Tropic of Creation (24 page)

“And if an ahtra bears a vone?”

She kept her eyes carefully down, “We kill the issue, if vone. We would tend to have no choice.”

“No disrespect intended, Maret. But all this is complicated.”

“Inefficient, you are thinking?”

He nodded.

“Eli, you are in error to think nature is efficient. Nature is traditional, building on past biology, however imperfectly. The thread of evolution is unbroken, and today we are modifications of what we were. Your people, Eli, are built in a similar manner. On the old.”

Eli was quiet for a long while. Then he said in a low voice, “The result is harsh, Maret.”

“Nature is harsh. Sex and death are kin, so it seems to us. We do not flee from either. As a result, we are a strong, long-lived race.”

Her feet throbbed with the grinding of the carriers as
they drilled their way to the surface. She had only a few increments left.

“We are one people,” she said. “Your lexicon has a word you may know:
dimorphs
. That would tend to describe us and the vone.” She paused. “I feared to meet with them. And I longed to.”

Her time was at an end. She saw the guards hovering, but she spat out a warning for them to back off. To her relief, they relented, for now. She turned back to Eli, trying to finish in a hurry. “It is said, The vone keep our dead.’ Children believe the dead walk Up World. But the truth of it is the vone mimic our kin to inspire terror—those they devour, they mimic. So, Eli, when you go Up …” She saw his expression, and it was easy to read. “When you go Up, you must not hesitate to kill the vone if you are so unfortunate as to encounter them. No matter what you see, have no mercy on them. And have no mercy on the dead, either.”

She saw his eyes narrow with intense concentration. With hope.

“Maret,” he said, “will Nefer release me?”

“Yes, if you force her to relent.” She saw his emotions painted so clearly. There was no going back now. “Eli, I have a selfish hope that you will not go Up. But your wish is to die like a soldier, yes?” She didn’t need to wait for an answer. “So, then. I will give you a ‘fighting chance,’ as you say. It would be traditional, to have a fighting chance.”

“Have I won my wager with Nefer? Is that why you say I’m going Up?”

“No. It would be unlikely for you to win that wager. But I know another way. You understand, a ‘desperate gamble’? That is what this is.”

He took her hand, gripping it. “Tell me.” It was a stronger grip than she had thought him capable of. Still, it was a hand that she or a vone could easily break. He was not bred for war.

She told him then, what he must do to ascend. Soon she would have the satisfaction of watching Nefer lose face and lose her prisoner. When Eli worked this scheme upon the Most Prime, Maret planned to be in the front row.

If their ruse proved successful, he would go UpWorld. There he would become that good soldier he wished to be. Therefore—though it gave her two sadnesses—it must be a good thing to release him from Down World, where he had no rug to hold his bones, or kin to wrap him.

V
od was seen and not seen. He appeared for an instant at the head of an up way; he was glimpsed jumping into a chute; he was seen OverPrime and, at the same moment, UnderPrime. Wagers began on where he would be seen again, and when. Sightings of Vod were sworn by fluxors and statics alike. He appeared in an enactment; dwellers who watched the drama thought he was an actor. Later the actors said it was all improvisation with Vod the Digger, who walked onstage and said:
The world has changed. How shall we be?

It was a question Vod had no complete answers for. But when Maret joined him, together they would forge a change. Her brains, his fervor. The rumors in the flow gave him hope. Dwellers thought they saw him everywhere, but it was their own hopes they saw. They yearned for change, he thought, or had he become mad as Hemms?

At the head of the ancient upway, Vod dug a short tunnel through to Ankhorat, and, at the last, pierced the hab carefully to minimize bleeding. Peering out, he heard the pulsings of the recyclers and the throb of the generators.
Down the way, shadows of maintenance workers—statics who would betray him in an instant—flickered against the hab. Arching snakes of hosing loomed large, as the workers labored beneath the exposed flap. He sprinted to the nearest nub and plugged in, there leaving a data trail for Maret, code terms for where she might find him.

