Stardogs (27 page)

Then the human part of his mind attacked the confusing alien matter with logic. It didn’t understand the image of the roost, even if it understood the concept of shared warmth, love and sex that were inextricably tied to it. But it did know that the Denaari were no more. Juan-human didn’t know what world he was on, but no human-discovered world had been populated by the silica-bat creatures of his new memories. As for a mere twenty-five
zefts
that Juan-Denaari recalled, what was a
zeft
? The distance imaged might be easy to those who rode thermals and to whom the understanding of air-currents was as instinctive as breathing, but the crown-bearer had no wings, just very sore feet. Those dunes were as un-crossable as a sea. Sea? Ah! that rather toxic hydrogen-oxygen compound that the Juan-human required. The mnemonic crown bearer was indeed very alien. Well, Juan-human would be wise to use his sore feet to get out of the low-country and into the high-places. There would be H2O precipitation there. They used it in the high-altitude terrace-paddies for growing some of the rarer crystalines. Besides, to a creature that didn’t fly, a sheeter herd might be dangerous.

With no way of carrying water, and no idea what a sheeter might be, except that it was big, flat, and nearly mindless, Juan set off up-valley. It was still early, but already it was warm. He welcomed the breeze.

The ‘cave’ was little more than a long overhang where the sand-crusted wind off the dunes had eaten out a segment of softer rock. At its deepest it was barely three yards deep, with the roof perhaps four yards up at its highest point. It offered little real shelter from the elements. Yet… it was airless and stuffy. And, although Juan was already walking with painful feet up-valley in the bright sunlight with sweat dripping off the rim of the crown and running down into his eyes, in the cave it was dark and cold.

“We’re shut in.” Lila’s torchlight wavered slightly as it shone on the white filamentous surface which totally sealed off the mouth of the cave.

“What is it?” demanded Johannes.

He got the sort of look this sort of idiotic question deserved. “How in the hell do you expect us to know, sonny-boy,” said Sam, eyeing the fur wall warily.

“Look!” Caro pointed. A part of a metal sheet they’d used as a sled had been half pulled into the cave. Now only the inside half of it remained. Cilia from the bear-rug clung to it. Digesting.

“Gods! Shoot it! It’ll eat us all!” yelled Lila almost hysterical, forgetting she had a weapon.

Martin Brettan’s heavy automatic came out. He held steady, but shook his head. “I don’t see that it’ll do a damned thing to something big enough to block the cave. Still… better take cover behind that stuff in case it ricochets.” He waited, and when they were ready, and Otto had been called off guard, he fired. The sound in the closed off cave was terrifyingly loud. After a few moments he walked closer. Peered into the circle of focused torchlight. “I hit it, but it’s… it’s like I never shot.” He studied the fur without quite touching the waving cilia. “There’s not even a mark.” His voice too showed the edge of panic.

“Perhaps it will go away.” Tanzo got up from behind the bags and rocks and peered at the cilia. She sounded more curious than alarmed. “It’s a bit like Stardog belly cilia isn’t it?”

Her pragmatism steadied them. “Maybe it will go away, as quietly as it came. How could something that big get here without us even noticing it?”

“How are we for air?”

“Enough for a good few hours yet.”

Sam looked at the gently moving fur-clad wall. “It doesn’t feel bad,” he said slowly.

“You touched it?”

“No. I mean… it won’t… harm us. It’ll go away.”

The lean Leaguesman snorted, irritated. “How could you know? Stupid Yak bastard.” He picked up a rock from the back of the cave, where, as it happened, sheeters couldn’t normally reach. The fragment was pleasantly mineral rich, unlike the accessible material which generations of sheeters had already probed for minerals. Kadar flung it with all the might of his sinewy arms.

It struck the fur. The fur-wall indented with the force of the blow. Then the wall bounced back. The rock, however, stuck. Cilia clung hungrily to it.

