Cities in Flight (24 page)

Still chortling, he led the way to the dock, where they were both stopped by a perimeter cop who recognized' Chris. Between them, the boy and the lord explained the bargain, and the Okie guard dubiously allowed Chris to board the swan boat.

In the forward cabin of the bobbing cylinder, two other colonists confronted them at once, wearing expressions at once nervous and angry, but the owner shushed them with a swift slash of one hand. He still seemed to be highly amused.

"It's only an infant. He traded me a bangle to learn how to mush the boat about. There's nothing to that. Go on aft; I'll join you in a minute."

To judge by their expressions, the other two still disapproved, but they took orders. The big man sat Chris down in a bucket seat before the broad front window and showed him how to grasp the two handles, one on each side of the half-circle of the control wheel, which were the throttles of the vehicle.

"It's not enough simply to turn the wheel, because you must also deliver power to one tread or the other. To do that, you push the handle forward or back, to speed the treads or slow them down. Past the red mark here, the tread will reverse. If you're not getting any traction, tilt the whole 'wheel forward on its column; that blows the tanks and allows the boat to settle in the mud. When the ground gets harder, the boat will of course climb up by itself and that will start the pumps; as the pressure in the tanks rises, the steering column tilts back to its original position automatically. Understand me so far?"

"But can I try?"

"Well, I suppose so. Yes. I have some talking to do abaft. Let me back the craft away from the pier, and then you can try crawling in a circle just outside the perimeter. Make sure you can always see your city beacon there."

"Let me back it up, lord?" Chris said urgently.

"All right," the big man said with amused indulgence. "But don't be rough with it. Gently back of the red line on both throttles. That's it. Not so fast. Gently! Now into neutral on the left. That's it; see how it turns around?"

There was a shout 'from somewhere in the rear of the vessel, to which the big man responded with a tremendously rapid burst of speech, only a few words of which were intelligible to Chris. "t have to leave for a few minutes," he added. "Remember, don't try anything tricky, and don't lose sight of the beacon."

"No, lord."

As the boat's owner left the cabin, Chris caught a few more words, amusedly beginning to relate the story of the dock boy who had picked up a few stammering words of the language and immediately had decided that he was a pilot; then the voices dwindled to a blurred murmur. Chris spent the next few minutes testing the controls of the boat in small jerks and spurts, being as inexpert about it as he could manage, although the machine was really not difficult to master. Then, as directed, he set it to crawling in a fixed circle, counter-clockwise, left the bucket seat, and edged his way back to 'the door leading to the next chamber.

He had no idea what it was that he expected to overhear-he was simply avid for more information, to relieve the recent famine. He was certainly unprepared for what he got.

The men were talking in a rapid patois which differed sharply from the form of the Universal Language which the memory cells 'had been teaching him, but many phrases were clear and distinct:

"... can't be done without keeping the city, that's all there is to it."

"... Disable it? ... Don't even have a blueprint of the machinery, let alone a map."

"That can come later, after we've occupied ... We've got thousands of commoners to throw away, but the defenses-It's essential first to immobilize their Huacu, or whatever they call it here. We can't afford to fight on their terms."

"Then what's the problem? We've got their two chief generals for hostage. We can hold them forever if necessary ... Don't even know the name of Castle Wolfwhip, let alone where it—"

There the conversation ended abruptly. With a grinding thump, the swan boat hit something and began clumsily to try to climb it. Chris was thrown to the deck, and on the other side of the doorway there was the sound of scrambling and of angry shouting. Then 'that too was cut off as the bulkhead swung to, of its own inertia.

Fighting to regain his balance against the blind lurching of the boat, Chris scrambled up, and dogged the bulkhead tightly closed all the way around. Was there any way to, lock it, too? Yes, there was a big bolt that could be thrown which would hold the whole series of dogs in place, provided that it could not be unbolted from the other side. Well, he'd have to take his chances on that, though a fat padlock to complete the job would have made him feel more comfortable. Then, he clambered up the tilted, pitching deck to the control seat.

