Thousandstar (#4 of the Cluster series) (25 page)

Heem rolled to a halt. "How can I see all that? I have no light-receptors! In the ship we were translating machine-input that derived from a visual source, but now I can only taste and feel. There can be no direct input from the sky."

'I confess, I cannot tell a lie, this time,' Jessica said. 'I filled in the imagery from my own awareness. I know what day on a planet looks like; I have made holograph paintings of it many times. I just don't feel comfortable, blind.'

"But if your picture differs from reality, and I am deceived—"

'That could be quite a problem when you encounter Slitherfear,' she agreed. 'I hadn't thought of that. When you fight the Squam, you have to have an exact notion of every detail. I think we can translate from your taste-input, but we'll need more work on it. So we'd better stay away from Slitherfear until we have it down pat.'

Heem was relieved to agree. He had to fight the Squam, but he wanted to do it in the most favorable situation for him.

'Still, I do have some direct input,' Jessica continued. 'I feel the sunlight on your flesh and the heat of the air; it has to be midday. So I know that whatever is visible, is visible.' And she strengthened the image.

Heem contemplated the scenery. It was lovely. He liked seeing, now that he had discovered how. His taste was unimpaired; he was aware of the pavement, the fumes of the ship's emissions, the nearby alien vegetation, and the line of tractors at the edge of the landing area. There was no harm in the vision.

Suddenly the tractors appeared, as Jessica caught his thought. Gross black machines with huge ballooning tires and metallic grills and complicated appurtenances.

"Oh, stop it!" he needled at her. "There is no taste of composition wheels or controls. The diffusion of taste indicates smaller sources than you show."

"Oops." The balloon wheels were replaced by metal ones, and the tractors shrank in size.

Heem rolled rapidly across to the nearest one. As he touched it, and picked up the flavors of its immediate vicinity, the oil spots and fuel drops, the taste and visual pictures merged. It was a treadlaying vehicle, with a single front wheel, just large enough for a sapient body. The controls were multiple, so that HydrO, Squam, or Erb could operate it. Heem rolled up the sloping side ramp and settled into the control chamber, familiarizing himself with the details. It was a standard model, with the jet-buttons organized in the normal HydrO mode. He could not decipher the Squam or Erb controls, but did not need to.

The next ship was coming down; Heem felt its vibration. Jessica, indulging her artistic propensity again, filled in the image: a sliver of bright metal balanced on a thin column of orange fire against a deep blue backdrop.

The fire cut off.

Heem jetted at the tractor controls. His engine wooshed into life. Fluid drove into wheel-chambers, and the vehicle lurched forward.

'What are you doing, Heem?' Jessica cried. 'Jackrabbit starts waste fuel!'

Heem did not answer. He aimed the tractor directly into the jungle at full acceleration. The vegetation loomed up, clarifying as Jessica interpreted the taste emanations of it: green stems rising from the ground, flaring into side-stems, which in turn flared into more side-stems. 'Watch out for those ferns!' Jessica cried. 'Heem, there's no need to careen off like this—'

Then the concussion came. The fern-trees swayed with the blast, and the tractor jumped momentarily from the ground.

'What was that?'

"The descending ship. Didn't you see it run out of fuel? It had to crash."

'Oh. Someone played it too close.' She was chastened. 'No wonder you got out of the way in a hurry! We could have been—'

"Destroyed," Heem finished. "As that contestant was."

'This competition—isn't supposed to be fatal, is it? I mean, the losers shouldn't—'

"Those who play it foolishly close can die. That pilot should have opted out, merely orbiting the planet until picked up. But he elected to risk it, hoping he would not crash too hard—and had he had moments more fuel he might have survived. It was a far lesser gamble than the one we took passing the Hole."

'Yes,' she agreed weakly. 'Do you suppose it could have been Slitherfear who crashed?'

"Hardly. Slitherfear is too canny for such a basic error. He was several ships back, while this one was the next following us. Slitherfear will die only when I kill him."
If
Heem killed him, instead of getting killed himself.

'Are you allowed to—to attack another contestant?'

