The Valley Beneath the World: The Fugitive Future - Book One

by Brian Lowe

  V

  It was early in the morning, but I knew I would find Maire at the palace; work was her life now. And sleep, I suppose, although she probably did that in her office. The civil guards passed me quickly, and Maire's household guard even more quickly. They knew me; there aren't a whole lot of gorillas in Dure.

  I didn't pause until I reach Maire's outer office, when I made a detour to visit with Lottric, the nobleman who was her cousin and also her chief of staff. He already knew what had happened, of course, since Skull had gone to Maire the instant we landed. Which didn’t explain why she had sent for me. But Lottric didn't show any reaction at my appearance, just saying:

  "Good. You're here. I'm about done. You'd better go right in."

  I did, narrowing my eyes as I wondered what he was "about done" with, and what it had to do with me.

  Maire por Foret, rightful Duchess of Dure and its current co-regent, is, according to Keryl, a beautiful woman. I knew that Keryl's viewpoint was biased, but at the same time it didn't matter, because Maire is human and I'm not. Different points of reference all around.

  Although her mother was Thoran, Maire is considered Nuum. She has long brown hair that she keeps piled on her head nowadays, probably just to keep it out of her eyes. She has brown eyes, too, which I appreciate, because apes all have brown eyes, and that's about where I lose the thread.

  But after Keryl, she's my closest friend.

  Usually when I come back from a trip, Maire gets up to give me a hug, sits me down with a hot drink, and grills me about every step I took, and every question I asked, to find Keryl. She knows perfectly well we didn't find him, but it's always the hug, the drink, and the questions.

  This time she didn't offer any of them.

  Her desktop was awash in flat-image and holographic documents, charts, and images. Normally she would have swept them all away at my entrance, but she only sat in her chair, her desk between us like a barrier, staring downward. Her voice sounded as it had after Keryl disappeared.

  "I thought you would want to know that I've spoken to Lord Amman, the father of Amal Amman, the boy you attacked." I started to interrupt but she stopped me with a raised hand. "It wasn't as bad as I'd feared; I had Lottric do some checking, and apparently Amman isn't much fonder of his son than you are. He thought that sending the boy out of the capital would keep him out of trouble, but obviously that didn't work.

  "Fortunately, he's from the Lesser Tyaranes, a small island group out to the west. Maybe you've heard of it; I never had. The point is that as co-regent of Dure, I am a member of the Council of Nobles, and Amman is not. I was able to press him into a settlement. Fortunately, Farren agreed back me, so the Council took our side."

  "Farren? Backed you in my favor?"

  She looked up with a sad smile. "Ironic, isn't it? The Nuum racial champion backing a Thoran against one of his own. But he had to. Our little arrangement here is hell for both of us, but it's working. We need each other."

  I don't read humans well, but I've known Maire a long time.

  "You said you'd reached a settlement, but you don't sound very happy about it."

  Maire sighed. "Economic concessions… but it means more trade, so it's pretty much a win-win."

  I knew she wasn't telling me everything. I started to feel cold; I trust Maire with my life, but then again, it was my life we were talking about.

  "You're not telling me something. Economic concessions; what was the rest of it?"

  "That's just it; there was no 'rest of it,'" she blurted out. "Amman gave in too easily--he's planning to have you killed, or worse, make an example of you. You have to disappear for a while. At least a year. And I mean you can't be seen anywhere. I can give you a ship; I've had Lottric working on something. You should go home." Maire knew I came from Tehana City, but she had never been there, and did not know its location. "I need you to drop out of sight completely until this all blows over. If you don't, I can't guarantee your safety."

  I spent a few moments absorbing this news. I had no real ties to Dure other than Maire and my crewmates, but I had considered it my home for five years.

  "Exile is better than the alternative, I suppose," I said, prompting Maire's emphatic nod. "And my mother has been complaining that I don't get back there as often as she'd like. She'll probably throw a fit when she hears what happened, but she'll be glad to see me."

