Tropic of Creation (27 page)

T
he grinding action of the carrier stopped, but Maret’s heart beat so hard in her ears she didn’t realize it. Lioth Vir Homan turned to her in the murk of the capsule, her face dark but her voice easy to read. “We are Up.”

They must act quickly, before the arrival of predators, attuned to the sound of a carrier. Maret reached for the door release.

Lioth stopped her hand. “I do not know you,” Lioth said in the formal cadence.

She’d almost forgotten the ceremony. There would be no mutual aid, no acts of mercy between them. Tradition held that Up World would cull those ill-suited for breeding. So the oath was sworn, that they were strangers to each other.

Maret responded, “And I do not know you, Lioth Vir Homan.” She punched the release and the door flew open.

A soup of odors flowed over her as she bolted outside, arming the mav, the traditional ronid weapon. Behind her, Lioth sprang out, her feet hitting the ground with a
splat of mud. Droplets of water hit Maret’s ankles, running in repulsive warm trickles into her boots. The heat squeezed her with a suffocating embrace.

They were on a plain of stalky plants that jutted from the ground. Leaves in the shape of swords fanned out, pointing skyward. Between clusters of the sword plants, festoons of moss formed bridges, obscuring sight. Maret pivoted, scanning for predators. In the distance, jagged peaks formed a long ridge.

Lioth looked at her, her eyes wide in a face rapidly loosing camouflage. Then, looking past Maret as though she were no more than a shrub, Lioth chose her direction and bolted off, quickly putting distance between them.

Two suns shone over the world, one large, one small. Near the mountains, clouds towered, emitting pulses of light. Maret smelled ozone, humus, plants, and her own fear. As she’d been taught, she used that fear to fuel her purpose. She ran, choosing a different direction than Lioth, crashing through the moss walls, feeling their feathery scrape on her face. After a few moments, she crouched near a clump of sword plants, listening for pursuit. UpWorld rippled with noise: wind, rustling leaves, chittering. The sounds painted a jumbled picture.

She raced for the crest of a hill, then used the vantage point to scan the larger terrain. In the distance lay a gallery of trees. Such an OverWoods would harbor many vone, but at the same time, in the close growths of stalk and vine lurked a concentration of predators. But this was no time for timidity.

Running toward the OverWoods, she noticed how the moss shot out filaments to connect one bush with another. The plant created a net to more easily catch the fertilizing pollen. Maret darted from bush to bush thinking that her goal was the same.

The sky spoke in a deep-throated growl. No one who
had studied thunder could imagine that sound. It beggared her imagination. The stacked clouds, though still distant, made the sky look immensely tall. Such distance, such height, such …

She had stopped, gazing at the sky, but she mustn’t. Maret set her legs to running again. And then, amid the sun, and the thunder, and the hard plain beneath her feet, a surge of joy overtook her. It powered her legs and primed her senses.

I am Up World. By my kin, by my bloodlines, I am here
.

An hour later she was more circumspect. She’d drawn the interest of a
frajet
, a low-slung amphibian capable of disabling her with a poison-delivering tongue as long as she was tall. Though she sliced off that tongue with her mav, it was a warning to keep her camouflage intact. Humans had an expression:
Looks can kill
. To an ahtra, this had special meaning. Calming herself, her skin mottled up nicely again.

By Ellod, she thought, I will prevail. By my departed prime, I will come to the shade of the trees, swim the dark rivers, meet ronid with all courage
.

A glint caught her eyes, a bounce of light off metal. Curiosity pulled her toward the glare. As she approached, she saw the human ships. One, as Eli had described, crashed and ruined; nearby the … 
Lucia
. In a bizarre custom, humans named their ships, sometimes after people or human qualities. It was like humans to bring poetry to war, confusing the two.

The
Lucia
was squat and fat, surrounded by the blackened scars of the craft’s descent. Maret stood for a moment, staring up at the massive and clumsy structure. She found herself thinking she would see Eli Dammond come around from the other side of the ship. He would walk up
the ramp to the craft. In her imagination, he took a last look at his prison world. Then he looked at her, waiting for her to say that some yet lived.

