Part 21 (2/2)

”s.h.i.+t,” he said. ”Oh s.h.i.+t.” He slammed the door, reached for a bar that wasn't there. The door quivered as the Surge crashed against it. He went up the ladder faster than he'd come down it, slammed the trap and yelled at the ex-slaves to help him shove bales on it.

They got the first bale in place as the trap shuddered and started to rise, rolled another over beside it, then a third. The bales quivered as the Hordar below pounded and shoved at the trap, but they had to stand on the ladder to reach it and couldn't get enough leverage to s.h.i.+ft the weight piled on it. The barrier held.

Quale scowled at the faces turned hopefully toward him. The se Vrolys were both slender, the four Jajes added together wouldn't make one of him. Lyhyt was vaguely vegetative like Kinok, though not Sikkul Paem; he was broad and tall, but maybe not as ma.s.sive as he looked. The Froska female wouldn't take much s.p.a.ce and would suffer in silence for pride's sake, but the Miesashch could be a problem if he panicked. The third from Touw's cell was a fragile nocturnal whose species Quale didn't recognize, but she at least looked fairly calm. ”Listen,” he said, ”I'll take a chance I can lift off with all of you.

It's a wild gamble, you might be safer finding a place to hide up here where you can ride that mess out. . . .” He broke off, looked up as he heard the tinny clatter of a yizzy.

A fireball came straight at him. He dived away, rolled over, dived again, rolled behind a stack of crates.

The second fireball missed him by the width of a hope, splashed on the roof and started it smoldering. The others had scattered almost as quickly, hunting cover, but the inklin didn't waste more fire on them. The yizzy swept past, went soaring up to the mooring tower; the rider began working on the airs.h.i.+ps. Moreyizzies converged on the towers. The airs.h.i.+ps were as fire safe as chemistry could make them, but with a dozen fire throwers heating them up, even the heavily sized yosscloth was beginning to smoke. Before long the heat would kindle the hydrogen in the ballonets and the conflagration that followed would melt more than the tower.

While Pels was helping the ten pack themselves into the skip, Quale risked another look over the parapet.

The street was packed with Hordar moving and breathing as if they were limbs of a single beast. The whole city was coming to press against the Fekkri, the Hordar flowing like a river of ants over the few Ta.s.salgan guards stupid enough to try stopping them. The Surge tore them apart, tore off arms, legs, heads, anything one of the many beasthands could get a grip on. He saw a pair of guards trapped in a doorway trying to shoot themselves clear; pellet guns on automatic, they emptied clips one after another at the mob, the pellets scything across the front ranks, knocking down dozens of men and women. The Surge ignored them, came on without noticing the dead and injured, cast them aside like sloughed skin cells. The guards panicked, tried breaking into the House behind them. They couldn't get away. The Surge threw off a tendril which flowed after them and pulled them back to the street; it hurled them against a wall, knocked them again and again into the stone, rocked them back and forth under casual undirected blows, it kicked them off their feet and stomped them into stewmeat. The chatter of the guns, the yells of the guards, their final screams were lost in the SOUND coming from the Surge, a hooming howl/growl without words, only a rage so tangible that the hair stood up on Quale's arms and rose along his spine. He backed away and ran for the skip.

Pels had got the weight of the pa.s.sengers distributed as well as he could, but the machine was still dangerously overloaded. Quale eased into the pilot's seat and punched on the liftfield, cycling it gradually higher as the drives warmed and tried to take hold. They whined and shuddered; after a tense moment when he was sure they weren't going to bite, the skip lumbered clumsily into the air. He held her an arm's length off the roof while he tested her handling. She was sluggish and crank, the slightest misjudgment on his part might flip her or send her into a slip and that would be that for all of them.

He eased her higher, a hand span at a time until she was finally high enough to clear the parapet.

