The Kindly Ones

by Melissa Scott

"Sor Alkres. On behalf of my father, and on my own, I welcome you to Glittermark, and to Electra." The voice was a woman's, rather deep, with less of the Oresteian accent than I had expected: Signe, Orillon's Heir.

  There was a moment of silence after she'd finished speaking. Then Leith said hastily, "There's an outside intercom by the hatch."

  "Thank you," Alkres said, though he knew she couldn't hear him, and moved forward cautiously to the hatch. He found the broadcast button after a moment's study, and pressed it. "Thank you for your welcome, ama, and for all the kindness your Family's shown to me. To me and mine," he amended hurriedly, an anxious frown on his face. I nodded, I hoped encouragingly, and after a moment's thought, he took his finger off the button. "I think I said everything."

  "I think so," I said, and reached for my cloak, which I had stowed in the cell set into the bulkhead beside the couch. My clothes were looking ragged, despite Leith's having shown me how to wash the shirt in the zero-G, shower; the magnificent cloak would cover a multitude of sins. Alkres hauled his bag out from the cell just as the two pilots came into the passenger compartment. Both women had on their best to neaten their appearance, but Leith looked acutely grateful for her leather coat. I was glad to see she'd returned her blaster to its place in her campaign bag.

  "The tube's in place," she said. "We can pop the hatch whenever you're ready."

  Alkres took a deep breath, and slung the borrowed bag over his shoulder. "I'm ready." His voice quavered a little, but we all ignored it.

  "Seals are green," Leith said, automatically. Peacekeeper routines are drilled very deep into the psyche.

  Guil gave her a rather amused look, but answered, "I confirm, seals are green."

  "Opening the hatch," Leith continued, making a face at her own unnecessary caution, and swung the wheel. The tri-leaved hatch irised, opening onto the docking tube. The pilots had positioned the Koniko perfectly: the tube segments were at minimum extension, pointing straight into the port building. A knot of people in bright clothing waited just beyond the blued steel ring of the tube's base.

  Alkres squared his shoulders, and stepped out onto the tube's padded surface. I positioned myself carefully at his left shoulder, and followed. The spacers lagged behind, and I heard Leith murmur something that might have been a curse.

  As we crossed the ring at the end of the tube, a woman stepped out from among the waiting group, and took a few steps forward to meet us. Seeing Alkres's stiff figure, she checked what might have been an embrace, and instead offered both hands in sober, adult greeting.

  "Sor, welcome," she said, and Alkres answered, "Many thanks for your hospitality."

  The woman smiled, including all of us in its warmth. "I think we won't stand on ceremony, under the circumstances. I'm Signe Orillon."

  "Trey Maturin," I answered. "Halex Medium." The others introduced themselves, too, but I wasn't really listening. The Orillon Heir was a striking woman—not particularly tall, but with a beautifully regal carriage. She had a rather long face, with a starkly defined cheek and jaw, and the Orillon slanted eyes. Her brows tilted upwards, too, following the line of her eyes. Her lips were a fraction too long and thin to be conventionally beautiful, but they gave strength to an otherwise delicate face. Her jet-black hair was drawn up in a heavy topknot, bound with a strip of purple cloth patterned with the Orillon seaflower, that served to emphasize the lurking delicacy. Then she smiled again, and that image vanished, to be replaced with the woman—the Heir—who managed a world's spaceport. She was not that much younger than I was, I realized with surprise.

  "My husband, Berild," she was saying, almost parenthetically, and I felt a moment's pang. That was absurd enough to sober me; I returned the man's friendly greeting, studying him curiously. He was no taller than the Heir, but broad-shouldered, with a mane of chestnut hair only partly controlled by the purple ribbons woven through it. He was handsome enough, in a quirky, good-humored way, but he lacked Signe's striking beauty.

  Signe introduced the rest of her party as well, but so quickly I was unable to put names to faces. I identified the medium, Edlin, from the badge pinned to her collar, but that was all. Signe went on, oblivious. "My father wants to welcome you as soon as possible, so I thought we'd return to the Tower in my iceboat. It's as fast as anything else, and a good deal more private."

