Collected Short Fiction, page 719
What he found was a small straw basket of food. Scraps of smoked fish. Bits of something dark and tough and sweetish, perhaps dried fruit. Stone-hard cakes of black bread. A small skin of some sour, weakly alcoholic liquid.
Too ravenous to be critical, he gulped the beer and gnawed the bread, trying to infer what he could about the native culture. There was fishing and forming and brewing of a sort—since the food was all preserved, he thought it must have come from some more fertile region, perhaps as tithes to support the bride of night. Nothing suggested a technology advanced enough to cross the trench.
While he ate, the tiny lamp flickered out. Left in utter blackness, he finished the food, drained the last drop from the skin, and sat back restlessly to wait.
Desperately, seething with his own frustration, he groped for ways to escape the pit, to cross the ditch and reach the space gate. All the plans he found were sheerest fantasy. He saw no action he could take.
He was blindly pacing the floor, avoiding collision by the echo of his footsteps, when the earth quaked again. Thrown against the wall, he fell back to the pitching floor. The planet reverberated under him, its vibration more powerful than sound.
Struggling to his feet in the dusty dark, he was flung down again. At last he merely lay there, ill from the motion of the troubled world. The floor quivered again to smaller concussions, and he wondered if some tunnel above him had caved in to seal the cell.
At last there was silence.
Lying helpless there, with nothing else to do, he imagined the black hole still plunging Earthward, dragging the unswallowed fragments of Mars. The new quake was due, he supposed, to the beginning strains of its terrific tidal forces—or perhaps more likely to the passage of another satellite hole, like the one-which cut that trench.
Perhaps Snowfire would know.
With slowly waning hope, he waited for her to return with news, with some unimagined miracle that might carry them across the trench to the space gate, but she didn’t come.
His mouth was parched and hunger tormented him and still she didn’t come.
He tried to estimate the days or hours left, but his sense of time was gone.
Finally, exhausted, he slept.
5
SNOWFIRE woke him.
“Sorry, Blackie.”
Her touch shattered a dream in which he had been a boy again, newly apprenticed to the arena and elated to be in the highlands on his first tly hunt. The master hunters had rigged a kite, and he was riding on it to reach the nests on the cliffs.
“I did—did try!” Despair broke her voice. “No luck.”
He sat up stiffly, his dreamed elation dying.
Stooping over him, she held a clay lamp in one black hand and a coil of his own climbing rope in another. Her black-streaked face looked pinched and bleak.
“What now?”
“Forgive me, gunggee.” She set the lamp on the floor and bent as if to kiss him. “Can’t you forgive me?”
“What do you want?”
“This isn’t I who wanted this. Believe me, gunggee!”
Frozen, he sat staring at the yellow rope.
“It’s Lar—Larlarane.” Her voice shook. “She’s afraid to hold you any longer. Since the moon is breaking up. She thinks that’s your doing. She wanted to fill the pit to bury you alive, but I convinced her that you could make a new volcano here to lift you out again. Her solution now is to give you to the bomzeeth
He merely stared, in dazed protest.
“Please stand. Hands behind you.”
“Not again!”
“We must.”
He stood unwillingly and felt her fingers knotting the ropes.
“The blindfold, too.” Her low voice caught and quivered. “We—we must. Because Larlarane’s still afraid of you. She won’t risk letting you see her again, or even the inside of her underground temple.” The blindfold covered his eyes, and he felt her cold lips brush his. “Good-by, gunggee. And please don’t blame me.”
“I don’t blame anybody,” he muttered hoarsely. “What’s the use?”
She slid a rope under his arms. It tightened. He felt himself hauled upward, dragged through the ceiling vent, tossed on a litter. Silent men ran with him. The air on his face was suddenly cold. He heard the crunch of snow underfoot, and the crack of Larlarane’s whip. At last the litter bearers dropped him into soft snow and ran. Their receding footfalls died. All he could hear was a faint crackling, like a fire that gave no heat. He lay somewhere alone, in an icy wind. Once he caught a sharp whiff of wood smoke, but he felt no warmth from anything.
