by Vernor Vinge
“Yeah. Take this,” she handed him the sledge’s control box, “and gimme the maser. Okay, now let’s keep walking. I think there’s only one, and he’s keeping his distance.”
Bjault did not dispute the instructions. He tried to see into the deepening gray. It was no use. It was hard enough to see a pine tree just ahead in time to walk the sledge around it. Yoninne must have heard something; her ears were much more acute than his.
On his right Leg-Wot fumbled about as she checked the maser, then pointed it into the sky to the north. She spoke the appropriate call signs into her hood mike, but there was no response. That wasn’t too surprising. In order to save fuel, the ferry was making an unpowered entry, using the planet’s atmosphere to slow itself down. No doubt the spacecraft was momentarily blacked out by entry ionization.
Leg-Wot waited two minutes, then repeated her call. Almost immediately, Bjault’s earphone came alive with Draere’s cheerful voice. “Hello, down there!” the voice said, ignoring standard radio procedure. “We’re about sixty kilometers up and coming down fast. Never fear, the mail will arrive on time.”
Leg-Wot outlined their situation to the descending ferry. “Okay,” came Draere’s voice, “I understand. If you can hold on for another ten minutes, you’ll be all right, I think. The ferry’s landing jets are guaranteed to scare the wits out of the uninitiated, and if that doesn’t work, we do have some firepower aboard—Holmgre and his entire platoon. We didn’t leave anything but some robot radios on that miserable little island.
“Keep in touch. You should be able to switch to your omnies any minute now.”
“Wilco, out,” Leg-Wot replied. They had reached the pass in the ridge line and were starting down the other side. Here the snow lay much deeper, the product of more than one storm. The sledge churned along just ahead of them, its treads acting as tiny paddles in the loose snow. The woman retrieved the sledge control from Bjault and guided them down the slope toward their ablation skiff.
Still he heard nothing but their own footsteps and the sound of the sledge. Perhaps Yoninne had heard some large animal. He loosened his machine pistol in its holster. They knew there were such things: their sonic fence had scared away something big just the day before.
Leg-Wot turned the sledge hard right, let it run on about two meters, then halted it. It was completely dark now. As Ajão walked forward he nearly tripped over a curving mound covered with a few centimeters of fluff snow. The ablation skiff! Bjault went to one knee and swept the snow from its hull. There was something comforting about the feel of the scorched ceramic beneath his gloves, even though the skiff would never fly again. The ablation skiff was nothing more than a spherical hulk, three meters across. Inside there was barely enough room for two humans, their equipment, and the skiff’s parachute. The little craft had no power of its own, and there was really only one mission it could ever fly: dropped from an orbiting spacecraft, it burned its way down through the upper atmosphere to an altitude and a speed where the parachute could bring it to a gentle landing. In concept the ablation skiff was nearly as old—and as simple—as the wheel. No doubt the human race had rediscovered both dozens of times during the last thirteen thousand years.
Yoninne’s voice came softly into his ear. Apparently she had sealed her suit and was speaking—whispering—to him over the hood radio. “Let’s stick to radios from now on, Bjault. I drove the sledge off to one side, so whoever-it-is that’s following us may get the wrong idea. I’m crawling back to the skiff now. If we just lie quiet in the snow, I don’t see how they can know exactly where we are—just remember, we’re the guys with the automatic weapons.”
Ajão closed his hood. “Yes,” he whispered back, though he wasn’t sure if he could bring himself to play mass executioner, even in a pinch.
He relaxed in the snow, listened. The hood’s earphone had a good acoustical link with the outside air, but he heard nothing beyond that faint hiss of endlessly falling snow. Somewhere to the north, way, way out in the dark—perhaps ten kilometers up, still—the ferry was plummeting toward them at hundreds of meters per second. Five hundred tons of titanium and plastic just—falling. When would Draere kick on her landing jets?
As if in answer to his thoughts, Draere’s voice sounded in Bjault’s ear. “Any trouble with the locals?”
“No, but Yoninne thinks we still have some undesired company.”
“Aha.” Pause. “Well, I just lit my jets. I wonder what they’ll make of that. See you.”
