function well in the warm, wet
world it was.
“What’s so bad about it?”
Moisture and heat quickly bring rust. Snowglade had Alpine woods once, and vast grasslands that stretched from horizon to
horizon. The mechs came to see if the planet was useful for their projects, and seem to have decided that it was, though of
course it needed what they would call, I quite believe, improvement.
Killeen stopped beside a carboglass device that was milling what looked like large spheres of matted, chromed sponge. “How
you know?”
I was
there.
We were first aware of them as simple explorers. The Clans had set up their Citadels—
“There were more than one?”
Arthur’s smoothcoursing voice paused only momentarily in surprise:
Oh yes, I forget so readily now. You are young. We once had
glorious
things. When we came to Snowglade we were under no illusion that we were safe from mechlife. But we could scarcely cover
an entire planet, protect every—
“Yeasay, get on with it.” He had never heard of anything truly manmade other than the Citadel, only of things fashioned from
mechcraft or stolen outright. The Aspect frequently talked of things which Killeen knew did not exist and so he thought they
were lies or brags or else tall tales to hold Killeen’s attention. The contrast of these past accounts with their present
condition had made the Family seldom consult the Aspects.
The mechs did not confront us directly. Some felt that the mechs scarcely noticed us, or else thought we were local lifeforms
of no real consequence—a view which I suppose history has confirmed, with sad consequences for us all. At any rate—
Here Arthur obviously sensed Killeen’s impatience. His voice speeded up until the images and thoughts came in bursting bluebright
clots, vivid pictures delivered without explanation, letting Arthur’s remembered experience explode directly into Killeen:
We noticed first that winters deepened and there was less rain. Our crops dwindled. We had to undertake some extensive breeding
and genetic alterations to harden them against the warped seasons.
“You savvyed weather?” Killeen was impressed, but wished there was some way he could keep Arthur from knowing. There wasn’t,
of course. He felt the Aspect’s pleased aura.
Understood, yes—or so we confidently thought. Only slowly did we realize that the mechs were deliberately bringing clouds
of gas and dust into Snowglade’s planetary path. They even used fineground asteroids. This brought the dust-storms we thought
were a passing feature of the changing weather, but were in fact causing that weather. The dust smothered our equatorial regions.
Somehow, the mechs contrived to evaporate a great deal of the icepack at the poles. This drove Snowglade toward a dryer, cooler
climate,using processes I cannot guess. Obviously the mech civilizations have worked this kind of planetary engineering before, and
they well understood the thousands of small side effects one must calculate. It was a feat of awesome power, and one carried
out so gradually we had no intimation of truly fundamental change until centuries had passed. By then our crops had withered
and we were eking out an existence at the Citadels, planting more and reaping less with each passing year. We were innocent,
thinking the mechs at best had not detected us, or at least would ignore us. More the fools, we!
Killeen picked up one of the chromed balls and tossed it to the floor. It shattered into a thousand strands of delicate spooling
fiber, each glinting in the harsh fluorolight. He concentrated on Arthur’s fastpassing talk. Such ancient knowledge he had
always ignored, figuring that Fanny would tell them what was useful. Ledroff, he knew, was similarly ignorant. “The Splashes’re
still left,” he said.
So paltry were our imaginations that we did not at first recognize the significance of the Splashes. Snowglade follows a near-circular
orbit
world it was.
“What’s so bad about it?”
Moisture and heat quickly bring rust. Snowglade had Alpine woods once, and vast grasslands that stretched from horizon to
horizon. The mechs came to see if the planet was useful for their projects, and seem to have decided that it was, though of
course it needed what they would call, I quite believe, improvement.
Killeen stopped beside a carboglass device that was milling what looked like large spheres of matted, chromed sponge. “How
you know?”
I was
there.
We were first aware of them as simple explorers. The Clans had set up their Citadels—
“There were more than one?”
Arthur’s smoothcoursing voice paused only momentarily in surprise:
Oh yes, I forget so readily now. You are young. We once had
glorious
things. When we came to Snowglade we were under no illusion that we were safe from mechlife. But we could scarcely cover
an entire planet, protect every—
“Yeasay, get on with it.” He had never heard of anything truly manmade other than the Citadel, only of things fashioned from
mechcraft or stolen outright. The Aspect frequently talked of things which Killeen knew did not exist and so he thought they
were lies or brags or else tall tales to hold Killeen’s attention. The contrast of these past accounts with their present
condition had made the Family seldom consult the Aspects.
The mechs did not confront us directly. Some felt that the mechs scarcely noticed us, or else thought we were local lifeforms
of no real consequence—a view which I suppose history has confirmed, with sad consequences for us all. At any rate—
Here Arthur obviously sensed Killeen’s impatience. His voice speeded up until the images and thoughts came in bursting bluebright
clots, vivid pictures delivered without explanation, letting Arthur’s remembered experience explode directly into Killeen:
We noticed first that winters deepened and there was less rain. Our crops dwindled. We had to undertake some extensive breeding
and genetic alterations to harden them against the warped seasons.
“You savvyed weather?” Killeen was impressed, but wished there was some way he could keep Arthur from knowing. There wasn’t,
of course. He felt the Aspect’s pleased aura.
Understood, yes—or so we confidently thought. Only slowly did we realize that the mechs were deliberately bringing clouds
of gas and dust into Snowglade’s planetary path. They even used fineground asteroids. This brought the dust-storms we thought
were a passing feature of the changing weather, but were in fact causing that weather. The dust smothered our equatorial regions.
Somehow, the mechs contrived to evaporate a great deal of the icepack at the poles. This drove Snowglade toward a dryer, cooler
climate,using processes I cannot guess. Obviously the mech civilizations have worked this kind of planetary engineering before, and
they well understood the thousands of small side effects one must calculate. It was a feat of awesome power, and one carried
out so gradually we had no intimation of truly fundamental change until centuries had passed. By then our crops had withered
and we were eking out an existence at the Citadels, planting more and reaping less with each passing year. We were innocent,
thinking the mechs at best had not detected us, or at least would ignore us. More the fools, we!
Killeen picked up one of the chromed balls and tossed it to the floor. It shattered into a thousand strands of delicate spooling
fiber, each glinting in the harsh fluorolight. He concentrated on Arthur’s fastpassing talk. Such ancient knowledge he had
always ignored, figuring that Fanny would tell them what was useful. Ledroff, he knew, was similarly ignorant. “The Splashes’re
still left,” he said.
So paltry were our imaginations that we did not at first recognize the significance of the Splashes. Snowglade follows a near-circular
orbit
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