Skal sat down cross-legged in his vacant spot in the circle, just in time to accept the pipe. “I would ask more for Jack.”
“What?”
“Mist-off-the-waters, read the smoke for him.” Skal gave him a crooked grin and passed the pipe by.
The ivory female frowned, then inclined her head with the faintest ruffling of her whiskers. “All right then.” Her bluish black eyes slit with concentration. She looked up suddenly then, the glow of candles making bright suns in her eyes. “You are far older than you look … almost twice your years have you spent, but in dreams … dreams of war.”
Jack started. The helmet protected him from showing his emotion, but inside his suit, he began to tremble.
“I see flames. Everything is flames.” Mist shook her head. “What a terrible world it must have been … no, wait. That was its end.”
One-arm muttered, “Like the skahala says he will make for our world.”
“Ssssh.” The Elder was roundly hissed silent and he bowed his head in embarrassment, though Jack couldn’t tell if it was because he had interrupted Mist or because he’d spoken the name of one of their evil gods.
Mist pointed at him. “You have a duty, born out of the sands and now tempered by flame. Do not forsake it, no matter where you go.” She paused. “And there is another—”
Jack could not bear to hear more. “Thank you, Elder, your reading is true, but allow me some secrets. As Skal would remind you, he is my enemy.”
Mist nodded. She got to her feet. “And, now, we will see how you … move.”
Skal guided him through the mountain to the far side. A slit opened into a bowl-shaped valley. The mire lay in front, with only a very small path marked with tiny white pebbles to the side. Jack saw the narrow pathway only because he was looking for it, saw it, and realized that he might not be able to traverse it in the suit, anyway.
It was not an open pit of muck. Deceptive wisps of grass grew from it, the ground in spots even looked quite firm. But because he’d been told it was there, he knew it was, and identified it. He made a note … in case the future decreed that he come by this way again.
The Elders ringed the pathway and watched him expectantly. The storm breeze, still building, ruffled their sleek pelts. A few of them, he saw with surprise, had balding patches. Mist moved gracefully, but one or two of the older males had stiff joints and needed help getting from stepping stone to stepping stone. As Jack watched them, he thought of them less and less as alien or strange to him. He shook himself inside the suit. One of the contacts gave him a nasty pinch.
Skal stood on the far side, waiting for him.
“Well, old boy,” Jack said to himself, “here we go.”
Bogie didn’t answer, though Jack felt that it was listening somehow. Jack flexed his knees. He put the power vault onto hover and stepped out over the muck.
Skal sucked his breath in, his tail arching in avid fascination, as Jack moved into the bog. The Fishers, evidently, expected him to sink rapidly, but on hover setting, as long as his jets didn’t clog, the suit more than buoyed him. He strode quickly toward Skal. The commander stood between him and the throat of the valley. Beyond that, he could see a cool green vale, with silvery trees that wept in the wind, a demi-paradise in a world he’d once referred to as the mother of all swamps. Only Skal blocked his passage to it.
Jack chinned the power vault and literally blew himself out of the mire, over Skal’s head and onto the edge of the valley turf. He landed with a deep curtsy, straightened, and twisted to face them.
“I was trained,” he said, “to fight a war in a way so that the earth, the land and all its environs, would be damaged as little as possible. We call that fighting the ‘Pure’ war.”
“Makes sense,” grumbled One-arm. “What sense is it to gain a swamp if you’ve polluted it.”
“That’s something of the idea. Our critics say that we’ve forgotten the worth of a soul. Maybe there’s something to that, too … but if the flesh is stupid enough to war upon other flesh, then the world ought not to be destroyed so that a different flesh can someday be born there and, perhaps, in a wiser way, rule the world again. Anyway, I’m not a … I’m not an Elder. I’m just a soldier. What I’m going to do now is against my training, but it will show you the kind of damage I can do, if ordered to.” Jack turned and lasered the canyon wall, bringing molten rock down in front of them, sealing off the tiny vale forever.
