Aurora Wolf

The Plains of Fire

by

Manda Benson

“You’re late!” Kellan snapped as Nargwyn hurried in to the airlock chamber. Nargwyn muttered an apology, gaze fixed on the floor as she and Syl took their places beside Lirez and her mount Kale.

“Look at me when I’m speaking to you!” It was a deep-seated enmity, instilled over years of mocking and ridicule. “Your food rations will be docked accordingly.”

Nargwyn kept her head down, only glancing up briefly into Kellan’s stony face. The leader turned away.

Syl blinked smartly, his narrow, vertical pupils dilating. Unable to walk upright as females like Nargwyn did, he lumbered along with his wings closed flush against his forearms and his long hindlegs bent up underneath him. He grumbled in his throat; regretting the loss of a chance to rest and savour the air. Syl always relished an opportunity to sit and do nothing.

“Are you sure you’re alright to fly like that?” Nargwyn asked, dubiously glancing down at Lirez’s swollen abdomen.

“It’s not due for another two weeks.” Lirez grinned. “And anyway, I’m a rider. If I malingered here while the harvest went on, I’d be no better than a spinster!”

Nargwyn glanced around the airlock chamber. A few spinsters clustered by the walls, watching them. They weren’t malingerers, really. They had to work hard, and Nargwyn could only imagine what being stuck here in the city and never able to go out must be like. Exactly the lifestyle Kellan had been desperate to avoid seven years back.

Lirez regarded Nargwyn with a sly, sideways gaze. “What were you doing?”

“I was on the science database. Haven’t you looked at the statistics on it? There’s a fusion modelling program; no-one’s looked at it for a long time. The computer takes readings every day, of the solar radiation and other things, and the fluctuations in the readings over the past few decades are starting to resemble part of the simulation.”

“What does that mean?”

“The sun is nearing the end of its main sequence burn, and expending its hydrogen.”

They were empty, learned words, with nothing to connect to. But Nargwyn understood one thing from the science database: a star like the sun had a finite lifespan, and when that lifespan ran out, the sun would die and all life on the planets around it would cease.

“What? You think it’s going to blow up?”

Nargwyn nodded vigorously. “Yes. Inflate into a red giant.”

“And engulf the planet, like the Database reckons?”

Kellan had arrived back at the inspection line. Nargwyn tried to look inconspicuous.

“We’re going to have to make a ship and leave. Like they did in the Legends in the Database. That’s supposed to be how we got here in the first place, isn’t it?”

Nargwyn considered this for a bit. “We can’t build a ship. All our science is inherited. That Database was compiled by people centuries ago. Where would we start, Lirez? We wouldn’t even know where to get the materials from.”

“Perhaps there are people in other cities who would know,” Lirez suggested. “Or perhaps other planets.”

“Are there still humans on other planets?” Nargwyn was doubtful. Syl nudged her from behind. “Not now, Syl,” she said, brushing him off.

“There used to be humans on Mars I think. After all, we didn’t evolve here on Venus.”

“Silence on inspection!” Kellan shouted. She spun round on Nargwyn. “No, there are no humans on other worlds! Not at all!”

“But there must be!” Nargwyn objected, in far too strong a tone than she’d intended.

An uncomfortable, prickly heat crawled under Nargwyn’s skin. She was aware of the weight of everyone’s eyes focused on her. Once again, Nargwyn realized, her mouth had got the better of her. Kellan was older, and age was authority. And Nargwyn resented that. She knew a large proportion of the wing disagreed with Kellan’s management, but why was it always only her who ever made any sort of objection? Some of the others were bigger than her, and Nargwyn imagined a group of them could easily overthrow Kellan if they could muster the audacity to try.

Kellan raised her fist and smote Nargwyn an angry blow to the side of the face. Her hand came back down, and seized Nargwyn by the neck. Nargwyn tensed. “Be silent! You will not answer back, or I will not have you fly with my wing!” Kellan shook her by the neck, and then pushed her away roughly. She turned away, and then glanced back, her orange eyes flickering with malevolence beneath a brow of dark granite. “The other worlds are empty. As vacant as your head!”

“What?” said Nargwyn, then she realized, with a pang of embarrassed guilt, what it was that Syl had been trying to alert her to — his harness was missing.

Nargwyn cursed, and headed off back to her quarters to fetch it. Patient Syl waited for her to return.

