The Strange One

IAN STUMBLED THROUGH KNEE-DEEP DRIFTS on numbing feet, the bone-chilling cold of the screaming wind creeping inexorably through his warmsuit, sapping his waning strength. He knew if he stopped he would freeze to death, but he had long since lost all sense of direction in the swirling snow.

“Ian Thorne calling Base,” he croaked into his transmitter. Only static answered. “Ian Thorne calling Base. Somebody...”

Lightning ripped the sky and his earphones roared. Hopeless, he thought. Well, kid, you’re not stuck in that little dome now. How do you like it?

I get enough sarcasm from my father, he told himself. I don’t need it from you.

His father. In a couple of hours Ian Thorne Sr. would be back from his geological survey and learn his son and namesake had disappeared. How would he react?

He’ll just be angry I left the base without permission. And tell my frozen body, “I told you so.”

A gust hammered Ian to his knees. Gasping, he struggled back to his feet and pressed on. If he cared about me he never would have dragged me to Aleutia. Newhope was just a stopover to him—but it was my home!

Something loomed ahead, resolved into the black stone face of a cliff. For a moment Ian leaned against it, though it provided no shelter from the wind. And then confining me to the base for my “own safety”...what did he expect me to do, twiddle my thumbs for two months?

It didn’t help Ian’s mood that his present predicament pretty much proved his father right. Strength refuelled by anger, he pushed away from the cliff, fought his way another dozen steps through the snow—and fell into darkness.

Pain stabbed his right ankle as he hit rock, and he crashed forward, reflexes honed on the hoverball field barely enabling him to throw himself into a shock-absorbing roll before his face slammed into stone. Swearing, he sat up, pulled off his ice-caked face mask and glared around.

Curving stone walls surrounded him, forming an almost-circular cave. The man-sized hole through which he had fallen, three metres above, was the only opening. Snow sifting through it fell gently on his upturned face, but the rest of the cave was dry.

Ian tried to stand, but agony shot up his leg and he fell to his hands and knees, tears blinding him. He pressed his forehead against the icy rock until the pain subsided, then lifted his head and looked bleakly around at the barren walls. No one knew where he was, and he couldn’t contact Base. He had no food or water. The cave, though sheltered, was ice-cold, and his warmsuit’s batteries were low. It was a recipe for slow death.

He licked suddenly dry lips. Think, Ian. Remember the survival briefing.

Oh, he remembered, all right. “Never travel alone. Never leave Base without telling someone where you’re going. Never go out without a survival kit.” Three basic rules—and he’d broken them all.

The cold pinched his ears. He eased himself into a sitting position, then scooted on his rear end out from under the column of falling snow. He pulled up his hood; as he did so a message glowed red on the control band on his left wrist: BATTERY LOW.

He looked down and touched a small, flat, gold-coloured metal box hooked to his belt. The thought of using it filled him with horror—but so did the thought of freezing to death. Convulsively he pulled it free, then broke the seal and flipped back the lid.

Inside, a hypodermic glinted in a bed of black foam, next to a dull-silver disk with a single switch on its upward face. Ian lifted the disk out and flicked that switch, then jerked his hand to the control band to lower the volume as a powerful, frantic beeping exploded in his ears. That signal would lead rescuers to him...if they ever heard it. In Aleutia’s peculiar electromagnetic environment, and underground as he was, the odds were against it.

He lifted out the hypo and stared at the ruby liquid inside it. Its primary ingredient was HIT, hibernation-induction trigger, a synthetic human version of the blood chemical that caused squirrels and chipmunks to go into their long winter sleeps. The dosage in the hypo would put him into hibernation for seventy-two hours, slowing his metabolism so his body could maintain itself at a much lower temperature. Somewhat insulated by the powerless warmsuit and sheltered from the wind as he was, the drug would keep him from freezing to death.

But unless someone found him and moved him somewhere warm during those seventy-two hours, he might never wake again.

Ian took a deep breath, then another—and then plunged the hypo into his arm.

Drowsiness gripped him and his eyelids and limbs seemed weighted with lead. He yawned and lay on his side, curling into a fetal position. The sound of the beacon ushered him into oblivion.

Kerr’tok was not supposed to go up: no one was, while the Strange Ones wandered the planet, for there weren’t enough Listeners to track them all.

