Runner (13 page)

The passageway took a sharp turn, passed a pool inhabited by blind fish, and went up over a rise. Thota followed the procession into a vast chamber. Thousands of crystals were embedded in the rocky ceiling. They twinkled like distant stars.

Below them, his back still connected to the rock from which his massive body had been hewed, sat a likeness of Teon. If the great master was saddened by the deaths of his servants, there was no sign of it on his impassive face.
Nor should there be,
the monk thought to himself,
for he sees that which we seek.

One by one the bodies were placed on a rocky platform, a sonorous chant echoed between rough-hewn walls, and Thota gave the necessary signal. Wood was a precious commodity in Gos, so natural gas had been piped into the
caverns, and was lit with a torch. There was a dramatic
pop!
as blue flames rippled out to embrace the bodies, and what little smoke there was wafted upward.

Finally, once the ceremony was complete, Thota bowed to the image of Teon before retracing his footsteps and entering the medium-sized chamber that doubled as both his living quarters and office. The bioengineered beings who awaited him there were so different from members of the A-strain that they might as well have been aliens. The precise rationale for creating an offshoot of humanity that could fly had been lost to the sect's historians but the monk suspected that the so-called wings had been created in order to exploit certain habitats for commercial purposes.

Whether their creators had Pooz in mind back then, or the winged humanoids simply found the planet to their liking was unknown, but the result was the same. Just as the phibs made themselves at home in the Great Sea, their airborne cousins laid claim to the mountains, where they lived in terraced villages, farmed hardscrabble plots, and preyed on commerce below.

Two of the exotic creatures stood waiting. Both were scantily dressed, about six and a half feet tall, and very thin. Thota knew that their bones were hollow, certain portions of their skeletons had been fused to make them stronger, and the variants had muscles that norms didn't. Their leathery wings were folded vertically along their backs, both carried projectile weapons, and eyed him with what could only be described as a look of fierce independence.

“Welcome to our humble monastery,” the monk said, bowing formally. “My name is Thota. I would invite you to take a seat, but I fear I don't have any suitable furniture.”

“There is no need,” one of the wings replied stiffly. “My name is Karth. This is Zota. What do you want of us?”

Thota perched on the edge of a handmade desk that had once been the property of the senior member of the local red hat sect. “You come right to the point. I like that. Well, here's the situation . . .”

The ensuing conversation lasted for the better part of an hour. Finally, once both sides were satisfied with the terms of the agreement, and the first of two payments had changed hands, Thota escorted the bandits up to the surface. The top of a sand dune made a good launching pad, and their long, powerful wings made a gentle
whuf! whuf! whuf!
sound as the variants beat their way upward, found a thermal, and let it loft them even higher into the sky.

The monk watched his new allies for a while, marveled at the freedom the wings enjoyed, but wondered about the price they had paid. Had the technology used to create them been a good thing? Or simply a distraction from humanity's
real
goal, which was to supersede the physical? There was no way to be sure, but one thing was for certain, the sun was extremely hot.

Thota turned, waited for a lesser monk to lift the metal lid that prevented sand from spilling into the vertical access stack, and made his way down the spiral stairway. Cool air rushed up to embrace him, a cup of hot tea awaited, and Thota was content.

FIVE
The Planet Pooz

There is only one race that can fly, that can ride the wind, that can touch the clouds. Others may walk the sands, or swim in the sea, but we own the sky.

—Author unknown,
A wing proverb

The sun had just broken contact with the horizon, which
meant that the air was still relatively cool, as the team of twenty specially bred angens hauled the custom-built flat cars along the single track. Once, back before the rising tide of sand had submerged all but the tops of the pylons, the monorail had been elevated fifty feet off the ground, and sleek bullet-shaped trains completed the trip between Gos and Tra in hours rather than the fourteen days currently required.

But once the sand had risen, and off-world parts were no longer available, the bullet trains had given way to the current low-tech version. Extensions had been added along both sides of the rail so that the huge draft animals had a surface to walk on, and a system of walled “inns” had been
established so that passengers had a safe place to stay during the worst heat of the day. Each fort was approximately fifteen miles from the next, built around a hand-dug well and protected by a contingent of lancers.

The trip was still rather dangerous, however, since bandit raids were not only common, but to be expected as the angens pulled the rather optimistically named
“Desert Zephyr”
up through the southern foothills and through Hyber Pass. An area that the wings patrolled and considered to be their own in spite of the Shah's claims to the contrary.

Which was why each sixty-foot flatcar was equipped with a venerable but still-serviceable machine gun. Each weapon squatted in a metal tub, where it could sweep the sky above, and was served by a two-man crew. A corpulent noncom was in charge of the detachment but spent most of his time dozing in the sun. There had been talk of increasing the number of guards, but because the addition of five soldiers would force the government to cut an equal number of passengers, nothing had come of such discussions. It seemed that the Shah felt the train was losing too much money already. In fact, according to what one passenger said, the only reason the
Zephyr
remained in service was the need to move official mail from one city to the other, a function the government refused to let the local runners take care of.

