Analog SFF, July-August 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Nothing happened.

  “It's not working right?” she said unbelievingly.

  Martan cocked his head. “Something heavy is moving. I hear dead leaves crackling."

  “I don't hear anyth—"

  “I do! Can we use the gates?” he demanded.

  “The zone gates don't let visitors change zones without permits, but I have a university authority key.” Nia whipped the small cylinder out and inserted it into the Haven door's keyhole. Again nothing happened.

  “It is stalking nearer."

  She wasn't sure she believed him. But something had given the hugwort the scare of its little life. Something was wrong with Haven's failsafe door.

  A concave part of the cave's rocky back wall displayed 5. A convex part of the wall said 9. Nia inserted the key in the unobtrusive slot under 5.

  The concave wall rotated, taking them with it.

  Harsh daylight flooded their eyes.

  * * * *

  “Desert—cliffs?” Martan sounded incredulous. “The other place was—"

  “Valleys full of fog and mist and soft green plants.” Nia crossed her arms. “This one is sand and glare and spiny plants that bleed when you break them. Some things here shock you if you touch them. We're in the Wendway called Inferno. The fauna and flora are from the most hostile alien world ever colonized by humanity."

  To one side, the land fell away. They were on the knees of Mount Zaber, close—too close for comfort—to the precipitous canyon between Zaber and Specter.

  “Valles Avendis,” said Nia.

  Martan's gaze jerked up. Deeply scored, reddish rocks climbed the steep flank of Zaber. Far above and east of their zenith, Specter's summit was swathed in clouds. The sunspar ran straight through the clouds, but the brilliant sunball had traveled well west of Specter. It was mid-afternoon in Wendis.

  Behind the sunspar, the foothills of the Wend Range were swaddled in fog and hung overhead like a barrel-vault. From here they couldn't see the university, much less the rest of Wendis, not the city to the west, or the farms to the east, or the shallow green bowl of the Celadon Sea. It was as though they had stepped out onto a hostile alien world.

  “Incredible,” said Martan.

  “Welcome to the Wend Range. The way the gate system is designed, most animals and plants can't move from zone to zone. People shouldn't. It's disorienting in the extreme,” said Nia. Then she heard a coarse rasping sound. The zone gate was revolving back around.

  “Come with me,” said Martan. He took her wrist in an unbreakable grip and scrambled, pulling her along, up the precipitous slope.

  “Stop! What are you doing?"

  “Finding cover and a vantage point to watch the gate."

  His strength startled her. She had to climb with him or be dragged along. Fright flared in the back of Nia's mind. If she struggled and broke free of him she might fall—and it was a long way down to the bottom of Valles Avendis. “Don't believe the hype,” she pleaded. “Bad things seldom happen to ordinary tourists. Not unprovoked predator attacks!"

  He hauled her up alongside himself on a shelf of rock and said vehemently into her ear, “I was predator and prey for seven years. I know unhealthy attention when I feel it.” Finding a niche in the cliffs screened by a spiny plant with shiny purple leaves, he slithered in and pulled her in after him.

  “Don't touch the leaves!"

  “I won't. You needn't. Look.” He pointed below them, where a black bird raggedly circled in midair. “That is the same deathbird, and now it's here."

  Nia had often seen gulls ride the winds beside the chilly new seas of Azure. Here in Wendis, with nothing but spingravity—a counterfeit of planetary gravity—some birds managed a counterfeit of flight that typically looked comical. But now she found the deathbird's flight disturbing to watch. Its head turned from side to side as if scanning the harsh landscape. For the first time, she felt afraid of it. “Birds sometimes flutter-fly over the barriers,” she murmured. “Of all things in here, the birds are the most free—they fend for themselves although their nests are protected."

  “Their young are poisonous."

  “You're being paranoid,” she whispered. “There's no reason for things to go witherspin because we're here. As far as anyone in Wendis knows, you're just an academic."

  “Faxe sends revenge a long way,” he said under his breath.

  “Here?"

  “Our handlers never sent us in here."

  “Of course not. The insiders in the Wends don't want anybody else's games going on.” She rubbed a bruised knee. “And the price of sabotaging normal operations in the Wends, to make an outsider have an accident, is so steep that it's almost hypothetical."

