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The Stolen Future Box Set

Page 31

by Brian K. Lowe


  “Without you,” he said, gently removing my hand from his arm, “that tiger spider would have killed me. Get some rest.”

  He sounded just like his mother.

  I took an inordinate amount of pride in the fact that I was up and about before Maire came in to see me. Knowing she would come, the idea of greeting her as an invalid proved so abruptly and overpoweringly distressing that I nearly tripped over the furniture in an incipient panic that she would open the door to discover me not only dishabille, but disabled as well.

  Pulling on my boots, I fell wildly sideways, windmilling in a vain attempt to preserve my balance and succeeding only barely in finding a chair with that part of my anatomy built for the purpose when the door opened. I smiled, the picture of careless ease.

  “Didn’t I lock that?”

  She smiled lightly. “Even if you had, it wouldn’t have made any difference. How do you feel?”

  I waved off her question, intending to ask instead about the men, but the sight of her had temporarily numbed my tongue. Cleaned up, somewhere she had found another outfit, a deep red blouse tugged tightly into midnight black leggings. Where she kept her omnipresent baton was an enigma I hoped not to unravel. How she had waltzed through the men on deck without causing a riot was likewise a mystery I thought better left alone. Why she had done herself up like this was enough of a concern, although I thought I knew the reason.

  She sat down across from me, rushing into the vacuum with her own report, taking my tongue-tied silence as an invitation—or perhaps simply as her due. Her recent adventures aside, she was a pampered princess from a master race.

  “We lost a handful of men, not nearly as many as we should have, but we had the element of surprise—thanks to you. I’ve never even heard of a sky barge being hijacked before, let alone by someone swinging in over the force fields and climbing down the mast to deactivate them by hand while fighting off the ship’s crew with a sword in one hand and pistol in the other.” I started to protest but she waved me off. “Don’t get mad at me. That’s what they’re saying…”

  “That’s ridiculous!” I burst out. “Where did they ever get an idea like that? They saw me, for heaven’s sake!”

  “Use it,” Maire advised. “The more the men think you walk on air, the easier it is. Believe me, I know.”

  I shook my head. “What about the Eyrie’s crew?”

  “About eight of them are still alive. None of them are officers. We checked the crew manifest and accounted for all but one. We think he may have fallen overboard in the fighting, but we’re checking belowdecks. The survivors’re all locked up, but I don’t know how long they’re going to stay that way.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Maire took a deep breath without seeming to notice its effect on me, and slumped in her seat.

  “Remember how I told you conditions on other barges were worse than here?” I replied that I did and Maire continued grimly: “I wasn’t kidding. The rowers on the Eyrie were half-starved, and beaten daily. They’re weak now, and confused by what’s happened, but they won’t stay that way. When they’re rested and fed, their minds will turn to revenge.”

  “Do you have a guard on the door?”

  “Of course. But they won’t let that stop them.”

  I turned her words over in my mind. I couldn’t spare enough men to guard the prisoners effectively, even if I had that many. And I couldn’t very well allow them to barricade themselves inside…

  “Bring the prisoners over to the Lady. We can lock them up here. If we do it now, before the Eyrie’s rowers feel up to anything, we should avoid trouble.”

  Maire’s eyes widened in admiration. She saw me as a vagabond, a renegade wanderer smiled upon by Fortune and placed in a—temporary—position of authority. As Maire used the annunciator to relay my orders to Timash, I smiled back at her; I hid mysteries of my own that I had no intention of disclosing. She had no idea that I had commanded men in battle eons before her forebears’ planet had even been discovered by Man.

  I wonder, if in all those millennia over which I skipped, any bigger fool was ever born than I.

  “Have you decided to tell me yet what your plans are?”

  What I had decided was not to tell her what she really wanted to know.

  “Right now my plan is to find someone who can take command of the Eyrie. We can’t sit here like this forever. Somebody is going to notice that it’s missing.”

