Cheela - Starquake Part 11

Speckle-Top shook off the pile of Slinks that had been clambering all over her and, shoving back an inquisitive mini-Swift, she left the compound she had made. The eye-waves on the big-badge grown-up had a twitch that showed she was worried about something.

"Whole species gone. Wiped out!" said Zero-Gauss. "All we have left is the collection from my laboratory, and it is solimited"

"Looks to me like we got lots of everything," said Speckle-Top. "The stores are full of food, and when we want something special, we can eat one of your food Slinks. What is the taste of the striped ones?"

"No!" Zero-Gauss was nearly panic-stricken at the thought. "We must not eat them. They are the last ones on Egg. I must breed them to keep the species alive. The plants, too. They are the only ones left. I have to save the plants, too."

She went to the edge of the hole and looked down at the dozens and dozens of plants many millimeters below. They would survive there for a time, but they or their seeds must be laboriously hauled up on the crust if they were to be available for future generations,if therewere any future generations.

Speckle-Top had come up beside Zero-Gauss as she peered down the hole at the plants. The feeling of the immature body next to hers caused the collapse of Zero-Gauss's last defenses against the Old-One syndrome. She spread out a hatching mantle and covered the scarred, paint-smeared, speckled topside of the ugly youngling.

Speckle-Top had seen adult cheela do many strange things, but it was a new experience for her when the professor developed a long ridge just underneath her eyeflap bulges. The ridge became a sheet that slid up over her speckled topside.

A strange feeling came over her. It wasn't the intense feeling she got when playing eye-ball games with Crumpled-Tread, but a relaxed, warm,safe feeling. She could finally relax the eternal vigilance that had kept her alive since her first terrifying days in the dump with the wild Slinks hunting her.

Someone was now taking care of her. Someone was now watching out for her. She pulled all her eyes in under their eyeflaps, contracted her body into a small egg-shaped ball under the hatching mantle and rested. She liked the professor and the professor liked her. She liked the animals and they liked her. She wondered if this was what it was like being part of a clan. She decided she would stay if the professor wanted her to.

06:58:08 GMT TUESDAY 21 JUNE2050.

The last place Qui-Qui checked was the Rejuvenation Center. As she expected, everyone was dead there, too, even the "dragon plants," snapped off at their roots. The large rods of dragon crystal that had supported the plants now lay glistening on the crust. She moved past a motionless robotic body on her way out and stopped as she felt an electronic tingle.

"Emergency! Emergency!" a metallic voice whispered. She moved closer to the robot. The body of the robot didn't move, but the electronic tingle became stronger.

"Emergency! Emergency!"

"The emergency is over," Qui-Qui's tread vibrated through the crust. The robot continued its alarm as if it hadn't heard her. She switched to whispering herself.

"The emergency is over," Qui-Qui whispered, using her body to set up oscillations in the sea of electrons around them.

"Emergency! Crustquake! Activate Plan Two! Call Doctor!" said the robot.

"Stop!" commanded Qui-Qui, who owned a dozen personal robots. "Emergency Over! Restart! Report Condition!"

"Three-greths functional," said the robot. "I must report to a medical doctor. A failure has occurred."

"Stop! Restart! Emergency over! Tell me how to activate communications links to Bright's Heaven."

"I must report to a medical doctor," said the robot. "You are not a medical doctor." It fell silent.

Qui-Qui was puzzled. The robot's eyes were useless. How did it know she wasn't a medical doctor?

She went back to the main offices, found the remains of M.D. Sabin-Salk, pulled off his ornate badges, and replaced her glow-jewel decorations with badges. She went back to the robot, but didn't get too close. She could have done a good imitation of M.D. Sabin-Salk's tread accent, but she had never heard him whisper. She did the best she could.

"Tell me how to repair the communication links to Bright's Heaven!" she commanded.

"Open box," said the robot.

Qui-Qui was bewildered. She looked around, then saw a large metal box in one corner of the room.

The room wall had suffered a large dent where the box had slid into it. She went over to the box and read the badly faded label. It was another robot! According to the label, it was a maintenance robot for the next bank of enzyme machines that were due to be sent to the rejuvenation center. She undid the latches and slid off the heavy lid. Twelve gla.s.sy eyes raised up from a Slink-sized dome and looked around. The top of the dome had the design of a cleft-wort plant.

