Stavros felt the Sled shudder and begin to vibrate. He wondered why he was not more concerned about Danforth’s untested pilot’s skills.
“One,” agreed CRI.
“Two? Three?” Danforth touched the last contacts in rapid sequence.
He’s just as eager as I am. Stavros welcomed back his sense of high adventure and the surge of elation that came with it. He laughed aloud, forgetting the comset hugging his jaw, and Danforth swiveled in his seat to stare at him. His voice in Stavros’ ear was silky with amusement.
“Off to see the wizard, eh, Ibiá? Then let’s do it!”
His fingers went to work, and the Sled jerked and lifted, seesawing sloppily within its dust cloud. Danforth whooped softly and closed his hand around the stick. The craft rose sharply.
Danforth’s whoop died into a tight-lipped gulp as he steadied the rise.
“Sorry ’bout that.” He grinned sickly, then eased the stick forward. The Sled dipped, wavering from side to side, then shuddered off above the fields, banking gracelessly toward the open plain.
38
Liphar did not intend to be left behind. He ran about tirelessly in the staggering heat, hauling supplies to the Sled, carrying messages back and forth between Susannah and Danforth in the cargo hold, Weng in her sickbed in the Underbelly and Megan in the Lander’s storage bays above. He assigned himself a slot on one of the two padded benches at the forward end of the Sled. Climbing in to run a final provisions count, Stavros found the young Sawl half strapped in, struggling with the buckles, ready to go.
Stavros looked down at him sternly but Liphar returned a sly smile.
“You are new ’prentice now, Ibi. You listen now what I say, more big ’prentice than you.”
“Lifa, I don’t think…”
The young man folded his arms across his thin chest with stubborn dignity. “I teach you be kav first, ah? Then I listen you again.”
Stavros crouched in front of him, nonplussed. It had not occurred to him that any other priest could teach him what Kav Daven had failed to. “All right. Then what do you say to me now?”
“I say, I must go with you, help talk this angry Sister.”
Stavros frowned at the dust-powdered plastic floor grating. He could think of no reason to refuse him but concern for his safety. An agile figure in white swung up through the cargo hatch and edged forward through the maze of equipment and supplies. Stavros glanced up, then rose in slow astonishment. Weng’s therm-suit fit the Master Healer as if it were made for him. He wore it as if he had worn it all his life, as if he savored the close, slick feel of it against his body, as if he shared some of Weng’s pride in what it meant. He had tied his brown curls at the nape of his neck and abandoned his characteristic stoop. Weng’s gold command bars glinted on the open collar. He looked like a slim, able spacer, fully at home in the Sled’s smooth, plastic environment. Only his faint self-conscious smile gave him away.
“Ghirra, what the…?”
Stavros’ stare stopped him mid-hold. His eyes accepted Stavros’ surprise but not his reflex disapproval. “Suzhannah say wear this for best safety,” he explained coolly.
“Yeah.” It frightened Stavros that Ghirra could seem so at ease in Terran uniform, embracing the very image he himself had cast off for the Sawls’ sake. But he understood that the neat white uniform bore a compelling significance for the Master Healer, of the brave new universe out there beyond the dome of his own familiar sky, a universe he was increasingly curious about.
Startled into self-doubt, Stavros fingered his own Sawlish clothing. He questioned his fear of the modern world intruding upon the Sawls. Was he fighting it for their future good, or was it, as Clausen always implied, for romantic reasons of his own, to find and preserve a backwater kingdom where he could live and work in peace?
Relax. Ibiá, it’s only the clothing he’s put on, not the entire value structure!
“Looks pretty good on you,” he offered lamely.
Ghirra’s defensiveness eased.
Stavros plucked at his gauzy tunic, limp with sweat. His bandages itched. The therm-suit would keep him cool and dry. It was absurd to resist it. “Better get mine on, too, I guess.”
To cover his discomfort, he cuffed Liphar lightly on the head.
“You too, Lifa. Untangle yourself from those straps and go tell Susannah to issue you one of McPherson’s suits. That’ll be the smallest we have.”
