Nebula Awards Showcase 2008 (15 page)

“If things go wrong in the east, we might need to set our firebreak as far back as Blue Valley Road.” Spur ran his finger down the line on the map. “It won’t be as effective a break as the ridge road but we can improve it. Get the Bandarans and Sawatdees to rake off all the forest litter and duff on the west side. Then disk harrow the entire road. I want to see at least a three-meter-wide strip of fresh soil down the entire length.”

“Prosper.” Cape’s voice was hushed. “You’re not giving up on all of this.” He traced the outline of the four threatened farms on the map, ending on the black square that marked Diligence Cottage.

Spur glanced briefly at his father, then away again, troubled by what he had seen. Capability Leung looked just as desperate as Stark Sukulgunda. Maybe more so, if he thought he had just heard his son pronounce doom on his life’s work. For the first time in his life, Spur felt as if he were the father and Cape was the son.

“No.” He tried to reassure his father with a smile. “That’s just our fallback. What I’m hoping is that we can cut a handline from Spot Pond along Mercy’s Creek all the way down to the river. It’s rough country and depending on how fast the burn is moving we may not have enough time, but if we can hold that line, we save the Millisaps, Joerlys and us.” Left unsaid was that the Ezzats’ farmstead would be lost, even if this dicey strategy worked.

“But right now the fire is much closer to my place than anyone else’s,” said Stark. “And you said yourself, there may be some suicidal maniac just waiting to burn himself up and take my house with him.”

Spur was annoyed at the way that Stark Sukulgunda kept buzzing at him. He was making it hard for Spur to concentrate. “We could send the fire truck your way, Stark,” he said, “but I don’t know what good it would do. You don’t have any standing water on your land, do you?”

“Why?”

“The truck only has a five-thousand-liter water tank. That’s not near enough if your house gets involved.”

“We could drop the hard suction line into his well,” said Livy. “Pump from there.”

“You have a dug well?” said Cape. “How deep?”

“Four meters.”

“We’d probably suck it dry before we could do you much good,” said Cape.

“No,” said Spur. “He’s right. Peace, you and Tenny and Cert take No. 4 up to Sukulgundas’. You can also establish our western perimeter. Clear a meter-wide handline as far up the ridge as you can. Watch for torches. I don’t think the fire is going to come your way but if it does, be ready, understand? Get on the tell and let us know if anything changes.”

“We’ll call in when we get there,” said Peace as her team scattered to collect gear.

“Livy, you and the others round up as many as you can to help with the creek line. We may want to start a backfire, so keep in touch with me on the hand-tell. How much liquid fire have you got?”

“At least twenty grenades. Maybe more. No firebombs though.”

“Bring gas then, you’ll probably need it. Keep your people between the civilians and the burn, understand? And pull back if it gets too hot. I’ve lost too many friends this year. I don’t want to be burying anyone else. DiDa, you and I need to find a way to get up the ridge….”

He was interrupted by the roar of a crowd, which had gathered just outside the firehouse. Spur froze, momentarily bewildered. They couldn’t still be playing baseball, could they? Then he thought that the burn must have changed direction. It had careened down the ridge faster than it had any right to, an avalanche of fire that was about to incinerate the Commons and there was nothing he could do to fight it; in the nightmare, he wasn’t wearing his splash pack. Or his fireproof field jacket. Spur shuddered. He wasn’t fit to lead, to decide what to let burn and what to save. He was weak and his soul was lost in darkness and he knew he shouldn’t be afraid. He was a veteran of the firefight, but fear squeezed him nonetheless. “Are you all right, son?” His father rested a hand on his shoulder. The burn licked at boulders and scorched the trees in the forest he had sworn to protect.

“DiDa,” he whispered, leaning close to his father so no one else would hear, “what if I can’t stop it?”

“You’ll do your best, Prosper,” he said. “Everyone knows that.”

As they rushed out of the firehouse, they could see smoke roiling into the sky to the northwest. But the evil plume wasn’t what had stunned the crowd, which was still pouring out of the communion hall. A shadow passed directly overhead and, even in the heat of this disastrous afternoon, Spur was chilled.

Silently, like a miracle, the High Gregory’s hover landed on Littleton Commons.

