suggested something so apt, so clever ... But Kri’nni would never again be waiting in the upper suites of the abandoned Ophiucan Star Ship Lines to listen to Mart’s problems.

  That completed his round of matters to be depressed about, just as the air-car announced Domenica Heights and a minute later alit on Vinson Todd’s roof.

  Some days before the advent of the recent crises, Mart had been intrigued to hear about young Todd’s purchase of this extraordinary property and his decision to turn it into a living space. Fairly early in Hesperia’s history, this still-isolated area of the City had been taken over by Tans’man and Huybrechts, who had just begun large-scale Beryllium mining operations. And this edifice was equally historical, having been where they had first refined Beryllium into its crystalline form for their first Fast jump experiments.

  Even now the building was nothing more than a large, irregular polygon, sitting upon a cradlelike structure of raw Plastro-iron. The walls had been a multilayered combination of iridium and lead to contain the radiation emissions. Additional screens of infrablue Plastro-leaded glass had been placed a meter away from the external walls for extra shielding. In their journals and diaries, the scientists had referred to the building as “The Blue House,” and that’s how it had been known ever since.

  Of course it had been abandoned long ago. Once the experiments had worked, the scientists obtained vast sums of funding from starship liner moguls like Jat Kell, and had moved deeper into the planet’s core, utilizing Cybers for the most dangerous work. This area of Multi-Use 2 Girder had filled up with hastily constructed living quarters for the scientists’ and their assistants’ families, friends, and unrelated dependents. It was as close to a “factory town” as Hesperia had ever possessed. Over the years, as the population expanded and new girders were opened up for residence, Domenica Heights (named after one of the original team’s mistresses) was left to dry-rot, like so many other areas of the City. But recently, spatial and molecular artists had discovered the sector and settled in, attracted by its cheapness – no housing costs at all – and the freedom to make as much noise and fuss as they needed to perfect their various and sometimes dubious art forms. Although – or perhaps because – he was the last born of the Quinx Premier’s children, Vinson Todd had pretensions in the arts. He’d associated with some of the younger denizens of the City’s extensive art network since his university days and moved here as soon as he had found The Blue House free of radiation.

  Getting out of the air-car, Mart could see the external modifications. Most of the lead/iridium roof and side walls had been removed and the infrablue Plastro-glass installed in their place. More of the blue stuff had been formed into a lift chamber. From the roof, Mart dropped directly into the center of the place. And was greeted by an enormous, more or less open space on two distinct levels, filled with people, and with the subtle, but omnipresent tint of the deep blue windows.

  Vinson had removed all but a dozen of the four-meter-high blue Plastro-glass tubes wherein Tans’man and Ling Chi had first refined the precious ore. The remaining tubes, which dotted the upper level of the space and defined various sitting, eating, and sleeping areas, he had filled with colored inert gases, terraria, aquaria, in one smaller insects, in another tiny birds. None of the other furnishings could compete with them, so Vinson had wisely kept them to a minimum and played down their cost with dull, matte colors.

  It was all “perfectly Hesperian,” Mart thought; nowhere else in the galaxy would someone dream of selecting this spot, with all of its truly important historical allusions and then renovating it so wittily. For a moment, it lifted his spirits.

  Just in time for him to be greeted by his host, who saluted smartly (a reference to his own recent service with the Fleet) then whispered in Mart’s ear, “I understand that you will be the first signer of the Declaration of Independence tomorrow. That’s exactly how it should be.”

  A sop, Mart suspected, devised by the other members of the Inner Quinx, to help convince him of the need for unity. Even so, he would accept; honors like that didn’t arrive every day Sol Rad.

  Vinson walked Mart out of the foyer
, still holding him around the waist, and said, “Have you seen the native Pelagians yet? We have four of them here tonight. All of them superb! As you well know, I’ve had my flings with males before, but never with any quite so beautiful as ... Greetings, Debr’a.”

  “Lord Kell! My hero!” Helmut Aare Dja’aa’s spouse greeted Mart, and virtually peeled him away from Vinson Todd. “You realize, of course, that simply everyone in the City is jealous of me this instant because I have you.”

  Although she was only a few decades older than Mart and was of a family with far less wealth and reputation, Debr’a Haydee Dja’aa acted as though she were far older, in fact as though she were the social arbiter of the City’s most elite set. As far as Mart knew, Debr’a remained mindlessly faithful to her spouse, was an excellent mother to their neonates, and spent whatever excesses of passion she might possess socializing and making sure others did, too.

  “Naturally,” she went on, all but dragging him away from Vinson Todd, “there will be all sorts of holo-gossip tomorrow about us. But I promise not to reveal a thing.”

  Once they were away from other people and approaching one of the infrablue glass tubes, this one containing the minuscule birds, Debr’a dropped her voice. “Mart, you know I’d be the last person to want to change the way things are and have been –”

  So Helmut confided Inner Quinx secrets to her. Interesting. “Before you say another word, Debr’a –”

  “No, please, Mart, hear me out. I think – No, I’m sure of it! Only you can make this ... new thing work! You and Vinson and Kars’s two lovely sons and ... all the rest of you whose every liaison is so reported on and analyzed in the popular media. Do you understand what I’m saying? All the laws and rules one could promulgate won’t do it! You lovely males must – no, you have a responsibility to – do it! Much as I hate to say it, you must abandon all thoughts of women, and simply ... And the more public, the more glamorous, the more outrageously romantic you are about doing it, the more effective it will be!”