Starquest: Scourge of the Spaceways, page 25
Having a dream vision of Elissa dress him down was too painful. The only part of being a traitor he liked was the idea of being on the same side with Elissa.
Flint felt his face grow hard. His eye narrowed, and his lips became a line. "He said it. Not me. If he did not send you, why am I seeing you?"
"You were on the planet when the sun was put out. How did you survive? Who else survived? If you know Jaywind, you are a friend. In his name, I charge you tell the truth!"
"Starquest is no friend of mine! And what is truth? Each man has his own."
The bowshaft of her golden longbow was longer than she was tall. She pointed it at him like a sorceress with a charming wand, and immediately his throat was blocked, and he began to choke. Eye bulging, clutching at his throat, he gasped and fell from his chair.
She intoned, "The breath of life was given man to speak the truth, to sing praises and adore. The stars forgive all; but will not forgive blasphemy against the spirit of the truth."
Flint's vision was awash with red, his ears were filled with pounding drums. Dream or not, he feared his death was at hand. He gasped, "Pardon! Your pardon, Sister! Truth is true! I seek it, too! I was lied to! They lied to me!"
Those words came out easily and freely. The impalpable noose was gone. He rubbed his throat. He was surprised that it was so easy to call a holy maiden dressed in temple robes "Sister," and a little abashed. He was also surprised that he could not gain control of the dream around him, and a little afraid.
"Who lied to you?" she asked.
"All of them! Nursemaids. Trainers. Manuals. Teammates. Officers. Everyone. Me."
"What are you talking about? Are you a Templar? A Squire? You were awake in your dream. Not many have that talent. Who are you?"
"I am a killer. I killed a Shrine Maiden." Again, the words seem to come unbidden. From his knees, he looked up at her. "Can you wash the blood from my hands? When I am awake, my hands are clean. Asleep, I see the stains. I see the truth. Can you wash me clean?"
"Shriving sins is a sacerdotal chrism," The image of Elissa said. "Shrine Maidens clean shrines. We sing psalms, swing thuribles, shake aspergilla."
"I don't know what those words mean."
"Then you should not kill those who do! Seek atonement not from me! You were on the murdered world. You saw the Great Eye of Darkness open! It was in your dream. Tell me why."
Still kneeling, words gushed from Flint. "Ksora died because the truth was seen, clear and clean before all eyes, and the Empire humiliated. Men must believe the heavens are empty of any thing but men. That is the law! Faith in the stars is illegal. But the faithful were flown away. The whole death chamber was ripped from its foundation, and carried them up into the clouds!"
The girl seemed bewildered. "Ksora?"
"I was stationed there for five years, on Ksora. The people were loyal — they did no wrong! Seeing the miracle was their only sin."
"Who escaped? Who is alive?"
"No one lived. No one could have — " But he caught his breath and climbed upright. "No, there were some who lived. A few."
Once on his feet, Flint realized that the girl was rather petite. Even floating six inches off the deck as she was, the crown of her head did not even reach his chin. She was shorter than the real Elissa had been.
"Who lived? Speak!"
"My men and I, we found children with traces of abnormal psychological manifestations —" Flint grimaced. He was still using the euphemisms and nonsense-words of the Empire. False words. He cleared his throat and said again, "On Ksora, we found some youngsters with Kirlian talent. A psychokineticist and a clairvoyant. They were taken away by the Inquisition for examination. I did not know it then. I was told they were to be examined, executed. All lies. They were recruited, rewarded, taught deeper and darker secrets. To work for us. Witches serving the Inquisition!"
"What did they look like?"
"Two little girls. One was a native and purple, the other was an offworlder, brown-haired and light skinned. I made ragdolls for them."
The image of Elissa frowned at the deck. "It might be them. But it cannot be! Camilla was dark skinned. And both were grown up by then." Then she looked at him. "What were their names?"
"They would not say."
"Oh!" The disappointment made the image of Elissa sink downward.
