Hell's Gate m-1

by David Weber

  "Fair's fair, Ghartoun, and we're lucky to have him," he pointed out. "Naldar's the best cook on any team this side of Sharona. He can even make trail-rats edible."

  "That's what you say," Shaylar muttered. "I'd almost as soon eat shoe leather."

  "A woman after my own heart," chan Hagrahyl chuckled. "At any rate, I trust Falsan's judgment. He's not going to shoot at something he can't see, but there's no point taking chances. I'd just as soon you didn't jostle his elbow when he's trying to stalk whatever's out there, either. If you head straight south, you might cross his firing line, so I'd recommend going east."

  "Agreed," Jathmar said dryly. Unlike his wife, Falsan was not a telepath, and without something like their own marriage bond, not even a Voice as strong as Shaylar could contact someone who wasn't telepathically Talented. Falsan chan Salgmun was as steady and reliable as they came, but accidents happened, and Jathmar didn't want to risk trailing a man with a loaded rifle in unknown territory. Not when the man didn't realize he was being trailed.

  "All right, I'll hike a mile out along the eastern line and work around the perimeter toward the terminus of the southern transit. That'll let Shaylar build up a detailed record of everything within six miles of our camp in that grid quarter. My terrain scans are picking up a fork in the stream, about a mile east of here. The main creek runs almost straight east, and the other branch flows south, so I'll follow those as a rough guide. I'll use the compass for directional corrections when the streams twist out of true with the baselines."

  "You always were a cautious fellow, Jathmar," chan Hagrahyl observed with another chuckle. "You've got the best directional sense of any terrain scanner I've worked with?and that's saying a lot, I might add. But you still carry a compass."

  Jathmar shrugged off the compliment to his skill, although Shaylar's grin could have cracked solid oak and her delight fizzed in his awareness.

  "A careful Mapper lives to map the next portal, my friend," he smiled. "Careless Mappers, on the other hand, can get themselves and their crews killed." He wrapped an arm around Shaylar's shoulders. "And just between you, me, and the fence we put up yesterday, I plan to survive long enough to see worlds we never dreamed were out here!"

  chan Hagrahyl grinned and clouted him across one shoulder.

  "Well spoken, Jathmar. Well spoken, indeed." Then his manner settled back into professionalism. "Will you be able to complete the baseline grid today?"

  Jathmar frowned thoughtfully up at the sky as he considered the question. Then he tossed his head in something which was almost a nod.

  "Probably," he said, "although it should take us most of the day, at a minimum. At least this," he waved one hand at the towering trees of the mature climax forest about them, "means we don't have much underbrush to slash our way through, thank the gods. But I'll be following streambeds for a fair portion of the day, and there's enough understory along these banks to slow me down a good bit. Once I start the perimeter swing down toward the southern baseline, the terrain ought to be easier going."

  Jathmar would essentially be walking along an L-shaped path that would fill in a square-shaped area of ground. Survey base grids were always square, given the nature of a terrain scanner's Talent. This morning's first square would begin the newest section of their base grid for this day-fort. Once that grid was completed, they would decide which direction to move to begin the next grid-square of exploration. Ideally, that would depend on where they were, and what valuable resources might be nearby.

  "If we can get a good look at the stars tonight," Shaylar said hopefully, "we ought to be able to place our location a little more precisely."

  "That'll make me feel better, I don't mind admitting," chan Hagrahyl agreed with a nod. "It's one thing to know approximately where you are, but I'll be happier when a star-fix pinpoints our location more accurately."

  The clear autumn day was welcome for more than the simple absence of rain. The skies had remained overcast since their arrival, almost as though the rain clouds had followed them through the portal and dogged their heels before finally attenuating with distance. That was actually possible, Jathmar mused, given the size of that portal and the collision of air masses between the two universes.

  The simple expedient of pouring water through a funnel to see which way it spiraled had told them they'd stepped through into the northern hemisphere. Based on the vegetation and wildlife, Jathmar was betting they were somewhere in the northern portion of what would have been his own birth country, back on Sharona. The massive oak trees, sugar maples, tulip poplars, and sycamores, coupled with the cardinals and chipmunks, and the majestic white-tail deer they'd spotted, all suggested a spot within perhaps two or three hundred miles of the lakeshore city of Serikai in his native Faltharia.