They gasped and Mist let out a sound of anguish that pierced Jack, but he did not stop. He scarcely waited until the last rock had cooled, then proceeded to lean over and tear the rock wall down with his gauntlets, until he stood, swallowed up by boulders. He reached down and tossed an immense rock into the air, blasting it into dust and splinters. Then he took the remainder and sealed them into the mountain again, the side nearly inviolate, except for the obsidian seam, like a scar, down its side.
Except for a second boulder. Jack took it, like a soccer ball, and proceeded to do an exercise from Basic, running, somersaulting, tumbling, and vaulting, all the time bouncing the rock from one gauntlet to another as easily and gingerly as if it had been an egg. Laser fire and projectile fire crackled over, above and about it. When he stopped, panting, the sweat running off him, he took his helmet off in triumph and turned to his audience. He hadn’t drilled like that in twenty-three years, yet his heart pounded for only a moment and he knew a certain sadness that, if he hadn’t slept for seventeen of those years, he couldn’t have done what he’d just done now. The drill needed a young man’s body.
Three of the Elders had fainted. Mist swayed upon Skal’s arm. Jack felt a moment of shame until the Fisher stammered, “We had no idea. All … all that you have done—you’ve been toying with us, when you could have crushed us like … like the lowest slug.”
“But we don’t war like that. We push back just enough to try to get you to stop pushing on your own. We … we try to—” Jack paused, his throat dry at the grief of the beings he faced. “There’s worse things…” But he didn’t tell them. He didn’t go on about artillery and bombs and chemicals. It seemed more than enough that they’d seen him. “We show mercy whenever we can.”
Mist clenched her jaw. “Is it mercy to toy with us? Is it mercy to let us think that we can, that we might possibly, be able to fight with you? What choice have we now, when we know that we cannot stop, that we must carry on with our efforts, even though you have shown us that it is totally hopeless and that we will be crushed to our last cubling. Is that merciful?” she said, and gave a piercing cry.
Chapter 21
And then what happened?” Purple said, leaning intently over the edge of the desk, all humor fled from his eyes, leaving them a dark and dangerous brown. He ran his hand through his silvery hair, ruffling it.
“Then I was drugged and brought back to the inn. I reported to you and headed back as soon as I found that the grain silos were, indeed, empty, and, from all evidence, had been that way for several days.” Jack answered evenly, thinking of what a few pulls on that pipe of Skal’s had done to his senses. He stared at the Purple, remembering what Mist had said to him. Born of sand and tempered by flame … do not forget your duty. Or had it been destiny? He dared to think of the Purple what he’d never dared to think before. Purple was a survivor like himself—so why didn’t they share the same enemies?
“So what do you think was the purpose of the intelligence we received, warning us of pending riots?”
“They wanted to see the suit.”
“And did they?”
“I was wearing it when taken,” Jack replied. “And I demonstrated it to a council of Elder Fishers.”
The Purple rubbed his right eyebrow wearily. “And what was their reaction?”
“They were crushed. But—I think they intend to continue.”
“The same Elders who think they can make it rain.” His supervisor sighed and sat back abruptly in his chair. He turned away from Jack and drummed the desktop with an angry staccat
o, as he looked to the map screen. Overhead, rain pelted the building relentlessly.
Unconsciously, Jack looked up. Skal’s last words to him had been vague. He’d said only, “Remember the dam.” Why? What should he remember about the dam?
He got up out of his chair and went to the map. Purple asked heavily, “Trying to retrace the route?”
“No … I was blindfolded, as I told you, both ways. But…” Jack paused, letting the lie sink in as he examined the topography. “I got the distinct impression talking to these Elders that the Fishers are splintered into a number of groups. Shining fur-grinning tooth can’t possibly represent their views.” As he talked, his back to the Purple, Jack examined the topography. He found the block marks of the newly-built dam … and, around the continent, saw the symbols for several more. Jack shifted, eying the four other major land masses … and dam construction headed the list of new projects for all of them. This was a marshworld … water reigned supreme.
