Four Hundred Billion Stars

by Paul J McAuley

  By the time Dorthy had dressed and stumbled outside, the bubbletent had been deflated, an orange pancake that Kilczer and Chavez were rolling up on the dry uneven ground. Dorthy helped Ade stow neatly packed boxes of equipment, helped her carry the treacher into the crawler’s cabin and plug it in. Within fifteen minutes, the crawler was bucketing along the stripped swath left by the voracious critters; within half an hour it was in sight of the dust cloud raised by the herds; in ten minutes more it was trailing the ragged vanguard.

  The herd didn’t stop for thirty hours.

  They all four took turns to drive the crawler. Dorthy enjoyed her spells at the controls. As she wrestled the ungainly but powerful vehicle across dry washes and gravelly ridges she felt that she was at one with it, extending into every corner of its trapezoidal hull, its churning tracks and hard-worked suspensors; the nagging sense of the others in the cabin receded. Otherwise she clung to the stay of one or other of the bunks or sat in the swivel seat beside the driver, watching the monotonous landscape crawl past, unable to read, unwilling to talk, the unvarying red light of the huge sun like some bore that had long overstayed its welcome. Once they stopped to snatch sleep for a few hours, Ade and Chavez outside, under the crawler, Dorthy and Kilczer on the bunks inside; Dorthy was too tired to complain about the arrangement, was too tired to care.

  And then they were off again, on one side the slope of the caldera rising into pink-tinged cloud, on the other the dark plain stretching to the level horizon. Once they passed, in the near distance, a herd of big slope-shouldered antelope that Chavez said came from Ruby. And once something the size of a small groundcar, with a high domed shell and broad massive tail, shot across the path of the crawler, forcing Kilczer to swerve. The vehicle ploughed through scrubby bushes, stiff branches rattling its sides, before he pulled back on to the stripped tail. “Glyptodon,” he said to Dorthy, who sat beside him in the other swivel seat. “Extinct Earth animal.”

  Behind him, clutching the edge of the bunk, Chavez called out, “The enemy seem to have collected plants from the Arctic Circle, animals from South America. Who knows why, eh?”

  “I see why that one became extinct,” Kilczer said, “with such poor instinct to run before vehicles. We also see megatheria. All animals brought here are herbivores?”

  “Surely,” Chavez said. “There are perhaps twenty thousand herders in this hold, each one the size of a small lion. That’s a lot of carnivores to keep fed; even with the critters, they don’t need competition.”

  Ade added, “As for why herders prey on other creatures when they do have critters, or why they have critters when they prey on other creatures, we don’t know. We’ve barely scratched the surface here.”

  When Ade was not driving she crouched over her monitor. Her probes quested wide either side of the herd as it moved across the dry plain, and a few hours after the glyptodon had thrown itself in front of the crawler, they picked up a hunting party of herders. The crawler stopped and all four people gathered around the monitor, glad of the break from the monotony of travel.

  The herders, three of them, had brought down an antelope; now they were butchering it with long stone axes they had flaked on the spot. The unfortunate creature was still alive, panting into the dust and spasmodically shivering as the herders stooped over it and stripped ropes of muscle from its hindquarters, hoods of naked skin flaring about their narrow faces. At last they discarded the bloody axes and shouldered the meat and began to lope at an angle towards their still-moving herd. Behind them the ground around the antelope cracked and heaved up as creatures like wolf-sized moles, with scaled hides and massive, humped forequarters, broke surface.

  “By the beard,” Kilczer breathed, avidly watching the final dismemberment of the antelope, “I no longer feel safe walking about out there.”

  “Those things only come up after a kill,” Ade said.

  “At least, we think so,” Chavez added, returning to the controls.

  As the crawler’s motors shuddered into life Dorthy turned from the monitor, looked out at the sombre landscape beyond the windscreen. The herd was a distant crawling line hazed by dust. Animals, she thought, seeing again the herders’ cruel, crude butchery. Animals.

  The path of the herd slowly bent towards the edge of the forested slopes. The vegetation became thicker: if not lush, at least less threadbare. Again and again the crawler bumped across dry streambeds. No dust obscured the herd now; the ground was increasingly marshy. Then there was a vast swath of green rushes, long stems bending in the wind. The critters hadn’t eaten these, had simply trampled a path through them. The crawler followed. And then Ade, who was driving, cut the motors.

