Landfall: Tales From the Flood/Ark Universe

by Stephen Baxter

  ‘And, if we miss them,’ Tripp reminded her, ‘for us, the ultimate result is that we starve. For we rely on food imports from the lower latitudes.’

  Maryam studied her, an uncomfortable scrutiny. ‘And you especially, Tripp, have a motive for seeing this sorry business settled.’

  ‘I do?’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten your talk of an expedition to the Antistellar. All postponed because of the war, I imagine? Look - if you help us resolve this conflict we of Port Wilson will help you achieve your goal. Materials, supplies, tractors, crew – whatever you need.’

  Tripp rubbed her cheek. ‘I should tell you that most of my people, the elders, aren’t interested in the Antistellar. It is half a world away even from us -’

  ‘But you’re interested,’ Maryam said bluntly. ‘And it’s you who’s sitting here. You’re a good negotiator. I’ve seen that.’ She sat back. ‘Offer them a deal, concerned specifically with the reason they went to war: Brod and Vala. You can offer a punishment for Brod, to return Vala – whatever. If we can resolve the immediate issue there’s a good chance this whole conflict will just dissolve.’

  Tripp nodded. ‘It might work.’

  ‘It’s certainly worth a try, for all our sakes -’

  There were footsteps, and Vala came bustling in. ‘Good mid-watch, Maryam.’ She turned to Tripp, who rose.

  Maryam smiled. ‘Vala, this is Tripp, from the Pole station. I’m sure you met her at the Colloquy last Great Year.’

  Vala wore a short skirt, shirt and sweater, sensible-looking shoes, and she carried a racquet. She smiled prettily at Tripp. ‘Forgive me if I can’t remember your face, madam Tripp. There was rather a lot going on at the time!’

  Tripp bowed her head, forgiving. But she hadn’t forgotten Vala’s face. Who could? Her delicate features – that long nose, the high cheeks – the bright red hair and startling blue eyes that seemed, if anything, accentuated by the subtler, slanting light of this mid-latitude location. She was thin, as most of Wilson’s citizens seemed to be after the long siege, but Vala had always been slender, Tripp seemed to remember, and she had always worn it well. Most inhabitants of Earth III were stocky, it was said because the planet’s gravity was that much higher than the world of mankind’s origin, but humans had a deeper sense of aesthetics that seemed to prefer a slender build.

  Tripp found herself staring at this girl, whose very understandable desire to take hold of her own destiny had caused so much trouble – who was coming close to breaking the heart of a young man at this moment scraping at a hillside trying to grow potatoes – who was evidently on her way to play some game. Vala smiled, evidently used to stares, and Tripp looked away, embarrassed.

  Vala turned to Maryam. ‘I thought I’d play some racquets with Roco.’

  ‘Her racquets coach,’ Maryam murmured to Tripp. ‘Brod will be back for his supper -’

  ‘Oh, I’ll be home long before then. ‘Bye – and nice to meet you, Tripp from the Pole!’ She skipped out, swinging her racquet.

  Maryam sighed. ‘Poor Brod! I don’t think she has feelings for Roco. But young men seem attracted to her like mirror-birds to the light.’

  Tripp murmured, ‘She is beautiful – no wonder she causes so much trouble – it’s not just her physical beauty but the friendliness in her face, the openness – I could barely take my eyes off her myself!’

  ‘I noticed,’ Maryam said sternly. ‘Funny lot, you Polars. Well – I suppose you’d like a bed for the sleep watch? It will be another tricky journey, I imagine, back out through the line of the siege, if you’re to meet Elios …’

  VI

  Despite the siege’s privations, Tripp found that at least within the Wilson perimeter there was a semblance of civic order – and evidently, judging from Maryam, there were still citizens able to live reasonably well. Not to mention Vala and her racquets!

  But for the besieging army things were much rougher. There was little sense of order beyond the basic military command structure, and the army units were expected to fend for themselves. So the countryside for many kilometres around had been systematically plundered, and all the way up the valley of the Wilson there was only bare, trampled earth where once crops had grown and sheep had grazed.

