Ceo take it! The Islay reached down (not quite as far as he had used to, he noticed with a mortal pang all fathers share), seized the boy and lifted him into his arms, squeezing him until they both squeaked. By the time this was accomplished, along with a ducking of the head which was not quite a kiss, and the boy set back upon his feet, his brother Donol's casual pace had brought him to his father's side, although so far without a word of greeting.
The Islay nodded at his middle son and clasped his arm. Donol made him feel a touch of guilt. In honesty, he had never been as fond of the boy as of the others. It was bound to be that he would love one more or one the less. He had striven to prevent Donol seeing it, but such deception was, the warrior knew, at the close range family life afforded and over a lifetime's risk of betrayal, all but impossible. It grieved him such deceit seemed necessary, as it must have grieved his not-altogether unloved nor unperceptive middle son. Thus it was Donol he first spoke to: "I trust, good steward, I shall discover affairs at home to be in somewhat better array than here."
Donol blinked, wordless and hurt-looking. Ceo's eyes, he had not intended to put it thus, a paternal and, even worse, sarcastic rebuke. It had been no more than comradely humor, commiseration over whatever circumstances had damaged the draywherry, and, more, an excuse to praise the careful administration of the Holdings into which young Donol of late, and upon his own initiative, had thrown his most passionate and concentrated effort.
Young Robret blinked as well, but for another reason. An unsettling thought occurred to him which, until now, had not crossed his mind. He was as disturbed at its lateness in
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arriving as he was at the thought itself. "Ceo's ghost, Father, I am inexcusably remiss! Are your communicators in working order? I believe we were attacked upon the way here, and have only just realized that something similar may have taken place at home!'*
Lacking better means of retraction, the Islay took Donol by the shoulder and looked him in the eye, but it was to his eldest he answered: "Be not alarmed, son. When you were overdue, I used the lasercom here. It and its relays are in fine repair. The one thing they worry about at home is your well-being, concerning which we shall soon put their minds at ease." He winked, inviting his middle son to share a mild joke at the expense of the eldest. "In particular the mind of Mistress Lia Woodgate."
"How pehfectly dweadjuir
Witsable Nasai-Ulness was Drector-Honorary of a "planet Ulness" which did not in fact exist. This sometimes useful legal fiction, unique to the imperia-conglomerate, was no less peculiar, nor less useful, than the legal fictions of a thousand other civilizations, both before and after the thirty-first century. He peered over the top of his masque—a chartreuse buckley with protruding front teeth, a single arched eyebrow, and an insolent sneer which he himself was not quite up to—at the damage done the fabric of the draywherry. A pale man, with watery, weak-looking eyes, a narrow nose, and thin, purplish lips, his sparse carroty-colored hair jutted out over his ears.
It would have been more pleasing to the Islay*s sense of the acceptable to assume the man feigned uselessness and stupidity for some sinister or cynical purpose of his own. Folk literature from a myriad of worlds abounded with such ironic conceits. But folk literature was not life, and the Islay had encountered enough of this disgusting kind at the 'Droom to resign himself that the Nasai-Ulness was exactly what he appeared to be.
It was not, thought the senior Robret, that the man was in any degree effeminate. That was not the word. The woman was rare who could exhibit such effete mannerisms and turns of phrase as he did and hold her head up. (No handy
world like "wanque" came to mind for the few women who did.) Nor was it that he was a member of a decadent and inbred aristocracy. His family had been elevated to the Drectorhood only in his father's time, like many among the peasantry of a million worlds who were much like him. The Islay dismissed the fellow as a natural-bom nonentity. It bothered him, wondering why a bright, aggressive, powerful, unstoppable individual like Morven should have known who he was, let alone have stooped to befriend him. What use was he to Morven? Something more was here than met the eye. Or perhaps something less.
