The Mystery of Ireta

by Anne McCaffrey

  “I did not. I had no option.”

  “In justice, you have the right to be bitter. You are the innocent victim of circumstances beyond ordinary control. The ARCT-10, the vessel which landed the Iretan expedition, is still missing.”

  “Missing? For forty-three years?” His contempt was obvious. “Were you looking for it when you found this beacon of yours?”

  “Not exactly, but our code requires that we respond to your distress call.”

  “Not mine. My grandparents—”

  “The call was heard and our ship has responded, whoever made the original signal.”

  “I’m supposed to be grateful for that?” He resumed his slicing of meat from the ribs of the monster, discarding the initial hunk, which was already crawling with winged vermin. Despite Discipline, Varian found herself revolted by his activity. “Forty-three years to answer a distress call? Mighty efficient organization, yours. Well, we’ve survived and we’ll continue to. We don’t need your help—now.”

  “Possibly. How many are you after two generations?” With such a small gene pool, she wondered if they were already inbred.

  He laughed, as if he sensed her thought. “We have bred carefully, Rianav, and have made the most of our—how would you term it, inadvertent plantation?”

  “Ireta is not on the colonial list. We checked that immediately for we are under no compunction to aid a colony which can’t fend for itself.” Her Discipline must be dropping, Varian thought, from the sharpness with which she answered him. Gaber’s rumormongering had lasted unto the second generation.

  “To be sure,” he said, angry sarcasm masking as courtesy. “So, what are your plans now, honorable Rianav!”

  She gave him a long look, playing her role as rescuer to the hilt. “Instructions, rather. I shall return to our base with my report on your presence.”

  “No need to concern yourself with me.”

  “How can you possibly transport all that . . .”

  “We’ve learned a trick or two,” and Varian was certain that his smile was faintly superior.

  “May I have the coordinates of your present location?”

  His grin was more amused than insolent but the mockery was in his reply.

  “Run at a good steady pace to your right, through the first hills, turn right up the ravine, but mind the river snakes. Continue along the river course to the first falls, take the easiest route up the cliff—it’s pretty well marked by now, and follow the line of limestone—you do know limestone from granite, I assume? The valley widens. You’ll know when you’ve reached us by the cultivated fields.” There was pure malice in his grin now. “Yes, we find that vegetables, fruits, and grains are required to maintain a balanced diet, even if we can’t process our food.” He had been gouging past the ribs of the dead beast and now suddenly, his arms dripping with blood, he held up a huge dark brownish red lump. “And this, the liver of the thunder lizard, is the most nutritious meat available.”

  “Do you mean to tell me that you slaughtered that creature just for its liver?” Her xenob training broke through her elected role.

  “We do not kill indiscriminately, Rianav: we kill to survive.” Coldly he turned back to his task, leaning partly inside the ribs to reach more of the choice liver.

  “The distinction is, of course, valid. However, we have no knowledge of the dangers of walking about this land of yours. Is the secondary camp of record far from your present location?”

  “No.” He had removed the curious tube from his back. From the tube he pulled a tight roll of what appeared to Varian to be synthesized fabric, light, waterproof, and durable enough to have lasted forty-three years. He spread the fabric with a practiced flip on the ground, piling the choice chunks of meat and covering them quickly, folding over the edges of the fabric to prevent insects from attaching themselves to the meat. “I’ll meet you there in three days’ time.”

  “Will it take that long to return to your base?” Varian could not keep the astonishment from her voice.

  “Not at all,” he said, severing more choice morsels. As he added these to the pack and covered them, he glanced skyward. Varian followed his gaze and saw that the carrion fliers were massing in their circles. She also noticed the three giffs to one side of the others and wondered if Aygar did. “We have to be quick after a kill. Or be mistaken for the corpse by those. No, I shall be in my home before nightfall, but my fellow exiles must be told of this happy reestablishment of contact with other worlds.”

