The Icerigger Trilogy

by Alan Dean Foster

  “I should not leave my post.”

  “Who is to know? The night-mate will not appeal until watch-change time, and our nearest enemies are at least a hundred satch behind us.”

  “That is true. I will come, but only for a moment. Foolishness,” Monont muttered as he followed the other sentry to the foredeck.

  Motioning his companion to silence, Sinahnvor extended his light pole over the railing, moved it about slowly as he searched the mountainside. For several seconds there was no sign of the shining and he was more afraid of the story Monont would tell the others come the morn than he was of any spirit they might arouse. But then the spark showed once more, unmistakably. It remained as steady as the lamp pole. “See? Did I not tell you?”

  The more prosaic Monont eyed the speck of light. “Truly is there something, but I think it is no spirit. Who ever heard of a spirit with only one eye? They have at least four each.”

  “Shssh! Do not insult it!”

  “That is no spirit, idiot-friend.” Monont mounted the railing, swung a clawed foot over the side. Sinahnvor watched him worriedly.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To that hillside.”

  “You are mad! Don’t do it, Monont. The spirits will draw you into the mountain and drown you in dirt.”

  “I thought the spirits of Hell would take us when we went under the ice and down to the inside of the world. The humans and Sir Hunnar Redbeard said such tales were mere superstition. Then they killed the devil that came up from the waters of the night. It stunk like a slaughtered hessavar. I find it hard now to believe as I once did in spirits and daemons.”

  He slipped over the side, used a boarding rope to drop quickly to the ice.

  “Monont—Monont!” Sinahnvor raised his lamp higher. In its shallow glow he saw the dim outline of his friend reach the hillside and begin an awkward ascent. The outline faded to shadow, then a memory of a shadow. Moments passed, silent moments broken only by the moan of the tired wind. But while he heard no cries of triumph, neither did any screams drift back to him.

  It was with considerable relief that he picked out the returning figure of the other sentry, apparently unharmed.

  “What was it, then?” He extended an arm and helped Monont back on deck.

  “Here is your spirit eye. I had to dig it out.” Sinahnvor, much to his surprise, recognized the object immediately. “Why, ’tis only a purras, a common mixing bowl much as my own mate uses. Odd how it shines. The wood must take a very high polish.”

  “Take it,” urged Monont. “’Tis not wood.”

  Sinahnvor accepted the object… and nearly dropped it. It was made of thick, dense metal, badly tarnished in places, still flashy in others. He did not recognize the metal.

  Both sentries exchanged glances. What people lived here in this iceless desert who could afford to make common, everyday kitchen utensils out of solid metal? Metal was hoarded for use in weapons and nails and tools, not mixing bowls.

  Sinahnvor did not understand. Not understanding, he said, “I think we had best wake the night-mate early.”

  The officer was no less startled by the bowl than the two lookouts had been. He chose to wake the second mate, who in turn roused Ta-hoding, who alerted the three humans and Sir Hunnar and the others of the icerigger’s informal decision-making body.

  Before long most of the crew was awake and hacking at the nearby hillside, their lamps looking to those remaining on the Slanderscree like a convocation of stultified fireflies.

  None of the humans took part in the digging. Their survival suits could barely cope with the nighttime temperature of seventy below, with a wind-chill factor nearing instant death. A crude digging tool could make a substantial gash in a survival suit. Insinuating itself into the cut, the outside air could freeze human skin solid almost as efficiently as a spray of liquid helium.

  With such a large party working, it wasn’t long before several bags of trophies were being examined on deck. Peering through his mask (no need of the secondary goggles during the night), Ethan saw spread out among wood and soil a treasure trove of metal objects. On most worlds these would have been dismissed as nothing remarkable, but on metal-poor Tran-ky-ky they hinted at a vanished civilization of immense wealth. There were knives, utensils of all kinds, buckles and braces, engraved and broken drinking vessels, even metal buttons and pins. Hunnar fingered several of the last. Until now he’d never seen a pin made of anything but bone.

