The Icerigger Trilogy: Icerigger, Mission to Moulokin, and The Deluge Drivers (76 page)

He was only partly right.

The teacher was deep in conversation with Ta-hoding when Ethan finally sought confirmation of his suspicions. “I don’t mean to interrupt, Milliken, but I’d like to know for sure—why this sudden interest in local astronomy? I’d think you’d be grubbing away in the cities instead of freezing out on deck at night. “You’re trying to find proof that the climate here was once much warmer, aren’t you?”

“Not just here, on this plateau.” Williams was only stating what to him was obvious and not being in the least insulting. A less sarcastic human being Ethan had never met. “Everywhere on Tran-ky-ky. The physical evidence inherent in the buried metropolis coupled with what little I’ve been able to calculate tells me that this was so. More importantly, it indicates to me who built these successive cities.”

“Don’t keep me in suspense, Milliken. Who was it? The Tran, the Saia, or some now extinct people? I’ll bet it was the latter, and when the climate turned cold everywhere, the builders died. The Saia were contemporary with them and keep their memory alive in legends.”

“Plausible, but I think, incorrect.” He adjusted the calculator built into his sleeve. “These cities were raised by both the Tran and the Saia.”

Ethan couldn’t forestall a grin. “That’s crazy,

Milliken. It’s too cold here for the Saia now and if they built these cities, surely they’d remember. And it’s too desolate now for the Tran and, assuming the climate was warmer, too hot for them before.”

“That reasoning misses the point. It’s because …” Williams paused, took a preparatory breath. “It’s not simply a matter of its once being hot, now being cold here, Ethan. I think Tran-ky-ky has a perturbed orbit of predictable periodicity.”

“I hardly know what to say.”

“I’ll try to explain. Any competent astronomer would have noticed it after a week’s study, with the proper factual input. But the only astronomer to visit this outpost world was the initial survey drone which first located it. The Commonwealth government would be interested first in the fact that it was an inhabitable planet with a stable climate, flora, and fauna. Relatively long-term alterations will show up in the files on Tran-ky-ky, but there’s no reason to act on them until the next period begins.”

“
What
next period?”

“Of warm weather. I’d estimate, very crudely, so many standard years of cold, followed by a briefer period of warm weather as it passes nearer its sun. Say, ten thousand years. The transition from cold weather to hot takes place comparatively rapidly, since as. Tran-ky-ky swings close by its star, its orbital velocity, would increase, slowing as it swings out into the cold zone again. It’s a peculiar situation and I’m not certain of the details or mechanics, but that’s what I believe takes place.

“Think what that would mean for this planet.” He spoke distantly, his gaze centered on events far away in time and place. “During the hot period the ice oceans melt, and rapidly. The sea level would rise to submerge island states such as Sofold and much of Arsudun. Sofold is in reality built atop a seamount, while the mountain-tops of Poyolavoniaar would become true islands.” Suddenly he dropped his gaze, looking embarrassed.

“That was what puzzled me so about Moulokin canyon.” Ethan thought back, recalling the teacher’s confusion over the canyon’s geology and his feeling of half-recognizing its source.

“It’s not a river canyon at all, though it resembles one closely. Rather, it’s a dry undersea canyon, the kind that slices through a continental shelf down to the edge of the abyssal plain flooring the ocean. The cliffs of the plateau we sailed alongside for so long are actually the old continental shelf. Now,” he said with satisfaction. “I’m ready to go digging for artifacts. But not in the cities. Right here, beneath the ship.”

“Wait a minute. What do you expect to find under the ship? And what did you mean when you said the Tran and the Saia both built the metropolis?”

“Tell you in a couple of days, young feller-me-lad,” he said, mimicking September.

It was two days, exactly. What the teacher uncovered were far less spectacular and much more important than any objects thus far uncovered in the buried structures.

He spread them out on a table in the central cabin, where human and Tran alike could see. “Look,” Williams began, “insect eggs over there.” He pointed to a pile of eddy-shaped, tiny white beads. “Try opening one. The casings are tough as stelamic. I had to use my beamer to assure myself of the contents.

“Animal eggs.” He pointed to some similar objects, only they were larger and multi-colored. “Seeds, I think.” He indicated a vast array of black and brown objects, mostly spherical. “Those I could barely singe with the beamer set for fine cut.

