Reign of Fire

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  “Given all the various possible moves, we can calculate a large number of possible end states, that is, finishes for the game. The observed strategies order these possibilities into smaller and smaller numbers until you can deduce which end state is the actual consequence of those strategies. From this we deduce the object of the game.

  “My conclusion has been that the object of this particular game is different for each of the two sides. For one, it is to neutralize an overbalance of heat within a given area of the habitable zone, for the other to cancel an overbalance of cold.”

  “With the violent redistribution of moisture as a strategy,” said Danforth, eager again.

  “Among others, such as the binding up of the opponent’s potential energy so that it is untransferable to the kinetic energy he needs to move his pieces around the board, thus disabling him.” Weng moved into her conclusion with relish, “These opposite objectives taken together could be seen as an attempt to achieve a balanced temperature in the zone of habitability, precisely the goal one would set if one were defending against excess heating of the atmosphere.

  “Therefore, the object of the game—analyzed in terms that postulate no players or intention but deal merely with the coreacting data—the object could indeed be weather control.”

  Clausen fished a pen out of his pocket to jot a few numbers on the crate top. Megan was unsatisfied. “Fine, Weng, but this puts us right back where we started. It doesn’t answer the question of why such extreme, lethal strategies are necessary.”

  “Or whose definition of weather control we’re dealing with,” added Susannah. “This current one doesn’t seem to consider the Sawls’ welfare one iota.”

  “Which in itself speaks against conscious intention,” Weng agreed. “I understand that the Master Healer might refuse to credit a deity of such cruelty, so much worse even than indifference, but neither can one believe that the former inhabitants would go to the trouble to construct machines that produced climate inimical to life, particularly when the Coal Sack is about to do it for them.”

  “So I gotta be right,” spoke up McPherson. “They are broken.”

  “If they exist at all,” reminded Clausen.

  “Unless you go back to my culling theory,” said Susannah.

  “Or maybe there’s intention, all right,” offered Danforth darkly, “but the intention is every bit as nasty as my weaker moments lead me to suspect.”

  “Or,” concluded Stavros with the implacable serenity of a priest, “there is intention but we do not understand its nature.”

  Clausen drummed his pen softly on the crate top, then returned it to his pocket. “If you know something we don’t, son, by all means enlighten us.”

  “I have seen an old man dance, and drive away the rain.”

  “Tut, Ibiá. Remember where you are. I doubt even the honored doctor here has much patience with such cant.”

  The prospector stretched and rose, shaking his legs out. He began a casual progress around the table, like the corporate chairman exhorting his board. “Myself, I care less about intent and more for the realities of climate control. Now this, Tay, could be the real discovery of the century.”

  Susannah felt the stirring of chill air as Clausen passed behind her. On the far side of the table, Aguidran detached herself from the retinue to move counter to Clausen’s clockwise drift. She reached the space between Liphar and Weng and hovered, watching the prospector as she might have an approaching viper.

  “Ah, but Emil,” said Megan airily, “if you uncovered a viable process for climate control on Fiix, you’d lose the planet. Not even CONPLEX could steal legal title from a local population capable of that.”

  “Once capable,” returned Clausen with a condescending smirk at Liphar, “maybe. I think we can safely assume the builders of such fantasy machineries to be long gone.”

  He laid both hands on Danforth’s shoulders. The planetologist tensed visibly but Clausen squeezed, patted and let him go. “But even old, broken equipment would offer clues to its manufacture. A find like that would make us rich, I mean all of us, CONPLEX, me, you, even the bloody Sawls.” He grinned wolfishly at Ghirra. “What do you say, doc? Would you like to be rich?”

  “What’s got you so interested all of a sudden?” rumbled Danforth.

  “I threw together a few rough numbers that might surprise you, Tay. A fusion technology not much more efficient than what generates our own FTL field could theoretically provide the energies required to move this atmosphere if scaled up appropriately.”

  “Theoretically according to who?”

  “All we’d have to do, really, is learn how to generate the right kind of fields. We should be able to learn that, whether the alleged machines are working right or not.”

