Fall of the White Ship Avatar (20 page)

"Perhaps we ought to rethink signaling?" Floyt ventured. "With a big fire if not with proteuses. If someone lands, we jump them and take their craft."

"First of all," Paloma told him crisply, "this whole area's very lightly inhabited. I doubt anyone flies within visual range of here once in several years. But if we did attract attention, it'd most probably be from a boatload of company police. Still, what you're talking about is the kind of thing we might have to file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...y%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (99 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:13

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think about, further down the line."

"I wonder what the Precursors were doing here," Floyt mulled.

Alacrity had been thinking the same thing and couldn't come up with much. He hadn't had much time to ponder it through, but at least one thing was definite: of all the Precursor manifestations he knew of, the two that had yielded the most amazing connections to Precursor knowledge were the only two located on or under a planetary surface. He also tried to envision where Hecate and the site had rabbit-holed to.

"You've got high desert, where we can travel and survive
if
the gawks help," Paloma said, "because they're good at finding water and can carry it for us, besides which they cover ground a lot faster." She was trying to see the map Alacrity was studying. "That's our first big barrier, if we can't win their help."

"What's this here?" Alacrity held the projection up so she could see it, pointing out a map feature. A half meter or so away, drillbugs bounced against the netting like pixie vampires. "Beyond the mountains, I mean. Savannah?"

He caught her nod, and moved the map around so Floyt could get a look at it.

"You read it right," she confirmed. "A gruesome place for humans afoot, but no great shakes for a herd of gawks. And beyond that is Lake Fret, which is a problem I haven't quite worked out yet. The gawks are supposed to be able to swim a little, but I don't think they can make it across a stretch of water that big. And besides, there's a good deal of surface shipping there, and some meat eaters in the water."

"Yeah, that's what—thirty, thirty-five kilometers across at the narrowest point, there?" Alacrity said. "Of course, it's a couple hundred extra to go around in either direction, but if we have to—"

"Uh-uh." Paloma was shaking her head. "At that end, beyond the company operations sites, there're mires and bogs pretty much the whole way to the sea, impassable to gawks. At the opposite end, it's open country, barren, with lots of company activity. We might be able to go around, but we'd end up in some very cold country. I don't know if the gawks could take it—or if we could."

Floyt, already chilly despite the fire, shivered at the thought of a snow trek, even on gawkback.

Especially
on gawkback. "What about rafts, for the lake?" he proposed hesitantly, picturing a fifty-klick row with something the size of a gawk trying to keep its balance. "Or could we leave them behind at that point?"

"Not a chance," Paloma said, "because the selling point of the trip, as far as the gawks are concerned, will be that they can go on from the opposite shore of Lake Fret to link up with another gawk herd down in those plains there a few hundred kilometers south. I'll explain the whole thing to you, but for now that lake's our big problem.

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"And we can't let the gawks be seen anywhere close to company operations, or everything the company could get flying in the air or moving on the ground would be out blasting away at them."

"But then what does that leave?" Floyt "wondered.

"I'm working on that, Hobie," she told him. Floyt started.
Hobie
?

"Well, keep us updated," Alacrity said. Then he added, "
Whoa
!" as something the length of his forearm whipped down into the firelight in a quick swoop and was gone again. "What-all in perdition's plenum was
that
?"

"Ringwing," Paloma said. "I didn't know there were any in this area. But then again, I didn't know the drill-bugs lived on this side of the mountains, either."

Another ringwing dove through the light and into the dark again, and another, eel shapes with multiple wing-sets that seemed to meet and form circles at the top and bottom of each stroke, oaring the air. Then more shot through the firelight as drillbugs began disappearing.

"Makes sense, though," Paloma said. "The drillbugs probably came along when the gawks did; they lay eggs in the dung. And the ringwings eventually blundered into a huge drillbug population and prospered."

Floyt could see that the fast-moving ringwings were proficient feeders, getting a drillbug or two on every dive, like bats grabbing insects. He gulped. "And do ringwings have a taste for human blood, too?"

She considered it dispassionately. "Mmm, I wouldn't think so. They're pretty specialized predators, and we're too big for them."

"Fast, too," Floyt commented. The air was cleared of drillbugs—not because the prey was very good at avoiding predators; the drillbugs seemed to be singleminded blood seekers, like leeches—in just a few minutes of ringwing feeding.

It was like being in the middle of some bizarre dogfight. Except for the flutter of wings, the hiss of air as the ringwings passed, and the occasional bump of a drillbug, it was played out in silence. The fire sounded quite loud in the middle of it all. The ringwings' guidance sense was uncanny; as close as they swept to the brolly, not one so much as brushed it. The humans watched spellbound for a total of seven minutes or so.

Then the air was clear of bugs and 'wings alike. Alacrity cautiously poked his head from under the netting. "Well, I'll be."

"Great, isn't it?" Paloma said cheerfully. "Let's all hear it for ringwings."

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Floyt emerged from the netting, grabbing for more wood. With a sudden dread of the dark and a determination that the flames would not die out, he fed the fire. The gawks' droning still rose and fell in the distance. Other nightfliers were venturing out, bioluminescent mites and fluttering, transparent things like ghostly, airborne hairpieces. Decaying matter and plant parasites gave off eerie phosphorescence, making the woods look menacing and haunted.

"Look, Paloma," Alacrity said, carefully laying aside the brolly but leaving it open just in case. "This stuff about wiping out the gawks and driving them out here—how long does the company think it can get away with a thing like that?"

She raised her shoulders and let them fall, making dismissing gestures with her hands. "People have better things to do than go nosing around the Lebensraum Outback. And most of the very few who know the real truth have a vested interest in keeping the secret. Besides, nobody's counting on it lasting forever.

