Moses nodded. It was easy to picture these pulsating green pipes in a less hostile environment—a lush coral reef or a tropical seabed. But setting it up would probably fall on his caste—the Pipe people. He shrugged.
“The theory is easy, but in practice it would be impossible. The hive is just too short on Pipes—skilled, five-toed Pipes. The four-toed Nebish is a nice docile citizen, but not too many of them want to crawl around inside a sewer or a pump. Our caste is just barely able to keep existing machinery functioning. New projects will be impossible until we get the Pipes.”
“Five-toed Pipes?” repeated Toothpick.
Moses chewed thoughtfully for a moment.
“Yes, five-toeds. But where can the Big ES find five-toeds? There aren’t many left on the planet—except for the Eyepeople. And they’re not really suited for this population density.”
Toothpick flexed restlessly in the frozen air.
“Hurry and finish eating. I’m going to take you someplace where there are hundreds—no, thousands of five-toeds. Citizen five-toeds!”
Moses wrapped the rest of the frozen food bar and put it in a deep pocket to thaw. Picking up the cyber he started toward the odor of brine. Two hours later they were peering through the mists at a pounding surf. Beyond that lay a foam-flecked gray ocean.
The years weighed heavily on Kaia. From his niche in Filly’s Mountain he watched fugitive bands of buckeyes cross the valley headed eastward. At night he pondered lights in the northern sky—hazy blues and yellows—dancing pastels. It was a time of wonder. He descended the crag to speak with a tattered clan who camped for the night—two score adults and as many children.
“Why travel together?” he asked. “The hunters will find you.”
“Olga protects us,” said the elder.
“Where do you travel?”
“To the river—The River. We come from the western sea coast. Our trek will take nearly a year. There is to be a great Coming Together. You are welcome to join us.”
Kaia studied the old man’s face. Never had he seen such excitement—such rigid purpose. They talked through the night. At dawn the clan prepared to move on.
“Come with us,” invited the elder.
“Snynovial edema puckers my gait.”
“We will travel slowly—because of the children. Your limp will not delay us.”
Kaia hesitated.
“This place you speak of—Olga’s place. It is a good place?”
“Olga has prepared it for us. It is full of things long gone from Earth—animals and plants known to only our ancestors’ ancestors. It is a good place.”
Kaia glanced at the distant mountains to the east.
“It is some valley—you think? A very distant valley safe from hunters’ arrows?”
The elder looked, not at the horizon, but at the sky.
“It is very distant, but not of this world—it is in the heavens. Far from the hunters.”
Kaia looked up at the sky nervously—blue, empty, cold. He shook his old, tired head.
“No.”
“But why? Olga awaits her five-toed men.”
Kaia sat down heavily.
“I was born here. Here I will die. These have been my hills and my father’s hills. Probably his father’s before him. The hunters will not drive me out. I will stay. My bones will seed the same soil that I grew up on. It is my home.”
The elder’s fervor pushed his hand to Kaia’s shoulder. He tugged on the old man. “Get up. Come with us. Olga waits.”
Fatigue showed through Kaia’s eyes as he answered.
“Sorry, Eld. Take your people on their trek. A year to The River you say? I am old. I will not live even that long. Olga has come too late for me. Mayhap my spirit will be in Olga’s land before you.”
Moses carried Toothpick along the seashore until they came to a dock. An underground tubeway surfaced on the frosty tidal flats. A robot boat was taking on a load of man-sized sausage casings. They climbed on.
The boat, a twin-hulled thirty-footer, had its bulge of neurocircuitry at the top of a short mast. The open cargo space contained a score of the eight-by-three-by-three-foot casings. Each casing was attached to a small console by a segment of tubing.
“Looks like a cargo of live melon vines,” said Moses lightly.
He leaned against one of the casings and tried to see through its opalescent skin. The pressure of his elbows slowly pressed into the skin until he met something firm. He stepped back abruptly, almost dropping Toothpick.
“What’s in there?”
“You’re about to find out. Here comes a human being. Try to open a casing. I think there is a latch on the end opposite the tubing.”
Moses crouched and glanced toward the bow. A human bundled in a thick, hooded suit was walking from casing to casing with a checklist. Moses fumbled with the latch and lifted the lid.
“A body—”
“No. A patient. Quick! Get inside.”
An angry sea lashed the cargo deck with cold spray. The wet casings squeaked against each other. Moses crawled into the casing and let the lid close.
Silence. He squirmed for comfort.
Later he lifted the lid an inch to allow stale air to escape. Whitecaps still tossed foam onto the deck. The hooded figure was gone.
“Where—?”
“She’s below deck,” said Toothpick, “In the Attendant cabin enjoying a nice warm drink and looking female.” The little cyber was eavesdropping on the boat’s life-support circuits. “We’ll be en route for a day and a half. You might as well catch some sleep. Stick me out under the lid. I can keep an optic on things and give you some air.”
Moses tried to relax.
“Are you sure this guy is alive? He feels so cold.”
“He’s alive—in suspension. But he won’t be for long if you go to sleep on his tubing. That coil carries his perfusion fluids. He doesn’t metabolize much at these temperatures—but he does metabolize. Those tubes exchange ions and gases with the sea water. You shouldn’t press on them for more than a few hours at a time.”
Moses rolled over and gently lifted the coils of two-inch transparent tubing up onto the patient’s chest. One end was fixed to a coupling at the head end of the casing. The other end entered the patient’s leg just above the knee. A similar tube ran into him from the opposite side.
Moses slept while Toothpick scanned.
The second day out they began passing frequent masses of drift ice and spotty fog banks. Moses closed the lid when they approached a floating dock. Machines offloaded.
Moses watched the silhouette—like that of a giant praying mantis—approach. Its two big arms cradled Moses’ casing, unmindful of the increased weight. Two smaller arms uncoupled the tubing from the boat’s LS console and reattached it to a smaller unit on the back of the robot’s mantis-like abdomen. The offloader rotated its head, turned carefully on the wet deck and moved onto the gently rolling dock.
Moses watched the vague shadows through the translucent skin of the casing. The robot rolled on wide soft wheels up a long ramp and into a cavelike hallway. The stability and quiet told him that he must be in a hollowed-out cliff overlooking the sea. Probably an island hidden from the dock by the fog.
An hour later Moses was rocking gently in quiet dark waters with thousands of casings. He popped his lid for air and was drenched with icy brine. Leaving the casing, he waded around in the waist-deep water groping for the wall that the echoes told him was there. A tangle of perfusion tubules tied up his feet. Floating, shifting casings blocked his path. Cold cut through his soaked issue tissue clothing.
Toothpick produced a beam of visible light that led him to a ladder. Dripping and shivering, he stood on the walkway looking over acres of casings.