by Chris Walley
Vero shrugged. “That is one mean lady.”
“Mean?”
“Just an expression. But I wouldn’t like to be the cockroach-beast that walked into her lab.”
There was a further delay, and Merral walked back to the LP4 and resumed his studies. Finally, around five o’clock, the robot painter finished. The Emilia Kay now looked very different, but Merral decided he felt ambivalent about the effect. It was splendid to see Perena’s “old lady” now dressed up in new paint, and the color scheme of blues and greens gave her a real sense of purpose, but seeing a ship in camouflage was too evocative for him of the ancient wars. He found a slight assurance in the fresh gleam of the Lamb and Stars emblem on the nose and tail.
The fueling was completed, and Perena and an engineer walked around making last-minute external checks.
Merral looked up at the sky, sensing a slight breeze. Sure enough, high above them, fine wispy clouds were sweeping in from the southeast. They would be on their way before any rain came in.
Vero, whom Merral had seen busy consulting with people and checking lists, strode over with a sense of purpose. He scrambled on board the LP4 and sat next to Merral. “Everything all right?” he asked.
“Pretty much. I feel nervous,” Merral confided.
“Yes. Me too. Anyway, I have some good news. Possibly.”
“Go on. I need it.”
“You know how we have been worried about the poor data on the intruder ship?”
“Of course.” One of many vague and dreadful scenarios Merral had considered had been that they would land at Fallambet Lake Five and find a perfectly elliptical—and perfectly natural—lump of iron ore.
“Well, I think we may have images in two days.”
“Really! How?”
“Well, I was much struck by the dreadful business with that surveillance buzzard, the thing that was a machine but with the dead bits.” There was a look of disgust on his face. “And I felt that something like that was what we needed. Only not exactly like that, if you follow. So I wondered if we could train a living bird to fly over and image the ship; like you can steer a horse.”
“With a micronic camera and transmitter system? Interesting idea. Possible, but not in the time.”
“Exactly what the two people I put to work on the idea said. But not impossible with a horse. So a day ago they landed a horse equipped for signals on the southern edge of the Lannar Crater and are now nudging it slowly northward. I’ve just heard from them on the secure link; it seems to be working, and the horse should be going along the other side of the lake the day after tomorrow.”
“Whose horse?” Merral asked urgently, suddenly concerned that Vero might have enlisted Graceful.
“A small, wiry, and shaggy gray mare called Felicity. From Isterrane stables, but originally from high along the rift flanks. Sure-footed and looks wild, so she shouldn’t be suspicious. The transmission is a low-energy directional burst signal southward. That should be undetectable.”
“And you are looking after her?”
Vero gave him a cautious smile. “Merral, try not to be too suspicious. The guys are taking it very slowly and have a metabolic monitor on her to check stress levels. She’s doing fine.”
“Good. I wish you’d told me, though.”
“I started it off when you were in Ynysmant, and anyway, I wasn’t sure it was going to work. It may not.”
“I don’t mind it failing. It’s a good idea, typical of you. But I’m worried it will alert the intruders. It may be risky to Felicity and maybe to us. But look, just keep me in touch on it.”
“Yes, I will do.”
Another vehicle drew away from the ship. “Oh, Vero,” Merral said, “I’ve been thinking. About what to do when we get to Tanaris. My feeling is that the best thing I can do is to start off with a meeting of all the leaders you have set up. The lieutenants, the chief of logistics, communications, etc. Perena, of course, as ship’s captain, Anya as chief of intruder studies. Get them to introduce themselves and give me status reports. You agree?”
“Yes, that would be a good idea.”
“Good. But, by the way, what are you?”
Vero chewed his lip and turned his brown eyes toward the ship. “A title for me? I have thought about it. . . . There’s an old term, but it describes what I want to do. Intelligence.”
“So you will be chief of intelligence?”
“Yes, why not? Chief of intelligence—” he made a slight bow—“at your service.”
