Footfall

Alice went back.

She didn’t like taking orders, and she didn’t like knowing that things were hidden from her. The goddam psychiatrists always had something they weren’t telling her.

There was a slot to house the hatch. Alice got her fingers into a crack and pushed, and the door moved back against springs, enough to let her through.

The air was terribly cold and still. She followed a short duct and found a grill.

Ten yards beyond was a peculiar surface, black and nearly smooth, but with undulations in it, like very dirty ice. With her face pressed to the grill Alice could see the curve of it, like the i

She studied it for a time. There was a bulge in the surface … like an unfinished raised relief painting… a frieze of one of the horrors. Dirty ice? Dawson had said… what? The horrors liked mud. It puzzled them that humans bathed in clean water. But frozen mud?

The grill was loose in her hands.

She pushed it aside and floated in.

It was frozen mud on one side, a ceiling of painted friezes on the other. The artwork was weird, alien, sometimes beautiful. Horrors — fithp — half hidden among weird trees; she recognized some from the Garden area. Here a good representation of one of the horrors faced a block covered with alien script. And sculpted into the opposing mudbank was a similar shape…

She’d freeze here. Alice backed into the duct, pulled the grill after her, and set it in place.

Alice didn’t like secrecy. She would have to learn more. She found an exit from the air shaft.

This part of the ship was strange, and she didn’t know how to get home. It was hard, stopping one of the horrors in the corridor She said, “Raztupisp-minz,” and followed it after it gave up trying to talk to her.

She was tired and she ached. The horrors on Earth had stopped her before she got around to collecting conveniences like cosmetics and liniment. Cleaning out air ducts was so much like flying! She hadn’t noticed how hard she was working. She wanted Ben Gay. She wanted to curl up and wait for the pain to go away.

“Alice wants to tell you something,” Melissa said.

Jeri stirred wearily. “How do you know?”

“She keeps looking at you. But she wants to see you alone. I know, Mom. I can tell. Alice is—”

“Yeah.” Interesting. Can you read her mind? Or are you guessing? Or what? Jeri floated lazily over to grip the wall beside Alice.

“How’d it go?”

Words bubbled out quickly. “Jeri, I found a peculiar place. Cold enough to freeze your ass off. Locked off. Black ice everywhere, or something like it. A long way from here.”

“Storage room? Anything stored there?”

“No, just ice, all along the one wall, the hull wall. Dawson said they like mud. Maybe it’s their idea of a big spa. Why would they freeze their spa?”

“Let’s ask Arvid.”

Alice looked afraid again.

“He won’t … he’s a good man, Alice.”

“Oh, all right …”

Rogachev frowned deeply. “Frozen solid?”

“I didn’t touch it. It must have been. It was cold.”

“No gravity. No spin, because we are mated to the foot. They ca

“That makes sense,” Jeri said.

“Yeah,” Alice agreed. “All right, explain this one. There was a shape in the mud, like a frieze — like one of those horrors under a blanket.

“How? As if it were lying on its side?”

“Yeah. Now, what was that?”

Wes Dawson was close enough to hear. “You’re sure of this?”

“Yes.”

“A frieze of a fi’?”

“I didn’t say it was a frieze! I said it was like that,” Alice said.

“Certainly.” Dawson made his voice soothing. He made no move to come closer to her. “Arvid, what do you think?”

“I do not know.”

“I think we should tell Raztupisp-minz.”

“We will consider that,” Arvid said. He turned to Dmitri. “You have heard?”

“Da.”

They spoke rapidly, in Russian.

Jeri took Arvid’s arm. “They learn languages quickly,” she said. “They say they don’t know any Russian.”

Arvid smiled. “If they have learned rapidly enough to comprehend the accented dialect we are now speaking, nothing will defeat them.” He turned back to the others. The liquid syllables continued. Finally Dmitri nodded. Arvid turned to the others. “Da. We will do it, then. Alice, you must tell your story to our masters.”

The mudroom was warm enough for comfort, and the mud was thawing, by the time Pretheeteh-damb arrived.

Raztupisp-minz had told him that the red-haired human was certified rogue. She could be hallucinating… The comfort that gave Pretheeteh-damb vanished as he entered. There in the ceiling was a frieze of Thowbinther-thuktun, a half-legendary priest of two eight-cubeds of years ago. Opposite Thowbinther-thuktun was an entirely similar bulge.

Some fi’ must have an odd sense of humor. He must have entered the mudroom after acceleration stopped; had shaped the mud into a ribald parody of the ancient discoverer of the Podo Thuktun. But Preetheeteh-damb was begi

This couldn’t have happened at a worse time. Within hours they would release the Foot. Then there would be violent maneuvers as they placed Thuktun Flishithy in position to send down the digit ships.

The Invasion of Winterhome was about to begin, and now this.

The warrior scraped away softened mud with the back of his bayonet, and Fathisteh-tulk began to take shape.

The Herdmaster waited impatiently for the call. Then Pretheetel-damb came onto the screen. There was activity behind him.

“Report.”

“It is indeed Fathisteh-tulk, Herdmaster. He was drowned. We find no breaks in the skin.” By now the corpse was free from the ice, visible in the screen. It rotated slowly for inspection by the octuple’s physician. “There’s a deep groove in Fathisteh-tulk trunk, above the nostril. It might have been made by a cord pulled very tight, but it wouldn’t have killed him. Mud caked in the fi’s mouth. It looks like a ritual execution. He was drowned.”

“Thank you.” Pastempeh-keph broke the co

“We approach the final moments, Herdmaster,” the Attackmaster said. “What shall we do?” Run away. Drop the Foot to slow the humans. Confine them to their planet while we take the rest of their solar system, which is more valuable than the planet anyway.

Fathisteh-tulk would have given that advice. Gladly. Advisor Siplisteph will not. The sleeper women will never consent to that. Nor will Fistarteh-thuktun.

“Attackmaster.”

“Lead me.”

“Continue with the battle plan. You are in charge of Thuktun Flishithy.”