The rangers brought Susannah the tail of the animal that had attacked the child. They had wrapped it in heavy cloth and helped her transfer the bloody tendril of flesh and scales into a plastic bag with great care to avoid touching it. Susannah packed it away according to Aguidran’s express order, though she longed to feed a chunk of it into her analyzer. When the rangers had gone, she sat by the wagon, staring up at the Cluster. Megan snored between the wheels with the apprentices.
“Show me your world,” murmured Ghirra, appearing silently at her side.
Susannah gazed blankly at the spectacle of stars. “I can’t,” she admitted with a small laugh. “I can’t even tell you which direction to look in. Probably you can’t even see our sun from here. Ask Taylor when we get back, or Weng.”
“TaylorDanforth, he studies about this things, worlds, stars?”
“Worlds, mostly. What they’re made of and how they got that way.”
“He comes also from your world?”
Susannah smiled. “Tay? Of course. Why?”
Ghirra held up his hand. “He is like I am, more dark even.”
“Yes. Black, he would call it, and it comes in many shades. There’s lots of people on Earth with skin the exact color of yours.”
“I could be there, and they not see me different?”
Susannah’s smile warmed. “A haircut and a change of clothes, nobody’d be the wiser.”
Ghirra considered this for a moment, then nodded. “I will have talk with TaylorDanforth about this thing of worlds.”
Aguidran drove the caravan hard for the two throws of remaining darkness but received few complaints. The hjalk were reasonably fresh and the travellers eager to cover as much ground as possible before the return of the burning sun. Megan estimated that they made twenty-five kilometers the first leg and a whopping twenty-eight on the second by shortening the dinner rest period and extending the period of travel from twelve hours to fifteen.
By the beginning of the third throw, the velvet black sky had softened to dark gray. The Cluster fire dimmed with its attendant stars and the broken horizon ghosted into view.
“Amazingly, the darkness hardly slows their growth rate,” said Susannah over breakfast, sorting through the few plant samples she had been able to collect in the dark, under the wary eyes of the ranger perimeter watch. “It helps answer one of my questions, though. With flora already evolved to survive this protracted light-dark cycle, some clever selective breeding might produce the fully dark-adapted varieties they grow in the Caves.”
“You mean genetic engineering isn’t the only explanation?” Megan shook her head, grinning. “Sometimes I think you biologists have forgotten about the good old-fashioned farmer.” Her eyes followed a ranger scouting party as they loped past in search of their guildmaster.
Susannah held up a thick, prickled knob. “Farmers didn’t create lush tropical bushes that metamorphize into this when a dry spell arrives.”
“You’re sure it’s the same plant?”
“Same name. Ghirra said so. He was quite surprised when he realized that I expected to find separate plants filling the various ecological niches. The way he explained it, more or less, since the Sisters can produce any possible weather in any possible location, all living things must be able to adapt quickly and completely in order to survive the whims of the Goddesses.”
“Makes sense—the freakish environment selecting for flexibility?”
Aguidran came pacing down the line with her brother and one of the scouts. Ghirra carried his breakfast tray, spooning grain mash into his mouth as he walked, as if determined that at least once a cycle, he would eat a meal while it was still warm.
Aguidran crouched before the two women and waved the young scout closer. He gave a shy nod of greeting but remained standing, thin and eager, leaning on the stout wooden club he carried during his watch.
“The guildsmen has find a thing,” Ghirra explained. He gestured to the southeast. “Away some way.”
“A thing?” asked Megan.
“A thing not our making. Your making, he think.”
Megan and Susannah exchanged glances.
“What sort of thing?” asked Megan. “How big?”
Ghirra conferred with the scout. “More big than a hjalk wagon.”
“Maybe he could draw it?”
But the young man’s willing scratches in the dust only mystified them further.
Susannah shrugged. “So we ought to go take a look.”
Ghirra murmured with Aguidran, talking her indecisive frown into a reluctant nod. “We must take water,” he noted finally.
