Consciousness returned in fits and starts, accompanied by a rhythmic, irritating, "plinking" sound—the repetitious dripping of water into some pool. Even before I opened my eyes, mineral aromas and stony echoes told me that I must be underground, lying on some cold, gritty floor.
Spikes of yellow light stabbed when I cracked my eyelids, but I tried not to move or make a sound as blurry outlines gradually formed into steady images—a stretch of rocky wall; a smoldering torch set in an iron cresset; stacks of wooden crates covered with frayed tarps; a rough wooden table, where lay a platter, stacked with raw meat steaks. A glass tankard frothed with some kind of brownish ale.
A pair of pale, squinting eyes peered over the tankard's rim as it raised to meet a broad face, nearly covered by a riot of dark fur.
The meniscus level of ale dropped swiftly, accompanied by slurping gulps as the tankard swung horizontal, draining down that hairy gullet. With a deep, satisfied sigh, the furry drinker licked the goblet's rim with a prodigious tongue. Where Earl Dragonlord had possessed canine uppers even pointier than a Demmy's, this fellow had huge, heavy lower tusks, jutting up to graze his shaggy cheeks.
The flagon slammed down and he started toward the pile of steaks, salivating prodigiously . . . then he stopped, sniffing the air. A matched pair of splendidly huge eyebrows arched as he turned toward me, grinning impressively.
"Snarsh glimp? Naggle scraggle. Yowzuh nowzuh, whutchuh-briggle. . . ."
My captor must not have come into contact with the translator-converter. Or else the device was knocked out during the ambush. No matter. I never believed in that method of dealing with language differences, anyway. "When in Rome . . ." begins an old human expression that's good advice for any traveler.
I tongued one of my molars, turning on the interpreter nanos in my own ear canal.
"Grimble gramble gnash . . . so-o-o it's no-o-o yoosh pretending-g-g," rumbled the deep, slurred voice, which grew steadily easier to understand. "I ken when a man's scannin' me, though 'is gaze be narrow as a nomort's charity."
I opened my eyes fully and sat up on one elbow, wincing just a little from sharp twinges.
"I suppose I'm your prisoner," I said, subvocalizing first in my own language, then relaxing to let my laryngeal nanos fashion the equivalent in local dialect.
The hirsute fellow replied with what I took to be a shrug, using shoulders the size of hamhocks. When he next opened his mouth, what emerged was a hearty, majestic belch.
I made certain to look impressed.
"Hmm. Well said. I take it you are what they call a lican."
If he winced at my use of the term, it was hidden by the mat of hair covering all but his nose and eyes.
"This week I seek no relief, 'xcept to be what I be, and am what I am. You should see me elsetimes. Handsome bugger, or so says my mirror. An' what about you? What's your fate? To eat, or be ate?"
A queer question. It made me glance, against my better wishes, at the stack of bloody cutlets on his plate.
"My name is Dr. Alvin Montessori. And I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Someone recently told me that I looked like a . . . a standard."
My host grunted expressively. "So does a corpambulist, when he's new an' not too smelly. So's a nomort, in daylight. Heck-o, you should see me most days. Smooth as a baby an' don't say maybe!" He guffawed heartily, a friendly sound that would have cheered me, were not beads of saliva running down his yellow tusks and pooling on his lower lip before they spilled onto the tabletop.
Questions had been swirling in my head ever since we met Earl Dragonlord, about the social class structure on this world. I had a feeling I wasn't going to like the answers.
"Let's say I am a standard. Does that automatically mean I'm slated for somebody's dinner table?"
My host sniggered, as if amused by my ignorance.
"In some measure that's up to the standard hisself."
"And I suppose licans and corpsic—"
"Corpambulists," he corrected. "Though they prefer bein' called Zoomz. T'is easier to pronounce, especially in their condition."
"Zooms?" I'm afraid I rolled my eyes. "Then licans and zooms are devourers of—"
"Hey. Don't pin the whole rap on us! There's nomorts, too, y'know."