  A dry lake bed stretched out, hectare upon hectare of ochre mud crazed into huge plates. Here and there boulder-strewn mounds that with water would have been islands rose from the dried mud like boats stranded by the tide. Close at hand to the north, low cliffs bordered the lake bed, cut by a wide canyon from whose mouth spread a fan of gravel; in the opposite direction the herd could be seen less than a kilometre away, gathered around one of the islands.

  Ade looked at them through field-glasses for a while, then announced, “They’ve stopped. What do you all suggest?”

  Chavez, gripping the back of her seat, looked out of the windscreen over his lover’s shoulder. “I think we need to rest,” he said. “And I’d like to set more traps. Besides, we must think about turning back soon, to keep our rendezvous with Andrews.”

  “I agree,” Kilczer said, behind Dorthy. “I would like another chance to take readings. What of you, Dr. Yoshida?”

  “Whatever,” Dorthy said, feigning indifference because she knew that another attempt to probe the herders would only confirm what she already knew, that they were not intelligent enough to be the enemy.

  So they made camp, choosing one of the rocky islands as a site in case the herd should break in their direction. The crawler was winched up the steep slope, Ade and Chavez doing most of the work, lithe and limber, coordinating their efforts with little more than looks. Chavez pulled off the top of his coveralls, and Dorthy guessed that if the twins had been alone Ade would have done the same. While Kilczer unpacked the bubbletent, Dorthy walked to the point of the little island, scrambled atop a huge boulder, and watched the herd through Ade’s field-glasses. Beyond it was a distant white-flecked line of dust; presently this grew larger, and soon Dorthy could make out the individuals moving within it.

  The others were unloading crates of equipment from the crawler. “There’s another herd coming,” Dorthy told them. “Perhaps bigger than the one we’ve been following.”

  Marta Ade snatched the field-glasses and jogged off towards the point. Dorthy and Chavez and Kilczer followed. “It’s a big herd,” she said, watching through the field-glasses. Her elbows stuck out like wings. “Could be more than one group, though I’ve never seen that before.”

  Kilczer asked, “What will happen when it meets our group?”

  Ade shrugged. “I don’t know. I had thought that each kept to discrete territories. Oh well, wrong again.” She handed the glasses to Chavez. “Take a look. I must send my remotes out there.” Then she was off, running among boulders towards the canted crawler.

  By the time the camp had been set up, the two herds had begun to mingle out on the lake bed. The new, larger herd of critters had three discrete groups of herders within it, Ade said, hunched over her monitor. Chavez had brought her half a dozen concentrate bars in lieu of a proper meal and she nibbled at one, the focus of the others’ attention in the sparsely furnished dome as she gave up staccato comments and speculations.

  Feeling confined, Dorthy went outside and stalked around the perimeter of the island, kicking at driftwood that marked the vanished waterline, climbed the boulder at the point again and stared across the cracked mud towards the mixing herds, no more than a distant blur of white. Feeling a deadly tiredness—she hadn’t slept six hours in the last forty-eight—she clambered off the boulder and went bac
k to the bubbletent to find out what was going on, whether she had to try out her Talent again.

  “They are all setting up camp,” Ade told her. “Four separate ones, each at a corner of a square with the island in its centre.” Over her shoulder Dorthy saw a dozen dark shapes sprawled around a flickering eye of orange flame, blurred by smoke. “The herder groups keep separate,” Ade said, “but their critters are all mixed up as if it didn’t matter who owned what. It doesn’t make sense. I haven’t seen any interaction between the groups of herders at all.”

  Kilczer, lounging in the embrace of an inflatable chair, said, “Perhaps we go out now?”

  Ade stretched hugely. “I wouldn’t advise it. Half the males are off hunting, and I don’t see how you could hide from them out there. There’s not a scrap of cover. But if you want to risk being eaten, go ahead.”

  “When it is safe to observe, they do nothing,” Kilczer grumbled, “and perhaps they do something now, and we cannot go near.”

