Ascending

Uclod took one of Lajoolie’s arms and I took the other. Together we guided her forward. When we reached the airlock, Nimbus was already there, hovering in a foggy ball above everyone’s head.

'All right,' Festina said, 'time to attack an entire shipload of hyper-advanced aliens on their home turf.' She sighed. 'Why I love being a goddamned Explorer.'

'I too love being a goddamned Explorer,' I said, proudly fingering my black jacket.

'Oar,' Festina said, 'you’re a total fucking lunatic. Fortunately, that’s exactly what we need.' She waved a hand at Aarhus, who was standing by the airlock controls. 'Push the button, Sergeant. Immortality awaits.'

23: WHEREIN I CONFRONT UNPLEASANT TRUTHS

Lady Bell’s Personal Limitations

The door of the airlock opened — and the first thing I noticed was dirt. The smell of dirt, loamy and cloying; the sight of dirt on the ground, dark and glinting with flecks of minerals; the feel of dirt in the air, gritty and humid and hot. Festina, standing in the airlock doorway, took a moment to inhale the deep soil scent… then she threw herself outside and assumed an aggressive posture with pistol in hand, quickly scanning the area for hostile forces.

After five seconds, she gestured for the rest of us to join her. We clambered out into dank sluggish air that pressed most tepidly against one’s skin — all except Lady Bell, who remained shuddering in the airlock.

'What’s wrong?' Festina asked her.

The lady replied, 'It’s horrid!'

She stared at the area surrounding us. It had the appearance of a vast tropical mud flat, simmering in twilight just after the sizzling sun has gone down. It even had some kind of foliage — not close to the ship, but off in the distance, clusters of trees and undergrowth rose high from the soil. Farther away still, dirt-covered walls towered up, up, up; in the dusky light, the top of the walls disappeared into shadow, but I assumed that far overhead there must be a roof closing us off from the vacuum outside. We were, after all, inside the stick-ship, even if this great chamber was so huge it seemed like out-of-doors.

'What is so horrid?' I asked Lady Bell. 'The temperature is hotter than one enjoys, but there are no robots trying to shoot us. Also, in a spacious enclosure such as this, one can see potential enemies from quite far off, yet there is no sign of anybody. I believe for the moment we are safe.'

'Knock on wood,' Aarhus muttered under his breath.

'But… but…' Lady Bell said, 'it’s so… raw. And open. And exposed.'

'Bloody hell,' Uclod said to Festina, 'are Cashlings agoraphobic?'

'Now that I think of it,' Festina replied, 'they put all their cities under opaque force domes — which is completely unnecessary on most of their planets. And my old partner Yarrun once told me he visited a Cashling city and wanted to leave the dome to see the countryside… but nobody knew if there was a doorway out. He thought it was crazy: they had a constant flow of people shuttling up and down to orbital space stations, but the Cashlings never went sideways, out into the trees and fresh air.'

'We don’t need trees and fresh air,' Lady Bell said, clutching one edge of the airlock doorway as if she were afraid we might drag her outside. 'We’re civilized. Cities have all the necessities of life… and they don’t have insects. Or poisonous weeds. Or trees that might fall on you.'

'If a tree attempts to fall on you,' I told her, 'jump out of the way. Trees are famed for their slow reaction times.'

Lady Bell ignored me. 'I think…' she said. 'I think I should check on my husband. Yes. That’s what I should do. He must be lying unconscious, somewhere inside. The poor darling. I’d better find him and make sure he’s all right.'

Without waiting for an answer, she pushed a button on the airlock control panel and the door swished shut in front of her. Uclod stared after her a moment, then made the odd hiss-whistle noise he and Lajoolie had produced just before vomiting. Obviously, this was his race’s expression of supreme disgust. 'I was wondering when she’d remember her missing husband. That Rye guy goes off to fetch food, he gets zapped by the Shaddill, and our godly prophet-lady doesn’t give him the least little thought till she decides to turn chicken.'

'Some men don’t like their wives to fuss,' Lajoolie murmured. 'And some women learn to hide their concern.'

We all stared at her a moment; then we quickly turned away and gazed at our feet. 'Let’s take a look around,' Festina said in a muttery voice. We were glad to follow her forward.

Footprints

The great mud flats stretched in all directions. There was plenty of space to hold all the Cashling ships that had been captured thus far; and even as we watched, another small crusade vessel descended from the sky on a red beam of light, to be deposited a short distance from Unfettered Destiny. The other Cashling craft sat close by — no doubt to make it easier for the admiral robots to move from one ship to the next, looking for… well, looking for me.

