Icerigger - Mission To Moulokin Part 23

The two scout parties sent out to search for a pas-sage through the hills returned. Their crews babbled out an impossible tale, so laden with gestures, expres-sions and adjectival phrases that Ethan and his friends were hard pressed to make sense of any of it.

While they debated uncertain terms among themselves, Tahoding and his crew launched feverish preparations to get underway. At that point, Ethan cornered Hunnar and refused to let him pa.s.s until he explained what was happening.

"Suaxus, my squire, was in the first boat," the knight said, trying to control his obvious excitement.

"They found a pa.s.s through the mountains. Only, they aren't mountains."

"You're not making sense, friend Hunnar," Septem-ber prompted.

"They traversed this pa.s.s and emerged on the other side of this range. It seems the wind blows harder, or steadier, or both, on the other side. What is buried here lies revealed there." He turned, indicated the partly excavated hillside.

"These are not mountains, they are buildings." And he broke away to perform some important task before Ethan could think to ask anything more.

Only Williams accepted this news calmly. "It makes sense, not to mention explaining the preponderance of artifacts we've found." The icerigger was already racing for the recently discovered pa.s.s. "There are similar buried cities on many Commonwealth worlds, Ethan. The same winds which would cover an ancient metropolis could later uncover it."

"a.s.suming that's what we've found-who built it?" The teacher eyed Ethan, pursed his lips. "Who knows? The Tran obviously don't, nor do the Saia, who are supposed to know so much about this land.

If we're lucky, maybe we'll find out. Perhaps they are people who no longer survive on Tran-ky-ky but who gave the Saia their legends of other worlds."

The pa.s.s turned out to be much wider and smoother than anyone had a right to expect. So straight was the gap between hills that unnatural forces were sus-pected. Ethan wondered if they excavated straight down, would they eventually strike pavement?

Once through the slopes they turned east, inland and away from the cliffs. They did not have to travel far. Dirt and rock were piled here also, but much stonework could be seen rearing planes and angles toward the sky, reminding Ethan of a partially eroded graveyard. Here it was the bones of dead buildings which stood revealed to the air.

The ground rose skyward not in a smooth slope as on the other side, but in graduated levels. "See?"

called Williams, pointing out different stone work and designs on each level. "This is not one building, as the scout parties a.s.sumed, but new structures raised atop the old. As each older structure was buried, it formed a foundation for the next building erected on the same spot. One town on the skeleton of the old."

His hand swept eastward.

"We are looking at an ancient series of cities, not a cl.u.s.ter of monumental buildings. We can only guess at how far it extends. Since we've been paralleling similar rises nearly all the way from Moulokin, it's possible similar towns are buried beneath each of them. They may all form part of a single lengthy metropolis at least several hundred kilometers long."

The crew furled all sail and anch.o.r.ed the icerigger against the wind. Everyone not on watch scrambled over the side to marvel at the colossal architecture.

"One thing I don't understand." Williams tried to rub an eye, remembered his mask, raised it slightly to admit a comforting finger. "It would be natural to expect the topmost structures to be the most sophisticated in design and execution. Yet from what I can see the architecture is nearly identical from top to bottom, town to town."

"I'd like to know who's responsible for all this." Ethan scrambled carefully across the fine but slippery talus. "Now I'm even more positive it's not the Tran. Look at those arches, those wide windows." He bal-anced himself on a partly buried rectangular block that must have weighed several tons, pointed upslope and to his right.

"And that building almost exposed over there. The roof's too flat to resist snow buildup, and it's lined with what looks like gla.s.s to me. A skylight, on Tran-ky-ky? Not with the quality of gla.s.s the Tran make.

A decent day's wind would blow it to splinters. Unless, of course, it's something more than normal gla.s.s."

"Perhaps the Saia did build this after all, and have just forgotten about it, young feller-me-lad,"

ventured September. "A selective memory about such matters would keep 'em from gettin' embarra.s.sed about let-ting so much knowledge slip away."

They uncovered one building after another: homes, warehouses, public meeting places, even what seemed to be an open amphitheater. An open stadium, on Tran-ky-ky!

It didn't take thirty years experience or several scientific degrees for Tran as well as humans to pos-tulate a climate completely different from the present.

Having come to that realization, Williams left the archeology to EerMessach and others. Using the primitive Tran navigation instruments and the inade-quate but useful ones included in each survival-suit's kit, he devoted himself to a nighttime examination of the stars. Not the most intricately formed metal cup or detailed inscription cut into stone could dis-suade him from his sudden fanatic interest in astron-omy.

