“Attack—!” Kuzhinn gasped. “All of them together, like a pack of lopers?”
Ayon halted. His hand dropped to the blaster, his vanes and ears drew back, his pupils narrowed beyond what the glare brought about. “What are you saying among each other?” he demanded. “You do not bear yourselves like peaceful people.”
Yewwl had taken a lead in moots at home and assemblies on the Volcano for well-nigh twenty years. She relaxed her whole frame, signalled graciousness with her vanes, and purred, “I was translating, of course, but I fear I alarmed them. Remember, we are completely new to this kind of place. The high walls, the narrownesses between, light, noise, smells, vehicles rushing by, everything sets us on edge. Mention of armor has raised a fear that you—the local Ramnuans—may plan to oust us from our lands, against the coming of the Ice. Or if you plot no direct attack on us, you may mount one on neighboring barbarians. That could start a wave of invasions off westward, which would finally crash over our country.” She spread open palms. “Ai-ah, I know well it’s ridiculous. Why should you, when you already have from the humans more than what we came seeking? But it would soothe them to see what you really do make.”
—“Oh, good, good!” Banner cheered.
Ayon dropped his wariness, in a slightly contemptuous manner. “Come,” he invited.
Clangor, lividness, a vast sooty hall where natives controlled engines that cut, hammered, annealed, transported . . . a warehouse where rack after rack held what appeared to be helmets, corselets, arm-and legpieces, and shapes more eldritch which Banner had names for. . . . It was as if Yewwl could feel the woman’s horror.
“You see that none of this could fit any of us,” Ayon fleered. “It is for humans. They take it elsewhere.”
—“Combat space armor; auxiliary gear; small arms components.” The Anglic words in Yewwl’s head were a terrible litany. “I suppose he’s established a score of factories on out-of-the-way worlds, none too big to be hidden or disguised—” Urgently, in the tongue of the clans: “Find out about those garments.”
“Yes, we receive cloth and tailor it to pattern,” was Ayon’s reply to Yewwl’s leading questions. “The finished clothes are alike, except in size and ornament; yes, also for humans to wear.”
—“Uniforms,” Banner nearly groaned. “Instead of making a substantial, traceable investment in automated plants, he uses native hand labor where he can, for this and the fighting equipment and—and how much else?”
Fear walked the length of Yewwl’s spine. “Oath-sister,” she asked, “have I seen enough for you?”
—“No. It’s not conclusive. Learn all you can, brave dear.” Anguish freighted the tone.
“Does this prove what you have fretted over?” Skogda breathed.
“Thus it seems,” his mother answered low. “But we need our fangs deeper in the facts, for if the thing is true, it is frightful.”
“We will take that bite,” he vowed.
Ayon led them out. “We’ve walked far,” he said. “I grow hungry, whether or not you do. We’ll return home.”
“Can we go forth again later?” Yewwl requested. “This is such a wonder.”
He rippled his vanes. “If the humans haven’t dismissed you. I’ve no hope for your errand. What under the sky can you offer them?”
“Well, could we go back by a different route?”
Ayon conceded that, and padded rapidly from the factory. Its metal clamor dwindled behind Yewwl. She looked around her with eyes that a sense of time blowing past had widened.
The tour had gone beyond the compact part of town. New structures stood well apart, surrounded by link fences and guarded by armed Ramnuans. The street was now a road, running along a high ridge from north to south, over stony, thinly snow-covered ground. Eastward, the hill was likewise bare of anything except brush, to its foot. There a frozen river gleamed. Across a bridge, Dukeston reared and roared and glared. Westward lay only night, wild valleys, tors, canyons, cliffs, tarns. A cold wind crept out of the wastes and ruffled her pelt. The few stars she could see were as chill, and very small. Banner said they were suns, but how remote, then, how ghastly remote. . . .
Ahead, the road looped past another featureless building which air towers showed to be the cover of caverns beneath. “What is in that?” Yewwl queried, pointing.
“There they work the new ore I spoke of earlier,” Ayon said.
