Aurora Wolf

The Mechanisms of Dawn

by

A. L. Sirois

The portal, discolored with age, showed a telltale glowing dim orange under a coating of dust.  Oka Té traced the letters with her finger: Recreation Level.  She reached out to activate the hatch control, then hesitated.

“How long did you say it’s been since this door has been opened?” she asked her arm.

A small, sausage-shaped appendage welled up out of her flesh.  A speech organ appeared on its surface.  “No updates in my files for two hundred and seven years, four months, twenty-five days, ten–”

“All right, I get the idea.”  Dae hadn’t come this way, then.  But there could be another entrance…  She sighed, hefting her disperser, and stared at the old door.  There was nothing for it: she had to investigate the level.  Go on inside, what are you afraid of?

“I lack the capacity for fear,” said the implant.

Oka Té suppressed a surge of irritation.  Tia caught subvocalizations all too efficiently.  “Record, Tia.”  Oka Té touched the door control.  The portal split into quarters and folded away into the bulkhead.  She gasped.  Stars shone above her.  She backpedaled into the corridor, slamming hard against the wall behind her.

“Artificial night,” Tia noted.

“Arti –?  Oh, gods.  Oh, my heart!  I thought the level had been breached!”  Oka Té swallowed hard, and took a deep breath to regain her composure.             And of course I had to be recording it!

She stepped forward, then halted in the hatchway, unwilling to venture into the darkness.  Odd scents drifted out of the obscurity.  The weapon felt good in her hands.  She glanced at the stock.  The CHARGE light indicated full, as she had already known.  “Scan and report, Tia.”

“A moment.”  The nanorganic computer grafted into her body used her entire central nervous system as a power supply and basic sensory grid.  It was far more adept at interpreting subliminal data flow than she was.  Oka Té felt the tickling sensation she had come to recognize as the budding and scanning motions of various small organ-sensors all over her body, surfacing up through her clothing, which itself was formed of neuroplastics that Tia also used to gather data.

Oka Té herself could see little, even as her eyesight adjusted to the darkness inside the recreation chamber.  The “stars” were simply lights in the chamber’s roof.  According to her studies, this artificial lake module had been built more than a thousand years previously.  For a time it had enjoyed great popularity among Lu’un’s inhabitants.

Then the political climate changed.  A reactionary government under control of Arth declared such outrageous excesses as an entire subselenian lake decadent, and closed it down – reserving it for themselves.  Other cavern systems were colonized, and the population forcibly relocated to them.  The lake was abandoned and gradually forgotten.

Until Oka Té, an archeology student, and her lover Dae, who studied computer science, found a cache of old operating system files dealing with Lu’un history and set about decoding them.  Forgotten levels, deep within Lu’un, lay open to discovery.  Three weeks ago, Dae, an enthusiastic amateur historian, outfitted himself and went to investigate, leaving behind a note telling her not to worry.  Oka Té, recuperating from an illness, could not have accompanied him.  He was now a week overdue, and she couldn’t get rid of the knot of dread in her belly at what might have happened to him.

“Visual model ready,” said Tia.

“Let’s have it.”  Instantly an overlay flooded her vision, not quite obscuring it.  A measuring grid appeared momentarily.  The chamber was ovoid, an ancient lava bubble adapted by by human engineers, three and a half kilometers by six, with a roof about a half kilometer overhead.  Most of it was taken up by the lake, but there was a substantial strip of shore all around, widest at the southern end where Oka Té stood.  Half a kilometer or so ahead of her, due north and blocking out most of her view of the lake itself, was a long, low structure.  An old commons building of some kind, she supposed.  A dock, or boardwalk, cloaked with vines and lianas, stretched around the inner wall at this end of the recreation chamber for nearly a kilometer in either direction.

She squinted at the model and sections of it grew sharper.  Ancient and moldering wharves, also covered with weedy plants, poked out of the lake.  Dozens of disintegrating boats lay adjacent to them, most visible only as portions of superstructures above the water.  Some were so obscured by vegetation as to appear like little islands.  There was little enough weathering here, but even the tough, genetically altered ironwood that had been used in the wharves and boats was deteriorating after such a long time.

Oka Té took a step forward.  There was more water here than she had expected.  From her archeological studies, she knew that it must have taken incredible effort on the part of thousands of people – and cost billions of credits — to transport the ice from the lu’unar poles to this cavern.  The knowledge of this unknown reservoir was a prize she could take back – after she found Dae.

But, how much water?  Most of the lakebed was dry: cracked mud formed much of the floor of the cavern, much of it overgrown with strange glittering vegetation.  The reflection of the stars off this stuff had fooled her into thinking at first that there was more water here than there actually was.

Nevertheless, it persisted for two or three kilometers along the shore at this end of the lake, and looked deep enough to swim or fish in.  Not enough for serious water skiing or scuba diving, though.

“There is such a thick growth of weeds around the docks that it will be almost impossible to penetrate past them without cutting a path,” Tia said.