Crowded beside the Nasai-Ulness, squeezed tight as they were between the pair of Oplyte guards, the Lady Nasai-Ulness (the Islay could never remember her first name, nor had he any wish to) followed her husband's intoxicated gaze toward the wire-ends shining golden in the starport floodlights. Anyone else from the 'Droom of the Monopolity of Hanover would have offered an urbane comment, or at least evinced a delicate, civilized shudder. Lady Nasai-Ulness shrugged and scratched at her ribs where her traveling dress bound her.
"Like the old days, eh, Robbie?" As the Drector-Honorary and his Lady gathered their voluminous clothing about them, ducked with a measure of awkwardness beneath the draywherry's belly, and climbed the hatch-ladder, passing beyond their host's immediate responsibility to those he had delegated aboard the vehicle, the Islay turned toward the only individual who ever called him by nickname. Pushed along by yet another Oplyte, one of the rare domestic conversions (more reliable, it was claimed, less prone to turning ugly, it bore a thrustible upon its forearm in at least the semblance of its owner's defense), Tarbert Morven leaned back in his chair as far as his paralysis would permit, gazing upward at the damaged hull. "Wreck and ruination! Perverse as it may be, I find it almost stimulating—do you not find it likewise?—I suppose because it reminds me of my lost... youth."
The Islay, occupied with his own thoughts and having felt no such emotion, gave the question a vague shrug. Lifting him from the chair, which would soon be useless in any case.
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and carrying the crippled Shandeen up the ladder in its heavy-muscled arms, the unlucky Oplyte stumbled, almost spilling Morven. A soldier's expletive followed, evoked, no doubt, by these reminders of the crippled man's youth, after which the Islay heard Morven add something to the Nasai-Ulness about repenting of having brought the creature, having intended soon to replace it. Having suffered considerable experience with Oplytes in his own youth (and less anxious than Morven to be reminded of it), the Islay was not certain he would risk saying such a thing in front of it.
Last to enter, the Islay followed his bride. Ever practical, after her own impractical fashion, the Lady Alysabeth had consented to forgo the presence of servants during the brief trip to the planet's surface and what they had all assumed would be an even briefer voyage to the Holdings. The lubberlift of the vessel which had brought them to Skye, a mere carrack of fifteen projectibles' prowess, had scarce afforded sufficient room for those who had come, although he supposed the servants might have shared a perilous ride down with the sailors who had piloted the thing to its shackle. Alysabeth's servants—half a dozen of them, all human— and the considerable baggage their mistress brought with her would follow upon successive journeys from synchronous orbit, which would also bring other illustrious guests accompanying them from Hanover.
As the hatch-ladder was allowed to raise itself and the passenger-guests seen safe to their seats—Morven's wheelchair lay folded upon the deck nearby its owner—the Islay took his eldest son aside. "Open the panel upon the forward surface of the steering pedestal." Young Robret raised his eyebrows, but did not as yet offer a reply. The Islay continued: "Within, you will discover an old-fashioned keypad I installed myself, in secret and by hand, forty years ago. Push out the sequence T-457902." He repeated the digits. "This will allow us to override the safeties and halt this vehicle whenever and wherever we wish."
"And will we wish to?" Robret asked his father.
"If we have an uprising upon our hands—I find that hard to credit, but must proceed upon the evidence—it is best to deal with it without delay."
"Yes, sir. You will want me to pilot the wherry?"
"That we shall leave to Donol. Had you thought to bring a thnistible?"
"Why, no, Father, I never anticipated—"
"It is my fault,
this oversight. We shall speak of it again. Sometimes, Robret, things must change if anything is to remain the same. Meanwhile, I shall speak to the Nasai-Ulness about borrowing his thrustible. He will not likely want to join us ahunting." The warrior grinned. "I cannot say how good a weapon it will prove, but you may rest assured it will be pretty."
The loan was arranged with Drector-Honorary Nasai-Ulness as the elder Robret had desired. The thrustible, indeed, proved pretty as he had predicted. As far as the Islay knew, this was the second time young Robret had ever strapped a thrustible upon his arm, the previous occasion being picnic practice at the Holdings when Glynnaughfem yet lived. He knew that his eldest son, a peaceable man within his heart (as his father and mother had brought him up), with a peaceable man's interests, cared little for the things and had less experience with them.
