Thousandstar (#4 of the Cluster series)

by Piers Anthony

  She made a certain female sense. If they failed to win the competition, both would die. Slowly, horribly, suffering stifling confinement of one kind or another. If they won, they would separate, and live half the Galaxy apart. Even if Jessica could mattermit in her own physical body to his world, or he to hers, they would be of two completely alien species. Meanwhile, they were together—and could do nothing, because they had between them only a single body. So she was exactly correct; even if it were possible, it would be impossible. Therefore it was pointless and foolish even to speculate on alternatives; it was a dead issue.

  Yet somehow it did not feel dead. Suppose they failed in the competition, but remained free on Planet Eccentric? At least they would be together, and could wait for the killing winter in company. He wanted her with him, even on that basis. It was an emotion he had not felt before, this willingness, even desire, to sacrifice everything else for the mere sake of the company of another creature.

  'Maybe your species doesn't have that emotion,' Jessica said. 'Your couples don't seem to stay together after reproducing. Among our kind it is called love.'

  "I have never tasted that concept before," Heem admitted. "It must be another crossover from your being, like the ability to see. I do not know how to deal with it."

  'You shouldn't have to, Heem. It is unfair to make your kind react to an emotion it doesn't possess naturally. I'll try to blot it out—'

  "No! I do not comprehend it, but it relates to you and I must keep it. It is a torment that I like."

  'Oh, damn, Heem!' Yet she was pleased.

  Then he had another realization. "The competition—we do not have to win. I will yield myself to the authorities, and they will transfer you back—"

  'And imprison you. I will not have my freedom that way.'

  "But if I am doomed anyway—"

  'You are not doomed. You can have the rest of the summer season of Eccentric free, then perish as you prefer, by the action of the Hole. Reaching to claim you in the form of the eclipse. It is right for you, Heem, and I would not deny you that.'

  "I do not want freedom if you die!"

  'Heem, if you go to prison, my heart goes to prison with you, no matter where my body is, or my aura. You try to turn yourself in, and I will paralyze you with my screams. We are not going to separate that way. Only if we win, so that I know you have a future—then I can go home.'

  And she was not bluffing. She was as foolishly principled as he. "Then we must win."

  'We won't win if we don't pay more attention to where we're going. Why don't you stop trying to argue with females and get to work?' But she sent him a kiss.

  According to the map, they were nearing the first bridge. The tractor emerged from the jungle, and there was an awful flavor of molten rock.

  'Flowing lava!' Jessica exclaimed with a thrill of horror. 'So it really is true! The volcanoes really are active here!' Working from his taste, she made a visual picture: a cleft in the ground, brimming with glowing red liquid rock that sizzled its way downhill.

  A tractor ground up from behind. Two tractors, three. The later arrivals were taking to this "poor" route in greater numbers, evidently reasoning that it was, after all, the best prospect, just as Heem and Jessica had. Heem concentrated, and picked up the tastes: the new contestants were a HydrO, a Squam, and an Erb. They quickly spread out on the wider path beside the lava channel and raced toward the bridge ahead.

  'We'd better move, if we want to keep our place,' Jessica said.

  "We know one Erb is ahead of us," Heem responded. "I judge from the nature of the flavor of the trail that there were no more than two tractors ahead of that one. If we assume there is fuel at the depot for five tractors, we can let one of the following machines pass us, no more—and our path will be easier if we do let that one ahead."

  'That's cutting it close, Heem.'

  "We must cut close to win. We must conserve fuel, building up reserve. In the final stage, those who have planned most carefully will prevail—and we must be among the first five."

  'First five? Why that number? There is no cutoff here, is there?'

  "I believe all tractors will exhaust their fuel before the finish, as we surmised. The leaders will be strung out, perhaps widely. We shall have to proceed without machines. There should be a chance to pass a few—but if we are not near enough the lead, we shall have no chance. I deem five to be the only ones having fair chance."

  'I see. You're right, of course. You thought it through better than I did. Very well, we'll play it close now, so we'll have the edge when it counts.'

