The Great Hydration

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

By the time he reached the camp of the Artaxa Roncie Northrop was very hungry, very thirsty, and near the end of his tether. He had tried to eke out the water, but it became so hot during the day! The canteen had less than a pint left in it now.

As for the food, he had starved himself at first, but as the water steadily disappeared down his throat he began to wonder what the point of that might be. Thirst would kill him before starvation did. So he had allowed himself half a sandwich a day.

Except that yesterday he had eaten only one quarter of a sandwich. So he had a quarter left.

During daylight he continually scanned the sky hoping to see a lighter from the Enterprise come curving down towards him. In that, he had been disappointed. But not really surprised. It wasn’t the done thing to leave a bondman in distress—not if you wanted to ensure the loyalty of your staff—but with the partners down on the ground that bastard O’Rourke was in charge, and in his eyes Northrop was a traitor anyway.

His entreaties to Karvass had been unavailing. The Artaxa had looked stonily ahead without answering whenever Northrop tried to explain that he must be taken back to the camp immediately, because of his daily need for water.

Northrop had begun to accept that he was doomed.

He had to admit that the sandboat was a marvellous construction, well adapted to the terrain over which it travelled. Its radium motor humming, it fairly skimmed over the soft yellow sand day and night. In a mostly featureless environment he could not easily estimate its speed, but if he had been told they were covering somewhere between one and two thousand kilometers per planetary rotation—about thirty hours—he would not have been in the least surprised.

It was yet one more similarity between Tenacity and the fictional Barsoom, he told himself: technical sophistication in a sparsely populated warrior culture (which in the case of the green Barsoomians had been nomadic to boot). In Burroughs’ stories that had been a contradiction. It was like expecting Genghis Khan’s Mongols to manufacture machine guns.

Yet here, it was a reality.

Then, when the sandboat wound among the hill formation and plunged down the underground bank to emerge into the huge cavern, he almost forgot his plight. Here indeed was a wonder not described in any of the Burroughs’ Martian books he had read. True, the Tlixix were said to live in domes which might be of comparable size, but they were not like the Barsoomians either. They were more like the hippopotamus-resembling masters of Pellucidar, the world within the Earth. And he doubted if the Tlixix boasted such numbers as he saw jostling on the floor of the great cavern.

Entranced, he gazed up at the mass of glowing crystal of which the roof was composed, turning the whole huge space into an eerie grotto.

Karvass nudged him from the sandboat and towards a line of Artaxa whose skin seemed rougher than his own. Perhaps, Northrop thought, that meant they were older. Their metal ornaments were more numerous, too. His mind went back again to Barsoom, where metal ornaments on otherwise naked bodies were like campaign medals or badges of rank, collected by killing someone.

A younger Artaxa came from somewhere to the side of the welcoming committee. He carried a small bucket-like container with a metal lid, which he offered to Northrop.

Holding it in one arm, Roncie removed the lid. The container held what looked like water, though it was dark and oily-looking.

He was puzzled. The Tlixix were supposed to have all the water on the surface of the planet. He dipped a finger in the liquid and tasted it. It was not salty, at any rate. It tasted like brackish water.

His thirst became overpowering. He lifted the container to his lips and drank, cautiously at first. The water had a strong mineral taste, but it was drinkable.

Gasping with relief, he put the lid back on. Holding on to the container, he turned to Karvass.

“Where did this come from?”

Karvass pointed a lank finger to a group of creatures who were neither Artaxa nor even humanoid. They were vaguely lizard-like, standing erect with a forward-sloping posture, but white as worms which never saw the light.

“Those are our allies the Sawune, who live in deep caverns, much deeper than this. There, they have found water.”

So! There was water which the Tlixix had not sequestered, though probably not much. Northrop tried to recall his brief look at the report on the species of Tenacity. Apart from the numerous dehydrate humanoids, there were also dehydrate lizard species, mostly subterranean. It was possible that a few pools of fresh water had survived evaporation in far-down pockets, also escaping detection by the lobsters’ enthusiastic water-searches.

A more far-reaching realization came to him, now that the long drink had cleared his mind. His captors had known in advance that he needed water. They had made provision for it.

He turned again to Karvass.

“Thank you. But what about food?”

The Artaxa’s facial membranes adopted a configuration. Northrop knew enough by now to interpret this as an expression display, but he didn’t know of what. Karvass’s verbal response, however, made it clear it was one of surprise.

“But have you not eaten? Surely you do not need to eat again?”

Northrop began to remember some biology. He looked at the compact bodies of the dehydrates. Since they did not have circulating blood, these creatures might not need homeostatic temperature control. It was the high-energy-using warm-blooded creatures that needed to feed every day. A mammal needed ten times as much food as a reptile. The dehydrates, with their bodily process of molecular migration through a gel, would have such fine temperature control, and their bodies would be so economical in the use of its resources, that they probably ate only a few times a year.

That made perfect sense. There would be little enough food to find on this desiccated planet.

