The Wanderers

by Kate Ormand

  Hardly-There was as much an engineer as a trader, buying and refashioning items made from any material you could find in the valley. For a high price, he had secretly advised Fireface on the making of his attack wagons, as Hawkerman learned.

  Kean was present at the interview with him. It took an unexpected turn.

  “Why do you want this kind of trailer, anyway?” Hardly-There asked sullenly, outside the well-appointed shed where he slept with his goods. It was a dull red evening, and there was a hum of activity all over the Lakes.

  “My business.”

  “Silence costs extra.”

  “We’ll bear that in mind as we deal.”

  Hardly-There tried to put that moment off. “Got your team yet?” He added caustically, “The best in the valley?”

  “One short. Going to leave it at that.”

  Changing the topic of conversation, Hardly-There said, “You’ve got these skis, you say. Constructed solid? Not welded from two pieces?”

  “Solid. Kean said they’d need to be, for strength.”

  “That’s the pale-skinned boy of yours.”

  “Yes.”

  “Another hero,” Hardly-There sneered.

  “Good man to have on a team,” was Hawkerman’s neutral reply.

  It appeared that Hardly-There had run out of words for a second or two. Until he said in an uncomfortable whisper, “Take me into your team, and you get the work for nothing.” He waited. “Think about it.”

  Hawkerman thought about it, thought about what he knew of Hardly-There.

  Hardly-There said, “I need something new. I do, too. I’d try real hard to fit in.”

  Hawkerman thought about the composition of his team, tried to visualize Hardly-There working alongside the others. Thought of his skills.

  He nodded. “You’re in.”

  The team was complete.

  A search lasting several weeks turned up a hidden campsite near the Big White where they could build the craft and launch it on the winds when they came. Around five hundred yards from the start of the bleached desert, the Rocks tumbled down in a welter of gargantuan rubble, honeycombed with caves. In the biggest of these was a natural chimney, so they could feed and heat themselves with some comfort.

  There was a reason no one had ever set up home here; it was the habitation of several families of the big cats. Driving them out took another two weeks and was about the most dangerous exercise you could undertake. It had the consequence of knitting the new team together. At first Essa felt sorry for the cats, but when you saw them close up, long and scarred and liquid-muscled, and staring at you with cold golden anger, you quickly accepted them as a life force who saw you only as moving food.

  Where there was such a large concentration of animals there must be water, too, and Essa found it only half a day’s march away, well-nigh hidden in another tumbledown confluence of rocks.

  Eaten for food themselves, the big cats did not taste good, as the new Wanderer, Hardly-There, discovered after they had killed a few.

  Hawkerman said, “They got things to do, we got things to do. Only kill if you have to. That’s their way, and it should be ours, too.”

  Hardly-There thought that was a puny, soft-hearted approach and advocated that they slaughter each and every one of the beasts and let them rot. Hawkerman told him, “If a creature can find a way to live out here, it deserves to go on living,” and then got Kean to talk to Hardly-There. “See if you can get through to him. If you can’t, he’s out. Well—soon as the trailer’s built.”

  They went everywhere in twos because of the threat of the cats, which might at any moment launch themselves from behind a boulder. Kean and Hardly-There were at work shifting smaller rocks in order to clear a flat area with a natural windbreak, where the trailer could be assembled. Hardly-There labored with a will until Kean told him to stop.

  “Why? We could finish this today.”

  “You don’t use all your strength. Keep some back so you stay sharp. Use too much and you sleep too heavy and drink too much water. We’ve got time enough.”

  Hardly-There did not like taking orders from Kean, but they sat awhile. Kean told him a few tales about Hawkerman and his methods, and then he said, “Hawkerman never wastes energy. So he’s not going to tell you when you overstep the mark. The way you’ll find out is when he asks you to leave. Every waking minute you’ve got to show him you fit in with us.”

  “Well,” Hardly-There grunted unwillingly, “if I was in his place, I suppose that’s the way I’d handle it, too.” It came hard, but he said it. “Thanks, Kean.”

  They talked a little more, about Kean’s exploits in the Pyramid. Hardly-There was impressed even if he tried not to show it. He asked, “Why is Hawkerman helping you like this? It costs plenty, and it takes all this time—why would he do it?”

  Kean had been over that in his mind. “I’m a team member. We’ve spent a lot of time together … Hardly-There, I’ll tell you. I don’t know.”

  Hardly-There reverted to type. “Maybe you done something, and he wants you eaten by vultures. If they fly over the Big White, that is. If I was a vulture, I wouldn’t.”

  Essa herself still had to concentrate on fitting in and doing the right thing. She was not yet as physically tough as the others, and she hoped her powers of endurance would not let them down when they crossed the Big White. Or tried to …

  Secret trips were made to the Lakes for materials, and they accumulated in the cave under Hardly-There’s supervision. “Dimensions, strength, weight …” He would mutter these or other such keywords to himself as he designed the craft in his head. One night he required the three voyagers to line up so he could lift them, one by one, to gauge their weight. He was pleased with that. “No bodyweight at all—when you think there’s three of them.”

