The Miocene Arrow

by Sean McMullen

  “How do you know this?” asked Sartov, riffling through the pages he had just read.

  “I have lived for years at the sea’s edge, I am a Callwalker, after all. The language of the cetezoids and their client species is not a real language, it is a sharing of concepts, feelings, and images. One has to be in the water to do it, and to be proof against the Call.”

  “Answer me this. You say Australica is one immense Callhaven, with only a band of Callscour land at the rim. Why is it worse on the American continents?”

  “Politics and fear. The cetezoids have developed twenty-eight major political groupings over the past two centuries. As well, the ancient dominion of the United States was the most powerful and advanced of the human states, and so the cetezoids hit it a lot harder than minor dominions like Australica.”

  “Nothing is free in this world,” Sartov said as he picked up the harpoon rocket and examined it again. “What do you want?”

  Theresla began to pack up her papers and sketches. “I have a proposal for the council of Alliance Airlords, but I shall need a super-regal for a very long journey.”

  Sartov now looked to Vander. “Sorry, old friend, but you are not an airlord. Can you wait outside?”

  Vander went outside and sat down in one of the Bartolican armchairs. The chair was designed to be sprawled in rather than sat upon, and Vander was too tense to sprawl. He stood up again and paced before the door, watched by the two Yarronese guards. Suddenly there were raised voices behind the varnished pine paneling, then angry shouting. Sartov flung the door open, reaction pistol in hand, and called the guards in. When Vander finally got a clear view of the room’s interior he could see Theresla gagged and being bound as she lay on the floor. The Callwalker was not struggling.

  “She went too far!” declared Sartov as he stood at the door, his face almost purple with fury. He turned back to the guards. “Tell the warders of the palace dungeons that her gag must stay on at all times. She can live on soup sucked through a straw.”

  Sartov stayed until the guards had bound Theresla, then followed as they carried her away. Vander walked with him.

  “I’d kill her, but she knows how to repair the sunw—a very advanced artifact that I have at Wind River.”

  “But what did she say?”

  “What she said about the cetezoids may be true or may be exhaust, it doesn’t matter,” said Sartov as they walked the polished stone floor and thick carpets to the stairs. “If we destroy the featherhead wingbases and their stolen wings we thwart their Operation Miocene Arrow. If the Airlords think that they are merely keeping the wings out of the hands of Mexhaven nobles and their peons, they will fight just as hard for us. Let it go at that.”

  “But what did she say?” demanded Vander again.

  Sartov stopped and rounded on him, his reaction pistol raised but pointed to one side. The guards carrying Theresla stopped too, but he told them to take her down to the dungeons and have her put in a muffled isolation cell. He stood in silence with Vander as they left, then slowly turned back for his rooms.

  “She proposed the end of all that you and I stand for!” he explained to Vander. “Yarron just lost seventy-eight thousand lives in the struggle to remain Yarronese and free, and I am not about to let those lives be wasted. If you knew, I would … no, I would probably not shoot you, but as sure as the Pope of Mexhaven is a Catholic you would join her in that cell. Now leave! Go to your house, I’ll come around and apologize when I am fit company again. Go!”

  Alone again, Sartov called for a clerk, then sat at a bureau and scratched out a death warrant for Theresla. He sealed it with his ring when the clerk had poured out a puddle of hot wax.

  “Call me a coward, Vander, but I couldn’t let you know that I gave such an order,” Sartov said as he twirled the propellor of a model gunwing of solid gold mounted above the bureau.

  The new Yarronese supervisor of the Condelor palace dungeons read Sartov’s instructions a second time before calling five carbineers down from the old guardroom. He set them to work prising up a dozen flagstones, then digging a shallow grave.

  “Not you, Horrey,” he said, taking one of them aside and handing him a drawstring hood and a key. “Put that on the woman in Isolation Six, and make sure there’s a bullet hole in it when you carry her out.”

  Horrey put the hood under his arm and checked the revolver at his waist. “The grave will take another half hour to dig,” he mentioned, letting the implication float on the air.

  “Do as you will, just leave the gag on.”

