R. GARCIA ROBERTSON
GONE TO GLORY
THE SAD CAFE
Defoe sat at one of the Sad Cafe's outdoor tables, soaking up gin slings and
watching an energetic couple attempting to mate in midair, wearing nothing but
gossamer wings and happy smiles. This pair of human mayflies had to be used to
the exercise -- neither showed a gram of fat or a bit of shame.
The four-hundred-year-old bistro stood in an open air park on the Rue Sportif
near Spindle's main axis, where g forces were low and the fun never slowed.
Holodomes and hanging gardens arched overhead. Beyond the mating couple, halfway
up Spindle's curve, nude bathers raised slow motion splashes in a low-g pool.
Not a shoddy spot for doing nothing. Defoe ordered his third (or maybe sixth)
sloe gin sling from a roving cocktail bar, a barrel-shaped dispenser doing a
lazy drunkard's walk between the tables, happily doling out drinks. Never asking
for credit or expecting a tip. Human service was rarer than saber-tooth's teeth
on Spindle.
Sipping his sloe gin, Defoe listened with mild disinterest to priority beeps
coming over the comlink clipped to his ear. The first calls weren't for him, but
they were coming fast and close together. Always a sad sign. Hoping not to be
dragged too deeply into other people's troubles, he had his navmatrix decode the
binary signals. The pilot's navmatrix grafted into the back of his skull was
immune to alcohol. Defoe could down a dozen gin slings and still pilot a
tilt-rotor VTOL in a blinding sand storm, or rendezvous with a starship -- if
the need arose. Only the need never arose. Not here. Not now.
First came a distress bulletin, direct from dirtside.
Then a standby alert.
Followed by a formal AID action request.
The final call was for him. Defoe answered in his off-duty voice.
Salome, his section head, came on line. Her parents had been ultra-orthodox
Satanists (who believed John the Baptist had it coming) and her strict religious
upbringing made Salome controlled and precise, with barely a wayward impulse.
Except for her hair, which tumbled in untamed curls and wild midnight blue
ringlets past her hips, almost to the floor. She sounded soft and winsome over
the comlink, a sure sign HQ was in second degree alarm -- Salome never courted
underlings unless she needed something. "There's an AID team down in Tuch-Dah
country. They want us to send someone."
Defoe snickered. "Who's the lucky sucker?"
"AID wants an 'experienced surface hand.' Someone who knows the Tuch-Dah. You've
been fortunate with them."
"Fortunate? Not hardly. Incredibly lucky would be nearer the mark." Not the sort
of luck Defoe aimed to lean on.
Salome persisted. "But you have come through intact -- always a plus -and saved
us a lot of trouble." And saved the Tuch-Dah a lot of trouble, thought Defoe,
not that the ungrateful bastards ever seemed to notice. "Besides you're fresh up
from the surface; it won't be so much of a shock."
"Right. With four months up-time coming." Up-time as in up here -- on Spindle --
where it was too perfect a day to contemplate work. Defoe had just done a solid
eighteen weeks on Glory. Great-aunt Tillie in Alpha C would do duty dirtside
before he went back early. "Last time AID lost a team the problem solved itself
-- Tuch-Dahs sent their heads back in a leather bag."
"Marvelously considerate. But we can't always count on it. Take a couple of
weeks," Salome suggested. "Clear this up, and we'll make it five months." That
was double time. A rare offer. AID had to be in a fine panic.
"Make it six months," Defoe said. Every day in paradise is perfect -- so one is
as good as another. He was demanding four days of up-time for every day dirtside
-- a splendid deal if he was so awfully essential.
"Find the team first," Salome told him primly. "Four weeks for going down to
Glory. Four more for getting the job done." Defoe would get the extra days only
if he delivered.
Bargaining with a Satanist was like dealing with the Devil. Centuries of
persecution had turned a diabolically carefree sect into overcompensating
overachievers. But it was always a comfort knowing that in the bad old days
decent folk would have tied his boss to a stake and had her barbecued.
"I'll need a free hand," Defoe told her. "No interference from AID."
"That's your lookout. AID will be there -- it's their team that's down. The way
to avoid them is to get going and keep going."
"Sure thing." Defoe was already up and moving. "See you in Hell, Salome."
"Not unless you convert." He could hear her wicked smile. Another sign things
were serious. Normally, Salome would never kid about religion.
Sloe gin and low gravity made the slidewalk seem to float in front of him.
Rooftops and tree-lined arcades curved upward, vanishing into the light
streaming down the length of the rotating habitat, reflected inward from mirrors
set in the spinning well of stars. Spindle could amaze even sober senses.
Kids flashed past on the slidewalk, tanned young bodies in overdrive. Defoe
passed feelie spas and low-g saunas. Happy holos invited him in. No more. Not
now. Sorry guys. Got to sober up and go to work.
Temptation abounded. And it was all free, from gaming orgies to organic feasts.
Free as air to anyone who set foot on Spindle. Like an ancient Greek polls,
Spindle made its own laws -- but without the polis' slavery and infanticide --
computers and birth lotteries took their place. No money. No credit. No theft,
graft or taxes. And like the ancient polls Spindle had only two punishments that
mattered. Death and exile. Now Defoe had to face both of these fates, for
nothing except the right to return. Hardly fair, but the system lacked honest
work.
At Port Orifice -- the cavernous lock that let ships enter and exit --he drew
emergency rations, heat caps, a thermal parka, bedroll, camp knife, folding
mattock, climbing rope, canteen and medikit. Telling the medikit to sober him
up, he ticketed himself for the surface.
A call came through with his clearance. Salome's assistant, a pretty little
catamite with painted lids and pierced nipples, purred into the comlink. "Hey
big boy. Is it true the Tuch-Dahs are cannibals?"
"No such luck." Defoe doubted Salome's kept boy had ever seen the surface. "They
only eat people." Given conditions on Glory, Defoe thought cannibalism should at
least be legal. Maybe even mandatory. If people were like hyenas, compelled to
eat everything they killed, dirtside would be a safer place.
Salome's pet laughed wickedly. "Old Battle-ax wants to talk with you."
"Who?" The lock door dilated, cheerily welcoming Defoe aboard.
"Ellenor Battle. Boss dragon lady at AID."
Defoe stepped through the lock into the shuttle. "Tell 'em I've gone to Glory."
The oxy-hydrogen shuttle lacked g-fields and cabin service; inflight
entertainment was a pair of tiny portholes. Defoe felt the backward jolt of
retros. Spindle seemed to leap ahead; the sole fleck of civilization in this
very Outback system dwindled rapidly.
He had his navmatrix tap into the shuttle's moronic guidance system. Nerve
endings merged with avionics -- sensors, astrogation, and stabilization became
extensions of sight, sound, and kinesthetics. A modest thrill. Pretty dry
compared to real piloting. Defoe's previous employer had been an over-privileged
idiot who wracked up a Fornax Skylark, stranding Defoe insystem. Delta Eridani
was a dead end, producing nothing the wider universe needed. Traffic was all
incoming. Subsidized AID shipments came in cosmic packing crates --
robofreighters cannibalized at their destination.
