Kurwer drew Hrityu aside to confer. “Each of these weapons seems impressive in its own way,” he said doubtfully. “What do you think? Perhaps we could obtain them all.”
Sadly Hrityu shook his head. “It is the custom for the buyer of an invention to demand sole possession of it. We can offer our radiator to one party only, and I do not think any of these weapons are its equal in value.”
“What could be more valuable than the survival of the Analane?”
“But nothing we have seen so far guarantees victory. The machines are large and clumsy. They could be overrun or stolen, leaving us worse off than before. It is too early to reach a decision.”
They moved off, and as they did so a small slim humanoid, standing no taller than Hrityu’s shoulder, sidled up. Hrityu stopped. He had not seen the stranger’s like before. His skin was as black as a Gaminte’s, but was covered in fine corrugations that might have been tribal markings. Most striking was the absence of any head-crest: his bald pate aroused a measure of revulsion in the two Analane. Striking too were his eyes: milky pale, and wide as if in wonderment.
“Analane,” he said in a low, purring tone, “a Crome has boasted of your tribe’s impending destruction. One may deduce that in military terms your position is untenable.”
Hrityu replied stiffly. “That is supposition only.”
The other raised a placating hand. “No doubt the Crome are much given to bluster. I am of the Toureen. We live a long way from here, within the barriers of a fifty-lang-wide crater, and so are little known. But we are not without inventiveness. For two years I have waited in this pavilion to see if anything can match what we have to offer. You have something to barter?”
“Indeed.”
“May one enquire …?”
“We shall reveal our device when we see something we want in exchange.”
The Toureen paused before replying. “Strangely, that is also my policy.”
He gestured around him. “Nothing you may see here is comparable with what I can give you. Any who possess it will win supremacy in the field of battle … we appear to be at an impasse, unless we can at least describe our respective goods.”
“Even for that, mutual trust is necessary.”
“I am ready to risk mine.”
Hrityu looked down at the bald black pate of the Toureen. In his own tribe it signified emasculation, and he wondered how it could be possible to trust such a creature.
“Then you must speak first,” he said.
Beckoning, the Toureen drew him down the aisle and apart from any of the stands. He looked this way and that to ensure he was not overheard, and spoke quietly.
“Our weapon achieves total disintegration of whatever it is hurled against. It can burst huge rocks asunder. It could demolish this entire pavilion in the space of a single breath.”
“You make an extravagant claim,” Hrityu responded, trying to picture what the Toureen was saying.
“But a true one. The world has never before seen such sudden and violent force in the service of war. It can be compared to the eruption of a volcano.” He paused. “Now: tell me of your device.”
“Very well, but it is not a weapon,” Hrityu told him. “Our mechanics have discovered a means of long-range communication. We call it a radiator. It is able to transmit the spoken voice over great distances—we have tested it up to a hundred langs.”
Seeing the look of puzzlement on the Toureen’s face, he continued: “Its greatest value lies in its secrecy. Invisible radiations that can neither be seen nor heard carry the voice. It is made audible only by means of a receiving apparatus carried by the listener. Imagine, if you can, the uses this invention can be put to. Messages can be sent without a messenger, and what is more, received the instant they re dispatched.”
The Toureen was evidently having trouble understanding him. And indeed the radiator was so strange, so inexplicable, that Hrityu himself sometimes had difficulty believing it. “To send a voice a hundred langs with no one in between hearing it?” the black humanoid said in mystification. “That would be most remarkable …”
“We do not lie. Only dire necessity persuades us to divulge this secret, as you have deduced. If you are interested in obtaining it, then I wish to see this weapon of yours.”
The Toureen made up his mind. “Come with me.”
He took them out of the Pavilion of Warfare and past the adjacent compound where dejected prisoners waited as targets on which to demonstrate this weapon or that to prospective customers. At the rear of the compound, ochre Yongs fought with buff lizards, Yong blades clashing with lizard prongs. Hrityu guessed them to be rival groups of mercenaries competing for a commission.
