by Paul Lucas
“The more practical question,” Cloud said, “is what we do now.”
Amethyst nodded. “Agreed. We really should set ourselves on a long-term strategy of some kind, something beyond just sitting here beside the node.”
“But what?” I said.
“We should try and find a local civilization,” Louis said. “You know, something at least what you Myotans had, or better. An actual city-state would be best. They would have much better information about this area of the Shard than we could get ourselves.”
Amethyst nodded agreement. “And it would give us the option of settling down somewhere.”
We all looked at her, puzzled.
“Think about it,” she said. “We’re all used to some trappings of civilization. Even a city state with Bronze-Age tech would be better than the four of us wandering around forever by ourselves, our equipment and tools breaking down one by one.”
“What would be so awful about that?” Cloud asked. “I find the idea of a life of wandering and exploring an appealing one. When your human tools break down we can just make do with simpler devices. Think of the adventure it would be! All this time I’ve been a hunter I’ve had responsibility to the community and I could never really explore like I wanted. Now, I do not have to do that. There are only four of us. It would be easy enough to keep ourselves fed on the trail.”
“But that’s part of the problem,” Amethyst said. “I think of all of you as my friends, but I do not want to spend the rest of my life knowing only you three. Besides, we are also relatively young, so maybe a few years of traveling don’t seem so bad now. But I imagine there will come a time in our lives when we will be pushing fifty or sixty, our bones creaking, and we would want to settle down, have families.”
“But that should not be a problem,” Cloud pointed out. “Look at us. Two humans, two Myotans. We could--” he cast a furtive glance at me as his words died in his throat.
“What?” I said, letting ice drip into my voice. “What could we do?”
His voice was very small, his eyes avoiding me. “Pair off. A family is not impossible for at least two of us.”
My eyes narrowed. “Yes it is, Cloud. It always will be.”
He ruffled his wing membranes in irritation but said nothing.
I turned to our human companions. “But how about you two? Are baseline humans and Orcs compatible that way?”
“Certain rare human-Orc couples can produce children,” Amethyst said. “The genetics are just barely similar enough for that to sometimes happen. But half-Orcs are always sterile. Mules. It would be a cruel thing to foist onto our children, if we can have them.”
“Hey!” Louis interrupted. “Who said anything about us getting together? I’m engaged to Rumiko, remember?”
“But that means nothing now,” I reminded him. “You may never see her again.”
“That’s okay, Gossamyr,” the Orc said. “I was only musing. I wouldn’t want to go to bed with ‘tiny’ here anyway.” She gave me a broad wink.
Louis was indignant. “What do you mean by that?”
She held up a rigid index finger. “You.” Then she held up the forearm of her other arm, fist balled. “A typical Orc male. Figure it out.”
She exaggerated, of course. I hoped she exaggerated.
Cloud indignantly interrupted. “I thought this was supposed to be a serious discussion!”
Louis fumed into silence, but I caught a brief and secret smile on Amethyst’s lips. “All right,” she said. “It is. So we’ve kind of decided to search for a decently-advanced civilization nearby, if there is one. Once we find it and see what they know about this area of the Shard we’ll decide what to do after that. Is everyone in agreement on that?”
I nodded, Louis grumped a yes, and Cloud shrugged his shoulders.
“Okay, then. Now we’ll have to decide on the steps we’ll have to take to do that.”
“We will have to scout around much more thoroughly than we have been,” Cloud said. “See what is beyond these mountains, so we at least have some idea which way to go.”
“But there’s a problem with that,” Amethyst said. “The smart thing would be to climb a summit and see what’s what from up there. Unfortunately, we’re on one of the smaller peaks, surrounded by many larger mountains. Ascending the larger mountains will be dangerous. None of us are experienced climbers. Plus there’s all this cloud cover. I don’t think I’ve seen the sun more than twice these past few weeks.”
