Analog SFF, July-August 2006
Page 6
“I saw what you did in Davos,” she answered, but she didn't pull away.
“I really had to dig,” said Martan. “There wasn't much in his mind for me to work with, because he just wanted a fat bounty. My telepathy drives along the tracks laid down in someone's brain by pain, shame, and anger. The enemies of Faxe tended to have a royal road for me in their minds. That last night when we were together, as soon as I touched those scars on your back, I knew somebody had hurt you, and then you told me it was an early and very unsuccessful experiment in love. It carries pain and shame for you now. I instinctively reacted to that, and made you explain everything. But you are the last person in the universe I intended to Interrogate. I'm sorry."
It made sense. He made sense. Finally she said, “You told me you made a drastic, emotion-driven, foolish decision at a young age. Well, so did I. It's in the past now."
“If you say so."
She squeezed his hand.
Martan said, “It was an Interrogation that made me defect from Faxe. I hunted down my last enemy of Faxe, and when I interrogated him, I found that he was a principled man, not a nihilistic terrorist. Things he knew about Faxe shocked me. I broke the Interrogation off—ran away—and tried to end my life in an explosion. Except I didn't die. Wendisans rescued me. Then the doctors reconstructed me, learned all about my hellhound modifications by repairing the damages. They restored my abilities. It's more than telepathic interrogation."
“I understand that now.” A hellhound was a subtle tool as well as an effective and terrible one. No wonder Wendis had been interested enough to rescue Martan, repair him, and finally offer him asylum and a useful job. It was very much the tradition of Wendis to gather up resources, human or otherwise, that added value.
“I like the things I can do. But I'm not Faxe's hellhound now."
No, she thought, he was not a Faxen hellhound anymore. He might just be a Wendisan hellhound.
They rounded the bony flank of a rocky hill. The High Road ended just ahead at a fragile-looking swinging footbridge suspended over a chasm.
A figure like a winged gargoyle crouched on the anchoring post on the near end of the bridge. Both the bridgepost and the gargoyle looked made of pale marble and were of incongruously imposing size compared to the spindly bridge.
Nia drew close to Martan. “Watch out for the guardian Angel,” she whispered.
As they approached the threshold of the bridge, the guardian Angel watched them with live, shifting eyes. Martin pulled out the thug's knife. The Angel's head turned toward them as they went by and stepped onto the slender bridge.
“Suspended at forty-five degrees to the axis. That may make it a little challenging for you,” Martan murmured. “Walk fast but lightly, smoothly."
With every step, it felt as though a subtle, invisible spingravity finger nudged Nia's foot toward the edge of the bridge. It made her fear falling off. Panicky, she said, “It feels—"
“Close your eyes."
With her eyes closed, Nia clung to the arm Martan put around her waist, guiding her. He glided right behind her, his footfalls so light that they didn't even seem to register on the bridge.
Music and faint laughter drifted up from the deep valley far below the swinging bridge. Colored lights swirled on the valley's floor. That was Karnivale down there. No carnival for anybody who fell off this bridge.
“We're past the middle,” Martan said in a low voice. Nia heard a flapping sound behind them. “Now hurry—” Martan shoved her the rest of the way to the end of the bridge, where she felt solid rock under her feet and stumbled.
Martan whirled with the knife ready in his hand.
The guardian braked in midair with flapping wings. He dived onto the anchoring post. With long, bony hands, he grasped the knotted ends of the bridge and unfastened the ropes. Dangling from the Fair Country end, the bridge slowly fell away.
The guardian spoke. “The way is closed."
* * * *
Nia shuddered. Even more than the deathbird, the way that winged parody of a human being flew in the air of Wendis looked hideous to her. But Martan didn't seem fazed. Holding her hand, he backed away from the bridgepost, trading glares with the guardian Angel all the way to the foot of a long stairway carved into the vertical face of rock at the high end of Karnivale.
“Up to the top of Zaber,” Martan told her. “It's not far."
