“I’ve been told the drought here is bad enough that the silos might be attacked.”
“Possibly, but not probably. Why don’t you come downstairs with me and have something a little stronger to drink? Meet the locals.”
Jack hesitated, then stood up. “All right.”
Downstairs was nearly deserted. Perhaps three Fisher groups were scattered throughout the massive tavern. Wooden tables gleamed in the glow of lamplight. No electricity here. The innkeeper waddled over, an ebony Fisher, with grizzled gray at his hands, feet, and muzzle. His thighs were bowed, and his tail thick and sleek. He wore a shirt as well as shorts, with a heavy, oilcloth apron over a slightly round stomach. “Lads!” he said in the local dialect, and then switched over. “What can I do for you?”
Skal pushed out a quarter flake. “Two draws of your finest, laid down in the cellar.”
“Ah,” the innkeeper said. “If your eldest sister didna work here, Skal, ye wouldn’t know I had sech hid. Ah, well, ye paid for it—ye’ll get it.” He strolled off.
Jack could feel curious stares at his back, but ignored them. “Quiet tonight,” he commented.
“Most nights, now. Fisherfolk are moving out of the flatlands and up into the mountains. River water there—and it’s harder to collect taxes that way.”
“Did the dam do this?”
Skal shook his head. “It didn’t help… but the heavy rain upriver is our doing.”
“What?”
Lamplight glowed in the Fisher’s orbs as the being considered him. “You’re no fool, Jack. You heard me the first time.”
“You can’t control the weather. You haven’t the technology, and even if you did, it would be too damned expensive for you. Look at the toll here. And displacing moisture centers could cost you the ecology of the whole continent.” Jack had to force himself to keep his voice level. He felt that everyone in the room was listening to the two of them.
“We haven’t displaced anything, except a cloud or two from downriver. We’ve just concentrated it all upriver.”
“But how?”
Skal leaned over, mischief gleaming in his face. “Magic, Jack. By magic.”
Jack choked back a disbelieving laugh as the innkeeper leaned over in front of them and set down two exquisite cups brimming with liquor. The smell alone was enough to put off any thought of an argument.
Skal lifted his cup. The gold-rimmed porcelain was so fine, the shadow of his fingers showed through, darkening the liquor. “As one of your philosophers said long ago, ’the truth will set you free’.”
“Another one also said that candy was dandy, but liquor was quicker,” Jack returned, sipping cautiously at the ambrosia. It fired his throat and settled into a comfortable, banked warmth in his stomach. It was mellow and very slightly sweet, and totally unique to the Fisher world.
“And what is candy?” asked Skal.
“Never mind.”
They sat in companionable silence a moment longer, then Jack said, “What do you mean by magic?”
“Magic. I’m not a mystic, and even if I was, I wouldn’t tell you the secret, but I can tell you, it works. One look at our parched flatlands will tell you that it works.”
“It could be coincidence.”
Skal shook his head emphatically.
“It can’t be done by magic.”
“Perhaps you have another name for it.” Skal wrinkled his brow in thought. “Chants, or prayer, I think, would cover it.”
Jack thought that would cover about anything, including wishful thinking. He picked up his cup, looking at the exquisite workmanship. The anomaly pricked his curiosity. Just how backward were these innocent-seeming marshworld folk, anyhow? They distilled a liquor that compared favorably with any he’d ever tasted, and someone, somewhere, had discovered the secrets of porcelain, and they used mindpower to control the weather. “What do you hope to gain?”
“That,” the Fisher said, his large eyes twinkling. “I expect you to find out for yourself, worthy adversary.”
They had another cup of the innkeeper’s finest, then staggered back to Jack’s room, where Skal left him to make his own way into bed. The Fisher first shuffled through Jack’s duffel while he watched bemused. Skal seemed pleased to find the ceremonial knife, and displeased not to find what he was looking for.
“Where is it, Jack?”
“Where is what?”
“The control for your robot there.”
Jack sat up and swung his feet to the floor, feeling a pleasant whir in his brain. “There’s no control. It’s not a robot. It’s battle armor.”