  Aluminum did not come cheap. Hawkerman remarked, “This is going to be the most expensive trailer ever built.”

  Hardly-There joked, “Let’s hope it gets years of use, then.”

  When construction started, Hawkerman sent Essa to the Pyramid.

  Wideboy went with her as bodyguard. She would rather it was Kean. Hawkerman said, “The two of you together? It would get some Bleacher folk worked up till they could murder.” So Wideboy it was: his first time inside the city. Essa felt bad, because it had been Cara, not she, who had suggested she see her foster parents. It would be for the last time; Essa couldn’t refuse.

  They stopped off at the Lakes, where you got tokens that were like permits to enter the city. As yet, there was no charge for the privilege. They timed the journey to arrive at dawn. Essa gasped as Arcone materialized through the night sky. Half of it was missing.

  Not half. A third, maybe. In order to withstand the approaching Season, the sections that were hopelessly wrecked had been removed in their entirety, and the inner walls in these areas had been shored up tight. No longer was Semipermanent Ark One a beautiful structure. The hope was that next year, the original shape would be restored, no matter how clumsily, so long as it was strong.

  A young Pacifier, surely underage for the job, led them up to the new apartment occupied by Bonix and Marran.

  It was a dingy one-room affair. Marran looked tired. She said, “You didn’t have to come.”

  So she understood how things had changed between them. What she did not know was that in all probability, this was the last time she would ever lay eyes on the girl she had brought up as her daughter. Her main worry today was that she had no food to offer them.

  Essa said, “Don’t worry about food. Wideboy eats too much, anyway!”

  Wideboy grinned.

  Marran took them on a tour of the Pyramid as they looked for Bonix. Everywhere they went, Wideboy was awed and amazed by the splendor of the place.

  “It looked better before,” Essa said dryly.

  Bonix was working in the Middle Chamber, a small figure in its great space, and his face lit up when he saw Essa. That was unexpected, and moving.

  He
was fervent in his satisfaction with the work he was doing. Wideboy quickly tired of the conversation as Bonix got Essa to admire—as an expert in her own right—the quality of the repairs he was engaged in.

  “Of course, it can’t look the same, using temporary measures as we have to, but—believe it or not—the acoustics are even better than they used to be!”

  He took Wideboy to be more than just a companion and told him, “Essa must bring you to an Evening of Beauty here—next year, perhaps. You will see the sweetness of our life in Arcone!”

  All in all, her farewell turned out to be more hello than goodbye. There was nothing she could do about it.

  Marran asked her, “Are you happy?”

  “I think so. I feel very alive. Maybe that’s the same thing. Are you still painting?”

  “No. Not yet. One day, maybe.”

  “I wanted to ask you—has there been any word of the Commander?”

  “Grollat? No. Now he is being blamed for our reversal. It’s always the way, isn’t it. Blame the absent. If he is alive, he is wise to keep out of sight.”

  “I don’t think he cared whether Arcone triumphed or not.”

  Marran said sharply, “He was a fearsome man. I hope he’s dead.”

  Essa could not picture him dead. He was the kind of person who went on forever, somewhere.

  She and Wideboy left the Pyramid shortly afterward. It was hot; looking back, Arcone shimmered in the heat haze, dreamlike.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The Season was due, and the trailer was finished.

  It was low to the ground, a sliver of aluminum with a single broad cockpit at the back. Cara and Wil had made new tie-down Voyager hats for them, and leather gauntlets. While the winds blew, they would be traveling in the heat of the day. There were storage bays in the belly of the craft to hold water sacks and food, and when asleep on the ground on their leather pallets, the little team would be insulated by Arconian technology, boxed in by a buckle-on skirt for the trailer that consisted of heatproof panels from the black market at the Lakes.

  The sail was made of five skins from the big cats. Metal eyelets had been stitched into it, so it could be raised on the mast on leather lines. The mast itself was a short steel cross. Four wheels were lashed to the back of the trailer, and they spoiled its natural elegance, as did the two sharp steering poles.

  Hardly-There said gloomily, “Why steer at all, if you don’t even know where you’re going?”

  The skis were much longer than the vehicle itself and cushioned by a primitive suspension system suggested by the steel springs that had been found with them. “Theory,” Hardly-There said. “The length of the skis reduces the bumps. Never use wheels when you’re going at speed. They’ll strike and flip you over.”

  Barb did not say much. But they could tell she was still glad to be going on the venture, when they saw her satisfaction as she ran her hands along the smooth aluminum of the trailer.

  Kean and Essa worked hard, and thought about the voyage every waking moment, and grew more and more anxious. He said to her once, “You can still change your mind,” just as Hawkerman had said it to him.

  “Oh, now, that’s not fair,” Essa retorted angrily. “If you’re going, I’m going. But if you don’t want to, just say so—don’t leave it all up to me.”

  “No. I mean, I do want to go. It’s the same with me—if you’re going, I’m going.”

  They talked to Hawkerman. He took them away from the cave, and they sat by the trailer itself. In the rocks up above them, one of the long gray cats was noisily eating a medium-size lizard, the staple diet of the felines. The cat choked momentarily and gave out one of those deep echoing coughs. Hawkerman had got it right, and the team’s presence was now accommodated by the big predators. You still watched your back, though.

