GONE TO GLORY
R. Garcia y Robertson made his first sale in 1987, and since has become a frequent contributor to Asimov’s Science Fiction and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, as well as selling several stories to Amazing, Pulphouse, and Weird Tales, and other markets.
Robertson has made something of a specialty of adventure writing and, in fact, may be one of the very best in the business when it comes to turning out vivid, headlong, fast-paced, colorful, inventive, swashbuckling, and yet keenly intelligent adventure stories. Since adventure writing is still widely considered to be synonymous with “junk” or throwaway writing by many genre critics, stuff not really worth considering (although a really good adventure story is actually harder to write in some ways than more introspective fiction), this may help to explain why Robertson’s work, like Robert Reed’s, has been largely and undeservedly ignored, and why he’s rarely mentioned among the ranks of good new writers of the eighties and nineties—although a good case could be made that he’s delivered more pure first-rate entertainment pound for pound than almost any other new writer of the last ten years.
L. Sprague de Camp was clearly one of the major influences on Robertson (although I suspect that George MacDonald Fraser, author of the Flashman series, was a strong influence as well), and, like de Camp, even the most swashbuckling of his adventures contains a generous measure of sly humor; also like de Camp, he makes intensive use of authentic and intensively researched historical settings, and clearly has a love for obscure and little-known corners of history. He’s taken us to the bitter days of the Indian Wars on the American frontier in stories such as “The Moon of Popping Trees” and “The Other Magpie,” to San Francisco’s Chinatown during the Gold Rush days in “Four Kings and an Ace,” to the turmoil of the French Revolution in “The Great Fear,” to the Cretaceous period to stalk hungry dinosaurs in “The Virgin and the Dinosaur,” to ancient Scandinavia in “The Wagon God’s Wife,” on a trip on a Mississippi paddle wheeler with Mark Twain in “Down the River,” to London during the Blitz in “Wendy Darling, RFC,” and to Greece in the days before history to deal with a fractious Hercules in “The Moon Maid”—among many other historical milieus that he has made his own.
Some of these stories are fantasy, and so outside our purview here, but his stories about the misadventures of Jake Bento and Peg and their bumbling crew of time-traveling documentary filmmakers—which includes the aforementioned “The Virgin and the Dinosaur” and “Down the River,” as well as “On the Way to Gaugamela” and “Seven Wonders,” as well as his recent novel The Virgin and the Dinosaur—have been extremely popular with Asimov’s readers, as were his nonseries
time-travel stories “Gypsy Trade” and “Not Fade Away.” He’s also written baroque and inventive Space Opera or Space Adventures of various sorts, including “The Werewolves of Luna,” “Into a Sunless Sea,” “The Siren Shoals,” “Cast on a Distant Shore,” “Fair Verona,” “Starfall,” and the exuberant picaresque adventure that follows, “Gone to Glory,” which takes us out across the boundless prairies of an exotic and dangerous alien world, in search of answers that it would be safer not to find … .
Robertson’s books include, The Spiral Dance, The Virgin and the Dinosaur, Atlantis Found, and, most recently, American Woman. His most recent book is his first short-story collection, The Moon Maid and Other Stories. Several of his recent stories, including “Gypsy Trade,” have been optioned for the movies, although none of them have made it to the screen as yet. He was born in Oakland, California, has a Ph.D. in the history of science and technology, and, before becoming a full-time writer, taught those subjects at UCLA and Villanova. He lives in Mt. Vernon, Washington.
Let’s hope that as the years to come take us into the new century, Robertson gets some of the respect and attention he deserves. In the meantime, if you’re looking for first-class adventure fiction, watch for his name—you’re unlikely to be disappointed.
Defoe sat at one of the Sad Cafe’s outdoor tables, soaking up gin slings and watching an energetic couple attempting to mate in midair, wearing nothing but gossamer wings and happy smiles. This pair of human mayflies had to be used to the exercise—neither showed a gram of fat or a bit of shame.
The four-hundred-year-old bistro stood in an open-air park on the Rue Sportif near Spindle’s main axis, where g forces were low and the fun never slowed. Holodomes and hanging gardens arched overhead. Beyond the mating couple, halfway up Spindle’s curve, nude bathers raised slow-motion splashes in a low-g pool. Not a shoddy spot for doing nothing. Defoe ordered his third (or maybe sixth) sloe gin sling from a roving cocktail bar, a barrel-shaped dispenser doing a lazy drunkard’s walk between the tables, happily doling out drinks. Never asking for credit or expecting a tip. Human service was rarer than saber-tooth’s teeth on Spindle.
Sipping his sloe gin, Defoe listened with mild disinterest to priority beeps coming over the comlink clipped to his ear. The first calls weren’t for him, but they were coming fast and close together. Always a sad sign. Hoping not to be dragged too deeply into other people’s troubles, he had his navmatrix decode the binary signals. The pilot’s navmatrix grafted into the back of his skull was immune to alcohol. Defoe could down a dozen gin slings and still pilot a tilt-rotor VTOL in a blinding sandstorm or rendezvous
with a starship—if the need arose. Only the need never arose. Not here. Not now.
First came a distress bulletin, direct from dirtside.
Then a standby alert.
Followed by a formal AID action request.
The final call was for him. Defoe answered in his off-duty voice.
Salome, his section head, came on-line. Her parents had been ultraorthodox Satanists (who believed John the Baptist had it coming), and her strict religious upbringing made Salome controlled and precise, with barely a wayward impulse. Except for her hair, which tumbled in untamed curls and wild midnight-blue ringlets past her hips, almost to the floor. She sounded soft and winsome over the comlink, a sure sign HQ was in seconddegree alarm—Salome never courted underlings unless she needed something. “There’s an AID team down in Tuch-Dah country. They want us to send someone.”
Defoe snickered. “Who’s the lucky sucker?”
“AID wants an ‘experienced surface hand.’ Someone who knows the Tuch-Dah. You’ve been fortunate with them.”
“Fortunate? Not hardly. Incredibly lucky would be nearer the mark.” Not the sort of luck Defoe aimed to lean on.
Salome persisted. “But you have come through intact—always a plus—and saved us a lot of trouble.” And saved the Tuch-Dah a lot of trouble, thought Defoe, not that the ungrateful bastards ever seemed to notice. “Besides, you’re fresh up from the surface; it won’t be so much of a shock.”
“Right. With four months up-time coming.” Up-time as in up here—on Spindle—where it was too perfect a day to contemplate work. Defoe had just done a solid eighteen weeks on Glory. Great-aunt Tillie in Alpha C would do duty dirtside before he went back early. “Last time AID lost a team, the problem solved itself—Tuch-Dahs sent their heads back in a leather bag.”
“Marvelously considerate. But we can’t always count on it. Take a couple of weeks,” Salome suggested. “Clear this up, and we’ll make it five months.” That was double time. A rare offer. AID had to be in a fine panic.
“Make it six months,” Defoe countered. Every day in paradise is perfect—so one is as good as another. He was demanding four days of up-time for every day dirtside—a splendid deal if he was so awfully essential.
“Find the team first,” Salome told him primly. “Four weeks for going down to Glory. Four more for getting the job done.” Defoe would get the extra days only if he delivered.
