Reign of Fire

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  It hit with a jolt and the pressure impact of a thunderclap. Susannah’s ears rang and a blue-green afterimage flared inside her eyes. The unheard sound came in a blaze of invisible light.

  “Incredible!” exclaimed Danforth from the terminal.

  Wind gusts growled through the underbelly, sweeping loose papers and plastic cups off the crate tops to skitter across the hard ground.

  Out in the clearing, Clausen and McPherson scrambled about in the dim pink dawn, throwing silver tarps around the base of the high-gain antenna and over the half repaired B-Sled. The Sawl ranger who had rushed down to warn them strung tie ropes and helped to weigh the tarps down with stones.

  “Cover the dish last!” Clausen yelled over the wind. In the terraced fields, the tall red stalks rattled like dice in a cup. A few frantic and sweating Sawls rushed among them drawing the stalks together into conical bunches and tying them gently with strips of cloth.

  “The music has stopped,” Weng noted from Danforth’s side. “Up in the Caves.”

  Danforth was oblivious. “Christ, here we go again! Look at this!”

  The terminal displayed the local weather map.

  “Discrete packages of turbulence charging around like goddamn bumper cars! Without a cloud in sight! It’s dry as a bone out there and hotter than blazes! And look at this! CRI, show the Commander what’s happening elsewhere in the so-called habitable zone!”

  Weng leaned in closer as the glowing image shifted. The wind loosed silver tendrils from her neatly bound hair.

  “This damned nonsense is planet-wide!” the planetologist fumed. “But only within that narrow band. Return us to local, CRI.”

  Weng’s fingertip followed a phosphor-green packet as it sped across the map of the plain toward a larger frontal indication. “Would you say that was random movement, Dr. Danforth?”

  “Random? Weather’s never random. I…” Danforth stopped, looked at Weng sideways. “But that’s not what you meant, is it?”

  “No, Dr. Danforth, it’s not.” She glanced around as Clausen snapped a string of orders at the Sawl ranger in very passable and hitherto undemonstrated Sawlish. She tucked hair back into her bun and continued. “We have seen this behavior before.”

  “I know. That damned thunderstorm.”

  Weng nodded. “According to Mr. Ibiá’s files, the Sawls would say there was a battle being waged out there on the plain. Don’t you find that description rather appropriate. Dr. Danforth?”

  Danforth watched the storm pockets march across the screen like little legions, unable to bring himself to voice the affirmative. Not yet. Not out loud. But Weng’s faint smile, as she steadied her slight body against the rising gusts, was like an invitation to join in some wonderful secret. Weng, a complication of hidden strengths, whose moral support had kept him sane during the recent weeks of his confinement, whose command he had resented enough to nearly kill himself in the process of insubordination. Danforth hoped there were a few corners of his soul that the Commander’s bright black eyes could not see into.

  And I called Ibiá a punk… he thought ruefully.

  “Well, Dr. Danforth?”

  “Appropriate, yes,” he conceded. On the screen, the wind packets halted briefly as if awaiting orders, then altered course in phalanx. “But intent is in the eye of the beholder.”

  Weng’s mildly raised eyebrow did not hide her satisfaction. “It was yourself who first ascribed intent, Dr. Danforth, as much as two weeks ago. ‘Something’s out there moving it around.’ I believe I am quoting you correctly?”

  “Metaphorically speaking, I meant.” Danforth hedged.

  “Ah. Metaphors.” Weng eyed him sternly. “I thought perhaps you had more in mind. Well, then, let me tell you of a little metaphor that I have been playing with lately.” She frowned slightly as Clausen’s harsh shouts, aimed this time at McPherson, nibbled at her concentration.

  “Noisy, isn’t he,” muttered Danforth. “What ever became of the velvet glove? Never thought I’d miss it.”

  Weng closed her eyes, opened them. “As you know, Dr. Danforth, I often exploit the principle of game theory in my musical compositions. Recently, I thought to apply those principles to your problem as well.”

  “My problem?” Danforth was momentarily distracted by ominous flickerings of the weather map. He touched a pleading hand to the screen. “Gods. CRI, don’t crap out now.”

  “The x-factor. Your ad hoc.”

  “And?”

