The Great Hydration

by Barrington J. Bayley

The Artaxa paused for long thoughtful moments. “That is hard to believe, for water is a deadly poison to all humanoids. Who is there to back up your word? Did you see this, Karvass?”

  “No, elder, I did not. But I believe the Analane.”

  The elder’s voice fell to a mutter. “What can it mean? What can it mean?”

  He seemed to be in a reverie. “There is a possibility. The Tlixix may have bred a new type of servant race more like themselves, even though humanoid. Perhaps they are beginning to doubt the loyalty of the Gamintes.” He pondered further. “But then they would have to share their water with them … puzzling …”

  Suddenly he seemed to come to life again. “There must be an immediate convocation. This is what will be proposed. Hrityu of the Analane, you will without delay instruct our artisans in the manufacture and use of your ‘radiator’. Meanwhile a force will be assembled to speed to the aid of your tribe. Karvass, there is also a task for you. Lead a raiding force to the water-eating strangers. We need to know more about them. Capture one, and bring him back here!”

  Though their pleasure was to slosh luxuriously in abundant water, Tlixix could also make their way on dry land—though preferably, of course, on spume-drenched land, being adapted for clambering over rocky shoreline. On a dozen stalk-like legs the visiting VIP dragged himself through the corridors of the Enterprise, blue-tinged chitin scraping on the floor, shelled head with its four white eyes turning this way and that.

  The welcoming party consisted of O’Rourke, looking irritated as usual, Spencer the planetologist, and most of the engineering team that was assembling the shock tubes. The protocol, though a trifle perfunctory, was adequate enough, the eminent personage being treated with utmost deference—though Castaneda, the only one wearing a translation necklace, found himself being called on to act as interpreter. “You’ll know how to talk to them,” O’Rourke had muttered hurriedly. “You’ve had the experience.”

  So Castaneda did his best. He had been present at a number of such courtesy tours in the past, usually conducted by the partners in person. On one occasion he had asked whether planet-bound aliens might not go into shock on being taken into space. Krabbe had scowled, dismissing the point with a wave of his hand.

  “Anybody that feeble won’t do business anyway, Carlos. They’ll clam up, go into fugue.”

  Castaneda took the Tlixix on a circuitous route through the starship, giving the maximum impression of its size, showing the propulsion section, the engineering departments including shock tube assembly—this he carefully explained—and finally finishing up on the navigation bridge. There he put Tenacity on the main screen. He knew the effect this would have. He had seen it before, more than once. It did not matter what the species; the astonishment was the same.

  “That is our world?”

  The voice of the Tlixix came through the translator as a breathless whisper.

  “That’s your world,” Castaneda confirmed flatly. “The one we’re going to transform for you.”

  The four milk-white eyes were fixed on the screen as though hypnotised. Castaneda could almost hear the creature’s thoughts.

  His was a deliberate ploy. The vision of one’s home world as an object, rather than a limitless environment, with dark space all around it, made the idea that it could be altered much more believable.

  Finally the Tlixix pulled himself out of his trance. “I will inform my colleagues that you speak the truth,” he said hoarsely.

  Smiling faintly, O’Rourke nodded when Castaneda relayed the words. He turned to his secretary who stood behind him.

  “Tell them to start drilling,” he murmured.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Roncie didn’t hear them coming.

  Like most hot deserts, Tenacity grew cold during the night. Roncie huddled in his tent, trying to sleep. A faint thrumming sound, like a rope vibrating in the wind, filtered through the camp. It was the sound made by the drilling rig, dipping down through the basaltic crust, its e-m beam constantly returning itself to the resonance frequencies of the rock crystals it met to pull them apart molecule by molecule. A mound, or giant snake, went winding out over the desert, made up of the dust and rubble being shuffled out of the hole.

  The work was going well. The project was turning out to be an even easier job than had been anticipated. Castaneda’s men had been able to determine that only eight strategically placed shock tubes would be sufficient to realign the fracture plates. Three drilling rigs had been delivered by engineering so far, with another on the way. This camp, site A, had already drilled five kilometers down. When it reached its planned depth of ten kilometers the rig would be moved out to do the same elsewhere.

