Binary system, p.12
Binary System, page 12
She was stopped by a deafening cacophony as the gathered Skelt clicked and chattered in consternation. At first she thought they were objecting to her execution, unlikely though that was. Then the Skelt turned, staring around them, and instantly dropped into crouches, alert and poised.
The leader of the Alkellion Skelt, before her, lowered its sword from her chin and whirled around.
Behind her, the harl raised its massive head and gave a startled snort.
What’s happening?
Look, Imp said.
The combined forces of the Skelt – both the scavenging party and the new arrivals from Alkellion – formed a great protective circle around the caravan, swords and crossbows at the ready.
As Delia stared across the plain of ice, she saw a Vo emerge from a hole in the ground a hundred metres away, then another and another. She counted a dozen of the giant creatures, and then more – twenty, thirty – and still they came. She whirled around, aware that on every side, in a great encompassing circle, the Vo were popping up from the icy ground and moving carefully towards the beleaguered Skelt.
And they’re armed, Imp said.
The spider-crabs carried staffs topped with great scythe-like blades, and many Vo bore more than one weapon. Some hefted clubs of bone, while others were unarmed but for the natural defence of their huge, swinging pincers. Perhaps two hundred Vo advanced, step by step, towards the Skelt.
Delia, back off and take cover beside the harl.
She glanced over her shoulder. As if in fear, the harl had collapsed to the ground. She took a step backwards, then another, away from the Skelt, then crouched down beside the flank of the creature and watched as battle was joined.
The Vo advanced in fits and starts, scuttling forwards and then stopping, a phalanx of bristling legs and waving claws. The Skelt moved to meet them, crouched and wary – but it was clear that the bipeds were massively outnumbered.
Imp said, I suspect that the Skelt capture Vo only when the numbers are in their favour. Now they face a fight.
I can’t see them overcoming the Vo, she said, but I hope the spider-crabs don’t take me as just another Skelt.
The Skelt had remained visible as they advanced slowly, but now they moved in a blurred wave and were among the spider-crabs in an instant. Delia heard the ringing clatter of steel on chitin, the frenzied knocking of a hundred pairs of mandibles and the high, whistling battle cries from the Vo. She saw a few spider-crabs fall, their legs hacked from under them – but she witnessed even more Skelt succumb to the onslaught. One second the Skelt were silver-grey blurs, and then they materialised on the ground as corpses, often nipped in half at the midriff, or missing arms, legs and heads.
She watched the Vo dart forward relentlessly, hacking and slashing, and Skelt bodies flew through the air and rained down on all sides. The sound of their bony bodies hitting the frozen ground was deafening; Delia cowered beside the great bulk of the harl, covering her ears and fearing that a Skelt, in an act of petty barbarism, might decide to despatch her before its own inevitable end.
She found herself clutching her laser scalpel, with no memory of pulling it from her pouch. Beside the sickle swords of the Skelt, and the Vo’s bladed staffs and murderous claws, her weapon was pathetic. She held it before her like a talisman, daring any Skelt to come within striking distance.
I wish the thermal suit was grey, she said. I’m more than a little obvious in this crimson suit.
I think the combatants have more to occupy their minds at the moment.
Yes, but when the battle is over...
I would advise you to put the scalpel away, Imp said. Whatever happens next, you should not be seen as a threat.
Very well. She retracted the blade and slipped the device into her pouch.
I’ve noticed something, she said seconds later.
Go on.
The markings on the shells of the Vo, she pointed out. They’re not all the same. I’ve counted a dozen different sigils.
This suggests a coming together of tribes, Imp said.
She looked across to the Vo imprisoned by the Skelt, who were watching the battle but were unable to join in due to the shackles around their limbs. The markings on the prisoners’ shells were, likewise, varied.
An uprising to rescue their fellow Vo? she said. I just hope they don’t associate me with the Skelt.
We will explain the situation, given the chance. But look, it appears that the battle is approaching its finale.