  Horrey clattered down the steps to the isolation cells and drew open the outer door to that marked with a 6. A lantern burned in the short passage beyond. He closed the outer door. These cells were for political prisoners who might shout truths that even guards could not be allowed to hear without joining them, but the woman Theresla was gagged and bound hand and foot so it hardly mattered. He frowned at the thought of the bindings as he lifted the lantern from its peg, then decided that he could bend her over the stone bunk rather than untying her legs. Horrey drew the inner door’s shutter aside and peered through the bars. The woman was bound and gagged, but lying stark naked on the bunk!

  “Aht, but those buggers who brought her in here were quick,” he muttered as he unlocked the inner door.

  Warily pushing the door open he glanced about the tiny cell. In one corner was piled the woman’s clothing, while she lay naked and gleaming in the lantern’s light on the bunk, regarding Horrey with wary, frightened eyes.

  “Well now, would you be cold?” he said as he set the lantern down and bent over her. “You’re going to be colder when I carry you out of here, but first—”

  The pile of clothing on the floor lashed out with a pair of bound legs, kicking Horrey in the backside with great force. He pitched forward, striking his head on the stone wall and slumping through the image on the bunk and onto the floor where he lay still. The clothing lost a dark fuzziness to reveal the fully clothed but still bound and gagged Theresla snaking backward over the floor to Horrey. She scrabbled blindly with her fingers until his knife came free, then jammed it into the join between two flagstones and began rubbing her bonds against the edge.

  The ropes and gag binding the image on the bunk dissolved; then Theresla’s face transmuted into Glasken’s.

  “You know, I’ve always like getting my hands on women, but this is a bit extreme,” he said as he experimentally fondled a breast.

  Theresla freed her hands then unbound her ankles before undoing the gag. She quickly went through Horrey’s pockets and found both drawstring hood and death warrant. She examined his head.

  “Depressed fracture of the skull,” she concluded as she began pulling off his clothes. “Get a good look at his face, Glasso, my life depends on it.”

  “May I point out that he is about two inches taller than you?” said the image on the bunk as Glasken’s face grew a handlebar mustache and became Horrey’s.

  “And may I point out that you fabricated the image of a body about thirty pounds heavier than mine!” snarled Theresla as she drew the hood over Horrey’s head. “I was simply mortified!”

  She rolled Horrey’s body on its back, placed a knee on his chest, and fired his pistol at the hood. The sharp crack was all the louder for being in the tiny stone cell.

  “Was he dead already?” asked Glasken.

  “That’s between me and my conscience.”

  “Poor fool, but he’s lucky. My existence is pointless nothingness, I can’t even hope for the release of death. The real Glasken is probably swapping jokes with the devil, but what am I doing?”

  “Helping me get out of here alive,” muttered Theresla impatiently.

  Ten minutes later Theresla knelt in Horrey’s uniform, trying to push and pound his large feet into her small boots. The hooded and skirted guardsman on the floor would not bear close inspection, but it would probably not come to that. The image on the bunk dissolved into just Horrey’s face, which moved through the
air and backed onto that of Theresla.

  “Remember to let me do all the talking,” warned Glasken. “Remember too, that this image loses substance in daylight. Once out of here you’re wearing your own face.”

  From the annotation on the death warrant and what Horrey had said when he came in, Theresla decided to carry the skirted body out of the cell on her shoulder. The Yarronese supervisor was there as she climbed the stairs with the body. Blood dripped from the hood as she walked, and Horrey’s face was impassive.

  “Any problems?” asked the supervisor.

  “Had better,” Glasken said with Horrey’s voice, and Theresla’s eyes bulged with impotent fury beneath the holographic mask.

  To Theresla’s relief the supervisor led the way to the grave in the floor. She eased the body face down into the grave with some care, not wanting to expose Horrey’s hairy legs and lack of breasts. A bucket of lime was poured over the corpse, and the four guardsmen began filling in the grave.

  “Are you all right?” the supervisor asked what passed for his carbineer.

  “Need a drink,” replied Horrey’s voice.

