The parachute rig that followed was not the standard type required for workers when outside. A fall off the aerostat being rare, they got verbal instructions, not a practical training that might claim lives. Hence the equipment must needs be simple. Dany had brought a pack of the kind favoured by experienced skydivers, some of whom jumped from the aerostat itself.
Iern had done that once, years ago. Tess heard of it, called him on the carpet, and forbade him explicitly and profanely to repeat the stunt ever again. ‘We spent a fortune qualifying you for your wings,’ she snapped, ‘and yesterday you risked spattering yourself over half the Domain, for a thrill!’
Tonight is different, he thought. He drew on his airtight gloves. She snugged them to his wrists.
They stood before each other while silence grew. ‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘I, um, I’d better be on my way. Thank you for everything.’
Her grin wavered. ‘See to it that you make me a proper return, you rascal. I’m angling for grandchildren, and I want them to enjoy all we’ve had.’
She rose on tiptoe and kissed him, fleetingly as swallowflight. ‘Farewell, Talence Iern Ferlay. Fare always well.’
More awkward than he was wont, he departed. She waved as he went out the door.
Thereafter he strode purposefully. The faceplate, halfway lowered, should veil him, unless somebody saw him loitering along and wondered why. He met no one. Skyholm had drawn back into itself to await the morning.
A green-clad guard did stand at the airlock to C-3. He lifted a rifle. ‘Halt!’ he called. Echoes shivered in the locker-lined space. He spoke nervously, with a thick Eskuara accent. ‘Where do you go?’
‘Outside, on regular duty,’ Iern said. ‘Let me by.’
‘Have you a pass?’
Iern was prepared to edge close, whip out a knife, and kill. He would rather not take the chance of failure in the attack; and abruptly he discovered that he would rather not succeed, either. ‘Why should I need a pass for a piece of routine?’
‘What do you want?’
Iern sighed elaborately. ‘Look here, compadre. That isn’t a parking dock out there, or a laser emplacement, or anything else you can imagine I might sabotage. It’s nothing but a small observation platform. I’m supposed to inspect as much of the skin as I can see from there. Afterward I go on to the next platform, and the next. Ultra-violet light and ozone make the material deteriorate. We want to replace every panel before it blows out. Your interference today kept us from checking. Pressure changes at sunset generate stresses. My chief told me to make certain nothing is about to pop. Now may I do my job?’
The sentry was quick to stand aside. ‘Yes, go, go,’ he said.
Iern leered inwardly. Except for pretending to be at work, he had uttered no lie. He had merely put urgency in his voice, and omitted to mention that, the average lifetime of a panel being ten years, inspections were performed annually, using precision instruments, and never at night. He had implied that a blowout would bring Skyholm crashing down, when this was not even true of the buoyant inner sphere; outward movement of air would automatically unroll an adhesive patch, good for hours of service, before pressure had dropped noticeably. The ancestors had built some big safety factors into their creation.
But they never imagined it would be betrayed.
Iern closed his faceplate and cycled through. Having done so, he must needs spend minutes looking, for this might be his last sight from on high.
Eastward the full moon glowed dazzling bright in a hyaline blackness. Elsewhere stars crowded heaven, unwinking ice-glints of a hundred different hues, and the galatic bridge swept sword-sharp from horizon to horizon. The night was cloudless below him, he saw Gulf and Channel and outlines of land, here and there a river or lake or snow-crown glimmered, but otherwise Earth lay blurred, all grays and silvers and moon-haze, more distant and less real than ever he had known it before.
Stranger still, somehow, was the vast opalescent curve of the captive stronghold. Its lattice showed faint; he thought of veins blue in a woman’s milk-swollen breast and then, so keenly that he gasped, of his mother. Sun energy stored during the day kept the sleeping giant aloft, in place, alive. When he gripped the platform rail, he felt a slight quiver as air surged from two of the jet engines, and imagined he could hear its br-r-roo-oo-oo-m-m that had challenged the upper winds for eight hundred years.
He shook himself, as if he had just come out of a wintry river. ‘Time to start, lad,’ he muttered.
Awe faded, excitement crackled. What a leap he was about to make!