  “Game theory is really number theory, yes? The analysis of coincidence. But if you think of the theory as being primarily about relationships, you can examine a given series of events as moves in a game, in order to detect patterns of motion among these events and with an eye to discovering what the object of those motions might be.”

  “As I recall,” Danforth countered, “Game theory does not postulate intent in that objective.”

  “No.” Weng’s smile was a forest of possibilities and her calm a steady island within the rising storm. “It is an analytical way of describing something that is happening—as in, ‘here is a list of numbers, what do they have in common?’—and thus, speaking of the given series of events in terms of a game, of understanding what constitutes winning that game.” She paused, but only for effect. “In light of the Sawls’ own explanation for these events, I thought the metaphor particularly appropriate.”

  “What constitutes winning?” Danforth repeated, as if the idea had never occurred to him but had an increasingly reasonable currency.

  “Do you know what the Sawls think constitutes winning?”

  “Keep those tarps ready, McP!” Clausen stormed from the clearing. “Out. Tay. I need my console back.”

  “Your console?” Danforth grabbed the prospector’s wrist as it reached for the keypad. “Hold on, man, look at what’s going on out there!”

  “Enough of your simulation games, Tay. I’ve got to worm the contents of that drone out of this computer before we lose her to the weather again.”

  Danforth’s grip tightened. “That’s what I mean! Look!”

  Clausen snarled and levered his arm free of the bigger man’s fist. “Move your crippled butt, Taylor, or I’ll move it for you!” He grasped the wheels of Danforth’s cart-chair, threatening to tip it. Danforth clung to the sideboards in mute outrage.

  “You stop that!” McPherson flung herself at the cart to steady it. The Sawl ranger pulled up warily behind her.

  “What the hell’s your problem?” Danforth roared.

  “I need this terminal!” Clausen stared straight at Weng, daring her to challenge him, then jerked his thumb at Danforth.

  “Get him out of here, McP. And stay ready to cover that dish!”

  “In a pig’s eye, Emil! Cover your own fuckin’ dish!” McPherson pulled Danforth’s chair out of Clausen’s range and planted herself between them.

  “That will do, Lieutenant,” Weng advised, barely audible over the wind.

  Clausen let his hand fall to the holstered gun on his belt, then swiveled back to his captured terminal with a mocking laugh. The three glared helplessly at his back while the hot wind leaned its weight against the Lander’s hull. The metal trusswork groaned. The waiting Sawl ranger broke their deadlock with a shout. He pointed over the swaying fields toward the plain. The silhouette of the Vallegar was a distant darkness against the rosy sky, but a ruddy swirling mist hung over the plain.

  “Jesus!” McPherson exclaimed.

  “Dust storm,” said Danforth. “A real mother. Batten the hatches.”

  Weng was silent for a moment, then said, a trace unsteadily, “Has it occurred to anyone to wonder where the market caravan is just now?”

  At the terminal, Clausen exploded. “Sonofabitch! So that’s his game!”

  He flung the stool aside, and was racing across the clearing before anyone could think of trying to stop him.

  Stavros pounded through the fourth-level tunnels at a dead run, with Edan a long step behind him and gaining. Lipha
r struggled to keep up, wasting needed breath on futile high-pitched remonstrance. The tunnels were deserted, the stone floor barely lit. One lamp in ten burned in the niches along the walls. The updraft was hot and smelled of dust. Edan made a grab for Stavros’s back-pumping arm and missed.

  “No go out, you!” Liphar yelled breathlessly.

  “The Kav is dancing, Lifa!” Stavros shot back. The guar-heat in his palms strummed with the rhythm Of his step. “And the fields! They’ll need every available hand!”

  Edan concentrated on gaining the extra step.

  “Crazy, you!” Liphar panted.

  “In this weather, they’ll never even notice me!”

  They sped through an empty residential district. A half-pace behind, Edan lunged for her quarry’s naked shoulder. Her fingers slipped along his damp skin. She made a second grab for the loose folds of his pants.

