Look to Windward (24 page)

“Too.”

“Too?”.

“We too would be destroyed.”

“Yes. Well, then.”

“This outcome will grow more likely with delay Therefore delay is not wise. Expedition is advisable.” 974 Praf shuffled its feet. “Extremely advisable.”

“Praf,” Uagen said, “do we have to do this?”.

The creature rocked back on its heel talons and squinted up at him. “Of course. It is duty to the Yoleus.”

“And if I say no?”.

“What do you mean?”.

“What if I refuse to go inside and look at whatever it is you've found?”.

“Then our investigations will take longer.”

Uagen stared at the Interpreter. “Longer.”

“Of course.”

“What
have
you found?”.

“We do not know.”

“Then—”.

“It is a creature”.

“A creature?”.

“Many creatures. All dead but one. Of an unknown type.”

“What sort of unknown type?”.

“That is what is unknown.”

“Well, what does it look like?”.

“It looks a little like you.”

•   •   •   

The creature looked like an alien child's doll, thrown against a barbed wall and left hanging there. It was long, with a tail that was half its body length. The head was broad, furred and—he thought—striped, though in the darkness, using only his IR sense, he couldn't tell what colors its pelt might be. The creature's big, forward-facing eyes were closed. It had a thick neck, broad shoulders, two arms about the size of a large human's but with very wide, heavy hands which looked more like paws. Only a dirigible behemothaur or one of its acolytes would have imagined it looked much like Uagen Zlepe.

It was one of twenty similar forms strung out along one wall of the chamber. All the others were dead and rotting.

Below the creature's arms, supported by a second, still wider set of shoulders, rested what at first appeared to be a giant flap of furred skin. Looking closer, Uagen realized this was a limb. A dark pad of toughened skin extended across its end in an 8 shape, and stubby hints of toes or claws dotted the perimeter of the pad. Below the torso, two powerful-looking legs hung from
a broad set of hips. A furred mound probably concealed genitals of some sort. The tail was striped. One of the root-cables Uagen had seen attached to the raptor scout in the similar chamber in Yoleus led from the back of the creature's head and into the ribbed wall behind.

The smell in here was even worse than it had been in Yoleus. The journey had been horrific. Dirigible behemothaurs were riddled with fissures, chambers, cavities and tunnels disposed so that their collection of tributary fauna could carry out their various tasks. Many of these were large enough to admit raptor scouts and it was down one of these that they had journeyed from an entrance behind the behemothaur's rear dorsal fin complex.

The effects of the creature's own attendant entities turning against it were everywhere. Great gouges and tears had been slashed through the tunnel's walls, making the curved floor slick with liquid in some places and cloyingly sticky in others; flaps of decaying tissue hung from the ceiling like obscene banners, and rents in the floor could swallow a leg, a wing, or even—certainly in Uagen's case—a whole body.

Here and there smaller creatures still feasted upon the body of the being they had served; other corpses littered the floor of the winding tunnel, and where the two raptor scouts accompanying 974 Praf and Uagen Zlepe down into the body of the behemothaur could do so without delaying their progress, they swiped out at the parasites and tore them to pieces, leaving them twitching on the floor behind.

Finally they had arrived at the chamber where the
behemothaur sought knowledge from its self-kin and guests. A great tremor ran through the cavern just as they entered, making the walls shake and dislodging some of the half-rotted bodies.

Two of the specialist raptor scouts had clawed their way up the wall beside the creature which still appeared to be alive. They were intent on an examination of its head where the cable root disappeared into it. One of the raptor scouts held something small and glittering.

“Do you know the nature of this being?” 974 Praf asked.

Uagen stared up at the creature. “No,” he said. “Well, not properly. It looks vaguely familiar. I might have seen it on screen or something. But I don't know what it is.”

“It is not of your sort?”.

