The Icerigger Trilogy: Icerigger, Mission to Moulokin, and The Deluge Drivers (104 page)

Corfu frowned and lifted the muzzle of his own beamer. “All will
bow
.”

September shrugged indifferently. “What the hell. It’s only a gesture. Not much point in getting shot over a gesture.” He bent from the waist. Ethan and Milliken mimicked the movement.

Their Tran companions were not as ready to comply. Corfu aimed his beamer between Hunnar’s legs and scorched the floor with a single shot. Hunnar’s expression tightened, but he held his ground. The merchant was about to fire again when the diminutive ruler tiredly waved a paw.

“It doesn’t matter, Corfu. Leave it be. What good to kill a potential convert?”

Corfu’s gaze narrowed as he stared at Hunnar Redbeard. “Not this one, I think. Too stubborn to save himself.”

“Stubbornness can give way to fanaticism, and if channeled, that can be useful.” Massul waved a second time.

The merchant hesitated, his eyes locked with Hunnar’s. Then he shrugged as if it were of no consequence and re-holstered his weapon. “As you command, my lord.”

“There are no emperors on Tran-ky-ky.” Elfa didn’t request permission to speak. “There never have been and never will there be.”

“Never is a long time, female.”

“Besides, we’ve already unified four major city-states and are preparing to accommodate more in a union of our own making. We have no need of would-be emperors.”

“A union, you say? Good news, if true. It makes our own work that much easier.” The emperor appeared no more distressed by this news of a competing planet-wide government than had Corfu. On the contrary, it was a development he seemed to welcome.

“Just what is your ‘work’?” Ethan asked him.

Massul studied him out of small, sharp eyes: “Curious, you humans. Always asking questions. When you’re not giving orders.”

Suaxus-dal-Jagger was craning his neck to examine the hall with exaggerated interest. “Where are the banners, the insignia of family? What kind of court is this?”

“A new kind,” the emperor informed him. “One based on achievement instead of nobility. I do not count myself the product of an ancient line. I merely have been fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time. As have many of us.” He gestured casually in Corfu’s direction. The merchant acknowledged the gesture with a nod. Even here, in the castle’s inner sanctum, the wind penetrated sufficiently to ruffle the fur and dan of the visiting Tran.

“Words do not make a ruler,” Hunnar snapped.

“Truly. Only deeds make rulers. One cannot achieve great things without proper preparation. We are in the process of preparing. The results will become apparent to all Tran soon enough.” He looked past him. “What I do not understand,” he said, addressing himself to Hunnar and Elfa, “is what a grand vessel crewed by warriors like yourselves is doing convoying a group of humans to this part of the world.”

“We are friends,” Elfa replied simply.

Cheela Hwang stepped forward and spoke through her translator. “We have come to observe an anomalous meteorological phenomenon. The air here is much warmer than it should be. Surely you have noticed.”

“You do not find our climate to your liking?” Massul was clearly amused. “I thought you humans preferred warmer weather.”

That was as much as an outright confession that the emperor and his people were being aided directly by a group of people operating illegally on Tran-ky-ky, Ethan thought.

“Yes, we do. We prefer much hotter temperatures than you. That’s not what we’re concerned about,” Hwang explained. “The weather here shouldn’t be this warm. The upper part of the ice sheet hereabouts is melting.”

“Not only the upper,” Massul informed her, not in the least perturbed by the thought, “but from below as well.”

“Then you must know what’s going on here,” Williams blurted, “and yet it doesn’t seem to bother you.”

“Why should it bother us? Everything changes sooner or later.”

“Yes, but in the case of your world it should be later. Ten to twenty thousand years later, according to our calculations. Something is very wrong here.”

“No!” Massul leaned forward. “Nothing is wrong here—except you. You should not be here. Something will have to be done about that. Everything else here is very right.”

Dal-Jagger leaned over to whisper in Hunnar’s ear. “My lord, I am not afraid of these light weapons. No matter how efficient the spear it must still be wielded with courage and daring. We can take this lot without much trouble.”

Hunnar turned his squire down. “There may be others watching us armed with similar devices, or machines we know nothing about. We do not yet know enough to risk all. Hold.”

