Silverrock, p.17
Silverrock, page 17
“Easily, no—until somebody offers them a profit.” She propped herself onto her elbows. “If scorps are sapient, that means the mighty Stellar Coalition has made a huge error. Think of the embarrassment! Humans would have a good case to demand compensation for them sending us to an out-of-bounds world. I’ll bet that if Venture Mining makes enough of a stink, the non-homs would give us another planet, a better planet, to make up for the inconvenience. And don’t underestimate Venture Mining’s capacity for delay. They’ll use every tactic at their command to harvest a few more gigatons of rare earths before they go.”
Since when did powerful rulers worry about being embarrassed? I thought she was wrong, dead wrong, but I didn’t want to start a fight. “I hope so. At least the delay will give Lucien a chance to do his job. With Pinch’s help, he should have no trouble translating all the inscriptions. That’s what you need, isn’t it? More insight into the Builders’ thought processes.”
Emma’s eyes glittered in the dim light. “You’re thinking too small. I gave Lucien the samples Ambrose left behind. The Builders trained scorps to sort through rock and fetch minerals, right? Soon we’ll have our own army of scorps bringing us all the tech samples we can use.”
“That would be treating scorps like work animals. Like slaves.”
She scrunched her nose at me. “Oh, Booker—always so righteous. I’m talking about a mutually beneficial, purely voluntary exchange of goods for services. Tech for table scraps, win-win, everybody goes away happy. All we need is a little more time. That’ll be my job, convincing Havens to drag things out so Lucien has room to maneuver. Your job is to watch Lucien’s back. Whether Havens likes it or not, he’s going to be spending a lot more time with Pinch.”
The rest of the night, my dreams were filled with Canton’s broken bodies and crawling scorps spelling out words I couldn’t read. Long past dawn, I dragged myself out of bed to find that everyone else had already breakfasted and tensions were high.
Lucien fidgeted near the door. “Dr. Havens, I have to go. Pinch wants me to join him in the tunnels.” Lydia sat nearby, her breakfast left half-eaten.
“No, Lucien.” Havens turned her focus back to Emma. “I see no reason to delay sending my report to the Coalition. My task was to ascertain whether scorps are sapient, and I have done so. Your approval is not required.”
Emma’s voice was honeyed. “My approval, no. But as a member of the team, I have a responsibility to provide context to help the Coalition make a fully informed decision. That’s prudent, surely?”
“Dr. Havens,” Lucien said, “this call comes through Pinch, but it’s the queen’s voice. I have to go.”
Havens barely glanced at him. “Absolutely not, Lucien. You will not engage with the scorpidons without instructions from the Coalition. Emma, you are welcome to convey to the Coalition your findings from the dissection. But what happens to the colony here is not my concern—or yours. Our mission is complete.”
“My research extends far beyond a dissection. As the team’s exobiologist, I look at the entire planetary ecology. If your report is simply a bare conclusion that scorps are sapient, the Coalition will likely order the immediate evacuation of the planet. That would do more than disrupt tens of thousands of human lives. In my professional opinion, it could destroy thousands of scorp lives as well.”
“Nonsense,” Havens said. “Removing humans will simply restore the planet to its natural state, allowing the scorpidons to live their lives in peace.”
Emma waved a hand toward the monitors displaying the scorp day shift at work. “That might have been true if the Coalition had done its job from the beginning, recognized that scorps were sapient and banned colonization. We’re way past that now. For thirty earthyears, ever since the colonists arrived, scorps and humans have intertwined their lives. We provide scorps access to our garbage, and in return, scorps dispose of it. A trade of services, a lot like the way humans developed a relationship with cats.”
“Cats aren’t sapient,” Samson said. The camera at the message platform still displayed the glyphs placed by Pinch. Baby Builders: no noise, bring more food.
Emma kept her focus on Havens. “We’re the ones who made scorps dependent on us. For all practical purposes, we trained the scorps to expect food at the dump. Then we took it away, forcing the Valley hive to look for food in town. If humans suddenly withdraw from Silverrock, it could cause scorp starvation on a large scale.”
