The Miocene Arrow

by Sean McMullen

  “Chancellor Sartov, I see you are back.”

  Glasken was wearing a Yarronese carbineer’s uniform which had seen a lot of action.

  “Forgive me for tying you and bringing you here, but I had to demonstrate that I could indeed move about during a Call.”

  A Callwalker! The word of fancy, fairytale, and legend echoed through Sartov’s mind … yet here he was, face-to-face with very convincing proof. Did Callwalkers drink blood? No, that was vampires.

  “Before being too outraged by my attack on your person, bear this in mind. Real Callwalkers have been sabotaging Yarronese defenses and gunwings during each Call that passes. If you want proof, remember that I have just abducted you, the best-guarded noble in North Yarron. Do you wish to talk?”

  Sartov nodded. Glasken untied his hands, but left him to take off the gag himself.

  “Glasken and, and … how?” Sartov had started angrily, but ended with a strangled whisper. “Uh, are you really …” He hesitated over the word from the fairytale nightmares of his childhood. “Are you a Callwalker?”

  Glasken leaned back against the slate tiles and stretched.

  “Callwalkers, I’ve read your fairytales about them. They’re usually men, and during Calls they steal gold, read secret papers, change words in registers and records, abduct children, murder the innocent by cutting their Call tethers, and raise the skirts of honest, virtuous women—thus seeding the next generation of Callwalkers. One of my human lady friends once asked me to take advantage of her during a Call.”

  “Did you?”

  “It was uninteresting, in fact it was quite hard work. All she wanted to do was walk south, there was not the slightest response on her part.”

  “But where do you come from?”

  “From another continent, Australica. We were invented there, Chancellor. We think that aviads are a synthetic type of human, invented as a last, desperate measure against the Call by ancient Australican engineers. The gift only manifests itself at puberty, which may have led the ancients to think that they had failed when the experimental children were found to follow the Call. A few survived to interbreed among humans as barbarism descended. Our name for ourselves is aviads; although the earliest records refer to us as avians. We have something of the essence of birds bred into us, and our hair looks like very fine feathers under magnification. Except for mine, that is. I must have been descended from a failed experiment, because my hair looks normal and I had to be trained to resist the Call.”

  Sartov shook his head. “Are you telling me that Mounthaven has been invaded by Australica?”

  “Not quite. For the past two thousand years the Australican humans have feared aviads and slaughtered them whenever they were discovered. In the past few decades the aviads have become organized and set up colonies in our Callscour lands. There are not many of them, and originally they just wanted to live in peace, but recently a radical faction has gained power. The radicals want revenge for two thousand years of genocide, and the reaction guns and gunwings of Mounthaven could make one aviad warrior the equal of a hundred humans. A deal has apparently been done in the Bartolican court: aviads help to annihilate Yarron in return for weapons.”

  “So that’s how Bartolica wins so easily,” said Sartov slowly, as if weighing the words for worth. “Did you really keep your will during that Call?”

  “I may have, Sair Chancellor, but then I may have been just as mesmerized by the Call as yourself. I may have had help from someone else who can defy the Call who drew both of us up here, then drugged you to stay insensible a little longer than me. The point is that there are individuals who can defy the Call.”

  The tower clock played the first few bars of “The Birds Are in the Corn,” then struck twice for the hour. Sartov ran his fingers along the slate tiles and greymetal guttering, trying to accept that the place where he had awoken was real. He crawled to the edge of the roof, looked down for a moment, then shuddered and returned to Glasken.

  “I cannot believe this … yet here we sit.”

  Glasken took two tin mugs from his jacket pocket and reached for the bottle.

  “I once promised to fetch you a drink to remember, Sair Chancellor.”

  “I gave up drinking when I returned to Yarron, but as sure as hell I’ll make an exception now.”

  They sipped the wine in silence. A large steam engine chuffed into life somewhere in the distance. Glasken held up a hand to one ear at the sound.

