The Great Hydration

They moved off, and as they did so a small slim humanoid, standing no taller than Hrityu’s shoulder, sidled up. Hrityu stopped. He had not seen the stranger’s like before. His skin was as black as a Gaminte’s, but was covered in fine corrugations that might have been tribal markings. Most striking was the absence of any head-crest: his bald pate aroused a measure of revulsion in the two Analane. Striking too were his eyes: milky pale, and wide as if in wonderment.

“Analane,” he said in a low, purring tone, “a Crome has boasted of your tribe’s impending destruction. One may deduce that in military terms your position is untenable.”

Hrityu replied stiffly. “That is supposition only.”

The other raised a placating hand. “No doubt the Crome are much given to bluster. I am of the Toureen. We live a long way from here, within the barriers of a fifty-lang-wide crater, and so are little known. But we are not without inventiveness. For two years I have waited in this pavilion to see if anything can match what we have to offer. You have something to barter?”

“Indeed.”

“May one enquire …?”

“We shall reveal our device when we see something we want in exchange.”

The Toureen paused before replying. “Strangely, that is also my policy.”

He gestured around him. “Nothing you may see here is comparable with what I can give you. Any who possess it will win supremacy in the field of battle … we appear to be at an impasse, unless we can at least describe our respective goods.”

“Even for that, mutual trust is necessary.”

“I am ready to risk mine.”

Hrityu looked down at the bald black pate of the Toureen. In his own tribe it signified emasculation, and he wondered how it could be possible to trust such a creature.

“Then you must speak first,” he said.

Beckoning, the Toureen drew him down the aisle and apart from any of the stands. He looked this way and that to ensure he was not overheard, and spoke quietly.

“Our weapon achieves total disintegration of whatever it is hurled against. It can burst huge rocks asunder. It could demolish this entire pavilion in the space of a single breath.”

“You make an extravagant claim,” Hrityu responded, trying to picture what the Toureen was saying.

“But a true one. The world has never before seen such sudden and violent force in the service of war. It can be compared to the eruption of a volcano.” He paused. “Now: tell me of your device.”

“Very well, but it is not a weapon,” Hrityu told him. “Our mechanics have discovered a means of long-range communication. We call it a radiator. It is able to transmit the spoken voice over great distances—we have tested it up to a hundred langs.”

Seeing the look of puzzlement on the Toureen’s face, he continued: “Its greatest value lies in its secrecy. Invisible radiations that can neither be seen nor heard carry the voice. It is made audible only by means of a receiving apparatus carried by the listener. Imagine, if you can, the uses this invention can be put to. Messages can be sent without a messenger, and what is more, received the instant they re dispatched.”

The Toureen was evidently having trouble understanding him. And indeed the radiator was so strange, so inexplicable, that Hrityu himself sometimes had difficulty believing it. “To send a voice a hundred langs with no one in between hearing it?” the black humanoid said in mystification. “That would be most remarkable …”

“We do not lie. Only dire necessity persuades us to divulge this secret, as you have deduced. If you are interested in obtaining it, then I wish to see this weapon of yours.”

The Toureen made up his mind. “Come with me.”

He took them out of the Pavilion of Warfare and past the adjacent compound where dejected prisoners waited as targets on which to demonstrate this weapon or that to prospective customers. At the rear of the compound, ochre Yongs fought with buff lizards, Yong blades clashing with lizard prongs. Hrityu guessed them to be rival groups of mercenaries competing for a commission.

Soon they were in the humming vehicle park. Their guide showed them to a low-slung, six-wheeled carriage, and invited them to board it. They reclined uneasily on cushions piled in the box-like passenger compartment, while the Toureen seized a steering lever and yanked on a hand-grip.

The vehicle rolled forward. Careless of who stood in his path, the Toureen negotiated the concourse with skill and soon they had left the World Market behind and were heading into the plain towards the hills.

For some time the vehicle rushed over the sand, their driver offering no hint as to their destination. Suddenly he made for a clump of rocks. Behind it was a depression that, until one came suddenly upon it, remained unseen. At its bottom a small camp had been set up with two more ebon Toureen squatting beneath an awning.