Nia shook her head, despairing. This looked even worse than the Spiral Stair. The frigid wind galed and sighed. The ends of her shawl fluttered. Her muscles fought for balance, and she forced herself to suppress motions too forceful for the low spingravity.
Martan coaxed her up a step at a time. He ceaselessly scanned the stairs and the air for danger. “What is that thing?"
“He's not a thing. He's human. There are two groups of genetically changed—or deranged—humans in Wendis. One is the Children of Bane. Like the Gatekeeper. The other is the Angels. They're Shandy's Angels."
“Do say,” Martan replied, with a cold ironic note in his voice that she'd not heard before. But then she'd never heard him contemplating a sentient enemy.
Nia dared one look back. The guardian Angel glared up at them with his wings cocked.
One minute of inattention on Martan's part and the Angel would fly up to knock them off the stairs. But Martan's alertness didn't waver.
On the first landing, hidden from the bridgepost by a fold of stone and out of the wind, Nia stopped. Her leg muscles trembled with fatigue, and the knee that she had bruised in Inferno and again in the stream near Davos throbbed. Icy tears tricked down her cheeks. “I can't take much more of this."
Watching the air with the knife in his hand, Martan kissed the side of her face. “I'm sorry. If I'd known, I would never have let everything today happen to you."
She said, “I knew it might be dangerous to help you. I just didn't think it would be this much, this soon, like this. But ... I knew.” She leaned against him. Elzebet's cloak smelled like the Fair Country, spice and smoke.
She'd known, and she'd made the first move of this perilous game herself, by sending out inquiries into areas of interstellar law that might have bearing on the human rights of hellhounds. And her motives had been a tight braid of ambition, compassion, and sexual passion. How very Wendisan. Wend your way, play a game, win or lose the prize of your life in the Magic Mountains....
Martan sounded calm. “I will get you home tonight. I promise.” He pulled out the guidebook from her jacket's breast pocket. “Be our lookout for a few minutes."
Nia anxiously watched the windy air.
Martan leafed through the guidebook's pages. “Zaber's peak has very unusual properties,” he said. Faint accordion and zither music drifted up from Karnivale. He turned a page. Suddenly Martan hissed, “This thing is transmitting! I feel it. Only when a page turns—and only sneaky little packets of data."
“Telling someone where we are?” Nia's mind reeled.
Martan hurled the guidebook into the valley. It fluttered away on the winds over Karnivale. “I memorized what I need,” he said. She felt his back muscles tense up and his breathing change, deeper and harder. He was spring-loading for a fight.
The stairs ended on the wider crest of Zaber. Starlight shone blindingly on a thin blanket of snow. Nia located Lover's Leap, a scalloped terrace protruding from the top of Zaber.
It was roped off and posted with signs.
CLOSED FOR MAINTENANCE
NO TRESPASSING
NO SAFETY NET
* * * *
“Company,” Martan said flatly.
Nia turned around to see four humans standing up from the snow, wearing arctic-white hunting garb and masks, with weapons in their hands. A harpoon was flying through the air toward her.
Martan shoved Nia down onto the snow. The harpoon harmlessly skimmed his shoulder. He tumbled over Nia's back, skidding over the vertical edge of Karnivale valley. She grabbed for him, missed, and watched horrified as he fell. But not far. He
slid toward a tiny shelf of rock. His feet landed there. Terror for his safety choked Nia's throat. But he coiled onto the shelf like a spring, balanced on the balls of his feet, safe. But he had nowhere to go.
Nia forced herself to roll toward the hunters, to get to her feet. She must not let them know he was safe, just below the edge. She had to get their attention away from him. She took a shaky step in the low gravity. The hunters advanced. One of them shook out a huge net.
Out of the corner of her eye Nia registered rapid motion just before Martan hurtled into her. He collided hard with her and launched them both into the air. He'd jumped up from his narrow perch with all the power he had. He'd broken both of them free of the low spingravity. With his arms wrapped tightly around her, they coasted upward from the peak of Zaber.
The mountain rotated away. The hunters gestured excitedly. But they didn't shoot another harpoon. Nobody in Wendis would dare fire a weapon toward the spar at the center of the world.