  Roncie had managed to fall into a doze when a stealthy opening of the tent flap woke him up. Starlight showed through the opening, outlining an indistinct figure.

  He sat up, thinking it was one of the survey team. “Swanson?”

  Reaching out, he turned on the light, and only then discovered that the figure at the tent flap was a greenskinned humanoid. It had silvery slanting eyes, and a large headcrest. As was typical of its kind, the humanoid was naked except for bangles on the arms and a metal circlet at the neck. Roncie would have raised the alarm by yelling at the top of his voice, but for the fact that the dehydrate was pointing a weapon at him. It had a dull grey stock—or so it appeared in the lamplight—and a spring-loaded mechanism for shooting the helical blade which featured so prominently at the front end. Having seen the way such a blade could scythe the flesh from a man’s bones, Roncie froze.

  Damn. He didn’t even have his DE beamer. He had given it to the other dehydrate, the one called Hrityu.

  The desert dehydrate had not yet discharged the blade, which gave Roncie heart. He reasoned that verbal communication might well be an advantage. Slowly, with infinite caution, he allowed his fingers to search the bedside table until they touched the translator necklace.

  Still moving slowly, with an attempt at apparent casualness, he draped it on him in time to hear the dehydrate speak.

  “Greetings, Roncie of the Earthmen.”

  Now he remembered encountering this form of humanoid before. He strove to recall the name.

  “You are … Karvass? Of the Artaxa?”

  The membranes on the other’s face underwent a peculiar writhing motion, possibly the equivalent of a nod. The tent flap admitted two more Artaxa who ranged themselves on either side of the first. They, too, carried flingers.

  “You must come with us,” Karvass said. “Our tribal elders have much to ask you.”

  Roncie sprang from his bed, standing in the insulated utility suit he used as sleeping wear because of the cold. “We are under the protection of the Tlixix—”

  These words seemed to provoke the Artaxa, who took a step forward and used his free hand to seize Roncie by the arm. The Earthman was surprised at the wiry strength of his slim, smooth muscles. Karvass dragged him to the tent flap. At the same time another Artaxa was searching the tent. He opened the lid of the water cask and recoiled as the smell of water hit him. Hastily he closed the flask and threw it to the third Artaxa who caught it deftly.

  Also on the bedside chest was Roncie’s uneaten supper and his breakfast for next morning, in the form of trays of sandwiches in transparent wrappers. The Artaxa poked the preparation with a forefinger.

  “It is the tribesman’s food.”

  He tucked the trays under his arm and turned to go.

  With the guide rail of a flinger digging into his ribs, Roncie could not resist being ushered outside. The camp was in darkness. The desert, sulfur-coloured by day, became a powdery alum under the massed stars. It came to Roncie that the visitors from those stars had taken local politics too much for granted. Assured of the power of the Tlixix—as well as of their own superior armament—they had posted neither guards nor warning devices.

  It was time to regain his nerve. Roncie cried out at the top of his voice.

  “Swanson! Pettiford! Help me! I’m b
eing kidnapped!”

  Too bad, he was still wearing the translator. His voice rang out in both languages across the camp. The Artaxa quickened their pace, bundling him along. They turned as lights came on and heads poked out of tents further off. There were shouts of alarm.

  Flingers clanged, flenching blades whirred. One tore through a tent covering, but the Artaxa were not aiming properly. Roncie was hustled into the desert and flung to the floor of a sandboat face down. In seconds the vehicle was in motion. With a slithering sound it mounted the nearby dune, putting the camp out of sight, then went coursing away.

  Roncie groaned. There was no vehicle in the camp in which to make pursuit.

  He could only hope that O’Rourke would take the matter seriously enough to track him down and mount a rescue, or at the very least persuade the Tlixix to do so.

  But there was no guarantee of that.

  Hrityu had left his wheeled vehicle in the underground camp. He travelled now in a much larger Artaxa sandboat, holding thirty warriors.

