In the pilot's chair beside him, Selmer Ogram gave the drive system a final command and leaned back to look at the screen. "Home at last!" He looked over his shoulder at Dorland Avery in the rear passenger compartment. "Look familiar?" Dorland offered no response. He was hunched in one corner of the wide seat, staring up at the vidscreen. His face was expressionless. He had been immersed in his own thoughts during the entire trip.
Ogram turned back to the console. "Well, it looks good to me."
Paul had fervently hoped they would never see Selmer Ogram again after his departure through the window of Dorland's dressing room. But
Ogram had returned to the auditorium for the 51
§2 William Greenleaf
evening show just as Dorland had predicted. Fresh clothing and a shaved face had changed his appearance enough to get him past the guardsmen at the door, but Jeffrey Hanes had found him easily in the balcony.
Ogram hadn't seemed at all surprised by
Borland's change of heart. He wasn't happy at the prospect of taking an extra passenger, but Paul made himself a nuisance until Ogram gave in. Paul had wanted Jeffrey Hanes to come, too, but Ogram stood his ground in refusing that request.
In real distance. Clarion was less than a hundred light-years from the planet Fynnland, but the trip had taken a long and tiring six hours. For obvious reasons, Ogram couldn't file the skip sequence with NavSec, and had been forced to use mass-plus planets and stellar objects for skip points instead of the UNSA sector stations that would have provided a shorter route.
Which meant that Paul had had a full six hours to wonder what awaited him and Dorland on Clarion. We need your help. The situation at home has gone from bad to impossible. Sabastian wants you to come back.
That had been Ogram's message to Dorland in Dorland's dressing room—that and a few vague statements about the Holy Order and a man named High Elder Brill and something called the Sons of God. Paul had questioned him during the trip, but Ogram had refused to elaborate.
"You'll find out when we get there," he had said. But he had freely given Paul information about the planet itself, and it was clear that Erich Frakes was right about at least one thing: Clarion was a ninety-nine. That was UNSA jargon for a planet that had the atmosphere and water and other ingredients necessary to support human life without artificial—and expensive—help. According to Ogram, the climate was mild in the area where the
CLARION 53
colony had taken root. The animals were small and docile, although none had been domesticated. Edible, too—but Paul wasn't surprised to learn that nearly everyone on Clarion was a vegetarian. That was typical on colonized worlds where Terrandescended livestock weren't bred. Humans had always been squeamish about eating alien flesh. Ogram had mentioned one thing that struck Paul as an oddity: the planet's entire population still lived in a city at the site of the original colony. The sector ship Vanguard had put them down two
hundred years ago, and they had never strayed in all that time. Clarion had never been mapped or explored.
Beep.
Paul looked over as Ogram pressed a combination of keys on the console. Luminous lines of figures built across the readout screen. After a moment he pressed another console key. Beep. The screen changed.
"Whoops."
Ogram pressed another key and the screen
changed again, accompanied by another tone from the console.
"Damn!" He leaned over to consult 'a sheet of stiff white paper that was clipped to the console beside him. Dark-lettered notes were scrawled across it.
"Trouble?" Paul asked. He realized suddenly how isolated they were. If something went wrong with the stasis drive or control system . . .
"Nothing I can't fix," Ogram muttered. He searched the keypad and punched another key, then grunted with satisfaction when the screen lighted with a new message. He glanced at Paul and shrugged his shoulders apologetically. "Guess I should've gotten more hands-on practice." Paul stared at him. "You should have—
practiced? Don't you know how to fly this thing?" 54 William Greenleaf
Ogram gave him a hurt look. "Of course. I spent a week studying the manual." He waved at the rows of data that still scrolled across the screen. "I may have missed some of the details, though." Paul realized with a sinking feeling that Ogram was serious. The flight from the surface of Fynnland to the skip zone had been rough, but Paul had attributed that to the condition of the aging scoutship. Now he wasn't so sure. Skipping through the stream was handled by the drive engines and navigation computers, but reaching the surface of the planet below would require piloting skills . . .
"You learned to fly from a manual?"