However, most of the other fifty or so passengers were armed. That added to the total firepower the train could muster and served as an additional deterrent. Of course there was no telling how effective the ragtag mix of merchants, civil servants, and other citizens would be if confronted by bandits. That was why Rebo maintained his own watch on the second car. A tattered awning provided the runner with a scrap of shade augmented by an oft-patched
sail. It flapped uselessly on those rare occasions when a breeze found it and only rarely functioned as intended. Both the runner and his companions kept their packs at hand and were prepared to abandon the train should an overwhelming threat appear, even if that meant continuing on foot.

Rebo saw Norr appear at the back end of the first car and pause in front of the three-foot gap. It was as if the moment was frozen in time as the sun hit the sensitive's face just so, the woman bit her lower lip as she contemplated the jump, and a momentary breeze tugged at her loose-fitting robe. She was attractive, but Rebo had spent time with far prettier women, so why stare at her?

Then the moment was over as Norr completed the jump, exchanged greetings with the machine gunner, and made her way back to Rebo's scrap of shade. “Here,” she said, handing the runner a small bundle. “Have some dates. One of the women gave them to me in return for reading her palm.”

“And what did you see?” Rebo inquired as he untied the cloth and selected a likely-looking piece of fruit.

“She's going to die,” Norr said matter-of-factly, as she stared off into the distance. “And soon. Which is too bad because she's no more than thirty-five years old.”

Rebo spit the pit into the palm of his hand and threw it out into the desert. “Really? That's tough. What did she say when you told her?”

“I didn't tell her,” the sensitive replied evenly. “Not the truth. I told her that everything would go well, that she would be happy in Tra, and live a long productive life there.”

Rebo frowned. “But why? If she knew she was going to die, she might make different decisions.”

“Exactly,” Norr replied, as she chose a date for herself.
“Which is why most sensitives won't disclose death dates. First, because we're fallible, but mostly because people who believe they're going to die stop living and focus on death. She's happy. That's what's important.”

“So, what about
me?
” Rebo inquired, extending his hand.

“Hmmm,” Norr said, as she made use of a long slender finger to trace the curve of his life-line. “It looks like you will travel to the stars, have many adventures, and fall into the company of a beautiful woman.”

She was joking, Rebo knew that, but when he looked up into Norr's face the runner thought he saw a look of concern cloud her brown eyes, and was about to question her when Lee dropped in on them from above. “I climbed all the way to the top of the mast!” the boy announced proudly. “You can see the next fort from up there. Well, not the fort, but the tops of the palm trees around it. They're Pooz palms. That means they're variants of trees that grew on ancient Earth and were brought here by ancient colonists.”

Lee had been a full-time student until very recently and had a tendency to absorb information like a sponge. The only problem was that some of it tended to be wrong. “The trees could be variants,” Rebo allowed, “but they didn't originate on Earth. It's a legend—nothing more.”

“Maybe,” the boy said carefully, “but the ancient texts refer to it, and humanity had to come from somewhere.”

Somehow, without intending to, Norr had become the peacemaker in such disputes. “Look!” she said, pointing to the east. “What is that? Some sort of bird?”

The runner removed a small but powerful pair of binoculars from a pocket and brought them up to his eyes. He panned a section of sky, acquired the object in question, and pressed a button that rolled the image into focus. The range was printed along the bottom edge of the frame. They
would wear out eventually—and no one would be able to repair them. “It's a wing,” Rebo reported. “And that isn't good. A scout probably, watching our progress, so he can report back.”

“Can I see?” Lee inquired eagerly, and was thrilled when Rebo handed him the glasses. Other passengers were pointing by then, chattering among themselves or calling to the soldiers for reassurance. The gunner on the first car even went so far as to fire a three-round burst toward the distant target, but the airborne variant was well out of range and continued to circle as if inviting the soldier to waste even more of his precious ammunition.

Half an hour passed like that, until the train neared the next fort, and the wing banked toward the south. The foothills could be seen down there, shimmering in the steadily increasing heat, with the vague shape of a mountain looming beyond.
That's where the variant is headed,
Rebo thought to himself, and lowered his glasses. At some point during the next day, or the day after that, the bandits would attack. Would the machine guns be sufficient to hold them off? The runner certainly hoped so—but felt an emptiness at the pit of his stomach. The train jerked forward as the normally listless angens spotted the fort, realized that they were about to be fed, and broke into a clumsy trot.

Inside the fort a whip cracked, and a capstan started to turn, as a pair of elderly angens walked an endless circle. Ropes grew taut, pulleys squealed, and a pair of bullet-pocked iron doors parted to let the
Zephyr
pass between them. The sun reached its zenith not long thereafter. Those life-forms that could scurried for cover. The rest started to die.