Megan and Susannah refilled their field canteens from the kegs strapped to the side of the wagon. Ampiar grew more solemn than usual and Xifa fidgeted, her cheery round face tight with worry as she watched them prepare, gently clasping Dwingen’s shoulder to keep him from asking to go along. Ghirra smiled at their concern and slung his water jug gaily across his back. They fell in behind the waiting scout and moved out into the greying night.
The walking was hot and dry but not arduous. Past floods seemed to have neglected this central portion of the Dop Arek. The ground was flat and hard as baked ceramic, marred only by the fine-lined cracking of its dull glaze of dust and sand.
“Damn, it’s desolate out here,” said Megan nervously.
“A proper surface for a gameboard.” Susannah imagined giant dice rolling like tumbleweed across the hardpan. The odd half-light was a woolly limbo between the realities of day and night. She would not have been too surprised to see the pale reflective ground fade into the angular black-and-white of a checkerboard.
The scout led them southeast of the caravan route, miraculously steering a certain path across the featureless landscape. Eventually, the rim of a wide ravine appeared suddenly out of the pearly gloom, part of the branching system of a dry watercourse. The drop was short but steep, the boulder strewn bank as black as pitch. The scout pointed, then shyly touched Susannah’s elbow and pointed again, eager to prove that the mysterious object of his report was not imagined.
Deep in the shadow of the far bank, a lighter colored, triangular shape nestled among piles of rock and uprooted brush.
“Well, well, well,” exclaimed Susannah softly.
“Where?” Megan scanned the semidarkness unsuccessfully.
“What?”
“I think it’s A-Sled. Or what’s left of it. Let’s take a look.”
She scrambled down the rubbled bank, the scout keeping anxious pace with her. His eyes raked the rocks and ravine bottom for signs of reptilian motion.
“It is!” she called back from the far side. She approached the pale hulk and laid her hand on its mud-encrusted skin as if it were a sleeping animal that might stir to her touch. She traced the neatly stencilled registry numbers. The Sled’s machined familiarity was like a shock of cold water waking her from a dream where mankind hurried along the ground but gave no thought to flying. She wondered how McPherson was, ashamed to realize that she had hardly thought about her in the last three weeks, and not much more about Taylor or Weng or Clausen.
Emil. Oh, lord. She wished Megan hadn’t told her that Clausen had a gun.
“How is it?” Megan called breathlessly, hurrying across the ravine in Ghirra’s wake.
“Okay, I guess. Hard to tell in this light.” Susannah walked the Sled’s full length. The nose was badly misshapen, but the wings showed only fine-line cracks and the tail mostly intact. “It’s real dirty but seems to have ridden the waters fairly bravely.”
Ghirra ticked at the smoothly resistant hull with a thumbnail. “This is not like glass,” he commented.
“Plastic,” said Megan.
“How is it here if Ibi…?”
“Oh. We brought two Sleds, This is the one the flood washed away.” Megan reached to feel around the edges of the transparent blister in front of the tail. “Wonder if the com still works.”
“You know how to fly one of these things?” asked Susanna
h.
Megan laughed. “No. You? They don’t want us scientist types knowing how to get around by ourselves.”
When Ghirra had walked away toward the nose to peer into the dusty cockpit, Susannah said quietly, “We’ve got to get it back to the Lander somehow.”
“Do you think they’ll object?”
“In this heat? The extra load and effort?”
“Well, why don’t you go to work convincing Ghirra while I clean off the com and try to raise CRI.”
The open compartment was littered with flood debris. A cracking layer of dried mud roughened the flooring. Megan heaved herself onto the wing, then over the edge of the cargo hold, and clambered forward through matted brush and water-shaped mounds of gravel.
The upholstery was brittle from weathering. It crackled in complaint as she sat down in front of the instrument panel. She tapped at the once transparent housings. Dessicated yellow scum flaked away to reveal a more stubborn layer of mud beneath.
Megan dug at it with a thumbnail. The mud had hardened around the switches. “Might as well be set in concrete,” she muttered.
