The Touch of the Hook
WARREN Ash sat in the airgate lounge, staring at nothing, waiting for Obsidian's ocean to freeze. On his left wrist the snake tightened.
He looked down. It's almost pretty, he thought. How odd. Black armored segments curved smoothly around his wrist. A ruby optic band and a cluster of silver sensor studs marked the snake's blunt head. Its tail circuitry plugged into a recess where an organic snake's gullet would be, and two heavy alloy fangs locked into deep sockets in the tail, forging an unbreakable manacle. Beside the optic band a tiny plate read: Property of SeedCorp.
Ash remembered the Seed Corp recruiter who had purchased his contract, three Standard years before.
The recruiter, an elegant morph from Dilvermoon, had spoken persuasively, in a guileless voice. «Citizen Ash, I judge you to be a careful man, and this is a job for a man who despises risk. SeedCorp will equip you with an advanced security link. It will be — I guarantee this — impossible for you to make a mistake in the performance of your duties.»
Ash had pressed his thumb to the validation square, and the herman had smiled an ugly smile.
Ash reflected on the lovely irony of his bondage. He had always been cautious, afraid to act without the blessing of authority, afraid to make a fool of himself, afraid to commit an inappropriate act.
He would bear the bitter weight of the snake for seven more years. «Fool,» he said, without passion.
He rose; stood looking from the outer airgate over the black sea. On the faraway horizon he could see another SeedCorp rig, its riding lights reduced by distance to a pallid glimmer.
A few dim stars emphasized the darkness of the moonless sky, and the sea was like an iron mirror. A long shudder ran through the rig, as it adjusted to the sea's tightening grip. The pressure of the water against the rig's insulating fields created a low gnawing sound, just at the threshold of audibility. Ash tried to ignore it, but the sound trembled along his bones.
It was three Standard weeks past sunset.
The snake stung him lightly. «Attention,» it said. «A visitor approaches from the outer Seagate.»
«Now?» Ordinarily, the outside Dags went deep into the reefs before the freeze.
The snake made no reply. Ash went quickly down the spiral of steps to the Seagate lounge. At the outer Seagate membrane, he looked down. A swimmer moved through the dark water along the top of the black reefs.
The Dag approached the Seagate, a slender, legless creature with a muscular fluked tail and two almost-human arms, its skin a dense matte black encrusted with patches of white snowflake limpets. Its head was a smooth ovid, featureless except for the palps wrapped across the face, and the gleam of deep-set eyes.
Ash activated the lexitran.
The Dag floated upright on the other side of the gate. It uttered a low-frequency chime. The lexitran took a moment to process the Dag's statement; then, in a neutral tone, translated, «I speak of important matters, Keeper. Do you know me?»
The Dag swam close to the membrane. Its palps opened briefly in the brightness of the Seagate lights, exposing rich color, violet and wine on soft gray. He recognized the markings of the Dag overseer's mate. She had no nose, and her mouth as a circular maw ringed with three rows of sharp, inward-hooking teeth. For a moment her pale yellow eyes seemed remarkably human, comprehensible, filled with some deep sorrow.
«I know you,» he said.
The face closed. «Do you know my mate?»
«Yes.»
«I come to plead for his life.»
The snake spoke. «What threatens your mate?»
The Dag overseer's mate shifted her palps to look down at the snake. «Do I address the Keeper, or the Will he carries?»
The snake flexed against his wrist, the segments moving with a small rasping sound. «What matter?»
Ash attempted to regain control. «To return to the important matter…»
«The freeze approaches.» The Dag overseer's mate paused. «How many of your crew have died this night?»
Ash was taken aback and had no ready response. The snake spoke for him again. «The work is dangerous; SeedCorp makes no secret of that. Your mate is well paid.»
«How many?» she persisted.
«Four, since sunset, accidents,» Ash said. «What has this to do with your mate? He is capable.»
The palps opened slightly, under the stress of emotion. «Yes, he is stronger than most, but he carries heavier burdens. When the ice comes, I will go to the dreams fearing his death.» The palps opened further, trembling, and Ash saw her naked face again. «He has not dreamed in four nights! Please, let him out of the Warmth. Give him to the ice for a night; surely you can spare him that long.»
The snake twitched again. «Impossible,» it said. «Now is Our heaviest harvest cycle. His skills are indispensible.»
«He must dream!» Even the neutral voice of the lexitran contained a trace of passionate emphasis. «Don't think we are not grateful. Without the food SeedCorp pays, we are a dying race on a dying world. We all know this. But he must dream. Please! Or sometime soon he will choose to die, like the others.»
«No suicides have occurred, to Our knowledge.» The snake spoke in didactic tones. Ash no longer attempted to interrupt.
«It is not like that. You cannot understand.» Her face was fully exposed, the eyes bulging with urgency, the mouth spasming.
At that moment the freeze caught her. Ash looked into her frantic eyes for a long moment, until the ice clouded with stress fractures and the membrane of the Seagate turned an opaque pearly gray.
Later, Ash looked down into the rig's protected lagoon. Here and there, dim red lights burned through the dark water. The mature cryptopods moved through the artificial reefs in flashing shoals, mirrored bodies throwing crimson glints against the black insulator fields that held out Obsidian's ice.
The snake stung him sharply. «Be alert: something comes across the ice,» it said.
He went to the outer airgate and saw the ice crawler, approaching rapidly over the fresh ice. Green and violet running lights glowed above the crawler's cab. It came under the rig's lights, a very old crawler, poorly maintained, its naked-alloy chassis marked with weeping lines of corrosion. At every pressure ridge it jounced violently and emitted a small cloud of steam.
«Another one, there to the north,» the snake said. A second set of lights closed swiftly.
The first crawler plunged to a halt in a spray of ice, to sit rocking on spiked rollers. A moment later the dorsal hatch popped, and the Green peddler emerged, its stocky, six-limbed body encased in a battered exosuit. The peddler climbed nimbly to the ice and turned to face the approaching vehicle.
The Green waved its upper arms violently, made shooing gestures, finally drew a graser and fired a beam across the other crawler's nose. The other crawler slewed around, made off to the west, and the peddler holstered the weapon with an air of satisfaction. It reboarded, and a moment later the crawler churned off along the rig's perimeter. Ash watched it until it disappeared around the curve of the sponson wall.
The snake shifted on his wrist. «You have duties,» it said. «And then We will check on the peddler. Strange, that little drama — possibly irregular. We understood that the peddlers divide their territories most exactingly. But now, to work.»
«Yes.» Ash shook himself. He looked out over the ice one more time. Colloidal colony plants ordinarily kept Obsidian's ocean fluid, despite the terrible cold. Now they used the heat released by the freeze to raise their sporing bodies above the ice. Spiky threads covered the ice with a quivering furry black carpet. The reproductive cycle of these plants accounted for the unnatural swiftness of the freeze.
The deaths that had occurred since Obsidian's long night had begun; were they truly suicides, as the Dag overseer's mate believed? Two of the workers had died perforated by cryptopod swarms. One was found drifting dead under the reefs, with no mark on his body. And one had apparently been carried out of the water by a surge of the insulating fields and died slowly and painfully of gill-burn. Accidents, he had supposed.