  He continued his progress around the table, passing McPherson who sat very still with her arms pressed into her lap. “Now, of course, it would also be interesting to learn what sort of fuel has kept our hypothetical machines stoked up over the course of a hundred and sixty-odd thousand years. Clearly they’d have to have access to an inexhaustible supply of something.”

  Stavros stared at his hands. He seemed to be hardly paying attention. Susannah tried to catch his eye, imagining him once more withdrawn into contemplation of his windswept visions.

  From behind Weng, Clausen fixed him with a stare of innocent inquiry. “Perhaps there’s a hint or two to be found in your precious myth with regard to that issue, my boy?”

  On the crate top, Stavros’ hands clenched and withdrew to his sides.

  Stavros dared not move until the nauseating jolt of recognition passed through him. He feared he might let slip some further clue.

  Does he know the answer? Can he really know what I am so sure of?

  Stavros knew utterly, though it was instinct alone that told him.

  In his mind, he saw the shadowed arching vaults of Eles-Nol, the guar cavern, crowded with its mammoth cylinders of glass. He saw the miles of thick white piping, and the lavender sparkle of the lithium ore, lifted from Clausen’s pack by the Master Healer’s hand. He remembered the grave accusatory look in Ghirra’s eyes.

  What does he with this? Ghirra had asked, and Stavros had answered with the truth.

  The fire burned in his palms.

  Raellil…?

  It is possible, then, to trace one’s destiny from a single moment.

  But only, he regretted, in retrospect.

  Now the Master Healer frightened him further by leaning over to whisper in Sawlish, breaking their habit of speaking only English, wishing to know what had upset him.

  “Private consultations, honored doctor?” needled Clausen.

  Ghirra smiled humbly. “I did not know this word hypo-thetical.”

  Clausen smiled back and provided two possible Sawlish equivalents.

  The man’s calm terrified Stavros. He longed to jump up and run for the deepest cave he could find. The comfort of the heat in his hands could not salve the memory of an agonized dying. He’d been a fool to let Susannah talk him into this conference.

  Gotta stick it out, Ibiá. Find out how much he only suspects.

  “There would hardly be reference to fuel sources in a mythology built around living, breathing deities, Emil.”

  “Tut, more imagination, my boy. Do the goddesses eat? Any mention of food, perhaps?”

  Stavros’ breath stilled, as did Ghirra’s beside him. He hoped the restraining hand he laid on Liphar’s knee was an unnecessary precaution. He made a pretense of consulting Ghirra for the backward reassurance of seeing the same horrified comprehension lurking behind the Master Healer’s helpful smile.

  “There’s no mention of eating in my recent research into the myths,” said Danforth, “Only strategies and arsenals. Mostly the stories are concerned with the lengths one Sister will go to in order to beat the other to a pulp.”

  “And how badly the Sawls suffer as a result,” added Megan, but she said it to Stavros with a searching squint that told hi
m that his distress was more evident than he had realized.

  “We oughta just go out there and find ’em,” said McPherson. “When the sleds are finished.”

  “This is a big planet,” scoffed Megan.

  “If we respect the points of correlation between myth and sensing data, we start at the godhomes and work from there,” Danforth suggested.

  “No…” said Stavros, unable to stop himself.

  “If they’re machines, they can be fixed,” pursued McPherson with the confidence of a confirmed technocrat. “That’d be good for the Sawls and everybody.”

  “Not good for the Sawls,” said Stavros.

  “It is not the worst idea, Mr. Ibiá.” Weng’s tone was puzzled.

  “I thought we should try to contact them first,” he blurted. The only definite part of his plan was that he had to be the first to meet the Sisters face to face.

  “Contact a machine?”

  A distant shout echoed faintly in the entry cylinder. The rangers nearest the opening stirred, looked around. One nodded at Aguidran’s abrupt signal and slipped out into the sun.

  “CRI is a machine,” Stavros reminded them.

  The shouting neared, a high-pitched summons. Stavros thought he heard his name called. Ghirra turned to listen.

  Liphar fretted. “Ibi…”

  “I know,” he murmured.