“Very well, but I will expect you to define exactly what you do.”
“Terms of reference, et cetera. Yes, you will have it.”
“And so, Chief, at this meeting, what else do you propose I do?”
“Oh, announce a provisional timetable for the next few days. Show them you are decisive.”
Merral sighed. “But I gather the trick is to be sure that your decisions are right.”
“True. That as well. But to be indecisive is to be wrong before you start. You must be decisive and decisively right.”
“Help! And I suppose also at some point I must address the men? As soon as possible?”
“That would be wise. They are expecting their leader.”
While he was considering an answer, Merral caught a glimpse of Perena waving at them from the side of the Emilia Kay.
“Well, time to fly, Vero. Tanaris beckons.”
Vero left to get his bags while Merral started walking to the bulk of the Emilia Kay with his holdall. As he paused on the runway, waiting for Vero to catch up, he felt suddenly daunted by all that lay before him. He was strangely reminded of the Lymatov painting that, until recently, had been in Barrand’s office; he could imagine a similar painting of him, now in that same genre of historical realism. He would be a small, vulnerable figure with a large bag walking across the empty black runway to the looming, freshly painted bulk of the ship. And the Emilia Kay would be so depicted that the name and the emblem of the Lamb and Stars would be clearly visible, as would be the late-afternoon sky in which clouds were ominously gathering. What would the title be? Captain D’Avanos leaves Isterrane? On the way to Tanaris? or even The War Begins?
Then Vero caught up with him, and Merral curtailed his imagination. The present reality was more critical than any fantasy of the future.
Besides, he reminded himself, if he failed, there might be no one to paint pictures.
36
Inside the Emilia Kay, gently throbbing and humming with new life, Merral and Vero found seats in the passenger compartment behind the cockpit. There were eleven other people there; most appeared to be technicians and engineers. Merral realized that all of them seemed to know who he was. This will be the way now; the title “Captain” hangs round my neck like Lucas Ringell’s identity disk. As if sensing his unease, Anya smiled warmly at him. “Preflight nerves, eh?”
“The flying, Anya, is probably the easy bit.”
Then the engines coughed and rumbled to life, the airframe began to vibrate softly, and they rolled forward onto the main runway.
There was a long pause and then, without warning, came a sudden ear-jarring blast of thrusters and the ship began accelerating forward until, after what seemed an uncomfortably long time, it shuddered free of the ground.
Ten minutes later Merral slipped forward into the cockpit and stood quietly at the back. The view ahead out of the expansive windscreen caught his attention immediately; whatever vices the Series D might have had, poor pilot visibility was not one of them. Through the broad, bronze-tinted screen Merral could see a mosaic of small, white, fluffy clouds hanging over the brilliant blue-green sea, the golden rays of the late-afternoon sun illuminating the clouds and casting vast black shadows on the ruffled waters below. The effect was one of great beauty and charm, and Merral felt uplifted and somehow soothed. It is a view I could watch for ages. Then he reminded himself that today—and for the foreseeable future—preoccupying himself with the admiration of creation was something fo
r which he and others might pay a high price. It was yet another disturbing thought.
He dragged his eyes down to look around the spacious cockpit. Only once or twice had he been in a similar position in any atmosphere craft when it was flying, and he didn’t know what to expect. But he saw nothing in either the many screens and lights or the language or attitudes of Perena, the copilot, and the flight engineer to raise any alarm. All seemed ordered and calm.
Perena glanced back and motioned him to her side.
“Everything okay back there?” she asked, keeping her eyes on a multicolored display of daunting complexity.
“Fine. Noisy though.”
“Yes. Ideally we would have replaced the acoustic insulation, but there were other priorities.”
“And everything is all right here, Captain?”
“So far fine, Captain,” she answered, an amused irony in her tone. “Barely two hours’ flying time. But she’s doing okay. Some fine-tuning needs to be done.”
He watched her eyes flick carefully across the screen. “But no, Emilia Kay is one nice old lady. I have a good feeling for her.”