She spat on her fingertip and tried to soften the coating, then searched among the scatterings on the cockpit floor for a rock to chip it away. She decided it was really not much different from freeing a shard of ancient pottery from its prison of sediment, but hoped it would not take as long.
She was struggling with an immobilized pressure switch when Susannah sauntered back, victorious from her conference.
“He’s sent the scout back to request a tow for the Sled,” she reported. “He has a bet on with him that Aguidran says no, but I think that’s to get the boy working harder to convince her. They both figure it’ll cost nearly a throw if the caravan waits for us, so we’ll have to play catch-up. Any luck with CRI?”
Megan sat back in disgust. “I think the insides are solid mud.”
Susannah scratched at the yellow film rimming the windscreen. “Needs a wash all right.”
“So what now?”
“Ghirra says we sit tight and watch out for the creepy-crawlies.”
The young scout returned several hours later with two hjalk and a driver. Aguidran had agreed to the tow, but promised to abandon the Sled without question the moment it became too much of a burden. Ghirra paid off his bet with a satisfied nod. He set them to digging out the Sled, marveling particularly over the hard rubber of the wheels as he and the scout freed the landing gear from the encasing debris. Once loose and hitched to the hjalk, the lightweight craft bumped along quite willingly on its own wheels.
“Well, that was easy,” commented Megan as the team hauled the Sled up out of the ravine.
Susannah made light of Meg’s suspicious frown, but her laugh rang too loudly in the pale half-light. Ghirra was somber, too, as the scout pointed out that with the approach of dawn, the heated air had assumed a sluggish sort of motion, too fitful for a breeze but enough to send occasional dust devils scurrying across the dry ground.
Susannah coughed and took a long gulp from her canteen, then stoppered it tightly. She noticed that the scout’s worried eye scanned the full circle of the horizon in more than a casual search. The driver, a weathered older man, sucked on his blue talisman bead and urged the hjalk along as fast as they could manage.
19
“Amnesty?” Clausen laughed harshly. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
Danforth settled his head on his forearms while McPherson massaged his bed-stiff back. She was an efficient masseuse but ungentle, and her hands were hot and damp against his skin. “Well, what’s he done, Emil, really? Ripped off some equipment, caused a little inconvenience. Nothing lethal.”
Clausen swiveled away from the computer table. “Tay,” he said with sour disbelief, “a month ago you were ready to strangle the kid if he so much as looked at you. Now when he’s really fucking us over, you want to forgive and forget?”
Danforth shrugged beneath McPherson’s busy hands. “I need him down here to translate.”
“Fine. He can translate from the brig.”
“The brig, Mr. Clausen?” Beyond the edge of the lamplight, Weng’s head inclined to the reedy sound of chanting, now drifting almost perpetually from the Sawl encampment at the cliff base. The darkness over the fields was lightening into gray.
“Figuratively speaking, of course, Commander.”
“Are you suggesting that we actually incarcerate Mr. Ibiá?”
Clausen turned back to the console. “Christ. You people.”
“Well,” said McPherson, “I wouldn’t mind you spending less time on Stav and more time fixing the Sled with me.”
“The kid’s crazy, Emil,” Danforth rumbled reasonably, as McPherson pummeled the small of his back. “He’s not responsible.”
The prospector tapped the keypad impatiently. “He’s responsible enough to plan and carry off a well-organized theft, then cover his tracks fairly skillfully, electronically and otherwise. You think he’s just fooling around, Tay? Playing little kid’s tricks on us? You’re the fool if you do.” Clausen shook his head. “He’s deep into something and I damn well want to know what it is!”
McPherson nodded toward the wilting fields, where the meager Sawl home guard were still hard at work laying irrigation pipes. “I think they’re helping him.”
“Of course they’re helping him!” Clausen fumed.
“They?” said Danforth.
