Well of Furies Read online

  “Now,” Eydis said, as she pointed at Bria. “I know what you are. You’re a Sussurat. Am I right?”

  Bria de-opaqued her suit’s visor. Her huge green eyes, and two small black eyes, fixed on the human woman.

  “Right,” Eydis said. “Just and honest, that’s what the Sussurat are. And they don’t say what doesn’t have to be said, do they? Sussurat speak what matters, and nothing more.”

  “Briaathursiasaliantiormethessess,” Bria said. “Commander.”

  “Of course you’re the commander,” Eydis said. She turned to Ki’Ki’Tilish. “And a Kirt. Sensible species. They know what’s what.”

  “I know we’re all going to die,” the Kirt clicked mournfully.

  “See what I mean? Refreshing realism. And what’s this? Who’s in here?” She stepped forward and tapped on Gowgoroup’s encounter vehicle. The window cleared, the shielding opacity lifting. “An OnUnAn! Marvelous. Creative people. You’re not six times as creative as one of us, not you—no, you’re six orders of magnitude more creative, that’s what you are. Am I right?”

  Twelve slug eyes pushed up against the glass, silent for the first time since the mission began.

  Eydis touched the hard shell of Tiklik. “This one is a mystery. Is someone in there? Can’t imagine who. You’re a slender reed, you are.”

  “I am Tiklik’al’Takas, made-mind of the Kirt.”

  “I bet you’re twice as sensible, then,” she said. She turned to Tarkos. “And you. Well, no surprise seeing one of us here, is it? You and me, we humans, we’re amateurs, right? New kids on the block. First steps into the galaxy. All that. But we are doing it. That’s the thing about us. That’s what we are. Optimists. The rest of these marvelous beings can do it—” she switched to English to say, “they can be blasé about it, right?” before finishing in Galactic with, “but by damn we will do it all too, and we’ll know it for the wonder it is.”

  Tarkos stared, mouth open. He didn’t know what to make of this summary of their group, except to admire its audacity.

  Eydis nodded at him, as if expecting this reaction. “So, now, what are two Harmonizers, with a Kirt and an OnUnAn, and a marvel of an antique AI, doing in an abandoned, ancient Ulltrian palace of state?”

  “Looking for you,” Tarkos said.

  She frowned. “Why?”

  “Another way outside,” Bria said.

  Still frowning, Eydis shifted her eyes to Bria, considering. Then she nodded, and her face relaxed. “See. Sussurat. Few words, the right words. We do well to listen, am I right? So. Way out. There are several.”

  “Which will require me to kill fewest Kriani?” Bria said. “And out to clearing. To land ship.”

  Eydis nodded, lifted a hand, squinted in thought, and then pointed. “That way,” she said. “That would be best.”

  Bria’s visor became black, as if in answer. She turned, her armor crackling now because of the cracks in it caused by the Kriani’s guns.

  “Close visor,” Bria said softly as she passed Tarkos and loped to the dark entrance that Eydis had indicated. Tarkos reluctantly pulled is visor down and blacked his view. Eydis disappeared, to be replaced by a reconstructed image of her, obscured with tactical displays and false colors showing a range of information. She didn’t look human anymore.

  “Follow me,” he told Eydis. “You two follow behind. Tiklik, you bring up the back. Let us know if anyone approaches from behind.”

  “Just one minute,” Eydis said. She went to one corner of the room and began throwing tools and memory crystals and large sheets of smart paper into a large metal box.

  “We have to go, Doctor,” Tarkos said.

  “Not without my data. I’m taking my work with me.” She finished quickly, and then slammed the box closed. She whistled, and a robot that Tarkos had mistaken for another box stood up beside her on four legs. It lifted her cargo and put it onto its back, and leaned forward, waiting to follow her.

  “Now I can go,” she said.

  They hurried to catch up with Bria. The hall was dark, and smaller than the room behind, but still very large by human standards. Bria lit up her suit again, so that Eydis and the others could see. Pale gray dust, stirred up by their passing, clouded around their feet and then rose behind them and clotted the hall, so fine it hung in the air. The dust seemed to emanate a sickly gray glow as it soaked up the light shed by Bria’s suit. Tarkos realized the dust was both curse and blessing: it could obscure a visual of their precise location, but it left a clear trail behind them.

