Reign of Fire

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  Weng waited in silent concern.

  Danforth stared at the figures evolving on the screen. “Global averages, that’s the key… well, I’ll be… that heat’s still here, all of it.” He squinted out past the shading trusswork of the landing strut, through hard amber sunlight and dust, to the russet and gold wall of stalks and giant leaves ringing the clearing. “Somewhere.”

  “Dr. Danforth?” Weng prodded gently.

  “I was stuck on the time averaging, the variability, but the spatial average is correct for the model!” he explained, waving an arm in emphasis until his pain stopped him. He wiped his hand across his mouth. “I kept looking for the extra heat! Well, it’s still goddamned here, only something’s out there moving it around!”

  Weng’s chin lifted. She gazed down her nose at him in restrained surprise. “Something out there, Dr. Danforth?”

  He flicked a dark wrist. “I mean, some redistributing mechanism, you know? The missing term to my equation, my X-factor.” He glared at her to cover his embarrassment. “What’d you think I meant, some old guy with a wand?”

  Weng pursed her lips noncommittally. “It strikes me that the Sawls would say very much the same thing: that something’s moving the weather around. But they have, as it happens, given that something names and personalities.”

  “Oh, no you don’t, Weng. Leave that goddess crap to Ibiá, eh?”

  She let the impish smile she’d been hiding surface. “My apologies, Dr. Danforth.” She gathered up her lapful of papers and dumped them on her worktable. “I must concentrate now on trying to extract from the Master Healer’s library a reasonable estimate of this civilization’s age.”

  “You must?” he asked, thinking that Weng made the most bizarre connections sometimes, as if cause and effect followed different rules in her spacer’s mind. But it was his stated new policy to remain open to every possibility, every path of inquiry.

  “Well, think, Dr. Danforth,” she replied with calm intensity. “If the collision with the Coal Sack has altered the planet’s climate, imagine what it might have done to something as fragile as a human civilization on that planet. Worse still, if the planet continues to heat up.”

  At the top of the steps, Clausen smiled at the old women, giving them his courtly half-bow. The ladies dipped their heads and laughed, rearranging the wrap of their shawls like young girls. The prospector inquired after their health and crouched to admire the spotted eggs gathered in a basket on the stone floor. The young man Leb stood in the middle of the tunnel, leaning on his cane. He returned Clausen’s smile pleasantly.

  Chatting his way toward the limit of his command of the language, Clausen straightened and backed up casually as if to include Leb within the circle of his attention. He draped his left arm genially around the boy’s thin shoulders, palm down against the soft muscle behind the neck. Leb’s shoulder twitched and his eyes flicked to Clausen, briefly puzzled. The prospector drew his arm away to reinforce a further compliment to the ladies, and bent to pick up the egg basket offering. Leb’s knobby stick clattered to the floor. The boy sighed once, staggered to the wall and collapsed. The women gasped and scurried to his aid. Clausen was beside them one minute, checking the boy’s pulse. In the next, he was gone up the passageway, shouting back that he would bring help.

  The clinking in the clearing, as McPherson built her wall, was as disrupting to Danforth’s concentration as the heat. A further uneasy counterpoint to the irregular rhythm of stone on stone was the reedy chanting from the fields, as the home guard continued its round-the-clock care of the precious food crops.

  Muttering into the privacy of his pocket recorder, Danforth tried not to think about how much he would dearly love to be able to get up and pace about.

  “Concentrating on the snow data. Normal circumstances that would give rise to such activity within the observed semi-equatorial band: One, winds blowing northeast to southwest and southwest to northeast, converging on the band. Two, strong heat flux away from the band. Three, strong moisture flux into the band.

  “Now, at these low latitudes, we would expect the radiative heating of the surface, plus the small-scale dynamic heating of the atmosphere to balance the large-scale dynamic cooling.”

  He paused, let the recorder drop to his lap and sighed, rubbing his eyes. Sighing was not something Danforth had done much of in his life. He was well aware of fighting a sense of hopelessness. He picked up the recorder with weary resolve.

