Cimma quivered to attention, like a hunting dog which had heard the call of the wild. Her eyes went far away for a second, and then refocused on the present and met Ledin’s with resolve. “Let’s go!” she said.
“We need to space shuttle up to the orbital station,” Ledin told her. “Arcan can’t transport us off Kwaide itself.”
Cimma nodded. “We will need a change of clothes.” She thought back to her previous travels on Xiantha. “And I will bring a few other things. Xiantha is a very different world to this.”
Ledin nodded. “We leave in ten minutes,” he warned. “You might not know your son, but I do, and I don’t think there is any doubt what his intentions are!”
Cimma felt a shaft of pain in her heart. “No.” She ran up the steps of her cabin to get the provisions they might need, and touched the magmite of her husband’s sarcophagus on the way out with all her fingertips. “So many things have happened,” she murmured. “How you would have hated the world we have now!” She looked around slowly. “Take care of Kwaide for me.” Then she was out of the door, and on her way.
THEY ARRIVED ON Xiantha just where Cimma had asked to be taken. The corrals of the canths at the canth farm.
As soon as he spotted the new arrivals, the man who kept canths came over. He examined both of his new visitors with some care, and then his face broke into a smile. “The Sellite 256th house!” he exclaimed. “This is a great honour, indeed. I was privileged to meet your daughter only a few days ago.”
“Canth keeper! It has been a very long time. I no longer belong to the 256th house of Sell. I am now known only as Cimma. I have no honours.”
The man bowed low. “As you prefer, Cimma, but I note your colours, and I think that you have very many honours in your present life. Your canth will be happy to see you again. You bring us multiple shades.”
Then he noticed something hovering just to the right of his face, and jumped. “What in Sacras is that?”
Ledin looked around. “This is the visitor,” he told the man. “At least, this is a machine which represents the visitor. Err … it is complicated.”
“I wouldn’t even try to explain it,” said the video camera in disparaging tones. “He is clearly a low-level 3b and I don’t suppose he would understand.”
“A machine has no colour,” the Xianthan said darkly.
The machine suddenly disappeared, activating the blending mechanism. “Now I have no colour,” it said, the voice emanating from the empty space in front of them.
The canth keeper gasped. “This is powerful magic,” he said. “You are able to decolourize at will. You are a superior being.”
The sphere reappeared before them, and gave a crackle of pleasure. “I have to agree with you,” it said. “Although, since you yourself are so primitive, it is only to be expected.”
The scenery in front of them shimmered, and Arcan appeared, taking his usual outworld form of a diaphanous shape made of two bubbles. The canth keeper took a step back. “And what is th-this?” he stammered.
Ledin again found himself required to explain. Cimma was unresponsive, he saw, and seemed to be waiting for something to happen. “This is Arcan, the orthogel entity,” he told the man. “You may have heard of him.”
“Indeed I have.” The canth keeper bowed so low that his forelock touched the ground, while looking at the shimmering shape before him. “I discern a myriad of colours in your person. You honour us with your presence.”
“Of course he does!” the visitor whirred, through its hovering video camera. “And so do I, of course. We are both type 2 species.”
The man who kept canths seemed rather confused, but turned to Cimma and inclined his portly figure before her. “Would you like me to take you to find your canth?”
Cimma held up one hand. “That will not be necessary. It is coming, I think, and I believe it is not alone.”
The canth keeper’s eyebrows nearly shot out of the top of his skull as he heard the pounding of hooves. He almost ran to open one of the gates, and then stopped, amazed. He put his head onto one side, and then ran to another gate, leaving it open. Then he stopped and listened again, and with an expression of utter astonishment, a third.
They all watched and listened as the hooves came nearer. First a sorrel canth came jauntily up to one gate, and sidled over to Cimma, dancing on its toes, and looking delighted to see her. She lay her face against the animal’s, and was obviously equally pleased to see it again.