Clouds slid in over the desert. They concealed the moon
one moment only to reveal it the next. During the brief
interludes when the satellite was visible it threw light down onto the monorail, which gleamed like platinum and seemed to streak through the night. Most of the passengers had fallen asleep by then, not because they were especially tired, but because there was nothing else for them to do. There were exceptions, however, including the angens, which continued to plod along both sides of the track, the driver who sought to keep them moving, and the soldiers who sat slumped in their gun tubs.

Farther toward the rear, with his back supported by a crate, Rebo floated in the nowhere land that lies between full awareness and sleep. The gentle sway of the flatcar, the creak of wood, and an occasional
click
as the
Zephyr
passed over an expansion joint combined to take the runner back to his boyhood on Thara. He could feel the subtle roll of his father's fishing boat as it surged forward, hear the gurgle of water as it slid along the hull, and smell the sharp tang of the sea.

He would have been about ten then, back when life was good, before the storm took half the local fishing fleet, the family boat, his father, and both of his brothers. His mother had never been the same after that, working as a maid during the day and crying herself to sleep at night. The other villagers assumed little Jak would become a fisherman when he grew up and serve on someone else's boat, but his mother had other ideas. She saved every gunar she could to buy Jak a different future. Anything but the profession that had claimed her husband and two oldest sons.

There weren't many opportunities in the village of Lorval, and as time passed, Jak's mother began to feel a sense of hopelessness. But that changed one day when a stranger appeared at the inn where she worked. The stranger was a runner with a letter for those who lived in the big house up on
the bluff, and he was a sight to see. Thomas Crowley stood six-six, had long gray hair and piercing green eyes. His skin had a strange pallor, as if it was rarely exposed to the sun, but the man seemed to radiate an inner strength. Rather than carouse with the regulars while he waited for his wealthy clients to compose a response to the letter he had brought, the runner preferred to read books via a small machine that he held cradled in his hands.

From the first moment that she saw him Torley Rebo knew Crowley was the man who could save her son from what she saw as certain death, and immediately went to work on him. For the next three days the runner received every attention that the maid could lavish on him, and could easily have taken her to bed, had that been his desire.

But unknown to Torley Rebo, or to anyone else for that matter, it had been many months since the runner had been interested in sex. He was ill, and not only had the nature of his disease robbed the off-worlder of his sex drive, it resulted in persistent abdominal pain and a dry, hacking cough.

Rebo remembered the morning when his mother had given him an unscheduled bath, dressed him in his very best clothes, and taken him to work with her. Then, having entered the inn via the hot steamy kitchen, Torley Rebo led her son up through a tight, winding staircase to the second floor. The runner occupied the best room the inn had to offer, and their shoes made a
clacking
sound as the two of them walked the length of the hall and paused in front of a heavily varnished door. That was when Torley patted her hair, checked to make sure that her son's jacket was straight, and rapped on the worn wood.

Rebo heard a muffled cough, followed by a hoarse “Come in!” and wondered what his mother was up to. The door
swung open, he was nudged inside, and soon found himself standing in front of a man with a long, serious face. A handgun, a glass of wine, and a small machine lay on the table next to him.

The boy hadn't understood much of the ensuing conversation, only that it involved him in some important way, but remembered how profusely his mother thanked the tall man even as she handed him a purse full of coins. Then, turning to him, she had smiled. Strange really, considering the tears that ran down her cheeks, and the emotion in her voice. “This is Citizen Crowley, son. He's a runner—and you are to be his apprentice! Isn't that wonderful?”

The younger Rebo nodded dutifully, wondered what runners did, and felt a hard lump form in the pit of his stomach. Two days later he said good-bye to his mother, boarded a coach, and began his new life. He hadn't been back to Thara since.

Now, as the train murmured along the track, the runner was going home. Or hoped that he was. Was his mother alive? Had the village changed? Only time would tell. Memories morphed into dreams, and Rebo slept.

Enormous wings made a gentle
whuf! whuf! whuf!
sound as
the two variants closed with the train. Although the darkness offered concealment, the cool night air forced the wings to exert themselves in order to maintain their altitude, and chilled their thin, nearly unprotected bodies. That, plus the fact that the two-car train was in motion, meant that the snatch would be difficult. But even as the air around him acted to slow Karth down, it also provided his wings with lift, a paradox he had once captured in a poem.

But this was no time to consider the gentler arts as the bandit closed the gap with the second flatcar and searched the
blackness below for the beacon that was supposed to mark his target. The variant didn't see it at first, and was just about to conclude that the black hats had been unable to tag the boy, when he saw a patch of green luminescence. The substance that produced the telltale glow had been sprayed onto the youth's pack as he boarded the train. It was invisible to anyone not equipped with goggles like those the variants wore.