  If so, the five immense lakes of Faltharia?larger than many a Sharonian sea?should lie very close to their present position. Jathmar had made a private bet with himself that they would end up fixing their position of within a few days' hike of this universe's analog of Emlin Falls. Emlin was one of the two most spectacular waterfalls on Sharona?and, of course, on any of its many duplicates which had already been discovered and at least partially explored. But Jathmar wasn't thinking solely about the scenery. If they were near Emlin Falls, they wouldn't be too terribly far from some valuable iron ore deposits. Still, he didn't want to raise anyone's hopes yet, so he said nothing about his suspicion to chan Hagrahyl.

  "We'll get started, then," Jathmar told their expeditionary leader instead. "I'll plan to rendezvous back at camp around noon."

  chan Hagrahyl grunted his satisfaction and turned back to carefully finish sharpening his ax blade.

  Jathmar and Shaylar headed for the eastern end of the camp, passing Rilthan's tent, where the gunsmith was busy making field repairs to one of the rifles which had started jamming yesterday. The tools of his trade were spread out around him, along with pieces of the partially disassembled weapon. It was one of the Model 9's. The Ternathian Army had disposed of thousands of the lever-action .48-caliber rifles on the civilian market over the last several years. They were powerful, reliable weapons, especially with the newly developed "smokeless" powders, even if their tubular magazines made it unsafe to use the equally new (and ballistically far superior) "Spitzer-pointed" rounds. They were certainly sufficient for any civilian need, at any rate, and the Army had just about completed reequipping its active-duty formations with the newer bolt-action Model 10.

  Past Rilthan, the drovers were working on the pack saddles, examining their tack carefully while a dozen sturdy donkeys stood slack-footed and bored in the temporary pen. Pack animals were essential to a long expedition, and donkeys were sturdy enough to require very little veterinary care. They were also rugged enough to subsist on vegetation on which horses would have starved, although they couldn't match the speed and carrying capacity of the mules the military used as pack animals. The mingled scents of gun oil, dust, warm hide, and dung lent a pungent note to the early morning air.

  Several of the little animals shook their heads and followed Jathmar and Shaylar with hopeful eyes, wanting fresh carrots or a handful of grain. Shaylar reached across the rope that served to pen the animals into one corner of the stockade and scratched one of them between its ears. It butted her hand, begging for more, and she laughed.

  "Sorry, pet. That's all the scratching I have time for. And I'm fresh out of carrots."

  Jathmar grinned as Shaylar followed him out through the rough gate in the stockade and trailed him a short distance into the trees. Her dark hair caught the early sunlight with a silky gloss, like a blackbird's wing. She looked … not out of place in this towering timberland, but still somehow alien. Like a visitor from another, very different world, not just another universe.

  Perhaps it was just that Jathmar knew exactly what world she'd been born to, for he'd visited Shaylar's home before marrying her. The diminutive beauty who'd captured his heart was not Faltharian. Shaylar had been born in Shurkhal, a prospero
us kingdom of ancient Harkala that sprawled across a hot and arid peninsula between the eastern coast of Ricathia and the great triangular jut of land that lay a thousand miles across the Harkalian Ocean.

  Shaylar's features bore the unmistakable stamp of Harkalian ancestry, as well they might, since Shurkhal had once been the cultural center of the Harkalian Empire. Swallowed up by the massive Ternathian Empire, ancient Harkala had prospered, thanks to its placement along the trade routes running east and west. When Ternathia had finally dissolved most of its empire, retreating back to its core provinces, the Harkalian kingdoms had come into their own again as independent realms. Shaylar's family wasn't part of the wealthy traders' class, let alone the ruling families, but they had welcomed him?a genuine outsider?with open arms and that worlds-famous, genuine Shurkhali welcome that Ternathian bards once had written of so eloquently.