  “What is this place?” he asked.

  “It was once a kind of… government building,” Eydis said. “It is old. The Ulltrians used it for many eons.”

  “No one has used it lately,” Tarkos said, kicking at the thick dust. “The Kriani had no use for it?”

  “The Kriani resent it,” Eydis said. “I’m here because some old Ulltrian technology is here, in working order. That’s what I study, mostly. Ulltrian systems.”

  “So why are the Kriani fighting?”

  Eydis stopped. Ki’Ki’Tilish bumped into her, and reared back, clicking softly, “Apologies. This one did not mean to insult a human before death. Let us go to our graves without rancor.”

  Eydis did not answer her, but kept her gaze fixed on Tarkos. “You mean you don’t know?” Tarkos gently pulled on her arm, and they started walking again.

  “I thought you could tell me,” Eydis said. “I thought you came because of the fighting. You don’t know why they’re fighting?”

  “No idea. We showed up here, and could see from orbit battles raging across whole continents. Before that, we had no word that there was fighting here. It probably started after we left to come here.”

  “Which way?” Bria grunted. She had come to a crossing of paths. As they stopped, the dust caught up with them and swallowed the party.

  “That way,” Eydis said. She pointed to the right.

  They turned the bend and Bria stopped, her feet skidding in the soft dust. Again, Ki’Ki’Tilish bumped into Eydis and Tarkos.

  Two Kriani lay before them, their six limbs spread out, thoraxes in the dust. One had the same scars on its head that they had seen on the Kriani outside, with dried green blood smeared across its face and eyes. The other did not: its black antennae lay forward in the dust but were still attached to its body. But in the side of this Kriani, some kind of metal weapon had been thrust, like a sword, the handle standing in the air above its limbs.

  “Oh,” Eydis cried out. “I know these two. Wak and Holwa. Oh. This is terrible.”

  Bria turned in place, fearing another attack. But, as the rest of them stared at the Kriani victims, the antennae of the closer Kriani twitched. Eydis pushed forward, squeezing past Tarkos and Bria.

  “Stay back!” Tarkos called, but Eydis ignored him and crouched before the Kriani that had moved.

  Eydis talked to the Kriani in a low, gutteral version of Galactic.

  “Wak,” she said. “You are hurt. But I’ve some friends here.”

  “I die,” the Kriana hissed. Tarkos slipped forward, instructing his armor to run phonetic translation pitched at Kriana tones. He leaned near the weapon in the Kriani’s side, frowning at the wound. His suit ran diagnostics, drawing rough conclusions from a suit database with minimal information on Kriani anatomy. The prognosis was not good.

  Eydis put her other hand on its head. “We can save you. You’re tough, that’s what you are. Nothing tougher than a Kriani. Nothing.”

  The Kriani grunted in response.

  Eydis looked up at Tarkos. “Your ship has an autodoc? Could it help?”

  Gowgoroup radioed, “Negation. Ten eyes may peer back while two eyes lead the way to escape. Continue retreat immediately.”

  Tarkos ignored the OnUnAn. “Our autodoc has notes on every known species. We could try it.”

  “Hear that?” Eydis said to the Kriani. “A Harmonizer—a genuine Harmonizer, and a human one at that, says help is on its way.” She leaned closer
to the Kriani, till her face was between its drooping antennae. “What happened, Wak? Who did this? And….” She hesitated before she whispered, “Who’s going around cutting off people’s antennae? And who cut Holwa’s antennae?”

  “Self. Holwa did to herself. And then… after… Holwa attacked me.”

  Eydis put a hand to her mouth, and ended up laying her trembling fingers over her oxygen mask. Her palm covered the vents, making her breath cloud against the plastic. “Oh no,” she moaned. “Don’t tell me this is some kind of… recidivism?”

  “What?” Tarkos asked. “What is that?”

  “Death and destruction,” Ki’Ki’Tilish clicked behind him. Tarkos crouched by Eydis’s side. He de-opaqued his visor. The Kriani’s two small black eyes seemed to fix on his face.

  “Why would she do that?” Eydis said, leaning closer. “Did the person who killed her force her to do it?”

  “I killed her,” the Kriani choked out.

  “Oh, Wak, why?”