Shivering, he waited.
For this useless end, he and Snowfire had been trained as Benefactors. They had waited long years for the slow probe to reach Earth. They had left undone all their tasks on Nggongga. They had lost each other—
Whipping about him, the arctic wind was suddenly alive with another sound, a far-off steady howling. On a more advanced planet, it might have been the whine of some jet-driven aircraft. Here, it could only be a diving bomzeeth.
He lay trembling. Trying not to feel the numbing Cold, he wondered about those alien creatures. Really, could their vital force come from small black holes? The physics of it troubled him. There would be radiant heat of course, from matter sucked into the funnels, and the energy of falling particles might be trapped by magnetic fields, but he couldn’t quite imagine the anatomy.
The nature of the holes themselves was another puzzle. If the force of gravity was propagated at the speed of light, how could the gravitational field of the swallowed mass reach out to trap more matter? He should have asked that double-brained portal engineer more about the theory.
Though he found no answers, he kept himself busy with such problems. They were better than counting the seconds toward the break-up of the Earth, better than regretting that he would never know the son Snowfire had promised him.
The wind brought another whiff of pungent smoke. He heard sudden distant shouts, the far-off crack of Larlarane’s whip, the jangle of broken ice beneath running feet.
“Gunggee!” Snowfire was suddenly above him, gasping for her breath. “I slipped away—from Larlarane—to die with you!”
“Untie me!” he rasped. “Can’t you untie me?”
“Here’s your knife. I’ll cut the cords.”
He felt her at his aching wrists and ankles. Suddenly the blindfold was gone. He sat up unsteadily on a snow-sifted pile of broken iron. Though it was night, the half-light seemed strangely bright. He looked at the sky—and trembled.
What he saw was a long egg-shape of silver fire, pierced with one hot blue point. Flecked and streaked with black, it reached from the zenith of the sullen sky far toward the ice horizon. Its strangeness brushed him wit a numbing chill.
“The moon of Earth,” Snowfire was whispering. “Broken up by the tidal forces of another black hole—larger I guess than the one that cut the trench. The fragments are in elliptic orbits around it. The blue point is the funnel of the hole itself, at the upper focus.”
Shaking, he staggered to his feet.
“A dreadful thing!” She caught his arm, and he felt her trembling. “And it fits a prediction that you will set the sky on fire before you destroy the earth. Larlarane is terrified. She was afraid to follow me.”
He looked uncertainly around him. The eerie light of the shattered moon lay blue and cold on a vast flat field of snow. A foot-beaten trail ran far across it to a low stone building, which he thought must be the temple of Ghur. Beyond, rounded mounds were soft with snow.
“Ruins.” Snowfire gestured widely. “A city—when Earth had cities. This fiat field is where the shuttle craft took off. Your altar, now. The fires must be a signal to the bomzeeth.”
He found the fires as she spoke. Three smoky blazes, spaced wide about the pile of broken metal where he had been tossed. Their yellow light was dim beneath that great frozen whirlpool of brighter fire overhead.
“What—what now?” Her teeth chattered. “What can we do?”
He caught her arms and held her off to look into her green eyes. They were lusterless and hollow, dull against her black-dyed face. He felt her shivering beneath the loose white cloak.
“We’re still Benefactors,” he told her. “Well do what we can.”
She still held his knife in one black hand. Behind her, among the scraps of metal offered to Ghur, he saw their packs, his binoculars and translator, Snowfire’s yellow survival suit, finally the laser energizer.
“Our key!” He bent to snatch it up. “If we could reach the space gate—”
His voice faded when he heard the howling returning overhead. The diving creature thundered low above them and climbed again on its plume of scarlet flame. In black silhouette, its big-bellied shape crept upward across the silver egg-shape of the splintered moon.
“Can you run?” She tugged at his sleeve. “Maybe it will wait till the fires burn lower before it drops to feed.”
Scarcely hearing, he stood following its far red fleck, climbing and wheeling above the broken moon to dive again. Trembling, he felt almost that he was once more in the great arena at Nggonggamba, awaiting the dive of a killer tly. His numb fingers tightened suddenly on the laser energizer.