Nomorts . . . such as Earl Dragonlord. The native I last saw guiding my captain and crewmates toward his home. His lair.
I felt a chill that had little to do with the dank, underground cold. Turning toward the torch, I squinted so that its light pierced between my eyelids in sharp, diffracting rays. My nose began to tickle.
"So," I asked. "What must a standard do in order to keep from being someone's dinner?"
The furry humanoid grinned, his tusks gleaming. "You mean you really don't know? Then as we suspected—"
The tickling light beams struck a nerve at last. I gasped . . . then bellowed a ferocious sneeze.
The abrupt noise sent my captor toppling backward, off his chair. If my intent had been to jump him, that would have been the time. But I only took the occasion to gather myself up to one knee, pulling in my collar tab.
A fleecy, dark mane reappeared in view, rising above the table, followed by peering eyes.
"Wha . . . what was that?"
"Just a sneeze. It's freezing down here, don't you think? Doesn't a solitary captive like me deserve a blanket, after being attacked on the darkened streets of your urb district, knocked out, and dragged underground, away from my friends?"
"That was a sneeze? It sounded like a cross 'tween a hellion howl and a razortooth's roar." He blinked some more. "I thought you said you was a standard."
I divided my attention, as another voice buzzed in my ears.
"Advisor Montessori, this is Commander Talon, on the bridge of the Clever Gamble. Thank Avery you're all right! I assume from your phrasing that you're alone underground, under some type of coercion, and out of contact with the captain. Is that correct?"
I shivered to reinforce the impression that I must keep my hand on my collar. Facing the lican, I spoke sharply, as if to answer his question.
"I never said I was a member of the planetwide social class that's apparently preyed upon by three other sub-races of humanoids . . . those three groups being called the corpambulists, whom I've never seen; and the elegant nomorts, one of whom I last saw guiding my comrades toward castlelike structures on a hill west of the park, presumably into a trap; or licans like you my captor, who seem to grow abundant lower bicuspids and facial fur during certain times of the month, and relish beer with their raw meat."
The lican stared at me, rising the rest of the way. "Uh, why are you talkin' like that?"
"How should I talk to a fellow who has taken away my belt pouch and all my tools, and now holds me captive in a subterranean chamber, a little over two meters in height and roughly three meters long by four wide, with a tunnel exiting along the long axis? There you are, standing about a meter and a half tall, though a bit crouched, on the other side of a table piled high with raw steaks, and you have the nerve to ask—"
"We're homing in on your signal now, Advisor. I don't think we can read the kind of detail you're giving us. Not through solid rock. But the room dimensions should help us track you down."
"—have the nerve to ask why I'm talking like this? You really don't know why I'm talking like this?"
The lican shook his head vigorously, eyes betraying growing worry. "Look, Doc, maybe we got off to a bad start. My name's Lorg, by the way. He hurried over to a pile of tarps in the corner. "Here, let me get you that blanket—"
"Got it!" The voice of the ship's exec cut in. "Hold on, Advisor, we've found your locus, in a cavity underneath one of their streets. I'm warming up the blasters right now. Just give us a few seconds. We'll rip away thirty meters of rock and have you outta there in a jif—"
"No!" I cried out, leaping to my feet so fast that I lost contact with the throat mike. Lorg jumped back in dismay, yelping like a puppy with its tail caught in a door.
I pressed my uniform collar once more. "Don't you dare!" I reiterated. My heartbeat raced, knowing how quickly Demmies can work when they think they're coming to the rescue of a friend. Any moment now, the planetary crust over my head might start boiling into the atmosphere, surgically peeled in molten sheets by a terrawatt laser.
"Just . . . just hold it right there," I added, in a lower tone. "Hold it and stay calm."
Lorg stared at me, clutching the blanket in front of him, his jaw quivering, tusks and all.
"I'm calm. I'm calm!"
Commander Talon also replied—"Roger, Doctor Montessori. Understood. Standing by."
