"—unsanctified hour. Why now, for Vishnu's sake?"
"Those fool newcomers. They might not be distressed mariners, ever think of that? In any case, they mustn't see us handling stuff like this." Four men staggered past bearing a coiled cable. The uninsulated ends shone the red of pure copper. "You don't use that for geographical research, what?"
Ranu felt his hair stir.
Two soldiers embarked with guns. Ranu doubted they were going along merely because of the monetary value of that cable, fabulous though it was.
The scientists followed. The ground crew manned a capstan. Their ancient, wailing chant came like a protest—that human muscles must so strain when a hundred horses snored in the same room. The hangar roof and front wall folded creakily aside.
Ranu went rigid.
He must unconsciously have shot his thought to the other Maurai. "No!" Alisabeta cried to him.
Keanua said more slowly: "That's cannibal recklessness, skipper. You might fall and smear yourself over three degrees of latitude. Or if you should be seen—"
"I'll never have a better chance," Ranu said. "We've already invented a dozen different cover stories in case I disappear. So pick one and use it."
"But you," Alisabeta begged. "Alone out there!"
"It might be worse for you, if Dhananda should decide to get tough," Ranu answered. The Ingliss single-mindedness had come upon him, overriding the easy, indolent Maurai blood. But then that second heritage woke with a shout, for those who first possessed N'Zealann, the canoe men and moa hunters, would have dived laughing into an escapade like this.
He pushed down the glee and related what he had found in the storehouse. "If you feel any doubt about your own safety, any time, forget me and leave," he ordered. "Intelligence has got to know at least this much. If I'm detected yonder in the hills, I'll try to get away and hide in the jungle." The hangar was open, the aircraft slipping its cables, the propellers becoming bright transparent circles as they were engaged. "Farewell. Good luck."
"Tanaroa be with you," Alisabeta called through her tears.
Ranu dashed around the corner. The aircraft rose on a slant, gondola an ebony slab, bag a pale storm cloud. The propellers threw wind in his face. He ran along the vessel's shadow, poised, and sprang.
Almost, he didn't make it. His fingers closed on something, slipped, clamped with the strength of terror. Both hands, now! He was gripping an ironwood bar, part of the mooring gear, his legs adangle over an earth that fell away below him with appalling swiftness. He sucked in a breath and chinned himself, got one knee over the bar, clung there and gasped.
The electric motors purred. A breeze whittered among struts and spars. Otherwise Ranu was alone with his heartbeat. After a while it slowed. He hitched himself to a slightly more comfortable crouch and looked about. The jungle was black, dappled with dark gray, far underneath him. The sea that edged it shimmered in starlight with exactly the same whiteness as the nacelles along the gondola. He heard a friendly creaking of wickerwork, felt a sort of throb as the gasbag expanded in this higher-level air. The constellations wheeled grandly around him.
He had read about jet aircraft that outpaced the sun, before the nuclear war. Once he had seen a representation, on a fragment of ancient cinema film discovered by archeologists and transferred to new acetate; a sound track had been included. He did not understand how anyone could want to sit locked in a howling coffin like that when he might have swum through the air, intimate with the night sky, as Ranu was now doing.
However precariously, his mind added with wryness. He had not been seen, and he probably wasn't affecting the trim enough to make the pilot suspicious. Nevertheless, he had scant time to admire the view. The bar along which he sprawled, the sisal guy on which he leaned one shoulder, dug into his flesh. His muscles were already tiring. If this trip was any slower than he had guessed it would be, he'd tumble to earth.
Or else be too clumsy to spring off unseen and melt into darkness as the aircraft landed.
Or when he turned up missing in the morning, Dhananda might guess the truth and lay a trap for him.
Or anything! Stop your fuss, you idiot. You need all your energy for hanging on.
IV
The Brahmard's tread was light on the verandah, but Alisabeta's nerves were strung so taut that she sensed him and turned about with a small gasp. For a second they regarded each other, unspeaking, the dark, slight, bearded man in his neat whites and the strongly built girl whose skin seemed to glow golden in the shade of a trellised grapevine. Beyond, the airstrip flimmered in midmorning sunlight. Heat hazes wavered on the hangar roofs.
"You have not found him?" she asked at last, without tone.
Dhananda's head shook slowly, as if his turban had become heavy. "No. Not a trace, I came back to ask you if you have any idea where he might have gone."
"I told your deputy my guess. Ranu . . . Captain Makintairu is in the habit of taking a swim before breakfast. He may have gone down to the shore about dawn and—" She hoped he would take her hesitation to mean no more than an unspoken: Sharks. Rip tides. Cramp.
But the sable gaze continued to probe her. "It is most improbable that he could have left this area unobserved," Dhananda said. "You have seen our guards. More of them are posted downhill."
"What are you guarding against?" she counterattacked, to divert him. "Are you less popular with the natives than you claim to be?"
He parried her almost contemptuously: "We have reason to think two of the Buruman pirate kings have made alliance and gotten some aircraft. We do have equipment and materials here that would be worth stealing. Now, about Captain Makintairu. I cannot believe he left unseen unless he did so deliberately, taking great trouble about it. Why?"