Vacuumclear skies, Tran navigation charts and old tales seemed to reinforce his determination to keep at his lonely cold night studies. Ethan could imagine what the teacher was trying to prove.

He was only partly right.

The teacher was deep in conversation with Tahoding when Ethan finally sought confirmation of his suspicions. "I don't mean to interrupt, Milliken, but I'd like to know for sure-why this sudden interest in local astronomy? I'd think you'd be grubbing away in the cities instead of freezing out on deck at night.

"You're trying to find proof that the climate here was once much warmer, aren't you?"

"Not just here, on this plateau." Williams was only stating what to him was obvious and not being in the least insulting. A less sarcastic human being Ethan had never met. "Everywhere on Tran-ky-ky. The physical evidence inherent in the buried metropolis coupled with what little I've been able to calculate tells me that this was so. More importantly, it indicates to me who built these successive cities."

"Don't keep me in suspense, Milliken. Who was it? The Tran, the Saia, or some now extinct people?

I'll bet it was the latter, and when the climate turned cold everywhere, the builders died. The Saia were contemporary with them and keep their memory alive in legends."

"Plausible, but I think, incorrect." He adjusted the calculator built into his sleeve. "These cities were raised by both the Tran and the Saia."

Ethan couldn't forestall a grin. "That's crazy, Milliken. It's too cold here for the Saia now and if they built these cities, surely they'd remember. And its too desolate now for the Tran and, a.s.suming the climate was warmer, too hot for them before."

"That reasoning misses the point. It's because?" Williams paused, took a preparatory breath. "It's not simply a matter of its once being hot, now being cold here, Ethan. I think Tran-ky-ky has a perturbed orbit of predictable periodicity."

"I hardly know what to say."

"I'll try to explain. Any competent astronomer would have noticed it after a week's study, with the proper factual input. But the only astronomer to visit this outpost world was the initial survey drone which first located it. The Commonwealth government would be interested first in the fact that it was an in-habitable planet with a stable climate, flora, and fauna. Relatively long-term alterations will show up in the files on Tran-ky-ky, but there's no reason to act on them until the next period begins."

"_What_ next period?"

"Of warm weather. I'd estimate, very crudely, so many standard years of cold, followed by a briefer period of warm weather as it pa.s.ses nearer its sun. Say, ten thousand years. The transition from cold weather to hot takes place comparatively rapidly, since as Tran-ky-ky swings close by its star, its...o...b..tal velocity, would increase, slowing as it swings out into the cold zone again. It's a peculiar situation and I'm not certain of the details or mechanics, but that's what I believe takes place.

"Think what that would mean for this planet." He spoke distantly, his gaze centered on events far away in time and place. "During the hot period the ice oceans melt, and rapidly. The sea level would rise to submerge island states such as Sofold and much of Arsudun. Sofold is in reality built atop a seamount, while the mountaintops of Poyolavomaar would be-come true islands." Suddenly he dropped his gaze, looking embarra.s.sed.

"That was what puzzled me so about Moulokin canyon." Ethan thought back, recalling the teacher's confusion over the canyon's geology and his feeling of half-recognizing its source.

"It's not a river canyon at all, though it resembles one closely. Rather, it's a dry undersea canyon, the kind that slices through a continental shelf down to the edge of the abyssal plain flooring the ocean. The cliffs of the plateau we sailed alongside for so long are actually the old continental shelf. Now," he said with satisfaction. "I'm ready to go digging for artifacts. But not in the cities. Right here, beneath the ship."

"Wait a minute. What do you expect to find under the ship? And what did you mean when you said the Tran and the Saia both built the metropolis?"

"Tell you in a couple of days, young feller-me-lad," he said, mimicking September.

It was two days, exactly. What the teacher uncovered were far less spectacular and much more important than any objects thus far uncovered in the buried structures.

He spread them out on a table in the central cabin, where human and Tran alike could see. "Look," Williams began, "insect eggs over there." He pointed to a pile of eddy-shaped, tiny white beads. "Try opening one. The casings are tough as stelamic. I had to use my beamer to a.s.sure myself of the contents.

"Animal eggs." He pointed to some similar objects, only they were larger and multicolored. "Seeds, I think." He indicated a vast array of black and brown objects, mostly spherical. "Those I could barely singe with the beamer set for fine cut.

"When the temperature rises and the oceans melt, you'd have ample rainfall. In addition to enhancing an explosion of vegetation on land, such a drastic change would kill off the pikapina and pikapedan.