“The Sawls.” McPherson dug into the muscles knotting around his spine. “They’re real helpful bringing in the Sled and all, but I’m sure they’re hiding him. I went up there with Emil, you know? There’s a whole new rock slide just where CRI said Stav was supposed to be. Now, how could he do a rock slide by himself?”
Clausen raised a briefly ironic brow but let her query go by. He returned his concentration to the keypad and a screen full of sensing data.
Danforth stirred irritably. McPherson gave him a final slap and helped him as he struggled to turn over and sit up.
“Those little Sawls seem to be hiding just everything up there,” he murmured, while reminding himself privately that Clausen’s obsession with the hunt for Ibiá conveniently occupied the prospector away from the Underbelly. CRI was then left free to help Danforth pursue his scientific quarry.
“There’s a bit of a breeze coming up,” Weng noted, coming in from the half-light.
“Breeze?” Danforth sniffed the air like an eager dog.
Weng moved about with distracted purpose, collecting dirty dishes left from the dinner meal. “I will need some power for the sonic, Mr. Clausen. We can’t afford to use water to wash up anymore.”
“Maybe when the Sawls get their pipes laid, we can borrow from them,” McPherson proposed.
“Emil, have CRI check wind speeds,” Danforth interrupted. “We haven’t had real air movement in weeks!”
Weng scraped drying food out of compartmented plates. “Such waste.”
“This food tastes pretty yucky now,” regretted McPherson.
“A pity Mr. Clausen won’t stoop to applying his culinary talents to ship’s rations.”
“Nothing can come of nothing,” Clausen replied tartly.
“Anything on those wind speeds?” Danforth grunted at the pain in his chest wound as he levered his rangy body into his makeshift wheelchair by the strength of his’ arms alone.
“How about magnetic and gravity field data?” Clausen replied. “Got some interesting fluctuations there.”
The computer spoke up of her own accord. “Local winds are from the northeast, Dr. Danforth, building slowly. Now intermittent at four to seven mph. Current local temperature is ninety-three degrees.”
“Thank you, CRI. Keep an eye on it for me, will you?” With effort, Danforth hand-wheeled the two-cart into the work area, refusing all help as had become his habit. He did allow Weng to adjust his position at her worktable and push his papers within reach. She perched on a crate opposite him, and he thought of a tall and steady-eyed heron.
“CRI’s done prelims so far, vertical profiles for each weather station. I’d hoped the new data would answer the questions, not just confirm them, but I’m afraid the results were what I’m coming to expect: they don’t fit my model and they don’t make sense.”
Weng made encouraging listening noises while slowly covering her sheet of paper with numerical jottings that might have been formulae, or something else entirely.
“For instance,” Danforth continued, “Global Theta’s stationed over the northern ocean. You’d expect to find a lot of water there, at all altitudes. But the instruments say it’s confined to near the surface.
“Also, you’d expect to find less water as you move away from the ocean into the drier areas, water vapor being drawn there from the ocean to support global equilibrium. Instead, we’ve got water moving all over the place, apparently at random, apparently as isolated local phenomena.” He settled back against his cushion of blankets, finding a kind of wondering calm within the depths of his frustration. “Now ain’t that the damnedest? A system refusing to move toward equilibrium, I mean, refusing. It’s the same thing we noticed with the temperature, with the heat often moving away from cooler areas instead of toward them.”
“Heat moving toward heat, water moving around at random.”
He nodded, grimacing at the illogic of it. “Like that damned freak thunderstorm, in apparent violation of dynamical laws, of basic physics.” He nodded again, pensively, like an old man praying. “Something’s got to be pouring a hell of a lot of energy into holding this system away from equilibrium.”
“Your X-factor again?”
“Yeah, for lack of a better culprit.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “I promised myself to look for naturally occurring patterns. Well, here’s one I can no longer deny: if you combine all the dynamical data, a clear trajectory asserts itself. Except for the dry period between the flooding and the hail, when some east-to-west zonal movement actually occurred, all the movement is along that northeast-southwest axis.”
Reign of Fire Page 17