Soon they were in the humming vehicle park. Their guide showed them to a low-slung, six-wheeled carriage, and invited them to board it. They reclined uneasily on cushions piled in the box-like passenger compartment, while the Toureen seized a steering lever and yanked on a hand-grip.
The vehicle rolled forward. Careless of who stood in his path, the Toureen negotiated the concourse with skill and soon they had left the World Market behind and were heading into the plain towards the hills.
For some time the vehicle rushed over the sand, their driver offering no hint as to their destination. Suddenly he made for a clump of rocks. Behind it was a depression that, until one came suddenly upon it, remained unseen. At its bottom a small camp had been set up with two more ebon Toureen squatting beneath an awning.
The vehicle crept into the hollow and stopped. The driver got out and spoke to his tribesmen. They glanced at the Analane, then reached into the back of the awning and dragged forward an evidently heavy chest, whose lid they threw open.
“Here, if you please.”
Hesitantly, Hrityu and Kurwer stepped down and approached.
The chest was filled with brown globes, nearly the size of a Toureen’s head. Hrityu was reminded of the flasks of air-absorbing crystals he had seen earlier, until one was taken from the chest and he saw that a short cord dangled from it.
Their guide picked up two shields from a pile that lay nearby and handed one to each of the Analane. “These will protect you from the fragments. Now: we had best get out of the hollow.”
No explanations were offered as the party scrambled up the incline, each carrying a shield and the three Toureen cradling a number of the brown spheres in their arms. At the top, some distance from the rocks, the leader called a halt.
“We shall hurl the balls at those rooks. Hide behind your shields.”
The spheres were placed on the ground. Squatting behind their shields, Hrityu and Kurwer watched as the two Toureen from the camp took up a globe each and applied fire to the cords from tinder-boxes that dangled from their necks. The cords sizzled. The Toureen ran for the rocks. Peeping over his shield, Hrityu saw them hurl the globes and then come scampering back to throw themselves behind their own shields.
Instinctively he ducked. From the direction of the rock clump came a massive noise, a double blast, one a split second after the other. Hrityu had never heard anything so loud; it actually hurt his ears. Missiles were battering away at his shield, as if shot from flingers. Then something seemed to be trying to tear the shield from his grasp, and following that, fragments of rock came rattling down from the air.
When the pandemonium was over, pungent-smelling smoke came drifting in their direction. Hrityu dared a look. He stared stupefied.
Part of the rock clump had vanished.
“Again!” the Toureen leader ordered.
The ritual was repeated. Again came the titanic blasts, the fusillade of rock fragments, the buffeting wind.
Even more of the rock clump had been demolished. Chunks of it lay about the desert floor.
The Toureen waited until everyone had climbed to his feet before speaking. “We call the substance eruptionite,” he explained. “The recipe is fairly simple, merely a matter of mixing certain purified chemicals in the right proportions. When ignited, the mixture eru
pts as you have seen. The force of the eruption is greatly increased if the mixture is confined in a strong, solid shell, and this, of course, is also a convenient way of delivering it. The shells can be made to any size—small enough to be hand-flung, or so big that only specially made flingers could hurl them. As you have just witnessed, eruptionite will even tear apart stone fortifications. The Crome will be blown to bits.”
Hrityu pondered. “Do you undertake to provide us with the mixture itself, or merely the formula?”
“We can supply a sufficient amount of eruptionite to give you a breathing space, thereafter you must manufacture it for yourselves. By the usual protocol, we also promise not to sell it to any other tribe.”
Again Hrityu pondered. Kurwer spoke up.
“Since this weapon is so potent, why do you not wish to preserve it for your own use?”
“We Toureen are not accustomed to engaging in war. Our crater walls have so far been sufficient discouragement to invaders, and they are so massive that not even eruptionite could breach them My race delights in new knowledge, and therefore we are willing to impart this secret if in so doing we gain another that is equally remarkable.”