Only a knack for steering through trouble (and putting up with Thals) earned
Defoe part-time privileges on Spindle.
At the top of the stratosphere, the shuttle shifted her angle of attack.
Acceleration gave way to the gentle persistent push of gravity. Through the near
porthole Defoe saw the green-brown limb of the planet rising to greet him, edged
by a thin corona of atmosphere. Cloud puffs hung over blue splotches -- large
lakes or inland seas. Knocking around the Near Eridani, he had seen worlds
aplenty, some good, some bad, some merely uninhabitable. When humans first
arrived, Glory had been an airless husk, pitted with craters. Relentless
terraforming had made her almost liveable. No worse than New Harmony, Elysium,
Bliss, or any of a half-dozen made-to-order worlds. Either a shining success
story, or a case of hideous ecocide. As a pilot, Defoe had to believe in
terraforming --starships needed places to go.
The shuttle came screeching in for a horizontal landing. Millions of kilometers
of steppe, savanna, and lava desert allowed landing strips to be as long as you
liked. A groundhand undogged the hatch with a gleeful, "Welcome to dirtside,
land of enchantment -- where falls can kill you, beasts can eat you, and Thals
will snap your spine just to hear it pop. Watch your step, you are in two-thirds
g."
Defoe nodded. He was used to gaining thirty kilos every time he went down to
Glory. The strip was a study in spasmodic activity. Cargo pallets came dropping
down from orbit, braked by big silver chutes, raising yellow clouds of dust.
Semi-rigids landed and departed. SuperChimps sat like rows of sad monkeys, ready
to help with the unloading. It had been cocktail time on Spindle; here it was
early morning. Dun-colored hills stretched north and west of the field. Beyond
the electrified perimeter a solitary male moropus dug for steppe tubers. Hyenas
trotted past, giving the moropus wide leeway -- behind them, the Camelback
Steppe disappeared into endless distance.
Waiting at the bottom of the landing ladder was a uniformed woman. Tall and
athletic, with her steel-gray hair cut down to stubble, Ellenor Bat fie could
easily have looked half her age -- but she did not go for biosculpt or hair
toner. Taking life as it came, she expected the universe to do the same. Defoe
had dealt with Ellenor before, finding her as proud as Lucifer's aunt, a
no-nonsense reminder that AID stood for the Agency for Imperial Development.
She gave him a liquid hydrogen greeting. "Welcome to Glory. You missed your
briefing." Defoe confessed as much. Full-blown AID briefings were full of
glaring oversights and ass-backward assumptions -- besides, if the problem was
solvable from orbit AID would not have asked him down. But he listened dutifully
to the facts as Ellenor saw them. "We have a semi-rigid and crew more than forty
hours overdue. Orbital retort spotted the crash site in the TransAzur, Tuch-Dah
territory..."
"How many in the crew?"
"Three."
"All human?" A normal enough question, but Ellenor Battle took it badly,
replying with a curt nod. Defoe never knew what was about to bother her. She was
very like a Thai in that way -- moody and demanding. Salome might worship Satan,
but you at least knew where you stood.
A bang and a wail cut off conversation. SuperChimps were refueling the shuttle
for her return to Spindle. Boiling LOX filled the collapsed tanks, screaming
through the safety valves. With an irritated wave, Ellenor led him away from the
ladder. Defoe matched her swift sure strides.
Two huge airship hangars dwarfed the clutter of buildings edging the strip.
Outside the electrified perimeter sprawled Shacktown, one of those shameful
slums-cum-animal-pens that sprang up around an Outback landing field. Cook smoke
climbed lazily over dirty-naked Thai children searching through dung heaps for
breakfast. Plastic honeycomb, narrow alleys and open sewers gave Shacktown the
look and smell of a slave labor camp -- lacking only the camp's energy fences
and city services.
The howl of liquid oxygen faded, and Ellenor went on, "A Thal came into Azur
station with a ship's recorder -- hoping to trade it for booze. When the ship
crashed the survivors were attacked by Tuch-Dahs."
It had been a long time coming, Defoe decided, but all hell had finally broken
out.
The main hangar was packed with nervous armed humans. Defoe was welcomed aboard
by the Port Master, a local worthy who doubled as Mayor of Shacktown, charged
with neglecting sanitation and handing out beer and bhang on election day. The
hangar canteen had been opened for the duration. Drank vigilantes brandished
riot pistols, pepper grenades, and scoped sporting lasers -- as though they
could not decide whether they were faced with a prison break or a big game hunt.
A Tuch-Dah uprising had the worst elements of both.
The quarter-kilometer hangar housed a giant rigid airship, the Joie de Vivre,
belonging to a rancher named Helio from the Azur. Ellenor Battle pushed through
the jittery throng with Defoe in tow, making for the control-car. The gangway
was guarded by a brace of armed Thals, meaner than normal Neanderthals, nearly
as tall as Defoe, and twice as broad looking as thick as they were wide.
Standard airship harnesses supporting stubby grenade launchers and bandoleers of
gas grenades. A pair of dire wolves strained on electronic leashes.
The liquored up posse, loudly aiming to take on the entire Tuch-Dah nation, gave
the two Thals ample space. It was easier to talk of annihilating ten thousand
Neanderthals somewhere out on the steppe than to face down a couple of them
sporting grim looks and civilized weapons.
What the Thals thought, Defoe could hardly guess. Heavy brow ridges hid their
deepset eyes.
A rigger appeared at the top of the gangway -- a Homo sapiens with dark skin,
and a drooping mustache trained to blend into trim whiskers. Giving a sloppy
sarcastic salute, he led them to the control cat's lounge. He had a gasman's
easy grace, accustomed to balancing on a catwalk in any sort of wind and
weather. Crepe overshoes kept him from raising sparks. "Rig'em Right" was
scrawled across the back of his bullhide flight jacket, and he had the veteran
gasman's grin -- the small ironic smile that said he savored the insanity of
making his living aboard a flying bomb.
Hello had that smile too. He sat by an open lounge window, eyes hidden by blue
wraparound shades. Broad-shouldered as a Thal, the rancher was reckoned to be a
dead shot. Surrounded by a breakfast buffet of cold capon and Azur caviar, he
still looked deadlier than any dozen men outside.
Defoe pulled up a handwoven wicker seat, admiring the gold pattern in his plate.
Ellenor Battle tried to decline brunch, but Helio insisted. "It's no advantage
to be uncomfortable."
No advantage indeed. Defoe let his host pour him some offplanet champagne.
Relaxing under six tons of explosive hydrogen did not stop Helio from doing
himself up right. Silk panelling framed slender lacquered columns.
"The first thing," Helio told his guests, "is to see this recorder-- and the
Thai who found it. We have the transmission from Azur Station. But what is that?
A bunch of digital blips." He smiled behind his blue shades, kissing off the
tips of his fingers. Electronic evidence was notoriously manipulatable
-inadmissible in honest courts.
