Silverrock, p.22
Silverrock, page 22
Lydia slumped in her chair, a hand over her stomach.
I looked from Lydia to Emma. “What’s wrong?”
Lydia took a deep breath. “I gotta go to the doctor, Booker.”
“Are you sick?”
“Not sick. Not now, anyway. Please, just take me to the hospital.”
“Of course,” I said. “Get your coat, and I’ll bring the hopper around.”
“Do you want me to come?” Emma asked.
At the door, Lydia stiffened. “No. I know what I gotta do.”
When Lydia was out of earshot, I turned to Emma for an explanation.
Emma looked grim. “I suppose Lydia doesn’t like me much right now, but I couldn’t let her go on with the pregnancy without explaining the risks.”
Pregnant? I felt stupid for not having realized, and somehow responsible. “What risks?”
“The telepathy virus. If she goes on with the pregnancy, there’s a chance her baby could be born telepathically linked to the scorps.”
That evening, the hospital’s waiting room was as gloomy as ever. Once Lydia had been delivered into the nurses’ cool hands, I crammed myself into a hard chair and tried to tuck my legs out of everyone’s way. People waited, disappeared into treatment rooms, moaned, and cursed. Somewhere out of sight, a woman wept.
On the way to town, I’d asked Lydia if Lucien knew she was expecting.
She’d shaken her head. “I wasn’t going to ask him for anything. I know he can’t stay here. I just wanted the baby to keep something of him for myself, after he’s gone back to Prime.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“Don’t tell him,” she’d said. “Don’t ever tell him.”
I’d promised, but the promise didn’t sit well. Rita and I had talked about having kids, but the timing had never been right. I’d been glad about that when we broke up, but since then I’d often wondered how different my life would have been if we’d had a baby to draw us together.
From somewhere outside the hospital came shouts and police sirens. The waiting room’s vid cut from an educational program about Coalition non-homs to an excited newscaster. “Breaking news! At the hydroponics pumpstation west of Sweetwater City, scorps have gathered by the dozen, frightening away the technicians and destroying property . . .”
CHAPTER 29
The Pumpstation
THIS TIME, the Valley scorps hadn’t attacked the main waterworks but had invaded a secondary pumpstation that served the hydroponic farms. Water gushed out of a broken water main, spilling into a gulch that drained off rain from the infrequent winter storms. The lower end of the gulch had been blocked with rocks, mud, and trash from people’s backyards: the scorps had created a dam to form a widening pond.
A score of good-sized scorps were patrolling the dam and the pond. They were matched by a score of deputies and onlookers, the scene lit by spotlights from police rovers.
I donned my armor and helmet from the hopper and switched to transmit. “Samson? Are you seeing this?” Small scorps scampered back and forth, packing mud into any weak places in the dam.
“We saw the newscast. According to our monitors, all the scorp tags at your location are ones associated with the Valley hive. Is the Valley queen there? Damn, I wish I was there to tag her.”
“I don’t see her, but I’ll keep an eye out.” We hadn’t seen much problem-solving ability from the Valley scorps, but the queen was clearly smart enough to direct her troops to make a dam. I figured she was desperate to find water to release her eggs.
Samson said, “Listen, Dr. Havens is talking to the mayor, but you’re there on the spot. Do what you can to keep the townies from violence.” He didn’t have any suggestions as to how.
A meaty hand circled my arm. “Booker? What the hell are you doing? Get those scorps away from the water main.” Chang bared his teeth at me like a dog about to bite.
“Me?”
“You folks can talk to ’em, can’t you? So, talk to ’em!”
I sputtered at that. “I can’t, Deputy Chang. This is a different group of scorps. And you locked up the one person who knows scorps best.”
“That’s Acting Sheriff Chang. And if you ain’t here to help, then you’re in the way. Dante—cuff him.” He walked away shouting to shut off the water supply, ordering rifles to be issued.
A stony-faced Deputy Dante secured my left wrist to one of the police rovers. “Sorry, Booker,” he muttered.