Skal made a movement with his whiskers and eyebrows that Jack had learned to interpret as a frown. “It’s inefficient.”
“Insult me all you want, but not my suit!” Jack found the bemusing haze of the alcohol slipping away from him, all too soon, like the effects of a stunner. He stayed relatively limp to allow the Fisher to think he still had an advantage over him.
Skal balanced on the fronts of his supple feet. He hooked a thumb in his weapons belt. “I don’t know how much I can believe you.”
“Same here. With your wild stories about Elders using magic on the weather…”
The Fisher’s eyes fairly glowed. He held out his hand. “Come with me, then, and I’ll show you. And wear the armor.”
“The armor?”
“The Elders must see it. Yes, that’s the only way to do it. You’ve got to come with me and wear your suit.”
“And if I don’t want to?”
“Of course you do!”
Jack stood up carefully, feeling a last farewell rush of alcoholic haze numb him to his toes and then disappear. “I’ve got the grain silos to check on in the morning, and a guard to arrange before there’s a riot.”
Skal shrugged a sinuous Fisher shrug. “Don’t worry about it, my friend—the rin is all gone. Has been for days.”
Somehow Jack wasn’t surprised. “What about the riot activity?”
Another ripple of pelt and muscle. “A little intelligence misplaced—I was hoping they would send you into my embrace. And they did! Come on, Jack—what have you got to lose?”
It wasn’t a question of what he had to lose so much as what he suspected Skal had to gain, but he nodded. “Where are we going?”
“To the hill country.”
“And we’re hiking over the dried-out mud flats to get there?” Not only was he worried about the terrain, but also about the displaced fauna which might be out looking for meals.
“I’ve appropriated a skimmer.” Skal drew his lips back in a smile.
“I’ll bet you have. All right. I’ll send back word.”
Skal reached out and caught his wrist. “That’s something I strongly suggest you do not do. If worse comes to worse, you can always claim you were taken.”
Jack felt his eyebrow arch, but he said nothing. He walked over to the suit and prepared it for the journey. Bogie’s questing mind failed to come to life at his touch and, though he’d asked Amber to squelch it, he felt a brief sorrow.
The purple edges of dawn were curling back as the skimmer shot over the crackled and dried mud flats. A layer of flashing-bugs hovered over the barely moist ground, their golden flashes flickering on and off. Above them was a layer of butterflies, multicolored, their wings frail against the morning breeze. Still higher flew dragonflies and birds, dipping now and then for a butterfly or flash-bug breakfast.
The blue-gray haze of night was soon burned off by the yellow sun. Skal rode his skimmer as though it were a wild creature, as it bumped and hydroplaned off thermals. He turned and grinned at Jack. There was no windshield or hood, and the wind tore through Jack’s sandy hair. He wore goggles and paid attention to keeping his mouth shut, though the layers of bugs were below him. He squinted against the dawn. It wasn’t burning bright as Malthen’s had been, or even the dawns across the sands of Milos, but bright enough.
They hit an air pocket and the skimmer bucked across it. An empty slee
ve brushed eerily at his arm as though the suit reached for comfort. As the ride smoothed out, there was a dull rumble.
Jack looked up. The cloud layer overhead was high, but already growing thick and dark and moving upriver. There was little wind here. What pushed them? What indeed?
Chapter 20
There is no one man wise enough to rule us,” the Elder Fisher said.
Jack blinked in the dim light of the immense cavern. Minerals glowed in the walls, catching the sparkle of tiny tallow candles set in niches about the cave, drip marks flowing down, showing that similar candles had melted away in the same niche, for generations. He sat awkwardly, enfolded in his suit and helmet, as Skal had insisted, and his pearly form dwarfed those of the Fishers sitting on either side of him. He wanted to shift from hip to hip, or shrug his shoulders, but knew that such a movement would annihilate the beings closest to him. Fisher muzzles turned to him, then, and he realized he was expected to make an answer to the statement he had just heard. He began to clear his throat, when a one-armed Fisher cleared his own with an angry growl.