"So long as we get going." Ellenor Battle glared out the open window at the
panicky mob scene below.
Defoe agreed. He too wanted to see the recorder -- and the Thal who found it.
But most immediately he had to get out of this idiotic atmosphere with its
infectious panic. Once underway, things were bound to be better. Hello was
supposed to understand Thals, and conditions in Tuch-Dah Country -- as well as
anyone could pretend to. Besides, if there was any answer to the disappearance
of the AID team, it was going to be "out there." Somewhere in the endless
unknown that lay beyond the fringes of settlement, even on human-made planets.
Defoe was fairly at peace with that. Hell, at the moment he made a dubious
living off it.
Helio gave orders from the table, speaking through the open window and into the
ship's comlink, letting the Port Master's young assistant come aboard, along
with a couple of sober gunmen. The rest of the mob would be more of a threat to
themselves than to the Tuch-Dahs. A gang of SuperChimps hauled on the ground
lines and the cabin began to move.
As they cleared the hangar, Defoe had his navmatrix lock into the onboard
systems. Everything read right. Gas pressure. Wind speed. Elevator alignment.
Keel angle. When Helio gave the order to "up ship," the champagne in Defoe's
glass did not so much as quiver. The sign of a good crew.
Shacktown and the landing strip fell away to windward. There was a hesitation as
the big props started to turn, biting into thin air. Then airspeed picked up and
they plowed along powered by a cold fusion reactor driving four paired
propellors. The Camelback Steppe rolled placidly along a few hundred meters
below. Springbok bounded off, alarmed by the airship's shadow.
Defoe decided he should see the recorder transmission from Azur Station,
subjecting it to his own prejudices before hearing about it from others. Helio
gave an airy wave. "Use my cabin. I have flying to do."
Ellenor Battle followed Defoe to the cabin, bent on seeing the recording again.
Helio's private quarters were a sumptuous reminder of the good things to be had
on Glory -- hand-carved ivory and fine embroidery --luxuries that people on
Spindle were too busy enjoying themselves to produce. And there was power to be
had as well. Snappy service from human and semi-human attendants. Naked
authority over Chimps, Thals, and Shacktown whores who would do nearly anything
for next to nothing. Exotic animals roamed the endless veldt, ready to be
hunted, killed, and butchered -- the cabin was carpeted with a giant moropus
hide, its head and claws attached. Defoe knew dirtsiders who were not even
tempted by the tame pleasures of Spindle, who snickered when he boarded a
shuttle to go back.
The 3V imager made use of one whole bulkhead, turning curios and tapestries into
a stereo tank.
Images leaped out. Defoe saw at once that the transmission wasn't a proper
flight recording. The transmission had to come from an AID team member's
personal recorder. First came establishing scenes -- the semi-rigid taking off,
steppe wildlife, a couple of male team members. Then came a terrible swift pan
of breathtaking intensity. The recorder was sited on a small rise, aiming
downslope. A low cairn of charred stones poked out of the steppe grass. Defoe
flinched as rocket grenades and recoilless projectiles roared right at the
recorder, a barrage so real that he almost dived out of his wicker seat,
expecting to be showered with exploding shrapnel and shattered bric-a-brac. A
ragged line of Thals came screaming out of the long grass, waving steel hatchets
and hideous spiked clubs. They were Tuch-Dahs -- no doubt there -- Defoe
recognized the garish paint and bloodfreezing cries.
Willungha himself led the charge, atop a full-grown moropus -- a tremendous
horse-headed, long-necked beast with rhino-sized shoulders and tree-trunk limbs.
Like Tars Tarkas aboard a wild thoat, the Neanderthal chieftain brayed commands,
wielding a long thin lance. A grenade launcher in his rein hand looked like a
tiny toy pistol.
Willungha's mount reared, waving clawed forefeet, and the recorder swung
crazily, focusing for a second on the scene atop the knoll. Defoe could clearly
make out the crash site. Kneeling among blackened girders and burnt grass was a
woman, the third member of the AID team. She was small and brown-haired, in a
rumpled uniform, taking painstaking aim with a recoilless pistol. Brown eyes
stared intently over the sights, seeming to look right at Defoe. She squeezed
off shot after shot as death stormed toward her.
The recorder jerked upward. Swaying grass tops framed empty blue sky. A superbly
ugly Tuch-Dah appeared, swinging a hideous curved club. The transmission ceased,
replaced by braided hangings and a case of bone china.
Defoe turned to lady Ellenor, saying, "That was fairly ghastly." Shutting her
eyes, she gripped her wicker seat with white knuckles, letting out a short sharp
gasp. He had thought Ellenor Battle would be fairly shockproof, especially on a
second viewing -- but without any warning, her feelings were showing. The woman
was full of surprises.
Helio was in the lounge. Any flying he had done had not taken him away from the
table. Breakfast had disappeared, but his glass still held champagne. Broken
highlands had replaced the Camelback Steppe. Defoe's navmatrix knew the country;
beyond these mesas lay the Sleeping Steppe. Then the Azur.
"Enjoy the show?" Helio's eyes were still hidden by blue shades, so it was hard
to tell how he meant it.
Defoe nodded. A full-blown Tuch-Dah massacre. No wonder everyone from the Port
Master on down was potted and praying. There were a thousand or so bona fide
Homo sapiens on Glory. Plus maybe twice as many on Spindle who weren't much
inclined to come down. Willungha could field 20,000 club-wielding Tuch-Dah, if
he cared to. There were ten million Thals spread over the planet.
Helio twirled the stem of his champagne glass. "Glory might have been a new Eden
for ambitious youngsters from the Home Systems -- but the task of terraforming
was too real for them." Helio did not have to say that he had come here, giving
up the easy life to raise bison and horses, risking his neck with archaic
technology, making the planet not merely habitable but semi-inviting.
He dearly relished the irony of how hard it was to get people just to come down
from Spindle. Yet the habitat was built as an interstellar slowboat, launched
ages ago to seed the Delta Eridani system. A home for humans while Glory was
being terraformed. But by the time Glory had a biosphere and a semi-breathable
atmosphere, the insystem humans had become perfectly adapted -- to life on
Spindle.
So AID had to go for Thals. Retrobred Neanderthals were shipped direct to Glory,
to do the drudge work, overseeing SuperChimps, leveling landing strips, digging
canals, tending great herds of herbivores. And the brutes had done a sterling
job. Hell, they were still doing it. While backward types -- like the Tuch-Dahs
-- bred like lemmings out on the vast steppes.
Defoe glanced over at Ellenor Battle. AID had planned this fiasco, from the
first slowboats to the retrobreeding program that produced not just the
Neanderthals, but a ready-made Cenozoic ecology as well.
She gave him a defiant glare, daring him to say that AID's multithousand-year
program was a disaster. "The first colonists are on their way -- 10,000
settlers, headed straight from Epsilon Eridani at near light speed. And a
hundred thousand more are set to follow. And a million after that."
