"How far will we travel?" Darc asked in a faint voice.
"South of the land of Espa," the young pilot replied. As he spoke, Dohan fastened himself to his pilot seat, checking and starting up the ship's engines. "I have taken the controls a few times on this ship," he explained, "but my father has much more experience flying the Sunray." He turned in his seat, and gave Darc an encouraging smile. "Have no worry, Darc. I am certain you must be under the Goddess's special protection."
When the engines started, filling the ship cabin with vibrations and noise, Darc began to suspect the trip might in fact shorten his life span by several days. But he held on to life all he could.
The Sunray roared out of the hangar bay; the noise awakened the entire castle, and the city as well.
As soon as Bor understood what had happened, he barked orders at his staff: "Prepare a carrier for pursuit! Alert our allies - they must not fire at the ship, whatever happens! And - if news of this reaches our enemies, every man in this castle will be banished to the Wastelands!"
His family members comforted each other through the night, anxiously awaiting the news of Dohan and Darc's whereabouts.
Dohan increased the Sunray's speed carefully, so that the acceleration would not harm Darc. The aircraft effortlessly climbed up through the dark clouds, until he could put it at a steady altitude of about 10,000 meters. He accelerated it to top speed - below the speed of sound - and set a straight southwestern course toward Kap Verita. Dohan estimated the flight would take little more than four hours. Cabin pressure was steady, with plenty of oxygen to spare. He switched on the autopilot and unbuckled himself from the seat, suppressing a yawn.
Until this moment, Dohan had managed to avoid thinking about what would happen after Darc was saved; now the gravity of his own situation was beginning to sink in. To escape such gloomy prospects, he went over to Darc and helped him loose.
Dohan sat down on a wall seat and asked: "Darc, tell me about the world in your time. Was it like Librian taught us - a Golden Age?"
The white-haired man chuckled, turned his head to watch the troubled youngster next to him, and said: "Yes... and no. In many ways it was worse, in many ways better. We never conquered the stars - or perhaps that happened after I was frozen, I don't know. "In my days, the Goddess and the Singing King were just people - they were worshipped of course, but we didn't think of them as gods - not yet."
He sighed, thinking of all he had left behind - and what Dohan must have left behind in order to save him.
"Dohan... do you have a girl waiting for you back home? You know - someone special?"
Dohan's brow wrinkled - his parents had constantly been reminding him about the matter of marriage for the past two years.
"I have not decided upon a wife yet, no. Soon, my parents will arrange a bride for me." He made an excusing grin, and added: "I mean, there have been women in my life - nothing official, of course. The women of our cities, they..."
"They are not pretty? I think they are."
"Yes, but... I am born a nobleman, a protector of the city. Everyone expects me to be and act my father. He is so... I love and respect him, but I cannot..."
"You cannot be him."
Dohan was greatly relieved. Here was another man he could talk to without feeling the burden of his own authority - someone who did not grovel, nor answer with platitudes of duty and destiny.
He eagerly went on: "Yes, that's it! And when I try to talk to a lady about this, she turns less interested... she only sees my power, my position, but she does not see me. Sometimes I think our city is... a prison."
Darc shook his head slowly, chuckling again. Dohan frowned.
"You think it sounds strange?" he said nervously.
"No, you are perfectly normal. Just like any well-bred young man in my time. Your father should be proud of you. Trust me."
Dohan's sinking spirits soared again; he was not sure how this was going to end, but once more he was certain he was doing what was right.
The autopilot's clock rang, waking Dohan from his slumber.
He looked out; the sun was rising over the glittering ocean. The Kap Verita archipelago lay straight ahead; he took the jet craft into a slight dive for a closer sweep. As he banked the ship down to one side, he could discern ten or more jagged, gray-brown islands of various shapes and sizes - scattered over a stretch of a few hundred kilometers. To the north, a faint plume of smoke was emerging from the highest mountain peak of a larger island.