"What I'm getting at is, you have this company exec, and how much do you think he cares if the truth comes out thirty or fifty or a hundred years down the line? By then he's long since retired somewhere with his money, or dead. But they all make sure nothing gets out while
they're
on the scene, and that's the way it's been all along."

"Some secrets have been maintained for a long, long while in more or less that fashion," Floyt said, the fire set up to his liking again. Alacrity could just about read his thoughts: the Camarilla had lasted two hundred years.

Floyt took the mated proteuses and began flashing forward and back through gawkleg data, looking over some very old company zoological studies. Alacrity tossed more wood on the fire so that it was disarranged; Floyt took a moment to square it away to his own satisfaction once more, with a proprietary air. The brolly and the data and wilderness savvy might be someone else's, but the campfire was Floyt's.

"I think it'll be all right," Paloma said, meaning the fire. "If we run low on wood we can take torches and get more; there's enough nearby. I don't think even a scare-flare would bother three of us with burning brands."

"Now, while we've got a minute," Alacrity brought up some old business, "just why is it again that you think the gawks'll go along with your invitation to convoy us cross-country?"

"In a way, the gawks need us just as much as we need them," she said.

Floyt, the professional Earthservice accessor, had found what he was looking for. He looked to Paloma.

"Only to convince them of that might require a little nature study of our own, am I correct?"

She gave him a congratulatory nod and a smile Alacrity found himself coveting. "You're a fast man with file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20krui...%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (102 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:13

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a file, Hobie."

"All right, all right; I'm lost," Alacrity confessed. "Now will somebody please tell me?"

She gave him a surprised look. "Why, we're going to take a headcount on the gawklegs, of course."

"Day shift coming on." Floyt yawned, looking down at some little rodent-thing scampering from cover and back again. "I hope the scare-flares are late sleepers." He rolled in his mouth the pebbles he was using to try to keep his mind off thirst. He rubbed his side to get the blood circulating after a torturous night of trying to sleep on cold solid rock. As a mercy, though, the drillbugs hadn't returned. As he watched, an enormous flock of avian-things took to the wing, blotting out Invictus and darkening the sky.

Alacrity looked up from where he was hardening his spearpoint in the coals and wondering if he was doing it right; he'd only heard about that sort of thing. At the very least, Floyt's multitool was a promethean blessing, a hip-pocket machine shop of sorts.

Alacrity squinted at the dawn. Gawklegs were on the move in the distance, their infrasonics apparently silent. "Time to go house hunting, what d'you say?"

Paloma stood and stretched, hands against the small of her back, groaning as she arched. Alacrity watched admiringly. "First, how 'bout some food hunting?" she proposed.

"That sounds wonderful," Floyt enthused. "My stomach's rumbling so loud, the scare-flares must be cowering in their dens. Or nests, or whatever."

"Usually in a burrow down on the flatlands," Paloma clarified. "And today's the day we start convincing them they better stay the hell down there and away from
us
."

"What've you got, landmines hidden in your girdle?" Alacrity blinked. He was scattering the fire, grinding embers and covering them with ash; the area was dry and he had no desire to find out what a local wildfire was like.

"Trust me; I'm the legendery Siren of the Wilderness, remember?" Paloma followed Floyt down from the redoubt, both of them alert against attack, holding their sharpened walking staffs as spears.

Alacrity moaned tiredly, gathering up his own spear and meticulously brushing off and refolding the brolly. He thought a moment, then left the cap off its sharpened tip.

"A drink of water's first on the list as far as I'm concerned," Floyt announced. "And, er, another brief stop."

"No argument here," Paloma assured him. "Only first let's see what's left of the scare-flare."

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They went with Paloma leading because she knew more than either of the men. Floyt held the center and backed her up while Alacrity brought up the rear. They moved in close order; it wasn't a combat patrol wherein one round might get them all. It was instead a survival march in unfamiliar wilds without firearms; grouped defense, grasslands-baboon style, was their best bet.

Unless, of course, some gawklegs elected to come up from the plains and romp and stomp on them, in which case even a tree probably wouldn't be much protection and they'd all three very likely become so much toe-jam.

Floyt's thoughts strayed to their conversations in the night. Alacrity had questioned Paloma and combed her proteus for all the local data he could find. Floyt mentioned general survival rules and Alacrity explained, "General survival rules that don't stand a chance of making you die young, you can count on one hand."

"I heard this story once, when I shipped in the Salty Dog. Guy was one of a survivor party, so this big whatsit comes charging outta the brush and he shinnies up a tree. Well, who wouldn't? Besides, he was from Adam's Apple, and that was what he was used to."

"Only, it turns out, the thingie he was running from was this harmless spore-strainer, but the tree he picked out was a carrion eater with toxic bark. So his account got stamped
closed
brother."

Floyt sighed. "At least I wish we had our guns. Especially the Captain's Sidearm, with those pouches.

We could certainly use more equipment, survival equipment."

Alacrity had half turned to him in the firelight. "
What
survival equipment? Those pouches are just for cleaning equipment and ammo and a lanyard and like that, Ho. The Captain's Sidearm's not meant for survival ground-side; it's meant to keep you from
losing
your ship!"

And then Alacrity looked out into the darkness, adding softly, "
Goddammit
anyway … "

"Oh! Sorry, Alacrity."

"Forget it, Ho. Wait'll you see what we do when I've got that Ship back."

Bigger scavengers were done with the leavings of the cricket-fawn's carcass; the smaller and smallest were almost finished. Bones were cracked, marrowlike contents gone. Most tissue and skin had vanished, too.

"Thank goodness," Paloma breathed. "That foreleg's still here." She grabbed the defeated scare-flare's dismembered leg and began knocking tiny feeding things loose from it with her spearpoint and by banging it against a tree.