The Fall of Tartarus (29 page)

He
sat at the tiller and wept.

Jenner
had no idea how long had elapsed when he heard a cry from the bank of the
river. He looked up, but could make out nothing. Then the cry came again -
animal in its urgency.

Something
appeared from the foliage on the river bank and shot into the water like a
spear. She did not emerge until the parabola of her dive brought her up beside
the boat. She gripped the gunwale and pulled, so that the boat rocked and her
streaming head showed above the side. Her bright eyes stared him through the
wet strands of her fringe, her watchful expression caught between fear and
entreaty.

His
heart swelling with an emotion he found hard to contain, Jenner reached out and
pulled Cahla aboard. Then, his arm around the quietly crying girl, he gunned
the engine and steered the boat downstream, towards the Station and salvation.

[Interzone 129,1998]

The
landscape that enclosed Connery and his campsite was stark and inhospitable -
the crater of a long-extinct volcano a kilometre wide, its inner walls
encircling a perfect disc of still, green water. A fitting venue, Connery
thought, for the final act of a drama that had lasted five years. For that long
he had tracked the last existing Vulpheous on Tartarus, at first following no
more than folk tales and rumours, later picking up the trail of the creature
sighted by mariners and islanders across the southern sea from the continent of
Iriarte to the archipelago of Demargé. Now he had traced it to its lair, its
final resting place before the sun went supernova.

Three
days ago he had pitched his dome and set up his equipment, and it was while he
was working in the intense heat of the early morning that his hopes were
confirmed. According to the fisher-folk now evacuated from the islands of the
chain, the last remaining Vulpheous on the planet had emerged from the sea a
year ago, scaled the incline of the volcano, and disappeared over the side in
search of its aeons-old spawning lake. Connery had taken their stories lightly
- he’d been disappointed too many times in the past - but, while installing his
monitors beside the water, he was alerted by a bubbling disturbance on the
surface of the lake. He turned in time to see the grey bulk of the creature’s
huge head break the surface, water cascading from its hide in scintillating
cataracts. He stared in awe and exquisite relief for a minute while the
Vulpheous took in air to sustain it in its submarine lair for four to five
days. Then the creature ejected a spume of water like a cockade from its
cranial blow-hole, and submerged, leaving the lake serene and undisturbed. For
the next three nights Connery worked hard erecting his equipment in preparation
for the creature’s next appearance.

Now
he stepped from the air-conditioned coolness of his dome and was enveloped by
the cloying evening heat. He wore only shorts and boots, and within seconds his
exposed skin was covered with an irritating film of sweat. He walked down the
incline, through a rattling scree of pumice, towards the water’s edge.

These
days the sun was so huge and emitted so much light that it was no longer
discernible as a sphere: it filled the sky during the day with a pure white
glow, blinding to look upon. During the pulsing hours of night, the heavens
were a gaudy, beribboned display of magenta and tangerine strata, and this was when
Connery preferred to work. It was hot, even then, but not as hot as the
flesh-burning, furnace heat of day.

He
stepped beneath the sun-reflective canopy where he stored his equipment, found
the air-tanks and strapped them to his back. He exchanged his boots for
flippers and picked up the underwater flashlight, then fitted his mask and
stepped from the canopy into the water.

It
was a thick, warm soup that offered no relief from the twilight humidity. As he
waded further into the lake, the gradient of the slope quickly taking the water
level past his knees and groin, the algae seemed to suck at his flesh.
Suppressing a shiver of disgust, he switched on the flashlight and kicked out
from the shore. Within seconds he had penetrated the mat of algae and was swimming
through an aqueous, jade-green realm, the water becoming cooler as he
descended.

For
ten years after Madelaine’s death he had lived alone, the first five spent
exploring many of the Thousand Worlds - less, he realised later, through a
genuine curiosity than a desire to fill his time and thoughts with anything
other than his grief. Then, after something told to him by a physician on
Solomon’s Reach, he had come to Tartarus in search of the Vulpheous. Once more
his life had a reason, a goal.

When
he reached the area where he judged the creature had risen three days ago, he
turned his flashlight into the depths and swam after its widening beam. It had
occurred to him that the Vulpheous might not surface for a second time in
exactly the same position. If it re-emerged at another part of the lake, then
all his preparations would be in vain. It would be a tragedy if he wasted
valuable time chasing the creature around the lake after assuming it to be so
captive a target. The last TWC evacuation ship left Tartarus in three months,
and Connery planned to be on it.

In
the illumination of his flashlight, tiny silver fish turned as one like a
million scintillating components of some larger, gestalt creature. The
Vulpheous was not occupying the lake bed directly beneath the place where it
had surfaced.

Connery
manoeuvred himself into a standing position, moved his right flipper and turned
the flashlight in a great probing circle. He was almost back where he’d started
when the cone of light picked out what appeared to be a colossal boulder. He
started, shocked, despite himself. He’d seen pix of the creature, even seen its
great head in the flesh the other day, but nothing had prepared him for the
fact of its size. Physically it resembled a sea elephant, though Connery
estimated the Vulpheous to be fully twenty times bigger. It reposed on the lake
bed in dolorous obesity, something tragic in its isolation. According to the
islanders it was a female which, unable to be impregnated, had returned anyway
to the place of its birth, not to spawn young but to die in the imminent
supernova. Amid the piled flesh that was the creature’s head, Connery could see
two tiny, bright yellow eyes, staring out at him. He felt a great sadness then,
almost a regret at what he was doing.

