Michael Siemsen - Exigency

Unhkte?

Tom pushed off the wall and stood. “I believe that was the objective until we happened upon Dowfwoss Fetz.”

“Yes, I am aware,” Unhkte said. “Come now. You have nothing more to fear for the time being.”

Tom helped Angela up. “The time being?”

“Yes. For the time being you are under the scrutiny of my group. This is maneuver. Do you understand?”

“I’m not sure I do.”

“Gesture,” Unhkte attempted. “For the council’s sake. ‘Scrutiny,’ we say. Tactical naming to quell concerns while not, ourselves, harboring such concerns. Do you understand?”

Tom got it. The Thinkers—or at least Unhkte—believed Tom innocent, even if the council did not, and had presented some sort of ruse to get them freed.

“I understand,” Tom said. “You have our gratitude.”

“We shall see. Come out now.”

Tom and Angela stepped over the puddle and struggled to find footing on the roughhewn bedrock beneath the exit. Seconds later, unannounced arms from above curled under their armpits and lifted them up and out of the cave.

Angela pulled her suit down at the legs. She sent one of the preset Threck phrases through her suit’s PA. “Thank you.”

Unhkte slid closer and regarded Angela. “Identical voice. You share this Threck voice.”

Earlier in the day, atop the trembling harvest cart, Tom had reviewed vid of the whole bath encounter, cataloguing observations while critiquing his own performance. Dissatisfied with his poor explanation of the whole talking suit thing, a better explanation had occurred to him that he was pleased to now share. “Our garb emits the words we put into it. It is like Threck whistle—producing sound your bodies alone cannot create, and it’s the same sound regardless of the user.”

ANGELA: Brilliant! You!

“This is the most extraordinary thing I have heard,” Unhkte said with two eye hides. “It is shame.” She turned and began walking down the torch-lit hall.

“Why ‘shame?’” Tom and Angela followed as some Threck closed the holding room while others walked close behind.

“This is not your mistake.” Unhkte gestured behind her back, one arm coiling clockwise, close to her body (“is not”), while the other pointed at him (“you”). Tom realized that one had to adopt a simpler type of speech when addressing someone who was not looking. Unhkte started up the tunnel’s cramped, semi-spiraled stairway to ground level. “It is simply unfortunate that we cannot spend more time with you. From what little I have heard, the Thinkers and I could blithely halt all current contemplations and dedicate seasons of time just listening.”

“Believe,” Tom said, and suddenly felt quite moved—strangely—as if the emotion had a physical form stretching out inside his head. He swallowed. “Syons People share this opinion of Threck.”

Unhkte paused at the arched exit and turned to face him. Tom had to balance awkwardly on the concave stairs. Angela ran into him and put a hand on his rear. “What could Syons People learn from Threck? It appears that you have already achieved shyma .”

“I do not know this word shyma , but I assure you, there is much that we’ve already learned and can still learn from your people.”

Unhkte emitted a short laugh. “As Eshkowoss Peekt taught, shyma is not end. To reestablish this notion… my group will be amenable.” She continued on, out of the archway, and Tom was relieved to exit the precarious shaft.

He wondered, though, what was this lamenting? She seemed to be implying there remained little time. Had Unhkte negotiated a reprieve from whatever sentence the council had decreed, but they were now to be forever exiled? Tom wanted to ask, but opted for silence. Despite Unhkte’s seeming fondness for them, Tom had earned the same esteem from Amoss until he’d talked too much. No, it was back to Minnie’s sage directive: say as little as necessary in as few words as possible. Earlier, once the dialogue had begun flowing, he’d disregarded this advice.

They followed Unhkte along one of the wide, canvas-covered passages that connected the arcades and plazas. From above, this was the outermost of the city’s concentric circles, and a bustling army of hungry Threck happened to be heading the opposite direction to one of the plazas for mealtime. Tom, Angela, and the Threck walking with them fell in line behind Unhkte as the ground-quaking crowd parted and streamed by on either side. Ostensibly identical sets of curious eyes flicked by like a series of flashing pics of the same person, reminding Tom of some early animation or motion picture.

“What are these?” popped into Livetrans so many times that Tom paused input until the swarm’s numbers thinned and the corridor ahead cleared, only muddy tracks remaining.

“This way.” Unhkte gestured to a sloped ramp. “To the nursery.” She lifted her cloak from the ground and stepped onto the ramp, skating on her knee-bends down the slippery, hooked slide.

If Earth cities had been built with slides everywhere, Pablo had once remarked, there would be no wars.

Angela shoved ahead of Tom, crouched down, and launched down the slide on her backside with a “weee.” Tom followed after her, the somewhat muddy polished stone banking left and depositing him at ground level, five meters below the previous tier. A set of stairs followed the edge of the slide, obviously for trips back up, but apparently not to descend levels. Tom supposed it made sense. Who would want to go down stairs?

The group walked between two high walls that spread away from each other as they approached the doubly tall main city wall. The sound of a rushing waterway echoed in the corridor with a disorienting stereo effect. The air was cooling, and Tom could smell the moisture… and something else. He peered up as they walked. This alleyway was not shaded, revealing the violet sky’s darkening gradient as the East Ocean rose, eclipsing the Epsilon star. The last sunlight would soon leave the atmosphere.

Before reaching the end of the alley, Unhkte cut right through the only exit, an archway that led to a small, mossy riverbank, and the source of the sound. Threck City had been built atop the “Great Flow,” the widest and most consistently flowing channel of a large delta system. The city center and tower were situated just south of the channel, which entered the city through fixed bars beneath the outer wall… just there! A stone’s throw away from him!… and exited the same way at the other end of the city, near the harbor. As a geologist, Tom had devoted much of his time to studying this delta, establishing models that predicted likely and potential shifts and erosion—data he would not be sharing with the Threck any time soon. “You’re going to have to move your city in the next fifty years” didn’t feel like a prudent fun fact to share at the current juncture.

The river flowed powerfully before them, masking the sound of what lay beyond an arched bridge: the source of the nasty smell. Hundreds of very young Threck thrashed wildly in a huge mud pit, jabbering and splashing and laughing.

ANGELA: Smells like the farm house… times an illion.

“This is the nursery,” Unhkte gestured.

Tom glanced around and observed that the mud pit was only a portion of the total area. They followed Unhkte up to the bridge’s highpoint, where she stopped once more.

She pointed to the mud pit. “There you have young, ten days to one hundred or more—I’m not confident of the specifics.” The bridge led to a low earthen wall that wrapped around the pit all the way to the city wall. A few adult Threck lounged on top of some sort of seats, like stools, and vaguely watched the young. “These are overseers. When old enough, they move newborns from the hatchery,” she motioned to a pool of still water about half the size of the mud pit, “to the mud, and from the mud, inside. Come.”