Reign of Fire

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  “Yes?” Weng waited while he mused over a notion he was reluctant to express out loud. She hummed three dissonant notes under her breath, her head cocked as if still listening to the distant chanting, then crossed out one of her scribbles.

  “Thing is. Commander,” Danforth admitted finally with an uncomfortable grin, “I can’t escape the fact that, in putting the back data together with the new to pinpoint a consistent locus of action for the snow, rain, hail and now this rising heat, I keep landing right on top of Ibiá’s damn god houses or whatever the hell CRI calls them.”

  “Godhomes,” Weng supplied, withholding all editorial comment.

  “Whatever. The ocean and the desert. That’s where it’s all coming from or going to. It meets in the middle, within what just happens to be the planet’s narrow zone of habitability, and all hell breaks loose.”

  He buried his fingertips in his tight curls, squeezing his head as if to keep it from flying apart. He heard a muttered exclamation from Clausen that sounded like a curse and lowered his voice. “Maybe we could get some Sawl to sneak a message to Ibiá, You think they really know where he is?”

  Weng’s pen point paused. “I expect they do, Dr. Danforth.”

  He studied her carefully. “Do you know?”

  “No. Dr. Danforth. I would not want to.”

  He smiled, relieved but vaguely disappointed. “You know, Commander, I had you pegged for one of those discipline-at-all-costs types.”

  She regarded him mildly. “I doubt that I’d have survived this long had that been the case. One must always consider the costs.”

  “A lesson I learned the hard way,” he remarked, patting his cast-bound thigh.

  “One always does, Dr. Danforth.”

  “Well. Now this is very interesting.” Clausen’s voice was raised for all to hear. “CRI, let me see the original cargo and equipment manifest.” He leaned forward eagerly. “Good. Now give me the updated launch roster.”

  McPherson slotted the last dishes into the sonic and wandered up to read over the prospector’s shoulder as he scanned the listing of satellites in orbit, each followed by a brief notation as to equipment, location and purpose. Several offered no information other than the CONPLEX log and a launch date.

  “Look!” McPherson exclaimed. “A drone!”

  “Precisely.” Hunched over the keypad, Clausen wore his hunter’s grin of anticipation. “CRI, get me Captain Newman on the line.”

  “Captain Newman is in his sleep period. Is it an emergency?”

  “No, never mind. CRI, tell me, did the Captain authorize a drone launch recently?”

  “No, Mr. Clausen.”

  “But I see here on the schedule that a drone has been launched.”

  “That is correct.”

  “The launch coordinates would seem to indicate a trajectory toward Earth.”

  “I quite agree, Mr. Clausen.”

  Clausen straightened slowly, like a cobra uncurling. “CRI, I’d like to know the contents of that drone.”

  “I am not at liberty to divulge that information.”

  He nodded. “That’s what you think.”

  “How’re you gonna break open a confidential file?” McPherson demanded.

  “Well, now, McP., if I told you, then we’d both know.” He smiled nastily. “You really expect me to give up my advantage?”

  McPherson blinked. “Jeez. ’Scuse me for asking.”

  “I have updated wind and temperature readings for Dr. Danforth,” said the computer.

  “By all means, speak up.” Clausen sat back, smugly accommodating.

  “Local temperature has risen to ninety-six degrees. Winds up five mph, gusting from nine to twelve mph.”

  “Still rising.” Danforth shook his head.

  “And so will the sun,” added Weng. She switched off the work light and turned her back to Clausen’s searchbeam. Danforth turned in his chair. Beyond the shadowed belly of the Lander, the fading Cluster hung in the east like a spattered drop of bleach on a pearl-gray satin sky. Danforth thought if there was ever a time to pray for rain, this was it.

  “So what do you say to that?” Clausen faced them from the hot glare of his lamp.

  “To the sun?” Desert visions filled Danforth’s head.

  “To a drone that’s been sent to Earth, but not by Captain Newman. Or by yourself, I assume, Commander?”

  Weng shook her head.

  Clausen stretched out his legs, his feral smile broadening. “Now, who else has that authority. Well, my, my. The Communications Officer. What a coincidence.”

  “You’re saying Stav sent it?” McPherson asked.

