by Baen Books
“My lord,” he said. “I take it that Mr. Zamerling was not forthcoming with the information that we seek?”
“Not at all,” I said, throwing myself into the nearest easy chair and flinging a leg over one padded arm. “I’d have an easier time asking my cousin Jil what she weighs. Which, I confess, I only do to provoke her. But OP-634g has some information that he is just dying to impart.”
Parsons showed no more expression than the LAI as he turned to the operative.
“Report.”
“Examination of the locked area by the nanites reveal that the protected space extends some six hundred meters below the plant. Pumps are present, but only going upward to the purification and bottling facility. It would seem that Acqua Astra’s claims are as they have stated. There are no mechanisms present to raise water from a source of any kind. It is very still and quiet in the lower chambers.”
“They are certainly siphoning water from the other aquifer,” Parsons mused. A tiny muscle twitched in that epicene brow, showing him to be deep in thought. “Nothing that produces as much water as Acqua Astra distributes could be passive.”
“I am prepared to return this evening to investigate,” I said.
Parsons gave me a quelling look. “Ensign Nesbitt is prepared to infiltrate the plant within the hour.”
“No, I want to do it,” I said, knowing that I sounded a little peevish. “I dislike it when someone promises me a full tour and fails to deliver. I fancy I am as observant as he. Moreover, I know where all the biometric facilities are. I’m a known quantity. He will surely set off the alarm system. I only need OP-634g to guide me into the depths of the plant.”
“There is no means to take you to the lower levels,” OP-634g said. “I can go.”
“How will you get there?” I asked, a little stung. “Any way you can pass, I can, too.”
“It would be too uncomfortable for you, sir. Cold. Cramped.”
“Ha!” I snorted. “You have never known uncomfortable, cold and cramped until you have sat in a malfunctioning hot tub with my cousin Erita and her horde of cronies. Is there air?”
“There is, sir.”
“Then I will go. Well, Parsons?”
Parsons knew when to thwart me and when it would be best to let me have my way.
“Very well,” he said, regarding me with a bare hint of resignation. “The crew will be on hand to rescue you if needed.”
A desert night sky displayed so many stars with such clarity that I found it contradictory that darkness should lie so thick upon the ground. My LAI escort rolled with near silence over the sands. I trudged much more slowly behind.
OP-634g engaged a panel that seemed to be drilled into a solid slab of stone and passed a web of green light across it.
“Welcome, Mr. Zamerling,” the panel said. A vast boulder shifted back and out of our way, opening a Stygian shaft before us. The LAI rolled inside. I had only a single point of green light to guide me. We had entered by the loading dock. No shipments left during the night, possibly to keep the insurgent locals of the nearby town from attacking in darkness.
Instead of essaying the red door, OP-634g led me through a low and narrow passage to a utilitarian hatch of stainless steel. Beyond it was a dumbwaiter system, a continuous belt of narrow platforms designed to carry AIs and LAIs down into the depths. OP-634g shone his green spotlight inside.
“Are you certain, sir?”
“That’s not cramped,” I said, evincing scorn. “I’ve played Sardine in smaller locations with a dozen of my closest relatives stuffed in beside me.” I swung into the next compartment that passed and was conveyed downward into the gloom. I crouched upon the narrow metal shelf. “So this is how the other half lives, eh?”
“The other 75%, sir,” the LAI said. “Mechanicals outnumber sentient organics more than three to one in the Imperium.”
“Pays to be nice to you, then, doesn’t it?” I whispered. “I have lots of friends who are LAIs. Old pals, correspondents, and so on. I trust I won’t be first up against the wall when the revolution comes, eh?”
“Yes, sir. Not first.”
I wanted to laugh, but first, my hoot of appreciation would probably be heard a thousand meters away, and second, I wasn’t certain that he was making a joke. An LAI in the Imperium Security service might or might not be programmed with a sense of humor.