Oka Té grunted.  “There’s more to it than that.”  She examined the display.  “Lots of stuff buried under the weeds.  All kinds of trash, machinery…”

Analysis results cascaded past her vision.  “Wow!  This is amazing!”  There were ruined engines, smashed deck chairs, old plates and other crockery, dead batteries, cracked plastic panels, clogged filters… junk discarded for a final trash pickup that had never come.

Oka Té grinned.  She could visualize her thesis, could even see the title: Lu’un’s Vanished Lake Dwellers.

The hatch behind her cycled shut as she stepped forward another pace, startling her.  The data display crumbled away from her view as she swung around, disperser at the ready.  She stared at the portal for a moment and then shrugged.

As she turned back to face the lake once again, the decking beneath her feet shivered and folded back with enough force to fling her off balance.

“Personal safety alert!” exclaimed Tia.  Oka Té rolled to one side as quickly as the pack on her back would allow.  Angrier than ever at herself for being so careless, Oka Té scrambled into a prone position and trained the muzzle of her weapon on the trap door. 

An inarticulate questioning sound from below was followed by a hand gripping for purchase on the upper edge of the door.  Then a head rose into view, in profile to her, followed by another hand, this one holding an intricate and somewhat tarnished energy gun of ancient design.  Oka Té saw a long, aquiline nose, stringy hair and eyes sunk beneath sparse eyebrows.  Her weapon remained steady as the intruder made the questioning sound again, deep in his throat.  He slowly turned to survey the area, and saw her.  Instantly he ducked down beneath the deck.

She snaked her way over to the trap door and paused.  Well?  Is he down there? she subvocalized.

“The intruder has moved out of sensor range.”

“You told me there wasn’t anyone in here.”  Oka Té peered down a rickety wooden ladder leading into shadowy depths.  In the dim light, she couldn’t tell how far down the ladder went.

“Inaccurate.  I said that the portal hadn’t been opened in two hundred and seven –”

“All right, all right.  Well, who is that, and what is he doing here?”

“Insufficient data.”

After a moment, Oka Té continued on down the dock toward the dilapidated building at the water’s edge, casting suspicious glances at the plastic planks beneath her feet.  Just keep the night vision going, she told Tia.  I don’t want him sneaking up on me again.

She reached the end of the wharf.  Set into the building’s side was an unpowered door.  It had been so long since she had seen one that she stared at it as though it were some piece of alien technology.  She glanced off to her left across the starlit mudflats, momentarily forgetting the intruder.

Here, Lu’unish of means had come to sport in the waters as they could nowhere else in the Solar System save on Arth itself.  The shouts and laughter of happy men, women and children had filled the air along with the hum of boats and the splashes of divers and water polo players.  Clouds would have been coaxed into existence in the humid air above the lake, a sight seen nowhere else on Lu’un.

Now the cavern was floored with cracked orange mud, a desert beneath the polished ceiling high overhead.  No clouds had formed here for centuries.  Despite the widespread use of ironwood, with its ability to alter its cellulose content into more durable plastics upon death, the fragile ecosystem here was slowly deteriorating.  It would soon cease to be viable, probably within her lifetime.  The rich played elsewhere now.  They had long since forgotten this ancient spa.

She sighed, then used the muzzle of the disperser to push the door open.  Her eyes went wide.

The place was a veritable museum, albeit a completely disorganized one.  Stacks of elderly equipment of all sorts, draped with nets, rose to the rafters.  Telltales blinked here and there through gaps in the netting.  Oka Té took a careful step inside and peered at the nearest pile.  The machinery, some of it, was clearly nanorganic, using its own quantum power source, like her glandular implant.  What was it waiting for?  Schools of fish to activate its sensors?  A request for a drink or a meal or directions to some popular swimming area?

“I don’t like this, Tia.  It’s like a den, or -– damn.  This is where that weird man under the docks lives!”  She whirled around to flee the building.

Tia shrilled an alarm.  He stood in the door with the energy pistol held loosely at his side.  In a spasmodic motion she brought her disperser up to bear on him.

He dropped his weapon.  “Oh, no no, you mustn’t shoot me,” he cried in a high, cracked voice.  “Who would tend the boats?  Who would feed the little crabs?”

“The little–?”  She expelled a pent breath.  “What the hell is going on here?”

“Please!  You must promise not to hurt me!”

“I won’t hurt you.  Just kick your gun over here.  You have a bad habit of startling me.”

His were wide and very dark.  “I startled you?  I thought you were the thief… my gun?  Yes, of course.”  He carefully nudged the gun with his foot, then shoved it toward her.  She grabbed it.  It was so old, she saw, that it might have detonated if he had tried to fire it.  She placed it back down on the floor.       

“I don’t even like carrying it,” the fellow went on, “but the thief, you see… I must protect my belongings.”  He leaned over to one side of the doorway out of her vision, and straightened up, holding a wriggling fish.

“You see?  Fish?  Not a weapon, not a gun, like yours.”

Oka Té smiled and let the disperser droop.  “Right.  Come on in.  I guess we owe each other apologies.  I’m Oka Té.  Oka Té Caliphiblis.  What’s your name?  And who’s this thief of yours?”