—“Find out what it is!” Banner hissed. Yewwl tried. The clumsiness of conversation helped mask her directness, and the rest of her party, in their unmistakable hostility, trailed her and the guide. “Ruad’a’a,” Ayon responded finally. “I have no other word for it. The humans use ours.”
—“Oh, shit!” Banner exploded; and: “But why would they go to that trouble? Ordinarily they use Anglic names for such things. Get him to describe it.”
Yewwl made the attempt. Ayon wanted to know why she cared. She thought fast and explained that, if the Dukeston humans valued the stuff, and her homeland chanced to be supplied with it, that would be a bargaining point for her.
“Well, it’s black and often powdery,” Ayon said. “They get a kind of metal from it.”
—“Could be pitchblende,” Banner muttered in Anglic. To Yewwl: “Find out more.”
Ayon could relate little else. Native labor had done only the basic construction; after that, secrecy had clamped down. He did know that large, complex apparatus had been installed, and the interior was conditioned for humans, and machines regularly collected the residue that came out and hauled it off to dump at sea, and the end product left here in sealed boxes which must be thick, perhaps lead-lined, since they were heavy for their size.
—“Fissionable? Nobody uses fission for anything important . . . except in warheads—” The incomprehensible words from afar were a chant of desperation. In Yewwl’s speech, Banner said out of lips that must be stretched tight across her teeth: “It would be the final proof. But I can’t think how you could learn, my sister—”
“What is this?” Skogda growled.
“Nothing,” Yewwl said hastily. “He’s just been describing what they make there.” If her son knew that Banner thought it might be the very house of destruction—if that was what Banner thought—he could go wild.
“No,” he denied. “You may fool everybody else, Mother, but I can read you.” His fangs glistened forth, hackles lifted, ears lay back, vanes extended and shivered. “You agreed we, your companions, have the right to know what’s happening.”
“Well, yes, it does seem that something weird goes on, but I don’t understand what,” she replied with mustered calm. “I would guess we’ve discovered as much as we’re able to. Let’s stay quiet, give no alarm, till we’re safe—”
Ayon stepped backward. “The young fellow stands as if he’s about to attack me,” he said. His own voice and posture were charged with mistrust. “The rest of your following are fight-ready too.”
“No, no, they are simply excited by this experience.” Yewwl insisted. A sick feeling swept through her. Ayon didn’t believe. And surely it must seem peculiar to him that a group of touring foreigners were so taut.
“Perhaps,” he said. “But I’ve served the humans through my whole life—”
And grown loyal, as I am to Banner, Yewwl realized. And observed that in these past few years they have been working on a thing vital to them. They have not told you what, but you sense that this is true, and for their sake you are wary. No doubt it is a reason why they put us in your charge.
“You may be harmless,” Ayon continued. “Or you may be spies for a horde plotting to sack the town, or—I know not. Let the humans investigate.” His blaster came forth. “Tell your friends to hold where they are,” he ordered. “I am going to call for assistance. If you behave yourselves, if you really have no evil intentions, you will not be hurt.”
“What does he mean?” Skogda roared.
—“Yewwl, Yewwl.” Banner’s tone shuddered. “Do as he says. Don’t resist. It woul
d be hopeless. Dominic and I will free you somehow—”
“He’s grown suspicious, thanks to the lot of you and the fuss you’ve made,” Yewwl told her group. “He’s sending for people to take us prisoner—”
She got no chance to explain that surrender was the single sensible course. Skogda howled and sprang.
Even as he did, his mother saw upon him his astonished regret, the instant knowledge that his nerves had betrayed him. Then the blaster shot.
Its blue-white flare would have left her blinded for a while, had she seen it full on. As was, her son’s body shielded her eyes from most of it. After-images danced burning; they did not hide how Skogda crashed into Ayon and the two of them went down, but Skogda was now only a carcass which had had a great hole scorched through it.
“Ee-hooa!” shrieked Yewwl, and launched herself. Ayon was struggling out from under the corpse. His left wrist brought the caller to his mouth. “Help, help,” he moaned. Yewwl was upon him. Her knife struck. She felt the heaviness of the blow, the flesh giving way beneath it. She twisted the blade and saw blood spurt.
