Eyes of the Calculor (24 page)

Martyne ran his fingers through his hair. Morally he was in a difficult position. He had intended to kill all her attackers as well,

but had also intended to take bit more care with those who blundered into the crossfire.

"But—but when I left for Balesha you could not even stand to squash a snail. You ate only vegetables, fruit, and nuts, and even then you mourned that the nuts would not grow up to become trees. Now you can shoot and fight, and, and you complain when I rob you of a victim!"

"Is this bad?" asked Velesti.

"Well... it is a little surprising. I mean, I like a girl who can defend herself. It shows independence and spirit, but really!"

"Really?"

"Really! I would be surprised if less than a dozen innocent drinkers have not been carried from the Filthy Swine feet first tonight, for a free night's accommodation at the morgue."

"If they were in that place then they deserved to die."

"/ was drinking in that place."

"Then you deserved to die."

"I rescued you from the crossfire, and at great personal risk. Do I deserve to die for that?"

"No," conceded Velesti, then she stood up and limped over to the window. "The rain has stopped, I must get back to Libris."

"People are going to notice that limp," said Martyne. "Best to lean on me."

"I do not touch men."

"Except when you're killing them. Look, someone may have noticed that you were wounded, so the constable's runners will be looking for anyone limping tonight."

"So I'll kill them."

"No!"

"Then what do you suggest?"

"That I walk you back to Libris while you lean on my arm."

"But I do not want to touch you."

"Velesti! This is me, Martyne! Remember? We grew up together. Now I am trying to help. / don't like touching my own backside either, but I do it every time I sit down on the privy."

Hawaii

Iwelve days after Airlord Samondel had disappeared, the Yarron Star descended with another load of fuel and Airlord Sartov. Venture Australica would continue, but from now on it would be managed by Yarron's airlord himself. Realistic goals would be the rule now, not suicidal bravery.

"Note, all of you, that as soon as Airlord Samondel departed from her own principles of caution she lost her life," Sartov told the gangers, farmers, artisans and their wives who were crowded around the nosewheel of the Yarron Star where he was standing. "The next phase will be . . ."

His voice trailed off. Nobody was looking at him. Instead they were staring out to sea, where a sailwing was approaching in silence.

"Ghost," said someone, and nobody else dared say more.

The apparition was gliding low over the waves and slowly losing height. It was the Dove, and it was trying to make for the beach. It began to skim the wavetops, and in the last few feet before the beach it suddenly dug into the water, tumbled, and collapsed. Spray flew high into the air, and the assembled human population of Hawaii rushed down to the beach of black sand to where a figure with long, matted red hair was crawling out of the water.

Sartov arrived to find the scratched, sunburned, and emaciated Samondel alive, with the wingfield adjunct kneeling beside her. Some yards offshore, the smashed body of the Dove was slowly drifting in with the waves. Sartov dropped to his knees beside Samondel.

"Is she all right?" he asked the adjunct.

"Apart from exhaustion and dehydration, yes. I've sent for a stretcher and water gourd."

"How in all names of hell and—I mean, what? . . ."

"Samondel, House of Leover," croaked Samondel. "Pleased to report. . . Samoa Wingfield . . . ready."

Over the following three weeks Samondel slowly recovered her strength, but only six days after her return the first super-regal flew out for what had officially been renamed Samondel Wingfield on

Samoa's main island. She had brought the Dove down on firm, wet sand at low tide. With a cleaver she and the two gangers had cut handles for the axhead and shovel, then set the brush and trees afire at her chosen wingfield site. The site actually turned out to be a two-thousand-year-old wingfield, and most of their time had just been spent grubbing out bushes, raking away sand on the ascent strip, and chopping down trees to give the wings clearance. They had lived on crabs and shellfish, foraged at low tide.

"What compelled you to do it?" demanded Sartov, visiting her the day after she had returned. "The Dove has been salvaged, but repairs will take weeks."

"My schedule was slipping. I saved us at least five super-regal flights."

