The Invisible City

by Brian K. Lowe

  "Why not?"

  "Because things back home are already in a mess. We've used the datasphere ourselves to get in contact with Thorans in other countries—even Dure, where this ship is from. The people are ready. If word got out that the man who destroyed a Nuum research station was also a ghost—the rumorcasters would go wild. This planet is seething with revolution…" His voice trailed off and his eyes took on a feverish shine I did not like. "You could do it. You could be the spark that sets the world on fire!" Suddenly our surroundings seemed to take on entirely new meaning in his brain. "All this… A few months ago you didn't even know how to communicate! Now you've destroyed a Nuum installation, stolen two of their sky barges… Keryl, do you realize what this news could do?"

  "Yes," I said honestly. "It could get me killed." Bantos Han's news had shaken me, but regardless of the justification for my feelings I could almost feel the ghosts of ten thousand generations turn their backs in scorn and shame. I plead with them. "You have to understand, I have a war of my own to fight. I left men behind in my own time. If I can return to them, I can save them. The people of this time have to save themselves."

  But to Bantos Han, the men I had left behind had never been real, only dust for a thousand thousand years.

  "I see," he said quietly, and then he, too, turned his back upon me.

  "I have an obligation to your sister!" I reminded his retreating form, but his reply, if any, was lost in the wind of our passage.

  46. We Enter Dure

  The landscape passed below us with measured tread, strolling steadily northward as we passed south. At first I woke in the night, dreaming that we had been overtaken by another Nuum aircraft, a shining, swooping metal bird of prey with wings like the craft that had taken me out of Vardan. But in common with the mariners of times past, we saw no one else on this vast sea, and as we progressed toward our destination my rest became less troubled, even as our chances of discovery grew greater. What we would do if hailed depended on the caller: Maire still trusted her family's oldest allies, proof she was sure against any leverage Farren might apply, and those she would greet personally. But if we were contacted by strangers—or worse, Farren's own household retainers—our tactics must be determined by our situation. We could bluff, run, or fight—but we would not know which was best until the choice was put to us.

  I spent much of the days in my cabin, leaving the ship's running to those more competent than I. Timash took to sailing with the curiosity and enthusiasm of youth, and Maire seemed glad to teach him if it meant she could spend less time with me. Bantos Han had taken it upon himself to help organize the rowers, mediating disputes (with Timash's backing) that once would have ended in fights. The rowers themselves still rowed, for they needed something to do, but their shifts were humanely limited, and their quarters had been improved as far as was in my power.

  Nights found me often on deck. Modern technology had dispensed with running lights, and the dark suited my moods. There were no rowers and only a skeleton crew which was glad enough to leave the captain to his musings as long as he returned the compliment. So far I had contented myself with the cooling breeze on my face and trying to memorize the changed constellations, but at last I forced myself to face the truth: The warm winds were drying out my skin and I had never really been interested in astronomy.

  There was no one for me to talk to about my feelings. Timash was asleep, and, I feared, too young to understand—notwithstanding that I was not much older. Bantos Han would probably not appreciate being disturbed. And Maire—my soul reeled at the thought.

  In the end, old friends are the best. I pulled out the Library and held it in my cupped hand. Then I asked it an unfair question.

  "What do you know about the human condition?"

  The Librarian did not materialize, of course. He was a secret I still held close to my heart.

  "I hold nearly 117,000 novels in my memory cache." He replied so softly that I could not quite be sure if the irony I heard was really there.

  Though the little sphere had no face, I stared down at it anyway.

  "I thought you were just a branch library. You told me you were only programmed with information I might need on the journey."

  Had it shoulders, it would have shrugged. "Boredom is a danger on any journey. And you would be surprised how many novels can fit in one krypton molecule."

  "Hm." Behind me I heard the scrape of a shoe, and I stopped talking long enough for one of the crew to slip by me on his way to the forward hatch. When he'd gone I asked: "No psychology books?"