I tried to think. So far I'd been improvising . . . a technique which isn't taught much here at Earth's Advisor Academy, since that skill is usually left to Demmies. (It is their strongest trait.) But sometimes a human has to do the Demmiest things. At this point I had my captor intimidated, but I knew that would give way when he realized my loud bark wasn't backed up with bite.
I took an assertive step towards him. "Where are we now? In the sub-urb?"
Lorg nodded. "Under my own place. You were closest to the manhole, so I grabbed you before the renks grabbed ever'body else."
This confused me. "You mean the captai—my friends aren't here too?"
"Naw. The renks laid a trap for 'em. Me an' my friends were lucky to get you."
"Renks? Who are they? Are they nomorts?" My suspicions of Earl Dragonlord flared. Had he led our party into an ambush?
But that didn't make sense! We had been following Earl toward the hill of castles he called home. Why should he abduct victims who were already heading into his lair?
"Renks is a kind of zoomz," Lorg said, with a shiver and a shake of his head. "They swarmed over y'all. We hardly had time to—"
"Shut up, Lorg!"
A new, harsh voice cut in, making us both startle and turn. At the entrance to the underground chamber, three more licans had appeared, even larger than my host. Foremost among the newcomers was a giant figure, bulging out of his makeshift, burlap clothes. Pale yellow fur stood on end with rage, and his curling tusks made Lorg look like a poster boy for Orthodontia Monthly.
"Besh!" Lorg cried out . "I was just—"
"Playing with your food, I know." The bigger lican sauntered in—if one can "saunter" with treelike arms that almost brush the floor. "How many times do I haveta tell you? If you talk to it, that only makes it harder to eat."
The other two licans leaned against the door and chortled, a sound vaguely like what an engine might say, after being fed a treat of corundum sand. Lorg turned red—in those few bare patches showing through his matted pelt.
"Uh, Besh, I don't think this's food at all. It . . . he ain't like any standard I ever seen."
"Nonsense! Look at him! X'cept for that funny nose, and those flattish eyes, and smooth fore'ead—"
What funny nose? I thought, a bit put out.
"Besides, what were renks doing out there? Hunting for partners in a game of spin the skull? They must want this meat pretty bad, risking a foray into our urb like that."
"Exactly!" Lorg said, gaining some feeling in his voice. "You ever see that happen before? Or for that matter, you ever see standards come strolling through the urb at night? With a moon full? I tell you, them renks wanted somethin' more'n just standard flesh."
Besh seemed torn between affront at Lorg's daring to talk back, and interest in the possibilities he'd raised.
"Not a regular standard, eh? Maybe something tastier?"
"Maybe something a whole lot more dangerous," I interjected, speaking with more steadiness than I felt inside.
Besh looked me over, and barked a savage laugh. He ambled toward me with an air of relish . . . and mustard and mayonnaise, I'd wager.
"I don't scare off easy, meat. I'm Besh, night-howler and hill-loper! Runner in the woods and bed-lover of all three moons! My yowl curdles milk in far counties. It shatters windows in the standards' armored high rises. Nomorts take a sunburn, before they face Besh. Little baldie, you dare try to out-bluff me?"
As he moved closer, flexing hands like the scoops at the end of a steam shovel, Lorg tugged at his sleeve.
"Watch out, Besh. He makes this noise."
I had been getting ready for a fight, relaxing into Judo stance . . . as if that would help much against four such demons. But Lorg's words gave me an idea. I pressed my collar again.
"Did that noise impress you, Lorg? Why, I wouldn't insult Besh with anything so puny."
This time the big lican stopped, clearly intrigued.
"Oh yeah?" he asked.
"Yeah! Besh calls himself night-howler? Why, I can out-bellow him anytime, anywhere. I can make clamor that'll rattle your gums and shake your teeth out of their sockets. I can make water rise up and stones fall from above. You want noise? I'll give you noise!"
