Fliers of Antares [Dray Prescot #8]

by Alan Burt Akers

  I was not interested in working for a living if I had money in my pocket. Oh, yes, I'd work, and work like a slave, if I had to. I'd do anything at all—for certain reasons that you know. So I said as the carriage halted before the little crowd waiting to board, “What do you do, anyway, Avec? You never talk about it."

  The carriage—usually they have four central wheels, and like the chaldrons of the Heavenly Mines they run on tracks let into the road—lurched ahead. I sat on a wooden-strip seat as Avec paid the fare. He stumbled across a woman with a shopping basket filled with plump ripe shonages, gloriously red, luscious, making my mouth water, and Avec mumbled some apology and flopped into the seat next to me.

  The woman glared at him and then solicitously at her shonages; I didn't blame her. We were going to meet Ilter and the first thing I promised myself was to buy a shonage and sink my teeth into it. I remembered them from Huringa.

  “What do I do, dom?” Avec chuckled and cocked one leg over the other and so kicked the shonage basket again. The woman tsk-tsked and glared; but Avec bestowed upon her so sweet and gallant a smile that she was forced to lower her eyelids.

  I wondered if Avec in his bumbling way had overdone it. In a country so ridden with laws as Hamal the woman might easily stop the carriage and call the Amith drawing it to come and sort out this yetch who kept insulting her and damaging her fruit.

  I was interested in knowing what Avec did, for he had never mentioned it, and I suppose I was assumed to understand what Niltch meant.

  Avec struggled in his seat to get a wad of cham from his arm-purse. Avec was a great cham-chewer. He was also leaning over toward me as he tried to flick the purse-lid open, but the pesky thing had stuck. His legs were kicking about dangerously.

  “I don't mind telling you, dom,” he said, and his voice sank. We had forced ourselves not to use each other's names in public, just in case. “But, you know the way the government and the Emperor regard this matter. I'm not a skilled man, as Havil the Green is my witness, although I would wish to be. Now, young Ilter is now.” He swore a little more loudly then, and wrestled with the purse. We both hoped no one would have overheard his careless use of the name. The woman was trying to move her basket away, and a shonage looked about to slide off at any minute. I was looking at the shonage, and thinking my tangled thoughts about emperors and their laws and how poor folk could not afford to ride in a voller and sail through the air, and so avoid knocking into old ladies and damaging prime shonages.

  Avec rambled on, under his breath, leaning over more and more, struggling with the arm-purse.

  “We are all vowed to secrecy, of course. Penalty death. Oh, yes—death! But I will tell you what I can, and hope you will come with me to Sumbakir, and I'll put in a word for you. We'll be safer there, too, for the guards are fierce, by Krun!"

  The woman rescued her shonage. I let my breath out. Avec ripped furiously at his arm-purse. He also spoke softly to me as the purse-lid came free.

  “You must know, dom, what I do, from what I have already told you, and my name, and where I work."

  His thick arm jerked with the violence with which he dragged the purse open, the elbow driving toward me as he told me.

  “I build vollers, dom."

  My surprise was complete. I could not stop the instinctive start of shock. Avec's solid elbow hit me as I jumped and my body lunged forward in exact time to a corner-turning lurch of the carriage. It threw me forward putting my face and shoulders slap-bang squash into the woman's basket of ripe shonages.

  * * *

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Vollers of Sumbakir

  At this time Sumbakir and the voller yards were organized on military lines; instead of foremen and gang-leaders and time-keepers and floor-managers there were Deldars and Hikdars and Jiktars to run the shops. I fitted in well enough with Avec the Niltch to guide me, and Ilter Monicep as a smith was quickly at home in the smithy where the angle irons, brackets, and control rods were produced. Slaves, of course, swarmed everywhere. They wore the common gray slave breechclout, and they did the hard and onerous tasks set them by the slave-masters, who took their orders from the Deldars of Slaves.

  Truly, I would not have welcomed such a life. But I think you will fully understand my motives. For most of my life on Kregen I had been cursed by the dark knowledge that at any time a flier might break down and so precipitate me—and those dear to me—into danger. The people of Vallia and Zenicce and Balintol and many other of the places where Hamalian and Hyrklanian vollers were sold lived with this knowledge. A voller was not to be trusted. Yet I knew that within the bounds of Havilfar itself—certainly in Hamal and Hyrklana—airboats were perfectly sound.