  In their camp, some soldiers had been on station for nearly the whole siege, living beside drains they themselves had dug down to the river, and wearing uniforms that were reduced to the colour of the mud. Everywhere smoke rose from the endless fires, and Tripp saw rat carcasses and other indefinable bits of meat roasting on skewers. All of this went on under the flags of the Speakerhood, listlessly fluttering banners that showed a fat bird-like shape with fixed wings, a black underbelly, and wheels.

  ‘It doesn’t change,’ said the young lieutenant from New Denver, as he and Tripp picked their way carefully through this morass. He had been assigned as Tripp’s escort and guard. ‘Watch after watch. The Star just hangs there in the sky, and we all sit in the mud, waiting. Every so often we mount a raid against the walls, or the Wilsonians come riding out against us, and there’s a bit of drama. But then it’s just back to sitting and waiting.’

  Tripp squinted up at the Star; lacy cloud hung before a face mottled by spots and flares. ‘Helen Gray says that we humans came from a turning world, where a sun rose and set. I wonder if we miss that, on some deep level.’

  ‘It feels like I’ve been here all my life,’ said the officer miserably.

  They let their horses walk on in silence.

  Naturally the Speaker of Speakers wasn’t living in the mud with his soldiers. At a small jetty near Wilson’s main harbour wall, a smack was waiting to carry Tripp out through the picket-line of blockading ships to the Speaker’s yacht. This was a grand affair, painted brilliant white, standing well off the coast and out of range of any gunfire. The smack’s captain seemed a gossipy sort, and he regaled Tripp with tales of the twice-daily arrival of provision ships from the Navel, and the petty graft that followed.

  Tripp, weary and travel-worn and carrying her packs of spare clothes and trade goods, felt shabby indeed as she was conducted into the august presence of the Speaker of Speakers, and told to sit on a couch to wait as Elios received submissions from advisers and ministers who entered the cabin one after another. An aide at his side took notes, murmuring in his master’s ear. In his white robe the Elios easily filled the chair on which he sat. The chair itself, however, was unusual – not a throne but practical-looking, a sturdy metal frame hung with canvas, and with straps, unattached now, that could be buckled around the Speaker’s girth.

  Elios saw her looking. When there was a gap in the flow of supplicants, the Speaker of Speakers beckoned Tripp forward. ‘You study the chair.’

  ‘Yes. I couldn’t help wondering – we Polars like to think of ourselves as engineers, Speaker -’

  ‘Could this be the Left Hand Seat itself, you think? Please, come and inspect.’

  Boldly Tripp walked around the throne, and Elios’s assistants looked faintly alarmed. ‘Light but sturdy. Harnesses to hold in the occupant. It is a seat from a ship, a ship designed to sail in the air. Just as the legend of the Landfall says.’

  Elios slapped the metal frame. ‘Sadly the original is in a vault, somewhere deep beneath the ground on the Navel – precious beyond reckoning, as you can imagine. But this is said to be a fair replica, and is itself hundreds of Great Years old. But – “legend”?’ His voice was sharp, faintly mocking. ‘Are you not a true believer, madam Tripp?’

  ‘I’m no theologian, Speaker.’

  ‘Yes. Best we each stick to what we know – is that your philosophy? I imagine if we all did that the world would be a less turbulent place. My advisers tell me you’re here on a mission given you by Elder Maryam in Wilson.’

  ‘And for my own purposes too, Speaker.’

  ‘Of course, of course.’ He eyed her bag. ‘To which end, you bring me gifts, do you?’

  ‘Nothing so coarse, Speaker. Trade goods.’ She opened the satch
el. Within, she had samples of new kinds of hardened steel and brilliant glasses, a novel musket-trigger mechanism, and a box-like device that exploited the strange properties of photomoss.

  The Speaker inspected all these carefully, and handed them on to his advisers. He was intrigued by the photomoss. After being exposed to Starlight for a while, it could be shut up inside its box, and a small metal wheel, attached to the outside of the box, would begin to turn, powered by the moss within.