He swung his legs over the rail, poised for a second, and jumped.
At first it was dreamlike. Weightless, disembodied, he passed through silence and moonlight. He tumbled, but slowly and gently; Earth revolved through his vision, followed by the white globe from which he, thistledown, drifted. Did he hear the air sing, or was it too thin? Surely it was cold enough to freeze his eyeballs, but in his suit he floated womb-warm, encompassed by stars. The part of him that gauged and calculated made no call upon his awareness, any more than heart or lungs did. His true self had dissolved into the distances around.
Must delay chute release till the right atmospheric density, else the rig will most likely foul and become a winding sheet for my meteorite corpse. When, though? I could overheat and be cooked, streaking unchecked into those lower levels. About fifteen kilometers’ altitude, but when I did this last time, I had instruments –Make an estimate, bird-boy, and act on it.
He pulled a ripcord. The drogue and then the primary parachute came free, trailed, expanded, stiffened. Harness slammed brutally against his flesh. He hung for a while before he regained the strength to dismiss the pain. I overdid the waiting. I’ll be bruised and sore tomorrow. Exultation: But I’ll be free!
That brought him entirely back to consciousness. Never mind eldritch beauty, he was an aviator with a landing to make. He lacked precise data, but he could observe. Warily, he began manipulating the shrouds. Winds generally blew east in the stratosphere, his last choice of directions, but he could counter them to some degree by judicious spilling, and after he entered the troposhere, they should be going different ways at different heights. He could partly collapse the canopy and drop fast when the set was wrong, open it wide and fall slowly through desirable flows.
Skyholm dwindled above him. Presently a heaviness and a whistling told him he had indeed crossed into the nether kingdom of air. Stars faded from view until those that were left formed the familiar constellations. He swung a bit, clapper underneath a broad pale bell, and navigated as best he was able. Channel and sea were not shrinking much on the horizon, were they?. … Ah-ha! He had a wind from east of south. It made the lines quiver.
He nerved himself and pulled another cord. The parachute let go of him and fluttered off, shrouds twisting about in the moonlight like tendrils on a jellyfish. He started falling swiftly – not free-floating, in this densergas, but falling, buffeting through it – until his second chute deployed and put on a brake.
He was gambling, he knew. The primary one would have brought him down safely, though he would not have had a great deal to say about where he touched ground. The second was a modern device, Maurai-inspired, an intricate and comparatively fragile thing of vanes, battens, ailerons, Venturis, well-nigh as steer-able as a hang glider. You weren’t supposed to open it more than a few kilometers above turf.
His conscience twinged. People counted on him – Tess, Dany – his friends, his pysans – Faylis? – Well, if he smashed, he smashed. The point was that he could use this chute to reach Brezh, the country of his mother.
His whoop made the helmet ring.
– He came down almost softly, on a road he had chosen. Dust puffed from his bootsoles, gray-white. On either side, trees stood hoar under the moon and dew glittered on grass in ditches. When he stripped, he felt a breeze slide cool around him, he drank its moist earthy odors and heard an owl hoot afar.
First he should dispose of the telltale
half of his gear. He went a small distance into the woods and used a knife to dig it a shallow grave. Footwear and coverall he resumed; insignia removed, they could pass for garb of an itinerant laborer.
Then he started walking on the road. He had a fair idea of where he was. Not far ahead there ought to be a trail leading to the ruins of a castle, abandoned centuries before the Judgment. The hermit who dwelt in it would give him shelter, and keep quiet after he was gone.
The moon rose higher. Its lambency outshone by far a Skyholm on which the sun’s rays no longer fell.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The news came to Ronica Birken soon after she had crossed the River Seyn on her way back from lands beyond the Rhin. A sweep-driven ferry let her group of half a dozen and their wagon and horses off at its left-bank wharf. They mounted to seat and saddles and started on the last three or four kilometers to Fonteynblo.
Alek Zaksun urged his steed forward until he rode in front, beside the woman, ‘A fine evening, hm?’ he remarked.