A bar of red light indicated the bottom of the shaft. I made ready and sprang out onto the floor on feet as silent as I could make them. While I regained my equilibrium, OP-634g emerged beside me. My eyes had become as accustomed to near darkness as they were going to be. I saw shadows that I believed to be walls and corridors ahead of us.
“Anyone down here with us?”
“I see three infrared signatures of human beings,” OP-634g said. “Security guards. Warmth issuing from the pumping mechanisms fed from solar-panel-charged batteries. Otherwise, cold temperatures coinciding with ambient underground.”
“Good. Now, let’s see those pumps. Perhaps we can get an idea of the source from the pipes.”
OP-634g flashed on the floor an image of the layout of the pump level that he had gleaned from the nanites and laid out our path. Two rights, a left, a long corridor, then another right. He shut off the map, leaving only the single green dot to guide us or, rather, me.
Unlike the rest of Bleke, the subterranean chamber was cool with a pleasant dampness in the air. As we wended our winding way, the scent of fresh, clean stone, like the water that I had thought was pure, grew steadily stronger. The nearly deafening thrumming vibrated the floor under my feet. The pumps had to be fairly close by.
Suddenly, an alarm went off overhead.
“Alert! Alert!” a loud voice boomed in the midst of blaring sirens. “Organic presence detected in secure area. Investigate! Investigate!”
“Curses,” I hissed. “Hide me!”
I held onto the comforting frame of the LAI. He pulled me into a chamber and pressed me up against an inner wall. I heard a hiss, followed by a cooling spray. The faint security lights in the corner showed me that I was in a storeroom for pump parts and hoses. In contradiction to the CEO’s statement, the chamber hundreds of meters below the surface was not dingy or dirty at all. One could have dined off the smooth stone floor. I huddled in a narrow niche behind the door. OP-634g stood behind me, disguising my presence.
Voices belonging to two humans approached on the other side of the wall. I squatted lower in my hiding place.
Steps entered the room. I listened to them shuffle on the smooth floor for what felt like eons.
“No one’s here,” a resonant female voice said at last. “He must have gone to its chamber!”
“Right,” said a deep male voice with a distinctive Kazuran accent. “We’d better make sure it’s all right.”
It?
I used Sang-Li fingerspelling to communicate with OP-634g. The guards were on their way to our objective! We would follow at a respectful distance. OP-634g flashed his eye-lights in agreement, then let them fade to blackness.
We counted to thirty, then tiptoed out to follow.
Very soft desert boots and a great deal of practice with my martial arts instructor on how to move silently allowed me to pursue our guides without detection. After passing along a lengthy corridor and turning right, the hazmat-suited guards passed through a broad doorway.
I had no idea what to expect it to be, but my wildest imaginings would not have created the scene that awaited me in the immense chamber. Rippling light played upon the walls, like sunlight on a lake. Millions of tiny, crystalline filaments snaked across the floor and into myriad cracks in the wall to my right. They shimmered with their own crepuscular light. They seemed to move under my feet like a living carpet, which was in fact what they were.
The object from which those filaments arose was a beast, a creature, a being, larger than any I had ever seen in my life. It must have measured a kilometer wide by two long, stretched out in a chamber that barely
fit it top to bottom. Its rounded sides glimmered with blue-white and pearlescent peach lights. A behemoth like that should have been horrifying, but instead I found it beautiful, a delicate creamy, gelatinous oblate spheroid, the blancmange that no chef had ever dreamed of.
I trod carefully around the being, watching its sides pulse as its myriad tiny straws sipped from the strata of the deep underground. At the far left, I heard gentle splashing, softer than the sound of a fountain. I made my way around to see what was making the noise.
If on the far right was the intake, this was the outflow. From the body of the massive, pulsing hulk, half a dozen large tubules rained clear, perfect water into a vast, bottomless reservoir. And, there at the edge of the cavern was where the pumps of the Acqua Astra dangled their intake pipes. The exclusive “dihydrogen monoxide” product in which Zamerling took so much pride was the excreted waste material from a massive underground native creature. No wonder the source was a trade secret!