  The desire to uncover the secret, perhaps to take away with me the knowledge of the construction of vollers, fired me to a determination that made me do things I detested. Even if this meant I would miss the date on which I could fly back to the Shrouded Sea and pick up my life again with Delia and my friends, even this I would do to secure the secret knowledge.

  I have some skills as a carpenter and can turn my hand to that trade when necessary, as a ship's officer of a wooden navy must be able to, if he is a tarpaulin lieutenant without prospects. Learning my way about the yards took little time after our arrival, and Deldar Naghan the Triangle took to me, with Avec's coarse comments to spur him on.[5]

  [5 One of those annoying gaps in the record of the Tapes from Rio de Janeiro occurs immediately after Prescot tells us that he was pitched into the basket of shonages. We have lost all details of his journey to and arrival in Sumbakir, and of the official attitude to him and Avec and Ilter. As, also, excruciatingly, we have lost what happened immediately after he took his fruit-stained face out of the shonages. A.B.A.]

  The long open sheds resounded with the blows of ax and adz, the chirr-chirr of saws, the sliding hiss of planes and the sharp staccato cracks of hammers. I'll admit they built well. The wooden frames were fashioned from seasoned wood, and the Kregans know what there is to know about seasoning and steam bending as about compass timbers. Sometimes the coverings were mere canvas and hide, at others sliced planks produced with extraordinary skill by slaves trained from birth to the work. The timbers were beautifully jointed and glued. As well they were on occasion pinned. Over at Conelawlad, so Naghan the Triangle told me, they built their frames from metal. Ilter said he would stick by that fambly of an uncle of his, for the nurdling onker would as well cut his thumbs off as saw a straight line.

  We were a harum-scarum bunch, as I see now, looking back. Under the harsh laws of Hamal we still found time to skylark. The lot of the slaves was far less enviable. They were guarded by the prowling black-and-white-striped forms of the werstings. These four-legged hunting dogs are extraordinarily vicious, and when they draw their lips back from their fangs it is time either to face front with a weapon or to run. But, running, you would be brought down in an instant. The wersting packs kept the slaves under guard, and the guards kept intruders out, and in Sumbakir there in south-central Hamal we built fliers.

  Looking at the black and white stripes of the werstings reminded me of Jumnee of Nycresand, that Hikdar of a wersting pack, and on the morning the Kov of Apulad paid us his customary once-a-sennight-visit, I thought of Jumnee and wondered what he was doing now.

  This morning the Kov was in a foul temper. This was quite normal. Only once had I seen him come in smiling, and that morning the rumor was that one of the Emperor's daughters had had a miscarriage.

  “I run Sumbakir for the glory of the Emperor!” This Ornol ham Feoste, the Kov of Apulad, was fond of declaiming.

  He stalked into our shed and everyone straightened up from their tasks and bent their heads, even me, Dray Prescot who was called Chaadur. The four guls the Kov had had whipped last week were back to work, and we all knew that the Kov was out to find fault. Any one of us might find the thongs around his wrists and his shirt stripped down his back, and the Deldar of the Lash laying on.

  Ornol ham F
eoste stalked between the lines of petal-shaped vollers, for we were working on an order that called for simple four-place fliers at the time. He ran his hand down the wood to test its smoothness, then he would wrench away at joints hoping they would come apart in his hands.

  As usual, I did not look at his wife. The Kovneva, however, as usual, looked at me.

  The silly woman wore her fine sensil veil swathed across her face so that her large dark eyes could look boldly upon whatever and whoever she wished. Her gown, a gaudy combination of emerald and ruby and diamond stripes sewn against a white soft material spun from the wool of the Methydrian ponsho, clung to her body as she moved. This was scarcely the dress a Hortera would wear to visit a workshop. The custom of elderly Earthwomen never to wear silk out of doors is a strange custom not followed upon Kregen; but this dress was too flamboyant by half.