She looked around her. Trees, mostly alder and beech, formed a vaulted corridor full of shadows, wherein leaves that caught the last level sunbeams gleamed green-gold. It was no longer quite warm, but summer odors lingered. The road was graveled, crunchy beneath hoofs and wheels. Birds twittered. For a moment, homesickness tugged at her – but Laska lay beyond the Pole, and its wildernesses weren’t really akin to this domesticated forest in the middle of the Domain. ‘Yes, beautiful,’ she said.
‘Why not spend tomorrow resting?’ Alek proposed. ‘You’ve pushed us like a muleskinner.’
‘We’d’ve been fools to dawdle,’ she snapped. ‘You know that.’
Recollection: Maybe not so much among the barbarians of the eastern parts. They seemed in awe of us, and had no firearms in any case. There, what we had to sweat at was the Doom-near impossible traveling conditions. But half-civilized western Allemans, yeh, I didn’t want to give them time to brew up ideas about robbing us. The fact their plunder would kill them shortly after they pried it open would’ve been a mouse fuck-small consolation.
‘We’re safe now,’ he pointed out. ‘Have been for the past week, at least. And still you crack the whip over us. What’s the rush, Ronica?’
‘We may be needed at the ship.’
‘If we were, you’d have heard from Captain Karst, wouldn’t you?’
She must nod. In the outlands they had been cut off from communication, but here the situation was different. The tiniest hamlet, anywhere in the Domain, kept a public radio receiver. For an hour out of each twenty-four, Skyholm devoted its relay capability to messages, for a price, which were transcribed at the designated post offices and held until called for. Mikli had had her memorize a list of code phrases. To date she had gotten nothing, and she had no reason to expect anything before she reached Kemper – perhaps nothing there, either, if he was away at the time, busy with his machinations.
‘The Domain is a clutch of states, though, each running by its own rules,’ she reminded Alek. ‘So far our papers have gotten us past every checkpoint, but we are a conspicuous gang of foreigners, and if we loaf on our course, some official may notice us enough to grow too poxy curious.’
‘What if he does? He’ll read our documents, won’t he, and not meddle with archeological salvage for a, uh, a Consvatoire.’
Salvage – four impact plutonium warheads, from that ancient battleground in the Czechy Range, shunned and dreaded by the natives – but they have nothing to tell them that the lethal contents of other missiles, broken or corroded, have leached away into Earth’s entire biosphere –
‘It’ll scarcely happen anyhow,’ Alek persisted. ‘None of the jurisdictions we’re passing through is given to fussiness. They’ve been at peace for centuries, and we’re a breath of fresh air to them. Take my word for it, Ronica. I do know this country.’
Again honesty forced her to nod. ‘M-hm. How you do.’ Without him, her expedition would have been hopeless. She could make a way through forest and swamp, over roadless heights and rivers in spate, all the while keeping her party well fed off the land and well sheltered at night. When trouble arose, as it had done a couple of times, she could order them into such a formidable array that the troublemakers slunk off. At the end, she could direct a search for the objects they sought. But she had no acquaintance with Franceterr, let alone the tribal patchwork eastward; and her knowledge of Yurrupan languages amounted to little more than limited Angley and less Francey, studied while the ship fared from Seattle. Alek Zaksun had spent a total of years on this continent, as an anthropologist. He was fluent not only in Francey and several Alleman dialects, but in a few Shlavic ones. His had been the talk that eased their path among the barbarians, the tactful inquiries that yielded clues for them to follow in their quest.
‘Well, then, why not take a day or two off in Fonteynblo?’ he asked. ‘It’s a delightful place, it and its hinterland. If nothing else, think of our poor beasts.’
Ronica looked downward. She saw how her horse’s head drooped, she felt how its hooves plodded. Guilt pricked her. He’s right. I have been setting a tough pace, and it’s not necessary anymore. At home I don’t kill an animal or cut down a tree without whispering, ‘I’m sorry, my brother (my sister); I have need.’ Should I abuse these creatures, only because I’m in a hurry to – to what? I’m not even sure of what. Although –
‘Okay,’ she decided. ‘If we don’t find a message calling for us to make tracks.’
