Landfall: Tales From the Flood/Ark Universe (13 page)

‘It feels like I’ve been here all my life,’ said the officer miserably.

They let their horses walk on in silence.

Naturally the Speaker of Speakers wasn’t living in the mud with his soldiers. At a small jetty near Wilson’s main harbour wall, a smack was waiting to carry Tripp out through the picket-line of blockading ships to the Speaker’s yacht. This was a grand affair, painted brilliant white, standing well off the coast and out of range of any gunfire. The smack’s captain seemed a gossipy sort, and he regaled Tripp with tales of the twice-daily arrival of provision ships from the Navel, and the petty graft that followed.

Tripp, weary and travel-worn and carrying her packs of spare clothes and trade goods, felt shabby indeed as she was conducted into the august presence of the Speaker of Speakers, and told to sit on a couch to wait as Elios received submissions from advisers and ministers who entered the cabin one after another. An aide at his side took notes, murmuring in his master’s ear. In his white robe the Elios easily filled the chair on which he sat. The chair itself, however, was unusual – not a throne but practical-looking, a sturdy metal frame hung with canvas, and with straps, unattached now, that could be buckled around the Speaker’s girth.

Elios saw her looking. When there was a gap in the flow of supplicants, the Speaker of Speakers beckoned Tripp forward. ‘You study the chair.’
 

‘Yes. I couldn’t help wondering – we Polars like to think of ourselves as engineers, Speaker -’

‘Could this be the Left Hand Seat itself, you think? Please, come and inspect.’
 

Boldly Tripp walked around the throne, and Elios’s assistants looked faintly alarmed. ‘Light but sturdy. Harnesses to hold in the occupant. It is a seat from a ship, a ship designed to sail in the air. Just as the legend of the Landfall says.’

Elios slapped the metal frame. ‘Sadly the original is in a vault, somewhere deep beneath the ground on the Navel – precious beyond reckoning, as you can imagine. But this is said to be a fair replica, and is itself hundreds of Great Years old. But – “legend”?’ His voice was sharp, faintly mocking. ‘Are you not a true believer, madam Tripp?’

‘I’m no theologian, Speaker.’

‘Yes. Best we each stick to what we know – is that your philosophy? I imagine if we all did that the world would be a less turbulent place. My advisers tell me you’re here on a mission given you by Elder Maryam in Wilson.’

‘And for my own purposes too, Speaker.’

‘Of course, of course.’ He eyed her bag. ‘To which end, you bring me gifts, do you?’

‘Nothing so coarse, Speaker. Trade goods.’ She opened the satchel. Within, she had samples of new kinds of hardened steel and brilliant glasses, a novel musket-trigger mechanism, and a box-like device that exploited the strange properties of photomoss.
 

The Speaker inspected all these carefully, and handed them on to his advisers. He was intrigued by the photomoss. After being exposed to Starlight for a while, it could be shut up inside its box, and a small metal wheel, attached to the outside of the box, would begin to turn, powered by the moss within.

‘This is just a toy, of course,’ Tripp said. ‘But it’s meant to illustrate a basic principle. Speaker, we think the photomoss is an engineered organism. Much of what it does is not, apparently, for its own benefit, but for the benefit of a user. In that, it’s like a tractor beast, which happily digs out furrows and ditches and canals not for itself but for whoever commands it. There is another sort of moss that, we believe, is intended to strain the salt from seawater. The mirror-birds seem designed to scatter light into the dark -’

‘I’ve heard of this idea, of course,’ the Speaker said. ‘These animals were changed, made into what they are, for some purpose or other, by people who have long gone.’

‘People – intelligent creatures like us, or not - yes. That’s what we think. They went away, or died out. Since then the various creatures have evolved away from their original forms, but they still retain traces of that engineering, which we can exploit.’

‘Or,’ said Elios, ‘the creatures were
Designed
that way, by those who made the world. It’s just that we poor Avatars have yet to discern the purpose of that Design.’

‘Well, that’s possible too.’ Tripp saw the slightest smile crease the corners of the Speaker’s eyes, and she knew that the theology didn’t matter; they were talking business here. ‘With the photomoss, it clearly gathers energy from the Starlight – but, unlike our own grass and trees, and indeed unlike the Slime, it doesn’t exploit much of that energy to fuel its own growth. Instead it dumps it out as light – which we find useful for lighting shady rooms.