  “Enormously rich or enormously wasteful,” he murmured, letting oil lamp light create argent patterns on the ornamental steel. “We will dig with more discipline in the morning.”

  “Who could have lived here?” Ethan wondered aloud.

  “Not Tran nor Saia.” The knight turned his attention to a delightfully intricate metal bottle wrapped in fine wire scrollwork. “’Tis too desolate and iceless for us and too cold for the Saia. But this is not spirit work.” Cat-eyes strove to penetrate windswept darkness. “Someone lived here…”

  The next day different sections of the hillside were marked off according to how promising they’d proven the night before. The excavation parties turned up a steady stream of new artifacts. Some were made of familiar materials, wood and bone, but most were various alloys, including several neither September or Williams could identify.

  Unexpectedly, the wooden artifacts were what the teacher found most intriguing. When Ethan asked him why, he replied, “Because they mean this region cannot have been deserted very long, in geologic time. While it’s true the cold air would preserve cellulose materials for a while, it is not desert-dry. Nor is the soil devoid of minute organisms and bacterial agents, which would also act to break down the wood—though they are scattered through the soil and nowhere very populous.

  “This wood is in far too good condition to have lain buried for any great length of time.”

  They decided to remain several days and unearth all they could. But a new discovery soon altered their plans.

  The two scout parties sent out to search for a passage through the hills returned. Their crews babbled out an impossible tale, so laden with gestures, expressions and adjectival phrases that Ethan and his friends were hard pressed to make sense of any of it.

  While they debated uncertain terms among themselves, Ta-hoding and his crew launched feverish preparations to get underway. At that point, Ethan cornered Hunnar and refused to let him pass until he explained what was happening.

  “Suaxus, my squire, was in the first boat,” the knight said, trying to control his obvious excitement. “They found a pass through the mountains. Only, they aren’t mountains.”

  “You’re not making sense, friend Hunnar,” September prompted.

  “They traversed this pass and emerged on the other side of this range. It seems the wind blows harder, or steadier, or both, on the other side. What is buried here lies revealed there.” He turned, indicated the partly excavated hillside.

  “These are not mountains, they are buildings.” And he broke away to perform some important task before Ethan could think to ask anything more.

  Only Williams accepted this news calmly. “It makes sense, not to mention explaining the preponderance of artifacts we’ve found.” The icerigger was already racing for the recently discovered pass. “There are similar buried cities on many Commonwealth worlds, Ethan. The same winds which would cover an ancient metropolis could later uncover it.”

  “Assuming that’s what we’ve found—who built it?”

  The teacher eyed Ethan, pursed his lips. “Who knows? The Tran obviously don’t, nor do the Saia, who are supposed to know so much about this land. If we’re lucky, maybe we’ll find out. Perhaps they are people who no longer survive on Tran-ky-ky but who gave the Saia their legends of other worlds.”

  The pass turned out to be much wider and smoother than anyone had a right to expect. So straight was the gap between hills that unnatural forces were suspected. Ethan wondered if they excavated straight down, would they eventuall
y strike pavement?

  Once through the slopes they turned east, inland and away from the cliffs. They did not have to travel far. Dirt and rock were piled here also, but much stonework could be seen rearing planes and angles toward the sky, reminding Ethan of a partially eroded graveyard. Here it was the bones of dead buildings which stood revealed to the air.

  The ground rose skyward not in a smooth slope as on the other side, but in graduated levels. “See?” called Williams, pointing out different stone work and designs on each level. “This is not one building, as the scout parties assumed, but new structures raised atop the old. As each older structure was buried, it formed a foundation for the next building erected on the same spot. One town on the skeleton of the old.” His hand swept eastward.

  “We are looking at an ancient series of cities, not a cluster of monumental buildings. We can only guess at how far it extends. Since we’ve been paralleling similar rises nearly all the way from Moulokin, it’s possible similar towns are buried beneath each of them. They may all form part of a single lengthy metropolis at least several hundred kilometers long.”

