The Unwound Way

by Bill Adams

  Principato tipped over into his dive. The zoomed image foreshortened to a dark circle, with the smaller circle of gun barrel somewhere near its center. I could feel its aim, like a coin of ice pressed to my forehead. I wrestled the crossbow into firing position, let him see that I, too, had disengaged steering, and he kept coming…built up speed, committed to his line, became a sharp image at close range⁠—

  And then I released the supercord towing Foyle.

  Relieved of that drag, my engine jerked me forward even as Foyle stalled backward, and Principato sliced down harmlessly between us. Variation on a theme: once again, I’d broken course without using the steering controls. I hoped Principato caught the same wisp of Foyle’s jeering laughter I heard as he swooped back and around into a slow climb.

  I didn’t want to go head-to-head with the skeet gun. I banked and turned after Principato, hoping to get on his tail and stay there, but he broke off in a new direction. On a hunch, I scanned the vista ahead of him.

  Flecks zoomed to become flyers. There was Ariel, safe, and Mishima towing her. And what was that to the side? Another blazing corpse; another merc victim of our own merc colonel. No wonder Principato considered Mishima the more urgent target.

  I looked back at Foyle, thinking she was safe enough for now, Ariel needed me, and so forth. But the redhead recalled me to the part I’d somehow agreed to play. She pointed, with exaggerated jerks, to another part of the sky.

  I scanned in that direction and swore. She’d found the Lagados, father and son, and I was obliged as our team’s rover to go to their defense, leaving Ariel to another man’s protection.

  The direction was more west than north. I saw a mock volcano some hundreds of meters farther on and a pylon floating beyond that, each providing a little dark contrast for white wings in the foreground.

  Scan, close-up.

  I caught Ruy Lagado for just a moment, wings already lost, a fleshy ball suspended from a parachute. And then he was gone forever, his head red wreckage, bloody spatters to his waist, arms jerking on control lines in a last spasm. His chute spilled and became a shroud for a quick burial at sea.

  I could only keep coming, in steady descent. I appreciated Principato’s problem now, always playing catch-up. Maybe that’s why I felt so sure it would come down to him and me in the end⁠…

  I had the scanner widen frame, trying to get a line on Ruy’s killer. It pulled too far back. I saw two mere specks, no detail, but they were approaching each other at top speed and soon the computer focused in again.

  Here was a shotgunner, taking a hard bank away from the line that had just ended in Ruy’s death. And here, from the opposite direction, headed straight at him before he could reload, flew Ruy’s son, Harry, sharpened wooden hook upraised to throw. They came together so close it seemed they would have to collide, but passed each other by. My computer view flickered backward again as the gap widened. Harry didn’t have the hook anymore.

  An invisible cord snapped taut between them, and both were hit with the impact of our top speed times two. Harry’s wings jerked straight up and down, stalled, and began to drop—and the merc, his shotgun spinning loose out of sight, was ripped out of his wings entirely.

  The hook had caught the merc in the midsection—not his belly, but the parachute strapped over it. Even as Harry settled back into flight, the merc went straight down to dangle from the boy like an anchor.

  One of Harry’s own wings showed signs of whiplash, no longer smoothly curved, as if some of its internal shapers had been knocked out of commission. But he settled into a lopsided climb away from me, the merc dangling behind.

  I was finally closing with them, ready to help if Harry’s wings failed entirely. I saw Harry’s body shuddering and thought he might be wrestling the line into position for cutting. But then the purposeful way he held his direction despite wing trouble registered on me. Those shudders were sobs of pain and rage, and the man who had killed Harry’s father was being taken, very deliberately, for a ride.

  I followed them toward the volcano.

  The merc was too high to risk a fall into the sea. He knew it, too. He’d pulled the long-shafted hook free of the parachute in order to get at the cord, which he’d begun to slowly climb. Even though he appeared to have gloves, the fine line must still be murder on his hands. Tough customer. Maybe he even had a plan, to force the kid to land at knife-point or something.