Would Commander Talon understand what I wanted? By sonic induction, it should be easy enough to transmit vibrations directly into the bedrock all around this chamber—something loud and awe-inspiring. It would only be a matter of timing, triggering it to coincide with my surreptitious cue. Just the sort of improvised trick I had seen the captain pull, plenty of times.
I felt a moment's triumph from the facial expressions of Besh and the others. Clearly, bravado and bluster were components of lican character, part of how they sorted out their own pecking order. Now to back up my bravado with something that would turn them into jibbering converts, eager to help me any way they could.
"Right!" I took a step forward, brandishing a fist. "I'll make these rock walls tremble with such a din, you'll think the world is ending!"
The licans stared at me, wide-eyed and nervously expectant.
Seconds passed, measured by the slow plinking of condensation droplets, falling unhurriedly into a nearby puddle. With each "plunk" my heart sank. Where was Talon? Why didn't he answer, to confirm my request?
Besh blinked once. Twice. Scratching his shaggy, blond mane, he ran his tongue back and forth a few times between his tusks, making a thoughtful clicking.
He glanced at Lorg, who looked back at him and shrugged.
"Okay, I'll bite," Besh said, facing me once more. "What noise is it you were thinkin' of impressin' us with?"
"Yeah," Lorg added, a little eagerly. "Will it hurt?"
I pressed the collar mike against my throat, with desperate urgency.
"Hurt? Why . . . I can make a racket that will shiver these chambers and rattle your soul! A cacophony to show you I'm nobody's meat. It'll petrify your very bones, shrivel your guts, shake your teeth—"
"We heard that part already," Lorg complained, a little churlishly. I really was doing my best, under the circumstances.
"Enough!" Besh roared, setting off his own reverberations and sweeping the plate of cutlets off the table, crashing to the floor.
"Enough braggin'! Just do it, meat. Give it a shot."
He crossed his arms, waiting.
My mind whirled. What had gone wrong? Was it a problem with my microphone or nanos? Or had something gone amiss with the Clever Gamble, in orbit?
The eyes of the lican chieftain told me, I had but seconds left.
Improvise! Part of me insisted.
But I'm no Demmie! Another part replied. I'm a logical Earthman!
That thought cheered me, just a little. Enough to find some saliva in my dry mouth, to wet my lips.
I brought them together . . . and blew.
This isn't going to work, I thought, as I began a softshoe tap-shuffle, to my own whistling accompaniment.
I had never been so right in all my life.
The next time I awoke, it was under a vast canopy of stars, damp, bruised, and in pain. Still, I gasped foremost in surprise at still being alive. My last recollected image hadn't been all that promising.
After the ship didn't answer, and the licans called my bluff, what else could I do but wing it? Starting with the very first thing to come to mind. The "Colonel Bogie March" was followed by a brief rendition of "I Got Rhythm," which seguéd into a blues version of that ancient, venerated Earth melody, "Zippedee-doo-dah"—attended by every sound effect I could muster with hand in armpit.
Slack-jawed, the four licans had stared in astonishment while I moved on through a half-dozen of my best animal calls, then a syncopated chant of "The Ballad of Eskimo Nell"—in some faint hope they'd like the raunchy bits. Or else, perhaps, that sheer tedium would put them to sleep.
No such luck. The two silent licans had stared with glazed expressions. And while Lorg seemed willing to give me points for effort, the giant leader simply glared..
At last, Besh told Lorg—"I guess you're right, after all. This meat's no good. I'll help you throw it out."
With that, four huge creatures—each about the size and density of a Harley space scooter—buried me under a blurry avalanche of hair and burlap.
In fact, I must have made a good account of myself during the brief fight, since it lasted longer and was even more painful than I expected. Finally, as the world spun and I blacked out, the last words I heard were—"Let's' toss him to the zoomz, if they want him so bad."
Pondering about later, as consciousness returned, I didn't much like the sound of those words, even in recollection. At the moment, though, I had other worries as I lay in the dark, sprawled on my back on a cold, hard surface.
No bones seemed broken, but I hurt all over. Stars could be seen overhead—occulted by the outlines of clouds and tree branches. It was damn cold. And worse yet, my uniform was torn!