Then a canth approached the second gate. It was the colour of sand, with a black mane and tail, and black markings running up its legs. It walked directly up to Ledin, and lowered its neck in front of him. The Kwaidian looked disconcerted.
“This is a yellow dun,” the man who kept canths told him. “It has chosen you as its rider, and is now linked to you for your lifetime. You must have much colour in your life to attract such an animal.”
Ledin stroked the silky hair on its shoulder. The man who kept canths bustled to provide them with saddles and head straps. When he had finished, Ledin pulled himself onto his mount, following Cimma’s example.
A distant pounding of hooves could still be heard, coming closer, from the last gate.
“But who …? I don’t understand …” said the Xianthan. Then his voice dried up as he saw which animal was approaching. It was a huge specimen, pitch black from the tip of its nose to the tip of its tail, and it was walking with complete confidence through the gate.
“I … I …” The canth keeper was speechless.
The animal came boldly through the gate, ignored both the other animals present, together with their riders, and walked right up to the diaphanous bubbles which were the orthogel entity. It went down on one knee in front of Arcan, and blew air softly out of its muzzle in a whicker of welcome.
“But … but how is this possible?” The canth keeper whispered. “No black has ever chosen a rider. How can this be?”
Cimma too, looked taken aback. “Arcan? You don’t need to ride, you can transport yourself wherever you wish to go. This is very strange.”
The figure that was Arcan scintillated with colour, which seemed to reflect on the glossy blackness of the canth’s coat, making it appear multi-coloured too. “I do not need to ride,” the orthogel entity said proudly, “but this animal is welcome to join me. It is an excellent specimen of its kind.”
“But Arcan will live for thousands of years,” Cimma told the Xianthan. “And adopted canths live for exactly as long as their riders. How can a canth live for so long?”
“I do not know. Perhaps it will not. We must not expect to understand all that occurs around us. Our own blinkers may prevent us from seeing the truth.”
“Then the black canth will go with us?”
“Undoubtedly. It has bonded with the orthogel entity, and it will accompany him until he leaves Xiantha. I have no doubt of that.”
“Then let it come. Perhaps its presence will turn out to have a meaning,” said Cimma.
“We have been waiting thousands of years to see a black adopt a rider,” said the man who kept canths. “It is a momentous day for Xiantha, and will be remembered for many generations.”
Ledin had only time to smile his thanks at the man before Arcan decided to move them all to the spaceport. The ground in front of them flickered momentarily, and then disappeared. The canth farm regained its usual tranquility as the whole group, including the man who kept canths, was transported over to the spaceport, the black canth seemingly unfased by the process, and the others following his lead, though tossing their heads.
ATHERON AND XENON drew up to the spaceport with dismay. There was no sign of either their own or Six’s space shuttle. They had no way to get off the planet.
Atheron looked around with a thundery expression. “The orthogel entity!” he snarled. “That means we will have to change our plans.”
“But you brought one of the old ones with you, didn’t you?” Xenon asked, in a worried tone.
At
heron pulled out an orange canister from his robes. “I certainly did,” he said. “But we will have to be very careful how we act.” He drummed his fingers against the console of the magsled. “Very careful.”
“But—”
“Be quiet, Xenon! I am thinking!”
“I was only going to—”
“I said, be quiet! You can have nothing important to say.”
Xenon did not agree with this last statement, but felt it would not be politic to say so. Since arriving on Xiantha his mentor seemed to have lost much of his superficial good humour, and it was not unknown for him to take drastic action if his orders were disobeyed. Xenon subsided into a resentful silence. He still needed Atheron’s support at the moment, but just wait until he was head of Sell. Then … then there would no longer be any need to kowtow to this, or any other, person. A grim smile crossed his face. He and Amanita would be back on Valhai, back where they belonged, back as leaders of the rest of Sell.
So he waited with some semblance of patience while his partner in crime came up with a new plan. He was good at waiting, he decided. Amanita had helped him with that. She had explained that it was a mistake to expect instantaneous rewards, that it was necessary to plan very carefully if one expects the fruits of one’s enterprise to drop neatly into one’s hands. She had drummed it into his head. He would not fail now. Not after so many sacrifices.
