Part 16 (1/2)

”Don't know, Riker. I'd rather have it another way.”

”It's too late for any other way. Stross picked this path,” said Mikken. ”Then he dragged us down it. The Hidden Hand can't find us here.”

”How do you expect your handful of believers to bring down an entire planetary government?”

”The simple d-d-days,” said Tritt quietly. ”We have to go back to them. We just have to.”

Up ahead, less than a kilometer away, the track bed ended in an old crater formed by an explosion. Durren backed the throttle down, and the car coasted to a stop within a few meters of the damaged section. A young woman waited for them, with five of the same beasts to which Tritt had tended back at the watering hole. His face lit as he saw them nibbling on some p.r.i.c.kly brush clinging to the hillock where they stood untethered. ”Mori!” he shouted. The young woman replied with a wave, and Tritt jumped down to the gray sand before the car had quite stopped moving and ran over to greet the animals.

He gave each one a thump and a hug. Riker and his remaining captors followed Tritt over.

”Is he talking to them?” Riker asked.

Mikken's head quirked in disgust. ”He's named them. Swears he recognizes each one on sight.”

”Ealixes seem to know each other,” Durren said.

”That's by scent. They all smell the same to me-bad.”

Riker walked cautiously around the animals, looking them over. They, on the other hand, showed little interest in him, except for twitching their snouts as they caught his scent. They looked to him like an ungainly cross between camel, horse, and hippo.

Barrel-shaped bodies with small humps just behind their withers, wide heads with dainty mouths that seemed frozen in a Mona Lisa smile, soulful eyes with long lashes, nostrils that opened and closed tightly, probably to prevent them from breathing in grit whipped up by the wind, wide flat feet with toes that splayed for better traction in the sandy terrain. Two of the ealixes also had double sets of horns sprouting from their brow ridges.

Males, Riker guessed. The only noise the animals made was a rhythmic snorting as their nostrils sealed and snapped open with each breath.

Riker approached Tritt, who was vigorously scratching the nose of one of the horned animals. The ealix yawned in pure contentment. ”So these are ealixes ...”

”Best friend you could have out here.” Tritt's stammer disappeared as he stroked the animal's neck, ruffling its fine pinkish fur.

The ealixes all had blankets thrown over their backs and bridles and reins over their heads.

Since there weren't any bits in their mouths, Riker guessed them to be docile animals. He touched the one Tritt was petting and felt it actually purr.

The notch on its back between shoulders and hump seemed amply padded with fat to provide a reasonably comfortable seat.

Riker watched the young woman adjust an additional harness around the neck and shoulders of one of the ealixes. Another animal had a similar rig, which held a dull brown metal tube as long as a man's armspan. ”Weapons?”

Mori nodded. ”Ground-to-air slasher launchers.”

”What do you shoot at?”

”Government hoverjets. We were easy targets before we got these.”

”And now?”

”Now we get the jets more often than they get us,” she said in an a11-business tone, as if she'd been shooting down attacking aircraft most of her life, which might have been the case, for all Riker knew. ”Are you a good shot?”

She fixed him with a flinty gaze. ”I get my share.” When she was satisfied she had the launchers hanging properly, she moved around the second ealix to face Riker. ”Can you ride?”

”I've ridden a lot of different animals on a lot of different planets. These don't look like much trouble.”

”They're not. Comfortable, too.”

”Where are we going?”

Mori turned and pointed off to a distant pa.s.s between majestic cliffs. ”Sanctuary Canyon.”

”How did it get that name?”

”When our ancestors came out here to the Sa'drit, that's where they found water and fruit growing. And that's where our legends say Mother World handed down the Testaments-the writings that told us how to live in Fusion with the land and sky.”

”Fusion. That's the same name Stross uses for his plan.”

Mori's eyes flashed. ”He stole the name, thought he could fool people. His Fusion mocks what the name stands for.”

Mikken vaulted smoothly up onto one of the ealixes bearing a slasher. That didn't surprise Riker, considering this Thiopan's affinity for weapons. Mori climbed onto the shoulders of the other animal with the launcher rig. Riker, Durren, and Tritt mounted the remaining three. Although there were no stirrups and saddle horn, human hindquarters fit snugly into the crook of the ealix's back and Riker felt sufficiently secure.

”Out there, Riker, is the heart of the Sa'drit, the heart of the Sojourners,” Mikken said with a grim smile. ”The heart of the revolution that's going to save Thiopa from ruin at the hands of Ruer Stross.”

They left the rail line behind and began to ride across the barren plain of the Sa'drit Void.

From the slate-colored faces of far-off mountains to the pallid gray-blue of the sky, this land was as bleak as a moonscape. Riker wondered at the crazed courage it must have taken for the first Sojourners to venture out here centuries ago-and at the fanatical dedication to a Sojourner renaissance that was driving these people who'd had the audacity to s.n.a.t.c.h him from the middle of Bareesh.

Along the way, they pa.s.sed mute evidence of past clashes-burned carca.s.ses of hoverjets scattered grotesquely, like dead birds shot down by desert marksmen. Whether because of the destructive power of the slasher weapons, the impact of the crash, or both, little 167 was left to give Riker an idea what the hoverjets would look like whole. But the charred and twisted bits told a story all their own. The other side of the story was also told by the ashes of a small encampment, still retaining the two-dimen sional layout of a place where people had lived. But the third dimension, height, had been burned to the ground. Somehow, a tent pole here, a structural frame there, still stood, blackened and so fragile they would not stand long against a strong wind.

The caravan slowed as it pa.s.sed the burned campsite. ”What happened here?” Riker asked Mori, who rode flank to swaying flank with his ealix. ”This is what the hoverjets could do anytime they wanted before we got the launchers.”

”When was that?”

”Six months ago.”

”Where did you get the weapons?”

”From the Nuarans.”

Riker was shocked. ”The Nuaransl I thought you hated them.”

”We do,” Durren dissd from the animal behind Riker. ”But they gave us what we needed to defend our land.”

”Your archenemy gave you weapons?”

”They sold them to us,” Durren said, ”in return for the rights to future resource mining in our territory and any other places we might conquer.”

”They were hedging their bets,” Riker concluded.

”Just in case. But I thought there wasn't anything left to mine out in Endraya.”

”There's plenty,” Mikken said from the lead ealix. ”It's just that the mines had to be dug deeper and 168 deeper, and out in areas that were open to our surprise attacks. The government decided it was too expensive and too dangerous. That's about when they broke off ties with the Nuarans. So the Nuarans came to us.”

”I'm a little surprised the Sojourners would deal with the embodiment of evil,” Riker said.