But Kerr’tok felt like a trapped nek after five twelve-days stuck in the close confines of Northwest Tunnel. He longed to breathe the crisp, clean air of the surface.

So long before firstmeal he sneaked away into Dead Passage. No one would see him there; the adults had no reason to go, and the little ones believed monsters lived in its abandoned chambers. Kerr’tok was too old for such terrors, but as he passed gaping doorways, opening into chambers his glowbulb did nothing to illuminate, it occurred to him that if the Strange Ones had found the Mouth and entered Dead Passage, they could be hiding...anywhere. So cubbish though he knew it to be, he quickened his pace, anxious to see daylight.

Dead Passage ended at last in a small chamber hung with thick black ropes. Kerr’tok set his glowbulb in a wall niche, then leaped up to seize one of the lines. As he descended the far wall rose and fog rolled across the floor: the cold breath of the Mouth.

Kerr’tok tied the rope so the door would not close; the outer mechanism had been destroyed to secure it from the Strange Ones’ prying. Then he stepped into the Mouth, grey-lit by the hole in the high ceiling—and hissed in shock.

Something dead lay curled in a ball on the floor.

Monster! Kerr’tok thought for an instant, but as his pounding heart slowed he realized what the creature had to be: one of the Strange Ones.

Muscles tight, ready to spring away—though the creature had to be dead, half-covered with snow as it was—Kerr’tok crouched for a closer look.

He poked the creature’s leg with a cautious claw, and realized what he had first taken for naked, orange-red skin was an artificial layer, like the orthokk furs the People sometimes donned for long surface trips. But the Strange One’s pale, furless face remained exposed, its fleshy lips parted to reveal even, blunt teeth. Its nose protruded and its eyes were too round.

Kerr’tok glanced at the opening above. The creature must have fallen into the Mouth and been unable to climb or jump out. But others might search for it, and if they entered the Mouth, they might discover the hidden door into the Dead Passage—and Golden Seer had prophesied what would happen then.

“They would take our Destiny.” Kerr’tok could see Golden Seer in his mind’s eye, standing in the Gathering Hall before all the people, the red light of the Great Fire burnishing his pale fur. “Not from evil—we sense no great evil within them—but by leading us from the Path. We would no longer be the People, but poor, weak copies of the Strange Ones. They must not find us.”

Golden Seer must be told, Kerr’tok thought. And Secondfather Tok’arrth too, his conscience added, though he shuddered to think what his mother’s father, who ruled Northwest Tunnel with the Seer’s advice, would have to say about his folly.

He would first drag the creature’s body into the abandoned tunnels; that way if its fellows came searching for it they would have no cause to enter the Mouth.

First Kerr’tok gathered the belongings the Strange One had dropped: a mysterious box of golden metal, a glass tube with a sharp metal needle on one end, a silvery metal disk. He put them in one of the empty chambers, then returned for the dead alien.

It was limp, despite the cold, and heavy. Kerr’tok dragged it a step at a time across the floor and through the door. Then he untied the ropes and the rock slab slid noiselessly back into place.

But as he released the rope he froze.

The creature behind him had just taken a long, slow breath.

Ian had expected to wake, if he woke at all, in the clean white surroundings of the Base infirmary. But when his eyes fluttered open he saw nothing but blackness, and still felt rock beneath him.

He lay still for a moment, disoriented. If he hadn’t been found and returned to the station, then seventy-two hours must have passed and the HIT had worn off. But he wasn’t cold—the air was cool, but much warmer than it had been in the circular cavern; warm enough he wouldn’t freeze.

Maybe warm enough to wake me, he thought, and felt for his watch. Its dim light showed him nothing of his surroundings, but confirmed his suspicion: only twenty-four hours had passed since he took the HIT.

He sat up and stared into the darkness. “Hello?” he croaked, and echoes told him he was in a much larger cavern than the one into which he had fallen. Though ravenously hungry, with a throat like sandpaper, he was alive—but not at Base. Which was impossible.

The hood of his warmsuit had been pulled back. As he tugged it on again he heard the steady beeping of the homing signal. Touching his throat mike, he called Base, but heard only the beeper in reply. Even the static had vanished, and buried alive as he seemed to be, he couldn’t believe his transmission was going anywhere.