  “Callwalkers,” said Sartov yet again. “I’ll have terriers trained to attack them with poison blades strapped to their jaws. I’ll have traps set, sailwings will be ascended to shoot at them from the air. Sair Glasken, this will change the war.”

  Glasken shook his head. “The aviads—Callwalkers—supporting Bartolica would have no trouble shooting dogs, avoiding traps, and hiding from air attack. They are the elite of our elite. There are other ways to fight the Bartolicans, however. Did you know that your steam trams can haul ten, twenty, even thirty carts?”

  “Only until the next Sentinel Star passes over and burns the tram and all thirty carts to cinders and slag. Nothing may move that is longer than twenty-nine feet and six inches. No tram, no regal, no gunwing, no sailwing, no crane and no canal barge.”

  “Have you tried it lately?”

  Sartov chuckled and sipped his wine. “Have you tried setting your arse on fire lately? Why bother? Machines are expensive, and Mounthaven is poor in resources. That is why our wars are—or were—so stylized and contained. That is the basis of our chivalric system: the Call confines us here, and the Sentinels constrain what we can do.”

  Glasken gestured to the sky. “Two decades ago you may have noticed some odd bursts of light in the sky. Mirrorsun split, then re-formed, and the Sentinels flashed and shimmered.”

  “Yes, I saw all that. There was much talk about the end of the world and church attendance soared to nine souls out of ten within most parishes.”

  “What you saw was a war between the Sentinels and Mirrorsun. The Sentinels were roasted, they’re dead hulks.”

  Sartov took out his knife and sliced off a chunk of wurst, then listened while Glasken explained about trains. He had a great need for transport, and this was a gift from heaven if true. Thousands of guild families and carbineers could be transported to his new estate at Wind River, and he could even build another wingbase at Gannett. Whole artisan workshops could be transported without being dismantled to fit into trams, thousands of tons of supplies could be moved, in fact every barrel of compression spirit in North Yarron could be hauled out of Bartolican reach.

  “It occurs to me, Sair Glasken, that the Sentinels also limited the speed of our gunwings to below a hundred twenty-five miles per hour.”

  “Not any longer. Your Air Carbineers can get away with whatever speed they can manage.”

  Sartov felt like Faust being tempted by Mephistopheles. His new hybrid gunwings could do 180 miles per hour, in theory; they were light and powerful. The Bartolican Callwalkers would be no more than a minor nuisance if Yarron was first to use tram-drawn lines of carts and to build gunwings that could exceed 200 miles per hour … or even giant regals with wings a hundred feet across. He held out his mug for more wine and grinned cannily. The strangest of physical sensations swept over him, and he wondered if Glasken could see the lines fading from his face and his hair turning black again. It was too good to be true. There had to be a catch.

  “Why did the Callwalkers, the aviads, not tell the Bartolicans about the Sentinels?” Sartov asked, staring Glasken in the eyes.

  “You are more suspicious than my former banker. Suppose you answer the question.”

  Sartov thought carefully. “By making Bartolica depend on them, the Callwalkers gain control of Bartolica. It is in their interest to keep the Bartolicans ignorant of the Sentinels being dead.”

  “Indeed. They just want war and chaos to cloak them as they go about their work. Bartolica’s fate probably means nothing to them.”

&nb
sp; Again, this was fair and reasonable, but Sartov did not want to admit it yet.

  “As the engineers say, Sair Glasken, there comes a time to shut up and cut metal. Centuries ago a warden named Alsek attached a steam tram to a galley cart by two hundred feet of thin gunwing bracing wire. He thought to fool the Sentinels into thinking the cart was moving by itself.”

  “Were they fooled?”

  “No. The next Sentinel to pass overhead annihilated the galley cart, the wire, the steam tram, the trackwork between them, and Alsek. He had such faith in his scheme that he had been driving. Would you care to repeat his experiment?”

  “Show me how to drive an steam tram and I’ll use it to haul thirty galley carts.”

  Sartov had meant to call Glasken’s bluff. Now he shook his head. “I cannot risk a steam tram. I have only fifty in service and two more under repair. The Bartolicans make a point of shooting them up at every opportunity.”

