Ancestor's World (38 page)

Whap!

The bolt splashed harmlessly against the canyon wall behind him. They were protected by the skimmer--until Beloran reached the middle part of the boulder ramp on which his skimmer, like Gordon's, had crashed, wedging itself in among the rounded boulders.

Suddenly, the skimmer began vibrating. It was a steady vibration, a thrumming that was not an aftershock, not thunder, and not anything else.

Except for one thing.

The bindings parted. "Etsane! Run! Out of the skimmer and up to the top of this boulder pile! There's a flash flood coming!"

The girl looked alarmed, then determined. She reached out to him. "Give me my sling. I will strike down Beloran!"

"No!" Gordon pushed her away and over the side of the skimmer. "You don't study archaeology and not learn how to use ancient tools. I can sling this baby almost as good as you. Go! I don't know why, but you're the one he's trying to kill."

Etsane tumbled out onto the boulders, but called back to him even as Gordon loaded a stone into the cup of the sling. "He said I could not live because of my deciphering of the Royal script! " Gordon peered over the edge of the skimmer.

Just three meters away, Beloran lifted up his scaly head. Black eyes fixed on Gordon. "Infidel!"

"Gordon!" Etsane yelled. "He thought if I was dead, the Mizari would leave, the CLS would leave, and his world would be stronger because of the dam and its power."

279

He didn't care what insanity the alien used to justify murder. Spinning the sling despite the rain and his fear, he rose up suddenly. "Run, Etsane!"

Beloran raised his pulse-gun. "Die!"

Aiming with his chin, Gordon let fly the sling stone with a snap-thwack that almost unhinged his shoulder. "Yeah!" The stone hit Beloran between his eyes. Blue scales parted. Red blood ran freely. The alien clutched his forehead, crying out "Nooooo!" Then he fell backward and tumbled downslope, a rolling ball of blue scales and slashing tail that ended up at the bottom of the boulder pile. One leg wedged between two rocks. The pulse-gun disappeared.

Gordon felt the vibration in the skimmer floor increase. Scrambling out of the craft, he looked up the boulder ramp toward where Etsane had fled. She huddled at the top of the ramp, her back against the canyon wall. But someone else also sat with her. "Mahree!"

His love grinned crazily, waving madly for him to join them. "Get up here!"

The boulders vibrated even more strongly. Looking up the narrow canyon, Gordon froze with horror. A wall of gray water mixed with brown sand and red mud roared around the last curve of the canyon. It rushed at him with the speed of a skimmer.

"Gordon!"

He unfroze, looked up the boulder ramp, and climbed for his life.

The ground vibration grew. Rain slashed his face. Climbing, he battled against the cascading water that poured over the canyon rim ten meters above Mahree and Etsane. They were being drenched by the cascade, their clothes plastered to their skin. But they were wedged between the uppermost boulders. The cascading waterfall did not dislodge them. He climbed.

He slipped.

He slammed knees against the stones.

A shuddering roar filled his ears, a sound like all the demons loosed from some distant hell.

Would the Revered Ancestors claim him for their own?

280

Gordon had offered water and salt yesterday morning, in company with Pokeel and Axum. He'd treated the sarcophagus and body of King A-Um Rakt with the reverence due all burials. And he'd tried his best to learn what could be learned from a myriad of temple-cities soon to be buried under a giant lake. As his homage to the past, his respect shown for the remarkable civilization of a people whose culture predated that of the pharaohs by two thousand years.

"Gordon!" Mahree grabbed him as he fell into her arms.

"Teacher Mitchell!" Etsane too grabbed him.

He turned in their embrace, settled into the hole between the boulders, and then looked down at the bottom of the canyon.

Beloran the Merchant cried out to them. "Save me!"

Shivering from the wet, the cold, the shock of it all, Gordon sat between his two special women. He watched as the high wall of the flash flood rushed over Beloran's blue scales, burying the murderer under tons and tons of sand, water, and small rocks. He shuddered.

Mahree leaned into him. He looked her way. She sat under a waterfall cascading down from the canyon rim, and yet to him, she looked beautiful.

She smiled. "You didn't die."