Bargaining with a Satanist was like dealing with the Devil. Centuries of persecution had turned a diabolically carefree sect into overcompensating overachievers. But it was always a comfort knowing that in the bad old days decent folk would have tied his boss to a stake and had her barbecued.
“I’ll need a free hand,” Defoe told her. “No interference from AID.”
“That’s your lookout. AID will be there—it’s their team that’s down. The way to avoid them is to get going and keep going.”
“Sure thing.” Defoe was already up and moving. “See you in Hell, Salome.”
“Not unless you convert.” He could hear her wicked smile. Another sign things were serious. Normally, Salome would never kid about religion.
Sloe gin and low gravity made the sidewalk seem to float in front of him. Rooftops and tree-lined arcades curved upward, vanishing into the light streaming down the length of the rotating habitat, reflected inward from mirrors set in the spinning well of stars. Spindle could amaze even sober senses.
Kids flashed past on the sidewalk, tanned young bodies in overdrive. Defoe passed feelie spas and low-g saunas. Happy holos invited him in. No more. Not now. Sorry, guys. Got to sober up and go to work.
Temptation abounded. And it was all free, from gaming orgies to organic feasts. Free as air to anyone who set foot on Spindle. Like an ancient Greek polis, Spindle made its own laws—but without the polis’s slavery and infanticide—computers and birth lotteries took their place. No money. No credit. No theft, graft, or taxes. And like the ancient polis, Spindle had only two punishments that mattered. Death and exile. Now Defoe had to face both of these fates, for nothing except the right to return. Hardly fair, but the system lacked honest work.
At Port Orifice—the cavernous lock that let ships enter and exit—he drew emergency rations, heat caps, a thermal parka, bedroll, camp knife, folding mattock, climbing rope, canteen, and medikit. Telling the medikit to sober him up, he ticketed himself for the surface.
A call came through with his clearance. Salome’s assistant, a pretty little catamite with painted lids and pierced nipples, purred into the comlink. “Hey, big boy. Is it true the Tuch-Dahs are cannibals?”
“No such luck.” Defoe doubted Salome’s kept boy had ever seen the surface. “They only eat people.” Given conditions on Glory, Defoe thought cannibalism should at least be legal. Maybe even mandatory. If people were like hyenas, compelled to eat everything they killed, dirtside would be a safer place.
Salome’s pet laughed wickedly. “Old Battle-ax wants to talk with you.”
“Who?” The lock door dilated, cheerily welcoming Defoe aboard.
“Ellenor Battle. Boss dragon lady at AID.”
Defoe stepped through the lock into the shuttle. “Tell ’em I’ve gone to Glory.”
The oxyhydrogen shuttle lacked g-fields and cabin service; in-flight entertainment was a pair of tiny portholes. Defoe felt the backward jolt of retros. Spindle seemed to leap ahead; the sole fleck of civilization in this very outback system dwindled rapidly.
He had his navmatrix tap into the shuttle’s moronic guidance system. Nerve endings merged with avionics—sensors, astrogation, and stabilization became extensions of sight, sound, and kinesthetics. A modest thrill. Pretty dry compared to real piloting. Defoe’s previous employer had been
an overprivileged idiot who wracked up a Fornax Skylark, stranding Defoe in-system. Delta Eridani was a dead end, producing nothing the wider universe needed. Traffic was all incoming. Subsidized AID shipments came in cosmic packing crates—robofreighters cannibalized at their destination.
Only a knack for steering through trouble (and putting up with Thals) earned Defoe part-time privileges on Spindle.
At the top of the stratosphere, the shuttle shifted her angle of attack. Acceleration gave way to the gentle persistent push of gravity. Through the near porthole Defoe saw the green-brown limb of the planet rising to greet him, edged by a thin corona of atmosphere. Cloud puffs hung over blue splotches—large lakes or inland seas. Knocking around the Near Eridani, he had seen worlds aplenty, some good, some bad, some merely uninhabitable. When humans first arrived, Glory had been an airless husk, pitted with craters. Relentless terraforming had made her almost livable. No worse than New Harmony, Elysium, Bliss, or any of a half-dozen made-to-order worlds. Either a shining success story, or a case of hideous ecocide. As a pilot, Defoe had to believe in terra-forming; starships needed places to go.
The shuttle came screeching in for a horizontal landing. Millions of kilometers of steppe, savanna, and lava desert allowed landing strips to be as long as needed. A groundhand undogged the hatch with a gleeful “Welcome to dirtside, land of enchantment—where falls can kill you, beasts can eat you, and Thals will snap your spine just to hear it pop. Watch your step, you are in two-thirds g.”
Defoe nodded. He was used to gaining thirty kilos every time he went down to Glory. The strip was a study in spasmodic activity. Cargo pallets came dropping down from orbit, braked by big silver chutes, raising yellow clouds of dust. Semirigids landed and departed. SuperChimps sat like rows of sad monkeys, ready to help with the unloading. It had been cocktail time on Spindle; here it was early morning. Dun-colored hills stretched north and west of the field. Beyond the electrified perimeter, a solitary male moropus dug for steppe tubers. Hyenas trotted past, giving the moropus wide leeway—behind them, the Camelback Steppe disappeared into endless distance.
Waiting at the bottom of the landing ladder was a uniformed woman. Tall and athletic, with her steel-gray hair cut down to stubble, Ellenor Battle could easily have looked half her age—but she did not go for biosculpt or hair toner. Taking life as it came, she expected the universe to do the same. Defoe had dealt with Ellenor before, finding her as proud as Lucifer’s aunt, a no-nonsense reminder that AID stood for the Agency for Imperial Development.
She gave him a liquid hydrogen greeting. “Welcome to Glory. You missed your briefing.” Defoe confessed as much. Full-blown AID briefings were full of glaring oversights and ass-backward assumptions—besides, if the problem was solvable from orbit, AID would not have asked him down. But he listened dutifully to the facts as Ellenor saw them. “We have a semirigid
and crew more than forty hours overdue. Orbital recon spotted the crash site in the TransAzur, Tuch-Dah territory … .”
“How many in the crew?”
“Three.”
“All human?” A normal enough question, but Ellenor Battle took it badly, replying with a curt nod. Defoe never knew what was about to bother her. She was very like a Thal in that way—moody and demanding. Salome might worship Satan, but you at least knew where you stood.
A bang and a wail cut off conversation. SuperChimps were refueling the shuttle for her return to Spindle. Boiling LOX filled the collapsed tanks, screaming through the safety valves. With an irritated wave, Ellenor led him away from the ladder. Defoe matched her swift sure strides.
Two huge airship hangars dwarfed the clutter of buildings edging the strip. Outside the electrified perimeter sprawled Shacktown, one of those shameful slums-cum-animal-pens that sprang up around an Outback landing field. Cook smoke climbed lazily over dirty-naked That children searching through dung heaps for breakfast. Plastic honeycomb, narrow alleys, and open sewers gave Shacktown the look and smell of a slave labor camp—lacking only the camp’s energy fences and city services.
The howl of liquid oxygen faded, and Ellenor went on, “A Thal came into Azur Station with a ship’s recorder—hoping to trade it for booze. When the ship crashed, the survivors were attacked by Tuch-Dahs.”
It had been a long time coming, Defoe decided, but all hell had finally broken out.