  “I am offering my life, Chancellor.”

  “Your life,” echoed Sartov. “What are you getting out of this?”

  “I might help shorten a war between people that I am learning to like. I might also help prevent your weapons being used in the genocide of humans back on my own continent.”

  Sartov poured out another drink. From far below came voices calling for Sartov and shouting that the Call had taken the Chancellor.

  “I must return, my staff are in search of me,” Sartov said as he held up the little mug. “Very well, I consent. This, Glasken, is to be the last drink of my life. Join me in a toast to your experiment, and let us hope that it is not the last drink of your life as well.”

  That evening several dozen carbineers moved thirty galley carts onto a disused length of track beside the railmuster yards and tied them together with rope. Glasken backed a steam tram down the track with the help of a driver, and it was tied to the lead galley cart. The driver then retreated to a safe distance and joined Sartov and his senior staff. The Sentinel that passed overhead some minutes later gleamed brilliantly as it moved among the stars. Glasken opened the steam lines to the drive cylinders. The ropes between the carts were pulled taut in turn, and the improvised train began to move. It chuffed down the track, gathering speed. No fire poured down from the Sentinel.

  They had been so sure that Glasken would die that nobody had shown him the brake. The red lamp of an approaching buffer warned him of disaster and he frantically hauled on levers and spun taps. The buffer loomed in the glow of its own lantern. Without even pausing to curse Glasken wrenched open the forward door and leaped to safety a moment before the tram was annihilated between the buffer and the combined momentum of the thirty galley carts that piled up upon the wreck with a sound like rolling thunder.

  The experiment was repeated with another improvised train just before dawn, as a brightly gleaming Sentinel cruised among the stars. The bold provocation brought no retribution from above, and this time an experienced driver was at the controls.

  By the time the sun appeared on the horizon the Archaic Anglian word “train” was again in use in North America and designs for the first of five hundred flatbed wagons were on the drafting boards. In the meantime Sartov ordered two makeshift trains of thirty galley carts drawn by steam trams to leave for Gannett that very morning, and by the afternoon a thousand refugees, eleven gunwing engines, and three hundred barrels of compression spirit were on their way to Wind River. The line was soon running day and night at its logistical capacity of a train every four hours.

  When Glasken returned to see Sartov some days later, the Chancellor wanted to honor him before his entire diplomatic and strategic staff. Because he was suddenly the most important man in all of North Yarron, the reception was in the ballroom of the Governor’s palace. Here Sartov had assembled his senior administrative and tactical staff to meet Glasken, and they were by now restive at the long delay. Glasken noticed that the parade uniforms of the Yarronese were cleanly tailored and smart, rather than opulent in the Bartolican style. The colors were mainly green and orange, with much gilt thread embroidery.

  “Can’t I give you any reward?” Sartov asked as the guards and servants were being sent outside. “A bag of gold, guildmaster status among the engineers? Learn to fly and I could have you made a ward—”

  “No!! No. No, no, no.” Glasken had gone sheet white at the memory of his flight out of Opal in a badly damaged sailwing with a barely conscious flyer. “Passage to Denver is enough.”

  “You have that.”

  “Well … trust me, just one more time,” said Glasken as he surveyed the gathering.

  Sartov began his address by explaining something of what Glasken had told him. The Yarronese could now do more than just assemble trains. Fast combat wings and giant regals could be used safely.

  “Now you may smile at the word Callwalker,” Sartov continued after bracing himself with a gulp of rainwater.

  Several of the men did smile reflexively, and some shuffled uneasily on the spot. Fieldmajor Gravat took a sudden and intense interest in a plate of emu pate, but Sasentor of the Tramways Corporate remained loyally attentive. Glasken stepped forward, his hand held up.

  “Great and wise sairs, may I first provide a small and edifying demonstration?” he asked, taking a very ordinary carbineer’s revolver from his coat.