"Energy!" it said. The end of the box fell away and the robot glided out on its undulating underside. It paused by the damaged robot to exchange information, then moved into the enzyme machine room, where it found a partially full acc.u.mulator and reenergized itself. Qui-Qui followed it. The robot ignored her and started to lift an enzyme machine back onto its base.

"Stop!" she said. "Repair the communication links to Bright's Heaven."

"That is not my function," said the robot. "My function is to maintain the Rejuvenation Center in operational condition."

"Reset!" she commanded. 'The Rejuvenation Center cannot operate without doctors. All the doctors are dead. You must get new doctors. The doctors must be called from Bright's Heaven. You must repair the communication links to Bright's Heaven so the doctors can be called."

The robot paused in its repair of the damaged enzyme machine. It moved to the main offices, found one of the video link consoles, and opened it. It carried out a few tests, then moved to the next console.

Since none of them were operational, it then took out a part from one console, other parts from another console, more from a third, and put them in a fourth. It left the room for a while and came back with a small energy source to power the console. It went through its testing routine again.

"The communication link is repaired. Bright's Heaven does not respond." It returned to its work of fixing the enzyme machine.

Qui-Qui tried the video-link console. She had made so many long-distance calls in her life that she knew all the screen blotches and tread murmurs that indicated the condition of the various portions of the links.

The call probably made it to the central exchange at White Rock City, but the fibers were dead from there to Bright's Heaven. She tried to get the robot to go to White Rock City to fix the central exchange, but it refused to leave its a.s.signed duty station and the enzyme machines. She finally gave up and set out for White Rock City herself to pick up her flyer.

As soon as the flyer was activated, the acoustic coupler to the deck vibrated the floor with a recorded message.

"Qui-Qui! Respond on channel 36. Qui-Qui! Respond...."

The communications set was already on channel 36 so she activated the transmitter.

"Qui-Qui here," she said. After two long grethturns there was an eager reply.

"Lieutenant Shannon-Capacity here, Qui-Qui. Are you all right? I'm switching you right over to the admiral."

The harsh voice came rasping through the deck. The admiral sounded even more hara.s.sed than the first time.

"Your behavior is inexcusable!" said Admiral Hohmann-Transfer. "From now on I want you to make contact every turnfeast and midturn. Do you understand? Where have you been?"

"I was trying to find somebody else," said Qui-Qui. "I was not successful. Were you?" She then went through another long wait.

"No," said Hohmann-Transfer. "What am I going to do? We are doomed!" There was another long pause. "If only we had someone else than astupid entertainer."

The link to the admiral clicked off. Qui-Qui was about to turn off the power when she heard Shannon-Capacity again.

"There is someone else who wants to talk to you," he said.

"... h.e.l.lo? ... is this Qui-Qui? ..." came the voice. "I ... ah ... I met you some time ago . .. didn't really meet you really ... I saw you when you were going through the Rejuvenation Center ... my name's Cliff-Web ... run a construction company ... or used to."

Qui-Qui had been through this before. Another male overfl.u.s.tered by her large eyeflaps.

"I rememberyou" she said in her best stage tread. "The doctor said you needed to do some extra exercises. I didn't think so. You looked fine to me." After another long wait, Cliff-Web replied. He had regained his composure.

"You looked fine to me, too," he said. "And I bet you're looking even better now after rejuvenation."

"... I wish we had video," Shannon-Capacity interjected.

"It's been twenty turns since the starquake," Cliff-Web continued. "And you're the only one we've been able to contact. I've talked to the few people here on the s.p.a.ce station who know you and I've done some research in our library, limited as it is. You produce your own performances, manage your own finances, control dozens of personal staff including a dozen robots, and pilot you own flyer. You arenot stupid."

He hesitated before continuing, "Do you think you can become an engineer?"

"Sure," she replied. "With the right teacher and enough time. Why?" The answer from Cliff-Web came two grethturns later.

"The admiral is basically right. We're stuck up here. We don't have any s.p.a.cecraft that can land on Egg under its own power without cras.h.i.+ng. We can't build a lander because we have no tools and no raw materials to work with. We need something to 'catch' one of the s.p.a.cecraft we have. The jump loops are down, but it might be possible to reactivate one of the gravity catapults if they aren't too badly damaged.