  "Certainly. But psychology concerns the mind. You asked about the human condition. For that you need to read novels."

  "And have you?"

  "Most of them."

  "That's a lot of work."

  "I read quickly."

  "Hm." Come to think of it, how long could it take to read a molecule? "So what's wrong with me? Up until a few days ago, I wanted nothing more than to kick the Nuum off this planet. Now I just want to be left out of the whole mess."

  Can a machine sigh? Evidently so. "Keryl, Keryl, Keryl…" It had to be something bad; he'd never called me by my first name before. "If I told you, you'd never believe me."

  I hate it when people tell me that. I told him so.

  "All right, then. Your problem is you're in love."

  I squinted down at him. "I know that."

  "Do you?" There was an almost imperceptible pause. "Yes, I suppose you do."

  "What is that supposed to mean?"

  "According to your body telemetry, you are telling the truth."

  I stared in sudden anger. "Maybe you're right," I said, pocketing the Library. "I don't believe you."

  The next morning we awoke to the sight of Dure, the Island Continent.

  Maire was already in the piloting room when I got there. Timash moved out of the way to allow me room to see the holo-charts. They showed the island from our perspective, tiny flying dots whizzing about like manic fireflies. Even from here the buildings on the shore were enormous in comparison.

  "Normally, we'd be in the grip of traffic control by now," Maire said without looking away from the plot. "But the computer still broadcasts my ship transponder, so TC doesn't bother us. One of the perks of power."

  I scanned the view anxiously for signs that any of the dots were growing larger.

  "Do they know we're here?"

  "TC has to keep a lock on us so it can move everybody else around us, but my father stopped getting automatic reports on my whereabouts when I took my title." According to Nuum law, Maire had not inherited her own title until she reached the proper age, so this was the same as saying she had attained her majority.

  "Farren must know by now that the Eyrie failed," I said. "He probably has someone watching for us."

  Maire nodded grimly. "Probably through the datasphere. He'd have no trouble patching in."

  "Could we turn off the transponder?" Timash ventured.

  Maire grimaced. "Then we'd be subject to traffic control. We'd be like everybody else. We could end up berthed anywhere."

  "Yeah. Exactly. We leave as the Dark Lady, we come back as…?"

  I liked it. So did Maire.

  "Do it," I ordered.

  "TC," the pilot murmured. "We have lost transponder. Request repair depot berthing. Aye, TC. Thank you." He looked up at us. "It's done. They don't have a clue who we are." An instant later he frowned and his face again took on an attitude of listening. "Say again, TC." A few moments later he signed off. "Traffic control has taken over our approach," he said slowly. "Once we dock we are to stay on board until we receive further instructions."

  "What?" Maire asked. "Why?"

  "According to them, Dure is in a state of martial law."

  I looked at my officers. "Conference in my cabin. Now."

  Maire shook off the effects of lengthy immersion in the datasphere and gave us a worried look.

  "I can't get through to my father at all. The news reports say he's b
een sick, and nobody's seen him for at least three weeks."

  "What about the martial law?" I asked. "Who's running the country?"

  Maire's voice was small and afraid. "Farren. He's stepped up in my father's absence, and the Council of Nobles has given him discretion because of some problems in the north. They think there may be a general uprising coming."

  Given the substance of my talk with Bantos Han, Farren and the Council might be more on top of things than Maire had thought.

  "Farren's probably holding my father hostage in case he needs him, but if he was willing to kill me, he might not think that way."

  "Which means you're the best guarantee your father has to keep on living," Timash pointed out.

  "He's right," I said. "Farren isn't the kind of man to leave loose ends—that's why he sent the Eyrie after us, to eliminate the men who were supposed to have killed you." I was just talking off the top of my head, but it did make sense. "But at the same time, Farren's a coward. I should know; he hit me from behind and ran." I rubbed my head at the memory. "He'd want an ace in the hole if anything went wrong—he may even have convinced your father that he is sick."