"Sure." Ogram grinned. "We had to translate from old Espana. Some of the pages were in pretty bad shape, but I think we got most of it." He searched the control panel, jabbed at something with a forefinger. "See, you push this blue button and wait for something called translation."
"Transition," Paul corrected. He had sat in the front with Dorland's pilot often enough to pick up some of the jargon. During transition, the stream driver switched control to the stasis system for atmospheric flight.
"Whatever." Ogram frowned at the console when nothing happened. He leaned over to consult the card beside the readout screen. "Oh yeah, this light has to be green. To make it green you push these three switches up." He demonstrated. "Now we have to wait for the computer to beep, then we'll be ready to go."
Paul turned around in his seat to look into the rear compartment. Borland's head rested against the back of the seat, and his eyes were closed. Possibly asleep—Paul knew the last few hours had taken a lot out of him. More likely he was meditating. That was Dorland's way of sorting out his feelings. Paul had learned soon after they met that Dorland was subject to wide mood swings. Now he
CLARION 55
was somber and uncommunicative, drawn deeply into himself.
Beep.
Paul's thoughts were disturbed again by the sound from the console. He turned around as system lights winked from amber to green. Ogram punched out an instruction on the keypad, then nudged the drive control panel out of the way and unfolded the flight wheel. He consulted the manual again, then touched one of the hand controls. The stasis engines roared and the craft shot forward, throwing Paul back into his seat.
"Take us an hour or so to get down," Ogram said. If we live that long, Paul thought, rearranging himself in the seat.
Ogram gestured at the vidscreens. "Beautiful, isn't she?"
A huge mass of land stretched out on the central screen, green and brown beneath scattered clouds. Paul made a grudging sound of concurrence, and in fact he was grateful to feel the first faint tug of gravity. The old scoutcraft had no grav-field, and the long period of weightlessness had made him feel a little queasy. Already the noise of passing air was building up outside the hull, whistling through the fore and aft drive webs.
Ogram activated another console screen that had a dark green background with a superimposed image in lighter green that looked to be the outline of a map. Gridlines were marked off across it, and a yellow light pulsed faintly in one comer. As Paul watched, the map shifted slightly to a new position.
"That's our beacon," Ogram replied when Paul asked about it. He used a finger to tap at the pulsing light. "The map and beacon were programmed by the original Vanguard Explorer crew. Very superficial, but it does the job. Without it we'd never find our way back."
The comment resurrected a question Paul had 56 William Greenleaf CLARION
57
wondered about earlier. "Why hasn't the planet been explored in more detail?"
Ogram offered a wry smile. "Not exactly progressive, are we? Not like you folks, flitting hitherthither." He shook his head with open wonder. "All those planets—it boggles the mind." He sighed.
"High Elder Brill won't even let us go outside our little valley. According to him, we have everything we need in Fairhope and Chalcharuzzi." Fairhope was the village at the site of th
e Vanguard colony. Ogram had already told him about that. "What's Chalcharuzzi?"
"The Tal Tahir city. Ruins, really—mostly overgrown." Tal Tahir. Erich Frakes had used the name. "The gents?"
Ogram gave him a blank look.
"Intelligents. The race of beings that used to live on the planet."
"Oh. Yeah, that's the Tal Tahir." Paul sensed that Ogram had loosened up somewhat. Maybe this was the time to try to get more information out of him. "Who's Lord Tern?" Ogram glanced up at the vidscreen. He seemed to gain strength from the view of his homeworld.
"According to the Holy Order, Lord Tern is the only Tal Tahir still living."
Ogram said it in such a matter-of-fact way that Paul turned to look at him. Ogram obviously opposed the Holy Order, but that didn't necessarily mean that he didn't believe in Lord Tern. "Is he really alive?"
Ogram hesitated, then shook his head. "As far as I'm concerned. Lord Tern is Holy Order gobbledygook. Nobody's ever seen him outside the Holy Order's temple. But there's something funny going on inside the temple. That's what Sabastian wants to find out about."
Ogram had mentioned something earlier that
came back to Paul. "You said a man went into the temple ..."
"Cleve Quinton. He tried to kill High Elder Brill. You'll find out about him."
