Thousandstar (#4 of the Cluster series) (15 page)

It was a long, steady movement. Heem, tired, slept. Jessica, deprived of Heem's sensory input, slept also.

Heem, like most sapients, dreamed. Dreaming was a kind of sifting and tagging of recent experiences, identifying the important ones in key respects so they could be cross-referenced and filed safely in memory. Often Heem's dreams were unpleasant, for his life had not been generally satisfactory to him. Quite a number of his dreams were of the illegal variety. This time, however, his sleep imaginings were strange and pleasant.

He found himself riding a docile flatfloater, one that obeyed his every needlejet without quarrel. But he did not needle it; he let it take its initiative. Together they sailed over slopes and ridges, slid down into a river valley, and across the river. The scenery was delicious, with the vegetation spraying gentle wafts of delicate flavor in waves. He was back in his juvenile phase, happy, careless of the future. His juvenile siblings were with him, here in the valley of Highfalls.

"Make it go faster, Jess!" his companion jetted.

"It's already at its cruising velocity, Jess. It can't safely accelerate."

"Cruising velocity? Dragons have no cruising velocity! They just accelerate till they can't go any faster!"

"Well, that's how fast I want to go, clone-brother!"

Clone-brother?
This is not my dream!
Heem needled internally. But he did not wake. His dream shifted into another reality. He was rolling desperately toward freedom in the recurrent nightmare reenactment of his escape from captivity. Yet the deepest element of that experience was not the physical escape, for that had succeeded. It was the emotional escape that had failed.

He rolled up to a safecage and needled his signature-flavor into its lock. Its mechanism took a moment to absorb this. Then the lock released and the gate fell open. Heem rolled in, and his weight caused the gate to counterbalance, sliding back into position and relocking.

Now he was safe for the night. The cage was designed to keep Squams out; Erbs of course were no threat. He could rest and sleep, letting his guard relax. Of course the lock now had his flavor, and that would alert the authorities to his location, but the flavor-credits were collected only once a day, and by the time his flavor was fed into the credit computer, he would be gone. His credit was good; it was his citizen's status that was invalid.

Now for a good evening meal. He punched the food display, summoning a pseudosteak and sparkledrink, gray-flavored. He picked up the drink—

Eating?
In absolute shock and revulsion Heem voided all his jet-reserves. The ship, responsive to random commands resulting from this explosion, damped its main drive and veered. Suddenly he was in free-fall and fully awake.

He reacted with experienced proficiency, quickly restoring the drive and stabilizing the ship. Then he turned inward. "Solarian, that was your dream, was it not?"

'Yes—at the end. I'm sorry—I did not realize—'

"It is not bad enough that your female alien presence intrudes on my mind, but to have your Squam-begotten dreams polluting my sleep—eating! You make my imagination unclean!"

'I see that. I'm sorry. But I do not control my dreams.'

Heem's attention was already on the column of ships. It had thinned out; now all ships were single file and well spaced. "We are rolling to the midpoint; now we shall discover how we situate."

Translating his taste, Jessica looked at the scene. 'We slept longer than I supposed! We're halfway there already?'

"The time sense is distorted under constant acceleration. We have been half a day in space, and now approach a velocity of one thirty-fifth light speed."

'Half a day? Twelve hours?'

"As I recall the Solarian scale, correct. If a day on your home-planet is similar to a day on mine—"

'I—I can't tell, but from your feeling about it, it
feels
the same. Let's assume a day is a day the Galaxy over, and go from there.'

"We accelerate for half a day, and decelerate for half a day, our full course between planets being about one seventy-second of a light day."

'I—see,' she said uncertainly. 'We accelerate to only a fraction of light speed, so it takes us much more time to travel the distance light does. I think your planets must be about as far from their primary as ours, and ours are only a few light minutes from—'

"Your distances are irrelevant," Heem needled in impatiently. "The moment of truth is upon us."