  Shaylar's dark eyes lifted, meeting his as she caught the nuances of his emotions.

  "Well, why wouldn't my family welcome you?" she asked softly. "You were quite a coup for a girl like me."

  "A girl like you?" He chuckled. "Do you have any idea how many Mappers at the Portal Authority I had to knock over the head to get myself assigned to you?"

  Shaylar laughed out loud.

  "Jath, you never had a chance! Not after I'd made up my mind. Which I did about five minutes after meeting you in Halidar Kinshe's office."

  He grinned, hazel eyes dancing impishly with the delight that could speed her pulse even after ten years of marriage. They'd met while interning at the Portal Authority during the early phases of their training. Halidar Kinshe was a Royal Parliamentary Representative from Shaylar's kingdom, who also held a position on the Portal Authority's board of governors. No portal survey crewman?or crewwoman?could accept employment from anyone, not even a private consortium like Chalgyn, without being bonded by the Portal Authority. And the Authority wouldn't bond anyone who hadn't completed its rigorous coursework successfully. Part of that included a political internship with a Board director, whose evaluation of an intern's performance literally made or destroyed that intern's hope of future employment.

  Shaylar had sometimes despaired of surviving those grueling years of intensive classwork, combined with field expeditions and mandatory training in things like marksmanship and self-defense. They'd taxed her to the utter limits of her intelligence, Talent, and endurance. But she'd made it?one of only sixteen women who'd ever completed the full course, and the only one allowed to join an active survey team. While Halidar Kinshe had proven himself an unexpected ally and mentor, for which she would always be grateful, it was Jathmar who'd helped get her through the classwork and the agonizing fieldwork, which was designed to weed out as many applicants as possible. She'd fallen hard for Jath, as he'd been called then, long before their graduation from the Portal Authority Academy.

  He'd done the same. He'd even adopted the customary "-ar" suffix married couples from Shurkhal added to their first names once they'd exchanged wedding vows. It wasn't a Faltharian custom, but he'd told her he wanted to follow it before she could work up the nerve to ask if he might consider it. His offer had melted her heart with joy, and not just because it had underscored how much he loved her. She'd also recognized what it would mean to her family, and she'd been more afraid than she'd been prepared to admit even to herself that her family wouldn't approve of her independent-minded Faltharian and his republican notions and dreams that her father, at least, would never fully understand.

  Her father was, at heart, a simple agriculturalist, tending admittedly large flocks of russet-wool sheep, silk-hair goats, and the surly, hump-backed dune-treaders that Shurkhali merchants had used for centuries to cross the desert trade routes between their coast and the rich markets far to the east. He couldn't understand the dream that drove Jathmar … and he understood Shaylar's dreams even less well.

  But he loved her, and he seemed to realize that her mother's dreams had been reborn and reshaped in her own heart. Shaylar's mother was a cetacean translator. A very good one, in fact, employed by one of the largest cetacean institutes on Sharona. Thalassar Kolmayr-Brintal had come to Shurkhal as a young woman, following her own dreams. She'd helped found the Cetacean Institute's Shurkhali Aquatic Realms Embassy, which was?as sheer happenstance would have it?located on land the Institute had purchased from Amin Kolmayr. Their unexpected courtship was still Institute legend.

  Shaylar had grown up with "playmates" whose playground was the long, narrow Finger Sea that lapped against Shurkhal's eastern shoreline, linking the the Mbisi Sea?by way of the Grand Ternathian Canal?with the Rindor Ocean. Dolphins and whales from the Rindor Ocean swam to the Embassy to pass messages and conduct treaty negotiations with the Cetacean Institute, by way of the Embassy. The Embassy passed those messages to the cetacean Institute's headquarters in Tajvana, as well as passing the Institute's messages to the whales and dolphins.

  Jathmar had been as delighted as an eager adolescent, not only meeting but swimming with dolphins who could hold actual conversations with Shaylar's mother. Their approval of Jathmar had gone a long way toward endearing him to her mother's heart. Like all cetacean translators, Thalassar had a high opinion of Sharona's ocean-dwelling citizens. An opinion that Shaylar?and now Jathmar?shared.

