by Various
What about Challenger? What were his shipmates His words disturbed the people around them. Braxan noticed, even more than Keller did, or a least cared more.
"Get your Grid mats," she said. "Spread the word for all hunters to meet at the Feast plain."
The people broke up and hurried back into the city to prepare for the hunt. Ring-ring-ring-ring-ring-ring-ring - their chain-mail moccasins were like jinglebells anyway. Vibrations couldn't be muffled here.
Braxan was uneasy giving the order to hunt, or any order. It wasn't in her nature. She reminded Keller some of himself when he had been suddenly spun into charge of a ship in crisis and a colony in trouble, without the people he had come to depend upon. She was alone too, without family. Braxan had lost all her relatives in the last few hunts, a group of people who hadn't been blessed with many children. Most women Braxan's age had a half-dozen children. Braxan had none. Apparently the luck of the draw.
So Braxan was alone, except for the injured traveler she had nursed back to health.
This would be the fifth hunt since Keller came through the gateway and crashed the spinner out on the plain. Through weeks of Keller's recovery, Braxan had provided both nursing and information. She had wanted to go through the gateway more than either Riutta or Luntee, and for that reason she had stayed - one of those old-order quirks of caution.
"When you appeared in one of our spinners," she said, "we didn't know what kind of being you were or why you came. You told us we must use our stored energy to power more ships, to cross over before the gateway closes ... that it is still time to go. Still, there are many fears to this."
"Braxan, you have to keep believing." He clasped her arms and bothered to look deeply into her eyes, hoping she would find the truth in there. "This side doesn't want people. It never did. On the big scale of time, eleven thousand years isn't that long. The time of the Living is running out on this big ball bearing. Lightning, rain, ice - on the other side of the gateway you can do more than just survive. You can grow. You won't have to give up thousands of people to the hunts. It's better there. It wants life."
"I believe it's wonderful," she said. "I believe you. We'll keep storing energy, and keep trying to convince Kymelis. If her voice is with us, then we'll all go."
He smiled at her, but not because she was telling him what he wanted to hear. She wasn't the youngest nymph on the planet or the prettiest, but he liked looking at her. Her harsh features - a sharp nose, thin eyebrows, high cheekbones, thin lips, and a chin that came to a dimpled point - were offset by worshipful eyes like two balls of hematite in a setting of platinum skin. She was a very simple person, content with small comforts and controlled hopes, yet she had warmed to Keller's tales of life on the other side in a way that made him feel valuable.
Though she had no unique talents or wisdom or skills, she was special because she had survived more hunts than all but two others of her people. That made her the third Elder, the one Riutta and Luntee had left behind. After so long with no word from Riutta and Luntee, the Living had accepted two new elders. Braxan was now in a new triumvirate of leaders for the Living.
There were Braxan, a one-eyed woman named Kymelis, and a man named Issull, in that order of seniority. Braxan wanted to go through the gateway. Issull intended to go through, but didn't think this was the time. Since there was trouble in space on the other side, perhaps another ten thousand years of preparation was needed.
The middle Elder, one-eyed Cyclops, hadn't made up her mind about what random order "wanted."
Three elders - a leadership in turmoil. One for Keller's way, one against, and one vacillating. Kymelis knew hers was the swing vote, but also didn't know whether to trust Keller, a stranger who had soared through the gateway after the signal from the Anointed was silenced. Was Keller the one who had stopped the signal? What had happened to the Anointed? These many troubled months hadn't been smooth skating for Keller or his message of welcome from the other side.
Of course, one key factor was that Issull did want to go through the gateway, as all their histories planned, but he didn't think this was the time. That meant he could eventually be convinced. Keller only needed two Elders to go his way.
'Time's running out," he murmured, more to himself than Braxan. "If my multiplication's right, it's been almost thirty hours on the other side. They can't hold the gateway open much longer."
"I think you'll prevail," she said quietly. "My people listen to you."
"Well, the Living don't waste. I'm a stranger, but I've got special knowledge and skills. They can't ignore me ... it's not exactly the same as listening."
"You are a champion of many here, especially the young ones like Donnastal. He defies everything for you."
"Mmm ... that's because I'm the suave foreign substitute teacher. What I am is the focus of conflict really."
"Our first leader, Ennengand, meant for us to go through. We have invested generations in this. I still believe."
"But is Nick Keller the messenger?" he asked. "OF Cyclops isn't sure."
Braxan's glossy eyes regarded him warmly as he came out of his thoughts. 'There are some who say you treat me gently for the sake of influence. So I'll go with you."
"Hey, hey ... don't blame the messenger." Keller grinned, caught her hand, and pulled her up close. In a cold world, she was his only warmth and therefore all the more precious. "You always wanted to go to the other side. I didn't change your mind, did I?"
"Random order sent you to us to tell us it's time to leave. Why would you be here otherwise?" Like a silver bell on a cord she swung in his arms, and appreciated him with her eyes.