  His glance flickered to her. “Hypothetically, how would it work?"

  “An enormous sum of money would come from Outside. Things would go witherspin. Rangers distracted, busy elsewhere. No tourists around—” She gulped. Even for winter in the Wends, it was strange how few other visitors they'd seen today. She made herself finish the thought. “Whoever it is who has rich, remorseless enemies is fatally injured or simply disappears. Anyone who's arrested was an unwitting pawn, the legal system turns into a house of mirrors, and charges are never brought."

  “I have enemies. All the followers and kin of every enemy of the state I executed. And the Faxen secret intelligence agency, since I defected."

  She shook her head impatiently. “What lives in the Wends is extremely dangerous too, and cares nothing about the politics of colonized planets."

  “That's ridicu—” His face hardened. Far below them, the gate was turning again. A huge, tawny cat with fangs as long as its head stepped out.

  Nia clutched Martan's arm. “That's Old Scratch! The sabertooth tiger from The Most Dangerous Game in Zone Nine! It's a robot programmed to be a savage predator—"

  “Robots can be hijacked,” he grated. “Deathbirds can be trained."

  Nia's heart pounded. “We've got to get to Haven."

  “Give me that book.” He scanned a page and frowned. “This makes no sense. It looks like we have to go uphill to find a door to Haven. But higher zones are more dangerous."

  “Don't confuse uphill with upzone! Almost every zone has an incredibly irregular border that somehow runs all the way from sea to one of the summits—"

  “I see. Uphill now, hurry."

  * * * *

  Wind blew strands of her hair across Nia's face. She wasn't resisting Martan now, but the rocky slope was rough and increasingly steep. Martan caught her when she tripped. “This is enough less than full Wendis spin-gee to botch my coordination,” she admitted bitterly.

  “I won't let you fall,” said Martan.

  They came to what looked like a rockslide, a field of rocky debris. Martan started to pick a way through. He froze as a gaunt, ugly, dog-like creature sprang out of a crevice in the rubble and confronted them, growling.

  “Infernal jackal!” Nia whispered.

  Stepping forward, Martan flung his arms out threateningly. He grimaced. His teeth flashed in the hard bright sunlight. The animal snarled back, but it retreated. Martan bounded on up, keeping Nia close to him.

  Uphill from the rockslide, Martan scooped up some rocks and stuffed them into the knapsack. “What is an infernal jackal?"

  “One of the few terrestrial species that thrived when colonists from Earth introduced them on Inferno. Back there, you—your teeth—” Nia stammered. Martan gazed at her expressionlessly, which unnerved her further. “I thought I saw ... maybe not."

  He shouldered the knapsack, now slightly lumpy with a cargo of rocks. “Not like what the big cat has. But yes, I can morph, in a few small ways."

  She hadn't imagined it: Martan had showed the jackal a neat sharp pair of fangs. She felt lightheaded.

  “I retracted them right away,” Martan said.

  Snarling erupted behind them, and a scrabbling sound, and then a yelp, abruptly cut off. Had Old Scratch met the jackal? Nia felt dread ball up unto
a sick, cold lump in her stomach.

  “Hurry. Uphill.” Martan held a large, edgy rock in one hand. But what good would rocks do against the giant cat?

  Mount Zaber confronted them with cliffs of deeply folded stone with dark recesses. Nia opened the guidebook. “To keep going upward from here, we would have to zone up."

  “But there's a door to Haven, where?"

  “That way. The door is inside the mountain."

  The deathbird slanted down from the sky to flap in a lopsided circle above them, as if announcing their location. Hardly breaking his stride, Martan hurled his rock at the bird. The rock traced a line so straight it might have been drawn in the air with a ruler. The rock connected with the bird's red head. Trailing purplish blood, the deathbird flailed its wings and tumbled away over Valles Avendis.

  “So much for that.” Martan sounded satisfied. Taking Nia's arm, he shepherded her into the deep fold in the red cliff. In cold shadow deep inside it, they found the mouth of a tunnel that slanted down into the mountain. Martan slowed them both to a fast walk. “And if this door doesn't work either, like the last one?” he asked conversationally.

