by Brian Daley
A young assistant motor-stable overseer came hurrying up to him. "I see you've got everything set, Reef," Alacrity said.
The young man nodded energetically. "You bet, Alacrity." He patted the barouche.
"Good." Looking around, Alacrity pointed to a row of surface skimmers. "Now, which of those is free?"
Reef's eyebrows knit. "Uh, all of 'em. They're mostly for local sightseeing."
"Well, which one's the best of the lot?"
Reef indicated an almost-new skimmer, fully charged. Alacrity leaned the rifles against it and began stowing the gear he'd selected. Floyt snorted with laughter.
The skimmer was an open vehicle with a fairing, two low-slung tandem seats, and a small luggage well between the rear seat and the tiny engine. A safety helmet sat astride each seat's control pommel. A navigation-commo unit bulged its nose. To Floyt's way of thinking, the ground skimmer couldn't have looked much more like a bobsled without being one.
"But, but what about the barouche?" the perplexed Reef asked.
Alacrity paused. "After we're gone, take it back to the motor stable and dismount the control stem or something. Then keep your lip sealed. But make sure nobody uses it, read me? Good. Here."
He surreptitiously passed Reef a Spican bank note. The assistant overseer palmed it and took an unhurried leave.
"Why shouldn't anyone else use the barouche, Alacrity? Wouldn't that help confuse anybody who was looking for us?"
Alacrity reached for a medical kit. "Yeah, but somebody might catch a missile or something that's meant for us. Not very likely, I admit, but there's always the chance."
They loaded a few more items, and Alacrity made fast the cargo. Floyt, watching, inquired, "I suppose the destination changes too?"
"Very good. Yup, I have a spot all picked out. We'll stay hidden until these social retards are through trying to vaporize local fauna, then come back as early as we can without giving Seven Wars grounds for complaint. Say, tomorrow mid-morning."
"Staying out of everyone's way is fine with me, Alacrity."
"Great. Want a helmet? I don't much favor them in a puny rig like this."
Floyt took one anyway. "I always say, don't wear a helmet if you haven't got anything to protect."
Alacrity got into the front seat, securing his weapons in their clips and buckling his safety harness. Floyt did the same, then tightened the helmet's chin strap and lowered the visor. The breakabout pulled on a pair of goggles.
Alacrity took the steering grips and toed the accelerator. The skimmer rose two meters into the air—very nearly its ceiling—and glided away slowly and silently.
It was pleasant to have the wind in his face again, Floyt thought as he leaned around Alacrity to watch. It was pleasant to leave his troubles behind.
* * * *
Floyt was awakened by a cry of haunting, luminous, and mournful beauty, a sustained trill rippling down from the sky.
The Terran hiked himself around as quietly as he could in his sleeping cocoon, inchwormed, and poked his head through the yielding film that was the door of the shelter. He moved gently, not because he was alarmed or afraid, but because he knew instinctively that whatever had made that heartbreakingly beautiful sound would be timid, easily frightened away.
The little security field generator, attached to the edge of the shelter, hummed almost inaudibly. It was rated for most Epiphanian areas; anything with even a vestige of a nervous system would be repelled by the invisible barrier protecting the shelter. The area looked clear. Floyt flicked off the generator, the better to listen.
They had pitched camp atop a hill. Floyt, seeing the vegetation around it, recalled some of the names: snareweed and coronet shrubs, spark-nettles and culverin vines. There were lacy, translucent ice trees and patches of ribbon grass, blossoms and leaves, spores and undergrowth in startling colors, shapes and profusion. He couldn't spot the crier, though.
The wonderful sound came again. Hoyt caught a flash out over the small valley below him, of something that made his breath catch in his throat. It was gorgeous, polychrome, blazing in a way that resembled metal one moment, stained glass the next.
It had two sets of wings like spun gauze and a wide, diaphanous tail. It soared unhurriedly and with consummate ease, just below the dawn line, calling like a lost soul and making the hair on Floyt's neck and arms stand up. His skin showed gooseflesh.