"I'm glad you've survived," he murmured, "even if you have to bear the burdens of an Elder." Usually he tried not to be so candid. But for this moment, would a little selfishness hurt? "How do you stay so nice in a place like this? You don't even realize how much death breathes on this place, do you? It'll always be a subsistence living here. If more resources appear, the population expands just enough to make it subsistence again."
"We have enough to survive," she said.
"You have metal. Nothing else. No help from others, no neighbors in space, no way to make medicine ... you live on candleflies and legends of better places. People are afraid to form relationships, children are pushed away by their parents, nobody dares to care too hard... there's complete insecurity. You lose everybody you love, or they lose you. The only thing in my culture's history, the only parallel I can think of... is the Black Plague."
"You always speak of other colors," she said, steering him away from his morbid subject. "We have darkest dark, this 'black' you've shown me. I like to hear about the others. Red and green. Cobalt and pumpkin ... very exotic names."
"They're exotic." He twiddled his fingers through her coppery hair. "Not quite as exotic as you, I don't think." With his eyes out of focus he hugged her and gazed at the silver dome over their heads. "I wish I could remember... sometimes I dream in colors ... but I'm afraid I might be forgetting what they really look like. Seems to have been an awful long time..."
"Time - " She pulled away, her shiny eyes bright. "It's time for the hunt. I have to be there."
"I know." He sighed. "You, me, coupla hundred other hunters, and my trusty tricorder."
She smiled. "Again you'll take it onto the plain?"
"I have to reset it just before the capture. You know that."
"You reset at the last hunt, and the one before, and before that."
"Oh, I s'pose," he mumbled as he palmed the instrument. "Clears the head ... electrical interference is my hobby now. I can compare certain electrical readings. Y'know - research. Data acquisition. Fun with numbers."
"On our world there is not enough electricity for you already?"
"Hon, on your world there's enough electricity for dang near everybody, dang near everywhere. If we could box it - "
He stopped himself, held back from telling her too much. These people had survived in an impossible place by holding to
some kind of purpose. Civilizations had been doing that for a long time, but this one took the method to an extreme. Keller knew he had to work within their system. They wouldn't accept too much rebellion.
"Stand right in front of me. Let me use you for - "
"A sensor anchor," she completed. "I know. You will 'read' me now, and you will 'read' yourself on the plain, and later compare the information. I shall stand better than anyone ever has stood."
She squared her shoulders, spread her hands out, drew a deep breath and closed her eyes, still smiling. Her hands, less a little finger on each, were slim and feminine. Even the bitterness of evolution and of life on this rugged world hadn't taken the girl out of this girl. She didn't have much of a figure, but the simple foil sheath made an enchanting envelope.
"Mmm, you're good at standing," Keller commented wryly. He finished scanning her and turned the tricorder on himself for a quick sweep. "Ought to do it..." Braxan pressed her hands to her gold-leaf pixie-cut hair. Her hair looked brassy to him here. What it would if look like on the other side - he had no way to guess. All he knew was that her smile was friendly, her heart forgiving and unsuspicious in a place of inclement legend, and she had started to look pretty to him.
"I wish I could have you give the commands." She sank against him, pressing her chin to his shoulder. "Why would random order select such as me to be made an Elder?"
"When we go to the other side, you can be whatever you want. There's no 'random order' there. You can be lots of different things. All at once, if you want." He gazed at her. "What do you want?"
It was like asking a cloistered novice to describe Mardi Gras. Her lashless eyes tightened with the mystery he put before her.
"I would like to see trees," she said.
"We have trees on Belle Terre. We're sowing sod too. Grass. I think you'll take to grass between your little stubby toes down there."
She smiled, but he had awakened a cautious streak. "Does color hurt?" she asked.
Her innocence filled him with a whole new kind of responsibility. Cupping her neck, his own hands were a bizarre computer-generated pearly texture instead of their normal shade of Santa Fe. Everything here seemed artificially animated. He'd almost forgotten what a human really looked like or the kind of world he and all life like him was meant to occupy. Was some inner part of him expecting to be trapped here?
He slid his hands down her shoulder blades and solemnly promised, "Color is one of the best things."
"Hunt! The hunt!" Cries from the streets shook them out of their private moment. Local heralds were running through the streets, summoning all those qualified to hunt. The same thing would be happening in the other settlements.
Keller looked up and sighed. What a shame - a free dancer had just landed here, but all its energy was lost. Hundreds of people would soon die a horrific electrical death to tempt down more free dancers in a controlled environment, so one could be killed and its energy taken into storage.
"It's time to hunt" Braxan said, and pressed back, breaking their quiet communion.
"Right," he acceded. "Let's buckle on our swash and participate in chivalry at its weirdest."
The hunt plain was nothing more than miles of ferrous flats, brushed to a dull sheen by wind and storms constantly battering this planet. Lightning flashed overhead and the skies growled. The biohaze, a shroud of primordial life surviving in the atmosphere, flickered and swam and tumbled.
