Summertide hu-1

by Charles Sheffield

  Atvar H’sial, with J’merlia as interpreter, could make all those arrangements without difficulty. What she could not do, the one task for which Darya Lang was absolutely essential, was to requisition a capsule on the Umbilical.

  She stated her reasons, as Darya listened with half an ear and fought the storm. No Cecropian had ever before visited Opral. The appearance of one on Quakeside, trying to board an Umbilical capsule, would produce immediate questions. Permission would not be given without checking entry permits, and that would lead back to Rebka and Perry.

  “But you,” J’merlia said, “you will be accepted at once. We have the correct documents already prepared for you.” The pleated surface of Atvar H’sial’s proboscis tightened a fraction. She was leaning over Darya, forelimbs together in a position that looked like earnest prayer. “You are a human… and you are a female.”

  As if that helped. Darya sighed. Full interspecies communication might be impossible. She had told them three times, but the Cecropian could not seem to accept the concept that in humans, the females were not the unquestioned and dominant ruling gender.

  Darya set out to gain altitude. This storm was something. They needed to be above and beyond those thundercaps before they started any descent, and despite the stability and strength of the aircar she did not relish the job ahead of her.

  “And we know the correct control sequences to employ in ascending the Umbilical,” J’merlia went on. “Once you have cleared us for access to the capsule, nothing will stand between us and the surface of Quake.”

  Those words were intended to encourage Darya and soothe any worries. Curiously, they had the opposite effect. She began to wonder. The Cecropian had arrived on Opal after her — and yet she had false documents, already prepared? And she knew all about Umbilical control sequences. Who had given those to her?

  “Tell Atvar H’sial that I’ll have to think about all this before I can make a final decision.”

  Think, and learn a lot more for herself, before she committed to any joint trip to Quake with Atvar H’sial. The alien seemed to know just about everything on Dobelle.

  Except, possibly, about the dangers of Opal’s storms.

  They were descending, and the turbulence was frightening. Darya heard and felt giant wind forces on the car. She prayed that its automatic stabilization and approach system could fly better than she could. She was no superpilot.

  Atvar H’sial and J’merlia were quite unperturbed. Maybe beings who were descended, however remotely, from flying ancestors had a more sanguine view of air travel.

  Darya would never acquire that, for sure. Her guts were knotting. They were through the clouds and dropping in a rainstorm more violent than any she had ever known on Sentinel Gate. With visibility less than a hundred meters and no landmarks, she had to rely on the beacons of Starside’s automatic landing system.

  If it worked at all, in such a downpour.

  The view through the forward window was useless, nothing but driving rain. They had been descending for a long time — too long. She steadied herself on the console and peered at the instrument panel. Altitude, three hundred meters. Beacon slant range, two kilometers. They must be just seconds away from landing. But where was the field?

  Darya looked up from the panel and saw the approach lights for a couple of seconds. They were right in place, dead ahead. She reduced power, drifting them down along the glowing line. The wheels touched briefly. Then a rolling crosswind grabbed the car, lifted it, and carried them up again and off to the side.

  Everything moved to slow motion.

  The car dipped. She saw one wing catch on rain-slick earth…

  …watched it dig a furrow, bend and buckle…

  …heard the crack as it broke in two…

  …felt the beginning of the aircar’s first cartwheel…

  …and knew, beyond doubt, that the best part of the landing was over.

  Darya never once lost consciousness. She was so convinced of that fact that after a while her brain came up with an explanation of what was happening. It was simple: Every time she closed her eyes, even for a moment, someone changed the scenery.

  First, the agony and indignity of a drag across wet, uneven soil. No scenery there, because her eyes were not working.

  (blink)

  She was lying face-upward, while someone leaned over her and sponged at her head. “Chin, mouth, nose,” a voice said. “Eyes.” And terrible pain.

  “Transmission fluid, looks like.” He was not speaking to her. “It’s all right, not toxic. Can you handle it on the others?”