  He had what Varian judged to be fifty or sixty kilos of meat. Lashing the tube to the base of the meat, he deftly added straps, padded where they would cross his shoulders, and made a portable package. One eye on the scavengers, he now rinsed his arms from a water bottle, then covered them with mud, scooped at a distance from the slaughtering ground. Then he swung the pack to his back, settling the pads properly. He stared at her so intently that a faint stirring of alarm prompted her next action.

  From a pouch on her upper arm, she took out the dark plastic box in which she once carried stimtabs. He could see that she had something in her hand but not what. She pretended to depress a switch with her thumb, holding her hand close to her mouth.

  “Unit Three to Base. Unit Three to Base.” She made a disapproving noise. “Recorder’s on. They’ve all left the encampment!” She gave Aygar an angry glance. “Base, I have made contact with survivors, coordinates 87.58 by 72.33. Returning to Base. Over.” She operated a thumb switch again and then replaced the box in her pocket. “Leaving for base at once. They’ll hear about this. In three days then, Aygar, and good luck!” She swung away from him, walking rapidly toward the sled.

  From the corner of her eye, she saw him set off at a steady jog and sighed in relief. For a moment, it seemed to her as if he might do something. A glance at the sky showed her that Aygar’s departure might have been a signal and she a negligible danger, for the scavengers were backwinging to land. Out of the grasses other creatures slunk toward the feast. She was relieved to be so close to the sled but only felt completely safe when she had fastened the canopy overhead.

  She guided into the clouds to head southwest. She caught sight of him again and marveled that he could run so easily, burdened as he was and after the exhausting chase. There might be something to say for implantation after all if the process resulted in such superbly fit people.

  She wished she had a working wrist unit to tell Lunzie about the survival of the mutineers as well as the slanted account passed down to their descendants. She wished she could have figured out a way to ask Aygar if his people had encountered the creature that had attacked Kai, and if they knew what could be used to cure him. On the other hand, she now knew that the second camp had been abandoned. She debated the wisdom of continuing to it since it would be unlikely she’d find anything of value to her. Certainly none of the equipment Lunzie needed. Of course, if Kai were not considerably improved, and Varian refused to consider the worst, she had a good reason for approaching Aygar again today. Surely his people must have encountered the leech-creatures and might even have developed an antidote for the toxemia. She could say that another member of her landing party had been attacked—which was true enough anyhow. She grimaced at the comunit on her console and suddenly realized that the device was operative, even if there was nowhere to communicate to. But, Varian told herself cheerfully, there were four other sleds with equally undamaged comunits. They could wake Portegin, have him utilize what matrix slabs were necessary from one or two of the sleds and repair the shuttle’s smashed unit, at least for intership communications. That would give them two, maybe three sleds available for use. It might not be enough to reach a passing EEC ship outside the stellar system, but certainly they’d be able to reach the Thek again. Or the Ryxi.

  Varian grimaced at the thought of having to appeal for help to the Ryxi: how they would flaunt that news about! More vital, she didn’t want the Ryxi to know more about the giffs than they already did.

  Kai had to recove
r. After the mutiny of the six heavyworlders, their situation had been difficult at best, desperate at the worst. They had emerged from cold sleep in a very much improved position, despite Kai’s injury. The mutineers had had their own problems on Ireta, and Varian felt that her initial contact with the younger generation had established a position of undeniable superiority. Or had she? Something about Aygar’s manner toward the end of their encounter bothered her. That’s why she had instinctively invented a “contact” with a “base.”

  She could feel the laxness of her muscles as Discipline eased. She ate the rest of the fruit, inadequate though it was to replenish her energies. Why hadn’t she thought to take a pepper with her, she wondered peevishly. Probably, she amended her own forgetfulness, because the last peppers had been used to overcome delayed shock after escaping the stampede of the herbivores.

  She smiled as she recalled Aygar’s legend of that incident. Did he know how silly it was for six people to be deliberately abandoned to form a colony? He didn’t know the first thing about genetics. Well, yes, he must if he’d mentioned breeding.

