King of the Scepter'd Isle (Song of Earth) (43 page)

“The tide will rust it, you fool. You know they can’t stand seawater.”

“Listen, if you want any help from me, you’d better stop calling me a fool. Just tell me how you think you’re going to get down there.”

“With the rope, of course. I came prepared.”

They descended to a platform of large boulders, all that remained of ancient falls after the tides had swept the small stuff away. The savior lay twisted, humming pleasantly to itself. Its right leg was broken. The skin had split and a mess of parts had spilled out.

“Hello,” it said. “I’m damaged and I haven’t been able to notify anybody. Will you be kind enough to carry a message back to Mara Zion?”

“No, we won’t,” said Sally, chuckling triumphantly. “You’re going to stay
here until you tell us what we want to know.”

“Of course. What can I tell you?”

Its readiness took Sally by surprise and she hesitated. Marc said, “Why did the true humans go into the dome?”

“Because it’s much better for them in there.” The savior’s tones were quiet and reasonable. “The dome was built long before we came on the scene. The humans were already in there, their minds living in a place they call Dream Earth. They’d already discovered mental activity is much safer than physical. Not to mention the increased life span resulting from a perfect diet, administered intravenously. You humans are delicate creatures, like all organic life-forms. You must be protected.”

“Suppose we don’t want to be protected?” asked Sally.

“It’s for your own good.”

“Why won’t you let wild humans into the dome if it’s so good for people?” asked Marc, glancing at Sally’s wings. “I’m sure there are people outside who would like to try dreaming.”

“The domes are for true humans. That is the way. True humans are inside and wild humans are outside. I thought you didn’t want to be protected, anyway,” said the savior cunningly.

“We’re getting nowhere,” said Marc.

Sally was flushed with frustration. “Why don’t you allow my people to go out in fishing boats?”

“We do not prevent you. Your own physique prevents you. You Wingers cannot swim. The young man with you belongs to a different race. His kind can swim, so they can go out fishing. Our duty is to protect you from yourselves. Humans are not always completely rational.”

“Why can’t I swim? Why am I different from him?”

“You were born different. Your parents’ genes are different from his parents’ genes.”

“
Why
are our genes different from True Humans?”

“It is not in your best interests to know that.”

“Marc, get a rock. Bash it till it talks.”

“Good
idea,” said Marc. He picked up a large rock and poised it over the savior’s good leg.

Sally leaned forward, staring into the savior’s flat eyes. “
Who are we?
” she asked quietly.

“It is not in your best interests to know that.”

“Bash him, Marc!”

Marc hesitated, the rock held high. The savior’s eyes met his blandly. The savior’s face was well made. It was convincingly human—with skin, underlying bones, and a complex musculature allowing an extensive range of facial expressions. Now it twisted its features into a pleading look.

“I can’t do it,” said Marc at last.

“Give me the rock! I’ll do it! I’ll smash it straight through the chest screen!”

“The rock’s too heavy for you, Sally.”

“Oh, shit!” Sally cried. “What a bloody fiasco! These bastards have got us by the short hairs, Marc. We’ve
got
to make him talk. We’ll never get a chance like this again. We’ll get the truth out of him if we have to pound him to a pulp. We’ll—”

“Quiet! Somebody’s coming. I heard voices.”

“You’re just saying that to shut me up. You know what, Marc? You’re a bloody weakling!”

“I just can’t see the point in smashing up this savior when we both know it’s programmed to keep its mouth shut.”

“We have nothing to lose. It must have some instincts of self-preservation. When that kicks in, it’ll tell us everything. It’ll crack suddenly, and scream for mercy. It’ll—”

“Somebody’s coming down the rope!”

A cascade of pebbles rattled onto the boulders. They peered up, but it was too dark to make out details on the cliff face. “Bloody hell,” muttered Sally. “I bet it’s my dad.”

“Or mine.”

The rope twitched. ‘Who’s that?” shouted Sally. “Tell us who you are or we’ll bash your head in! We’re ready for you!”

The reply was one they would remember for the rest of their lives. The accent was strange and the voice tiny, as though a foreign mouse had spoken.

