In Solitary (5 page)

I thought for a bit then replied, ‘I suppose they must do. An awful waste I suppose when you consider …’

‘Consider what?’

‘Well, the number of Soal that use them.’

We talked like this for many hours until the light of day was thrown through the translucent walls by that fuzzy ball that rolls around its sky. It sparkled on the crystal needle towers we could see from the segment, colours dancing in the mud. The tidal change was due in two or three hours so there was no point in moving. Fridjt would probably lay his traps and catch us a few fish for breakfast. At least I hoped he would. Fridjt was very proud of his traps – they were intricately made and finely balanced mechanisms, constructed of rustless metal. They never failed to attract the fish into their mirrored passages. When expanded and set they covered a full cubic metre of ocean, finding the depth of the shoals automatically, but they folded down to a mere twenty centimetres in length and two in radius, for carrying purposes, and were light and easy to handle. A true work of Soal craftsmanship.

This generous aspect of the Soal was somewhat difficult to understand now that I was a mudwalker. While I had been the companion and servant of Lintar I never questioned such enigmatic behaviour. It seemed natural then that our benevolent masters should find pleasure in occasionally distributing aid to the pathetic humans on the mud, but now I was on the receiving end such acts seemed strangely at variance with the Soal policy of killing humans whenever a legitimate reason showed itself.

For instance we had the needle towers, provisioned with a unit that converted seawater into fresh water, at the same time introducing human vitamin needs into the supply. This at least ensured that our basic requirements, beyond food, were met. In the slim crystal towers we had comparative
warmth during the chilling night exhalations, safety from drowning and solar units for heating food.

If the Soal wanted to destroy us all, they need only have removed the towers.

My deductions produced a line of thought.

The towers and handouts were established at a time when the Soal had no need to be cautious. The policy of genocide was the result of a change in these circumstances.

The towers were self-maintaining and required nothing more than supervision by the Soal, to ensure that humans were not gathering in groups of two or more.

Destruction of the towers was an action to be avoided for the present, one to be saved until absolutely necessary. Until that time, open slaughter was a crudeness unworthy of a master race.

The whittling down of the human population by apparent legitimate policing was an interim measure and should the situation worsen (whatever that situation was), more drastic moves would have to be taken.

I voiced my opinions to Stella, whose own opinion of me was very low as a result.

‘Why didn’t you find out the answers to these questions yourself, when you were with the Soal?’ she demanded.

‘Because they didn’t concern me then – and don’t forget the Soal do not speak Terran to each other. I had no idea what passed between them in the council chambers. I can’t hear through locked doors, even though I can mouth read. They
were
worried about something,
perpetually
– consequently it was a normal state of affairs and not one that struck me as in need of investigation. Finally, I was hardly ever allowed out of the Klees’s house – certainly not without an escort.’

So I defended myself, but it did not save me from her scorn.

While her tirade was in progress Fridjt entered carrying the child. He no longer looked an ogre – more like a crestfallen child himself. Stella turned a face of stone onto the small body, lying like a limp fish in the large man’s hands.

‘She’s dead,’ said Fridjt simply, but it sounded more like a question than a statement. He placed the infant carefully on one of the bunks and we all moved towards the door. The tower would dispose of the body, as it did
with waste food and dead animals. Anything that generated the kind of bacteria that infested dead flesh was a usable commodity. The Soal could use it but I did not tell Stella that. She would have eaten the child rather than let it benefit the Soal.

We gathered our few belongings together and prepared to leave the tower, each of us lost in our own thoughts. Perhaps it was because we were all so preoccupied that we did not hear the approaching military. Stella went out first.

Stella returned quickly to warn us of approaching
Soal but we were somewhat disorientated – after the death of the baby and by the time we had gathered our thoughts towards separation it was too late.

The vehicle hovered just outside the entrance to our segment and we knew we had been seen. There was nothing we could do – we stood, still as the infant behind us, waiting for the inevitable. A few moments later the entrance admitted a Soal – one of the hard-faced military. A painted gold bar running from his hands to his claw-like feet, along the edge of his skinwings, proclaimed him to be an officer. We were finished.