Two yizzies backed away from the siege on the airs.h.i.+ps and came swooping at them. Quale turned the skip through a wide gentle arc, gradually accelerating, cursing under his breath at the impossibility of losing the inklins fast enough. Pels slid over Touw se Vroly's lap so he could snap loose Quale's stunner which had a longer reach to it than his own. One of the inklins squirted fire at them, but a gust of wind carried it wide. Back in his cubby, Pels bared his tearing teeth, hissed with satisfaction and put that inklin out; he got the second inklin before she could release more fire. The two collapsed in their saddles; strapped in so they didn't fall, they went drifting off, ignored by guards on the ground and their fellows in the air.

Quale relaxed and nursed the laboring skip through the city, picking a circuitous route that avoided the taller buildings, the speakers' minarets, mooring towers, and the like. Below them the Surge went on, spreading from precinct to precinct, leaving death and destruction behind it as it moved.

Quale brought the skip down slowly, carefully, landing her in a gra.s.sy swale between two groves, one a collection of nut-bearers, the other ancient hardwoods. There was a small stream wandering vaguely westward across the middle of the swale and a tumbledown shelter tucked away under a lightning-split cettem tree still alive and heavy with green nuts. He left Pels and four of the ex-slaves there to wait for his return and took the others to Base.

He started back at once, reached gul Ukseme shortly before dawn; he circled over the city to see how the Surge had developed. It was very dark, both moons were down and the storm that had threatened at dusk was on the verge ofbreaking. No yizzies. The streets were empty. The Fekkri was a burnt-out husk.

There were bodies everywhere, trampled into rags on the paving stones, men and women, impossible to say which body was which; dead children who were recognizable as children only because they were littler than the others. He was too high to smell the stench, but it was thick in his nostrils despite that; he'd seen more wars than he cared to count, he'd seen his own body, the one he was born in, flung down in a ragged sprawl, he knew that smell, he knew the look of bodies thrown away, flattened, empty. He'd never gotten used to the smell or the look of the violently dead. Grim and angry at the futility of it all, he swung the skip around and got out of there; fifteen minutes later, with wind hammering at him and rain in cold gusts drenching him, he picked up Pels and the Jajes and went back to Base where life was marginally saner and the folk living there full of juice and hope.

30 days after the meeting on Gerbek.

The muster in the Chel, semi-arid land between the Inci Mountains and the southern edge of the gra.s.slands. The chill gray hour just after dawn.

Knots of talk as the muster is getting organized: ”Any time now. Soon as you're ready to load.” Quale looked round at the untidy ferment scattered over half a kilometer of scrub. ”Adelaar's got a clawhold on the s.h.i.+pBrain through the tap; she's routing the scanners away from this sector, but I don't want to lean too hard on that, it's complicated working blind like she is with two sets of alarms to avoid. The sooner you can get this lot ...” he waved his hand at the noisy congeries about them, ”sorted out, the better for all of us.”

Elmas Ofka looked past him at the tug. ”The systems.h.i.+ps have lifts; how do we get into that thing?”

”Right.” He lifted the com. ”Pels, open her up.”

Karrel Goza threaded through the clumps of rebels, forces from every part of Kuzeywhiyk brought together for this thing no one had believed possible before Elmas Ofka put it together; he knew most of them because he'd given most of them a lift at one time or another when the bitbits were hot after them; he waved a greeting to those who yelled his name but didn't stop until he reached one of the knots near the outside, seven quiet men who were sitting on their packs or squatting beside them, ready to go when the word came. He dropped to a squat beside them. ”Not long now,” he said.

Jamber Fausse snapped a twig in half, began peeling the stringy bark from the dry white wood. ”Mm.” He scratched at a patch of rot. ”I know you, Kar, you want something.”

”Elli.”

”So?”

”We need her.”

”Yeh. So?”

”She's got three sets of outsiders watching each other, she thinks that'll be enough to keep them from knifing her.”

”Probably right. Usually is.”

”Uh-huh. Safe is better'n sorry. She's got her isyas scattered to keep the squads on track.”

”Kar ...” there was a weary patience in Jamber Fausse's rough voice, ”we been going through the motions the past ten days. Why you keep telling me what I already know?”

