Well of Furies Page 13

  “Go where?”

  “To you.”

  “Things are a little crazy up here, commander. The doors to the top vent are broken, they won’t close. It’s getting windy, and wet, in here. The bottom vent is closed, but some of the waves are actually reaching up to it. Even assuming we could find a way to get Eydis up the cliff, two groups of Kriani are massing outside with laser weapons. And, worst of all, there’s a platoon of what look like construction robots climbing down the cliff face.”

  “Only exit,” Bria growled impatiently. “We fight. Climb cliff. Call ship. Leave.”

  Tarkos took a deep breath. “Yes, Commander. There’s another thing, Commander: I’m getting transmission from the Kriani. Or some of them, anyway. I can’t translate the transmissions. Can we switch over to the common band? I thought we could ask Dr. Eydis.”

  In answer Bria switched bands. Tarkos followed her lead and in a moment he forwarded a transmission of whirring sounds.

  “That’s the most common Kriani language,” Eydis said. “Amazing species, the Kriani. They can write this language, or speak it in radio waves, or talk in speech.”

  “Says?” Bria demanded.

  “Uh… ‘Surrender now impure invaders of weak clades, and we will kill you quickly, a sacrifice to the life leaders’—that’s what they call the Ulltrians.”

  “Charming,” Tarkos muttered. Then he added, “I’m getting another transmission. Similar frequency, but higher power. Seems to be different. I’ll forward it.”

  Eydis listened in silence a moment before she said, “Well, these ones demand we surrender for the crime of having brought the Ulltrians here.”

  “There are no Ulltrians here,” Tarkos said.

  “Were here,” Bria said.

  “What?” Tarkos’s voice rose an octave.

  “They landed nearby, and collected some Kriani—no doubt to make them into slaves,” Eydis said.

  “Great,” Tarkos said. “There are two groups out here, one with and one without antennae, and they’re cutting each other to pieces. And what you’re telling us is that they both want to kill us.”

  “I’m not telling you that,” Eydis said. “They are.”

  “And meanwhile, there might be Ulltrians around,” Tarkos added.

  “No signature,” Bria said.

  Tarkos hummed thoughtfully. “Right,” he said. “The cruiser detected nothing. The Ulltrians are likely out of the system, unless they’ve shut down their ships and are waiting.” His voice turned decisive. “So, first step is to get everyone up here. It’s going to take a while to bring you all one at a time.”

  “You stand before ship?” Bria asked Tarkos.

  “A ship? Oh. Yes. I guess it is. An old wood thing. Like a wooden submarine. Hanging from the ceiling.”

  “Hurricane ship,” Bria said.

  “And there are other ships Two boats behind it, along with an airplane.”

  Bria pointed an open claw at the historic ships suspended above. “Work?” she asked the Librarian. It waved its antennae weakly. Bria took that as a yes.

  “Bring down,” Bria radioed.

  “What?”

  “Can lower boats?”

  After a long silence, Tarkos said, “Maybe. Their suspension cables go up, over pulleys, and join at a central point—a kind of suspended control. Might be winches there, by the look of it.”

  “Lower open boats,” Bria instructed. “Will use as elevator. Then we call cruiser.”

  “It’s not going to be easy to board the cruiser while standing on a cliff face and fighting robots in a hurricane,” Tarkos said.

  “Never easy,” Bria agreed.

  CHAPTER 10

  Tarkos helped Tiklik find its balance on its three remaining legs, as they stood together on the edge of the vent. The wind whistling through the open tunnel behind them made the suspended boats shift, their cables creaking. Somewhere, the intruding water must have shorted a power connection: the lights in the Library began to flicker, causing an eerie strobing among the ominous ships.

  When he was confident that Tiklik could stand alone, Tarkos reached around and pressed his hands to the stone. His suit extruded gecko hairs, and the nanotech grippers seized the black stone, pulling his palm flat. He planted a foot on the wall, pulled himself out onto the surface, and ascended into the dark. The armor’s power assist made the climb feel easy—easier than the descent had been. At least until he moved past the ships, and up the rising surface of the dome.