He said, "They had only street-names. Gypsy and Jinxy. Or something like. If they were offered the same offer I was, and they took the deal, and they collaborated with us, then they are alive. That would be my guess."
The shrine maiden's face lit up with joy. "Alive! But where are they?" And then, just as swiftly, her face grew dark again. "What deal? Collaborate with whom? Who are you?"
Flint remembered he was wearing the comfortable smock and loose knee-trousers of a man from Coma Berenices, which he had bought for a penny there. He was not in uniform, and so she did not know he was a Centurion of the Empire. Then he shook that silly thought away. She was a dream-image, a figment woven of memories. She only spoke as his subconscious directed.
But it was best to answer her question: It might lead him to some insight about himself.
Flint said, "Lord Mandor offered to make me his apprentice. That is what happened to your friends. Count on it."
"Who is Lord Mandor?"
"The Grand Inquisitor."
"The what?"
"Of the Empire. He is the head of the Imperial Inquisition. The Psychological Conformity and Correctness Office. But he is really a Dark Overlord. Good chance your friends are alive. They are his servants now. They are Stygians. They were street trash, so they clearly would have collaborated."
He knew no young girls had his training or his coldblooded courage to face a Dark Overlord and escape undetected.
Ruby sparks now flickered in Elissa's beautiful eyes, and her long black hair broke from her ponytail, and began to lift and swirl hypnotically about her head, yard-long streamers of ink-black. It was an eerie sight, Flint stepped back, bumped his calves against his chair, and he sat down heavily.
"If they collaborated!" The shrine maiden floated upward, hair whirling as if tossed by a silent hurricane, eyes red-shining like a night-beast seen by firelight. The tesserameter telltale bolted to the overhead began to spin wildly as the Shrine Maiden came near, and the lamps in the cabin flickered. "Jinx was my sister! Gypsy was a cove mort! We were solid! Tight and thick! None of my crew would have turned nose to a Beck, a Cop, or a Ketch!"
Flint was startled to hear street slang from the lips of a Shrine Maiden. The dream was turning insane. He said, "Who are you? What are you? What do you represent?"
"They would never serve you! Never serve the Empire! They died!"
The unseen, inaudible winds blowing her hair and skirts now roared and raged with double strength. The girl's face was woebegone yet wrathful, halfway between anger and grief.
Flint was afraid. He raised his hands. "Elissa! Don't do anything rash!"
She said in a strange, unearthly voice, "Their blood calls for yours!"
He heard the voices then, like a sound of rushing waters, the voices of the dead moaning, wailing, and shrieking: blood! blood! Louder they cried.
The lamps flared went dark for a moment, and ignited again, showing an empty cabin. The girl was gone, and the dream was done. It was quiet, and Flint was alone.
So it was a dream. Flint leaned back in his chair, and sighed.
But then he saw the hole through the cork carpet, and the scar in the deck beneath, where the arrow had been. He reached down and put his finger into the hole. The hard alloy of the deck beneath had been penetrated to the depth of his first knuckle.
So it was not a dream.
Chapter 11: The Hell of Ice
1. No Man’s Land
The disaster came slowly, one icy hour at a time.
The highway was broad and flat beneath the stars. The night sky here was dark, compared to the core worlds where Athos had been born, for the galaxy was merely a strip of milky diamond stretching across scattered constellations. Even if this world had owned a moon, it would have been dark, for there was no sunlight to reflect.
But his night vision was keen, and the white ground caught the light, so that all things were a ghostly pale, without shadows.
The highway was also straight. The tread marks of the vehicles were immense and obvious. There was no chance of missing the path. That was not the danger.
The danger was cold. The danger was fatigue.
At first, they made good time, spears in hand, sprinting on sliding steps from the outskirts of the gray and windowless town, snow flying from their awkward snowshoes. During the first hour, there were no signs of pursuit.
The highway itself was so hard-packed by the passage of vehicles, that the savages merely slung their snowshoes over their shoulders, and ran on moccasins.