The blurs that were the Skelt became less numerous, and here and there the huge Vo halted amid the carnage and looked about them as if seeking their next opponent. The sound of battle diminished, and soon the conflict was reduced to scattered skirmishes as the Vo mopped up the remaining Skelt.
Delia hunkered down in the lee of the harl’s bulging gut, trembling; it was only a matter of time before one of the victorious Vo noticed her.
She counted five dead or badly injured spider-crabs, while not one Skelt remained standing. Vo passed amongst the carnage, beheading those Skelt still living with economical snips of their great pincers. Others crossed to where their brethren were imprisoned and, amid whistled greetings and celebrations, cut through their shackles. Still more Vo pulled the animal carcasses from the backs of the harl and feasted: Delia averted her eyes from the macabre sight of mandibles chewing dead flesh.
A towering Vo, scuttling by, stopped suddenly and turned its great dark eyes upon her.
She pushed herself back against the harl, then forced herself upright so that she was facing the spider-crab. Her hand crept, instinctively, to her pouch – then stopped. What possible protection might the pathetic laser scalpel afford her against the Vo?
A great claw moved towards her, plucked her up with a delicacy she found incredible, and swung her through the air.
She was set down away from the harl so that she was in full view of all the Vo, silent now and staring at her. A strange calm descended on the gathering, the spiders dispensing with the feast and turning to her in silence.
A hundred pairs of compound eyes turned on their stalks to regard her, and the silence was broken by a sudden high-pitched whistle from the creature that had found her. Then others joined in, taking up the cry, and soon the entire spider-crab army was whistling and chirruping and waving legs and pincers.
Imp?
I don’t know, Imp admitted.
The phalanx of Vo before her parted, and a lone Vo, much smaller than all the others, advanced towards her – its right foreleg severed at the first joint.
And riding on the spider-crab’s back, his right arm in a makeshift sling, was the small, blue-furred Fahran Delia knew as Mahn.
Chapter Eighteen
THE SELF-APPOINTED LEADER of the massed Vo clans – a huge brute the size of an earth-mover – declared a famous victory over the accursed Skelt and suggested the combatants, joined by Delia, Mahn and Var, return to the nearest underground lair to celebrate. The Vo had vast quantities of gallia pod wine with which to lubricate tired throats, and a hundred night worms were being roasted in preparation for the feast.
Mahn thanked the leader but said that time was pressing – the three friends were on a pilgrimage to the valley of Mahkanda, and must make haste. The leader accepted this but insisted that she and a dozen other Vo escort Delia, Mahn and Var south to the escarpment and the Fahran’s home village of Jhelam.
Var scuttled along proudly at the head of the procession, while Delia and Mahn sat on her back and shared a meal of neer root and water.
They passed along the bank of a river now melting in the rising heat. Huge floes of ice loosened and floated off, and meltwater sparkled silver in the midday light. The riverbank was turning green, thick with a mat of fast-growing vegetation, interspersed with pink blooms which snapped open in an instant.
Delia reached out and touched Mahn’s shoulder, then tapped Var’s shell. “You don’t know how good it is to see you both. I thought you were dead, Mahn, and I never thought I’d see you again, Var.”
“When the Skelt retreated,” Var said, “I came out of hiding and found Mahn. His arm was sprained, and he told me how he’d seen you carried off. I took him belowground to my people, who attended to his arm while I explained that you, Delia, had saved me from the ghorn but had been taken by the Skelt.”
“And they readily agreed to help me?”
“My people admired your bravery, Delia, and could not leave you to the depredations of the Skelt. My elders petitioned other tribes, raised a small army, and set off across the plain in search of the cowardly Skelt.”
“And there I was, thinking that a Vo might do for me when the battle was over.”
“My people rescued not only yourself, but a dozen enslaved Vo, with the loss of only three brave warriors. When the remains of the Skelt are discovered by their fellows, they will realise that we can resist their dominion; we can fight against their injustice and assert our rights.”
