Forge of Heaven

by C. J. Cherryh

  "Mine." He didn't have to explain anything to Hati. Everything was a mystery to the boys. They'd doubtless heard what to do, but never had to depend for their lives on the old wisdom. A man afoot was a dead man, and getting only one beshti down and secured meant they could catch the rest. if things went well.

  Now it was a matter of getting their two beshti up and saddled, which meant letting go very carefully and only one at a time.

  "Let go," he instructed Argid. "Loose the hind feet when Fashti brings my tack. Move easily. Don't hurry."

  There was a quick to-do, sorting tack, and Fashti brought the saddle. Marak eased his pressure across the beshti's eyes, and it wanted up all at once as the boy loosed the hind feet. Long legs started to flail, looking for purchase.

  It rolled upward. He gathered himself up with a death grip on the halter and kept the beshti's head exactly where it had to be to assist the beshti up without its breaking its own bones or a bystander's. It had to get its front feet tucked and its hind feet under it, first.

  Up it came then, reliant on his pull, dependent on him all the way, and continually under control. While he held it steady, Fashti bravely eased the saddle pad on, as another boy waited with the saddle.

  "Watch that girth." It was swinging free, and the beshti's patience with objects hitting him in the groin was slim at the moment. The beshti was ready to explode, and another shaking in the earth could send him sky-high. Fashti made a fast reach under, risking his head, and got the girth strap threaded through the steel ring. Then Fashti hauled up hard, once, twice, three times. The beshti, however, took it with a deep sigh, wove from side to side, beginning his general lament at the winds and the dust and the thunder of the canvas tent, and most of all at his own deep misfortune, being caught and saddled when all but one of his mates had run, lured off by a young rival male.

  "Lai, lai," Marak said, as a parent would to an infant, while hanging on to the rein with all his strength. "Argid, get hold of his head on the other side."

  The saddle was on, straight and secure. Fashti handed Marak his long quirt. He let go the cheek strap, slipped the quirt's loop onto his wrist, and tapped the beshti's foreleg, keeping the long rein in hand. The beshti offered a partial, distracted obedience, answering to its training and extending its left leg in a bow. It was more interested in getting up, pulling and turning, but the slight bob it gave was enough. Marak seized the mounting loop, hurled himself up like the tribesmen of old and landed firmly in the saddle, rein in hand.

  "Let him go," he said immediately, and reined the beshti in a circle, pulling its head around against its own deep-chested body.

  The beshti only managed a little lurch forward and around, a motion that, in the veiling dust, took them in the general direction of the canyon rim.

  "Fool," he named it, and used heel and rein to hold it back. "Help Hati," he said to the boys, and the whole process began again, getting their second beshti up onto her feet and saddled.

  Hati got up to the saddle as a little jolt hit: a tall rider and a long-legged beshti necessarily swayed in the aftershock. The two beshti staggered, squalled and fought the reins, heads aloft.

  "How is Meziq?" Marak asked the boys from his high perch. His dust-hazed view of the camp moved from windblown canvas to the relay installation as the beshti under him restlessly turned half-about and squalled. He saw Meziq lying beside the tent, the other boys hovering over him.

  "The femur is broken, but not through the skin." The boy who stood up, bare-faced, to report it had a sand-scrape on his cheek, and a renewed gust of wind battered at him, rocking him on his feet. "We shall take care of him, omi."

  The stack of baggage and saddles was safe. Their supplies and water were safe in the tent. They had two beshti. In the old days, even if the worst happened, a man only needed to stay in camp with the only water in a wide, arid land. The runaway beshti would tend in again in a matter of days to get a drink and a browse, leaving it to a man's cleverness and strength to catch one and afterward track down the others.

  But the land had changed. Water and new green growth abounded down in the river chasm on one side and down among the pans on the other, the latter sheltered from this miserable northwest wind. Marak had no question what thoughts would come into their furry skulls once the panic of the quake wore off.