  “Yeah,” another man said. “But the big one has a crack in its shell. It’s dribbling gunk and we can’t suture. What should I do?”

  “Tape, maybe?” A dark shape moved away from her. Cold raindrops splashed into her stinging eyes.

  (blink)

  Green walls, a beige ceiling, and the hissing and purring of pumps. A computer-controlled IV dripped into her left arm, cantilevered up over her body by a metal brace. She felt warm and comfortable and just wonderful.

  Neomorph, said a detached voice in her brain. Fed in by the computer whenever the telemetry shows you need it. Powerful. Rapidly addictive. Controlled use on Sentinel Gate. Employ only under controlled conditions with reverse epinephrine triggers.

  Nuts, the rest of her said. Feels great. Phemus Circle really know how to use drugs. Hooray for them.

  (blink)

  “Feeling better?”

  A stupid question. She did not feel good at all. Her eyes ached, her ears ached, her teeth ached, her toes ached. Her head buzzed, and there were stabs of pain that started near her left ear and ran all the way to her fingertips. But she knew that voice.

  Darya opened her eyes. A man had magically appeared at the bedside.

  “I know you.” She sighed. “But I don’t know your first name. You poor man. You don’t even have a first name, do you?”

  “Yes, I do. It is Hans.”

  “Captain Hans Rebka. That’s all right, then, you do have a name. You’re pretty nice, you know, if you’d just smile a bit more. But you’re supposed to be away on Quake.”

  “We got back.”

  “I want to go to Quake.”

  The damned drug, she thought. It was the drug, it must be, and now she knew why it was illegal. She had to shut up before she said something really damaging.

  “Can I go there, nice Hans Rebka? I have to, you see. I really have to.”

  He smiled and shook his head.

  “See, I knew you’d look a lot better if you smiled. So will you let me go to Quake? What do you say, Hans Rebka?”

  She blinked before he could reply. He disappeared.

  When she opened her eyes again there was a major addition to the room. Over to her right a lattice of black metal tubes had been erected to form a cubical scaffolding. A harness hung at the center of it, attached by strong cords to the corners. In that harness, pipe-stem torso swathed in white tape, head drooping low, and thin limbs stretched out vertically and to both sides, hung J’merlia.

  The contorted position of the wrapped body suggested the agony of a final death spasm. Darya automatically looked around for Atvar Hsial. There was no sign of the Cecropian. Was it possible that the symbiosis between the two was so complete that the Lo’tfian could not survive without the other? Had he died when the two were separated?

  “J’merlia?”

  She spoke without thinking. Since J’merlia’s words were nothing more than than a translation of Atvar H’sial’s pheromonal speech, it was stupid to expect an independent response.

  One lemon eye swiveled in her direction. So at least he knew she was there.

  “Can you hear me, J’merlia? You look as though you are in terrible pain. I don’t know why you are in that awful harness. If you can understand me, and you need help, tell me.”

  There was a long silence. Hopeless, Darya thought.

  “Thank you for your concern,” a dry and familiar voice said final
ly. “But I am in no pain. This harness was built at my own request, for my comfort. You were not conscious when it was being done.”

  Was that really J’merlia speaking? Darya automatically looked around the room again. “Is that you, or Atvar H’sial? Where is Atvar H’sial? Is she alive?”

  “She is. But regrettably, her wounds are worse than yours. She required major surgery on her exoskeleton. You have one broken bone and many bruises. You will be fully mobile in three Dobelle days.”

  “How about you?”

  “I am nothing; my situation is unimportant.”

  J’merlia’s self-effacing manner had been acceptable when Darya had thought him no more than a mouthpiece for Cecropian thoughts. But now this was a rational being, with its own thoughts, its own feelings.

  “Tell me, J’merlia. I want to know.”

  “I lost two joints of one hind limb — nothing important; they will grow back — and I leaked a little at my pedicel. Negligible.”

