Barrington Bayley: The Great Hydration

He indicated a balled-up rubbery object in the midst of an arrangement of rods and loaded springs. “I, too, can apply it to some prisoners I keep ready, provided there is sufficient inducement.”

Kurwer drew Hrityu aside to confer. “Each of these weapons seems impressive in its own way,” he said doubtfully. “What do you think? Perhaps we could obtain them all.”

Sadly Hrityu shook his head. “It is the custom for the buyer of an invention to demand sole possession of it. We can offer our radiator to one party only, and I do not think any of these weapons are its equal in value.”

“What could be more valuable than the survival of the Analane?”

“But nothing we have seen so far guarantees victory. The machines are large and clumsy. They could be overrun or stolen, leaving us worse off than before. It is too early to reach a decision.”

They moved off, and as they did so a small slim humanoid, standing no taller than Hrityu’s shoulder, sidled up. Hrityu stopped. He had not seen the stranger’s like before. His skin was as black as a Gaminte’s, but was covered in fine corrugations that might have been tribal markings. Most striking was the absence of any head-crest: his bald pate aroused a measure of revulsion in the two Analane. Striking too were his eyes: milky pale, and wide as if in wonderment.

“Analane,” he said in a low, purring tone, “a Crome has boasted of your tribe’s impending destruction. One may deduce that in military terms your position is untenable.”

Hrityu replied stiffly. “That is supposition only.”

The other raised a placating hand. “No doubt the Crome are much given to bluster. I am of the Toureen. We live a long way from here, within the barriers of a fifty-lang-wide crater, and so are little known. But we are not without inventiveness. For two years I have waited in this pavilion to see if anything can match what we have to offer. You have something to barter?”

“Indeed.”

“May one enquire…?”

“We shall reveal our device when we see something we want in exchange.”

The Toureen paused before replying. “Strangely, that is also my policy.”

He gestured around him. “Nothing you may see here is comparable with what I can give you. Any who possess it will win supremacy in the field of battle… we appear to be at an impasse, unless we can at least describe our respective goods.”

“Even for that, mutual trust is necessary.”

“I am ready to risk mine.”

Hrityu looked down at the bald black pate of the Toureen. In his own tribe it signified emasculation, and he wondered how it could be possible to trust such a creature.

“Then you must speak first,” he said.

Beckoning, the Toureen drew him down the aisle and apart from any of the stands. He looked this way and that to ensure he was not overheard, and spoke quietly.

“Our weapon achieves total disintegration of whatever it is hurled against. It can burst huge rocks asunder. It could demolish this entire pavilion in the space of a single breath.”

“You make an extravagant claim,” Hrityu responded, trying to picture what the Toureen was saying.

“But a true one. The world has never before seen such sudden and violent force in the service of war. It can be compared to the eruption of a volcano.” He paused. “Now: tell me of your device.”

“Very well, but it is not a weapon,” Hrityu told him. “Our mechanics have discovered a means of long-range communication. We call it a radiator. It is able to transmit the spoken voice over great distances—we have tested it up to a hundred langs.”

Seeing the look of puzzlement on the Toureen’s face, he continued: “Its greatest value lies in its secrecy. Invisible radiations that can neither be seen nor heard carry the voice. It is made audible only by means of a receiving apparatus carried by the listener. Imagine, if you can, the uses this invention can be put to. Messages can be sent without a messenger, and what is more, received the instant they re dispatched.”

The Toureen was evidently having trouble understanding him. And indeed the radiator was so strange, so inexplicable, that Hrityu himself sometimes had difficulty believing it. “To send a voice a hundred langs with no one in between hearing it?” the black humanoid said in mystification. “That would be most remarkable…”

“We do not lie. Only dire necessity persuades us to divulge this secret, as you have deduced. If you are interested in obtaining it, then I wish to see this weapon of yours.”

The Toureen made up his mind. “Come with me.”

He took them out of the Pavilion of Warfare and past the adjacent compound where dejected prisoners waited as targets on which to demonstrate this weapon or that to prospective customers. At the rear of the compound, ochre Yongs fought with buff lizards, Yong blades clashing with lizard prongs. Hrityu guessed them to be rival groups of mercenaries competing for a commission.

Soon they were in the humming vehicle park. Their guide showed them to a low-slung, six-wheeled carriage, and invited them to board it. They reclined uneasily on cushions piled in the box-like passenger compartment, while the Toureen seized a steering lever and yanked on a hand-grip.

The vehicle rolled forward. Careless of who stood in his path, the Toureen negotiated the concourse with skill and soon they had left the World Market behind and were heading into the plain towards the hills.

For some time the vehicle rushed over the sand, their driver offering no hint as to their destination. Suddenly he made for a clump of rocks. Behind it was a depression that, until one came suddenly upon it, remained unseen. At its bottom a small camp had been set up with two more ebon Toureen squatting beneath an awning.

The vehicle crept into the hollow and stopped. The driver got out and spoke to his tribesmen. They glanced at the Analane, then reached into the back of the awning and dragged forward an evidently heavy chest, whose lid they threw open.

“Here, if you please.”

Hesitantly, Hrityu and Kurwer stepped down and approached.

The chest was filled with brown globes, nearly the size of a Toureen’s head. Hrityu was reminded of the flasks of air-absorbing crystals he had seen earlier, until one was taken from the chest and he saw that a short cord dangled from it.

Their guide picked up two shields from a pile that lay nearby and handed one to each of the Analane. “These will protect you from the fragments. Now: we had best get out of the hollow.”

No explanations were offered as the party scrambled up the incline, each carrying a shield and the three Toureen cradling a number of the brown spheres in their arms. At the top, some distance from the rocks, the leader called a halt.

“We shall hurl the balls at those rocks. Hide behind your shields.”

The spheres were placed on the ground. Squatting behind their shields, Hrityu and Kurwer watched as the two Toureen from the camp took up a globe each and applied fire to the cords from tinder-boxes that dangled from their necks. The cords sizzled. The Toureen ran for the rocks. Peeping over his shield, Hrityu saw them hurl the globes and then come scampering back to throw themselves behind their own shields.

Instinctively he ducked. From the direction of the rock clump came a massive noise, a double blast, one a split second after the other. Hrityu had never heard anything so loud; it actually hurt his ears. Missiles were battering away at his shield, as if shot from flingers. Then something seemed to be trying to tear the shield from his grasp, and following that, fragments of rock came rattling down from the air.

When the pandemonium was over, pungent-smelling smoke came drifting in their direction. Hrityu dared a look. He stared stupefied.