  “Then go. Take an hour, but make it up this evening.”

  Out on the streets of Condelor, Theresla. had her own face exposed to the world by the bright sunlight. Feeling like a rabbit that could hear terriers in the distance, she made straight for the tramway depot and used all Horrey’s money to bribe the immigration inspector to let her board a tram for Yarron. There had been no money left for a ticket, but she agreed to work as a relief stoker.

  “What did you mean, ‘Had better’?” she asked as the tram rattled over points and turned east at Ogden’s ruin.

  “Man talk,” piped a voice in her ear. “You had to pass as a convincing man.”

  “Suppose you’re right. I owe you the ultimate debt, Fras Glasken.”

  “It’s a pity I’m dead or I might take you up on that.”

  Theresla left the tram at Green River, and hitched a ride in empty trucks being drawn by a tram going north. She talked her way past the Dorakian border guards, and finally left the tramway at Jackson Lake. From here she set out to walk the ninety miles to Wind River wingfield after stealing a pack, bedroll, and supplies during a Call.

  In the fortnight that it took Theresla to travel from Condelor to Wind River, over seven hundred wings from fourteen dominions had gathered at Forian. Every airworthy regal in Mounthaven was there, as well as the three surviving super-regals. Serjon was almost continually in the air, liaising with the new Bartolican dominions. Bronlar took over his place as Sartov’s personal liaison, and saw Serjon only infrequently. Men now gave her a wide berth, and one free guildsman apprentice was flogged for merely touching the seat of her gunwing. Nobody dared to praise her, and even among her peers she would speak only to Ramsdel—and only when on a wingfield, in full view.

  10 September 3961: Wind River

  The guards at the Wind River perimeter jumped up in surprise when a figure came walking in from the darkness, but in the lanternlight it turned out to be Guildmaster Feydamor. He had been out walking, he said, now that there was enough time to be alone again. Even though it was his second excursion for the day, nobody was inclined to question the acting adjunct of the wingfield any further. The cloaked figure had Feydamor’s face and voice, so he was let through.

  Once in among the tents the face dissolved into Theresla’s, and she drew out a dispatch with a seal on it. Shown into Feydamor’s tent by a surprised and confused aide, Theresla explained that she had parachuted into the wingfield from a sunwing, and that she was on Sartov’s business. If the guildmaster had given the seal more than a glance he would have seen that it did not have the sharp, crisp lines of the Airlord’s real seal, but his night vision was not good and he saw what he expected to see.

  Sartov’s order was that Theresla be allowed to work on the sunwing immediately, but he imposed strict limits on what she could do. Most conspicuously, she was not allowed to lay a hand upon the sunwing without having a gun against her head. Wind River was practically deserted as a result of the Forian gathering, and Feydamor had been made acting adjunct and commander of the three interceptor gunwings, two sailwings, and four hundred staff and carbineers who were left. Every guildsman except Feydamor had been moved to Forian.

  “Well, first thing in the morning,” began Feydamor as he looked up.

  “Now,” said Theresla firmly.

  “Now? It’s ten o’clock at night!”

  “Now.”

  She started by having all the scattered modules of the sunwing brought back together. True to her eccentric reputation, she called for several bags of beet sugar, a water cart, two hundred blankets, and a special detail of carbineers to rip canvas tents into strips. As if the modules of the sunwing were patients in an infirmary, she splinted and wrapped the broken pieces together, then soaked them in sugary water. The large areas of torn fabric were sewn together by tentmakers; then Theresla covered the repairs with sugar-soaked blankets. Feydamor noticed that the blankets soon got quite warm and gave off steam. More carbineers were detailed to apply more sugar water or patrol the rows of modules with sprayers.

  After two days of work Theresla began carefully peeling off the blankets and bandages. To Feydamor’s astonishment, the breaks and rips had healed like skin and bone. Theresla gently removed the stitching in what had been rents and applied more strips of sugar-soaked cloth to the little rows of holes. All the while Feydamor sat on a folding chair with a reaction pistol, watching and dictating notes to a clerk. More carbineers were called in to carry the modules about and interlock them with each other. Presently the sunwing was a whole aircraft again.