Epsilon E was less than twenty light years away.
"Excellent." Hello emptied his champagne glass with an evil chuckle. "Willungha
will have them for breakfast."
The rancher was right. Even a Navy cruiser with antimatter warheads could hardly
cope with ten million Thals spread over an entire planet, (Currently the Navy
had not so much as a captain's gig insystem.) The colonists could be armed of
course -- but the Tuch-Dahs knew all about modern weapons. Dumping an armed mob
of city-bred humans on a strange world, outnumbered 10,000 to 1, with no way of
telling the "good" Thals from the "bad" ones would be a first-magnitude
disaster. They might as well ship the weapons straight to Willungha, compliments
of AID.
Ellenor Battle looked angrily out the lounge window, staring stiff-necked and
imperious at the endless veldt. "There is room enough for humans and
Neanderthals." As she saw it, AID was doing everyone a favor, bringing life to a
dead world, making space for settlement, resurrecting a lost race, perhaps
partly atoning for some ancient Cro-Magnon genocide.
Hello laughed heartily. "Tell that to Willungha. Maybe there is room. If the
wild ones can be tamed, or pushed back. And the colonists kept near the strips.
But no one is planning for that, eh?" He clearly thought someone should be.
"We have plans," Ellenor retorted.
Defoe thought of the lone AID woman in the recording, backed against the
burnt-out wreck, coolly firing at the oncoming Thals. Whatever plans AID was
hoarding had to beat that -- in fact they had better be damned slick.
The great blue-green ink blot of the Azur hove into sight. Azur Station stood at
the near end, a small circle of dugouts and stock pens between the Blue Water
Canal and an east-west fence line. All along the canal the Sleeping Steppe had
been made to bloom, growing rice, melons, and sugar cane.
Azur's station chief met the airship. She was a big weather-beaten woman named
Cleo with flaming red hair, and scoped Centauri Special tucked under her arm --
a sign of the times. A caravan was leaving her station, headed west along the
fence line. The beasts of burden were low-humped retrobred camels, Camelops
hesternus, as strong as bactrians but more docile, with liner wool, also better
eating.
Cleo had the recorder, and the Thal who had brought it, guarded by armed
SuperChimps. The Thai did not understand Universal, or at least pretended not to
-- staring dumbly at the ring of narrow Cro-Magnon faces.
Helio tried signs. Grudgingly the Thai responded enough to indicate that he was
not Tuch-Dah. He was Kee-too-Hee, from the marshes. He had found the recorder in
a salt pan and trekked down to the station, hoping to get a reward. Instead he
was being held prisoner and insulted. This did not altogether surprise him, but
did not please him either.
Ellenor Battle studied the recorder, then passed it to Defoe with a grim, "What
do you think?" The first time she had asked his opinion. Touched, he had his
navmatrix go over the recorder. No sign of tampering. But this was an idiot box
with sensors, playing back what was put in.
Defoe nodded at the Thai. "He's telling the truth. At least about not being
Tuch-Dah. That circle and dot on his cheek is a Kee-too-Hee clan mark. Any right
thinking Tuch-Dah would cut his throat with a dull clamshell before claiming to
be a Kee-too-Hee."
"But what was the recorder doing sitting on a salt pan?" Ellenor sounded
unconvinced. Rightly so as far as Defoe could see. "Give him his reward," she
decided. "AID will pay. But don't let him go until we come back from the crash
site."
The crash site lay across the Azur. Defoe watched the approach from the control
cat's foredeck, standing before wide wraparound windows. He felt Helio's firm
hand on the elevators, anticipating changes in trim, keeping the keel angle
constant. North of Azur Station the shoreline became a maze of salt marsh
teaming with spoonbills and wild boar. Then came the Azur itself, bright green
in the shallows, deep blue in the center.
Helio pointed out his plantation, a great green delta thrust out into the sea.
On the landward side a long straight north-south fence kept his domestic herds
from straying into Tuch-Dah country. West of the fenceline was a knoll topped
with a black smear left by the burnt semi-rigid. Helio descended, dodging tall
columns of vultures. Never a good sign.
Ellenor told Hello to turn out the Joie's crew.
"Have them go through the long grass around the knoll."
"Looking for what?" The rancher sounded skeptical.
"Whatever they find."
On the ground, Defoe was struck by how peaceful it seemed. This was the
Saber-tooth Steppe, a silent mysterious savanna, its mystique as solid and
tangible as a patch of unterraformed bedrock. The semi-rigid's small control-car
was intact, showing no sign of having come down hard. Blackened girders formed
big looping curves. They might have been spares ready to be assembled into
another ship.
Dire wolves sniffed out two bodies. "Burnt beyond recognition" hardly conveyed
the horror of the charred skeletons, jaws agape in final agony, held together by
shreds of cooked flesh. Riggers watched Ellenor Battle go over the corpses with
cool intensity, calling down DNA signatures and dental data from orbit. "This
guy's kinda short," someone suggested. "Maybe he's a Thal."
"I don't know. Might be human."
"Human as you anyway."
"Just bein' hopeful."
Glad not to be needed, Defoe conducted his own search, using his navmatrix to
find the low black calm, and the fold the Tuch-Dah had burst from. A rigger was
down in the grass on his knees, a strip of gasbag fabric tied around his head
like a bandana holding his hair back. Defoe recognized "Rig'em Right" on the
back of the man's jacket.
Seeing Defoe, he got up. His name was Rayson, which everyone shortened to Ray.
He held up a small finned and pointed object. "There's a mess of these in the
grass." Defoe recognized the spent projectile from a recoilless pistol. The
young AID woman had been firing downslope from up by the wreck. Had she hit
anything? Defoe looked for bloodstains.
Ray glanced upslope to where Ellenor Battle was working over the bodies, then
walked around behind the fire blackened caim, opening his pants to piss.
Defoe called out softly, "That's a shrine."
Taking a sharp step back, Ray zipped his pants. "Shit, I thought it was a
barbecue pit." Just the sort of thing that got people in trouble in Tuch-Dah
country -- you could get brained by a Thal and never know why.
Finding no blood on the grasstops, Defoe stood up, studying the shoreline. The
colder north shore marshes were thin, broken by shimmering white pans. Wind
whipped fine, dry grit off the pans, stinging his eyes, settling in skin
creases. He licked the corners of his mouth, tasting tiny bits of the
Saber-tooth Steppe. It was salty.
A dark object lay between the steppe and the sea, as still as the shrine. Defoe
walked toward it, brittle shore grass crunching underfoot. The big still object
was a bison, down on its knees. Vultures flapped off as Defoe approached. Tail,
ears, eyes, and testicles were gone, but the bison was hideously alive, managing
to lift its head, turning bloody sightless sockets toward Defoe.
"Damn." Ray was right behind him, letting out a low whistle. "I'll fix him." He
produced a recoilless pistol with a folding stock. Shouldering it like a rifle,
he fired.