It said, “We come in peace.”

It was Fang who
spoke.

The words would have been more appropriate if addressed to a formal gathering of Earth’s leaders. It takes time to find a leader in an underpopulated region, however, and the exploratory party had landed only a couple of hours ago. Walking toward Mara Zion in the gathering darkness, they had headed for the first human voices they heard.

They assumed these would be the lonely and frightened survivors of an almost extinct race, who would be grateful for help and guidance during their final years.

Instead it seemed their heads were in danger of being bashed in.

“We’ve made a mistake,” muttered Fang, reversing direction and bumping into the hairy buttocks of Afah. “Back up the rope, gnomes!”

Afah began to climb, but the Miggot, above him, accidentally grasped the Princess’s ankle instead of the rope. She lost her grip and fell onto him. With a wail of fright he crashed onto Afah. In an instant the four members of the exploration party were rolling down the steep slope. They arrived in a heap at the feet of Sally and Marc.

“Bash them, Marc!” In the twilight the scrabbling figures looked like gigantic spiders.

“They said they come in peace.”

“They don’t look like things that come in peace. They look like things that bite!”

However, when the small creatures picked themselves up, they looked reassuringly bipedal, although one had a tail.

“We are kikihuahuas,” said Afah. “We come from another world.”

“Where’s your ship?” asked Sally suspiciously.

“We don’t actually use
ships
,” explained Fang eagerly. “We use bats. We—”

“That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard! And why aren’t you gobbling and twittering?
Things from other worlds gobble and twitter. They don’t have normal vocal cords. But you even speak our language. You know what I think? I think you evolved in a sewer somewhere. Given time, almost anything can evolve in a sewer, so I was told.”

“We used to live on Earth, long ago,” said Fang, before Afah could launch into a long-winded explanation.

“Prove it!”

“This place is called Mara Zion.” Fang began to give a detailed description of the topography, but Sally cut him short.

“We know all that stuff. Tell us something we don’t know.”

“Then you wouldn’t believe me.”

“Why are you different from him?” asked Sally, pointing to Afah. “Why does he have a tail? And he’s covered with fur, but you three wear clothes. You can’t all be Wawas, or whatever the hell you call yourselves.”

Afah was appalled at the turn events had taken. There was a certain protocol attached to historic encounters between intelligent races. Leaders met and exchanged expressions of mutual esteem. There were usually tall buildings involved, and well-disciplined crowds and speeches. And above all, there was a deep respect for kikihuahua achievements in genetic engineering.

Notably absent from such occasions were belligerent interrogations, accusations of lying, and blinding clouds of salt spray.

He said quietly, “Let me handle this, Fang.” Then, drawing himself up to his full height—an act that went unnoticed by the humans—he said, “Take us to your leader.”

“No,” said Sally.

“I am a member of the most numerous form of kikihuahua,” he explained, maintaining his dignity. “The other three are of a temporary form that we created for the specific purpose of exploratory work on the planet Earth. In your language they are called gnomes.”

“Gnomes?” Sally uttered a shriek of incredulous laughter. “Gnomes are funny little people in children’s stories. They live in burrows and wear pointy red hats.”

The Miggot
spoke for the first time. Picking up his cap and wiping the moisture from it, he held it out. “What the hell do you think this is?” he said with a snarl.

There was a pause while the two factions regarded each other in frustration. There seemed to be nothing useful this encounter could achieve. It would have been better if it had never happened.

At that moment the situation was further complicated by the savior. Unnoticed by the others, it had gradually struggled to a sitting position, its eyes easily coping with the dim light as it stared at Afah. It registered his height, his weight, his general physique, his fur, his tail. Meanwhile other sensors noted his body temperature, his odor, and his vocal characteristics.

Finally satisfied, it raised an arm and pointed a long finger unerringly at the kikihuahua.

“Master,” it said.

Sally whirled around in a fury. “My God!” she cried. “Don’t we have enough problems without that crap? Is the spray getting to you?”

But Afah had been going through his own tortuous process of recognition.