And neither am I, he thought. I can’t wander around in the dark. Someone brought me here—sooner or later they’ll be back.

Or maybe some thing had brought him there. He remembered survey-team tales of giant carnivorous bear-like creatures. What if one of them had brought him home as a midnight snack?

That uncomfortable thought had barely come to roost when the darkness was relieved by a pale pink glow. He lay in a large, rough-hewn chamber; the growing light entered through a low arched doorway. A moment later its source came into view, borne by...something.

The thing looked roughly human, though smaller and more slender than Ian and covered in smooth grey fur. Three sharp black claws curved around the tiny globe that gave off the pink light. It wore no clothing, but carried a bulging leather pouch over one shoulder.

When it saw Ian sitting up it froze, its sharp ears flattening against its skull, then snarled, revealing sharp fangs. Its long tail lashed.

Ian raised both hands in what he hoped was a universal gesture of peace, while his mind reeled. Intelligent life! But we haven’t had a hint...

His furry visitor took a step closer, then another. Ian didn’t move, and finally it stood only a yard or two away, so near he could smell a hint of bitter musk, alien but not unpleasant. It stared at him with gleaming golden eyes, and he stared back.

Now what?

Kerr’tok clenched the glowbulb so tightly its light dimmed. His terror upon realizing he had brought a live Strange One into the Tunnels had driven him to Golden Seer. He had expected anger, but when he knelt before the golden-furred elder in his tapestry-hung chamber the Seer said only, “Our Destiny is in your claws, young Kerr’tok.”

“But Golden One, what should I do? Should I kill the Strange One?”

“Could you?”

“I...I don’t know. It is horrible...but it is hurt. I would rather heal it. But if it endangers the People...”

“There is always danger.” The Seer paused. “You ask what you should do. I tell you, do what you think best.” He slipped down from his stool and padded across the chamber to a table set against one wall, littered with parchments and writing-sticks and an assortment of colourful crystals. The Seer selected a bright green crystal, then pressed it to his forehead and closed his eyes. He held it there for a long moment, then sighed deeply, opened his eyes, and held out the crystal to Kerr’tok. “Return to the Strange One and give him this. Beyond that, you must decide.”

Trembling, Kerr’tok had returned to the chamber where he had dragged the Strange One. The Seer had said the Destiny of the People rested in his claws, yet had given him no guidance, only a strange command. He considered going to his Secondfather; but his Secondfather would surely kill the Strange One. He could not let that happen until he had done as the Seer asked, however little he understood it.

He fervently wished he had stayed home that morning. Was a breath of surface air worth this?

Now he faced the terrifying Strange One. Its strange five-fingered hands were spread in a gesture Kerr’tok hoped was peaceful.

He reached out and put the crystal in one of them.

Ian instinctively closed his hand on the green crystal, then cried out and tried to drop it as it blazed with light—but his fingers wouldn’t unclench.

Brighter and brighter it glowed, stabbing into his brain. His vision blurred and his head reeled, and for a moment he sensed a third person in the chamber, had an impression of age and immense wisdom—and then the crystal went dark and everything was as it had been.

He dropped the crystal as if it had burned him, and the alien snatched it out of the air with cat-like reflexes. “What happened?” Ian gasped, and the alien jumped back, fur bristling.

“You spoke!” it said.

Ian gaped. “I can understand you!” Then he clamped his mouth shut as he realized his words were not coming out in Unilingua, but in a vowel-heavy, moaning tongue.

“The Golden Seer has given you our language,” the alien whispered.

“The Golden Seer?”

“The Old One...” Suddenly the alien straightened. “I am Kerr’tok. Our meeting brings warmth.”

“Uh—I’m Ian Thorne.” His own name sounded strange in his hears. A thousand questions danced in his mind, but one overrode the others. “Where am I?”

“This is the Dead Passage of the Northwest Tunnel. I brought you here after finding you in the Mouth.”

That meant nothing. “When?”

The alien closed his eyes for a moment. “The sun is now at zenith. I found you as it rose.”

Ian struggled to his feet, wincing at the pain in his ankle. “Do you know where our base is? Can you lead me there? My people will want to meet you...” A considerable understatement. “And they’ll be worried about me.” Possibly an overstatement, at least in the case of his father.

