Clarke, Arthur C - Fall of Night 02 (33 page)

 
          
 
Cley pressed her palms to her ears. The din of
talent-talk drummed on. As soon as they got through with their labyrinthian
logic, they would notice her again.

 
          
 
And talk down to her. Reassure her. Treat her
like a vaguely remembered pet.

 
          
 
No wonder they had not recalled the many
varieties of dogs and cats, she thought bitterly. Ur-humans had served that
purpose quite nicely.

 
          
 
Her people . . . They had labored for the
Supras for centuries, tending the flowering biosphere. The Supras had known
enough to let them form tribes, to work their own small will upon the forest.
But drawn out of that fragile matrix, Cley gasped like an ancient beached fish.

 
          
 
She staggered away, anger clouding her vision.
Conflicts that had been building in her burst
forth,
and she hoped the blizzard of talent-talk hid them. But she could avoid them no
longer herself.

 
          
 
She was like a bug here, scuttling at the feet
of these distracted supermen. They were kind enough in their cool, lopsided
fashion, but their effort to damp their abilities down to her level was
visible— and galling. Longing for
her own
kind brimmed
in her.

 
          
 
Her only hope of seeing her kind again lay in
these Supras. But a clammy fear clasped her when she tried to think what fresh
Ur-humans would be like.

 
          
 
Bodies decanted from some chilly crucible. Her
relatives, yes, clones of her.
But strangers.
Unmarked
by life, unreared. They would be her people only in the narrow genetic sense.

 
          
 
Unless somewhere, some Ur-humans lived. They
would know the tribal intimacies, the shared culture she longed for.

 
          
 
If they existed, she had to find them.

 
          
 
Yet every nuance of the Supras' talk suggested
that they would not let her go.

 
          
 
They were not all-powerful—she had to keep
reminding herself of that. They gave Seeker an edgy respect, clearly unsure of
what it represented.

 
          
 
Their very attainments gave them
vulnerabilities. Immortals were enormously cautious; accident could still
destroy them. Caution could err. They could have missed some of her kind in the
dense woods.

 
          
 
Nobody from the crystal elegances of Diaspar
or
Lys
could be worth a damn at tracking in the
wilderness.

 
          
 
Very well, then.
She
would escape.

 
          
 
Surprise and diversion are tactics best used
swiftly. In Cley's case the surprise had to come at the perimeter the Supras
had erected around the wrecked Library. Yet she had no idea how to do this.

 
          
 
She confessed her thoughts to Seeker. She was
sure that it would not betray her. It seemed unsurprised by her news, or at
least to Cley the beast showed no visible reaction, though its fur did stir
with amber patterns. She had hoped for some laconic but practical advice. It
simply nodded and disappeared into the night.

 
          
 
"Damn," she muttered. Now that she
had decided to act, the hopelessness of her situation seemed comic. She was,
after all, the least intelligent human here, surrounded by technology as
strange to her as magic.

 
          
 
The party continued across the camp. Waves of
talent-talk frothed in her mind, making it difficult to think clearly. She
hoped this torrent would also provide cover for her plans.

 
          
 
A loud, groaning explosion rolled through the
dark. Seeker was suddenly beside her. "Walk," it said.

 
          
 
Shouts, flashes of purple
radiance, a chain of hollow pops.
Luminescent panels flickered out.

 
          
 
They simply slipped away. Seeker had executed
some trick to deflate the screens near the Library and instantly Supras and
robots reacted. For all their mastery of science the Supras reacted in
near-panic to the noisy folding of the screens. They truncated all standing
robot orders and directed every effort toward erecting the defenses again.

 
          
 
Seeker watched warily as they walked unhurriedly
across the camp to the side nearest the forest. "The moment was
approaching," was all it would say.

 
          
 
"But the robots—"

 
          
 
"They will not expect this now. They
never see the moment."

 
          
 
They moved silently out of the Supra camp,
keeping to the shadows. Everywhere robots hurried to restore the bulwarks of
the Library but took no notice of them.

 
          
 
They reached the forest beneath a moonless sky
strung with a necklace of dense stars. Cley tweaked her eyesight to enhance the
infrared and bring color forth from the pale glow of a million suns.

 
          
 
They ran steadily for the first hour and then
slowed as the terrain steepened. Whatever Seeker had used to gain them freedom
would not last for long. She had been restless under the lofty and distracted
restrictions of the Supras and she could not for long conceal from them her
feelings. She suspected that Seeker had sensed her restlessness and had
prepared to get the two of them out, before Seranis could read Cley's
intentions and tighten her hold.