‘But we can do more than that.’ She opened up the wooden box and showed the Speaker a kind of mesh of electrodes around the moss clump, and a small, simple electric motor. ‘It’s possible to use the flow of energy to power this engine. I’m sure you see the possibilities, if we can scale this up. You can have photomoss reliably and cheaply powering machines to do whatever you like – dig ditches, build your Palaces, drive carts without horses -’

The advisers gasped in wonder at these visions.

‘Or drive machines of war,’ said Elios. He smiled. ‘But none of these miracles are available yet, I suppose.’

Tripp shrugged. ‘I’m here to ask you to help fund the development of these advances, as well as to purchase the results in the long term.’

Elios dismissed the photomoss box with a wave; an adviser took it. ‘And I suppose all of this is contingent on our resolving the current war. Shall we get to the point of your mission, madam Tripp?’

Tripp sat on her couch. ‘Yes, Elder Maryam asked me to speak to you. I think she hoped that a neutral voice, a relative outsider, might be able to broker a solution satisfactory to all parties. But I don’t deny an ending to this conflict is in all our interests. The shutting-off of such a vital trading link is strangling global trade -’

‘Yes, yes. And I suppose you’re authorised to offer me the return of my daughter – yes? And perhaps the handing over of that buffoon Brod, who caused all this trouble in the first place.’

‘Or at least a commitment to punish him.’

‘But I’m sure that Maryam explained to you, point by point in her own tedious way, how the lovestruck youngsters are only one reason for this conflict.’

Tripp forced a smile. ‘Actually the word she used is “pretext”.’

‘Ha! Well, she would. You are caught in the middle of a conflict with much wider purposes – political, economic, even strategic. Why do you think she summoned
you
as the ambassador of peace? Have you thought that through, Polar?’

Tripp stiffened, feeling insulted by his implication. ‘Say what you mean, Speaker.’

Elios counted the points on his fingers. ‘You at the Pole are long-term rivals to the Navel, in terms of your divine position. Even you secularists must see that in terms of strategic advantage. You’ll have to be dealt with some time, I imagine, but for now we want to keep you calm – neutral – on good terms, as long as possible. Also we need your steel and gunpowder, of course. This is the calculation Maryam has made, that we’ll listen to you, given the context of our relationship.’ He sat back, his face hard under his shaven head, his plucked and dyed eyebrows fierce, and he ticked off the next point.
 

‘And what is it we are being encouraged to hear from you? She instructed you to offer us a deal concerned with the specific reason we are supposed to have gone to war: Brod and Vala. And if you make such an offer, and it’s just, and if my low-browed allies get to hear about it – and they will, Maryam will make sure of that – then I will not honourably be able to turn you down. For if I do there’s a good chance my alliance will dissolve. You see?
They
think they are fighting for my family honour, and the sanctity of the religion; they think it is a war of heroes and warriors and so forth – and not about hegemony, about breaking the power of an upstart statelet, which is the reality. And if that pretence is taken away, they will either not understand the geopolitics, or will be repelled by it. Either way we must withdraw, and Maryam will win.’

Tripp considered this flood of ideas. ‘You know, I really am just an engineer. I’m not used to thinking this way. You make me feel -’

‘Naïve?’

‘Innocent, anyhow. But the fact is, Speaker, the offer to return Vala has been made. So what are you going to do about it?’ She found she was anticipating Elios’s response with some interest.

But what that response might have been she was never to learn, for just at that moment a messenger burst in with the news that Elios’s son, Khilli, sick of the drawn-out siege, had taken matters into his own hands.
 

His face white with anger, Elios hurried out. It took Tripp some time to find somebody to escort her off the yacht safely, and back to shore.

VII

‘
Brod! Brod son of Maryam! I am Khilli son of Elios! Come out here and meet me! Brod, you are a coward and a kidnapper and a rapist, and I will avenge my sister! …
’

Once off the smack, Tripp was met by her patient officer from New Denver, and escorted back through the besieging army’s camp. But even from the harbour she could here Khilli’s bellows. Single-handed, armed only with a sword and spear, he was stalking beneath the walls of Port Wilson, and was yelling up his challenges and insults to Brod.

Tripp shook his head. ‘I can hardly believe it. One champion challenging another to single-handed combat? Are we really reduced to this?’
 