Dohan turned the Sunray in a wide orbit over the southern string of islands; within a few minutes, he was circling the largest and greenest piece of land there. The landscape below was full of ridges and sharp peaks, but there were no apparent signs of active civilization. A city ruin, with traces of streets and a harbor, was all that suggested people had once lived there. There were outlines of terraced fields - but they could be abandoned, for all he knew. Dohan did not give up, though; witchdoctors and their associates were said to be secretive.
He brought the craft down to the harbor ruins, and landed in the shadow of a high cliff. Flocks of squeaking seagulls scattered into the clear sky, as the jet craft stirred up clouds of dust among their nests. Dohan watched them fly off; never had he seen so many birds at once! In his homeland, most birds had been exterminated centuries ago. Dohan went to the aft section, and helped Darc free himself from the couch. From the armory cabinet, he took a heavy laser rifle, a polished shield, a reflective visor helmet - and a light sword.
"I shall go out and scout the terrain for signs of people. There is water and food here. I have a special key to open the aft port - if anyone tries to force his way inside, just stay here. If you have to, use the cannons, but then you risk overheating the cabin." He felt at Darc's forehead - it was hot and moist with fever. "Darc, you must try to stay alive. The Goddess will watch over you."
"Thanks," Darc said wearily. " 'Let's be careful out there.' "
"What?" Dohan could not understand the English phrase.
"Nothing," Darc smiled. "A joke. Go. I'll be fine."
Dohan put on the helmet and slid the reflecting visor down over his eyes. He walked over to the aft port, and pulled the lever that caused the cargo ramp to extend down to the ground. Quickly, he opened the port and stepped out into the blazing sun - shutting the port after him. Left alone in the ship, Darc drifted into a wavering sleep. He felt as if he had not days, but hours left before the virus had drained all life from him.
Should I pray to the Goddess or to God? he thought ironically.
Chapter 15
Outside, the sea breeze proved refreshingly salty; but the dry heat came very hard on a pale city-dweller like Dohan Damon.
Thick layers of dried bird-dung crackled under his boots. He rushed as quickly as his load allowed him, to the shadow of a few palm-trees, and paused for breath. He scanned the city ruins in his binoculars... and spotted nothing but ruins, halfway covered with vegetation. No boats were visible anywhere; apparently the harbor belonged to the birds. He looked up toward the nearby hills, rising up to the north - mostly barren, but with large patches of green, low forests in the valleys. Vegetation meant water, which meant possible habitation. Dohan continued his survey for several minutes, until...
A foreign noise caught his attention. Something big and lumbering was crashing down the near hillside, trampling undergrowth and palm-trees in its way. Dohan heard an animal sound, unlike anything he had ever heard before: too loud for a bird, too high-pitched for a domestic animal - like some twisted trumpet. The sound repeated in short, snorting bursts, closer each time, and soon - a beast emerged from the undergrowth, stampeding straight toward the ship! Dohan impulsively ran from his hidingplace and intercepted the running animal. Then he saw just how huge it was - and he suffered a momentary paralysis.
The beast was gray-green and covered with coarse, shiny, leathery scales. It towered above him, almost four meters tall, supported on straight legs, like four tree-trunks with stubby, clawed feet. It
had a long, drooping, useless tail, two meters long. The creature fixed its yellow reptilian eyes on Dohan and turned its very long, sloping head toward the tiny intruder. It sounded its trumpet-roar again - the sound came from its huge nostrils, not the long jaws with the rows of sharp front teeth...
Dohan's moment of paralysis ended; he backed, but the beast charged forward, as if to scoop him up and bite him in half. Dohan threw himself to one side and fell, as the giant reptile thundered past him.
He fired a pulse at the beast's side - it roared furiously and ran off in a wide circle, stirring up more dust. The pulse had barely penetrated its thick skin, and Dohan knew why - the dust-clouds were refracting the laser-beam, making it too weak to concentrate heat onto one spot. Dohan dropped the rifle and grabbed the shield in his left hand, the sword in the right one. He beat the sword-hilt against his shield, trying to draw the beast's attention away from the ship - the monster was large enough to crush the jet tubes under its feet.
"Come on then, you overgrown turtle!" the young warrior shouted - his legs trembling with fear for the first time in months.