 
          
 
After a while all this complication fell away
from Cley and she gave herself over to the healing exuberance of the forest.
She knew from Supra talk that her kind were not the true, original humans which
had come out of the natural forces of far antiquity, but that mattered little.
Though her genetic structure could be easily modified, as the inclusion of the
thought-talent showed, the Supras had kept her kind true to their origins. The
simple enfolding of forest could still reach deeply into her.

 
          
 
Seeker did not slow its rhythmic pace, four
legs seeming to slide across the ground while its hands swept obstacles aside
for the both of them. "They must be looking for us now," Cley said
after a long time of silence.

 
          
 
"Yes. My effect will wear away."

 
          
 
"What was it?"

 
          
 
Seeker looked at her, opened its slanted
mouth, but said nothing.

 
          
 
"Is it something I shouldn't know?"

 
          
 
"A thing you cannot know."

 
          
 
"Oh." She was used to Supras making
her feel stupid. Seeker, whose kind had come well over a hundred million years after
Ur-humans, made nothing of its abilities, but this somehow made them seem more
daunting.

 
          
 
"They can find us, though," she
said. "Supras have so many tricks."

 
          
 
"We must seek concealment. Something more
works in the sky."

 
          
 
She looked up and saw only a low fog. She
puffed heavily with the effort of keeping up with Seeker as they plowed through
dense thickets. "Why can't they see us right away?"

 
          
 
"We swim in the bath of life."

 
          
 
With each step the statement became
more true
. They moved deep into the embrace of a land
bustling with transformation. Fungi and lichen coated every exposed rock. This
thick, festering paint worked with visible energy, bubbling and fuming as it
ate stone and belched digestive gases into a hovering mist. Where they had done
their work webbed grasses already thrived.

 
          
 
Cley stepped gingerly through a barren area
speckled with bile-green splotches, afraid one might attack her feet with its
acidic eagerness. Not all the vapors that hung over the fevered
landscape were
mere bioproducts intended to salt the
atmosphere with trace elements. Buzzing mites abruptly rose from a stand of
moldyweed and swarmed around them. For a terrified moment she batted them off
until Seeker said calmly, "Stand still. They are thirsty."

 
          
 
The cloud was
opalescent,
its members each like a tiny flying chip of ice that refracted pale starlight.
Yet they seemed clever, buzzing with encased fervor and quick skill. They
banked in elaborate turns around her. She realized she must seem like a
mountain of chemical cropland. "What do
they
—"

 
          
 
"Do not speak. They will smell your
stomach lining and plunge down your throat."

 
          
 
She shut up and closed her nostrils as well.
The clasping cartilage in her nose had been useful in staving off water losses
in the desert of an ancient Earth only dimly remembered by even the Keeper of
Records. Now it kept out drumming mites as she held her breath for long, aching
moments, wondering what the succulent scent of her digestive acids was. She
squeezed her eyes shut, gritting her teeth. If she could only have the luxury
of screaming, just once—

 
          
 
The fog hesitated, buzzed angrily, and then
purred away in search of more tasty banquets.

 
          
 
"They seek to find and alter,"
Seeker said. "Not merely eat."

 
          
 
"How can you tell?" she asked
wonderingly.

 
          
 
"In my age there were many forms which
lived by chemical craft. They work on molecules themselves, transforming crude
minerals into elegant usefuls."

 
          
 
Cley shivered. "They make my skin
crawl."

 
          
 
"These are obviously designed to aid the
lichen in their gnawing, preparing the ground for life."

 
          
 
"I never saw them before."

 
          
 
"They ferret out their molecular cuisine
at the edge of the forest. Your kind inhabited the deep woods."

 
          
 
"I hope—"

 
          
 
"No more talk.
Quickly
now."

 
          
 
They ran hard. Seeker stopped often and
crouched forward, listening to the ground. Cley needed the time to adjust her
blood chemistry. The rhythms of walking helped key in hormonal cues to stop her
menstrual cycle and increase endurance. She kept glancing at the sky where the
galactic center was rising. Its gossamer radiance was unwelcome; she felt
exposed.

 
          
 
Loping along a steep
hillside.
Seeker said, "They come now."

 
          
 
"The Supras?" she asked.

 
          
 
"More than them."