"My plan is to use the robots on Egg," Cliff-Web explained. "With the two grethturn communications delay from synchronous...o...b..t to the surface, it will be impossible for us to direct them from up here. But if you can help control them, we can send down the information needed for them to make repairs to the catapult. First, however, we have to find those robots and gather them at one of the poles. Can you do that?"

"I've already found some," said Qui-Qui. "They are just as dead as everyone else. Except for one. I found him in a box at the West Pole Rejuvenation Center. He works perfectly, except he only wants to work on keeping rejuvenation machinery fixed. I tried all the robot control tricks I could think of, but the best I could do was make him fix the video link machines. Unfortunately, it was the only functional robot I saw. I'm afraid we can't use robots to repair the gravity catapults." Although disguised by the squeaky sound caused by the gravitational time s.h.i.+ft, Qui-Qui could hear the overtones of dejection when Cliff-Web's voice finally returned.

"I'll have to think of something else," said Cliff-Web. "Well, goodbye for now."

"Goodbye, Engineer Cliff-Web," Qui-Qui said in her most pleasant tone. "It has been a real pleasure talking to you. I hope to see you in personreal soon."

She spent the next two grethturns thinking of the many greats of turns she faced being all alone.

When Qui-Qui's gravitationally red-s.h.i.+fted voice finally reached Cliff-Web, it had been lowered from her normal contralto range to a slow, husky tone normally only heard in the privacy of a love-pad room.

Cliff-Web stammered a reply. "... ah ... Yes. I've really enjoyed ... been a pleasure ... talking with you ...

ah ... Qui-Qui ... really nice...." The link went dead.

Two turns later Qui-Qui returned to the Rejuvenation Center wearing a full panoply of M.D. badges.

The maintenance robot had repaired the auxiliary power generator and had gotten one enzyme machine working. Once that was done, it had allowed itself to work on lower priority items and had cleaned out all the bodies and tidied up the place. It was now trying to get a second enzyme machine working. She slipped into the main office and tried to read the files to find out how the Center worked so she could do a better job of playing a doctor. There was no power to the memory banks, so she went back and complained to the robot. It took him two turns, but he finally got the main office memory powered and running.

She then found that the memory files were blank. They had been erased by the radiation during the quake. She went into M.D. Sabin-Salk's old office compound and took down a few scrolls from his scroll wall. Except for some very faint markings at the very center of the scroll, they were blank too. She reported her findings to the West Pole s.p.a.ce Station.

"Why are you still at the West Pole?" Hohmann-Transfer was annoyed. "You should be out looking for robots or something useful!" Her hara.s.sed voice changed to one of near panic as Shannon-Capacity told her the bad news. "I could expect computer files to go, but scrolls, too?"

"Even taste-plates," said Qui-Qui. "There used to be an ornate taste-plate sign in the crust at the entrance to the Center. It's now tasteless." The delayed reply back from Hohmann-Transfer was worse than useless.

"Civilization is destroyed! What shall we do?!?"

Qui-Qui didn't bother to reply. She turned off the communicator and returned to her battle of wits with the robot. First she got it to reconstruct most of the files for the operation of the rejuvenation center from its internal memory. She then read those and figured out a way to get the robot to recharge the acc.u.mulators on her flyer. She ordered it to bring the acc.u.mulators in from the flyer as "urgent cargo" and put them next to the acc.u.mulators that were used as standby power to the enzyme machines. She then sent it off on a "repair" in the main office while she switched cables and charged up the acc.u.mulators.

Then she made the robot haul the "urgent cargo" back to the flyer. She was now ready to go anywhere on Egg. But there was nowhere to go.

06:58:09 GMT TUESDAY 21 JUNE 2050.

Heavy-Egg finally came to his senses. He dimly remembered the shrieking pain in his eye-b.a.l.l.s. It now was a dull ache. He stretched his eye-stubs to make sure his eyes weren't hidden behind their eyeflaps, but he could see nothing. He listened with his tread, trying to figure out where he was. All was silent around him. The only sounds were the thumping of his fluid pumps and faint rumbles from deep inside Egg.

Pieces of memory started to return. He remembered blindly wandering around on the top of the East Pole mountains, mad with pain. Finding the drop chute. Creeping, falling, sliding down through the darkness. New pain as he hit a broken section of the chute. Cries for help into the crust until his tread was raw, but no help came. Then the hunger pains grew stronger than the burn pains. He had finally found food. A chunk of food was in his manipulator, ready to go into his eating pouch. He was starved.