  Clausen laughed. “So, Tay, you still think he’s just a harmless loony?”

  Danforth tried to read Weng’s impassive face, and failing that, looked for a hint of her reaction in the angle of her stance. Maybe we have let Ibiá get out of hand? It is possible to be loony and still be dangerous. He tried to imagine circumstances short of insanity that might cause himself to go renegade and fire off secret messages to Earth.

  Perhaps if I made some momentous discovery that I didn’t want anyone here to know about…

  “Commander,” he murmured. “I’d like to know what’s in that drone, too.”

  In the half-dark, Weng nodded her assent. The chanting from the Sawl encampment swelled on the rising breeze and ceased suddenly. A runner was coming down the path from the cliff, his rapid footfalls softened by the thickening dust.

  “Furzon!” he called. “Furzon!”

  McPherson looked up. “That’s me.” She went out into the clearing to usher in the leader of the ranger salvage party. He was a sturdy middle-aged man with a seamy worried face. He eyed Clausen warily as he passed and continued to expostulate at McPherson’s back as she led him to Weng’s worktable.

  “I can’t quite get what he wants, Commander, but it’s something about that old priest and the sky, and you know what that could mean!”

  Danforth suffered a jolt of déjà vu, seeing in the ranger’s stubborn agitation a memory of Stavros Ibiá, damp-haired and on the edge of panic, pleading that a priestly warning be heeded. He bit back hard on his first impulse to dismiss the man’s obvious concern and shoved his wheeled chair away from the worktable, waving McPherson to him abruptly.

  “Get me to that terminal, Ron, and fast! Ten to one we’ve got weather on the way!”

  20

  On the desert hardpan of the Dop Arek, the gray pre-dawn was stained with red. Susannah slitted her eyes against the swirling dust, struggling to keep the young scout in view. Ahead, to the south, the toothy profile of the Grigar wavered mirage like, its narrow peaks salmon tipped and glowing. The hot wind snatched at the sand and the scattered dry tufts of brush. Susannah scooped up a loose twig and bent it. It snapped easily and spat out a puff of yellow powder. A plant that had been budding and spongy with moisture a scant three weeks before was reduced to a brittle husk. She held it out to Ghirra as he trudged along beside her.

  “It didn’t even have time to develop its dry form, did it?”

  “The heat is too soon. You hear?” he asked, listening into the wind. The dry stems beat against each other with the hollow rattle of pebbles cast across stone. “The Sisters prepare the game.”

  Susannah smiled uneasily. “You sound like Aguidran.”

  “No. My sister will name this fighting, what Ibi call ‘war’.”

  “Ah. War.” She nodded. He grasped the subtleties of translation so readily. “And you?”

  “I do not know what I name this.”

  A sharp gust whipped sand against her cheeks. Her eyes stung and watered. “And are we the Sisters’ gaming pieces?”

  He offered a bleak nod to her attempt at humor. “You see now our life, Suzhannah.”

  “Understand, you mean?”

  “I will not say for your understanding,” he replied. “You see now as we see.”

  Living as you live, she reflected. The wind billowed through the loose light la
yers of her Sawlish clothing to dry her heat-damp skin. The dust and gravel crunched beneath her sandaled feet. A direct and sympathetic methodology. So obvious. Stav’s instinct from the beginning. She matched Ghirra’s measured stride and felt marginally less weary. The scout moved ahead, barely visible through the dawn-colored dust. Behind, the hjalk curled their strong necks into the wind, their wide nostrils opening and shutting with the labored rhythm of their step. The Sled rattled in their wake, collecting the extra weight of the sand blown into its seams and open hold. Megan struggled along in its lee, one hand grasping the wing as if the Sled itself were her guide to safety.

  “What game will they play this time?” Susannah played out the metaphor like a fishing lure, to snare Ghirra’s less guarded thoughts. The wind built shifting singing walls around their tiny caravan but the sky above the gusted sand was clear, shell-pink and limitless.

  Ghirra dug in his pockets and held out a half-dozen black stone counters. “Do you offer a wager?”

  She glanced at him, surprised. A deeper creasing at the corners of his mouth was his only hint of a smile. “That far I would not presume.”