  But the Kriani did not answer. Eydis leaned closer. She seemed to listen. After a moment, she whispered, “He’s gone. He’s dead.”

  Tarkos checked his suit’s med subroutine. The Kriani’s remotely detectable vitals were diving. Eydis was right.

  The human woman stood abruptly and walked around the Kriani, till she stood by the weapon thrust in its side. She put one foot on the Kriani, grabbed the handle of the weapon, and, with a loud growl, pulled it loose. The gore-covered blade was like a long, serrated sword. She let it drop in the dirt, where it rang and stirred up a cloud of dust.

  “I won’t leave this in him,” she said. “It’s an Ulltrian weapon. An obscenity of their past.”

  “Leave now,” Bria said. She took a step forward. The dust that their own steps had stirred up now surrounded them, so that they milled in a thick pale fog.

  “These were good people,” Eydis whispered. Tears welled in her eyes. “I tell you what: these were good people. None of this makes sense.”

  Tarkos took her arm, careful to be gentle with his grip. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Do you have something to do with this?” she asked, pulling her arm free, a flash of anger in her eyes. “You tell me now, if you did.”

  The servos of Gowgoroup’s encounter vehicle whined as it began to pace in place. “Leave, leave, leave,” the slugs chorused quietly in the background. Even Ki’Ki’Tilish began to rock back and forth impatiently.

  “No,” Tarkos said. “No. I told you the truth. We just arrived. We have no idea what is happening here. Please, show us the way out, to our ship, and I’ll tell you all I know. Maybe it will help. I’m sorry for these Kriani. But we might have to hurt others if they attack us again.”

  Eydis grunted at that. “Right. You’re right. Well. Come on. I can wait till we’re safe to learn about why you and your transgalactic crew is here.”

  Eydis stalked past Bria, and the big Sussurat followed, armor clattering.

  They walked a hundred meters through a dim, wide passage, until they turned a bend and the tunnel widened and opened into daylight. They stopped at the end of the hall, under an archway of stone from which dangled long green and black vines that shifted in the wind. Before them lay a hexagonal plaza formed of glittering black tiles. At the plaza’s far edge, black stone sloped steeply down to the back of the village they had walked through.

  Bria turned off her lights. The primary sun had slipped behind the gas giant, which filled now the sky above, a huge dim blue globe. On the horizon, the edges of the gas giant’s rings shone as white bands across the sky. The secondary sun glowed dimly high above.

  Tarkos and Bria stepped out, back to back, and examined the area. They seemed to be alone.

  “Call ship,” Bria said.

  Tarkos used his implants to interface with the cruiser. In a moment he saw the view before the ship, beamed directly to his visual cortex. In the street, Kriani crowded the way. Tarkos panned cameras. Kriani surrounded the ship, some holding lasers, some waving in the air sword-like weapons of the kind that Eydis had pulled from the victim in the tunnel. Green ichor blotted all their faces: none of them had antennae.

  Tarkos instructed the ship to take off vertically, with emergency speed, indifferent to acceleration. In an instant, his view turned to treetops, then sky. Dirt exploded below, blasted off the road by the cruiser’s engines. Projectiles clattered against the underbelly of the ship, fired by the stunned Kriani, but only for a few seconds before the ship shot out of range and out of view.

  “She’s on her way,” Tarkos said.

  Bria turned to the others. “Prepare. Board quickly. Or there will be much killing.”

  “Where are we going?” Eydis asked.

  “That paper you wrote,” Tarkos said, “about the free planetary pair that passed this world….”

  Eydis frowned. “Why do you care about that?”

  “Well, we need you to help us plot its trajectory.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say why,” Tarkos said.

  Eydis shook her head. “Well, doesn’t matter anyway, because I can’t do it. Not me. Not on some Predator ship, or anywhere else up there.”

  Bria turned and lowered her head, pointing her nose at the ground. Tarkos could read her expression, even buried in armor and behind the black visor. She was not pleased.

  “It’s important,” Tarkos said.

  “It must be, to bring this group out here. But I don’t know its trajectory. I only studied the cultural reaction of the Ulltrians, how it drove development of new technology. I didn’t do more than glance over the data regarding the trajectory. You’re a reasonable being. You can see that, if I’m studying its cultural impact, I wouldn’t need to study its path out of the system.”