  As they passed over the stage-set island cone they hit the updraft, air so hot it visibly rippled. A ski lift, Harry had called it, and he did ride up. His wings looked worse than ever, but by stalling and nearly falling into the center of the column, he reached a point where the merc’s weight stabilized him like the tail of a kite; he spiraled around tightly without being moved from that center and the two of them quickly rose.

  When I reached the volcano, they were already high above me. My first attempt to enter the updraft was a failure. A huge but gentle hand simply lifted me to one side, where I stalled, for a net loss of height. The trick was to head in and down, and hold the falling and lifting in balance, like keeping a boat’s sail from luffing. And when I found the angle, it had something of the thrill of sailing, this continuous circular swoop. But the air I rode was hot and dry, not cool and wet, as I stared down into the heat source—a receding circle of what looked like molten metal.

  It was still Harry’s play. I craned my neck painfully to follow the action and saw the merc clambering upward hand over hand, closer and closer to the boy, like a marionette in revolt.

  “Cut the line!” I shouted. What was the kid waiting for? Couldn’t he see or feel the climbing? Had he forgotten what would happen if we soared too high?

  Zoom view. Harry had no knife, that was the problem. Spinning dizzily, he was trying to untie the tiny knot that secured the ultra-thin cord to his belt. Another moment would be too late; the merc was almost close enough to grab his ankle. I shouted at him to let the whole belt go—déjà vu, hadn’t I yelled that to Hogg-Smythe once for some reason?—but I couldn’t be heard. The boy drew his legs up out of reach. And the merc heaved himself closer—and the boy’s face changed expression, let me see what he’d intended all along, as his feet hammered down at the head finally within range.

  I caught the flicker of the merc falling past me down the center of the updraft, faintly heard the cross-section of a long scream. He dwindled to a dot in the center of the orange glow beneath us and vanished in a puff of greasy black smoke.

  I rolled over onto my back and let the heat wave shoulder me aside into cooler air, looking for the boy to do the same. But he couldn’t. His twisted wings—or their confused computers—kept him in a tight spin, like a leaf in a drain but upward, and twice as fast now that his anchor was gone. I heard my own voice shouting meaninglessly as he shot up the invisible pipe. The seconds hurtled past, ran out.

  I was dazzled by the silver light, deafened by the infinite shearing sound. Harry had hit the barrier where the sky ended.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Fear for the others kept me going.

  I’d lost all sense of direction, going round and round the volcano’s airspout. But I remembered the nearby pylon as having been past the volcano, and put my back to it now as I scanned the lower distance.

  Nothing on the first swing. My wings hummed softly as I took a slower second look. In the back of my mind, something else was going on, a headcount. Was it just wishful thinking? Mishima had only taken two of his promised four scalps, but I had matched him, and Foyle and Harry had contributed one apiece. If I’d been right about the original number of mercs, there remained only⁠—

  Tiny hailstones spattered against the calf of my left leg, just a faint coldness. But hot pain followed a moment later like the simultaneous sting of a half dozen hornets. I turned hard into a new course and went over onto my back.

  Principato straightened from a bank that had matched mine. Of course; the flare of Harry’s passing would have drawn his eyes in this direction. N
ow he’d achieved the classic aerial kill position, above and behind me. Even as I watched, he fired the skeet gun again.

  After a moment’s lag, I heard a faint chittering sound from my left wing, felt it dip only slightly with the hit. Apparently his ammo was just the small birdshot characteristic of the gun. But that would be enough, if I started catching full bursts.

  The scary thing—as I rolled back on my belly and began jinking from side to side—was that he’d hit me twice in two shots, without the advantage of a dive-bomb attack. He was evidently more than proficient, and had picked a range great enough to take advantage of the spreading of the pellets.

  Damn! I’d got into a rhythm, and he’d anticipated my bank. Another faint wing-hit.