  He fingered the counters thoughtfully, then put them away. “Sometime, is better to lose the stones.”

  “You mean you’d rather be wrong about what you think is coming?”

  All trace of a smile evaporated. “This is correct, Suzhannah.”

  The scout called back hoarsely, urging speed. Susannah swallowed as sand grains grated between her teeth. Megan’s slitted eyes were fixed on the swirling ground. She had not spoken for over an hour, a more eloquent expression of her exhaustion than any litany of complaint.

  A maverick windburst momentarily thinned the veil of sand. The scout called out again. Ghirra waved back and pointed. Below the ruddy crenelations of the Grigar, still sunk in predawn shadow, the distant cliffs of DulElesi were briefly visible.

  “Thank god,” Susannah breathed, then as the sand closed around them again, she asked, “How long?”

  Ghirra spread his hands. “Two throws, it could be.”

  Susannah squinted crestfallen at the vanishing rockform. “That far? Shouldn’t we have met up with the other wagons by now?” she worried, clearing sand from her throat with a strangled cough.

  “Not talk now,” advised the physician. “See, I do this way.” He unwrapped his wide cloth waistsash and wound it loosely around his head, Berber-style, to shield his eyes and mouth from the flying sand. “No worry, Suzhannah. My sister hurries, but also we hurry and there is few of us.”

  They crossed a shallow gravelled wash snaking up from the south, Susannah’s impulse, had she been wandering alone in this polished waste, would have been to follow its dry meanderings, if only for the suggestion of shelter in its crumbling banks, for the relief it offered from unrelieved flatness.

  The Sled’s wheels jolted into the wash and balked at the rise, spinning in the dusted gravel. As the hjalk strained, it lurched up over the edge, The driver alternately cooed to his beasts and berated them, as his patience waxed and ebbed, When the wheels rolled free once again, Ghirra whistled ahead to the scout to declare a brief rest stop, The canteens and the clay water jugs were unslung in the lee of the Sled, The hjalk, standing lathered and panting in their harness, sucked warm water from the driver’s cupped hands, He had few words for his human companions but an endless stream of chat for his animals, The larger nuzzled him repeatedly, bleating indignantly when he stoppered his jug and reslung it across his back, Murmuring fond negatives, the old man grasped the beast’s curly head apologetically to brush encrusted sand away from its long-lashed eyes.

  Watching, Ghirra shared an unreadable glance with the anxious scout. “The hjalk are restless,” he offered cryptically. He rose from his crouch beside the aft landing gear. “We must hurry.”

  The scout stayed close by as they started up again, The wind continued to rise, The thickening sand stole back the feeble light won from the coming dawn. Clumps of brush rolled loose, ripped from their moorings. Susannah rewound her sash around her face to filter the sand-choked air, suffering waking visions of being buried alive.

  “Susannah!” Megan shouted suddenly. In the shelter of the Sled, she had pulled out her pocket compass and was staring at it oddly. Susannah dropped back to join her. Within its plastic case, the needle was shuddering like a live thing as it wavered wildly from point to point. Abruptly, it swung to the southwest and hovered quaking, as if fighting a pull to which it must inevitably give in.

  The hair rose on the back of Susannah’s neck. “Broken, huh?”

  “Compasses don’t break. Not like this.”

  “The magnetic field must be different here.”

  “Thing worked fine before.”

  Susannah’s head jerked around at a sound that was not quite a sound, rather as if a tiny explosion had occurred just outside her ear. But Ghirra halted several paces ahead, alert and listening. The scout frowned, then shouted a tense query back at the older men. Ghirra answered grimly.

  “What was that?” Susannah’s words were lost to the wind. The hjalk danced in their traces. The smaller animal skittered to one side against the larger’s momentum, uttering small bleats of dismay. It was brought up sharp by the limit of its harness, it squealed and bucked. The driver growled and slapped its wooly flank to urge it forward again. The wind sighed and wound itself into tighter eddies, sucking up funnels of yellow dust to chase among the tumbling bundles of brush. Overhead, the flamingo sky grew luminous as silk.

  Megan gasped. “Look! Your hair!”