“You shall have your wish,” Hrityu said confidently, “for this is indeed the weapon we seek. The time has come to exchange names. I am Hrityu, of the Analane. My companion is named Kurwer.”
The other drew his small slim bulk erect. “I am Nussmussa, of the Toureen. Now as to this radiator … you mentioned a range of one hundred langs. How may this be put to the test?”
“One hundred langs is perhaps rather too much to demonstrate easily,” Hrityu admitted doubtfully. “What do you suggest?”
“You have the apparatus at the market?”
“Yes.”
“Then we shall put the transmitting device in your vehicle, and the receiving device in our vehicle. One of my party will accompany you while we drive for one half of a day in opposite directions, and will attempt to speak to me at intervals. When the sun reaches its zenith, we shall return.”
Hrityu nodded. “That is acceptable. Let us return to the market, and we will show you the radiator.”
The warm breeze blew in the Analane’s faces as they rode in the Toureen vehicle. Hrityu tried to calm his elation, reminding himself that there was still much to be done. Transport would have to be arranged for the initial supply of eruptionite before the Crome staged their main attack. Also, how difficult might it be to find and purify the chemicals needed for its manufacture? This would have to be talked out with Nussmussa.
Then again, there were the Tlixix to deal with, and their fee to be arranged.
Hrityu reflected that it might be worth applying to the Pavilion of Audience to try to forestall the Crome’s petition.
At his direction Nussmussa sped into the market, wheeled into the vehicle park and flashed past the lines of carriages to halt beside the Analane rover. Hrityu and Kurwer stepped down and went to the rear of their vehide, opening the hidden compartment where they had secreted their precious apparatus.
He blinked as he pulled up the metal panel. He was not sure that he could believe his eyes. Then a horrified sound escaped from his throat. His eyes had not deceived him.
Their invaluable cargo, the radiator and its accompanying receiver upon which the survival of the Analane depended, was gone!
CHAPTER THREE
Poised in an orbit synchronous with the planet’s rotation, the twin speculae of an interferometric telescope looked down from opposite ends of a mile-long extensible rod. Their slightly different images, processed by point-to-point comparison, gave Messrs. Krabbe and Bouche an excellent view of the World Market far below them.
Karl Krabbe twiddled a knob beneath the viewplate. The scene, currently bird’s-eye, shifted and tilted until it was as though one stood on the ground amid the inhabitants. The processor made a fair job of the representation, though the deduced facial features tended to be vague and fuzzy. He focused on a drama in cameo: two thin blue humanoids gesticulated excitedly to a smaller black humanoid. They had opened up the rear of a wheeled vehicle.
He turned to Boris Bouche. “It’s the nearest thing to a town on the whole damned planet! You only find camps and villages anywhere else.”
“That’s because towns are markets, essentially, and this is the only market they have.” Bouche’s voice had an acid quality, easily given to sarcasm. “God, Karl, I have to remind you of enough. Don’t you remember your economics?”
“Sure I remember,” Krabbe retorted testily. “What makes you think I don’t?”
Karl Krabbe was a barrel of a man, his large, ruddy face seeming always about to break into some anguished pronouncement, leaving it lined and anxious. He dressed carelessly and tended to slouch. His partner, Boris Bouche, slender and tall, was neat and compact by comparison, but the dapper impression did not extend to his face. The wide slash of his mouth and the close-set eyes gave him a predatory look. He stepped forward, peering over Krabbe’s shoulder at the plate.
“Here comes one of the bosses.”
Krabbe had panned the focus to the main concourse. One of the lobster-like creatures was being moved from one pavilion to another. A transparent tent covered the motorised dray. Within it, water sprays asperged the bulky, shelled passenger. There was something lordly about the beast’s slow progress through the throng, whiskery stalks waving above the foot traffic.
“If we do any business here, it’s his sort we’ll be dealing with,” Bouche said.
Krabbe grunted. “I mostly like crustaceans in a well-blended sauce.”