He
switched off his flashlight and rose quickly to the surface of the lake. The
water warmed as he swam, and when he broke through the raft of algae he felt
the heat of the night hot on his skin. From the pouch in his shorts he pulled
an inflatable buoy, activated it and left the bulbous red and yellow marker on
the algae above the creature’s position. When he returned to camp, he would
recalibrate his equipment to the position of the buoy.

As
he swam towards the shore and his camp, he thought of Madelaine. Upon his
arrival on Tartarus, he had made a promise to her memory - a ridiculous and
romantic thing to do, which his younger self would never have understood, but
which somehow seemed right in the circumstances. That promise was close to
being fulfilled.

He
was wading from the lake, his limbs suddenly heavy, when he caught a glimpse of
movement perhaps half a kilometre away to his right. At the narrow defile in
the encircling crater, though which he himself had entered, he made out a
small, human figure. It was moving slowly down the incline towards the lake.
After assuming he was the only person on the island - perhaps even on the
entire archipelago - it came as a shock to find that his triumphal arena had
been invaded.

He
shrugged off his air-tank and set to work on the equipment beneath the canopy.

After
her arduous, zigzag climb up the side of the volcano, Leona arrived exhausted
at the gap in the rock overlooking the lake. She sat and stared down at the
perfect circle, sudden tears blurring her vision. She wiped them away with the
back of her hand, telling herself that she was no longer a child: she was a
woman, now, and women didn’t - not even after spending three days canoeing from
her island and climbing the volcano to the lake considered holy by her people.

She
could have rested for longer, but decided to press on. Once she had pitched her
tent beside the lake, and said her prayers to the healer, then she could rest
for as long as she liked. It would be a reward for the hardship of getting this
far. She had never really believed that she would succeed in crossing the
straits, still less be able to scale the volcano. She had expected her boat to
sink, or that she would collapse exhausted halfway up the mountainside. That
she had made it this far was an omen: her pilgrimage would be a success.

She
climbed to her feet and adjusted her pack, its leather thongs biting painfully
into her shoulders. The ground on this inner rim of the crater had absorbed the
heat of the setting sun, and the rock was griddle-hot beneath her bare feet.
She picked her way carefully down the incline, trying to step in the shadows
cast by the rocks that littered the slope. She wondered if her tribe would be
thinking of her now, if her mother was wondering whether she had reached the holy
lake. She glanced into the sky, at the colourful display that reminded her of
the feathers of a belcher-bird, and tried to imagine the stars her mother had
told her were once visible at night. It was hard to believe that her people
were being carried to a new star aboard the great TWC ship - even though three
weeks ago she had concealed herself behind a bush on her island and watched
fearfully as it ate up her tribe and left Tartarus forever.

Now
she was here, and perhaps if all went well she would one day be joining her
people in their new home among the stars.

She
was standing at the water’s edge, on a flat shelf of rock she thought would be
a good place to erect her tent, when she saw that she was not alone. Three
stone throws around the lake was a man. More than just his impressive height
told her that he must be an off-worlder. There was a lot of machinery beneath a
silver canopy, strange devices that Leona had never seen before, and farther up
the slope was a silver living dome. The man was crouching beneath the canopy,
working on his machinery.

She
wondered if he was here for the same reason that she was - she could think of
no other - and the thought worried her. She occupied herself by building her
tent. She tied together the canes that had doubled as the frame of her pack,
forming the outline of a pyramid. Then she unfolded the animal skin cover of
the pack and draped it over the pyramid. She ducked inside, unrolled her
sleeping blanket across the rock, and set out her scant possessions beside it:
her comb, her eating bowl and cup, and her five important powders. It was dark
inside the tent; she hoped that it would be as dark when the sun came up in the
morning, affording her cool shade.

She
left the tent and walked to the water’s edge. She sat cross-legged and said a
prayer, paying her respects to the healer, telling it that at last she had
arrived. Later, she would chant the mantra that her people’s holy-man had
taught her, the ritual of the Summoning.

After
prayers, she stripped off her dress and washed it in the lake, having to wade
in to her neck to get past the plant-life. The water was like a balm on her hot
and tired skin. She felt soothed by its warm envelopment, and at the same time
blessed that she was sharing the lake with ultarrak. She fetched her cup from
the tent and strained a quantity of water through the material of her dress.
This she drank, slaking her thirst. She strained another cupful and carried it
carefully to the tent for later. She laid her dress out on the hot rock, and then
scraped the water droplets from her body. Within minutes she was dry, and not
long after that so was her dress. She stepped into the garment, tied the laces
up the front, and then stared along the shore of the lake to where the
off-worlder was still busy beneath the canopy.

What
was he doing? Why would a man from the stars camp beside the lake and set up
his complicated machinery?

Once,
when she was a girl, a small tribe of off-worlders wearing blue uniforms had
come to her island in flying machines. The elders greeted them, and shared food
and drink with the strange men and women, and then told the rest of the tribe
that the off-worlders were people of honour and could be trusted. For days
Leona had watched the strangers move around the island - counting people for
the eventual evacuation, according to the elders. She had come to trust the
tall men and women of the TWC, had even accepted fruit from a woman with hair
the colour of blood-grass. Now she felt no fear of the off-worlder who had
arrived at the lake before her, just a slight apprehension as to what he was
doing here.