Land and Overland - Omnibus

by Bob Shaw

  Telescopes! The idea of a primitive species having been able to devise ways of manipulating a medium as intractable as light startled Divivvidiv into full wakefulness. He sat up on the smooth, spongy block which was his bed and switched off its artificial gravity field, without which he would have been unable to enter any but the most superficial level of sleep.

  Tell me, he said to the Xa, will the Primitives be able to see us? He had to ask the question, to rely for the moment on the Xa's senses, because his own radius of direct perception was severely curtailed by the metal walls of the habitat.

  Yes, Beloved Creator. Two of them are already scanning the general area of the visual sphere in which we are located—one of them with the aid of a double telescope—and there is a strong possibility of our being detected. The heaters of the protein synthesizing station are the most likely to draw attention—they leak radiation which is well within that part of the spectrum spanned by the Primitives' eyes. 'Purple' is the word they use for it.

  I will shut down the heaters immediately. Divivvidiv floated himself out of the habitat's living quarters and into the principal operations hall. His trajectory carried him through the air to the control matrix which governed nutrient production, and he used a pencil-slim grey finger to divert the flow of power away from the row of exterior heaters.

  I have done it, he said to the Xa. Have the Primitives seen anything?

  There was a brief pause before the Xa replied. Yes—one of them has commented on seeing 'a line of purple lights', but there is no associated emotional reaction. The event has been dismissed as insignificant, and is already being forgotten.

  I am glad of that, Divivvidiv said, using the mind-colour appropriate to relief.

  Why do you experience relief, Beloved Creator? Surely a species at such an early stage of its development can pose no threat to you.

  I was not concerned about my own safety, Divivvidiv said. If the Primitives had been curious about us, and had decided to investigate, I would have been forced to destroy them.

  There was another pause before the Xa spoke. You are reluctant to kill any of the Primitives.

  Naturally.

  Because it is immoral to deprive any being of its life?

  Yes.

  In that case, Beloved Creator, the Xa said, why have you decided to kill me?

  I have told you many times that nobody has decided to kill you—it is simply a matter of… The talk of killing reminded Divivvidiv of why he was there, of the awesome crime against nature being perpetrated by his own kind, and a pang of anguish and guilt stilled his thoughts.

  Chapter 5

  The ancient city of Ro-Atabri was immense.

  Toller had been standing at the rail of his gondola for more than an hour, staring down at the slowly expanding patch of intricate line and colour patterns which differentiated the city from the surrounding terrain. He had been conditioned to regard Prad, Overland's capital, as an imposing metropolis, and had visualized Ro-Atabri as much larger but essentially the same. The reality of the historic seat of Kolcorronian power, however, was something for which he could not have prepared himself.

  He sensed that such a huge difference in size somehow led to a difference in kind, but there was more to it than that. All the cities, towns and villages on Overland had been planned, and therefore their chief characteristics sprang from the will of their architects and builders, but from high in the air Ro-Atabri resembled a natural growth, a living organism.

  It was all there, just as in the sketches his maternal grandmother—Gesalla Maraquine—used to make for him when he was a child. There was the Borann River winding into Arle Bay, which in turn opened out upon the Gulf of Tronom, and to the east was the snow-capped Mount Opelmer. Cupped in and shaped by those natural features, the city and its suburbs sprawled across the land, a vast lichen of masonry, concrete, brakka wood and clay which represented centuries of Endeavour by multitudes of human beings. The great fires which had raged on the day the Migration had begun had left a still-visible discoloration in some areas, but the durable stonework had survived intact and would serve humanity again in some future era. Flecks of orange-red and orange-brown showed where the ill-fated New Men had begun capping the shells of buildings with new tiled roofs.

  "What do you think of it, young Maraquine?" Commissioner Kettoran said, appearing at Toller's side. Now that gravity was back to normal he was feeling much better and was taking a lively interest in all aspects of the ship's affairs.

  "It's big," Toller said simply. "I can't take it in. It makes history … real."

  Kettoran laughed. "Did you think we'd made it up?"

  "You could have done, as far as most of the present generation are concerned, but this… It hurts my brain, if you know what I mean."

  "I know exactly what you mean—think how I feel." Kettoran leaned further across the rail and his long face became animated. "Do you see that square patch of green just to the west of the city? That's the old Skyship Quarter—the exact spot we took off from fifty years ago! Will we be able to land there?"

  "It seems as good a place as any," Toller said. "The lateral dispersions on this flight have been remarkably slight, and those that did occur have cancelled each other out. The decision rests with the Sky-commodore, of course, but I'd say that's where we'll put down."

  "That would make it perfect. The perfect full circle."

  "Indeed yes," Toller agreed, no longer really listening, his attention captured by the realization that the ten-day flight between the worlds was all but over, and that very soon he would have unlimited opportunities to court Vantara. He had not even glimpsed her since the incident with the blue-horn, and the lack of contact had fuelled his obsession to the point where the prospect of seeing another world for the first time seemed no more of an adventure than being able to speak to the countess face to face and perhaps win her over.