In the second hour, a pair of white rats the size of greyhounds loped silently over the snow behind, but without any human huntsmen following. The savages hid behind a hillock of snow, waiting for the giant rodents, spears ready, while Athos and Gutwound continued on, moving down the broad highway in plain view, luring the rodents onward. Their footfalls crunching the snow seemed shockingly loud in the silent landscape.
Afterward, the savages caught up with Athos, jogging rapidly. The bloodstains on their spearpoints had already frozen. Little Elk Soldier muttered disconsolately: he did not like leaving good meat and pelts merely buried in the snow.
The small troop of men, with one Arachnid, moved on. They fell into a rhythm of running, walking, running. Hours grew and lengthened. There was no talk.
They did not sleep. Every four hours, they chewed on salted jerky to keep up their failing strength. For drink, they gathered snow into bottles kept beneath the furs to warm and thaw. The men looked under each others' furs and facemasks to inspect faces and extremities for signs of frostbite.
They did not actually know how far north the base sought by the land barges might be. No food had been seen being loaded aboard the barges at the warehouse, so it was impossible to estimate how long the trek was to be. In the best case, the base would be just beyond the mountain pass called No One. That was assuming there were a base, and not merely a rendezvous to meet further transport.
How many watches passed? There was no way to track time except by counting paces. Athos' pocketwatch ceased as hours passed, the mainspring growing too brittle in the cold to unwind. Athos was not familiar with the stars here, so the times of their rising and setting meant nothing to him. All electronic comdiscs, anything with a time-circuit, had been left behind. If the mission failed, with no comdiscs, there was no way to radio for rescue, and no one to call.
As they went, a murmuring, muttering noise came from behind, filling the sky. As hours passed, it grew louder, becoming a roar. Flares of light appeared and vanished on the horizon behind them.
Athos knew what it was. The parish behind them was now in curfew. No satellites were overhead, and no orbital beams were bathing the landscape. The atmosphere was cooling. The roar was raindrops made of condensed atmospheric vapor. The flashes were lightning, caused by atmospheric frictions. The stormfront of this rain stretched across the whole region to their rear, growing closer.
The Landlord had spoken of nitrogen condensing out of the atmosphere when the satellites were gone. Athos had assumed that was exaggeration: surely it would take months, not hours, for a normal atmosphere to lose so much energy? But then, a normal atmosphere was not heated to gas only above towns and trade routes, with wilderness areas left under ice. A normal atmosphere was not a thin layer of gas roofed over by a continental force shield.
He was too tired to puzzle it out. He did not know the quirks of the composition of this planet. Whether it was nitrogen or ammonia, isopropyl alcohol, or some other compound turning into rain behind them, it was cryogenically cold.
All he knew was that this was the pursuit they had to outdistance. To be caught in that cryogen downpour was certain death. The effect would spread slowly, as land and air does not lose heat so quickly, but it would not stop.
On they went and on, without sleep. Periods of slower march was the only rest they were permitted.
The zone of atmospheric condensation, darkening the air with thunderheads, soon appeared on the southern horizon, a rising shadow blotting out the stars.
Then, the ground ahead began to rise. Their aching eyes were relieved by the sight of black rocks, crags and peaks, almost invisible against the snow, marking out hilltops ahead of them. The change in grade made the weakness and pains in ankles, knee, and thigh, turn into torture, and the sense of weakness became fierce as death in their weakened bodies.
Up they climbed. They slowed, and walking times grew longer, and jogs grew shorter.
The hills turned into mountains, but the highway, now a slope of stone coated with frost, was as straight as ever. But it was poor footing, slick and uneven, and walking was difficult.
It might have been a dozen hours later, or a score, when the men started reaching the ends of their endurance.
They began to stumble. They began to slow.
Walls of rock were now to either side. Steeper it grew.
The men were now walking like stiff-legged puppets, fumble-footed with fatigue, leaning heavily on their spears. Ever and often they slowed and stopped; but each time, panting in their masks, groaning, they stirred their numb feet to motion again.