  “What we seem to have in fact is strong radiative cooling plus large-scale dynamic cooling balancing the latent heating.”

  He paused again and let his attention wander, distracted by McPherson’s bright shape moving about in the sun. The distant singing rose and fell. McPherson had achieved a fieldstone circle as high as her chest, intended as a base for the high-gain antenna. She had planned carefully and laid the widest stones in the lowest layers. The wall tapered upward in neat overlapping tiers of pale, dusty rock. Danforth smiled faintly as he watched her set the first of the partial layers that would allow the dish to rest at its proper receiving angle. He was impressed by her careful craftsmanship and the structure’s apparent stability. He found her wisecracking persistence comforting. She was one of the things that was keeping him sane.

  At one side of the clearing, several sun-hatted FoodGuilders took a break from hauling water to observe the mysterious stone circle taking shape. They stood in the shade of their own tall crop, chatting among themselves with the arm-waving, measuring gestures of a building crew assessing the problems of the site or the quality of a competitor’s work.

  Danforth wrenched his attention back to his recording.

  “In addition, the movement of the snow to the northeast, toward the great northern ocean, was observed throughout the entire band of activity. Thus, in relation to my X-factor, we cannot assume spatial dependence only. Frontal movement indicates that the missing term is also time dependent, and is, we will assume for the moment, global in scale.”

  He took a breath and reached under his worktable to haul one useless leg into a more comfortable position.

  “Now. Must-do’s for when we finally get CRI back: detailed mapping of heat and water distributions, horizontal and vertical profiles.” He touched the recorder to his lips pensively, then set it aside and lay back against his pillows.

  “Right through the goddamn Coal Sack,” he muttered, then closed his eyes and surrendered to his exhaustion and the heat.

  Clausen jogged lightly through the stable caverns. He slowed lit each turning or tunnel crossing, watching his footing carefully in the half-dark, hugging the walls, ready to leap back into shadow at the slightest sound.

  He knew the layout of the stables well. The Sawls had not bothered to curtail his explorations there. But for all their size, these caves did not extend deeply into the rock. Instead, they spread laterally across the cliff face, several large entrances joined by interior corridors. The caverns were high and wide, and Clausen liked their smell of dry hay and manure, reminiscent of his own small stable at home, the home he rarely saw. But these caves were by now familiar. The prospector did not linger. He headed for the nearest ramp to the upper levels.

  The ramp was empty but pitch dark. The pragmatic Sawls did not waste good lamp oil on unused corridors. The darkness heightened the sound of his own footsteps, even with the soft-soled shoes he had worn for the specific purpose of stealth. He paused, weighing his minute flashbeam on his gloved palm as he debated the disadvantage of feeling his way in blackness against that of giving his presence away with light. He stowed the beam in his pocket and put a hand to the wall, remarking to himself, not for the first time, that no deep-cave rock surface had a right to be so warm and dry.

  The wide main thoroughfare at the top of the ramp was lighted again, though only one lamp in five had been left burning, and those had their flames turned as low as possible. Clausen looked around cautiously. The alternating light and shadow was further punctuated by the dark half-moon entrances
to living enclaves. Several paces to the left was the back entry to the MeetingHall, impressive but again, familiar. Beyond it were more dwellings and other guildhall entries, Woodworkers’ and Keth-Toph. Clausen had no fondness for wood or its related technologies, only for tine objects into which it had already been made, preferably long enough ago to add to the objects’ value.

  He glided to the right and slipped into the first tall archway he came to. He listened to the darkness, then palmed his light and nosed the beam around the room. Tall wooden rug looms lined the walls, each with its attendant well-worn bench and great wood skeins suspended above the frames like bunches of multicolored fruit. The storage racks for the finished rugs were picked clean but for one or two tightly bound rolls lingering like rejected suitors in the isolated upper reaches of the shelves.

  The prospector shrugged and turned away down the outer corridor, dipping in and out of dwelling entries until he found what he had hoped for, a wider tunnel that did not dead-end in the usual trio or quartet of living caverns, but continued inward, sparsely lit but passable. Single-unit dwellings opened to either side. Bachelor quarters, thought Clausen, amused. His pace quickened. He was into unexplored territory at last, heading deeper into the rock.