The bison jerked at the impact, his head dropping, one horn gouging into the
sandy pan. Defoe bent down, examining the dead beast; the tongue was tom out,
the muzzle white with salt. There was more salt beneath the sand, where the horn
had gone in. Looking east and west along the shore, Defoe saw spiraling columns
of vultures.
Ellenor Battle pronounced the bodies to be Homo sapiens sapiens. Male. Two
members of the AID team were accounted for. Cause of death unknown. "We should
start a slow search, standard pattern, centered on the crash site."
Helio nodded and they set off again. As Glory's tight ten-hour day ended, Defoe
sat in the lounge, trying to fit together everything he had seen -- the mob
scene in the hangar, the recording, the silent Thal, the crash site and the
dying bison. Delta Eridani had sunk down almost to the level of the steppe. The
Joie was making gentle sweeps at less than 30 kph, twenty meters or so above the
grass tops. He doubted they would turn up anything. That would be far too easy.
Gathering his things, Defoe climbed up to the keel. Tall hydrogen-filled gas
bags swayed in semi-darkness. A rigger with "Catwalk Charlie" on his jacket
bossed a gang of SuperChimps.
Defoe made his way to the empty tail, unsealing an inspection hatch. Grass tops
slid by less than twenty meters below. Unreeling a dozen meters of cable from a
nearby winch, he swung his legs through the open hatch, letting the cable drop.
"Hope it wasn't something we said." Rigger Ray was standing on the keel catwalk.
Defoe shrugged. "I need room to work."
Ray sat down on a girder, eyeing the open hatch. This close to dusk, shaded by
the giant tail, the hatch looked like a black hole whipping along in midair.
"There's room aplenty down there. lust don't end up at the bottom of the food
chain."
Defoe nodded. "I'll do my damndest."
"Well, good-bye, an' good luck." Ray made it sound like, "Hope to hell you come
back."
Defoe dropped through, slid down the cable, and let go. He had ample time to
position himself. The most charming thing about Glory was the lazy falls at
two-thirds g.
Steppe floated up to meet him.
Defoe hit, bounced, and scrambled to his feet. He stood staring up at the big
tail of the dwindling airship. The Joie de Vivre, kept to her search pattern,
straining to complete the last leg before nightfall. When she dipped below a
rise, he was alone.
Hip high grass tops ran in every direction, prowled by tawny killers with
knife-sized fangs. A cold undertaker's wind sent waves of color sweeping over
the twilight steppe -- deep blue, rust brown, old gold, and a dozen shades of
green. Hyenas chuckled in the deepening gloom.
As Delta Eridani slid beneath the horizon, darkness rose up out of the grass
roots, devouring the light. Night birds keened. Whoever said humans were the
meanest animals -- "the most dangerous game" --undoubtedly said it in daylight.
Certainly it was never said at night, alone and unarmed on the Saber-tooth
Steppe. Orienting himself by the strange stars of Eridani Sector, Defoe set out
walking toward the distant fenceline.
THE SABER-TOOTH STEPPE
Dew clung to the grasstops by the time Defoe found the fenceline. He had slept
once, to be roused stiff and sore by the cough of a saber-tooth. Throughout the
dark morning hours he heard the cat-like predators that gave the steppe its name
calling to each other. Dawn wind carried their smell, like the odor of a ship's
cat in a confined cabin. At first light the calls ceased; he supposed the pride
had made its kill.
The energy fence cut a shimmering line across the steppe, carrying a hefty
neural frequency shock. Domestic herds grazed beyond it. Overgrazed in fact. The
far side looked like a low-cut lawn.
Defoe walked along the fence until he found a knot of horses, Equus
occidentalis, tall as Arabians but heavier, with slender feet, reminding Defoe
of zebras or unicorns. The lead mare even had zebra stripes across her withers.
The horses lifted their heads as he approached, staring at him and at the
hip-high steppe grass. Defoe told his navmatrix to bypass the fence's gullible
software. The air between the nearest pylons ceased to shimmer, but still
carried the signal saying the fence was intact. Ripping up some long grass,
Defoe stepped through, offering it to the lead mare. They were immediate
friends. She took the grass, letting him mount.
Riding bareback, he guided her through the break in the fence. Her little herd
trotted after them. Defoe set a leisurely course deeper into Tuch-Dah country.
As his navmatrix moved out of range the fence reestablished itself.
He saw springbok and prong horn, but no bison or Tuch-Dahs. Steppe thinned into
shortgrass prairie broken by black knobs of basalt. Curious antelope came right
up to him, heads held high, showing off tiny horns and white throats. Brown
sombre eyes studied him intently. Defoe doubted they had ever been hunted by
humans.
Seeing a spiraling column of vultures, Defoe made for it. It marked a bison
kill, a lone bull set upon by hyenas. He got down to study the kill site. Drag
marks mapped the struggle. The bison had been hit once, and ripped completely
apart, probably in seconds. Nothing remained but rags of hide and white
bone-rich dung. Hyenas were more to be feared than overgrown cats; their bite
was better than a panther's, and they weren't as picky as a saber-tooth pride.
A shadow swept over him, a gigantic condor-sized shape among the vultures,
circling downward, parting the smaller birds, boring toward Defoe in a tight
spiraling dive, hiding in the orange glare of Delta Eridani. Almost on top of
him, the big shape side-slipped, spilling air. He recognized Ellenor Battle,
wearing an omithopter harness -- a powered version of the wings people flew with
(and sometimes fucked in) on Spindle. She flew like she had been born with them,
doing a low-level stall and landing feet first.
Never let down your guard on Saber-tooth Steppe. Defoe had been blissfully
alone, sharing the day with vultures and a dead bison. Now without warning
Ellenor Battle was standing over him, demanding an explanation. What excuse
could he have for jumping ship, cutting fences, and stealing horses?
Defoe shrugged. "No one needed me just to fly around in circles aboard the Joie
de Vivre."
What fascinated him was her wings. A really fine pair. Falcoform Condors, solar
assisted, seven-plus meters of extendible wingspan, with autoflaps and fingertip
trim tabs. An energy pack in the small of her back powered the harness.
He nodded at the horses. "These are my tickets into Tuch-Dah country. What's
your excuse for being here?" When it came to unwanted company, Glory could be
more crowded than Spindle.
Ellenor slowly reached behind her back, taking the AID recorder from between her
wings -- it must have been strapped alongside the power pack. "I'm here because
of this." She weighed it in her hands, then held it out. "It's my daughter's."
Defoe shooed aside some vultures and sat down. So, the woman on the AID team was
another Battle. They did not look much alike, except perhaps in the shape of the
face. But maybe Ellenor's hair used to be brown. More important, this explained
her readiness to listen to reason.
"What is her name?" -- Defoe bore down lightly on the verb, no reason to assume
she was dead.
"Lila. It's Hindu, and means the playful will of Heaven."
He took the recorder, turning it over in his hands. "So, why didn't your
daughter have this with her during the attack?"
"I've been wondering. There might be some simple explanation."