Perena gestured forward with her head. “We are flying due south for another few minutes. Mainly to mislead anyone watching by giving the impression that we are going to one of the Farakethan Islands.”
“Deception again . . . ,” Merral remarked, as much to himself as to her.
“Yes, sorry. I think we shall all be forced to retake Basic Ethics when this is over.” As she said it, she gazed up at him with a troubled expression. I too am worried, it seemed to say.
She looked back at a screen. “But, more immediately, I’m concerned by the weather. There’s the tail of a storm belt coming in, and we will probably intercept it in forty minutes.”
“How bad?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “That’s the fun. Vero’s ensuring that all the observation satellites, including the weather monitors, were down today was clever, but it has left us blind too.”
“You can’t fly above it?”
“No. We are staying pretty low to keep well over the horizon from anything watching in northern Menaya.”
There was a gesture from the copilot.
“The turn coming up. Watch out ahead.” Perena’s voice was flat.
The ship banked left gently, and as it turned, the vista ahead changed. The isolated clouds seemed to suddenly cluster, thicken, and darken, and as they did, they lost their innocence and became threatening. As if to add emphasis, the ship was buffeted slightly, and Merral reached out to hold a strut.
When he looked forward again, there was just a wall of black dense cloud ahead stretching from the sea below to a level high above them. Staring at it, Merral could make out swirling and boiling billows within the cloud barrier. A flicker of lightning illuminated the interior of a cloud column.
Although he could hear the quiet but urgent discussion occurring among the three crew members, Merral felt unable to take his eyes off the scene before him. The view seemed somehow symbolic of all that had happened over the last few months—how his life and that of Farholme had gone from an infinitely open and benevolent landscape to one over which a turbulent darkness loomed.
Perena, her voice cool and tense, interrupted his thoughts. “Merral, we are going to risk flying between the cells of the front. Sensors say it’s a thin but violent weather unit. As you can see. We have about ten minutes before it gets really rough. Better make sure everybody is strapped in back there.”
With a final glance at the impending cloud mass, Merral slipped back into the passenger cabin as another shudder struck the ship.
“Captain’s warning,” he announced as he took his seat. “Storm ahead. Fasten belts.”
Merral caught a shudder of expectation from Vero and remembered that he was a bad traveler.
“You’re serious?” he said, peering nervously at him.
“’Fraid so. She’s says it’s all your fault, switching off the weather sats.”
“Ah. It seemed a good idea at the time. I have antinauseants. Oh no, they’re in my bag.”
“Where’s that?”
“In the hold. Oh, the moment you get a new Gate here I’m back to Earth. The weather on the Made Worlds isn’t for me. Not—”
“Alert! Imminent turbulence!” proclaimed a mechanical voice from above their heads.
The ship suddenly dropped as if the air had been removed from underneath it.
For a second it seemed to Merral as if his stomach had been punched skyward, then he was crushed down in his seat.
All around a great rattling and slithering erupted as unsecured objects flew around the cabin and crashed against the floor and walls. Someone’s diary flew past Merral and struck the side with a crash. There were exclamations and groans around him. The Emilia Kay banked and then nosed slightly upward. There was more shuddering and creaking.
Above the noise, coming vaguely from somewhere below and behind the cabin, Merral was aware of a strangely ominous rumble. Perena’s voice, now insistent and tense, sounded through the speaker. “Captain, Anya, can you come forward, please?”
Merral released his belt and made his way forward carefully as the ship jolted again. The worrying rumbling below them continued. As Anya joined him, he caught a glimpse of Vero reaching for a sick bag.
The strained and tense atmosphere in the cockpit and the flashing red light on Perena’s screen confirmed Merral’s unease. She didn’t look up but gestured to an ancillary monitor.
The image on it was a wide-angle view of the hull interior and, as Merral watched, he saw a large yellow drum roll along the floor and strike a crate. He now knew the source of the rumbling.