  In her arms she carried a wersting pup. The thing grew bigger week by week, and now the Lady Esme, Kovneva of Apulad, held a thin golden chain in her dainty hand, a chain that fastened to a gem-studded golden collar around the pup's neck.

  We were all standing there, and many of the guls were trembling in a thinly controlled way that indicated they were almost beyond control. We were all wondering what the Kov would find fault with this week, for we knew that find fault he would. We stood there, hating the cramph, for in a very real and meaningful way he was the chief blot upon the landscape.

  Ornol ham Feoste, Kov of Apulad, broke the joint that young Lenki had just made.

  I saw Lenki sway and his hands wring together behind his back. The Kov turned to him quite slowly, and the Kov's face bore a look that chilled the human soul in Lenki.

  “You call yourself a gul, rast,” said the Kov in a quiet and deadly way. “No Horter would demean himself with you. A slave could do better work than you. And yet I, the Kov, must spend my time seeing you do work for which you are paid well—golden deldys the empire could use better elsewhere."

  Lenki had sense enough not to reply.

  The Kov gestured to his guards. They were apim, heavy-set fellows in half-armor and close-fitting helmets with the bright plumes of the arbora flaunting from their crests. They were soldiers, as their insignia showed, for it was the habit of the Hamalian government to post regiments from one part of the empire to duty in another and remote part. They seized Lenki.

  He yelled, then, a thin shriek of abject fear.

  “The joint broke, rast!” The Kov was enjoying this.

  There was no excuse. The joint should not have broken, even in the thick and sweating hands of the Kov. We looked after Lenki as he was dragged out, screaming.

  Esme, Kovneva of Apulad, lingered as her husband strutted on. She eyed me. I could see the red smudge of her mouth beneath the veil. Her body thrust boldly forward as she snuggled the wersting pup against her bosom. The golden chain jingled.

  “Should I ask the Kov to break your joint, Chaadur?"

  I said, “Your gracious eminence must do as she pleases. The joint will not break to a bungling clasp."

  She flushed.

  She had said to me, the week before last, “I am the Kovneva, Chaadur. You would do well not to forget that."

  She walked on, swinging her hips. She had taken many lovers from the strong young men working here, soldier, guard, Horter, gul, slave. It was rumored she preferred slaves, for their mouths might be stoppered with least inconvenience.

  When the inspection was finished the Kov strode to the wide double-doors which stood open so that the radiance of Far and Havil might strike through. He paused and shouted at us.

  “You must work harder! By Hanitcha the Harrower! The Emperor demands more fliers. You will build them, or as Malahak is my witness, it will be the Jikhorkdun for you!"

  He strode away, the thraxter swinging at his side, his guards at his heels. Following them strolled Esme, insolent in her power and beauty, with her two maids.

  Avec rumbled an oath and said, “The Emperor will have that rast of a Kov in the Jikhorkdun if we do not work!"

  Avec had no real idea of what a strike was; one day the minds of the guls might veer to the concept. The guls have no power, no privileges, no ranks. They are free men, not slaves, children of free parents, and they are not Horters, not gentlemen. They are not working people of the tradesmen class nor yet are they of the class of which stylors form the bulk. They are craftsmen, masters at their trades, and without them Kregen—aye, and the Earth—would tumble into ruin.

  Soon after that the petal-shaped four-place flier I was helping to build was framed out and her canvas covering sewn on. With Avec and old Ob-eye I helped trundle her out of the double doors and across the yard into the fitting shed.

  This was a place I needed to know more about. Here was where the controls and the silver boxes were fitted. The boxes were made up from tin. In a black-walled room at one end of the shed the tin boxes went in with their lids neatly laid beside them, for they were all handmade, and one lid might not fit a different box. They came out from the black-walled room with their lids fastened down and soldered. At the opposite end of the fitting shed stood the red-walled room. The tin boxes went in here just as they did into the black-walled room and came out exactly the same, filled and with the lids soldered. With great care the guls then took a tin from the red room and a tin from the black room and slotted them into the grooves made for them in the voller. Then the controls could be fitted.

  As usual, a guard—he was a Rhaclaw—herded us out as soon as we had pushed our flier into the fitting shed. We wet our lips, but the next mealtime lay a few burs ahead yet, and took ourselves off to the stores to draw fresh timber and so begin the construction of the next voller.