Louis shrugged. “Probably the mountains are a natural weather barrier for some drainage system. All the precipitation and storms from the surrounding area may get pushed by the prevailing wind against the mountains and get bottled up here.”
Cloud rubbed his chin. “That still does not solve our problem. Both climbing a peak or hiking out of the range to have a look around would require at least two of us, leaving the other two back at our camp here with the equipment. That is a separation of at least a week, probably more.”
Amethyst finished her meal and put her bowl aside. “Yeah. I’d rather not have us separated for that long. who knows what complications that could arise.”
“Isn’t there any other way?” Louis asked.
We were all silent for a heartbeat, thinking. “Too bad we cannot still fly, Gossamyr,” Cloud mused.
I sat straight up, an idea hitting me like a clap of thunder. “Yes, we can!”
FORTY-EIGHT
It took us a little over a week to complete the glider. It was nearly identical to the ones Lerner showed my people how to build a few year ago. The longest activity was hunting the animals needed for the appropriate hides and then curing their skin. Some of the human tech did help, especially all the spider silk cable used for lashings, but otherwise it was culled from all-natural materials.
I was the natural choice to pilot. I was the lightest and the most knowledgeable about building and handling such gliders. After all, I had helped Lerner build the first one years ago and had supervised the building of the one we would use for scouting.
For once, I think Cloud’s protests had less to do with his overprotective instincts toward me and had more to do with his jealousy of my being able to fly while he could not.
We had plenty of places with which to launch the glider. High, steep cliffs with steady, powerful updrafts for my animal hide wings to catch. Getting into the air would be no problem.
Landing was another tale. The mountains we were in were heavily forest-covered and steep. The few clearings we could find near the camp were too steep for me to even try to land in, and the territory above the tree line was no better. So that left just one relatively long, flat expanse where I could land and not expect to snap my legs on touchdown: the river.
On the morning the glider was ready Louis came up to the cliff to help me launch while Amethyst and Cloud were by the long, lazy, broad stretch of river where I planned to land.
Louis burdened me down with a bunch of equipment which I was not sure I needed. The transceiver radio headset I could see, but a full video ensemble, vision-enhancing goggles, inertial locator and other items looked liked they would only weigh me down.
“They’re mostly just precautions,” he said. “I’ve linked your goggles and locator into your video hook-up, which will transmit everything it sees to my handcomp-radio link here. Notice the chest harness for the camera is gimbaled, and that’s linked into your headset. Basically, the camera will follow your head movements to a certain degree, so we’ll be able to see and record everything you do. I can even do a computer enhancement on the recordings later, and maybe we can even see some things you won’t.”
“I am surprised Jacqueline included such sophisticated equipment in her ‘care’ packages to us.”
He pulled on my equipment harness, making sure everything fit snugly. “The second rule of any explorer: record everything. Jackie’s been in the business a long time, so I guess when she thought we’d be in uncharted territory, it was just second nature for
her to include this stuff. I only hope I’ve hooked up everything right.”
“What is the first rule?”
“Hmm?”
“Of exploring. You mentioned the second rule. What is the first?”
“Survive.”
I absently patted the holstered sawed-off shotgun strapped to my thigh. Pistols designed for human hands were clumsy for us Myotans. Our wing-fingers were too long to easily or quickly wrap around the pistol grip. Rifle grips, which tended to curve back at a shallower angle, made handling such a weapon much easier for me. “Is that why you three insisted I bring this along? I really do not think I am going to need it.”
“You might run into trouble up in the air and be forced to land somewhere unpleasant. That’s the secondary purpose of all this gear you’re carrying. If you do go down somewhere unexpected, we can find you much more quickly by reading your locator readout and checking the video of what you saw on the way down.”
A long pause.
“Louis, do you hate me?”
He blinked at me. “What?”
“For stranding you here. I mean, Cloud and Amethyst have so far been treating this like a big adventure, as if they don’t understand the real trouble that we are in.”