At last Atheron lifted his head, breathed a long breath out into the sunny air, and gave one of his deceptively sweet smiles. “Right!” he said.
“You have a plan?”
“Of course I have a plan!” The Sellite snapped, “My resourcefulness is legendary! Why, I even successfully planned to—”
“What?”
“—No. Nothing. I have forgotten what I was going to say. It is of no matter. Our next step is clear to me.”
“We run?”
“As you so succinctly put it, we run. But not just anywhere. We will run in a particular direction, to draw our opponents all to one place. Once we are there … well, we will put our little plan into operation. There need be no change to our original plan. It will simply be moved to a different venue. They will be forced to choose the path we want them to. And that will give us the chance to make this mission a complete success. Luckily I still have a canister of the first generation of orange compound with me, even if that alien has managed to remove the shuttles.” Atheron gazed around him, with a pleased expression.
“So where are we going?”
“The Xianthes, of course. Where else?” Atheron put his fingers to the controls, and entered in the new course. The magsled rose above the ground again, and began to accelerate towards the towering mass of rock to the north of their position. Xenon looked ahead of him eagerly. To the Xianthes, then. After all, they were said to be the greatest wonder of the binary system.
SIX AND DIVA looked around the deserted spaceport with a feeling of desperation. They were far too late. Atheron and Xenon were long gone, although there was at least some comfort knowing that they must still be somewhere on Xiantha. The Xianthan hosts who had brought Six and Diva this far were tracking backwards and forwards around the perimeter of the spacefield, but the truth was that they had no idea which direction the Sellites had taken, and nobody knew if Grace was still alive or not. They both got down from the sled dispiritedly, and stared at the slots where the space shuttles had been. Six tossed a stone across the empty expanse, and they listened as it skittered aimlessly to a halt.
“What now?” Diva’s voice was listless.
Six gave a sigh. “We keep looking, of course.”
“Well, du-urr, dummy! Of course we keep looking. Where exactly, oh wise one?”
“If your munificence doesn’t know, then how do you expect a lowly no-name to figure it out?”
“True. Very true.”
The voice which interrupted both of them was hot with anger. “Perhaps I could be of help?”
“Ledin!” they said in unison, turning to look at the speaker. Six walked quickly over to the Kwaidian pilot, and clapped him on the back, hardly noticing the rest of the group which had arrived with him.
“I let Grace go off with both of you,” Ledin said tightly, catching Six’s arm and holding it in a vice-like grip. “And you were supposed to take care of her. What in Sacras happened? What were you thinking of?”
Six narrowed his eyes. “You ‘let’ her go? I don’t think so, my friend. You couldn’t have stopped her if you had tried. And you made no effort at all to keep her on Kwaide.”
Ledin dropped the arm, and glared. “Of course I didn’t. She wouldn’t have listened to me if I had. But I did assume that you would be looking after her, First Six!”
“Don’t call me that! I told you! And I wish you well of looking after her. Grace is almost as independent as Diva here.”
“Excuse me? You said that like it was a bad thing!” said Diva, putting her hands on her hips and staring pugnaciously at the two men. They both looked skywards and ignored her.
“What autonomy have those sled things they are using? Do they need servicing, or fuel, or what?” asked Ledin.
“Apparently not,” Six was morose. “The damn things can run for thousands of kilometres without refueling. As long as they stay in northern latitudes, that is, where the magnetic lines run almost vertically, they could be anywhere. If they head south I gather they will use up fuel much more quickly.”
“Yes, but there aren’t really any places they would want to go to in the south of Xiantha, are there? You know what the Sellites are like!”
“Don’t I just! You are right. They won’t go and hide in a shack, for sure. And if they want to get rid of Grace they will still want it to look as if it could have been an accident, even if everybody knows that it wasn’t.”