Samson cocked his head. “We need significantly more information to understand the possible effects of a human evacuation. Pinch asked for food, and the Valley hive is already in distress. At the very least, there would have to be some remediation of the damage done by capping the spring and building the town over scorp territory.”
Havens’s fingers twisted and twined. “That is not our decision. Our mission ends when we pass the information to the Coalition.”
“Just following orders?” I asked. “Damn the consequences? We have relevant field intelligence: if we fail to put that intelligence into our report, you can’t pretend we’re not responsible for the outcome.”
Lucien spoke softly. “The Builders used scorps as servants—slaves—and then abandoned them. That event hasn’t faded with time. After fifty thousand earthyears, the scorps remember it, and yet they still revere the Builders as gods. What will it do to them if we abandon them too?”
Havens fidgeted her fingers, her lips taut.
Lydia looked up at Lucien. “What do you think we should do?”
His gaze strayed to the dark foothills. “The scorps deserve a voice. We should ask them what they want.”
Samson smiled.
Havens’s eyes widened. “No! You are absolutely not authorized to negotiate with the scorps.”
One side of Lucien’s mouth lifted. “I don’t think you understand. I wouldn’t negotiate with scorps. I’d negotiate with you.”
Though I feared the answer, I had to ask. “What do you mean?”
Lucien laughed, a chuckle without humor. “Don’t you see? Pinch’s sting wasn’t an attack, he was opening a channel to communicate. He was making first contact with us. By making me part of his telepathy chain, Pinch made me the scorp ambassador to humanity.”
CHAPTER 22
Audience with the Queen
WHEN SAMSON backed up Lucien’s request to attend the Highlander queen’s audience, Dr. Havens didn’t approve so much as surrender. “This must be an information-gathering expedition only,” she told Lucien. “Except as instructed by me, you are not to make any sort of proposal or commitment on the part of humans.”
Lucien nodded as if he cared what she said.
When we got to the access tunnel entrance, I asked Lucien, “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
He quirked a smile. “How can I ignore a royal summons? The queen is calling—every scorp in her chain of telepathy will be there.”
“That doesn’t include me.”
Lucien and I were suited up in armor. My backpack had the usual nutrition bars, water, and first-aid kit. I also carried a camera and a sackful of small repeaters—if we were going to penetrate the tunnels beyond the Pueblo, we’d need them to relay signals back to base.
“We’ll be all right,” Lucien said. “If we meet one of the bigger scorps, just act subservient. They’ll let us by.”
Bowing and scraping to scorps stuck in my craw. Even as a grunt in the militia, I’d stood upright to salute the brass. Still, the caverns were the queen’s castle, so I supposed it was only polite to adhere to the scorps’ customs.
I keyed the mic to base. “Samson? Are you reading us?”
“Got you. Good luck.”
Lucien was already charging down the path. Feeling a little foolish, I spoke for the record: “This is Booker. Lucien and I are entering the caverns. We’ll be penetrating farther into the tunnels than before in response to a telepathically received request from the queen.” I turned on my wristlamps and shoulderlamps and stepped into the tunnel.
As we descended the myriad shallow steps, we were hit with the tang of scorp guano. Our steps echoed against the clicking and scrabbling of the rockskippers and sandbugs. The twists and turns should have seemed familiar, but instead they were as alien as the first time I’d entered the tunnel.
At the overlook, our lamps’ meager beams scarcely seemed to penetrate the dark. I saw so few scorps that I looked at my own hand to make sure the thermal camera was working.
“Where is everyone?” I asked. There should have been scorps scouring algae from the Pueblo’s floors and walls, greeting each other with clacks of their claws, and scurrying along the streets. Instead, only the little rockskippers and a few small scorps manned the Pueblo’s ramparts.
“Gone to the queen.” Lucien led the way through the meandering pathways.
At the inscribed south wall, Lucien paused long enough to brush his hand over one of the glyphs—the one for the Builders. I settled for a military salute. It couldn’t hurt to show respect for the neighbors’ gods.