The silence stretched on for another thirty seconds. Then a vast and continuous rumble swept over them. The ferry was still so far away that all but the lowest frequencies were smeared out by the air. What was left sounded like strange thunder; it started loud, and just kept getting louder and louder. To anyone not acquainted with reaction motors it must have sounded like an immense monster, only a few hundred meters away and coming closer.
A pearly white light glowed faintly in the blackness above and to the north of them: even the light from plasma jets had trouble penetrating the thousands of meters of thickly falling snow. Through the mike he could hear Draere calmly reading out the ferry’s altitude.
Louder, louder, the sound came till it was a physical force pushing at him through both air and ground. Winds generated by the superheated air from the jets whirled the snow up and around him. The very storm itself was being shattered by the energy these jets were pumping into it. Ajão tried to bury his faceplate in the snow, but out of the corner of his eye he could see the needlelike blue flames of the ferry’s three plasma jets. A perfectly normal night landing, he chuckled to himself, and tried to burrow deeper into the snow. God, it was going to be wonderful to have a shower and some decent food. Most of all, wonderful to get away from Yoninne Leg-Wot.
Draere’s voice came distorted and faint against the roar, “Three hundred meters up, and your reflector is shining loud and clear directly under us. Hold on, gang.”
The ferry’s thirty-meter bulk hovered, then slowly descended on the reflector Bjault and Leg-Wot had set at the bottom of the valley, three thousand meters away. The snowstorm was literally blown away from around it, and looking up, Bjault could see the hillsides lit by painfully bright, electric-blue light. Ajão gasped. They had been followed: across the blue-lit snowfields, dozens of figures stood silhouetted in the glare.
But the ferry was less than fifty meters up now, and—the craft lurched slightly, then toppled to one side. Draere’s voice came as calmly as if she were discussing ancient history. “Ground turbulence like I’ve never seen.” Two of the ferry’s jets brightened and the craft shot off to the side, slowly gaining altitude. “I can’t recover …”
The blunt-nosed ferry curved gracefully downward, smashed sideways into the valley floor, and exploded in flashes of blue-white flame as the jets’ plasma escaped confinement.
Bjault’s jaw went slack. Draere, forty people, all dead … in less than a second. He lay dazed for a moment as gobs of flaming wreckage rained down out of the sky. Around the crash site there were only chemical fires now—ugly red and orange flames that were virtually silent compared to the plasma jets.
The ringing in his ears subsided and he heard voices. Bjault tilted his head to look across the snow at the sledge. There stood three natives. The orange firelight flickered across them and the turtlelike form of the sledge, as a light breeze brought the snowfall back over the hillside. Ajão squinted at the trio. They could have been the fellows he had seen during the landing, but if so they had moved awfully fast in those last instants before Draere and the others crashed. The men appeared to be normal Azhiri: squatbodied and light-skinned. They were dressed in gray-and-white camouflage uniforms that Bjault associated with automatic-weapons warfare; soldiers from more primitive cultures usually dressed like peacocks or else went about in ragged civilian clothes. But the only weapons Bjault could see on the men were machetes strapped securely to their sides.
Bjault kept absolutely still. The snow was falling faster no
w. Perhaps he and Leg-Wot could yet evade capture—though what good would that be? They were truly shipwrecked now. He concentrated on the others’ fast, slurred speech. “A little monster, like that huge one perhaps,” one of them said, and kicked at the sledge’s treads, “but at least it is dead. Apfaneru, this is bvepfesh … .” His voice trailed into frightened silence.
“Ahe, look!” The second soldier grabbed the first’s arm and pointed off to Ajão’s right. “You there! On your life—don’t move!”
The three started off in the direction the soldier had pointed. Suddenly the dormant sledge surged forward, its electric motors whining at full power. Apparently Leg-Wot still had control of it. “The monster!” screamed the third soldier as the sledge bowled him over. The second Azhiri whirled upon the machine, and a thunderlike snapping sound shook the ground. The snow whirled up around the sledge, and when it cleared, he saw the vehicle was on its side, and on fire.