“Well, I will be a Pthohannixian candle-snuffer,” I said, and burst out into uncontrollable laughter. My knees threatened to give out under me as my hoots and cries echoed off the ceiling.
“Lord Thomas, quiet!” OP-634g warned me, but all in vain.
At that moment, hands grabbed my arms and dragged me backwards. I fought against the pair of guards, attempting to show them my face, but they put me into an armlock and dragged me toward a red door, the counterpart to the lift on the ground floor.
“You really should untie me,” I said. I was sealed into a chair in Zamerling’s plush office. A length of clear plastic strapping surrounded my chest and wrapped my arms tightly. OP-634g was bound full-length in swathes of the stuff. Only the lights of his eyes told me that they had not deactivated him. “You don’t really want to hurt me.”
I knew they did not. One quality of being a noble of the Imperium meant that no ordinary human would wish to do me harm. Nor did his guards. Once they had seen me, they realized that they had made a terrible mistake. But the longer we sat facing one another, the more nervous they became. They fidgeted with their stun weapons, clearly wishing to be anywhere but there. I could tell that Zamerling was of two minds.
“We can’t let him go,” Zamerling said to the guards. He tapped at his lower lip with nervous fingers. “It would mean bankruptcy.”
“What is that creature?” I asked. “I’ve never seen any living being that large in all my life. It’s breathtakingly beautiful. I don’t suppose it has a name for itself, or not one we can understand. What do you call it? A mega-micturator? A tinkle-titan? Your number one resource?”
“Aquavore!” Zamerling exclaimed suddenly. “We call it an aquavore.”
“It doesn’t really eat water, though,” I said.
“It absorbs minerals. The water that, er, passes through it is purified.”
“But you told me perfectly pure water is dangerous,” I pointed out.
“The aquavore’s system excretes a mixture of minerals that keep the pH balanced. That combination has proved to be… palatable to our customers’ tastes.” Zamerling’s greenish complexion turned ruddy with embarrassment. “My lord, you put us in a terrible position.”
“I don’t see it that way at all,” I said, rustling my bonds. “You’ve put me in a terrible position, sealing me in plastic like my great aunt’s sofa. Sooner or later, you will have to let us go. I am sure that we can come to some kind of… understanding.”
“A bribe?” Zamerling asked, goggling at me in shock.
“Certainly not,” I said, drawing myself up in outraged pride, or as much as I could under the circumstances. “I would demean neither one of us with such an offer. I mean to find a solution to your dilemma. Surely you have not fallen into a situation from which you cannot be extricated. I’m rather good at unknotting problems. Try me.”
“I can’t,” the CEO all but wailed. The guards shifted, worrying me that one of them might react rashly.
I glanced at the burl-wood chronometer that sat on Zamerling’s desk. If I did not inform Parsons soon as to my whereabouts, he and the others would activate the locator in my lower gastrointestinal tract and come looking for me, leading to further grave misunderstandings, and possibly resulting in one or more of us suffering life-threatening injuries. I did not see this man as the enemy.
“Come, come, Mr. Zamerling. I want to help. Consider me another natural resource. Where did the aquavore come from? Did you import it? Is that why you don’t want it revealed? And what does this have to do with the water being pulled out of Conoceil’s reservoir?”
“Aquavores are native to Bleke. They’re all over this planet.”
I raised an inquisitive eyebrow.
“But biologists don’t know about them. How is that possible?”
“They do, but the only specimens that they see are small, up to a few centimeters in diameter.”
My eyes widened. “Then your friend downstairs must be the great-great-grandmother of them all.”