  "If it were me, I wouldn't tell her."

  I grinned, despite the situation. "She'll know something's up when I tell her I've come to stay." And even if it somehow escaped her, Uncle Balu would have it out of me fast enough. I'd only made a few visits since Keryl and I left; friends would have grown up and started families--some might have died--and things would have changed. I certainly had.

  "How much time do I have?"

  Maire shook her head. "None. I asked Lottric to send someone to clean out your rooms. Everything is packed on your ship." She stood up at last and came around the desk to hug me. "You should leave as soon as possible. Even around here, there are a lot of people who think you're getting away with something you shouldn't."

  Like any good assistant, Lottric always gave the impression he'd been listening at the boss's door so he'd be ready when you came out. He held up a cautionary finger as I emerged from Maire's office; although most of his staff were Thorans who would probably cheer for my actions (and I had no doubt they knew something about it), the more people know a secret, the less secret it becomes. So we did not speak until we were on a private lift car ascending to Maire's personal hangar.

  "As I'm sure Maire told you, it's likely that Amman has spies watching you already."

  "Already? She didn't mention that. How would he manage to find them so fast?"

  "I doubt that he did. There's no reason he'd have spies in place here--we've never had much to do with each other--but other people have, and I'm sure he has friends." Lottric shrugged. "For all we know, he's using Farren's spies. There are certainly enough of them around."

  "Yeah." I had to agree that made a lot of sense. "Farren and I don't get along, that's for sure. I'm surprised Amman didn't just ask him to shoot me and save him the trouble."

  "Well, there's not much doubt he would, if he could. But that would cause open warfare with Maire, so he can't. Besides, Amman would want to do the job himself, or at least give the order."

  Lottric was also Nuum, so I expected he would know. It gave me the slightest bit of reassurance. I decided to let the subject rest until we reached our destination.

  Our destination turned out to be a sleek flyer big enough to house a crew of four comfortably, although it could be operated by a single pilot with the help of an onboard AI. It looked familiar, and for good reason…

  "This is Maire's flyer!"

  Lottric gave me a little smile. "They're all Maire's, when you get down to it."

  I turned to him and lowered my voice. Even here--maybe especially here--we couldn't afford to take chances.

  "You know what I mean. This is her personal flyer. I recognize it even though you took off the ID markings and colors."

  "This is the flyer she ordered outfitted for you," he said. "Let's go inside; there are some things you need to know." He ushered me into the ship, casting small glances in either direction.

  "Now," Lottric said, "we can talk without worrying who's going to overhear us. Rose, please activate the privacy cloak."

  I felt a tingling like the hairs all over my body were rising a little bit. I get that feeling whenever I'm inside a privacy screen. None of the humans I've asked has ever noticed it.

  "Timash, meet Rose, your flyer. Rose, I'd like you to meet Timash. Please observe proper decorum; you've only just met."

  "How do you do, Timash. It's a pleasure to meet you. I've heard so much about you."

  The ship's voice was husky and a bit measured. From what I've observed, human males would probably find it quite sexy, but as I like to say, I'm not human. It was nice enough, but it seemed a bit talky. I made
a mental note to make some changes if I was going to keep the ship for a while.

  "Nice to meet you, too, Rose." I turned my attention to Lottric. "So, what are these things I need to know? Does Maire's ship have some special features, like maybe a particle beam?" I rubbed my hands together.

  "No, no particle beam. It does have some armament; technically, it's a Durean naval vessel, like The Dark Lady. And since you're a member of the Lady's crew, on paper you're an officer in the Durean navy. That's the legal fiction that allows the crew to carry arms.

  "But the most important thing you have to know about… you just met her."

  I furrowed my brow. "You mean the AI? What's so special about that?"

  Lottric sucked in his breath. "Careful! Her name is Rose. You don't want to forget it. And Rose is a 'she,' not an 'it.'"