"But why? The Council of Airlords is not unreasonably impatient with your progress, in fact they are quite sympathetic."

"Even the Council is hanging by a thread, Saireme Sartov, and support depends on results. We are now over halfway to Australica. In theory the Yarron Star could reach the Australican coast from here on a one-way flight."

The figures were true, but Sartov was not impressed.

"Then what? Are you going to leave the super-regal parked on some Australican farm road while you walk into the nearest town and try to teach them to distill compression spirit—provided that they speak Austraic on the northeastern coast. Semme Darien says that Austaric is only the common language of the southeast, by the way. When you arrive in Australica, you are to be an airlord representing the entire North American continent, not a wretched refugee crawling out of a crash-landed wreck. We shall continue with the original plan to establish a third wingfield at New Zealand, Air-lord Samondel, then fly on to Rochester."

"The cost of the compression spirit burned in our engines alone has already exceeded my original estimate," insisted Samondel. "I have spies, I know there is disquiet in the Council."

"There is always disquiet in the Council. More money is sure to be found."

"Today. A week is a long time among accountants, and I have saved four weeks!"

"And practically wrecked one sailwing. Still, I thank you on behalf of the Council of Mounthaven Airlords, yet on behalf of that Council I now order you to lie there, shut up, and recover your strength for the next fortnight. All two dozen souls now in the Hawaii settlement have been ordered to take no more orders from you for that period."

Rochester, the Rochestrian Commonwealth

Although the clocktowers of Rochester were clanging out two hours past midnight, a history class was being held in a deep, soundproofed basement. The edutor was younger than many of those who were listening to her. These were adult aviads, those who had been recruited to the Airfoxes recently. Recruits tended to have a muddled grasp of their people's history.

"Until the day in last September that we call Black Thirteenth, humanity ruled most of the land, although we Homo avianis were gaining in strength. The oceans are forbidden to both humans and aviads, and are ruled by intelligent cetecians that also owe their existence to the technology of two thousand years ago. The great aviad leader Zarvora Cybeline managed to get in contact with that machine we see in the sky and call Mirrorsun, that huge band that circles the earth inside the orbit of the moon. She used primitive electrical essence machines, and discovered that Mirrorsun was a machine with intelligence. She persuaded it to send devices such as improved electrical communicators down to Earth for the use of we aviads. It was the greatest advance in our history; it had the potential to tip the balance between aviads and humans in our favor forever.

"For some there is no boon that cannot be improved upon, however. Frelle Overmayor and Highliber Cybeline was murdered by a faction of fellow aviads. She died sitting in her great reclining chair

with an electrical essence machine encircling her neck and penetrating her spine with long, flaccid tendrils. The conspirators were exhilarated at first. Frelle Cybeline's electrical machine was removed from her neck and her body dragged away and cast into a stable. The leaders argued for many days about who should wear Frelle Cybeline's collar of electrical essence, and through it rule Mirrorsun and control its bounties. Finally Fras Dariar of the Radical faction prevailed. He lay back in Zarvora's chair and wrapped the collar about his neck, while all the leaders of the other factions stood in a circle with their guards flanking them and their flintlocks drawn. Not one of them left the room alive.

"From what was later deduced amid the carnage, the collar exploded with the force of roughly a fifty-pound barrel of gunpowder. Dariar's body was pulverized, and the others were smashed back against the stone walls of the room. All bounties from Mirrorsun stopped thereafter, and it would not respond to entreaties using old-style spark-flash radio machines. The goose that laid golden eggs had been killed.

"Still, Mirrorsun had already been sending its riches to a mainland aviad may orate, Macedon, for eighteen years. There were goggles that allowed one to see in the dark, radio machines that would fit within your hand, small flying machines nourished by sunlight that could lift two heavy men from the ground, and huge flying machines that were a half mile in span and flew constantly. With these we began to lift pioneers to a colony on Tasmania Island, but our surviving leaders still had a hunger for very advanced machines that would magnify the strength of a few aviads against many humans. The huge wings that were powered by sunlight carried aviad explorers all around the world. On the North American continent they found a human civilization which had developed small, primitive, but effective flying machines and very advanced guns.

