Barrington Bayley - The Great Hydration

So the Artaxa had made no provision to feed their prisoner, beyond grabbing up his breakfast. And whatever they used for food would at best pass right through him, if it did not poison him outright.

He sighed grievously. For all his wandering, this was the first time in his life that he had gone hungry, except by choice.

Hands pushed him towards the elders. Without preamble or greeting, one spoke to him.

“Your kind has been seen in the Pavilion of Audience. You have erected machines in the desert. You have weapons unknown to us. Clearly you are an inventive people. But who are you? By your appearance you are numbered among the races of men, yet water is not poisonous to you and you require it as do the Tlixix. This is a contradiction. Did the Tlixix make you to be their new servants, or are you from some hidden part of the world? Answer, and answer truthfully, unless you wish to test how much torture you can withstand.”

Furiously Northrop began wondering what he could say to avoid that threat. Did the Artaxa know any astronomy? Would they understand the idea of a world other than Tenacity?

He set about trying to explain it all. That he and his friends were men, but they came from another world that was full of water, as this one had been when only the Tlixix lived on it. He had expected this to be greeted with incredulity, but not a single facial membrane as much as stirred. The elders simply listened. When he had finished one spoke.

“So you have come to our world from elsewhere, or so you say. And you talk to the masters of our world, the Tlixix. Why? What is your business with them?”

Northrop started thinking hard. What the hell do I owe Krabbe and Bouche? They wouldn’t let me go when I wanted to leave. They locked me up and dragged me out here. Now they’ve abandoned me to the dehydrates, leaving me to die. Anyway they’re acting illegally. Apart from that, their morals stink. These dehydrates will all drown when the ocean comes back. I’m not even sure they can survive on higher ground once the climate changes. But the least they deserve is to be warned.

He spoke aloud to himself. “All right Karl, all right Boris, here it comes.”

He began to spill the beans, again reminding the Artaxa of how Tenacity had once borne a large ocean. In those long-ago days, he said, water had showered from the sky even on to the dry places. They appeared already to know this and became impatient at his words.

But when he told them that those days could be made to return, they were both startled and bewildered.

“This is to happen in the next few days,” he said implacably. “All the low-lying areas, including these caverns, will lie under water. If you want to survive you had better move to higher ground.”

Not a single one of his listeners stirred or spoke for a long time. Then, in a voice gravid with disbelief, one said, “It is a lie. The creature is trying to panic us into evacuating.”

“Put him to the torture,” another said.

Yet another spoke up. “Why do you tell us this? It is treason to your kind.”

“My masters are acting against the laws of the world we come from.”

Northrop answered. “If they are found out they will be punished. I disagree with what they are doing, but while I was their slave I had to do their bidding. Now you have taken me away from them, I am not their slave.”

The most bemetalled of the elders turned to another. “How much eruptionite have we? How many radiators?”

“We have more than a thousand shells of eruptionite,” the other answered. “As for radiators, about forty so far.”

The chief elder addressed Roncie again. “If your warning is a true one, then you have rendered us a great service. If it is not, your punishment will be a terrible one. We go now to consider your words.”

The elders turned as one man and marched into the great crowd thronging the floor of the cavern.

Roncie was left with Karvass, who though badly shaken by everything he had just heard, offered to show him round the underground camp.

“A great enterprise is underway,” he revealed. “The tyranny of the Tlixix is over. We and other tribes are ready to rise in revolt. Furthermore we have new weapons and devices which not even the Tlixix have.”

In a side cavern he showed Northrop where one of these devices, referred to as ‘radiators’ was in production. To the Earthman’s bemusement it turned out to be a primitive form of radio. Like all early inventions, it was unnecessarily large and cumbersome.

But it followed the general pattern of technology on the desert planet. All powered machinery on Tenacity depended on the presence of the radioactive element radium, plus a means to convert its radioactivity to electric current, which was also due to a serendipitous natural resource. Tenacity was rich in exotic crystals, some of which generated enough electricity to turn an electric motor if placed adjacent to pure radium. Tenacity mechanics had also devised accumulators, again exploiting naturally occurring exotic minerals, able to absorb a hefty amperage at fairly high tension. Hence a radium power source continued to charge up an accumulator whether the machine was in use or not. A Tenacity vehicle could therefore travel at top speed for many days, drawing additional power from a previously charged accumulator.

The layout of the ‘radiator’ was somewhat similar, except that no accumulator was necessary. Semiconductor crystals sent an oscillating current to the antenna, causing it to transmit a carrier wave which was modulated by means of a simple microphone. In addition there was a speaker for receiving. And that was all. There was no tuning. The frequency was fixed.

Northrop silently saluted the unknown Analane genius—or geniuses—who had discovered radio waves and developed the rig, something which the Tlixix had failed to do throughout their history.

Perhaps, he told himself, Krabbe & Bouche were doing business with the wrong side.

Indeed, no sooner had he finished inspecting the radiator than word came to Karvass. The council had taken his warning seriously. In an effort to avert the catastrophe they were bringing forward the revolt.

Task forces were to set out immediately to launch attacks on the Tlixix hydroriums.

The inhabited part of Tenacity consisted of the bed of the dead ocean together with the former shoreline. The old Tlixix civilisation had centred on that shoreline. When the Tlixix created their helper races they confined them to the great empty space around which were ranged the new domes of survival. They had no wish to see those races spread to the highlands, which even before the great dehydration had consisted mostly of desert. They knew they would be unable to exercise control over so vaster an area, and that endangered their security.

Now, from the secret giant camp of the Artaxa, from the camps of the Toureen, from the camps of the Sawune and of those others who had thrown in their lot with the rebellion, which included the Limes and one of the two Jodobrock tribes, motorised war-hordes set out. Gaminte patrols they encountered were wiped out, any individuals who fled or escaped hunted down in the fastest available vehicles. It was essential the Tlixix should not know what was about to hit them.

Had O’Rourke in fact kept a watch to search for Northrop they might have received a warning—supposing anyone had remarked on the number of desert caravans heading for the Tlixix refuges. He had delegated a crew member to make a scan through the interferometric telescope initially, though without moving the Enterprise to get a better view. Almost as quickly, he had taken her off the duty to supervise the delivery of shock tubes to the eight sites in preparation.