The Great Hydration Read online

  THE GREAT HYDRATION

  Barrington Bayley

  www.sfgateway.com

  Enter the SF Gateway …

  In the last years of the twentieth century (as Wells might have put it), Gollancz, Britain’s oldest and most distinguished science fiction imprint, created the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series. Dedicated to re-publishing the English language’s finest works of SF and Fantasy, most of which were languishing out of print at the time, they were – and remain – landmark lists, consummately fulfilling the original mission statement:

  ‘SF MASTERWORKS is a library of the greatest SF ever written, chosen with the help of today’s leading SF writers and editors. These books show that genuinely innovative SF is as exciting today as when it was first written.’

  Now, as we move inexorably into the twenty-first century, we are delighted to be widening our remit even more. The realities of commercial publishing are such that vast troves of classic SF & Fantasy are almost certainly destined never again to see print. Until very recently, this meant that anyone interested in reading any of these books would have been confined to scouring second-hand bookshops. The advent of digital publishing has changed that paradigm for ever.

  The technology now exists to enable us to make available, for the first time, the entire backlists of an incredibly wide range of classic and modern SF and fantasy authors. Our plan is, at its simplest, to use this technology to build on the success of the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series and to go even further.

  Welcome to the new home of Science Fiction & Fantasy. Welcome to the most comprehensive electronic library of classic SFF titles ever assembled.

  Welcome to the SF Gateway.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Gateway Introduction

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Website

  Also by Barrington J. Bayley

  About the Author

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  The desert rover laboured up the slope, sand falling from its long wheelspokes, until it gained the top of the big dune. There the driver disengaged the inner and outer wheels and jerked a lever which applied the brake. The vehicle came to an abrupt halt, its inner wheels continuing ineffectually to turn, still driven by the never-ceasing radium motor.

  The two Analane who had come so far gazed fascinated down the other side of the dune. A range of distant hills marked the limit of a level plain. In the foreground stood the numerous pavilions of the World Market, their bright colours glittering against the shining yellow sand.

  “Our journey is over. We have arrived.”

  Hrityu, the driver, turned to glance at his companion Kurwer. Both were typical of the tribe of the Analane: humanoid, lean, rubbery, skin a luminous blue in colour, purple crests dividing their smooth pates. Hrityu raised an arm as slender as the rest of him, and began to name the various pavilions which were scattered over two langs or more. In the midst of the complex was the huge Hydrorium, the refuge of the market masters, fronted by the gaudy Pavilion of Audience where they deigned to meet with visitors. Round about lay the Pavilion of Mining, the Pavilion of Vehicles, the Pavilion of Extravagances, and more—all places where bargains could be struck, and knowledge and techniques exchanged between races from anywhere across the globe.

  “And there is the one we want, Kurwer. The Pavilion of Warfare.” Hrityu veered his finger towards a structure that, unlike the brilliant hues of the other buildings, was made of a dull grey metal.

  “Let us hope we shall get what we want,” Kurwer murmured, overawed by the sight.

  “With what we have to offer, we should do a good deal.”

  He engaged the rover’s inner and outer wheels once more, releasing the brakes. They braced themselves as the machine lurched slithering down the dune’s collapsing slope. Soon they were on level ground and rolling towards the brilliant shapes ahead.

  Hrityu steered towards the concourse that ran through the middle of the market. Kurwer, who was on his first visit, gawped as the pavilions rose around them, and stared at the creatures of many tribes and races that they passed. Hrityu made immediately for the vehicle park, drove into it, founda space and stopped.

  They climbed out, and became aware of a chorus of soft humming noises. It came from the radium motors of the vehicles parked around them, which could not be switched off once they were assembled and to which the voice of their own vehicle’s motor was added.

  The park itself was indeed a wonderland, littered with carriages of various kinds from all over the planet. There were cars mounted on big rollers filled with air. There were walking carriages. There were vehicles running on treads and tracks, and leaping parachute vehicles which could traverse lava swamps by kicking themselves into the air and guiding themselves onto a firm spot from which to kick off again. There were crawling vehicles which flipped or screwed themselves through the sand, and boat-like, sharp-keeled vehicles which coursed hissing over the desert propelled by blasts of air.

  But at the entrance to the park was a curious sculpture of great antiquity, much corroded by sand abrasion. It resembled slightly one of the airjet sandboats, but its sides were taller. Vertical poles sprang from its superstructure, one of them broken short, and from these sprang fragments of what once had been billowing sheet-like shapes.

  The two Analane but glanced at it as they left the park. No one in the present-day world built such a craft, nor was there any need to.

  Instead they devoted their attention to the sights and scenes around them, for this was the one cosmopolitan spot upon the entire surface of the world. Most of those thronging the concourse were humanoid. There were giant Yongs, nearly twice the height of an Analane and a pale yellow in colour, with bright, slitted eyes. There were squat Grishis, whose orange-coloured bodies made them look like lumps of sandstone. There were Jodobrocks, Limes, and even a few coal-black Gamintes with red eyes and wiry, sparkling, silver hair.