She backed away. The ship rested in its grass nest, deserted, quiet.

Then she turned and ran on, watching as the storm clouds masked the suns, turning the valley gray and cool.

Screams drifted in from the distance. Ahtran screams. She tried to outflank the noise, but was drawn to it. Coming closer, she parted the moss to spy into a clearing. It was Lioth, writhing on the ground. She was beset by habsen, burrowing predators, distant kin of the hab itself. Erupting from the grass, one had got hold of her leg. As Lioth thrashed, Maret’s fingers shook on the mav she held. Blood gushed from Lioth’s leg. The habsen was still half in the ground, but its grip was sure. Another burrower tossed its head up from underground, turned toward the action. Slowly, Maret let the curtain of moss fall.

Lioth Vir Hornau, I do not know you
.

She ran on. The clouds flowed toward her with relentless roaring, masking the howl in her throat, a moan of terror.

Maret
, came her unsettling thought,
I do not know you
.

N
efer Ton Enkar remained on the stage, watching. Eli could feel her drilling gaze as he hurried through the crowd. With the PrimeWay in an uproar, and the crowd surging around him, it was hard to say just what the mood of the ahtra was at the moment. Some reached out to touch his arms, the cloth of his sleeve, others jostled against him rudely. Zehops was left behind, and he was in the custody of the rotund ahtra who had joined him on the stage. This individual cut a swath through the crowd, muttering and warning off the rabble with ham-fisted waves of his arms.

“Where are we going?” Eli managed to shout at the guard who had some Standard.

“Following Tirinn Vir Horat,” came the unhelpful answer.

“But where?”

The one called Tirinn turned and glared, saying in Standard, “Less talking, more hurrying, you progeny of hopeless stock!”

They quickened their step, with Tirinn sweating and
puffing ahead of them, until they came to a stairwell where they hurried up a flight of stairs, leaving the crowd, if not its rumblings, behind.

“Hurry!” Tirinn growled at them, looking over his shoulder as he lumbered down the way. “If you were paying for my time, you’d pick up your feet.” He pressed on, growling, “Clods and stumblers …”

At an imposing portal the guards remained behind, and Tirinn swept into a gallery crowded with workers. Thick platforms jutted from the floor like growths, their top surfaces deeply pitted with depressions. Trunks of the hab trailed from the ceiling in fleshy pulls into which some of the ahtra were connected by their tendrils, hands free to work at the platforms. Ignoring the clamor his appearance created, Tirinn waved them off and led Eli down a narrow corridor and into a den.

Throwing open storage chests, he began pulling out items, and throwing them into a sack. “There are some things she can’t have,” he mumbled, rummaging in bins. “She’ll give this stage to another guide faster than the hab can digest dirt, you may be sure. But she can’t have everything.” He pivoted slowly, staring at Eli. “And I suppose you can’t pay for my time, can you? Don’t own anything, don’t know anything. You
would
be me my last client; there’s a flourish to my life pattern!”

An attendant appeared at the door. Tirinn thrust the sack into his hands, saying something in ahtran, and fairly pushed the acolyte out of the room. In due course another attendant appeared at the door. Tirinn spoke in low tones, handing him the sack. “My Prime Locator,” Tirinn explained when the individual left. “He’s good, is Nemon Es Marn, but he’ll never make it to Data Guide. Here’s why: He knows too much. Head stuffed with facts, backmind brimming with information. But the secret of the prosperous guide is context, attend me. Context. Generalizations. Think of it. Without generalizations we wouldn’t know
anything. Anyone can do specificity! Plug in, get specific! Then what do you know?” Tirinn glared at Eli, daring him to say that something might be known.

Tirinn deposited his bulk wearily on a wide bench. “Oh, sit
down,”
Tirinn snapped. “I’m not going to give myself a neck ache on your behalf.” His gesture made it clear Eli was to sit on the floor.