That was bad. Circuitry woven into the fibers was essential to communicating with my crewmates, in orbit. Wincing at the effort, I pressed my collar tab anyway, and tried to transmit. My voice warbled and scritched like something made of tin.
"This is Ship's Advisor Montessori, calling . . . calling Clever Gamble. Come in, Clever Gamble. Do you read?"
No answer. The nanos in my ears remained silent—though I couldn't rule out the possibility that Besh and his boys had knocked them loose, along with half my fillings.
Maybe it would help if I sat up and smoothed some of the kinks out of my abused shirt. I pushed up to my elbows, and for the first time got a glimpse of my surroundings. My call to the ship trailed off as I made out rows of grayish white forms, mostly rectangular, arrayed in rows that vanished into the gloom in all directions. Some of the slabs stood upright. Others tilted awkwardly or had toppled on the ground. I now lay upon one of the latter kind.
An overturned grave stone.
Frissons of panic climbed my gorge. It wasn't just your typical queasiness, mixed with surprise. When you've spent as much time with Demmies as I have, you can't help picking up their penchant for superstition. Right then, my cemetarian surroundings didn't make me any more appreciative of the direction life was heading.
Then I noticed something else that didn't help my sense of well-being. Among the tombstones I'd thought "toppled," several of those nearby seemed deliberately positioned on the ground, with metal fixtures along one side.
Hinges, I realized, unhappily, soon noting that the slab I lay upon came so equipped. Why would anyone put hinges on grave slabs?
As if that weren't bad enough, it was about then that a voice murmured out of the darkness behind my back.
"There, you see, Sully? He got up. I told you he must be dead. You owe me five."
Shivering, I turned to see two humanoids watching me. One leaned against a tall funerary monument, managing to look wryly dapper, despite missing an ear, an eye, and nearly half his scalp. The other one sat atop the same marble shrine, swinging her legs while regarding me with an amused expression on her waxy, overly made-up face. Above them both, a stone heroic figure—exaggeratedly masculine—stood frozen in the act of offering sage counsel, chiding with an outstretched finger.
Probably warning future generations never to stand still long enough to let birds roost on your head, I thought. Or so mused the part of me still capable of detached observation. Symptoms of incipient hysteria were evident. I had started not to give a damn.
"I don't think so, Moulder," the woman answered her companion with a wry smirk. She slid off her perch to land beside him, and pointed at me. "He smells much too fresh. Besides, ever see Besh and his bunch leave their meat in such good shape?"
"Moulder" winced and touched the missing side of his face.
"Well, maybe it wasn't Besh that left it here. Some of the other lican bands are still living by the Old Code. Or maybe the nomorts dumped him, after draining him."
The female shook her head as she sauntered toward me. Her gait was strange, at once both graceful and somehow impaired—as if she were a dancer, struggling to disguise a progressive neurological disease. Underneath that casual pose, I thought I caught an attitude of intense concentration. She dropped to one knee next to me and reached out toward my neck. I flinched, and her fingers stopped short, then withdrew. She tilted her head, looking at me from both sides... and I caught a pungent, sweet scent, like a ten-times normal dose of tangy perfume.
"He's not been sipped by nomorts, either. He's warm." She rocked back on her haunches. "And I sense a normal pulse."
"Ho, yes?" Moulder shambled closer, and I saw that one of his arms hung nearly useless at his side. He gave off a reek that made me to quail back, breathing only through my mouth.
"You're right, Sully," he muttered, crouching over me. "Lookit him pant like a scared puppy!" Moulder guffawed so hard that something came loose from his mouth, flying past my left ear. A tooth, I suspected unhappily. "So, you're still standard, eh? Still among the true-living? Well enjoy it! For a while."
I wasn't sure I liked the sound of that. It seemed time that I took matters in hand. But as I was about to speak, I heard something I liked even less. A rumbling vibration that seemed to come from below my mortifying platform. There was a scraping clatter, followed by a bang which jarred the stone from underneath.