The spar was a torrent of brilliant stars channeled inside a thick crystalline tube. It mesmerized Nia. The heart of the spar was filled with translucent threads, conduits for a sunlike pulse of golden light by day and a million starlike pulses of silver light by night. It was blindingly bright up this close. The air around it was warm. Nia felt numb awe as she saw the spar up close, and closer yet.
They were going to collide with it.
Martan reached out and put his hand on the spar. His arm absorbed their momentum. Electrical fields swirled around his hand on the spar's clear surface.
With a forceful shove, Martan propelled them away from the spar.
Now they fell at the same slow rate at which they'd ascended from Zaber. As dazed as if she were dreaming, Nia saw they were coasting rimward on the other side of the spar from the peak of Zaber, where the distant hunters had dwindled to angry little toys. Martan and Nia fell rimward, down, and down. But it didn't feel like falling. It was dreamlike flying, free from spingravity. The whole vast cylinder of Wendis rotated around them.
Martan shrugged off the knapsack, which still contained rocks from Inferno. He slung the whole thing away from him, changing their course so that they coasted rimward at a different angle. “Hah! We'll land safe!” he exulted.
Now Zaber rotated back around.
Zaber morphed into an immense white wave looming over them, closing in with terrifying speed. Nia screamed. Martan twisted around to cushion the impact with his own body. The steep slope of Zaber slammed into them and buried them in snow.
They rolled back out into the air. Nia coughed and spat snow. They slid downhill. Snow slithered through Nia's clothes.
Martan shouted a curse. “No rock—no roots—can't stop!"
They kept sliding downhill toward a dark flat blur on the mountainside. A fragment of Nia's mind worried what the dark blur was—it looked familiar—bad for some reason—
Nia, Martan, and the snow traveling with them spilled into an ice-rimmed lake. Frigid water shot through Nia's clothes like driven nails.
Martan hauled Nia up, getting her head out the water. She coughed. The lake came up to her collarbone, and it was shockingly cold. “Aaaah!"
“This way!” Martan gasped.
She staggered toward shore leaning on him.
“I think we're safe,” said Martan.
Shaking uncontrollably, Nia looked at the shoreline. It was familiar. It was also lined with people staring excitedly at them. “Robin Lake in Haven,” Nia stammered past chattering teeth. “Winter stargazing. We are safe here. Oh, cold! Oh no!” She fished the hugwort out of a pocket full of water. It clutched at her fingers with all of its tendrils.
They waded out of the water onto a smooth sand beach. Water spilled off Nia's shawl and flowed off Martan's cloak, as the fabrics rejected the water.
“Here!” Martin flung his cloak and her shawl around them both. He twined his fingers through the hugwort's tendrils and between Nia's fingers. He embraced her, and he radiated heat. Another special hellhound ability, Nia realized. Raise body temperature. Survive immersion in cold or snow or ice water. She held onto him, sharing his elevated body warmth. The hugwort relaxed its grip on Nia's fingers and twitched its tendrils, flinging water off its leaves like a wet bird shaking its plumage dry.
“A flying ambulance just landed,” said Martan. “Don't forget I kept my promise to you."
Nia held his face. “You—are—wonderful!” She kissed him. He responded instantly, but he held back, implicitly asking how much kissing she wanted and how long. Her answer was more and very.
“What happened?” said an ambulance medic pushing through the cluster of people. Voices answered, “They fell down the mountain—caught in an avalanche—” A child piped, “They fell from the starspar, they did, they did!"
“Anyway, they seem to be all right,” someone remarked.
Nia broke off the kiss but whispered to Martan, “More later!"
Then there it was, finally, with ice water dripping from his hair onto his face, he gave her his end-of-an-eclipse smile.
* * * *
They shook off the curious star-gazers, including one who seemed to be an ambulance-chasing reporter, by ducking into the Robin Lake boathouse. Since it was winter, the boats were tied and covered. Martan led Nia along the floating dock in the darkness, unerringly reaching the far end of the long boathouse while the reporter and other curious citizens were still blundering around near the door they'd entered by.