'But the course is only half run. You said—'

"It is not yet half rolled. There will be a period of free-fall; ships who do not utilize this will be short of fuel. But it is the point at which approximately half our fuel has been expended. We can gain on the other ships only if we have more fuel. The initial bunching and column-merging is done, and the fools have been eliminated. From this point on, only power and margin suffice."

'Oh, yes, I see that. But we're well up in the line, now, aren't we? We don't need to win at this stage; all we have to do is finish in the top fifty.'

"Yes. Therefore we now assess ships to determine our place. This is most accurately done at the moment of turnabout, for only then do the other ships betray their situation. They must turn on schedule."

'Suppose they don't? I mean, suppose they coast a little longer at top speed, then brake more suddenly at the end, gaining a few places?'

"Some will try that, especially if they are just behind the fifty-cut position. But if they cannot decelerate to landing velocity—"

'Crash,' she said. 'That's a risky game.'

"Extremely. Most will roll it safely, not endangering their lives for the gain of one or two places." He needled the buttons, establishing a composite flavor for the ships of the column ahead and behind. He wanted every one of them in mind, for this critical survey.

'I see the ships!' she exclaimed. 'It's almost like having eyes now! But why are you surveying the ones behind us also? We don't have to worry about them, do we?'

"We do not yet know who is ahead and behind," he explained. "Their present position in space is deceptive. Some have too much velocity; they will not finish."

'Oh, I begin to understand. If they're too fast at the turnover, they can't decelerate in time to land. I mean, they might decelerate to landing velocity, but only some distance beyond the planet, which would be no good. They won't really crash, will they?'

"They should signal for a fuel recharge—after the cut has been made. They will not crash, but they will be out of the race."

Heem and Jessica spotted the ships. Heem used the ship's computer to calculate the velocity of each vessel as it turned over, while Jessica kept track of the leaders. It turned out that ten of the apparent leaders were over-velocity and were unlikely to finish; but fifteen ships behind Heem's own turned about on a schedule that would normally put them in the first fifty. Some of these might be within-velocity, but actually be scant on fuel—but others might be below-velocity and have reserves of fuel, enabling them to gain at the end. Strategies varied, and it was necessary to make educated guesses. There could be a lot of shifting of places at the end of the race, as all velocities were reduced.

The best finish Heem could reasonably hope for was sixty-one. That represented an excellent gain, from his start at or near two hundred—but not quite enough.

'But if you do some more clever maneuvering, antagonize a few more pilots—' Jessica said.

"I might gain four, five, possibly even six places, no more," Heem jetted. "We are not competing against fools and amateurs now; these are the natural spacers like myself. They will not react, they will not be deceived; they know they have the advantage, and they will maintain it. I used up my surplus fuel getting to this stage; this is my maximum position. To push beyond this place in the column would be to disqualify myself for inadequate fuel, or to crash." He needled the buttons, and the ship abruptly changed course without turning about.

'Is something wrong?' Jessica inquired worriedly. The ship doesn't seem to have reversed. It's still accelerating forward, angling out of the column.'

"The ship is responsive. It is on course for my destination."

'But there is no habitable planet in that direction, is there?'

"Correct. And if there were, I would not have the fuel to make a safe landing, after correcting for a non-buoyed and therefore inefficient course."

'Then where are you going?' Her alarm was burgeoning, anticipating his answer.

"Into the Hole."

 

 

 

Chapter 4:

Holestar Abyss

 

 

She did not taste very much different than a male, in general flavor. But the distinction was instantly manifest. Every jet she made possessed the female attribute, clear only to another HydrO but extremely significant
to
that HydrO. Heem had never before encountered a female of his species, but from the outset he had not the slightest doubt of her nature.

"Who are you, who preserves me from demise?" Heem inquired as he recovered his equilibrium.

"I am Moon of Morningmist," she responded with a jet so diffident he hardly felt it. She, too, was acutely aware of the presence of the alternate gender.