“And you, old shit, would leave decision-making to a circle of Elders such as ourselves, who do little other than chant about the rain and argue over everything else. A village, let alone a planet, cannot be ruled this way.” He waved his stump of a shoulder. He was raven black, except for the silver that tipped his muzzle and ears, and chunky for a Fisher.
“And who here is to believe you are taking the side of Shining fur-grinning tooth?” A Fisher of a rare, almost pure cream color spoke, a female, Jack believed her to be. She wore an apron as well as the shorts.
“You know me better than that, Mist-off-the-waters,” the one-armed Fisher said. He looked to her and made a tiny nod with his head, a movement Jack was beginning to recognize meant respect. “But there must be one authority to take action.”
“One man backed by a council, then.”
“Perhaps.”
“Bah!” growled the first Elder, and the hackles along his russet back bristled. “No one man can feel what all Fishers feel.”
Jack fought the urge to shift again. He looked to Skal, who lounged impassively across from him, the candlelight sending a glow to his light spots, giving him the look of an ancient leopard. Though Skal appeared at ease, he had the look in his eyes of one absorbing every word, every nuance.
Skal stirred then, as if feeling Jack’s eyes on him. “I brought a guest, not for him to hear you argue politics, but for you to show him the magic you can do.”
Every Fisher eye, bright and luminescent as the moon, narrowed at his words. Jack felt his back grow cold inside the suit.
“This is a thing,” Mist said, “that we consider sacred. Even talk of it is not allowed. You know this, Skal.”
He inclined his head and kept it down. “These aren’t ordinary times,” he responded.
“Indeed? And why not? We parched our own rin fields, sending our villages to the hills to survive. Why? Because we wish to show our snarls to our Emperor?”
Skal shrugged. His pelt rippled, then settled, as Mist’s tone echoed away in the cavern.
One-arm moved his stump. “You’re both less than turds in the water, if you continue to argue in front of this outsider. You would show him all of our flaws and none of our strengths.”
Jack spoke then, “I’m not here in an official capacity.”
“You represent no one other than yourself?”
Jack nodded.
One-arm showed his teeth in a pleased grin. “Good! That’s the way it should be.”
“Politics again, you old freak,” a russet-coated Fisher in the shadows of the circle spoke out. “The stranger’s ears will be filled with our feuds when he leaves.”
“And why shouldn’t they be?”
“Because,” Skal said quietly, “he is our enemy.”
An abrupt silence fell in the cavern, broken only by the flaring of a candle as its drippings caught fire, flared up, then sizzled out.
Cream-colored Mist, her eyes a midnight blue, looked to Jack. “Is this true?”
“I’m paid to serve Commander Poonum—and it’s my understanding he’s the commander in chief for Shining fur-grinning tooth.”
Someone hissed. Another said, in broken phrasings, “Enemy of some of us, allies of others.”
Jack blinked. What would allies of the Fisher emperor be doing in this group? He began to grasp that the politics of the situation was rapidly growing beyond his reach.
Skal held up the ceremonial knife. “Yet, even for an enemy, he has honor. And, I made him wear what soldiers of his own emperor wear, so that all of us can understand what we face if we allow a full-blown war to begin.”
It dawned on Jack that Skal had brought him here for a demonstration. He shrank within the suit. The Owner of the Purple would be furious with him for getting trapped into this. He imagined Amber saying, “Jack, you’re too damned gullible.” A droplet of sweat squirmed its way down his torso, leaving behind a trail that itched where he could not reach. For a fleeting second, he had a panic-stricken sense of déjá vu—this was Milos, all over again, with the natives they were supposed to aid and defend having ideas and wars of their own.
It was worse than Milos, because the enemy he would be fighting had become human to him; these Fishers were not despicable Thrakian bugs that crunched satisfyingly under his boots. Skal was as much a comrade in arms as Purple. How could Jack destroy him?