So the Artaxa had made no provision to feed their prisoner, beyond grabbing up his breakfast. And whatever they used for food would at best pass right through him, if it did not poison him outright.

He sighed grievously. For all his wandering, this was the first time in his life that he had gone hungry, except by choice.

Hands pushed him towards the elders. Without preamble or greeting, one spoke to him.

“Your kind has been seen in the Pavilion of Audience. You have erected machines in the desert. You have weapons unknown to us. Clearly you are an inventive people. But who are you? By your appearance you are numbered among the races of men, yet water is not poisonous to you and you require it as do the Tlixix. This is a contradiction. Did the Tlixix make you to be their new servants, or are you from some hidden part of the world? Answer, and answer truthfully, unless you wish to test how much torture you can withstand.”

Furiously Northrop began wondering what he could say to avoid that threat. Did the Artaxa know any astronomy? Would they understand the idea of a world other than Tenacity?

He set about trying to explain it all. That he and his friends were men, but they came from another world that was full of water, as this one had been when only the Tlixix lived on it. He had expected this to be greeted with incredulity, but not a single facial membrane as much as stirred. The elders simply listened. When he had finished one spoke.

“So you have come to our world from elsewhere, or so you say. And you talk to the masters of our world, the Tlixix. Why? What is your business with them?”

Northrop started thinking hard. What the hell do I owe Krabbe and Bouche? They wouldn’t let me go when I wanted to leave. They locked me up and dragged me out here. Now they’ve abandoned me to the dehydrates, leaving me to die. Anyway they’re acting illegally. Apart from that, their morals stink. These dehydrates will all drown when the ocean comes back. I’m not even sure they can survive on higher ground once the climate changes. But the least they deserve is to be warned.

He spoke aloud to himself. “All right Karl, all right Boris, here it comes.”

He began to spill the beans, again reminding the Artaxa of how Tenacity had once borne a large ocean. In those long-ago days, he said, water had showered from the sky even on to the dry places. They appeared already to know this and became impatient at his words.

But when he told them that those days could be made to return, they were both startled and bewildered.

“This is to happen in the next few days,” he said implacably. “All the low-lying areas, including these caverns, will lie under water. If you want to survive you had better move to higher ground.”

Not a single one of his listeners stirred or spoke for a long time. Then, in a voice gravid with disbelief, one said, “It is a lie. The creature is trying to panic us into evacuating.”

“Put him to the torture,” another said.

Yet another spoke up. “Why do you tell us this? It is treason to your kind.”

“My masters are acting against the laws of the world we come from.”

Northrop answered. “If they are found out they will be punished. I disagree with what they are doing, but while I was their slave I had to do their bidding. Now you have taken me away from them, I am not their slave.”

The most bemetalled of the elders turned to another. “How much eruptionite have we? How many radiators?”

“We have more than a thousand shells of eruptionite,” the other answered. “As for radiators, about forty so far.”

The chief elder addressed Roncie again. “If your warning is a true one, then you have rendered us a great service. If it is not, your punishment will be a terrible one. We go now to consider your words.”

The elders turned as one man and marched into the great crowd thronging the floor of the cavern.

Roncie was left with Karvass, who though badly shaken by everything he had just heard, offered to show him round the underground camp.

“A great enterprise is underway,” he revealed. “The tyranny of the Tlixix is over. We and other tribes are ready to rise in revolt. Furthermore we have new weapons and devices which not even the Tlixix have.”

In a side cavern he showed Northrop where one of these devices, referred to as ‘radiators’ was in production. To the Earthman’s bemusement it turned out to be a primitive form of radio. Like all early inventions, it was unnecessarily large and cumbersome.

But it followed the general pattern of technology on the desert planet. All powered machinery on Tenacity depended on the presence of the radioactive element radium, plus a means to convert its radioactivity to electric current, which was also due to a serendipitous natural resource. Tenacity was rich in exotic crystals, some of which generated enough electricity to turn an electric motor if placed adjacent to pure radium. Tenacity mechanics had also devised accumulators, again exploiting naturally occurring exotic minerals, able to absorb a hefty amperage at fairly high tension. Hence a radium power source continued to charge up an accumulator whether the machine was in use or not. A Tenacity vehicle could therefore travel at top speed for many days, drawing additional power from a previously charged accumulator.

The layout of the ‘radiator’ was somewhat similar, except that no accumulator was necessary. Semiconductor crystals sent an oscillating current to the antenna, causing it to transmit a carrier wave which was modulated by means of a simple microphone. In addition there was a speaker for receiving. And that was all. There was no tuning. The frequency was fixed.

Northrop silently saluted the unknown Analane genius—or geniuses—who had discovered radio waves and developed the rig, something which the Tlixix had failed to do throughout their history.

Perhaps, he told himself, Krabbe & Bouche were doing business with the wrong side.

Indeed, no sooner had he finished inspecting the radiator than word came to Karvass. The council had taken his warning seriously. In an effort to avert the catastrophe they were bringing forward the revolt.

Task forces were to set out immediately to launch attacks on the Tlixix hydroriums.