  Bria hissed.

  “As a diplomat of the OnUnAns,” a wet slapping voice called out, “I observe that we have now confirmed that this dangerous and wasteful mission was useless.” And several of the slugs of the colony echoed the sentiment, “Useless! Useless! Failure! Predicted failure!”

  “Ah,” Ki’Ki’Tilish said, “and so now we’ll die for no reason.”

  “There’s no way you can help us?” Tarkos asked. Above them, the air shimmered as the cloaked cruiser descended. He sent the command for the bottom hatch to lower as the ship approached. A crack of light appeared in the sky above, then widened to reveal the interior of the ship.

  “Nothing I can do alone,” she said. “What you need would be to look at the original records—they’re in a book—you’d need to look at the book, with the goal of finding the trajectory.”

  “Do you have a copy?”

  “No. The Kriani are funny about Ulltrian texts. No copies. They even make elaborate arrangements for impeding implants, so you can’t take a retinal image. They see a brain as a kind of… filter. Or barrier.”

  “But if we had the original….” Tarkos prompted.

  “But, if you had the original, I think it could tell you what you need.”

  Tarkos smiled. “Good. So it can be done.”

  “What did I say? You’re an optimist. Good for us humans. It might be possible with the book. Only, the book, you know….”

  “Where is book?” Bria demanded.

  “In the Library of the Tides. Which is really a kind of museum of Ulltrian history. It is a place feared by the Kriani, but maintained out of respect for their own suffering. The problem is: we can’t go there now. The hurricane tides are coming. Soon the library will be submerged under huge, hammering waves.”

  “We go,” Bria said, walking towards the ship’s ramp that lay now on the stone before them. “Get wet. But get book.”

  CHAPTER 6

  “What a world,” Tarkos said. He stood on the edge of a stone cliff, with Eydis and Bria flanking him as he looked out over a black sea that crashed on shards of rock a hundred meters below. The cresting waves glowed pale blue along their tops from the reflected light of the gas giant above, before they fell
into the bruised black water. In the distance, the dark front of the approaching storm gathered over the foaming ocean.

  “You’re telling me that those clouds out there are a storm of hurricane strength, and it comes every few days?” Tarkos asked.

  Eydis nodded.

  “What a world,” Tarkos repeated.

  “You begin to see it,” Eydis said. “Imagine how the Ulltrians evolved, and how their civilization evolved. The sky here is completely unpredictable. The secondary sun is on a chaotic path out of the ecliptic of the system. The other moons of this gas giant move in an enormously complex dance. I mean, think of Earth. We came to believe the universe was orderly because the skies were orderly. Plato said our children should study astronomy in order to learn geometry; for him, the stars moved in simple, perfect patterns. But for the Ulltrians, chaos ruled the sky. And that Jovian world, the clouds on the giant,” she pointed at the vast world that loomed overhead, with its rococo bands of pearl methane snow, “the clouds are never the same. The tides from the gas giant’s gravity are terribly strong—so much so that you can almost feel the difference in your weight sometimes, when the world is overhead. It causes frequent and unpredictable quakes, and a sea that spawns weekly hurricane waters.” She shook her head. “Somehow the Ulltrians developed science in the midst of all this chaos, but for them, the universe is a violent and unpredictable place.”

  “So Ulltrians try to make all worlds violent and unpredictable,” Bria hissed. The Commander moved closer to the cliff’s edge. Big steps, each about a meter high, had been carved along the face of the cliff, descending to a narrow walkway far below that crossed uneven, surf-tunneled black stone. Tarkos had wanted to try to land the ship there by the waves, but Eydis had objected: the violent seas had hollowed out the stone walkway, she said, making it everywhere brittle and weak. The ship might land, only to crash through the black rocks, harming the ship and damaging an ancient monument. So they would have to walk down.

  “Library?” Bria asked.

  “That’s the main entrance.” Eydis pointed at a narrow passage that turned left into the base of the cliff. At its end, in a dark recess, stood a tall rectangular door of sea-blackened metal. “The library is large, tunneled out in the stone beneath that cliff. The Ulltrians were not as concerned with their own history as most species are. But this is one of the few museums on the planet, so it is important.”