Free Into the New Millennium: Trailblazing Tales From Analog Science Fiction and Fact, 2000 - 2010 by Penny Publications Page A

you were not the instigator, Jerik," said Harshket, ignoring K'chir, "you will simply be beaten—and forgiven."
    "Thank you, sir." Jerik hated himself for giving the required response. He felt the ripple of current as the priest turned to K'chir.
    "But for you, K'chir, there is no earthly redemption."
    Jerik sensed his friend go as motionless as a rock. A few of the people chirp-mapped, but mostly the water was silent—save for the constant grinding from beneath the ice.
    "For the crime of sacrilege," Harshket intoned, "your life-bubbles will be beaten from your body and your body will rise to heaven. Far better that than cede your immortal soul to the Antigod."
    "No!" came a voice from the people. It sounded like a student in the Fourth School.
    "Life-bubbles are a gift from God!" Harshket raised his voice over the cries. "You are not worthy of them. But for your redemption, your precious life-bubbles will be your contribution to your people—allowing another of our people to be born. I and the people thank you for your sacrifice."
    Angry shouts of "No" came from many youths in the crowd.
    "This is an important lesson for the people," Harshket shouted over the protests. "In fact—in fact so important that the punishment and sacrifice will be administered in the presence of the Antigod himself." He paused as if for effect. "To show our contempt for him."
    Like a tide, an expectant hush washed over the people, broken only by the sounds from under the ice.
    "Where the hellish noise in the ice is the loudest," shouted the priest, "there, we will go to confront the God of Evil." He paused. "We are not afraid!" he intoned as a chant. He hesitated as if expecting the people to pick up the chant, but the people only ping-chirped. Then in a quiet voice Harshket said to those around him, "Attend that the malefactors do not flee."
    Jerik felt himself grabbed by many limbs and propelled toward the grinding sounds. He could tell by the smells that his captors were old people. The trip to the center of the noise was a delay of his punishment, and Jerik was grateful for that. He wanted to say something comforting to K'chir but couldn't think of anything that wouldn't sound banal.
    At a point where vibrations shook the ice and the din had grown to a muffled roar, Harshket called for a halt. "Here," he shouted over the subsurface rumbling, "we will display our contempt for the God of Evil." He turned to Jerik. "We'll start with you." He chirped a superior smile. "Be thankful that in your case, it will just be a beating." Clearing his voice with a grunt, he turned to K'chir. "And then we can attend to the more serious matter." Again, he addressed the people as a whole. "Let this be a lesson to our young people."
    Harshket gave the order and six of the people stretched Jerik out on the ice. The ice, quivering and groaning, seemed to be foretelling Jerik's fate, and he winced in anticipation. Suddenly, he had a renegade notion: he wasn't going to just lie there and take it. He'd taken enough. He'd fight, struggle, try to break free.
    But just as he began kicking, he heard a great crash. Then a turbulence in the water pulsed across his body. His legs easily broke free, or maybe were released. He scrambled to his six feet, then ping-chirped—one voice in a sea of pings—and found that something had broken through the ice. Repeatedly then, he chirp-mapped, sacrificing spatial resolution for temporal, and detected an object rising from a tumble of ice fragments. The object appeared similar to the four-footed thing that Harshket had maintained was a demon from the Ice God. Jerik shivered. Could The High Priest have been right?
    Jerik, chirp-mapping steadily, couldn't actually tell if the thing did indeed have four feet, for it had stopped midway in its emergence from the ice. But in any case, it was huge—far larger than the thing Harshket had observed. It was clearly a thing of design, of purpose. And it was awash in electromagnetic