"I am Heem of Highfalls." He paused, absorbing further impressions of her, and discovered an urge he had not felt before. "You are the first female I have encountered in my life. Shall we indulge in sexual play?"

"Of course," she agreed.

"Is this valley otherwise occupied?" He was not certain why he inquired, but knew it was important.

"Four of my sister-siblings remain."
 

Therefore he knew that there would be no reproduction. He needled a splash of purest lust at her, the product of a lifetime of innocent abstinence, but did not include the key flavor of his signature. She responded with a passionate spray that soaked him with her essence. The result was a pleasure so novel and intense that he gave himself entirely up to it. He knew that Moon was reacting similarly.

'You just met her, and you copulated?' Had Heem needled that question to himself? Mentally he answered it. As a juvenile he had no reservations about pleasure, and sexual gratification was the most available and harmless of pleasures. It was practiced as a routine courtesy whenever male and female HydrOs associated with each other on an individual or group basis. As an adult he discovered that many other sapient Cluster species regarded sex in another flavor. But alien ways were alien ways; why any creatures should choose to restrict something as natural and necessary as this was not a thing he needed to make the effort to understand. Alien species had a number of strange or appalling attitudes, such as eating or—

'Doesn't that leave offspring littering the landscape?' the internal needle came quickly.

Naturally not! Sexual interplay was a prerequisite for procreation, but not identical to it. Reproduction occurred only when the male included his unique signature in the needlejet and when the female accepted that flavor. Neither would do this unless the habitat were suitable. Reproduction, unlike copulation, was a serious matter.

'I suppose it really is the same with us,' the mental jet continued. 'We invoke contraceptive measures so that we can indulge in similar play without conceiving offspring. Nevertheless, we do have a certain discretion about the choice of partners for such intimacies. Sex, to us, is not a casual matter, even without procreation.'

Heem ignored the alien taste and continued his forbidden memory-dream. After sating himself pleasantly with Moon, he rolled with her on a tour of the valley of Morningmist. It resembled Highfalls, but lacked the great central river; instead small streams fed into a good-sized lake, from which mildly flavored vapors rose in the early section of each day. Heem soon became acclimatized to the variant tastes of this region, which were not far distinct from those of his own valley.

The sapient inhabitants of Morningmist were female, as only one gender was littered in any one site. Heem met them singly and needled each courteously with lust, and each responded with a spray of gratification more passionate than his own gesture. This was natural, for he was recently sated while they were not. In due course all rolled together beside the lake and Heem, with a special effort, sprayed all five simultaneously with passion. They needled him back, all together, and his pleasure was so strong that he rolled into the water and sank to the bottom. They shoved him back to land cheerily. It had been a wonderful occasion.

'Simultaneous group sex with five females?' the interfering thought came. 'This is beyond the capacity, if not the aspiration, of our males.'

It would have been embarrassing had it been beyond the capacity of Heem, for the females of Morningmist were all deserving. It would have been a shame to exclude any from the polite welcome.

'Some polite welcome!' the private needle came. While they toured the valley, he jetted conversationally with them, learning about their situation. It was similar to his own. They too had been seeded in their valley and left to develop independently; they too had suffered crucial attrition from hundreds to the present five. In crossing the mountain range he had learned only that the next valley was different in detail, not nature. He had not solved the mystery of his existence.

"What of your valley?" Moon jetted delicately after they had satisfied themselves with another copulation and settled for the night in her cave. "How did you travel to ours?"

"Two of us rode a flatfloater up the mountain slope," he jetted back. "The floater lost propulsion near the apex, and we managed to roll on over the top. My sibling was slain by an alien monster. I am the last survivor of my valley, I believe."

"Slitherfear!" she sprayed with horror. "The nemesis that—" She nerved herself for the foul taste. "That eats."

"You know of him? We did not know his name."

"He has no name we can conceive. He is a dread Squam, predator on our species. We named him for his attributes. He has been preying on our number since he appeared recently in our valley. Every several days he destroys another sister, most horrendously."