Iyaai and Kuzhinn were shaking her. “We must flee,” they were saying. “Come, please come.” In her head, Banner stopped weeping and said almost levelly, —“Yes, get away fast. They have instruments which can track you by your body heat, but first they’ll need to give those to people who can use them—”
Skogda is destroyed, Robreng’s son and mine, Skogda whom I bore and pouched and sent off laughing for joy on his first glide and saw wedded, Skogda who gave me grandchildren to love. This thing was done in Dukeston. Aii, aii, I will give Dukeston to the wildfire, I will strew its dwellers for the carrion fowl, I am become the lightning against them. Here I am, slayers. Come and be slain!
“Yewwl, go,” Banner pleaded. “If you stay, you’ll die, and for nothing. I will punish them, Dominic and I. Your oath-sister swears it.”
Almost, Yewwl obeyed. They can take such a vengeance as the world has never seen. Let me abide until they are ready. A few words more would have mastered the blind rage that was grief. But—
Huang flipped the main switch. The system went off line; the night at the far end of the continent blanked out; Banner stared into his face and the barren walls behind it.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Abrams,” she heard, and knew in a dim way that his formality was meant to show his regret was genuine. “I know you aren’t supposed to be disturbed when you’re in rapport. But you did issue strict orders—”
“What?” She couldn’t see him well through her tears.
“About newcomers. You were to be informed immediately, under any circumstances.”
“Yes. . . .”
“Well, we’ve received a call. Three spacecraft of the militia will land in half an hour. The Duke himself is aboard, and requires your attendance.” Anxiety: “I hope I didn’t do wrong to tell him you’re here, when he asked.”
“I didn’t tell you not to,” Banner said mechanically. How could I have?
Huang scowled. “What’s going on, anyhow? Something deucedly strange.”
“You’ll hear later—”
For a moment, nearly every part of Banner’s being cried to be back with Yewwl. Nothing but the memory of Dominic stood between. But he had described, unsparingly, what could happen if she fell into Cairncross’ hands—to her and afterward to several billion sentient beings. Yewwl, Yewwl, Yewwl was an atom among them.
Banner removed the helmet and lurched to her feet. Flandry’s words against this contingency flowed of themselves. “Listen. We have an emergency situation. As you may have guessed, the admiral didn’t come here just to oblige me; it was on his Grace’s personal commission. I have to leave for a while—at once—alone—No, not a word! I haven’t time. Tell them I’ll be back shortly. His Grace will know what I mean.”
All too well, he’ll know. But I can be gone by then, a flying speck on a monster world.
She ran from the chamber and the bemused man. She ran from Yewwl. It was the hardest thing she had ever done. The news of her father’s death had not hurt so much.
From somewhere far down inside herself, Yewwl found speech. “Go,” she commanded her followers. “Scatter. Hide in the wilderness. Make your ways home.” It was no fault of theirs that they had helped kill Skogda.
They saw that her fate was upon her, and departed. Air currents streamed over the hillside. They leaped from the ridge, their vanes took hold, they planed off into darkness.
It boomed around Yewwl. A flyer was descending. She took the blaster from Ayon’s slack hand, the weapon that had slain her son. Her oath-sister had let her practice with such things in the past, for sport. She grinned at the oncoming machine, into the wickedness of its guns, and sprang.
Her own vanes thrilled. Each muscle in them rejoiced to stir, tense and flex, become one with the sky and steer her in a long swoop above the world. The chill brought blood alive in them; she felt it throb and glow. Overhead burned stars.
Had the pilot seen her? She’d make sure of that. She took aim and fired. By whatever trick, when she was shooting the beam was merely bright, it did not dazzle. It raised a sharp noise and a stormy odor. When it smote, brilliance fountained.
The flyer veered. Its wake thundered around Yewwl. She rode that surge, rising higher on it. Then she was above her foe, she could glide down as if upon prey.