  ‘This is just a toy, of course,’ Tripp said. ‘But it’s meant to illustrate a basic principle. Speaker, we think the photomoss is an engineered organism. Much of what it does is not, apparently, for its own benefit, but for the benefit of a user. In that, it’s like a tractor beast, which happily digs out furrows and ditches and canals not for itself but for whoever commands it. There is another sort of moss that, we believe, is intended to strain the salt from seawater. The mirror-birds seem designed to scatter light into the dark -’

  ‘I’ve heard of this idea, of course,’ the Speaker said. ‘These animals were changed, made into what they are, for some purpose or other, by people who have long gone.’

  ‘People – intelligent creatures like us, or not - yes. That’s what we think. They went away, or died out. Since then the various creatures have evolved away from their original forms, but they still retain traces of that engineering, which we can exploit.’

  ‘Or,’ said Elios, ‘the creatures were Designed that way, by those who made the world. It’s just that we poor Avatars have yet to discern the purpose of that Design.’

  ‘Well, that’s possible too.’ Tripp saw the slightest smile crease the corners of the Speaker’s eyes, and she knew that the theology didn’t matter; they were talking business here. ‘With the photomoss, it clearly gathers energy from the Starlight – but, unlike our own grass and trees, and indeed unlike the Slime, it doesn’t exploit much of that energy to fuel its own growth. Instead it dumps it out as light – which we find useful for lighting shady rooms.

  ‘But we can do more than that.’ She opened up the wooden box and showed the Speaker a kind of mesh of electrodes around the moss clump, and a small, simple electric motor. ‘It’s possible to use the flow of energy to power this engine. I’m sure you see the possibilities, if we can scale this up. You can have photomoss reliably and cheaply powering machines to do whatever you like – dig ditches, build your Palaces, drive carts without horses -’

  The advisers gasped in wonder at these visions.

  ‘Or drive machines of war,’ said Elios. He smiled. ‘But none of these miracles are available yet, I suppose.’

  Tripp shrugged. ‘I’m here to ask you to help fund the development of these advances, as well as to purchase the results in the long term.’

  Elios dismissed the photomoss box with a wave; an adviser took it. ‘And I suppose all of this is contingent on our resolving the current war. Shall we get to the point of your mission, madam Tripp?’

  Tripp sat on her couch. ‘Yes, Elder Maryam asked me to speak to you. I think she hoped that a neutral voice, a relative outsider, might be able to broker a solution satisfactory to all parties. But I don’t deny an ending to this conflict is in all our interests. The shutting-off of such a vital trading link is strangling global trade -’

  ‘Yes, yes. And I suppose you’re authorised to offer me the return of my daughter – yes? And perhaps the handing over of that buffoon Brod, who caused all this trouble in the first place.’

  ‘Or at least a commitment to punish him.’

  ‘But I’m sure that Maryam explained to you, point by point in her own tedious way, how the lovestruck youngsters are only one reason for this conflict.’

  Tripp forced a smile. ‘Actually the word she used is “pretext”.’

  ‘Ha! Well, she would. You are caught in the middle of a conflict with much wider purposes – political, economic, even strategic. Why do you think she summoned you as the ambassador of peace? Have you thought that through, Polar?’

  Tripp stiffened, feeling insulted by his implication. ‘Say what you mean, Speaker.’

  Elios counted the points on his fingers. ‘You at the Pole are long-term rivals to the Navel, in terms of your divine position. Even you secularists must see that in terms of strategic advantage. You’ll have to be dealt with some time, I imagine, but for now we want to keep you calm – neutral – on good terms, as long as possible. Also we need your steel and gunpowder, of course. This is the calculation Maryam has made, that we’ll listen to you, given the context of our relationship.’ He sat back, his face hard under his shaven head, his plucked and dyed eyebrows fierce, and he ticked off the next point.

  ‘And what is it we are being encouraged to hear from you? She instructed you to offer us a deal concerned with the specific reason we are supposed to have gone to war: Brod and Vala. And if you make such an offer, and it’s just, and if my low-browed allies get to hear about it – and they will, Maryam will make sure of that – then I will not honourably be able to turn you down. For if I do there’s a good chance my alliance will dissolve. You see? They think they are fighting for my family honour, and the sanctity of the religion; they think it is a war of heroes and warriors and so forth – and not about hegemony, about breaking the power of an upstart statelet, which is the reality. And if that pretence is taken away, they will either not understand the geopolitics, or will be repelled by it. Either way we must withdraw, and Maryam will win.’

