Jack Chalker - Priam's Lens

The day of mutual discovery ended with wonder on both sides, but no clear answers. The one thing that Kat Socolov couldn’t help thinking was how fragile and vulnerable human beings had made themselves by being so dependent on technology. If these descendants of the survivors of conquest had known how to harvest and process and weave cotton, for example, they would have had no problems with clothing and blankets and the like, they would have had fabrics that did not dissolve in the engineered rains. But nobody really knew how to do that, or plow a field with human power, or to do any of the thousand and one things ancient humans had taken for granted.

They had sunk so far and so fast because nobody was left who knew how to do those things. Nobody had needed to do them for centuries.

Sergeant Mogutu was restless during the night, and at one point cried out in his ancient mother tongue. In the morning, he was dead.

Father Chicanis did what he could, and together that morning at the insistence of the priest and the colonel, they managed to bury him in a shallow grave.

“I’m next, I suspect,” the priest said. “I don’t mind, really. I will at least die on the world of my birth in a good cause and serving God.”

“Don’t talk like that! It is self-fulfilling!” Kat Socolov snapped.

He sighed. “Look, there’s infection in the arm and it’s not going to get better or stay where it is. You know it and I know it. And there’s no way anybody here can do a competent amputation. We don’t even have a sterile blade.”

It was the two young women who came to his aid. They found and mixed a paste of some local herbs that really did seem to lower the inflammation on his arm; at least it eased the pain.

Still, looking now at the river, Chicanis said, “I can’t come. You and I know I can’t get across that. I’m going to move north by east and see if I can contact another of the Families. At least try to be of some use.”

The young people were upset at the idea. “You don’t have to do that! We will all go your way!” Littlefeet told him. “Look, we have a new Family here. We have a priest, guards and scouts who can take on and beat Hunters, three women to bear more children, and we can become one!”

It was Harker who shook his head and told them, “We are not here to start a family, Littlefeet. We’re here to do a job. Over there, beyond the river, beyond the hills, is a weapon that might drive the demons out. We are here to get it and make sure it gets used. We must do this even if we all die as a result.”

“But the demon city is over that way! I looked upon it from the high mountains and it took a part of my mind! No one can gaze upon it and not be changed for the worse! And going right there—they will capture you and you will become their slaves!”

“We have to take the risk. It’s the same as the guards of a Family in your lives. They must be willing to give their lives for the greater good. You have no idea how many people are depending on us.”

“He’s right, Littlefeet,” Kat Socolov agreed. “And we must begin today. You do not have to come. Stay with Father Chicanis, help him, and save him if you can from his wounds. The rest of us must cross the river.”

Littlefeet didn’t want things to go that way, but he was also torn. To stay behind was weakness; he could not bear for them to think him less willing to face the demons than they. But he didn’t understand what they were trying to do, and he sure didn’t want to go that way.

Spotty realized the situation and tried to suggest a middle ground. “Froggy can stay with the Father,” she suggested. “They will be good support for each other. Littlefeet and me will go with you.”

N’Gana wasn’t all that sure he liked that. “Now, hold on! You said yourselves you don’t know what you’re getting into but it’s all bad. I’m not sure I want to worry about you two when we’re this close.”

Littlefeet drew himself up to his full height, even though he barely came up to the colonel’s neck, and said, “We have survived all our lives on this world. You have not. We know the dangers and how to stalk the tall grass and dark groves. We will be no burden!”

None of them really thought that they would after that. Still, one problem showed up almost immediately.

“You mean neither of you can swim?” Harker was amazed. That seemed such an obvious survival skill.

“Nobody knew how,” Littlefeet replied. “There were tales that people could swim in the water in the old days, but there was nobody to teach us.”

Time was far too limited to give them lessons, but a variation of Littlefeet’s own idea of river travel wasn’t all that hard, as it turned out. Very near were some good-sized pieces of wood that had been blown down in the storms long ago, and with a little work and trimming here and there they made a serviceable float. And the log did float, a bit awkwardly, with Littlefeet and Spotty clinging to it for dear life as Harker and Socolov took turns guiding and pushing it.

Much of the crossing turned out to be less swimming than navigating through river muck. This was a brand-new channel and a delta that was still forming. It was shallow in most places but had a sticky mud bottom that threatened in turns to drag them down or pull them under if they walked the bottom.

By the coming of darkness they hadn’t quite made the opposite shore and were pretty well stranded on a wet, muddy bar a few meters out of the water. Their meager rations were long since exhausted; it would be a hungry and desolate night.

The storm didn’t help, either; it put a huge amount of water into the river in a very short period of time and threatened to wash them off their precarious refuge. Finally, the storms passed as they always did and the sky began to clear.

They were all covered in mud, and there wasn’t much that could be done about it in the dark. So, they just lay there and mostly stared up at the stars or dozed uneasily.

“The grid is easy to spot tonight,” Harker commented to Kat. “Maybe it’s just being out here with nothing obscuring my vision for a couple of kilometers, but it’s a lot clearer.”

She nodded. “I think if we can break one of the anchors, that whole thing will collapse, and with it their immediate hold on this continent. I wish I knew how to do that.”

“You still think the grid’s more than just a surveillance system?”

“I’m sure it is. I think it’s managing the whole continent and everybody on and in it. Their precious giant flowers, maybe even the way the so-called survivors are developing.”

“Huh?” He was interested.

“The more I think of those Hunters, and the more I talk to the two here, the more certain I am that the Titans are allowing the Families to survive, at least for a while, for some purpose. Maybe breeding stock for pets or guards or whatever. Hard to say. I’ve felt it since a few days after we arrived. Felt my own body respond to it. Talking with Spotty only confirmed it.”

“You’ve felt it?” He knew that she’d been talking about this in some kind of nebulous terms, but this was the first time she was willing to articulate her feelings.

“Yes. You know, like most girls, I had the implant at fifteen and since then I haven’t worried about pregnancy or suffered more than a very mild and almost forgettable period. But a few days ago, I could feel it being canceled out. I started to have feelings I hadn’t had very strongly in a long time, and hadn’t particularly wanted, and I became aware of going on a fairly strict cycle. Spotty says that her periods are bloody and one’s due in a couple of days, and I’m beginning to suspect that I’m going to face the same thing. That’s going to be bad enough, but after Sergeant Mogutu and Father Chicanis’s arm I can handle it, I think. It’s—after that. From talking to Spotty, I get the impression that for most of their cycle the women had little or no sex nor much urge to do so, and that the men didn’t push it. That’s unnatural in that kind of primitive setting. But every month, they had a period of time when that’s all they wanted to do. Gene, that’s like animals in heat.”