Still, he was confident Robret would follow where led. Even now, with the thrustible's power supply locked out at the elbow, the boy was familiarizing himself with the much-embellished weapon (if anything, his father's guess had fallen short of the reality), aiming the designator at an empty portion of the hull aft of where the passengers had been seated, squeezing the yoke, thumbing the trigger to see where the still-brighter flash of the thrust-simulating beam struck.
The senior Islay relaxed. Robret would acquit himself, did it come to a fight, as well as any. This was what counted, after all. The virtues and skills of soldiery were overrated. Ask anyone who had done some soldiering.
This settled, the Islay glanced about to make what disposition in his mind he mi^t of the meager forces available to him: himself there was; young Robret, an amateur; likewise Donol, piloting; the three Oplytes—the Nasai-Ulness' aged pair and Morven's—for what they were worth. The rest, including his wife and youngest son, sat as safe as they might be (which, to judge from all appearances about him now.
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was not much) within the draywherry. Only when he had accomplished what he could, did he pause in his thoughts to wonder again. Woodsrunners?
Chapter IX: Remise et Redoublement
They had arrived.
The nighttime sky was pretematurally clear. Stars shone, each encircled by an individual frosty halo. The mist-gauzed Skyan moonring spilt its milky light upon the greenway as the wounded wherry slowed to a weary halt at a prudent distance from newfallen rock which darkened the ring-silvered sward before the roadcut where the machine had earlier been ambushed.
Even so, they were anticipated. For the briefest moment, those inside the damaged machine found themselves bathed in the tepid, scattered scarlet of someone's faraway designator. A dull thump! vibrated the hull. The fabric of the wherry began singing with the energies of thrustibles directed toward it at the fiirthest extremity of their useful range.
Issuing terse instructions, Robret the Islay levered the hatch-ladder to the ground and preceded those he had chosen—if such word was accurate, given millions he might have picked before depending upon three aging Oplytes and two untried lads—to assist him. He knew he had small hope of finding those responsible for this villainy, but even less choice about trying, not only as a man whose family had been assaulted, but as the planet's Drector-Hereditary, representative and enforcer of the Ceo's law.
At the Islay's direction (given with a trepidation which, if the father were lucky, the boy would never know of), Robret fils, armed with a borrowed thrustible as untried as himself, departed for the left side of the tumbled roadcut with Morven's erstwhile wheelchair-pushing servant. The Nasai-
Ulness bodyguards, specialized to the task assigned them, newer but of inferior quality, went with his younger, unarmed, and less-experienced brother Donol through the menacing shadows down the center of the cut. The Islay himself would take the right, whence he believed the thrusts had originated.
His own well-worn thrustible, although he bore it all his waking hours, felt odd to him (it was always thus before a fight too long anticipated) where it lay along the back of his forearm. Its curved powerpack was warm, strapped to his elbow. Its cooler axis lay hard against his flesh, fastened about his wrist. Its lensed beam-end projected a siemme or two beyond his knuckles, and the yoke, two siemmes from front to back, palm-wide and kidney-shaped, was no more than a tenth that thickness, lifetime-tested, ready in his hand.
The Islay took deep breaths, thinking. He had never been one of those joyous warriors he had fought beside in the Ceo's wars. He no longer hunted, although he had aplenty in his youth, also in his first days upon Skye, and still encouraged his sons in the enthusiasm. Now he raised meat for slaughter at the Holdings and owned neither time nor energy to hunt for more. The killing of men or other thinking things such as he had encountered war-voyaging among the stars filled him with no delight. Yet never had he shrunk from the necessity, nor from the ruthlessness it required, when need was clear. Nor would he do so now. Cursing, he stumbled over an exposed and upturned rock.
It was passing strange, he thought to himself, to be seeing bare soil and barren rock, almost obscene after decades of his life spent upon this moist, rich world where everything soon acquired a layering of green, be it the grassy covering of meadow, the darker, heavier foliage of the forest, or the simple lawn of moss high in the mountain passes. It was like seeing the skeleton of a world.