  Alkres nodded gratefully at that, and I was again impressed by the Heir's courtesy—and by her political sense. It was only sensible for the Orillon not to advertise their support of the awkward Halex claimant until Landret had decided exactly how far he was willing to go on our behalf. It was their good luck that politics coincided with politeness.

  The Heir's boat was docked at the iceport itself. A snow car was waiting at a service door, and the Heir bundled us to it and aboard before we could think of protesting. The car was crowded, and the nose ski grated unpleasantly on the half-melted ice of the access road before the driver got the weight distributed properly and fed power to the tracks.

  Iceport and spaceport shared the same strip of flatland that ran between the low hills of the town and the ridged ice of the perpetually frozen Closed Sea. At first, it was hard to tell which buildings belonged to which complex, but then we swung past the last of the massive hangars and turned down a row of low-roofed, thick-walled, hired-storage blockhouses, and I caught my first glimpse of the iceport.

  I had forgotten that many of the transports that crossed the Closed Sea carried sails as well as fans. The road we were travelling seemed to end in a forest of masts, each webbed with a complex network of multi-colored lines. Ice glittered here and there, and beyond those masts lay the dulled ice of the Closed Sea.

  "Sailing ships?" Leith said, from behind me.

  "Cheaper than fossil fuels," Signe answered cheerfully, "and a lot more reliable than electrics. Our settlements lie mostly on the solid land ringing the Sea—there're one or two fish towns on the ice, but nothing that really counts—so the boats tend to be the fastest way to get around."

  "How much actual land do you have?" Leith asked idly. "The two continents looked pretty small from orbit."

  "The continents, and a scattering of volcanic islands in the southern hemisphere," Signe answered. She seemed glad of the innocuous topic. "But those are mostly uninhabited—there isn't anything on them, really."

  "Of course, what looks like the biggest landmass is mostly ice," Berild interjected. He grinned. "They say the Closed Sea's the caldera of the biggest volcano this world's ever seen. We'll all be in for a surprise if it ever comes to life again."

  "You know that theory's been discredited," Signe murmured, but she was smiling.

  The car turned again, this time onto a broad boulevard that ran along the head of the wharves. Most of the berthing spaces were full, and lines snaked from hulls and masts to a grid that formed a sort of ceiling for the length of each wharf. Power lines, I guessed, and communications hookups. The iceboats came in all sizes, from the sleek, brilliantly painted needles that had to be sport boats, to broader-beamed craft that sat squarely on their triple runners, to squat fishing boats that carried four or five net-booms to their single mast. Almost all of them had fans as well, set into the sterncastle in the channel between the runners: working ships that could not afford to be becalmed.

  Alkres nudged me then, and I could see the effort he made not to point. "What is that, that ship?"

  I looked, and shook my head. "I have no idea." It was a massive thing, three times as big as any other ship in sight, so large that it took up two of the dock spaces. It was painted from runners to deck rail in a crimson that gleamed dully, like enamel. Smaller, drabber ships were snugged up against its outer side like nursing children.

  "Ama?" Alkres leaned forward to touch the Heir's sleeve. "What's that, please?"

  Signe glanced over her shoulder. "Oh, that's a factory ship—a fleet mother-ship." She raised her voice a little, to carry over the hiss and clank of the car's tracks. "Agnar, what's the Chijo doing in port so early?"r />
  The blondish, bearded man sitting beside the driver turned awkwardly to face her. "Cracked strut. Didn't you get my memo?" Signe shook her head. "Give me a report later."

  We were almost at the end of the icefront now, the long lines of the commercial wharves giving way to smaller berths that housed more of the slim, brightly painted private yachts. The car slowed, then swung into the bay at the entrance to the final dock. The driver lowered the door, and we climbed out onto the heated surface of the dock. The grid running the length of this wharf was decorated with painted bosses in the shape of the Orillon seaflower: clearly, this was the mainline Family's private dock.

  "This way, sor, if you please," Signe said, and offered her arm. Alkres rested his hand on her gloved wrist, an unhappy parody of the adult gesture, and they started together toward the iceboat that waited at the end of the wharf. The rest of us followed.