"I don't know, I tell you!"
"You must admit we are duty bound to consider the possibility that you are not simple merchant mariners."
"What else? Pirates ourselves? Don't be absurd." I dare you to accuse us of being spies. Because then I will ask what there is here to spy on.
Only . . . then what will you do?
Dhananda struck the porch railing with a fist. Bitterness spoke: "Your Federation swears so piously it doesn't intervene in the development of other cultures."
"Except when self-defense forces us to," Alisabeta said. "And only a minimum."
He ignored that. "In the name of nonintervention, you are always prepared to refuse some country the sea-ranching equipment that would give it a new start, or bribe somebody else with such equipment not to begin a full-fledged merchant service to a third and backward country . . . a service that might bring the backward country up-to-date in less than a generation. You talk about encouraging cultural diversity. You seem seriously to believe it's moral keeping the Okkaidans impoverished fishermen so they'll be satisfied to write haiku and grow dwarf gardens for recreation. And yet—by Kali herself, your agents are everywhere!"
"If you don't want us here," Alisabeta snapped, "deport us and complain to our government."
"I may have to do more than that."
"But I swear—"
"Alisabeta! Keanua!"
Distance-attenuated, Ranu's message still stiffened her where she stood. She felt his tension, and an undertone of hunger and thirst, like a thrum along her own nerves. The verandah faded about her, and she stood in murk and heard a slamming of great pumps. Was there really a red warning light that went flash-flash-flash above a bank of transformers taller than a man?
"Yes, I'm inside," the rapid, blurred voice said in her skull. "I watched my chance from the jungle edge. When an oxcart came along the trail with a sleepy native driver, I clung to the bottom and was carried through the gates. Food supplies. Evidently the workers here have a contract with some nearby village. The savages bring food and do guard duty. I've seen at least three of them prowling about with blowguns. Anyhow, I'm in. I dropped from the cart and slipped into a side tunnel. Now I'm sneaking around, hoping not to be seen.
"The place is huge! They
must have spent years enlarging a chain of natural caves. Air conduits everywhere—I daresay that's how our signals are getting through; I sense you, but faintly. Forced ventilation, with thermostatic controls. Can you imagine power expenditure on such a scale? I'm going toward the center of things now for a look. My signal will probably be screened out till I come back near the entrance again."
"Don't, skipper," Keanua pleaded. "You've seen plenty. We know for a fact that Intelligence guessed right. That's enough."
"Not quite," Ranu said. The Maurai rashness flickered along the edge of his words. "I want to see if the project is as far advanced as I fear. If not, perhaps the Federation won't have to take emergency measures. I'm afraid we will, though."
"Ranu!" Alisabeta called. His thought enfolded her. But static exploded, interfering energies that hurt her perceptions. When it lifted, an emptiness was in her head where Ranu had been.
"Are you ill, my lady?" Dhananda barked the question.
She looked dazedly out at the sky, unable to answer. He moved nearer. "What are you doing?" he pressed.
"Steady, girl," Keanua rumbled.
Alisabeta swallowed, squared her shoulders, and faced the Brahmard. "I'm worrying about Captain Makintairu," she said coldly. "Does that satisfy you?"
"No."
"Hoy, there, you!" rang a voice from the front door. Lorn sunna Browen came forth. His kilted form overtopped them both; the light eyes sparked at Dhananda. "What kind of hospitality is this? Is he bothering you, my lady?"
"I am not certain that these people have met the obligations of guests," Dhananda said, his control cracking open.
Lorn put arms akimbo, fists knotted. "Until you can prove that, though, just watch your manners. Eh? As long as I'm here, this is my house, not yours."
"Please," Alisabeta said. She hated fights. Why had she ever volunteered for this job? "I beg you . . . don't."
Dhananda made a jerky bow. "Perhaps I am overzealous," he said without conviction. "If so, I ask your pardon. I shall continue the search for the captain."
"I think—meanwhile—I'll go down to our ship and help Keanua with the repairs," Alisabeta whispered.
"Very well," said Dhananda.
Lorn took her arm. "Mind if I come too? You, uh, you might like to have a little distraction from thinking about your poor friend. And I never have seen an oceangoing craft close by. They flew me here when I was hired."
"I suggest you return to your own work, sir," Dhananda said in a harsh tone.
"When I'm good and ready, I will," Lorn answered airily. "Come, Miss . . . uh . . . m' lady." He led Alisabeta down the stair and around the strip. Dhananda watched from the portico, motionless.
"You mustn't mind him," Lorn said after a bit. "He's not a bad sort. A nice family man, in fact, pretty good chess player, and a devil on the polo field. But this has been a long grind, and his responsibility has kind of worn him down."
"Oh yes. I understand," Alisabeta said. But still he frightens me.
