The Great Hydration

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The Great Hydration Page 10

by Barrington J. Bayley


  So! There was water which the Tlixix had not sequestered, though probably not much. Northrop tried to recall his brief look at the report on the species of Tenacity. Apart from the numerous dehydrate humanoids, there were also dehydrate lizard species, mostly subterranean. It was possible that a few pools of fresh water had survived evaporation in far-down pockets, also escaping detection by the lobsters’ enthusiastic water-searches.

  A more far-reaching realization came to him, now that the long drink had cleared his mind. His captors had known in advance that he needed water. They had made provision for it.

  He turned again to Karvass.

  “Thank you. But what about food?”

  The Artaxa’s facial membranes adopted a configuration. Northrop knew enough by now to interpret this as an expression display, but he didn’t know of what. Karvass’s verbal response, however, made it clear it was one of surprise.

  “But have you not eaten? Surely you do not need to eat again?”

  Northrop began to remember some biology. He looked at the compact bodies of the dehydrates. Since they did not have circulating blood, these creatures might not need homeostatic temperature control. It was the high-energy-using warm-blooded creatures that needed to feed every day. A mammal needed ten times as much food as a reptile. The dehydrates, with their bodily process of molecular migration through a gel, would have such fine temperature control, and their bodies would be so economical in the use of its resources, that they probably ate only a few times a year.

  That made perfect sense. There would be little enough food to find on this desiccated planet.

  So the Artaxa had made no provision to feed their prisoner, beyond grabbing up his breakfast. And whatever they used for food would at best pass right through him, if it did not poison him outright.

  He sighed grievously. For all his wandering, this was the first time in his life that he had gone hungry, except by choice.

  Hands pushed him towards the elders. Without preamble or greeting, one spoke to him.

  “Your kind has been seen in the Pavilion of Audience. You have erected machines in the desert. You have weapons unknown to us. Clearly you are an inventive people. But who are you? By your appearance you are numbered among the races of men, yet water is not poisonous to you and you require it as do the Tlixix. This is a contradiction. Did the Tlixix make you to be their new servants, or are you from some hidden part of the world? Answer, and answer truthfully, unless you wish to test how much torture you can withstand.”

  Furiously Northrop began wondering what he could say to avoid that threat. Did the Artaxa know any astronomy? Would they understand the idea of a world other than Tenacity?

  He set about trying to explain it all. That he and his friends were men, but they came from another world that was full of water, as this one had been when only the Tlixix lived on it. He had expected this to be greeted with incredulity, but not a single facial membrane as much as stirred. The elders simply listened. When he had finished one spoke.

  “So you have come to our world from elsewhere, or so you say. And you talk to the masters of our world, the Tlixix. Why? What is your business with them?”

  Northrop started thinking hard. What the hell do I owe Krabbe and Bouche? They wouldn’t let me go when I wanted to leave. They locked me up and dragged me out here. Now they’ve abandoned me to the dehydrates, leaving me to die. Anyway they’re acting illegally. Apart from that, their morals stink. These dehydrates will all drown when the ocean comes back. I’m not even sure they can survive on higher ground once the climate changes. But the least they deserve is to be warned.

  He spoke aloud to himself. “All right Karl, all right Boris, here it comes.”

  He began to spill the beans, again reminding the Artaxa of how Tenacity had once borne a large ocean. In those long-ago days, he said, water had showered from the sky even on to the dry places. They appeared already to know this and became impatient at his words.

  But when he told them that those days could be made to return, they were both startled and bewildered.

  “This is to happen in the next few days,” he said implacably. “All the low-lying areas, including these caverns, will lie under water. If you want to survive you had better move to higher ground.”

  Not a single one of his listeners stirred or spoke for a long time. Then, in a voice gravid with disbelief, one said, “It is a lie. The creature is trying to panic us into evacuating.”

  “Put him to the torture,” another said.

  Yet another spoke up. “Why do you tell us this? It is treason to your kind.”