He took a hesitant step inside, tall, thin to the point of emaciation, gangly, barefoot, clad in rags that might once have been a uniform of some kind but were now held together with oddments of plastic and lengths of some ropelike beaded material.  “I am the Boatkeeper,” he said with pride.  “I tend the boats.  For the tourists, you understand.  Though we haven’t had any in–”

The night vanished, leaving her blinking in the sudden late morning light pouring in through the door.

“Sorry.”  The Boatkeeper raised his hands.  “I’d program in a gradual dawn if there were any visitors.  But there are!  You are here!”

“Uh, yeah.”  She took advantage of the daylight to look at her surroundings.  They were even more squalid than she had thought.  And – she sniffed.  The Boatkeeper was even less clean.  To Tia, she subvocalized, Are you getting all this?

“Recording.”

“You know, uh, Boatkeeper… I wasn’t really expecting anyone to be living here.”

“What?  They didn’t tell you that the Boatkeeper is ready to help all visitors?”

“You were saying something about how long it’s been since you had any company here?”

“Before you?  Well, I’d have to think.”  He tapped the side of his long nose.  “I am so busy, you see, that the days flow by me in a whirl.  I am uncertain what year this is.”  His head bobbled up and down in apparent counterpoint to his thoughts.

So long a time passed that Oka Té sighed.  “Forget it.  Listen, I’m an archaeologist.”  He looked puzzled.  “I study old things, from vanished cultures.  Understand?”

He nodded vigorously.  “Many of my boats are very old, but I keep them in good shape.  Would you like to see them?”

“Yes, I would, very much.  But tell me; you mentioned a thief?  You didn’t mistake me for this person once you saw me.  You must know what he looks like.”  Could it possibly be Dae he was talking about?

“Oh, it is not a person.”  The Boatkeeper wrung his hands.  Suddenly he bent to snatch up his old energy pistol.  Oka Té said nothing.  If the weapon made him feel more secure, that was fine.  “It is an animal, and it has been plaguing me for years.  It robs me of fish from my lines and crabs from my traps, it steals frogs from my pen… it is a sly and cunning beast.  Occasionally I catch a glimpse of it, always at night, never near.  At times it creeps up to my boathouse and spies on me.”

In Oka Té’s ear, Tia murmured, “Doubtless a fox or a weasel, some creature left over from the days when this small ecosystem was more extensively populated.”

Oka Té nodded, as if in sympathy with the man.  “Listen, Boatkeeper — would you be willing to show me around your docks?”

“Certainly!  Certainly!  May I offer you a boat ride?  It is the best way to see the extent of the lake.  But I forget my manners.  It has been so long, you see, since I’ve had visitors.  Would you like some refreshment before our tour, or do you care to rest?”

Oka Té did feel the need to relieve her bladder.  “Some refreshment, perhaps?”

“Of course, of course!  But allow me to put my fish into the freezing unit.”  The Boatkeeper guided her to a dusty armchair from which he brushed a stack of plastic flimsies.  The sharp tang of the mud flats outside was overridden in the boathouse by the scent of hydrocarbons, the stale odors of cooked fish, and human perspiration, all blended together over many years.

“May I offer you something cool and wet?”  The Boatkeeper materialized at her elbow from behind a stack of rusty engine parts.  “Carbonated and sugared to give you energy?”

“That would be — I thought you were offering me another fish, for a moment.”

He brightened.  “Ah!  Joke!”  He sneezed out a laugh, then made a half bow and vanished behind a room divider.  Clanking and clattering noises came to her ears.

“So, are there many fish in the lake these days?”

“Sufficient, sufficient.  Below the docks there are yet deep pools.  The chamber’s floor is inclined to allow for deeper water at this end.  Were it not for that, all would have drained away long ago.  I cannot plumb the bottom of these pools, though I’ve tried, with lines tied together and weighted.  I believe they lead into the bowels of Lu’un.  If the fish swim down, I may have to follow one day.”  He laughed again, a short, sharp sound.  “I hope not.  I’m not at all sure how well the diving gear will operate after having been unused for such a long time.”

He was at her side once more, holding out a tall glass full of ice and a red liquid that bubbled of its own accord.  She accepted the glass and carefully tasted the drink.

“This is solar!”  She took another sip.  It was unlike anything in her experience: sweet, fizzy, cold and unexpectedly tart.

“Thank you.”  He seated himself on a generator off to one side.  “I am at pains to feed the fish and the crabs so that they will not go elsewhere and leave me to starve.”  He paused and became melancholy.  “Things are not as they once were.”

“How old are you?”  She sipped her beverage.

“Somewhat in excess of two hundred and thirty years.”

Oka Té blinked.  Clearly, then, the Boatkeeper was a genie: a product of genetic design.  He didn’t look to be more than forty or fifty, under the dirt.

“I have lived here all my life,” he said.  “The position runs in the family, you see, but I am the last Boatkeeper.  I have been alone here for many years, since my father died.”

“And what happens after you?”

He shrugged.  “Given the shrinking lake, and the mud, and that thief… it hardly matters.”

She frowned at her glass.  “This drink,” she said, to change the mood.  “How is it made?”

“I haven’t the least idea.  The machine does it.  I have many such devices, all constructed to provide visitors with various fripperies.  I rarely partake of them myself.  The water suits me, the fish are sweet, and the frogs succulent.  I am content.”