Both Sully and Moulder stood up and stepped back. I quickly saw that the disturbance wasn't limited to this area. On all sides, tombstones that lay flush with the ground were being nudged, then rocked . . . and then flung back, swiveling over their hinges to strike the abused earth with loud thuds, revealing yawning black cavities below.
I stared as more and more opened, the lids pivoting and banging into dirt, raising small dust clouds, until the cemetery hills were pocked with rectangular holes like a carcass pecked-over by neat ravens.
The nearest grave lay silent for an agonizing eternity that for me lasted all too briefly. Then a hand emerged . . . or something that may once have deserved the name.
While I stared, transfixed, the stone beneath me rocked once more, this time insistently.
"Well, bloodywarm?" Moulder sneered. "Gonna get out of the way? Or d'you want to join us the fast way?"
I turned to see that he and Sully had retaken their perches, climbing up the pedestal of the monument, more than two meters above the ground.
More hands were emerging from graves on all sides, followed by vague shapes that made me deeply grateful for the dark. The tombstone that I sat on received a bang that lifted one side several centimeters before slamming back down.
I suddenly found the will to move my arms and legs, scrambling to my feet and running past gaping crypts whose residents now emerged like implacable wraiths. Desperately, I dodged around crumbly, foul-smelling pits, evading clawlike hands that reached for me—whether in aggression or supplication I didn't tarry to find out. I leaped for the pedestal and managed to get my arms over the stone lip, near the cold base of the statue. I was trying to swing my legs up when something brushed my left foot. I tried shaking it off, but a bony grip clamped down on my boot and began dragging me backward!
I seem to recall a sound leaving my throat. I would not be ashamed if anyone called it a whimper.
Suddenly, two pairs of chill hands seized my arms and yanked me upward. I felt a snap below, and soon thereafter found myself on my feet atop the pedestal, standing next to the statue itself, just under the benevolent arm of the sculpted eminence.
"Thank you," I gasped, between hasty breaths.
This time, Moulder spilled no parts when he laughed. "Think nothing of it. That's why the tribe has recents, like us, check out the surface before an advent. Older corpies don't like surprises. Makes 'em grumpy." He nodded downward, and I got an all-too good look at the entity who had tried to seize me, seconds before.
A zombie, I thought, subvocalizing a word that I'd been avoiding for some time. Shreds of former clothing still draped the cadaverous form, grinning liplessly as it cast about, left and right, searching for something it had lost. It never occurred to the wretched thing—thank God—to look up.
"S'cuse me," Moulder said, in an amused voice. "I think you've got something our cousin wants back."
As he crouched by my side, I looked down and must have yelped. The woman, Sully, steadied me as Moulder wrestled loose a severed hand that still clamped ahold of my service boot. With a grunting effort, he loosened its grip, holding it warily by the wrist as it slowly writhed, opening and closing clumsily.
"Hey, cuz! Here ya go. Wear it in health!"
He tossed the disembodied appendage down so that it struck the zombie in the chest. After a moment or two, the pathetic, horrible thing bent over to recover the member, fumbling and finally managing to re-attach the hand in some way. Backwards, I realized when it clenched. The poor creature didn't seem to notice.
"Flshsh-shfleppp-ph-ph gr-gr-flph-ph-f," it slobbered through a rictus grin . . . and I swear, the slavering sound seemed almost musical, in a strange, chilling way. I wouldn't have expected my nanos to make sense of the noise, but the translator in my left ear offered a best-guess interpretation—
"Why thank you, kids, for finding what I had misplaced! How nice to see that courtesy is still extant among today's youth."
It was only a rough rendering. The original statement might have been bitterly sarcastic for all I knew.
Still, I muttered, "You're welcome," almost involuntarily, as the corpambulist shuffled off to join a horde of risen forms, now shambling in unison through the gloom.
"Have a nice evening stroll," I added.