FIFTEEN

Men go to a fire for entertainment. When I see how eagerly men will run to a fire, whether in warm or cold weather, by night or by day, dragging an engine at their heels, I’m astonished to perceive how good a purpose the level of excitement is made to serve.

—
J
OURNAL
, 1850

 

“There’s a big difference between surface fire and crown fire,” said the Pendragon Chromlis Furcifer to the L’ung assembled in the belly of the hover. “Surface fires move along the forest floor, burning through the understory.” She was reading from notes that scrolled down her forearm.

“Wait, what’s understory again?” asked Her Grace, Jacqueline Kristof, who was the youngest of the L’ung.

Memsen pinched the air. “You mustn’t keep interrupting, Your Grace. If you have questions, query the cognisphere in slow time.” She nodded at Penny. “Go ahead, Pendragon. You’re doing a fine job.”

“Understory is the grass, shrubs, dead leaves, fallen trees—that stuff. So anyway, a surface fire can burn fast or slow, depending. But if the flames climb into the crowns of the trees, it almost always rips right through the forest. Since the Transcendental State doesn’t have the tech to stop it, Spur will have to let it burn itself out. If you look over there…” The group closed around her, craning to see.

Spur had been able to ignore Penny for the most part, although Cape kept scowling at the L’ung. Memsen had explained that Penny’s research topic for the trip to Walden was forest fires.

The hover was not completely proof against smoke. As they skirted the roiling convection column of smoke and burning embers, the air inside the hover became tinged with the bitter stench of the burn. This impressed the L’ung. As they wandered from view to view, they would call to one another. “Here, over here. Do you smell it now? Much stronger over here!”

They had dissolved the partitions and made most of the hull transparent to observe developments in the burn. Just a single three-meter-wide band ran solid from the front of the deck to the back as a concession to Spur and Cape; the L’ung seemed totally immune from fear of heights. Spur was proud at how Cape was handling his first flight in a hover, especially since he himself felt slightly queasy whenever he looked straight down through the deck at the ridge 1,500 meters below.

From this vantage, Spur could see exactly what was needed to contain the burn and realized that he didn’t have the resources to do it. Looking to the north, he was relieved that the burn hadn’t yet crossed Lamana Ridge Road into the wilderness on the far slope. Barring an unforeseen wind change or embers lighting new spot fires, he thought he might be able to keep the burn within the Littleton valley. But he needed dozens of trained firefighters up on the ridge to defend the road as soon as possible. To the west, he saw where the flames had come close to the Sukulgundas’ farmstead, but now the burn there looked to be nothing more than a surface fire that was already beginning to gutter out. Peace and the team with Engine No. 4 should have no trouble mopping up. Then he’d move them onto the ridge, not that just three people and one ancient pumper were going to be enough to beat back a wall of flame two kilometers wide.

“Where you see the darker splotches in the forest, those are evergreens, the best fuel of all,” said Penny. “If they catch, you can get a blowup fire, which is what that huge column of smoke is about.”

To the east and south, the prospects were grim. The burn had dropped much farther down the ridge than Spur had expected. He remembered from his training that burns were supposed to track uphill faster than down, but the spread to the north and south, upslope and down, looked about the same. As soon as the first crews responded from nearby Bode Well and Highbridge, they’d have to deploy at the base of the ridge to protect the Commons and the farmsteads beyond it.

The head of the burn was a violent crown fire racing east, beneath a chimney of malign smoke that towered kilometers above the hover. When Spur had given the Ezzats and Millisaps permission to save as much as they could from their houses, he’d thought that they’d all have more time. Now he realized that he’d miscalculated. He reached both families using the hand-tell and told them to leave immediately. Bash Ezzat was weeping when she said she could already see the burn sweeping down on her. Spur tried Comfort’s tell again to let her know that her farmstead was directly in the path of the burn, but still got no answer.

“DiDa,” said Spur gently. He’d been dreading this moment, ever since he’d understood the true scope and direction of the burn. “I think we need to pull Livy and her people back from the creek to Blue Valley Road.” He steeled himself against anger, grief and reproach. “There’s no time to clear a line,” he went on. “At least not one that will stop this burn.”