And it was the same as Milos because Jack knew this was a no-win situation. No wonder he worked for a private employer. If the Emperor heard about this, he’d wash his hands of the whole affair, and Jack stood a good chance of disappearing again, lest he become a public embarrassment. If this became too much of a fiasco for a private employer, he’d simply become a battle casualty.
No, not again!
He would not let himself be buried alive again.
He realized that Skal had said something else to him, and that all the Fishers were staring, waiting for a response. He shoved himself to his feet. “This is not what I came for.”
To a murmur of disappointment and anger, Skal held up his hand. “No, my guest is right. He is from another world. He scoffed when I said that you had driven all the rain upriver. This is my pride gift I ask.”
Mist-off-the-waters looked at Skal. Her whiskers trembled. Then she put her head back and began to sing, eerily, almost a howl, a primeval sound that sent ice-cold chills through Jack, even though he was buffered by the suit’s sound system.
The twelve other Elders in the circle joined in. Some sang, one barked in accompanying cadence, and several chanted, paused, then chanted again.
Jack felt the sound beating at his ears. The suit wasn’t pressurized or carrying an air supply against an alien environment, he was breathing off the vents. It muffled his hearing. He could feel pressure building up, as though he was making a drop from an assault tube, or climbing rapidly in altitude. Then, suddenly, he heard the distinctive rumble of thunder.
Jack swung to the mouth of the cavern, so far away, he could barely see its opening. He left the circle and walked toward it. Skal bounced to his feet and stood in front of him, as though he would block Jack’s passage, but he paused, then let Storm pass.
When he reached the outside, he stood on the side of the mountain crag. The skimmer flashed a glint of sunlight at him. Mountain grasses, thin and wiry, tossed as a building wind ruffled through them. Trees below rustled. Jack looked through his topside camera, and scanned the heavy skies overhead. What had been blindingly sapphire blue when he entered the cavern was now charcoal—and the high, boiling clouds were headed upriver. It was impossible, but his cameras scanned it in the distance, and his gauges told him there had been a drastic change in the barometric pressure.
He had no explanation for what they’d done, or at least, none that he could accept. If Amber had been with him, maybe…
He scanned Skal at his back. “I see it,” he said, “but I don’t understand it.�
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“Some things are beyond knowing,” Skal answered. “I don’t understand how you can be here, on my world, yet you are. And why have you no tail?”
Jack smiled, in spite of himself. He turned to re-enter the cavern. “You brought me here to show them the suit, didn’t you?”
A Fisher shrug. “I wanted to see what it can do.”
“Why?”
“I’ve heard stories. I have been trying to convince my people that, if we wish to win this war, we must make a single, sweeping gesture. Otherwise, you and others like you will chew us up.” Skal pointed into the dark recesses of the cavern. “They don’t believe you can.”
“And if I show them I can?”
“Then I will have convinced them of what we must do to win.”
Or, Jack thought, convinced them to surrender to the inevitable. He hesitated. “You once laughed at my suit. You didn’t seem to think it would work in the swamps and marshes.”
“And I don’t think it will,” Skal answered.
“Then it won’t be a true test.”
The big brown eyes, so like an animal’s, with very little white, widened. “Do you intend to convince me, too?”
“If I can.”
Skal paused, then said, “There’s a mire not far from here. It’s fed by mountain springs … we use it to protect the entrance to this cavern on the far side. It’s not big, but it will engulf a man easily enough.”
“That’s all it takes.”
He grinned. “I look forward to seeing you waddle in mud. Please, come back inside. The Elders are waiting.”
The chant had stopped. Mist-off-the-waters had her arms curled lightly about her knees. The others reclined. A sweet-smelling smoke filled the air and Jack saw a pipe being passed around. It didn’t surprise him somehow.
“I saw the storm moving,” he said, simply.
One-arm grunted. “It is only a small spate. Little enough effort.”
“But how do you do it?”
The Fisher folk froze, and Jack realized then what a stupid thing he’d said. He waved a gauntlet. “I beg your pardon. I had forgotten this … thing … is sacred.”
Solar Kill Page 18