The boat had been' doing its best to travel in a circle, but Chris had failed to realize that mud is a shifting, inexact sort of medium in which to turn a machine loose. The circle had been precessing, and the boat had run head-on into a dock. Okie cops were running toward it.

Chris reversed both engines, backing away from the city as rapidly as the boat would go, but that was not half as fast as he would have liked. Then he switched the vehicle around, end for end, and set it to whining and sliding squarely into the teeth of the storm, aiming it for the pip on the cross hairs which showed on the control board as its homing signal.

Where that might wind him up, he had no idea. He could only hope that it might be Castle Wolfwhip, and that he would find Anderson and Dulany there-and that the six furious colonists in back of the locked bulkhead would not be able to burn their way out before he got there.

Before the swan boat had been on its slobbering way outward for more than five minutes, the sodium-yellow glare of the city's dockside beacon dimmed and vanished as swiftly as if it had ' been snuffed out. Except for his, prisoners, whom he was trying to ignore, Chris was alone in the shell of the boat, like a chick in an egg, with nothing for company but the unfamiliar instruments, the grunting of the engines, and the flash and crash of the eternal storm.

He studied the control board intently, but it told him very little that he did not already know. All the lettering on and around the instruments were in the Cyrillic alphabet-.-and although the City Fathers expected citizens to be able to speak the Universal Language, up to now they had given Chris not even a first lesson in how to read it. Even so obvious a device as the swan boat's radio set was incomprehensible to him in detail; after a brief study, he gave up all hope of finding the city's master frequency and calling for pursuit and aid. He could not even decide whether it was a AFM or a PM tuner, let alone read the calibrations on the dial.

Nevertheless he urgently needed to signal. Above all, he needed to let the city know the details, fragmentary though they were, of the plotting that he had overheard. Running away with the' 'plotters in their own swan boat had been an impulse of desperation, which he was already beginning more and more to regret. If only he had managed somehow to get back on shore, and told somebody in Amalfi's office what he had learned, pronto!

But the question was, would they have listened, or believed him if they had? Nobody who was anybody aboard the city seemed to want to bother with youngsters until they had become citizens; the adults were all too old, somehow, to be even approachable-and for that matter citizens paid very little attention to passengers of any age.

Of course, Chris could have told the City Fathers what he knew, easily enough-but everything that was told the City Fathers went into the memory cells, which was the equivalent of putting it in dead storage. The City Fathers never took action on what they knew, or even volunteered information, unless directed; otherwise they only held it until it was asked for, which might take centuries.

In any event the die was cast. Now he also needed someone in the city to know where he was going, and to follow him. But among the glittering, enigmatic instruments before him he could find no way to bring that about, nor did he in fact know even vaguely how the city might chase after him if it did know what his situation was. The Tin Cabs operated upon broadcast power which faded out at the city's perimeter, and to the best of Chris's knowledge, the city had no ground vehicles capable of coping with shifting, ambiguous, invisible terrain of this kind. Somewhere in storage, true, it did have a limited number of larger military aircraft, but how could 'you fly one of them in this region of perpetual storm? And even if you could, what would you look for, in a world where even the largest villages and castles produced and consumed so little power that detecting instruments would be unable to differentiate a city from a random splatter of lightning bolts?

The swan boat churned onward single-mindedly. After a while, Chris noticed that it had been at least several minutes since he had had to apply corrections in order to keep the green pip on the cross hairs. Experimentally, he let go of the controls entirely. The pip stayed centered. Some signal-perhaps simply his keeping the pip centered for a given length of time-had cut in an automatic pilot.

That was a help, in 'a way, but it deprived him of anything to do but worry and added a new worry to the list: How could he cut the autopilot out of the circuit if he needed to? The pertinent switch was doubtless in plain sight and clearly marked, but' again, he couldn't read the markings. As for his prisoners, they were being disturbingly quiet. In the back of his mind he had been anticipating some attempt to 'burn through the door-surely 'they had some sort of hand weapon back there which might serve the purpose-but they hadn't so much as pounded on it.

