Medusa: A Tiger by the Tail (14 page)

The dominant life forms were mammals, however, something I found interesting but logical—reptiles couldn’t really have much of a future on a world as cold as this, and insects would have too short a developmental season each year to do more than fill an ecological niche. Even the ocean creatures, as far as was known, were air-breathing mammals, since, apparently, the algae and plankton that would support a real fishy evolution was low, and the seas were relatively shallow.

The familiar pattern of animal development was here, though, with one vegetarian species called vettas eating mostly grasses and another called tubros eating mostly leaves and other parts of trees, apparently instinctively trimming but not killing. The big, -nasty brutes were the harrar, who mostly ate vettas and tubros. There were several hundred subspecies of the two vegetarian types, and several varieties of harrar. The rest of the animal kingdom was varied, vast, and mostly invisible, but fitted into the normal balance of nature in totally expected ways. I concentrated on the dominant life forms, except for the smaller creatures that were poisonous or nasty, because I hoped to find some clues in the big ones to what I was looking for.

As for looks, the vettas had large, flat, toothy bills, big, round eyes, short necks, and legs that were very wide, clawed, and padded, and yet they could move when they had to, at speeds up to forty kilometers per hour for short distances. The tubros had long, thin snouts, necks that bent in all directions and were longer than their bodies, and enormous, clawed limbs that were almost handlike. Their tails somewhat resembled their necks, and they occasionally used these tails as decoys when checking to see if the coast was clear. Apparently the tails came out if bitten. Tubros weren’t very fast, but they could climb trees in a flash and could sleep either right side up or upside down, clinging to strong branches or trunks. Vettas had no real defense except their speed; tubros, however, could be nasty when cornered, and could use that tail of theirs like a whip.

The harrar was the hardest to put down. Mostly it looked like a huge, undulating mass of fur, skin, and taloned feet that were almost birdlike. It generally walked, looking ridiculous, on those legs; but when it caught prey, two small, nasty hands in that fur were strong enough to tear heads off. Somewhere in that lump, was the biggest mouth relative to body size that I’d ever seen, with row upon row of teeth. The harrar interested me the most, since it was, according to the legends, a shape-changer. This critter would need to eat a lot to feed that big body, and it could hardly climb trees or outrun anything going forty kilometers per hour.

The sea creatures seemed to mirror those on land, except that there were more levels with far greater interdependence, starting with the little slugs that ate bacterialike organisms near the surface and also scavenged the bottom, up to water-born counterparts of the vettas and tubros. Despite smooth sides and flippers and fins, these looked very much like their land counterparts—but were omnivores, eating smaller animals as well as surface and bottom water plants. There was also an amphibious version of the harrar, which appeared to be a one-ton or more lump of gray or black with dorsal and tail fins, little beady eyes, a big, big mouth—and little else. This sea carnivore, called makhara, seemed totally unable to cope with swift prey—yet it had to do pretty well to keep that mass of fat happy. How did it do it? How, in fact, could
it
even grab its prey? These questions, too, were not only unanswered in the texts, they were unasked.

There were no tubros north of the twenty-eighth parallel, where the trees became too small or intermittent to support such life. But there were snow vettas able to burrow under meters of snow and ice to get at whatever was down there, and harrar to hunt them. That, too, was interesting. Lots of stuff on the unique life cycle of the snow vetta, nothing but a mention that the harrar were there. That implied that there were no snow harrar, and again brought up an interesting question: how did the dark, bulky, ungainly
harrar
ever catch its quota of snow
vetta,
many of whom spent most of their time burrowing deep beneath the snows?

Ching, to my surprise, became interested in some of my studies. It was amazing to me that someone born and raised on Medusa knew so little about the bulk of the planet. But she was aware of her ignorance—after first confessing that, until I looked into these things, she’d never even thought about them—and eager to fill the gap.