I had clearly been their quarry. Apart from wondering why that was — and I wondered about it a great deal — one had to ask what the robots were supposed to do after I was secured. If, for example, they were under orders to carry my unconscious body to a place of imprisonment, how long before the Shaddill realized the robots had been waylaid? Perhaps only a few minutes. We must needs act quickly, before an alarm was raised; we had to bring the Shaddill to their knees (if they were such creatures as possessed knees) before they even knew we were coming.

But where to go? We were in the middle of the flats, with no exit in sight. Almost certainly, there had to be a door in the distant wall of the chamber — perhaps many doors. But the wall was curtained off by those thick stands of trees, and in the grayish twilight, it was impossible to see where doors might be hidden. Considering how large this hangar area was (almost the size of the cavern that held Oarville), it would take hours to walk the circumference… perhaps longer if the jungle-ish forests at the edge hindered our progress.

The same thoughts must have passed through Festina’s mind. She had stopped on a clear patch of ground and was turning in a slow circle, peering at the horizon with narrowed eyes. 'Wish I had a Bumbler,' she muttered. That was a device human Explorers carried for scanning their surroundings; it had many Scientific Abilities, such as amplifying dim light and magnifying faraway objects. However, we did not possess such a device, so we would be forced to rely on our own ingenuity.

I am excellent at ingenuity.

'Here is what we must do,' I said. 'We must spread out to look for tracks. The robots were heavy creatures of metal, and the ground is only dirt. They must surely have left discernible footprints. We shall find those footprints and follow them back to the point where the robots entered this chamber.'

Uclod’s mouth dropped open. 'Missy!' he said, in tones of admiration. 'Good thinking!'

'Oar’s right,' Festina agreed. 'Let’s be quick about this.'

The footprints close to the Cashling ships were too jumbled to read; but when we fanned out a short distance, Sergeant Aarhus found a clear pair of booted tracks leading back in a straight line toward the distant walls. They were like a great big sign saying THIS WAY OUT.

Since time was short, we followed the tracks at a run… and since Uclod was short, Lajoolie carried him. (Nimbus showed no apparent difficulty keeping up with our pace — he simply compacted his body into a horizontal raindrop shape and flew right along beside us.)

It took five minutes to reach the trees: five minutes during which we saw nothing but mud, mud, mud. The mud was not the deep mucky kind, and our feet were not completely swallowed with every footfall; nevertheless, the run was strenuous business, especially for one with low reserves of energy. If at the end I was wheezing, it is not evidence I was piteously out of shape — I was in excellent shape. How many of you could pass four years without food, then run for five minutes on muddy terrain? You would most likely die from exertion… and when you arrived in the afterlife, you would say to the Hallowed Ones, 'We are sorry we mocked poor Oar for gasping a little bit. She is clearly a splendid physical specimen, and doubting her was very very wrong.'

Apology accepted.

Mini-Chilis

As we came in under the trees, we were forced to slow down — not because I was panting for air and feeling most fluttery in the stomach, but because the undergrowth was prohibitively profuse. The only way forward lay along a narrow path that had apparently been slashed by the robots; this was not a long-established trail, but a route that had recently been forced through the snarl by dint of brute strength. If there was indeed an exit door somewhere ahead, it must not be used very often.

We had only gone a short distance forward when Festina stopped and craned her head back to look up into one of the trees. Here in the forest shadows, everything was harder to see than in the open… but I could make out yellowish objects hanging amongst the tree’s dark leaves. Festina jumped high and grabbed one, pulling it off its stem with a soft pop. When she held it out for the rest of us to examine, I saw it was a waxy fruit the color of dandelions, two fingers wide at the stem and narrowing down to a point.

'Looks like a half-sized yellow chili pepper,' Aarhus said.

Festina nodded. 'Back home, we called them mini-chilis. The trees grew wild all over Agua.'

'This is a tree from your home planet?'

She shook her head. 'It wasn’t native to Agua, it was a transplant. Don’t know where it came from originally, but it was brought by Las Fuentes… those aliens who abandoned their colonies five thousand years ago.' She looked down at the fruit. 'Everywhere Las Fuentes went, they planted mini-chilis. Must have been one of their favorite foods.'

My mouth watered. 'Are mini-chilis tasty?'

'Don’t know,' Festina told me. 'Humans who try to eat them always keel over and the before describing the flavor. Totally poisonous to terrestrial life. Our farm lost dozens of cattle because of the damned things — whenever a cow escaped from pasture, she headed straight for the nearest mini-chili tree and gobbled whatever fruit she found on the ground. I guess animals liked the smell; either that, or our herds were suicidal.'

Festina looked at the chili a moment longer, then folded her fingers over it in a tight squeeze. 'Nasty stuff,' she murmured. I thought she intended to hurl it away, but instead she tucked it carefully into a jacket pocket.