‘Look,’ I started desperately, ‘this is not what you think, Poston-Yarcave.’ I used his full rank to show him he was not dealing with an ignorant mudwalker – my own name was a shortened version of that rank. ‘We were all in separate segments when we heard your craft. We … we panicked.’ I laughed. ‘You can understand that.’

The Soal officer ran his eyes over our group, then said in Terran, ‘You are the human, Cave?’

I laughed again, slapping my knee.

‘Yes, yes. You know me then? You’ve seen me with Lintar?’ I tried for a recognition but could not place him. His feathers rose irritably.

‘I am from the continent. We have a call for your arrest – from Librarian Endrod.’

I was stunned, and turned to look at the other two. Fridjt was standing quietly, his arms folded. Stella stared straight ahead. I could read nothing from either of their expressions.
I turned back to the officer.

‘But I haven’t broken any laws,’ I raised my hands in the Soal gesture for honesty. ‘Not since I was banished.’

The officer smiled in that detestable way the Soal have, by twisting the upper beak over the lower. His small eyes took in the three of us together. His meaning was plain.

‘But,’ I cried, ‘you didn’t know that I’d be with someone. You couldn’t know that.’

Stella said dully, ‘They don’t need an excuse these days Cave. If they want to arrest you, they simply do that. There’s little justice on the mud.’

I whirled round again angrily.

‘I have friends,’ I waved my crossbow in the air.

Suddenly the second Soal was behind the first, in the entrance to the segment. He was saying something in his own language. I read it, automatically, over the officer’s shoulder.

‘What is the trouble? You are a long time here.’

The officer did not answer – instead he turned to us and said, ‘Get on the mud – all of you.’

I realized then that we were finished and made a move towards the door, half-turning to pass a look at the others to say in a gesture, ‘I did my best.’ Stella’s face had a peculiar look on it which pulled me up short.

‘Stella?’ I said in a low voice.

Her eyes glittered with a kind of triumph.

They’re together,’ she muttered in a satisfied tone. ‘Your bow.’

I wound the mechanism without really considering why. The Soal officer looked puzzled but stood his ground. He had no reason to move.

‘On the mud,’ he jerked out the words again, annoyed at having to repeat himself. No one moved except Fridjt who took a step forward.

‘Kill them!’ rapped Stella.

I gasped, unbelieving. No mudwalker had ever used violence against a Soal – not for as long as I could remember. The Soal memories contained the same thoughts as my own, for they merely began ruffling their feathers in anger. They did not even bear personal arms – though the craft contained brainstingers.

‘Now!’ screamed Stella, stamping her foot. ‘Do it, you fools, do it
now.’

Fridjt suddenly came to life again, reached forward and grabbed the officer by his right skinwing, tearing the flimsy webbing. The Soal opened his mouth in pain and Fridjt clamped his hand round the mouth, between the two beaklike jaws, and drove the head against the wall, shattering the light skull.

I stood transfixed in terror, shaking from head to foot. The other Soal took off from the ledge and began gliding towards his craft, which was hovering a few metres from the tower.

‘Get him,’ shouted Stella.

I raised the crossbow, levelled the sights on the moving figure and pulled the trigger. There was a smooth clunk and a nudge from the crossbow as the bolt left the channel. I was trembling so much I felt I must have missed, but the figure doubled-up in mid-air and fell to the mud below with a muffled splatter. He gave one twist, as he lay in the small hole his impact had made, and was then still. We could see the black bolt projecting from beneath his torn armpit. The amount in view, and the angle of the bolt, told me that the point of it was buried somewhere in the Soal’s brain. I shivered involuntarily.

‘We’re really in trouble now,’ I stammered still staring at the body below.

The way the Soal had fallen into the mud reminded me of poor Askreenata, when her wings had failed her over the sludge of the vats. She plummeted in the same manner – broken-winged and with a look of surprise mixed with annoyance, that changed to terror when she hit the surface of the mire. Unlike the Soal below, her death was one of suffocation, watched by helpless playmates. A Soal feared death only when it was imminent. Until that last second, they were immortal.