  He passed dwelling after dwelling, and side corridors and cul-de-sacs that led to multi-unit complexes. He allowed that Ibiá was right to say the Caves were like a small city. A good half mile of cliff face had been hollowed out into a giant apartment megalith. Even this deep inside, the air remained temperate and sweet-smelling. Clausen looked for vents and shaftways, and finding none, concluded from the constant slight draft against his face that the tunnels themselves comprised the ventilation system. He had also noted from the first something he had not seen fit to pass on to his colleagues, particularly the bleeding-heart anthropologist Levy: some of the tunnels appeared to be extremely ancient, easily many thousands of years old, yet none were natural formations. Clausen could not help but admire the Sawls’ determination, digging a city out of solid rock with what must have amounted to their bare hands, due to the scarcity of decent tool-making metals. Idly, he speculated about the heights their civilization might have achieved, had they been gifted with the planetary resources that he considered essential for bootstrapping a society out of its initial stone age.

  A noise ahead alerted him. His inward-leading corridor intersected with another, running perpendicular. Voices raised in cheerful debate floated around the corner. Laughter was followed by a chorus of heavy groans, as if a weight was being lifted; unsuccessfully, for the groans broke off and the laughter increased. Clausen crept forward to peer around the corner. A large cart with a broken axle filled the passageway. Four sturdy Sawls milled about exchanging jocular repair suggestions. In the opposite direction, the intersecting tunnel ended after several hundred paces in a blank wall.

  Clausen flattened himself against the rock, considering his next move. When, almost simultaneously, he heard new voices proceeding toward him along his own corridor and retreat became impossible, he knew the Sawls had activated another of their seemingly endless repertoire of defense strategies. He eyed the unlit doorway of the nearest dwelling, but found that an unsatisfying option. If discovered in hiding, his hand would be forced, and he was not yet ready for open warfare. He had yet to assure himself of allies among his own party.

  Carefully, he stripped off the fingerless gloves, disengaged the tiny mechanism, then slid the needle and its heavy dose of tranquillizer into a slot in the butt of his laser pistol. He folded the gloves around the little gun and shoved the wad into his deepest pocket. He took what satisfaction he could from the fact that he had gotten further in this time than any before. Then, laying an expression of urgency across his face, he launched himself into the open, calling for help.

  6

  For two throws. Susannah drew her anger up around her like a wall. She adopted Ghirra’s habit of walking silence. At mealtimes, she buried herself in note-taking, ate mechanically and withdrew into sleep as soon as the clean-up duties were done, or went off to other wagons to gather information for her population survey. She let observation become her obsession, as if a conscious retreat into empirical practice could save her from messier, more subjective considerations.

  She decided it was selfish of Stavros to take her as a lover when he knew he would be leaving so abruptly. But he had been right to think she would try to talk him out of his plan, had she known about it beforehand. Her “determined neutrality,” as Megan called it, was a learned defense against the same impulsive streak that had catapulted her into the sun after the snows and nearly cost her life, as well as Liphar’s. As she mistrusted this tendency in herself, she also mistrusted it in others, and resented being dragged into a dangerous scheme that she was not sure she approved of. She recalled her frustration at feeling excluded and wondered if it might have been better left that way.

  Megan watched and worried and speculated, giving it time that should have gone into her own notes and observations. But Ghirra simply left Susannah alone, waiting for her to come to terms with the situation and with herself.

  Meanwhile, the landscape blossomed. The rapid growth cycle progressed into full flower. The roadside was a riot of color. Tender shoots and leaves broadened and thickened, soaking in and storing the now abundant water.

  In the east loomed the Talche, oddly rounded little mountains with a friendly aspect, like ranks of golden buttocks. The dairy herd had turned aside midway in the third throw to climb the curvaceous grassy slopes into the lush foothills. Several senior herdsmen remained with the caravan, shepherding two dozen prize heifers to be bred in Ogo Dul. Relieved of the drag of five hundred ambling beasts who would rather eat than walk, the caravan made better progress, for the first time accomplishing the full twenty kilometers per throw that the term implied.