  Maire sat up straight in her chair. “Why don’t you take it? I’ll take back the Lady, and you can go wherever you want. I won’t say a word.”

  I had to laugh. “That’s very generous, but I was thinking of Skull. He’s the logical choice.”

  “For what?”

  “For—”

  “Captain!” the annunciator interrupted tersely. Upon my response, Timash said: “We’re trying to transfer the prisoners off the Eyrie, but the rowers are putting some up trouble. I don’t want to hurt them, but…”

  “Understood. I’m on my way.”

  The other barge was deceptively calm when we came outside, floating a few feet away with its shields still down to accommodate the inter-ship traffic. Now that both were under common control, we had tied their computers together with the result that their relative positions were fixed and we had installed a short footbridge between them. The ingenious little device was completely collapsible right down to the handrails. Its magnetic attachments were incredibly strong, but if the ships were violently wrenched they would snap like sticks. We crossed quickly.

  You could feel the tension aboard the Eyrie as soon as you stepped on deck. My men stood stiffly on guard, nervous and uncertain as to their loyalties if their fellow Thorans tried to rush the Nuum ostensibly under our protection. The rowers had been unchained; many were shedding their filthy rags and washing themselves where they stood. Instinctively I tried to shield Maire from the sight, but she seemed not to notice, and I realized belatedly that there were more urgent issues here than those of propriety.

  I collared one of my own sailors. “Why aren’t these men below? They shouldn’t have to wash themselves here.”

  “Sorry, captain. Skull says there’s no room below. He told us to give the rowers whatever they needed to keep them quiet.”

  “No room?” I turned to Maire. “What does he mean, no room? There’s got to be room…!”

  Maire took me firmly by the arm. “No, there doesn’t. I keep trying to tell you that. Now let’s get moving. I’ve been in two battles in two days and I’m not going for a record.”

  Any sensible man—nay, any sane man—would have let her lead him wherever she wanted to go. But I have always been cursed with a mulish stubbornness disguised as principle. The same condition which had led me to France under a foreign flag now rooted my feet to the deck. It got me into several fights as a child, and probably will get me killed some day. It almost got me killed right then.

  “I’m going down below. I want to see the rowers’ quarters.”

  Maire’s fingers dug into my skin, and the sailor cleared his throat.

  “Uh, captain, I’ve been down there. Maybe you don’t—”

  I stopped him with a glance. Perhaps my emotions were beginning to boil over, because he just stood there with his mouth open. Even Maire’s grip relaxed.

  “Go see Timash,” I ordered her. “See if you can make transfer. Heaven knows that outfit of yours should distract the rowers.”

  I left her gasp behind as I strode toward the double doors leading to the companionway. I must still have been radiating my feelings, because the rowers actually looked up as I passed. A slow buzz rose about me, traveling first behind, then with me, and finally preceding me down the rows.

  “It’s him! It’s the Ghost!”

  I halted in my tracks, half-turning to look at those dirty, smelly wretches who rose unsteadily to watch me with too-bright eyes in their smeared and tired faces. I turned about, and the other side of the ship showed the same rows of beaten
and haggard men’s eyes unblinking upon me. But it wasn’t fear, nor hostility, nor anything that I should fear—it was worse. To a man, they were almost worshipful. I knew without reading their thoughts that every poor devil on that ship saw me not just as his rescuer, but as his savior—and I had not the slightest idea why. And then one called to me.

  “Keryl! Keryl Clee!”

  I was at his side in an instant. “Bantos Han!”

  And that was when the man next to him tried to kill me.

  Chapter 44

  Return to the Dead

  The attack was so clumsy and hurried I was in little real danger of being hurt. I saw the knife blade glint in the sun as the assassin drew it from his shirt; had he been clever enough to dull its shine with the same grease he used to disguise his own face he might have stood some small chance of success.

