Dragon's Egg (24 page)

After several demonstrations, Swift-Killer let some of the more eager novices play with the new toy. As she flowed back to talk to the Institute astrologer, she could hear others starting to grind away at two plates to make their own expanders.

It was soon obvious to all in the Institute that Swift-Killer’s new invention provided a means to signal back to whatever it was in the Inner Eye that was beaming down messages to them. After several turns, they set up a bright light source and started sending off a coded message aimed at the Eyes of Bright. They kept it up for many turns, but nothing happened; the pulsed beam from the Inner Eye continued its methodical blinking, slowly finishing off the last picture. After many, many
turns, Swift-Killer had a thought. Far to the east of Bright’s Heaven was a fracture ridge that stuck up just over the horizon. Its side was the quarry for the blocks that were used to build the housing and storage compounds for Bright’s Heaven. Swift-Killer decided to go out to the quarry, and make the arduous climb up the slope to the top; then she would look for the beam of light that the astrologers would send periodically in that direction.

After a dozen turns, a dejected Swift-Killer returned to the Institute.

“It is no wonder that Inner Eye is not responding to our signals,” she said. “I can just barely see them from the top of the quarry.”

“I was afraid of that,” the Institute Astrologer said. “The Eyes are so low on the horizon that our light beam has to travel a long way through the absorbing atmosphere. It is too bad that the Eyes of Bright are hovering over the east pole, if it were hovering above us, we could not only detect their beam easier, but they could see our pitifully weak attempt at a response.”

Swift-Killer shivered at the thought of something hanging over her in the sky, but agreed that Bright had certainly sent his seven Eyes to the poorest spot in the sky for seeing.

Then suddenly, Swift-Killer had an idea.

“If we went to the east pole, we could send our light beam straight up to the Inner Eye. The distance through the atmosphere would be a lot shorter, and the beam would be going in the easy direction and would not fade so much.”

“But nobody goes to the east pole,” the Institute astrologer protested. “The land is full of barbarians, every direction that you move is in the hard direction, the sky is hot and full of volcano smoke, the crust is too bristly to move on … No cheela could survive there.”

“I know it is not as nice as Bright’s Heaven,” Swift-Killer said. “But cheela can survive there. After all, as you said, the place is infested with barbarians.”

“Actually,” Swift-Killer went on, “the troopers on the eastern border have penetrated a good way toward the east pole in punitive raids on barbarian settlements. We have them cowed enough that they would not bother a good-sized expedition.”

A discussion of the pros and cons of Swift-Killer’s suggestion continued for many turns. The cost would be high, especially in terms of the number of troopers that would be needed to guard an expedition deep into barbarian territory. It was beyond the resources and authority of the Inner Eye Institute, and the idea might have been dropped if the last section of the third picture had not been so dramatic. The picture of the machine with the strange beings was remarkable enough (for there was no doubt that the sticklike things seen vaguely through the holes in the Inner Eye were beings). But up in one corner of the picture was a similar figure placed next to the familiar (although stretched) outlines of the Holy Temple. It seemed incredulous, but the markings left no doubt that the being was about one-twelfth as big as the Temple. When the new picture was completed, the Institute astrologer decided that he had better inform the rest of the ruling authorities of their discoveries.

Initially, the High Priest and the Chief Astrologer were perturbed about the Institute astrologer’s interpretation of the pictures, but finally accepted his version as no threat to their religion by assuming that Bright worked in a mysterious way, and that some time in the distant future, it would all become clear to them.

The Leader of the Combined Clans, although nominally a devout worshiper of the God Bright, was willing to compartmentalize her mind and look at the
pictures without being bothered by the religious overtones.

“Weird looking creatures,” the Leader said. “And giants at that. Yet if they have learned to hover in the sky without falling down, we could learn much from them, and they seem to be willing to talk to us. It can’t hurt to learn more. Proceed with the expedition.”