“Brilliant. That has of course made the huge creature so sore it’s bound to scamper away. Of course a rock flung by
you
would be more effective than a mere bullet.” Shari hadn’t slept much after the water-theft and Deo’s strange fit, and her tiredness and worry were coming out in knife-edged words. Actually, she was more concerned by Deo’s robotic obedience of her orders, on being woken from his unnaturally heavy sleep, than about the alien behemoth sealing off the cave. She had so desperately hoped he would be well when he woke up. You don’t rely almost completely on someone for nearly twenty years and then find it easy to suddenly have them reliant on you. She was nervous, worried… and resentful. The last emotion upset her, and she felt guilty about it, but that didn’t make the resentment go away.

Tanzo was so absorbed in studying the cilia and the rock that she failed to take in the sarcasm. “Actually I would guess that rather than driving off the creature, Leaguesman Kadar has just fed it. It’ll probably stay longer.”

The little ridergirl shivered and began to sob, huddling in on herself. Otto went across to her and began licking her conveniently placed face. She enfolded the small fur-ball in her arms. For some reason this seemed to incense the older harsh faced Leaguesman. He’d stood glowering, tight-lipped while Shari’s sarcasm had slashed at him. He’d smouldered at Tanzo’s comment. Now he exploded and rushed at the wide-eyed Una. “Leave it alone you useless little slut-slave! LEAVE IT, I say!” He kicked out at her. His fists were balled and he bent to strike. The frightened girl dived away. She rolled, with her arms still around the dog, toward the rippling cilia of the fur-wall.

“NO!” Screamed Shari, frozen, seeing the rage-crazed man kick Una, with the dog in her arms, toward the hungry cilia.

Deo leaped. His “KIIIIHAI!!” strike-scream tore at the fur wall as the wavy blade in his hand slashed at it ahead of the rolling girl and dog. It parted like tissue paper. A sheeter is, after all, rarely more than a quarter inch thick. Heat and light smote in at them as the girl and dog rolled straight through the slash. Then, within a second, before the surprised people had a chance to react the slash began to knit.

The Dagger of the Goddess, shook his smoke-filled head. What had he done? Why was he here? Everything swam confusingly about his mind. Why did he have the holy dagger in hand? What was it about a woman and a dog? He couldn’t remember. He shook his head again. It hurt. The dagger was not supposed to be used for lesser purposes than human blood. He fed it, traced the cross in red, and cleaned it on the insignia he had cut from the sleeve of the commander of the Imperial garrison on Arunchal. Strange. There were other rusty brown marks on the patch he had cut only yesterday. He looked in puzzlement at the people in the ill-lit cave as he put the blade away.

“Well. At least we can get out and we know we won’t suffocate,” said the dumpy woman with glasses. “Quick thinking, Deo.” She seemed to be talking to him. Then the Dewa appeared at his side, and took him to sit down. He was grateful. His muscles hurt.

They could hear Otto barking. Then the dog came running back into their midst, flinging himself at Shari. The far corner of the cave was now exposed as the sheeter continued its flatworm progress across the sun-side of the rocky ridge. Soon they were able to scramble out. Down the length of the ridge were a score or more sheetlike black creatures, moving slowly down-valley, their thin bodies clinging and taking on the contours of the rugged terrain beneath them. They appeared to have no interest whatsoever in the small motile bits that had just emerged from under the rear mantle of one of their number. Even that creature simply went on moving steadily and smoothly with the pack, as if nothing had ever happened.

Una was huddled in a foetal ball in the sunlight. Tanzo hastily went to comfort her. Sam stepped over to the tall Leaguesman who was looking decidedly wary. “Listen good, shit-for-brains,” he said quietly, “Do something stupid like that again and you’re going to get killed, see.”

The Leaguesman was too cowed by the sequence of events to do more than stare uneasily at him.

Shari clapped her hands, calling their attention. “Hear me, everybody. I spent a lot of last night thinking. This incident this morning just reinforces it all. We need to talk. We need to decide on how our group can work together. We need to decide who will lead us, and what the ground-rules are. We’re a small group, and we have a limited amount of resources. We can’t hope to survive unless we do this.”