  But there wasn't all that much wealth in dune-treaders and goats, no matter how you added up the small change. And while her mother was a respected and Talented professional, there wasn't a great deal of money in cetacean translation, either. Not even at the embassy level.

  Of course, if that black liquid seeping up through the sand in her family's ancient holding proved to be as valuable as some of the Ternathian engineers thought it might, Clan Kolmayr might just find itself possessed of more wealth than their entire lineage?stretching back nearly two thousand years?had ever possessed. That was what everyone else seemed to think, at any rate, although Shaylar wasn't so sure there was enough of the "crude oil" beneath the family holdings to make it worth the developers' while. Investing the time and machinery necessary to drill wells and pump out whatever oil might be there would surely take a hefty chunk of money up front.

  And once they'd pumped out whatever was there, what would they use it for? She couldn't help feeling skeptical about those newfangled engines that used the refined products made from oil. She couldn't imagine a world where the noisy, smelly, dirty things would ever be as widespread and useful as the more wide-eyed fanatics claimed they would. But the thought of her parents and cousins wearing silks and building fancy houses and gardens was enough to tickle her sense of humor. Those images flickered across the marriage bond into Jathmar's awareness, and his eyes twinkled.

  "Of course they'll be rich as kings. Why do you think I married you, my little sand flower?"

  Shaylar thumped him solidly on the shoulder with the best glower she could produce. It wasn't very convincing. Jathmar was the least money-oriented human being she'd ever known.

  He laughed and kissed her likely, then sighed.

  "Time to get busy," he said. "Give me time to get into position before making contact. Call it at least half-an-hour, given that underbrush."

  He was eying the thick growth along the stream's steep banks.

  "Half-an-hour, then," Shaylar nodded, and he turned and headed east along the creek.

  Shaylar watched him vanish around the bend, allowed a small sigh to escape her?mostly because she wanted to go with him this morning?then shook herself firmly and returned to camp. She set up her work table, which was a lap desk that unfolded to give her a smooth writing surface. The donkey assigned to them carried it, when they were on the move, since that level writing surface was a necessity. Mapping was ninety percent of the reason they were out here, after all.

  She chose a spot on the eastern edge of camp, outside the stockade, since chan Hagrahyl had most of the survey crewmen taking their gear apart to check for damage. It was a ritual they performed each time they stopped. Frayed straps could lead to damaged equipment, wh
ich could put lives at risk, and chan Hagrahyl was too good team leader to risk that kind of sloppiness.

  While most of the crew busied themselves inside the stockade, Shaylar laid out her materials, sitting within visual range of the remaining three crewmen who were busy along the stream. Braiheri Futhai, the team's naturalist, was peering through the weeds, sketching something in his notebook. Elevu Gitel, the team's geologist, was dutifully absorbed in taking soil samples. Futhai had already laid out his collecting nets, waiting until the mist burned off and the dew dried from the grass before scooping butterflies and other insects out of the air. Both men were self-absorbed, scarcely aware of one another.

  The third man caught Shaylar's eye, rolled his own at the scientists, and gave her an irreverent grin. Boris Kasell was a former soldier, an Arpathian who'd served his time in the infantry of his native kingdom, which made him something of an oddity. Most Arpathians were horsemen, renowned for their equestrian skill and ferocity, both of which they needed to guard their borders from the powerful Uromathian kingdoms and empires south and east of them.

  Unlike chan Hagrahyl, Kasell had a wicked sense of humor. He usually drew guard duty, watching over the scientists?and her, as well?because he didn't mind the job and was extremely diligent. His almond-shaped eyes, legacy of the mixed blood in that region of Arpathia, twinkled after.

  Shaylar wore her own handgun at her hip, as did every other member of chan Hagrahyl's team. But she couldn't do her job and pay attention to her surroundings, so Kasell watched out for danger while she charted and the others did their collecting.

  The heavily forested region around them teemed with birdlife and dozens of small mammal species, one of which had already sent Futhai into fits of ecstasy, since it was a completely unknown type.