There was no doubt in anyone’s mind who would be the leader of the expedition. As a combined astrologer-thinker and battle commander, Swift-Killer was the obvious choice. With the authority of the Leader of the Combined Clans behind her, Swift-Killer organized the expedition. They would be gone for many, many turns, and meanwhile the work of the Institute had to go on, so she only took a few of the younger astrologers and novices. A good supply of flares and concentrated pod juice were obtained under her direction, and during that time a few excellent large-diameter expanders had been manufactured by the careful grinding of newly trained artisans. One of the expanders was so large in diameter that only a few of the novices could get a carrying pouch around it; once it was pouched, they could carry little else.

For the trip out to the eastern border, no troopers were needed for protection, and the food stops sufficed for supplies. However, messengers were sent ahead to gather the supplies that the expedition would need in the turns ahead. Soon, Swift-Killer returned to take over command of her troop of needle troopers, for naturally she had requested that they supply the guard for the expedition. Soon the entire party was assembled. Rations were distributed, and civilians were taught the elementary thrusts of the short sword in case a barbarian ever penetrated to the center of the circle formation. Finally they left, gliding easily over the crust toward the east magnetic pole.

Dead-Troopers pulled her eye down from its crystallium-cored stub and pushed her way off in the hard direction, keeping her body as thin as sex until she was well over the horizon. She could not figure out why this circle of troopers were penetrating so far into her territory. The scouts had reported that they were on the move, and she had acted to defend the nearest village that would have been an obvious target for a punitive attack, but the circle of troopers had carefully worked its way around it. Such behavior of Empire troopers was new, and Dead-Troopers hated anything new. They were up to something, and she would stop it—but what?

As she slithered into the compound, she noticed with glum satisfaction that the scrape of her tread on the crust had warned the camp. Those who were presently in her good graces were merely very busy taking care of important matters, while those who weren’t had rapidly absented themselves when they felt the first murmurs of her approach.

Her second-in-command, and one of her lovers, was busy rubbing his unusually brilliant short sword against a chunk of crust. Although the cast dragon crystal would usually stay sharp until the edge was notched by a hard blow, it did help a little to keep the edge in fine hone by monotonous rubbing against the crustal material. Dead-Troopers knew that Pink-Sky had never let the short sword get dull since the time he had wrested it from the dead body of a trooper whom they had killed jointly. She glided up next to Pink-Sky until their edges were touching along almost half their length. Pink-Sky continued to hone his sword as Dead-Troopers watched.

“They are in full force,” she said. “But they do not attack! I don’t like it!”

“There are very few things about troopers that you do like,” he replied calmly.

Dead-Troopers paused for a moment, then said, “Well, I like this even less.”

“Where are they going?” Pink-Sky asked.

Dead-Troopers shifted, several eyes staring at Pink-Sky while the rest wriggled in irritation. “It looks as if they are headed for the east pole,” she said. “But that makes no sense at all. No one goes to the east pole. It is too hot and bristly.”

Pink-Eye remarked sagely, “They seem to be getting very far from their home base, and the mountainous territory near the east pole makes the horizons undependable.”

Dead-Troopers paused a moment, and then realized what her second-in-command was referring to. It was a good thing he was a lot smaller than she was, or he would have been leader of the clan.

“You are right, as usual,” she said. “Let us gather the warriors and go east to the first range of ridges, to the one that has a cliff different than the rest, the one that looks as if it is a horizon until you are almost on it.”

Pink-Sky shortly had a signaling crew together and was sending out phased messages to the nearby barbarian clan settlements. The message took a long time to send, since the signaling crew had to adjust their treading to emphasize the natural resonant frequencies of the crust.

“What is that strange rumbling sound in the crust?” one of the novices inside the circle of marching troopers asked. “Is it a crust-quake?”

“No,” another said. “This is the wrong part of Egg for quakes.”

Swift-Killer had felt the rumble long before the novices. Despite what one of them had said, the east pole was crustquake country, but this was not a quake.

