Golden Torc - 2 (54 page)

"Give me just a few minutes." She gestured to the red balloon jumpsuit she still wore. "I'd like to find some other clothes."

Torn from its base, the huge glass box that was the Great Retort wallowed in the flood, the bodies inside of it tumbling and piling with each violent oscillation. Eventually the Retort settled on a fairly even keel. Half of its bulk was below the waterline and the conscious ones among the prisoners felt they were adrift in some bizarre parody of a glass-bottomed boat.

The black and silver awning that had roofed it was all tattered and it snapped as the gale took hold of the ornamental superstructure. The benches and tables, the commodes and food dishes and water jars were all flung together with the bodies of the condemned.

Raimo Hakkinen spat out saltwater, salt blood, and a tooth. He lay up against the front wall, close to the door. Water was leaking in through crevices around the jamb.

"Come on," he croaked, stripping off his undershirt and ripping strips from it with his teeth.

Only one person from the pile of casualties nearest him responded, a woman dressed in a suit of armor-padding. They bit and tore apart her short gambeson; the collapsed plass bubbles made excellent caulking.

"That ought to hold her," Raimo said, offering a gap-toothed smile.

"She floats!" The woman stared in a dazed fashion at the brownish water, swirling with unimaginable debris, that surrounded them outside the four transparent walls. "Just like some crazy aquarium-except-those things on the outside aren't fish-" She turned away and was violently sick. Raimo backed off on hands and knees.

"Maybe I can find a water jar that didn't break." He went creeping among the bodies and the mess. Quite a few people were alive, but there were plenty of deaders, too. He located a container of water snuggled amid three corpses.

And wasn't that one over there-

He turned the body over. "Bryan? You all right?" The lips smiled. "Bryan?"

"He cannot hear you," said the voice of Aluteyn Craftsmaster. "Your friend has passed into Tana's peace."

Raimo shrank back, holding the water bottle. "Uh-too bad. We came down to Muriah on the same boat together. And if the rumors I heard about him and Lady Rosmar were true, maybe the two of us-well, sorta suffered the same way." Aluteyn gently unfastened Bryan's golden torc. "Not quite the same way, Raimo. But neither of you has to suffer any more." He put the torc around Raimo's neck, removing the silver one he had been wearing. "I think Bryan would have wanted you to have this. Your brain is mending, thanks to my little patch job, and we may find more skilled redactors among our fellow survivors. Or-later."

"You think we'll make it? You think this damn glass box'll float long enough to take us to shore?"

"Those who programmed restraints on my metafunctions are doing so no more. I can generate a moderate PK wind, even keep out the sea by reinforcing the walls of the Retort, now that I have recovered my full consciousness." He gestured to the sprawled bodies. "If you will help me to sort out the ones who still live-"

"Let me go get the dame who was helping me to caulk the door." Raimo grinned and tottered off. The floor of the Retort lurched in the fierce currents, setting the bodies to rolling.

The Craftsmaster gave one last look at the smiling face of the dead anthropologist. Then, groaning with pain and resignation, he began to work again.

She was a strong swimmer and a woman of courage. Using her fatigued creativity, she could still fashion twin bubbles from a portion of her court dress and position them behind her arms so they would help to buoy her up. And when the sun came out at last to shine on the swirling muddy waters and she began to faint from weariness and shock, Mercy called out: "My Lord! Where are you, Nodonn?"

No answering thought came. It was hard, almost impossible, to muster the control needed for long-range farspeaking. She was so deadly tired! But finally she gathered the strength and called again. "Nodonn! Nodonn!"

O come daemon lover, angel of light, come. How can you be dead and I not?

She floated in the midst of the flood. Faint thoughts, faraway and garbled, made a vertiginous twitter in her brain. None of them were his thoughts.

"Nodonn," she kept whispering. And once, "Bryan." Her head flung back, hair trailing like tendrils of dark seaweed, Mercy drifted in the sea. Finally the sun went down and it was cold. Her legs and lower body numbed. She suffered from thirst, but she was so weakened from shock that she could separate the sweet water molecules from the salt with only the greatest effort. Creativity, of all the metafunctions, is most vulnerable to trauma and sorrow.