“Get out of that cape.” He swung suddenly to Snowfire. “Get into your suit.”
She slid out of the loose white fur. Nude and black, shrinking from the bitter wind, she looked so defenseless, so utterly despondent, that a lump throbbed in his throat. He held the stiff yellow suit while she slipped into it, then bent to gather up the rest of their gear.
High in that uncanny sky, the bomzeeth turned to dive again. He saw a ripple of color beyond it, and paused to stare at the long curtains of green and crimson fire dropping toward the blue-lit white horizon, all across the north.
“The aurora,” Snowfire. whispered. “Caused I guess by particles from the funnel that tore up the moon.” Breathless, she finished fastening her suit. “Shall—shall we run?”
“Not far,” he murmured. “Not too far.”
Just beyond the nearest signal fire, he pulled her flat beside him in the snow. The bomzeeth came roaring down, more appalling than any tly. The ice quivered when it struck. Sliding on to Larlarane’s offering, it began licking up the broken iron with an enormous rough black tongue.
“Come along!” He hauled her upright. “We’re going for a ride.”
She hung back, staring blankly. “Are you crazy?”
“Maybe,” he muttered. “But the craziest chance is better than none.”
He dashed back around the fire, toward that dark and monstrous shape. At the last instant, its alien black-scaled hugeness almost broke his resolution—but an unseen drag had already caught him. Swept unexpectedly ahead, he jumped high. Snowfire came flying behind him, drawn after that same savage attraction.
They crashed against the hot black scales. The impact dazed him for an instant, before he caught his breath and tried to stand. The pack had been tom off his back, and his limbs were leadenly heavy.
“So I was right!” Her outcry was oddly triumphant. “It does have a black hole in its belly. We’re already caught in the gravity field.”
Fighting that ruthless force, he was climbing the great scales to the top of its swollen body. Twenty feet beneath him, that thick snake-like tongue dropped a mass of rusted arm and struck savagely at him. He thumbed the laser alive, and slashed back with its blinding green needle.
The tongue recoiled.
The creature bellowed, with a hurricane of sound that battered him backward and ached in his bones. Snowfire seized his arm, screaming. He heard nothing, but saw her arm pointing. He turned and found the creature’s black-fluked tail whipping toward them.
He Stabbed it with the laser.
The blade of pulsing light did no harm that he could see, but the creature thundered louder. The tail stiffened, red fire exploding from its flaring jet. The hot thick scales quaked underfoot, and suddenly they were gliding across the flat snowfield.
Snowfire’s clinging fingers dug hard into his arm. Glancing at her, he found her eyes dark and staring. Beneath the mask of blackness, her drawn face wore a look of startled incredulity.
“Down!” he shouted. “Hang on!”
She gaped at him, unhearing, unbelieving.
Crouching against the bitter wind rising, he beckoned her down behind him. Followed by its long plume of crimson thunder, the creature was sliding faster, faster. Larlarane’s tiny signal fires were lost behind. The air-stream tore at him, till he had to drop deeper into the grip of the creature’s great belly and clutch the edge of a massive scale. Suddenly they were in the air, lifting above the rounder mounds that once had been a city. Wheeling beneath the blazing ellipse of the fragmented moon, the creature swung north, toward the cold high shimmer of the aurora.
“The wrong way!” The shriek of the icy wind and the roar of the jet swept Snowfire’s voice away, but he saw her dark mouth moving and saw her black hand pointing and understood her desperate words. “The gate is southeast!”
He searched to sense and master the creature, as he would have probed to control a fighting tly. Fighting the cruel wind, he played his wire-sharp laser blade against its left-hand fluke. Its rough scales bucked under him and its bellow hurt his ears. But the massive tail flinched aside, and the aurora slid back across the sky.
Pure joy lifted him, a sheer elation he had never felt before, but had only imagined once long ago, the first time he sneaked into the arena to try picking pockets and discovered a new ambition when he saw a black champion binding a vicious tly, with thrown hats falling in a colored rain to acclaim his triumph. Nothing in all reality had left him feeling quite so splendid.