The main hangar was packed with nervous armed humans. Defoe was welcomed aboard by the Port Master, a local worthy who doubled as Mayor of Shacktown, charged with neglecting sanitation and handing out beer and bhang on election day. The hangar canteen had been opened for the duration. Drunk vigilantes brandished riot pistols, pepper grenades, and scoped sporting lasers—as though they could not decide whether they were faced with a prison break or a big game hunt. A Tuch-Dah uprising had the worst elements of both.
The quarter-kilometer hangar housed a giant rigid airship, the Joie de Vivre, belonging to a rancher named Helio from the Azur. Ellenor Battle pushed through the jittery throng with Defoe in tow, making for the control car. The gangway was guarded by a brace of armed Thals, meaner than normal Neanderthals, nearly as tall as Defoe, and twice as wide. They wore standard airship harnesses, supporting stubby grenade launchers and bandoliers of gas grenades. A pair of dire wolves strained on electronic leashes.
The liquored-up posse, loudly aiming to take on the entire Tuch-Dah nation, gave the two Thals ample space. It was easier to talk of annihilating ten thousand Neanderthals somewhere out on the steppe than to face down a couple of them sporting grim looks and civilized weapons.
What the Thals thought, Defoe could hardly guess. Heavy browridges hid their deep-set eyes.
A rigger appeared at the top of the gangway—a Homo sapiens with dark
skin and a drooping mustache trained to blend into trim whiskers. Giving a sloppy sarcastic salute, he led them to the control car’s lounge. He had a gasman’s easy grace, accustomed to balancing on a catwalk in any sort of wind and weather. Crepe overshoes kept him from raising sparks. RIG’EM RIGHT was scrawled across the back of his bull-hide flight jacket, and he had the veteran gasman’s grin—the small ironic smile that said he savored the insanity of making his living aboard a flying bomb.
Helio had that smile too. He sat by an open lounge window, eyes hidden by blue wraparound shades. Broad-shouldered as a Thal, the rancher was reckoned to be a dead shot. Surrounded by a breakfast buffet of cold capon and Azur caviar, he still looked deadlier than any dozen men outside.
Defoe pulled up a handwoven wicker seat, admiring the gold pattern in his plate.
Ellenor Battle tried to decline brunch, but Helio insisted. “It’s no advantage to be uncomfortable.”
No advantage indeed. Defoe let his host pour him some off-planet champagne. Relaxing under six tons of explosive hydrogen did not stop Helio from doing himself up right. Silk paneling framed slender lacquered columns.
“The first thing,” Helio told his guests, “is to see this recorder—and the Thal who found it. We have the transmission from Azur Station. But what is that? A bunch of digital blips.” He smiled behind his blue shades, kissing off the tips of his fingers. Electronic evidence was notoriously manipulatable—inadmissible in honest courts.
“So long as we get going.” Ellenor Battle glared out the open window at the panicky mob scene below.
Defoe agreed. He too wanted to see the recorder—and the Thai who found it. But most immediately he had to get out of this idiotic atmosphere with its infectious panic. Once underway, things were bound to be better. Helio was supposed to understand Thais—and conditions in Tuch-Dah country—as well as anyone could pretend to. Besides, if there was any answer to the disappearance of the AID team, it was going to be “out there.” Somewhere in the endless unknown that lay beyond the fringes of settlement, even on human-made planets. Defoe was fairly at peace with that. Hell, at the moment he made a dubious living off it.
Helio gave orders from the table, speaking through the open window and into the ship’s comlink, letting the Port Master’s young assistant come aboard, along with a couple of sober gunmen. The rest of the mob would be more of a threat to themselves than to the Tuch-Dahs. A gang of SuperChimps hauled on the ground lines, and the cabin began to move.
As they cleared the hangar, Defoe had his navmatrix lock into the onboard systems. Everything read right. Gas pressure. Wind speed. Elevator alignment. Keel angle. When Helio gave the order to “up ship,” the champagne in Defoe’s glass did not so much as quiver. The sign of a good crew.
Shacktown and the landing strip fell away to windward. There was a hesitation as the big props started to turn, biting into thin air. Then airspeed
picked up and they plowed along, powered by a cold-fusion reactor driving four paired propellers. The Camelback Steppe rolled placidly along a few hundred meters below. Springbok bounded off, alarmed by the airship’s shadow.
Defoe decided he should see the recorder transmission from Azur Station, subjecting it to his own prejudices before hearing about it from others. Helio gave an airy wave. “Use my cabin. I have flying to do.”
Ellenor Battle followed Defoe to the cabin, bent on seeing the recording again. Helio’s private quarters were a sumptuous reminder of the good things to be had on Glory—hand-carved ivory and fine embroidery-luxuries that people on Spindle were too busy enjoying themselves to produce. And there was power to be had as well. Snappy service from human and semihuman attendants. Naked authority over Chimps, Thals, and Shacktown whores who would do nearly anything for next to nothing. Exotic animals roamed the endless veldt, ready to be hunted, killed, and butchered—the cabin was carpeted with a giant moropus hide, its head and claws attached. Defoe knew Dirtsiders who were not even tempted by the tame pleasures of Spindle, who snickered when he boarded a shuttle to go back.
The 3V imager made use of one whole bulkhead, turning curios and tapestries into a stereo tank.
Images leaped out. Defoe saw at once that the transmission wasn’t a proper flight recording. The transmission had to come from an AID team member’s personal recorder. First came establishing scenes—the semirigid taking off, steppe wildlife, a couple of male team members. Then came a terrible swift pan of breathtaking intensity. The recorder was sited on a small rise, aiming downslope. A low cairn of charred stones poked out of the steppe grass. Defoe flinched as rocket grenades and recoilless projectiles roared right at the recorder, a barrage so real that he almost dived out of his wicker seat, expecting to be showered with exploding shrapnel and shattered bric-a-brac. A ragged line of Thals came screaming out of the long grass, waving steel hatchets and hideous spiked clubs. They were Tuch-Dahs—no doubt there—Defoe recognized the garish paint and blood-freezing cries.
Willungha himself led the charge, atop a full-grown moropus—a tremendous horse-headed, long-necked beast with rhino-sized shoulders and tree-trunk limbs. Like Tars Tarkas aboard a wild thoat, the Neanderthal chieftain brayed commands, wielding a long thin lance. A grenade launcher in his rein hand looked like a tiny toy pistol.
Willungha’s mount reared, waving clawed forefeet, and the recorder swung crazily, focusing for a second on the scene atop the knoll. Defoe could clearly make out the crash site. Kneeling among blackened girders and burnt grass was a woman, the third member of the AID team. She was small and brown-haired, in a rumpled uniform, taking painstaking aim with a recoilless pistol. Brown eyes stared intently over the sights, seeming to look right at Defoe. She squeezed off shot after shot as death stormed toward her.
The recorder jerked upward. Swaying grass tops framed empty blue sky.
A superbly ugly Tuch-Dah appeared, swinging a hideous curved club. The transmission ceased, replaced by braided hangings and a case of bone china.
Defoe turned to Lady Ellenor, saying, “That was fairly ghastly.” Shutting her eyes, she gripped her wicker seat with white knuckles, letting out a short sharp gasp. He had thought Ellenor Battle would be fairly shockproof, especially on a second viewing—but without any warning, her feelings were showing. The woman was full of surprises.