He hoped fervently that they were just being fatalistic about their captivity. If their silence meant that they were satisfied' with it, that was bad ,news. The news was bad enough already, for he had no idea what he was going to do with them, or with the boat, when he got to Castle Wolfwhip. And no time left to invent any plan, for in the next flash of lightning he saw the castle.

It was still several miles away, but even at this distance its massiveness was awe-inspiring. There were many towers in the city that were smaller; despite the lack of any adjacent structure with which to compare it, Chris guessed that the black,' windowless pile could not be less than thirty stories high.

At first, he thought it was surrounded by a moat, but that was only an effect of foreshortening brought on by distance. Actually, it stood in the middle of a huge lake, so storm-lashed that Chris could not imagine how the clumsy swan boat could survive on it, let alone make any headway.

He pulled back on the throttles; but as he had suspected, the boat no longer answered to the manual controls. It plowed doggedly forward into the water. A moment later, the compressed air tanks blew with a bubbling roar, and the lake closed over the boat completely. It was now traveling on the bottom.

Now, he no longer had even the lightning flashes to see by-nothing but the lights inside the boat, which did not penetrate the murky water at all. It was as though the transparent shell had abruptly gone opaque.

After what seemed a long while-though it was probably no more than ten minutes-the treads made a grinding noise, as if they had struck stone, and the vehicle came gradually to a halt. On a hunch, Chris tried the manuals again, but there was still no response.

Then the outside lights came on.

The swan boat was sitting snugly in a berth within a sizable cavern. Through 'the rills of yellow water draining down its sides, Chris saw that it had a reception commit-tee: four men, with rifles. They looked down into the boat at him, grinning unpleasantly. While he stared helplessly back, the engines quit-

-and the outside door swung open.

They put him in the same cell with Anderson and Dulany. His guardian was appalled to see him-“Gods of all stars, Irish, now they're snatching children!"-and then, after he had heard the story, thoroughly disgusted. Dulany, as usual, said very little, but he did not look exactly pleased.

"There's probably a standard recognition signal you should have sent, except that you wouldn't have known what it was," Anderson said. "These petty barons did a lot of fighting among themselves before we got here-fleecing us is probably the first project they've been together on since this mudball was colonized."

"Bluster." Dulany commented.

"Yes, it's part of the feudal mores. Chris, those men in the boat are going to take a lot of ribbing from their peers, regardless of the fact that they were never in any danger and they had sense enough to let you spin your own noose. They'll be likely to take it out on you when you're taken out for questioning."

"I've already been interviewed," Chris said grimly. "And they did."

"You have? Murder! There goes that one up the flue, Irish."

"Complication," Dulany agreed.

Anderson fell silent, leaving Chris to wonder what they had been talking about. Evidently they had been planning something which his news had torpedoed-though it was hard to imagine even the beginnings of such a plan, for their captors, out of a respect for the two Okies which Chris knew to be more than justified, had left them nothing but their underwear. At last the boy said hesitantly:

"What could I have done if my interview were still coming up?"

"Located our space suits," Anderson said gloomily. "Not that they'd have let you search the place, that's for sure, but you might have gotten a hint, or tricked them into dropping one. Even wary men sometimes underestimate youngsters. Now we'll just have to think of something else."

"There are dozens of space suits, standing around the wall of that big audience chamber," Chris said. "If you could only get there, maybe one of them would fit one of you."

Dulany only smiled slightly. Anderson said: "Those aren't suits, Chris; they're armor-plate armor. Useless here, but they have some kind of heraldic significance; I think the Barons used to collect them from each other, like scalps."

"That may be," Chris said stubbornly, "but there were at least two real suits there. I'm sure of that."

The two sergeants' looked at each other. "Is it possible?" Anderson said. "They've got the bravado for it, all right."

"Could be,"

"By Sirius, there's a bluff we've got to call! Get busy on that lock, Irish!"