  It was fatigue more than curiosity that made Varian decide to continue on to the old camp. She’d be safe there and able to snatch an hour’s sleep before the return journey. She was so nearly there anyhow, she might just as well have a look.

  4

  THE rain, combined with a dismal heat mist, made the site more desolate than she remembered it. She’d spotted a stand of fruit trees on the final leg of her journey and, hovering the sled, had picked the upper branches free of succulent ripe yellow globes. Consequently she felt less weary when she glided the sled to land on the square of the old secondary camp. And it did look ancient.

  The original dome, which would have been comfortable for two people, was missing but the space it had occupied was an ovoid barren of all growth in the center of an octagon of long stone buildings. Tiny plants now grew in cavities where windblown dirt had accumulated. The buildings had been so well built that Varian wondered why the mutineers had moved. Of course, just then the rain kept the insects away, but there would be a superb panorama of the surrounding plains, not that she supposed the heavy-worlders had indulged themselves that way. Most of the visible buttes supported crowns of trees, heavily vined, but the area adjacent to the octagon had been cleared several meters on all sides and covered with a concrete which, to be sure, was now cracking as the more tenacious vines reclaimed their customary dominion. Beyond that apron was lush growth, but the buildings—she couldn’t call them homes or houses because of their forbidding aspect—claimed her attention first.

  As Varian approached the nearest, she saw that the windows had been glazed yet when she rubbed away grime, she could barely see through the dense and irregular glass. When her eyes had compensated for the gloom, she could see the interior had been stripped of everything but the stone shelving set into the corners of each room. The only door was made of stout wooden panels, coated with some glossy substance which obviously protected the wood against the depredations of Ireta’s insect life. Set above the handle of the locked door were four metal tumblers, coded to some pattern, for the handle would not move at her touch although the tumblers rolled easily under her thumb. A cursory examination of the other seven buildings told her they were identical: four rooms, two on either side of an entry hall. The windows were too narrow for any but a young child to climb in or out of. With such stoutly built dwellings, why had they moved? There was plenty of room for expansion on the bluff top.

  She went beyond the octagon and saw outbuildings, two with chimneys well blackened even after decades of scouring rain. One proved to be a forge and marks on the concrete behind it indicated the complete removal of another installation, as well as the squat thick form of a kiln. What power would they have used for the forge? Water? Up here? No, but there was no shortage of wind! She had become so accustomed to the buffeting of the almost incessant breezes that blew from moderate to gale force through the course of every Iretan day, that she’d almost missed the most obvious and easiest power source.

  Paskutti had not been idly bragging when he’d said that he and his band could survive nicely on Ireta. If Aygar was to be believed, and the barbed steel tip of his lance gave fair evidence of metal craftsmanship, they didn’t need the Federated Sentient Planets. Maybe not the FSP, thought Varian, kicking at the mud, but they’d need a larger gene pool or their community risked dangerous inbreeding that could wipe out all they had achieved.

  She should reserve her sympathy for her own problem—Kai’s restoration—and she wasn’t getting any help on the bleak butte. But she couldn’t resist the urge to peer into the buildings set apart from the living quarters. They might provide her with a measure of information on the quality of life the mutineers had established for themselves. With metal-working, glass manufacture, windpower, and pottery, they’d achieved a commendable basic standard. One long building, downslope and nearer the luxuriant growth, attracted her interest since it was so obviously set apart from the industrial sites. The door faced the brush and Varian paused, puzzled. Despite the wild profusion of lush vegetation, something about the area struck her as odd. Then she realized that the fruiting trees were placed at regular intervals, and each row comprised different types. Moving closer, she saw metal stakes holding up another form of vine from which thick pods hung: a series of thorny bushes bore huge red berries, then another stand of trees and beyond the trees, against a low retaining wall were smaller plants, weed vines choking them and, on the wall, tucked into niches as if by design, a curious feathery purple moss.

