‘I told them what’s plausible, that we considered crashing ourselves before we’d yield to them. Next I said we’d changed our minds, but want assurance we won’t be massacred. Lohannaso claimed he has no such intention, which is doubtless correct, but I insisted we come down simultaneously, rather than he second. That way, I said, we can bargain when we’re on the ground, instead of sitting helpless under his guns. I’m sure he expects we’ll attempt a dash in among the trees. He also, obviously, means to catch us or shoot us. And at worst, he’ll have our plutonium – that wasn’t mentioned, but of course he will – and he’ll have Ferlay, too, who may well be able to tell him something. He does know you are in our midst, Ferlay; I’d be very interested to hear how he learned it. … Well, that’s what I’ve negotiated. Satisfactory?’ A flint snicked, a plume of harshness streamed.
‘I hope so,’ Iern said. ‘May I fly us now, Ronica?’
‘Go ahead.,’ she answered. The knife was once more in her hand.
He grabbed altitude. That should not alarm the opposition. They’d assume he was looking for the beach where he was supposed to go. The jet buzzed him, impatiently, and climbed higher.
Soon he did spy the destination, a white crescent shadowed by the pines that gloomed behind. He moved toward it. When above, he went nose up and started backing earthward. After a short while the Maurai craft entered his view, a hundred meters off, matching his descent. He felt how his light vessel shuddered in the turbulence of yonder exhaust.
An inner trembling went through him. He was about to attack brave men who had done him no harm and would have made him welcome, in order to save a pair of devils who – And to save me. And maybe afterward, somehow, Ronica can explain, can justify – I always have wondered about the rightness of the Power War.
Go!
He kicked the pedals and shoved the stick. Vision and equilibrium spun dizzily, propellers howled, metal rang. He saw how the Maurai veered; but he was the Stormrider, and his aircraft was a limb of himself.
They struck. The force slammed back through him.
‘Out!’ he roared, slipped his safety belt, and lunged for the door on his side. Ronica went the opposite way. Mikli followed.
Iern twisted through whistling air, he pulled his ripcord, the chute blossomed white and smote him with deceleration. Then he was free, shrouds in hand, steering for earth. Not far away he saw Ronica and Mikli, likewise liberated.
His gaze pounced on the planes. The Northwestern fell in ruin, along a stone’s trajectory, ablaze. It struck water; waves fountained, steam roiled; it was gone. Fleetingly, Iern thought of its cargo. The lake must have softened the impact, kept the containers from breaking open. Eventually they would disintegrate and release the poison. Let there first be time for a salvage expedition.
The jet was still in flight, staggering. Iern had tried for a frontal collision, to wreck the controls, but instead had taken out the starboard engine and, it seemed, slewed around to crumple the portside wing. The Maurai pilot was good. His machine could not land without smashing, but somehow he forced a direction upon its descent and used what was left him to slow down. He brought it to the lake, a kilometer out. Spray flew, golden in the evening light. The fuselage bobbed for several minutes before it sank. Meanwhile the people within emerged and started swimming. Only one of the three bothered with a flotation cushion.
The knowledge that he had not killed them made Iern sob for joy.
He, Ronica, and Mikli rolled over on the sand, sprang to their feet, shucked their parachutes. The woman had kept her knife, the Norrman his automatic pistol. He gestured at a tangle of bleached driftwood. ‘Get behind that,’ he said. ‘They’re bound our way, those kanakas. I suppose they figure they can’t survive by themselves in an environment this unlike their South Seas. They may be armed. But we’ll have the drop on them.’
‘Take it easy,’ Ronica answered. ‘They won’t get here fast.’ She swung toward Iern. ‘Oh, great work!’ she cried, radiant. ‘By God, you didn’t lie, you are a flaming hell of a flyer!’ She seized him to her and kissed him for a thunderful time.
The sun dropped under the pines. Heaven turned greenish. Cold shadows engulfed the beach. Lap-lap said wavelets that came in aglimmer from the edge of the world.
As the swimmers drew nigh, recognition lanced through Iern. ‘Anim of Charles! Plik!’ He leaped up and started to cross the log behind which he had been lying.
Ronica grabbed his leg. ‘Down, you gruntbrain,’ she rapped. ‘A well-oiled gun can fire even if it’s gotten wet.’