“When the temperature rises and the oceans melt, you’d have ample rainfall. In addition to enhancing an explosion of vegetation on land, such a drastic change would kill off the pika-pina and pika-pedan. Despite such changes, some plants have managed to survive the cold periods. Witness the yellow grass and occasional wire-brush we’ve passed these past days. Those grasses and the unknown varieties contained in these seeds take over the land. The pika-growth would retreat to the poles, waiting for cold epochs to return. We’ve seen how fast it grows. It could expand down from the poles, and perhaps from isolated surviving pockets on the shores, to become the dominant vegetable species in a very short time.

“I wish I had a decent laboratory here. These eggs … Somehow they survive thirty thousand years before the land warms and frees them. That’s important, because there are pretty disorganized people wandering around at that time, looking for food.

“The Golden Saia are not a different variety of Tran, nor are the Tran a species of Saia.” He gestured at Hunnar, at Elfa, at Ta-hoding. “You and the Saia are the same people.”

A mate made a disgusted noise.

“The Saia are the warm-weather mode of the Tran. During the onset of cold, those who survive the radical weather change develop thick fur. Wing dan appear and podal claws expand and grow to become chiv for traveling across the ice.” He sat down behind his table of living fossils.

“Think what such cataclysmic change would do to a developing but still primitive society. Famine, death from exposure, the near instant destruction of familiar food supplies. Sea travel obliterated, cutting off intercontinental and interisland communication. A drastic reduction in population—which explains the extent of these cities compared to the size of present Tran communities.

“It explains, Hunnar, why your people retain no memory of your warm weather ancestors. Survival would be more than enough to occupy every mobile minute of the dazed remnants of that hot climate civilization. How to make a fire, how to cook food, those would be the important things to hand down to shivering children. Not history. Given the frequency of the warm-cold weather cycle, you never have the chance to catch your racial breath.”

“No ice—free-flowing water for oceans?” Hunnar’s expression showed both horror and disbelief, as if someone had proved unequivocally that the world was flat.

“No ice,” said Ethan slowly. “And probably no real winds to speak of, either. Rain instead of snow and ice particles—-good-water-falling-from-the-sky,” he translated awkwardly, remembering that the Tran had no word for rain.

“No ice.” Hunnar seemed unable to pass beyond that incredible concept. “One could fall all the way through to the center of the world.”

“Water can support you, Hunnar, though not as well as ice.” Ethan forbore trying to describe what swimming was.

“The more reason for this confederation.” September brought them back to the present, back from speculations future and past. “If this information can be conveyed back to a few Commonwealth bureaucrats in the right agencies, it could mean a change so big and important here that—well, I can’t put into words what it would mean to your people, Hunnar.

“More o’ less, it’d mean that the next time your world warms up and you develop a nice, burgeoning society, get yourselves growing good and proper, then when it turns cold again, Commonwealth technology will be there to help you cope. Assumin’ the Commonwealth stands. I don’t make predictions for
any
government. They’ve got a disconcertin’ way o’ self-destructing.

“And you’d be able to develop a true planetary society for the first time, gain a continuity of racial development and history your world’s knocked down every time its gotten started.

“But it won’t do anybody any good unless we get this knowledge to Commonwealth authorities and show them there’s a world here cryin’ out for associate status and some honest recognition.”

I
T WAS SEVERAL DAYS
before they broke into the Assembly. The impressive domed chamber was buried beneath a huge slide. That unstable ground made Ethan and several others reluctant to enter, despite the apparent stability of the intact ceiling. Williams and Eer-Meesach could not be restrained, however. They were followed by others, reluctantly, into the largest enclosed space they’d found on Tran-ky-ky.

Built of stone and metal so solid that it supported the cumulative weight of dirt, rock and structures above it, the dome was filled with engravings and mosaics which proved conclusively most of William’s assumptions.

“You were not entirely correct, my friend.” Eer-Meesach ran a gnarled finger across one wall bas-relief. “The yellowish grass does not drive out the pika-pina but rather is a warm weather variety of it, as the Golden Saia are warm weather versions of us Tran.”