When they crested the pass, a new landscape lay before them. Athos, panting and numb, paused at the crest to gaze down. This northern countryside was rough terrain, marked with fissures and hillocks, treacherous to hike across.
The others shuffled even with him, and paused also. No man groaned nor showed sign of despair, but the vista robbed their spirits. If anything, it was even colder and darker, more chaotic and more deadly than what they left behind.
It was also empty. The land barges were not in view.
The hope that the destination might be nearby, directly beyond the pass had been a false hope. Athos had no idea how far the land barges trekked. The line of tread-marks and trampled snow led straight as a spear to the north and vanished in the distance. But the slow machines had evidently outdistanced them: from the high point of the mountain pass, nothing was visible all the way to the horizon, which was two score miles away. Debilitated with fatigue, in sub-arctic cold, even with no stops for rest, it would take as long to cross the distance as they had already gone. Supplies were not endless. Nor was strength.
Peering, he saw in the distance what seemed the shore of a sea. It was black and choked with icebergs, but the water had not yet frozen over. The wide and empty shore about it showed where glacier ice had been piled by high and low tides. The sight was strange enough to give Athos pause, despite his weariness and worries. He tapped Arbogast on the knee, and pointed, and talked to him in gestures, spelling out his message in semaphore. How could there be tides with no moon?
The Spider answered briefly with the spaceman's hand-sign indicating a major navigational hazard. Then the hand-sign for all-clear. Athos was not sure what this meant. Had there been a moon here once, now gone? But the ice build-up from the moving tide, as best he could tell, seemed recent, not something that had happened geologic ages ago.
It was one more oddness in an odd world, one not to be solved here or now.
Athos resumed the hellish march.
The seven of them descended a long slope, and this was a great respite to them, for fatigue had reached the point of exhaustion. Still they pressed on.
On and on they went. Now, as all were far past the point of exhaustion, a wind began to whisper in the silence, then mutter, and small flakes of snow began pelting their faces. It was like a fine drizzle at first, but grew more fierce, more thick.
It was a matter of dizzying pain even to move in simple ways, such as to turn one's head. Athos looked behind him. The stormclouds were now above the mountains, rising higher, swallowing stars. Athos saw this, and a gulf of despair opened in his heart.
The wind in their faces was caused by the cold front behind. As the atmosphere cooled behind them, the wind would increase.
Athos turned his face into the wind, and resumed the hellish, endless march.
Each time he thought his will would break, and his tortured body would give out, Athos saw Gutwound stoically picking up the pace again, to step ahead of Tisquantum.
And, with silent pride as great as his, with stoic composure as stern, the tall savage would redouble his efforts, put one weary moccasin before the other, and pull even to the neanderthal, and then ahead.
Again and again, this happened. Gutwound would not give Tisquantum the satisfaction of a fall before his eyes; neither would Tisquantum let Gutwound see him fail. Savage and space pirate would not yield before the other. Both would rather die than cease the march.
And where Tisquantum led, his men refused to fall behind.
When he saw this, Athos was inspired to find some last ember of strength in his failing body, found some means to push the pain aside, ignoring weakness and weariness, and slog ahead.
Ironically, the Spider, who Athos thought would prove least suited to this sub-zero environment, not only was able to keep the pace, but gradually drew ahead. The huge creature merely slid through the snow, using its abdomen as a sled, and working his long, crooked legs like a bank of oars.
When Arbogast grew too far ahead, Athos called out. But the creature without his translation gear either could not hear and understand him, or merely ignored the noise. Like the rest of them, the Spider was swathed in white. It was easy to lose sight of him against the unrelenting pallor of the terrain, beneath a sky of unchanging night.
A time came when the Spider was lost in the distance ahead and did not reappear. His race was not one given to team efforts. Arbogast would not much care if those left behind lived or died.
The snow flurries grew thicker. It would have been more bearable if the snow had been falling on their heads. No, this was ground-snow and tiny, biting particles of ice, being whirled aloft by death-chill sub-zero winds, and driven directly against them.
