Fall of the Towers

chapter one And above the empty stage in the laboratory tower of the dead city of Telphar, the crystal sphere dimmed. The room was silent as it had been for sixty years. From the crystal the metal ribbon soared over the balcony, above wet ashes and puddled roadways. The sun had cleared the ragged horizon. Like the back of a sleeping serpent the dripping metal gleamed. Miles on, darkness paled before morning. In the lava fields among the ferns sat row behind row of barracks, cheerless as roosting macaws. The light rain had stopped. Water dribbled the supporting pylon. The ribbon made a black band on the fading night. From the jungle, six people approached the barracks. They were all over seven feet tall. They carried the bodies of two ordinary-sized men. Two behind the others hung back to converse. "What about the other one, Larta?" "Koshar? He won't get far." She pushed back her fur cape from her shoulder; the new sun struck the brass circlets banding her upper arm. "If he does," said the man, "he'll be the first to get through us in twelve years." "If he makes for the coast and out to Toron," Larta said. "If we don't get him, it means he's gone inland toward the radiation barrier." They passed under the shadow of the transit ribbon. The circlets-and her eyes-darkened. "Then we won't have to worry anyway, if he goes toward Telphar, eh, Ptorn?" The tall man's head was shaved. "I suppose I'm not really worried about the one escaping." Ptorn glanced at those passing into the sun. "But the increasing number of escape attempts over the last year . . ." Larta shrugged. "The orders for tetron have nearly doubled." As she left the shadow, the sun lit three parallel scars down the side of her face, under her jaw, and down her neck. Ptorn slid his right hand beneath his left arm. "I wonder what sort of leeches make their living off these miserable . . ." He didn't finish but nodded ahead. "The hydroponics growers, the aquarium manufacturers in Toron," Larta said. "They're the ones who call for the ore. Then, there's the preparation for the war." "They say," mused Ptorn, "that since the aquariums have taken over supplying fish to Toron, the fishermen on the coast have nowhere to sell and are being starved out. And with the increased demand for tetron, the prisoners are dying like flies here at the mines. Sometimes I wonder how they supply enough miners." "They don't." Now Larta called ahead, "All right. We'll leave the rest to the men"-there was the gentlest contempt in the word "men" that italics would be too strong to convey-"who guard them. We've done our part. Drop them there, in front of the cabin." The rain had made the yard mud. "Maybe that'll teach the others some sort of lesson." Two dull splashes. "Maybe," Ptorn said. But Larta had turned back toward the jungle, shadow from the trees brushing over her face, over the triple scar. Streaks of sun speared the yellow clouds and pried apart the billowing rifts. Shafts of yellow sank into the lusher forests of Toromon nearer the shore. The light dropped from wet green fronds, or caught in the moist cracks of the boulders. Then dawn snagged on the metal ribbon that lanced above the trees. Webs of shadow from the supporting pylons fell over a lava bed. A formation of airships flashed through a tear in the clouds like a handful of hurled silver chips. The buzz from their tetron motors descended through the trees. And Lug, who was four feet three inches tall, with a forehead as high as his thumb was wide, looked up from under his bony brow. The others around him, of the same height and rounded shoulders, grunted to one another. The worDelany, Samuel R. is the author of 'Fall of the Towers' with ISBN 9781400031320 and ISBN 140003132X.