One thing was for sure—they were really scared of those harrar, even in the highest councils of Medusa. You had only to think of the double energy guard around Gray Basin’s entrances, and even Rochande had a double perimeter fence of the same lethal energy barrier around it. Of course, such a system, for the protection of the public—sold and accepted as such—also kept the people tightly inside their monitored cities and protected trains. Even those trains were sealed compartments, totally insulated from the outside world, almost as if they were spacecraft sealing off their occupants from some lethal, alien environment.

Man had always triumphed over the most vicious and lethal carnivores on world after world. Yet here it seemed almost as if the legendary harrar were allowed to breed and roam and multiply; and they probably were, not so much from technological as from political motives. Raised in insulated cradle-to-grave technological pockets, most Medusans probably couldn’t survive a day without those conveniences they took for granted. This suited the Medusan authorities very well indeed.

Whether the doing of Ypsir or of his predecessor, this was a unique society and something of a work of genius, based on the fact that Lilith and Charon supplied so much food there was no necessity to raise any on Medusa, and technology had maintained the closed culture of Medusa and fed it.

We worked some six weeks with nothing happening, and I was beginning to grow bored and worried and fidgety once more. Neither TMS nor this mysterious Opposition I only half believed in had surfaced, and I was beginning to wrack my brain once more for a different opening.

88 Medusa: A Tiger by f he Tail

Ching dismissed my irritation as moodiness, something she was used to by now, but I was determined to do something to get me off dead center and beat the system. Of course, just when I’d given up all hope or belief in the Opposition, I heard from them. And heard is the right word, although they took a leaf from Krega’s notebook.

We had a separate crew’s toilet on the train, just forward of the first passenger car, and, as usual, I went there to take a piss. Such occasions were one of the very few times I was separated not only from Ching, who had to keep working while I went and vice versa, but also from the supervisors and general passengers. There was, of course, a monitoring device in. the John.

‘Tarin Bul?” I heard the voice, electronically distorted, and looked up and around, puzzled. I’d been called by vox on the terminal many times, but the voices had never sounded as inhuman as this.

“Yes?”

“We’ve been watching you, Tarin Bul.”

“Aren’t you always?” I cracked, zipping up my pants and going to the washbasin.

“We are not TMS,” the voice told me. “We do not like TMS very much. We suspect that, by now, you don’t like them much, either.”

I shrugged and washed my hands. “I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t on that one,” I told the voice sincerely. “If this is a test by TMS and I say I don’t like them, I’ll get picked up and asked why. If, on the other hand, I say I just love TMS, they’ll pick me up for sure and rush me to the nearest psych. So I’ll pass on the answer, and unless there’s something else I’ve got to go back to work.”

“We are not TMS,” the voice told me. “We are in opposition to the TMS and the current government of Medusa. We are powerful enough to feed a false signal, recorded earlier, of you sitting on the toilet to TMS monitors while we use this channel to talk to you.”

“Says you,” I retorted.

“You’re no native, programmed to this life. Why do you not accept what we say?”

“For one thing, if you’re that powerful you don’t need me. And if you
do
need me, and are that powerful, then you’re either phony or pretty, incompetent rebels.”

“We
don’t
need you,” the voice responded. “We
want
you. That is a different thing. The more people in more guilds we have, the stronger we become, the better able to manage this world after it is ours. You in particular have two attributes of value to us. You have mobility due to your job, which is invaluable in our society. And, you are not a native of this world, and sooner or later it will drive you crazy.”

“Maybe it already has,” I said, retaining my skeptical tone. “But let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that I believe you’re who and what you say. What good does it do me?”

“Listen carefully, for we will say this only once, and time is short. Someone will soon miss you and come in demanding to know why you are not back at work. You have one chance and one chance only to join us. At your next layover at Rochande you have a day off. Go to the matinée show at the Grand Theater that day. Sit in the balcony. Leave to go to the bathroom halfway through the first act. We will contact you.”

“And my pair-mate?”

“Not at the first meeting. Later we will arrange for her as well. This communication is ended. Guard your comments.”

And, with that, things were, allegedly, back to normal. I left quickly and returned to work. Ching noticed that I seemed cheerier than I had for weeks, but couldn’t figure out why.