  It had its own feelings — and its own rights?

  “J’merlia.” She paused. Was it her business? A member of the Council was here, on this very planet. In fact, running away from him had been the prime cause of their injuries. If anyone should be worrying about the status of the Lo’tfians, it ought to be Julius Graves, not Darya Lang.

  “J’merlia.” She found herself talking anyway. How long before the drug was out of her system? “When Atvar H’sial is present you never speak any of your own thoughts. You never say anything at all.”

  “That is true.”

  “Why not?”

  “I have nothing to say. And it would not be appropriate. Even before I reached second shape, when I was no more than postlarval, Atvar H’sial was named my dominatrix. When she is present, I serve only to carry her thoughts to others. I have no other thoughts.”

  “But you have intelligence, you have knowledge. It’s wrong. You should have your own rights…” Darya paused.

  The Lo’tfian was wriggling in his harness, so that both compound eyes could be turned toward the human.

  He bowed his head to her. “Professor Darya Lang, with permission. You and all humans are far above me, above all Lo’tfians. I would not presume to disagree with you. But will you permit me to tell you of our history, and also of the Cecropians? May I?”

  She nodded. That was apparently not enough, for he waited until she finally said, “Very well. Tell me.”

  “Thank you. I will begin with us, not because we are important, but only for purposes of comparison. Our homeworld is Lo’tfi. It is cold and clear-skied. As you might guess from my appearance, we have excellent vision. We saw the stars every night. For thousands of generations we made use of that information only to tell at what time of the year certain foods should be available. That was all. When it was colder or hotter than usual, many of us would starve to death. We could speak to each other, but we were hardlv more than primitive animals, knowing nothing of the future and little of the past. We would probably have stayed so forever.

  “Think now of Atvar H’sial and her people. They developed on a dark and cloud-covered world — and they were blind. Because they by echolocation, sight for them implies the presence of air to carry the signal. So their senses could never receive information of anything beyond their own atmosphere. They deduced the presence of their own sun, only because they felt its weak radiation as a source of warmth. They had to develop a technology that told them of the very existence of light. And they had to build instruments that were sensitive to light and to other electromagnetic radiation, so that they could detect and measure it.

  “That was just the beginning. They had to turn those instruments to look at the sky, and deduce the existence of a universe beyond their homevorld and beyond their sun. And finally they had to acknowledge the importance of the stars, measure their distances, and build ships to travel to and explore them.

  “They did this — all this — while we Lo’tfians sat around dreaming. We are the older race, but if they had not found our world and raised us to self-awareness and to understanding of the universe, we would be sitting there still, as animals.

  “Compared to Cecropians, or to humans, Lo’tfians are nothing. Compared to Atvar H’sial, I am nothing. When her light shines, mine should not be seen. When she speaks, it is my honor to be the instrument that gives her thoughts to you.

  “Do you hear me, Professor Darya Lang? It is my honor. Darya Lang?”

  She had been listening — and listening hard. But she was beginning to hurt, and the computer-controlled IV was not ready to allow that. The pump had started again, a few seconds before.

  She forced her eyes to remain open.

  I am nothing! What a racial inferiority complex. But the Lo’tfians should not be allowed to be a slave race even if they wanted it. As soon as she could get to him, she would go and report it.

  To him.

  To whom?

  Mad and misty blue eyes, but she could not recall his name. Was she afraid of him? Surely not.

  She would report this to—

  (blink).

  CHAPTER 9

  Sumnmertide minus twenty

  “She’s not dead, and not dying. She’s healing. The correct Cecropian response to trauma and physical insult is unconsciousness.”

  In the middle of Opal’s brief night, Julius Graves and Hans Rebka stood by the table that held Atvar H’sial’s motionless body. Part of one side of the dark-red carapace had been coated with a thick layer of gypsum and agglutinate, hardening to a gleaming white shell. The proboscis was pleated and secured in its chin pouch, while the antennas lay furled over the broad head. The whistle of air pumping through spiracles was barely audible.