  And one thing more he could predict. The young male, Fashti's, would assert himself over the females of the group the moment he was out of range of Marak's senior bull. Tolerated until the mass escape, he would find new and rebel thoughts entering his thick young head. He needed no water their former masters had to supply, and being with the females, he would keep the females with him, moving farther and farther from the threat of combat.

  So as master of this small band, Marak had his own choice. They could pile food, water, and small canvas on their two beshti, having set up the one relay and disposed of its heavy components. They could abandon the other relay yet unset and the bulk of the supplies as a cache for a later mission to the Southern Wall, such supplies as might survive the intervening storms. They could try again next year.

  But that quake had been strong, a forewarning, it might be, that they had no next year, and going back now was not Marak's first choice. Meziq could live and heal while on trek in either direction, back to the Refuge or on to their final site, where he could sit and heal. And which direction they went now, in his intentions, depended solely on their catching or not catching the fugitive beshti.

  "They will go down to the pans, likeliest," Hati called to him over the thunder of canvas. "They will go down at the first opportunity, away from this wind."

  "No question," Marak said, and looked down at the boys caring for Meziq. "Set it, splint it. Wrap it with matting. Keep him still until I get back."

  "Yes, omi."

  If he now only cut his hand, if he set the bone straight and bled the makers in his blood into Meziq, he might greatly hasten Meziq's recovery.

  Or kill him with fever. That sometimes resulted. In either case he would change Meziq's life. That always resulted, and it was worth Meziq thinking long and soberly about the consequences.

  "Keep the tent," Marak said further, "and finish the work here. If one or two beshti should come back, and you can get them, do, but take no chances and do not try to follow us down. Stay here in comfort as best you can and save your resources." He and Hati could talk directly to the watchers in the heavens. The boys could not, but they had the relay installation at hand, and could communicate with the Refuge by means of their hand units with no trouble at all, once the relay was up and working. They needed only get the power cell charged. "Finish the setup, call Ian and get his instructions. Find out what may have happened to the Southern Wall and use your wits. Expect more quakes, and trust Ian to advise me. Be moderate with food and water, and check the deep-stakes of the tent at every shaking. We shall need rope, supplies, and canvas. And a pistol."

  "Omi," they said earnestly, and ran to do his bidding.

  With the uncertainty of the earth, he elected to stay in the saddle, he and Hati, having the boys pass them up a couple of good coils of rope, enough to constitute lead ropes for the two key fugitives, the young male and the senior female of the escapees. Food, water, a small medical bundle, else, and a simple roll of good canvas, in case worse weather came through before they got back to the tent-that was the rest of the supplies they needed. They could survive without any of it, but the nights were cold with the wind sweeping in off the southern ocean, and he foresaw several nights on this trek, very possibly.

  Absolute prudence, the rule in the old days, would have left one rider with the camp itself-but try to persuade Hati to stay behind, in anything less than direst circumstances? She would suggest he could stay, she who was of the tribes, blood and bone.

  And would he have that? No. So there was no need going that circle.

  Meziq was his worry. He rode near the boy, where he lay in pain. "Three days, Meziq. Endure three days and from a cle
ar head, when I come back, ask me favors, if you think you must."

  On that offer, he turned his beshti away. The canvas thundered in the wind, and Hati, moving ahead of him, was already a red-hazed ghost in the dust.

  They rode away, tracking the fugitives easily and quickly so long as the tracks lasted in the blowing gusts, intent on overtaking the beshti on the straight and narrow of the spine.

  But the tracks soon led to a slot on the south side of the ridge and vanished.

  It was a long, sandy slope they had noted on the way to their camp. The tracks went down it, down toward the pans, vanishing among sandstone spires, along windswept terraces.

  And the wind, in the trick of that slope, came up in their faces, a different wind, that carried the warmer air off the pans.

  "Auguste?" he said.