Williams was examining the carvings, nodding slowly in agreement. “Probably the nutrients concentrated in the pika-pina and pedan are moved landward and help to revive the dormant grasslands.”

“But what are these?” The elderly wizard indicated a profusion of small carvings, each different from the next. Remnants of ancient dyes still clung to the bare stone.

“Do you not remember them from the land of the Saia?” said Elfa. She turned to Ethan. “What did you call them?”

“Flowers.” He walked over, avoiding rocks and broken stone which littered the floor. “So the pika-pina flowers before it gives way to the grasses. Milliken, maybe every creature that flies, swims or chivans on Tran-ky-ky has both cold-and hot-climate varieties. That creature on the wall over there, isn’t that a stavanzer?”

“No,” Hunnar insisted from nearby. “Those strange things on its front—”

“Gills!” Ethan shouted it. “The stavanzer does look vaguely like a beached whale. Dormant gills don’t show themselves until the oceans turn to water. A stavanzer could never support its own weight on land.”

“I’m sure,” added Williams, “that the creature could exist as an amphibian for as long as was necessary to complete the transition to a watery existence.”

“I would much like to see these things you call ‘ghuls’.” Hunnar took a knife from his belt, handed it handle-first to Williams. “Go and kill a stavanzer and I will help you do the looking inside.” Laughter human and Trannish resounded in the chamber, producing echoes that were anything but eerie.

A week later the
Slanderscree
was filled with a cargo as unusual as it was diverse. There were hundreds of kilos of carvings, artifacts, sections of mosaic and wall. Enough proof of Tran-ky-ky’s erratic history both sociological and climatological to convince the stubbornest bureaucrat or Landgrave of The Truth.

September and Ethan were once again discussing the Tran’s future and history as the last of the cargo was secured in the spaces within the deck.

“Likely in the Saia mode all the Tran lived together on a few continents, lad,” the giant said. “Raisin’ a new civilization until the cold wiped it out, forcing ’em to disperse to the islands to survive. The harsher the climate, the more territory it generally takes to support folks.

“Now that we can prove they all used to live together and cooperate, it ought to be easier to get ’em to do it again.” He punctuated the comment with a reverberant grunt.

When they produced the evidence many days later, back in the steaming lands, the Golden Saia accepted the unarguable with typical lack of visible emotion. Their words betrayed their true excitement. Here was proof of most of their legends, solidified with a knowledge hitherto unsuspected. Listening to the legend-spinners, Williams and Eer-Meesach were able to fill in portions of the history that silent stone and walls had been unable to tell.

In contrast to their difficult ascent of the canyon, returning was mostly a matter of keeping the ship on a single heading. Motive power was no longer a problem, not with the wind off the plateau shoving insistently at their stern.

On reaching the edge of the ice, the captain brought the ship to a halt, whereupon Hunnar and a small group of sailors chivaned off toward Moulokin. They were expected to return with shipwrights, cranes and tools to aid in removing the wheels and axles and to help speed the installation of the five massive duralloy skates.

Their arrival in that busy shipbuilding city provoked a good deal of surprise. Neither the Landgrave Lady K’ferr, minister Mirmib, nor any of the others who knew where the
Slanderscree
had gone ever expected to see her crew again. They were certain the spirits of the dead who lived in the great high desert would claim the healthy bodies of the sailors for their own, to enable them to wander the spirit lands in more corporeal form.

Sir Hunnar’s hurried, none-too-precise explanations of what they’d uncovered created more confusion than enlightenment. He finally gave up trying to explain something he didn’t fully comprehend himself.

The following day he returned to the landlocked
Slanderscree,
accompanied by a large party of craftsmen from the city’s yards. Eer-Meesach provided a better explanation of their discoveries. Thus assured of old friends and a new heritage, they set to work making the great raft iceworthy again.

“What of the fleet from Poyolavomaar?” Ethan hesitantly interrupted the chief of the Moulokinese work crews.

The burly Tran left the final installation of a duralloy runner to his colleagues. “They remained a ten-day after your departure to the land of the Golden Saia, Sir Ethan, thence departed themselves. There have been but few ships put in to Moulokin since. None report sighting them, though two mentioned a large number of runner tracks extending northeastward.”