New Writings in SF 20 - [Anthology] Page 16

  Skunder grinned to himself. From time to time he would be amazed at the technological supremacy of Earth over Cantek; the plastics, the atomics, the mere perfection of machinery. And then he would think to himself: yet they need me to control the bergworm. So he would smile and for a moment himself feel superior, despite knowledge of his home planet’s oil-based economy and polluted seas.

  But they were clever, these Earthmen who had bought the option on the Cantek polar ice-cap a century ago. They had been farsighted, their judgment based on experience of their own world; while Cantek had laughed and sold what it thought was a useless waste of floating ice.

  Skunder shrugged and carried the equipment and provisions into the tent, stowing them neatly, setting up the two beds. Himself, he preferred to sleep outside in a mini-dome, away from the company of the two men who mostly ignored him, thereby making his loneliness more intense.

  Oh, Valinda ...

  So he set up his minidome and walked over to where Erkelens and Rosskidd had begun to drill and the ice was fountaining steam as the laser beam sank deep. To act as general labourer was a part of the deal and the men of Earth paid well.

  Rosskidd looked up. ‘Ah, Cantek. You can drop the charges in. Make sure they go right to the bottom. Follow us along with the leads. Mind you don’t break any. Got that?’

  ‘Skunder’s done this before,’ said Erkelens mildly.

  ‘No doubt, but I’m an explosives expert, Skipper. That’s why you hired me, remember? After that trouble you had last trip, when you split the berg and killed the worm ... I’m not blaming you, but you’ve got to watch Canteks all the way, or they’ll fall down on the job. I know.’

  * * * *

  In the course of the next few hours they drilled innumerable shafts deep in the ice, delineating an area roughly one hundred yards square based on the estimated size of the worm beneath. Skunder followed behind, dropping the charges, trailing the wire. At last they were finished; they returned to the dome and connected up the control unit.

  Erkelens glanced at the sky. Cantek’s yellow sun was well above the horizon; the long polar day would last for a few more weeks. ‘No point in doing too much,’ he said. ‘We’ll turn in for a while. Detonate in six hours.’

  Rosskidd yawned; in the warmth of the dome he had removed his top clothing and stood bearlike and hairy in long underpants. Skunder suppressed his distaste for the uncouth, animal appearance of the man and said good night politely, stepping through the lock to the snow. Erkelens muttered tiredly but there was no reply from Rosskidd. Skunder hadn’t expected one. He crawled into his mini-dome and slept.

  He was wakened within an hour by a harsh chattering from above. Pushing his head through the flap of the dome he looked up. Stark against the blue mist of the sky was the dragonfly outline of a helicopter whirling west. He withdrew into the tent and tried to sleep again but his thoughts were whirling with the rotor blades in a vortex of hate. It was not the chartered helicopter which had brought them here. He had recognised the white insignia on the underbelly of the machine, however; the image remained on his retina for several hours.

  Asleep at last, it seemed only minutes before he was awakened again by a rough hand on his shoulder. He opened his eyes wearily; Rosskidd was bending over him, his face unshaven and expressionless with contempt.

  ‘You. Up.’

  Skunder rolled his legs off the bed, stood, and already fully dressed, followed the Earthman out of the dome. Erkelens was emerging from the larger dome, dragging the detonating equipment. He glanced at them briefly, then scanned the horizon.

  ‘Everything ready?’ he queried, a note of uncertainty in his voice. There was something very final, irreversible, about the operation of blasting clear.

  Rosskidd looked at him. ‘All ready,’ he said.

  ‘Right.’ Erkelens depressed a button and the ice trembled as the charges fired one by one at microsecond intervals. Little puffs of snow rose in a rectangular mist around the camp, apparently simultaneously. The three men waited, not looking at each other, standing square on the ice and waiting for their feet to tell them whether the operation had been successful.

  ‘We’re free,’ said Erkelens with relief as he detected motion beneath him. Imperceptibly, the ice was rocking. Grinding noises began, rose to tortured shrieks as the new berg began to move clear of the ice-cap. ‘Start cutting the control shaft, Skunder.’ He disconnected the detonator and dragged it back into the dome.

  Skunder wheeled the pump and laser to the seaward end of the new berg. He erected the laser drill downwards-directed, hung from a tripod, and set the control to throw a beam two feet wide by a thousandth of an inch thick! He flicked the switch and checked the rotary propulsion unit with a test circuit. The two-foot thread of light focused on the ice and described a slow radius. Soon Skunder was standing beside a neat circular pool of steaming water, four-foot six in diameter. He started the synchronised pump and watched as the ribbon of steam circled the flexible six-inch pipe. Satisfied, he relaxed as the unit drove the shaft rapidly downwards, the generator puttering evenly, the water flowing from the outlet of the pump, away across the snow.

  He walked back to the camp. Erkelens and Rosskidd were preparing breakfast on a portable stove; a whiff of bacon arose.

  ‘I saw Lejour’s helicopter last night,’ Skunder said.

  The effect of his remark was immediate. Erkelens sprang to his feet, upsetting the frying pan. ‘Where? Which way was he headed?’

  ‘West.’