Zamerling gave me a superior smile. “No, there are more. My scientists have discovered eight others of this size. They’ve been paid well not to publish about them. The aquavores adapted over hundreds of millions of years to create an underground ecology.” Now that I’d gotten him going, the CEO was eager to explain. “The aquifers discovered by our ancestors left geologists mystified, because they’re much larger than the pockets of stone would have suggested. But the aquavores purify the water so much by consuming the impurities that they leave none of their own organics behind, only a few minerals. Then, we believe, they move along, leaving no trace, and create another aquifer fifty or a hundred kilometers away from their last haven. The nine giants are enormous, kilometers in size, but they’re flat, because they are formed of billions of clear capillaries, by which they feed on water supplies left over from when this planet was wet. They create their own cracks to live in, by moving between strata like glaciers, until they find a place with the right kind of resources, and begin another aquifer. They’re amazing creatures.”
“But you or, rather, Great-Grandmother is robbing the town of the water it needs to thrive. You must admit that. Why don’t you share? There is surely enough clean water for all foreseeable needs, including Ad Astra.”
“Not for long,” Zamerling said, and the haunted look reasserted itself on his face. “The town is growing faster than we anticipated. They pull so much water out of the wells that the aquavore began to shift. When one has used up the useful organics and minerals and drained all the water in an area, it moves on. My scientists tell me that the minerals and trace organic elements that the aquavores crave are nearly depleted in these strata. When this one does, then it will ruin Acqua Astra. I can’t even explain to our vendors, let alone our shareholders, what has happened if we lose our source. We’re walking a tightrope, Lord Thomas!” He wrung his hands.
The desperate look on his face touched me, but the funny side of the situation took precedence. My mouth quivered. I did my best to hold onto my hilarity, but it burst out of me in a wheezing, whooping, hee-haw of a laugh. The inspiration made my mood soar sky high.
“But, my good man, the problem solves itself!”
Zamerling’s long eyes narrowed dangerously. I had probably pushed him as far as I dared.
“Do not make fun of me, Lord Thomas. You are in a precarious position.”
I felt a preternatural calm. If I seemed to be teetering, it was only his perception.
“Not at all, Mr. Zamerling. Look at it this way.” I tried to turn up my palms, but the pinioning of my arms made that impossible. I fixed him with my most sincere gaze. “You have a, well, trade secret that creates a product that has gained you a following, with more orders than you can easily fulfill. The town that has grown up side by side with Acqua Astra is being starved for clean drinking water and irrigation, which you could supply. But only if you understand your neighbors to be the renewable resource that they really are. You have not taken advantage of a closed system.”
“What?”
“Well, yes,” I said. “The town of Conoceil drinks water, yes. They need it to farm with, of course. But what do they produce?” I waited for a moment, but none of my audience chimed in. “Sewage! And what is it your aquavore needs, lest it move on and destroy your infrastructure?”
Zamerling looked fearful, until my words sank in, and enlightenment dawned.
“Useful minerals,” he said.
“Exactly! The dearth of water is not insurmountable. Why have you never considered simply replacing the water itself? You’ve just told me there are other aquifers of a similar size a mere fifty kilometers distant. Pipe it in for the city and the growers. They will use it and flavor it sufficiently for the aquavore’s use. And round and round it will all go.”
The forefinger tapped again at his lower lip. “But, Lord Thomas, we’re a luxury brand! You have learned our ‘trade secret.’ What guarantee do I have that you will not reveal it and ruin our reputation? You must admit that the truth is a business-ending embarrassment, if it got out that our product was the end result of a… natural process?”
“Well,” I said, toying with the armrest with my fingertips, almost the only part of my extremities that were free to move, “I might be satisfied with a compromise.”
The long eyes narrowed again. He tilted his head.
“Meaning?”
“Well, you will have to share with Conoceil,” I said. “Beginning at once. The town has the right to flourish and grow. If there are large aquifers all over the planet, you can run pipes out under the sand and replenish the water table here from them, then ensure that the wastewater runs into your cellar here. With the, er, input from thousands of people producing organic waste by the ton, Great-Grandmother will be so happy that she’ll never move from downstairs. It will form a healthy cycle, and the ‘trade secret’ need never surface. In any way.” I winked at them.