Helio was in the lounge. Any flying he had done had not taken him away from the table. Breakfast had disappeared, but his glass still held champagne. Broken highlands had replaced the Camelback Steppe. Defoe’s navmatrix knew the country; beyond these mesas lay the Sleeping Steppe. Then the Azur.
“Enjoy the show?” Helio’s eyes were still hidden by blue shades, so it was hard to tell how he meant it.
Defoe nodded. A full-blown Tuch-Dah massacre. No wonder everyone from the Port Master on down was potted and praying. There were a thousand or so bona fide Homo sapiens on Glory. Plus maybe twice as many on Spindle who weren’t much inclined to come down. Willungha could field twenty thousand club-wielding Tuch-Dah, if he cared to. There were ten million Thals spread over the planet.
Helio twirled the stem of his champagne glass. “Glory might have been a new Eden for ambitious youngsters from the Home Systems—but the task of terraforming was too real for them.” Helio did not have to say that he had come here, giving up the easy life to raise bison and horses, risking his neck with archaic technology, making the planet not merely habitable but semi-inviting.
He clearly relished the irony of how hard it was to get people just to come down from Spindle. Yet the habitat was built as an interstellar slowboat, launched ages ago to seed the Delta Eridani system. A home for humans while Glory was being terraformed. But by the time Glory had a biosphere and a semibreathable atmosphere, the in-system humans had become perfectly adapted—to life on Spindle.
So AID had to go for Thals. Retrobred Neanderthals were shipped direct to Glory, to do the drudge work, overseeing SuperChimps, leveling landing strips, digging canals, tending great herds of herbivores. And the brutes had done a sterling job. Hell, they were still doing it. While backward types—like the Tuch-Dahs—bred like lemmings out on the vast steppes.
Defoe glanced over at Ellenor Battle. AID had planned this fiasco, from the first slowboats to the retrobreeding program that produced not just the Neanderthals, but a ready-made Cenozoic ecology as well.
She gave him a defiant glare, daring him to say that AID’s multithousandyear program was a disaster. “The first colonists are on their way—ten thousand settlers, headed straight from Epsilon Eridani at near light speed. And a hundred thousand more are set to follow. And a million after that.”
Epsilon E was less than twenty light-years away.
“Excellent.” Helio emptied his champagne glass with an evil chuckle. “Willungha will have them for breakfast.”
The rancher was right. Even a Navy cruiser with antimatter warheads could hardly cope with ten million Thals spread over an entire planet. (Currently the Navy had not so much as a captain’s gig in-system.) The colonists could be armed, of course—but the Tuch-Dahs knew all about modern weapons. Dumping an armed mob of city-bred humans on a strange world, outnumbered ten thousand to one, with no way of telling the “good” Thals from the “bad” ones, would be a first-magnitude disaster. They might as well ship the weapons straight to Willungha, compliments of AID.
Ellenor Battle looked angrily out the lounge window, staring stiff-necked and imperious at the endless veldt. “There is room enough for humans and Neanderthals.” As she saw it, AID was doing everyone a favor, bringing life to a dead world, making space for settlement, resurrecting a lost race, perhaps partly atoning for some ancient Cro-Magnon genocide.
Helio laughed heartily. “Tell that to Willungha. Maybe there is room. If the wild ones can be tamed, or pushed back. And the colonists kept near the strips. But no one is planning for that, eh?” He clearly thought someone should be.
“We have plans,” Ellenor retorted.
Defoe thought of the lone AID woman in the recording, backed against the burnt-out wreck, coolly firing at the oncoming Thals. Whatever plans AID was hoarding had to beat that—in fact, they had better be damned slick.
The great blue-green ink blot of the Azur hove into sight. Azur Station stood at the near end, a small circle of dugouts and stock pens between the Blue Water Canal and an east-west fence line. All along the canal the Sleeping Steppe had been made to bloom, growing rice, melons, and sugarcane.
Azur’s station chief met the airship. She was a big weatherbeaten woman named Cleo with flaming red hair, and scoped Centauri Special tucked under her arm—a sign of the times. A caravan was leaving her station, headed west along the fence line. The beasts of burden were low-humped retrobred camels, Camelops hesternus, as strong as Bactrians but more docile, with finer wool, also better eating.
Cleo had the recorder, and the Thal who had brought it, guarded by armed SuperChimps. The Thai did not understand Universal, or at least pretended not to—staring dumbly at the ring of narrow Cro-Magnon faces.
Helio tried signs. Grudgingly the Thal responded enough to indicate that he was not Tuch-Dah. He was Kee-too-Hee, from the marshes. He had found the recorder in a salt pan and trekked down to the station, hoping to get a reward. Instead he was being held prisoner and insulted. This did not altogether surprise him, but did not please him, either.
Ellenor Battle studied the recorder, then passed it to Defoe with a grim “What do you think?” The first time she had asked his opinion. Touched, he had his navmatrix go over the recorder. No sign of tampering. But this was an idiot box with sensors, playing back what was put in.
Defoe nodded at the Thal. “He’s telling the truth. At least about not being Tuch-Dah. That circle and dot on his cheek is a Kee-too-Hee clan mark. Any right-thinking Tuch-Dah would cut his throat with a dull clamshell before claiming to be a Kee-too-Hee.”
“But what was the recorder doing, sitting on a salt pan?” Ellenor sounded unconvinced. Rightly, so far as Defoe could see. “Give him his reward,” she decided. “AID will pay. But don’t let him go until we come back from the crash site.”
The crash site lay across the Azur. Defoe watched the approach from the control car’s foredeck, standing before wide wraparound windows. He felt Helio’s firm hand on the elevators, anticipating changes in trim, keeping the keel angle constant. North of Azur Station, the shoreline became a maze of salt marsh teeming with spoonbills and wild boar. Then came the Azur itself, bright green in the shallows, deep blue in the center.
Helio pointed out his plantation, a great green delta thrust out into the sea. On the landward side, a long straight north-south fence kept his domestic herds from straying into Tuch-Dah country. West of the fence line was a knoll topped with a black smear left by the burned semirigid. Helio descended, dodging tall columns of vultures. Never a good sign.
Ellenor told Helio to turn out the Joie’s crew. “Have them go through the long grass around the knoll.”
“Looking for what?” The rancher sounded skeptical.
“Whatever they find.”
On the ground, Defoe was struck by how peaceful it seemed. This was the Saber-tooth Steppe, a silent mysterious savanna, its mystique as solid and tangible as a patch of unterraformed bedrock. The semirigid’s small control car was intact, showing no sign of having come down hard. Blackened girders formed big looping curves. They might have been spares ready to be assembled into another ship.
Dire wolves sniffed out two bodies. “Burned beyond recognition” hardly conveyed the horror of the charred skeletons, jaws agape in final agony, held together by shreds of cooked flesh. Riggers watched Ellenor Battle go over the corpses with cool intensity, calling down DNA signatures and dental data from orbit. “This guy’s kinda short,” someone suggested. “Maybe he’s a Thal.”
“I don’t know. Might be human.”
“Human as you anyway.”
“Just bein’ hopeful.”
Glad not to be needed, Defoe conducted his own search, using his navmatrix to find the low black cairn and the fold the Tuch-Dah had burst from. A rigger was down in the grass on his knees, a strip of gasbag fabric tied around his head like a bandanna holding his hair back. Defoe recognized RIG’EM RIGHT on the back of the man’s jacket.