Lorn ran a hand through his thinning yellow mane. "Most Brahmards are pretty decent," he said. "I've come to know them in the time I've been working here. They're recruited young, you know, with psychological tests to weed out those who don't have the . . . the dedication, I guess you'd call it. Oh, sure, naturally they enjoy being a boss caste. But somebody has to be. No Hinjan country has the resources or the elbow room to govern itself as loosely as you Sea People do. The Brahmards want to modernize Beneghal—eventually the world. Get mankind back where it was before the War of Judgment, and go on from there."
"I know," Alisabeta said.
"I don't see why you Maurai are so dead set against that. Don't you realize how many people go to bed hungry every night?"
"Of course, of course we do!" she burst out. It angered her that tears should come so close to the surface of her eyes. "But so they did before the War. Can't anyone else see . . . turning the planet into one huge factory isn't the answer? Have you read any history? Did you ever hear of . . . oh, just to name one movement that called itself progressive . . . the Communists? They too were going to end poverty and famine. They were going to reorganize society along rational lines. Well, we have contemporary records to prove that in Rossaya alone, in the first thirty or forty years it had power, their regime killed twenty million of their own citizens. Starved them, shot them, worked them to death in labor camps. The total deaths, in all the Communist countries, may have gone as high as a hundred million. And this was before evangelistic foreign policies brought on nuclear war. How many famines and plagues would it take to wipe out that many human lives? And how much was the life of the survivors worth, under such masters?"
"But the Brahmards aren't like that," he protested. "See for yourself, down in this village. The natives are well taken care of. Nobody abuses them or coerces them. Same thing on the mainland. There's a lot of misery yet in Beneghal—mass starvation going on right now—but it'll be overcome."
"Why haven't the villagers been fishing?" she challenged.
"Eh?" Taken aback, Lorn paused on the downhill path. The sun poured white across them both, made the bay a bowl of molten brass, and seemed to flatten the jungle leafage into one solid listless green. The air was very empty and quiet. But Ranu crept through the belly of a mountain, where machines hammered. . . .
"Well, it hasn't been practical to allow that," said the Merican. "Some of our work is confidential. We can't risk information leaking out. But the Beneghalis have been feeding them. Oktai, it amounts to a holiday for the fishers. They aren't complaining."
Alisabeta decided to change the subject, or even this big bundle of guilelessness might grow suspicious. "So you're a scientist," she said. "How interesting. But what do they need you here for? I mean, they have good scientists of their own."
"I . . . uh . . . I have specialized knowledge which is, uh, applicable," he said. "You know how the sciences and technologies hang together. Your Island biotechs breed new species to concentrate particular metals out of seawater, so naturally they need metallurgic data too. In my own case—uh—" Hastily: "I do want to visit your big observatory in N'Zealann on my way home. I hear they've photographed an ancient artificial satellite, still circling the Earth after all these centuries. I think maybe some of the records our archeologists have dug up in Merica would enable us to identify it. Knowing its original orbit and so forth, we could compute out a lot of information about the solar system."
"Tanaroa, yes!" Despite everything, eagerness jumped in her.
His red face, gleaming with sweat, lifted toward the blank blue sky. "Of course," he murmured, almost to himself, "that's a piddle compared to what we'd learn if we could get back out there in person."
"Build space probes again? Or actual manned ships?"
"Yes. If we had the power, and the industrial plant. By Oktai, but I get sick of this!" Lorn exclaimed. His grip on her arm tightened unconsciously until she winced. "Scraping along on lean ores, tailings, scrap, synthetics, substitutes . . . because the ancients exhausted so much. Exhausted the good mines, most of the fossil fuels, coal, petroleum, uranium . . . then smashed their industry in the War and let the machines corrode away to unrecoverable dust in the dark ages that followed. That's what's holding us back, girl. We know everything our ancestors did and then some. But we haven't got the equipment they had to process materials on the scale they did, and we haven't the natural resources to rebuild that equipment. A vicious circle. We haven't got the capital to make it economically feasible to produce the giant industries that could accumulate the capital."
"I think we're doing quite well," she said, gently disengaging herself. "Sunpower, fuel cells, wind and water, biotechnology, sea ranches and sea farms, efficient agriculture—"
"We could do better, though." His arm swept a violent arc that ended with a finger pointed at the bay. "There! The oceans. Every element in the periodic table is dissolved in them. Billions of tons. But we'll never get more than a minimum out with your fool solar and biologic
al methods. We need energy. Power to evaporate water by the cubic kilometer. Power to synthesize oil by the megabarrel. Power to go to the stars."
The rapture faded. He seemed shaken by his own words, shut his lips as if retreating behind the walrus moustache, and resumed walking. Alisabeta came along in silence. Their feet scrunched in gravel and sent up little puffs of dust. Presently the dock resounded under them; they boarded the Aorangi, and went across to the engine-room hatch.
Keanua paused in his labors as they entered. He had opened the aluminum-alloy casing and spread parts out on the deck, where he squatted in a sunbeam from an open porthole. Elsewhere the room was cool and shadowy; wavelets lapped the hull.
"Good day," said the Taiitian. His smile was perfunctory, his thoughts inside the mountain with Ranu.
"Looks as if you're immobilized for a while," Lorn said, lounging back against a flame-grained bulkhead panel.
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