  I flew on, twisting and turning, trying to stay in a broad circle around the area where I believed the women to be, its northern boundary newly marked by an east-west drift of cloud. The next few shots—I could just hear the reports—were misses, but I wasn’t encouraged. My zoom-view of Principato had shown a bandolier of ammo. He could take his time. Eventually, partial hits would destroy the control structures in my wings, and once I was reduced to a parachute I’d be helpless.

  The fear-sweat was hot on my ribs, cold on my forehead. Principato was far enough away that he couldn’t stay on my tail if I doubled back sharply. But the maneuver would only put me broadside to one of his blasts, then give him a chance to punch one big hole in my head instead of a lot of little ones in my tail.

  I held the next bank a moment or two longer, trying to be unpredictable. I’d thought the bastard had to disengage steering to shoot, but the blasts were coming too often for that. Firing one-handed? He had to reload the pump periodically. That might give me a few seconds for radical action, but meanwhile I had a reload problem of my own. I was down to my last crossbow bolt.

  No choice but to use it. Without doubling back, I couldn’t fire forward along my line of flight, but there was one other way to stay aligned.

  I climbed slightly in order to dip slightly, tucked my chin hard to my chest, and aimed the crossbow straight back between my toes. Principato’s image seemed to hang motionless “above” the ankle-to-ankle horizon of my tailwing, perfect, but the bow bobbed with my breathing—God damn it, I was panting—and once, twice, three times I had to hold my fire at the last instant. And if I maintained a straight course much longer I’d get lost in the cloud bank ahead. Steady, steady⁠…

  Then Principato’s position shifted and I had to jink up and down again to bring him back into my sights, the cloud wall that much closer. And yet, when I finally squeezed the shot off, it felt so orgasmically right I couldn’t imagine it missing.

  Which it did, by a good five meters. Only then did I realize, in a sickening rush, just how much beginner’s luck had contributed to my first two shootouts. And now my last arrow was gone, even as another smear of birdshot howled past, snapping and snarling along my left wing.

  Panic hammered at the mind’s portal, not to be put off much longer. My engine seemed much louder, as if compensating for something. Were my wings already so ragged I was losing lift? I couldn’t tell how bad they were from my angle, though I could see a few shreds and flaps marring the front edge of the fabric. I only knew I had to peel Principato off, and fast; I couldn’t last much longer.

  And suddenly the cloud ahead seemed like the only possible haven; the sound of Principato’s latest shot drowned the warning voices in my head, the memories of the holo briefing; I dove in.

  At first the cloud seemed to part for me: the nearest meter of vapor was transparent. My tail still felt exposed, but then I looked back and saw the whiteness closing behind me.

  I was alone in my own world.

  The cloud was something like ground fog, cool and soft and placid. But there was nowhere to stand, no reassuring sight of grass or smell of earth below, only the same luminous whiteness as above. The single variation in color lay ahead, toward the center of the great massless mass: a not-white, white’s shadow, more like blindness than like anything seen.

  I could hear myself think again, but didn’t like what I heard. I was out of ammo and lost. While Principato wasn’t likely to follow me into the cloud—he wouldn’t have understood the Ur-Linguish warnings in the briefing, but he could see that the vapor would blind him—he could use the time to pick off Ariel or Foyle instead. I didn’t even know if Mishima was still protecting them, maybe dead, maybe knocked down to a parachute; in any case, he’d used up his incendiaries. At least in the clear I could have decoyed Principato away, but now⁠—

  One moment I was cruising north through the universal mist, faint hurt cries coming from my wings where the breeze hit them. Then, without warning, the air quit holding me, as if a whirlpool had opened below.

  Wind shear! I fell helplessly, spinning end over end, my wings offering no resistance at all. Fifty, sixty, maybe a hundred meters down a greased tunnel of empty white, and then, with a terrifying whipcrack sound—droplets of condensation bursting from me in all directions—the wing computers found purchase in the air again, let me slice down into a stable glide, not quite a dive.