  The crew furled all sail and anchored the icerigger against the wind. Everyone not on watch scrambled over the side to marvel at the colossal architecture.

  “One thing I don’t understand.” Williams tried to rub an eye, remembered his mask, raised it slightly to admit a comforting finger. “It would be natural to expect the topmost structures to be the most sophisticated in design and execution. Yet from what I can see the architecture is nearly identical from top to bottom, town to town.”

  “I’d like to know who’s responsible for all this.” Ethan scrambled carefully across the fine but slippery talus. “Now I’m even more positive it’s not the Tran. Look at those arches, those wide windows.” He balanced himself on a partly buried rectangular block that must have weighed several tons, pointed upslope and to his right.

  “And that building almost exposed over there. The roof’s too flat to resist snow buildup, and it’s lined with what looks like glass to me. A skylight, on Tran-ky-ky? Not with the quality of glass the Tran make. A decent day’s wind would blow it to splinters. Unless, of course, it’s something more than normal glass.”

  “Perhaps the Saia did build this after all, and have just forgotten about it, young feller-me-lad,” ventured September. “A selective memory about such matters would keep ’em from gettin’ embarrassed about letting so much knowledge slip away.”

  They uncovered one building after another: homes, warehouses, public meeting places, even what seemed to be an open amphitheater. An open stadium, on Tran-ky-ky!

  It didn’t take thirty years experience or several scientific degrees for Tran as well as humans to postulate a climate completely different from the present.

  Having come to that realization, Williams left the archeology to Eer-Messach and others. Using the primitive Tran navigation instruments and the inadequate but useful ones included in each survival-suit’s kit, he devoted himself to a night-time examination of the stars. Not the most intricately formed metal cup or detailed inscription cut into stone could dissuade him from his sudden fanatic interest in astronomy. Vacuum-clear skies, Tran navigation charts and old tales seemed to reinforce his determination to keep at his lonely cold night studies. Ethan could imagine what the teacher was trying to prove.

  He was only partly right.

  The teacher was deep in conversation with Ta-hoding when Ethan finally sought confirmation of his suspicions. “I don’t mean to interrupt, Milliken, but I’d like to know for sure—why this sudden interest in local astronomy? I’d think you’d be grubbing away in the cities instead of freezing out on deck at night. “You’re trying to find proof that the climate here was once much warmer, aren’t you?”

  “Not just here, on this plateau.” Williams was only stating what to him was obvious and not being in the least insulting. A less sarcastic human being Ethan had never met. “Everywhere on Tran-ky-ky. The physical evidence inherent in the buried metropolis coupled with what little I’ve been able to calculate tells me that this was so. More importantly, it indicates to me who built these successive cities.”

  “Don’t keep me in suspense, Milliken. Who was it? The Tran, the Saia, or some now extinct people? I’ll bet it was the latter, and when the climate turned cold everywhere, the builders died. The Saia were contemporary with them and keep their memory alive in legends.”

  “Plausible, but I think, incorrect.” He adjusted the calculator built into his sleeve. “These cities were raised by both the Tran and the Saia.”

  Ethan couldn’t forestall a grin. “That’s crazy,

  Milliken. It’s too cold here for the Saia now and if they built these cities, surely they’d remember. And it’s too desolate now for the Tran and, assuming the climate was warmer, too hot for them before.”

  “That reasoning misses the point. It’s because…” Williams paused, took a preparatory breath. “It’s not simply a matter of its once being hot, now being cold here, Ethan. I think Tran-ky-ky has a perturbed orbit of predictable periodicity.”

  “I hardly know what to say.”

  “I’ll try to explain. Any competent astronomer would have noticed it after a week’s study, with the proper factual input. But the only astronomer to visit this outpost world was the initial survey drone which first located it. The Commonwealth government would be interested first in the fact that it was an inhabitable planet with a stable climate, flora, and fauna. Relatively long-term alterations will show up in the files on Tran-ky-ky, but there’s no reason to act on them until the next period begins.”

  “What next period?”