  Feydamor watched nervously while Theresla sat in the cockpit and brought a screen within a frame to life. She tapped at colored squares inscribed with Old Anglian words, stroked images in the screen, and even spoke to the sunwing. Feydamor was no stranger to people who spoke to compression engines to coax more performance out of them, but the guildmaster nearly dropped his reaction pistol when the sunwing suddenly replied in Archaic Anglian. Theresla told it to speak Old Anglian instead.

  “System diagnostic enabled,” reported a clear contralto voice.

  “What?” exclaimed Feydamor.

  “This will take six minutes, so please sit back and relax.”

  “It spoke to me!” exclaimed Feydamor.

  “It likes you,” suggested Theresla.

  “But it’s a machine.”

  “True. But don’t you like machines too?”

  Feydamor had realized by now that such conversations were liable to lead nowhere. Theresla climbed out of the cockpit and ordered the sunwing dragged out of the tent and into the sunlight, where it was tied down against a light breeze. As the carbineers washed the last of the sugar from its skin she ate something small and furry that she took from a jar of pickle.

  “The sunwing is in very good condition,” she reported as she stretched like a cat that had been watching a mouse-hole for too long. “When the diagnostic is complete we can spin the electric engines and even do taxi and flight trials.”

  “No flight trials, not even taxiing,” said Feydamor firmly. “The Airlord wants all such trials done tethered to a sailwing, with three gunwings flying escort. It says so in his dispatch.”

  Theresla had written such strict instructions because otherwise the supposed dispatch from Sartov would have been out of character. Now she shrugged and looked around as if searching for something. This put Feydamor on his guard, but he could see nothing unusual. There were the guild tents, carbineers, guards for various facilities, the three gunwings and two sailwings, and the pen complex of the two hundred terriers awaiting release before the next Call.

  The remaining tests did not take long. The sunwing reported that its systems were all operational, and on Theresla’s command it flexed all its control surfaces and finally spun up the engines for a few minutes. Finally satisfied, she ordered the aircraft left in the sunlight and began
to read through the notes made by Feydamor’s clerk.

  “This is good, but you need these notes expanded if you want to keep the sunwing in good repair,” Theresla finally said. “Come over to the tent and out of the wind.”

  Feydamor felt the tension drain out of him as they got clear of the sunwing, and even holstered his reaction pistol. Inside the maintenance tent Theresla spread the notes out on a bench and asked Feydamor to send all the guards and carbineers away. They had barely begun to work when the inner Calltower’s bell began to ring.

  “Damn! Five minutes,” sighed Feydamor as he set his drop-anchor.

  “Wait, this won’t take long.”

  “Semme, you have to get to the cage for your own good. At a half-minute to the Call the terriers are released. They are trained to scent aviads. They will tear you to pieces if you are outside.”

  “Ten seconds, give me ten seconds. Just look here.”

  “Very well, what—”

  Theresla’s elbow slammed into Feydamor’s jaw as he leaned over and he collapsed silently across the bench. With fluid precision she removed his reaction pistol, checked the magazine, released the safety catch, then rummaged in his pockets and removed four more clips of ammunition and a heavy-caliber carbineer’s revolver.

  “Four minutes, Sair Guildmaster,” called a guard from outside as Theresla bound down her hair and pulled on Feydamor’s greatcoat. By the three-minute warning bell she had his boots on as well, and had pulled his body under the bench. The guildmaster’s peaked hat was a snug fit over her bound hair, but there was no mirror to check the overall effect. At the two-minute bell she strode from the tent just as a guard came to check on them.

  “Guildmaster, the featherhead needs to be caged,” the guard warned, but Theresla only jerked her thumb back to the tent and kept walking.

  The wingfield was making an orderly transition to secure for the Call, but the terriers were still caged. Theresla walked straight for the three guards who were preparing to do the release. Through the mesh the dogs were bounding about excitedly in anticipation of three hours of freedom on patrol. As she neared the wire they caught her scent and started barking and lunging frantically. One of the guards noticed.