  A contingent of rangers went with the herd, taking two spare teams of hjalk , to guard the placid dairy animals from the increasingly active wildlife on the road to their new pastures. Afterward, they would return to DulElesi for the salvage of the Terran flying machine. As Megan explained it, while Susannah tried hard not to listen, the rangers would contrive to arrive at DulElesi about the time that Stavros and Liphar were expected to reach the site of the wreck, giving the conspirators the needed time for their own secret salvage project, yet seeming to offer Clausen the help he demanded.

  The caravan followed a rough track winding among the crotches of the amber foothills. A stream accompanied them, lined with lithe river grasses. The wagons splashed across many clear, shallow rivulets rushing down from the hills to throw themselves into the silty, slower-moving water. Susannah saw entire herds of the shy tortoiselike creatures, and amphibious lizards cavorted like otters in the brown water. More than once, she spotted huge, spiked, toadish beasts who shot basilisk glares at the human intruders from the safety of midstream boulders. They did not attack, but she thought they seemed to be just waiting for an excuse.

  As well as shooting up and bursting into bloom, the flora diversified geometrically in the wetter foothills. Susannah did not have to pretend to be kept busy with her notebook and sample case, though sampling became increasingly difficult as the plants’ natural defenses improved along with the growing conditions. The squat clusters of bristles that had dotted the Dop Arek grew here into clumps of tall yellow swords, triangular and barbed in bright red, as thick as a man’s thigh. The desert brush enlarged into misshapen trees, stubby trunks caught in a mare’s nest of tubular branches that twisted and curved back on each other. The branches were jointed like fingers, and brittle looking, but resistant to every blade except Ghirra’s obsidian flake scalpel.

  Deeper into the hills, the air smelled sweet and damp. The cart track narrowed where huge trees reclined along the stream as if blown over at an earlier time, but content to take life lying down. They sent out rows of frail shoots to stand up like soldiers at attention along their fallen trunks. Tall, waving stands of amber-plumed succulents uncur
led fernlike in the shallows, offering occasional feathery shade for the sweating travellers. Tangled root systems fringed the riverbank, competing for space with the razor-edged grasses and spreads of fleshy ground cover. Broad orange pads armed with crimson thorns sprouted masses of lemon-colored blossoms iced with pollen and humidity like a lady’s powder puff.

  Ghirra’s insistence kept Susannah to the path. Beady eyes in the underbrush followed her movements along the verge. Shiny red leaves as big as dinner plates shuddered to the passage of heavy reptilian bodies beneath. She knew that later she would have to risk trapping a sample population of wild creatures. But for now, she would concentrate on the flora, for the sake of the Master Healer’s peace of mind. Her anger with Megan and Stavros did not extend to Ghirra. After all, she could hardly expect him to be objective about the fate of his own planet.

  During the fourth throw, the meandering stream showed a few stony rapids. The hillsides steepened. Craggy rock broke through the yellow topsoil, and the gentle river glen roughened into a deep gorge. The wagon wheels clattered over exposed stone ledges, descending with the river toward the northeastern reaches of the Dop Arek. Stretches of the pinkish plain below appeared in brief vistas over the canyon’s crumbling rim, through gaps choked with soaring amber plumage.

  Picking her way along the rocky path behind Ghirra, Megan noted an unusual restlessness in the Master Healer’s gait.

  As if he’s looking for something, she decided.

  The air hung heavy and still, sluggish with moisture. Megan’s trail clothes clung like a binding second skin. The hjalk snorted and shook their manes, bracing their fleshy feet against the slanting ledges to hold back the weight of the wagons. Ghirra’s restlessness was evidently shared, for Xifa sent Phea and Dwingen to crowd into the driver’s seat beside Ampiar, then went herself to walk beside the lead team of hjalk. Megan was not surprised when several PriestGuild apprentices came running down the line of wagons, their high voices overlapping urgently as they announced a weather alert.