"Might be." But Defoe doubted it. "That makes another strange circumstance about
the crash and recording."
"What are the others?" Ellenor folded her wings, settling down across from him.
"First -- no crash. That semi-rigid landed intact, then burned on the ground.
Second, what sort of shot is Lila?"
"I taught her myself." There was pride in her voice and a recoilless pistol on
her hip.
"So I supposed." He remembered how cool and unflinching Lila had looked -- a lot
like her mother. "But there was no blood on the grass. It is hard to believe
every shot was a miss."
Ellenor nodded grimly.
Defoe got up, handed back the recorder, and dusted fine grains off his lap. The
soil felt thin and silty. "Can you ride bareback?" Ellenor was not his first
choice as a traveling companion, or even his fiftieth, but that was Glory for
you.
"I was doing it before you were born." She fixed up a loop bridle, selected a
mount, and they set off.
The prairie thinned further. Sandy patches showed between tufts of shriveled
grass. More buzzards appeared, over more dead bison. More than even hyenas could
eat. Defoe reined in, asking "What do you make of this?"
Ellenor dismissed the apocalyptic scene. "A local die-off. We saw it from orbit.
Lila's team was investigating."
Defoe shook his head. "I've been seeing signs of major drought ever since
crossing the Azur. And real overgrazing as well. Hello's horses were frantic to
cross the fenceline."
Ellenor sniffed. "Is that a pilot's opinion, or are you a xenoecologist as
well?"
"You don't have to be a xenoecologist to know a dead buffalo. The water table is
falling. You can see the steppe salting up. Springbok and pronghorns are
filtering in from out of the wild, replacing the bison."
Ellenor denied the Azur was in any trouble. "The sea is stabilized."
"Stabilized?" He reminded her the planet was still terraforming. "Shouldn't the
Azur be growing?"
"A local shortfall," she insisted, shrugging off the buzzards and dead bison.
"Another wet season and this will all be forgotten."
It did not seem that local to Defoe. Kilometers north of the Azur he could still
smell salt on the breeze. Nor would the Tuch-Dah take a "local condition" so
calmly -- they had to live here. And they were not the types to forget and
forgive. Anyone who endured a two-day Naming Fast knew Thals had godawful long
memories.
From time to time Ellenor took off, soaring aloft to do a turn around the
landscape, looking for water. Near to dusk she found a dry bed winding through a
sandy bottom. Dismounting, Defoe attacked the damp sand with his mattock. An
hour of digging produced a small hole full of brackish liquid. He refilled his
canteen, then let the horses drink.
Ellenor alighted on a cutbank, saying a rider was coming.
Defoe nodded. Dusk was when they could expect company. Gathering dry grass and
brushwood, he made a bed for a fire. Then he took out a heat cap, a capsule the
size of an oral antibiotic, breaking it and tossing it on the wood. It burned
with an intense flame and acid odor.
He watched the rider trot warily into camp, separating from the red-orange disk
of Delta Eridani. It was Willungha, atop a giant male moropus. Thals did not
have aerial recon and orbital scans, but not much that went on in Tuch-Dah
country escaped Willungha's attention.
Despite rumors about him being a half-breed, or even Homo sapiens, the Tuch-Dah
chieftain was pure Neanderthal, with bulging brow ridges, buck teeth, and a
receding chin. That chin was the only weak thing about him. Willungha's huge
head and shoulders topped a meter-wide chest; arms the size of Defoe's calves
ended in hands strong enough to strangle a hungry saber-tooth (a perennial party
pleaser at Tuch-Dah fetes). An old scar ran along one gigantic thigh. In his
youth, Willungha had been gored by a wounded bison, the horn going through his
thigh. Hanging head down, with the horn tearing at his leg, Willungha had
clamped his good leg and left arm around the beast's neck. Calmly drawing a
sheath knife, he cut the bison's throat. Willungha's mount was an ancient cousin
of the horse and rhino, intended to be a browser and pruner -- recycling plant
material into the soil. AID had never thought a moropus could be ridden.
He grunted a greeting.
Defoe did not attempt to answer. Instead he unhobbled the horses, laying the
lead mare's halter rope ceremoniously before the Tuch-Dah. He kept back only a
pair of mounts and a lead horse for himself and Ellenor.
Willungha responded with a series of snorts. Wild Thals spoke a hideous
concoction of clicks, boots, and grunts, which some Homo sapiens claimed to
understand, but none could imitate. To the Tuch-Dah, Homo sapiens were
overwhelmingly deaf and totally dumb, hardly even a thinking species. Powerful
and unpredictable maybe, able to tear up the landscape like a mad moropus. But
reasoning? Even Willungha reserved judgment. He was tolerably familiar with "man
the wise" -- which explained his mixed opinion.
Having given gifts, Defoe moved to the next stop in the evening's entertainment,
setting up the recorder by the fire, so it would play on the cutbank. Using the
eroded rock as a 3V screen, he had his navmatrix sort through the recorder's
memory for the final images, including the Tuch-Dah attack. When Willungha
himself materialized atop his charging moropus, the chieftain gave a hoot and
whistle. For all Defoe knew, it merely meant, "Hello." Or, "Handsome fellow,
what?"
Lila appeared next, pistol in hand. Defoe froze the image. Walking up to the
scene, he stabbed a finger at her, then made as if to look about --hopefully
telling Willungha that he was looking for her.
The Tuch-Dah's eyes fixed him from within their deep sockets. Defoe repeated the
signs. Wild Thals were not much impressed with offplanet marvels, unless they
could put them to use. Without as much as a grunt, Willungha headed off into the
dark with his gift horses in tow.
Defoe leaped up, telling Ellenor, "We've got to follow." Willungha was the best
lead they were likely to get.
They trekked through most of the short night. Badlands gave way to savanna.
Tangerine dawn outlined the tops of black acacias.
Twenty-odd hours without sleep had Defoe dizzy with fatigue -- wishing to God he
could glaze over for a while. From upwind came the smell of burning dung
denoting a nomad camp.
Beneath the acacias stood a dark circle of yurts, surrounded by lowing herds. A
crowd of Thals emerged to click and whistle their leader into camp. Defoe and
Ellenor got no such cheery greetings, facing stony indifference leavened by the
occasional dirty look.
While Ellenor sat with folded wings, Defoe listened to a lively exchange among
the Thals, seeing fists waved in their direction. The discussion narrowed to a
debate between Willungha and a tall brute with a broken nose and bold red-ocher
tattoos. He must have outweighed Willungha by a couple of stone, but lacked the
chieftain's sangfroid. Pug-ugly's part in the conversation consisted of low
growls and grim looks.
Willungha ended the exchange, turning abruptly and striding over to where Defoe
and Ellenor sat waiting. Squatting on his haunches, he made his position plain
with signs and finger jabbing. They were free to search for their stray female,
with a single exception. Defoe explained to Ellenor, "The only yurt we cannot
enter belongs to mean and ugly over there." He nodded toward the tall Thai with
the broken nose and archer tattoos.