”Just laying foundation, Jamo. You're scheduled for the drive chambers. Kanlan Gercik's willing to trade. I want you and them . . .” he jerked his thumb in a nervous half circle taking in the others who were listening without comment, without expression, waiting! with the patience of monks for the talking to be over, ”next to her. Kan's all right, he's good in a pinch, but you've been dealing with Huvved since before you could walk, you can smell a trap before it hatches.””Mm.” Jamber Fausse broke the length of denuded twig into smaller and smaller bits then threw them at a patch of dried gra.s.s and brushed the debris off his callused palms. ”All right.”

Aslan stood in the shadows and watched the fighters file past; she had the Ridaar running, flaking them as they came up the lift and into the hold. These male guerrilla bands and female fighting isyas were unlike the outcast, outlawed and rebel Hordar she knew from the Mines. They were harder, angrier, fined down by hunger, fear and pain; these Hordar had lived on the run for decades, no sanctuary for them, never enough food, never enough anything but ammunition for their guns, living with the knowledge that their capture alive or dead meant death or exile for their families; to the Huvved, blood was blood, corrupt in one set of veins, corrupt in all. She watched their faces and thought she wouldn't much like living on a world that these men and women had a hand in running. She didn't understand why Elmas Ofka had such a powerful hold on them, but she was glad of it, she liked the Hordar and wished them well. She watched the fighters and ached for them though they'd be furious if they knew it; in a few hours their rationale for living and doing what it took to stay alive, that rationale would be taken from them. If not in a few hours, certainly in a few days. Worlds have no place for fighters once the war is won. What were they going to do with the rest of their lives?

”Eh, Lan!” Xalloor danced over to her. ”Why the long face? You're as melancholy as a poet with a prize.” Behind her, Churri snorted; he leaned against the lock and said nothing.

Aslan pulled Xalloor closer so she could talk without shouting. ”What in the world are you two doing here?”

”More insurance. We're supposed to keep an eye on you and your mum. And the rest of 'em. Churri's a poet which makes him respectable and I'm nothing much, someone she knows, someone too feeble to be a danger to her, just barely bright enough to watch-hound.”

”I see about her, what about you? This isn't a stage, you could.get killed.”

Xalloor grinned. ”Dearie dai, you are a romantic. Stage. ...” The word turned into a giggle. ”Once upon a time about a hundred years ago, didn't I say you've led a sheltered life?”

30 days after the meeting on Gerbek. Lift-Off.

On the bridge, her hands alternately at rest and work-ing with a swift sureness across several sensor pads, Adelaar sat half-lost in a recapitulation of her Listening Station, part environment, part sculpture, part haphazard stack of blackbox units, playing her sup-with-the-devil-games with target and tie-line, blocking approach alarms, feeding in false readings, singing the ancient s.h.i.+pBrain to sleep.

Quale was taking the tug up on a long gentle arc, moving west to chase the night, the ar-grav blending so smoothly with the drives that the only sense of movement the pa.s.sengers had, on the bridge or in the hold, came through the screens that showed Tairanna curving more and more beneath them.

Elmas Ofka stood beside Quale, watching the screens, her hands closed into fists, her body stiff. She'd had it with strangeness, her own world was complicated and difficult enough, she needed all her skills, her intellect and energy to deal with the disintegration of the society she'd been born into.

This extra element of confusion threatened to wrench control from her and destroy any possibility of a return to order. At least, to the sort of order she remembered. If she could have expunged these aliens from the Horgul system, closed it away from the Outside as Adelaar planned to encyst an area of the s.h.i.+pBrain, she'd have done it without a second thought. Too intelligent to linger mournfully on impossible dreams, she forced herself to concentrate on limiting the damage the aliens could do. She could feel the one called Aslan watching her. The most dangerous of all of them, if Parnalee wasn't lying to her. Aslan knew toomuch. She was capable of too subtle a twisting; the play-maker Parnalee showed her how Aslan had turned the Prophet's Life on the lathe of her knowledge and imagination and used Pradix to rouse the Hordar out there watching, innocent victims of the woman's will to power. Ruthless, he said, you can never trust her because she can manipulate you without you knowing a thing about what was happening to you. She gazed at the back of Quale's head, cold dislike was.h.i.+ng over her though she knew that was foolish. Thing. Bought thing. Cat on a leash, dancing for whoever pulls it. With regret and resentment she thought of the pouch of prime rosepearls she'd handed over once her fighters were loaded in the tug. No threat voiced, no threat in his posture, but he didn't need to make explicit what was implied by his control of the machine. No, she had no choice; the rosepearls bought her this standing s.p.a.ce, bought her a chance at the Warmaster, a chance at liberation for all Hordar. Divers did what they must to stay intact. Discipline was life. She disciplined her fears and forebodings and watched the screens, watched the War-master swimming smoothly toward them.