  The three tractors were not conserving fuel at all. Each was racing to be first. It was now evident that there was no absolute limit on tractor velocity, contrary to Heem's assumption. But the faster a given vehicle moved, the more wastefully it expended its fuel. Either these drivers had not calculated as precisely as Heem had, or they did not know precisely where the limit was. Each wanted to be sure of obtaining refueling.

  No—they were not merely racing, they were fighting. The Erb was in the center, with the best track, but as it drew ahead the others closed in from the sides to bang against it, disrupting its progress. Jessica patched together her picture from Heem's taste and vibration perceptions, showing the three tractors skewing along.

  "I think we had better stay clear of that," Heem jetted, accelerating their own tractor. "There is no fuel economy to be gained in that melee."

  But there was another clang of contact. All three pursuers skewed, and the Erb bounced ahead. Heem had to veer out of the path to prevent it from bumping him. That put him in front of the other HydrO, and he had to steer on out to the jungle to avoid it. The foliage entangled his treads, and he had to slow.

  All three tractors shot past him. In one miscalculation, he had lost his place. Instead of crossing the bridge ahead of the three, he would cross behind. "Food!" he swore.

  Jessica, as tense as he, broke into hysterical mental laughter. 'To you, the foulest concept is food,' she gasped. 'To us, it is excrement, or—'

  Heem angrily maneuvered the machine back onto the center path. "Or what?"

  'Or copulation.'

  Now it was his turn to signify mirth. "You Solarians are truly, wondrously alien! Copulation is your foulest concept?" The tractor resumed speed, moving well, gaining on the others—but Heem knew he would have to pass two of them, somewhere between the bridge and the fuel depot. That would be difficult, and cost him fuel. He should have crossed the bridge first, then allowed one tractor to pass him when all were conveniently spaced out.

  'It is sort of silly,' Jessica admitted. 'We have good terms and bad terms for the same things. Things that are quite natural and necessary. Your way makes more sense. Your expletive relates to a function alien to your metabolism.'

  Now the bridge came into clear perception. It was, by the taste of its ambiance that Jessica translated into another picture, a narrow span of hardened lava arching over the channel, wide enough for one tractor at a time. It seemed to be a natural span; easier for the Competition Authority to direct a path to it than to build a bridge over flowing stone.

  The Erb charged up and onto it, lifting above the liquid lava. The passage had to be quick, because the air was quite hot in that vicinity. Both HydrO and Squam skewed to a halt. "The weight of two tractors might collapse it," Heem explained, slowing his own vehicle. "No use to crowd past if it only means destruction; we have to let the Erb clear first."

  'At least we know it's safe for one, because the first Erb crossed it.'

  Then, as this Erb reached the apex, the bridge collapsed. Lava-rock and tractor plunged into the boiling river. The channel was narrow; blocked by this mass, the lava foamed up and overflowed its bed. Hastily, the three remaining tractors spun about and accelerated into the jungle, getting clear of the widely spreading liquid. The vegetation it touched burst into flame.

  Soon the blockage melted, and the lava overflow receded, returning slowly to its channel. Much of it remaine
d, cooling and hardening, unable to flow. A small new lava plain had been formed. But the bridge was gone. A small section of hardened lava had formed at the height of the overflow, and now represented the beginning of a new bridge. This demonstrated how these things occurred, but it was hardly safe to use now; it would have to cool for many days.

  'What do we do now?" Jessica asked dispiritedly.

  "We follow the Erb into the flow," Heem responded, his own hopes destroyed.

  Her spirit revived abruptly. 'Oh no we don't! There's got to be a way to continue!'

  The Squam tractor moved slowly toward them. Heem wondered whether it could be Slitherfear, and prepared himself for a battle in tractors, but soon the taste-pattern showed it was a stranger. A peculiar rapping came from its occupant: the sign-signal of truce.

  'Um, let me handle this,' Jessica said. 'I'm closer to the Squam type than you are. We're all in the same boat, now.'

  Heem acquiesced, not wishing to converse with the monster, and she used his body to needle a tractor control. The tractor made a similar knocking sound, agreeing to the truce.