Slipping back into the upway, he tended the hab, knitting the flesh into place, leaving only the smallest evidence of bruising. Though by tradition maintenance work was a static function, Vod was not unfamiliar with upkeep of the hab. As a digger, he was accustomed to repairing the sheath, where its growing tip extruded into raw digs.

He scurried down the stairs, disturbed at having to descend an upway. But here, with most stairs collapsed and choked with soil and stone, custom must give way to necessity, and, liking the sound of it, he filed the notion away in backmind.

Once back in the ancient Prime Way, Vod shone the light of his stolen headlamp on his water-collection tubes, still producing enough water for his hydration needs; as for food, the lorel proliferated here, where the hab placed no limits on its fruitings. The role of revolutionary went better on a full stomach, he had to admit.

The ways echoed with his footsteps, recalling the tread of so many who had gone before. The sheer darkness of the place coaxed images from shadows, to one unaccustomed to the dark. But when he brought his light to bear on the presumed spot, he found only the hab, creased and rigid, or a gaping portal to up- and downways, inhabited only by memories. Vod was not one to believe in the vitality of the dead. Here and now was life enough.

A thud of something behind him. He stopped, swinging his head around to shine the lamp. Nothing.

Rocks fell here, he realized. He’d seen how things slumped. Gravity would claim everything in the end. But, to his surprise, he heard himself say, “Who are you?”

Asking that question seemed to give life to the way. He imagined many voices answering.
I am Mirab. I am Veil. I am Unso. Gor. Atter. Doln
 … Pushing the fancy aside, he listened again. Shapes bulked up out of the blackness, ink against jet.

“Who?” he asked again.

Then, “I am Tirinn,” came a voice.

“If you are Tirinn, why are you following me?”

“I’m not
following
you, you young clod. I’ve been trying to
find
you.”

A dark shadow moved into the middle of the way, a shape large enough to be Tirinn. Then he caught the Data Guide’s bulk in the beam of his light.

“Turn your headlamp to the side, you’re giving me a headache.”

Vod complied, watching as Tirinn trudged over to an old crusher machine abandoned by the wall.

The Data Guide deposited himself on the seat. “Made quite a stew of things, haven’t you?” Tirinn shook his head wearily, wiping at his forehead with the edge of his caftan. “And I still have to walk
up
all those stairs,” he said ruefully.

“What are you—”

“Oh, keep quiet! I didn’t come here to waste my time. Fact is, I don’t know why I am here. Maybe I owe you a little help. I don’t want to die with more debts than I already have.”

In the murky corridor, Vod could only see one side of Tirinn’s face, and that, dimly. He looked very old and sagging downward, like the AncientWay itself.

“First off,” Tirinn said, “stop leaving your artless clues for Maret. She’s gone. And you’re giving your position away, though you’re bound to be caught anyway. Beg Nefer’s pardon, do it publicly, maybe she’ll get a few hexals out of displaying generosity toward you.”

“Maret’s gone?”

“Of course she’s gone! If you spent some of your ample free time collecting information instead of making trouble, you’d know what every other dweller’s known for the past span. Gone, yes. I sent her Up.”

“Up?” Vod was so stunned, he repeated, “Up?”

“Yes, yes, Up.” Tirinn said acidly. He braced his hands on his knees and looked about himself. “This place is a mess. No wonder we built a new one.”

Vod felt a surge of outrage. “This is the old dwelling!”

“Outrage, my Skilled Digger, is ill-suited to the young. Wait until you’ve got a few cycles on you, then you can be outraged. You’ll be more convincing when you’ve seen as much villainy as I have.” He turned to look directly at Vod for the first time. “Now, attend. I haven’t got much time. I sent her Up. You understand it was my choice? Hemms has the mind of a plucked mushroom. He’d forgotten the rules. That’s one thing you know well by my age. I get to choose, and I don’t care if Hemms chokes on his twelfth net.” He glared at Vod. “Thought he could overrule a Data Guide.”

“But she’ll die,” Vod said, the full implication of Tirinn’s words finally registering.