“If we’re in a hurry, Tirinn-as, why don’t you get to the point?” Eli managed to fit in.

“Why don’t I get to the point?” He sighed with a huge gust of breath. “Eli Dammond, if you had any idea of the point we’re about to get to, I don’t think you’d be in a hurry.” His eyes narrowed. “And I set the pace, attend me. A little courtesy is in order for the free information I am about to impart. Not to mention the sizable draw-down I did a few spans ago to learn your cliché-ridden language.”

He wiped his hands on his caftan. “It galls me, it really does, to give information away. Can’t understand that, can you? In your world, information is the only thing that’s free. You let your people starve, but they can be informed! Well, you’ll learn. Eventually you’ll be exactly where we are. That’s the only consolation of the old among the young. Knowing that eventually, despite all the posturing and nonsense, they’ll all end up exactly like you.”

The den darkened. “I’ll miss watching you blunder into the future,” Tirinn said. Around them, the air sparkled as the den became a virtual environment.

The floor dropped away. They were suspended in a cavernous cylinder, with viney growths and ferns clinging to the walls. A warm tickle of air pushed up from below.

“Hold on,” Tirinn shouted—but there was nothing to hold on to—as they began a rapid but controlled descent.

Eli’s stomach clenched at the sudden fall. As they dropped down the tube, the vines lost their leaves, becoming skeletal roots clinging to glistening wet rock.

“Everyone has their own picture of the Well. This is
mine. No pretty, awe-inspiring metaphors. Just deep. No one knows how deep.”

The notion came to Eli that every time he thought he was going up, something conspired to take him down. He had wrestled Nefer for his freedom, and now he would go Up. But first, apparently, Down.

Glowing rock walls emitted just enough light to show myriad fault lines webbing the stone.

Tirinn waved his arms. “It’s all here. All the records, all the generations. Everything we know now and everything we used to know. In the Well. The names of our kin, and all their cares and wagers are here.”

Their descent halted in front of a lateral shaft. They entered it, seeing scenes of ahtran life: dwellers moving about their lives. Maret appeared before them, her face lost in a rapt smile, her data tendril plugged into the flow.

“Studying, of course,” Tirinn said. “Even as a youngster, always studying. She was a rule-breaker, too, and I had great hopes for her. You have to know when to break the rules. That’s the sign of a leader, savior and tyrant alike.”

In the central shaft once more, they were dropping again, gaining speed.

“You’re getting quite a ride for free, Eli Dammond. I hope you appreciate it!”

“I’d like it better if I knew why.”

“Why? Why?” They stopped suddenly with a resounding bounce. Now Tirinn was on a swing, and he kicked his legs out to get a movement going, then clutched on to the rope of Eli’s swing. “Because you’re going Up World, you hopeless dolt! And you’d better know why.” He pulled Eli so close to his face that Eli could see the faintest circles within the circles of his eyes. “Context, context.” He pushed Eli away, in a wild arc. “So try to pay attention.”

And they dropped again.

“In my little conceit here, the deeper you go, the older
the data. In reality, it’s nothing like that. When we say the Well is deep, it’s an expression. But its true, if you know what I mean. Most dwellers never come here. But for you, the trip’s important. So you can quickly grasp what every ahtra knows from a life of contact with the Well. Think we’re deep now?”

They sped downward faster than Eli could keep his eyes focused on the walls. Beside him, Tirinn’s robe billowed in the rush of air, his giant sleeves fluttering up against his face like beating wings.

Swirling around them, scenes emerged. Of ahtra going about the business of Down World, living in close dens, tending the hab, digging new habitat, studying, birthing, dying, rolling the dead in their rugs …

They fell and fell. The air turned suddenly cooler. “So much for verisimilitude,” Tirinn said. “But the heat gets tedious.”

“Where are we going, Tirinn-as?”

“A hundred thousand cycles and more!” came the reply. “To the beginning of your time.”