Jack Chalker - Priam's Lens

“Well, that could have just developed along with their other oddball notions,” he suggested.

“No, I don’t think so. It’s more specific than that. And since, as we said about the Hunters, these kinds of mutations—in this case a throwback characteristic—would be unlikely in large numbers in so short a time, it had to be deliberate. But the Families weren’t ever captives of the Titans, nor did they spring from there. Conclusion: they are being kept in the mud deliberately. And that is the mechanism. It doesn’t have to be specific. If they’ve identified the latent genes, they could just turn them on. It’s a lot easier than engineering creatures like the Hunters, which may just be out there to keep the `normal’ population numbers under control.”

“I liked it better when we thought they ignored us completely,” Harker said.

“Yeah, me too, now. But I don’t think they have any sense of us as individuals, let alone equals. I don’t think they think that way at all. I think they’re just playing games or experimenting or whatever with whoever and whatever they happen to have around. And that now includes us. ”

That thought was always on his mind. And, he now realized, it was even more on hers. If she was right, they had very little time to complete their mission before the grid introduced some compelling and inconvenient distractions.

It wasn’t a big deal to make it the rest of the way once morning arrived, and all concerned were more than happy to get underway. They were hungry, thirsty, and exposed.

Kat didn’t want to talk about it, but she’d slept very little overnight and had been nervously watching fuzzy egg-shaped balls of light dart back and forth in the distance, coming from and going to the very area they were headed for. Many times she worried that one would change course and notice them, all in the open on the mud bank, but, thank God, none did.

Littlefeet had had the same kind of night. He didn’t wonder about the grid, which had always been there, or about the effects it might be having on him and Spotty. He did, however, worry about those fuzzy eggs speeding back and forth. Something in a corner of his mind sensed them. He could even, to some extent, link with them or with whatever was driving their craft and see a bit of what they saw and hear a bit of what they thought. Of course, none of their thoughts made any sense at all. It was just images and confusion, but it had an ugly, unclean feel to it every time. Like the anthropologist, he was very happy to get off that bar and back onto land.

Finding some squash and melons was relatively easy; there were also several pools of reasonably clear water that was useful for washing off the mud, although none of them felt they would ever get all the stuff off.

Having Littlefeet and Spotty as scouts proved very valuable, although somewhat embarrassing as well. Both of them were able to vanish and blend into the tall grasses and groves almost at will, and then reappear with barely a sound to report on what was ahead.

What was ahead now was the ruins of Sparta.

Not a century before, this had been home to perhaps half a million people. What remained were the grooves for the roads, and, here and there, the remnants of a building made of stone or brick or adobe mud, substances that the rain dissolved more slowly. There were also expanses of twisted metal and cracked concrete. It looked and felt like the ruins of a truly ancient place abandoned for thousands of years, not fewer than a hundred.

Here and there were also very regular-looking holes in the ground, rather evenly spaced along the old boulevards.

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings,” Kat muttered, looking at the barren remnants of the city. “ Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair.”

“Eh? What?” Colonel N’Gana asked, startled.

“Oh, just an ancient poem that stuck with me,” she told him. “It was supposedly on a stone marker in the middle of the desert in an ancient empire. The punch line was that only the marker remained. Every trace of the king and his awesome works was gone. This place reminds me of that. This city, or what’s left of it, and even this lonely, empty shell of a once vibrant world and civilization. How thin it all is! Our civilization, our institutions, beliefs, laws, comfortable ways of life. How fragile.”

Harker looked around and understood her point. The colonel ignored it; it was irrelevant.

“The pattern indicates a subway system,” N’Gana noted. “Of course, there wouldn’t be any trains left, nor power for them or for lights down there, either, but I wonder just how much survived below?”

“The rains would run down into the tunnels and dissolve most of the stations and track bed,” Kat Socolov noted. “Besides, it would be darker than pitch down there and we have nothing to create light.” She sighed. “What a weird world this is! Some deep buried things from the past have a residual power supply so the looter could broadcast his warning before he died, and we have a crack at the codes, but just lighting a fire anywhere on the surface would ring alarms and bring the Titans. Crazy.”

“Well, we’re going to have to work out some way to light our way once we get to Ephesus,” Harker noted. “And there has to be some way. Our original freebooter got down as far as he could until he was blocked by a cave-in. I wonder what he used for light? He faced the same bare assed situation we do.”

“It might be time this evening to see if our young natives have any ideas on how to light up the darkness,” Kat said thoughtfully.

But they didn’t. Their entire lives had been devoted to making no signs, no impact at all that would draw attention to themselves and those around them. The humidity was so high in the region that wildfires were virtually unknown, but they associated fire with lightning and local blazes and were terrified of it. There was no way to know short of finding and joining a Family and watching the process, but Kat suspected that one aspect of training from the time when these people were very small was an absolute terror of fire.

The only other possible source wasn’t that useful in the end, either. There were swarms of flying insects that gave off white and yellow light as they flew, probably to attract mates or perhaps to recognize one another as friends or signal poison to enemies. The stuff did glow, and held its glow for a while, but it was so weak and the quantity was so small that it wasn’t viable.

“The Dutchman’s man found a way,” N’Gana pointed out. “If he did, then we will find one, too.”

Through the night, and the next three nights, they heard a good deal of clicking from Hunters about in this region, which also implied that one or more Families also roamed the area and thus provided prey for them, but none of them, Hunters or Family members, came near, and all eventually faded into the darkness.

There was one last river to cross as well. They could see the low rounded mountains of the coastal range ahead, just beyond it. This river was more difficult to handle, being old and deep, but Harker, using the knowledge of the two natives, was able to gather enough wood and strong vines to lash together a basic raft that, he hoped, could be steered with two poles. Not only the young natives, but also Hamille was very happy to have this, even though it would not hold all of them. At least the river at this point was no more than a kilometer wide.

“Two of us will have to swim it,” Harker told them. “One of us should be up there as the captain and handle one of the poles.”

“Don’t put yourself out on my account,” Kat told him. “I can swim this.”

“I wasn’t even considering being gallant,” Harker replied. “I’ve handled these rafts before, although ones that were better made with stronger materials. I know how it handles. Colonel, are you up to a swim?”