Stella snorted. ‘We were dead anyway.’

‘Yes but …’ I could not find the words. There was no punishment great enough for such a dastardly crime as ours, but I was sure the Soal would think of one.

Fridjt spoke for the first time since the nightmare began. ‘Come. We must go quickly.’ He was no longer the bumbling idiot. It was I who lacked the mental strength
necessary to meet the situation.

‘Where?’ I cried. ‘They’ll find us wherever we go on the mud – there’s nowhere to hide.’ I began babbling but neither of them were listening to me. They were staring at the hovering machine, divorced from us by just a few metres of unbridgeable air.

‘We’ve got to get on that chiton craft,’ said Stella. Then she jerked her thumb at me.

‘He can control it.’

A heavy feeling settled in my stomach as I stared helplessly, and silently now, at these humans that had destroyed me within a matter of days. They were alien beings – I did not understand either of them and I doubted I ever would, but I was grateful to them now, as surely as if we three were grafted together. Between them they had seen to it that any hope I ever cherished of returning to my comfortable life on the mainland was gone now. Even Lintar would be horrified at what his once close human companion had done.

‘How are we to reach it?’ I asked them helplessly.

‘You think of a way,’ said Fridjt, nodding his huge balding head at me. ‘You’re the one with the brains. I’ll give you thirty seconds – then I’m going to throw you at the chiton and if you don’t make it, well then, you fall.’

Chiton was the mudwalker’s name for a Soal patrol vehicle – they called it that because it was built with overlapping plates of metal and was roughly the same shape as that creature.

‘… fifteen, sixteen …’

‘All right! All right! I’ll think of something,’ I snapped. ‘Just be quiet for a moment and let me concentrate.’

It took me more than the allowed time to find the answer but when I did it was a good one.

Endrod walked along the cold stone corridors
with the characteristic featherlight step of a Soal. Had he been human his brow would have been furrowed and a smouldering anger evident in his complexion. Being a Soal he expressed his inner rage by blowing hard through the vents behind his tiny mushroom ears and ruffling his coat. Endrod had just been refused a third request for licence to commit immediate genocide upon the remainder of what was once an intelligent, resourceful race. The Klees of Brytan and Hess had vetoed the act.

Endrod came to the balcony and, contrary to normal safety observations, spread his bat-like wings and glided over the courtyard. Soal did not normally take risks by gliding over a hard surface from two storeys up, for the adult Soal had long since given up soaring for fun. It was indicative of the ill-humour of Endrod. He hit the grass on the far side of the courtyard rather harder than he intended and toppled awkwardly on to his back. He was finding his feet just as another Soal entered the courtyard.

‘Opanion,’ Endrod spoke before the other could express the obvious surprise she felt at seeing her superior rolling around on the grass. ‘What do you do here?’

Opanion was unruffled by the terse attitude of the Librarian. She was used to his bouts of bad temper.

‘I came to tell you that your wish has been granted, Chief Librarian Endrod,’ said the other. She was the Assistant Chief Librarian, and it was her wish that Endrod regain his former position as Head of the Military in order that she herself might be promoted to her Chief’s present position. She was ambitious, but only in her own field. Chief Librarian
would suit her fine.

‘Oh? What wish is that?’ the Chief Librarian asked, his anger less evident.

The mudwalkers have done something which may help you regain your former rank. They have killed two Soal – one of the killers is believed to be your old antagonist’s son – the human Cave.’

Endrod was eager to hear the whole story and Opanion repeated what she had heard in the communications cell. The Hessian Soal had found the bodies of a Yarcave and Teel at one of the needle towers near the coast. Shortly before that a Soal craft was seen entering a transcontinental tube, heading towards one of the southern oceans. It was guessed that the human called Cave was piloting the craft, since he was the only human in the north that had lived amongst the Soal and would have the expertise.