Ellenor frowned. "Logically that is the yurt we most want to examine."
Defoe nodded. Thals could be amazingly unsubtle. He fished out his medikit,
knowing he would need a boost. Strapping the kit to his calf, he told it to give
him the chemical equivalent of a week's rest. "I'll see what I can do about
getting Pug-ugly's permission."
Stimulants hummed through his blood. The morning got brighter. A two-thirds g
bounce came back to his step. But Defoe hated relying on chemical imbalance --
you could fool your body only so long. The Thai stood planted in front of his
yurt, a skin hovel on wheels trimmed with camel tails. A bison hide hung over
the doorway. Defoe strolled up with a hearty "How ya doin'?"
The Tuch-Dah merely spat. Since neither could speak the other's language there
was no need for formal insults. Defoe slid silently into migi gamae, arms
hanging loose, spine aligned, right foot leading. Out the corner of his eye, he
could see Willungha and the boys settling down to watch the fun.
Giving a roar, the Thai rushed at him, arms raised, bent on snapping the spindly
Cro-Magnon in half. Defoe was well outweighed, and his sparring partner would be
immune to any sort of body blow. He seized the big right wrist with his left
hand. Pivoting sideways, he used the Neanderthal's momentum to sling the ogre
over his hip, hacking as hard as he could at the immobilized right wrist. Mean
and Ugly went butt-over-brow-ridge into a heap against one wheel of his yurt.
Willungha's boys applauded with pant hoots.
The Thai bounded right back up, snarling like a wounded lion. Favoring his right
hand, he lashed at Defoe with his left. Defoe parried with his forearm. A bad
mistake -- the glancing blow staggered him.
Grinning with feral glee, the Thal circled leftward, not even winded. The
bastard had probably gotten his beauty sleep. Defoe's right forearm felt numb,
and his lungs rasped -- a sign the medikit had reached its limits. Much more of
this, and the Thai would wear him down. Then stomp him into oblivion.
The Tuch-Dah lunged at Defoe with his left. This time Defoe ducked under the
blow, grabbing the Thal's left hand with both of his, ignoring the injured
right. Lacking the strength to go the distance, Defoe held grimly to the
Tuch-Dah's good hand. He sent the bellowing ogre cartwheeling over his shoulder,
letting the Thal's own weight and momentum bend the left wrist until it snapped.
The Neanderthal lay dazed, one wrist badly sprained, the other broken. A firm
believer in kicking a fellow when he was down, Defoe brought his boot heel
sharply down on the Thal's tattooed instep, to discourage the brute from getting
up. Mean and Ugly moaned.
Dusting himself off, Defoe glanced over at Willungha. The Tuch-Dah chieftain
gave a congratulatory grunt. Defoe was free to search the yurt. He hoped to hell
he'd find something.
As soon as he lifted the bison hide, Defoe knew that whatever was in the yurt
stank all the way to Spindle. Urine, sweat, and burning shit mixed with moldy
leather. Worming his way in, he startled a gaggle of Thai children playing
beside the central fire. They piled out past him, terrified by a Homo sapiens
bogeyman turned real.
The yurt was dank and smoky, walled with soot and skins -- aside from body paint
and tattoos, Thals did not bother with decoration. What he was looking for sat
in the back, amazingly alive. Alert brown eyes ringed with fatigue stared back
at him, hardly believing what they were seeing. "Lila Battle, I presume?"
She managed a nod. Tuch-Dah methods were crude and pitiless. To keep Lila in
place a long yoke was fitted around her neck, made from two heavy lengths of
wood lashed together with leather. Her hands were free, but the ends of the yoke
were out of reach, anchored to the bed of the yurt. She could move enough to
feed herself and attend to body functions, but could not reach the knots holding
the yoke in place.
As he cut Lila loose, Ellenor Battle came crawling in, dragging her wings. She
hurriedly strapped her medikit around Lila's forearm. Mother and daughter were
reunited in the fetid interior of a Tuch-Dah yurt, a touching moment lasting
about a nanosecond. Lila was clearly Ellenor's daughter, and neither was given
to excess sentiment. Before they had finished hugging, Ellenor wanted to know
what had happened, and Lila was telling them.
"Hello did it. The bastard flagged us down for a face-to-face. The next thing I
knew, I was being bundled up and given to the Tuch-Dahs."
Defoe had suspected something of the sort -- it wasn't in Willungha's nature to
mix with Homo sapiens, either as friends or enemies. Full-fledged humans had to
be behind this. But he was sorry to find out it was Hello. He had liked the
arrogant asshole.
Hauling out the recorder, he gave Lila a look at her "last stand." She shook her
head. "I wish I had put up that fight, but I never saw it coming." She knew
nothing about the fate of her ship and team.
"Dead and burned," Ellenor told her daughter bluntly. Everything else had been
digitally programmed straight into the dimwitted recorder's memory. A decent
scheme, but not foolproof. The chance selection of Lila's recorder had made her
mother suspicious. While Defoe was always willing to believe the worst.
"Why didn't he just kill me?" Lila wondered. Having spent the last few days
bound in the back of a Tuch-Dah yurt, she was in many ways the most amazed.
"You are his insurance shot." Defoe set the recorder next to his knee. "A good
hunter always has an extra charge handy, to insure his prey is nailed. The crash
and fake recording were not enough to thoroughly implicate the Tuch-Dahs. But by
the time your body turned up, it would be obvious who had you." Willungha's
people probably had no idea why Hello wanted one of his females carted about
against her will. But the Thal he had made the deal with fought to keep up his
end. Touching in a terrible way.
"But why do this at all?" For once Ellenor looked at a loss. "Why wipe out our
team? Why blame it on the Tuch-Dahs?"
"Because Azur is dying." Lila spoke softly. "The sea is overloaded. The steppe
is salting up." From the way Ellenor scowled Defoe guessed this was an old
argument.
Lila matched her mother's stubbornness, insisting that "Sea and grass aren't
returning water to the air as fast as the canals are draining it away. The thin
layer of soil atop this cinder and bedrock cannot absorb new arrivals. We saw
it. Hello sees it. Willungha must know as well. Hello wants the Azur closed off
to settlement. So do I. But he apparently thinks it will take a war to do it."
Ellenor gave Lila a sour to-think-I-suckled-you look. But as far as Defoe could
see, Hello might be right, even AID wouldn't dump settlers into a war zone. With
the colonists diverted and the Tuch-Dah pushed back, Helio would have the Azur
to himself.
Hearing hoots outside, Defoe lifted the bison hide for a peek. Thals were
looking up. From over the steppe came the beat of paired propellors, announcing
more unwanted company. The Joie de Vivre was approaching.
Ellenor swore. Her daughter began to gather her strength for a getaway. No one
was burning to confront the guilty culprit. Defoe had pictured them sending a
signal to Spindle, then lying low until AID organized a rescue operation. Armed
and reckless felons should be cared for by the pros.
While Ellenor hustled her daughter out, Defoe scooped up the recorder. Telling
his navmatrix to turn the recorder on, he pointed the business end at the yurt
fire, getting a long shot of the flames.
