A Fire Upon the Deep (3 page)

It took five hours for the ground to cool enough for Dad to slide the ladder-ramp to ground. He and Johanna climbed carefully down, hopped across the steaming earth to stand on relatively undamaged turf. It would be a long time before this ground cooled completely; the jet's exhaust was very "clean", scarcely interacting with normal matter -- all of which meant that some very hot rock extended down thousands of meters beneath their boat.

Mom sat in the hatchway, watching the land beyond them. She had Dad's old pistol.

"Anything?" Dad shouted to her.

"No. And Jefri doesn't see anything through the windows."

Dad walked around the cargo shell, inspecting the misused docking pylons. Every ten meters they stopped and set up an sound projector. That had been Johanna's idea. Besides Dad's gun, they really had no weapons. The projectors were accidental cargo, stuff from the infirmary. With a little programming, they could put out wild screeching all up and down the audio spectrum. It might be enough to scare off the local animals. Johanna followed her father, her eyes on the landscape, her nervousness giving way to awe. It was so beautiful, so cool. They were standing on a broad field, high in hills. Westward the hills fell toward straits and islands. To the north the ground ended abruptly at the edge of a wide valley; she could see waterfalls on the other side. The ground felt spongy beneath her feet. Their landing field was puckered into thousands of little hillocks, like waves caught in a still picture. Snow lay in timid patches across the higher hills. Johanna squinted north, into the sun. North?

"What time is it, Daddy?"

Olsndot laughed, still looking at the underside of the cargo shell. "Local midnight."

Johanna had been brought up in the middle latitudes of Straum. Most of her school field trips had been to space, where odd sun geometries were no big deal. Somehow she had never thought of such things happening on the ground....
I mean, seeing the sun right over the top of the world.

The first order of business was to get half the coldsleep boxes out into the open, and rearrange those left aboard. Mom figured that the temperature problems would just about disappear then, even for the boxes left on board: "Having separate power supplies and venting will be an advantage now. The kids will all be safe. Johanna, you check Jefri's work on the ones inside, okay?..."

The second order of business would be to start a tracking program on the Relay system, and to set up ultralight communication. Johanna was a little afraid of that step. What would they learn? They already knew the High Lab had gone wicked and the disaster Mom predicted had begun.

How much of Straumli Realm was dead now? Everyone at the High Lab had thought they were doing so much good, and now ....
Don't think about it.
Maybe the Relayers could help. Somewhere there must be people who could use what her folks had taken from the Lab.

They'd be rescued, and the rest of the kids would be revived. She'd been feeling guilty about that. Sure, Mom and Dad needed extra hands right at the end of the flight -- and Johanna was one of the oldest children in the school. But it seemed wrong that she and Jefri were the only kids going into this with their eyes open. Coming down, she had felt her mother's fear.
I bet they wanted us together, even if it was only for one last time.
The landing had been truly dangerous, however easy Dad made it look. Johanna could see where the backsplash had gouged the hull; if any of that had gotten past the torch and into the exhaust chamber, they'd all be vapor now.

Almost half the coldsleep boxes were on the ground now, by the east side of the boat. Mom and Dad were spreading them out so the coolers would have no problem. Jefri was inside, checking if there were any other boxes that needed attention. He was a good kid when he wasn't a brat. She turned into the sunlight, felt the cool breeze flowing across the hill. She heard something that sounded like a birdcall.

Johanna was out by one of the sound projectors when the ambush happened. She had her dataset plugged to its control, and was busy giving it new directions. It showed how little they had left, that even her old dataset was important now. But Dad wanted something that would sweep through the broadest possible bandwidth, making plenty of racket all the way, but with big spikes every so often; Pink Olifaunt could certainly manage that.

"Johanna!" Mom's cry came simultaneous with the sound of breaking ceramic. The projector's bell came shattering down beside her. Johanna looked up. Something ripped through her chest just inside her shoulder, knocking her down. She stared stupidly at the shaft that stuck out of her. An
arrow!

The west edge of their landing area was swarming with ... things. Like wolves or dogs, but with long necks, they moved quickly forward, darting from hummock to hummock. Their pelts were the same gray green of the hillside, except near the haunches where she saw white and black. No, the green was clothing,
jackets
. Johanna was in shock, the pressure of the bolt through her chest not yet registering as pain. She had been thrown back against uptilted turf and for the moment had a view of the whole attack. She saw more arrows rise up, dark lines floating in the sky.

She could see the archers now. More dogs! They moved in packs. It took two of them to use a bow -- one to hold it and one to draw. The third and fourth carried quivers of arrows and just seemed to watch.