“Well, of course not. Look at it. It's bigger, it's got enormous eyes and a totally different sort of head. I mean, umm,
I'm
not of my sort, not originally, if you know what I mean,” he said, turning to Praf, who blinked up at him. “But the main thing, umm, difference, is that middle bit. That looks like a sort of extra leg and foot. Well, like two that have grown together. Do you see those, ah, ridges? I'll bet those are the bones of what used to be two separate legs in its fore-bears, before it evolved into a single limb.”

“It is not known to you?”.

“Hmm? Umm, sorry. No.”

“Do you think if it can be made to speak it will be able to be understood in its talking by you?”.

“What?”.

“It is not dead. It is linked to the mind of the
Sansemin but the mind of the Sansemin is dead. But the creature is not dead. If we are able to sever its link to the mind of the Sansemin, which is dead, then it might be able to speak. If this were to happen, would you be able to understand that which it says?”.

“Oh. Umm. I doubt it.”

“That is unfortunate.” 974 Praf was silent for a moment. “And yet this means that we would be wise to sever its link soon rather than later, and that is good because then we would be less likely to die when the Sansemin suffers its catastrophic explosion.”

“What?” Uagen yelped. The Interpreter started to repeat itself, talking slightly slower, but he waved both hands at it. “Never mind! Sever its links now; let's get out quick! I mean, quickly!”.

“This will be done,” 974 Praf said. It babbled and clicked at the two raptor scouts clinging to the wall by the side of the alien creature. They turned and jabbered back. There seemed to be a disagreement.

Another tremor shook the whole chamber. The floor under Uagen's feet quaked. He put his arms out to each side to balance himself and felt his mouth go dry. There was a draft, then a distinct breeze of warm air, scented with a smell he suspected was methane. It took most of the smell of rotting flesh away, but he felt sickened with terror. His skin had gone cold and clammy.
“Please
let's go,” he whispered.

The raptor scouts on either side of the hanging creature did something behind its head. It slumped forward and down, then the thing trembled as though shivering and brought its head back up. It worked its jaw, then opened its eyes. They were very large and black.

It looked around, at the raptor scouts on either side, at the rest of the chamber, then at 974 Praf, then at Uagen Zlepe. It made a sound, or set of sounds, but it was no language that Uagen had ever heard before.

“This is not a speech-form which is known to you?” the Interpreter asked. On the barbed wall of living, dying tissue, the alien creature's eyes went suddenly wide.

“No,” Uagen said. “Doesn't mean a thing to me, I'm afraid. Umm, look, can we please, please get the hell out of here?”.

“You, you there,” gasped the creature on the wall, in accented but recognisable Marain. It was staring at Uagen, who was staring right back. “Help me,” it wheezed.

“Wh—wh—what?” Uagen heard himself say.

“Please,” the creature said. “Culture. Agent.” It swallowed with obvious pain and croaked, “Plot. Assassin. Need. Get word. Please. Help. Urgent. Very. Urgent.”

Uagen tried to speak but could not. There was a smell of something burning in the wind blowing through the chamber.

974 Praf adjusted her footing as another huge tremor shook the chamber and made the floor swell. She looked from Uagen to the creature on the wall and back again.
“This
speech-form is known to you?” she asked.

Uagen nodded.

The Memory of Running

T
he figure seemed to coalesce out of nothing, out of the air. Anyone or anything watching would have needed more than natural senses to have noticed the slow fall of dust spread out over an hour of time and a radial kilometer of the grasslands; that anything out of the ordinary was happening would only have become obvious a little later when an odd sort of wind seemed to stir itself out of the gentle breeze, disturbing the grass on the broad plain and producing what appeared to be a slowly revolving dust devil, whirling quietly in the air and gradually shrinking and tightening and darkening and speeding up until, suddenly, it disappeared, and where it had been there stood what looked like a tall and graceful Chelgrian female, dressed in the country day clothes of the Given caste.