The woman, Sully, let go of my arm and stared at me. I turned, and abruptly realized something I'd been too tense no notice before—that she was, without a doubt, the loveliest dead person who ever saved my life. To her surprised regard, I could only I shrug and repeat what my own instructors used to teach, at the academy, as good advice for any occasion.
"Well after all," I told the beautiful zombie. "It never hurts a body to be polite."
Sully and Moulder led me to a mausoleum at the far end of the cemetery, where tombs apparently pre-dated the present era of decline in both population and wealth. Lavish marble masonry faced the vaults and sepulchers, adorned with kneeling statuary figures in prayerful poses. On Earth, such postures usually illustrated earnest supplication for an afterlife. But I tried to shuck aside any preconceptions. Clearly, to the denizens of 1265 Oxytocin 41-C, "death" was just another phase in a rather complex cycle.
The crypt possessed an arching roof, like an ancient Greek tholos, under which we sheltered from some intermittent drizzling rain. Beyond a bank of low trees, I could make out lighted skyscrapers, less than a kilometer away. I might have been tempted to call them beacons of refuge, but right now I was in no hurry to test the nighttime reactions of trigger-happy guards, protecting the "standard" populace . . . standards who were sure to be utterly paranoid, if they had any sense at all.
In the opposite direction, away from the city lights, a gap in the clouds let moonlight spill across a hilly glade, where milled throngs of limping, staggering forms. A distant lowing floated from that place—a creepy, moaning din that sent chills coursing down what remained of my aptly-named nervous system.
I tried ignoring the zombie sounds, as my rescuers, Sully and Moulder, asked questions and I did my best to answer. Still, my thoughts were elsewhere. What I really wanted, desperately, was to restore contact with Clever Gamble! Whatever my plight, the well being of my ship and crewmates came first.
Fortunately, the cool weather was reason enough to press my collar against my throat the entire time that I told Moulder and Sully about my predicament—the kidnapping of my comrades from the heart of the lican urb, and my subsequent encounter with Lorg and the gang of Besh. Perhaps my shirt was transmitting but not receiving. Anyway, it seemed worth a try.
"You were lucky to get away from Besh in one piece," Sully commented. "Either his bunch currently has a full larder, or you did something to put him off his feed."
"Mmm," I commented, remembering those last moments under the urb. My singing has affected people that way, on occasion. But I never before owed my survival to that fact.
"Anyway," Moulder added as he groomed Sully, much as I'd seen apes do in a zoo, picking through her glossy hair, seeking what I dared not dwell upon. "Anyway, I wouldn't worry about your friends anymore, if I was you."
"You wouldn't?"
"Naw. You'll probably be reunited soon."
"Really?"
"Sure, providing the licans left enough of them to animate, and didn't put the remains out in the sun. It's not nice, but Besh has been known to do that. Otherwise, they'll be along this way soon."
I winced at the image. Demmie zombies. It made me shiver.
"I'm pretty sure Besh never got his hands on my colleagues." And I explained the reaction of Lorg to my questions.
"He said what?" Sully sneered. "That zooms ambushed your group? Right in the middle of the urb? Oh, that's rich!"
"Why's that? Maybe it was some other, er, tribe of corpambulists. I think he used the term . . . renks?"
The two of them looked at each other and I knew I'd said something important. But they didn't comment.
"Look, If I could only ask your leaders—"
"That's just the point! Zooms have very little of anything you'd call leadership. Sometimes a group'll get an idea into their failing brains, and go shambling off in some direction to do one thing or other. Settle old scores they vaguely recall from when they were alive, for instance, or surround a house and bang on it to scare everybody inside half to death. And then there are brain-smorgs . . . those are hard to resist.
"But the very idea of doing something so . . . organized . . . as an ambush in lican country . . . ?" She shook her head, dismissing the idea as absurd.
"Well, what about you?" I asked, taking a chance. "You and Moulder are . . . well, recent is the word you used. You still have plenty of umm . . ."
I almost said life in you, but decided to use other phrasing.
". . . You seem just as bright and astute as anyone not saddled with your . . . uh, impairment."