  ‘West. God...’ Erkelens stared at Rosskidd. ‘He could be on the same run as us. He could be going to Alkar. It’s the only sizeable city in this direction.’

  ‘We’ve got a start on him.’

  ‘Not if he’s blasting free downcoast, we haven’t. He’s taking the shortest route. We’ve got to follow the ice-cap for thirty miles before we strike off across the Polar Sea. I thought we’d got plenty of time; I was more interested in finding a good worm. If Lejour’s already got a worm lined up... He’ll be ahead by the time we reach his departure point.’

  ‘So if he beats us to Alkar, he gets the best market,’ Rosskidd said slowly. ‘We have to take a give-away price. And we can’t hang around bargaining, with the berg melting under us in the warmer waters.’

  ‘Christ.’ Erkelens slumped to his collapsible chair, threw the spilt bacon back into the pan and stirred it moodily.

  ‘We have a good worm,’ Skunder ventured. ‘We can beat him.’

  ‘I hope so.’ Rosskidd looked at the Cantek meaningly.

  Skunder decided he would be better out of the picture, so he muttered something about seeing to the laser and walked quickly away.

  The hole was deep, the bottom out of sight in a mist of steam. He watched for a while, his thoughts straying, then felt the unmistakable distant jolt as the bergworm sensed the presence of the approaching laser beam. He switched off, removed the tripod, strapped the smaller, portable laser on his back and threw the collapsible ladder down the shaft. He began to descend.

  At the foot of the shaft the flexible pipe was sucking air, a noisy gobbling sound. He shrugged the laser from his back, thumbed the switch and began to enlarge the shaft into a chamber, his breathing harsh in the steamy atmosphere. When he had melted enough ice to permit free movement he drove away to one side, playing the laser on the glittering ice-wall, kicking the hose before him as he moved forward. He drove a narrow tunnel about twenty feet horizontally into the ice then began to slope downwards, gradually doubling back, to run parallel to, but many feet below his original course.

  An hour later he could make out a dark shadow beyond the scintillating reflections of the laser beam. He turned the instrument to low output and carefully melted away the remaining ice, exposing a rough leathery wall at the extremity of the tunnel.

  This was the flank of the giant bergworm. He tried a full-power pulse. The hide contracted, the flesh bubbled. The berg lurched, a vast heave under his feet. The worm was a good one, huge and strong
.

  Skunder shuddered...

  He crawled back to the chamber at the foot of the shaft and repeated the operation, driving a tunnel to the opposite flank of the worm. He tested the creature’s reactions then, satisfied, climbed the ladder and eventually emerged into daylight.

  Erkelens and Rosskidd were waiting for him.

  ‘Everything OK?’ Erkelens’ face was lined with anxiety.

  ‘Fine. It’s a good worm. We’ll be all right.’

  He looked around. They had left the ice-cap and were drifting in the open sea. Behind them yawned the gap in the glacier, a behemoth’s bite.

  * * * *

  ‘There is no right of property in a floating berg.’ Erkelens sat outside the dome on a folding chair, oiling his rifle, watching the shimmering cliff’s slide by. ‘Once it has left the ice-cap, possession is what counts. Occupancy.’

  ‘Scared of piracy?’ Rosskidd glanced at the grey horizon.

  ‘Of Lejour. He’s got more resources than me. He can pull some queer tricks, and he’s got the cash to back them up. He can afford his own helicopter—and you ought to see his submarine. It’s a bit different from that can over there.’

  He indicated the small craft hanging from automatic davits at the lip of the berg. A patched ovoid of grey metal, it measured some twenty feet in length and contained cramped accommodation for one man in dangerous proximity to an ancient miniature reactor.

  Skunder’s eyes followed Erkelens’ finger and his heart constricted at the thought of the claustrophobic blackness within.

  The image remained with him as he made his way to the control shaft to correct a slight course deviation. As he played the laser at low power on the tough hide of the worm, he imagined the huge head swinging below the dark water, swinging to the right as the beast’s muscles contracted in response to the heat irritant. He imagined the cavernous mouth sucking, blindly questing for sustenance in the depths ...

  He remembered Valinda ...

  He remembered Lejour (‘Get down there, you Cantek, and find out what’s wrong—I don’t want to see you back until we’re moving again.’) and Valinda as she stood beside him, holding his hand as the Earthman raved about loss of profits for late delivery, inefficiency of his Cantek worm expert; while the berg heaved idly on the grey sea. So he and Valinda climbed into the midget submarine and swung wildly out from the face of the berg while Lejour overrode the automatic, freewheeling the davits with heedless speed.

  He remembered the jarring impact as they hit the water, the sudden blackness in the viewport turning to abrupt viridescence when he switched on the floodlights and illuminated the side of the berg as they sank slowly. He remembered Valinda’s hand on his in a tender attempt to quell his uncontrollable trembling (‘Don’t let him get you down, darling; just remember the bonus at the end of this trip.’) And his feeling of gratitude because she knew he was shivering from fear, not anger.

  And then the sight of the bergworm... Oozing segmented from the base of the berg like a monster maggot, glowing phosphorescent in the black water, a gigantic tube of mindless evil. Hanging low, too low; two thirds of its tunnel it was preparing, for unknown reasons, to quit the berg.