By the time Defoe tumbled out, the Joie de Vivre was poking her nose over the
nearest rise, looming larger as she descended. Mother and daughter were
disappearing into the long grass beyond the yurt circle. When he caught up with
them, Ellenor had her wings on and communicator out, preparing to punch through
a call to Spindle. He grabbed her hand, stopping her from opening the channel.
"Wait."
"Why?" Ellenor looked angry, annoyed, and scared. Her recoilless pistol was out
and armed.
"Helio will be listening," he reminded her. Ellenor might be absolutely ready to
sacrifice everything just to see justice done, but Defoe was not near as
determined to die for the law. "Give us a chance to get away first."
"How?" she demanded. Running was ridiculous. Helio would swiftly spot them. Nor
was there any reason for Willungha to take their side.
"Start by lying down," Defoe insisted, "so we don't disturb the grasstops. Right
now we can see him, but Helio can't see us." He had to make the most of that.
The Joie settled down on a hillock near camp, close enough to cover the exits,
but not so close as to disturb the Tuch-Dahs. SuperChimps swarmed down the
ground lines and anchored the airship to the hilltop. Helio and his gunmen
trooped down the control-car gangway, sporting rifles tucked under their arms,
fanning out as they approached the yurts.
"Get ready to run." Defoe aimed the recorder at the airship. "I'm going to
create a diversion."
Lila nodded gamely. Ellenor remained unconvinced. "What sort of a diversion?"
"Fire and panic." Defoe told his navmatrix to set the recorder on playback,
projecting a continuously expanding loop using the most recent image i n memory.
"No matter what you see, run straight for the Joie de Vivre, and up that
gangway. Got it?" Both women nodded. "Then go," he hissed, triggering the
recorder.
They broke cover as a red glow appeared on the hull of the airship --the image
of the yurt fire magnified by the recorder -- growing into a terrible circle of
fire. SuperChimps hooted in terror, scattering away from the ship. In seconds
the image covered half the hull, looking for all the world like a trillion cubic
centimeters of hydrogen bursting into flame. The control-car crew dived out the
gondola windows.
Defoe topped the hill. Shoving Ellenor and Lila toward the gangway, he began
releasing ground lines. Lightened by the loss of men and chimps, the airship
strained at her anchors, heaving about above hi m like a whale in labor.
Someone yelled stop. Without bothering to answer, Defoe leaped on the last line,
pulling the anchor pin, letting the line hoist him up and away. The airship tore
off downwind, wallowing drunkenly, her control gondola empty. Dangling cables
rattled through the stand of acacias.
Seeing he could not clear the trees, Defoe had his navmatrix send a frantic call
to the Joie's emergency system, releasing the landing ballast. Tons of water
cascaded past. The ship shot upward, out of Helio's range and reach.
His navmatrix ticked off altitude increases. 1000, 2000, 3000 meters. Savanna
spun below him. Time he hauled himself aboard. Holding on with his left hand,
Defoe reached up with his right, grasping the taut line. Getting a good grip, he
let go with his left.
He fell, steel line sliding through his fingers. His right hand would not hold.
Making a frantic grab with his left, he managed to catch the line.
Dangling left-handed, Defoe realized his right arm was useless. It would no
longer support him. The medikit strapped to his leg had masked his pain, and the
damage done by the Thal. Betraying him into trying too much.
Swinging silently, several kilometers in the air, beneath a bucking airship, he
pondered his next move. Unable to climb one-handed, Defoe kicked at the end of
the line with his boot. If he could snag the anchor loop, he could hang safely
until someone hauled him up.
Too far. His foot would not reach. Grasstops whirled dizzily below him. The Joie
de Vivre topped four kilometers, still rising.
Loosening his left hand, he slid down the line, feeling with his boot for the
loop. His toe went in. He gave a silent cheer. He had made it.
Just as his boot settled in, the line jerked -- the Joie had reached her
pressure height, automatically venting hydrogen. Nosing down, she took a drunken
dip, porpoising out of control.
Defoe fought to regain his grip. Fatigued fingers weren't quick enough. The line
snapped away. Two sleepless nights, the fight with the Thai, the struggle on the
line, had all taken too much out of him.
Arms flailing, he fell slowly backward, his booted foot twisting in the loop.
Two-thirds g gave him enough time to make a last lunge at the line. And miss.
Dangling upside down, holding on by his boot, he could feel his foot slipping.
Doubling up, Defoe made a grab at the boot with his good hand. He got it.
Fingers gripped the boot as his foot slipped free and the line bounded away.
He was falling. Holding tight to the useless boot. Defoe shrieked in fright and
exasperation. He could see the snaking line above him, and the shadowy form of
the airship starting to dwindle. Five kilometers away, ground rushed silently up
to greet him.
Defoe felt none of the dreamy complacency the dying were supposed to enjoy. Even
in two-thirds g, onto soft grass, he knew he would hit hard, bounce badly, and
not get up. Ever. His navmatrix ticked off the fall. Slow at first. A few meters
per second -- but ever faster. Numbers began to blur.
The horrible silence was broken by the rush of wings. Hands seized him.
Primaries beat frantically. He could feel flaps straining against the sky.
Ellenor Battle had him. Pulling out of her stoop, she was trying to brake, wings
beating against better than twice her weight. Good shot, thought Defoe. But the
wing loading was way too high. He could feel her stalling about to tumble into a
spin -- unless she let go.
But she dug in instead, spreading her wings, defiant to the end. Her contorted
face centimeters from his.
Then came a miraculous jerk, and the impossible happened. Defoe bounded to a
dead stop in midair.
A line stood taut between Ellenor's shoulders. She had clipped a cable to her
harness before diving after him. Staring up at the sky line, Defoe tried to
cheer, getting out a grateful croak. The woman was a pigheaded genius, and he
wanted to kiss her. But then Ellenor might really drop him.
Meter by meter he felt himself being hauled to safety. The cold-eyed bitch was
grinning.
As they were drawn aboard the galloping airship, Defoe saw Rigger Ray working
the winch. Lila lay full out on the deck, reaching down to help her mother.
Catwalk Charlie was holding tight to a girder, eyes shut, still waiting for the
flaming crash. Defoe could hear him mumbling:
*
Our Satan that art in Hell.
Damned be thy name.
Lead us into temptation,
And encourage our trespasses . . .
Defoe was shocked. Charlie had never looked religious. But a brush with death
will bring out the Devil in anyone.
Gingerly sliding his boot on, Defoe told his navmatrix to take control of the
airship. The Joie righted herself, turning back toward Shacktown.
Heating Ellenor put in her call to Spindle, Defoe wondered how Hello was doing
with Willungha. After murdering two AID workers, trying to frame the Tuch-Dahs,
then bungling the cover-up, Hello had serious problems ahead. But so did
everyone on Glory. And the first 10,000 colonists were already on their way,
leaving Epsilon Eridani at near light speed.