Mikli discharged his, a warning shot. The noise went flat and loud across quietness. Startled birds left the boughs where they had settled. Some fluttered high enough that their wings caught sunlight. ‘Attention!’ he shouted in Angley through the tangled dead roots before him. ‘If you fellows want to come ashore alive, you’ll wade in with hands raised and any weapons discarded.’
‘How’ll we get food without guns, or fix it without knives?’ bellowed the basso Iern heard over the radio.
‘Oh, fout, you didn’t expect to bag anything with those toys, did you?’ Ronica called back, almost merrily. ‘I have a knife, and that’s plenty. If I didn’t, I could improvise. Behave yourselves, boys, and I’ll nursemaid you to safety.’
Motion in the water indicated reluctant obedience. The three reached the shallows and walked toward the beach. Drenched garments, clinging to them, revealed no questionable bulges underneath.
Mikli rose. ‘Very well,’ he said, and holstered his pistol. ‘Please remember I’m quick on the draw, Terai.’
The huge gray-haired man nodded. Ronica vaulted the driftwood and advanced to meet him and the freakish figure at his side. ‘Better shed your clothes and let ‘em dry,’ she advised. ‘Wrap yourselves in parachute cloth. I can’t do much about a case of pneumonia, and your race – Oh!’ She stopped in her tracks. Her right hand went to her opened mouth, her left clenched into a fist.
Iern scarcely noticed. He was speeding toward Plik. The singer’s teeth chattered; he shook and hugged his skinny frame. Iern took him by the shoulders. ‘What have you done, you bastard?’ the Clansman raged.
‘N-n-not what… what I expected.’ Misery regarded him. ‘The aim was to f-f-force the Norrmen down, take them … prisoner, con-confiscate their shipment – but you’d have gone free, they’d have brought you to refuge – if those maniacs you’re with hadn’t – Iern, they were carrying fissionables. Judgment stuff! What could I do but cooperate with the Maurai?’
‘I discovered that myself. All right, I understand, Plik.’ Iern released his grip and patted the other on the back. ‘Not your fault or mine, what’s happened. Let’s make the best of it together.’
‘You wouldn’t have a drink about you, would you?’
Iern could not help laughing. ‘No, I’m afraid the nearest obtainable alcohol is a long way off.’
‘And Sesi still farther.’ Plik slouched on up the beach.
Approaching Ronica, Iern caught words passing between her and the tawny-skinned giant. ‘– Then it is you,’ she breathed. ‘I wasn’t sure, I was just a kid and that was twenty years ago, but I could never forget –’
‘But do you remember I was your father’s friend?’ the response rumbled, most gently. ‘Not his enemy, though bad luck put us on opposite sides in the war. His friend. I came to see your mother because I felt she deserved to hear whatever I could tell her about him, and maybe I could help her.’
‘We’ll have to talk more, later.’ Ronica turned her back on him and walked off, stiffly. Silent tears gleamed on her cheeks, amidst deepening shadows.
The Maurai men stripped. Iern tried not to stare at the grotesque one. Mikli did not try. Ronica knelt by a parachute. Her blade flashed as if in anger. She cut pieces to serve as towels and togas. ‘You do the same, Plik,’ Iern counseled.
‘If the lady will look elsewhere,’ the Angleyman replied.
A grin of sorts passed across her. ‘Don’t be shy,’ she said. ‘I know that what
cold water does to a man is temporary.’
‘I never supposed you were inhibited,’ Iern remarked.
‘You’ve never seen me sober,’ Plik answered dourly. Ronica heeded his wish and soon he too was sheeted. His shivering began to abate.
Mikli hopped onto a log. ‘Hark, everybody!’ he called. ‘Gather ’round. We’ve got to settle things between us.’
‘Who appointed you boss?’ Ronica demanded.
‘Chairman,’ he corrected her. That’s more my métier than yours, no?’ The rest of them came to stand before him: the Maurai on the right, Plik and Iern on the left, Ronica alone in the middle. ‘As a matter of fact,’ Mikli continued, ‘you – this girl here, gentlemen – she’ll be in charge because she knows how to stay alive in wilderness. You’ve no way of compelling her, when she has to be free in order to operate. Therefore obey her, if ever you want to see your own womenfolk again.
‘Introductions first.’ He named those present, except for the domino-visaged man, who stated, ‘Wairoa Haakonu,’ and no more.