Oka Té repressed a shudder.  Frogs?  “You wouldn’t care to leave here for some more populous region?  Life would be easier there.”

“Oh, but remember: there would be no one to take care of the boats for the tourists, should I leave.”

“I’d forgotten that.”

He smiled.  “But tell me, how long a sojourn here do you plan?”

“I am outfitted for two weeks.  But I always intended to be flexible about my timetable.”  She licked her lips.  “I’m — officially I’m on a scouting mission for potential research sites.  But  a friend of mine vanished into the tunnels two weeks ago.  He didn’t have authorization for the trip.  He’s such an idiot, he just took off and only left me a damn note.”  Tears welled up but she set her jaw and blinked them away.   “Anyway, I’m looking for him.”

She was about to continue, but the Boatkeeper was shaking his head and mumbling to himself even as she uttered her last words.  He sat illuminated by a cone of light from a small lamp clipped to a pile of folders and cartons, with his hands interlaced between his knees.  “Not truly a tourist,” he said to himself.  Oka Té waited to see if he would speak again, and he did.

“I have never seen the lake in the days of its full glory.  The old vids and images give me only the illusion.”  He looked at her.  “There are yet oceans on Arth?”

She nodded.  “It will be many millions of years before they disappear.”

“Ah.  Boats.  And… docks.  And engines smelling of lovely grease and electricity, propelling small craft that bear laughing young people… and grinning old people.  Swimming.  Hydroballooning.  All manner of watersports…”  A tear trickled down his cheek.

Oka Té found herself strangely moved by this peculiar, simple man, who was unlike anyone she had ever met.  “And scuba diving, gill days, beach parties, bonfires.”

“Could I go to Arth?  Would there be a place for… for someone like me?”

For a moment he looked at her, his eyes bright, his mouth hanging slightly open, his need and lonliness so naked as to make her uncomfortable.  Then his hands flapped down and his eyes drooped.  “I am too much a part of this place,” he muttered.  “And it is too much a part of me.”

Oka Té leaned forward and set her unfinished drink on the floor next to her chair.  “Look, maybe you can take me on that boat ride you mentioned earlier.  I need to survey as much of this cavern as I can before I leave.”

“When will you go?  Soon?”

She chuckled.  “Not for a while.  And then, you know, I’ll be back with more sophisticated equipment, and people from the University.”

“Other people.”  He rubbed his unshaven chin.  “Other people.”  He stood.  “First I will show you around.  Then we will talk about… other people.”  He smiled at her.

                                                                        *

She followed him carefully down the rickety plastic ladder that gave upon the lower deck, which like the upper one was planked with ironwood.  She supposed it had originally come from trees grown in one of the enormous environmental caves that provided cheap organics to the population.

“I rarely venture beyond the ends of the dock any more.”  The Boatkeeper pushed a screen of vegetation away from several small nanorganic craft moored at the far end of the deck.  “I used to, but the undergrowth grows too fast for me.  I cannot be everywhere and do everything.  My main concern, of course, is with the boats.”

The boats were all in good condition, tied to the dock and to moorings a little way out in the lake.  Oka Té hadn’t seen the vessels before because the dock itself hid them from view.

Suddenly she realized that he expected her to get inside one of these flimsy things and cast off across the lake.  She shrank back.  Yes, there were oceans and lakes and rivers on Arth, but she had never been off Lu’un and had seen large bodies of water only in entertainments and documentaries.

People drown in water, she thought.

“There is no need for concern,” said Tia in her inner ear.  “The odds of my being able to resuscitate you in case of accident are well over seventy-five per cent.”

Shut up!  “Are we going to, we’re going to ride in one of these, are we?”  She tried to sound casual.

“Certainly.  How better to show you the extent of my trust?”

How much trust am I going to be able to show him?

He stepped into one of the little boats.  She approached, unable to hide her nervousness.

“Technically,” said Tia, “a coracle.  The nanorganic motor is both silent and environmentally neutral.  The draft is very shallow, only– ”

Never mind, Tia.  She looked up and out across the water.  Several larger boats, floated placidly on the mirror surface of the lake.  From her low vantage, Oka Té could not see the muddy plain into which the water spread, although the far wall of the cave was visible.

The Boatkeeper looked expectantly at her from inside the coracle.  “Just imagine what it was like here when the lake was full.”

She stepped into the craft.  The motion of the boat as it responded to her weight dismayed her.  She plopped down, gripping the gunwales so hard that her knuckles went white.

The Boatkeeper activated the motor and seized the tiller. The boat glided slowly away from its slip.

Oka Té watched the shore slide past.  To calm her nerves she took careful note of her surroundings.  The moorings did not extend past the curve of the headlands bracketing the small harbor near the docks.  To her left and right she saw undergrowth cloaking the ruins of several beach houses.  Above, where cliffs had been built in a gentle slope up to a plateau flush against the cavern wall, the greenery straggled up to lusher growth on the plateau itself.  There, too, were ruins, and above them, the naked wall.  She noticed projector stubs poking out of the stone at regular intervals.  No doubt the rock had once been hidden behind an illusion of sky and clouds, making the chamber’s vista seem almost limitless, as on Arth.