  The fear began to recede from Maire's eyes as her natural inner strength reasserted itself. Slowly she took on the expression of the woman I had first glimpsed battling a horde of Vulsteen all by herself—and winning.

  "You're right," she said slowly. "Both of you. I've known Farren a long time. He's been trying to convince my father to marry me to him for years—of course my father wouldn't agree. He's a cunning little brat, but his family is one of the most powerful on Thora. Half the Council is a cousin either by blood or marriage."

  Timash glanced from one of us to the other. "So what we do? We're going to dock pretty soon."

  "Normally in situations like this, we'd be boarded and inspected." I ignored Maire's questioning look. Let her wonder at my familiarity with wartime protocols. "If that happens, we have to assume that either Maire or I—or both—would be recognized. We can't let that happen."

  "Do you think they'll inspect the entire boat?" she asked. "Maybe we could hide. I know some places."

  "Too risky," I said. "They might know the same places." I rubbed my chin. "We're just going to have to make sure we aren't on the boat when they board her."

  "And how are we going to do that?" Maire demanded.

  As I expected, she did not like my answer.

  "You actually did this in flight?"

  "Shh! They probably don't have surveillance cameras, but they still could hear you!"

  Even if I were disposed toward giving Maire the gruesome details of the last time I sat precariously in a maintenance harness outside one of the Lady's access ports, this would not be the time nor place. We were shielded from casual detection by virtue of hanging on the side of the ship closest to the wall of our docking hangar, but there was nothing above us save the side of the ship itself. If one of the boarding party took it upon himself to look over the side, we were sitting ducks.

  We had come to rest in one of the skyscraping docking towers that ringed Dure's capital city, aptly enough also named Dure. These mile-high structures were little more than immensely tall tubes, pockmarked with landing bays ranging from the private, barely large enough to hold a small manor house, to the public, gigantic maws which could swallow half of Trinity College, where stacked air barges and flying ships entered to be attacked by giant tubular arms that locked on like eels. The arms retracted into the building until the ship was fastened to the side of the bay by gravitic magnets. I had counted on the magnets not covering the maintenance hatches.

  Our particular home was an arena-sized repair bay, where we could stay, Maire assured me, "as long as the crew can come up with excuses—and my credit balance holds out." When I asked how she could access her credit when Farren had doubtless frozen her accounts, she had explained that the custom was billing on departure; with the ship itself as collateral; everyone paid one way or another.

  "How long do you think they'll take?" she whispered. Her voice sounded strained; I didn't blame her.

  "It depends on how seriously they take their duties," I replied. I was about to elaborate when we both felt a humming vibration through the soles of our feet, planted against the ship's hull. "What's that?"

  "It's the ship's engines!" Maire hissed. "We're moving!"

  All at once I saw the outermost docking magnet release the Lady and retract just enough to let her slip out of the bay. Enough to let the ship get by, but not us. In a few seconds we would be swept up against it—and we'd be crushed!

  47. The Invisible City

  "Jump!" I cried. There was no time to see if she did so as I pushed off from the hull and launched myself into space, jettisoning my harness as I did so. At the far point of my swing I let go, and after a frighteningly long six-foot fall, I landed flat-footed on a narrow ledge I had noticed when first we climbed out of the maintenance hatch. At almost the same moment Maire landed next to me, each of us instinctively reaching out to keep the other balanced.

  Quickly I glanced upward to make sure no one had noted our impromptu trapeze act, but no curious faces were bending over the side of the ship, so I supposed we had gone unnoticed. That was a relief, for I'd half a mind that the shifting had been deliberately designed to trap us.

  "What happened?" This time the question was mine.

  Maire shook her head. "I don't know—unless the docking authority wanted the ship moved forward so they could get to the transponder array."

