The Great Hydration

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.