Now things were moving too fast for Bjault to follow. On his right, Leg-Wot had risen to her knees, her machine-pistol covering the three Azhiri. Again that massive snapping sound. The snow blew up around her, and she was thrown head over heels into the drift behind her.
Suddenly the first soldier was beside her. “Ho! So that’s why you didn’t try to escape.” He seemed relaxed now, almost jovial. “You are a witling.” Ajão raised his head slightly. The snow was coming down as heavily as before the landing, but by the guttering fires he glimpsed several other troopers in the near distance. The men were systematically searching the snowfield. Each trooper kept five meters between himself and the next man—just like modern soldiers wary of automatic weapons fire. Why, why?
Heavy hands grabbed him under the armpits. “We have found another, Dgedga,” shouted his captor. “A witling also.” His pistol was taken and he was half-carried, half-dragged past the sledge toward Leg-Wot. The soldier dropped Bjault beside the girl and disappeared into the snowstorm. It was almost humiliating how casually they were left here, apparently unguarded. The darkness had returned, but Ajão heard the soldiers moving back and forth across the hillside, probing the snow. In minutes the Azhiri discovered the ablation skiff and its fiberene parachute.
The one called Apfaneru spoke loudly, “Group four will remain here through the night. Be alert. There may be more monsters. Group leaders may call for help at the smallest sign. Groups two and three will take what remains of the monsters. Group one: the witlings go to the deepest dungeon in Deleru Moragha.”
Again Ajão was picked up and dragged through the snow. Behind him he could tell that Leg-Wot was getting the same treatment. How badly had Yoninne been hurt? Was she unconscious, or worse?
They stopped and Bjault got to his feet. He saw what looked like a steel pot, perhaps two meters in diameter. It was suspended from a heavy timber tripod, and beneath the pot, a trooper was trying to keep some kindling afire. With a sudden shiver of fear, Ajão guessed that the pot was filled with water. He struggled frantically back from his captor, but the other man was built for this gravity, and Ajão was slapped to the ground. “Witling, if you don’t wish to be hurt you will climb in.” Then the soldier piled a further incredibility on the scene: he turned and climbed the narrow wooden ladder that led over the flames to the lip of the pot. There was a loud splash as he jumped in.
Bjault stared blankly for a moment. Someone pushed him roughly from behind. “You heard the man, witling. Move!” He stepped forward and awkwardly climbed the closely spaced rungs. Behind him another soldier dragged the now weakly struggling Leg-Wot up the ladder. Ajão stopped at the lip of the pot and looked down, for a moment saw nothing. Then he heard the voice of the fellow who had jumped in. “Iou, this water’s cold. Should have waited till they had the fire going properly.” The native was holding onto the lip so that just his head was out of the water. “Jump in, you two. The quicker in, the quicker out.”
Bjault tried to ease himself over the edge, but the snow along the lip was slippery and he splashed awkwardly into the water. Lord, it was cold. He couldn’t take more than three or four minutes of this without his heated suit. He kicked himself to the surface just in time to be smashed downward again by Leg-Wot. They bobbed to the surface, the woman swearing loudly. She’s all night, then! Ajão thought with relief. He trod water frantically, trying to find a hand hold, but the soldier grabbed his shoulder. “Where are you from anyway, witling? Let yourselves sink below the surface.” They did as they were told. Ajão was at the point now that things seemed more like dream than reality.
He looked up through the water. The darkness was not complete. Something strangely green, quite unlike torchlight, glowed above them. Then strong hands pushed against his buttocks and he and Yoninne burst through the surface. Gasping, they pulled themselves from the water, assisted by the soldier below. Bjault lay back dazedly on the warm stone floor. The air stank of human waste and worse. He saw now that they were in a featureless chamber some three meters across. The green glow came from phosphorescent fungus that hung in great loops from the raw bedrock of the walls. He could see no doors, no ventilation holes.