The archers hung back, staying mostly under cover. Other packs swirled in from the sides, now leaping over the hummocks. Many carried hatchets in their jaws. Metal tines gleamed on their paws. She heard the
snickety
of Dad's pistol. The wave of attackers staggered as individuals collapsed. The others continued forward, snarling now. These were sounds of madness, not the barking of dogs. She felt the sounds in her teeth, like
blasti
music punching from a large speaker. Jaws and claws and knives and noise.

She twisted on her side, trying to see back to the boat. Now the pain was real. She screamed, but the sound was lost in the madness. The mob raced around her, heading for Mom and Dad. Her parents were crouched behind a rendezvous pylon. There was a constant flicker from the pistol in Arne Olsndot's hand. His pressure suit had protected him from the arrows.

The alien bodies were piling high. The pistol, with its smart flechettes, was deadly effective. She saw him hand the pistol to Mom and run out from under the boat, toward her. Johanna stretched her free arm towards him and cried, screamed for him to go back.

Thirty meters. Twenty-five. Mom's covering fire swept around them, driving the wolves back. A flurry of arrows descended on Olsndot as he ran, arms upheld to shield his head. Twenty meters.

A wolf jumped high over Johanna. She had a quick glimpse of its short fur and scarred rear end. It raced straight for Dad. Olsndot weaved, trying to give his wife a clear shot, but the wolf was too quick. It jinked with him, sprinting across the gap. It leaped, metal glittering on its paws. Johanna saw red splash from Daddy's neck, and then the two of them were down.

For a moment, Sjana Olsndot stopped shooting. That was enough. The mob parted and a large group ran purposefully toward the boat. They had tanks of some kind on their backs. The lead animal held a hose in its mouth. A dark liquid jetted out ... and vanished in an explosion of fire. The wolf pack played their crude flamethrower across the ground, across the pylon where Sjana Olsndot stood, across the ranks of school children in coldsleep. Johanna saw something moving, twisting in the flames and tarry smoke, saw the light plastic of the coldsleep boxes slump and flow.

Johanna turned her face to the earth, then pushed herself up on her good arm and tried to crawl toward the boat, the flames. And then the dark was merciful, and she remembered no more.

.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush

-=*=-

Peregrine and Scriber watched the ambush preparations throughout the afternoon: infantry arrayed on the slope west of the landing site, archers behind them, flame troopers in pounce formation. Did the Lords of Flenser's Castle understand what they were up against? The two debated the question off and on. Jaqueramaphan thought the Flenserists did, that their arrogance was so great that they simply expected to grab the prize. "They go for the throat before the other side even knows there's a fight. It's worked before."

Peregrine didn't answer immediately. Scriber could be right. It had been fifty years since he had been in this part of the world. Back then, Flenser's cult had been obscure (and not that interesting compared to what existed elsewhere).

Treachery did sometimes befall travelers, but it was rarer than the stay-at-homes would believe. Most people were friendly and enjoyed hearing about the world beyond -- especially if the visitor was not threatening. When treachery did occur, it was most often after an initial "sizing-up" to determine just how powerful the visitors were and what could be gained from their death. Immediate attack, without conversation, was very rare. Usually it meant you had run into villains who were both sophisticated ... and crazy. "I don't know. That
is
an ambush formation, but maybe the Flenserists will hold it in reserve, and talk first."

Hours passed; the sun slid sideways into the north. There was noise from the far side of the fallen star. Crap. They couldn't see anything from here.

The hidden troops made no move. The minutes passed ... and they got their first view of the visitor from heaven, or part of him anyway. There were four legs per member, but it walked on its
rear
legs only. What a clown! Yet ... it used its front paws for holding things. Not once did he see it use a mouth; he doubted if the flat jaws could get a good hold, anyway. Those forepaws were wonderfully agile. A single member could easily use tools.

There were plenty of conversation sounds, even though only three members were visible. After a while, they heard the much higher pitched tones of organized thought; God, the creature was noisy. At this distance, the sounds were muffled and distorted. Even so, they were like no mind he had ever heard, nor like the confusion noises that some grazers made.

"Well?" hissed Jaqueramaphan.

"I have been all around the world -- and this creature is not part of it."

"Yeah. Well, it reminds me of mantis bugs. You know, about this high --" he opened a mouth about two inches wide. "Great for keeping your garden free of pests ... great little killers."

Ugh.
Peregrine hadn't thought of the resemblance. Mantises were cute and harmless -- as far as people were concerned. But he knew the females would eat their own mates. Imagine such creatures grown to giant size, and possessed of pack mentality. Maybe it was just was well they couldn't go prancing down to say hello.