  Sartov gave him the floor, and Glasken held the gun up for inspection between his thumb and forefinger. It was just a gun, a Lemnidor of .38-caliber. He now grasped it by the handle and trained it across the faces of the senior civil and military leaders of North Yarron. Most shuffled uneasily. The chambers appeared to be loaded with hollow-point rounds.

  “Now there is one remarkably reassuring thing about this gun,” Glasken declared, then let his words hang.

  Several of the men glanced at each other, others shrugged. Whatever his point, it was an obscure one. Glasken shot Sasentor through the forehead.

  Pandemonium was already firmly established before the liaisory of the Yarronese Tramways Corporate hit the floor. Glasken was seized and disarmed, and the guards burst into the ballroom to find him being held spread-eagled on the floor with the tip of Fieldmajor Gravat’s ceremonial sword at his throat.

  “If I could finish,” cried Glasken. “The reassuring thing about any gun is that it will kill Callwalkers as readily as humans. Take a strand of his hair, Chancellor, examine it under a microscope. It will look like a long, fine feather—and remember that birds are immune to the Call. I watched him at work while I hid during the last Call. He never expected another Callwalker to be here.”

  The microscope confirmed Glasken’s words. That night the entire local diplomatic staff and high command was checked and another aviad was discovered. A short, intense, and very vindictive bout of torture extracted the names of two more aviads; then all three were put on a train under Gravat’s personal supervision. Sartov would not speak of their fate.

  The following evening Glasken met Sartov at the wingfield, as the chancellor climbed out of a hybrid gunwing. He had just become the first human in nearly two millennia to exceed 200 miles per hour.

  “I still need to get to Denver,” said Glasken as soon as they were alone.

  “Sair Glasken, it’s getting dangerously late in the flying season. You should wait until spring.”

  “Feydamor has educated me about such things. It’s late in the season, but not dangerously late.”

  “I’d have to have you flown there at night and parachuted down.”

  At the word “parachute” Glasken lost some of his composure and all of his color.

  “Parachute? Night? Can’t your flyer use a wingfield in daylight?”

  “Colandoro is neutral territory, Sair Glasken. Any Yarronese sailwing landing at a wingfield would be seized and I don’t want to lose a single one—even for you. Only a sailwing could make the distance, and that distance is over occupied Yarron. To avoid the Bartolican gunwings you would have to fly at night.”

  Glasken drew out a pair of goggles
such as a warden might use while flying. He handed them to Sartov.

  “Expose those to sunlight for a few hours during the day and you will be able to use them to see in the dark all night. They have been in the sun for most of the afternoon.”

  Sartov examined them closely. They were grey-black in color, and made of a pliant, soft material. When he put them on he could see through the darkened lenses as clearly as if they were polished glass—and the dusk-darkened wingfield was as brightly illuminated as at noon on an overcast day. Sartov cried out in surprise, then took the goggles off and gazed around again.

  “You can have them if you fly me to the outskirts of Denver tonight and land me on a straight stretch of road,” Glasken offered.

  “Done!” replied Sartov. “What luggage do you have?”

  “I’m standing up in it. I can leave now.”

  After a stop to refuel at Casper they flew out over the mountains and into occupied airspace. They were flying an armed sailwing trainer which had been hastily painted black. As they traveled Glasken told Sartov all that he knew about the infiltrating invaders, and something of his own civilization as well. Sartov had chosen to fly beneath the clouds, so that to Glasken the scene was of unrelieved darkness.

  “I see the Laramie River down there,” said the Chancellor. “These goggles are worth a flock of gunwings, Glasken. How do they work?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But your people made them.”

  “No, they were made in Mirrorsun’s factories, on the moon.”

  “What? Your people command forces like that and they still covet our miserable gunwings?”

  “It’s not so simple as that. About twenty years ago Zarvora Cybeline, a great engineer from Australica, deduced that Mirrorsun was a vast, intelligent machine, designed by ancient engineers to moderate the Earth’s climate.”

  “But Mirrorsun has only been in the sky for about thirty years.”