"No, I didn't." He hugged her close, crying with relief, his cries lost among the shuddering roar of Mother's Tears--the flash flood. The bright flash of Mother's Touch shook them with booming thunder. And a new aftershock hit as Father's Snores reminded them all of how dangerous it is to disturb the chambers of Father Earth.

Etsane pushed against him, shaking. He put his other arm around her and, the three of them holding each other close, he joined his women in silent, thankful homage to Mother Sky and Father Earth.

Two days after the earthquakes and floods, Mahree squatted on the hard stone floor of the meeting chamber of the Council of Elders. She faced the central sand disk and the assembled effigy sticks of the clans of the Na-Dina with a thumping heart. She clenched her hands to keep them from shaking.

To either side squatted the sixteen Elders,

281

gathered like her in a ring about the pit as they all faced the red porphyry effigies of the Revered Ancestors. Their manner was subdued, their glances at her wondering, and the pile of salt tablets lying in front of each Elder, and before Mahree, lay unused.

She had come to explain how Nordlund had lied about the safety of the dam site, how a flooding of their upriver villages and cities had been narrowly avoided when the clay core of the diversion dam did not breach, and how one of their own, one of the People, had murdered Bill Waterston, her predecessor to this very Council. She felt inadequate to the task. But the presence of Gordon, sitting behind her in the shadows of the round-walled chamber, comforted her.

Elder Salween, from the Temple of Earth Quaking, flared her silvery ears, then fixed dark eyes on Mahree. The woman tossed salt onto the sand.

"Ambassador Burroughs, how is your camp? Are your homes safe? Are your people uninjured?"

The woman's voice, speaking firmly in High Na-Dina, sounded sympathetic.

Mahree rose, bowed deeply to her questioner, then stood straight. "Elder Salween, the Camp survived intact. The ancient flood baffles prevented damage to my people, to our tents, to the Queen's Own Guard, and to the sarcophagus and body of King A-Um Rakt." A hissing sigh of relief echoed around the chamber as she mentioned the last. "The drilling camp at the Lake of Stars was destroyed, but the workers survived. Sadly, the same could not be said for the person of Beloran, of the clan Flooding Waters, of the Trade Merchant, former Liaison to us."

"Beloran!" hissed Elder Hakeem, representative of the King and the Royal House.

Salween ignored the male's breach of protocol, maintaining her stare at Mahree. Well, at least the senior Traditionalist thought she'd done something right. "Our apologies to your clan, and to all damaged by the actions of this member of clan Flooding Waters." Salween's ears fluttered with anger.

"Representatives of his clan have promised thirty years of reparations to the family of Interrelator Waterston. Will this, joined with the completion of your Temple Obligation,

282

be sufficient recompense for their loss?"

Mahree wanted to refuse the financial penalty offer, but refrained. It was the way of the People, and perhaps accepting the reach of their Law in this case would assuage the recriminations she heard had broken out among the two factions. She bowed slightly. "The offer of reparations is accepted by me, on behalf of Bill's parents. I am sure it will comfort them. Thanks to the final report by Investigator Krillen, this case is now closed. The harm to our clan Human is healed." She squatted back down.

Salween's ears showed relief. "The Law of the Revered Ancestors is satisfied." The Elder glanced around the circle of other Na-Dina. "Do my Brothers and Sisters have questions of this brave female, who brought down the escape craft of the One Who May Not Be Named?"

Mahree's face burned. She didn't feel like a hero. She still felt waterlogged, thunder-deafened, sandblasted, and just thankful that Etsane had escaped death. As had Gordon. She almost reached back to grip his hand, but refrained when the Elder representing the Temple of the River tossed salt into the sand pit.

"Ambassador, what is the status of the Great Dam at the First Cataract?" The rather young female paused, her ears grimacing, as if the question burned her tongue. "And is it true that Nordlund lied to the Council about the site's safety?"

Mahree rose from her squat, telling herself not to take advantage of the fact that Renzees' Modernist faction had been shown to have had poor judgment. "Elder Renzees, the clay core of the diversion dam at the First Cataract, which held back a large lake as it forced the River of Life into a diversion tunnel, is
intact
." The young female's ears flared with relief. "But the gravel layers covering the core are cracked, seepage is rising, and piping through and under the core is likely to occur. The dam will hold until the lake can be drawn down, or a controlled breach cut into the core."