  I stared at him, but at the same time I was becoming vaguely aware that something was off, like the ship's environmental controls were be subtly manipulated.

  "Is she--?"

  Lottric nodded. "You should apologize to her, later. For now--you remember how The Dark Lady ran without a tracking beacon when Keryl was trying to reach Dure without anyone finding out who you were?" I nodded; that time of my life was rather hard to forget. "The Council has been cracking down on unregistered shipping ever since. They don't want captains running their ships without tracking beacons."

  "I think I heard something about that. Skull was complaining because he had to adjust our schedule so every stop would appear to have a legitimate purpose."

  "Exactly. So now all of our ships, even this one, have beacons that can't be turned off. Which means--"

  "Which means that if Amman knows I took this ship, he could follow me anywhere, and I can't turn off the beacon to get away from him." I looked around. "So why are we here?"

  "Because--and this is why we came in here and I asked Rose to activate the privacy shield--Maire and Skull and I have been working on a way to get around the beacon problem. She wanted to try it out herself, but you need it more. The idea is, we can't shut down the beacon, but the ship can refuse to broadcast it."

  "Isn't that the same thing?"

  Lottric smiled widely. "No. We're not telling the ship not to broadcast; that would be illegal. But if the AI refuses to send a signal of her own accord, well, there's nothing we can do about that."

  I was actively resisting the urge to grab my friend by the throat and shake him a few times.

  "What the hell are you talking about? Why would the ship refuse to send a beacon signal?"

  "Because she knows that would be bad for you." He clapped me on the shoulder. "And I want to you know," he said earnestly, "that this was Skull's idea."

  "What was Skull's idea?"

  "It's Rose, Timash--she's in love with you."

  VI

  "So, sweetie, are you going to give me the coordinates for Tehana City approach, or do you want to land manually?"

  I had learned already never to tell Rose that I was going to manipulate her controls "manually;" it only led to an uncomfortable and suggestive reply. Whoever had come up with this "AI in love" concept needed to have his head examined. Come to think of it, why would Maire, who was still pining for Keryl, want a ship that took every opportunity to declare its undying devotion to her? Now, when it was far too late, I smelled a rat --or more likely two, named Lottric and Skull.

  The plan was to go back to Tehana City. I hadn't seen my mother or Uncle Balu in a year. I had been handling the piloting myself--learning in the process several ways in which the word "handling" could also be misused--because I didn't want Tehana City's coordinates in Rose's system. That was one good thing; I just asked her not to record them, and she was very prompt to agree.

  Now that we were nearly there, though, it occurred to me that I was just stalling. If I went home, I'd stay, maybe for a long time. If I knew my mother, a very long time. And while I love my family, I wasn't ready to run back home and hide under my bed just because someone had it in for me.

  "Neither. We're not going to Tehana City."

  "Oh, honey, that's too bad. I was looking forward to meeting your mother. So where are we going instead?"

  I shook my head. "I have no idea."

  Eventually, I ordered Rose to head due south, not because I knew where I wanted to go, but because it seemed the least logical direction. Who would guess where I'd gone?

  I had been searching for somebody else for five years without success; maybe it was time I did some searching for me. When I first ran into Keryl, I'd been wandering around outside Tehana City simply because I was bored, a poor choice that had nearly cost me everything. But after meeting Keryl, everything I had done was on his schedule, and for his reasons--good reasons, for sure, but not mine. And then he'd disappeared, and since then my life had been consumed by looking for him. I had traded Keryl's quest for Maire's.

  But what was Timash's quest? Now, for better or worse, I had the chance to find out.

  And apparently, it lay to the south.

  I was only vaguely aware of what was ahead. Rose showed me on a map how we were approaching the edge of the continent where Tehana City lay, lands where the snow never melts and as far as I knew, no one lived. Beyond that stretched an ice-cold ocean surrounding the Southern Continent and the South Pole. Once I crossed those, I'd be heading north again, but into territory I'd never seen.