"Brill is head of the Holy Order?" Ogram nodded. "He's also High Elder of Clarion and First Speaker of the Tal Tahir."
A chime sounded on the console. Ogram leaned forward to study the readout screen. He thought for a moment, then tentatively flicked a switch on the panel. Lights winked green across the bottom of the screen. Ogram grunted with satisfaction and twisted the drive wheel to turn the streamer in a wide arc to face the sun. The fore screen dimmed as a filter snapped into place. The green lights on the map formed vertical lines.
"Lord Tern is High Elder Brill's personal god," Ogram went on. "He gives the orders and Brill carries them out. Before he died, Cleve said he saw Lord Tern. Of course, he was babbling by then. Whatever he saw in the temple was too much for him. He went crazy."
Some of it was beginning to fit together. "You think Dorland can help determine what Quinton really saw in the temple?"
Ogram frowned slightly as if he just realized he'd stepped past a line of discretion. "I'll let Sabastian tell you about that."
Paul looked up at the screen as they flew out over a scruffy shoreline. Ogram eased the wheel forward. The pitch of the stasis engine changed slightly and the craft picked up speed, then veered slightly in another course correction. The pulsing light moved noticeably closer to the center of the grid. Ogram reached to the console and flipped a switch. The grid screen went dark.
"I can find my way from here," he said. 58 William Greenleaf
The shoreline gave way to white beach. Paul tried to imagine a line of resort hotels, and failed. "How many people live in Fairhope?"
Ogram considered. "Five or six thousand, probably. Far as I know, nobody's bothered to count."
"That's all?" After two hundred years, Paul had expected a population of several hundred thousand. Colonies had a tendency to grow quickly.
"The Holy Order controls the birth rate," Ogram said. "High Elder Brill wants to keep the population where it is."
"Sounds like he'sgot his thumb into everything."
"He owns the planet," Ogram said flatly. "At least, that's how he sees it."
"How do the rest of the people see it?" Ogram shrugged. "Mostly, they go along. Too afraid to do anything else. Except Sabastian and me and a few others."
"And Dorland's parents?"
Ogram looked at him. "He told you about that?"
"He said they were executed as heretics." Ogram nodded and turned back to the console.
"If you oppose High Elder Brill and Lord Tern, that's the risk you run."
"Meaning Dorland will be risking it as well." Ogram grinned crookedly. "You, too, my friend. But remember—you insisted on coming."
Another silence intervened. The craft swept up over a mountain peak that was covered with a blanket of snow, then down over wooded, brushcovered foothills. Paul glanced into the passenger compartment. Dorland still sat silently, eyes closed.
"There it is," Ogram said, pointing. "Chalcharuzzi. The Holy City." A wide valley lay between the rugged range of mountains below them and a lower range fifty kilometers away. A river snaked through one corner, and even from here Paul could see the white
CLARION 59
froth of rapids. Much of the valley was overgrown with vegetation, although Paul could see scattered patches of pale pink showing through. Natural outcroppings of stone, he thought at first. Then he looked closer and realized they were structures, but he couldn't discern their size or shape.
"Only the deacons and elders are permitted to live in Chalcharuzzi," Ogram said. "We aren't supposed to go there, but a few of us break the rules. Karyn says the Tal Tahir abandoned the city at least fifty thousand years ago."
"Karyn?"
"Karyn DiMemmo. You'll meet her. She's read all the old Vanguard reports. She knows about that stuff."
A gridwork of gray lines was prominent against the green backdrop of the ruins. Paul thought they were roads, then realized they were suspended above the city. They gleamed dully with reflected sunlight. He asked Ogram about them.
"Tubeways," Ogram explained. "Karyn says the Tal Tahir used them for transportation, with vehicles that ran inside them. They're big enough to walk through—the ones that are still standing, anyway. We use them to get into the city." As they approached the ruins, Paul saw that long sections of the tubes lay broken among the vegetation. He lifted his eyes higher on the vidscreen, beyond the ruins, where he could see a scattering of smaller buildings that stretched along the bank of the river. "That's Fairhope?"