The first thing she did when she felt she was complete was to crouch down and dig into the earth beneath the grass with her fingers. Her claws slid out, spearing the ground. She ripped out a handful of the
soil and grass. She held the handful of earth and vegetation up to her broad, dark nose, and sniffed slowly.

She was waiting. She had nothing better to do for the moment, and so she thought that she would take a good hard look and a good long sniff at the ground she stood on.

There were so many different tones and flavors to the smell. The grass held a spectrum of odors of its own, all of them fresher and brighter than the heavy notes of the soil, giving it a scent of the air and the winds rather than the ground.

She raised her head, letting the breeze ruffle her head fur. She took in the view. It was almost perfectly simple; ankle-high grass stretching in every direction. There was a hint of cloud to the far northeast, where the Xhesseli Mountains were. She had seen them on the way down. Above, and everywhere else in the sky, just aquamarine clarity. No sign of contrails. That was good. The sun was halfway up the southern sky. To the north, both moons shone full face, and a single day star twinkled near the eastern horizon.

She was aware of some part of her mind using the information in the sky to calculate her position, the time and the precise compass direction she was facing in. The resulting knowledge made its existence felt, but did not force itself upon her; it was like the presence of somebody in an anteroom, signaled by a polite knock on the door. She called up another layer of data and was presented with an overlay across the sky; suddenly she could see a grid superimposed across the heavens, and drawn on it were the paths of numerous satellites and a few sub-orbital transport craft, with identities attached and a
further stratum of more finely detailed information on each implied. The satellites whose images were slowly flashing were the ones which had been interfered with.

Then she saw a couple of dots on the eastern horizon, and turned to them, her eyes adjusting. Inside her, something exactly like a heart thumped hard and fast for a single beat before she could control it again. Some of the earth fell from the handful she held.

The dots were birds, a few hundred meters away.

She relaxed.

The birds rose into the air, facing each other and flapping wildly. They were half displaying, half fighting. There would be a female sitting crouched in the grass nearby watching the two males. The scientific and common names of the species, their range, feeding and mating habits and a variety of other information about the creatures seemed to hover at the back of her mind. The two birds fell back into the grass again. Their calls came thinly through the air. She had never heard their voices before, but knew that they sounded as they ought to.

Of course, it was still possible that the birds were not as innocent and unthreatening as they appeared. They might be real but altered animals, or not biological at all; in either case they might be part of a surveillance system. Well, there was nothing to be done. She would go on waiting a little longer.

She returned her attention to the clump of turf she held, bringing it up to her eyes, soaking up the sight. There were many different types of grasses and tiny plants in the handful, most of them a pale yellow-green color. She saw seeds, roots, tendrils, petals, husks, blades and stems. The relevant information describing each
different species duly made its existence known at the back of her mind.

She was, by now, also aware that the data presenting itself had already been evaluated by some other part of her mind. If anything had looked wrong or seemed out of place—if, for example, those birds had moved in a manner so as to imply that they were heavier than they were supposed to be—then her attention would have been drawn to the anomaly. So far, everything seemed to be reassuringly normal. The data was a distant, comforting awareness, patiently lingering on the outskirts of her perception.

A few tiny animals moved within the mass of soil and on the surfaces of the vegetation. She knew their names and details, too. She watched a pale, thread-thin worm waving about blindly in the humus.

She put the divot back, pressing the clump of soil into the hole it had left and patting it down. She dusted off her hands while she looked around once more. Still no sign of anything amiss. The birds in the distance rose into the air again, then descended. A warm wave of air unfolded itself across the surface of the grass and flowed around her, stroking her fur where it was not covered by her plain hide waistcoat and pants. She picked up her cloak and fastened it around her shoulders. It became part of her, just like the waistcoat and pants.

The wind came from the west. It was freshening, taking the cries of the displaying birds away, so that when they rose in the distance for a third time, they seemed to do so quite silently.

There was just a hint, a faint tang of salt in the wind. It was sufficient to decide her. Enough of waiting.