“Stale old barnacle,” she muttered acrimoniously as she snapped shut the buckles to secure the heavy harness with its bulky oxygen cylinders over Syl’s asphalt-coloured shoulders. He gave her side an appeasing butt with his head.

They took their place with Lirez and Kale over at the back of the line by the airgate. Each of them filled their lungs with air.

The machinery grated as the doors drew open, and a sulphurous wind tore into the airlock. The riders at the front of the group mounted their males and began to leap through the gap.

Nargwyn scrambled up on Syl’s back as her and Lirez’s turn came, her catarrhine nostrils clamped shut to prevent the inferno from entering her. Syl jumped, and for a moment he was falling, until he opened his reflective grey wings. As his first powerful sweep brought them up, Nawgywn caught a glimpse of the Venusian surface, a sickly floodplain of yellow-red lava, split with burnt black lines of cooling dendrites, and the city retreating behind them, a bulbous protrusion of glass and steel, covered with yellow-grey patches of air barnacles, sprouting right up through the atmosphere, its foundations lost in the conflagration below.

 With metamorphic strength, Syl beat up above the clouds. The fumes thinned, and Nargwyn sat on his rocky back, looking down on undulating fields of soft yellow cloud and verdant rivers of Aircrop. The Aircrop drifted in their translucent green masses, but every so often one would pulse and squeeze, and instigate this same contraction in the surrounding plants, so great surreal rippling waves spread over the sea of green. Above the fluffy horizon the dark sky was aglitter. Over to the other horizon lay the sun.

Nargwyn squinted at its ruddy glow. Did it look bloated? Nargwyn had to concede that it did look somewhat swollen and redder.

Lirez threw her the other end of the field net, and as other members of the wing began to emerge up from the cloud cover below, they began to trawl with the mesh stretched between them and snagging up Aircrop.

They had been at it for half an hour or so, keeping their manoeuvres tight and meticulous so as not to displease Kellan, who watched in anticipation of Nargwyn’s slightest error, when Nargwyn fancied she saw something, riding silvery just above the clouds. She waved and pointed at it, but Lirez couldn’t see anything, and Nargwyn gave up on the matter.

Lirez suddenly twisted on Kale’s back, her head dipping and her back arching in an abrupt seizure of pain. Nargwyn realised with shock that the spasm was the onset of labour.

She made frantic signals for Lirez to go down.

Kale slipped down into the cloud and headed back to the city. Nargwyn gathered up the field net. Kellan would still be angry if she returned with a poor yield, even though her partner had a valid excuse for leave. She secured the handles to Syl’s harness.

Syl’s neck twisted around, and he eyed her with a coercing demeanour. He needed to breathe. Nargwyn would be okay for a bit longer, so while she detached the hose from one of the air canisters secured to his back, he exhaled loudly, a steamy cloud exploding from his nostrils. She unhooked the safety mechanism and held it out. His mouth clamped round the nozzle, and Nargwyn felt his sides expanding as he drank the air.

Syl shied away from something as she was reconnecting the hose. Nargwyn looked down to see what the matter was, and started at a huge expanse of shiny silver which had apparently materialized jutting up out of the cloud layer. The surface was convex and infinitely reflective, like a bead of mercury. Nargwyn saw a distorted image of herself peering over Syl’s shoulder against the smouldering horizon.

Nargwyn urged Syl up, away from the strange object, but he wasn’t rising fast enough, and it struck him from beneath with a violent jolt that threw Nargwyn from her seat. The bag of Aircrop split, sending its bounty bouncing gently off the surface of the silver object. Nargwyn made frantic snatches at the flimsy organisms as she fell, twisting over in the air and flailing her arms. As she fell through the clouds, the atmosphere forced into her lungs, and a rank, searing vapour kicked into the back of her throat and made her choke and retch. A break in the clouds offered a fleeting, nightmarish glimpse of the surface far below; a spinning noxious vomit of volcanic yellow, black, and red. As she spun over again, she caught sight of Syl’s dark shape above, trying to follow, his wings opening and closing in consternation, before the angry colours, the whirling confusion, and the howling wind in her ears evanesced to unconsciousness.

#

Nargwyn came round lying on her side in some sort of room. The air was breathable, but she didn’t recognise this as any part of the city. She looked up at a ceiling of featureless grey metal. Turning her head, she saw the floor was covered with some sort of pale plastic.