Martan was breathing hard, and he was shaking. “Hungry,” he whispered, while the boats around them creaked and muttered in their moorings. “Used up a lot of energy."
Nia cautiously cracked open a back door of the boathouse. She saw a crowd of people scattered on a slope of Zaber that faced the city. Viewing the glittering skyscrapers and shining scraps of fog that filled the far end of Wendis like a geode, these people hadn't noticed anything sliding into Robin Lake behind them. Nia put her shawl over her hair and led Martan by the hand. They merged into the crowd.
Sweet smoke led Nia to a food vendor's booth. She bought a fried cake and six winter rolls. Martan ate the rolls while the cake cooled, then wolfed down the cake. Then he smiled.
“Happy now?” Nia asked.
“You were right. It's the best obstacle course that ever existed. That was a good run. I'm very happy."
Nia liked being right. But she was aware of Zaber's bulk curling up toward the spar, looming over them like a live, imposing presence. “You know you have enemies up there."
He smiled again, with a glint in his eyes. “Dealing with enemies was what I was made for."
He had his idea of an exciting challenge. Nia had hers. If the Jeng Family tried to pursue a vendetta against Martan, they would find themselves in serious trouble with the Wendisan legal system. Nia would see to that. If the Shandiists weighed in, then things might get legally very exciting—as well as dangerous. But when you could play danger games in the Wend Mountains and win, it was only natural to have both bad enemies and good friends and allies.
“What about you? Happy?” Martan asked, stroking the side of her face.
“I'm so glad we made it down, but I'm worn out,” said Nia. She was trying to ignore her scraped skin, muscles taxed into painful knots, and fatigue building to crushing proportions.
A quarter of the way around Wendis from here, the university stood on the low hills, surrounded by a decorated wall that was also very functional, designed to keep students and scholars from outside worlds safe from the dangers of Wendis. “You said you wanted to be in your own bed tomorrow morning, and it all be a bad dream, but I'd like for you to come home with me,” said Martan. “The proctor's apartment is secure by design. And I made security improvements since I moved in."
To reach the university only took a short walk downhill and then a brief slidewalk ride. There was a narrow Proctor's door in the wall beside the university's main entrance. Martan's keys opened the door and then locked it with several layers of security.
Copyright 2006 Alexis Glynn Latner
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* * *
IN TIMES TO COME
Our September issue features a wide variety of stories that turn familiar ideas and situations on their heads, challenging you to think about them in new and perhaps uncomfortable (but entertaining) ways. Richard A. Lovett's “A Pound of Flesh,” for example, offers a scary way an old truism might be put to all-too-practical use. Rajnar Vajra's “A Million Years and Counting” stars a protagonist as outrageously alien as you've seldom seen elsewhere but likely come to expect from Vajra—yet in the end perhaps much more familiar than some would like to admit. John G. Hemry's “Kyrie Eleison” is a tale of reunion in an age when humanity has expanded far beyond the Earth, wherein a rescue team discover a startling example of “making do” twisted to sinister new ends.
Kyle Kirkland's fact article is “The Right Stuff: Materials for Aerospace and Beyond.” What you can build depends, of course, on what materials you have available to work with—and we're just now seeing the beginnings of some new ones that are not only very exotic, but very “talented.” Finally, of course, we'll have the sweeping conclusion of Edward M. Lerner's four-part novel A New Order
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* * *
SCIENCE FACT: MESSENGERS FROM THE EARTH'S CORE? THE GREAT PLUME DEBATE HEATS UP
by RICHARD A. LOVETT
For vacationers, Hawaii means paradise: a fertile chain of volcanic islands, bedecked in rainbows and flowers, bathed by the Pacific Ocean. But geologists would love the islands even if the climate weren't so appealing. That's because they are the most active volcanic area in the world, in a region where, for years, it appeared that volcanoes had no right to be. Hawaii was a tropical paradise that, quite simply, seemed as though it shouldn't exist.