The Boatkeeper guided the coracle around a spit of land to their left.  Trees and rank grasses covered even this, their roots dipping into the lake like banyans.  To the right, large floating mats of algae and reeds presented a barrier that the Boatkeeper avoided.

In all, the spectacle of abandonment and decay depressed her.  She had expected -– what had she expected?  It was one thing to read about a place like this, but to see it, to experience something of the way it must once have been, brought an unexpected lump to her throat.

Dae would laugh.  Careful you don’t get too involved with it! is what he would have said, with a grin.  The lump in her throat grew a little bigger.  “Boatkeeper, can we go ashore somewhere?”

He brought the boat about to parallel the shoreline, which described a smooth curve for three or four kilometers to the north-northwest.  The strip of beach narrowed gradually from a width of fifty or so meters to virtually nothing where the northwest wall merged into the northeast side of the chamber.  Oka Té spotted the ruins of several beach houses on a patch of sand where few plants had gained purchase.  “Can we land there?”

The Boatkeeper surveyed the site doubtfully.  “I have been on this beach, but not for a long while.  I know that there are rats in these houses.”

She smiled and patted the disperser.  “I’m not afraid of rats.”

“Very well.”

The boat’s prow crunched up against the small beach.  Less than fifty square meters of sand formed an oasis amid a riot of undergrowth.  Three cottages crouched nearby, more or less visible through the brush.  Only the lack of weathering and their ironwood construction had prevented them from crumbling away, but the action of the growing plants was enough to ensure the inevitable destruction was merely delayed, not arrested.

Oka Té stepped out on shore and walked toward the nearest dwelling, swinging her head around so that Tia could record data the human woman sensed only peripherally, subliminally.  Oka Té’s training kicked in and she grew excited.  This would be a completely solar report!

“Voiceover draft,” she murmured to Tia.  “These cottages were designed to house three or four people for short periods, and were owned co-operatively by up to a dozen or more families who would allocate vacation time in accordance with each other through –”

Tia broke in.  “Movement in the northwest cottage.”

Oka Té glanced at the Boatkeeper, who shrugged.  Oka Té faced the tumbledown little building.  The encroaching vegetation cloaked it more deeply than the other two.  She could see part of a cracked wall, and a broken window in that wall.  Through the window only shadows were visible.  “All right, Tia, what’s in there?”

“Small arthropods, a lizard, and a –”

“A… what?”  The Boatkeeper’s face registered puzzlement.

“Oh, Tia’s done this to me before,” Oka Té said.  “If she hits an unknown quantity she just stops responding.  She probably scanned some species of cockroach or spider she hasn’t got on file.”

“Some animals were abandoned when their owners left.  Even a few genies, you know; designer pets.  I run across one every so often.  There was one, a tiny purple rhinoceros with sucker feet, that — ”

“Yes, yes.  I’m going to go take a look.”

With the Boatkeeper trailing along she entered the screen of underbrush several meters from the wall.  She shrank back from the rustling leaves, unused to any plants that weren’t properly sequestered in ornamental plots or hydro tanks.  Tia said nothing, so there was no reason to fear poisonous exudations or thorns -– not that any such harmful vegetation would have been allowed inside this recreation facility in any case.

Keeping a firm grip on the disperser, Oka Té pushed through to the door.  It gaped open.  Inside, the cottage was in an advanced stage of neglect.  A few plants had even taken root in the silica-fiber carpet.  Dust covered everything.

The Boatkeeper, at her elbow, peered past her.  “Aren’t you going inside?”

“No, not on this trip.  Everything needs to be catalogued.  The entire site will be maintained in as pristine a state as possible for as long as it takes a University team to study it.  Until then, I’ll disturb nothing.”

“Oh.  That’s good, I suppose.”

She turned away from the door and walked around to the side of the house that faced away from the beachfront landing.  Over her shoulder, she said, “I’ll just take a quick scan of the other side.”  Passing quickly by the broken window, she rounded the corner of the building.  The undergrowth here was less rank.

Before she had taken two steps, however, Tia shrieked: “Personal safety alert!”

Oka Té’s gaze snapped around to the right and up, catching peripheral movement.  A huge feline-lizard thing crouched on a low branch near the window.  Its head split open –- no, it had a four-section jaw, gaping at her like a grasping hand!  The thing’s shiny black eyes never left hers.  Time seemed to slow down.  She drew her disperser, but before she could fire the creature leaped up onto the roof and from there into overhanging foliage.  Time surged ahead.

“I saw it, I saw it, a glimpse through the leaves!”  The Boatkeeper’s voice was near hysteria.  “The thief!  The thief!  That’s who it is!”

Backpedaling out of the undergrowth, Oka Té let Tia do some deep scanning through her eyes, but the implant couldn’t resolve the animal’s pattern.

“The creature has fled the area,” said Tia.

“And I didn’t shoot it!”  Oka Té and the Boatkeeper retreated to the coracle, where they both stood shaking in reaction to the fright.  “That’s your thief?  You’re certain?”

“Yes, definitely.”

“Don’t you know what it is?”

“No, who is it?”