But for some reason he had not eaten.

He felt something underneath his tread. It was the body of another cheela. He moved his tread around, feeling the dead body-it was a large female. There were long slashes in the body torn by a crude blade.

The sharp piece of metal that had caused the slashes was in one of his manipulators. The chunk of food was in another. He formed a set of tendrils and reached out to touch the food. It was smooth and round and soft and leathery ...

"An egg!!!" he cried, his tread grating the crust with its vibrations. "I nearly ate an egg!!!"

He went mad again.

Eye-stumps waving erratically, he put the egg back in its mother, then stumbled across the deserted street. He found a store with an open door. It was a pulp-bar. Pus.h.i.+ng his way past the body of the barkeeper he found the cache of pulp-bags. He couldn't read them, but after sucking a few bags dry he didn't care. The dull pain in his eyes went away. He felt good. He loaded his carrying pouches with as many bags as he could carry and weaved his way back out into the street.

"h.e.l.lo!" he called. No answer.

"Got to keep on moving. Got to findsomebody."

He moved his overloaded body laboriously down the street and found another open door. This one led to a repair shop. Maybe he could find a good knife. He found lots of tools, but no knife. He picked up a tool from its holder next to the mechanic's work-pad. It was a welding torch. It used tanks of liquids that were mixed to produce an ultra-hot flame. The torch was on automatic and it immediately formed a long flame that flickered toward Heavy-Egg's hide. He screamed in insane panic as he felt intense heat once again. His pouches vomited bags of distilled pulp, and he dropped the torch which licked at a bag that burst into a bright violet-white ball of flame.

"I can see!!" Heavy-Egg said as the singed end of one of his eye-stumps gave a weak response to the intense flood of light. Entranced by the light, he madly added bag after bag of pulp to the growing blaze.

The equipment in the shop caught on fire and drove him out into the street. Then the tanks of welding liquid blew up in a tremendous explosion.

The next time Qui-Qui checked in on the communicator, there was some good news.

"Staring-Sensor at the East Pole s.p.a.ce Station has detected a large fire and explosion in Swift's Climb at the base of the East Pole mountains," said Lieutenant Shannon-Capacity. "It could be a signal or it could be a delayed reaction to the starquake. So far, it is the only sign of life on Egg."

"Then it is our only hope," said Qui-Qui. "I'm heading for Swift's Camp. I'll take the flyer, but I'm not going to fly, it wastes too much power. I'm going to travel close to the surface where the gravity repulsors have plenty of ma.s.s to push against. In that mode I could travel around Egg a couple of times without emptying the acc.u.mulators." She paused, "Sure seems like a terrible waste though. Here I have this terrific toy that can fly about in the sky and I have to use it as a dull crust-glider."

Leaving the robot tending its rejuvenation machine, Qui-Qui lifted the flyer on a low alt.i.tude, minimum energy flight profile, and headed for the East Pole. Meter after barren meter pa.s.sed under the flyer as she traversed the glowing yellow-white crust.

Avoiding the wreckage of the Jump Loop spread over the crust, she brought the flyer down in a flat s.p.a.ce in the outskirts of Swift's Climb. Finding nothing to tie it down to, she made sure that the machine was left far from anything solid in case there was another crustquake. Before leaving the flyer she made a call to the East Pole s.p.a.ce Station floating overhead and waited for the reply.

"The blaze occurred in the eastern section," said Staring-Sensor. "It's the old section of town right at the bottom of the superconducting chute that was used by the Web-Con workers on the s.p.a.ce Foundation project. Just find an east-west road and head for the mountains."

Just then another voice entered the communication link. It was Hohmann-Transfer.

"At all costs youmust protect our flyer," the admiral warned. "The fire may have been caused by looters.

You are to take weapons with you and report in every dothtum."

"I have no weapons, and it will take me two dothturns just to get to the east side from here," said Qui-Qui. "Besides, one fire does not a band of looters make. I will report in when I get back."

Qui-Qui did begin to feel a little uneasy as she made her way through the deserted town. She moved quietly and stopped often to listen. Finally she heard a voice. It had the high tenor pitch of a male tread.