  The Heir's boat was as brightly painted as any of the needle-yachts —I guessed visibility was a highly desirable quality, in the event of a malfunction somewhere in the emptiness of the Closed Sea—but much broader in the beam. The carbon-compound masts were already set, and a couple of sailors were busily threading the last control lines into their winches. At the Heir's approach, the young man who had been supervising the sailors stepped from the rounded deck to meet her, touching his forehead in salute.

  "Everything's in order, ama."

  Signe nodded, not quite returning the salute. "We'll come aboard, then, Hildur."

  The young man—I assumed he was the actual captain, though Signe would hold that title—whistled sharply, and caught hold of one of the stays supporting the mast. He swung himself back aboard just in time to catch the main hatch as it popped from its seat, and keep it from crashing against the polished decking. A segmented gangway of fleximesh unfolded itself and locked into place against the edge of the dock. Signe crossed without waiting for a handrail to appear, and Alkres had to follow. I was glad to see that Hildur had moved to stand by the hatch. It was a good three meters to the ice from the gangway.

  The handrails clicked into place as Signe vanished into the hull, and I was glad of their protection as I made my way across the unstable mesh. The interior of the iceboat was comfortable but not lavish, with a single row of armor-glass ports along each side of the hull. A passenger pit was tucked into the widening stern just ahead of the helmsman's position. A single ladder led to a lower level: sleeping quarters rather than cargo space, I guessed, but there was no time to ask questions. Already, the rest of the iceboat's crew had taken up their positions by the interior winches, and a frail-looking woman who appeared to be in her early twenties stood by the tiller bars. For a moment, I wondered how she could see to steer, and then I saw the weirdly angled mirrors suspended from the ceiling.

  "Clear below?" Hildur called from the deck, and Berild answered, "All clear."

  The main hatch closed over us. The nearest sailor dogged it shut, and darted back to her place. Signe waved us to the seats in the passenger pit, but her polite invitation was drowned out by the coughing roar of the fan. There was a shrill whistle, barely audible over the noise, and sailors at bow and stern bent rapidly to their winches. The iceboat shuddered and then, very slowly, slid away from the dock. Despite the noise of the fan, we weren't moving very fast. The ships tied up at the neighboring dock formed a stately procession in the ports.

  Then we had passed the end of the docks, and the boat turned slowly, as deliberately as a starship lining up for takeoff. The ice beneath the runners was surprisingly smooth. Far ahead on the ice, I could see a line of emergency-red pennants, their staffs bending almost double in the freshening wind. The boat swung further, and I realized we were heading for an opening in that line of flags.

  There was another whistle from the deck, and the woman at the helm flung her weight against the tiller bars. The boat slowed, the scree of brakes against ice clearly audible above the fan's sound. It was very like the sound of a sledge's brakes, and I shivered. Leith, sitting next to me, felt it and gave me a sympathetic glance. I looked away, feeling unreasonably annoyed. On the opposite bench, Guil craned her body sideways to see out the nearest port, and I wondered just what she was looking for—the spaceport, Glittermark, her home? I wanted to ask, but conversation was impossible—a further annoyance, I thought, if the fan's going to be on the entire trip. I didn't even know how long it would take us to reach the Orillon Tower.

  Abruptly, the fan cut out, leaving us in a silence that was broken an instant later by a series of flat, explosive cracks like the discharge of an electric carbine. I jumped, and I felt Leith's hand move toward her hip where her blaster had hung.

  Signe said hastily, "Hildur's set the sails, people. We should reach the Tower in an hour or two."

  I breathed a sigh of relief, and heard it echoed by Leith. Alkres's face was a study in affronted dignity, and I was glad the Electrans were too polite to laugh. The line of flags slipped by in the ports, and one of the Electrans—Tirzen, I thought his name was—called, "Time, please?"

  "Marked, sor," the helmsman answered.

  In the same moment, a hatch opened toward the boat's bow, and Hildur and the two crewmen who'd been on deck with him dropped back into the body of the boat. The crewmen took their places at the winches set along the hull, while Hildur came aft, touching his forehead again. The boat jumped and skidded—the ice was much rougher now—but he kept his balance easily, one hand on the grab bars running overhead.

  "On open ice, ama, and all sails set. Any orders?"

  Signe shook her head. "Carry on, as usual."