She passed a hand across her forehead and found it damp and clammy.  “I think it was a psulb, although they’re supposed to be extinct.”

“A what?”

“A –- look, let’s get out of here.”  They cast off.  When the coracle was well under way she said, “Psulbs were brought here more than a thousand years ago from — I forget which star.  They were regarded as being intelligent because they can speak, but on their own world they had no cities, roads, nothing indicative of true intelligence.  Perhaps it’s because they only have a nine-year life span.  I don’t know.  They were kept in special enclosures, but some escaped into the forests on the surface, until the ecology began to deteriorate.  The psulbs vanished, and it was thought they died with the surface life.  Apparently not.”

“Intelligent, you say?  It avoids me, or else it would have tried to communicate.  I am no danger to it.”

“Well, I think it realizes that.  As long as it can snatch food from you it has no reason to want to communicate.  Psulbs aren’t human, so don’t ascribe human motivations to it.  It hangs around your dock, you say, so maybe it saw me enter this level, and noticed my weapon.  Being wary, it wanted a closer look to see if I represented a threat.  I think what happened is that we surprised each other.”

The Boatkeeper scratched himself through his rags.  “What will it do now?”

What will it do now? Oka Té subvocalized to Tia.

“No data on psulbs available.”

Speculate!

“It will likely watch from a safer vantage point.”

“I am going to arm myself,” the Boatkeeper said as the boat drew near the dock.

                                                                        *

In the cluttered main room of the boathouse, he drew a small crossbow out of a drawer.  “I can shoot this well enough.”  He hefted the weapon.  “I prefer it to my pistol, though the gun is easier to carry.”

Oka Té regarded it with skepticism.  “Just watch where you aim it if you shoot it.”

“Have no fear.”  He lowered the crossbow.  “Have you no communications link accessible to you if you get into trouble?”

“I’m not really in any trouble yet.”  She thought about the psulb’s jaws and what they might have done to Dae, but forced the image away.

The Boatkeeper stared thoughtfully at her.  “What do you know of this thief?”

“Hmmm?  Oh – very little.  Psulbs were supposed to have been very clever about waylaying travelers, bedeviling them and then devouring them.  They were said to have a sort of, I don’t know, an ability to fascinate, or hypnotize.”  She grimaced.  “I guess it’s true.  It managed to slow me down so I didn’t shoot it.”

“D–devouring?”

“I don’t mean to distress you.  Your thief is curious and clever.  His habits and manner may be very different from those of his ancestors.  How long has he been stealing from you?”

The Boatkeeper put some thought into this.  “Seven or eight years.”

“Most likely he blundered in here when he was a hatchling.  Very small.  Probably got in through some crack, stayed, grew and now could not get out even if he wanted to.”  If her scenario were at all accurate, she knew, it could mean other psulbs lurked in the maze of abandoned tunnels honeycombing these lower levels.  What if Dae had run into one?  He hadn’t been armed.

“But you said it would waylay travelers.”

She shrugged.  “As I said before, this one seems content to co-exist.  In any case, it didn’t attack me when it had the chance.  You’re safe enough for the time being.  I’m sure I could convince a team of exobiologists from the University to capture the thing.”

                                                            *

They agreed that Oka Té would overnight in the recreation chamber and then set off on her return journey.  The Boatkeeper prepared a meal of broiled fish garnished with lakeweed and wild shallots, which Oka Té found delicious.

“Night” fell abruptly while they savored the last morsels.  As pre-programmed constellations pranked the vault overhead, Oka Té and the Boatkeeper swapped stories about their upbringing.  She, raised in luxurious conditions not far from the lu’unar surface, a privileged child who developed a curiosity about the levels below.  He, nearly three centuries old, leading a life of solitude and meditation, broken only by the occasional failure of a component or the splash of a fish in the dwindling lake.

She liked the odd man, and found herself feeling sorry for him.  He faced a bleak future.  A genie himself, he could conceivably live for another century and a half in an unstressed environment.  But the lake was drying up, and once it was gone there would be no place for a simple, gentle soul like the Boatkeeper anywhere in Lu’un.  It was true that there were remote areas on Arth where a man could live alone, but as a product of a long line of Lu’un dwellers, the Boatkeeper’s body would scarcely stand up to the planet’s stronger gravity.

She made herself comfortable on a couch in the cluttered commons room, and drifted off to sleep, charmed by the buzzing of insects and thrum of frogs.

                                                            *

“Oka Té.”

“Mmm?”

“Oka Té!”

She sat up in the darkened room.  Stars still twinkled in the “sky.”  Night sounds drifted in.

“The Boatkeeper has gone outside.”

She settled back.  “Aww, Tia, he’s probably relieving himself.”

“He took the coracle.  And his crossbow.”

“He what?”  She began pulling on her clothing.  “What does he think he’s doing?”

“He was muttering something about the thief.  He did not know I could hear him.”

Less than two minutes later Oka Té was hurrying along the wooden dock below the boathouse.  Sure enough, his boat was gone.  Oka Té cursed.  She looked around for another craft.  There was only one with an nanorganic engine.