  You see, although we had spent five years searching for Keryl, we had decided early on that there was a limit to how far we were going to go. It didn't make any sense flying back and forth around the whole world, because even if Farren or some other Nuum had engineered his kidnapping, chances were that he was being held relatively close by. For reasons I don't understand and no one ever bothered to explain, the Nuum in the western hemisphere don't have a lot to do with the Nuum in the eastern hemisphere. Even the Council of Nobles, for all it likes to think of itself as the ruling council of the Nuum, is really only in charge of the western hemisphere. I don't think most of them have a clue what goes on in the East.

  "I guess I'll go to the East, then. Who knows, maybe it's crawling with gorillas. Even cute girls." Rose had no comment.

  My mother would probably enjoy that--Uncle Balu sure would. But if I was going to plumb the mysteries of the East, first I had to get there--and that was destined to take a little longer than I expected.

  We crossed the ocean to the Southern Continent. While I was stomping around the world with Keryl Clee, we saw a lot of strange places, but nothing like this. I grew up inside an air-conditioned mountain; ice was something we put in our drinks. I knew there was snow on our mountaintop in the winter, but I never knew there was this much ice in the world. Nor would I have thought it could be so beautiful. Maybe it was because it was so different from where I grew up. It was all so white.

  I decided to override Rose's piloting and take my time traversing the ice cap. Depending on your point of view, that was either fortunate or unfortunate, because otherwise I might have flown right over the Southern Valley.

  "Timash, dear, I'm picking up organic readings."

  That brought me out of my daydream. "Here?" I waved a hand to activate a screen with an outside view.

  "No… Actually, out there."

  The view in front of me reared up so quickly that I fell backward in my chair. When I recovered, all I could see was blue sky with a pretty white striping of clouds.

  "Where, in the clouds?" I started to say, but Rose zoomed in on one and I stopped to reconsider. "Those… aren't clouds, are they?"

  At this apparent range, it was easier to see--what looked like thin upper-level clouds were moving, and not with the wind. They were more akin to membranes, pulsating in and out like the lungs of a huge, nearly-invisible sky-being.

  "No," Rose said in answer to my question. "They are organic, approximately seven hundred yards wide--and headed in this direction." Her voice took on a more mechanical tone. "Adopting evasive meas--Timash, they're everywhere! We're surrounded!
How did that happen?"

  Before I could offer any theories of my own, the scene I was looking at abruptly became fuzzy, and then fuzzier.

  "Several of the creatures have made contact with our hull," Rose reported. "Their weight is negligible, but they could start being sucked into my internal workings through my air vents. If that happens, I could suffer damage."

  However distracted I had been a few moments ago, I was fully engaged with the situation now. If these flying veils caused Rose to lose integrity, I could be forced to make an emergency landing--or worse. I could try gaining altitude, but who knew how high these things could go? And what would happen if I lost power?

  "We are taking on more passengers. My sensor efficiency is beginning to degrade. Really, Timash, dear, you need to make a decision." Then she said, "If it helps, I think they're attracted to me as a heat source."

  That did help. If our "passengers" were airborne and looking for heat, setting down in the snow was the best choice. I could power down if I had to; as long as I could stay inside, the ship would insulate me, and in this climate, the outer hull would cool off pretty quickly.

  "Find a safe spot to land and do so." Immediately I felt Rose comply, a sign of her desperation, since usually her course changes were so smooth you'd never notice them.

  "We're losing altitude, sweetheart."

  "That's because I told you to land--right?"

  "No, that's because my flight systems are being degraded."

  "I thought that was your sensor systems."

  "They aren't mutually exclusive, my love. I would suggest you return to the pilot's chair so I can strap you in. This may get rough."

  All right, now I was really engaged in the situation. We were still too high to survive a fall, no matter how strapped in I was. "How rough?"

  "Sensors are almost completely degraded. I should still be able to avoid any major mountains."

  The screen before me went completely dark.

  "Sensors are disabled."

  VII