by Julian May
“Richard,” Martha said breathlessly. “Take me with you tomorrow.”
“Oh, Marty-babe…” he began.
Madame intervened. “You may not, Martha. There is a risk, even though Richard is confident.”
“She’s right,” he said, taking Martha’s hand. It was cold in spite of the warm evening. The firelight threw cruel shadows on the engineer’s sunken cheeks and eyes. “Once I’ve checked her out, then we’ll go for a spin. Promise. We can’t let anything happen to you, kid… Who’d put that damn zapper back together?”
Martha moved closer to Richard and stared into the fire. “I think the Spear will work. The powerpack shows half-charge, which is really remarkable, and none of the tiny little internal components of the lance unit seems to have been damaged. The main difficulties have been cleaning out the barrel and replacing the chewed-up cable. It was lucky that the flyer had some stuff that seemed compatible. I’ll need one more day to finish and reassemble, and then we can test it and begin practice.”
“How powerful do you think it will be?” Claude asked.
“There are several options, I believe,” the engineer said. “The lowest setting is the only one lacking a caplock, so they might have used that for their ritual fighting. I’d guess its power to be within light-pistol range. The four higher settings under the lock must have been for special purposes. At the top of the line, we could have us a portable photon cannon.”
Richard whistled.
“I don’t think we dare test it on max unless, we want to risk draining the powerpack,” Martha said.
“No chance of recharging?” asked Richard.
“I can’t get the pack open,” she admitted. “It takes a special tool and I was afraid to lark around with it. We’ll just have to save our big zap for the war.”
The gnarled branches of the maquis burned with a pungent resinous odor, snapping and throwing sparks that had to be smacked out. Only a few insects buzzed in the drought-stricken jungle. When it was full dark, the remaining birds and small mammals in the area would come to the spring to drink, and Felice and her bow would glean food for tomorrow.
The blonde athlete said, “I have Lugonn’s place nearly clean now. There’s no sign of the torc.”
Only Martha was able to voice a regret.
Richard said, “Should be plenty of the things lying around if we make good at Finiah. You won’t have to beg the little King for one. Just reach down on the battlefield and grab.”
“Yes,” sighed Felice.
“How have you planned to mount the Spear, Richard?” Claude asked. “I can’t see how we could rig up a pilot-operated trigger given the short time we have left.”
“There’s really only one way to handle it. I hover the aircraft and somebody else shoots the zapper out the open belly hatch. I suppose we could trust one of Chief Burke’s bully boys to…”
The old man said softly, “Every exopaleontologist knows how to handle big zappers. How do you think we cut the rocks to get the specimens out? I’ve carved up a few cliffs in my day, even moved a mountain now and then to get at some really choice fossils.”
Richard chortled. “I’ll be damned. Okay, you’re hired. We’ll be a two-man crew.”
“Three,” said Madame. “You will need me to provide a metapsychic screen for the flyer.”
“Angélique!” Claude protested.
“There is no helping it,” she said. “Velteyn and his Flying Hunt would see you hovering there.”
“You’re not going!” the old man stormed. “Not a chance! We’ll come over Finiah at high altitude, then drop down vertically and take ’em by surprise.”
“You won’t.” Madame was implacable. “They will detect you hovering. We can only hope to surprise them if I conceal the vessel metapsychically during its initial maneuvers. I must go. There is nothing more to be said.”
Claude got to his feet and stood hulking over her. “The hell there isn’t. Do you think I’d let you fly into the middle of a fire-fight? Richard and I have one chance in a hundred of getting out with whole skins. We’re going to need every gram of concentration to do the job and then get out. We can’t afford to be worrying about you.”
“Tchah! Worry about yourself. Radoteur! Who is the leader of this group? C’est moi! Whose plan is it, de toute façon, for the entire attack? Mine! I go!”
“I won’t let you, you stubborn old she-goat!”
“Try to stop me, senile Yankee-Polack viellard!”
“Shrew!”
“Salaud!”
“Ball-breaking old bat!”
“Espèce de con!”
“Shut the hell up!” thundered Felice. “The pair of you are as bad as Richard and Martha!”
The pirate grinned and Martha turned away, nibbling her lip to suppress laughter. Claude’s face blackened with embarrassed rage, and Madame was stunned out of her hauteur.