"No. It will have to seem like an accident, or it could disqualify us if we win the competition. If we do not win the site, it will not matter; there can be no real enforcement of regulations here."

'But after what I said in your name on the space net, everyone will know that—'

"They will assume that was bluff. There are many such bluffs in such competitions, considered part of the byplay. Had I not been daunted by the sudden presence of my enemy, I should have acted as you did."

'Well, I'm still not sure it's proper,' she said. 'Promise me you won't attack Slitherfear.'

"But you were baiting him yourself!"

'Well, I changed my mind. It's a female prerogative.'

Heem could not admit that he was afraid to attack the Squam anyway. Maybe his new perception of sight would enable him to prevail, but he was hardly confident. It was one thing to contemplate revenge from the safety of distance, but another thing to roll it into practice. "I will, for your sake, try to avoid Slitherfear." He felt mixed relief and frustration. If only he had the power to destroy the Squam! Secure power, not just a hope. It wouldn't matter if he lost the competition for the Ancient site, if he settled with the Squam. He could die satisfied.

'Let's reverse those priorities. We will concentrate on winning the race. If we lose it, and all is lost, and we know I will die and you will be imprisoned,
then
we can go after your enemy. That would be the right time.'

That made excellent sense. At times the Solarian found channels of logic that were quite valuable.

Heem concentrated on his driving, using the jet controls to guide the powerful little machine through the jungle. These fern-trees differed from the plants of his home-planet; they had partial only respiration, depending on a network of roots to draw sustenance from the ground. He had studied this process and understood its alien nature. The fact that Jessica's visualization enabled him to perceive the plants with an alien sense only complemented the effect. Already he was getting used to vision, and even beginning to think visually.

There was a track in the jungle, circling the landing area. Heem guided the machine to follow it, picking up speed. This was not so very different from space piloting, in spirit.

'But how do we know where we're going?' Jessica asked.

Heem needled the tractor's information bank, and it sprayed a display of variegated flavors. "This is the pattern of the landscape," he advised her. "The keyed tastes mark fuel deposits, hazards, safe passages—"

'Oh, a map!' she exclaimed. 'I'm good at maps. Let me visualize it—there.' A colored picture-chart formed.

They contemplated it. The map indicated that they were on a large island girded with volcanic mountains, long rivers, broad plains, and deep jungles. At the center of the island was the destination, the object of the competition. The Ancient site. Heem felt a thrill of excitement run through him as he saw/tasted it, and was not certain whether it was his reaction or hers.

'Both,' Jessica said. 'The fascination of the Ancients appeals to all the sapient species of the Cluster. Even if it wasn't a race, I'd have to hurry to that site.'

"You know of the Ancients in your section of the Galaxy?" Heem inquired, teasing her.

'Of course we know of the Ancients! What do you think we are, savages? It was the Solarian Flint of Outworld who saved the Milky Way in the First War of Energy by penetrating an Ancient site. And I am descended from that great man, and my home is the castle where he liaisoned with Good Queen Bess and started my family line.'

"Roll cool, alien female! So a Solarian has tasted a site. Who knows, some century the Solarians may even achieve sapience."

She fired a mental needle-kick at him. 'You bastard! Just like a male!'

"You invite it. Just like a female."

She needled him again, but this time it was a more friendly jab, with a faint and intriguing flavor of sex appeal. Alien she might be, but she was reminding him more strongly of Moon of Morningmist. He remembered those first happy hours in the new valley, of association and copulation.

'Just as though there is nothing in the universe except sex,' Jessica said severely.

"Is there?"

'Oh, pay attention to your map! You're running into a mountain.'

So he was, in a manner of tasting. Heem guided the tractor to the side, skirting the ridge ahead. "According to the map, this is one trail of five threading through the terrain to the site. The problem is, with fifty tractors and narrow trails, it may become crowded."

'Crowded? It must be a thousand kilometers to the site! That's one tractor per fifty miles, average.'