  Ilter had told me that the silver boxes were made up from sheets of metal beaten to an extraordinary thinness and then passed through a bath of molten tin. Iron or copper, he said, he supposed, were the favorite metals. I was far more interested about what was inside the tins. Those silver boxes intrigued me. The Emperor of Vallia had once ordered a silver box broken open so as to discover the secret of the fliers. In one tin they had found fine grit and sand and earth, packed in tightly to the lid. The other tin had been empty.

  That had been some time ago, and the flier had, of course, been ruined. Despite my suggestion that I would pay to open a flier's silver boxes, the Emperor, Delia's father, had told me that he would not permit it. He knew, he said, what was in the silver boxes: dirt and air.With that I had been content at the time; now I was actually standing in the very place where fliers were made, where the silver boxes were filled!

  Let the devils of a Herrelldrin hell take me if I didn't find out the answers now!

  Around at the far end of the fitting shed, where I made it my business to wander as though merely dawdling, I had seen piles of dirt and gravel and sand. As unlikely as it had sounded, the Emperor's story must be true—not that I doubted his word in a matter like this even if, and despite my Delia, I would not trust him wholeheartedly.

  Dirt and air?

  There was a mystery here, by Vox!

  On the night I decided it was worth the risk of breaking out of our barracks by the back way and sneaking over to the fitting shed I made a few suitable precautions and then prepared to burglarize a window from the inside. Just as I put the blade of a chisel to the window a knock rattled the door of my cubicle, for the barracks, as I have said, were subdivided into single cubicles. I cursed and slid the chisel up the sleeve of my shirt and flopped onto the three-legged stool by the bed, and bellowed grumpily, “Come in, come in!"

  If my plans worked as I envisaged I wanted no one knowing I had broken out and gone prowling. The front door was open, and anyone could go out and come in, but I did not want to be noticed.

  It was Ilter. He carried a Jikaida board under his arm and a sturm-wood box of pieces. I dissembled. I owed him a game for I had beaten him soundly the previous evening, and he wanted revenge. We set up the board in deadly silence and ranked our Deldars and set to work. Al
though he was a fine player and my mind was not fully occupied with the game, I managed to hold him to a Pyrrhic victory. He grimaced and shuffled the pieces up, folding the board. “Next time, Chaadur, I will smite you, hip and thigh!"

  When he left the suns were completely gone from the sky and the Maiden with the Many Smiles floated above serenely. I did not bother with the cheap oil lamp in my room but again laid the chisel against the window. I was not too concerned over the delay. Now was probably a better time, anyway.

  The door opened swiftly, so swiftly that I only just had time to slide the chisel into my shirtsleeve.

  Hikdar Covell ti Heltonlad, as thin faced and hollow eyed as ever, with that suspicious beaky nose of his poking where it was not wanted, pushed that very selfsame nose into my room. He wore his uniform, and his thraxter was drawn. He looked as though he barely repressed an explosion of resentment and malice.

  “Are you washed, gul? Are you clean?"

  He poked his damned thraxter at me, rather as a schoolmaster pokes little boys with his cane.

  I did not take it away from him and clout him over the ears with the flat.

  Outside in the corridor shapes moved, and I heard the chink of a sword-blade against a lorica, and so I knew Hikdar Covell had not come alone.

  He did not wait for me to answer.

  “Up! Up with you, rast! Come with me!” He swirled his short cape, checkered green and black with the gold lace and bullion tassels, swung his sword up over his right shoulder, and pranced out. I heard him complaining to his men. “This place smells like a dopa den of Lower Ruathytu! Drag him out if he does not come—"

  I stepped into the corridor.

  Six soldiers closed around me.

  “Smartly, now,” rapped Hikdar Covell. “Here—” and a Deldar at his Hikdar's sword clapped a foul black bag over my head. I let them do all this to me. I let them put my head in a black bag and grab me by the elbows and guide me out of the barracks and into the night. I knew where I was being taken. I knew what their errand was. Also, I knew what I wanted to do. I would make a fine dovetail joint of those two wantings that no cramph of a Kov could break.