Liphar was out of the harness within seconds, disappearing through the cargo hatch wearing a grin as wide as his jaw.
Aguidran refused to wear a therm-suit and was nearly as unwilling to buckle herself into the flight harness. Like a great dark bird, she half crouched, half perched on the edge of the bench behind Stavros, the plastic strapping draped over one leather-clad shoulder, gripped tightly in one hand but not fastened.
Stavros had claimed the copilot’s chair. He muttered intently into his comset, pressing CRI for an update on Clausen’s location. His white therm-suit was unzipped to his navel, as if in rakish refusal to submit to total uniformity, but actually to ease the fit around his bandaged shoulder. Fully secured behind Danforth, Ghirra lounged into the padded bench with anticipatory relish, watching carefully as the planetologist punched through his final engine check. Liphar pressed close to Susannah on the rear bench. Arms stiffened, his hands grasped the forward edge of his seat. He anxiously monitored the three Terrans’ actions as if to be sure that everything was proceeding as expected. Occasionally he threw a guilty glance up at the white cliff. The black cave mouths and the hot bright ledges were crowded with faces, too distant to be recognizable but eloquent in their waiting torpor.
Susannah tried to summon a brisker sort of energy with which to face her second trek into the wilderness, but her sense of adventure was blunted by the crushing white heat. The merest movement was like swimming through shimmering will-sapping glue. The best she could do was to keep from drifting into daydreams of rain showers and cool forest glades.
Dust stirred in the clearing as Megan retreated into the shadow of the cylinder. She hovered behind a stubbornly erect Weng, who moved another step into the sun as the Sled’s fans hummed to life.
Susannah waved, partly in salutation, partly to shoo Weng inside, away from the heat and roar and the whirling sand. She realized sadly that when the expedition was, if ever, over, her medical report would have to recommend no further landing missions for the aging spacer. But she was not sure Weng would mind that. She’s got plenty of service years left on FTL craft and orbiters, if she takes care of herself.
She leaned forward to Ghirra. “Did you have a chance to ask Ampiar to check on the Commander every so often?”
He nodded without taking his eyes from Danforth’s work at the controls.
“He’s got a ten-hour, thirteen-hundred-kilometer start on us,” Stavros was saying, raising his voice over the noise of the fans for the benefit of the others.
“But he seems to be taking his time so far,” Danforth replied. “I’d guess he’s feeling his way and doesn’t expect immediate pursuit.”
“He didn’t think we’d get her fixed so fast.”
Danforth grinned, “Or come up with a pilot. Underestimated both the Commander and me… and it’ll cost him. We’ll pick up time if I push her hard, plus we may be able to cut some corners off his route.”
“CRI says the type of charge he’s using is hand-activated, but she can pick up telemetry the moment he arms them.”
Danforth nodded and raised his arm in a warning signal, then touched a switch to lift the windscreen extensions. A meter-high shield of clear plastic rose out of the hull to either side of the passenger area. As the fan and engine noise increased, he activated the force shield. The surrounding glare of cliff and sky dulled to a cooler dancing shade, cut at eye level by the hot white slicing through the narrow arc of the windscreens.
Danforth signalled again, thumb up. The Sled shivered and rose. Then, rocking on its cushion of air like a boat in cho
ppy seas, it rose again and surged forward clumsily. Aguidran snarled as she was thrown off balance into the padded curve of the bench. Liphar strained against his harness to huddle closer to Susannah.
Stavros spoke to Danforth over the com, circling his hand in the air. Danforth made a dubious face but nodded. The Sled wavered out over the blackened fields beyond the fire breaks, then banked sharply and circled back around the Lander to skim recklessly past the thronged cliffs in a parting salute. Ghirra’s head was pressed into his back rest, but his eyes were eager. Susannah wished she had a full-face view of his reaction to his maiden voyage.
What is it like to have never flown before? To have never even thought of flying?
Liphar answered her question by burying his head in her side with a trailing squeal as the Sled tilted into its sickening turn and the white cliff face filled the windscreens. On the crowded ledges, mouths gaped. Heads withdrew in fear and surprise.