  Nia was skirting panic like a ball circling the rim of a hoop, but she forced her mind to work logically. “If it doesn't work, we're in the center of a hideous plot, and there'll be a nasty surprise in Six. No. To Seven."

  “But that's an even higher zone. Isn't it even more dangerous?"

  “Yes. But I've been there before. And they control their own gates."

  A single orange arrow illuminated the smooth floor of the tunnel. This way to Haven. Nia drew in a deep breath of hope.

  Further in and down, and the daylight faded. Finally it seemed completely dark in the tunnel to Nia, but Martan steered her around invisible obstacles, one of which rattled unpleasantly. The passageway took a dogleg turn in an alcove where 6, 7, and 10 shone in the dark. “The Haven door shouldn't be much further,” Nia said eagerly, just before her foot splashed into cold water. She recoiled with a gasp.

  “Subterranean lake,” said Martan.

  Nia's hands shook as she opened the guidebook, which helpfully self-illuminated. “It does show a lake, but in winter it's supposed to be small—it's not supposed to block the door to Haven except in spring—"

  “Put that thing away and be quiet,” Martan said in a sharp whisper.

  “But—"

  He clamped a hand over her mouth and held her still. “I hear the water rising,” he said softly. “We can go back outside or we can use the upgates. With Old Scratch out there, outside sounds worse than gating up."

  Nia nodded.

  “You're shaking. Cold? Scared?"

  She nodded. She felt butterflies in her stomach, butterflies with wings of cold lead.

  “I can deal with danger,” he breathed in her ear, “though I didn't expect it today.” He rubbed the back of her neck.

  Eager to be calmed, defended, saved, she held on to him tightly.

  “Scratch is in the tunnel,” Martan said. “Give me your key. Back to the upgates. now!"

  They made a wild dash in the dark, veering toward the upgate marked 7. When Martan thrust the key into the keyhole, the gate illuminated. Nia saw the huge robot cat loping down the tunnel toward them just before the wall circled around them and sealed them off from Inferno.

  * * * *

  Nia shook with relieved tension. The two of them had just backed away from saber-toothed death into a normal translating elevator. The translator had slick sides, grab bars, and bright green footprints glowing on the floor to indicate which side would be down for the ride.

  Four of the glowing footprints on the floor were big paws with long claws, and there was a pair of cloven hooves.

  Keeping a protective arm around Nia, Martan held onto a grab bar. Coriolis force pushed them both against one wall as the translator descended smoothly in the spingravity of Wendis. The translator then moved sideways-spinwise, and the pseudo-gravity increased slightly

  The translator began to slow. “What next?” Martan asked. His tone sounded casual and interested, the tone of what's for dessert?

  “You'll see.” Nia hurriedly smoothed her hair, fastened up her jacket, and brushed the red rock dust of Inferno off them both. “I handle this one."

  The door opened to reveal a high-ceilinged room with painted walls and beveled doors. A high desk loomed at the end of the room. Behind the desk sat a figure with flowing robes over a misshapen body and a flowing beard over a misshapen mouth. Martan's eyes widened. Whatever he had imagined his next challenge would be, he wasn't expecting this.

  Here goes—something. Nia stepped forward. “May we enter the Fair Country?"

  “Go away, Silver,” the Gatekeeper answered in a disinterested tone. Behind him, the tallest door in the room, the door to the Fair Country, embellished with jewels, stood firmly shut.

  Nia answered, “My Fair name is Canter."

  “Do say.” The Gatekeeper leafed through the tome on his desk in front of him, an electronic book designed to look like an antique codex. “Very well. Who is he?"

  “This is—” she hesitated. “Night.” It would be a good nickname for Martan here, a memorable name that meant nothing. Martan nodded. Following her lead.

  “Bring him back in Fair time. Go away now,” said the Gatekeeper.

  “No. Night is not a tourist. He's a Traveler, and he has political asylum in Wendis."

  The Gatekeeper stared at Martan with piercing, mismatched eyes, brown and pale blue. “Very well. Watch your step."

  The jeweled door glided open onto a patio decorated with potted citrus trees with glossy leaves. They entered the patio, and the door snapped shut behind them. Nia sighed in relief.

  Almost inaudibly, Martan asked, “Why did you tell him?"