Just before she stepped into it, she hesitated.  All that water… She scowled.  Water or not, she had to follow the Boatkeeper. “Tia, tell me how to engage the engine on this thing.”

A few minutes later she was guiding the little vessel out from beneath the dock.  As she swept past the last of the moorings, day broke.

The Boatkeeper was not in sight.  She knew he had enough of a head start to get to the ruined cottage.  She urged her boat on at top speed.

Rounding the point, she saw a coracle beached on the sandy spit.  There was no sign of the Boatkeeper.  “Scan the area, Tia.  Full emergency resource allocation.”  A wave of dizziness passed over her as the implant complied, interfacing with a larger segment of her sensory spectrum than ever before.

“Two signals coming from within the screen of undergrowth,” Tia said.  “One is the Boatkeeper, and the other corresponds to the psulb.”

Damn!  “Patch in directly to my central nervous system.”

“Inadvisable.  There’s potential for overload and burnout, and the possibility of damage beyond the ability of regenerators to– ”

“Do it!”

“Complying.”

Oka Té’s heart raced.  Her vision grew sharper, and she heard faint sounds from within the ruins on the land ahead.  They were stalking each other, not yet in combat.  The psulb would understand what the Boatkeeper intended.  The Boatkeeper knew how dangerous the psulb was, but was unafraid.

Oka Té felt a twinge of admiration for his stupid bravery.

Even as her boat rammed into the beach, still at top speed, she was leaping forward, using the vesel’s momentum and her enhanced powers to clear the prow.  She dove into the foliage and into the house.

He crouched at bay in a corner, facing the snarling psulb.  As she entered, the creature whipped around to face her.

She lifted the disperser and fired, but missed, because the psulb was in mid-air.  Tia’s alarm blared.

Before Oka Té could fire again, the thing was on her.  It clamped its four jaws down on her right arm.  She screamed as its fangs punctured her skin.  Something pumped into her, something horribly cold from the throbbing poison sacs at the base of each mandible.

Her heightened awareness allowed her to see the Boatkeeper rise up behind the creature.  He aimed his crossbow as the psulb released her arm and fired a bolt that pinned its left front foot to the floor of the ruined cabin.

The psulb shrieked in pain.  Oka Té rolled away out of its reach.

Tia, completely risen from Oka Té’s arm, swelled to twice its normal size and began shuddering as its medical diagnostics took over all its resources.  Oka Té’s sharpened senses faded, but the coldness in her arm grew, spreading as her bloodstream carried in through her body.

“It was self defense!” hissed the psulb.  “She made to attack me!”

In answer, the Boatkeeper loosed another bolt, pinning the animal’s other forefoot to the ground.  He hurried to Oka Té’s side.

With his help she propped herself up against a wall.  Her breathing became very shallow; her head swam.  Is this it?  Is this how I die?  She did her best not to sub-vocalize this.

“Attempting emergency rescue call,” said Tia.  “Medical situation critical.  No antidote onboard for psulb venom.”  The gland paused.  “I can maintain you in a suspended condition for two days, but that would not allow for any movement or other forms of data processing.”

Oka Té looked up at the straggly man as he knelt beside her.  “It’s vascular.  Paralyzes heart and lungs.   I’m loaded with it.”  She gasped and swallowed convulsively.

“Emergency rescue signal blocked by structure of chamber,” said Tia.  “I would need to be at the entryway to patch into its systems.”

“Is there nothing I can do?”  The Boatkeeper’s voice was high with terror.

“If you could get help, within two days…”  Even as she spoke she knew it was impossible.  Two days wasn’t enough time, especially for someone who had never been out of this chamber.

Her dimming vision fastened on the knife dangling from the Boatkeeper’s belt.  Tia… has the poison reached my abdomen?

“No.”

Oka Té swallowed.  Weakly she raised her left hand.  “Boatkeeper, your knife.”

“What?”

“Freeze… my DNA… you…”  A gray curtain fell, blocking her vision.  She managed to subvocalize to Tia what she needed done.

Oka Té added, Tia, transfer mode.  He’s your new carrier.  Aloud, she said, “She’ll adapt.  You’ll adapt.  Take her.  If you find Dae, tell…”  She could not go on.

“Don’t talk,” he soothed.  He didn’t notice Tia begin to extrude a slender pseudopod in his direction.  “Let me get you up to the boathouse.”

“Won’t… make it.” Her eyesight began graying out.  Dae, you should see this, she thought.  Or is this what happened to you?  “Oh, I feel bad!”

“Oka Té, I’ll find him.  I’ll tell your University.  I won’t let this go.”  The pseudopod touched, merged, began to pulsate.

“Thank…”

“Lean back.  Rest.  Just rest for a few moments.”

She was dead.

                                                            *

The Boatkeeper knelt there for a few moments, in the shadows.  Outside, daylight blazed.  The shadows grew deeper -– no.  He realized, with a thrill of horror and revulsion, that the skin of her arm was turning a livid blue.  He grasped it, and grimaced in astonishment.  The flesh grew soggy, flaccid, more so with each passing moment.  The arm sagged in his hand: even the bones were liquefying.  He swallowed to keep his stomach in place.

“Boatkeeper!”