"Then I will die along with his world," she decided, "for it's all gone now, all the brightness and the wonder and the song."

A small yellow light.

It bobbed, flickered, grew. She decided to wait, since the radiant entity gave evidence of having farseen her, even though it stayed coyly beyond her own mental sight. After an hour or so the glowing thing drew close by. She saw it was the Krai-that great golden cauldron sacred to the Creator Guild-and she cried out.

"Creative Brother! Do you know if Nodonn lives?"

"Is that gratitude?" asked Aiken Drum.

He leaned over the rim of the kettle, extended an arm all covered in golden pockets, and painfully lifted her up. She was deposited in a heap on the curved metal beside him and he grinned down at her.

"Sorry to be so crude on the teleport, Merce lovie, but I'm feeling a little wonky myself yet. Lie still and I'll see if I can conjure you dry."

"You," she said. "You live."

"The baddest penny of them all. When I saw that we didn't stand a chance with our King Canute act, I figured every man for himself and spun myself a little air capsule. Popped up and only had enough strength left to float. This tub was a mighty welcome sight, I can tell you. I'd just about had it when it came sailing by, chirky as you please."

Slowly he dried her, cleansed her of salt and filth, clumsily restored her torn clothing. By the time he finished she was nearly asleep.

"The gown," she murmured, "is supposed to be rose-colored not gold and black."

"I like gold and black better."

She tried to rouse herself. Her whisper retained a trace of the old coquetry. "Now then... what's in that naughty mind of yours, Lord Lugonn Aiken Drum?"

"Go to sleep, little Lady of Goriah, little creative Mercy-Rosmar. There's plenty of time to talk about that tomorrow." Winter rains swept over the Bordeaux marshes. The great river was silty, and the fish were shy, but there were still plenty of wildfowl and the small anterless deer with the tusks, and in higher parts of the large island where the oaks and chestnuts grew, succulent mushrooms. Sukey craved them now and had nagged Stein until he agreed to go for a basketful. And then she was sorry when it began to rain so hard, and saw to it that there was a fine hot stew waiting for him and a good fire in the cabin hearth.

He returned when it was nearly dark. Besides the mushrooms, there was a haunch from a half-grown wild porker. He said, "The rest is cached up a tree. I can fetch it tomorrow. Cook this pig meat well, remember."

"I will, Stein. I wouldn't take a chance. You know that." She caught up one of the wet, callused hands and kissed it. "Thank you for the mushrooms."

"I'm all soaked," he admonished her. "Wait." He stripped off the squelchy buckskin jacket and pants and the rawhide moccasins and warmed himself at the fire while she leaned against him, watching the flames and smiling secretly. In the summer it would be born, and there would be plenty of time to search for other humans then, in the days of lasting calm weather when the great balloon would sail very slowly and land with scarcely a jolt. Next August or September, they would leave. And in the meantime, this wasn't so bad. They were all alone, completely safe, with plenty of food and a snug cabin and each other.

"Eat now," she told him. "I'll take care of your things and see to this meat."

Just before they were ready to go to bed the rain stopped. Stein lifted the door flap and stepped outside, and when she heard him returning she came to stand beside him in the peaceful, dripping dark. The stars were out.

"I love it here," she said. "I love you. Oh, Stein." He encircled her with one great arm, saying nothing, only looking up into the sky. Why should they leave this place? They had often talked of it, but why was it necessary to seek out other humans? Who knew what they would be like? Besides, there were wild Firvulag in the mainland wilderness. He knew, for he had seen their will-o'-the-wisp dancing lights once when he had gone exploring in the dinghy.

The two of them had been very lucky in avoiding contact with exotics on their way to this haven. It would be madness to run the risk all over again, doubly mad to take a newborn infant on a journey in the balloon. A balloon was too unpredictable.

It flew its own way, not yours. If an unexpected strong wind took them, they might be carried hundreds of kilometers before being able to descend safely. They could be carried southeast, all across France, over the Mediterranean... Never. He would never return there to look on what he had done. He would never do it.

"Oh, look!" Sukey cried. "A shooting star! Or-is it? It's moving too slowly. Too late, it's gone behind a cloud! And I forgot to make a wish."

