Cheela - Starquake Part 19

Crust-Crawler turned off the magnetic barrier and stood beside Dented-s.h.i.+eld as they waited for the Taker and her party to approach. The five Swifts each carried a heavily speckled cheela. The random dark red and yellow-white speckled pattern even extended to their eyeb.a.l.l.s. Behind the five Swifts plodded a line of porters, their pouches overloaded with cargo. Some were speckled, but nowhere near as much as the five warriors. The warriors kept their eyes looking in all directions, since they were in strange territory, but they seemed unimpressed with the huge gravity catapult off in the distance and the s.h.i.+ny machines scattered about the base.

"I don't see how they can see out of those pink eyeb.a.l.l.s," Engineer Thermal-Conductor whispered.

"That would put them at a great disadvantage in a battle."

"They can't see well," Dented-s.h.i.+eld explained. "But the speckled ones make up for it by their control over animals. It is rumored that the Emperor can talk to animals."

"I can see how riding on a Swift would be a significant advantage in a battle," said Otis-Elevator. "One warrior on a Swift would be much more than a match for a dozen warriors on the ground."

"Two dozen," said Dented-s.h.i.+eld quietly. "I know." Her eight eyes looked down at the deep dents in her s.h.i.+eld. She dropped the s.h.i.+eld on the ground and moved forward to meet the Taker, unarmed.

"Greetings, Taker of the Emperor," she said. "I am Dented-s.h.i.+eld, Leader of the Dusty Crust Clan."

"You failed," said the Taker. Her harsh voice was slightly m.u.f.fled by the body of her Swift.

"We have come to take the 132 Zebu Slinks that belong to the Emperor. You are four short. You know the penalty."

"Yes, Taker." Dented-s.h.i.+eld moved closer.

"What is the penalty?" Crust-Crawler whispered to Letter-Reader, who was standing next to him.

"An eye," said Letter-Reader. "One eye for each Slink."

"But she only has eight eyes now!"

"I will move forward with you, Dented-s.h.i.+eld," said one of the elders of the clan.

"I will too," said another.

"Wait!" said Crust-Crawler. "We are visitors from the stars in the sky. When our great s.h.i.+p came down from the stars we accidentally killed some of the Zebu Slinks that the clan was guarding. We would be more than willing to pay the Emperor for his loss."

"It is good for you that you admit your crime, slave," said the Taker. "You are indeed a stranger.

Otherwise you would know that the Emperor has no need of money. Money is for trade between slaves.

What the Emperor wants, he takes."

"We can give him a machine that makes food," said Crust-Crawler. "It will make more food than a great of food Slinks."

The Taker paused, her eye-stub waves switching from one pattern to another as she considered.

Crust-Crawler took advantage of the hesitation.

"I have some samples right here," he said, moving over to the food mats. He picked up a half-dozen each of the red b.a.l.l.s and the golden cubes and brought them back. Forming a strong manipulator he reached up over the back of the Swift and handed them to the Taker. The Taker took one each and looked them over carefully. Then she glared down at Crust-Crawler.

"Eat them!" she commanded. "Now!" She watched carefully as he took them back from her and put them in a feeding pouch. After a few sethturns he opened his pouch to show her that they were gone. He then raised the rest up for her to choose another. She sucked carefully at the golden crystal, then dropped it in her eating pouch.

"The Emperor will take the food machine," she said.

"I will place it on another machine that will carry it for you," said Crust-Crawler.

"I had better give them a cargo-glider," said Power-Pack. "It has a large acc.u.mulator. We don't want the Emperor to run out of food."

Within a few methturns a cargo-glider was loaded with a second food machine and brought before the Taker.

'This is the box that controls the glider," said Crust-Crawler. "I have set it for automatic. Wherever the box goes, the glider will follow."

The Taker took the box, then called over the leader of the porters.

"Here, slave," she said. "You carry the box. Be careful you do not damage the Emperor's food machine.

The penalty will be severe."

"Yes, Taker," said the porter. Crust-Crawler noticed that he only had nine eyes.

Crust-Crawler then handed up a scroll. 'This scroll contains the instructions for the operation of the food machine. In there the Emperor can read how to produce over a dozen greats of different kinds of food with the machine."

The Taker took the scroll and placed it in a pouch without deigning to look at it. "The Emperor has more important things to do than read," she said. "I do his reading for him."

"There is plenty of room left on the cargo-glider," said Crust-Crawler. "Your porters could unload their cargo and let the glider carry it for them."

"Ah! Yes. The cargo," said the Taker. "Unload the eggs!"

Each porter emptied three or four pouches, and soon there was a pile of black and white striped Slink eggs on the crust. The porters were still fairly bulky, however. They were probably still carrying the food supplies for the party and the Swifts, as well.

The Taker looked down at Dented-s.h.i.+eld. "Here are 144 Slink eggs. They belong to the Emperor. In 72 turns I will return. If you have taken proper care of the Emperor's 144 Zebu Slinks he will magnanimously give you twelve of them to feed the clan. If you fail, you know the penalty."

"Yes, Taker," said Dented-s.h.i.+eld.