Despite such changes, some plants have managed to survive the cold periods. Witness the yellow gra.s.s and occasional wirebrush we've pa.s.sed these past days. Those gra.s.ses and the unknown varieties contained in these seeds take over the land. The pikagrowth would retreat to the poles, waiting for cold epochs to return. We've seen how fast it grows. It could expand down from the poles, and perhaps from isolated surviving pockets on the sh.o.r.es, to become the dominant vegetable species in a very short time.

"I wish I had a decent laboratory here. These eggs? Somehow they survive thirty thousand years before the land warms and frees them. That's im-portant, because there are pretty disorganized people wandering around at that time, looking for food.

"The Golden Saia are not a different variety of Tran, nor are the Tran a species of Saia." He ges-tured at Hunnar, at Elfa, at Tahoding. "You and the Saia are the same people."

A mate made a disgusted noise.

"The Saia are the warm-weather mode of the Tran. During the onset of cold, those who survive the radical weather change develop thick fur. Wing dan appear and podal claws expand and grow to become chiv for traveling across the ice." He sat down behind his table of living fossils.

"Think what such cataclysmic change would do to a developing but still primitive society. Famine, death from exposure, the near instant destruction of familiar food supplies. Sea travel obliterated, cutting off inter-continental and inter-island communication. A drastic reduction in population-which explains the extent of these cities compared to the size of present Tran communities.

"It explains, Hunnar, why your people retain no memory of your warm weather ancestors. Survival would be more than enough to occupy every mobile minute of the dazed remnants of that hot climate civilization. How to make a fire, how to cook food, those would be the important things to hand down to shivering children. Not history. Given the frequency of the warmcold weather cycle, you never have the chance to catch your racial breath."

"No ice-freeflowing water for oceans?" Hunnar's expression showed both horror and disbelief, as if someone had proved unequivocally that the world was flat.

"No ice," said Ethan slowly. "And probably no real winds to speak of, either. Rain instead of snow and ice particles-goodwaterfallingfromthesky," he translated awkwardly, remembering that the Tran had no word for rain.

"No ice." Hunnar seemed unable to pa.s.s beyond that incredible concept. "One could fall all the way through to the center of the world."

"Water can support you, Hunnar, though not as well as ice." Ethan forbore trying to describe what swimming was.

"The more reason for this confederation." Septem-ber brought them back to the present, back from speculations future and past. "If this information can be conveyed back to a few Commonwealth bureaucrats in the right agencies, it could mean a change so big and important here that-well, I can't put into words what it would mean to your people, Hunnar.

"More o' less, it'd mean that the next time your world warms up and you develop a nice, burgeoning society, get yourselves growing good and proper, then when it turns cold again, Commonwealth technology will be there to help you cope. a.s.sumin' the Common-wealth stands. I don't make predictions for _any_ government. They've got a disconcertin' way o' self-destructing.

"And you'd be able to develop a true planetary society for the first time, gain a continuity of racial development and history your world's knocked down every time its gotten started.

"But it won't do anybody any good unless we get this knowledge to Commonwealth authorities and show them there's a world here cryin' out for a.s.sociate status and some honest recognition."

*XVI*

It was several days before they broke into the As-sembly. The impressive domed chamber was buried beneath a huge slide. That unstable ground made Ethan and several others reluctant to enter, despite the apparent stability of the intact ceiling. Williams and EerMeesach could not be restrained, however. They were followed by others, reluctantly, into the largest enclosed s.p.a.ce they'd found on Tran-ky-ky.

Built of stone and metal so solid that it supported the c.u.mulative weight of dirt, rock and structures above it, the dome was filled with engravings and mosaics which proved conclusively most of William's a.s.sumptions.

"You were not entirely correct, my friend." EerMeesach ran a gnarled finger across one wall bas-relief. "The yellowish gra.s.s does not drive out the pikapina but rather is a warm weather variety of it, as the Golden Saia are warm weather versions of us Tran."

Williams was examining the carvings, nodding slowly in agreement. "Probably the nutrients con-centrated in the pikapina and pedan are moved land-ward and help to revive the dormant gra.s.slands."

"But what are these?" The elderly wizard indicated a profusion of small carvings, each different from the next. Remnants of ancient dyes still clung to the bare stone.

"Do you not remember them from the land of the Saia?" said Elfa. She turned to Ethan. "What did you call them?"