The beast responded with a loud snort, turned and charged him. When the beast was almost too close, Dohan darted to the side and struck with his sword at a passing hind leg - the beast's jaws snapped together, but hit thin air. The sword cut deep, drawing dark-red blood. The creature roared again, slowed its onslaught and turned on the spot. Dohan was already running in the other direction around the animal, slashing at the other hind leg. The blade drew blood again.
Unexpectedly, the beast kicked backward with a hind leg - Dohan's shield was hit and tossed away. The handle whipped out of his grip, nearly breaking his hand and arm. Dohan groaned and retreated again - but he held his sword raised like a short spear now. The scaly thing opened its pink gap wide, tensing itself for another downward snap - and Dohan hurled the sword up into its gap. The blade pierced the palate and buried itself in the monster's brain. A final dying trumpet roar escaped its nostrils - and the beast slumped down on its side, dead. The dust settled. Dohan tore off his helmet, panting and coughing. He looked anxiously around the landscape for kindred beasts - but there were none in sight. Then an insight hit him. He pulled loose the bloody sword, took his equipment, and ran back to the ship.
"Darc, there is a witchdoctor on this island! The monster in the story - I met it and killed it!" Dohan described the beast to Darc, who nodded weakly.
"Have you seen... anything like it before?"
"Never!"
"Then it was man-made... find the creator... quickly..."
Dohan hurried to obey his dying friend.
Dohan sensed that Darc's time was running out, and his mind raced to find a way of attracting the mysterious inhabitants. He could not transmit laser signals, without knowing if and where there was a receiving disk.
He shouted, and shouted again: "Help! Come and help!"
The echo of Dohan's voice rolled back from the sun-scorched hills, taunting him. He cursed, and fired a few futile pulses up at the green valley ahead; the target was of course too distant to catch fire.
Fire! That was it! Dohan aimed the rifle at the nearest grove of trees. He adjusted the pulse rate to get a continuous low-intensity beam instead of short, white-hot pulses - and squeezed the trigger. The bright red beam swept over the grove, which immediately burst into flames. In two seconds he had used up the powercell, but it was enough to start a major fire. The sea wind soon began to blow sparks at the dry bush-covered ruins. If the inhabitants did not show up soon, every blade and leaf on the island would burn down.
A few minutes later, the inhabitants showed up, in a manner Dohan had not expected.
Hidden motors hummed to life in the hills. A series of telescopic, Y-shaped poles rose up along the nearest ridge, with thick wires connecting them - it was a camouflaged cable-way, a few kilometers long, which had been invisible from the air. From its top, a carriage glided down along the wires - it turned out to be a platform, carrying two people and a large electric carriage. The carriage was unloaded at the foot of the ridge, and the manned wagon hummed down the hills, into the harbor, on clanking wheels.
Dohan retreated to the ship's cargo ramp, and readied himself for a quick escape. But as he had expected, the two people ignored him at first. Instead, they steered the carriage to the burning grove.
They attached a pump to the vehicle's engine, and began to shower the fires with water-hoses. Almost like the fire brigade of Damon City, Dohan thought. A few minutes later the fire seemed extinguished, and the two figures steered the clanking carriage toward the parked jet craft.
When they stepped out of the open seat, Dohan could see that the two persons were both full-grown women. Loose knee-high skirts were draped over their legs. They wore long-sleeved shirts and cloths wrapped around their heads - and all their of their attire was camouflage-patterned. The red flame-symbol on their costume and carriage indicated that they belonged to the local firewatch. Two dark-skinned, broad-nosed, lively women. And very angry.
"Are you crazy?! " the shorter woman barked at him, in a rapid dialect which he could just about understand. "Starting a fire in the middle of summer! We ought to cut off your head and stick it on a pole, as a warning to other idiots!"
She wielded a laser rifle, and seemed prepared to shoot. The other, taller woman stepped in front of her, armed with a machete and rifle. She gave the pale-skinned stranger a hard look, measuring him up. Dohan blinked, but did not move or flinch.
"I am Sir Dohan Damon from North Castilia," he explained slowly. "I am looking for a witchdoct... a doctor. My friend is very sick; he must get help soon. Do you understand?"