  Also there were nonhumanoids of the sand-burrowing lizard family, distinguishable from one another by size and the patterns of colour on their corrugated hides, walking sinuously on their hind limbs and trailing thick tails which left wavy tracks in the sand. Hrityu even glimpsed a lone Sawune with its white, soft-looking skin, whose kind dug deep under the desert where it was very cold. The Sawune was clad in a long loose garment to ward off the day’s heat. Nearly blind, it wore shades over its eyes as protection from the sunlight.

  So many passed to and fro that they kicked up a continuous mist of fine sand. Kurwer cleared it from his membranes with a rasping, coughing noise.

  “This is like being in a sandstorm.”

  “You’ll have to get used to it,” Hrityu told him, wheezing a little himself. “It’s always like this.”

  “Well, let’s get inside as quickly as possible!” Kurwer looked about him at the accommodation houses that were interspersed between the pavilions. “Which lodging shall we go to?”

  Suddenly he stiffened. His hand went involuntarily to the flinger he carried at his waist-belt.

  “A Crome!”

  It was an effort for Hrityu not to go for his own flinger at sight of the enemy. He caught his breath.

  “Easy,” he warned. “Remember, there can be no violence here. The Market is neutral
territory. Any who break this rule cannot trade.”

  “But why is he here?” muttered Kurwer.

  The Crome had spotted them. He sauntered over, a humanoid fully a head taller than Hrityu and Kurwer. His shoulders were exaggeratedly broad, his torso slanting to a narrow waist. His bumpy, roughened skin was a deep, vivid green, making the black of his eyes all the more intimidating. Six neat crests, also black and barely a finger’s breadth in height, swept over his skull and gave a grooved appearance to the pate.

  Like Hrityu and Kurwer, and like most of the denizens of the desert planet, he was naked save for metal bangles on his arms and legs and belts and straps to which were hooked packs and pocket. His own flinger, a long-shafted Crome version, was slung across his shoulder. One arm hooked casually over the stock, he waggled the weapon provocatively as he approached with black eyes glinting.

  His expression was one of supercilious mirth as he looked the Analane up and down. When he spoke, his voice was sharp and piercing, with a florid accent.

  “What’s this? Blueskins! No need to ask why you are here. You know your doom is close, and you come crawling, hoping to find something to save yourselves with.”

  “Why are you here, if not for a similar purpose?” Hrityu retorted.

  The Crome affected surprise. He shifted his long flinger from one shoulder to the other, contriving to point the shaft at Kurwer and make it look as if he were about to discharge it at him. He laughed when they both flinched.

  “The Crome have no need of new weapons, though I shall keep an eye on you to see you do not obtain something inconvenient to us. By order of the Ephors of Crome, I come to notify the Market Master that we wish to exterminate the blueskins altogether when we launch our main attack upon them. I am sure they will have no objection. What importance the Tlixix is a band of mould-munchers?”

  Having delivered this insult to Analane eating habits—the Crome themselves lived on the pith of a spiny sandplant—the green humanoid strolled away, leaving Hrityu and Kurwer staring grimly at one another.

  “Can he be telling the truth?” rasped Kurwer, aghast.

  “You heard the way he just spoke of us. Blueskins, mould-munchers. I am sure the Crome are capable of it.”

  “But would the Tlixix give permission? To wipe out an entire race!”

  “It sounds incredible,” Hrityu admitted. “But above all the Tlixix like to preserve an outward appearance of authority. If it looks like the Crome will go ahead anyway … Yes, the Market Master may give his permission, simply so as not to be defied.”

  He gripped his flinger and his face set. “There is only one sure way out for us. We must make certain that we win the war!”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The entrance to the Pavilion of Warfare was in appearance a long grill, the gaps between whose teeth were automatic doors which shot up when touched, sliding smoothly back down again a few moments later. Having watched this mechanism operated by a lizard Grokog who disappeared inside the building, Hrityu tried it for himself. The two Analane slipped nimbly through and were faced with a vast interior.

  A cantilevered roof admitted light through transparent sections. Beneath it, the cavernous space was marked out into various stands accessed by aisles. A whispering, booming noise filled the air. It was a concert of talk, of devices being demonstrated, of objects being dragged across the floor. What struck the Analane most forcibly, however, was a peculiar quality and smell to the atmosphere, making them curl up their facial membranes, giving them a feeling of discomfort.

  It was moisture. There was moisture in the air.

  Not much, it was true. The humidity was evaporation from a podium some distance from the entrance. There, reposing in a bath-like couch, tented in transparent curtains, lay one of the Market Masters: a Tlixix, stalks and feelers waving and twitching, the telescoping segments of his shell gleaming with a bluish sheen.

  The Analane stared in awe as they timidly approached the podium. The Tlixix bore no resemblance either to lizard or humanoid: they had ruled the world long, long ago, before the Great Dehydration, when none of the desert species had existed.