Seeing Defoe, he got up. His name was Rayson, which everyone shortened to Ray. He held up a small finned and pointed object. “There’s a mess of these in the grass.” Defoe recognized the spent projectile from a recoilless
pistol. The young AID woman had been firing downslope from up by the wreck. Had she hit anything? Defoe looked for bloodstains.
Ray glanced upslope to where Ellenor Battle was working over the bodies, then walked around behind the fire-blackened cairn, opening his pants.
Defoe called out softly, “That’s a shrine.”
Taking a sharp step back, Ray zipped his pants. “Shit, I thought it was a barbecue pit.” Just the sort of thing that got people in trouble in Tuch-Dah country—you could get brained by a Thai and never know why.
Finding no blood on the grass tops, Defoe stood up, studying the shoreline. The colder north shore marshes were thin, broken by shimmering white pans. Wind whipped fine dry grit off the pans, stinging his eyes, settling in skin creases. He licked the corners of his mouth, tasting tiny bits of the Saber-tooth Steppe. It was salty.
A dark object lay between the steppe and the sea, as still as the shrine. Defoe walked toward it, brittle shore grass crunching underfoot. The big still object was a bison, down on its knees. Vultures flapped off as Defoe approached. Tail, ears, eyes, and testicles were gone, but the bison was hideously alive, managing to lift its head, turning bloody sightless sockets toward Defoe.
“Damn.” Ray was right behind him, letting out a low whistle. “I’ll fix him.” He produced a recoilless pistol with a folding stock. Shouldering it like a rifle, he fired.
The bison jerked at the impact, his head dropping, one horn gouging into the sandy pan. Defoe bent down, examining the dead beast; the tongue was torn out, the muzzle white with salt. There was more salt beneath the sand, where the horn had gone in. Looking east and west along the shore, Defoe saw spiraling columns of vultures.
Ellenor Battle pronounced the bodies to be Homo sapiens sapiens. Male. Two members of the AID team were accounted for. Cause of death unknown. “We should start a slow search, standard pattern, centered on the crash site.”
Helio nodded and they set off again. As Glory’s tight ten-hour day ended, Defoe sat in the lounge, trying to fit together everything he had seen—the mob scene in the hangar, the recording, the silent Thal, the crash site, and the dying bison. Delta Eridani had sunk down almost to the level of the steppe. The joie was making gentle sweeps at less than thirty kph, twenty meters or so above the grass tops. He doubted they would turn up anything. That would be far too easy.
Gathering his things, Defoe climbed up to the keel. Tall hydrogen-filled gasbags swayed in semidarkness. A rigger with CATWALK CHARLIE on his jacket bossed a gang of SuperChimps.
Defoe made his way to the empty tail, unsealing an inspection hatch. Grass tops slid by less than twenty meters below. Unreeling a dozen meters of cable from a nearby winch, he swung his legs through the open hatch, letting the cable drop.
“Hope it wasn’t something we said.” Rigger Ray was standing on the keel catwalk.
Defoe shrugged. “I need room to work.”
Ray sat down on a girder, eyeing the open hatch. This close to dusk, shaded by the giant tail, the hatch looked like a black hole whipping along in midair. “There’s room aplenty down there. Just don’t end up at the bottom of the food chain.”
Defoe nodded. “I’ll do my damnedest.”
“Well, good-bye, an’ good luck.” Ray made it sound like, “Hope to hell you come back.”
Defoe dropped through, slid down the cable, and let go. He had ample time to position himself. The most charming thing about Glory was the lazy falls at two-thirds g.
Steppe floated up to meet him.
Defoe hit, bounced, and scrambled to his feet. He stood staring up at the big tail of the dwindling airship. The Joie de Vivre kept to her search pattern, straining to complete the last leg before nightfall. When she dipped below a rise, he was alone.
Hip-high grass tops ran in every direction, prowled by tawny killers with knife-sized fangs. A cold undertaker’s wind sent waves of color sweeping over the twilight steppe—deep blue, rust brown, old gold, and a dozen shades of green. Hyenas chuckled in the deepening gloom.
As Delta Eridani slid beneath the horizon, darkness rose up out of the grass roots, devouring the light. Night birds keened. Whoever said humans were the meanest animals—“the most dangerous game”—undoubtedly said it in daylight. Certainly it was never said at night, alone and unarmed on the Saber-tooth Steppe. Orienting himself by the strange stars of Eridani Sector, Defoe set out walking toward the distant fence line.
Dew clung to the grass tops by the time Defoe found the fence line. He had slept once, to be roused stiff and sore by the cough of a saber-tooth. Throughout the dark morning hours, he heard the catlike predators that gave the steppe its name calling to each other. Dawn wind carried their smell, like the odor of a ship’s cat in a confined cabin. At first light the calls ceased; he supposed the pride had made its kill.
The energy fence cut a shimmering line across the steppe, carrying a hefty neural frequency shock. Domestic herds grazed beyond it. Overgrazed, in fact. The far side looked like a low-cut lawn.
Defoe walked along the fence until he found a knot of horses, Equus occidentalis, tall as Arabians but heavier, with slender feet, reminding Defoe of zebras or unicorns. The lead mare even had zebra stripes across her withers.
The horses lifted their heads as he approached, staring at him and at the hip-high steppe grass. Defoe told his navinatrix to bypass the fence’s gullible software. The air between the nearest pylons ceased to shimmer, but still
carried the signal saying the fence was intact. Ripping up some long grass, Defoe stepped through, offering it to the lead mare. They were immediate friends. She took the grass, letting him mount.
Riding bareback, he guided her through the break in the fence. Her little herd trotted after them. Defoe set a leisurely course deeper into Tuch-Dah country. As his navmatrix moved out of range, the fence reestablished itself.
He saw springbok and pronghorn, but no bison or Tuch-Dahs. Steppe thinned into shortgrass prairie broken by black knobs of basalt. Curious antelope came right up to him, heads held high, showing off tiny horns and white throats. Brown somber eyes studied him intently. Defoe doubted they had ever been hunted by humans.
Seeing a spiraling column of vultures, Defoe made for it. It marked a bison kill, a lone bull set upon by hyenas. He got down to study the kill site. Drag marks mapped the struggle. The bison had been hit once and ripped completely apart, probably in seconds. Nothing remained but rags of hide and white bone-rich dung. Hyenas were more to be feared than overgrown cats; their bite was better than a panther’s, and they weren’t as picky as a saber-tooth pride.
A shadow swept over him, a gigantic condor-sized shape among the vultures, circling downward, parting the smaller birds, boring toward Defoe in a tight spiraling dive, hiding in the orange glare of Delta Eridani. Almost on top of him, the big shape sideslipped, spilling air. He recognized Ellenor Battle, wearing an ornithopter harness—a powered version of the wings people flew with on Spindle. She flew like she had been born with them, doing a low-level stall and landing feetfirst.
Never let down your guard on Saber-tooth Steppe. Defoe had been blissfully alone, sharing the day with vultures and a dead bison. Now without warning Ellenor Battle was standing over him, demanding an explanation. What excuse could he have for jumping ship, cutting fences, and stealing horses?
Defoe shrugged. “No one needed me just to fly around in circles aboard the Joie de Vivre.”