He took her hand and led her back inside their little home.

"Don't worry. I made the wish for you," he said.

The lights on the orbiting flyer's display were all dead now, and the exotic alarms no longer sounded a warning. Without power, without oxygen, the craft faithfully maintained its parking orbit, going around and around the world at an altitude of something less than 50,000 kilometers. During most of its orbit, the dull-black surface of the flyer made it virtually invisible against the backdrop of space. But now and then sunlight would strike the flight deck's front port, brightening Richard's face and causing a brief beam to reflect back to Earth. Around and around the little broken bird went, endlessly circling.

In the Hall of the Mountain King at High Vrazel, the decimated council of the Firvulag met to discuss new business: the election of a new Sovereign Lord of the Heights and Depths, Monarch of the Infernal Infinite, Father of All Firvulag, and Undoubted Ruler of All the Known World.

"We're going to be in trouble this time," Sharn-Mes warned them.

"How so?" queried Ayfa.

He told her and the others the bad news. "The Howlers are demanding the franchise."

The great black raven spiraled downward to the place where its fellows were feeding. All along the North African shore, the scavenger birds were prospering as never before. The bounty had persisted for nearly four months now and still showed no sign of scarcity.

Pruuk! grated the newcomer. It ruffled its feathers malignantly when another bird was slow to move aside on the carcass of a porpoise. Pruuuuuuuk! it repeated, lifting its shoulders and opening its wings. It was a huge bird, half again as large as the others, and its eye sparkled with a mad gleam. Uneasily, the rest of the flock moved back from the meal, leaving the great stranger to dine in solitude.

***

"They're coming! They're coming!" Calistro the goat-boy shouted as he dashed up the length of Hidden Springs Canyon, his charges forgotten. "Sister Amerie and the Chief and a lot of others!"

People swarmed from the cottages and huts, calling out to one another in excitement. A long train of riders was wending its way into the village outskirts.

Old Man Kawai heard the commotion and stuck his head from the door of Madame Guderian's rose-covered house beneath the pines. He sucked air through his teeth.

"She comes!"

A small cat came running from the box under the table, nearly tripping him when he spun about to snatch up a paring knife. "I must cut flowers and hurry to greet her!" He pointed a stern finger at the cat. "And you-see that your kittens are groomed so that you do not disgrace both of us!" The gauze-screened door slammed. Muttering to himself, the old man chopped off an armful of the heavy June rose clusters, then rushed down the path scattering pink and scarlet petals behind him.

THE END OF PART THREE

REMEMBERING THE INCIDENT OF HIS CHILDHOOD, THE YOUNG male ramapithecine came again to the Lake of Giant Birds. There was a trail that some larger creatures had made more than a year ago, now kept open by other animals, for it had been a dry summer and the crater lake a boon to the thirsty. The ramapithecus was not in search of water, however.

Slowly he crept out into the open area along the crater rim. There was the bird! When he crouched under it, he wondered why it seemed smaller. And the hole in its belly was gone, along with the climbing-up thing. But this was his bird. He knew. The memory burned within him. His mother screaming her anger... snatching, flinging away a precious joy that gleamed the color of the sun.

He searched. Into a bush. That bush, that gorse bush. He extended a brown-haired arm into the spiny thicket. Careful. Scratch at the dusty soil. Dig, probe.

His hand touched something smooth and hard. He drew it out with great care. It was as he remembered. The knobs snapped open, the halves turned, and this time it fitted around his neck snugly enough so that it could not be slipped off over his head.

It would not be taken away from him again.

He got up and started down the path to the forest where his mate, more timid, was waiting for him. The sunshine was brighter, the smell of the maquis more pungent, the trilling of birds and insects more distinct. All of the things around him were transformed. It excited and pleasured and scared him a little, all at the same time.

I'm coming! Yes, I am!

He leaped in his joy and the lesser creatures on the trail hastened to get out of his way.

THE END OF THE GOLDEN TORC

Volume III of the Saga of Pliocene Exile, titled THE NONBORN KING, tells of a realignment of power structures during a turbulent period in the Many-Colored Land, wherein human and exotic antagonists receive their first intimations of a new-old menace from the western morning.