  “A thief to catch a thief?” Danforth shrugged. “It is something we haven’t tried.”

  “What kind of signal, I wonder?” mused Weng.

  The rangers rustled in the silver tunnel as the messenger arrived. She would not come in but stood breathless in the heat, repeating herself desperately.

  Stavros listened very hard. He recognized the voice: Kav Daven’s young apprentice girl. Aguidran backed three steps to the opening.

  “Ibi,” said Ghirra, rising. “Kav Daven calls you.”

  “GuildMaster?” Weng inquired. “Is everything all right?”

  “A patient calls, Commander,” he replied in urgent apology.

  Stavros shoved back his chair.

  “No, Stav. Don’t move.” McPherson’s command froze Stavros halfway to his feet. She gripped the laser pistol with both hands extended like a cop, pointing at him. “Please. Sit.”

  Stavros sat down slowly.

  McPherson flashed a desperate look at Weng. “Arrest him, Commander. For his own good.”

  “Weng, no,” said Stavros. “Not now.” He stood again, wary.

  “Stav, he lied,” Megan warned. “The gun is armed.”

  Clausen moved fast, flinging aside Liphar as the young man leaped on him, arms and legs windmilling like an angry monkey. Liphar crashed into the side of a crate with a yowl of pain. Aguidran grabbed Clausen’s shoulder, jerking him backward, but he ducked and whirled to unseat her grip, then reached to twist her arm back and throw her against the side of the cylinder. Aguidran feinted as he turned and neatly stepped aside. His momentum carried him off balance until he was yanked back hard against her chest, his own arm imprisoned and her unsheathed boot knife sharp at his throat.

  “Now, McP!” he barked. “For Chrissakes, she’ll kill me!”

  Danforth lunged against the restraints of his chair to sweep his arm out and up, grabbing McPherson’s clenched fists in one huge hand. He shoved the laser’s nose into the air. The gun smashed a needle of light into the ceiling. Danforth wrenched the weapon from McPherson’s grasp and levelled it at the struggling prospector.

  “Tay, no!” pleaded Susannah at his side.

  “Tell your sister to let him go, doc,” Danforth growled. “She’s in the line of fire.”

  “Tay…”

  “Are you reading this, CRI?” yelled Danforth. “Are you getting it all?”

  Ghirra said nothing, and Aguidran did not move. Stavros was transfixed by the darkly glimmering knife and the prospector’s snarling helplessness. If Edan had been so equipped, she would have stood a better chance.

  Hands pulled at him, Ghirra’s, the other rangers’. He let them drag him up from his chair, though his shoulder screamed at their roughness.

  Christ! he thought. On the run again!

  But his next thought was for Kav Daven. He looked to Susannah desperately. “He might need you. Will you come?”

  “Go ahead, Susannah,” said Danforth soberly. “Nobody’s going to get hurt, now we’ve disarmed him.”

  Susannah raced for her medikit.

  Weng stood up, grasping at formality. “Mr. Ibiá, I expect you to report to me as soon as this current crisis is over. Do I have your word?”

  Access to CRI tempted him. It would also be easier to influence their movements if he lived among them again. And the Sleds are here…

  Stavros nodded. “My word, Commander.”

  He grabbed Susannah’s hand as she trotted up with her kit slung over her shoulder, paused to throw Danforth a grateful glance, and hurried through the cylinder.

  36

  A winch platform waited at the bottom of the cliff, tended by an unexpectedly large assortment of engineers, priests and their various apprentices. Stavros stepped onto it gratefully, leaning into Ghirra’s side.

  The sun reflecting off the white cliff face scorched and blinded. The ache in his shoulder was a thumping bass accompaniment to every step. A winch ride would not only be quicker, but would save him the inevitable indignity of exhaustive collapse halfway up the broiling stairs.

  Faces crowded around him, more than were needed to man the winch ropes, to steady the wooden pallet as Susannah and Liphar mounted, followed by two of Aguidran’s rangers. Stavros wondered at the crowd, wondered at their intent serious faces, focused expectantly on his own.