The bird thing tilted with supreme grace and slid in the direction of the hilltop camp, fragile and radiant. It trilled again. Floyt could hear no other sound, as though the whole planet were listening to the cries. They echoed and hung in the air for what seemed a very long time. The creature glided closer; the Terran reached out to awaken Alacrity so that he wouldn't miss it.
Then he saw that the breakabout was also awake and had been listening too. Now Alacrity rolled onto his stomach and edged into the doorway, careful to make no sound or sudden move. The glorious flyer banked again, its long wings a blur. It climbed above the dawn line and into the morning sunlight.
Yellow-red rays seemed to spray off it in a rainbow, brilliant and breathtaking, making them gasp. It wheeled; multicolored waves shimmered from it. Then it dove like a fiery meteor.
Floyt felt peaceful and content for the first time since the celebration at the Sockwallet lashup. Alacrity felt untroubled for a change; there were worse places to be than the unspoiled wilds of Epiphany, beneath this aerial dance.
Then a bolt of light brighter than the sun lanced up from below. It caught the flyer squarely in a harsh, explosive fireball. The shimmering rainbow flew apart; the creature crumpled to ash. With a last trill of infinite loss it fell, smoking.
They watched, stunned. Floyt cried his anguish as the two wriggled free of cocoons and shelter. Alacrity reached for the vision enhancers and held them up to his eyes. He scanned quickly, searching the area from which the shot had come. He spotted the hunting party almost at once, at the far end of the valley, picking its way through the scrub. Alacrity directed Floyt's attention that way with his free hand, as the enhancers, monitoring the breakabout's eyes, brought the focus into sharp clarity.
Dincrist was riding at the head of the party, rifle aloft, spurring his horse, laughing triumphantly, white hair gleaming. The Presbyter Kuss was behind him, among others. The hunting beast from Gresham's World loped ahead of the group, sniffing the ground, obviously on a scent. It set up a raucous howling, leaping and circling.
The bird thing had fallen into the river that wound through the valley and was being washed swiftly downstream. Dincrist made an impatient gesture, dismissing it; the kill had only been a moment's idle diversion.
"You unutterable shitheel," Alacrity muttered, keeping the enhancer fixed on Heart's father, wishing for a second that his rifle wasn't safetied. "You gutless, soulless—"
Floyt was yanking his arm, saying, "Alacrity, look!" He pulled the vision enhancers down forcefully. Alacrity forgot his irritation at the Earther when he saw the little woodsprite, panting and spent, at the edge of their camp. It was injured, bleeding dark blood from a middle limb. As it had in its cage, it extended its snout at them, trembling, taking their scent.
"It found us," Floyt said excitedly. "It followed our scent."
"Well … possibly," Alacrity admitted dubiously. They'd spent a lot of time traveling at virtual ground level; if the woodsprite had been released early enough and was good enough at following airborne scents, it might have come after them on purpose, but that presumed an awful lot.
The Terran was approaching it with a bit of food. "Hey wait," the breakabout objected. "For all we know, that thing spits AP missiles."
Floyt had never had a pet of his own, of course, but he'd always felt a kinship for the timid little creatures in the childrens' petting zoos and school and lab menageries. He offered the woodsprite a crumb of ration, making chucking, clicking sounds. The thing sniffed him again, then reached out with three of its nimble little paws to snatch the food. It ate hungrily, watching them bot
h, looking ready to bolt.
"Well, I'll be damned," Alacrity said. "Maybe he was somebody's pet before Dincrist got his hooks in him, Ho."
Floyt came up with another ration fragment. This time the woodsprite didn't retreat after taking it, but let him stroke its head softly. It made a gurgling, cooing sound of its own. Floyt heard noises behind him and turned his head—slowly, no sudden movements—to see Alacrity folding their cocoons while the shelter collapsed and contracted itself. "What are you doing?"
The breakabout paused. "Dincrist's hound is on the scent. We can either hand over your pal there or give those morons a chase they'll never forget."
Floyt knew he should be objecting. While there was nothing directly prejudicial to their mission in what Alacrity had in mind, neither was there anything remotely advantageous about it. But the breakabout had apparently been right when he'd mentioned that three days' conditioning wasn't nearly enough for a complete behavioral reprogramming. Old attitudes and responses were likely to resurface if sufficiently evoked and unopposed by specific conditioning.
