Stardogs (43 page)

“What! Down to the snakes in the dark? Or do you think the lights will be on there too? Besides, two of those things came from down there,” said Lila wearily.

“It is a choice of down the inside or down the outside.” Shari stuck her hand out. “The stuff is glass smooth. You’d be sliding faster than a bullet before you hit the bottom.”

“If only we’d worked out how to get into one of the cages,” moaned Johannes. “We could hide or… or pretend we were just some of the animals or something.”

“It’s worth trying,” said Shari. “Would one of those grenades blow a hole for us, Deo? Or what about the laser?”

He realized she was addressing him. Felt the wall. Shrugged. “The laser is discharged, Dewa. It is possible that a grenade may do the task. This material does not feel like glass. The grenade is not a shaped charge. Most of the force would not be directed at the wall. The hole may also be small. I will try.”

“Why not just tell the wall to open?” Juan’s Denaari side said… in the wrong language for the rest of the castaways to understand. The Bio-zoo wall understood however, despite the atrocious pronunciation his odd shaped mouth forced on the words. It complied, as it had been bred to do.

For a moment they all stared at the open wall section next to them. Then Tanzo realised what had happened. “Quickly. Inside.”

They hurried in. Once they were in the alien environment, Shari turned on the boy. “Just what did you do?”

“I…. I told it to open.”

“Well, tell it to close, and be quick about it,” she said cheerfully.

A few moments later they were in the moonlit dark, shut into the envirocage. The Denaari had been master zoo-keepers. If the creatures of the world now known as Mali V had been accustomed to the light of seven moons, they would still see seven moons. Mali V was a Sahel world. A boom-and-bust place, where, because of the vast tides caused by its moons, the weather alternated between torrential downpour and searing drought and heat. The cage was in the just-after-the-rains’ growth phase right now. The grass was as high as a Taur-elephant’s eye, which is about eight foot. And it was still growing. Everything was growing, breeding and eating with frantic haste. In another two months the cage would be a dying place. In six months the only signs of life would be seeds, eggs, and hibernating Taur-elephants.

The native species of Mali V didn’t stop to sleep when things were good.

As a cage to hide in, the grass made it a good place. As a choice of environments to be in, it was terrifying. You couldn’t see anything for grass, but the place was full of noise. Bellowing beasts. Things munching to all sides. What could only be predators they could not see making their kills. Hoots from something big, really big, in the distance. And the sound of Mali-grass growing, and starting to seed.

They made their way forward cautiously. On a low mound, actually a Taur-elephant hibernation burrow, they formed a defensive ring. “Well, I suppose we’re safer in here than we were out there. At least here we can’t be seen.”

Sam didn’t agree with Tanzo. He had a cold ‘you-are-being-watched feeling’ in the small of his back.

At last Central had decent visuals of them. The Bio-zoo’s in-cage monitoring system was still in perfect order. The one with the mnemonic-crown was not a Denaari. Central did not understand how to feel heartbreak, but the entire great bio-brain was stilled for a moment.

Then it lurched back to reality. It had been a futile hope, really. But the alien with the crown was definitely not Sil. A hasty search of data files produced a near match, in specimens held in Bio-zoo units 23 and this one, 48. The match to the specimens in Bio-zoo unit 23 were closer. The ones which had been lost from this unit were related, but had died out by the time the monitoring station had been set up on the planet the castaways called ‘Earth’.

They had been considered as a nascent space-travelling species back then. The estimates on their achieving interstellar travel had been approximately 4000 years. It had been the Denaari’s intent to withdraw all but the most carefully hidden observers from that region of space well before this time. If, and Central noted from file records that this had been a big
if
, the species had been allowed into space. As the nest-minders had said, it was better to withdraw heat from the egg than the chick. As a result of the conflict with the mechanistic Sil, many of the Denaari had been scared of having any other space-travelling species in their sphere of space.

They must have come with the returning Stardog. Obviously, with the collapse of the Denaari Domain the aliens from Earth must have encountered and learned to use the Stardogs. One of the Stardogs must have begun to die in flight, and come here. The animals’ first and most basic safety imprint was to return. The hasty imprint that had gone out to expunge the way home to the Motherworld from the Stardog route-maps when the Sil plague began, could not override such an intrinsic part of the Stardog’s core indoctrination.

Now that Central knew what they were, and how they had got here, the great Biocomputer faced yet another dilemma: What should it do with them? The Denaari had regarded the species as potentially dangerous. It looked at the party huddled on the low mound in the Envirocage. They did not appear dangerous, but they had attacked and destroyed the brain-auxiliary units and a harmless stevedore. Attacked and destroyed without pause on being told to surrender. Then a logic circuit clicked in. They had been addressed in Sil. They’d appealed for help in the Denaari tongue. Perhaps these were allies, or at least aliens struggling against a common foe. It was yet another factor to be weighed in Central’s deliberations. The Denaari had set a program in motion to solve the nano-plague problem. The answer had come too late for the Denaari, but Central still had crystallised stocks of nanomech specific viruses in store.