She paused, noticing how closely all the Elders listened as she discussed the life blood of their world. Twenty mil ion

283

Na-Dina had been at risk in the upriver area, where a breach-flood would have inundated many houses and cities. The hundred million living in the delta would have been safe, as would have the tens of millions living elsewhere around the shores of the Northern Sea. But it had been a close thing.

Renzees prodded at her. "And the lie of Nordlund? We understand the Snore of Father Earth that cracked the dam facing came from a strike-slip fault lying underneath the dam axis." The woman, surely a hydrologic engineer like many of her sisters at the Temple of the River, grimaced again.

"How did such a fault escape our notice? We have barged over the First Cataract for millennia, and yet, none from the Temple ever noticed the fault signs. And we are good at Reading the Ground. Lives depend on us."

Mahree knew that. It was one of the two things that made this whole report a ticklish business. Still standing, she bowed slightly. "Elder Renzees, the fault-quake is not the responsibility of your Temple, but of Nordlund, which knew of the fault and lied to you." Reaching back, Mahree accepted the duplicate photo-sheets from Gordon, then passed them out to the Elders on either side. "Your Temple is highly trained at Reading the Ground--from ground level. But when the Sky Ship of our Mizari colleagues came here, after Nordlund's announcement of the contract with you, they conducted an orbital survey of the entire landscape of Ancestor's World, using multispectral scanners."

The Elder from the Temple of Storms, a silvery-scaled male of advanced age, tossed his salt and glared at her. "The Sky Ship flew at length through Mother Sky? We had hoped this was not so."

Mahree cursed the delicacy of diplomatic negotiations. Bowing to the Storms Elder, she explained. "Elder Too- loon, such an orbital survey is standard practice by all CLS survey ships. If there is error here, it lies with our own Council of Elders." Mahree faced back to her first questioner. "But, Elder Renzees, this error of ours now reveals what Nordlund knew, and did not tell you." She gestured at the false-color photoprints. "The strike-slip fault lies directly

284

underneath
the riverbed, under fifty meters of silt and mud, and
parallel
to it.

It is invisible from the surface and does not cross over into a cliff face, where you could Read the Ground and see how the soil speaks of such a break."

The Temple of the River female hissed her relief. "The fault extends south to the Second Cataract, where the river turns westerly. Our image was made by a synthetic aperture millimeter-wavelength radar. Like the photographs of Investigator Krillen, it tells us many things."

Mahree paused. All the Elders had their eyes fixed on the reflected radar photos. "This image also documents slight elevational differences between the canyon rim on the east side, and that on the west. The eastern rim is lower than the western one. I only discovered this myself when I called my office on Shassiszss and requested a copy of the survey report. It arrived at the embassy yesterday."

The River Temple Elder peered at the photo. "I see the line, underneath the silt of the riverbed. This radar of yours penetrates through soft soil?"

Mahree nodded. "Yes, it does. Rock bounces back the signal. With millimeter-wavelength radar, the smallest rock alignments, fractures, and discontinuities may be located. Even those buried under piles of dirt."

Another Elder tossed out salt. "So the Great Dam can never be built. That is sad. But the People still need hydroelectric power greater than what we already generate elsewhere, in the Mountains of Faith. Ambassador, can other dams be built along the River of Life?"

Mahree recognized the speaker as the young male from the Temple of A-Um Rakt who, last time, had accused her of wanting to keep the Na-Dina in ignorance. That Temple was the all-male home of the electrical engineers, and those female Honorary Members who shared the Temple's obsession with high technology, including dynamos, generators, and munitions.

Telling herself to be fair, she told the truth. "Yes, Elder Sashoon, other dams can be built on side canyons of the River of Life." The Na-Dina beamed, his ears fluttering. "They could be concrete arch dams, stone block dams, or 285

even earthfill dams. But careful study should be made of the impact on the flow of fertile silt down the River of Life. Your farmlands feed many of the People."

Elder Salween threw salt into the sand pit, blocking the young man from further questions. "Ambassador, I am sure all future dams will be studied carefully, and the benefits versus risks weighed fully. Power we must have, but not at the cost of infertile fields. And we will ask the CLS for assistance in picking a more truthful contractor next time." Mahree tossed in her own salt.