Heem struggled with the alien measurements, unable to reconcile them with each other or with his own frame. He had knowledge of Solarian time-scales, but not distance-scales. "It is about two days' travel by machine, if there are not too many interruptions. But the tractors will not be evenly spaced; they are beginning clustered and will proceed at similar rates, since all are set at the same level of propulsion. There will be blockages at the difficult passes. If we get trapped behind such a block, the tractors on all the other trails will proceed beyond us. Then we will lose, regardless of what else happens on our own trail."

'Oh, I see. So we'd better pick a trail that isn't much used—or go cross-country.'

"No cross-country. Taste these intense lines on the map? Those are lava runnels. This planet is actively volcanic. We can cross only at the bridges."

'So there is still a good deal of luck involved,' she said. 'Those who happen to be in the wrong line, lose out.'

"We must arrange not to be in the wrong line. That way we mitigate chance."

'Gotcha. Let's study that map more closely.'

Heem pulled the tractor off the trail and parked it behind the large clump of ferns. "We dare not proceed too far on this trail until we are sure," he jetted. "I dislike delaying, but since the trails do not intersect again until after the fuel depots—"

'Fuel depots?'

"We shall have to refuel once. Machines are not civilized; they must consume physical chemicals constantly, like Squams."

'Go ahead and needle it, chauvinist! Like Solarians too! Machines
eat
.'

Yet her words were pleasant, in contrast to her thought. He liked that counterpoint. In fact, despite what he knew of her nature, he liked her. She seemed so much less like a Squam than she had, now that he was well past the superficial points. After all, there were quite a number of species in the Cluster that consumed physical substance. Not all creatures who ate and had limbs were inherently evil.

'I should hope not,' Jessica said.

He kept forgetting that she could taste his superficial thoughts. Not that it mattered, anymore.

"The most direct route seems to be this one," Heem jetted, mentally indicating a line on the map. "Almost level, no swamps, only two lava bridges. Therefore a disproportionate number will follow it."

'Which makes it a bad route,' she said. 'Now here is the longest, windingest, hilliest route, with six lava crossings. No one will take that one!'

"Because anyone who does, will lose the race. Unless all four alternate routes get clogged."

'Which they might, if all the traffic goes on them. But what's to stop spaceship arrival number one from taking the shortest tractor route, and zooming along it without opposition, since no other tractor can catch up?'

"That is an excellent question. It simply cannot be that simple. These races are not designed for that sort of victory. There has to be something that prevents a rollaway victory for the first lander."

'I certainly don't see what—oh, do you mean monsters or something, lurking for the first arrivals?'

"No, this is supposed to be a low-hazard competition, which means the worst hazards are the ones we bring with us, like other competitors. There are very few animals on Eccentric, because of its climate. There may be undiscovered monsters in the wilds, but not on the marked trails."

'Then it seems to me it's backward. Each tractor that passes will chew up the ground some more, until it is virtually impassable. So the first tractor will just keep gaining.'

"That depends on the nature of the soil and of the treads. With laydown tracks like these, that approximate the sensible locomotion of HydrOs, the path may get better and safer each time—"

'That's it!' she exclaimed. 'The caterpillar treads beat down the brush, press down the rocks, make a bumpy trail become a highway! So the later tractors will gain on the first ones, and save fuel.'

"And guarantee pileups," Heem agreed. "Yet if we can only gain by being behind, we can't win—"

'Yes we can! The key is the same as with the spaceships! It's not where you are, it's how much fuel you conserve. If you run economically, you'll pass the others in the end. Look at those fuel depots on the map. They're nearer the landing field than they are the Ancient site. How much you want to bet that every tractor will run out of fuel before the end, on that last stretch? So any who haven't caught on by then, and who continue to waste fuel by forging new trails or jamming into each other or simply speeding—'

"This verges on genius, alien creature! That
is
the key! A trap for the stupid or unthinking. What use to lead the pack, if your tractor stalls out before the others and you have to roll on your own power while the others pass you by in their machines? The strategy is to use the most-used trail, proceeding slowly and efficiently, then go ahead at the end."

'Unless we get hung up behind a two-day-long traffic jam,' she amended. 'Better to stay up near the front while the fuel depots are ahead, and—' She paused. 'Oops—I just thought, Heem. Is there enough fuel for all the tractors, no matter when they come?'