  His watcher, Auguste, had listened in silence through all this, not saying a word-usual, in Auguste. But now Auguste failed to answer him.

  Perhaps the storm and tricks of the high atmosphere had made the relay uncertain. They were very near the outer range of the other relays. Once the wind sank and the boys ran up the antenna on the relay station and got the battery going, his watchers, he was sure, would all at once have a great deal to say, much of it exhortation to return to camp and wait for rescue.

  But for now they were on their own. Ian and Luz could oblige them by warning of further hazards and advising them the extent of the damage. once they were back in contact. No doubt Ian already knew about the earthquake.

  "The young bull thinks he is master," Hati said. "But he is not easy about it. He knows the old bull is back here."

  Small chance that the young bull, having his prizes headed down land, out of scent and sight, would come back on his own for a fight. He followed the females, damn them, thinking he led them, and they had done what beshti would do, going toward graze and most of all, water, down to the pans, where beshti were always most comfortable. Once they smelled that warm wind, all thought of the camp would fly right out of their heads.

  "We have no choice," he said.

  So they rode away down the slot, headed onto the spired terraces above the pans.

  Silence in his head was a curious thing.

  It felt like old times.

  0910h on a new day, and the Earth ship was now three hours at dock, all its attachments made. The Southern Cross, its name was, declared to be a research vessel. And carrying light armament.

  Armament. That was uncommon. That might say something about the ship's capabilities, but it still said nothing about its purpose here, in this most sensitive zone. inside what was, after all, ondat territory. If its arrival at Concord, even with light weapons, was in any wise a gesture aimed at the ondat, it was sheer folly, not even to be contemplated. If it was, as history indicated, a little gesture aimed at the Outsider authority, it was still provocative of the ondat. Neither was acceptable.

  Setha Reaux meant to make that point early and strenuously-once he found out what the ship was up to.

  Ambassador Andreas Gide held the explanation of what was going on, the only source of explanation that would reach Concord's deck, and Setha Reaux, dressed in his immaculate best, had headed down for the main-level personnel reception area to meet him, as far as meetings could go, once the necessary connection was made. But just as he got under way, security called with an emergency advisement, informing him, to his great dismay, that Ambassador Gide had left the dock on his own, refusing all advice, and headed up in the cargo-area lift system. The exit that particular lift bank afforded would be a seventh-level public station next to the Customs administrative offices.

  What in hell was Gide doing?

  Reaux immediately changed his car's destination. He was not that far from the offices in question. He reversed course and went up.

  And, a little breathless from the requisite walkover from a 53rd Street station rather than try to route over the Customs Plaza, Reaux arrived, planted himself in front of the bank of lift doors at Customs Plaza, watched the levels tick off on the digital indicator of an inbound lift, and drew a deep breath as Gide's car arrived. Intercept successful.

  The lift doors opened. A chest-high ovoid vehicle trundled out. A fog of melting condensation still hung about the vehicle's cold plastic surface, a shifting mix of violets and blues that flowed like oil on water, showing no window.

  Then, astonishingly, the machine extruded a violet bubble, which quickly swelled up into a head-and-shoulders simulacrum of a middle-aged man. It had a surly, heavy-jowled face and shoulder-length hair, all shining violet and fuming with cold.

  The mobile containment was no surprise. Elaborate and heavy as it was, it was the suit which Gide would wear continually, but the usual mode of interaction of such containments was a simple holo cube on the front. This unprecedented innovation, this vanity, this shape it presented to the outside world, reminded Reaux of nothing so much as the fabled Sphinx of Earth-the head and forearms of a man on the body of a beetle, a smooth, shining carapace, both sheathed in that continually shifting oil-slick plasm.

  Whatever that substance was-and in his tenure on the edge of ondat space he thought he'd seen all there was to see-it gave off cold vapor, and didn't encourage an exploratory touch.

