“No, Ozzie, nothing like. I understand very little of this place, and all the others I walked through. Why don’t the Silfen allow us to have electricity?”
“Simple enough theory. They’re experiencing life on a purely physical level; that’s all these bodies we see are for, to give them a platform at this level of personal consciousness evolution. And it kills me to say it, but it’s a pretty low level, given their capabilities. You start introducing electricity, and machines, and all the paraphernalia which goes with it, then you start to shrink that opportunity for raw natural experience.”
“Yeah,” she said sourly. “God forbid they should invent medicine.”
“It’s irrelevant to them. We need it because we treasure our individuality and continuity. Their outlook is different. They’re on a journey that has a very definite conclusion. At the end of their levels they get to become a part of their adult community.”
“How the hell do you know that?”
He shrugged, a gesture largely wasted under his heavy fur coat. “I was told that once.”
“Who by?”
“This dude I met in a bar.”
“Dear Christ, I don’t know which is weirder, them or you.”
“Definitely them.” They came to the top of the small rim as the sun vanished, leaving only a flaming fuchsia glow in the sky.
“You also shouldn’t be out so late,” Sara said. “There’s no beacon to guide you back here, you know.”
“Don’t worry about me, I see better in the dark than most people.”
“You got fur instead of skin as well? Even the Korrok-hi don’t stay out at night on this world.”
“Sure. Sorry. Wasn’t thinking.”
“You’ll have to do a lot better tomorrow when you follow the Silfen.”
“Right. You know, I’m still kind of surprised you didn’t want to come with us.”
“I will leave one day, Ozzie. Just not yet, that’s all.”
“But why, you’ve been here long enough. I can’t see you buying into George’s idea about how living here as some kind of penance makes us value our lives more. And as far as I can make out there’s no one special for you. Is there?” Which had slowly begun to nag at him as his own suggestions in that direction over the months had all gone unheeded.
“No,” she said slowly. “There’s no one right now.”
“That’s a shame, Sara. We all need someone.”
“So were you going to volunteer?”
The mild scorn in her voice made him pause. After a moment, Sara stopped and looked back at him. “What?” she asked.
“Well, goddamn, I couldn’t have been any blunter,” Ozzie said.
“Blunt about what?”
“About us. You and me. Rocking the mattress.”
“But you’ve got… Oh.”
“Got what?” he asked suspiciously.
“I thought… we all thought: you and Orion.”
“Me and Orion what… ohshit.”
“You mean he’s not your—”
“No. Absolutely. Not.”
“Ah.”
“And I’m not.”
“Okay. Sorry. Misunderstanding, there.”
“Not that there’s anything—”
“No, certainly not. There isn’t. I had lots of gay friends.”
“Did you?”
“That’s what you’re supposed to say.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Well, that cleared that up, then.”
“It did.”Oh, terrific.
They hurried back up the remainder of the escarpment to the tents in silence. Everyone was inside now, thick black oil fumes were squirting out of carefully designed vents in the top as the evening meal got under way.
“Ozzie,” Sara said in a weary tone just before they went into their tent.
“Yo.”
“Tomorrow, when the Silfen hunt the icewhales, don’t get curious, okay? No matter how exciting or repellent, or fascinating you think it is, stay back, stay right out of their way.”
“I hear you.”
“I hope so. I know why you’re here, I’ve seen it in people before, you think you’re on some kind of mission, you think that makes you invulnerable. Hell, maybe it does, but take it from me, tomorrow is not a good time to test it out, okay? I understand your crazy ideas about the Silfen, and how existential they are, but tomorrow it doesn’t get more real and physical than this.”
“I’ll be careful, I promise. I’ve got the kid and the alien to worry about.”
They were woken as the first magenta glimmer of dawn appeared. Despite being crammed into the tent with ten other people, Ozzie had slipped into a deep dreamless sleep as soon as he zipped up his sleeping bag. It was the first night since he arrived that he hadn’t had to endure the ubiquitous red light.
He and Orion ate their packaged breakfasts, warding off the edgy, resentful comments from the others who were having their standard Ice Citadel meal of mashed crystal tree fruit and fried icewhale rashers. They filled their flasks with boiled water; to two they mixed in the added-energy juice powder, and to the second two they added soup concentrate. While the rest hurried outside to watch the Silfen begin their hunt, Ozzie and Orion packed their rucksacks for what they hoped was the last time on this world.
It had snowed overnight, the wisps of cirrus condensing into tiny hard flakes that drifted down to dust every surface. Ozzie and Orion brushed it off the outer sheet of fur they’d arranged over Tochee’s sledge. They dragged it back, with Ozzie partly dreading what they’d find. A stiff corpse? But the heatbrick had worked. Tochee waved at them from behind the crystal windscreen, apparently unperturbed by its night spent alone.
The pair of them stood beside the sledge, slightly apart from everyone else milling around the tents. It was a good position from which to watch the hunt play out over the land below. Ozzie also realized why the Korrok-hi had driven the covered sleds up the escarpment yesterday evening. Up here they were well out of harm’s way.
Today’s hunt was going to range over the expanse of gullies and spinney-crowned hummocks that stretched back from the crater floor. The mounted Silfen had split into two groups. The first was making their way along the range of crags that plunged out across the crater, heading for the tip. While the second were cantering around the rim away from them. Those on foot were splitting into small parties, and fanning out through the spinneys and boulder fields.
Ozzie watched with considerable interest as individual riders dropped away from the group moving along the base of the crags, to stand a lonely sentry duty just above the uneven shoreline. After forty minutes, the last rider reached the apex and halted. Facing him, a mile away on the crater rim, the other group was spaced out in a corresponding formation.
Somewhere a horn was sounded, its clear note ringing through the frigid air.
“Cover your eyes,” Sara shouted in warning.
Ozzie and Orion exchanged a look. No one had mentioned this before. Ozzie quickly stepped in front of the sledge’s windscreen. When he glanced back at the crater, he zoomed in on the farthermost rider out at the end of the crags. The Silfen was perched on his mount, arm back in a classic spear-thrower position. Ozzie just had time to order his retinal insert filters on-line. The Silfen threw his spear. Even on full zoom, Ozzie was hard pushed to see the silver splinter as it sliced through the air at an impossible speed. When he checked, he could see the Silfen on the crater rim opposite had thrown his spear as well.
“What—”
At the top of their arcs, the spears ignited, stretching out to became lightning bolts. Incandescent white light flashed across the crater, casting the waiting Silfen riders into stark relief. Red sunlight was momentarily banished in the silent starburst splendor.
The twin ribbons of energy dived down into the lake of ice granules. Two blue-white circles of phosphorescence erupted where they vanished below the surface, expanding until they were hundreds of yards across, then slowly dying away.
“What was that?” Orion cried.
“I don’t know,” Ozzie replied truthfully. He was mildly surprised that the surface of ice granules hadn’t shot up like a depth charge explosion, but it remained perfectly calm. A plangent boom rolled in across the landscape, reverberating off the crags and hummocks.