“The structure of command was set out clearly in Coda de Gotha five centuries ago,” said Prince Jarian stiffly.

Shari took a deep breath. “Jarian. Besides the fact that I personally would rather take my chances on my own than take orders from you, do you think you have the experience to lead us? I think this is the first time you’ve been off Phillipia, if not the first time you’ve been outside the palace.” She shook her head. “You might know more about murder and intrigue than the rest of us, but that won’t help us in dealing with those creatures. No. I’m afraid you’ll temporarily have to suspend your rank, as I’ve done. If, as I suspect, we stay here forever, Jarian, the Coda de Gotha will never mean anything again. No. Let’s all agree on someone.”

His plump-petulant face crumpled. “It’s not fair. You sterile old hag, you always spoil everything!”

Shari showed her teeth. “I’m not sterile. Old for childbearing maybe, but not too old.”

“Hah! That’s what you think! Grandfather had you tested! You’re as barren as… as this place!” he snarled, spitefully pleased.

Shock wrote itself over Viscount Brettan’s face. She noticed it. So… he’d been
that
ambitious, even then? But surely he’d realized that a child would be killed, preferably even before it could be born, along with its father and mother?

She smiled pure malice at both of them. “Yes. The Emperor had to be deceived, didn’t he? Otherwise I’d have been killed, wouldn’t I? When, if, my child is born, I’ll call him Senn, if it is a boy, or Lea, if it’s a girl. In honor of the two brave people, my childhood bodyguard and my nursemaid, who fooled even the Emperor for me, and kept me alive.”

It was very sweet indeed to watch the parade of expressions across their faces. Shari noted that her supposed sterility had been no secret to the Guildsmen. “Now that we’ve dealt with that little aside, perhaps we can get back to discussing leadership,” she said crisply.

Leaguesman Kadar grimaced. “What basis will we use to choose a leader? The League has steered human affairs for time out of mind. I suppose you would have us reject that too.”

Sam burst out, suddenly agitated. “We need to get away from here.” Nobody paid him any attention. The various parties were too intent on how to lay claim to the power they saw as theirs by right.

“Given the circumstances, I think we should consider individuals and their abilities rather than groups or histories,” commented Tanzo dryly.

The horizon rippled, and then the ground shook itself like a wet dog. People tumbled and fell to the ground as if they were marionettes whose strings had just been scythed. “RUN!” screamed Sam. “Away from the cliff!”

“Albeer. Carry that rider,” Shari yelled. “Brettan. Lila. With me! Fetch the water! Go on, the rest of you, run!” She pushed Deo, who had staggered confusedly to his feet, in the direction of the sandflat in front of the dune. She and the two she’d nominated ran into the cave amid the groaning of rocks, grabbed packs, and more by luck than judgment managed to run clear before a huge slab of roof-rock came down. They pelted down-slope with new scree-fragments and pill-bug rolled sheeters bouncing around them. When they were nearly at the group on the sandflat an aftershock breakdanced the ground beneath them, and they had to fall. Above them the ridge itself seemed to sway. Shari fought her way to her knees. The ground still quaked. “Keep going! Crawl!!”

They fought their way to the middle of the sandflat, where Sam was trying to hold the group. He’d had to resort to knocking the Prince down, threatening Johannes with his chisel, and shaking the screaming Caro. “We’ve got to keep away from that dune too, you crazy woman!”

He was quite right. The huge dune was slipping, flattening, and cascading with wild plumes of excited dust swirling about it. That was nothing to what was happening to the ridge. Small rocks had fallen. Now the big ones, the office block sized ones were coming loose with a slow grinding, and then falling with ground-shaking thunder. The group, amid the giant beachballed sheeters, watched as the perpetual tectonic renewal of the Denaar-motherworld’s resources occurred. They were on the edge of a particularly stable and ancient plate. Most of this world could not be described as stable. The creatures who had evolved here needed it that way. Their food sources were sunlight and raw minerals. Raw surface minerals. Any form of mining would have been a non-survival evolutionary strategy. Mobility, particularly flight, was a distinctly advantageous trait.