“Oh, they understand,” he said. “They’re just hiding it better.”
“And you are acting bitter, resentful.”
“Geez, Gossamyr, how do you expect me to react? Of course I’m resentful! I’m engaged, for God’s sake! Granted I couldn’t have expected to see Rumiko for another eleven months, but now I probably won’t see her again, ever.”
I bowed my head. “I am sorry.”
He rolled his eyes. “Don’t give me that shit. Yeah, it is partly your fault I’m here. Yours and Cloud’s and Amethyst’s. The three of you had to act all brave and selfless. You especially, the grieving widow and mother all alone in some unknown place facing that monster. When the others volunteered on the spot to come and help you, I felt like a little shit of a coward for not doing the same. So I agreed to come with them through the node just so I could ease a momentary spasm of my conscience.” He smacked his forehead. “God, I’m so stupid, sometimes. I’ve ruined my entire life because of peer pressure. Now I’m stuck with a bunch of non-humans in the middle of nowhere, and I’ll never see Rumiko again. I’ll probably die alone and in pain, a happy-meal for some Xique or something.”
“Amethyst likes you,” I blurted.
He shrugged. “I know.”
“You do?”
“Of course I do. You think I never noticed that all her baiting and arguing with me was just an Orc’s way of flirting? I did grow up in the KN, you know. Everyone knows about that. But I’m not interested in her, and not just because I am--was--engaged. Interspecies couples always have a lot of problems, as I’m sure you know. Even races as closely related as baseline humans and Orcs. I don’t want to deal with that kind of thing.” He looked at me sheepishly. “Besides, she’s so huge.”
“So if you are not interested, why do you allow the flirting to continue?”
“Ego, I guess. A guy likes to be reminded that women dig him, even women who could press him one-armed like a free weight. Now if we’re all done with our little heart-to-heart, you better get in the air. We don’t know how long this good weather is going to last.”
I agreed, and he helped me check over the straps one last time to make sure everything was all set. As I approached the edge of the cliff, glider wings turned down and at an angle to avoid my lifting off prematurely, I glanced back one last time at Louis. He stood where I had left him, looking me over thoughtfully. Something about his gaze made me shift uncomfortably, like a gazelle being sized up be a nearby lion.
We four were going to be stuck together for a long time. Perhaps he was re-evaluating his options.
He had to know he had as little chance with me as Cloud did. He was Lerner’s best human friend, and I would never betray my husband like that. Still, I lingered at the cliff edge for a few heartbeats longer than I should have, arcing my back just so and letting him get a long eyeful. Males are not the only ones who like to know that the opposite sex “digs” them.
I stopped abruptly, brows knitting hard. Sweet spirits, what was I doing? What would Lerner think?
I hastily unfurled my tanned-hide wings and stepped off the cliff. Thankfully, I was instantly lifted into the all-forgiving sky.
FORTY-NINE
There are actually four Shard-spanning megarivers on the Megashard, roughly ninety degrees apart, running from the Birthing Zone in the center to the rim. The one closest to the KN is called the Forever River.
Calling these bodies of water "rivers" may actually be a misnomer; from space photos of the MegaShard it appears that only in a few spots do they become narrower than the Atlantic Ocean of old Earth. In fact, for most of their running lengths of 4-plus million kilometers, the four megarivers are wide enough to swallow old Earth many times over. Once their contents reach the Rim Sea after what some estimate to be a hundred year journey, their water is recycled back to the Birthing Zone to begin the cycle again.
The Forever River was first reached by the legendary Milthrai expedition, launched in 342. It took them over four generations to travel there via boat and return, greatly startling the then-new nation of Kylea when a ragtag-fleet of ocean-worthy canoes appeared at one of their remotest ports in 429. Today, the trip can be made in about eight weeks by a helistat, and a semi-stable string of medieval nation states called the River Kingdoms have welcomed trade with the KN.