  “I did not use the h-word, but I did tell the truth, which is the best course of action where the Gatekeeper is concerned. He's an important personage here."

  “He looks deformed. Is that a disguise?"

  “No.” Nia walked to the edge of the patio, overlooking a valley full of tall trees, brown and evergreen. In the heart of the valley nestled a cluster of stone, wood, and glass structures with ridged roofs and numerous weathervanes. She rifled through her memory for everything she knew about the Fair Country, its geography and its perils.

  “That village is an attraction for tourists,” said Martan. “They don't get killed."

  Nia was tall for a woman, taller than most Wendisans, which sometimes made her more conspicuous than she wanted to be, but with Martan her height was an asset: she could look him directly in the eye. “At Fair time, tourists are off limits for the local predators. It isn't Fair time now. But I think you're a match for the locals. Let's go."

  A staircase spiraled away from the edge of the patio, coiling down through a hundred feet of thin air to the ground below. Nia gritted her teeth at the sight of it. Planet-born people never completely adapted to spingravity and its Coriolis effect. You'd think you were accustomed to it and then you'd take an embarrassing pratfall, especially on stairs and ladders, and the problem was worst in the Strange Range, where the spingravity lessened or increased with higher or lower terrain. A pratfall on the Spiral Stair could be fatal. “You first."

  Martan started down the stairs with effortless ease. Nia followed, grimly holding his shoulders to steady herself. Her brain registered subtle discrepancies between how the stairs looked and how they felt, and her planet-born reflexes cried imminent peril. After a few steps Nia gave up and closed her eyes, trusting Martan more than she trusted her own reflexes.

  He said, “You did a good job talking us into here. You hold up to danger better than I would have expected."

  “Well, you're better tempered in real danger than in a nice park. How wonderful. Some people who enjoy danger join the Star Rangers, others find work as police officers or emergency doctors. You became a hellhound!"

  “Hellhound was not a career choice. My whole family died in an anti-Unio
n insurgency. I was in the Faxen Union army and stationed on Goya. My family lived in Delagua on Estrella."

  Oh. Delagua, Estrella. An ordinary colony on a half-terraformed world, but it had been near a military base of the Faxen Union where Disunion terrorists detonated a nuclear bomb—an ancient, hideous weapon that left a radioactive scar. Ecologists from the university had established several outposts from which they were calibrating the wound to Estrella's ecology. Nia had never really thought about radioactive wounds in the hearts of Delaguans who'd been away from home at the time. “You were young and bereft, and insane with grief and anger?"

  His shoulder twitched. “Something like that."

  * * * *

  Illusions that aren't, Nia explained while they went down the Spiral Stair, finding that talking took her mind off the Stair. Word games with high stakes, predators that might take a personal dislike to you. That kind of thing made the Fair Country more dangerous than Inferno. Imagine a festival with all kinds of exciting fake dangers that can become real if they want to.

  Martan conceded that the whole zoned park was dangerous. Why did it attract tourists?

  Because danger tends to focus people, Nia explained. Facing danger makes people feel alive, and superior to anyone who succumbs to the danger. That was a potent brew of human motivation, and tourists paid well to partake of it, keeping the Wendisan economy afloat.

  “There are that many tourists that stupid?"

  “Don't tell me you never enjoyed trading in danger! You enjoyed Inferno, too."

  “I like obstacle courses. The more dangerous the better."

  Nia's mental list of his hellhound abilities included supersensitive sight and hearing, exceptional strength and coordination, superior coordination in spin-gee, and a knack for situational geometry. With skills like that, Nia could imagine a perilous obstacle course being exhilarating. “Whether you realize it yet or not, you're in the right place for you,” she told him.

  Wendis hadn't always been full of dangerous games. In the beginning, two thousand years ago, it was a magnificent stargoing research habitat with nine sealed ecological zones. Its name had been Adventus. But a lot of history happened to Adventus since then. During a thousand-year research voyage, better and faster starflight was developed and human colonists radiated across the stars ahead of Adventus. When it reached this part of the galaxy, it found a flourishing interstellar civilization of terraformed planets. The huge, worn-out old engines were removed, and it became Avendis, orbiting around a small golden sun, a city-state with a busy starport, university, and the nine-zoned ecological research park