  "I envy you, young Maraquine," Kettoran said, gazing wistfully downwards at the natural stage upon which the half-remembered scenes of his youth had been enacted. "Everything lies before you."

  "Perhaps." Toller smiled, savouring his own interpretation of the commissioner's words. "Perhaps you're right."

  The village of Sty-vee contained no more than a hundred or so buildings, and even in its heyday would have housed only a few hundred people. Toller was tempted to cross it off his list and proceed on his way without even landing, but it would then have become necessary to falsify an inspection report and he could not allow himself to sink to petty dishonesty. He studied the layout of the village for a moment, noting that its central square was very small, even for such an out-of-the-way place.

  "What do you think, corporal?" he said, testing the younger man's judgment. "Is it worth trying to put the ship down on those few yards of turf?"

  Steenameert leaned over the rail to assess the prospects. "I wouldn't take the risk, sir—there's very little leeway and there's no telling what the eddy currents are like around that group of tall warehouses."

  "That's what I was thinking—we'll make a pilot of you yet," Toller said jovially. "Head for those pastures to the east, beside the river, and drop us there."

  Steenameert nodded, his naturally pink face growing even more roseate with gratification. Toller had taken a liking to Steenameert on the occasion of their first meeting, when he had parachuted down from the interplanetary void, and had put in a special request to have him in his crew for the flight to Land. Now he was personally grooming Steenameert for a field promotion, somewhat to the annoyance of Lieutenant Correvalte, who had spent the customary year in a training squadron.

  Toller turned to Correvalte, who officially should have been conducting the landing manoeuvre and was showing his discomfiture by lounging in a seat in a posture of exaggerated boredom. "Lieutenant, detail one man to guard the ship and get the others ready to inspect the village—the walk will do them good."

  Correvalte saluted, very correctly, and left the bridge. Toller maintained a carefully neutra
l expression as he watched the lieutenant go down the short stair to the gondola's main deck. He had already decided to recompense Correvalte by recommending him for a full captaincy earlier than usual, but had decided not to let him know until the current mission had been completed.

  It was the middle of foreday, and already in the equatorial region of Land the sun's heat was baking the ground. Most of the gondola was in the shadow of the ship's gasbag, a fact which made the environment beyond seem preternaturally bright and vivid. As the vessel performed a slow half-circle to face the slight breeze, sinking all the while, Toller saw that the fields surrounding the village had almost returned to their natural uniform shade of green.

  With no seasons to orchestrate the cycle of maturation, individual plants in the wild state tended to follow their own timetables, with a proportion in the earliest stages of growth while others were at their peak or in the process of withering and returning their constituents to the soil. From time immemorial, Kolcorronian farmers had sorted the seeds of useful vegetables into synchronous batches—typically creating six harvests a year—and as a result areas of cultivated land presented patterns of stripes of varying colours.

  Here, after decades of neglect, those patterns had all but disappeared as the edible grasses and other crop vegetables had slowly returned to botanic anarchy. The advanced stage of the reversal led Toller to suspect that the village of Sty-vee was not one of those which the New Men had reclaimed after the ptertha plague had wiped out the normal human population. If that were the case, the inspection of the village promised to be yet another in a series of unpleasant and highly depressing experiences.

  The final stages of racial extinction—half a century ago—had come so swiftly that there had been no time for the dying to bury the dead…

  The thought cast a pall over Toller's mood, reminding him of how wrong he had been in his supposition that the fleet's arrival on Land would give him endless opportunity to keep company with the Countess Vantara. At the heart of his mistake had been a single historical fact.

  The migration from Land to Overland had been a carefully planned affair, one which should have been carried out in orderly stages, but in the event it had been essayed in circumstances of panic and chaos. With the city of Ro-Atabri burning, with mobs on the rampage and the army's discipline gone, the evacuation had been forced through with only minutes of notice for the refugees—and in that extreme not one book had been taken on the journey between the worlds. Jewellery and useless bundles of currency notes had been carried in plenty, but not one painting, not one written poem, not one sheet of music.

  While men and women of culture were later to complain that the race had left its soul behind, King Chakkell and his heirs were to fret about a more irksome oversight. In all the turmoil and confusion nobody had thought of bringing any maps of Kolcorron, of the empire, or of Land itself. From the time of the Migration until the present day—although the Kolcorronian royal family still claimed sovereignty over the Old World—the lack of charts had proved an annoyance more than anything else, but the situation had changed entirely.

  Prince Oldo, Daseene's sole remaining offspring, was now in his late fifties and had been thwarted all his life by the Queen's refusal to step down from the throne. And, just as his mother's frailty was promising to clear the way for him, he had been given an extra frustration to contend with in that he was about to become heir to a kingdom whose actual and potential wealth were almost a total mystery.

  Unknown to Toller, he had prevailed on Daseene to put off the circumnavigation of Land until a detailed survey of Kolcorron itself had been carried out. Thus it was that, instead of pacing Vantara's ship on a challenging round-the-world flight, Toller had found himself committed to a seemingly endless series of aerial hops from one deserted village or town to another. He had been on Land for almost twenty days and in all that time had not even seen Vantara, who was engaged on similar duties in a different quarter of the country.