Danforth laughed and veered the Sled toward the plain again. Stavros turned in his seat with an encouraging smile.
“Everyone with us so far?” he called over the steady hum of the fans.
When he received no replies to the contrary, he nudged Danforth’s arm and jerked his head southward.
They flew due southwest for the first several hours. Danforth hugged the ground, building his confidence at the stick. He followed the margin of the Dop Arek until the steep rise of the perimeter cliff was jumbled by successive rock slides and ravines. He eased the Sled higher, mounting the bouldered slope to the dry plateau above. The rugged flatland was seamed by old watercourses like wrinkles on an aged face, later softened into the barren hills footing the northernmost of the mountain ranges that made up the Grigar, Lagri’s Wall.
Once they had left the level ground of the Dop Arek, Danforth kept to the lowlands, grazing the wide sand-bottomed mountain valleys where russet tufts of shrubbery still clung to the shade-side of the hills and canyons. Ghirra pointed out the dark cliffside cave openings and dry terraced fields of scattered settlements. Clumps of dust-colored succulents dotted the softer slopes. The sky’s white glow was disorientingly diffuse. It bleached out the shadows and flattened the geography until the landscape seemed caught in a flash of strobe light.
As the terrain roughened, signs of habitation vanished. Stavros unbuckled and got up to stretch. The Sled hustled along smoothly in the calm air, occasionally rising like a gliding hawk in the thermals beside a particularly precipitous edge. Ghirra followed suit, but stood cautiously, testing the faintly shifting floor while steadying himself on the back of his bench. Aguidran threw off her night harness and rose to join Stavros in the cargo hold.
“Go easy on the moving around,” Danforth complained as the vehicle wavered with the shifting of weight.
Susannah watched Aguidran adapt to the unsettled footing as naturally as a sailor to a rolling deck and recalled the narrow unstable creshin of Ogo Dul. This brother and sister had spent their early childhood on the water. Little wonder they were faring well. But Liphar looked less happy, a little airsick. Susannah left her seat to retrieve her medikit.
Stavros was filling a canteen from the refrigerated water tank. She knelt beside him to refresh her own. Aguidran wandered uneasily among the lashed crates at the back of the hold, then accepted a long drink from Stavros’ canteen and returned to her seat. Ghirra joined Susannah on the rear bench as she fed Liphar a pill to ease his stomach.
“To Ogo Dul, we go like this maybe for one cycle only!” he marvelled with boyish excitement.
“Less,” said Susannah. “I think you could fly from DulElesi to the ocean in an hour or two… ah, one thirty-part of a cycle.”
Ghirra’s face lengthened thoughtfully. “This make trade more easy, ah? Go more far with this Sledd.”
“You could visit settlements all over your world.”
“But Sleds are even more dangerous in bad weather than being on the ground,” Stavros reminded them as he leaned over to offer the canteen.
As if to reinforce his point, the Sled veered suddenly over a broad canyon that sliced across the plateau. Caught in a thermal, it lifted sickeningly, soared and then dropped. Susannah was made sharply aware of the boulders speeding by beneath the fans before the craft settled again into a comfortable forward motion. Danforth waved a mute apology without looking around. Liphar moaned weakly and clutched his stomach, but Ghirra watched Danforth’s hand on the stick with a faintly envious eye.
The long rocky miles slid past without serious incident. They left the desert foothills and climbed into the mountains. The ravines deepened into breathless chasms choked with rockfall. The crags towered more steeply. The valleys narrowed into canyons. The barrenness of the landscape caught like sand in Danforth’s throat. His cautious low-altitude flight plan did not offer the comforting objectivity of a bird’s eye view. The poignancy of a single cluster of brush wedged among the rocks, even the bare dead skeleton of a tree brought near tears to his eyes. He could not help but identify with any living thing left to shrivel away in such a wasteland, abandoned by the climate that had sired it in the first place. Desolation surrounded him, towered over him, caused him to stare at the sheer peaks of pale bright stone and the endless corrugated vistas of ridge and canyon and ridge as if they were singing a chorus to his human insignificance.