“Don’t let anybody start shooting, or there’ll be hell to pay,” I told him. “I don’t care what Chang says, scorps are sapient. That means they’re protected by law like any other non-hom. The Coalition’s already upset about the scorp killings—it has its eyes on Silverrock.” I didn’t mention that at the moment, the eyes were courtesy of my helmetcam. “Dr. Havens is talking to the mayor right now.”
The deputy glanced toward Chang. “I just follow orders.”
“Well, if you know what’s good for you and this colony, follow them slow.”
Dante nodded, then circulated among the other deputies. Gradually, they began to move away from the pond.
“You all right?” Samson asked from base.
“Fine, as long as I don’t need to go anywhere. You might let Havens know, in case I need bailing out too. And Emma, Lydia will need—”
Emma broke in. “Booker, there’s only one reason the Valleys would need water. Pan your helmetcam over the pond. The queen must be there somewhere.”
With my free hand, I flipped my helmet lamp to UV light. In the dusk, the scorps glowed blue, their eyes glittering like stars.
In the center of the pond was an extra glimmer of a massive body. “There,” I said. “She’s nearly submerged. Can you see her? That’s the Valley queen.”
Emma sucked in her breath. “But it’s just a shallow pool. If it dries up, none of the offspring will survive.”
“There’s no hope,” I said. “The hydro keeper has already turned the water off at the source. All they have to do is—”
Before I even finished the sentence, someone tossed a blasting cartridge into the makeshift dam. With a bang and a flash of light, debris flew into the air. Scorps ran in panic from the noise.
A loudspeaker sounded. “This is the mayor. No shooting!” She stood by the sheriff’s rover, a scowling Chang by her side. “Everybody just stand down. By order of the Coalition, no one is to interfere with the scorps. We don’t have to let them use our water, but we can’t kill them either.” As if denying them water would be any less lethal in the long run than a hail of bullets.
As the sludgy pool drained away, the Valley queen, attended by a few stalwarts, pulled herself out of the mud and disappeared into the brush. Was I imagining dejection in the droop of her antennae? Fatalism in the loyalty of her retinue?
A deputy pushed me into the rover. “Chang wants me to charge you.”
“With what?”
He shrugged. “Being a wiseass. Let’s go.”
As I was driven away in the back of the rover, I glimpsed a few hand-sized scorp babies struggling in the muddy water.
At the sheriff’s station, I was booked for impeding an officer. They took away my helmet, armor, and mocom. I was relieved nobody thought to take away my legs.
The cells housed an assortment of grumbling troublemakers. Lucien was alone in his cell, lying on his bunk.
“I guess you won’t mind,” the guard muttered, shoving me into his cell. “We didn’t dare put anybody else in with him—those men the scorps killed last night had a lot of friends.”
The door clanged shut behind me like the closing of a coffin lid.
Lucien brightened and sat up. “Booker! Thank you for coming. Are they letting me out soon?”
“Havens is working on it.” I sat on the other bunk, not correcting his assumption that I was there for a friendly visit. “What did Pinch do last night? Was he responsible for killing those men?”
“Booker, I swear I didn’t know anything about it. But Pinch is smart enough now to have expected a second ambush at the dump, and to have deployed his followers to prevent it. I doubt the scorps meant to kill anyone—for them, losing a leg is just an inconvenience. I don’t think they understand that cutting a leg off a person would cause them to bleed to death.”
“What about this evening?”
He blinked at me. “Today? What happened?”
“The Valleys attacked a pumpstation out by the farms. They dammed up some water so the Valley queen could release her eggs.”
Lucien shook his head. “I don’t know anything about the Valleys. They’re outside the Highlander queen’s telepathy chain. Whatever they’re doing, they’re on their own.”
On their own. I shook off a wave of pity for the Valley queen-in-exile and her court, homeless and now bereft of her offspring. “How are you doing? Is Pinch giving you problems for not coming when he calls?”
Lucien blinked. “He’s gone somewhere deep in the caverns to molt—his metamorphosis has begun. His old shell is peeling away. It makes him vulnerable.”