"Speaking of penalties," said the Taker. "You have not yet paid your penalty for the last failure."

"But we gave you the food machine!" Crust-Crawler objected loudly.

"Silence, slave!" the Taker roared. "You do notgive the Emperor anything. The Emperortakes."

The Taker brought her eyes to focus on Dented-s.h.i.+eld. "The Emperor also does not accept excuses,"

she said, pulling a long whiplike sword from its scabbard along the flank of her Swift.

"I understand, Taker." Dented-s.h.i.+eld raised four eyes up on elongated stubs.

"I will stand beside you," said an elder.

"I will too," said another, moving forward with an eye-stub erect.

"I, too," said Captain Otis-Elevator. He moved bravely forward to stand next to Dented-s.h.i.+eld. He held up an eye-stub, the eye glaring at the Taker.

"This affair is no concern of yours!" whispered Dented-s.h.i.+eld so loudly the electronic wave tingled Otis-Elevator's hide.

"I was pilot when my s.h.i.+p caused your clan damage," said Otis-Elevator. "I will cleanse my clan's honor by sharing in your punishment."

"I care not where the four eyes come from," said the Taker, cutting off the conversation with an expert whirl of her whip-sword. Four eyes fell to the crust and burst open from the fall. The Taker then stowed her whip-sword and urged her Swift up onto the cargo glider. Her four silent bodyguards did the same.

"Our Swifts are tired from much travel," the Taker said to the lead porter. 'Take the box and lead this floating machine back to Bright Center." She left without looking back.

Dented-s.h.i.+eld waited until the Taker was far in the distance. She then turned her attention to Otis-Elevator beside her. His remaining eleven eye-stubs were rigid with fury, the eye-b.a.l.l.s riveted on the distant speck on the horizon.

"It is useless to fight the warriors of the Emperor," said Dented-s.h.i.+eld. "Fortunately, they do not come often." Instead of reaching over to touch his hide with a tendril, she reached over with one of her good eye-stubs and rubbed the rigid base of one of his stubs. The subtle s.e.xual overtones of the touch helped him come to his senses.

"Your clan and my clan have partic.i.p.ated in a feast of friends.h.i.+p. I know I speak for the rest of the s.p.a.cer Clan," said Otis-Elevator, "when I say that we wish to be more than a friend of the Dusty Crust Clan. Although we are not bound to out-clan relations by exchange of partners and eggs, we can be bound to out-clan relations by mingling of body juices in combat."

He raised a stump of an eye-stub, body juices still dripping from the end. She brought her fresh stump forward and touched his, their juices blending. There was a hesitation, then the two elders of the clan that had shared in the sacrifice moved toward them and added their two stubs. Crust-Crawler took a sharp object from one of his pouches, deliberately slashed the side of one of his eye-stubs and pushed forward to join the group.

"You were very brave to come forward as you did," said Dented-s.h.i.+eld as the group broke apart. "I would be honored to share an egg with you, for I am sure the hatchling would bring honor to our clan.

Would your clan become our out-clan by exchange of partners as well as mingling of combat juices?

That is, if you are willing to mate with a female that only has seven eyes."

"None of us is perfect." Otis-Elevator waved his stump.

"Then if your clan leader will permit, you will come with us as we return to our clan compound," said Dented-s.h.i.+eld. "I am sure we have a lot to learn about each other."

"I have no objection," said Crust-Crawler. "Do you, Captain Otis-Elevator?"

"None," he replied. "But I think this is time for a name change. From now on, call me Captain Otis-Elevator no longer. Instead, call me Avenging-Eye!"

Dented-s.h.i.+eld gathered her clan, the clan's clutch of Slink eggs, and headed east toward the clan compound. Letter-Reader operated the glider carrying the food machine while Avenging-Eye moved alongside, giving instructions through a rapidly rippling tread. Not all the clan left, though. A number of the younger members stayed with the "s.p.a.cer Clan" to become apprentices to the engineers and learn the secrets of reading and computing.

The word of the strangers from the stars and their marvelous food machines spread across the crust. The leaders of other clans came to visit and were greeted warmly by Crust-Crawler and fed the delicious "starfood" from the machines. The members of the clans were eager to learn more about the miraculous machines of the s.p.a.cers. The memories of a life of ease and plenty in the ancient days before the starquake had been pa.s.sed down verbally from the tales of Old Ones in their hatchling pens, so they were not afraid of the technology, but embraced it.

It wasn't long before the clans abandoned their homesites and resettled around the s.p.a.cer's base. They were careful to bring along the Emperor's herds of food Slinks; but instead of being allowed to wander, the herds were kept in pens made of magnetic barriers and fed from food machines that had been adapted to manufacture a feed for the food Slinks that produced optimum growth in the animals. But they weren't eaten, for Chef Pouch-Pleaser and Engineer Metal-Bender had worked together to make food machines that could produce chunks of food Slink meat that were indistinguishable from the real thing.

"It seems like my crew is spending half its time building food machines," Metal-Bender said one turn at the meeting of the senior staff.