Ogram nodded. "Such that it is. Primitive, by your standards."
"I've seen worse." Between Fairhope and the ruins of Chalcharuzzi were large areas of flat land that were squared off in checkerboard patterns. Each square was a different color. Obviously crops, although they were too far away to be identified. Then Paul realized that the scoutcraft was
60 CLARION 61
William Greenleaf
headed in a direction that would take it away from the village. "Isn't that where we're going?" Ogram shook his head. "We have a camp in the mountains." He looked a little embarrassed. "Actually, it's a large cave. Yonder." He pointed to the rolling hills beyond the ruins of the city.
"You live in a ... cave?"
"Five of us. We moved out there a year ago, when High Elder Brill had Sabastian arrested as a heretic. We broke him out, but we knew we couldn't go back to Fairhope. Brill knows we're up there, but he can't do anything about it."
"Why not? If you only have five people . . ."
"High Elder Brill won't let the deacons or the Sons of God come up to the cave. Good thing for us. They have better weapons than we have, and they know how to use them. They could sneak up before dawn, wipe us out and still get back to the temple in time for morning prayers."
"Why won't he let them do it?"
Ogram shrugged. "He says Lord Tern told him it was forbidden. Lord Tern is big on rules nobody can understand. According to him, the Holy City was put there for the elders. The deacons and the Sons of God live in dormitories around the temple, but they can't leave the roadways that go directly to the temple from Fairhope. They can't cross the river and they can't go into the area of the Far Peaks. They'd have to do one of those things to get to our cave."
Beep, beep, beep.
Startled, Ogram looked up at the vidscreens.
"Uh-oh."
Paul followed his gaze and saw a small dark point hovering in the middle of the aft screen, just above the horizon. "What's that?"
"Brill's flyer." He shot a suspicious look at Paul.
"Unless you arranged to have one of your Guard friends follow us."
Paul shook his head. "I wanted to, but Dorland wouldn't hear of it." Not even t
he staff knew where they had gone. As far as the staff was concerned, Dorland had been called away on a personal emergency. Only Jeffrey Hanes knew the truth, and he had promised not to interfere, although it was clear he hadn't liked it.
"They must've been waiting for us," Ogram said.
"How could they know we'd be coming?"
"Somebody must've tipped 'em off. The Holy Order has lots of spies."
The speck grew rapidly into the oval frontal view of a flying craft.
"Can we outrun them?" Paul asked.
"Not a chance. That flyer's a lot faster than this old scout. But we might be able to outsmart them. Brace yourself. They're going to—"
The blast threw Paul's head into the back of the seat. The scoutcraft veered as though slapped by a giant hand. Paul's ears roared. Ogram struggled with the controls, swearing.
"That was too damn close!" he said after the craft had steadied.
A quick glance at the readout screen told Paul they had lost five hundred meters. He twisted around to look into the passenger compartment. Dorland sat rigidly, his hands gripping the arms of the chair. His eyes were open.
"Are you okay?" Paul asked.
Dorland kept silent, but his head moved in a slight, affirmative gesture. Paul barely had time to make sure Doriand's safety straps were pulled tight when the craft jerked sideways under the force of another blast. Paul heard the whine of the stabilizer engines as they fought to keep it on course. Ogram pulled out the stream drive controls and keyed in a quick sequence. He muttered something, slapped a bar to cancel the sequence command and started over. On the aft screen, Paul could see the flyer 62 William Greenleaf
lining up for another shot. He braced himself again as light flared from the flyer's nose—
The scoutcraft lurched, leaving Paul's stomach somewhere behind. It took him a moment to
realize that they hadn't been hit. The scene on the vidscreen had changed. The other craft was gone. Paul stared at the screen, puzzled as much as relieved. "Did you hit them with something?"
"Naw." Ogram was grinning with undisguised pride. He folded the stream controls away and repositioned the flight wheel in front of him. The craft's nose turned down toward a wooded area below them. "We just skipped over to the far side of the Peaks where they can't see us. I'll take 'er down low. We shouldn't have any more trouble." Paul still didn't grasp Ogram's meaning until Dorland spoke up: "We made a local skip."
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