Kerr’tok sprang back toward the door. “I will not let you destroy us!”

Ian stared. “Destroy you? We want to talk to you, learn about you, teach you about—”

“It is all the same! You would take us from the Path—the Seers have said!” His voice became a deep growl. “I will kill you if you try to leave!”

“You can’t keep me prisoner! Let me go, or—”

“Or what, Strange One?”

Ian tensed, but the alien’s gleaming fangs and claws made him hesitate. He was bigger and stronger, but also partially crippled and without those formidable natural weapons.

But what was Kerr’tok afraid of? “Why didn’t you just kill me when you found me helpless?” he demanded. “Why bring me inside?”

Kerr’tok didn’t relax. “I thought you were dead. I dragged you out of the Mouth so your people would not find you and perhaps stumble on us.”

“But when you found out I was alive...” Ian took two limping steps toward him. “You didn’t kill me because you don’t kill if you can help it. You’re peaceful.”

“Come no closer!” Kerr’tok snarled.

Ian paused. “We’re peaceful, too. We’re no danger to you. I’m no danger to you. Let me go.”

“I cannot! Golden Seer said I carry the Destiny of the People! If I let you return to your people, they will come here. They will find the hidden entrances, and the Path will be lost to us!”

Ian knew there was truth to what Kerr’tok said. Other non-technological sentients had lost their own cultures in the overwhelming galactic one, had been reduced to second-class members of a society they had not helped build and had no place in. He could imagine their anger and resentment—heck, he didn’t have to imagine it; he had felt it himself when his father had taken him from his culture, Newhope, the only home he had ever known. He had struck back by disobeying his father and leaving the base—and had almost killed himself in the process.

Swallowing hard, he looked into Kerr’tok’s blazing eyes. “I won’t try to escape. I doubt I could, with this ankle.” He lowered himself carefully to the floor, both to take the weight off his aching leg and to appear less threatening. “Tell me about your people. Maybe if I understood this Path of yours...”

Kerr’tok’s ears perked, and his claws slipped back into their sheaths. “If you will tell me about yours! Though your Path is not ours, I admit I am curious about you Strange Ones.” He slipped the pouch from his shoulder. “I have brought food and water for you...”

Ian grinned and gestured at the rock beside him. “Sit anywhere.”

When Kerr’tok left the Strange One late in the afternoon his head whirled with all he had heard. Cities on a hundred planets, ships that sailed the stars, machines that thought...

The Tunnel seemed even more confining than before. This whole planet is a prison, he thought. And we’ll never be free of it if the Seers have their way.

He stopped as though struck, frightened by his thoughts. The Seers were the guardians of the People. He had never before questioned their wisdom...had he already been led from the Path by the Strange One, in so short a time?

But isn’t their way of life better than ours? something inside him argued stubbornly. What great Destiny could the People have except to dwindle away to nothing, a pale, fading remnant of a once-great civilization?

He came out of the Dead Passage into the Suncave. A green forest filled its vast expanse, lit and warmed by a giant, sun-bright glowbulb at the cavern’s apex. Feathered flitters, blue and gold and red, mingled with yellow-furred furry gliders in the space above the trees, their chirping and chittering echoing off the cavern walls. Here, and in the other Suncaves, was all that remained of the once-teeming life of the surface, preserved by the Old Ones when they fled the encroaching ice.

Isn’t that all we are doing? Preserving a dead way of life? Isn’t it time we tried something new? What Destiny can possibly await us here except extinction?

He shook himself and followed a winding footpath down to the stream that meandered through the Suncave. He stretched out on its lush green bank and closed his eyes. He knew his family, especially his Secondfather, would be wondering where he was, but he couldn’t return to them while such troubled thoughts filled his mind.

Music began in the distance, the rich harmonies of the Sunset Song drifting into the Suncave from the Passage of Ritual, marking the setting of the sun on the surface above and the slow dimming of the sunbulb. Kerr’tok heard the somber words as though for the first time:

Beyond the mountains clad in ice

The sun in blood goes down.

The Dark of Death engulfs the land,

The Shadowlord puts out his hand,

And taking life as his due price

Puts on his starry crown.

But we who wander here below,

Trapped in these caves of stone,

Remember sunsets long gone by,

And though black shadow fills the sky

Our lives give night a golden glow

As though the sun still shone.