"Why, what a sweet thing to say!" She smiled and turned to her friend. "Wasn't that sweet, Moulder?"
Moulder grunted and rolled his one eye in its socket. "Yeah, real sweet."
"But you really don't understand," Sully continued. "Recents like us have to stay out of the way, or the older corpsies will tear us apart. We smell too fresh, you see. They assign us tasks that take finesse, like dealing with strangers and such. But when it comes to mass action, zooms tend to follow those even further along than they are."
"Farther along?"
"You know," she said, and pretended to hold her nose, without actually touching it.
"Rule by the ripest," Moulder summarized.
"Oh, I see."
"Ripe makes might," Sully corrected. "Only the decayed may decree."
Moulder pondered. "Which means the really rank hath privileges."
"Uh huh. And victory goes to the spoiled."
"Then corruption empowers?" I interjected, on impulse.
They paused, then Sully replied with a grin. "Necrolutely."
"Rot on!" Moulder enthused. "Power to the putrid!" And for a second I feared he was about to offer me a high slap-handshake. But he settled for raising a clenched fist.
I relaxed, having already, that evening, learned a new meaning to the expression—"gimme five."
We sat in silence for a time, listening as the zombie "singing" on that far hillside coalesced, taking on a complex rhythm and eerie tonality I had never heard in all my travels.
I let go of the throat mike at last. It seemed futile, and anyway, my neck was getting raw. There had never been the slightest sign that anybody in orbit heard me. Something was terribly wrong, and I was going to need help ever to find out what happened to my crewmates in the slurry party, let alone the Clever Gamble herself.
I could feel my alertness start to fade away. It had, after all, been a damn rough day. (Or two? Or three?) The music of the dead had a somnolent effect, drawing me downward toward unconscious realms, whether I liked it or not. I had no will any longer to resist as a deep languor spread across my limbs.
"I have it!" Sully announced abruptly. By now she had traded places and was grooming Moulder, a process I chose not to watch too closely. Still I managed to turn and regard her eyes, which seemed to shine at me with genuine pleasure.
"Have what?" Moulder asked, clearly concerned and trying to squirm around to see what she had found in his scalp.
"I mean I've got an idea. I know where we can take our guest in the morning, if the weather's nice. We'll guide him to town and introduce him to Professor Ping!"
Moulder sat up suddenly. Too suddenly, leaving a patch of hairy scalp in Sully's hand, which she quickly hid from view.
"Of course!" he cried. "Ping is the thing. You'll see, stranger. He'll get you straightened out in no time.
"And if he doesn't, perish the thought," Moulder added with a leer. "Or if the guards or viggies or nomorts get you first . . . well, no harm in trying. You'll just wind up right back here in Necropolis, and we can show you how to fit right into the rot race."
I suppose I thanked them. I guess I must have made all the right, polite sounds. But I was so exhausted, I had no strength to ask any further questions.
Sometimes students, in your travels, there will come occasions when you simply have to hope for the best and put your fate in the hands of strangers.
I had never been in stranger hands than I was that night. Still the rule held. Anyway, what choice had I, except to trust my instinctive feeling that these two would protect me until dawn?
I drifted off, lying upwind of my two deceased friends under a marble mausoleum canopy.
As minutes elongated, the crooning from the hillside zombie-gathering seemed to come together with compelling urgency and a kind of unexpectedly weird beauty, blending into the equally unalive, yet animate, singing of the wind.
I recall at the time thinking vaguely about a certain radio station—one still using binaural, no-pix format—that I used to listen to as a boy. The net-jockies on that channel always bragged that they played only contemporary tunes, never classical, or oldies, or cro-rock, or warp zither. . . . Just the latest stuff.
"No music by dead guys." That was their motto.
But here I was, listening to a veritable song of the perished. A melody with spirit, with soul. And it was the very latest thing.
The rhythms were unique.
The harmonies were splendid.
Decomposers were sublime.
David Brin is the author of many novels and short stories.