‘Now, then,’ Mikli said sharply. ‘Why were you pursuing us? Breaking Domain law in the process, I’ll bet, and certainly violating Krasnayan airspace. What’s your excuse?’
Terai bristled. ‘You know bloody well,’ he growled. ‘Plutonium.’
Mikli raised his brows. ‘What? What are you talking about?’
‘You had kilos of plutonium aboard your plane. Federation intelligence has been working for years to nail whoever’s been collecting that hell-garbage. We learned you had. Wellantoa has a report from us, of course, but no proof. All that our bare word can do is make them busier in your country than they have been; and you were already the prime suspects. We need physical evidence before we can properly crack down. Did you imagine I’d let you fly off with it, you swine?’
‘This is ridiculous. What put such a fantasy into your head? I credited you with common sense, Terai.’
‘Wairoa slipped aboard your ship after the freight arrived. He had a detector.’
‘Really? Infallible? See here, I’ll explain the situation. We did bring some material from an ancient bomb crater, by request, for scientific study at home. It did have a slight residual radioactivity. If you’d been less excitable, I could show you, but now it’s at the bottom of the lake.’
Appalled, Iern saw how such possibilities would have the political force to stay the hand of the Federation. ‘You lie!’ he gasped. ‘Or why did you bespeak plutonium to me when the danger came?’
‘That settles it.’ Terai lifted a fist like a sledgehammer. ‘One extra word of denial, Karst, and I’ll break your back across my knee, if I don’t smash your skull and spatter your foul brains.’ He glared around. ‘Nuclear weapons. After the war, I’ll recommend we encase your whole gang in the same concrete we sink them in.’
‘No!’ Anguish rang through Ronica’s voice. She lifted her arms. ‘Not weapons. I swear it.’
Compassion softened Terai’s tone. That sounds genuine,’ he said. ‘But what are you building, then? Secret powerplants? Doesn’t make sense.’
They call it Orion, Iern thought. He could not bring himself to reveal that. It would hurt her further, and serve no clear purpose. Though why should I care?
‘I can’t tell you.’ She drew a shaken breath. ‘I can only give you my oath it isn’t a nuclear weapon. If it were, and I’d found out, I’d have denounced it to the world myself. I swear this, Lohannaso, by my father’s memory, my mother’s decency, the honor of my Lodge and my people.’
I believe she’s sincere, Iern thought. Not that I know her, not really, not yet. But I cannot imagine her as a dissembler.
What is she, then? A half-barbarian, no doubt; she mentioned living in Laska. Could she have been hoodwinked in herignorance? That doesn’t seem likely. Her talk and behavior show a first-class brain.
Plik’s expression, like Terai’s, reproached her. ‘You did gather plutonium in the East,’ the Angleyman said.
Her nod was jerky. ‘Yes. For a good end, I repeat. Folk are scared witless by nuclear energy. They have been for centuries. They refuse to think about it, to understand how it can serve, not destroy.’
‘It is the dragon of the Apocalypse,’ Plik said. He looked from face to face, and into the forest murk beyond. ‘Have we, precisely we, come together like this by chance?’ He quaked and wrapped his cloth tighter about himself.
That interchange triggered something in Iern. Abruptly the wild-wood woman was uttering sense, the civilized man gibberish. Reading accounts of it, Iern had in fact wondered if the Maurai were right in waging their Power War. Why must the unbound atom necessarily be a menace? Surviving chronicles declared that before the Judgment, Old France got perhaps half its energy from that source; and Old France was the lost country in which human beings had been happy and prosperous. They had reached for the stars.…
Decision crystallized. Until I know more, I won’t commit to either side. But there does appear to be a fair chance that Ronica is… not unjustified. The realization that he need not shun her went through him in great warm billows.
Laughter of a loon shrilled across the water. Treetops were losing the light that had been theirs.
Mikli cleared his throat. ‘I’ll confess what I suppose you’ve already deduced,’ he said. ‘I overreached myself. My mission was not to acquire fissionables. I simply failed to resist the temptation, and invited Ronica along to see what she could do on the side.’
So she’s done it before, on this continent, Iern thought. His lust after her grew tempered by… fear? No, not really that.…
‘What was your mission?’ Terai inquired.
‘What was yours?’ Mikli countered.