Through night and deadly day, storm-blown,

We hear the future call.

We tread the Path the Old Ones trace,

Heads high, unbowed, a still-proud race,

Our Destiny, our goal, unknown,

But worthy of us all.

Kerr’tok opened his eyes and blinked at the sunbulb, no longer quite so bright, and taking on an orangey tint. No one knew their Destiny. No one knew the end of their Path. That meant it wasn’t written in stone; it could be changed.

By him.

The Strange Ones could give us the Galaxy, and I want it, Kerr’tok thought. But to have it I must surrender my people, too. What then of our struggle to survive and grow? It would mock our ancestors’ courage.

He got to his feet and climbed the slope back to the Dead Passage, his mind suddenly made up. Ian’thorne must not be allowed to betray them.

Ian saw the approaching glow of Kerr’tok’s glowbulb and thought, Well, I’m ready for him.

After Kerr’tok had left, he had thought long and hard about what the alien had told him about his race’s tragic and proud history. All of that effort and sacrifice would be meaningless if the People were swallowed up in the greater galactic culture: their way of life would be relegated to a footnote in some dry textbook about extinct primitive civilizations.

Ian knew the People’s Seers had real power—his ability to speak the People’s language was proof of that. If they said contact between humans and the People would destroy the People, they were probably right. It had certainly destroyed other cultures.

Ian knew one other thing, something his father had told him: Aleutia, the planet of the People, was beginning to warm. The millennium-old ice age that gripped it had already eased. Within a few decades, the land above these caverns would be free of ice. The People could emerge and reclaim their planet...if it still belonged to them.

And so Ian had come to a decision. Both frightened and exhilarated, he watched Kerr’tok enter. “I have thought on our words,” Kerr’tok said. “And I have decided—”

“I’ve thought about it, too,” Ian interrupted, “and I’ve decided I can’t go back.” He took a deep breath. “I want to stay with the People.”

Kerr’tok stared at him, fanged mouth gaping, and Ian laughed. “I hope that stunned look means you approve.”

“It is a gift beyond hope,” Kerr’tok breathed. He held out his clawed hand. “Come. I will take you to the Golden Seer, and then present you to my Secondfather, who rules this Tunnel.”

“I would be honoured,” Ian said. As he let Kerr’tok pull him to his feet he marvelled at how little emotion he felt. He had just written off his old life with a few simple words—and felt no regret. No doubt his father would grieve, or pretend to, for a few days. After that, Ian thought, he’ll probably be relieved to be free of me.

He limped after Kerr’tok along the Dead Passage, anxious to see the fantastic underground civilization Kerr’tok had described, anxious to tell the Seer what he knew of the planet’s future. Light glimmered faintly ahead. The Suncave! he thought with excitement, but Kerr’tok stopped suddenly and gripped Ian’s arm so hard his claws pierced the warmsuit. “Hey—” Ian pulled away from him. “What’s wrong?”

“Do you not smell it?” Kerr’tok hissed.

Ian smelled nothing but Kerr’tok. “Smell what?”

The light ahead grew stronger. “My people come!”

“So?”

Kerr’tok turned wide eyes toward him. His nostrils were flared and his breath came in short, rapid gasps. “They are in hunting heat—and the only prey in this passage is you, Ian’thorne!”

Ian didn’t understand; but before he could respond a band of the People appeared down the tunnel—like Kerr’tok, but as large as Ian. They saw him and surged forward with a moaning howl that stirred the hairs on the back of Ian’s neck.

“Stop, Secondfather!” Kerr’tok cried, thrusting Ian behind him and holding his glowbulb high. “There is no prey here!”

The lead alien slowed to a catlike prowl. “The Strange One is our prey,” he growled. “Stand aside, second-son. Did you think we would not smell him? He is a threat. He must die!”

The aliens behind him howled their approval, and Ian’s heart pounded in his chest.

“No!” Kerr’tok’s scream was piercing and defiant. “The Golden Seer knows of the Strange One. He does not want him killed!”

“The Golden One advises, but I rule.” The leader’s tail lashed the air. “The Strange One must die and his body be found by the others, before we are uncovered in their search for him. Even now one of their crawling machines approaches the Mouth!”

Kerr’tok whirled to face Ian. “How?”