"Aviad agents were dropped to learn the Americans' secrets and steal their flying wings, reaction guns, and master artisans. The Americans guarded their secrets closely, however, and many lives were lost for every flying machine, artisan, and reaction gun smuggled the seven thousand miles back to the Launceston Technical Institute on Tasmania Island. Then Black Thirteenth happened, and we

were cut off from North America once more. Ah, a question—and please state your camo name."

"Fras Shadowmouse. If you please, can the American flying wings not be used to cross the oceans as well?"

"Alas, they are small, heavy, clumsy and very limited in range compared to those from Mirrorsun. They also burn a mixture of alcohol and vegetable oil that is expensive to grow, harvest, and process, and each compression engine is the product of thousands of hours of work by countless artisans. Some are two, even three centuries old, and have been rebuilt dozens of times. For the Americans to build a flying wing to cross seven thousand miles of ocean would be impossible, our own engineers have calculated that. Another question?"

"Frelle Foxtread. What was the cause of the Black Thirteenth? Why would anyone want to destroy all electrical essence machines? Surely they benefit humans and aviads alike."

"There are as many theories as there are experts, Frelle. The one that I favor most strongly is that Mirrorsun, which is an intelligent machine of electrical essence itself, mistook the warlike uses to which our electrical essence machines were being put as preparations for an attack on itself."

"You mean to say all that was a terrible mistake?" asked Shadowmouse.

"That is my theory, young Fras, yes. The reason that you are here tonight is that for some reason the Call also ceased to act over land on Black Thirteenth. Our engineers and academicians think that the weapon that destroyed all electrical essence machines also damaged the mechanisms that the creatures of the oceans used to generate the Call. They are still formidable to deal with, of course. Avianese attempts to sail boats of even forty or fifty tons on the salt waters had been made, but all have been destroyed by shoals of sea creatures that boil up out of the depths and overwhelm them. Being immune to the Call, we aviads could live in Calldeath lands where the Call never ceased and humans could not go. With the Call gone, all we can do is retreat to islands beyond the reach of humans. For this we now use the few American flying machines that we towed over with the sunwings, and with some tiny kitewings that our own engineers have developed.

"All of you are part of a new, invisible paraline, one that moves aviads to the wingfields where they are ferried to safety on Tasmania Island. Babies, children, and those of small stature are given preference, because our wings are small and fuel is expensive. None of you will ever go to Avian, but you will ensure its future by giving it a population. Your work is dangerous, for most humans would gladly lynch us, but you have been selected as the cream of aviad warriors. Each of you is worth ten humans, but believe me, you will often be up against odds of greater than that."

Although the great reading room in Libris never closed, members of the public were compelled to leave at midnight, after which the staff moved in to clean, return books to their shelves, and then do their own studies if they wished. Few stayed more than an hour, but Velesti was one of those few.

The lower-ranking Dragon Librarians who patrolled the vast floor of the reading room knew that a ghost attended Velesti, a ghost in the image of the great and legendary Highliber Zarvora Cybeline. It hovered just behind Velesti as she sat turning the pages of some of the oldest and rarest texts, and they noticed that Velesti turned the pages about as fast as one could without damaging them. A few of the Dragon Yellows and Oranges had challenged the apparition, but it had either ignored them or vanished. Velesti denied all knowledge of it. By Velesti's second week in Libris the patrol librarians not only left her in peace, they actively avoided her.

"Derek Riplen, The Principles of Plasma Magnetodynamics for Engineers," said Velesti as she closed a slim volume bound in crumbly brown leather. "Eighty-two pages surviving out of five hundred twenty."

"What there was of it was very informative," replied Zarvora.

"I believe that it is my turn to read a book, Frelle Zarvora."

"We have scanned nineteen books, so the twentieth is yours," agreed Zarvora.

Velesti opened a large and heavy hardcover book and began to turn the pages. "Are you finding this interesting?" she asked.