Oh, no, where was Syl? What if he’d suffocated? What if she ended up like Kellan, stealing a steed from a younger in a desperate act of cruelty. She was not like Kellan; she was not!

A strident voice startled her; “Are you sure? We’ve encountered flying human species before, but these don’t even seem to be anthropomorphic. Not the winged one, anyway!”

Nargwyn cast about the room. It was her own language, spoken in a voice sounding a lot like the science database. She could see no computer.

“I ran a DNA comparison,” a patient second voice said. “eighty-five percent overlap with the standard human genome. See for yourself.”

“But they’re silicon based!”

“Externally. Their DNA and internal organs are carbon based. Their thick skin is just an evolutionary response to ambient conditions. Either that or they’ve artificially altered their genetics over the course of time to be better adapted. Either way, they can assimilate silicates through ingestion, and a silicon-rich diet gives them thick protective skins. We collected some samples of the stratospheric vegetation. These would seem an ideal food source for this sort of creature.”

“And the winged creature is some sort of symbiont?”

“No. Look closely here. The winged creature is the same. Apart from in one chromosome. It’s a male of the same species, Karl!”

Nargwyn sat up and looked down at herself. The steel carbide knife she usually wore was missing. The two creatures bending over a table with objects on it at the other side of the room drew back fractionally. Morphologically, they looked a little like women.

“Where’s Syl?” she demanded. “What have you done with him?”

The two creatures stared at her, as though they were surprised to hear her speak. “He’s in the cargo bay,” said the strident-voiced one. “We thought it best to keep him there as we didn’t know how stable his temperament would be. He’s not harmed in any way.”

“Oh, he won’t hurt you.”

“Are you okay?” asked the smaller, paler one, coming closer. “We were worried that you might have inhaled the sulphurous gas, but we were unsure whether to administer anything or not.”

“I’m okay, I think.” Nargwyn stared out the viewport at an empty vista of clouds, black sky and Aircrop.

“I’m Karl,” said the strident-voiced creature. “This is Maud.”

“He’s a male, and I’m a female,” Maud added.

“I’m Nargwyn.” Nargwyn frowned in confusion. “You’re a male? But you’re small – you’re intelligent — you can speak. You look the same.”

Karl looked slightly offended, but then he smiled and said, “Well, as long as we can tell the difference, I suppose that’s all that matters!”

“Are you from Mars?”

“Originally, yes. We’ve been living in ships like this one during more recent times.”

Nargwyn stared at the interior of the ship.

“Is it true what they say?” she asked slowly. “That the sun has exhausted its hydrogen supply, and is nearing the end of its main sequence burn?”

“Yes,” said Karl. “Within the next century, Sol will go red giant, and swallow up this planet’s orbit and Earth’s. People have been leaving the Solar system for many centuries now, and shortly those remaining will follow.”

“So that’s why you’re here? To collect people from this planet in preparation to leave?” Nargwyn felt a huge wave of relief well up inside her.

“Oh, no. We didn’t even know there was life on Venus any more, least of all human life. We’re a scientific ship. We came here to sample the atmosphere. Sort of Last Chance To See thing, if you get my meaning.”

Panic!

“But now we know you’re here, I’m sure there can be arrangements made for your people’s safe passage out of the Solar system.”

Nargwyn felt relieved, but then stopped to doubt. “But there are many, many cities! And what will we eat?”

“I’m sure there will be provision for food specimens to accompany you,” said Maud. She glanced out the window as she said this, towards a patch of bright green that Nargwyn knew was Aircrop.

“You can get a ship to come?”

“We can call for one now,” said Karl. “There are freighters that can make the journey, providing it’s not too far. They’re not luxury, though, I must add. It will take a few days for it to arrive. And more than one may be needed in the end. I’m pretty sure you are entitled to assistance, under Solar law. You’re an indigenous human species.”

“But where will we be taken?”

“You’ll probably be matched up to a planet closely resembling your original. There’s not much demand for planets like these, for obvious reasons,” Karl smiled, glancing out the viewport. “So you shouldn’t have too much trouble finding a niche elsewhere in the Universe.”

Nargwyn’s knife was returned, and she was led down to the cargo bay where Syl, much pleased to see her again, was held.

Maud gingerly reached out, and touched Syl’s gritty forehead. “You say he definitely won’t hurt me?”

Syl watched her, with a sort of wet-eyed placidity.