Richard said, “You two listen to me. The rho-field of the flux-tapper will prevent any of the Tanu Hunt from touching the aircraft. It’ll probably deflect lances and arrows and whatnot, too. So all we really have to worry about is mental attack. For countering that, our only hope is Madame’s metapsychic screen.”
“If I had a torc…” Felice muttered.
Richard asked Madame, “How long can you hold out against a bunch of ’em?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “We will be disguised as vapor until we direct the first blasts at the city wall. Then they will know an enemy is there, and many minds will be brought to bear upon my little screen. It is certain to be pierced. We can hope that this will happen after we strike at the mine. Once this is done, we can flee at top speed.”
“How fast can Velteyn’s outfit fly, anyhow?” Richard asked.
“Not much faster than a chaliko at full gallop. The mind of this Tanu champion is able to levitate his own steed and those of twenty-one warriors through PK, psychokinesis. There is only one other who is capable of such a feat and that is Nodonn, the Tanu Battlemaster and Lord of Goriah in Brittany. He can support fifty. There are others who can levitate themselves individually and a few who can carry one or two other persons. But none is strong enough to support many riders save these two.”
“If I had a torc!” Felice wailed. “Oh, wait! Just wait!”
“We’ll leave ’em in the dust,” Richard scoffed. “A couple of zaps to take out the wall on either end of the city, maybe one for the Tanu quarter to demoralize the opposition, then the big zorch for the mine. If that Spear really is a portable cannon, we can melt the place to a slag heap.”
“And come home safely ourselves,” Claude said, staring into the fire. “While our friends fight it out on the ground.”
“Velteyn will try to defend his realm,” Madame warned them. “He is exceptionally strong in creativity, and there are strong coercers in his company. We will be in great danger. Nevertheless, we will go. And we will succeed.” There was a loud snap and an ember flew through the air like a meteor, landing in front of the old woman. She got up and stamped upon it with great thoroughness. “I believe it is time for us to retire. We will want to get up early for Richard’s test flight.”
Martha rose from her place and said to Richard, “Come for a little walk with me before we settle down.”
“Conserve your strength, chérie,” Madame warned.
“We’ll just go a little way,” Richard said.
He slipped one arm around the engineer’s waist to steady her. They went out of the pool of firelight, leaving the others still talking, and walked to the far side of the camp clearing. Only stars illumined the tangle of maquis, for the new moon had gone down. Above them was the overgrown slope with its narrow trail leading to the crater rim. They could not see the refurbished flyer, but they knew it was up there waiting.
“We’ve been happy, Richard. Can you figure it? A pair like us.”
“Two of a kind, Marty. I love you, babe. I never thought it could happen.”
“All you needed was a go
od old-fashioned sexy girl.”
“Fool.” he said, and kissed her eyes and cold lips.
“When it’s all over, do you think we could come back?”
“Back?” he repeated stupidly.
“After the Finiah attack. You know we’re going to have to teach others how to fly the machine and maintain it so that they can carry out the other two phases of Madame’s plan. But you and I needn’t worry about those. Well have paid our dues. We can have them fly us back here, and then…”
She turned to him and he held her. Too frail and racked by cramps and hemorrhage to endure any further intercourse, she had still insisted upon consoling him. They spent every night in each other’s arms, sharing one of the decamole huts.
“Don’t worry, Marty. Amerie will know how to fix you up for good. We’ll come back here somehow and get a flyer just for ourselves and find us a good place to live. No more Tanu, no more Firvulag or Howlers, no more people at all. Just you and me. We’ll find a place. I promise.”
“I love you, Richard,” she said. “Whatever happens, we’ve had this.”
In the morning. Richard waved goodbye to the others and went up to where the bird stood. It still looked pretty scruffy in spite of the scraping, but he’d soon fix that.
He settled into the pilot’s seat and patted the console in the manner of an equestrian soothing a skittish mount “Oh, you beautiful, droop-snoot, swivel-winged thing. You wouldn’t badass the old Cap’n would you? Course not. We’re gonna fly today!”