Instead of objecting, Floyt held out his arms to the little animal, knelt before it, cooed, then said, "All right there, Short and Desperate, what's it going to be?"
The woodsprite studied him for a long moment, then climbed into his arms. As he stowed their guns, Alacrity said, "Here, take my spare shirt. Rub him down carefully, and daub at the blood; we want to leave a strong trail."
Floyt did so gingerly. The woodsprite's smell was thick and musky, but not unpleasant. The creature endured the treatment.
"If you can find anything like a scent gland or sebaceous glands, Ho, give 'em a once-over. But don't get nipped."
Floyt lowered himself into his skimmer seat slowly. His companion reached down to buckle his safety harness for him, loosely and with surprising gentleness, so as not to alarm their passenger. Then Alacrity hopped into his own seat and brought the near-soundless little engine to life. He hovered, barely clear of the ground. The woodsprite pressed closer to Floyt.
"Alacrity, should I drag your shirt along the ground?"
"Uh, not if it'll leave marks. I'll slow down when we pass rocks or grass and you can take a swipe. But don't snag any thorns or bushes. If we leave cloth behind, they'll know something's up."
Following a narrow game trail, Alacrity eased down the slope in the direction the little woodsprite had come from, backtrailing to keep the mounted hunters from spotting any remnants of the camp—though he doubted they'd left many. He spotted a track left by the woodsprite and veered over it. Floyt plied the shirt, and they headed downslope, leaving a fresh trail that would divert Dincrist's hunting animal.
"That Gresham's beast can probably follow a fresh air-scent as easily as a ground spoor," Alacrity told Floyt over his shoulder.
As they cut across a low field, building a lead, careful to keep terrain features and trees between the skimmer and the hunters, Floyt carefully wafted the shirt over rainbow grass. Alacrity, having picked out part of his course from the hilltop, crested another rise, then took on the merest bit of altitude and began to set the hunters a merciless trail. He swooped under fallen logs and over rocks, squeaked between clumps of vile-smelling rogue ferns and across patches of snareweed.
Then it was over a shallow streamlet and a mudflat too soft and watery to retain small-game tracks. Trying to stifle the sound, Alacrity laughed louder each time he put some new obstacle behind them.
After drifting over a bed of tear blossoms, he rose and pulled to a halt in the shelter of an upthrust rock. "We don't want to outdistance them by too much. I have to see this."
They crept to the edge of the jumble and looked back the way they'd come, the woodsprite apparently content to wait in the skimmer. As the riders were still negotiating the rogue ferns, their animals balking at the stench, Baroness Myers inadvertently jostled the Presbyter Kuss, and the clergyman took a header into the ferns. At the same time, Chief Operating Officer Gloria "Kiki" Bernath of Amalgamated Mining was in midstream, spitting water and wading one way while her horse went in the other.
Dincrist's mount became mired as he tried to skirt the mud, so he was afoot, in it up to mid-shins, floundering and trying to extricate the animal. There was a great deal of wild gesticulation.
But mud-covered, foaming, and frenzied with the chase, the Gresham's beast was screaming its hunting cry while it raced along halfway between prey and pack. The Terran and the breakabout realized that, much as they were enjoying themselves, they couldn't stay where they were forever. "What do we do now, Alacrity?"
"Urn. We can't just let the hitchhiker go; they'd pick up his trail again."
That hadn't occurred to Floyt. "So?"
"Let's take him to Redlock's camp. It's only a couple of kilometers from here. That's why I picked this spot."
"Redlock?"
"Well, the prey, there, is fair game, isn't he? And we've got him, don't we? So, we claim him and let him go later. What can anybody say?"
There didn't seem to be an acceptable alternative. The hunting party was beginning to move again. Apparently trained not to leave him too far behind, the Gresham's beast had circled around to wait for its master.
"All right," Floyt said. Off they went, careful to leave no tracks but leaving a trail through the worst parts of the area. Their only regret was for the horses that were going to have to follow it; for the hunters and the vicious Gresham's beast they felt no pity. Floyt found himself joining Alacrity in laughter; their ruse might be an irresponsible act of applied lunacy, but it was fun.