A hailstorm struck. She tumbled under the blows. There was no pain, she wouldn’t live long enough to feel any, but she knew she had been torn open. Somehow she recovered, kept her vanes proudly bearing her, went arching toward the frozen river. The aircraft slowed, drew near, sought to give its pilot a good look at his opponent. Yewwl saw it blurrily, through waves of blindness, but she saw it, and his head within the transparent canopy. She took aim again and held the beam fast on target.
The pilot died. His aircraft spun away, hit the ice below, broke through and sank. More machines hovered close. No matter them. Yewwl spent her last strength in swerving about and aiming herself at the opened water. She would lay her bones to rest above those of the man she had slain to her wounding. Oath-sister, farewell.
XII
The technician who reported at the garage, in response to Banner’s intercom call, was shocked. “Donna, you can’t do that!” he protested. “Going out by yourself, at night, no preparation, not even a shot of gravanol—it’s suicide.”
“It’s necessary, and I expect to survive,” she clipped. “We’ve no time to squander, and gravanol spends hours reaching full effect. I’ve just a short ways to go, on an errand that can’t wait, and I’ll return immediately.”
“Uh, let me accompany you, at least.”
“No. You’re on watch. Anyway, it’d take half an hour to rig both of us. Now help me. That’s an order.”
The sight of his concern softened her a mite. He was a pleasant young Hermetian who had shyly mentioned to her that a girl waited at home, and after his contract here was up they’d have the stake they needed to start a business. But . . . quite likely he was in the Cairncross Pioneers. She retained her martinet manner.
He set his jaw and obeyed. Armor against Ramnuan conditions was more complex than a spacesuit; you could not put it on single-handed. The minutes dragged past, clocked by her pulse. She smelled her sweat and felt it creep down her skin. Never before had she imagined that making ready—undergarb, bracings, harness, outer pieces, their assembly upon her, checkoff, tests, assistance to a gravsled, connection to life support units, strap-in, more checks and tests, closure of canopy—would be torture.
After a century of heartbeats, the vehicle did at last lift off the ferrocrete and slide silently forward. It passed among larger ones, both crawlers and flyers, most intended for remote-controlled, telemetered use. A sled was hardly more than a flexible means for a person or two to get about for brief periods, ordinarily operating out of a mother vessel. For instance, they might want to inspect something at close range, and perhaps send the collector robot forth from its bay aft
of the cockpit, to gather specimens or take pictures.
When Dominic suggested this plan, he didn’t know how risky the passage might become for me, Banner recalled, and I didn’t tell him. She was no longer sure that that had been wise. Not that she feared for herself; no, exertion and hazard would be overwhelmingly welcome. But if she failed to convey the information to Flandry that Yewwl had bought for the price which has no end—
The inner gate of the sally port swung back. Banner steered into the lock. For a spell she was closed off, as if in a tomb; then a valve opened, she heard the air of Ramnu whistle inward, the outer gate turned, and she came forth.
The sled had no room for an interior-field generator. Seven Terran gravities laid hold on Banner. It was not as bad, at first, as a crossing from spaceship to dome with no special equipment. The suit in its manifold modules supported her, gave pressure that helped against downward pooling of body fluids, gently helped her draw breath; elastic bands ran from wrists and elbows to a framework above the well-cushioned seat; safety webs embraced; she had swallowed a couple of stimpills, which pumped strength and alertness up from her cellular reserves. Yet already she felt the brutal heaviness through and through her, even as she peered around.
The sled was not airtight; ambient pressure was safest in so lightly built a shell. She heard every sound loudened and tonally shifted: despite hull and helmet, louder than a Ramnuan would, whose ears were not meant for Terra’s thin atmosphere. The night had become quiet, but she sensed the movement of scuttering animals, the trek of wings overhead—and high, faint, rapidly increasing, the noise of ships bound downward. She was barely in time.
With the deftness of experience, she turned the sled north and kicked in the power. The wind of her passage drowned out the booming from above, and the Sol-light on the spacefield fast receded to naught. Alone in the dark, she adjusted the helmet’s optics for nocturnal vision.
Flandry's Legacy: The Technic Civilization Saga Page 14