  Set a good example, he told himself, and stood as tall as he could manage. He wrapped his good arm around the twisted strands rising taut to meet the headknot of the rope bridle that cradled the pallet. His weaker arm rested about Susannah’s waist, more for his own support than for hers. Her hip nudged softly at his groin. He slid his hand across her belly to press her against him, wanting her fiercely for the lovely simplicity of lust, so comprehensible and sure, so easily satisfied in comparison to the mysteries that pulled at him from every side, stretching him, redefining his life.

  The engineers shouted, the crowd scattered awkwardly and the platform swung free and rose, swaying gently. The faces below followed its upward passage in silence. Most of the crowd headed for the stairs to make the slower, hotter ascent. Liphar edged around on the overladen pallet, calling attention to the sky. The sharp line of division had advanced further across the plain. Stavros was sure that the color contrast had increased. A pale greenish veil was being drawn toward the jade-colored zenith.

  “You see, Ibi? It comes here,” Liphar predicted.

  Ghirra nodded tightly. “White Sky.”

  The cave mouth was jammed, more priests and engineers, and many from other guilds as well, all eager to grab for the ropes to help swing the pallet onto the ledge, to offer a supporting hand. The two rangers jumped off as the platform shuddered down and began to clear a path through the throng.

  Stavros and Ghirra led the way across the entry cavern and up the inner stairs. At the top of the stair, both sides of the corridor were lined with young priests and apprentices sitting cross-legged with their backs rigid against the wall. They chanted a dirgelike melody and Stavros feared he had come too late. He heard “raellil” murmured up and down the line. He felt a strange flutter of hands about his ankles, fingers reaching to brush the fabric of his pants, to touch the tops of his bare feet. He gripped Ghirra’s arm.

  “What are they doing?” he whispered, afraid that he already understood.

  “They welcome you, ’TavrosIbia.” the Master Healer replied, and Stavros thought he detected grave approval in his voice.

  They hope too much of me, he worried. He could not recall even Ashimmel receiving such gestures of homage, only the Ritual Master himself. Old man, what have you started?

  He glanced behind to be
sure Susannah followed. Her serious calm smile reassured him. My ballast, my anchor. As long as he could call to mind the feel of her, skin against skin, heat and secret moisture, then he would remember he was a man, like other men.

  Aguidran waited until her guildsman had cleared the cylinder, then shoved Clausen aside and backed herself into the entry. She held the long dark knife poised across her chest like a shield, glaring a final accusation at the remaining occupants of the Underbelly. She singled out McPherson for particularly black censure, then bent to sheath the knife in her boot, straightened and loped off across the sun-baked clearing.

  Clausen picked himself up angrily. A hand touched to his throat came away bloodied. A slim scratch stained the crisp collar of his shirt. “That motherfucker’s got an edge on it,” he growled.

  “Yes, she does, doesn’t she…” agreed Danforth caustically. He cradled the little gun in his big hand and tuned it down, deactivating the pulse, bleeding off the power.

  Weng pulled a clean handkerchief from a pocket of her uniform and handed it to Clausen, but made no move to help tend his wound. “Lieutenant McPherson, you are confined to quarters for the next twelve hours.”

  McPherson looked resentful and confused. “It was for his own good!” she protested.

  “About the stupidest thing you could have done,” said Danforth.

  “What, it’s better for him to run around getting shot up?”

  “I do not require you to take such matters into your own hands, particularly at the expense of our good relations with the Sawls.”

  “Don’t worry on that score, Commander,” Megan assured her. “The Sawls know who their friends are.”

  “I’m sure they do,” Clausen snapped. “The question is, do you?”

  Danforth settled back into his chair with the laser cooling on his lap. Clausen’s tanned face was etched with paler tension lines. His pupils seemed a brighter blue for being totally outlined in white. Danforth thought of the winter sun glinting off an iceberg.

  The man’s fucking furious, he gloated. At last!

  “Fools, all of you!” the prospector spat. He held Weng’s handkerchief pressed to his throat. “He’s playing you all for goddamn fools!” He whirled on Weng. “Letting him waltz out of here like that? My god, he knows a soft touch when he sees one!”