But Khilli’s challenge had the whole camp churned up, and Tripp could hear the roars of support, and the clatter of spears and musket-butts on shields. The Denver officer said, ‘It’s one way of getting it finished. Oh, madam Tripp – there are a couple of traders who said they wanted to speak with you.’

‘Traders?’

‘From Holle City. They said you knew them.’ He pointed to a small supply dump, where fresh horses waited, and two strangers dressed in heavy, concealing cloaks. The officer stuck out a hand. ‘Been interesting meeting you, madam. Travel carefully now.’

She shook his hand, uncertain. ‘Thank you, Lieutenant.’
 

Then, her samples pack and rucksack on her back, she walked warily towards the strangers. Even when she’d come close enough to touch them she still couldn’t see their faces within their heavy hoods. ‘So,’ she said. ‘Holle City?’

‘Of course not,’ the taller of the two hissed. He pushed back his hood just enough to let Tripp glimpse his face.
 

‘Brod. And Vala, I suppose. What’s going on?’

‘My mother was going to give Vala up to her father – and me. That’s what’s going on! As you knew very well, Tripp, as you went over to the Speaker’s yacht to broker the deal.’

‘I was hoping to stop the bloodshed -’

‘You could have
told
me.’

‘Evidently your own spies work well enough. And what about Khilli?’

‘What about him?’

‘Aren’t you going to respond to his challenge?’

‘Are you joking? I could take down that tractor-spawned brute, but his companions would rip me apart. No, ma’am, Khilli can wait.’

‘And I,’ Vala said from the shadows of her own cloak, ‘am not going back to the Navel. To be a Sapphire would have been dull enough. To be a failed Sapphire, returned in shame – not for me!’

‘Then what? What do you want of me?’

‘We’re coming with you,’ Brod said simply. ‘There’s nothing for us here. We’ll make a new life at the Pole - together.’

‘As simple as that?’

‘You owe us, Tripp,’ said Vala heavily.

‘I owe you nothing,’ Tripp snapped back. ‘And besides, don’t you think we’ll be pursued? Your father no doubt has spies riddling Port Wilson – and that brother of yours doesn’t strike me as the kind to give up easily.’

‘We’ll deal with that as it comes,’ said Brod.

‘Oh, will you? You’ve dealt with it all so well so far, haven’t you? And what about the journey itself? You’re talking about a trek to the Pole! Have you any idea -’

‘
Brod! Brod, son of Maryam! Come down here so I can strangle you with your own intestines! …
’

‘He’s not getting any more patient,’ said Brod. He untethered three saddled horses, and jumped on the back of the strongest-looking. ‘Shall we make a start?’

Vala grinned and leapt easily on the back of her mount.

And Tripp, gloomily resigned to the fact that neither of these two children had any idea what they were letting themselves in for, even if they weren’t being pursued by a demented super-warrior, started to load her bags onto her own beast.

‘
Brod! Brod!
…’

VIII

They were to travel only fifty kilometres on their first set of horses, Tripp said. Then they’d change to a solution better suited to the long haul – which spanned no less than twelve thousand kilometres north, all the way to the Pole itself.

In those first hours Brod was intensely excited, charging along the open road into unknown realms, with a beautiful girl at his side and an enraged enemy at his back. ‘We’re making history!’ he cried. ‘They’ll tell our story for generations!’
 

Vala laughed prettily. But she stayed back with Tripp, who kept her own horse at a steady trot.

When Brod finally reined in his own mount, Tripp praised him for being ‘sensible’. ‘Horses must have their own ancestral dreams of a lost world where their grandmothers were slender and fleet. They’ll always run if you give them their head. But on this world they are better suited to a gentle, steady trot. Their hearts won’t take it, not if you push them too hard – and you’re likely to break their spindly legs.’

Brod felt restless to hear this sage advice. Sensible? Shepherding his horses for fear they might drop dead under him wasn’t in his nature at all – and not what he had expected of this journey, which he had vaguely imagined as a kind of running skirmish with Khilli and his warriors.
 

But Vala surprised him by adapting quickly to the ride. She even seemed interested in Tripp’s yakking about the horses’ history. ‘How strange, to think that horses, like people, might have been brought here from somewhere else. And, I suppose, sheep and cows and pigs and chickens as well.’