Larry Niven - Footfall

“How? As if it were lying on its side?”

“Yeah. Now, what was that?”

Wes Dawson was close enough to hear. “You’re sure of this?”

“Yes.”

“A frieze of a fi’?”

“I didn’t say it was a frieze! I said it was like that,” Alice said.

“Certainly.” Dawson made his voice soothing. He made no move to come closer to her. “Arvid, what do you think?”

“I do not know.”

“I think we should tell Raztupisp-minz.”

“We will consider that,” Arvid said. He turned to Dmitri. “You have heard?”

“Da.”

They spoke rapidly, in Russian.

Jeri took Arvid’s arm. “They learn languages quickly,” she said. “They say they don’t know any Russian.”

Arvid smiled. “If they have learned rapidly enough to comprehend the accented dialect we are now speaking, nothing will defeat them.” He turned back to the others. The liquid syllables continued. Finally Dmitri nodded. Arvid turned to the others. “Da. We will do it, then. Alice, you must tell your story to our masters.”

The mudroom was warm enough for comfort, and the mud was thawing, by the time Pretheeteh-damb arrived.

Raztupisp-minz had told him that the red-haired human was certified rogue. She could be hallucinating… The comfort that gave Pretheeteh-damb vanished as he entered. There in the ceiling was a frieze of Thowbinther-thuktun, a half-legendary priest of two eight-cubeds of years ago. Opposite Thowbinther-thuktun was an entirely similar bulge.

Some fi’ must have an odd sense of humor. He must have entered the mudroom after acceleration stopped; had shaped the mud into a ribald parody of the ancient discoverer of the Podo Thuktun. But Preetheeteh-damb was beginning to shiver, and it comforted him that his octuple were all spaceborn. “Remove the mud,” he told one of his fithp, “carefully. But waste no time. We resume acceleration shortly.”

This couldn’t have happened at a worse time. Within hours they would release the Foot. Then there would be violent maneuvers as they placed Thuktun Flishithy in position to send down the digit ships.

The Invasion of Winterhome was about to begin, and now this.

The warrior scraped away softened mud with the back of his bayonet, and Fathisteh-tulk began to take shape.

The Herdmaster waited impatiently for the call. Then Pretheetel-damb came onto the screen. There was activity behind him.

“Report.”

“It is indeed Fathisteh-tulk, Herdmaster. He was drowned. We find no breaks in the skin.” By now the corpse was free from the ice, visible in the screen. It rotated slowly for inspection by the octuple’s physician. “There’s a deep groove in Fathisteh-tulk trunk, above the nostril. It might have been made by a cord pulled very tight, but it wouldn’t have killed him. Mud caked in the fi’s mouth. It looks like a ritual execution. He was drowned.”

“Thank you.” Pastempeh-keph broke the connection. The octuple clan must be informed. The women will not be pleased. Murder. Murder was rare among the fithp. It was almost always the beginning of rebellion.

“We approach the final moments, Herdmaster,” the Attackmaster said. “What shall we do?” Run away. Drop the Foot to slow the humans. Confine them to their planet while we take the rest of their solar system, which is more valuable than the planet anyway.

Fathisteh-tulk would have given that advice. Gladly. Advisor Siplisteph will not. The sleeper women will never consent to that. Nor will Fistarteh-thuktun.

“Attackmaster.”

“Lead me.”

“Continue with the battle plan. You are in charge of Thuktun Flishithy.”

The funeral pit was a cylinder of soil, garbage, bones, and what remained of the honored dead, all being gradually churned into an indistinguishable matrix. Instruments sampled the blend for acidity, bacterial population, temperature. The atmosphere within was unbreathable. Workers in pressure suits maintained a cavity in the matrix, open at the fore end. They had removed several tons of it into the Garden to make room for this day’s funeral proceedings

The cold had preserved Fathisteh-tulk. His eyes looked off at different angles. As lines lowered him to join the Silent Fithp, his digit-cluster bent strangely above the nostril. One eye met Pastempeh-keph’s. My breath was closed with rope, and then with mud. Why both? What might I have said that I did not say while alive, who never hesitated to speak? Who closed my mouth with mud?

The Herdmaster shook his head. I will learn. He had already spoken his formal farewell to today’s half-dozen dead, recognizing posthumous accomplishments, sometimes authorizing upgrades in harness colors before a corpse was stripped for burial.

Elaborate funeral practices had evolved among the spaceborn during three generations of interstellar flight. Inevitably they were geared to a life in spin gravity. The funeral pit was on the ship’s axis. Ceremonies were held in the leavetaking chamber, a partial ring along the lip of the funeral pit, where spin gravity was almost nil. Today’s ceremony obeyed tradition. The main drive was running at high thrust; the hum of it was everywhere; yet there was almost no acceleration.

Pastempeh-keph sensed the immense mass against which Message Bearer was pushing. Message Bearer was even now issuing its final direction to the nickel-and-iron residue of an icy moonlet. She must break loose within a 512-breath, or ride the Foot down to Winterhorne. Had a lessor personage led these rites they might have been postponed until after the maneuvers; but after they separated from the Foot, there would never again be time. Fathisteh-tulk deserved all honors. And even if he did not, I could not seem niggardly in granting honor to a former Herdmaster!

Chowpeentulk watched through glass as Fathisteh-tulk came rest in the moving earth. Her digits wrapped the child and held it to her throat to suckle. He was male, eight days old. Under light thrust he would already have walked. In nearly free-fall he drifted with waving legs. He seemed to enjoy it.

“My mate was murdered,” Chowpeentulk said. “Who?”

“I face too many answers,” Pastempeh-keph said. “Your mate was never careful of whom he might offend.”

She trumpeted wildly. The child, startled, flung its stubby digits across its head and tried to burrow between Chowpeentulk’s legs. In the minuscule thrust its efforts lifted her from the floor. It was strong for a newborn.

The loss of dignity slowed her not at all. “This crime was committed against the whole of the Traveler Fithp!” she bellowed. “Sleepers and spaceborn, how can we hold together unless the murderers face judgment?”

The Herdmaster let silence follow, letting Chowpeentulk see how the others, the fithp and the little clump of humans, stared at her. Then, “We will solve this. You know that I like puzzles. Do you also know that I must fight a war?” He looked into the funeral pit. “Farewell, Fathisteh-tulk. You have too much company.”

He joined Takpusseh as they were leaving. “Fathisteh-tulk had always the virtue of asking interesting questions,” he said. “Now I must find my own.”

“You will have an Advisor,” said Takpusseh.

“Bah. Siplisteph will have to be trained. Breaker-Two, did Fathisteh-tulk ask you interesting questions?”

Takpusseh snorted. “I did not find them so. He wanted to interview the humans in privacy.”

“Why?”

“He would not say. The humans are not his thuktun. I told him that I myself would translate, and that I would inform you of all that transpired. He declined. He said that he would simply wait for me to do my job.”