What fascinated him was her wings. A really fine pair. Falcoform Condors, solar assisted, seven-plus meters of extendible wingspan, with autoflaps and fingertip trim tabs. An energy pack in the small of her back powered the harness.
He nodded at the horses. “These are my tickets into Tuch-Dah country. What’s your excuse for being here?” When it came to unwanted company, Glory could be more crowded than Spindle.
Ellenor slowly reached behind her back, taking the AID recorder from between her wings—it must have been strapped alongside the power pack. “I’m here because of this.” She weighed it in her hands, then held it out. “It’s my daughter’s.”
Defoe shooed aside some vultures and sat down. So, the woman on the AID team was another Battle. They did not look much alike, except perhaps
in the shape of the face. But maybe Ellenor’s hair used to be brown. More important, this explained her readiness to listen to reason.
“What is her name?” Defoe bore down lightly on the verb; no reason to assume she was dead.
“Lila. It’s Hindu, and means the playful will of Heaven.”
He took the recorder, turning it over in his hands. “So, why didn’t your daughter have this with her during the attack?”
“I’ve been wondering. There might be some simple explanation.”
“Might be.” But Defoe doubted it. “That makes another strange circumstance about the crash and recording.”
“What are the others?” Ellenor folded her wings, settling down across from him.
“First—no crash. That semirigid landed intact, then burned on the ground. Second, what sort of shot is Lila?”
“I taught her myself.” There was pride in her voice and a recoilless pistol on her hip.
“So I supposed.” He remembered how cool and unflinching Lila had looked—a lot like her mother. “But there was no blood on the grass. It is hard to believe every shot was a miss.”
Ellenor nodded grimly.
Defoe got up, handed back the recorder, and dusted fine grains off his lap. The soil felt thin and silty. “Can you ride bareback?” Ellenor was not his first choice as a traveling companion, or even his fiftieth, but that was Glory for you.
“I was doing it before you were born.” She fixed up a loop bridle, selected a mount, and they set off.
The prairie thinned further. Sandy patches showed between tufts of shriveled grass. More buzzards appeared, over more dead bison. More than even hyenas could eat. Defoe reined in, asking, “What do you make of this?”
Ellenor dismissed the apocalyptic scene. “A local die-off. We saw it from orbit. Lila’s team was investigating.”
Defoe shook his head. “I’ve been seeing signs of major drought ever since crossing the Azur. And real overgrazing as well. Helio’s horses were frantic to cross the fence line.”
Ellenor sniffed. “Is that a pilot’s opinion, or are you a xenoecologist as well?”
“You don’t have to be a xenoecologist to know a dead buffalo. The water table is falling. You can see the steppe salting up. Springbok and pronghorns are filtering in from out of the wild, replacing the bison.”
Ellenor denied the Azur was in any trouble. “The sea is stabilized.”
“Stabilized?” He reminded her the planet was still terraforming. “Shouldn’t the Azur be growing?”
“A local shortfall,” she insisted, shrugging off the buzzards and dead bison. “Another wet season and this will all be forgotten.”
It did not seem that local to Defoe. Kilometers north of the Azur he
could still smell salt on the breeze. Nor would the Tuch-Dah take a “local condition” so calmly—they had to live here. And they were not the types to forget and forgive. Anyone who endured a two-day Naming Fast knew Thals had god-awful long memories.
From time to time Ellenor took off, soaring aloft to do a turn around the landscape, looking for water. Near to dusk she found a dry bed winding through a sandy bottom. Dismounting, Defoe attacked the damp sand with his mattock. An hour of digging produced a small hole full of brackish liquid. He refilled his canteen, then let the horses drink.
Ellenor alighted on a cutbank, saying a rider was coming.
Defoe nodded. Dusk was when they could expect company. Gathering dry grass and brushwood, he made a bed for a fire. Then he took out a heat cap, a capsule the size of an oral antibiotic, breaking it and tossing it on the wood. It burned with an intense flame and acrid odor.
He watched the rider trot warily into camp, separating from the red-orange disk of Delta Eridani. It was Willungha, atop a giant male moropus. Thals did not have aerial recon and orbital scans, but not much that went on in Tuch-Dah country escaped Willungha’s attention.
Despite rumors about him being a half-breed, or even Homo sapiens, the Tuch-Dah chieftain was pure Neanderthal, with bulging browridges, buckteeth, and a receding chin. That chin was the only weak thing about him. Willungha’s huge head and shoulders topped a meter-wide chest; arms the size of Defoe’s calves ended in hands strong enough to strangle a hungry saber-tooth (a perennial party-pleaser at Tuch-Dah fetes). An old scar ran along one gigantic thigh. In his youth, Willungha had been gored by a wounded bison, the horn going through his thigh. Hanging head down, with the horn tearing at his leg, Willungha had clamped his good leg and left arm around the beast’s neck. Calmly drawing a sheath knife, he cut the bison’s throat. Willungha’s mount was an ancient cousin of the horse and rhino, intended to be a browser and pruner—recycling plant material into the soil. AID had never thought a moropus could be ridden.
He grunted a greeting.
Defoe did not attempt to answer. Instead he unhobbled the horses, laying the lead mare’s halter rope ceremoniously before the Tuch-Dah. He kept back only a pair of mounts and a led horse for himself and Ellenor.
Willungha responded with a series of snorts. Wild Thals spoke a hideous concoction of clicks, hoots, and grunts, which some Homo sapiens claimed to understand, but none could imitate. To the Tuch-Dah, Homo sapiens were overwhelmingly deaf and totally dumb, hardly even a thinking species. Powerful and unpredictable maybe, able to tear up the landscape like a mad moropus. But reasoning? Even Willungha reserved judgment. He was tolerably familiar with “man the wise”—which explained his mixed opinion.
Having given gifts, Defoe moved to the next stop in the evening’s entertainment, setting up the recorder by the fire so it would play on the cutbank. Using the eroded rock as a 3V screen, he had his navmatrix sort through the recorder’s memory for the final images, including the Tuch-Dah
attack. When Willungha himself materialized atop his charging moropus, the chieftain gave a hoot and whistle. For all Defoe knew, it merely meant, “Hello.” Or, “Handsome fellow, what?”
Lila appeared next, pistol in hand. Defoe froze the image. Walking up to the scene, he stabbed a finger at her, then made as if to look about—hopefully telling Willungha that he was looking for her.
The Tuch-Dah’s eyes fixed him from within their deep sockets. Defoe repeated the signs. Wild Thals were not much impressed with off-planet marvels unless they could put them to use. Without as much as a grunt, Willungha headed off into the dark with his gift horses in tow.
Defoe leaped up, telling Ellenor, “We’ve got to follow.” Willungha was the best lead they were likely to get.
They trekked through most of the short night. Badlands gave way to savanna. Tangerine dawn outlined the tops of black acacias.
Twenty-odd hours without sleep had Defoe dizzy with fatigue—wishing to God he could glaze over for a while. From upwind came the smell of burning dung, denoting a nomad camp.
Beneath the acacias stood a dark circle of yurts, surrounded by lowing herds. A crowd of Thals emerged to click and whistle their leader into camp. Defoe and Ellenor got no such cheery greetings, facing stony indifference leavened by the occasional dirty look.