  The head, in its light fog of condensation, looked around, and one had to wonder whether Gide, inside, actually saw his surroundings via those eyes, or whether Gide was looking at him on screens through entirely different receptors. Whatever the medium, Reaux was willing to bet that the sensors in that carapace compared very well to an Outsider's internal augmentations, that they saw into the extremes of the spectrum, that Gide could hear a pin drop-literally-if he wanted to. And he also bet that the apparatus recorded. Oh, depend on it, that shell recorded and eventually transmitted information back to the ship.

  But the lift hadn't delivered the ambassador to his office, and the ambassador had utterly ignored the official advisements to wait on dockside, as if to assert he went where he pleased and saw what he wanted. Maybe the ambassador wanted an official embarrassment, wanted to look around, and to be able to start their relations with an official fuss about protocols.

  Well, he and the lift automatics had outmaneuvered that try.

  "Ambassador Gide." A little bow, a little out of breath and trying to look serene. "I'm Governor Reaux. Welcome to Concord."

  The sphinx-face stared at him. Liquid blue ice scanned him up and down. Blue lips drew further down at the corners. "A long, unattended ride." The ambassador was trying to provoke an incident. And the thick Earth-ethnic accent jolted a compatriot's memory, sowed self-doubt. "Well, well," Gide said impatiently, "are we going to have to put up with tedious ceremonials here and now, at this late hour? Get on with them, if we must."

  "If you wish not, Mr. Ambassador, it's certainly easy to dispense with them." And give due notice to departmental heads, shivering in the dockside cold. "You're welcome in my office, two levels up from here." It would be pushing it to say the ambassador had mistaken his destination, or to hint that the peculiarities of the lift system, which needed a citizen code card on the dockside lifts, had foxed the ambassador's solo attempts to breach security and dumped him right on the plaza where any common non-citizen had to go.

  The sphinx-face looked around the area, looked far to the left, and again to the right. "This is Customs Administration. Where is my residence from here?"

  "This is the main foyer for those who have to file visa affidavits, Mr. Ambassador, who need a temporary card." He refrained from saying, fool. "Customs is certainly superfluous in your case. We can go from here either to my office, or straight to your residence." Impossible to offer food, drink, or even a soft bed to their visitor. What one of these rigs actually wanted was general connectivity and a secure place with wide doorways, which could be any apartment or office thus equipped, where there were adequate connector-slots. But Reaux had rather have this visitor well-protected. Constantly. And soon. And hell if he was going to issue Gide a co
de-card to let him come and go from docks to residencies at will. "If you'll share a lift with me, I'll escort you myself wherever you would wish to go."

  "My requirements?"

  "Exactly as requested, a secure apartment with broad accesses, on the lesser-gravity deck, in the heart of our community. It has all the connections, a secure line to your ship." The shell was, in its way, a bubble of pure Earth environment extended from the ship-a bubble that the ship extruded onto their dock and up into their station, since never, never, never could Mother Earth contaminate anyone, but the mere breath of station air would contaminate the purity of their visitor. Gide would leave that extravagant shell behind in a few days, discarding it like some outmoded chrysalis on the dock, as the ship took him in and sealed him behind its pure, uncontaminated hull, never having contacted the station's air or water.

  Then all the intriguing secrets of this simulacrum might be available to them to be extracted, if there were any secrets in it that they didn't already have, and by the look of it, there might be plenty. Earth might not particularly care about the expense or the knowledge shed along with that carapace, not relative to the value of the awe it generated among mere station-dwelling provincials, and assuredly it wouldn't want it back, no matter it was perfectly possible to decontaminate the thing. Earth and Inner Space didn't covet a stray molecule of Concord's air, let alone suffer its other microscopic contaminations, ever, in any form, or in symbol, to enter their ships or their lungs. The fuel they bought on station all burned in an antimatter furnace, utterly annihilated. They traded, but they traded in programs and data. God forbid they ever, ever touched a damned thing.