“So they will want somewhere public, a place where accidents can happen, a place …” Here Ledin trailed off, because they all knew exactly where that place was. Their eyes tracked over towards the north pole, towards the gigantic mole which soared up through the clouds.
“The Xianthes!” shouted Six. “They have taken her to the Xianthes!”
“What are we waiting for, then?” demanded Ledin. “How long will it take us to get there?”
The others had come up to them during this last exchange, and Arcan shimmered. “No time at all,” he said. “Cimma has visited them, so I can see where to take you all.”
Diva put up a hand. “Wait, Arcan! Since you have brought all these other canths, could you pick ours up too? Six and I left them just outside the Donor Headquarters.” She showed him where, and moments later two very surprised canths appeared, snorting at the change. Then the entire group, canths, magsleds, Xianthans and all, disappeared again. They were heading out to the Xianthes.
BACK ON VALHAI, the plan that Atheron had been waiting to put into effect went operative. He had decided to leave his next attack until he himself were off the planet since his last, failed attempt had left him under suspicion. Although nobody had openly challenged him about his possible participation, he had felt some uncertainty towards his persona on the part of the people nearest to Mandalon 50. This time he had been determined not to leave himself exposed to accusations. No, this time he had made sure that there could be no possible link to him!
The one guard who had steadfastly held loyal to him had been briefed over and over again, and knew exactly how he was required to act. Everything had been calculated down to the last detail, and Atheron had allowed for all contingencies. If, as he hoped, the orthogel entity tried to intervene, the plan would be doubly successful. Word of Arcan’s rescue of Mandalon in the tunnels beneath the Valhai Voting Dome had reached his ears, and he was determined to thwart the alien’s plans this time around. Before he had left Valhai for Xiantha he had triple-checked each last little detail.
The guard had hung behind as his shift finished, and then had managed to secrete himself inside one of the large state wardrobes which housed the ornate garments d
eemed necessary for important occasions. Even though Mandalon 50 was only a boy, the idea of him appearing in public without the lavish robes due to his position was unthinkable. As soon as his father had been killed, an army of tailors and seamstresses had been set into motion on Cesis to make sure that his apparel was of sufficiently high quality. The robe he was to wear for the Second Valhai Votation, for example, would take ten embroiderers two full years to make, for the whole garment was to be embroidered with orbs and sceptres in fine gold thread. Such clothes needed great care, and they had their own wardrobes, where the garments were tended to and nurtured as if they were small children.
Gorgamon, the guard, waited patiently inside the wardrobe. He occupied his time thinking about this usurper to the position of head of Sell. He hated the very thought of a young child leading Sell! How could a brat of ten know what decisions had to be taken? No, Sell needed a man at its head who was erudite, educated and able to think faster and more clearly than anybody else in the system. And Gorgamon knew exactly who that person was; he had been watching his progress for years, helping the great man on his way whenever he could. Gorgamon breathed a content but silent sigh. Only Atheron knew how much one particular guard had been able to help! Only Gorgamon had stayed loyal to Atheron after the debacle of the meeting in the Valhai Voting Dome! Other, newer allies had come and gone, but Gorgamon was the first and most trusted aide. And Atheron had promised him head of the security house. This was to be a new skyrise, one which would concentrate on keeping Valhai free from undesirable influences once Atheron had taken control of the planet. The guard found himself grinning in the dark at the prospects that appointment brought. Not only would he and his family have a new and prestigious skyrise, but he would have the most technologically advanced equipment at his disposal. There would be nothing that happened on Sell which he wouldn’t know about. It was a dizzying prospect, and one to be striven for at all costs. Tonight’s work was just one more step along the road to his vindication as a leading Sellite, and he was looking forward to putting a definitive end to the short life of this young meddler. He squeezed his huge fingers into fists and then relaxed them again. The puny boy would be no match for him! He let the hours wash by him, lost in the pleasant anticipation of his very just rewards.
Ammonite Planets (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #1-3 Page 75