A half hour passed. As the alien brought its cargo to ground, the Flenser archers moved closer; the infantry packs arranged themselves in assault wings.

A flight of arrows arched across the gap between the Flenserists and the alien. One of the alien members went down immediately, and its thoughts quieted. The rest moved out of sight beneath the flying house. The troopers dashed forward, spaced in identity preserving formations; perhaps they meant to take the alien alive.

... But the assault line crumpled, many yards short of the alien: no arrows, no flames -- the troopers just fell. For a moment Peregrine thought the Flenserists might have bit off more than they could chew. Then the second wave ran over the first. Members continued to fall, but they were in killing frenzy now, with only animal discipline left. The assault rolled slowly forward, the rear climbing over the fallen. Another alien member down.... Strange, he could still hear wisps of the other's thought. In tone and tempo, it sounded the same as before the attack. How could anyone be so composed with total death looming?

A combat whistle sounded, and the mob parted. A trooper raced through and sprayed liquid fire. The flying house looked like meat on a griddle, flame and smoke coming up all around it.

Wickwrackrum swore to himself. Goodbye alien.

The wrecked and wounded were low on the Flenserist priority list. Seriously wounded were piled onto travoises and pulled far enough away so their cries would not cause confusion. Cleanup squads bullied the trooper fragments away from the flying house. The frags wandered the hummocky meadow; here and there they coalesced into ad hoc packs. Some drifted among the wounded, ignoring the screams in their need to find themselves.

When the tumult was quieted, three packs of whitejackets appeared. The Servants of the Flenser walked under the flying house. One was out of sight for a long while; perhaps it even got inside. The charred bodies of two alien members were carefully placed on travoises -- more carefully than the wounded troopers had been -- and hauled off.

Jaqueramaphan scanned the ruins with his eye-tool. He had given up trying to hide it from Peregrine. A whitejackets carried something down from the flying house. "Sst! There are other dead ones. Maybe from the fire. They look like pups." The small figures had the mantis form. They were strapped into travoises, and hauled out of sight over the hill's edge. No doubt they had kherhog-drawn carts down there.

The Flenserists set a sentry ring around the landing site. Dozens of fresh troopers stood on the hillside beyond it. No one was going to sneak past that.

"So it's total murder." Peregrine sighed.

"Maybe not.... The first member they shot, I don't think it's quite dead."

Wickwrackrum squinted his best eyes. Either Scriber was a wishful thinker, or his tool gave him amazingly sharp sight. The first one hit had been on the other side of the craft. The member had stopped thinking, but that wasn't a sure sign of death. There was a whitejackets standing around it now. The whitejackets put the creature onto a travois and began pulling it away from the landing site, towards the southwest ... not quite the same path that the others had taken.

"The thing
is
still alive! It's got an arrow in the chest, but I can see it breathing." Scriber's heads turned toward Wickwrackrum. "I think we should rescue it."

For a moment Peregrine couldn't think of anything to say; he just gaped at the other. The center of Flenser's worldwide cabal was just a few miles to the northwest. Flenserist power was undisputed for dozens of miles inland, and right now they were virtually surrounded by an army. Scriber wilted a little before Peregrine's astonishment, but it was clear he was not joking. "Sure, I know it's risky. But that's what life is all about, right? You're a pilgrim. You understand."

"Hmf." That was the pilgrim reputation, all right. But no soul can survive total death -- and there were plenty of opportunities for such annihilation on a pilgrimage. Pilgrims do know caution.

And yet, and yet this was the most marvelous encounter in all his centuries of pilgrimage. To know these aliens, to
become
them ... it was a temptation that surpassed all good sense.

"Look," said Scriber, "we could just go down and mingle with the wounded. If we can make it across the field, we might get a look at that last alien member, without risking too much." Jaqueramaphan was already backing down from his observation point, and circling around to find a path that wouldn't put him in silhouette. Wickwrackrum was torn; part of him got up to follow and part of him hesitated. Hell, Jaqueramaphan had admitted to being a spy; he carried an invention that was probably straight from the Long Lakes sharpest intelligence people. The guy had to be a pro....

Peregrine took a quick look around their side of the hill and across the valley. No sign of Tyrathect or anyone else. He crawled out of his various hidey holes and followed the spy.

As much as possible, they stayed in the deep shadows cast by the northering sun, and slipped from hummock to hummock where there was no shade. Just before they got to the first of the wounded, Scriber said something more, the scariest words of the afternoon. "Hey, don't worry. I've read all about doing this sort of thing!"