  “My masters are acting against the laws of the world we come from,”

  Northrop answered. “If they are found out they will be punished. I disagree with what they are doing, but while I was their slave I had to do their bidding. Now you have taken me away from them, I am not their slave.”

  The most bemetalled of the elders turned to another. “How much eruptionite have we? How many radiators?”

  “We have more than a thousand shells of eruptionite,” the other answered. “As for radiators, about forty so far.”

  The chief elder addressed Roncie again. “If your warning is a true one, then you have rendered us a great service. If it is not, your punishment will be a terrible one. We go now to consider your words.”

  The elders turned as one man and marched into the great crowd thronging the floor of the cavern.

  Roncie was left with Karvass, who though badly shaken by everything he had just heard, offered to show him round the underground camp.

  “A great enterprise is underway,” he revealed. “The tyranny of the Tlixix is over. We and other tribes are ready to rise in revolt. Furthermore we have new weapons and devices which not even the Tlixix have.”

  In a side cavern he showed Northrop where one of these devices, referred to as ‘radiators’ was in production. To the Earthman’s bemusement it turned out to be a primitive form of radio. Like all early inventions, it was unnecessarily large and cumbersome.

  But it followed the general pattern of technology on the desert planet. All powered machinery on Tenacity depended on the presence of the radioactive element radium, plus a means to convert its radioactivity to electric current, which was also due to a serendipitous natural resource. Tenacity was rich in exotic crystals, some of which generated enough electricity to turn an electric motor if placed adjacent to pure radium. Tenacity mechanics had also devised accumulators, again exploiting naturally occurring exotic minerals, able to absorb a hefty amperage at fairly high tension. Hence a radium power source continued to charge up an accumulator whether the machine was in use or not. A Tenacity vehicle could therefore travel at top speed for many days, drawing additional power from a previously charged accumulator.

  The layout of the ‘radiator’ was somewhat similar, except that no accumulator was necessary. Semiconductor crystals sent an oscillating current to the antenna, causing it to transmit a carrier wave which was modulated by means of a simple microphone. In addition there was a speaker for receiving. And that was all. There was no tuning. The frequency was fixed.

  Northrop silently saluted the unknown Analane genius—or geniuses—who had discovered radio waves and developed the rig, something which the Tlixix had failed to do throughout their history.

  Perhaps, he told himself, Krabbe & Bouche were doing business with the wrong side.

  Indeed, no sooner had he finished inspecting the radiator than word came to Karvass. The council had taken his warning seriously. In an effort to avert the catastrophe they were bringing forward the revolt.

  Task forces were to set out immediately to launch attacks on the Tlixix hydroriums.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The inhabited part of Tenacity consisted of the bed of the dead ocean together with the former shoreline. The old Tlixix civilisation had centred on that shoreline. When the Tlixix created their helper races they confined them to the great empty space around which were ranged the new domes
of survival. They had no wish to see those races spread to the highlands, which even before the great dehydration had consisted mostly of desert. They knew they would be unable to exercise control over so vaster an area, and that endangered their security.

  Now, from the secret giant camp of the Artaxa, from the camps of the Toureen, from the camps of the Sawune and of those others who had thrown in their lot with the rebellion, which included the Limes and one of the two Jodobrock tribes, motorised war-hordes set out. Gaminte patrols they encountered were wiped out, any individuals who fled or escaped hunted down in the fastest available vehicles. It was essential the Tlixix should not know what was about to hit them.

  Had O’Rourke in fact kept a watch to search for Northrop they might have received a warning—supposing anyone had remarked on the number of desert caravans heading for the Tlixix refuges. He had delegated a crew member to make a scan through the interferometric telescope initially, though without moving the Enterprise to get a better view. Almost as quickly, he had taken her off the duty to supervise the delivery of shock tubes to the eight sites in preparation.