  "Well, they got more than they bargained for, then." I pointed to the maintenance hatch. It was now half obscured by one of the great magnets. Even if we could climb back up there somehow, our pathway home was blocked.

  I looked at Maire. She looked at me.

  "Not a problem," she assured me, and as I watched in complete bewilderment, she proceeded to roll up her sleeves, tie back her hair, daub on a few strategic bits of grease (of which there was no shortage), and become a different girl—and an old friend.

  "Why, Marella, it's been a long time."

  "Follow me," she ordered, and strode away along the ledge as though she owned the entire docking tower. A door slid back for us and we were inside.

  Low-ceilinged and grey, the were designed for utility, with no thought for decoration. Ventilation was not a priority; the warm air was redolent with the smell of oil and ozone. Marella muttered something and a pulsing green stripe suddenly appeared on the wall, accompanying us, turning at various cross-corridors and leaping through space at others to await us further along.

  "We probably don't need it," she said, motioning to the green light. "I've been walking these corridors for years. But they change sometimes, and if you get lost you could wander around for days."

  We often walked by others on their own tasks, almost all following the lead of a pulsing light-guide. Some carried small square panels lit with colored lights or moving pictures. Once we had to flatten ourselves against the side of a hallway as two short, squat, hairy workers maneuvered a long piece of machinery past. Marella sighed when they had gone by. "They're supposed to use the cargo tunnels," she muttered to me. None of the passersby, Nuum, human, or otherwise, paid us more than the most cursory attention, although now and again one would nod toward Marella as in recognition. She would nod back, but we never stopped to talk.

  "Marella?" A cheerful blond Thoran stopped in mid-stride, a welcoming smile lighting his handsome face. "I didn't know you were back!" I thought his interest more than passing. He spared a glance up at me. "Friend of yours?"

  "Kenns. Good to see you. This is Keryl."

  He offered me what passed for a handshake among his people. I squeezed hard on purpose. He gasped. Marella glared at me as I mumbled an insincere apology.

  "Don't mind him," she assured Kenns. "He's just a barbarian. He doesn't know any better." She patted his injured hand and his pained expression fled. My mood grew worse. "So what's going on here?" she asked confidentially. "What's with
all the security?"

  Kenns shook his head in friendly disbelief. "How can you not check the 'sphere more often? Don't they give you breaks down in the grav pits?"

  "Somebody's got to do the work. No, seriously, what's going on?"

  "Who knows?" He shrugged. "All I heard is the Council's in town and they're all cooped up in Assembly Hall. Nobody's seen the duke in days, and Countess High-and-Mighty is off on her boat somewhere whipping the slaves."

  I thought I was going to choke, but Marella only tsked in sympathy. Kenns made his excuses, gave me a plausible, "Nice to meet you," and went off on his own rounds.

  "I thought you were going to smack him."

  "Why?" she looked genuinely puzzled. "He was right about her."

  "It's amazing these people have no idea who you are."

  Marella shot quick looks up and down the hall before she backed me against the wall by poking me in the chest.

  "No, and don't you blow it for me! I've been coming down here for a long time—how do you think I learned to be a grav tech? Bloody boring at the palace all day…" She looked down the hall again; someone was approaching. "Nobody" —poke— "knows about this." Hard poke. "Nobody. Now come on."

  We soon reached a voice-activated elevator. She said "Marella Aujan," into the speaker, and the doors opened. We stepped on, and few moments later they opened again—on an empty countryside. Off to our left was a narrow beach and a sun-gilded ocean, but there was not a building in sight.

  Maire took this astonishing development in stride—literally. Once we emerged from the docking tower—which a swift whirl assured me still stood where to all appearances it had bulked since the first Nuum set foot on this planet—she set off at a determined pace on a northward course, parallel to the water. Just as astounding, the foot traffic in this area, as motley and dense as that surrounding any metropolitan transit center in my own day, treated this abrupt phenomenon with equal equanimity!