"Flowers." He walked over, avoiding rocks and broken stone which littered the floor. "So the pikapina flowers before it gives way to the gra.s.ses. Milliken, maybe every creature that flies, swims or chivans on Tran-ky-ky has both cold-and hot-climate varieties. That creature on the wall over there, isn't that a stavanzer?"

"No," Hunnar insisted from nearby. "Those strange things on its front?"

"Gills!" Ethan shouted it. "The stavanzer does look vaguely like a beached whale. Dormant gills don't show themselves until the oceans turn to water. A stavanzer could never support its own weight on land."

"I'm sure," added Williams, "that the creature could exist as an amphibian for as long as was necessary to complete the transition to a watery existence."

"I would much like to see these things you call 'ghuls'." Hunnar took a knife from his belt, handed it handle-first to Williams. "Go and kill a stavanzer and I will help you do the looking inside." Laughter - human and Trannish - resounded in the chamber, producing echoes that were anything but eerie.

A week later the _Slanderscree_ was filled with a cargo as unusual as it was diverse. There were hun-dreds of kilos of carvings, artifacts, sections of mosaic and wall. Enough proof of Tran-ky-ky's erratic history both sociological and climatological to convince the stubbornest bureaucrat or Landgrave of The Truth.

September and Ethan were once again discussing the Tran's future and history as the last of the cargo was secured in the s.p.a.ces within the deck.

"Likely in the Saia mode all the Tran lived together on a few continents, lad," the giant said. "Raisin' a new civilization until the cold wiped it out, forcing 'em to disperse to the islands to survive. The harsher the climate, the more territory it generally takes to support folks.

"Now that we can prove they all used to live to-gether and cooperate, it ought to be easier to get 'em to do it again." He punctuated the comment with a reverberant grunt.

When they produced the evidence many days later, back in the steaming lands, the Golden Saia accepted the unarguable with typical lack of visible emotion. Their words betrayed their true excitement.

Here was proof of most of their legends, solidified with a knowledge hitherto unsuspected. Listening to the legendspinners, Williams and EerMeesach were able to fill in portions of the history that silent stone and walls had been unable to tell.

In contrast to their difficult ascent of the canyon, returning was mostly a matter of keeping the ship on a single heading. Motive power was no longer a problem, not with the wind off the plateau shoving insistently at their stern.

On reaching the edge of the ice, the captain brought the ship to a halt, whereupon Hunnar and a small group of sailors chivaned off toward Moulokin. They were expected to return with shipwrights, cranes and tools to aid in removing the wheels and axles and to help speed the installation of the five ma.s.sive duralloy skates.

Their arrival in that busy shipbuilding city pro-voked a good deal of surprise. Neither the Landgrave Lady K'ferr, minister Mirmib, nor any of the others who knew where the _Slanderscree_ had gone ever ex-pected to see her crew again. They were certain the spirits of the dead who lived in the great high desert would claim the healthy bodies of the sailors for their own, to enable them to wander the spirit lands in more corporeal form.

Sir Hunnar's hurried, none-too-precise explanations of what they'd uncovered created more confusion than enlightenment. He finally gave up trying to explain something he didn't fully comprehend himself.

The following day he returned to the landlocked _Slanderscree_, accompanied by a large party of crafts-men from the city's yards. EerMeesach provided a better explanation of their discoveries. Thus a.s.sured of old friends and a new heritage, they set to work making the great raft iceworthy again.

"What of the fleet from Poyolavomaar?" Ethan hesitantly interrupted the chief of the Moulokinese work crews.

The burly Tran left the final installation of a duralloy runner to his colleagues. "They remained a tenday after your departure to the land of the Golden Saia, Sir Ethan, thence departed themselves. There have been but few ships put in to Moulokin since. None report sighting them, though two mentioned a large number of runner tracks extending northeastward."

"Toward Poyolavomaar." Ethan couldn't quite convince himself that mad Rakossa and RoVijar of Arsudun had conceded so quickly, despite this evi-dence to the contrary.

"Pis so. Nor have any of our own vessels seen signs of them, though two still search further out to make certain they have truly taken their leave. Tis safe I think to say that, finding you not here, they betook themselves elsewhere."

"I doubt that." Ethan looked around to see who agreed with his own private opinion. Teeliam Hoh watched the repositioning of the fore portside runner, while the crew leader watched Teeliam. Her thoughts, though, were not on the delicate operation taking place over the side.

"Tonx Rakossa would not leave me alive while he remains so. While I live free, his thoughts will be on naught else."

"Maybe he and RoVijar had an argument," Ethan half-joked, "and he lost."

"I hope not."