  Purple was not her favorite shade after the mold, Varian realized, even as she had to admit that she was looking at an overgrown garden. She turned then to the long hut and observed what she had failed to notice at first—it had no windows. A storehouse for the garden’s produce? Yes, for now that she was closer, she could see the carved panels in the door. Vines, trees, and plants were each so carefully delineated on that door that even someone with little botanical knowledge would be able to identify the specimens once the carvings had been memorized.

  What had Aygar said? They had learned a long time ago to balance their diet? Varian recognized the carotene-rich grass from the rift valley that the giffs as well as Tyrannosaurus rex had needed. Turning constantly to check against the door’s carvings, Varian found each of the plants growing in rows in the neglected garden. Divisti, the expedition’s botanist, must have been responsible for that catalog of Ireta’s edible flora.

  Varian pushed her way through the overgrowth, gathering fruits which she recognized, until she reached the vine with pods. One split with ripe readiness as she touched it, exposing large pale green beans. The bean had a wholesome smell. She bit, taking the smallest possible morsel to roll about in her mouth, tensing to spit out an unwelcome flavor. But the taste was mealy, the flesh of the bean crisp, but so satisfying that she consumed the contents of the entire pod greedily. She ate as she gathered the beans, as much as her arms could hold. Then she strode back to the sled, depositing her harvest. She had wheeled back toward the garden when she exclaimed in exasperation. Climbing into the sled, she guided it to the garden.

  As she picked and plucked, she was careful to take samples from each row of Divisti’s garden, including the leaves or tufts of the various wall plants. She wondered if Divisti had ever thought her garden would one day succor those the heavy-world botanist had once tried to kill. At the foot of the garden, held back by thick staves, Varian came at last to a fine stand of the thick-fuzzy leaves that the giffs had brought her for Kai’s wounds.

  “So, the bloodsucker got to you, too, huh?” Varian was subtly pleased that one denizen of this planet caused the heavy-worlders more pain than pleasure.

  When the sled was as full as possible, she checked once more that she had a sample of each variety carved on the door of the storage barn. Elated by the unexpected dividend, she set a straight course for the giff palisades, cutting due south and speeded on her way by
a smart tail wind.

  She was astonished, then, no more than five minutes in the air, to see the recognizable figure of Aygar trotting along a twisting ravine.

  Two thoughts occurred to her at once, and she diverted the sled to come up behind him.

  “Aygar, I must speak with you,” she said, and sighting a ledge beyond him, settled the air sled, waiting until he came up to her before she slid down to his level. “I’ve been trying to find you. Base reported to me. One of our party has been attacked by some—some—thing . . .”

  “Which sucks blood?” he asked quickly.

  “You know it?”

  “We call them fringes.”

  “Fringes?” Varian masked her shock with an understandable curiosity. Surely those aquatic life-forms that Terilla had named “fringes” had not been amphibious. She shuddered with revulsion.

  “They come in a variety of sizes,” Aygar went on, “are warmth seekers and fasten onto their prey, preferably lying on it, otherwise enveloping it between their two halves—”

  “Their what?”

  “I don’t know what your training is, Rianav, but surely you have seen strange life-forms before Ireta.” Aygar knelt, taking one of his knives to draw a fringe in the dust. “They move by collapsing the parallelograms of the side: they have two digits here and here, and can use them to clasp their envelope tightly about the victim, if it is alive. If not, they settle on it, and eat away!” He shrugged with indifference. “One can usually smell them coming but, of course, you haven’t been here long enough to know, have you?”

  “Two days,” Varian found herself answering far more casually than she felt because, again, that curious reticence held her: a reticence evidently not stemming from Discipline. “But, if you know about these fringe things, you know how to treat them?”

  “The victim’s still alive?” This gave Aygar some surprise.

  “Yes, but unconscious and delirious, bleeding profusely from the worst of the . . . puncture wounds.”