“I wouldn’t mind being a fly on the wall at the Vo celebrations,” Delia laughed.
Mahn looked at her. “A fly on the wall?”
Delia explained.
“I too would have enjoyed seeing the Vo celebrate,” Mahn said. “But time is pressing. I will spend only a brief time in Jhelam, and then we will be on our way again. We should be there in half a day, by sunset.”
Delia chewed on a neer root for a time, then asked, “Your mate, who passed away in the Skelt raid... How long had you been with her?”
“We were together for three summers, Delia, and were anticipating many more summers together. Like me, she was a teacher, though far more skilled and knowledgeable than me. She was a bright spirit, and illuminated everyone she met.”
“I’m sorry...” The response was inadequate. Delia stared across at the Fahran, who sat cross-legged, with a half-eaten neer root in his lap. “Your time in Alkellion must have been appalling.”
He turned his hand. “The odd thing is, Delia, that looking back on the last long year, I do not know how I managed to survive. I was in despair, and grieving the loss of my mate. You see, I saw her cut down by a Skelt sword during the raid...” He was silent for a time, staring down at the nibbled root. “The terrible thing was that her death was so needless. We were on the steps outside the village – gardens that we have fashioned on the side of the escarpment. It was the end of a long day in early summer, and we were walking and enjoying the setting of the sun. I look back and think that I had never been happier than at that time. Then I heard a scream from along the steps, and looked up to see a Skelt raiding party. They were making their way along the step, attacking the light huts the farmers erect at springtime, and putting the inhabitants to the sword. Mareen, my mate... she saw the Skelt attack the hut of a family she knew – she taught their daughter... I told her to run. There was a sinkhole leading to an underground passage just a few metres away. We could easily have escaped... But Mareen was more concerned about the safety of her pupil. She ran towards the hut just as a Skelt emerged.”
He fell silent and stared across the flat landscape, then closed his eyes and murmured, “It is a blessing that she died with one stroke of the sword, so suffered no pain... I collapsed in a faint, and that probably saved my life. The next thing I knew, I was corralled with a dozen other males while the Skelt leader moved from one to the other of us, demanding to know our professions. I was bound and taken away, and then tied to the back of a harl along with five other of my people. Six days later I found myself in Alkellion, being taught the language of our oppressors so that I might act as their interpreter.”
Var waved a claw. “Sad times, my little friend. But they are over.”
But the Fahran’s eyes were still far away. “I endured. My loss burned like a fire in my chest. Many was the time I almost threw myself from the ramparts of the city – but always something stopped me. My death would have gained nothing – in fact, it would have been an acknowledgement that the Skelt had won. And they would only have gone on another raid to find a Fahran to replace me... and that was a fate I wished on no one. So I lived one day at a time and dreamed that at some point in the future I might escape.”
Delia reached out and touched his hand.
Mahn looked up and said, “But you know how I feel, Delia, for you too have suffered your own loss, and more recently.”
She smiled. “More recently, yes, but we had only been together for a matter of months. I loved him, though. What is so painful... what really hurts... is that Timothy’s death has robbed me of a possible future. I’m an incurable romantic, you know. I looked ahead and saw myself with Timothy in a year, two years... five. Hell, I even dreamed of having children with him... and I’ve never admitted that to anyone before.” She shook her head. “Perhaps I was foolish to do that, invest so much after just months with him. But he was a good man, a gentle, loving man... And maybe it wouldn’t have lasted, like all the others... but now I’ll never, ever know.”
She fell silent and stared out from her vantage point high on the spider-crab’s back on a world more than ten thousand light years from Earth. She saw Timothy’s smile again, across the table in the Paris restaurant. She heard his avowal of love, just minutes before the starship blow-out: Delia... I love you.
And just seconds before the explosion, she had opened the channel to Timothy and said, Love you, too...
So at least he would have died knowing her feelings for him.
And his death would have been instantaneous, she told herself. Like Mahn’s mate, Mareen, he would not have suffered.