While Ellenor sat with folded wings, Defoe listened to a lively exchange among the Thals, seeing fists waved in their direction. The discussion narrowed to a debate between Willungha and a tall brute with a broken nose and bold red-ocher tattoos. He must have outweighed Willungha by a couple of stone, but lacked the chieftain’s sangfroid. Plug-ugly’s part in the conversation consisted of low growls and grim looks.
Willungha ended the exchange, turning abruptly and striding over to where Defoe and Ellenor sat waiting. Squatting on his haunches, he made his position plain with signs and finger jabbing. They were free to search for their stray female, with a single exception. Defoe explained to Ellenor, “The only yurt we cannot enter belongs to Mean and Ugly over there.” He nodded toward the tall Thal with the broken nose and ocher tattoos.
Ellenor frowned. “Logically that is the yurt we most want to examine.”
Defoe nodded. Thals could be amazingly unsubtle. He fished out his medikit, knowing he would need a boost. Strapping the kit to his calf, he told it to give him the chemical equivalent of a week’s rest. “I’ll see what I can do about getting Plug-ugly’s permission.”
Stimulants hummed through his blood. The morning got brighter. A two-thirds-g bounce came back to his step. But Defoe hated relying on chemical imbalance; you could fool your body only so long. The Thai stood planted in front of his yurt, a skin hovel on wheels trimmed with camel tails. A bison hide hung over the doorway. Defoe strolled up with a hearty “How ya doin’?”
The Tuch-Dah merely spat. Since neither could speak the other’s language, there was no need for formal insults. Defoe slid silently into migi
game, arms hanging loose, spine aligned, right foot leading. Out the corner of his eye, he could see Willungha and the boys settling down to watch the fun.
Giving a roar, the Thal rushed at him, arms raised, bent on snapping the spindly Cro-Magnon in half. Defoe was well outweighed, and his sparring partner would be immune to any sort of body blow. He seized the big right wrist with his left hand. Pivoting sideways, he used the Neanderthal’s momentum to sling the ogre over his hip, hacking as hard as he could at the immobilized right wrist. Mean and Ugly went butt-over-browridge into a heap against one wheel of his yurt.
Willungha’s boys applauded with pant hoots.
The Thal bounded right back up, snarling like a wounded lion. Favoring his right hand, he lashed at Defoe with his left. Defoe parried with his forearm. A bad mistake—the glancing blow staggered him.
Grinning with feral glee, the Thal circled leftward, not even winded. The bastard had probably gotten his beauty sleep. Defoe’s right forearm felt numb, and his lungs rasped—a sign the medikit had reached its limits. Much more of this, and the Thal would wear him down. Then stomp him into oblivion.
The Tuch-Dah lunged at Defoe with his left. This time Defoe ducked under the blow, grabbing the Thal’s left hand with both of his, ignoring the injured right. Lacking the strength to go the distance, Defoe held grimly to the Tuch-Dah’s good hand. He sent the bellowing ogre cartwheeling over his shoulder, letting the Thal’s own weight and momentum bend the left wrist until it snapped.
The Neanderthal lay dazed, one wrist badly sprained, the other broken. A firm believer in kicking a fellow when he was down, Defoe brought his boot heel sharply on the Thal’s tattooed instep, to discourage the brute from getting up. Mean and Ugly moaned.
Dusting himself off, Defoe glanced over at Willungha. The Tuch-Dah chieftain gave a congratulatory grunt. Defoe was free to search the yurt. He hoped to hell he’d find something.
As soon as he lifted the bison hide, Defoe knew that whatever was in the yurt stank all the way to Spindle. Urine, sweat, and burning dung mixed with moldy leather. Worming his way in, he startled a gaggle of Thal children playing beside the central fire. They piled out past him, terrified by a Homo sapiens bogeyman turned real.
The yurt was dank and smoky, walled with soot and skins; aside from body paint and tattoos, Thals did not bother with decoration. What he was looking for sat in the back, amazingly alive. Alert brown eyes ringed with fatigue stared back at him, hardly believing what they were seeing. “Lila Battle, I presume?”
She managed a nod. Tuch-Dah methods were crude and pitiless. To keep Lila in place, a long yoke was fitted around her neck, made from two heavy lengths of wood lashed together with leather. Her hands were free, but the ends of the yoke were out of reach, anchored to the bed of the yurt. She
could move enough to feed herself and attend to body functions, but could not reach the knots holding the yoke in place.
As he cut Lila loose, Ellenor Battle came crawling in, dragging her wings. She hurriedly strapped her medikit around Lila’s forearm. Mother and daughter were reunited in the fetid interior of a Tuch-Dah yurt, a touching moment lasting about a nanosecond. Lila was clearly Ellenor’s daughter, and neither was given to excess sentiment. Before they had finished hugging, Ellenor wanted to know what had happened, and Lila was telling them.
“Helio did it. The bastard flagged us down for a face-to-face. The next thing I knew, I was being bundled up and given to the Tuch-Dahs.”
Defoe had suspected something of the sort—it wasn’t in Willungha’s nature to mix with Homo sapiens, either as friends or as enemies. Full-fledged humans had to be behind this. But he was sorry to find out it was Helio. He had liked the arrogant asshole.
Hauling out the recorder, he gave Lila a look at her “last stand.” She shook her head. “I wish I had put up that fight, but I never saw it coming.” She knew nothing about the fate of her ship and team.
“Dead and burned,” Ellenor told her daughter bluntly. Everything else had been digitally programmed straight into the dimwitted recorder’s memory. A decent scheme, but not foolproof. The chance selection of Lila’s recorder had made her mother suspicious, while Defoe was always willing to believe the worst.
“Why didn’t he just kill me?” Lila wondered. Having spent the last few days bound in the back of a Tuch-Dah yurt, she was in many ways the most amazed.
“You are his insurance shot.” Defoe set the recorder next to his knee. “A good hunter always has an extra charge handy, to insure his prey is nailed. The crash and fake recording were not enough to thoroughly implicate the Tuch-Dahs. But by the time your body turned up, it would be obvious who had you.” Willungha’s people probably had no idea why Helio wanted one of his females carted about against her will. But the Thai he had made the deal with fought to keep up his end. Touching in a terrible way.
“But why do this at all?” For once Ellenor looked at a loss. “Why wipe out our team? Why blame it on the Tuch-Dahs?”
“Because Azur is dying.” Lila spoke softly. “The sea is overloaded. The steppe is salting up.” From the way Ellenor scowled, Defoe guessed this was an old argument.
Lila matched her mother’s stubbornness, insisting, “Sea and grass aren’t returning water to the air as fast as the canals are draining it away. The thin layer of soil atop this cinder and bedrock cannot absorb new arrivals. We saw it. Helio sees it. Willungha must know as well. Helio wants the Azur closed off to settlement. So do I. But he apparently thinks it will take a war to do it.”
Ellenor gave Lila a sour to-think-I-suckled-you look. But as far as Defoe could see, Helio might be right, even AID wouldn’t dump settlers into a war
zone. With the colonists diverted and the Tuch-Dah pushed back, Helio would have the Azur to himself.
Hearing hoots outside, Defoe lifted the bison hide for a peek. Thals were looking up. From over the steppe came the beat of paired propellers, announcing more unwanted company. The joie de Vivre was approaching.
Ellenor swore. Her daughter began to gather her strength for a getaway. No one was burning to confront the guilty culprit. Defoe had pictured them sending a signal to Spindle, then lying low until AID organized a rescue operation. Armed and reckless felons should be cared for by the pros.