  As it was, in immersing himself among the freed slaves he had taken a spot next to the rail, the better to conceal himself, but putting him in the position of having to strike at me over Bantos Han. I don’t even know why he even tried, unless he believed that I possessed some superior telepathic ability that would eventually unmask him. His mistake cost him dearly.

  I pulled back even as he lunged at me. He tripped over Bantos Han, who fell heavily to the deck with a painful noise, but something must have warned him about the man, for he twisted hard as he went down, arms flailing to spoil the attack. As they tumbled in a heap, he seized the assassin’s arm, and before I could help, Bantos Han was forcing the knife into my attacker’s side.

  The entire incident lasted no longer than it takes to tell. I was already helping my old friend out from under his dead burden by the time Maire dashed up from one end of the boat and Skull appeared from nowhere.

  “Are you all right?” both of them demanded.

  “I think I found your missing sailor.” I took in all the other rowers, frozen in place by the sudden violence. “You’re sure there was only one?”

  Skull glanced at Maire, started to say something, then thought it over and started again.

  “Get the captain and the prisoners back to the Lady right now, before something else happens. I’ll search the ship.”

  I was helping support Bantos Han, who was looking from one of us to another to the next, vainly struggling to follow the conversation.

  “Bring this man with you,” I said to Maire. “I still have to see below decks.” Both of my officers instantly protested, and I as quickly silenced them. “I’m just going to take a look. I want to know what’s so terrible that none of my crew thinks I should see it.”

  I was being stubborn again. I should have listened to them.

  Less than a century before I was born, European “traders” had trafficked in African slaves kidnapped and dragged to the New World in the hot, stinking bellies of ships upon whose decks walked creatures whose own souls mirrored the hellish conditions below. Hundreds of men and women and children were shoveled into dark holds until there was barely room to stand, let alone sit or lie down on the weeks-long voyage.

  Nearly a thousand millennia later, Man still had not learned. Accompanied by Skull and another sailor (who would not let me go on alone despite my direct orders), I climbed down a narrow ladder to a short, dim passageway ending in a tiny, square chamber whose walls were damp and stained. Before I could unravel this mystery—having seen first-hand the marvelous technology with which Nuum kept the decks of their sky barges dry—Skull pulled open the thick door on the opposite side of the chamber and I gazed into the seventh circle of Hell.

  I literally staggered from the stench, so foul that for a moment I had to close my eyes. When I opened them again I saw why my men had not let me wander hither alone. The wretches stacked in that hold like so many cords of kindling surged weakly forward; it was more of an easing of pressure than a concerted effort, but in their glittering, feverish eyes I could see the animal hunger for freedom. They would have overwhelmed a man alone and run amok up above.

  “We don’t even know how many there are in there,” Skull said from far away. “As soon as we can figure out how, we’re going to start letting them out and clean them up, but I don’t know where we’re going to find the room.” He began to push the door closed again, and a mad moaning issued from beyond.

  “We’ll have you out soon!” I called to them, but they surged forward again and the other man had to put his shoulder to the portal before they stormed the opening. I felt faint and had to lean against a wall for support, but I jerked away from its slimy feel.

  “What is this room?”

  “It’s a shower,” Skull answered. “They stink so bad they’re led through here before they go up to row. The water pressure hoses them off so their masters can stand the smell of them.”

  I waved the two of them back with me. It felt like hours since I had seen the sun and breathed fresh air.

  “How do they live down there?”

  Skull looked none too well himself. “They have food,” he said at last. “That’s what the rowers have told us. And somehow the Nuum removed the dead ones. Nobody knows how. But there’s no rotation, no set shifts. If you’re lucky enough or tough enough to fight your way to the door when it’s time for new rowers, you get to go up. If not, you could stay down there forever.”

  I walked back toward the bridge through the rowers who had been either lucky or tough. They lined both sides of the ship. I could see now why Timash had called for help getting the Eyrie’s crewmen back to the Lady; it was a wonder to me that he been able to do so, even with Maire’s help. There were hundreds like them down below; how were we to get them free?