“It’s amazing! These nodules over his eyes are like crystals of quartz! It’s a perfect hybrid material of silicon and carbon!”

“So will you call for a ship?” Nargwyn asked.

“Yes!” replied Karl. “I for one, being a biologist, would love to know more about your people and their way of life. You will have to return to your kind, and organize them so they are prepared for the arrival. It should be about three of your Venusian days before the ships will arrive, if I can persuade the Council. Do your people still have radio waves?”

“Yes. In the cities.”

“Then when the ships descend, they will use a radio signal to alert your people to their arrival and inform you of their location.”

Nargwyn thanked both of them effusively, and climbed back onto Syl’s shoulders. Karl and Maud retreated into the main part of the ship, for they could not tolerate the atmosphere outside.

Nargwyn and Syl both filled their lungs, before a wide cargo door at the end of the room slid open, and Syl dropped out, spreading his wings, and once more dived into the heated atmosphere. Nargwyn glanced over her shoulder, and saw the round aperture in the reflective flank of the ship sliding shut behind them.

#

As Syl entered the gate once more, Nargwyn recoiled at a picture of chaos. The hallway was full of people. Then she recalled Lirez’s excusing herself from the harvest with guilt.

Through the crowd, Kellan spotted her, and came striding over to where she stood, malice showing in her face.

“Where’s your contribution?” Kellan demanded, raising a reproving finger.

“I had an accident — I fell! Kellan, I need to talk to you!”

“That’s no excuse!” The Leader glared at her, and then hit her again. “Get out of my sight!”

Nargwyn dodged aside, under a barrage of angry kicks, and pushed into the throng where she guessed Lirez must be.

Lirez lay on the floor, writhing in the throes of labour. The onlookers — mostly spinsters — crowded round her in anticipation.

“Lirez, It’s okay!” Nargwyn called out, but the jostling city-bound pushed her aside.

Fighting against the crowd, Nargwyn felt a sudden resurgence of the emotions she’d felt seven years ago. She’d been fifteen, before she’d ever been out, there’d been an accident outside, and Kellan and her steed had become entangled in an Aircrop line and fallen and lost consciousness. Two other males managed to catch them and carry them back to the city, but although Kellan recovered, her steed had suffocated and was dead on arrival.

A month or so after this, a male had been born, and Nargwyn and one other young female were first in line to claim him. Nargwyn was bigger than the other female, and she had not wanted to fight over him. But then Kellan had challenged Nargwyn for the right to the steed. Nargwyn had been confused and frightened, and she’d known she stood no chance against the older female, and Kellan had taken the steed.

Two months later, Syl had been born, and he was much stronger and much better looking than Kellan’s Cian. But Kellan had never forgotten the looks of disgust on the faces of the people as she had taken by force what rightfully should have gone to a younger female still capable of breeding. And for this, Nargwyn would always be her scapegoat.

A scream escaped Lirez, and a second scream with a higher pitch rent the air. The crowd became suddenly silent.

Nargwyn craned her neck, dipping down and weaving from side to side, trying to get a look at what was happening.

Without warning, the close grouping spread away, leaving only Lirez and two of the stronger spinsters. Nargwyn looked at Lirez, and at the bloody mess behind her where a winged form, looking far too big to have reasonably fitted inside Lirez, looked up, mewling and flapping its wet wings. A male. And with every steed born, there must also be a rider.

Lirez struggled to stand, and Nargwyn pulled her away from the confrontation.

The two challengers circled each other, staring into one another’s faces; sizing up the opponent. Knives were drawn, slowly and with calculated menace.

Then the smaller of the two backed off in capitulation, not wanting to risk injury, and resheathed her knife. The victor turned, and stooped down to claim her prize. When he was bigger, she too would ride with Kellan’s wing.

Nargwyn muttered a vague congratulation to the lucky party, and then held out her hands. “Listen!” she called. “The sun is nearing the end of its life–”

“I told you to shut up about this End of the World rubbish!” Kellan glared fiercely at Nargwyn.

“No, this is important! While I was out, a ship came. A ship that flies through space. It was flown by people from Mars. They say the sun is going to die, for certain! But they also said they’re going to call for a ship, which would take us to another planet, like this one, where we can live. We need to get ready to leave, and send runners out to the other cities so they can leave as well.”

Nargwyn saw Lirez’s face crack into a grin of euphoria, but Kellan grimaced.