  “And it is amazingly effective by human standards,” Graves continued. “Recovery from an injury which does not kill a Cecropian outright is fast — two or three days, at most. And Darya Lang and J’merlia consider that Atvar H’sial is already recovered enough to renew a request for access to Quake.” He smiled, a death’s-head grin. “Not welcome news to Commander Perry, eh? Has he asked you to delay everything until after Summertide?”

  Hans Rebka hid his surprise — tried to. He was becoming used to the feeling that Julius Graves possessed limitless knowledge of every species in the spiral arm. After all, the mnemonic twin had been created for exactly that purpose, and from the moment that they had arrived at the scene of the crash Steven Graves had dictated the treatment for Atvar H’sial’s injuries: the shell must be sealed, the legs taped, the broken wing case removed entirely — it would regenerate — and the crushed antenna and yellow auditory horns left to heal themselves.

  But it was harder to accept Graves’s knowledge and understanding of humans.

  It occurred to Rebka that he and Julius Graves should switch jobs. If anyone could find out what had changed Max Perry from an up-and-coming leader to a career drop-out and impenetrable mental mystery, Graves could do it. Whereas Rebka was the man who could explore the surface of Quake and find the Carmel twins, no matter where they tried to hide.

  “And your own views, Captain,” Graves went on. “You have been to Quake. Should Darya Lang and Atvar H’sial be permitted to go there once they have recovered? Or should they be refused access?”

  That was exactly what Rebka had been asking himself. It was left unsaid that Graves intended to go to Quake, no matter who opposed him. Perry would accompany him, as his guide. And although Rebka had said nothing, he intended to go, too. His job required it, and anyway Max Perry was biased and unreliable on anything to do with Quake. But what about the others?

  He travels fastest who travels alone.

  “I’m opposed to the idea. The more people, the more dangerous, no matter what specialized knowledge they bring along. And that applies to Cecropians as well as humans.”

  Or even more so for Cecropians. He stared down at the unconscious alien, fought off a shiver, and walked away toward the door of the building.

  He had no trouble with J’merli
a, with his downtrodden look and pleading yellow eyes. But it made him uncomfortable just looking at Atvar H’sial. And he considered himself an educated, reasonable man. There was some hidden quality to the aliens that he found hard to tolerate.

  “Cecropians still make you uneasy, Captain.” It was Graves, following him to the door and reading his mind again — making a statement, not asking a question.

  “I guess they do. Don’t worry, I’ll get used to them.”

  He would — slowly. But it was hard going. The miracle was that Cecropians and humans had not embarked on total war when the two species had first encountered each other.

  And they would have, Rebka’s inner voice assured him, if they could have found anything worth fighting about. Cecropians looked like demons. If they had not sought planets around red dwarf stars, while humans were looking for Sol analogs, the two would have encountered each other in the outward crawl. But the unmanned probes and the slow Arks of both species had been targeted for quite different stellar types, and they had missed each other for a thousand years. By the time humans discovered the Bose Drive and found the Cecropians already using the same Network through the spiral arm, both species had had experience with other alien organisms; enough to allow them to coexist with other clades whose needs were for stellar environments so different from their own, even if they could not be viscerally comfortable.

  “Vertebrate chauvinism is all too common.” Graves fell into step at his side. He was silent for another moment; then he giggled. “Yet according to Steven — who says that he speaks as someone who lacks both a backbone and an exoskeleton — we should think of ourselves as the outsiders. Of the four thousand two hundred and nine worlds known to possess life, Steven says that internal skeletons have developed on only nine hundred and eighty-six. Whereas arthropod invertebrates thrive on three thousand three hundred and eleven. In a galactic popularity contest, Atvar H’sial, J’merlia, or any other arthropod would beat you, me, or Commander Perry hands down. And even, if I dare say it, your Professor Lang.”