  Just as the city of Ro-Atabri had impressed him with its sheer size, Kolcorron was overwhelming him with the multiplicity of centres, large and medium and small, which had once been necessary to house its population. Having lived all his life on Overland, where it was possible to fly for hours without seeing a single habitation, Toller felt oppressed, suffocated, by the extent of men's interference with the natural landscape. He had begun to visualize the old kingdom as one vast, seething hive in which any individual would have counted for very little. Even the knowledge that it was the birthplace of his grandfather did little to counteract his negative feelings about Kolcorron's tamed and overworked countryside.

  He gazed moodily at the cluster of dwellings and larger buildings, apparently tilting with the airship's movements, which made up Sty-vee. The old maps and gazetteers which had been found in Ro-Atabri showed that its chief importance arose from the fact that the village contained a pumping station which had been vital to the irrigation of a considerable area of farming land north of the local river and canal system. It was required of Toller that he should inspect the station and report on its condition.

  Still keeping a watchful eye on Steenameert and his handling of the airship, Toller consulted his list and confirmed that after Sty-vee had been crossed off there would be only three further locations to check. If there were no complications he could be on his way back to base camp in the capital before littlenight of the following day. Vantara might also have returned to Ro-Atabri by that time. The thought helped to dispel some of Toller's forebodings about the task in hand, and he began to whistle as he took his sword from a locker. The steel weapon—which had once belonged to his grandfather—was too awkward to wear in the close confines of a ship, but he never ventured abroad without it strapped to his side. It enhanced his sense of kinship with that other Toller Maraquine, the one whose exploits he would never have the chance to emulate.

  A minute later—to the accompaniment of short bursts from the secondary jets—the gondola's keel made contact with the ground and the four anchor cannon fired their barbs into the grassy earth. Crewmen leapt over the side immediately with extra lines and began doubly securing the ship against the possibility of the heat vortices which commonly roamed the land close to the equator.

  "Closing down the engines, sir," Steenameert said, his eyes seeking Toller's as he vented the pneumatic reservoir which fed power crystals to the jets. "How was the landing?"

  "Passable, passable." Toller used a tone of voice which showed that he was more pleased with the corporal's performance than his choice of words implied. "But don't stand there all day congratulating yourself—we have business in yonder metropolis. Over the side with you!"

  As had happened before, during the short walk to the edge of the village Toller felt oddly self-conscious, as though hidden observers were watching every step he took. He knew how absurd the notion was, but yet he was unable to forget what easy targets he and his men would be if defenders with muskets were to appear at the blank upper windows of the nearest houses. His uneasiness, he decided, sprang from a feeling that he had no right to be doing what he was doing, that the last resting places of so many people should be left undisturbed…

  An outburst of swearing from one of the crewmen a dozen paces to his left caused him to look in that direction. The man was gingerly skirting something which Toller could not see because of the long grass.

  "What is it, Renko?" he said, knowing in his heart what the answer would be.

  "A couple of skeletons, sir." Renko's saffron airman's shirt was already darkened with sweat in several places and he was showily limping. "I nearly fell over them, sir. Nearly broke my ankle."

  "If it doesn't mend soon I'll have the incident noted in your service record," Toller said drily. "Clashed with two skeletons—came off second best." His comment brought a round of laughter from the other men and Renko's limp rapidly disappeared.

  On reaching the village the group fanned out in what had become a routine procedure, with the crewmen entering
houses and reporting on their condition to Lieutenant Correvalte, who was making copious notes in a dispatch book. Toller took the opportunity to find some comparative solitude, wandering separately through narrow passageways and the remains of gardens. The derelict condition of the buildings convinced him that Sty-vee had not been occupied by the New Men, that half a century had passed since human families had enlivened the crumbling stonework with their presence.

  There were no skeletons visible out of doors, but that was not unusual in Toller's experience. In the final and most virulent phase of the ptertha plague victims had survived for only two hours after infection, but some instinct seemed to have prompted them to seek out places of seclusion in which to die. It was as if some lingering sense of propriety had been outraged at the thought of defiling their communities with decaying corpses. A few had made their way to favourite beauty spots or vantage points, but in general the citizens of old Kolcorron had chosen to die in the privacy of their homes, very often in bed.

  Toller had lost count of the number of times he had seen pathetic family tableaux consisting of male and female skeletons still locked in a last embrace, sometimes with smaller bony frames lying between them. The sight of so many reminders of the ultimate futility of existence in such a short span had contaminated his spirit with a deep melancholia which at times overcame his natural ebullience, and now—unashamedly—he avoided entering the silent dwelling places whenever he could.

  His meandering course through the village eventually brought him to a large windowless building which had been built on the bank of the river. Part of it extended down into the slow-moving water. Identifying the structure as the pumping station which was the chief item of interest in the area, he walked around it until he came to a large door in the north wall. The door had been constructed from close-grained wood well reinforced with brakka straps and appeared to have been quite unaffected by fifty years of neglect. It was locked and, as he expected, barely quivered when he threw his considerable weight against it.