“Crustaceans? Yes, I suppose that’s close enough, though you could say he is to a crayfish what we are to … well, there isn’t any mammal as brainless as a crayfish. What we are to a newt, maybe.”
“And on a desert planet. It’s amazing.”
“Not really. It’s just that they’re smart. Wouldn’t you say so, Spencer?”
He craned his neck to the planetologist who stood at the back of the room. Spencer nodded, and came forward.
“Yes, sir. There’s not much doubt that this planet was watery once, perhaps as recently as fifty thousand Earth years ago. Then the water suddenly vanished, for some reason. Castaneda is working on the data now.
“The crustacean-like creatures were the dominant intelligent species of the time, and as far as we can tell they are the only one to have survived the calamity—except, presumably, for whatever fauna or flora they keep as food. Instead, a desert biosphere has arisen, one that doesn’t need water. That the lobsters, as you call them, have managed to maintain some sort of dominance despite their small numbers is a tribute to their tenacity, I would say. They own all the free water on the planet, and conserve it with great care. I imagine they make good any losses by paying other species to process whatever tiny amounts can be extracted from plants and the dead bodies of desert creatures.
“That market is the secret of their power. They created it and they manage it, as the only real centre of trade on the whole planet. It gives them their wealth and their prestige, and makes it possible for them to impose their own conditions on anyone who wants to come there. Physically they could be wiped out overnight, but they’ve been there right through the evolution of the desert species, whose history they have practically managed, and that gives them enormous psychological pull. They rule by nerve.”
“That’s what I don’t understand,” Krabbe complained. “There’s a whole crop of intelligent species now. We probably haven’t even seen them all yet! How could that happen in only fifty thousand years?”
“Fifty thousand is the lower limit, sir. It could be as much as a quarter of a million, though that’s an equally ridiculous period from our point of view. I suspect the losters had a hand in that, too. They needed servant species to help them survive. To that we can add that there must be a terrific rate of mutation. There’s an awful lot of radium down there. They even use it to power their engines.”
“Were you surprised
to find a waterless biology, Spencer?” Bouche asked.
“Yes sir, I was. We picked up a couple of specimens. Seeing as how they evolved from water-based animals in the first place, the body chemistry is pretty ingenious. Their bodies do hold tiny quantities of water, but it’s held in a glycerine-like gel. They don’t perspire or excrete liquid waste. Their blood doesn’t circulate, if you can believe it. Oxygen and nutrients and all the rest migrate chemically through gelatinous blood, the molecules being passed hand to hand through the gel, so to speak. I’d swear it was impossible if I hadn’t seen it.”
Krabbe stared at the interferoscope plate, where the ‘lobster’ was disappearing inside the building which was the market overlords’ special retreat and where, presumably, they could be permanently drenched in water.
“Tenacity,” he murmured. “That’s what those old boys have got, all right. So that’s what we’ll call this planet, okay? Tenacity.”
“All right, if you want,” Bouche said sourly. “Tenacity it is.”
The food tray supported nonchalantly by the flat of one hand, Joanita Serstos walked the corridors of the gogetter ship with an easy, lank stride. She smiled on coming to the locked titanium alloy door.
Licking her lips, she fingered the lock tab.
“Hi, honey,” she said. “How goes it?”
“Hello, Jo,” a good-natured, if weary, male voice answered. “Why don’t you come in?”
A miniature oval image had appeared on the door. It showed the interior of the prison cell. Roncie Reaul Northrop lounged in an easy chair, one foot plonked on an occasional table. She tut-tutted to see how careless he still was with the furnishings, despite her admonishments. There was a big coffee stain on the carpet. The place was a mess.
He looked up from the book he was reading and smiled in greeting as she walked in, letting the door swing shut behind her. The vidset in the corner was switched on; involuntarily she glanced at the living, glowing flesh-tones it showed.
He followed her gaze and his smile became broader. It was a tape of her visit the day before. Their naked bodies were working away, her fleshy buttocks gyrating and nearly filling the screen.
The Great Hydration Page 2