What they felt was only a long distance signal from one barbarian clan to another. From its similarities to others she had heard, it was probably the call to assemble. No doubt her expedition this deep in barbarian territory had caused some concern. Since it was a long distance message, and not a localized call for attack, she had no need to put the troopers on alert, but she noticed with pride that most of them had felt the presence of the barbarians, and that the dragon teeth, which had been in typical marching disarray, now gleamed as a single, coordinated, double row of interleaved needles.

At the next rest break, Swift-Killer ordered out the feeding-time perimeter guard, and gathered the civilians to the center.

“The barbarians have called for an assembly to decide what to do about us,” she said. “Hopefully, they will realize that we are not bothering their settlements, and are too large to attack, and will leave us alone. However, this is the territory of Trooper-Killer, one of the few barbarian chieftains to have killed more than one trooper and survived to tell about it. For the next few turns we will keep in a tight circle formation, and you civilians will have to stay in the center.”

Moving in one direction while looking and fighting in another direction came easily to the multieyed, non-oriented cheela. Although each had a preferred set of eyes, all dozen worked well and gave the cheela a complete, if two-dimensional, view of the region around them.

Each cheela also had one or two preferred eating pouches and elimination orifices, but with a little concentration to break many turns of habit, the two could actually be reversed in function if necessary. The same went for carrying pouches, which were just immature feeding pouches. However, it was only the very young or very old who slobbered on their collection of trinkets.

On the body of a typical cheela there were certain sections of skin that had developed good muscle tone and a high level of tactile sensory endings that made the best pseudopods, and there were other chunky muscular sections that were the best to drape about a crystallium manipulator skeleton for maximum leverage. All troopers learned in basic training camp to form deep pockets in their skin, backed up with crystallium sockets imbedded in their tread muscles to handle the long, heavy dragon teeth. A well-trained trooper could perform that function at any point around the circle while maintaining the measured tread of the advance ripple, and simultaneously eating, eliminating, and switching trinkets from one pouch to the next. It was the brag of Swift-Killer’s troopers that they could engage in sex on top of all of that. But as had been proved during a few after-battle orgies, that was more talk than performance.

The commander of a circle of troopers had two choices. One was to put all the troopers of one sex in one ring, with the next ring of the opposite sex constantly riding partially on the topside of the first rank. This kept the troopers happy, with a constant reminder of fun either under tread or topside. However, there was always the problem of the one or two who didn’t quite fit into the geometry of the circle. A second choice was to alternate male and female side-by-side in each rank, with purely (nearly) platonic interaction between ranks, although they were overlapping on topsides. Swift-Killer preferred the second ordering since it made for tighter rank spacing, despite the other problems it caused.

At one time, early in her career as an officer, she had considered the possibility of a trooper circle made up of only one sex. She could see herself, leading the Ferocious Females to triumph in battle. But her trooper background vetoed that bleak, joyless scene quickly. In
their battles against the barbarians, the real enemy was boredom, and a single-sex battle circle would not survive long.

Dead-Troopers led her clan, and the out-family warriors who had joined them, off to the east, then back again to the west.

“A long crawl for no progress,” Sinking-Cliff, one of the out-family fighters, complained. But even he had to admit that their route had taken them safely around the trooper scouts who would slither quickly over the horizon and back again.

Sinking-Cliff had been the leader of his small clan before he had decided to join forces with Dead-Troopers’ larger clan that contained many of his out-family. The penetration of the large force of well-armed troopers into his clan territory was of great concern, and he readily joined himself and his three best warriors to the cause. However, he did not really like taking commands from someone else.

Dead-Troopers knew that she was treading on prickly crust when she heard the complaint and made her move, but she could tolerate no insubordination if she were going to keep control of this half-wild band.

“Silence!” came Dead-Troopers’ harsh whisper, and Sinking-Cliff half raised his club as a dozen eyes on a huge form blazed down at him.