  The other HydrO echoed the sound, and came close.

  "HydrO," the Squam sprayed, using its tractor's short-range communicator. The broadcast message emerged from Heem's unit in HydrO translation, since he had been using HydrO controls. The Squam, of course, had not really sprayed. "We are competitors, but face a common problem. Unless we can proceed, all have lost."

  Extremely true. "Agreed," Jessica jetted into their own tractor's unit, knowing that the receiving Squam unit would translate it into the series of noises that was its language.

  "Know you who passed last this bridge?"

  "An Erb was ahead of us," Jessica jetted.

  "Could that Erb have sabotaged the bridge?"

  'Trust a Squam to think of that!' Heem sprayed internally. 'Of course that happened! It must have knocked out part of the rock from the far side, weakening the structure. So that no one could overtake it.'

  "We believe it did," Jessica jetted to the Squam. Now that it was close, her picture was clear. It reposed coiled in the compartment, both extremities below, its three limbs extended upward from the elevated center section. Three pincer-fingers on each limb were spread. The creature's hue was dark, its scales glinting metallically, and its nether portion was very like a serpent. There was no Solarian analogy for the rest, so the picture became fuzzy.

  "Our map suggests another potential natural crossing, downstream where the lava spreads and cools," the Squam continued. "But the terrain is rugged, probably too arduous for a single vehicle. Will you assist, so that one or two of us may reenter the race?"

  'No!' Heem sprayed.

  "Yes," Jessica agreed even as he objected.

  'Cooperate with a Squam?' Heem demanded. 'This is impossible!'

  "Yes," came the other HydrO's spray.

  "It is possible and necessary," Jessica told Heem internally. "The Squam is being positive; we must be the same."

  'No Squam can be trusted!'

  "We are not sure of that. Surely Squams differ, just as Erbs do. As HydrOs do. We had not expected such vicious tactics from an Erb, had we? And the other HydrO does not seem to fear Squams the way you do. You have Squam-phobia, Heem; it may be unjustified."

  'Unjustified! A Squam killed Moon of—'

  "A Squam, yes; this Squam, no."

  "We shall have to use lines to anchor our vehicles to each other, to navigate rough terrain," the Squam communicated, "Shall we agree to resume the race in the same order we reached the bridge, at such time as we achieve crossing?"

  That left Heem's tractor last. Still, it seemed fair. 'No, it isn't fair!' Heem protested. 'All three of us will be well behind the pace.'

  "That's not the Squam's fault," she reminded him. Then, to the Squam: "Agreed."

  There was a brief dialogue between the Squam and the other HydrO, determining who was first. Then the quest for the natural crossing commenced. They all knew that speed was of the essence.

  Off the path, progress was a challenge. The ferns crowded in as close to the lava channel as the heat permitted, leaving little room for the tractors. They proceeded single file, slowly.

  Then the channel became shallow. The lava overflowed in disciplined fashion, thinning and slowing and hardening. Flood plains had formed and turned to solid stone and been overrun by new floods, so that there were many step-layers. Several new channels had been cut through this landscape, but even the cool rock was extremely irregular. The Squam's tractor halted. "We must survey," the Squam communicated.

  All three occupants dismounted from their tractors. The two HydrOs met the Squam. Now no linguistic communication with the Squam was possible, but it wasn't necessary. They knew what they had to do.

  They spread out, surveying the lava-beds. The rock was warm in places, hot in others; they had to discover a route that was cool enough and stout enough to be firm under the weight of a tractor.

  In one place the lava formed a veritable mountain, as though it had made a vast bubble when hot, which firmed and was overlaid with subsequent lava. The far side of this dome was across the original channel; Heem could taste the vegetation beyond. The burningly hot lava flow plunged out of perception somewhere beneath this dome. This was a giant bridge!

  They returned to their vehicles, consulted, and agreed: they would try to cross this dome. It seemed firm enough to support the weight. But its sides were steep.

  "A winch," Jessica said. "One tractor here, pulling, the cable guided over the curvature. The other tractor there, pushing the third. Once the third is over the hump, it can winch the others up the incline." She returned to their tractor's communicator so she could make this clear to the Squam.