  In those days, it was said, water had been everywhere, floating in the sky, falling from the air, lying on the ground in vast sheets as far as the eye could see. Such a hellish world was hard to envisage, but if it could be imagined, then the Tlixix was a fitting creature to live in it. Angled over the bath-couch were pipes ending in nozzles from which atomised sprays of water hissed over it. Fortunately little of the spray drifted through the folds of the curtains. Hrityu knew that such as did was mostly recovered at night, when it condensed against the cooling walls of the building. The Market Masters were careful hoarders of the corrosive, alien substance on which their lives, and theirs alone, depended.

  The bewhiskered, chitinous visage, whose eyes were no more than whitish scales, had a bleary look. Water sploshed in the bath-couch as the Tlixix leaned towards the arrivals, speaking in a voice that was hoarse and distant-sounding.

  “You come to buy and sell?”

  Momentarily Hrityu found that his voice had deserted him. He drew himself erect.

  “We Analane are engaged in a war with the Crome, who lately have begun destroying the beds of ground-fungus which is our food. We are here to barter for weapons with which to defend ourselves against a stronger enemy.”

  “Is the conflict permitted?”

  Hrityu hesitated. “The Market Masters were notified. No edict of denial has been issued.”

  “I shall check the truth of that. Meanwhile, go your way. When you have made a transaction, there is a fee to be paid. Should you wish to rent space in the pavilion to display wares of your own, the terms will be explained upon request. Do you understand all this?”

  “Yes.”

  The Tlixix twitched a feeler and turned away. He appeared to be luxuriating in the water in which he lolled and with which he was being sprayed, even though the weird environment was all he had known since being hatched.

  The Analane set off cautiously between the rows of stands, carefully inspecting everything around them. At nearly every stand a hawker boasted of the death-dealing devices that were on show there, irrespective of whether anyone was nearby to listen. On offer were flingers of various types and sizes, their innovation lying in the ingenuity of the flenchers they projected, or else in their range or speed. There was little of interest there, and Hrityu and Kurwer passed them by. They passed by, too, rolling war wagons to be hurled at an enemy spitting darts in all directions, multiple flingers trailing nets which would then contract, choking the life out of an enemy, and engines for raising such a wind that an enemy was faced with a lethal sandblast.

  They were in search of something invincible. The Crome had to be defeated without question. And with them they had brought the means to pay for it: one of the greatest inventions ever—as great a step forward, possibly, as the radium motor itself.

  Deeper into the pavilion stands were stocked with sample mercenary warriors, both humanoid and lizard. The Analane took no notice of these. Mercenaries could not be trusted, being liable to turn on their paymasters if they found themselves on the losing side.

  New methods of war lay at the far end of the pavilion, and this was what the Analane were pinning their hopes on. They gazed bewildered at a jumble of battle machines of all shapes and sizes, until a blue-skinned lizard a head taller than Hrityu accosted them.

  “You are here to buy?”

  Hrityu nodded. The lizard’s reply was a hiss. “Then witness our ferocious invention in action.”

  At his gesture his helpers set to pushing a large, heavy block of a dark material in place. Then there was aimed at it a weapon resembling some sort of giant flinger, but instead of a shaft there was what looked like a barrel or cylinder.

  Two lizards withdrew to safety. A third squatted behind the weapon, and pulled a lever.

  A radium motor had all the while been humming in the depths of the contraption. Now, with a rapid ratc
heting noise, the barrel of the weapon rotated, hurling an incredible stream of flenchers.

  The onslaught seemed endless. Before their eyes the target block was chewed to bits.

  “This machine is the product of much mechanical skill,” the lizard hissed smoothly. “It will annihilate a whole company of warriors. Consequently its price is high.”

  Stunned by the demonstration, Kurwer became excited. Hrityu, however, cautioned him to silence.

  They passed on, and were accosted by a sand-coloured Grishi who spoke to them gruffly. “Curiosity-seekers are not welcome among those who innovate and invent. Is what you can offer of comparable value to what you find here?”

  “What we have,” Kurwer snapped, “is so extraordinary that only dire necessity persuades us to part with it!”

  The Grishi inspected him, and then nodded slowly. “Perhaps you would care to see our own devastating contribution to the art of total warfare. It works by denying the enemy breathable air.”

  He turned and picked up a glass globe from a nearby table. It contained a mass of green crystals. “Sprayed onto a force of enemy warriors, this preparation instantly absorbs the life-giving element in the atmosphere, causing them to fall insensible. I am ready to prove its efficacy against a few prisoners we keep in the testing ground outside—if, that is, your own goods can be deemed of equal desirability.”

  From the adjoining stand a Grishi of a different tribe, his skin a somewhat darker orange, laughed. “My rival’s chemicals are interesting, but unreliable. They do not necessarily kill the enemy, who is apt to recover later. Here, now, I have a device of a definitely lethal description: a machine which casts a tough flexible canopy over the enemy. The canopy contracts, stifling its victims. As many as a hundred may be asphyxiated together.”

  He indicated a balled-up rubbery object in the midst of an arrangement of rods and loaded springs. “I, too, can apply it to some prisoners I keep ready, provided there is sufficient inducement.”