‘Wonderful! You won’t be sorry.’ He edged his mount close, until his knee touched hers and he could pat her hand, unseen in the dimness by their followers. ‘I’ll show you around. The local wines are superb, the food is excellent, the sights interesting, the country-side ideal for a picnic, and – m-m-m.…’ He let his voice trail off, but not his hand over hers.
It seemed to burn, yet she did not withdraw from it. Her pulse quickened. Something of a cramp passed through her, but not like a period or a sickness. Well-nigh furtively, she glanced aside at him. He was no counterpart of the tough, burly men at the rear, soldiers and mechanics. Whipcord-slender, clean-featured, neatly clad and jauntily bearded under the harshest conditions, and a sparkling conversationalist, Alek minded his manners with her as properly as the others did. But somehow he never let her forget that her chastity was merely for the sake of maintaining discipline.
Damn, but it feels like forever since – She remembered temptations on trek, especially after she’d picked up a smidgen of lingo. It would have been easy to sneak off with a handsome young tribesman, and nobody else ever the wiser. The trouble was, she had no immunity to numerous nasty diseases endemic in those populations, and not all of them yielded to antibiotics. (On this suddenly dizzying evening, she rejected memories of stenchful shacks, niggard fields, people gnarled and toothless and nearing the grave at forty, infant after infant: in primitive cribs, obviously dying, while flies buzzed around. According to what she had read, East Yurrupans were better off than most of the human race.) For the same reason, she hoped, her men had confined themselves toanticipations of Franceterr. She felt sure Alek had.
I’m no floozy. I can go without as long as I must, and often have for months. There’s plenty else in life. However – All at once she grinned. Admit it, Ronica. You want to get yourself discreetly but thoroughly laid. Why not here? She patted her horse’s mane. It was coarse and warm beneath her palm. Courage, my friend, she thought at it. You’ll have a holiday now. Lord knows you’ve earned one.
Alek released her, for they were leaving the woods and the town stood before them.
Outbound, they had taken a northerly route, in order that they not be seen coming and going – when Maurai agents scuttled ratlike around the Domain. This sight was new to Ronica. ‘Hoy-ah!’ she exclaimed, and clapped her hands together for joy.
The forest swung off to the right in a darkling arc. Elsewhere land rolled away as vineyards, here and there a meadow or orchard, poplars along the roads, farmhouses snug in the hollows and l
amplight mellow in their windows. The town clustered neatly around a time-blurred gracefulness of remnant palace walls. The sky was clear, shading from violet in the east, through gray-blue overhead, to greenish in the west above a newly sunken sun. South-westward stood Skyholm, the size in vision of the full moon that would shortly rise. Swallows darted and flicked. An angelus bell pealed, coolness given a voice.
‘Oh, yes,’ Ronica murmured. ‘Oh, yes.’ She clicked tongue at her horse and put heels in its ribs to urge it onward, but gently. Alek kept beside her. The followers clattered and the wagon rattled behind, on into town.
Streets were paved, noisy under hooves. Walls, made of the sandstone that was a local product, gave back a hint of the day’s ardor. Most folk were indoors, having dinner, but some gaped and squinted at these foreigners bound for the inn. That house fronted on a marketplace whose booths were shuttered for the night. In the middle of the square rose a post, the lamp on top not yet kindled. Lower down was a loudspeaker. Ronica clattered across.
The loudspeaker came to life. She reined her steed in so harshly that, no matter its weariness, it reared. The Francey roaring forth meant nothing to her; the tone, and the people who spilled from their doors and swarmed onto the plaza, meant everything bad.
She brought her animal under control, drew close to Alek, and seized him by the arm. ‘What is it?’ she demanded. ‘What’s gone wrong?’
His features were unclear in the gloaming, but she thought she made out a starkness upon them. ‘“Attention, attention, burghers,”’ he translated in a slurred, hurried tone. ‘“Special announcement from Ileduciel to the Domain –”’ Abandoning the effort, he turned to her and said in Unglish, amidst ongoing oratory from above and jabber of those who seethed everywhere around: ‘Some kind of political coup. Talk of a crisis, an emergency. Word is, everybody should stay calm, but – Nothing’s definite, except that hell’s boiling over.’
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