“So you’re all right? He can’t ask you to do anything if he’s hiding out.”
“It’s the questions.” Lucien rubbed his arms. “He’s like a child, asking why this and how that. He’s never satisfied, one question right after another. I haven’t slept since I got here.”
“What kind of questions?” I hated to think that maybe Chang was right, that Lucien was in some part responsible for the prior night’s deaths.
“Everything. How sound works. Why the air outside is different from the air in the tunnels. Where the food at the dump comes from. What is rain? Why is cold?” Lucien leaned forward, dropping his voice. “He’s getting smarter. Figuring things out. Some things I try not to answer, like why people keep making noise in the tunnels, what brings us into scorp territory, and what makes us go away. But he badgers at me.”
I rubbed my jaw, not liking what I was hearing. “Is it just him? Or is Queen Highlander asking questions through him?”
Lucien wrung his fingers, over and over. “I think it’s him, not the queen. He’s outgrowing his dependence on her.”
What would that mean for the Highlanders, to have two queens? From what I’d seen of scorp life, cooperation wasn’t a high priority. Would the hive split in two?
“Do you think Pinch will leave the caverns and form a new hive somewhere else?” I asked. But there was nowhere else, not with enough accessible water to nurture their young.
Lucien shook his head. “He won’t leave the tunnels. It’s the only world he knows, and it’s the home of the Builders. He believes in them, if that’s the right word. He won’t abandon their city. But the hive can’t have two queens.” Lucien looked up, his eyes bleak. “He’ll have to fight the old queen.”
“To the death?”
“Until there’s only one queen.” Lucien closed his eyes. “You might as well go home. Pinch wants me to answer more questions now, but I’m so tired. Pinch doesn’t understand that I need to sleep.”
“I’ll stay a while.” Courtesy of Acting Sheriff Chang. “You go ahead and answer Pinch, or rest if you can.”
“Thank you,” he whispered. For a moment, his eyes locked on mine. “If Pinch fights the queen, maybe Pinch will be the one to die and I’ll be free. I hope so. I can’t go on like this.”
The jail was not a peaceful place. While Lucien communed with Pinch, the other inmates talked, shouted, and cursed. Whenever they got bored with harassing the cellblock guard or one another, they hooted at Lucien, promising dire revenge on the scorps and on him.
A battle between queens. If Pinch died, Lucien would be free, but we’d also lose our channel to gain insight into the Builders’ tech. If Pinch survived to become queen, he’d become stronger, taking over more of Lucien’s life.
The worst possibility was that Pinch would lose his battle with the Highlander queen but survive, to be driven away to scrounge for food and water like the Valley queen, with Lucien still his mental slave.
Emma had predicted that the Valley hive was close to failure. Queen Valley was truly alone: no Pueblo to remind her of a proud history, none of the Builders’ writings to consult, and no human ally like Lucien to answer the kind of questions that were now consuming Pinch. Her home was overrun by humans, forcing her to rely on human garbage to survive. Did she hate humans for driving her away from her birthplace, her ancestral home?
Queen Valley’s death would be a tragedy: after all, she was the bearer of all her lineage’s memories, passed down with the telepathy virus queen to queen, all through the scorp generations. She must have been desperate, haunting Sweetwater City in a fruitless quest for access to the old spring, her body swollen with eggs, aching for release. A final, hopeless gamble to create a pond she could claim for her hive. What had she felt when she’d realized her offspring were doomed? Emma said scorps had no need to love their offspring, but even for them, the urge to protect their young must be a primal instinct.
The guard’s clanking on the cell door startled me awake. “Up, you two. Time to go.”
“Go where?” I helped Lucien to his feet.
“Who cares? You’re out of here.”
In the busy lobby, Dr. Havens waited, head austerely high, next to a smirking Emma.