  The Artaxa meanwhile diverted from the main column a detachment to the only one of those sites known to them, and from which Northrop had been taken. They were disappointed to find it abandoned, the tents gone, only the litter of past human occupation remaining. They were not to know that a shock tube had already been put in place and the shaft over it filled in, or that the stiff wire jutting out of the yellow sand was the antenna for the detonation signal.

  A hastily set up network of radiators enabled the Artaxa to launch their attacks simultaneously. Carrying flingers specially adapted for throwing spherical shells of eruptionite, the humming columns approached their targets.

  When Karl Krabbe felt the first explosion rock the dome of the hydrorium he wondered if Castaneda had jumped the schedule, or worse, something had gone amiss. He got through to O’Rourke on the gogetter ship.

  “O’Rourke, what the hell’s going on?”

  The answering tone was puzzled. “Going on, sir?”

  Krabbe formed a suspicion, making him momentarily furious.

  “Say, you didn’t use any of that prehistoric junk, did you?”

  During the early planning Engineering had proposed using an archaic technology—hydrogen fusion—for the shock tubes on grounds of economy. Both Castaneda and Northrop had vetoed that. Hydrogen fusion couldn’t be tuned fine enough for a controlled shifting of the tectonic plates without serious risk of widespread vulcanism. The tubes were to use helium fusion, a standard if old-fashioned technique.

  “No sir, of course not.”

  “Well, where’s Castaneda?”

  “He’s here with me now, sir.”

  Krabbe’s fury returned. “Castaneda, what the hell are you doing up there so soon? Why aren’t you down on site?”

  “I’ve got lung cancer, sir,” Castaneda answered dolefully. “It’s all the radon gas I’ve been breathing, a breakdown product of radium. The atmosphere’s full of it. Radpaint can’t protect you against that.”

  “For heaven’s sake don’t be such a sissy, Carlos,” Krabbe said irritably. “Medbay has a spare lung or two, I expect.”

  While they spoke a barrage of explosions rattled the dome. They were coming nearer. Boris Bouche dashed into the apartment, his face feral with excitement and alarm.

  “We’re under attack! A revolt against the lobsters! They’re using explosives!”

  Through the open door Krabbe saw a scene of frenzy. Tlixix scuttled along the passage as fast as their short stick-like legs could take them, roaring ferociously. Black Gamintes also ran, metal accoutrements clinking and clashing.

  Krabbe turned back to the communicator. “O’Rourke, we’ve got a situation down here. What’s the status of the project?”

  “The last tube has just been put in place,” O’Rourke said. “Provisional detonation schedule is, er, right now plus one-seventeen minutes.”

  “Okay, this is what I want you to do. Pull the team up and detonate immediately. Have you got that?”

  “Pull up and detonate. Yes, sir. What about yourselves? Shall we come and get you?”

  Krabbe hesitated, glancing at his partner. “No, we are still ‘honoured guests’, so to speak. We’re all right for the moment. Keep me informed.”

  He signed off. “Do you think this attack is serious, Boris? Does it happen often?”

  Bouche scowled. “We’d understood the lobsters have everything sewn up tight. And explosives are supposed to be unknown here.”

  “This is the main hydrorium, for God’s sake!” Krabbe found time to smile. “Well, if this is a large-scale uprising the lobsters will have double reason to be grateful to us. Detonation is coming. That should put the dehydrates in their place!”

  A loud crack and a roar drowned out his last words. There was no doubt that this time it came from inside the dome.

  A Gaminte appeared in the doorway.

  “Invaders have breached the sacred refuge. You are in danger. Follow me.”

  Hastily gathering up their effects, the partners hurried after him, away from the fighting.

  Castaneda himself transmitted the signal that detonated all eight helium fusion devices at the same time. The small planet rang like a bell. The shock was felt everywhere on its surface. A juddering, then another juddering, and another, as seismic waves travelled through the lithosphere and rebounded on themselves, criss-crossing. The first earthquakes for thousands of years shook the desert, knocking down dunes and hills. The underground caves and tunnels of the lizard species crumbled and collapsed, as did most of the caverns of the camp of the Artaxa.