  “Of warm weather. I’d estimate, very crudely, so many standard years of cold, followed by a briefer period of warm weather as it passes nearer its sun. Say, ten thousand years. The transition from cold weather to hot takes place comparatively rapidly, since as. Tran-ky-ky swings close by its star, its orbital velocity, would increase, slowing as it swings out into the cold zone again. It’s a peculiar situation and I’m not certain of the details or mechanics, but that’s what I believe takes place.

  “Think what that would mean for this planet.” He spoke distantly, his gaze centered on events far away in time and place. “During the hot period the ice oceans melt, and rapidly. The sea level would rise to submerge island states such as Sofold and much of Arsudun. Sofold is in reality built atop a seamount, while the mountain-tops of Poyolavoniaar would become true islands.” Suddenly he dropped his gaze, looking embarrassed.

  “That was what puzzled me so about Moulokin canyon.” Ethan thought back, recalling the teacher’s confusion over the canyon’s geology and his feeling of half-recognizing its source.

  “It’s not a river canyon at all, though it resembles one closely. Rather, it’s a dry undersea canyon, the kind that slices through a continental shelf down to the edge of the abyssal plain flooring the ocean. The cliffs of the plateau we sailed alongside for so long are actually the old continental shelf. Now,” he said with satisfaction. “I’m ready to go digging for artifacts. But not in the cities. Right here, beneath the ship.”

  “Wait a minute. What do you expect to find under the ship? And what did you mean when you said the Tran and the Saia both built the metropolis?”

  “Tell you in a couple of days, young feller-me-lad,” he said, mimicking September.

  It was two days, exactly. What the teacher uncovered were far less spectacular and much more important than any objects thus far uncovered in the buried structures.

  He spread them out on a table in the central cabin, where human and Tran alike could see. “Look,” Williams began, “insect eggs over there.” He pointed to a pile of eddy-shaped, tiny white beads. “Try opening one. The casings are tough as stelamic. I had to use my beamer to assure myself of the contents.

  “Animal eggs.” He pointed to some similar objects, only they were larger and multi-colored. “Seeds, I think.” He indicated a vast array of black and brown o
bjects, mostly spherical. “Those I could barely singe with the beamer set for fine cut.

  “When the temperature rises and the oceans melt, you’d have ample rainfall. In addition to enhancing an explosion of vegetation on land, such a drastic change would kill off the pika-pina and pika-pedan. Despite such changes, some plants have managed to survive the cold periods. Witness the yellow grass and occasional wire-brush we’ve passed these past days. Those grasses and the unknown varieties contained in these seeds take over the land. The pika-growth would retreat to the poles, waiting for cold epochs to return. We’ve seen how fast it grows. It could expand down from the poles, and perhaps from isolated surviving pockets on the shores, to become the dominant vegetable species in a very short time.

  “I wish I had a decent laboratory here. These eggs… Somehow they survive thirty thousand years before the land warms and frees them. That’s important, because there are pretty disorganized people wandering around at that time, looking for food.

  “The Golden Saia are not a different variety of Tran, nor are the Tran a species of Saia.” He gestured at Hunnar, at Elfa, at Ta-hoding. “You and the Saia are the same people.”

  A mate made a disgusted noise.

  “The Saia are the warm-weather mode of the Tran. During the onset of cold, those who survive the radical weather change develop thick fur. Wing dan appear and podal claws expand and grow to become chiv for traveling across the ice.” He sat down behind his table of living fossils.

  “Think what such cataclysmic change would do to a developing but still primitive society. Famine, death from exposure, the near instant destruction of familiar food supplies. Sea travel obliterated, cutting off intercontinental and interisland communication. A drastic reduction in population—which explains the extent of these cities compared to the size of present Tran communities.

  “It explains, Hunnar, why your people retain no memory of your warm weather ancestors. Survival would be more than enough to occupy every mobile minute of the dazed remnants of that hot climate civilization. How to make a fire, how to cook food, those would be the important things to hand down to shivering children. Not history. Given the frequency of the warm-cold weather cycle, you never have the chance to catch your racial breath.”