He paled. “The beeper must be getting through,” he whispered. “The storm must have died. I couldn’t turn it off...”

“Let us by, second-son!”

“No!” Kerr’tok howled again. Keeping himself between his elders and Ian, and not looking around, he asked, “What will make them go away?”

“They must find me, and the beeper.”

“Dead?”

“No...” Ian stared at Kerr’tok’s stiff back.

“You said you would stay rather than reveal us to your people, Ian’thorne. Would you protect us another way?”

Ian realized what was being offered. “Yes! If they find me with the beeper—they’ll look no farther. We’ll be gone for good in sixty days, and my father says there’s nothing here to draw colonists...you’ll be safe!”

“Then go!” Kerr’tok tossed his glowbulb back over his head and Ian caught it automatically. The alien kept his gaze on the now strangely silent mob. “To the very end of the passage. You will find the door back into the Mouth. Quickly!”

“But the others—”

“I will not let them pass,” Kerr’tok said. “They cannot remove me without violence, and that is forbidden against another of the People.” He raised his voice. “Or will you depart the Path to keep others on it, Secondfather?”

The older alien glared at him, ears twitching.

“Go, Ian’thorne,” Kerr’tok repeated gently, finally looking back at him. “If I could, I would come see your marvels. But my people...”

Ian swallowed. “May warmth be yours, Kerr’tok.” Then he turned and limped away as fast as he could, trying to ignore the pain in his ankle.

Behind him the mob howled, and again he heard Kerr’tok’s piercing shriek of defiance, but he dared not look back. He ducked into the chamber where he had awakened and retrieved the beeper and his other gear, then limped on down the tunnel.

Only a few yards further along was another, smaller chamber. A simple system of ropes and pulleys connected to a sliding stone door. He hauled it up, then released the rope and dove through before the slab could descend again.

When he pulled up his hood his headphones were free of static, and outside the wind no longer howled. Above the sound of the beeper he heard a human voice. For a moment the words were unintelligible, then his brain switched gears and he recognized the Unilingua phrases. “Crawler Two calling Ian Thorne. Ian, can you hear us? Crawler Two calling—”

“Crawler Two, this is Ian. Come in!”

“Ian! You’re alive!”

“Yes! Where are you?”

“Practically on top of your beeper, it sounds like. Where are you?” Ian explained briefly, and heard someone shout in the background. “We see it! We’ll have you in five minutes.”

“Is my father with you?”

Silence, for a moment. “Uh...he’s back at base, Ian. He, uh, said he didn’t see what use he’d be on a rescue mission.”

Good old Dad, Ian thought bitterly.

“Hang in there, kid. You’ll be home before you know it.”

Home? Ian looked at the closed doorway behind him, and thought of the People. He would have been proud to be one of them...but could he really have joined them without destroying them in the process? His very presence had disturbed their civilization; led them from the Path, they would have said. If he had told them of their planet’s warmer future...for all he knew, it might have destroyed them.

The People had their Destiny; he wondered if it weren’t their unshakable purpose he had envied and wanted for his own life. “I guess I’ll have to find it for myself,” he murmured.

He only wished he could have met the Golden Seer...

Even as he thought that, another presence touched his mind, the wise old someone he had felt when the People’s language was given to him. Golden One?

He heard no words, but warmth and gratitude flowed from the bodiless presence—then suddenly he was alone again, and, he realized with a trace of sadness, without any knowledge of the alien tongue.

Their Destiny is still their own, he thought. Outside he heard the crawler, and he smiled. And so is mine.

Kerr’tok’s Secondfather finally pushed him out of the way. Ruffled but unhurt, he got back to his feet as the mob howled down the tunnel. He knew they would find nothing; he had felt the cold blast of air that meant Ian’thorne was safely gone.

He wondered what punishment he would face from his Secondfather. Severe, no doubt, but he would survive...as would their people. Ian’thorne would keep his word.

Briefly he thought of the shining civilization the Strange One had described, of the myriad worlds he would never see, the wonders he would never know.

But he pushed the thoughts away. Ian’thorne has his Destiny, and I and my people have mine, he thought.

For a moment felt the presence of the Golden Seer, warm with gratitude. “There’s a thing or two I’d like to ask you, Golden One,” he murmured, and turned toward the Suncave.