He lit her up and went through the checklist. A familiar sweet hum of rho-field generators came to him there on the flight deck and he grinned at the thought of microscopic thermonuclear reactions hitting nicely on all sixteen, ready to weave a net of subtle forces that would free the metal bird from gravity’s domain. All of the engine idiot lights gleamed cyan-for-go. Keeping her firmly latched to Earth, he fed juice to the external web. The bird’s scabby skin glowed faintly purplish in the bright sunshine as the rho-field reticula clothed it lightly. All the crud that he’d been unable to remove sizzled away, leaving the surface a smooth cerametal black, just what you’d expect for an aircraft with orbiter capability.
He cut in the environmental system. Oh, yeah, little bluey-green lights telling him that no matter where the ship carried him, his life would be duty supported. Ease off on the field-web runup. Crank back the wings to minimum area until he got used to them. No use risking overcontrol on his maiden flight, wallowing all over the sky like a shot duck. Gotta do this with class, Cap’n Voorhees.
Okay… okay… and upsy daisy!
Straight up and dead level and hold at squiggle-hundred meters according to the readout on the indecipherable altimeter display. Call it 400. Down below, the Ries crater was a great blue cup with little spread-winged birds strung around its western lip, politely waiting for permission to drink. There were forty-two of them, with one missing where a section of the rim had collapsed in a landslide, and one empty slot for his own aircraft.
Damn those wings when the wind caught him at hover! He’d better move. Slowly… slowly… bank and zoom. Figure eight and vertical five and stop and start and swoop and glide and pendulum arc and, hot damn, he was doing it!
Down on the ground, four small figures were jumping up and down. He did a creditable imitation of a wing-waggle to let them know that he had seen them, then laughed out loud.
“And now, my friends, fare thee well, for I must leave you! We’ll save the touch-and-goes for later. Now the old Cap’n is gonna give himself a few lessons in how to drive this here flying machine!”
He slammed the rho-field into full inertialess web, stuck a burr under her tail, and took off vertically for the ionosphere.
CHAPTER NINE
Would volunteers come?
As the days of September dwindled and the preparations at Hidden Springs were completed, this question was paramount among the followers of Madame Guderian. Her influence, and indeed, the benefits of her Firvulag-Human Entente, did not extend much farther than the tiny settlements of the Vosges and the upper Saône wilderness, a region that would be able to muster not more than 100 fighters. Communication with other Lowlife enclaves was minimal because of the danger from Hunts, gray-torc patrols, Howlers, and even nominal subjects of King Yeochee who were reluctant to give up their human-harassing ways.
Before leaving High Vrazel, Madame and Chief Burke had discussed this problem with the shrewd old Battlemaster of the shape-changers, Pallol One-Eye. It had been agreed that the only hope for recruitment of more distant humans lay in the hands of the Firvulag. Only the illusion-spinners could hope to shepherd groups of Lowlife fighters from the far villages to Hidden Springs in time for the Finiah attack; but it was clearly going to take more than a simple call to arms to budge skeptical humans from their swamps or mountain fastnesses, especially if the invitation to the war was delivered by the little exotics.
Madame and Peo had recorded joint appeals on AV letter-plaques and left these with Pallol; however, the Firvulag messengers would have to establish credibility for the enterprise, and to this end a certain stratagem proposed by the Battle-master was ultimately agreed upon. At the same time that Madame’s expedition left High Vrazel for the Ship’s Grave, picked Firvulag teams, including King Yeochee’s most tactful Grand Combat referees, had set out on journeys to the south and west to summon all of the Lowlives in the known world to participate in the strike against Finiah.
The Little People went laden with gifts. And it happened that lonely huddles of cabins tucked away among the volcanoes of the Massif Central were visited at night by benevolent pixies. Bags of finely milled flour, flagons of honey and wine, luscious cheeses, candy, and other rare dainties appeared mysteriously on human doorsteps. Missing geese and sheep unaccountably found their way back to their pens; even lost children were guided home safely by butterflies or will-o’-the-wisps. On the mountain slopes of the Jura, a poorly tanned deerskin pegged to the wall of a Lowlife hovel might disappear, and in its place the delighted inhabitants would discover well-cobbled boots, fur jerkins, and butter-soft suede garments. Deep in the swamps of the Paris basin, the fen-dwellers would find that rotting punts were exchanged for new decamole dinghies stolen from Tanu caravans; great nets of waterfowl were left where outlaw human hunters could find them; plass containers of Survival Unit insect-repellent, more precious than rubies, appeared on the windowsills of the stilt-legged marshland houses where no passerby could possibly have reached. In scores of Lowlife settlements, humans were amazed when odd jobs were done by invisible helpers. Sick folks were nursed by elfin women who vanished with the dawn; broken things were mended; empty larders were filled; and always there were gifts, gifts, gifts.