  But within seconds I encountered a rising column of air as solid as a piston, and was hurled upward farther and faster than I’d fallen. I hit an air pocket above and tumbled down again—to be batted up, and to one side, and down once more, a hoarsely shouting shuttlecock. But the watchful computer had the sense to furl my wings, protecting them, until I’d lapsed back into a natural fall. Soon, the rough air past, I found myself gliding safely on my back, swearing as if praying while I clutched my empty cross.

  I was adrift in cold white nothingness. And fear. Very like a place I’d been before, perhaps had never left. The suspend-sleep tank, that magic mirror that always asks the same primal questions: Who are you really? And where?

  You are not a fighter pilot. You are not a match for murderers. That was just a part you played on the other side of the white curtain. You are really just a dreamer from Wayback who loved women and the stage and the secrets of the old tongue. And where you are is a world woven of just those secrets. In this lies your only possible advantage, in your wits the only weapon. It is Principato who must be drawn into one of the traps the old tongue warned you against—a warning he could not have understood.

  Now my scanner made signs to me. I wasn’t blind after all; the device, which did not view the world from my perspective, just showed it that way, was still receiving information from its mysterious source. It cast pictures of various distant objects against the cloud’s white screen.

  I struggled to supply a context. There was the volcano where Harry had died. Higher, at a right angle from the line I flew, was a pylon, probably the seventh and last. And finally, far above but matching my course exactly, flew Principato.

  Yes, he could scan me, too—or at least some representation of my position and bearing—despite the white vapor. Having never lost sight of me, he’d had no reason to risk the unknown territory of the cloud. Instead he’d climbed over it, following me at that altitude, ready to stoop and pounce whenever I made my exit. Now that the cloud had softened me up—and burdened my wings with water—he could move in for the kill: one last dive-bomb attack, one tight grouping of shot in my heart or my head.

  But I knew myself now, felt my old powers as I moved the plot elements around on the blank white page before me. I saw how to bring things to a close: win or lose, a spectacular finish.

  I scanned for my objective, and rounded into its direction at a slight climb. Having passed the turbulent middle of the cloud, I could hope to hold this line unbrokenly, Principato shadowing all the way.

  There was only one unknown. I could scan solid objects outside the cloud, but I couldn’t get a fix on the empty place where the cloud ended, couldn’t judge how far it would be until I emerged. My objective, zoomed, did not appear to be inside the cloud—it was not dripping with condensation as I was—but I didn’t know how much open space I’d have to cross to reach i
t. Too little or too much and my plan would end in disaster.

  But I soared forward anyway; my fear felt more like stage fright now, at least half exhilaration. Here it comes! Props ready? I pried the heavy almond-shaped rubber stopper from the storage hole in the crossbow’s stock and held it between my teeth. You’re on!

  I came up out of the white vapor like a cannonball, so close to the enormous rock mass of the pylon—only a score of meters away, a few seconds’ flight—I had to pull back and stall to avoid smashing into it.

  The floating island nearly filled my sky from side to side, and wider as I looked higher, up to the razor-sharp line where it appeared to end. Below me, where it tapered, a broad cave cut through to a far hole of blue, and in that first impression—everything in high contrast and high color after the white void—I made out the oversized bird nests inside the tunnel, and white bodies roosting. Another fifty yards lower the pylon ended in a point, but the gold hoop was not visible, apparently fixed to the opposite face.

  I twisted my body so as to fall sideways and rightward, not stall onto my back, and looked up the left wing as I went over to see if Principato was making his move. Yes! He’d seen me hanging there so teasingly and now he was locked on, roaring down like a thunderbolt.

  Had to stay ahead of him just a little longer. But the holes in my wings didn’t slow me much going down, and that was my aim, a steep dive straight at the lower part of the pylon.

  The rock wall surged toward me. I could make out green vines in the crevices, could even smell wet earth. I was on line with the cave opening below, but it was going to be close; I couldn’t tip any steeper without scaring the wing computers into pulling me up—and dashing me against the wall. But I couldn’t sheer away and let Principato make his strike, either. Down, down, listening for that fatal moan from my wings’ leading edges. The only way out is⁠—