Though its image was at that moment little larger than her hand, its ma.s.s was palpable. And she knew from evidence of her own eyes how huge it was. Two days ago she'd seen it gliding south over the Mines. Two days ago it descended over them to smother them with its immensity, its power. Two days ago it went south to Guneywhiyk to burn a Sanctuary down to bedrock. It could have been the Mines. But for the Prophet's Hand over them, it could have been the Mines. Two days ago. She felt the dead cl.u.s.tering over her, swimming through the incense of all these alien souls, puff of unseen smoke, bouncing under the ceiling of this alien place. Forgive me, she breathed at them. She sang in her mind the Litany of Dismissal/ The Promise of Return. Return to a quieter, gentler world, a world of calm and order. She sang the litany over and over as the Warmaster grew until there was nothing in the screen but a cratered black surface whose pits and flaws were more and more apparent, a calligraphy of age. She sang the litany over and over, sang it for herself, gentling herself, sloughing off her responsibilities, her plans and fears . . . odd, when she had so many anxieties and frustrations, how free she felt. As if the moment would permit nothing less. Free. For the first time she began to understand the seduction of war. How it stripped away everything but the need to survive, how it narrowed life to the Now, how it freed you from the niggling irritations and ambiguities of ordinary life. She was enthralled and appalled.

The power of it. The temptation. She looked over her shoulder at Aslan; the woman's face seemed wide open, utterly without defense. She looked into those cool amber eyes, strange eyes, and saw . . . she didn't know what she saw, but it terrified her. Aslan knew her, knew what tempted her, knew so much it was an obscenity. Moments pa.s.sed before Elmas Ofka found the courage to look away.

She shook briefly with fear, then the Now took her again, she turned back to the screen and forgot to be afraid.

Karrel Goza leaned against the wall, its vibration playing in his bones, not shaking but a note sung in a voice so deep he felt it rather than heard it. He watched Tairanna drop away, savoring this pale small taste of flight.

Otherwise the tug gave him nothing, how could he feel himself flying without a symbiosis of soul and air; shut inside here how could he feel anything? He was sad. The skips were fast and reliable and nearly indifferent to storms. Within a generation they and their cousins would most likely replace the airs.h.i.+ps; they were too tempting and with Outsiders coming in and out with no controls on them, Family businesses would be replacing airs.h.i.+ps as fast as they could import these machines. Would start building them as soon as they had the necessary mechanics trained. Not all airs.h.i.+ps would go, cost still meant something; but yosspod bags would be left to claw out a poor living on the fringes of transport and hauling. More change.

He sighed. For over two decades, since a childhood he remembered as calm, slow, ordered, he'd watched the world pa.s.s through wrenching transformations because the Outside, the OutThere, intruded. What they were doing this day would wrench the world yet more violently from that remembered time, but itmight (only might, he couldn't see beyond the hour, let alone so long into the what-will-be), it might ensure the coming of a new tranquillity. If he were fortunate and outlived this day, he might see that time within this life; if not, he was content to wait for the next. He, like Elmas Ofka, surrendered to the point-Now and watched the Warmaster swimming toward them; he forgot sadness, forgot speculation. Immense. Gargantuan. Enormous. Colossal. Feeble, all those adjectives. No words were adequate. It seemed to him impossible that men had made that immensity, it seemed to him that it must have been some demon also beyond words which had laid so impossible an egg. Which was absurd.

Men had made it, of course they had. How many men labored how many years in that making?

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