Lydia, fists on hips, faced off with the acting sheriff. “ . . . and you, Orville Chang, you should know better than to pick on poor Lucien. Acting sheriff? More like pretending to be sheriff! Why, Mick Ugarte was no mother’s dream, but he had more common sense in his little pinkie than you’ve got stuffed in that cotton wool you got between your ears.”
I corralled her before she got herself arrested too and hustled the group into the hoppers. Lydia took Lucien home, while Havens preferred to join me and Emma.
“Thanks for bailing me out,” I said.
Emma grinned. “No bail. All charges against both you and Lucien have been dismissed.”
Havens cleared her throat. “In light of the abject failure of the local police to enforce the edict, the Coalition will be taking a stronger hand in the governance of Silverrock. Acting Sheriff Chang is soon to be relieved of duty. I believe it was you who suggested a peacekeeping force? The Coalition agrees.”
“Peacekeepers?” I hadn’t intended my offhand comment to Samson to be taken so seriously. Silverrock’s settlers would view Coalition peacekeepers as invaders.
“Just while we await resolution of the various legal challenges regarding the status of scorpidons on Silverrock. In the meantime, the Coalition directs us to continue to promote negotiation as the best hope for peaceful coexistence.”
“Not that the parties have shown any enthusiasm for peaceful relations so far,” Emma murmured.
I turned to face Havens. “That’s because we haven’t been thinking big enough. Listen, we have an opportunity, right now. Lucien says Pinch has gone into molt. Pinch is changing, morphing into a queen. As his mind is maturing, he’s asking questions. At this moment, we have an opportunity to educate a developing queen and to suggest a way out of this mess. There’s a bargain to be made, and this may be our one chance to make it.”
CHAPTER 30
Peace Plan
SAMSON SLAPPED a palm onto the observation room table. “You can’t kill the Highlander queen. The whole point of first-contact protocol is peaceful coexistence.”
“I’m not talking about an assassination.” I’d gathered the assessment team in our usual meeting place at base, but this time I’d taken the head of the table. “One of the queens must be ejected from the hive or die—that’s the scorp way of electing a leader. Why shouldn’t we support the scorp candidate who’s more likely to promote peace? After all, Pinch made Lucien one of his entourage—Lucien has as much right to influence the outcome as any other scorp.”
On the monitors, the Highlander hive scorps went about their lives as Queen Highlander squatted in her cavern chamber, her little attendants scurrying to tend to her needs. How much of Lucien’s thoughts leaked through to Pinch, and from him to the queen? I decided it didn’t matter: in the strategy I was proposing, surprise was neither necessary nor possible.
Havens cleared her throat. “Exactly what kind of ‘support’ are you proposing, Booker?”
“Tactical advice. We’ve all seen the scorp dominance contests: they’re one-on-one duels. The winner stings the loser and adds him to the winner’s telepathy chain. But in the fights, they have to rely on vibration to detect one another, and that requires proximity. Humans have one big advantage over scorps: we can see. By observing the combatants, Lucien can advise Pinch how to avoid an attack or inform him of a vulnerability. We wouldn’t be engaging in violence, just sharing intelligence—the same sort of information gathering that scorps do naturally through their telepathic networks.”
Samson glanced at Lucien. “Suppose Pinch does become queen. Are you sure he’ll promote peace with humans?”
“No,” Lucien said quietly. “Pinch is like a teenager who’s about to graduate from school. He’s gaining new power, new knowledge, but that doesn’t guarantee mature thinking. I can’t really predict what he would do if he were in charge of the hive. He’s learning quickly, but it might take years for him to reach a level of wisdom that would keep him from making impulsive decisions.”
“But he’s steeped in reverence for the Builders,” I said. “That belief is in our favor.”
Havens raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Are you suggesting we should encourage the false belief that humans are the gods of their mythology?”
“I’m suggesting that we become the Builders. Humans are here for the same reason the Builders came: minerals. The only reason humans are in conflict with the scorps is because our mining techniques are incompatible with scorp life. So, we should adopt the Builders’ methods. Ban humans from the hills. Let the scorps do the mining for us, reward them with food for delivering high-grade ore to our specifications.”
