Medusa: A Tiger by the Tail

Or was I just kidding myself?

“How long will it take to get to the mountain?” I asked her.

“Seven weeks—and it is in the north and east.”

Fourteen weeks round trip. It was possible, anyway, to get there and back in the period before Angi was due. “Weapons?”

“Do you know how to use the sword?”

I almost laughed out loud. Considering Tarin Bul’s background, the question was a joke. But I wasn’t really Tarin Bul. “I’ve fenced for sport,” I told her, “but not with swords.”

“That’s the best I can do. We have no pistols or rifles. The swords are hand-made, melted,down and remolded from some useless metal artifacts we found here.”

“I can handle it,” I assured her. I was pretty sure I could handle any weapon, and I’d have weeks to get used to it. “And Ching?”

“Are you sure she will go with you?”

“You are,” I. pointed out.

She chuckled. “Yes, I am. She may choose what she wishes or feels comfortable with. You will go with a small group of sincere pilgrims, including a doubter or two going to see for themselves, and these will include experienced spear and bow masters.”

“These… demons. What are they like?”

“They are almost impossible to describe. But to reach the Mount you must cross an ever-frozen inlet of the ocean. There is no other way that is practical. They live there, in the waters under the ice, and can break through and grab you and drag you down as you cross. Their tentacles are tenacious, and their great mouths are on top of their heads. They are terrifying, and deadly, but remember this—hurt them and they will retreat They do not h’ke being hurt. But it is difficult to hurt them through their armor.”

I frowned… “They have shells?”

“No. Armor. They wear some sort of hard protective suit that is impervious to our weapons. Aim for the tentacles, eyes, and mouth. It is the only way.”

Armor? On a creature living in the frozen sea? Or a tough suit that would act like armor, perhaps…

Now I knew for certain that my choice was made. I would have to go. Unless I was completely and utterly wrong, the challenge was irresistible.

I was going to meet our damned, elusive aliens—and find out just what the hell they were doing up there that started a religion.

CHAPTER TEN The Goddess Medusa

“What’re you mad about?” Bura wanted to know. “You’re the one who’s leaving.”

“Well, at least I expected you to try and talk me out of it,” I retorted.

Angi looked me right in the eyes. “Would it matter? Would you not go if we cried and pleaded?”

I sighed. “Probably not. I have to go.”

“And we understand that,” Bura said. “We don’t like it, but we know you well enough by now. There’s something inside you, something eating away, that just isn’t going to go away. It’s just. …” Her voice trailed off and she turned away.

I reached out and put my hand on her shoulder. “I know. The children to come. You can’t believe how rotten I feel leaving you now—but, with luck, I’ll be back in fourteen weeks. If it was much longer I’d wait until after, you know that.”

“You probably would,” Angi agreed, “and you’d slowly go nuts. You know it and we know it So—go. But… come back to us, Tari.”

I admit I was starting to feel a little teary myself, and I hugged and kissed them both, and they hugged and kissed Ching. I turned to my original pair-mate. “I still wish you wouldn’t come. They need you here. Particularly if —”

“I go where you go,” she said once again. “I’m not going to sit here and not know.”

“All right, then,” I sighed, “let’s get going.”

We walked out to the courtyard, where the rest of the party was gathering. With Ching and myself it was a group of fourteen, led by an experienced northerner named Hono. Like the others, she’d been born in the wild; the Free Tribes tended to keep to one name if doing so didn’t lead to confusion. We had been practicing with the group for several days, and I had to admit that Ching seemed to have a better handle on spear and bow than I did. Yet using my increased muscle power and some of my fencing steps and moves, I could wield the sword very effectively in close quarters. It was a close quarters weapon only, though, and I sorely missed those two laser rifles at the bottom of the slag. pit.

There was one more round of emotional good-byes, and attempts on all parts to pretend that things were really just fine and normal, but both Ching and I were glad when we left the compound and our people behind. It wasn’t a question of out of sight out of mind, but, rather, a strong feeling inside me that if I didn’t get out of there soon I would be unable to leave. Having found a closeness and an emotional bond I had never before even conceived of, I was now turning my back on it and going back to work for a system in which I no longer had any faith. I liked to tell myself, and Ching, that we were doing this for ourselves and for the planet’s protection and not for any outside force or government. But there was still both the love of challenge which was part of my personality and the uneasy sense that three more of me—one each on Charon, Lilith, and Cerberus—were leading different lives with similar objectives. It would be intolerable for me to fail if any one of them were to succeed. I wished I knew more about them and their fates.

At least we didn’t have to walk all the way. Four sleds pulled by tame vettas awaited, large enough to carry us and our weapons, tools, and portable shelters. The vettas raised their odd-looking heads and snapped their wide, fiat bills at us as we approched, but that was just their form of recognition.

The sleds proved efficient, though neither comfortable nor fast, since we were traveling long ways over grass and rocks and the vettas, restrained in their harness, could use their power but not their speed and grace. The trip was bumpy as hell, but it beat walking and carrying the stuff.

Ching remained pretty tense and quiet—clearly she disapproved of the trip, of leaving the others, and of most everything concerning my objectives. She wanted to sit back, meld into one or another of the Free Tribes, and just live out her life. The war, the aliens, the Four Lords themselves seemed at best distant, at worst unreal or incomprehensible to her. But she did understand that she had a family and, away from TMS and the guilds and modern Medusan society in general, was enjoying a sense of personal freedom she had never known before. The primitiveness of her new life style really didn’t bother her. The sense of oppression—a sense she’d been born and raised with—had lifted from her, giving her what she wanted; Bura, Angi, and I gave her what she needed… And yet, here she was.

The Elders had spoken of a cultural gap between the Free Tribes and me that might never be bridged; here, too, I felt, was another gap that remained despite all our closeness and intimacy. Ching could never understand why I had to go; I could never understand why she had to follow—but I could no more stand in the way of what she had to do than I could allow her and the others to stand in my way. In that sense, as the days passed out in the bush and the air grew colder with the northern journey, we did more or less affect a practical sort of thaw. We did not understand each other, and we knew it; but we respected each other, and, for that time and place, that would have to be enough.

We fell in with a small hunting group backed by the trip leader, Hono, and also including Quart, Sitzter, and Tyne. Neither Ching nor I were very good or effective hunters, needless to say, and I doubt if Ching could bring herself to kill for food—although she had grown used to the idea enough to be able to eat an animal when it was no longer recognizable as what it was—so we were dependent on our little group for our nourishment. The four hunters were easy, likable, and outgoing people with a feel for life, but, as the Elders had warned, they were of and