  Forty similar vehicles were ranged on either side in a wide echelon, sandscrews propelling them at top speed. Raising his head above the side of the boat, Hrityu was filled with excitement at the sight of the task force.

  True, it bothered him a little that his new allies, the Artaxa, were green like the Crome, and not blue like the Analane. Colour was a special bonding in battle. When the fighting got furious would the Artaxa remember who were their friends and who their foe?

  He hoped so. They were, after all, a light green, not the deep green of the Crome.

  The great rolling dunes were left behind. They came among isolated hills between which blew a wind that rippled the yellow sand in complicated patterns. Here, too, were the first of the standing stones that marked the margins of Analane tribal territory. It alarmed Hrityu to see one of these tumbled on its side.

  Before long the echelon of sandboats swept past a food mountain, on whose rocky side grew the blue-green mould necessary to Analane existence. Again he was alarmed. No Analane were to be seen. The mould crop was being left ungathered.

  Worse, in the distance he saw lifeless bodies, relics of a recent fight.

  The sandboats slowed to avoid the boulders which strewed the terrain hereabouts. Topping a rise, the riders beheld a great saucer-shaped depression.

  It was the main camp of the Analane, and at present it was the scene of what could well have been their last battle.

  There had clearly been a great slaughter, and the Analane were never numerous. The females and young were gathered at the centre of the amphitheatre. The surviving male warriors were arranged around them in a star formation. A horde of green Crome, a few black Gamintes among them, surrounded the star and mounted charge after charge, shrieking war-cries. Flenching blades flashed. Gobbets of flesh, sliced from the bone, flew in all directions as warriors fell and died on both sides.

  Steadily the numbers of the Analane were diminishing.

  Hrityu hugged to his chest the weapon given him by the ‘Earthman’. The sight of his tribe being exterminated filled him with a greater rage than any he had known before.

  He set the weapon’s ring to full intensity. Better to leave one Crome dead than injure ten who might rise again!

  The sandboats came to a halt poised over the lip of the depression. Twelve hundred warriors climbed out. The spectacle of the battle had aroused them. The Artaxa marshal raised his flinger and uttered a loud ululating cry, to be answered by a throbbing, “Hoohoohoohoo …”

  The task force rushed shrieking down the slope.

  Karl Krabbe took the news of Roncie Northrop’s abduction with mild annoyance.

  The report had come from O’Rourke. “A dehydrate raiding party, it seems.”

  Krabbe and Bouche were still in the great hydrorium, in an apartment given them by the Tlixix. ‘Apartment’ was perhaps the wrong word. The walls were made of a light metal glistening with condensation. Furnishings consisted of boulders from the artificial seashore to use as chairs. They smelled of seaweed.

  The partners agreed it would be good to get back to the Enterprise.

  “Have you been able to keep track of him?”

  Testily, O’Rourke replied, “May I remind you, sir, that Northrop is of doubtful loyalty? That he has already tried to abscond once? Maybe we shouldn’t worry too much about him.”

  “Please be in less of a hurry to divest us of useful personnel, O’Rourke,” Krabbe drawled. “They’re hard to come by out here. See if you can find him.”

  “Yes, sir.” O’Rourke’s voice was grumpy. “Though the trail will be cold by now. He was taken an hour ago. And the interferometric telescope isn’t tuned to infrared, so we won’t be able to start looking till the region rotates into daylight. Even then we would have to move the ship to do a proper job.”

  He ended the last on an interrogative note, as if encouraging Krabbe to tell him not to bother. After a pause, he added, “I take it this effort should not be allowed to delay the main activity in any way?”

  “Well, of course, the project is the main thing.” Krabbe yawned, resignedly aware that he had given O’Rourke the excuse he sought to do little or nothing to help Northrop. He was feeling tired. “You’d better tell Castaneda what’s happened.”

  After O’Rourke had signed off he turned to Bouche, who was toying with his supper. “Why do you think those pesky desert-dwelling Barsoomians made off with our bondman? I thought the Tlixix had them well under control.”