  Kean and Essa told him how they were feeling.

  “You’ve got doubts,” he said quietly. “That’s natural. Just remember, there’s no shame if you don’t go.”

  “We’ve got to go now,” Kean agonized. “We’d have wasted all this effort otherwise. It’s cost you so much, too.”

  “That doesn’t matter. The point is, you can’t take this thing on unless your hearts are right in it.”

  “We’d look like such fools,” Essa said.

  “Ah, get that one out of your heads—that doesn’t help you. What you do, now the danger is near and you’re fearful, is remember why you wanted to do this thing in the first place. Then you balance one thing against the other and see what comes out on top.”

  In the state they were in, they could not remember why the idea had ever attracted them at all. So he told them. “There’s something out there. No knowing what it is. It might be a race of men who run as fast as greenbacks … You’re young and curious, and you have this feeling that you need to know, and you sense that together you could make it through. Men have tried before you, and my belief is that some of them made it. And there’s this for you to consider: between you, you’re the perfect Wanderer. Kean—you don’t burn, and you can go all day, and you see better than any mortal man ever did before. Ask me, you’re the result they wanted when they did those experiments in the Pyramid, all those years back. As for Essa, well, you’ve got the greatest talent of all. You’re a Waterboy.”

  He had rarely said so much all in one go before, and he wasn’t finished.

  “I don’t know what we’re here for.” He sighed. “Except maybe to look after each other now and then. But every one of us, sometime in our lives, says, ‘There’s got to be more than this—what I can see here around me,’ and it nags at us. If you’ve got that disease on you now, then you’ll go. And you might just see something new.”

  Kean felt Essa’s hand gripping into his arm, and it felt good, if a little painful. There would be three of them, in it together, and there was more to the world than this one enormous valley. Had to be.

  “We’re going,” he announced. “Isn’t that right, Essa?”

  “No doubt about it,” she said.

  Hawkerman nodded slowly. “All right, then. If you see wonders and prosper—don’t thank me. And if you should find yourselves lying out there dying, and you’ve seen nothing but sand … same thing applies.” He got up and added laconically, “Be a hell of a waste of a Waterboy, though.”

  The Season was late. It sent some clouds along, and the moment they appeared, the team loaded up the speed trailer and rolled it out onto the flatlands. Kean, Barb, and Essa stood by to jump in. The light wind dropped, and there was a short shower, and that was all. Over the next days, the sky darkened, and still the winds did not come. They moved Hawkerman’s trailer to stand next to Kean’s, and set up camp on the edge of the Big White. They would head out as soon as it became possible, to make full use of the Season’s wind power. The gales should not blow at full strength immediately.

  It was a period of waiting. Kean came back to the camp one evening with sad-eyed Creaser. They’d been replenishing stocks from the waterhole. Creaser went on to find Wil; they were having a stone-throwing competition, like kids. It had gone on for days. Kean went into the tent. Cara was alone in there, mending a leather waistcoat. Kean wondered about the weather conditions and went outside to take a look, for the hundredth time. Was it optimism, or were the clouds beginning move about up there?

  He ducked back into the tent and threw himself down on his back. The action was so abrupt that Cara missed a stitch.

  “Be careful!” she snapped.

  “Sorry.”

  “No—I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I know it’s hard for you.”

  “Well. Not much longer now. I hope.”

  “They’d better get back soon,” she worried.

  “Yes.”

  “It’ll be all right when you’re on your way.”

  “I know.”

  Now she had started to talk, she wanted to go on. “Sometimes I wish we were going with you. All this change around here. It’s disturbing.”

  “Yes
.”

  “I think you should know—and I’m sure it hasn’t been said—we’re going to miss you, Hawkerman and me.”

  Kean sat up. “Cara …”

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve had such a fine life with you. It was good of you to take me in when I was small. You didn’t have to.”

  “Well, that’s Hawkerman for you.”

  “What?”

  “Just when you think you know him through and through, he does the unexpected.”

  “But … it was your idea, wasn’t it?”

  “My idea?” She was patently amazed.

  “Hawkerman told me you were the one who said I should be looked after by the team. He told me.”

  She looked at Kean with a quiet smile in her eyes. “Oh. Did he.”

  There was a noise like a shot going off, and one side of the tent began to vibrate strongly.

  “It’s started,” Kean realized.

  He stood up. “So it was Hawkerman.”

  Cara dropped her pieces of leather and got up, too. “Yes.”

  Outside the winds settled into a steady pushing; nothing too dramatic. And here was the team, gathering.

  “It’s now!” Hawkerman shouted. “You get in now!”

  And suddenly, there was so much Kean wanted to say, and he no longer had the time. Everything was urgent movement. The water sacks in his trailer were topped up to the brim; the craft was realigned to face the center of the white horizon, the folds of the sail were rearranged so that it came up without snagging. Barb got into the cockpit and stowed her bow. She was still getting comfortable when Essa landed beside her and squirmed over to make room for Kean.