  In a few minutes he hung near the peak of the domed ceiling. Tarkos disliked clinging like a fly, but he forced himself to act now without hesitation. He crawled across the black rock, until he came next to the meeting point of the suspension cables.

  A small platform hung below the cables from six thin metal beams. Still holding the ceiling with one hand, he tested his weight on one of the beams. When it held, he climbed down to the platform.

  The platform was a mesh of dark rigid metal, punctuated with a complex pattern of spiky holes that might, he decided, be writing. He walked to the edge, his boots clanging on the metal, and stuck his head between two bars that held up a high railing, so that he could peer down into the flickering light in the stacks. Bria stood now with her feet underwater. Eydis and a Thrumpit struggled to drag the Kriani to a higher place. It seemed strange that Bria did not assist them—she usually could not watch a smaller being struggle with a weight before she impatiently began heaving the burden about. And, nearby, Ki’Ki’Tilish lay on a dry stretch of stone, limbs spread wide. Tarkos felt again the pang of sorrow and shame and guilt, to see the Kirt dead there, crushed by Gowgoroup.

  He switched to camera view and zoomed in. “Bria,” he radioed. “I’m at the central point. It looks like there are many of you there.”

  “Thrumpit is citizen. Kriani is librarian.”

  “Right,” Tarkos said. That meant two more beings to get out of here. How the hell could you get a Kriani up the cliff?

  “Commander,” he said. “I’m getting no diagnostics from your suit.”

  “Turned off,” Bria said.

  Tarkos frowned. He knew better than to question one of Bria’s decisions, but he also knew she would not shut down the information sharing between their suits if all was well.

  He turned off the camera view and looked around again. At his feet, the cables fed into black cylinders arrayed around the edge of the platform, and below these were spools of cable, each massive and seemingly free of corrosion.

  “Right,” he radioed to Bria. “It looks like the ships are on cables connected to what I think are winches. We should be able to move them.”

  “Test,” Bria answered. “Lower one open ship first.”

  Tarkos walked the platform, looking for controls. He circled it twice before he thought to look up. The Ulltrians had been—were, he reminded himself—huge. Above one end, he found a black tablet, hanging from the ceiling in one corner. He touched it gingerly, and the face lit up dark blue and green.

  “I’m going to send some images,” he said. “You’ll need to project them, so the Librarian or maybe Eydis can read this stuff for us.”

  “Send,” Bria replied.

  Tarkos radioed his helmet view to Bria’s suit. Bria projected the view on the end of the shelf near her. It took a few minutes of confused conversation, and finally Bria projected the scene below so that Tarkos could see the motions that Eydis made by way of explanation. Tarkos followed her commands, touching a series of sharp symbols. An array of identical symbols appeared, set out in a pattern isomorphic to the winches below his feet. He found that by touching the top of one, the winch wheeled in cable; and by touching the bottom, the winch let line out. Couldn’t be simpler, he thought.

  With a high screech, followed by a groaning shudder, he set the first boat descending. Six lines connected to it, so it required some finesse with the controls, but finally it descended evenly, swaying as it lowered toward the center of the library.

  “Send down both
ships,” Bria told him. Tarkos followed the same pattern of commands for the second ship.

  The winches were slow: it took five minutes, by Tarkos’s clock, for the line to pay out until the boats splashed into the shallow sea water. Tarkos turned off the winches as Eydis pressed forward, arms held up as she pushed through the water that was now waist high. She grabbed the side of one ship. She immediately began to disconnect the eye hooks on the hull, freeing the cables.

  “Why is Eydis disconnecting one ship?” Tarkos asked.

  “Not all come,” Bria said.

  _____

  “You’re sure about this?” Eydis asked the Thrumpit, after Bria, who had stood uncertainly before now, splashed forward and with obvious effort lifted the Kriani librarian into the open Ulltrian boat. The boat wobbled as the Thrumpit inelegantly heaved itself over the edge and found its footing in the prow, beside the Kriani, which lay listless with despair.

  “Friends in duty defy dim forgetfulness, and test true in harsh hours, after easy times,” the Thumpit chorused.

  “I understand you want to stay with the librarian,” the human woman said. “You’re a Thrumpit. You’re fearless. That’s what you are. But this place will flood.”