  It had to be driven back. The head had to be forced upward and backward, the brute’s present forward creep through the berg had to be reversed. Hovering with Valinda in the midget submarine, he released oxygen from the forward vents and watched as the bubbles were drawn into the maw of the worm. They disappeared and the mouth gaped further in a silent roar of pain as the gas coursed through the phosphorus-rich body. But it did not retreat.

  He remembered his sudden shock when he found that Valinda was no longer beside him. Knowing that he would have refused her, she had taken the initiative; he felt the click as the airlock closed and he moved too late to stop her. Presently her rubber-suited figure appeared in the viewport, moving steadily towards the bergworm, drifting fast in the current of inhaled water. In one hand she held a jet pack, the straps swinging loose; in the other hand, a small mine.

  She reached the lip of the worm’s mouth and hung there, a tiny black figure in the nightmare phosphorescence, while she pulled the lever which sank barbs deep into the coarse flesh at the same time arming the mine. Then she began to swim back, kicking strongly with her legs against the current, the jet-pack streaming bubbles as she hugged it to her breast.

  He remembered Lejour’s careless attitude over the time-setting on the mines. He remembered wishing he had had a chance to check the delay factor before Valinda had left. He remembered holding his breath as he watched her struggling towards him; and he inched the submarine as close to the yawning mouth as he dared.

  He remembered the flash, the sudden star-shaped ragged wound appearing on the worm’s mouth edge. He remembered Valinda’s body tossing in the shock-wave, remembered the jolt through the submarine, the flickering of the lights, the sight of Valinda spinning slowly head over heels, unconscious, out of control, drifting into the mouth of the worm as it convulsively withdrew into the berg ...

  And he remembered, a recollection coloured with the crimson fury of murder, Lejour’s later remark:

  ‘You won’t have to split your percentage now, will you?’

  Oh, Valinda.

  Rosskidd’s voice was in his ear and he returned to the present.

  ‘I don’t know what you think you’re doing down here, but we’re out of control. The berg’s spinning.’ The big man was regarding him furiously, and behind the rage was terror; the pale eyes flickered to the exposed flank of the worm.

  Skunder considered. A spinning berg could mean several things. It was possible that, lost in memories, he had over-corrected with the laser, but he didn’t think so. Again, the worm could have withdrawn its head into the berg, allowing the tail to hang free in the water, jetting aimlessly. This was unlikely; he would have noticed that the area of skin at the control point had altered.

  The third possibility was a near certainty. ‘Sometimes a worm will become aware that it is being used,’ he informed Rosskidd. ‘It senses the presence of men on the berg and the constant use of the laser irritates it. As a rule, the worms are almost mindless, but you can get one which turns rogue.’

  ‘So what’s happening?’

  ‘It’s doubled its head back, and it’s burrowing towards the surface of the berg. We’ve lost propulsion. We’re drifting with the tide and spinning with the wind.’

  ‘Great,’ said Rosskidd sarcastically; his voice was soft and he smiled mirthlessly, as though dealing with a child. ‘So what do you suggest we do now. Mister Skunder?’

  The Cantek shrugged. ‘Wait; he replied simply. ‘After a while the worm will double back and work through to the water again. It will probably finishing up facing in the other direction. This often happens, but it’s rare that a worm leaves the berg altogether. At this stage in the life cycle they have to keep cool. Sometimes the heat of the worm’s body melts the ice around it, making it difficult to get a grip to propel the berg, so the worm merely drives a new tunnel.’

  ‘You’re quite an expert.’ The Earthman’s voice was dangerously quiet and Skunder shivered inwardly. Why were they all like this ? What was it about the ice, and the worms, and apparently the very fact of being on Cantek, which turned the Earthmen sour? They didn’t need to come here, but they came because they had the chance of making money. Yet it appeared that the very process of making it drove them insane.

  ‘I’ve studied marine biology,’ Skunder said in carefully conversational tones. ‘In particular, the bergworms and their life-cycle. It’s an important study on Cantek, more so since the fresh-water crisis. Did you know that some worms can make up to forty journeys north in a lifetime? Their body is refrigerated in the berg as they head for warmer seas, then, when a certain latitude is reached and the berg is melted away, they spawn and make their way back, leaving the young to feed in the richer, warmer waters. The young worms only head south for the polar cap when they are mature; the males stay under t
he cap for the rest of their lives while the females mate, burrow into the edge of the cap, and wait, feeding all the time, for their section of ice to break free ...’ Skunder was aware that his voice had risen; he was talking desperately in terror of this large Earthman with the dangerous shadow of fear in his eyes.

  ‘You’re too smart by half, Cantek,’ said Rosskidd coldly. ‘Follow me. We’re going to have a talk with Erkelens.’ He swung away and struggled, feet sliding, up the sloping ice-tunnel.

  Erkelens was sitting outside the dome, moodily eyeing the slowly revolving landscape. He looked up as they approached. Rosskidd seized Skunder by the elbow and propelled him before the captain. ‘Tell him what you told me,’ he commanded.