  The Squam agreed. Since Jessica had suggested it, she and Heem had the privilege of making the first attempt. Each tractor had a winch—they were multi-purpose vehicles—but the reach was not long enough. They had to hook two cables together end to end. Then the Squam parked as close to the hot-lava flow as possible, and used his pincers to string the linked cables over the dome, catching them in a crevice so they would not slip off side-wise. The other HydrO, a female, nosed her vehicle forward to push.

  'If this does not work,' Heem sprayed morbidly, 'we shall be first into the flow, after all.'

  "Or stuck on top of this dome," Jessica said cheerfully.

  Push and pull. Heem put his treads in motion. They skidded, for the incline here was almost vertical. Then the cable carried the front end up. The tractor tilted alarmingly and tried to skew to the side; then the treads caught and helped it lift up the slope. The angle would have been impossible without the winch.

  Heem stopped at the top, where the bubble was level. The Squam, the only creature facile at this sort of thing, slithered up to disconnect the winch. Then Heem turned his vehicle around, on top of the dome, while the Squam drove around to the spot Heem's tractor had started from. They reconnected the winches, and Heem backed his tractor down the far slope until the rear treads struck the ground. He was across!

  Now the other HydrO nudged up to push the Squam, while Heem started winching in. The Squam's tractor-nose came up. The stiffest haul was while the vehicle's treads were skidding, for the cable now went entirely over the dome, with a fair amount of friction. Almost, it seemed Heem's own tractor was about to be hauled up instead, though he had his treads locked. Yet the powerful winches kept drawing in. Heem worried about the fuel expenditure.

  Then, abruptly, the cable went slack—and taut again, yanking Heem's tractor momentarily off its back threads. Then the cable snapped, and the tractor dropped. Jessica screamed.

  "Don't do that!" Heem sprayed, trying to damp down the searing emotion. He shut off the motor and rolled out of the tractor. He found a channel and moved up the slope of the dome with almost the dispatch of a flatfloater. The Squam's tractor had broken through a portion of the dome and fallen below. Now it lay in what Jessica's picture showed as a pool of light from the hole, overtu
rned.

  "One Squam departed," Heem remarked, not unduly disturbed.

  'We don't know that!' Jessica said. 'Get down there and check. It's a living creature who helped us; we must help it.'

  "But it's hopeless. Even if the monster lives, the tractor is defunct."

  The other HydrO joined them. "That crust was weaker than we thought," she sprayed. "The changed angle of draw—"

  'Get down there, Heem,' Jessica repeated warningly. Heem yielded. The notion of helping a Squam was still new to him, but he found it hard to protest what Jessica really wanted. She was so beautifully righteous in her emotion. "We must verify the condition of the Squam," he sprayed to the HydrO.

  "Why?" she asked reasonably.

  Heem hesitated. 'If you don't answer, I will!' Jessica told him.

  "The Squam is a sapient creature," Heem sprayed reluctantly. "He was helping us. We were operating under truce. To neglect him now would be to assume complicity in his destruction, violating that truce."

  "Perhaps so," the HydrO agreed distastefully. The rubble of the collapse descended at a navigable angle down from the HydrO's tractor. They rolled carefully down.

  "Squam," Heem sprayed. "Do you survive?" In a moment the other HydrO's tractor sprayed the reply. It seemed the Squam spoke into his own unit, which was still broadcasting. Thus the taste, a bit blurred by distance, wafted down from behind them: "I am crushed, yet I survive. I shall not live long without assistance."

  Heem hesitated again, but Jessica needled him. "What assistance may we proffer, Squam?" As his jet reached the other HydrO's tractor, Heem felt the harsh vibrations of the Squam's tractor-unit translating.

  Then the indirect response came back. "Only to notify the Competition Authority. I require serious medication."

  "I doubt our radios will reach," Heem sprayed. "They are intended only for short-range communication, as now, and we are far off the charted route. I believe there is a call-in unit at the fueling depot. But only my tractor is across; I would have to leave you both here and go to it alone."