  “Not as high as highest stone, dark sky arch above history here.” It waved a tentacle at the dome overhead. “And no danger I from water fear. This body is sea born—limpid water lineage limned these limbs.”

  Eydis nodded her head. “I’ll try to come back, Ruinreader. I’ll do my best to return and help you, help the Kriani, after this fighting is over, if not before.”

  The second boat, lowered by Tarkos, splashed in the rising water nearby. Eydis pushed toward it, leaning forward, eager to get inside. The cold water, now up to her stomach, had quickly leeched away her body’s heat. Bria was ahead of her, and gripped the edge of the ship, and struggled to climb in, barely able to lift herself. She dragged her limbs over the edge, and rolled inside, making the big boat almost tip. Eydis hurried forward and steadied it as best she could, damping its motion with one hand. Nearby, the robot that held up the book turned in place, seemingly lost in the water, barely managing to hold the book above the flood. Eydis grunted as she lifted the heavy book.

  “Sorry, little fella,” she said to the robot. “We need this.” She threw the book roughly into the boat, exhaustion breeding indifference where just minutes before she had been afraid to even touch the tome. Then she pulled herself in, her arms trembling from weakness and the cold.

  “Lift,” Bria growled. In a moment, the cables went taut, snapping off drops of condensation, and then the ship began to wobble and rise.

  The dark wood creaked. Eydis looked at the hull with concern. Many small planks, their knotty grain dense and dark, seamlessly joined to form its hull. The Sussurat was heavy, in full armor. Still, the Ulltrians had been heavier. The boat should hold.

  “You’re hurt,” Eydis said.

  Bria said nothing.

  “Will you make it to the ship?”

  After a long while, Bria said, “Perhaps not.”

  “Is there anything I can do? I owe you, Harmonizer. You saved my life back there.”

  “Yes,” Bria growled. Her voice seemed to fade as she talked. “Saved you.”

  Eydis gave Bria a mirthless smile. “You sound surprised.”

  “Was worried too angry to do duty. But not so.”

  Eydis nodded. “Right, you weren’t too angry to do your duty. You saved a lowly little human like me.”

  Bria did not answer. The big creature slumped down against the hull of the boat. This alarmed Eydis: Bria looked to have passed out. Eydis pressed the radio stud in her collar, about to call to Tarkos, when the Sussurat spoke to her quietly, on open audio, the speakers on her suit compressing her voice.

  “Are you a mother?” Bria asked.

  “What? A mother? No. Not yet. Why do you ask?”

  “Mothers are less stupid.”

  “Well. I’d like to be both a mother and less stupid. But I’ve been busy. Do you have children?”

  Bria did not answer. She closed her eyes, the black lashes coming down to press against the visor.

  “Harmonizer Tarkos,” Eydis radioed. “I think we have a problem.”

  “Worse than rising water and Kriani massing outside with lasers and killer robots slowly but surely climbing down the cliff?”

  “Yes. Maybe worse than all that.”

  _____

  Tarkos raised the boat as far as the cables would allow, and then climbed over it, moving again along the ceiling. The boat creaked in a frightening way when he dropped, heavy with his armor, onto the rocking hull. But after swaying sharply, the boat stilled.

  “What happened to her?” he asked, rushing over to his partner’s side.

  “In the explosion, she must have taken some harm. She put herself into the path of the shrapnel, so that she could protect me.”

  With Bria unconscious, he could turn off her overrides of the suit links. Colored lights played across Tarkos’s visor as he interfaced with Bria’s suit diagnostics.

  “She’s lost blood. A dangerous amount. Damn. A wound to the leg. She should have tourniqueted her leg. I’m telling the suit to do that right now.”

  “Why didn’t she tourniquet it before?”

  “Typical Bria,” he said. “She wanted to walk on her own two legs as long as possible.”

  Tarkos stood and looked toward the opening to the vent tunnels. “Those robots are some kind of utility robot, I think. I’m watching them now. They’re not fast, and not really made to climb cliffs. Two have fallen. But they’re coming, very slow but very steady. Soon they’ll be here. Even in this storm.”