The tall woman told her companion: "We will inform the village council first. This is not a matter for us to decide."
The short one shook her head and argued for decisive action: "I say we shoot off his kneecaps right now. He's a nut. And..."
Her shifting gaze discovered the fresh carcass of the beast that Dohan had killed. Birds were already beginning to flock around it.
"Aiiiii!" screamed the shorter woman - a mixture of horror and carefully staged rage. " He killed one of the master's pets! Meijji will cut off your balls for this, young fool!"
"I acted in self-defense," he objected, rubbing the sprained tendons of his sore left arm.
But the women had already come to an agreement. The short one aimed her rifle up in the air, and fired three bright signal pulses. Soon, another platform came gliding down the cable-line, loaded with people. The party rapidly marched down the slope, and arrived at the open space before the ship. Most of them were brown-skinned women of varying age, ogling him with curious - and suspicious - eyes.
A tanned old man with squinting eyes and small eyeglasses emerged from this crowd. Unlike the wrapped heads of the women, he wore a broad-brimmed straw hat, like the one the migrants from Asia brought to Castilia many generations ago. From his decorated white tunic, he produced a tiny metal instrument - and scanned Dohan and the ship behind him. He smiled and nodded to his company, which seemed to calm down just a little.
"You are a Castilian, eh?" the old man asked in a slower, more recognizable dialect. The old man nodded at his own question, and declared to Dohan: "I am Mechao the Eighteenth, elder doctor of the Kap Verita Islands. Now, where is the patient?"
Darc fought himself up from a nightmare of vast ice-flats, through which human hands were sticking up, clutching at his legs.
He opened his eyes and looked around. The unfamiliar place where he found himself lying was a spacious four-poster bed, in a chamber with tall, open windows. The sun was shining in from outside, but an overhanging roof prevented it from reaching inside the room. It was pleasantly cool indoors, though.
Darc struggled to an upright position, and found that his fever was gone. He was tired, but felt strangely healthy - perhaps healthier than ever before during this his second life in the future.
He went over to the window and gazed down at the beautif
ul, sun-scorched landscape. The long curtains fluttered slightly in the warm sea breeze. Below his window, a cliff face dropped straight down into a lush green valley ten meters below. On both sides, the rows of windows continued to stretch along the cliff face - the surrounding ridges, and the camouflage roof, hid this natural fortress perfectly from scouting aircraft. The buzz of crickets suffused the salty air.
He soon found his clothes - washed and ironed by someone - cleaned himself up, dressed, and felt at the door. It was unlocked. He walked outside.
Dohan, his arm in bandages, was dozing off on a chair outside Darc's quarters, watched over by quiet servants. He had waited all night for his friend to recover, and flew to his feet as Darc stepped outside.
Dohan hugged the confused Darc, and looked at him in astonishment - while Darc noticed the dark spots under Dohan's eyes, as well as his thickening beard and sunburned face.
The young man released Darc, laughed with relief, and babbled rapidly: "You really are better, Darc! I thought it was too late - but Mechao healed you in no time at all! "As soon as I had told him where you came from, he and his men worked like mad to rescue you! He said something about 're-shaping your bodily defenses' and 'injecting white-cells' - I don't understand half of it - but he saved you! Thank the Goddess!"
Once again, things were happening too fast for Darc. "Hey, hey, calm down... nice to see you too, but I'm a little dizzy yet. Who is this 'Mechao'? How did he cure me? And..." His tongue suddenly felt dry as a desert. "When do we eat? I'm starving to death here."
Dohan urged him along, grinning. "The meal is served and waiting," he said. "And perhaps you could explain to the house master, that I killed his pet monster in self-defense - how was I supposed to know it was tame?"
White-clad servants escorted them to a large dining-chamber, built in stone and concrete like the rest of the mansion. Some of its walls were actually part of the volcanic rock that made up the mountain - polished into shiny black slabs which were marbled with glittering minerals. The all-female staff served Darc a veritable banquet of seafood: lobsters, sardines, codfish, crab, oysters, sea shrimps, and fruits. Robots were completely absent.
Yngve, AR - Darc Ages Page 10