One point in the favor of these aliens was that they had come by Stardog. The Stardogs had always been willing servants of the masters they loved. That, after all was the Denaari way. Stardogs could not be made to do anything if they did not love these aliens too. But the records from the Observation Station back on earth were not encouraging. Certain of the vid-records could only be interpreted as a species which revelled in cruelty. The killings themselves were not intrinsically bad. The Denaari had accepted food chains and the role of the various species in them. Predators were predators, and to kill was part of their nature. But to wish to hurt…!

Central made up its mind. Firstly, it wanted that mnemonic crown. It might help, especially if it had been able to store data about these aliens. Anyway, it could only be one of the missing sixteen, and possibly it could be a vital piece in the jigsaw of Denaari racial history with the Denaari memories it held.

The crown must be recovered. If necessary the aliens would be killed to get it. Central was a Denaari creation itself. Their death would be quick and clean. If it didn’t have to kill them, it would assess them further. Possibly they could go to Bio-zoo unit 23, where records indicated that a viable breeding group of the species was held.

Liberty implies freedom of choice, and personal responsibility for those choices. Most people prefer chains, although they spend enormous amounts of effort swapping sets of chains.

From the collected sayings of Saint Sugahata the Reviled

The Taur-elephant mowed through the Mali-grass like the dream of all lawn-owners. The scything tusks moved in twenty foot sweeps leaving not a blade of grass standing. The long prehensile upper-lip seized the grass and shoved it into a maw full of grinding molars. The molars were remarkably effective at shredding the tough grass. They were just as good at mashing anything else that came along as incidentals with the grass. Strictly speaking Taur-elephants were omnivores, although they only harvested grass. If you were mobile you left fast when the grass fell, otherwise you got eaten.

They knew the Taur-elephant was approaching because of the fleeing animals. The mound would be relatively safe, as even Mali-grass would not grow there, and the huge harvesters wouldn’t go there unless there was food, or time to sleep. Both Martin Brettan and Shari had been to Mali V, and seen Taur-elephants, and had some idea of what to expect. There, hunters followed along the mown trails behind the Taur-elephants. Inevitably game fleeing other members of the herd would run across the open space. Here in the cage the ecosystem had not been disturbed, so instead of hunters the weasel-like Elines prowled behind the Taur-elephants. Elines are weasel-like in all but two respects: They lay eggs, and they’re bigger, about eight feet long. Elines are not courageous, and prefer small, weak or wounded prey.

The one which came racing out of the dark from the far edge of the mown of the strip just behind the Taur-elephant therefore streaked straight for Una. It had not seen Otto on the other side of the circle.

Only, as it was about to spring, the roof above them spoke. Startled by the booming voice the creature missed its neck-snapping pounce. It landed in Una’s midriff instead, all claws and snapping teeth. Juan, who was, of course, nearest, managed to grab the beast by its long, graceful tail. It turned on him instead, as Central, via the Bio-zoo’s mouthpieces, boomed out a message of goodwill in ancient Egyptian. Lila’s blow aimed at the weasel-head with a porcupine-tree branch bounced across Juan’s face. Teeth met through the meaty part of his hand between the thumb and fingers. Claws raked at his face and chest. There was a resounding thud, and the Eline left, yelping. The yelps ended abruptly as the creature fled into the path of another Taur-elephant in the herd.

Juan looked up at a pale-faced and bloody Una with a rock in her hand. She hugged him fiercely. The boy part of Juan was enormously confused.

“Are you two all right?” Shari asked. Juan nodded.

She continued. “I think this place is just too dangerous. We’d better try another cage. Besides the Taur-elephants have removed the cover between us and outside. By the way, Denaari experts, can you tell us what that loudspeaker announcement was about? Or were you too busy fighting that thing off?

Juan shook his muzzy head. His mouth was still too dry to speak easily. “Not Denaari.” he managed in a croak

Shari shrugged. “Well, let’s get out of here, anyway.”

They walked down the cut path across to the envirocage’s crystal wall, avoiding the huge mounds of steaming pungent dung that was already drawing coprophagous snark-beetles. From the inside they could not see out. And no matter how Juan asked, the cage would not open. Central had instructed the Bio-zoo not to respond.

“We’re stuck. Stuck in one of the toughest environments of all of the Empire worlds.” Already the new-mown Mali-grass was growing. There was a mournful yammering howl. Then an answering howl, closer.

“Stilt-tigers,” said Martin Brettan quietly. “They hunt in pairs.” There was a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach. The animals had been frightening enough, from the relative safety of a palanquin when his father had taken him on that long-ago safari on Mali V, as guests of the local Grand-Duke. He knew someone was going to die unless they got out of here very smartly.

The roof above spoke. This time it was a stream of whistles and clicks. Juan replied. Central had analyzed the fact that they had not responded to the message to stay put on the Taur-elephant burrow, and that in their attempt to get out, Juan had used several variations of the Denaari word ‘open’. It now addressed them in Denaari, which they plainly understood, even if they could not speak it properly.

“Stand close together, everybody.”

A minute later the huddle of humans was encased in a sample-cage. Outside the Stilt-tigers howled in frustration. The cage sprouted small gas-jets and drifted upwards and out, the wall opening co-operatively before them. The floor swayed rather a lot and they were obliged to sit down or fall down.

Once again they were subjected to a string of Denaari orders. Juan put his hands protectively over the crown.