  “Life is tough,” Chavez said, slotting another slide into his microscope.

  “I will wait and see if I get a chance,” Kilczer said.

  “And I’m going to sleep,” Dorthy told him, and went out again.

  The crawler hulked over its elongated shadow on a slope of sand, its metal flanks dully gleaming in the perpetual twilight. As she crossed to it, Dorthy felt frustration sink into the black pool of her exhaustion. She undogged the hatch in the crawler’s sloping rear, crawled in and endured the sterilizing blast, then opened the inner hatch and stepped past the motors and their archaic fuel cells. Red light poured through the wide windscreen. She found the switch that polarized the glass, then pulled off her boots in the glimmer of the checklights, tumbled on to a bunk.

  She was awoken by the sense of Kilczer somewhere close, a moment later heard the inner hatch hum back. She pulled the bunched pillow closer, feigned sleep as he came in, bringing with him a sour whiff of sterilant. He didn’t switch on any lights. She heard the rustle as he swung into the bunk opposite (so close she could have reached out and touched him), sensed his disappointment and frustration sullenly flickering within the shroud of his tiredness, a black tide flowing across her own mind.

  Again she slept, and dreamed (or was it Kilczer’s dream?) of a vast plain beneath a starless night sky hazed by frozen banners of luminous crimson, against which a great moon was rising, its full disc banded with blurred magentas. Shaking back folds of skin, she raised her head and howled long and high before moving on through the dense black-leaved bushes, their pungent coppery scent stinging her nostrils but not masking the salt trace of her prey, a twisting trail she followed at a loping run…and abruptly she was climbing a great ruined tower, a stair of broad steps winding widdershins between roughly dressed walls. Her claws rattled on old, cold stone. Behind, though she could not look back, something was climbing after her. Above was safety, but as she climbed the thing gained on her, its shadow thrown huge on the curved wall. Then she was somehow standing atop the tower, clutching wet stone and facing into a howling gale beneath a sullen sky in which a single star shone, a lonely fleck of light that suddenly flared brighter, a spark, a lamp, a searchlight that threw her shadow across the floor, mixing it with the shadow of the other. She turned just as the gale ripped loose the tower, and reeled as it reeled into the sky.

  And awoke.

  The crawler rocked back from a steep angle, its suspension groaning. Dorthy caught the side of the bunk as it tipped again. Something slammed into the windscreen. Glass cracked, then burst inward. Beyond the sagging frame, bristle-ringed segments scraped past. Cold air, the stench of aldehydes. Kilczer swung his legs over the side of his bunk just as the crawler lurched and he almost fell, catching himself on a pipe above Dorthy’s bunk; in the same moment Dorthy lost her grip and her head banged hard against the hull behind her. For a moment her sight washed with black.

  “Stay there,” Kilczer said hoarsely. “I go out, find—”

  And then the cables holding the crawler to the slope parted. The vehicle slipped sideways, its rear slamming against a huge boulder and splitting open. There was a roar as the casing of a fuel cell burst. Flames blossomed over the motors, the hatch.

  Kilczer grabbed Dorthy’s arm, helped her stand. “I can walk,” she said, and bent to shove her feet into her boots before stumbling forward, broken glass grinding under each step. Kilczer used his elbow to smash out knifelike shards still stuck in the frame of the windscreen. Thick smoke rolled through the crawler’s cabin, enveloping them. Outside, things were moving slowly past, humping over sand and rock. Kilczer lifted himself on to the dead console, reached around and pulled Dorthy after him; as they went through the broken windscreen she fell on top of him. Half a metre from her face, something huge dragged past, spraying sand.

  Kilczer stood, pressing against the blunt nose of the crawler. Smoke crimped out of the windscreen above his head, black banners rippling up in the thin breeze. Dazed, Dorthy crouched at his feet, watching without comprehension as critters heaved past, their blind snouts weaving to and fro, some half-climbing their fellows before falling back.

  “The tent! I do not see it!” Kilczer pounded the crawler’s hull. “By the beard—”

  The crawler rocked again, slipping farther down the slope as three critters hit it simultaneously, trying to crawl over it with idiot persistence. Turning, one brushed Dorthy and she was knocked backward. Kilczer caught the collar of her coveralls; her knees suddenly unjointed, she held his arm gratefully. At her back, she felt the hull of the crawler growing warm; the critters were widening their path around it now, some slithering down the slope to join the tide of their fellows on the dry mud of the lake bed. Smoke slowly obscured the vast disc of the sun.