“I think you’re right,” Cape said, as casually as if they were discussing which trees to prune. “It’s simple, isn’t it?”

Relieved but still anguished, he hugged his father. “I’m sorry, DiDa.” He couldn’t remember the last time they had been this close, and was not surprised that Cape did not return his embrace. “Should we send someone to the house?” he said, as he let his father go. “Have them pack some things? Papers, furniture—there’s still a little time.”

“No.” Cape turned and cupped his hands against the transparent hull of the hover. “If I did something silly like that, the farm would burn for sure.” He lowered his face into his hands as if to shade the view from glare. But the afternoon sun was a dim memory, blotted out by the seething clouds of smoke.

Spur shut his eyes then, so tight that for a moment he could feel muscles on his temple quiver. “Memsen,” he said, his voice catching in his throat, “can you put us down by the Sawatdees’ house?”

Spur got more resistance from Livy than he had from his father. It took him almost ten minutes to convince her that trying to dig a firebreak along Mercy’s Creek was not only futile but also dangerous. When it was over, he felt drained. As he flopped beside Cape onto one of the chairs that Memsen had caused to flow from the deck of the hover, the hand-tell squawked. He groaned, anticipating that Livy was back with a new argument.

“Prosper Leung?” said a woman’s voice.

“Speaking.”

“I’m Commander Do Adoula, Fourth Engineers. My squad was on CR in Longwalk but we heard you have a situation there and we’re on our way. We can be in Littleton in half an hour. I understand you’re in a hover. What do you see?”

The handover of command was subtle but swift. Commander Adoula started by asking questions and ended by giving orders. She was coming in four light trucks with thirty-seven firefighters but no heavy equipment. She approved of Spur’s decision to stop the burn at Blue Valley Road, and split her force in two while they were speaking, diverting half to the ridge and half to help Livy on Blue Valley. She directed the local firefighters from Bode Well and Highbridge to dig in on the south to protect the Commons and requested that Spur stay in the hover and be her eyes in the sky.

When they finished talking, Spur slumped back against his chair. He was pleased that Adoula had ratified his firefighting plans, relieved to be no longer in charge.

“The Corps?” said Cape.

“Fourth Engineers.” He folded the hand-tell. “They were on CR in Longwalk.”

“That was lucky.”

“Lucky,” he agreed. He spotted the High Gregory whispering to Memsen. “How are you doing, DiDa?”

“You know, I’ve never visited the ocean.” Cape blinked as he stared through the hull at the forest below. “Your mother wanted me to take her there, did I ever tell you that?”

“No.”

“She always used to ask if we owned the farm or if the farm owned us.” He made a low sound, part sigh and part whistle. “I wonder if she’s still in Providence.”

Spur didn’t know what to say.

Cape frowned. “You haven’t been in contact with her?”

“No.”

“If you ever do speak to her, would you tell me?”

“Sure.”

He nodded and made the whistling sound again.

“A burn this big is different from a surface fire,” said Penny. “It’s so hot that it makes a kind of fire weather called a convection column. Inside the column, bubbles of superheated air are surging up, only we can’t see that. But on the outside, the cooler smoky edges are pouring back toward the ground.”

“Yes, yes.” The High Gregory pointed, clearly excited. “Watch at the top, to the left of the plume. It’s like it’s turning itself inside out.”

“Awesome,” said Kai Thousandfold. “Do you remember those gas sculptures we played with on Blimminey?”

“But that’s going to be a problem for Spur and his firefighters,” said Penny. “It’s like a chimney shooting sparks and embers high into the atmosphere. They might come down anywhere and start new fires.”

“Is anyone going to die?” said Senator Dowm.

“We hope not,” Memsen said. “Spur is doing his best and help is on the way.”

“Don’t you wish she’d shut up?” muttered Cape, leaning into Spur. “This isn’t some silly class. They’re watching our life burn down.”

“They’re from the upside, DiDa. We can’t judge them.”

“And how does she know so much about how we fight fires? Look at her, she’s just a kid.”

That had been bothering Spur too, and it was getting harder and harder to put out of his mind. When had the L’ung had time to do all this research? They had arrived the day after he had first spoken to the High Gregory. Had they known ahead of time that they were coming to Walden? Was all this part of the plan?