At the entrance to a tunnel on the south side, Lucien didn’t hesitate. Bending low, he ducked into a hole partially blocked by rubble.
With a deep breath, I followed—my first steps beyond the cavern mapped by the archeologists.
I had to hunch down and keep my head bent, trying to watch my footing while avoiding banging my helmet on the ceiling. “The tunnel is low but wide,” I transmitted to base. “I’d guess it was made for scorps and not the Builders.” The tunnel had an ancient feel to it, worn smooth by the passage of countless scorps. It curved and twisted gently downward. “There’s a slight draft—the air’s heavy with the damp.” Our footsteps and my own harsh breathing echoed in the passage.
“Booker—we’ve lost the feed from Lucien. Better . . . repeaters . . .”
As the channel from base changed to static, I stuck a repeater into a crevice and activated it. “Samson?”
“That’s better. Even if we get nothing else out of this expedition, we’ll be able to extend our map a little.”
“As long as no industrious scorp tidies them into some hole.” I prayed to the underground gods that Lucien wouldn’t have to ask some helpful scorp to guide us out. Maybe I should have memorized the glyphs for Which way to the exit?
Lucien kept a steady pace, choosing branchings without hesitation as the tunnel angled down. Every two hundred paces I planted a repeater.
A big scorp coming from a side entrance lumbered into our path. We stood aside. It felt us with its antennae and went on by. After a few more turns, I heard another approach from behind. I hugged the wall. The scorp brushed by us with barely a twitch.
At a point with a cool updraft, I paused. “There must be a natural chimney here.”
“Are you encountering any resistance?” Emma asked from base.
“Not so far. They don’t seem to see us as a threat.”
At the two-kilometer point, I heard a rhythmic, distant pounding. As we approached, it became louder and resolved into beats.
“Lucien?” I called. “What’s that noise?”
“We’re getting close.”
The sound was much louder now, like the rhythmic clapping of hundreds of hands.
I didn’t think it was hands.
Ahead of us, two large scorps stood guard. They reared up and brandished their claws. Beyond them the pounding noise boomed—the clacking of hundreds of huge claws in a chamber large enough to echo and enhance the sound.
“Show subservience,” Lucien said. He bowed low.
I copied his bow. “Excuse us, gents.”
“This way.” Lucien led me left, into a small path twisting upward.
The path was narrow and steep. A dozen or so legs would have been a big help. And maybe even two or three claws to carry my pack.
The path ended at a ledge where a few small fry clicked their claws in time to the beat, their antennae quivering with excitement like kids peeking through the fence at a circus. Lucien shoved them aside to give us room.
Our ledge looked out on a cavern room, maybe as big as the ranch compound. My helmet’s thermal display was filled with ghostly, glowing forms of hundreds of scorps. The largest ones congregated in the middle of the room, crowding the smaller ones to the periphery. All clacked their large claws in a slow, steady beat.
“I think we’re here,” I said.
“There’s the Highlander queen,” Samson breathed. “Holy hellhounds, look at her! She must be ancient.”
In the center of the room was a scorp as big as a hopper, even bigger than the Valley queen we’d chased out of the waterworks. The plates of her carapace were grossly thick and gnarled. In a sea of snapping claws, only she was motionless, her large display claw held before her like a scepter. Small scorps scurried over her like ants, bringing morsels of food to her mouth and cleaning her legs and shell.
Lucien pointed to three massive scorps standing nearest the queen, doing nothing but twitching their antennae around. “Those are sentries. They guard the queen.”
“Booker,” Samson said. “The camera.”
“I’m on it.” I positioned the new camera on the wall above the ledge, where it would have a good view of the chamber. I triggered the bolt driver to coincide with the noise. Clack, clack, bam. Antennae twitched, but the sound was nearly drowned out by the general cacophony.
“Receiving camera signal,” Samson confirmed. “Thanks, that’s a much better picture.”
I stowed the bolt driver in my pack. The team at the ranch would have its own balcony seat in the royal chamber.
“Where’s Pinch?” I asked.