  “We have to go back down, and hide in the library,” Eydis said. “We can fight from there.”

  “No,” Tarkos said. “No. Just the opposite. Now we’re in even more of a rush. We’ve got to get Bria to the cruiser as fast as possible.” He stood and looked around. Finally, he pointed at the other ship.

  “What did you say this wooden submarine thing is?”

  “A hurricane ship. The Ulltrians used them to daredevil sail hurricane seas.”

  Tarkos looked back at the cables dangling behind them, the cables that had been detached from the other boat that the Thrumpit and Kriani lay in now. “I can use those cables to rig together a pulley to drag the hurricane ship into the tunnel.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Eydis whispered.

  “And then we get in, and let it slide down the vent tunnel to the sea, and ride the hurricane tides out. From there, we call the cruiser.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Eydis repeated. “We are going to sail a ship that even the Ulltrians feared, out into the huge waves, and then, right in the middle of the hurricane, climb off onto your cruiser?”

  “That’s the plan,” Tarkos said. “Humans go boldly where Ulltrians fear to tread.”

  _____

  It went faster than Tarkos expected. Using two lines, one run through his pulley and the other straight from the ceiling, he was able to both lift Bria and control how quickly she was pulled forward. Eydis stood in the swaying, suspended ship, and watched as Bria, head drooping forward, was lifted away.

  “So,” Eydis radioed to Tarkos, as they watched Bria’s unconscious form reel toward the vent tunnel, “tell me about the Ulltrians. I know you think that they’re on the World Hammer, the twin worlds that passed this planet eons ago.”

  “Well, then, I think you know everything,” Tarkos said.

  “You expect a lot of help for nothing,” Eydis said sharply.

  “Hey, fellow human,” Tarkos said. “I’m telling you the truth. We don’t know much more than you just summarized. That’s why we’re here. Trying to learn more. Why else would we be bothering you? You’re not much of a lead, you know.”

  Eydis shook her head, dissatisified. “Have you informed Earth?”

  “Of what?” he said.

  “Of everything.”

  “Our
mission is to investigate. Not announce the bad news.”

  “Don’t you think it’s your duty to tell Earth?”

  Tarkos did not answer. The question was unfair, in his opinion. He had a job to do, and he believed in that job. Just because he was human didn’t mean he should drop his mission and run for home.

  Eydis sighed impatiently at his silence. But after a moment she said, with her voice sounding more soft, “I should admit at least that it is good to see a human. I’ve been here a year, on Dâk-Ull. I felt a little stir-crazy sometimes. That Thrumpit was actually sounding sane to me, after a few months.”

  Tarkos grunted, the closest he could come to a laugh, given his concern for Bria. “I saw an Italian on a Neelee ship just—a week ago now, I guess, subjective time, though it seems a month. And I practically kissed him. I mean, and I’m not gay.”

  “You haven’t tried to kiss me,” Eydis said.

  Tarkos’s voice betrayed his smile. “My armor’s in the way.”

  He adjusted the speed of the cable playing out. It made Bria lift higher. She eased toward the edge of the tunnel.

  “So, where are you from?” Eydis asked.

  “Can’t you tell from my accent?”

  “You speak English with a Galactic accent,” she said.

  “God, that’s cruel.”

  “It’s true! And your Galactic sounds like a Sussurat. You pronounce your vowels in your throat. You were born there maybe, an orphan on the Sussurat homeworld? Raised by the wolves?”

  “California mostly,” Tarkos said. “And before that, Palestine. If I talk like a Sussurat, it’s because I talk to Bria all the time. Or, I guess, I talk at her. She doesn’t reply much.”

  Eydis nodded, an exaggerated gesture he could see from where he stood. She pointed at her chest. “Iceland.”

  “I read your file. I’ve never been there.”

  “It’s gray,” she said. “But beautiful.”

  “So. You’re not really an archeologist, are you?”

  A long silence followed. The radio hissed. She stood on the swaying ship, facing him, hands at her side. Her hair was stiff and pale with dust, and her face over her eyes dark with smeared dirt. The breather over her mouth made her expression seem hawk-like, her brows forming a sharp V over the beak of the oxygen mask. “What do you mean by that?”