He had long observed, upon every planet his feet had touched (and they were many), the manner in which his sense of smell became keener at night, be it upon account of vapors arising in the absence of sunlight to drive them away, or owing to the fact that, when eyesight was diminished by the darkness, one came to lean without volition or aware-
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ness Upon other senses. Now, an alien scent intruded among those of soil and broken vegetation, heavy upon the damp and earthy night air despite time's passage, which he could not at once identify. It grew stronger as he left the violated earth and climbed higher up the steep slope beside the roadcut. Shaq? it was, pungent, in some way even pleasant, yet it belonged neither to Skye nor anything he knew as Skyan.
A nightbird called in the silence. Disturbed by the sound, he sensed something wrong, something missing. That was it: at this time of night, this time of the year, insects should have made a greater racket than any bird!
Taking his time, he ascended, watching, sniflftng, listening each cautious step of the way until at last he stood just below the violated summit of the right-hand ridge of the roadcut. What he saw stretched his sensibilities near to breaking between awe and anger. With the sky clearer moment by moment, ringlight there was enough by now to see what had been done here. It looked as if some titan had cut a giant cake. Over an undetermined period—time would have abounded upon this neglected thoroughfare—a long row of vertical holes had been drilled deep into the rock. He could see the grooving which was all that was left of them; the odor he had noticed issued from here. Explosives had been tamped into the holes. He presumed the same had been accomplished upon the other side. Young Robret would let him know in due course.
He knew the smell now for what it was: sulfur. The machine-drilled holes had been packed with the most ancient and primitive explosive known to man's part of the galaxy, which accounted for their number. Of a sudden he was filled with suspicion. If someone who did not know the planet, who had only read about woodsrunners from a datathille, had wished, for some unfathomable reason, to imitate the rebellious pattern of many years ago, they might think to stir things up with a political potion of charcoal corned with yellow sulfur and potassium nitrate, both abundant upon Skye, kneaded with water and alcohol and let desiccate, then ground coarse with cautious patience.
They might. And they would be dead wrong, because
woodsrunners, for all they pursued a rustic existence, were far from primitive, fashioning their own machinery, generating their own power (or stealing it from Islay conductiles and beamcasts, which was easier). They would make and use explosives not a whit less sophisticated than any found within the sky-wide Monopolity. The only
mechanic arts they lacked were those which he, as Drector-Hereditary and representative of the Monopolitan Ceo upon Skye, was obliged by Hanoverian law to deny them. Likely such were practiced secretly in any case. Stooping, he ran a finger along one dew-damp groove, feeling chatter-marks of whatever tool had cut it into the stubborn mountain rock. This was a second betrayal of the same sort: woodsrunners would have used lasers.
Whatever fool was responsible for them, fused them together and set them oflf at once, the crude landmines had worked, hurling the entire face of the cut, a volume of two measures' depth by a hundred by another two, outward and downward onto the greenway. Had they been a fraction of a second better timed, he would have lost all his sons, buried alive in one ugly stroke.
The nightbird trilled again. This time something seemed as alien about the noise as the cloying odor filling the air about him. Without thinking, out of long years of warrior-training and near-fatal mistakes, the Islay had taken care not to silhouette himself against a sky which, filled with water vapor and backlit by the hazy moonring, glowed faintly to the night-adjusted eye. Now he was aware of what he had done, and grateful. Crouching low, he crept as silent as he could, feeling his way past slipping rock and brittle windfallen branches, toward the counterfeit bird-noise, an obvious signal, which came to him once again as he counted out his fifth and sixth paces.
A deeper silence followed, the Islay thought, upon the sudden awareness that he was not the individual for whom the signal had been intended and with whom a meeting was anticipated. A different sound came, of someone less woods-wise than the Islay making his way toward him in intended stealth. Thinking thoughts about professional assassins accustomed to city-work, the Islay drifted left, hurried low
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