  Tlixix engineering proved itself. The ancient cycloidal domes of the hydroriums, large as they were, mostly withstood the shock. Two, however, were weakened and breached by eruptionite. These cracked open like eggshells.

  One of them was the largest hydrorium of all.

  Such events were incidental and of little importance to those watching and recording aboard the Enterprise. They watched with satisfaction as sensors buried in the crust sent back data on tectonic plate movement.

  Expectantly, they waited for signs of water.

  It was not long in coming. Within the hour damp patches appeared on the surface of the sand. Spectrography detected water vapour in the atmosphere.

  Then there came muddy stirrings, followed by gushers, scalding waterspouts leaping high in the air. And then blowers—blasts of steam hissing out of the sand, accompanied by sudden uprisings of the desert floor as vast mounds of hot water forced their way through. An ocean was being squirted up from the planetary aquifer, bringing steamy heat with it. Fog and cloud formed. Soon, it would start to rain.

  Already the climate was reverting.

  And already the dehydrate tribes were in panic, fleeing the deadly liquid in frantic columns, racing for the high ground beyond the ancient ocean bed. Hrityu, rejoicing in victory over the Crome, watched in disbelief as a surging sand slurry came ripping and flapping at running pace towards the ruins of the Analane camp, before those who could do so piled aboard all available vehicles and departed.

  The aftershocks continued for several hours. Castaneda gave the partners reports every fifteen minutes. Underneath what Krabbe regarded as his cowardly hypochondria, he sounded quietly pleased. The planet was responding as calculated, the rehydration of Tenacity proceeding according to plan.

  Occasionally O’Rourke broke in, asking if the partners needed extracting from the ruined dome. Krabbe declined. He and Bouche wanted to see the ocean coming back first hand, and the Gamintes were now holding their own.

  They had been moved to what soon would be the landward side of the dome. But then something even more dramatic happened. Undermined by the rising water table, an entire slab of land collapsed to re-create the wide bay that had existed in former times. It immediately began to fill with boiling, hissing liquid. The broken dome, its foundations undermined, tilted and slid with a grinding
sound until partly submerged in the foaming tumult.

  In the part that remained above water, fighting continued. With no participation by the Tlixix, however. They abandoned the dome altogether, leaving it to the dehydrates. A frenzy had ripped them. The sight of an emerging sea seized them with an uncontrollable instinct to respond to their evolved nature. Dragging out metal boats stored for millennia somewhere in the dome, they launched themselves on to the heaving, steaming, bubbling water.

  The lurch as the dome tilted sent Karl Krabbe and Boris Bouche tumbling against the wall of the cell they now occupied. Luckily, it was in the half of the dome that stayed above water.

  Bouche squealed in alarm and pointed upward. The ceiling was bending and collapsing. The cell was being crushed as the dome deformed. The two scrambled on hands and knees from the contracting space and into the corridor. Here, the ceiling was holding. Their Gaminte guard, having regained his feet on the now-sloping floor, was chopping to pieces two green Artaxa, wielding the great curved axe which the Gamintes used for close fighting.

  Finishing the work, he gestured to them. “Come, we must escape.”

  Gladly they followed him through the wreckage of the dome, avoiding the sounds of fighting and the squealings and bangs as the ancient metal structure came apart. Eventually he found a rent where the external skin had ruptured.

  They emerged on to what was now a headland. A warm fog was everywhere, a phenomenon which must have seemed utterly strange to the Gaminte. He started coughing continuously and seemed to find it difficult to move. Krabbe wondered what his understanding of the situation was, as he loyally followed orders to protect his charges. Probably he thought the rebel attackers were to blame for everything.

  A short distance away lay a large vehicle park, a sort of terminus for traffic to and from the hydrorium. Beckoning to them, the Gaminte went limping towards it.

  From not much further off, a red glow could be seen.

 

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