The aurora, he saw, had wheeled too far around. He stabbed the laser at the right-hand fluke. The creature roared and veered sharply back. Snowfire was suddenly shaking his arm, pointing down. He saw the trench.
An endless black slash across the blue-lit snowfields, it crept back beneath them. To his left, the bottom of it shone with sudden silver, burned with one bright blue spot, reflecting the shattered moon.
That brief reflection dimmed, and the barrier chasm was suddenly behind.
“The beacon!” Snowfire’s scream was whipped away again, but he followed her pointing arm to the green-and-orange blink on the far white horizon. “The gate!”
It was slipping aside, and he stabbed the laser at the left fluke again. Again the creature veered. Green-and-orange, green-and-orange, the beacon winked straight ahead.
The wind-stream tore and battered at him, blurred his eyes with tears. His straining fingers ached and slipped on the edge of the great black scale. Snowfire lost her clinging grip on his arm, clutched at him desperately. He flung his free arm around her, to pull her down behind him.
And the beacon crawled on toward them.
He ducked his head to wipe his streaming eyes and found the dome beneath it, a tiny bulge on the vast expanse of blue-lit snow. He gave Snowfire a grin of elation, and saw the agonised question on her tear-streaked face.
How were they to reach the ground?
“Here we are!” He yelled into her ear, though he knew the wind would take his words. “With no fall gear.”
Testing the responses of the creature, he played the laser on the eyelike pits at the roots of the hard-scaled wings. It lurched and bellowed and at last began to drop. He stopped the stabbing needle, until it tried to climb again.
The beacon and the dome came nearer, nearer. He let the creature lift a little, held it level, forced it sharply down. Howling, it touched the ice, plowing out great plumes of snow.
“Now!” He lifted Snowfire. “Off!”
Fighting the pull of that vast anomalous mass in its belly, they climbed the thick-sealed tail, dropped off into a bank of snow. He heard its jet boom and shriek behind him, felt its scorching blast above him, saw its crimson glare receding.
And it was gone.
Dazed and bruised, he pulled himself out of the drift and turned to look for Snowfire. He found her standing where they had fallen, bent double. Sick, he thought, or perhaps hysterical. He was stumbling to help her when she straightened with the energizer, which he had dropped.
“Here, gunggee. You’ll need this.” They slogged to the portal dome. Built of massive permalith, it stood unscarred by centuries of vandals. The tall entry doors slid open before their translators. Inside, they found gloomy silence, a few scattered rocks and sticks left by the ancient Earth-folk when they disabled the gate, a dusty human skeleton sprawled beside a stone-tipped spear, where one invader had died.
On the high control stage, everything looked intact except a single shattered plexoid panel with a rock still embedded in it. With stiff and trembling fingers, he pulled out the broken energizer beneath it, snapped the new unit into place.
Nothing happened.
“Something wrong!” A shock of fear took his breath. “I don’t know what—”
“Wait!” Snowfire whispered. “I think the ring-fields are forming.”
The console was suddenly alive with winking symbols. At the center of the vast floor below them, where the entry ways and exit ways converged around a circular pit, fleeting wisps of dark shadow and pale blue fire had begun to flicker. The fire suddenly ballooned to become an enormous blue iris, The shadows blackened and condensed into its center, became the staring pupil of the interstellar eye. Sudden light flushed the vault above them. Signals chimed from the console. The ways began to crawl.
“Gungee!” Elated, Snowfire gripped his arm. “We’ve done it!”
They ran down the ramp to the nearest entry way. It swept them into that enormous lidless eye. Transit through the ring-fields that bridged the light-years was only a shock of shifting gravities, a wink of suspended sensation. With no more sense of motion, they were abruptly in the vaster portal dome on Xyr.
The fat bald portal engineer found them there, in the emergency hospital center. Between their tests and shots and treatments, he wanted to know every fact they had learned on Earth. News of the bomzeeth lit a glint of eager interest in the pale eyes beneath his implanted computer.