  Susannah’s long dark hair, dangling loose from beneath her improvised mask and turban, was denying the wind’s command. It floated upward as if of its own volition. She grabbed at it and shoved it under her collar. She felt an urgent need to sneeze or shout out loud, to release the tension rising through her body.

  The sound came again, sharper, like a blow to the midriff. The larger hjalk shied and lunged ahead. The driver bellowed his alarm. The Sled lurched, then skewed about wildly. Susannah jerked Megan away from the tail as it swung around toward her head.

  Ghirra was beside them instantly, hauling on the driver’s arm as he grabbed frantically at the tow ropes. The physician’s greater height was no advantage over a man who had spent a lifetime managing giant beasts. The driver tossed him off roughly and continued to yank at the ties. The Sled careened from side to side as the hjalk leaped and fought the harness. The scout screamed at the driver over the hum of the wind, waving ahead and then up at the sky. The wind wound its eddies tighter and spat spirals of razor-edged gravel. The grinding hum coiled into a whine.

  Susannah snared Ghirra’s arm as he readied himself for a second assault. “Let him! We’ll leave it behind!”

  “No!” he shouted.

  His insistence confused her, his uncharacteristic sudden fury.

  “We need this now!” He slammed his weight against the driver’s shoulder, throwing him off balance. The scout grabbed the driver from the other side and hauled him away from the Sled. Ghirra planted himself in front of it before the old man recovered his balance.

  The sand sang in Susannah’s ears. This is more than heat madness.

  The driver regarded Ghirra in bewilderment and disgust. The master Healer glared back and spat a terse command, suddenly so like his sister that the scout seconded him automatically, as if backing up his own guildmaster. The old man dismissed them both with a gesture. He flung an arm up at the sky and stalked ahead to his animals. They moaned at him but his coming settled their struggles down to frantic head tossing and shifting from one broad padded foot to the other.

  Susannah hovered uncertainly, fighting the gusts. Ghirra’s mouth was so tight that his lips were pale. He nodded calmly to her as he readjusted his head cloth, but his eyes, squinting into the sky, showed more than their usual white.

  “This is a chukka of the oldest legends,” he declared flatly.

  “A what?”

  “A plan of the Sisters,
in the Game. This we never see yet in my life, or of my two-father or even my five-father.”

  Not rage at all, then. Susannah realized. It’s fear. He’s afraid. Ghirra is afraid.

  Chilled, she grasped his arm as the wind snatched at her clothing. “We don’t really need the Sled!”

  “You do not understand, Suzhannah! Now to go fast does not help. Where do we run?” He spread his arms to the sky. “We need this thing to be inside it!”

  “Inside? Ghirra, it’s an open cockpit. You can’t get inside it!”

  Doubt and a moment of true panic flickered in his eyes. Then he set his jaw determinedly. “No matter. It is better than nothing.”

  “What is happening’? What’s coming?”

  The scout read her bewilderment. “Ph’nar khem!” he offered breathlessly.

  Ghirra translated. “He says these Sisters are most angry, so it is our worse than bad luck to be here where they chose to make their game.”

  He refused to say more and hurried them onward. The driver got the Sled moving again, his gnarled hand wrapped tightly in the lead hjalk’s head rein. He yelled at the frightened scout to grab the other, and the beasts danced forward reluctantly, their small round ears flat against their heads as they listened to their driver’s soothing patter. The weathered hostler snorted at the young scout’s fear and held up four fingers to offer a wager.

  Suddenly, the hjalk came alert.

  The wind shifted, forsaking its whirligig habit. Hot and sand-laden, it charged straight at their faces. The hjalks’ ears swiveled. Susannah braced herself for the next onslaught of panic-inducing non-sound. Instead she heard faint shouts carried on the wind. The scout cheered and danced about, still grasping the head rein, then held out a boyish demanding palm to the driver, who grudgingly paid over four shiny black counters.

  Ghirra’s stride lengthened with relief. “There! They are there!”

  Susannah linked her arm through Megan’s to keep her from falling behind. The stinging wind eased for an instant. In the near distance, she heard the bleats and bellows of frightened hjalk. Then the wind rose again, building until its engine whine drowned out all other sound except the one she feared.