  Bouche shrugged. “Maybe they want to see if he’s any good to eat.”

  He conveyed a morsel of reddish crustacean flesh to his mouth. He did not appear to relish it.

  For some perverse reason, he had got the Enterprise to send down a whole crateful of lobster thermidor.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  By the time he reached the camp of the Artaxa Roncie Northrop was very hungry, very thirsty, and near the end of his tether. He had tried to eke out the water, but it became so hot during the day! The canteen had less than a pint left in it now.

  As for the food, he had starved himself at first, but as the water steadily disappeared down his throat he began to wonder what the point of that might be. Thirst would kill him before starvation did. So he had allowed himself half a sandwich a day.

  Except that yesterday he had eaten only one quarter of a sandwich. So he had a quarter left.

  During daylight he continually scanned the sky hoping to see a lighter from the Enterprise come curving down towards him. In that, he had been disappointed. But not really surprised. It wasn’t the done thing to leave a bondman in distress—not if you wanted to ensure the loyalty of your staff—but with the partners down on the ground that bastard O’Rourke was in charge, and in his eyes Northrop was a traitor anyway.

  His entreaties to Karvass had been unavailing. The Artaxa had looked stonily ahead without answering whenever Northrop tried to explain that he must be taken back to the camp immediately, because of his daily need for water.

  Northrop had begun to accept that he was doomed.

  He had to admit that the sandboat was a marvellous construction, well adapted to the terrain over which it travelled. Its radium motor humming, it fairly skimmed over the soft yellow sand day and night. In a mostly featureless environment he could not easily estimate its speed, but if he had been told they were covering somewhere between one and two thousand kilometers perplanetary rotation—about thirty hours—he would not have been in the least surprised.

  It was yet one more similarity between Tenacity and the fictional Barsoom, he told himself: technical sophistication in a sparsely populated warrior culture (which in the case of the green Barsoomians had been nomadic to boot). In Burroughs’ stories that had been a contradiction. It was like expecting Genghis Khan’s Mongols to manufacture machine guns.

  Yet here, it was a reality.

  Then, when the sandboat wound among the hill formation and plunged down the underground bank to emerge into the huge cavern, he almos
t forgot his plight. Here indeed was a wonder not described in any of the Burroughs Martian books he had read. True, the Tlixix were said to live in domes which might be of comparable size, but they were not like the Barsoomians either. They were more like the hippopotamus-resembling masters of Pellucidar, the world within the Earth. And he doubted if the Tlixix boasted such numbers as he saw jostling on the floor of the great cavern.

  Entranced, he gazed up at the mass of glowing crystal of which the roof was composed, turning the whole huge space into an eerie grotto.

  Karvass nudged him from the sandboat and towards a line of Artaxa whose skin seemed rougher than his own. Perhaps, Northrop thought, that meant they were older. Their metal ornaments were more numerous, too. His mind went back again to Barsoom, where metal ornaments on otherwise naked bodies were like campaign medals or badges of rank, collected by killing someone.

  A younger Artaxa came from somewhere to the side of the welcoming committee. He carried a small bucket-like container with a metal lid, which he offered to Northrop.

  Holding it in one arm, Roncie removed the lid. The container held what looked like water, though it was dark and oily-looking.

  He was puzzled. The Tlixix were supposed to have all the water on the surface of the planet. He dipped a finger in the liquid and tasted it. It was not salty, at any rate. It tasted like brackish water.

  His thirst became overpowering. He lifted the container to his lips and drank, cautiously at first. The water had a strong mineral taste, but it was drinkable.

  Gasping with relief, he put the lid back on. Holding on to the container, he turned to Karvass.

  “Where did this come from?”

  Karvass pointed a lank finger to a group of creatures who were neither Artaxa nor even humanoid. They were vaguely lizard-like, standing erect with a forward-sloping posture, but white as worms which never saw the light.

  “Those are our allies the Sawune, who live in deep caverns, much deeper than this. There, they have found water.”