“My, my,” Tirinn said wearily. “UpWorld: sunshine, muck, and vones. I’ve heard it all before, believe me. All you need to know is that when Maret gets back she’ll need a few friends, and from all the fuss you’ve been making, I take it you’re one of them. I won’t be around to help her. When she gets back and bears her progeny, you help her. I have high hopes for her issue. Her genes are of the first order.”

“But why did you send her? She might be hurt!”

“For her
descendants
, you dumb clod! We can’t have her descendants without ronid, now can we? She’s the one I’ve been combing the genotype for all these cycles.” His chest rose and deflated in a long, weary gust. “When I saw her life unfolding in scholarship, I realized she’d never
make a good leader. Too brainy. Too conflicted. But her children … Now, there’s a wager worth making, or I’ve just thrown my life away.”

He noted Vod’s surprise and waved an impatient hand. “Don’t tell me you haven’t heard
that
data strand, either? And I thought I was the center of attention for once! I should be hurt.” He scratched at his belly in an idle fashion, as though tired of the news already. “Nefer got herself into an unseemly display of irritation over my pulling rank on the Maret issue, and arranged to send me Up, though I’m clearly not in shape to go. She got one of her more malleable Data Guides to approve me. Needless to say, I won’t be coming back.”

Vod stared at the blackened hab, hardly registering Tirinn’s plight. “You’re giving up on her. She could have been great. A great leader.”

Tirinn snorted. “Let’s leave the genetics to me, shall we?”

“Now
you
attend, Tirinn-as.” Vod stood and looked down on the Data Guide. He was done with giving this old fool a respectful hearing. “We can’t wait for Maret’s progeny.”

“Waiting is an undervalued quality, I assure you.”

“Listen,” Vod said, strictly controlling his pallor. “We’re building war machines. Right above your overstuffed head.” Vod pointed at the ceiling, where far above, the war foundry begat its progeny. “We can’t wait. We’ll be at war before Maret leaves the birthing dens
 … if
she comes back,” he added, wishing it were not such bad form to punch a Data Guide.

“We’re not at war,” Tirinn grumbled, eyeing Vod narrowly.

“No, not yet.” Then Vod gave him the news that was both terrible and opportune. But it wasn’t until Tirinn had climbed the thousand stairs that he believed.

They sat together then, at the top landing. Tirinn was quiet for a very long time.

“It’s time for us to be rid of Nefer,” Vod said quietly.

They stared at the walls of the stairset: crumbling, and seeping water.

“Yes,” Tirinn rumbled. But still he sat, gazing at nothing.

“We’ll use the foundry to drive a wedge between Nefer and Hemms. My wager is that Hemms knows nothing of this.” When Tirinn didn’t answer, Vod went on: “But we’ll move carefully, so as not to force Nefer’s hand. The question is, how close is she to blowing the tunnels?”

“It’s why Nefer hates Maret,” Tirinn said, his voice flat but still powerful.

“Beg pardon?”

“Hates her like she hates a water bath.” Tirinn chuckled. “It was never just a matter of power with Nefer, you perceive. It’s one of ideology. Isolation, that’s what she wants. A traditional ahtran way of life, uninfected by human contact. We’ve met another sentient life-form. And some of us wish we hadn’t.”

“Statics,” Vod supplied.

“Not all statics. By the deep dark Well, don’t turn this into
them
and
us
. It’s a continuum, my boy.” He turned and looked at him as though just remembering him. “You’re an extreme fluxor. Not everyone is an extreme. Don’t make the mistake of measuring all dwellers by your own index.” He sighed. “That’s the last free advice I intend to give you.” He rose, heavily. “Let us descend.”

“So why
does
Nefer hate Maret?”

“Vone take me for a dunce,” Tirinn muttered. He shook his head and began lumbering down the stairs. “Because, besides her most excellent genes, Maret has dangerous fluxor outwardness. Maret would be one to turn the Neymium Belt situation into a trading opportunity, not a battle. She might want to
mix
with humans.”

“Mate with?” Vod felt his tendril jerk at the awful notion.