“You are a stupid, naive fool!” Kellan exploded. “Who is leader here? You go over my head by engaging in these negotiations, of which you know nothing about! The sun will not blow up! I will not be guided by the insane prophecies of some computer!”

“But I–” Nargwyn paused. She supposed that part was true; she’d made an agreement on behalf of her people that was not rightly hers to make. “It’s true!” she objected. “All the other humans are leaving!”

“You usurp my command,” Kellan frowned. “And this ship, what exactly was it doing here, away from wherever it came from?” There was a dangerous ring to her voice.

“It was a science ship,” replied Nargwyn.

Kellan spun on her heel. “Exactly,” she spat, pointing an accusing finger at Nargwyn. “A science ship. Come to experiment, of course. To collect specimens for some freak show,”

Perhaps Kellan’s grudge was just an irrational hatred for what was different, but it made Nargwyn doubt herself momentarily. Karl had said he was a biologist.

In the ensuing silence, a distant rumble was heard, and a tremor conducted through the floor. Nargwyn didn’t let it bother her; the city’s architecture was designed to cope with the volcanic eruptions and earthquakes that plagued the surface so many miles below.

“They spare a ship to come here, and then go all the way out to some other system, and demand nothing in return for their inconvenience? Surely not even someone with your retarded faculties can fail to notice something wrong with that suggestion.”

Nargwyn searched for something to bring the argument back towards her. “These people have come to help us. If you don’t want to go, don’t go! Those who want to go can go! Nobody is forced to leave against their will!”

“Nobody is leaving!” Kellan hissed. The black pupils of her amber eyes narrowed.

“Then we shall all die, and the other cities with us if they are not informed! Your Leadership is a sentence! This is not something that should be done in our own interests, but for the whole of posterity!”

“No! No-one will go! And you will not go anywhere.” She glanced at Cian, and another large male, and pointed to Syl, his pinions raised and neck outstretched in alarm. “Break his wings!” she ordered them.

“No!” Nargwyn screamed, and threw herself at Kellan.

Kellan swung around, lashing out at Nargwyn, and drew her knife. Before Nargwyn could come to terms with what had happened; perhaps from the emotions from the birth of a steed or quite what; or consider how to act in order to defend herself, Kellan was upon her. Nargwyn drew her own knife, and it sang as she fended off a swiping blow aimed at her head. Her whole arm reverberated with the force of it. Kellan circled, facing her. Nargwyn’s feet were shaky and ill placed: unbalanced. She’d never expected it to come to this.

Nargwyn dived to evade her enemy. Kellan was stronger and faster, and Nargwyn spun helplessly away, rolling over the floor while Kellan’s blade rang as it struck the surface behind her. Nargwyn scooted around her on all fours, but she came up to a wall, and Kellan’s blade slashed viciously against her shoulder. The jarring blow pulverized the crystalline outer skin of Nargwyn’s obsidian shoulder. Cornered, Nargwyn went down on one knee with a smack of rock-on-rock, and almost dropped her weapon. But as Kellan drew her knife back to deliver her coup de grace she left herself exposed, and Nargwyn saw the gap. She lunged forward, her arm held straight and her weight behind it, spearing her blade into the thinner skin of Kellan’s abdomen.

Kellan’s eyes stared back at Nargwyn with a terrible realization, then life faded from them, and she crumpled and fell to the ground.

Nargwyn threw her weapon away from her, and it clattered along the ground over the stunned silence from the denizens of the city. She slowly crouched down against the floor, her breath heaving in and out of her in grating, irregular gasps. She closed her vitreous inner lids and her thicker outer lids over the tears in her eyes, but she couldn’t stop her shoulders from shaking. She hadn’t wanted to kill Kellan.

She became aware of Syl’s form leaning over her, and then he was joined by Lirez. Then, gradually, the others gathered around her.

Nargwyn felt Lirez’s rough fingers on her shoulder. “You are our leader now.”

Nargwyn got up and surveyed the crowd standing around her. These were her people.

“Send riders out to the other cities. Tell them to spread the word.” She spared the spinsters at the back of the room a glance. “Disconnect the computers — we’ll need to take them with us. We’ll need Aircrop spores, too.”

As the group broke up to go about their separate missions, Nargwyn leaned against Syl and let out a great sigh. Through the thick transparent shielding of the city, the blood-red sun pulsed on the horizon. Their race would have a future with the Martian kind.