"In my underwear? Nix."

"What difference does that-oh, I see." Anderson grimaced impatiently. "We'll have to wait for lights out. Happily it won't be long."

"How are you going to bust the lock, Sergeant Dulany?" Chris asked. "It's almost as big as my head!"

"Those are the easy kinds," Dulany said loquaciously.

Chris in fact never did find out what Dulany did with the lock, for the operation was performed, in the dark. Standing as instructed all the way to the back of the cell, he did not even hear anything until the huge, heavy door was thrown back with a thunderous crash.

The crash neatly drowned out the only yell the guard outside managed to get off. In this thunder-ridden fortress, nobody would think anything of such a noise. Then there was a jangle of keys, and two loud clicks as the unfortunate man was manacled with his own handcuffs. The Okies rolled him into the cell.

"What'll I do if he comes to?" Chris whispered hoarsely.

"Won't for hours," Dulany's voice said. "Shut the door. We'll be back."

From the boarding-squad sergeant, nine words all in one speech had the reassuring force of an oration. Chris grinned and shut the door.

Nothing seemed to happen thereafter for hours, except that the thunder got louder. That was certainly no novelty on Heaven. But Was' it possible for even the heaviest thunderclap to shake a pile of stone as squat and massive as Castle Wolfwhip? Surely' it couldn't last long if that were the case-and yet it was obviously at least a century old, probably more.

The fourth such blast answered his question. It was an explosion, and it was inside the building. In response,, all the lights came on; and Chris saw that the door had been jarred open.

When he went over to close it again, he found himself looking down a small precipice. The corridor floor had collapsed. Several stunned figures were sitting amid the rubble it had made on the story below it. Considering the size of the blocks of which it had been made, they were lucky that it hadn't killed them.

Still another explosion, and this time the lights went back out. Quite evidently, the suits Chris had seen in the audience hall had indeed been Anderson's and Dulany's battle dress. Well, this ought to cure the baron of Castle Wolfwhip of the habit of exhibiting his scalps. It ought to cure him of the habit of kidnapping Okies, too. It occurred to Chris that the whole plan of using Anderson and Dulany as hostages, even in their underwear, was about as safe an operation as trying to imprison two demons in a corncrib.

Then they were back. Seeing them hovering in the collapsed corridor, their helmet lamps making a shifting, confusing pattern of shadows, Chris realized, too, what kind of vehicle the city would have sent out after him if he had managed to get word back.

"You all right?" Anderson's PA speaker ,demanded. "Good. Didn't occur to me that the floor might go."

They came into the cell. The guard, who had just recovered his senses, took one look and crawled into the corner farthest from the two steel figures.

"Now we've got a problem. We've got a safe-conduct out of the castle, but we can't carry you through that storm, and we don't dare risk putting you in one of their suits."

"Boat," Dulany said, pointing at Chris.

"That's right, I forgot, he knows how to drive one, Okay, boy, stick your elbows out and we'll fly you out to where there's a floor you can walk on. Irish, let's go."

"One minute." Dulany unhooked a bunch of keys from his waist and tossed them into the corner where the guard was cowering. "Right."

Only Anderson joined him 'in the swan boat, still in his armor; Dulany stayed airborne, in radio communication with Anderson, in case the colonials should have the notion of making the boat turn around and return home on autopilot. After he saw the holes the two cops had torn through the great walls of Castle Wolfwhip, Chris doubted that they'd even entertain such a notion, but obviously it was sensible not to' take chances where it wasn't necessary.

The moment the boat was crawling across the bottom of the lake, Anderson took his helmet off and turned promptly to studying the control board. Finally he nodded and snapped three switches.

"That should do it."

"Do what?"

"Prevent them from putting this tub under remote control. In fact from this point on they won't even be able to locate her. Now Irish can shoot on ahead of us and get the word to the Mayor." He put the helmet back on and spoke briefly, then doffed it.

"Now, Chris," he said grimly, "comes the riot act."