The trooper bobbed through the green glinting surface of the water, his pale face asmile. “Comfortable?” He gestured at the dark stone that surrounded them on all sides. “It would take a Guildsman to get out of this thing, so I don’t think the prefect has to worry about a pair of witlings escaping.” He let go of the edge and slipped below the surface. Yoninne rose painfully to her knees and crawled to the edge of the pool. Ajao followed her, and they looked into the water. The light from above was faint, but he could see the bottom. There was no sign of the trooper. He dipped his hand into the scummy water.
Leg-Wot stared and stared down into the pool. “Teleports. They’re goddamned teleports,” she said finally.
Three
The Bodgaru terminus of the Royal Road had been carefully prepared for the prince-imperial’s arrival. Except for an army escort boat, which had arrived minutes before, the lake was free of traffic. All along the water’s edge, the season’s first ice had been chipped away and the stonework polished. Many ninedays before, the prefect had imported an ornamental jade garden and “planted” it along the wharf side of the lake. The life-sized stone trees and shrubs were adorned with hundreds of flowers carved from yellow and blue topaz. That morning the townsmen had dusted every trace of snow from the jade garden, so that now it sparkled with sterile grace.
The townspeople stood all along the wharf. Every man, woman, and child held tiny replicas of the imperial tricolor, issued them by the prefect’s men. Their talk was cheerful and unrestrained. Though their attendance was required, most waited eagerly: The visit of a member of the royal-imperial family was a rare event. No one realized this more clearly, more agonizingly, than the prefect himself. Parapfu Moragha stood at stiff attention, between the garrison band and his jade garden.
Though the sun hung at noon in the deep blue sky, the wind blowing across the lake was chilling, and the snow-covered, pine-covered hills that rose above the lake made it seem a frigid blue puddle caught at the edge of winter.
Suddenly the quiet surface of the lake was no longer empty. The royal yacht popped into existence, slamming down and eastward through the water. The white hull almost disappeared beneath the surface, then bobbed back up, its timbers creaking. Two-foot waves rippled back and forth across the lake, splashed icy water along the wharf. Even before the yacht had stopped rocking, its crew ran out the imperial tricolor: the yellow sun in a sky of blue over a field of green. The band on the shore struck up a cheery welcome as the road boat edged toward shore.
On the yacht’s private deck, Pelio-nge-Shozheru, prince-imperial of All Summer, undid his safety harness and got up to walk to the railing. Though taller than the average Azhiri, Pelio wasn’t much more than a boy. He wore a green-and-blue kilt with his rank woven across the waist, but even without the costume, his wide nose and green eyes would have at least identified him as one of the nobility. One would never guess tha
t the prince was a witling, so devoid of Talent that his kenging could scarcely kill a sandmite.
A warm summer breeze, renged from the southern hemisphere—as far south of the equator as Bodgaru was north—blew softly across the deck to warm Pelio’s back and insulate him from the local chill. The servants who cast those breezes sat below decks, as did the lords and ladies accompanying him. The prince stood alone, or as alone as he could ever be: only his bodyguards and his watchbear were with him on the deck. That was more protection than the average noble felt obliged to keep—but Pelio was a witling, and without his guards’ constant attention, the lowliest peasant could scramble his innards.
Pelio looked across the water at the cheering crowds and the garrison band. I wonder if they are laughing inside, he thought, while they cheer with their mouths. That a witling should one day be king-imperial was indeed a great joke. No doubt several of the rustics in that crowd owned unfortunates possessing more Talent than he. That was the normal fate of witlings. They were defenseless against every teleportive jape of normal people. A witling was treated as a chattel—unless, of course, he was born into the royal family, unless he was heir apparent to an empire. Pelio’s eyes stung with the old shame as he looked past the hundreds of townspeople waving their little tricolors: how wonderful his birth must have seemed to the Summerkingdom! For years his father had been childless, the dynasty imperiled—and then at last, at the very end of his father’s middle age, a fertile consort had been found. Pelio often imagined how his father must have suffered as it became apparant that his son was not superior, not normal, not even retarded—that his son would never display more than the smallest bit of Talent. And to top tragedy with insult, just one year later, Pelio’s mother, Consort Queen Virizhiana, gave birth to Aleru. But for a matter of dates, Prince Aleru would be first in line—and Aleru was perfectly normal, with more than average Talent.