  Stavros swerved aside, beginning to enjoy the chase. He had had his fill of being cooped up in a stuffy hot cavern, and refused to miss any chance to see Kav Daven dance. He angled at an intersection, speeding toward the nearest cave mouth. The darkened entry to the Potters’ Hall loomed up to one side. To the other, the tall doorway of the Glassblowers’ Hall, framed by its glimmering hand-blown pilasters and arch. The tunnel slanted as the floor broke up into stairs. Stavros flew down steps too narrow for his stride, keeping his balance by a miracle. His face lit up with unholy joy as the dark walls warmed with the glow of dawn.

  But he slowed at the foot of the steps when the cave mouth yawned in front of him and the full force of the dust-thick wind slammed into his face. His hesitation brought Edan down on top of him, spilling him to the floor. He rolled away to the wall but she rolled with him. Sweating body to sweating body, they grappled like wrestlers. Edan wrapped her arms around his chest and her legs around his knees, immobilizing him.

  Stavros swore and struggled. Her strength took him by surprise. Her agility suggested that she had been trained for this.

  Martial arts? he wondered with a shock. The Ranger Guild? Not just grown-up boy scouts but cops as well? Intrigued with this new insight, he let himself be manhandled into a sitting position against the rock and regarded his captor with quizzical admiration as she eased her grip and settled herself between him and the cave mouth.

  “Maybe you could teach me how to toss Clausen around like that the next time I see him.” He dropped his head between his knees, glad for the chance to catch his breath.

  Edan scowled, hearing Clausen’s name. Her sullenness accused Stavros of making her job unnecessarily difficult. Liphar gained the bottom of the stairs and dropped to his knees at Stavros’ side, his thin chest heaving. He coughed violently as he inhaled a lungful of dust.

  “Ibi, please. No go, you.”

  “Lifa, I have to! So do you. We can’t go to all this trouble and then let everyone die of starvation anyway! They need help down there in the fields. Oh my god, look at that!”

  Stavros stared into the face of the yowling wind. Out on the Dop Arek, cloud-high columns were forming out of a swirling red mist. As broad as the legs of colossi, they marched across the distance, rank after rank, like an invading army, dwarfing the rocky spire of the sentinel Red Pawn, whose crown glowed with the first touch of morning sun. Overhead, the sky was pink and clear and charged with blue-white lightning.

  Liphar’s hand went to his talisman. He scrambled to the edge on hands and knees to stare outward in awe.

  “O chukka desa!” he moaned, and raised the blue talisman to his trembling lips.

  Edan heard the horror in his voice. Her head whipped around, her attention snared by the astonishing vision on the plain. Stavros seized his chance. He leaped up, evading her grasp as she whirled back and grabbed for him.

  “Come on!” he shouted as he swept past Liphar and charged down the outer stairs.

  On the Dop Arek, the ruddy dust thinned in a spasm of release like a gasp for breath. The tail end of the caravan ghosted through the haze, tall wagons crossing a broad salt flat. A disarray of overladen hakra carts and families on foot struggled to keep up. The young scout hailed the stragglers and broke into a run.

  “He goes to tell my sister,” Ghirra remarked in an old man’s voice, hoarse from thirst and the effort of making himself heard over the roar of the wind.

  Susannah jiggled the canteen at her hip and hoped that the caravan had water enough to pass a little around. A hard salt crust crunched under their feet, glittering white stained with yellow.

  Hurrying, they caught up to the line of carts. It unnerved Susannah to see the heat taking its toll so quickly. The hakra pushed forward gamely with eyes closed and tongues protruding. Some limped, leaving bloody trails across the brittle salt. Small children huddled together in the carts among piles of cloth-wrapped market goods. Adults and older children trudged alongside, their heads swaddled against the stinging sand. They greeted Ghirra and his party wordlessly, with nods and expressions of quiet fear, an occasional spasmodic cough, or a whimper from a child as the wind blew up again.

  The bulk of the caravan had halted ahead. Arms waved and bodies plunged through the dust in a dreamlike chaos as the Rangers rushed to pull the wagons into tight rings around the giant FoodGuild wagons. The animals were unhitched without ceremony and hustled into the protective circles to mill about among the people and smaller carts, bleating unhappily. Guildsmen emptied their wagons, piling goods and cargo underneath.

  The driver hauling the Sled drew up beside a FoodGuild wagon and immediately loosed his hjalk team from harness. The frantic caravaners took no notice of the Terran vehicle but hastened to lash it down along with everything else.