Shining fur-grinning tooth’s strategy became crystal clear to him. He was damming up the water rights of every major river he could, forcing the factions to side with him or be driven out of their marshes. And now he could see the sense in Skal’s ominous hints. Only the fools didn’t know what they were about—but he, with this topographical map and his inside knowledge, could see.
“He doesn’t.”
“What?” Jack turned, bringing his attention back to the Purple, forgetting for a moment what he’d said.
“The Fisher emperor doesn’t represent a tenth of the population he claims to.”
“Then what are we doing working for him?”
“We’re not … we’re working for a private employer. Jack, if you’re having problems with this assignment, I have to consider terminating you.” The Purple stood, tension etched in every fiber of his lean body.
Jack shook his head. “I can’t believe you would—any more than I can believe you’d work without knowing what was happening here. When you sent for me, you said you wanted a man of conscience. Well, it takes a man of very little conscience to figure out what’s happening.”
They considered each other.
Then the Purple said, very quietly. “It’s much easier to defeat Poonum working with him than against.”
Those words took Jack’s breath away. He found himself frozen in place as he considered what the Purple was saying to him. Then he broke the silence. “Shit. Shit and damn. Amber’s right. I’m a gullible son of a bitch. And all this time, I thought you were tweaking Poonum’s tail because you thought he was an idiot!”
The Purple grinned. “And if you’ll sit down and listen, Jack, I’ll give you an idea of what our employer is really up to.”
The rain overhead became even harder.
Jack went to the map screen. “We’re out of time, then, if government sabotage is our game. Look here.” The Purple followed, looking over his shoulder. “Shining fur-grinning tooth has built dams here, and here, and there’s work in progress here, here, and there.”
The Purple nodded slowly.
Jack said impatiently, “Don’t you see? He’s ruining his own people, just to get them to toe the line. He’s using water rights to build his empire.”
“But if they can make it rain … why bother?”
“But they’re not making it rain downriver. Just here.” And Jack stabbed a finger at the map.
Purple’s eyebrows arched. “They’re trying to overflow the dam!”
“Exactly. And if it were a lower technology dam, they’d have done it. But we built it.”
“And when we built it, we took this minor tributary here into consideration. That’s where the floodgates are directed.”
“Right. So their efforts are futile. Their lands stay parched, the dam stays operational, and the quasi-emperor stays in power. Unless…” Jack paused.
“Unless what?”
“Unless I blow the dam.”
Purple let out a whistling breath. “You do that … and you’ll wipe out Shining fur-grinning tooth’s capital city, as well as flooding the flatlands.”
“But only because of the diversion, which he insisted be built, so that his own city profit from it.”
“Killed by his own weapon,” the Purple said slowly. He stood back, considering the map. “What about Skal and the downriver faction?”
“Most of them have already moved up into these hills, where the snow runoffs provide water and springs. Their lands will be inundated, but that will pass in a season.”
The Purple scratched his chin. The humorous brown eyes regained their twinkle. “I can’t back you in this. I’ll have to be with Poonum and a delegation, trying to convince Shining fur-grinning tooth of the error of his ways, in light of this new information.”
They looked at one another. Jack said slowly, “Can you get out in time?”
“If a pro is doing the job. We’ll be on a tight timetable.”
“And where,” said Amber, with an edge to her voice, “am I supposed to be while you’re doing all this brave crap?”
“Wherever Purple takes you. We’re upriver, but there could be some backwash. The main thing is to have you out of the way so that the Fishers can’t retaliate.”
She looked up at him. “You do care about me, then?” Her eyes shone strangely bright in the electric lighting.
“Of course I do!”
Amber looked away, presenting him with the profile of an attractive young woman, whose ash brown hair fell in soft waves over her shoulders. “I thought—I thought maybe you were mad you’d brought me, because I got in the way and everything.”
He didn’t ask why she’d thought that. He sat there, torn by the desire to hug her comfortingly, and by the knowledge that if he did that, he wouldn’t be hugging the urchin kid sister he’d thought of her as, for so long. He sat across the room from a woman who attracted him, and whom he didn’t dare touch. “When we get back—” he started, then stopped.
