Barrington Bayley: The Great Hydration

Part of the rock clump had vanished.

“Again!” the Toureen leader ordered.

The ritual was repeated. Again came the titanic blasts, the fusillade of rock fragments, the buffeting wind.

Even more of the rock clump had been demolished. Chunks of it lay about the desert floor.

The Toureen waited until everyone had climbed to his feet before speaking. “We call the substance eruptionite,” he explained. “The recipe is fairly simple, merely a matter of mixing certain purified chemicals in the right proportions. When ignited, the mixture erupts as you have seen. The force of the eruption is greatly increased if the mixture is confined in a strong, solid shell, and this, of course, is also a convenient way of delivering it. The shells can be made to any size—small enough to be hand-flung, or so big that only specially made flingers could hurl them. As you have just witnessed, eruptionite will even tear apart stone fortifications. The Crome will be blown to bits.”

Hrityu pondered. “Do you undertake to provide us with the mixture itself, or merely the formula?”

“We can supply a sufficient amount of eruptionite to give you a breathing space, thereafter you must manufacture it for yourselves. By the usual protocol, we also promise not to sell it to any other tribe.”

Again Hrityu pondered. Kurwer spoke up.

“Since this weapon is so potent, why do you not wish to preserve it for your own use?”

“We Toureen are not accustomed to engaging in war. Our crater walls have so far been sufficient discouragement to invaders, and they are so massive that not even eruptionite could breach them. My race delights in new knowledge, and therefore we are willing to impart this secret if in so doing we gain another that is equally remarkable.”

“You shall have your wish,” Hrityu said confidently, “for this is indeed the weapon we seek. The time has come to exchange names. I am Hrityu, of the Analane. My companion is named Kurwer.”

The other drew his small slim bulk erect. “I am Nussmussa, of the Toureen. Now as to this radiator… you mentioned a range of one hundred langs. How may this be put to the test?”

“One hundred langs is perhaps rather too much to demonstrate easily,” Hrityu admitted doubtfully. “What do you suggest?”

“You have the apparatus at the market?”

“Yes.”

“Then we shall put the transmitting device in your vehicle, and the receiving device in our vehicle. One of my party will accompany you while we drive for one half of a day in opposite directions, and will attempt to speak to me at intervals. When the sun reaches its zenith, we shall return.”

Hrityu nodded. “That is acceptable. Let us return to the market, and we will show you the radiator.”

The warm breeze blew in the Analane’s faces as they rode in the Toureen vehicle. Hrityu tried to calm his elation, reminding himself that there was still much to be done. Transport would have to be arranged for the initial supply of eruptionite before the Crome staged their main attack. Also, how difficult might it be to find and purify the chemicals needed for its manufacture? This would have to be talked out with Nussmussa.

Then again, there were the Tlixix to deal with, and their fee to be arranged.

Hrityu reflected that it might be worth applying to the Pavilion of Audience to try to forestall the Crome’s petition.

At his direction Nussmussa sped into the market, wheeled into the vehicle park and flashed past the lines of carriages to halt beside the Analane rover. Hrityu and Kurwer stepped down and went to the rear of their vehide, opening the hidden compartment where they had secreted their precious apparatus.

He blinked as he pulled up the metal panel. He was not sure that he could believe his eyes. Then a horrified sound escaped from his throat. His eyes had not deceived him.

Their invaluable cargo, the radiator and its accompanying receiver upon which the survival of the Analane depended, was gone!

Poised in an orbit synchronous with the planet’s rotation, the twin speculae of an interferometric telescope looked down from opposite ends of a mile-long extensible rod. Their slightly different images, processed by point-to-point comparison, gave Messrs. Krabbe and Bouche an excellent view of the World Market far below them.

Karl Krabbe twiddled a knob beneath the viewplate. The scene, currently bird’s-eye, shifted and tilted until it was as though one stood on the ground amid the inhabitants. The processor made a fair job of the representation, though the deduced facial features tended to be vague and fuzzy. He focused on a drama in cameo: two thin blue humanoids gesticulated excitedly to a smaller black humanoid. They had opened up the rear of a wheeled vehicle.

He turned to Boris Bouche. “It’s the nearest thing to a town on the whole damned planet! You only find camps and villages anywhere else.”

“That’s because towns are markets, essentially, and this is the only market they have.” Bouche’s voice had an acid quality, easily given to sarcasm. “God, Karl, I have to remind you of enough. Don’t you remember your economics?”

“Sure I remember,” Krabbe retorted testily. “What makes you think I don’t?”

Karl Krabbe was a barrel of a man, his large, ruddy face seeming always about to break into some anguished pronouncement, leaving it lined and anxious. He dressed carelessly and tended to slouch. His partner, Boris Bouche, slender and tall, was neat and compact by comparison, but the dapper impression did not extend to his face. The wide slash of his mouth and the close-set eyes gave him a predatory look. He stepped forward, peering over Krabbe’s shoulder at the plate.

“Here comes one of the bosses.”

Krabbe had panned the focus to the main concourse. One of the lobster-like creatures was being moved from one pavilion to another. A transparent tent covered the motorised dray. Within it, water sprays asperged the bulky, shelled passenger. There was something lordly about the beast’s slow progress through the throng, whiskery stalks waving above the foot traffic.

“If we do any business here, it’s his sort we’ll be dealing with,” Bouche said.

Krabbe grunted. “I mostly like crustaceans in a well-blended sauce.”

“Crustaceans? Yes, I suppose that’s close enough, though you could say he is to a crayfish what we are to… well, there isn’t any mammal as brainless as a crayfish. What we are to a newt, maybe.”

“And on a desert planet. It’s amazing.”

“Not really. It’s just that they’re smart. Wouldn’t you say so, Spencer?”

He craned his neck to the planetologist who stood at the back of the room. Spencer nodded, and came forward.

“Yes, sir. There’s not much doubt that this planet was watery once, perhaps as recently as fifty thousand Earth years ago. Then the water suddenly vanished, for some reason. Castaneda is working on the data now.

“The crustacean-like creatures were the dominant intelligent species of the time, and as far as we can tell they are the only one to have survived the calamity—except, presumably, for whatever fauna or flora they keep as food. Instead, a desert biosphere has arisen, one that doesn’t need water. That the lobsters, as you call them, have managed to maintain some sort of dominance despite their small numbers is a tribute to their tenacity, I would say. They own all the free water on the planet, and conserve it with great care. I imagine they make good any losses by paying other species to process whatever tiny amounts can be extracted from plants and the dead bodies of desert creatures.

“That market is the secret of their power. They created it and they manage it, as the only real centre of trade on the whole planet. It gives them their wealth and their prestige, and makes it possible for them to impose their own conditions on anyone who wants to come there. Physically they could be wiped out overnight, but they’ve been there right through the evolution of the desert species, whose history they have practically managed, and that gives them enormous psychological pull. They rule by nerve.”