  “We must go,” Kilczer said in her ear. “When fire reaches intact fuel cells they blow all at once. Hold on to me now.” He hooked a hand under her arm and they staggered forward, narrowly missing a critter, stopping to let another heave past. Kilczer pulled and Dorthy drew in a breath, with the last of her strength ran forward through a gap, choking on cold air and the stench of the critters, gaining temporary shelter of a rocky outcrop. Kilczer clambered up, reached down and more or less lifted Dorthy, her coveralls snagging and tearing free. She pushed down with palms and heels, working up the tilted slab of rock on her buttocks until she reached the top. Below, the backs of the critters humped past. Beside her, Kilczer began to cough, his chest heaving. At last he managed to say, “Still I think I sleep. Is there sign of the twins?”

  Obediently, Dorthy lifted her head. Her sight washed red and she almost fell, felt Kilczer grab her wrist. “I’m all right,” she said. But everything seemed disconnected.

  “That was quite a knock you took. Concussion perhaps. Stay still now. Nothing we can do.”

  “I was dreaming,” Dorthy said, as if it were an explanation for the chaos around them.

  “You and your damned Talent,” Kilczer said. “Can you use it to find the twins?”

  But all Dorthy could sense was his helpless fear.

  He pushed up on to hands and knees at the slab’s ragged crest. “Look at this around us,” he said angrily. “How many critters are there?” Then, more subdued, “The tent has gone. I see only critters.”

  The critters were still passing their haven, ten minutes later, when the remaining fuel cells in the crawler blew, a series of sharp explosions that threw rolling plumes of fire into the jostling herd. The critters on the lake bed around the island continued to move forward as if nothing had happened; on the slope above, mutilated carcasses were slowly trampled into the sand as those behind pressed on.

  “Now there are not so many,” Kilczer said. “At least, I think not.”

  Somewhere beneath the choppy surface of her confusion, Dorthy was beginning to be truly afraid. She wrapped her arms around herself, hunched in the dull, chill sunlight, watched the slow procession below. It was true: there were fewer critters now. After a while only one or two hitched past her perc
h: then at last only the trampled corpses remained, sprawled around the burned-out hulk of the crawler.

  Kilczer told Dorthy to stay where she was and clambered down, vanished among the boulders. He was gone almost an hour. Dorthy shivered but otherwise did not move. The blow on her head had dulled her will. Time did not pass: it simply was.

  Then Kilczer returned, scrambled up beside her. A rifle was slung over one shoulder; tied to his belt was a bag of torn orange fabric in which small shapes bulged. “The twins,” Dorthy said. “Did you find—”

  “I found Ade; and buried her. No trace of Chavez, but if he got away with life I am sure he would now look for Marta. The tent and all in it more or less gone, too. Not much food, no transmitter. How are you?”

  Dorthy was thinking about her book. She had had it a long time and now it was gone, a loss that for some reason hit her harder than the deaths of the twins, made everything that had happened real at last. She said, “I’ll do my best. I can walk.”

  “Walk where? Nowhere to go. We wait here, perhaps Chavez—”

  “He’s dead, Kilczer. Face it, we are alone here, stranded, and we can’t stay. There’s no water or food. We have to go up, do our best to find the lake, Andrews’s camp.”

  “Andrews may find us,” Kilczer said. But he did not believe it.

  “You know he might look, but we’ll probably not be found. We’re more than a hundred kilometres from the rendezvous point, and he doesn’t know which direction we took.”

  “No more talk.” Kilczer rubbed his pinched white face. “You are right, unfortunately. Walk through the wilderness, well, I do not like it, but I suppose we must.”

  The critters had left a broad trail across the dry, crazed mud, leading up the alluvial fan and on into the canyon that split the cliffs. Every so often as Dorthy and Kilczer climbed, they passed the corpse of a critter, white hide torn and trampled, blood a drying black jelly pooled around it on the sand.