Dal-Jagger stood back, disappointed but obedient. September had overheard and now bent over the squire. “Answers first, then fighting. If I’m going to get shot, I don’t want to go down full of unanswered questions. Time enough later for grand gestures. Let’s make sure we know the reason for them before we go making ’em.” The squire nodded reluctantly.

“Something else that interests me.” September addressed himself to Ethan while Hunnar and Elfa talked to Massul. “I’m still not sure who’s master here; emperor or merchant. Corfu lets his emperor do all the talking, but when he has something to say he says it and doesn’t ask permission. Doesn’t look to me much like your usual Landgrave-noble relationship, even if he did back off on shooting Hunnar. Maybe he’s got reasons for keeping himself in the background. Sometimes the people with the real power aren’t the ones you see on the tridee. They’re the ones to whom real power’s more important than ego-boosting. They hang in the background and shun the publicity. In that respect, based on what we’ve seen this past year or so, the Tran ain’t that much different from the rest of us.”

Massul was picking at one paw. “What are we to do with you humans?”

“I would think that our friends would have some suggestions,” Corfu said.

“Yes, yes, of course. Well, see to it. I have had a long day and I am wearied. Take them up to Shiva and let him decide.”

September and Ethan didn’t react to the name, but Williams and most of the scientists certainly did. As they were marched out of the court chamber the teacher fell back with his friends.

“That’s not a Tran name,” he informed them.

“Didn’t think it was,” said September. “Didn’t sound right.”

“It’s human, from one of the ancient babel-tongues. Pre-Terranglo. It’s from a dialect that was known as Sanskrit. In the Hindu religion Shiva was the god of death and destruction.”

“What’s in a name?” September muttered. “I was born in July.”

“Are you saying,” Ethan said, “that on top of the beamers and skimmers and lights we’re supposed to believe that there are ancient human gods wandering around here?”

“As Skua says, it’s just a name. I just thought you should know.”

Their escort marched them out of the castle, but instead of turning back toward the harbor they headed west and out of town. Corfu chatted with his own people, unsuccessfully tried to engage Hunnar in casual conversation. He had better luck with Grurwelk Seesfar, much to everyone’s surprise.

They turned up a well-worn path that led between a pair of ruined buildings and found themselves climbing a trail that switchbacked up the steep slope on the far side of Yingyapin harbor. Ethan tilted his head and regarded the ascent ahead uncertainly. The slope was climbable for about three-quarters of its height. Above that the broken talus and boulders gave way to sheer cliff. None of their guards carried ropes, grappling hooks, or any other kind of mountaineering apparatus. Surely they weren’t going to be expected to climb
that.
For one thing, humans were much better climbers than Tran.

At the base of the cliff Corfu turned to the left. A much narrower trail wound its way northward along the base of the sheer rock wall. Whether poorly cleared or intentionally camouflaged Ethan couldn’t decide. It was an excruciatingly difficult hike for the Tran. They were used to having the wind propel them effortlessly across the ice. Here, on rough ground, their huge clawlike chiv tended to be more of a hindrance than a help. Obviously used to the climb, Corfu bore the strain uncomplainingly. Hunnar, Elfa, and the rest of the Tran in the visitors’ party grimaced and tried to ignore the pain in their feet. It must have been, Ethan reflected, like walking in too-tight boots balanced on six centimeter-high spikes. You had to move slowly and carefully or you’d twist an ankle or worse.

As a result even Milliken Williams, who was not the most athletic of men, managed to keep up easily with their escort.

Ethan was only mildly surprised when Corfu finally halted outside what looked like a bare rock wall, touched a hidden switch, and caused a large slab of gray schist to swing aside to reveal a well-lit tunnel beyond. They’d endured so many surprises in the past twenty-four hours he was sure he was beyond being surprised anymore.

He was wrong.

The tunnel they entered had not been chipped from the solid rock with picks and hand shovels. The walls were smooth and straight, the ceiling gently curved. Before they’d walked very far the rock gave way to metal, the metal to plastic as the passageway opened into an endless, hangar-sized cavern full of machinery. The air was alive with humming and whistling, electronic Muzak. It stank of lubricants, steam, and electricity.