--Excerpted from The Outlands Primer, 9th Grade edition, Pertel Press, Lara, Borelea, 547
* * *
I laughed at the wonderful and long-missed sensation of the cool wind rippling my fur from head to toe. Spirits, I longed to beat my wings powerfully and bank and whirl among the clouds as effortlessly as the birds.
But I could not. I was only flying now thanks to a clumsy contrivance with stiff, barely movable wings made from the dead animal skins. I snapped my wing membranes between my two long fingers, fighting back the desperate urge to unfurl my living wings. To partake of the skies the way I was meant to, to feel the wind fill my wings instead of just being a passive passenger on an unliving human invention.
Louis’ voice burst forth into my ear. “Gossamyr, are you there?”
I frowned, the spell broken. “Yes,” I said into the radio transceiver. “The glider is holding up well. Everything seems to be in working order. I have gained quite a bit of altitude already, and the sky is fairly cloudless. Visibility should be good.”
“The camera’s picking up some good pictures, but there’s a bit of picture noise from jostling. Try to smooth out your flight as much as your can.” He paused. “Okay, start describing everything you see. It’ll help us to interpret what we see on the video hook-up.”
On that odd little ball-world of Earth where everything started, the horizon would curve away from you, hiding all but the terrain within a few dozen miles, even if you were standing on a mountaintop. But here on the MegaShard there was no such curve, only an endless flat expanse that stretched for millions of kilometers in every direction. I had a far vaster vista of the surrounding lands than the ancient explorers of old Earth could ever have imagined.
“Okay. The mountains seem to run in a broad but kind of regular line to what you’ve designated north east to southwest. To the north and west the mountains go on for some distance, then merge into a deep green. A forest, maybe? Then after that--it’s hard to make out from this distance--there’s a thin line of lighter green, then dark bluish-green for as far as I can see after that. It goes on quite a ways, right into the horizon-haze.”
“Damn,” Louis said. “That’s definitely a large body of water of some kind. Maybe even an ocean. So much for that direction.”
“Are you sure?” Amethyst said. We were all linked on the common radio channel. “Oceans are a natural source for food and trade. We’d be bound to meet up with at least some frien
dly peoples there. And we discussed making better travel time by water than by land.”
“Oh, really?” Louis said. “Gossamyr knows how to build a glider, but does any one of us knows how to build an ocean-worthy boat?”
The others were silent.
“I didn’t think so. River rafts like we discussed are one thing, but taking on an ocean is quite another. It could end up being Atlantic- or Pacific-sized, or even larger, for all we know. Which reminds me. Gossamyr, does the river near us empty into that ocean?”
“No. We’re almost directly on the opposite side of the range from it. I’m turning in that direction now. Maybe about forty kilometers of peaks and we’d be in what looks to be foothills. The river winds to the south and west through them, then empties into a large blue-green patch of water. A large lake of some kind. There is a huge stretch of light greenish-brown after that going into the horizon haze, broken up here and there by darker patches of either green, gray, or brown. Hills and forests?. I can also see thin blue lines radiating away from the sea. Other rivers draining into it, I guess. I cannot make out much beyond that.”
“Okay, that’ll do for a general lay of the land,” Louis said. “See if you can follow the river closest to us. That seems to be our best bet...”
I was up in the air for over two hours, much of that time hopping from updraft to updraft to get the altitude I’d need to see as far as I could. With the mountains, I had been high to begin with, and I must have ascended over a thousand meters beyond that. For a few moments, at the very apex of my flight, the air began to thin out to the point where I had trouble catching my breath.
Flying too high was a danger every Myotan is taught to avoid at an early age. If it ever did occur, we were told to dive back into the thicker layers of air immediately. I did so with the glider, concluding I had seen everything I could, despite Louis’ admonishments to stay aloft longer and gather more data.
I slowly spiraled back toward base camp, using the inertial locator to help find my way back. I was glad for the little instrument. One mountain slope looked too much like all the others in this alien land, especially from the air.