‘Gathering intelligence, especially on any calamities you might be brewing in Uropa.’
Ronica had recovered her self-possession. ‘Hold on,’ she said in a voice of command.’ Stuff the politics. It’ll soon be dark. Nobody has a flashlight, hey? Well, we can start a fire with your cigarette lighter, Milki.’
The Norrman felt in his pockets. ‘I seem to have lost it, probably while whirling head over heels out of the airplane.’
‘Damn.’
‘Yes, I call that downright petty of the gods.’
‘Okay,’ Ronica said, ‘we’d better make ready for tonight while we can see what we’re doing.’
‘What will that be?’ Iern asked.
Mikli jumped down from the log and gave Ronica an exaggerated bow. ‘You have the podium, my lady,’ he said.
She took it, in a catlike upward step, and stood poised against woods and dusking sky. ‘The three basic survival requirements are water, shelter, and fire, in that order,’ she declared, ‘and fire we can do without in a pinch. We’ll have to till tomorrow, when I can make a fire drill. But this is late summer in a cold climate. We must have shelter.’
‘Um, what about food?’ Terai wondered.
‘That’s not urgent. You should be able to manage on air for a month. Actually, though., I’ll have something for us to eat before noon.’
‘Shouldn’t we begin work on that shelter?’ urged Iern.
She surprised them by replying: ‘We can put it together in a half hour or less. Let’s take a little time first to get straight with each other.
‘We’re two pairs of rivals and a pair of neutrals, in a country foreign to us all. Except for a few savages, this region is practically uninhabited. If we struck inland, we might find a civilized village, but the odds are against it, when we have no maps. We could blunder around for weeks, and fall is coming on, winter close behind. I propose we follow the lakeshore, more or less southwest. That’ll bring us to a fair-sized town – Dulua, if I remember the name right. The distance is, oh, three hundred kilometers, I’d guess. We’ll have to keep moving. But we can certainly get there.’
‘And when we do, what next?’ Terai challenged.
Ronica shrugged. ‘Depends on the locals, no? But Krasnayans are generally pleasant. Or so I’ ve always heard.�
��
‘Yes, yes,’ said Mikli.
Terai glanced at Iern. ‘Good for you that we’re not in Yuan,’ he said.
‘Why?’ asked the Clansman.
‘You didn’t know? Well, what information Wairoa and I gathered is sketchy, but does give strong reason to think the Yuanese supplied most of the equipment for Talence Jovain Aurillac’s private army. It was smuggled in through Espayn, which suggests his dire words about that country are a smoke screen, hm?’
Iern stood dumbfounded.
‘I told you, take the politics and stick it!’ Ronica snapped from above. ‘Uh-huh, I understand the problem. We Norries don’t want you Maurai to go home with whatever additional data you’ve picked up about Ori – about our project. Like the confirmation that we are the fissionables gatherers, or whatever clues there may be in my identity and Iern’s presence. You don’t want us to go homefull of secrets you haven’t learned, plus a warning about what your high command has heard from you. Well, we’ve got to hang together on the trail. Else we may not live to backstab each other in Dulua. Give me your pledge – cooperation, yes, comradeship – or by God, I’ll strike off alone and leave you here to die!’
Iern suppressed a protest; Plik wet his lips; Mikli seemed thoughtful; Terai glowered; Wairoa waited impassive. After a moment, they mumbled agreement.
‘Good.’ Ronica sprang down, smiling. She touched Iern’s hand. ‘I wouldn’t really have abandoned you two guys,’ she whispered. ‘You’re innocent. But I figured we needed some dramatics along about then.’ She raised her voice. ‘Okay, let’s make that shelter. Follow me.’
Plik nudged Iern. ‘Innocent?’ he murmured hoarsely. ‘Perhaps, in a sense. But not harmless. You’re a mightier threat to the world – the old world we’ve known – than any of these, my friend.’
‘Do you truly mean that?’ the Clansman asked. ‘How?’
‘Upheaval. The forces are gathering for it, and you are at their center. Merciful Christ, but I want a drink!’
Ronica soon found what she sought: a long bough that had fallen and weathered into a pole; a pine with a branch low above the ground, and no dead trees nearby which might topple in a storm, on a site sufficiently elevated that rainwater runoff would not course through; surrounding deadwood and other forest debris, ferns, shrubs, lesser trees which included some broadleafs.
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