  Tripp considered this flood of ideas. ‘You know, I really am just an engineer. I’m not used to thinking this way. You make me feel -’

  ‘Naïve?’

  ‘Innocent, anyhow. But the fact is, Speaker, the offer to return Vala has been made. So what are you going to do about it?’ She found she was anticipating Elios’s response with some interest.

  But what that response might have been she was never to learn, for just at that moment a messenger burst in with the news that Elios’s son, Khilli, sick of the drawn-out siege, had taken matters into his own hands.

  His face white with anger, Elios hurried out. It took Tripp some time to find somebody to escort her off the yacht safely, and back to shore.

  VII

  ‘Brod! Brod son of Maryam! I am Khilli son of Elios! Come out here and meet me! Brod, you are a coward and a kidnapper and a rapist, and I will avenge my sister! …’

  Once off the smack, Tripp was met by her patient officer from New Denver, and escorted back through the besieging army’s camp. But even from the harbour she could here Khilli’s bellows. Single-handed, armed only with a sword and spear, he was stalking beneath the walls of Port Wilson, and was yelling up his challenges and insults to Brod.

  Tripp shook his head. ‘I can hardly believe it. One champion challenging another to single-handed combat? Are we really reduced to this?’

  But Khilli’s challenge had the whole camp churned up, and Tripp could hear the roars of support, and the clatter of spears and musket-butts on shields. The Denver officer said, ‘It’s one way of getting it finished. Oh, madam Tripp – there are a couple of traders who said they wanted to speak with you.’

  ‘Traders?’

  ‘From Holle City. They said you knew them.’ He pointed to a small supply dump, where fresh horses waited, and two strangers dressed in heavy, concealing cloaks. The officer stuck out a hand. ‘Been interesting meeting you, madam. Travel carefully now.’

  She shook his hand, uncertain. ‘Thank you, Lieutenant.’

  Then, her samples pack and rucksack on her back, she walked warily towards the strangers. Even when she’d come close enough to touch them she still couldn’t see their faces within their heavy hoods. ‘So,’ she said. ‘Holle City?’

  ‘Of course not,’ the taller of the two hissed. He pushed back his hood just enough to let Tripp glimpse his face.

  ‘Brod. And Vala, I suppose. What’s going on?’

  ‘My mother was going to give Vala up to her father – and me. That’s what’s going on! As you knew very wel
l, Tripp, as you went over to the Speaker’s yacht to broker the deal.’

  ‘I was hoping to stop the bloodshed -’

  ‘You could have told me.’

  ‘Evidently your own spies work well enough. And what about Khilli?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Aren’t you going to respond to his challenge?’

  ‘Are you joking? I could take down that tractor-spawned brute, but his companions would rip me apart. No, ma’am, Khilli can wait.’

  ‘And I,’ Vala said from the shadows of her own cloak, ‘am not going back to the Navel. To be a Sapphire would have been dull enough. To be a failed Sapphire, returned in shame – not for me!’

  ‘Then what? What do you want of me?’

  ‘We’re coming with you,’ Brod said simply. ‘There’s nothing for us here. We’ll make a new life at the Pole - together.’

  ‘As simple as that?’

  ‘You owe us, Tripp,’ said Vala heavily.

  ‘I owe you nothing,’ Tripp snapped back. ‘And besides, don’t you think we’ll be pursued? Your father no doubt has spies riddling Port Wilson – and that brother of yours doesn’t strike me as the kind to give up easily.’

  ‘We’ll deal with that as it comes,’ said Brod.

  ‘Oh, will you? You’ve dealt with it all so well so far, haven’t you? And what about the journey itself? You’re talking about a trek to the Pole! Have you any idea -’

  ‘Brod! Brod, son of Maryam! Come down here so I can strangle you with your own intestines! …’

  ‘He’s not getting any more patient,’ said Brod. He untethered three saddled horses, and jumped on the back of the strongest-looking. ‘Shall we make a start?’

  Vala grinned and leapt easily on the back of her mount.

  And Tripp, gloomily resigned to the fact that neither of these two children had any idea what they were letting themselves in for, even if they weren’t being pursued by a demented super-warrior, started to load her bags onto her own beast.