  Ghirra led Megan and Susannah through the dust and noise, searching for Aguidran, for the Infirmary wagon, for the rest of his staff. They found the wagon first, just as the half-lit dawn broke open with another blast of sound and light. Susannah stumbled, momentarily blinded. The sound grew more audible as the light flashes brightened. Inside the ring, the older apprentices had finished the unloading. Ampiar, Phea and Dwingen scrambled around tying the wagon to its immediate neighbors, on one side a big Dyers’ wagon, on the other the first of three from the Papermakers. Up in the driver’s scat, Xifa looped rope through holes in the canvas flaps covering the opening, and drew them tight to the canopy. The contents of the wagon lay piled underneath, heavily shrouded and lashed to the wheels.

  There was no time for reunion greetings. The lightning flashed again, blue-white and crackling. Ghirra sent them scurrying into the emptied wagon. They fastened the flaps and flattened themselves against the floorboards. The wind took a quantum leap as if lunging to the attack. It ran screeching among the fabric canopies to pounce on seams and mended tears and patches. The shuddering ring of wagons sang with the flap and shred of canvas.

  The animals wailed. The panicked cries of men and women joined in as their shelters shredded around them. The wooden canopies squealed as aged ribs bent inward and patches of bright paint were sandblasted down to the naked grain.

  Susannah huddled close to the wagon’s sideboard, ears ringing, her face buried in Ghirra’s hip, Dwingen shivering at her back. She clasped Megan’s hand tightly. Dust blew in through every cranny.

  The wagon shook as if seized by a demon fist. Outside, the wind yowled and the light blazed, leaving the tang of ozone in its wake. Wood splintered and a hjalk screamed.

  Panic-stiffened fingers thrust through the split in the canvas behind the driver’s seat. A woman’s voice begged for help. Ghirra twisted around in the crowded interior to free the ropes fastening the flaps. A young woman shoved aside the canvas, tossed two small children into the wagon and disappeared just as Ghirra shouted to her to stay. The children were dazed and weeping. The older, a dark-haired boy, bled from a gash on his forehead. Susannah struggled to sit up, gathering a child under each arm. They clung tightly, unquestioning.

  The lightning flared and flared again, burning jagged forks of heat and sound through the dust-choked air. T
he salt pan trembled with each hit. Shock waves shuddered through the hard ground. Susannah searched for some inner spot of calm where she might take refuge from the unrelenting roar and flash and crack. Ampiar’s lips moved as she fingered her talisman bead.

  Prayer? Susannah wondered, and considered the possibility herself.

  A wrenching crash came with the next flash of light. With a pop and a roar, a wagon down the line burst into flame. Smoke cascaded into the Infirmary wagon. Shouts rang out, a call to action. Ghirra tore aside the flaps and leaped out. Ampiar and Xifa followed without hesitation. Little Dwingen squirmed out of Megan’s grasp and vanished after them.

  Susannah thrust the two children at Megan. She scrambled into the driver’s seat to stare after Ghirra as he raced toward the wreckage. Loose canvas lashed at her face. The smoke and flying dust invaded her lungs. She pulled back as the lightning smashed into another wagon further off. She took a grim breath, then wrapped her sash about her face.

  “No, for god’s sake!” Megan clasped the weeping children.

  Susannah paused, but could not sit still to the chorus of desperation building outside. She gave Megan the high sign and bolted from the wagon before she could change her mind.

  She hit the ground as it was jolted by another strike. The scent of charred flesh sent her spine crawling.

  A dead hjalk lay to one side of the ring. Its fellows herded along the far side, away from the smoke and leaping flames. Human injured lay scattered across the hot ground, some moaning, some not moving at all. Parents clutched their children while the merchants rushed to save their hard-won goods.

  The Rangers had cut loose the precious water kegs and piled them in the center. Susannah ran toward the fire, saw Ghirra’s lean form silhouetted against the bright heat, then Xifa and others, pulling burning bodies out of the flaming wagon. Guildsmen tore at the ropes fastening the wagon to its neighbors. A woman snatched up a shred of blackened canvas to beat out sparks landing on nearby wagons. A man grabbed up a water keg from the side of a Potters’ Guild wagon and prepared to bash one end in with a stick.