Sight and smell alike were foreign to Tran-ky-ky. Pipes and conduits snaked off into the distance. Suddenly the presence among the Tran of Yingyapin of a few beamers and skimmers seemed but a trifling breach of regulations. If whoever had provided them, to Massul’s minions was a candidate for mindwipe, here was interference on a scale sufficient to qualify the perpetrators for physical dissolution.

Whatever the installation’s purpose, it was clear it hadn’t been put in place overnight. Design and scale suggested years of preparation and actual construction. It still wouldn’t be difficult to keep the whole business a secret, as September pointed out.

“We’re a helluva long ways from Brass Monkey and what with the weather on this world being like it is, why, you could build a whole city a few kilometers from the outpost.”

A city this was not, though it employed a small army of human technicians. They looked up curiously from their work as the parade passed them by. None tried to engage the visitors in conversation. Ethan found that odd. The presence of strangers within the complex ought to have provoked more than curiosity. Surely even the most ingenuous among them knew they were participating in an illegal operation. That might have something to do with their reticence.

“I don’t recognize any of this.” Cheela Hwang was studying the complex machinery intently. “I wish some of the people from our engineering department were here.”

“Be glad they’re not,” Ethan told her.

“Some kind of mining operation?”

“Possible.” September was as puzzled as any of them as to the complex’s purpose. “Maybe they found a big ore body here and they’re digging it out on the sly. You’d have to do it that way, since you wouldn’t be able to get permission from the authorities. On a Class IVB world any minerals would be left untouched, kept in trust as it were for the locals. Maybe whoever’s responsible—and they’ve sunk a lot of credit into this operation—is paying off Massul and Corfu and the others with beamers and skimmers and such.”

The deeper they marched into the complex, the easier it became to sense the vastness of the installation. The temperature here had risen to just below human optimum. Corfu and his troops seemed halfway acclimated, but Elfa and the other Tran from the icerigger were suffering, their long tongues hanging out as they panted incessantly, their bodies fighting to rid their systems of excess heat. Ethan and his companions had switched off their survival suits.

Corfu directed them into a large service elevator. It barely held all of them and would have been a good place to try overpowering their captors. Once again September vetoed dal-Jagger’s suggestion. At close quarters even a badly aimed beamer could do horrible damage to mere flesh and bone.

The lift ascended slowly, eventually depositing them in a deserted hallway. Corfu led them to a pair of doors which parted to reveal a spacious circular room. Free-form windows spotting the far wall looked out over sandstone monoliths completely enshrouded in fog. When the mist parted Ethan could see gentle slopes lining a smoking valley. Taller plumes of fog or smoke streaked the otherwise cloudless sky.

Here then was the proof of the volcanism which Hwang and her associates had been so sure existed. Yet there was something about the massive plumes that didn’t look right. They did not vary in thickness or intensity and showed no signs of fluctuating in strength. Ethan had visited a few hot springs in his life and their output was never this consistent.

“Perhaps the installation we walked through utilizes the subsurface volcanic heat for power.” He nodded toward the windows. “This vented steam could be a by-product of energy generation.”

“Probably is,” September agreed, “but I don’t think volcanism has anything to do with it.”

Any chance of pursuing September’s thoughts further was eliminated as they were pushed into the room, which on closer inspection most resembled a conference chamber combined with an office. Their beamer-wielding guards split up to flank the entrance. Corfu strode toward the windows and bent over a high-backed chair, whispering.

A small, dark-skinned man (though not as dark as Williams) rose from the chair. His back was to them and he was staring out at the smoking valley. Ethan wondered what this room would look like from the outside. Unless you stumbled into it, he was sure it would blend perfectly into its rocky surroundings. Even the free-form windows would be difficult to identify from a distance. He didn’t have to debate whether this was the result of camouflage or aesthetics.

As the man turned to face them he continued listening to Corfu. Ethan saw no evidence of a translator in the man’s ear. It followed that he was as fluent in Tran as any of them. His manner was preoccupied, nervous, and intense. He was smaller than Williams and his structure was delicate without in any way being effeminate. When he spoke he sounded preoccupied and almost apologetic.