Startled, he looked up.  It wasn’t the psulb’s raspy voice.

“Who –?”

“I am Tia.  Listen.  If you want to save her, you must do what I say –- now.”

“But –”

“Her DNA.  To resuscitate her, we need stem cells.”

“Stem cells?”  His arm twitched.

“Yes.  Embryonic ones would be best. I will direct you where to cut.”

The procedure flashed across his vision.  He was too shocked at the images to be surprised or frightened at the gland’s invasion of his body.  His arm twitched again.

“Embryonic?”

“She is three weeks pregnant but did not know.  Before the venom completely corrupts her you must act.  Please — do not be afraid.  I will guide you.”

His arm jerked, moviong of its own accord.  Aghast, he watched the knife come up, place itself point first on Oka Té’s belly, and push in.

Halfway through the harvesting procedure he vomited, but Tia never faltered.

“Now,” said the gland a few minutes later, “we must get this to your freezer unit.”

With control returned to him, he cut off a portion of Oka Té’s garment, using it to wrap the gory prize.  Then he stood and faced the squirming psulb, with crossbow raised.

The psulb looked up in alarm and pain.  “Consider!  A rare being such as myself might bring you fame!”

The Boatkeeper sneered.  “The last thing I want!”  He lowered the weapon.   “However, it’s true that more violence will not set things aright.”  He thought for a moment.  “It will take you some time to free yourself from those quarrels,” he said.  To himself, he further noted that with crippled forelimbs the psulb might not be able to provide itself with the frogs and fish it had previously found so easy to catch.  Oka Té had mentioned that psulbs had been known to be man-eaters.

He shuddered.  The lake was no longer safe for him.

Ignoring the threats and exhortations of the psulb, the Boatkeeper returned to his craft and procured a length of rope.  He tied it around Oka Té’s ankles and dragged her swelling, softening body down to the beach.

“What are you doing?” Tia asked.

Isn’t there some way to get rid of you? he thought.

“No.  I am part of you now.  What are you doing with her body?”

“I’m bringing it back to my home.  Perhaps I can freeze the rest of her.”

“The action of the psulb venom won’t allow you time.  If you remove her neuroplastic garment, our capabilities will be enhanced.”

“What kind of ghoulish thing are you?  Show some respect!”

“She is dead, and the garment is part of my systems,” said Tia.  “It is to your benefit –”

“Stop!  I’ll find a way.  If there is the slightest chance to save her somehow, through her DNA, or through freezing her or finding her friend Dae, then I’ll do all I can.”

“Then take her garment.”

Angrily he stripped it off the liquifying body.

Soon the coracle was headed back to ward the dock at half speed, towing Oka Té’s corpse.  At about the midpoint of the journey, the boat suddenly surged forward as if relieved of a weight.  He looked back.

The venom’s toxins had done their work.  The chafing of the rope had ruptured the bag of fluids that Oka Té’s body had become.  Its contents spewed out, mingling with the waters of the lake.

“Recording,” said a voice in his ear.  Startled, he looked all around.  Then he remembered the implant.  He looked down at his arm, and saw the blister-like capsule surface briefly and then subside.  He closed his eyes for a moment.  Tears leaked out from between the lids.

“Perhaps it’s not a bad end, for an archaeologist,” he managed to say, “to become one with the site where she sacrificed her life.”

Tia made no response.  The coracle arrived at its slip.  He secured it but made no move to exit the craft.

“Tia, if I were to leave here, could you guide me back to Oka Té’s home chambers?”

“I am a sensory analyst, not a cartographic module,” said Tia, “although I do possess a built-in compass.  I can assist and advise, where I have appropriate data.  I may access other implants and nanorganic nodes in response to specific directives from you.”

“What specific directives?”

Tia began a verbal outline of the command structure.

“Stop, stop!  I see that I will have to know what to ask for and how to ask for it.”  He rubbed his long chin.  The thought of leaving the lake and venturing into the unknown labyrinth of corridors daunted him.

“But I promised her…”  In his ears, his own voice said, “If there is the slightest chance to save her somehow, through her DNA, or through freezing her or finding Dae, then I’m –”  Tia had recorded his speech.

“I remember what I said.”  He stepped out of the coracle and climbed up to the boathouse.  In his pantry he wrapped her tissues in protective foil and put the package into his self-contained freezing unit, which he then turned to the highest setting.

“She would appreciate what you’ve done,” said Tia.  “What is your name?”

He frowned.  No one, not even his father, had used his name since his childhood, and he had long since gotten used to thinking of himself as “the Boatkeeper.”  He set about preparing for travel, still thinking.

Presently, shaven and shorn, bearing a backpack containing some essentials, he stood before the stained portal through which Oka Té had entered his world.  Wiry and younger looking now in his determination, he held his crossbow at the ready.  Oka Té’s disperser was slung across his back.  He reached out for the exit switch, then hesitated.

“What’s out there?  What’ll happen?”

“I am not a prognosticator.  I am a sensory adjunct.”

The Boatkeeper thumbed the lock and the door split open, like the jaws of the psulb.

“Ah.  I remember now.  My name; it’s Basrey, Cellun Basrey.”

Cellun walked out of his world.