I used to rejoice in the majesty, the purity even, of such emptiness, he mused with some surprise as he guided the Sled between two monstrous crags. Used to think it cleansing. But then. I didn’t used to think so much about what I was thinking, either. He wondered if this new habit of introspection would prove to be permanent. Though it had its uses and even its pleasures, it was not, he decided, an altogether pleasant compulsion. It nagged at him, like doubt or a sore tooth, teasing at his belief not so much in himself or in his skill and knowledge, but in the final authority of that knowledge to answer all questions put to it.
He decided that it did not do to be too introspective in the wasteland. So frail a commodity as human hope had less chance than the dying vegetation to flourish in such primal desolation. Danforth shook his head like a dog and took the Sled up higher, skimming just below the lowering white veil of clouds, concentrating on the comfortingly physical act of flying.
But by the time he began to feel some confidence in his piloting, he was tiring fast. Pretty dumb, to think I could manage a four-day flight single-handed when we can’t afford the time for a real rest stop.
His eyes hurt from staring into the white sky. On the benches, his passengers dozed.
“Christ, my butt aches,” he muttered into the thin comwire curling from his ear to his jaw.
“Surprised it took so long,” came a quiet reply over the com.
Danforth started. “Didn’t know you were awake, Ibiá.”
Stavros leaned forward, rotating the stiffness out of his injured shoulder. “CRI, what’s the word on our quarry?”
“Proceeding due south at the moment, Mr. Ibiá, at a mean distance of one thousand thirty-seven kilometers. Mr. Clausen and Lieutenant McPherson have exchanged seats.”
“She shouldn’t have gone with him,” Stavros growled.
“You think she had a choice?” Danforth returned testily.
“The Lieutenant is piloting,” CRI reminded them. “Shall I connect you?”
“NO!”
“Jesus, CRI! What are you thinking?” Danforth fumed.
“Mr. Clausen is well aware of your pursuit,” CRI answered.
“How?” Danforth was irritated by the computer’s self-righteous tone.
“He has asked for periodic reports, as you have.”
Danforth glanced at his copilot. “Great. Not only has he got someone to spell him but he knows we’re after him. I did notice his speed picked up just after we took off.”
Stavros shrugged. “We never had much chance of surprise with Emil.”
“Shit, what do we have a chance of?”
Stavros offered a look opaque with mystery. “Knowing
who to talk to once we get there.”
“Ah, And I take it you’re not referring to a local population.”
“Not exactly. The main problem will be getting Her attention.”
Danforth nodded sagely. “You still believe this living goddess stuff?”
“Did you think I didn’t?”
“Well, I figure, you see, that fifty percent of what anyone says in public is for effect, politics and the like. I figure your hidden agenda requires you to believe, or seem to…?” But Danforth could find no guile in the faint frown that creased the younger man’s angular profile. “Even with the lithium angle suggesting itself? I mean, with your Sawl power plant and all?”
“The lithium is key, yes, but a guess at the energy source doesn’t explain the implications of consciousness. That’s why I have Megan putting CRI through the First Contact procedures.”
Stavros stared ahead into the white glare, then settled back into his seat with an air of decision.
“Tay, if you can manage to keep this thing in the air a little longer without cramping up, I’ll tell you a story… no, two.” He murmured into the comset as if offering secrets. “Not to convince you—you can believe what you like—but to put you in possession of all the facts as I see them. And to warn you. Things may get a little… strange where we’re going. I may get a little…”
He paused. His voice whispering through the wire was ironic and throaty, compelling in its intimate hush. “Look, I know what you think of me, Tay, but what do you say? Will you listen for a while to the ravings of a madman?”
Danforth’s flesh tingled. “If it’ll keep me awake, I’ll listen,” he replied, trying not to sound too eager.
As Stavros unfolded his story yet again, the guar-fire burned hot in the soft inside centers of his hands. He watched the whitened dessicated landscape scud by and kept his voice calm, matter-of-fact, a cool murmur over the com to woo Danforth’s rationality with the merest hint of miracle.
What does it matter if he believes me?
Reign of Fire Page 34