We always went out for a special meal and a show on our day off and when I suggested the Grand, Ching wasn’t the least surprised. As instructed long ago, I keyed in the code on my terminal that told me how much credit we had for our day on the town—and simultaneously let my TMS contact know that things had, finally, started to roll. I had no intention of double-crossing either side until Td gotten what I wanted from this assignment, and certainly not until I could get away with it.

When you’re sitting in the middle of a dark and crowded theater you-can instantly make yourself a villain in a number of ways, but the worst is to go to the bathroom in the middle of the show. I finally made it to the aisle through the curses and dirty looks—made worse by the sure and certain knowledge that I’d be back—and proceeded to the upper lobby, where the large rest room was located. As I passed the last row of seats—far more sparsely populated since they were so far from the screen you might as well have dialed the show on your terminal—a hand shot out from a darkened seat, grabbed my arm, and pulled me over with such force I almost lost my balance.

All I could really tell about her was that she was tall, lean, and looked to be a pure civilized worlder. “Listen, Bul,” she whispered, “just sit down and make like you’re watching the show. Let me do the talking.”

“Fair enough,” I whispered back, and sat.

“Are you still interested in our organization?”

“I still don’t believe in it,” I told her, “but I’m here, at least out of curiosity.”

‘That’s enough—for now. Just two blocks north of this theater is a small café the Gringol. Go there after the show. Order what you like from the menu. Wait for us. We will take care of things from that point on, both with you and with TMS. If you are not there, you will never hear from us again. Now get up and go to the toilet.”

I started to open my mouth and respond, then thought better of it, and did as instructed.

Ching and I watched the rest of the show, then wandered outside, where it was still light but would not be for much longer. I suggested a walk to get the kinks out of my leg. In the middle of the second block north of the theater, I spotted the small sign for the Gringol and turned to Ching. “I’m getting hungry. Want to get something?”

“Sure. Why not? Got anyplace in mind? How flush are we?”

“Not very,” I told her, and that was the truth, despite the extra cash. “Let’s see what this café has.” The maneuver was nice and smooth and natural, and she didn’t suspect a thing.

The place was small and dimly lit, although, of course, that would not matter to TMS and its ever-present monitors. Still, in a world with cafeteria sameness, the occasional trip to a restaurant or café, with an actual menu from which to select meals, was a real treat. Sometimes, the food in small places like this was even prepared by humans with their own special recipes, mostly Warden exiles or those with recipes passed down from exiles and pioneers.

“Looks expensive,” Ching said dubiously. “Are you sure we can afford this?”

“Probably not, but what the hell,” I responded, picking a small two-person table in the back and sitting down. The place was almost empty, although a few more people drifted in as we sat A human waitress arrived from the back and handed us small menus. There weren’t
that
many choices, but the few available promised to be “special recipes found nowhere else on Medusa”: a Cerberan algae steak, an unusual Charon fruit plate, and other Warden specialties, including some meat dishes, I noted. The menu bragged that nothing used was synthetic. I doubted that, but at least such a declaration meant they’d try hard to make you believe it. The prices were fairly reasonable, so when the waitress suggested a special Lilith wine I looked at Ching, then sprang for it.

Frankly, I was surprised at the suggestion, considering our obvious youth. The wine arrived and was poured from a small wooden flask. I picked mine up, looked at Ching, and smiled. “Ever had alcohol before?”

“No,” she admitted, “but I’ve always been curious about it.”

“Well, you’ll know why you haven’t. Try it.” I sipped mine, and she drank hers as if it were a glass of water, then made a curious face. “It tastes—funny.”

It was actually a very good wine, considering I had no idea what it was fermented from, that tasted like a high-class white from the civilized worlds. “You don’t like it?” 

“No—I mean, yes. It’s just—different.” The waitress was soon back to take our order, and we gave it and relaxed. It occurred to me that either the wine or something in the food might contain a drug, but that didn’t worry me. I expected it.