“We have something loose among the cargo,” Perena announced in a coolly precise tone. “It shouldn’t have happened, but it has. Anya, is it one of yours?”
There was a cluck of distress from her sister. “Yes. It’s the fifty-liter drum of disinfecting agent. Thyrol 56.”
“Full strength?” Merral asked, remembering the care enforced when they used it in the lab for sterilizing equipment. There was a new, violent shuddering, and he clutched the seat back. Out of the window, he could only see a swirling blackness ahead now. Raindrops were splattering on the windscreen.
“Yes,” answered Anya. “The concentrate. We assumed a potential major biohazard risk. But it should have been secured properly.”
“Results if it breaks open, Sister?” The anxiety underlying Perena’s level and controlled tone was all too obvious.
“Not good. It’s horribly oxidizing; it will dissolve strapping and maybe insulation.”
Perena didn’t look up. “And if it meets explosives?”
There was the briefest of pauses. “Guess . . .”
A new jolting began. Ahead, a flash of lightning sliced through the darkness.
Perena flicked an urgent finger at the engineer next to her. “Pierre, start rehearsing the routine for ejecting the cargo module.”
Merral caught the engineer’s eyes widen. “Ejecting? Yes, Captain.”
Perena glanced at the hold image, where the yellow barrel was still careering around.
“Merral, if I feel it’s leaking I have no option but to shed the whole cargo module. It won’t do the aerodynamics or the mission any good, but we may land in one piece. Better get a couple of men to try to secure it. Fast.”
She flicked a switch. “The hold microphone is on for anybody to communicate with me. I’ll give you warning once we start the ejection sequence. Sister, get back to your seat; there’s more turbulence to come.”
The ship bounced around again as Merral made his way back to the passenger compartment. Ten faces with various degrees of anxiety on them looked up at him; an eleventh was too busy burying itself in a large brown bag. For a brief moment, Merral paused, realizing that, as captain, he could just order them to do it while he stayed up with the others. Somehow, though, he felt that wouldn’t be right.
“Lorrin! You!�
�� he yelled at the two men at the end of the row of seats. “Follow me!”
As the men unbuckled themselves, Merral made his way down to the hold. As he went down the spiral staircase, further jolts bounced him off his feet, throwing him against the walls.
The rumbling noise was louder at the bottom of the stairs. As he triggered the hatch switch, he saw for the first time the multiple seals around the door to the cargo module. It came back to him that on the model he had made in his childhood, part of the fun had been sliding the specialist load components in and out.
As the hatch door slid open, a pungent chemical aroma struck Merral. We have some leakage already. He paused, peering across the darkened cavern of the hold as he tried to evaluate the scene. The ship was buffeted again. Ahead the yellow drum rolled angrily backward and forward.
Perena’s voice spoke from above him. “Okay, Merral, I have you on camera. Is it leaking?”
“Well . . . there’s a smell.”
“Okay. It’s leaking. We’d better start preparations for ejection.”
There was a jolt. Everything in the hold seemed to lurch and creak. The drum struck a crate with a loud crack.
“Perena, wait. I think it’s a minor leak so far.”
“Negative, Merral. Pierre has pointed out that we can only safely eject on the straight and level. We have to do it before we hit the main belt of turbulence.”
Merral looked at the hold. “Give me five minutes. Please.”
“Three.” There was a note in her voice that forbade further negotiation. Through a porthole a flash of lightning flickered.
“Okay. Perena, can you put her into a smooth climb? Say, five degrees. I want the barrel to slowly, slowly roll to the rear.”
“Okay.”
Merral turned to the men behind him. “We have to get that barrel upright and secure it. And quickly. Try not to get any fluid on your hands.”
The ship began to tilt gently nose upward. After a moment’s hesitation, the barrel began to roll backward. Then it accelerated and for a horrible moment, Merral thought it was going to smash against the far wall, but the tilt eased off and it thudded to a stop.