They discovered that the area wasn't completely devoid of big game when, rounding the bend in a dry wash, they found themselves headed directly for a granite ox, who had until that moment been enjoying a sand bath. Alacrity hit the accelerator and cut around it before the huge, armored behemoth could swipe at them with its wicked horns. Floyt looked back over his shoulder to see the bulky herbivore trotting away, and was glad that it wouldn't be around when the trigger-happy hunters reached the scene. He took up leaving the scent trail once again.
From time to time the two found a safe vantage point from which to gaze back at their pursuit with the vision enhancers. Several hunters had dropped out, either from exhaustion or injuries. Floyt spied Kiki Bernath sitting on the ground, nursing her ankle as her horse disappeared toward the skyline. It did the Earther's heart good.
And in time, through a serpentine course, never letting the hunting pack get too far behind but never letting it catch up too closely either, the two gleefully skimmed to the big, busy hunting camp of Governor Redlock. At Alacrity's instruction, Floyt tucked the scent shirt out of sight. The woodsprite had been safely concealed under the cargo cover, although it had been nervous.
Alacrity pulled to a stop in the center of the camp. It seemed that most of the guests were still out potting away. There were cages, preservation containers, and hooks for the keeping of game live or dead, whole or eviscerated. The stench of burnt game defiled the air; most of the slaughterment would go to waste,
A fourth choice was also available. Gillies were feeding some game into a large machine that had been airlifted out from Frostpile as a conspicuous show of hospitality, wealth, and power.
"Taxidermic robot," Alacrity commented as they unbuckled and dismounted to await the fun. "Rich people's toy." Dead wildlife was fed into it at one end, to be processed by the most rapid, modern computerized systems available, emerging a short while later, stuffed and mounted, at the other end.
Floyt looked around. No one seemed to have taken much notice of their arrival. Gillies and servitors were moving back and forth, attending to their tasks; a few hunters were scattered about, swapping lies. No other tracking animals were nearby, though Alacrity suspected that all the dead game in the area would confuse anything but the determined Gresham's beast anyhow.
"Shouldn't we claim the woodsprite now, Alacrity?"
"Don't you want to see Dincrist's face when we pull that whatsit out of the cargo b
oot?"
"But when Dincrist gets close to camp, he'll know something's up. He might even give up the chase." Floyt couldn't see any sign of an approaching horseman.
"Without finding out what's going on here? Not a chance." Alacrity was looking around, on the off chance that the Nonpareil was at Redlock's camp, but she was nowhere to be seen.
So they leaned casually on the skimmer, Floyt whistling nervously, the breakabout humming a half-remembered tune, until Dincrist, the only hunter left in the chase, pounded into sight on a horse ready to drop. His Gresham's beast preceded him, confronting the Terran and the breakabout with a slavering snarl.
Dincrist dismounted, and the two companions had trouble deciding which was frothing worst: man, horse, or tracking animal. "Fitzhugh, I'll have you dismembered for this! What have you done?"
"We gave you a little riding lesson, is all," Alacrity replied airily. Floyt, remembering the senseless slaughter of the magnificent flyer, laughed spitefully.
Furious beyond words, Dincrist reacted more violently than they'd foreseen, and the entourage members and subordinates who would ordinarily have restrained him weren't around to intervene. He lunged at the breakabout, swinging his nerve-fire riding crop. The sting-crop hummed wickedly; its lash cut Alacrity's cheek. The younger man froze in shock for a moment.
Floyt yelped and moved to separate them or something; he wasn't sure what. The peacemaking didn't get far. The Gresham's beast drove him away from its master by baring rank upon rank of tine-teeth. When he moved toward the skimmer and its guns, the thing tensed to leap; it smelled the woodsprite on him and knew he was an enemy. The only reason it hadn't savaged Floyt or Alacrity was that it hadn't been commanded to.
Meanwhile, Alacrity had made a few decisions of his own, the most important one being that he wasn't going to be hit again. He blocked the crop's second swing, meeting the edge of Dincrist's wrist with the back of his own. Their free hands locked. People were yelling in the background, but Alacrity couldn't take time to listen.