It was a small consolation.
From down below, Var lightened the mood, piping up, “I feel very young, you know?”
Delia smiled. “You do? Why?”
“Because I have just ventured from my hive, and I have never mated, and I have not experienced anything like the things you two have experienced.”
Mahn laid a long hand on Var’s striated shell. “But look at what you have experienced, Var. How many Vo just one summer old have trekked this far across the world, met an alien from Earth and helped rescue her, and been part of an army that defeated the Skelt? For a young Var, you have accomplished much.”
“And,” Delia added, “you will accomplish much more.”
They fell silent. Delia finished her neer root and drank more water. Their Vo escort bulked on either side of them, great bristling monsters that scuttled along, legs pumping like great black pistons. From time to time their high-pitched whistles passed back and forth: Imp informed her that they were trading reminiscences of the battle just gone, feats of bravery and derring-do, and jubilation at the sight of the slaughtered Skelt. At one point they fell into concerted song, like a dozen faulty electrical appliances competing to be the loudest.
Delia dozed, only to be awoken an hour later when Var stopped and exclaimed with a high-frequency whistle. She sat up, groggily, and Imp said, Var called out in wonder, a word that is hard to translate. It sounds like: siiiik! An appreciation of beauty, and awe, and at the same time gratitude that she has come upon a sight she has heard so much about.
Mahn, beside her, was staring south.
Imp said, The great escarpment that very nearly cuts the world in two.
They stood, it seemed, on the side of a mountain. At their feet was a sheer drop that fell forever – though her Imp informed her that it measured two kilometres. The world expanded below them, extending to the long southern horizon, a jagged line of snow-capped mountains. The land between was flat, but already turning green with the approach of summer. Delia made out vast forests – swathes of jade green growth as large as cities – and huge contorted trees ten times the size of a Terran oak.
The huge Vo leader approached Var and whistled. Imp translated. “The Great Escarpment! We leave you here, to continue your journey. But you must promise to return, to celebrate – and bring the Fahran and the strange red creature.”
Var spoke, thanking the leader and wishing her a safe return journey to her underground lair.
Delia watched the dozen Vo turn and march off across the flat plain, a powerful troop the sight of which, just days ago, would have struck fear into her heart.
The sun was moving little by little towards the far horizon, a huge bloated red sphere without clear definition.
Mahn said, “My village is nestles on a ledge a hundred metres below the lip of the escarpment, and there is the track leading down to it.”
He fell silent. Delia could only guess at what Mahn must have been experiencing, as Var set off along the track down the wall of the escarpment.
THE GREAT WALL curved away into the distance. A dozen terraces stepped down the escarpment, reminding Delia of farmers’ fields in the Himalayas. In each long strip a skinny, pink animal drew a plough, tended by a Fahran. Towards the centre of the crescent hillside, a hundred or so beehive-shaped mud huts huddled on the tiered ledge. This, evidently, was Jhelam. Below the village, the escarpment fell away steeply to the plain far below.
Mahn said, “Var, would you pause for a short while, please?”
Var duly came to a halt and all three gazed upon the peaceful rural scene.
“My home village,” Mahn said at last. “Nothing has changed. It is just as I left it, one summer ago. Continue, Var.”
They proceeded down the track, and as they passed along the curving terraces, the farmers ceased their work and stared at the arrival of the spider-crab, bearing one of their own and another strange, bipedal creature.
Silently the farmers left their animals and approached the track, then stood in silence and watched as Var scuttled by. One or two Fahran called out to Mahn, and he replied. They summoned their fellows from the village, and more and more of the small, blue creatures emerged to witness Mahn’s return.
What are they saying? Delia asked her Imp.
Greetings, for the most part. The first Fahran asked, ‘Who are you?’ and Mahn gave his name, and then another said, ‘Mahn? Can it be? But you were taken by the Skelt!’ Mahn assures them that it was indeed he, returning home after a long winter...