There were twenty thousand people or so on this planet, by Keller's best reckoning. The low number was a sad clue. According to the "old records' there had once been upward of a hundred thousand, all descendants of the crews and passengers of those first two ships to pass through the gateway, one Blood, one Kauld.
Nature was intolerant here. The planet couldn't support a population. The Living were more devolving than evolving. Families had fewer children, even though they produced as many as they could. Women dutifully produced babies their entire adult lives, by several men, to keep genetics from singularizing. They had developed an Eskimo-like manner of cooperative tribal structure, to be sure children were cared for if their adult relatives didn't survive the hunts, and to make sure nonhunting families were fed. There was food sharing and a strict hierarchy of distribution, the top of which involved the families of people who had been "chosen" in the hunt. Perfect, to the dreamer's eye.
Reality was far less kind. Several times, the histories told, this system had broken down. Communalism would support only the very smallest of communities.
This inhospitable planet was a test case. When there proved no other way, communalism's answer had been to make the community smaller, not bigger.
They survived, but didn't thrive. Starvation, competition, failure. Generation after generation, the pattern repeated itself. The population surge to five hundred thousand had only happened once, and like a flare quickly collapsed. Now they were on their way to another wave of harsh limitation. Their numbers were shrinking. The metal planet would never let them flourish. It didn't want them.
So they clung to their legend about going home. It was their single enduring plan. They wanted to go. They planned to go. Unless they were "chosen" in the hunt of a free dancer or "Anointed" - killed by accident or illness - they worked toward the goal of eventually leaving this tin pot.
The plan's most recent leg had been a mighty monumental one - to take thousands of Anointed home, then send a signal for the rest of the people to follow. That signal had never come. Instead, quite another signal had been sent. The Anointed had been summoned down from their pedestals all at once, not by destiny but by Nick Keller in his determination to save his side of the gateway first.
Taking the unexpected "destruction" of the Anointed as a message, the Living had hunkered down once more to the business of collecting energy from the free dancers, but this time with the idea of another ten thousand years of work before trying again. They had used up almost all their stored energy to open the gateway and hold it open, then power Riutta's spinner fleet. They had to hustle now, hunt more and more often, to gather enough energy to go on surviving. But Keller had come. He wanted them to use their new power stores in a different way - to go through the gateway en masse, as they had originally planned.
He was the only one who knew the clock was ticking to a much nearer alarm. Challenger and the grave ship could hold the gateway open only a few hours on their side, more than a year on this side.
A year... sounded long, but wasn't. The Living had been waiting years on this side for Riutta and Luntee to send a summons, then instead received a cutoff. They supposed the Anointed had met with tragedy in space. After hundreds of generations, nothing had come of this. They had accepted two new Elders, along with the one left behind, and they had begun again. More than half of these people would die in a stepped-up schedule of hunts, to provide enough energy for the other half to keep existing on this brittle ferrous ball.
What could Keller do? Send a pigeon through the gateway and tell Shucorion to throw another dead guy on the fire?
The gateway was still open. He clung to that.
He clamped his lips on his thoughts as he and Braxan worked side by side, along with hundreds of hunters from all the settlements, to fit woven gum segments into place and seal the seams. The heavy mats, woven with patterns and messages and tributes, would prevent a grounding. Ironically, the mats protected the free dancers from the planet, but didn't protect the Living from the free dancers. The Living had learned long ago that they had to let the free dancers ... well, there was no nice way to say it... let them feed.
Rather quickly, the mats were puzzled together into a gigantic circle of a size perfect for its task, big enough that the free dancers would be able to sense the Living crowded upon it, but not so big that the Living couldn't race for the edges when the time was right. Keller had seen four other hunts and had participated in three. A more ghastly spectacle he had never witnessed.
He got a shudder up his arms as he remembered, and
fully realized again what was coming. Hundreds of healthy innocent men and women would strip down to their birthday suits and plunge out onto the plain, then wait for the free dancer herd to "see" them - whatever that meant - and come to the trough. Against all instinct, the Living had learned to simply stand there and be "chosen" in an electrical feeding frenzy that defied description.
The mental pictures alone turned Keller's stomach. The people would stand with their faces up, fear clearly shown, as the monsters came down, and wait for the Elders to decide the free dancers had eaten enough that they would return next time. Finally, the scramble back to the perimeter while the slaughter went on ... desperate hunters would pull on their silky chain-mail tunics so they would be protected from the pyrotechnics, snatch up their arc spikes, pulpers, clamps, nets, and race back to harvest one free dancer for the reservoir of energy and the gizzard full of candleflies it provided.
Not exactly Home on the Range.
Overhead, enormous shapes painted shadows upon the hunt plain. Heat blew downward from the skies, a sure sign that the free dancers were clustering above. A fine hail of ice particles bitterly pummeled the back of Keller's neck, his head and arms, as he worked on the gum mats, so hard that he fell to both knees. His hands were cold, but as much from the inside as the outside. Courageous people would be dying soon, and horribly.