  "Very good, ama," Hildur said, and moved aft to join the helmsman.

  The rest of the trip passed quickly enough. Berild brought out a deck of cards and he and three others began a desultory game of Chance. Signe did her best to engage Alkres in conversation, but neither one was really interested in talking. Leith dozed. The rest of the Electrans watched the card game, now and then muttering a comment on the play. Guil stared into space, her expression betraying nothing of her thoughts. I was just as glad of the quiet. I had no idea what I would say to Landret Orillon, or how I could persuade him to help us; the only weapon I had was the code, which had proved unexpectedly weak on Orestes. And Electra was said to be far more lax than Orestes.

  After about an hour's sailing, the first shadow of headland appeared on the horizon. It was an impressive sight, the dark, reddish-black rock in stark contrast to the grey ice of the bay, and to the masses of snow clinging to the higher ledges. Behind me, I heard Signe pointing out the tip of the Orillon Tower, but I barely caught a glimpse of the steeply raked roof before the iceboat slid under the lee of the cliff. Atreus's direct light vanished, to be replaced by a green, uncertain light, as though we'd slipped underwater. I leaned forward curiously, craning to see out the boat's narrow portals, and caught my breath sharply. The cliff above was not as steep as I'd thought at first. It rose in crumbling ledges, and each ledge was piled high with snow that had melted and refrozen into caps and falls of blue-green ice, banded here and there with fresh snow. The distant sunlight was reflected from it, throwing the strange light. It was almost as though a miniature Agamemnon had been spread out along the cliffside.

  At my back, Berild gave a crow of laughter. "Impressive, isn't it? We lose a couple of boats every year, when somebody sails too close during a warm spell."

  The comment made me look up a little uneasily, but I couldn't think there was much danger of the ice melting, even in Electra's Day. Still, the helmsman kept us meters away from the base of the cliffs—not just because of falling ice and rock, I realized suddenly. Close to the wall of rock, the ice was ridged and distorted, and there were dark shadows buried beneath the uneven surface: rocks that had fallen during the warm spells, and been swallowed by the subsequent freezing.

  "It's beautiful," Leith said, and sounded almost surprised.

  Guil gave her a lopsided smile, but said nothing.

  Berild's grin widened, but
his words were cut off as the boat's fan roared to life. Hildur and most of the crew had vanished through the forward hatch while we watched the ice, I realized, and I guessed they had taken in the boat's sails. We slowed, brakes biting into the ice to supplement the fan, and swung to face the cliff. There was an opening at its base, set so to be almost invisible until you were directly opposite it. Then lights flared in the cave's depths, and the boat slid neatly into its protected dock, bumping gently against the wharf before the gloved dockhands had it under control. The fan's noise died away to nothing.

  "Very nice," Signe said, with a nod to the helmsman. The hatch rose then, and she stepped easily across onto the dock without bothering to trigger the gangway. The rest of us followed, Hildur waiting to help the uncertain. As I stepped onto the dock, Signe turned away from an older man and came back to join Alkres.

  "Sor," she began, and raised a hand in my direction, "and you, Medium, you'll want to hear this."

  I joined them obediently, wrapping my cloak more tightly around my body. It was very cold in the cave, despite the heaters that glowed at either end of the dock.

  "My father's sent word that he's willing to see you now, or after dinner, if you're too tired," Signe went on. "He puts himself at your disposal."

  Alkres darted a quick glance in my direction, but I could feel Signe's eyes on me, and was careful to keep my face expressionless. It would not help us for the Orillon to think that I was acting as puppetmaster. The boy looked away again, and said, "Since he offered, ama, I think it'd be better to see him now. That way we can maybe enjoy dinner."

  The older man, some sort of Family steward, I guessed, looked a little shocked at Alkres's comment, but Signe laughed. "Wise move, sor. I'll take you up, then."

  Alkres started to follow, but I touched his arm. "Leith and Guil?" Alkres gave a guilty start. "I forgot. Ama, what about Guil and Captain Moraghan? Will you see to them, too, please?"

  "Berild has the matter in hand," Signe answered, carefully repressing a smile. "We wouldn't be such bad hosts, sor, I promise."