While Ellenor hustled her daughter out, Defoe scooped up the recorder. Telling his navmatrix to turn the recorder on, he pointed the business end at the yurt fire, getting a long shot of the flames.
By the time Defoe tumbled out, the Joie de Vivre was poking her nose over the nearest rise, looming larger as she descended. Mother and daughter were disappearing into the long grass beyond the yurt circle. When he caught up with them, Ellenor had her wings on and communicator out, preparing to punch through a call to Spindle. He grabbed her hand, stopping her from opening the channel. “Wait.”
“Why?” Ellenor looked angry, annoyed, and scared. Her recoilless pistol was out and armed.
“Helio will be listening,” he reminded her. Ellenor might be absolutely ready to sacrifice everything just to see justice done, but Defoe was not near as determined to die for the law. “Give us a chance to get away first.”
“How?” she demanded. Running was ridiculous. Helio would swiftly spot them. Nor was there any reason for Willungha to take their side.
“Start by lying down,” Defoe insisted, “so we don’t disturb the grass tops. Right now we can see him, but Helio can’t see us.” He had to make the most of that.
The Joie settled down on a hillock near camp, close enough to cover the exits, but not so close as to disturb the Tuch-Dahs. SuperChimps swarmed down the ground lines and anchored the airship to the hilltop. Helio and his gunmen trooped down the control-car gangway, sporting rifles tucked under their arms, fanning out as they approached the yurts.
“Get ready to run.” Defoe aimed the recorder at the airship. “I’m going to create a diversion.”
Lila nodded gamely. Ellenor remained unconvinced. “What sort of a diversion?”
“Fire and panic.” Defoe told his navmatrix to set the recorder on playback, projecting a continuously expanding loop using the most recent image in memory. “No matter what you see, run straight for the joie de Vivre, and up that gangway. Got it?” Both women nodded. “Then go,” he hissed, triggering the recorder.
They broke cover as a red glow appeared on the hull of the airship—the image of the yurt fire magnified by the recorder—growing into a terrible circle of fire. SuperChimps hooted in terror, scattering away from the ship. In seconds the image covered half the hull, looking for all the world like a
trillion cubic centimeters of hydrogen bursting into flame. The control-car crew dived out the gondola windows.
Defoe topped the hill. Shoving Ellenor and Lila toward the gangway, he began releasing ground lines. Lightened by the loss of men and chimps, the airship strained at her anchors, heaving about above him like a whale in labor.
Someone yelled stop. Without bothering to answer, Defoe leaped on the last line, pulling the anchor pin, letting the line hoist him up and away. The airship tore off downwind, wallowing drunkenly, her control gondola empty. Dangling cables rattled through the stand of acacias.
Seeing he could not clear the trees, Defoe had his navtnatrix send a frantic call to the Joie’s emergency system, releasing the landing ballast. Tons of water cascaded past. The ship shot upward, out of Helio’s range and reach.
His navmatrix ticked off altitude increases. One thousand, two thousand, three thousand meters. Savanna spun below him. Time he hauled himself aboard. Holding on with his left hand, Defoe reached up with his right, grasping the taut line. Getting a good grip, he let go with his left.
He fell, steel line sliding through his fingers. His right hand would not hold. Making a frantic grab with his left, he managed to catch the line.
Dangling left-handed, Defoe realized his right arm was useless. It would no longer support him. The medikit strapped to his leg had masked his pain, and the damage done by the Thal. Betraying him into trying too much.
Swinging silently, several kilometers in the air beneath a bucking airship, he pondered his next move. Unable to climb one-handed, Defoe kicked at the end of the line with his boot. If he could snag the anchor loop, he could hang safely until someone hauled him up.
Too far. His foot would not reach. Grass tops whirled dizzily below him. The Joie de Vivre topped four kilometers, still rising.
Loosening his left hand, he slid down the line, feeling with his boot for the loop. His toe went in. He gave a silent cheer. He had made it.
Just as his boot settled in, the line jerked—the Joie had reached her pressure height, automatically venting hydrogen. Nosing down, she took a drunken dip, porpoising out of control.
Defoe fought to regain his grip. Fatigued fingers weren’t quick enough. The line snapped away. Two sleepless nights, the fight with the Thai, the struggle on the line, had all taken too much out of him.
Arms flailing, he fell slowly backward, his booted foot twisting in the loop. Two-thirds g gave him enough time to make a last lunge at the line. And miss.
Dangling upside down, holding on by his boot, he could feel his foot slipping. Doubling up, Defoe made a grab at the boot with his good hand. He got it. Fingers gripped the boot as his foot slipped free and the line bounded away.
He was falling. Holding tight to the useless boot, Defoe shrieked in fright and exasperation. He could see the snaking line above him and the shadowy form of the airship starting to dwindle. Five kilometers away, ground rushed silently up to greet him.
Defoe felt none of the dreamy complacency the dying were supposed to enjoy. Even in two-thirds g, onto soft grass, he knew he would hit hard, bounce badly, and not get up. Ever. His navmatrix ticked off the fall. Slow at first. A few meters per second—but ever faster. Numbers began to blur.
The horrible silence was broken by the rush of wings. Hands seized him. Primaries beat frantically. He could feel flaps straining against the sky.
Ellenor Battle had him. Pulling out of her stoop, she was trying to brake, wings beating against better than twice her weight. Good shot, thought Defoe. But the wing loading was way too high. He could feel her stalling, about to tumble into a spin—unless she let go.
But she dug in instead, spreading her wings, defiant to the end, her contorted face centimeters from his.
Then came a miraculous jerk, and the impossible happened. Defoe bounded to a dead stop in midair.
A line stood taut between Ellenor’s shoulders. She had clipped a cable to her harness before diving after him. Staring up at the skyline, Defoe tried to cheer, getting out a grateful croak. The woman was a pigheaded genius, and he wanted to kiss her. But then Ellenor might really drop him.
Meter by meter he felt himself being hauled to safety. The AID woman was grinning.
As they were drawn aboard the galloping airship, Defoe saw Rigger Ray working the winch. Lila lay full out on the deck, reaching down to help her mother. Catwalk Charlie was holding tight to a girder, eyes shut, still waiting for the flaming crash. Defoe could hear him mumbling:
Our Satan that art in Hell,
Damned be thy name.
Lead us into temptation,
And encourage our trespasses …
Defoe was shocked. Charlie had never looked religious. But a brush with death will bring out the Devil in anyone.
Gingerly sliding his boot on, Defoe told his navmatrix to take control of the airship. The Joie righted herself, turning back toward Shacktown.
Hearing Ellenor put in her call to Spindle, Defoe wondered how Helio was doing with Willungha. After murdering two AID workers, trying to frame the Tuch-Dahs, then bungling the cover-up, Helio had serious problems ahead. But so did everyone on Glory. And the first ten thousand colonists were already on their way, leaving Epsilon Eridani at near light speed.
Defoe for one did not want to be there when trouble arrived. Right now he was headed back for Spindle, to spend long lazy hours of enjoying himself and looking for a ship headed out-system. AID could deal with the mess they had made. More people meant more traffic, and one day dirtside and all its dangers would be a batch of not-too-pleasant recollections. The sort of memories you were free to file and forget.