Something in the appearance of the sitting figure had touched a chord in his memory lobe. He began to explore it, tracing it back through generations of inherited memories with nothing to guide him but the shape of the savior and a spill of parts from an injured joint. He went further back, until he was revisiting the earliest kikihuahua explorations without having identified the elusive recollection.

Finally he reached the images of the Home Planet, the world from which the kikihuahuas had fled aeons ago, driven into the greataway by the suffocating presence of one of their own creations: the last electromechanical device ever constructed by Afah’s race. …

“By the Sword of Agni,” he whispered, “it’s a Tin Mother!”

“A
FTER ALL THIS TIME,” MURMURED AFAH, “WE
still haven’t been able to shake them off. They’ve been searching for us ever since we left the Home Planet. And now we’ve inflicted them on someone else. Isn’t it possible for us ever to escape the consequences of our own actions? Was the Exodus all a mistake?”

Fang had also
been searching his memory lobe. “It seems to me we developed a way of life that wasn’t compatible with the Tin Mothers, and we made the choice to go a different route. We weren’t running away. The Exodus was a glorious adventure.”

Fortunately it was too dark for Fang to see the look of irritation that Afah shot in his direction. “Agni alone knows how many worlds they’ve contaminated; how many intelligent life-forms have fallen victim to their stranglehold!”

“It’s not that bad, really.” Marc broke into the conversation, as it was going rapidly downhill. “The saviors have never done anyone any harm. Our history lessons tell us they arrived peacefully and immediately set about helping people. Unfortunately we sold out to them in exchange for an easy life.”

“You see, Fang?” said Afah. “We must get back to the spacehopper and report our shame to the bat.”

Fang decided it was time to make a stand. “You can if you like. I’m staying, and so is the Princess. And I’m sure the Miggot will. I refuse to set foot on that bat again. I’ve wasted thirty thousand years of my life in there. You can go back and send our children down, and anyone else who wants to come.”

Afah said, “You cannot
remain on a planet already inhabited by an intelligent life-form. Such is our code, Fang.”

“Bugger the code!” shouted the Miggot.

The Princess said, “We’re
not
going.”

“Shut up, all of you!” shouted Sally. “Stop arguing, or I’ll stamp on you—and then none of you will be going anywhere!” Fang watched in horror as she snatched Afah up. “Let’s talk about something useful for a change. You say your people built the saviors, or Tin Mothers, or whatever the hell they are. All right. So get this Mother to explain where Marc’s people and mine came from, and why our racial history was edited out of their lessons!”

Afah had begun to kick, but it soon occurred to him that this was even more undignified than not kicking. Motionless and rigid, he said, “It is the least I can do, when I think of the trouble my people have brought to your world. Please put me down.”

Sally complied. The moon chose that moment to emerge from behind a heavy bank of clouds, casting a silvery glow over the sea. Fang began to fidget with impatience. He was sure the history of Sally’s people was very important to them, but it had little relationship to the gnomes and their problems. She was waiting for Afah to speak, impatient herself, waggling her arms in a curious way. The two giants were quite different in build. Sally was slender, with queer arms; whereas Marc was built like a huge gnome, squat and muscular. Fang regarded Sally’s arms.

He could see feathers there.

His heart thudding, he looked again at her face. Now, in the moonlight, he could see her features more clearly, and he recognized them.

She was the creature of his dreams. The girl with wings. Fascinated, he stared openly. Perhaps she
was
important, after all. He wished Nyneve was there; then suddenly, in a moment of deep sorrow, remembered that thirty thousand years had passed.

“Miggot,” he
whispered.

But the Miggot’s attention was elsewhere. “The moon,” he whispered back.

“What?”

“Look.”

Fang looked. There, to the right of the hard-edged disc, was another outline, fainter but unmistakable. …

Misty Moon was back.

“Miggot!” he squeaked.

“Don’t say anything. That may come in useful.”

Fang turned his attention to Afah, who was staring down into the face of the Tin Mother. “Our people haven’t met for a long time,” said the kikihuahua. “The first thing you can do, is explain the origin of these humanoid creatures.”

“It is not in their best interests to know.”

“But I say it is, and I am your master.”