Lucien pointed. “Front row, on the right.” Among the largest scorps in the rank nearest the queen, he snapped his double claws in time to the rhythm.
“And Scrape.” Just to Pinch’s right, Scrape stretched as high as he could and clacked his single fighting claw.
I panned the room so the helmetcam could catch everything. Stalactites hanging from the ceiling showed that the winter rains must have seeped through the limestone. On the floor, a cleared path led from the monstrous queen toward the wall on my left. I peered down to see where the path led, but below me was a patch of inky blackness bordered by myriad scorp bodies.
“Is that a hole?” Samson asked. “A tunnel entrance, maybe?”
I aimed my wristlamp down—and a light flashed back. Immediately, I doused my light. “Hell, I think someone else is here.”
Emma chuckled. “It’s water, reflecting your lamp.”
Water. Of course. Its cooler temperature made it look black in the helmet’s thermal display. Cautiously, I shined my light down again. The water was scummy with algae—uninviting for a dip, but on Silverrock, any fresh water was a precious commodity.
“Good to know my hypothesis was correct,” Emma said. “It’s logical for the queen to nest near the water supply.”
“Something’s happening,” Lucien said.
As the clacking quickened, the queen began to raise herself. Her body looked too heavy for the skinny legs to lift, but as we watched, she managed to raise her massive front to show her underside. There, her carapace plates bulged at the seams, and between the plates were glistening globules.
“Eggs,” Emma said. “They look ready to spill from her brood pouches.”
Havens cleared her throat. “Lucien, please extend to the scorpidon leadership our appreciation for this opportunity to observe the Highlander queen. On behalf of the Stellar Coalition and the human colonial administration, we formally express our, um, best wishes for a long and productive reign.”
I suppressed a chuckle. No scorp would know or care what she was saying, but she’d no doubt make sure her supervisors at the Coalition saw the recording.
Clack, clack. The rhythmic pounding rose to a crescendo. Among the crowd near the queen, the biggest scorps began to surge forward, rising up and extending their antennae toward her. The three quiet sentinels stolidly held their ground.
The queen elevated her body even more, and the clacking stopped. The globes bulging from her underside shimmered and pulsed.
One of the small attendant scorps rushed forward. A little creature the size of my hand dropped out of the queen’s brood pouch, legs waving, and was deftly intercepted by the attendant. The attendant scurried to the pool of water, brushing aside all curious antennae. As more eggs hatched, other attendants darted to the queen and swiftly took the hatchlings to the pool.
“Marvelous,” Emma said. “This answers so many questions about their life cycle. Scorps are ovoviviparous—the eggs are fertilized internally and gestate in the brood pouches until ready to hatch. Once they hatch, the young must develop in water.”
The hatchlings came by the dozens, by the score, as the attendants ran back and forth between the pool and the queen. She stood with her huge body raised on her many spindly legs, swaying slightly as wave after wave of her brood poured out of her.
When the flood of hatchlings slowed to a trickle, the attendants crawled over the queen to be sure none were missed. Then the queen slowly lowered her body and settled on the ground. The crowd around her seemed to sigh in relief and began a quiet whispering of clicks and rustles.
“Incredible,” Samson said. “We’ve been invited to witness something never before seen by a human: the birth of scorp young. It’s an honor.”
“The Coalition will be pleased,” Havens said. “Lucien, please convey the felicitations of the Stellar Coalition on the hatching of a new scorpidon generation.”
I was ready to go home and celebrate, but the crowd didn’t break up yet.
Clack. Clack. At first, random clacks sounded. Then others joined in, and a slow rhythm began again.
“What’s happening now?” Samson asked.
Lucien chuckled. “Now comes the important part.”
The queen’s underside seemed flat and empty. Clack. Clack. The sound pounded in my head, and the smell of hundreds of scorps caught in my throat.
The three sentries nearest the queen remained where they were, antennae extended. But as the synchronized pounding of claws reverberated through the cavern, the crowd’s first rank—the biggest scorps—rose high, clacking their claws and extending their stingers.