Finally, when the Firvulag messengers ventured to appear en clair and present the awesome plan of Madame Guderian (who was, of course, known to all of the fugitives), the Lowlives were at least willing to listen. Fewer numbers agreed to respond to the appeal for fighting volunteers, for there were many emotional burn-outs and physical cripples among them, as well as a sizable percentage who cared only for their own skins. But the bolder, the healthier, and the more idealistic spirits were fired by the notion of striking a blow against the hated Tanu, while others agreed to participate in the attack when the subject of loot was delicately broached. So the Firvulag emissaries began to return, and those at Hidden Springs exulted because they brought with them a total of nearly 400 men and women recruited from places as far away as Bordeaux and Albion and the tidal estuaries of the Anversion Sea, These were welcomed in the name of Free Humanity, briefly trained, and equipped with weapons of bronze and vitredur. None of the newcomers, it had been agreed, would be told of the iron until the very day of the attack; and only the most competent of the volunteer fighters would be armed with the precious metal.
The secret staging area in the Rhineland bottoms opposite Finiah was in a state of full readiness by the middle of the last week in September. Lowlife warriors and a contingent of cra
ck Firvulag stalwarts were poised to cross the river in sailing lighters belonging to the Little People. The boats would be disguised as blobs of mist for as long as the most powerful Tanu did not consciously seek to penetrate them. Another Firvulag force was concealed farther upstream in a second camp, primed to strike at the second break in the city wall, which was supposed to be made roughly opposite to the main thrust.
Tactics and targets had been decided upon and logistic preparations were complete. All-that remained was the arrival of the Spear of Lugonn.
“The Hunt flies tonight, Peopeo Moxmox Burke.” It was very dark in the cypress swamp, for the moon was down. Chief Burke focused his night ocular on the activity across the river. The high, narrow-necked peninsula upon which the Tanu city perched was, as always, ablaze with an incredible display of colored lights. The much sharper vision of Pallol One-Eye had already discerned what the Chief now viewed through his scope: a glowing procession rising from the topmost parapet of House Velteyn. It spiraled slowly toward the zenith, the figures of the Flying Hunt distinct even at a distance of two kilometers. Tanu riders whose faceted armor flashed every color of the rainbow mounted upward on great white chalikos. The legs of the steeds pumped in unison as they galloped into the airy darkness. There were twenty-one knights in the train and another who forged ahead to lead them, his billowing cloak streaming back like a comet tail of vaporous silver. From the distance came the faint notes of a horn.
“They’re turning south, Battlemaster,” said Burke.
Beside him, Pallol One-Eye nodded, he who had seen 600 winters upon his own far world and more than a thousand orbits of the nearly seasonless Pliocene Earth. He was taller than the Native American and nearly twice as massive, and he moved as fluidly as the black man-sized otters of the riverine jungle whose form, three times magnified, he often adopted. His right eye was a great orb of gold with an iris colored deep red; the left eye was hidden by a jeweled black leather patch. It was whispered that when he lifted that patch in battle, his glance was more deadly than a thunderbolt, which is to say that the destructive potential of his right-brain’s creativity was second to none among the Firvulag and the Tanu. But Pallol One-Eye was an irascible ancient now, and he had not deigned to soil his obsidian armor at a Grand Combat for more than twenty years, unable to bear his people’s annual humiliation. He had found Madame Guderian’s plan against Finiah to be mildly amusing, and he had acquiesced in a Firvulag role when both Yeochee and the young champion, Sharn-Mes, decided to support the Lowlives. Pallol declared that he would lend the effort his good advice, and he had done so; but it was unthinkable that he should participate personally in what he termed “Madame’s little war.” More likely than not, the assault would be indefinitely postponed when the lady failed to return with the vital materiel. And even if she did bring back the Spear, how could mere humans hope to wield it effectively against the bravos of Velteyn? It was a weapon for a hero! And it was all too true that heroes were in short supply among this effete younger generation.