  My first mate had only one answer, and it was unwelcome: “We have to land.”

  I shook my head. “We’d be sitting ducks. Any Nuum airship within miles would see us and come to investigate, and that would be the end of that.”

  “And we can’t set down in a town for the same reason. But we can’t let them all out while we’re airborne. They’d overrun the ship. Half of them would probably fall overboard—or jump. Even if we got the force fields back up the deck would be jammed full before half of them made it up here.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said suddenly. “What if we could find a city where the Nuum wouldn’t bother us? We could set down without being seen—at least as long as no one flew right overhead…”

  Skull gave me a disbelieving look. “And where would this mythical city, with no Nuum and people who would allow us to set this bunch down there?”

  I told him; he said I was crazy.

  Crazy or not, I was the captain. We set sail immediately.

  The former city of the Vulsteen looked peaceful from the air. The avenues were remarkably free of debris; the buildings that had collapsed seemed to have fallen in on themselves in an admirably tidy fashion, and whatever means the original inhabitants had used to discourage weeds and plant pests had long outlived them. Or perhaps the Vulsteen themselves had appropriated all the loose building materials years ago, and some voracious herbivore kept the streets clean with its early morning feedings. Whatever the case, our two ships sailed loftily and majestically over a scene of such tranquility that even Skull, speaking to me from the control cabin of the Eyrie, allowed that I might have been right after all in choosing this refuge for the beaten and mistreated former rowers.

  And then our shadow crossed the path of a napping thunder lizard and his roar awoke every creature within miles.

  I fancied I could smell its breath from even this height. At my direction, the pilot zoomed in on the beast until we appeared to be but a hundred feet away—near enough for my taste, even in this indirect form.

  “You have to admire it,” Maire admitted. “For what it is, it’s magnificent.”

  “Oh, it’s beautiful, all right.” The irony in Skull’s voice was not lost in the inter-ship communication loop. “And I’m sure it’ll return the compliment—right before it eats us.”

  “Relax.” I had to laugh. We were already drifting out
of its sight, and with a final ineffectual snarl it turned away from the two flying irritants in search of something it could catch. “We’re going to set down on the other side of town—miles from here. We killed the one that lived there, and there can’t be too many—they’re too big. So relax.”

  “Relax, he says…” Skull’s voice disappeared as I waved the connection closed. Maire had covered her mouth as she tried not to laugh out loud at Skull’s irritation, but her giggles were getting the better of her. Evidently she found my leadership methods amusing.

  Although our words were flippant, we spent the better part of a day and a night floating above our intended landing spot, monitoring for life. During the day the streets remained empty but for small, scurrying animals. Daytime had been the haunt of the thunder lizard, and though we saw none, old habits die hard. Beyond the wall and across the river I could see the carcass of the thunder lizard that had pursued us and smashed the groundcar. Its bones had been stripped clean, and broken for their marrow.

  On a whim I borrowed the monitoring apparatus long enough for a close-up. The bones seemed to be flowing back and forth with a rhythmic, liquid motion. On closer inspection, they were covered with millions of tiny, white scavengers, methodically moving back and forth, scouring even the bones clean. Surreptitiously exposing the Library to the view, I asked what they were, but he didn’t know. I was suddenly glad that my duties had kept me from making a personal inspection.

  Nighttime was a different story. While we sat fascinated, the drama of life and death unfolded in the dim light of infra-red. Even with computer enhancement, the scenes retained a spooky dimness. Swarms of bats with three-foot wingspans soared gracefully from ancient towers, inverted V-shapes like hideous geese swooping over and around the lower buildings in perfect formation—until one flock blundered into the path of another. Instantly all was chaos, winged devils diving and pouncing on each other like rival packs of sharks. In less than a minute, one flock limped away. The other lay dead on the ground.

 

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