“Back where?” she asked quickly.
“Back to Malthen. I thought maybe you’d like to go back to school.”
“School?” Her brows knotted in puzzlement.
Her complexion had cleared, her face filled out slightly from its bony triangular shape, but she was still Amber. Her golden brown eyes watched him, and a faint flush colored her cheeks. But it wasn’t a demure flush. Jack discovered, as soon as she opened her mouth. “What is this? I used to be just fine as I was. Aren’t I smart enough for you?”
“Those are street smarts, and in that area, you’re smart enough for anybody. I just thought—”
“You thought! I don’t have to know how to build a goddamn starship just to take a ride in one! I’m fine just as I am, and it’s time you realized that, Jack Storm! It’s time you appreciated me.”
Jack said nothing. She’d gotten to her feet. Amber glared down at him for a moment and his ears began to ring. He put his hand up to them, saying, “Amber … you’re hurting.”
She paled immediately. “Oh, damn.” She put her trembling hands over her face. “Damn. I’m out of control again.”
“You didn’t mean to hurt me.” He sensed that she had begun crying silently, behind her mask of slender fingers.
“It isn’t that! Rolf had exercises he used to make me do. I never understood why … only now I do. It’s like … like I have to know how to rein myself in.” Amber sniffled. “Why can’t I be like everybody else?”
“I didn’t fall in love with everybody else.” Jack said, and the silence fell on his unexpected words as the two of them stared, astonished, at each other. He began to clear his throat when a commanding knock on the door interrupted him.
Skal came in, his pelt dappled dark with rain. He grinned. “A lover’s quarrel?” he asked in Fisher amusement as Amber’s face turned red again and she fled from the room.
“You have great timing,” Jack answered wryly. “Ready to go?”
“As soon as you and the suit are.”
Jack stood up. He hesitat
ed, then called out, “Get packed, Amber. The Purple’s sending someone by tomorrow morning. And if he doesn’t, steal a skimmer and get to high ground by yourself. I’m depending on you to do that for me.”
Amber came to the doorway of her bedroom. “All right,” she said softly. She watched him leave.
“Who’s in the raiding party?” Jack asked, as he settled the battle armor in the rear seat. This time, Skal had the roof up, though Jack doubted the vinyl covering could withstand the torrential downpour. “And I thought this stuff was supposed to stop?”
“Nobody in the Elders except Mist—we had to wrestle One-arm to convince him his disability would hamper us. And, yes, the rain will stop after this squall. We don’t want to give away our change in strategies, do we?”
But Jack didn’t like the news that Mist was coming. He said as much.
Skal looked at him. His whiskers and ears flattened, then pricked forward again. “Mist-off-the-waters can call down the lightning,” he said flatly. “Or did you wish to go in without a diversion?”
“I didn’t wish to jeopardize her.”
“Our world is not like yours, my friend. Our mates share equally in everything we say or do.”
“And what does yours say?” In that brief silence that followed, Jack knew he shouldn’t have asked.
Then Skal said, “Shining fur-grinning tooth had her killed, to avoid further confusion in the bloodlines of leadership.”
“I’m sorry,” Jack said. “And I shouldn’t have asked,”
Skal looked at him again, his dark eyes shining. “No,” he disagreed. “You have the right to know. And what is your stake in this?”
“Mine?” Jack thought. “I’m not sure really. Maybe it rests in what Mist said to me.”
They finished the trip to the sanctuary hills in silence, and it took Jack quite a long time to realize the rain had stopped before the skimmer landed.
“This is Hooker.” Skal indicated a massive, sable colored Fisher, his shoulders bowed with muscle and fat. Hooker wore a dark jumpsuit, taking advantage of its many pockets for storage—of what, Jack couldn’t hazard a guess. Food perhaps, or hand weapons. Hooker didn’t appear to have a tail, either inside or outside the suit. Hooker gave him a brusque nod and rocked back and forth impatiently on his bare feet,
Solar Kill Page 19