"One-dozeth is more like it," said Crust-Crawler. "Besides, with all the clan apprentices, your machine construction team is twice as large as it was."

"My crust engineering team is five times as large as it was," Engineer Crust-Cracker told the group. "We already have the support foundations under the gravity catapult and have excavated and lined the crust under the central hole. We are now moving into road building. We will have all the roads in the base camp plus clan compounds paved in the next four turns and the road out to the power plant site will be widened to Flow Slow size in a dozen turns."

"With the extra crew and the road, the construction of the main power plants is way ahead of schedule,"

said Power-Pack. "The first plant will be sipping magma in six turns."

"Good," said Push-Pull. "My crew has finished reconnecting the tubing on the gravity catapult to turn it from a flying machine into a standard catapult. One power plant should allow us to test it at one-quarter power."

"When you think you are ready, I'll send a message up to East Pole Orbital Station to send down a lightly loaded scout s.h.i.+p," said Crust-Crawler. "I want to bring down a rejuvenation machine. Some of these clan leaders are getting old and nearly eyeless from their encounters with Taker. Their experience is too valuable to lose at this stage."

"We can make our own rejuvenation machines," said Delta-Ma.s.s. "If the precision shops on the interstellar arks can fabricate the delicate inner machinery, Metal-Bender's crew can do the rest of it."

"We still have the problem of getting the rare catalyst to promote the formation of the rejuvenation enzyme," Crust-Crawler reminded his colleague.

'That's no problem," said Delta-Ma.s.s. "We have been shoving so much crust through the ma.s.s separator machines to make metal stock that as a byproduct we have collected enough of the catalyst to activate four dozen rejuvenation machines."

"How are our relations with the clans, Avenging-Eye?" asked Crust-Crawler.

"Excellent," said Avenging-Eye. "The members of the Dusty Crust Clan now almost consider themselves s.p.a.cers. They mix willingly with the other clans and have even taken over all of the beginner reading and computation cla.s.ses. There seems to be a tenseness in the actions of the elders, though. I think it is time for the Taker to come again."

"The thought makesme tense," said Crust-Crawler. "Are we ready for her?"

"I hope so," said Avenging-Eye.

21:03:12 GMT TUESDAY 21 JUNE2050.

The Taker came out of the west. She and her four warrior-guards rode their Swifts down the center of the paved road while the porters plodded alongside on the crust, carrying their heavy loads of Slink eggs.

Even at the great distance Crust-Crawler could see the annoyed twitch in the Taker's eye-wave pattern as she pa.s.sed by the clan compounds and food Slink pens.

"The timing is nearly perfect," Crust-Crawler said as one eye looked up at the sky. A large object was falling out of the sky directly toward them. A low groan started in the crust, rose to a piercing shriek, then tapered off as the gravity catapult brought the spherical scout s.h.i.+p to an abrupt halt in midair, then lowered it gently onto the landing platform.

The clan cheela and the food Slinks had seen a dozen landings already and were not disturbed. The porters accompanying the Taker, however, back-treaded and scattered, some of them pus.h.i.+ng eggs out of their pouches as they fled. Two of the riding Swifts bolted, and it took expert handling by the warrior-guards to bring them under control, but not before one of the Swifts scooped up three of the dropped eggs.

The Taker got her mount under control, glared angrily at Crust-Crawler, then with harsh commands and flickers of her whip-sword, reformed her expedition. Three eyes were left lying in the road.

The Taker moved her Swift forward and pulled a scroll from her pouch.

"Clan Leaders! Come forward!"

The leaders of the eight clans that had come to live around the base gathered in a group in front of the Taker. Dented-s.h.i.+eld moved forward from the rest. She had no weapons, but she carried her s.h.i.+eld by her side.

"Greetings, Taker of the Emperor," she said. "I am Dented-s.h.i.+eld, Leader of the Dusty Crust Clan."

"I have come to take the 132 Zebu Slinks that belong to the Emperor," said the Taker. "Why did you leave your a.s.signed grazing place and bring them here without permission?"

"The Emperor's Slinks are protected from wild Swifts here. If you count them you will find we have lost none of them. The Emperor's Slinks have better grazing here. If you look at them you will find them all in prime condition." The Taker had already counted the black and white striped Slinks in the pen when she had ridden by earlier; in fact, except for one yellow and pink Slink missing from the herd belonging to the White Cliff Clan, all were in excellent condition.

"I will take 132 Slinks from each herd for the Emperor," said the Taker. "The Emperor magnanimously gives you the rest to feed your clan." She waved her eyes at the porters, who started to unload their cargo of Slink eggs from their pouches.

"Here are the eggs for your next herd. They are the Emperor's property, guard them carefully. You know the penalty."

Dented-s.h.i.+eld's tread hesitated as she spoke, but she finally'trummedout the reply.

"We do not wish to have the remaining food Slinks. We willingly give them to the Emperor."

"You do notgive things to the Emperor, slave," said the Taker angrily. "The Emperor takes! For your insolence I shall takeall of the food Slinks, and your Clans can grub for groundnuts. Now pick up those Slink eggs and take care of them."