The Nonborn King (48 page)

The towering Apollo threw back his goiden head and roared with laughter. Then both of his hands framed her face. "You are the type I waited eight hundred years for- Only you." And then his inhuman eyes were stinging and he kissed her upturned brow She seized his true hand. "Let me stay with you in Afaliah. Please! At least until you're healed. Oh, don't send me back to him until we've made up for some of the emptiness."

"A little while," he agreed. "Certainly a little while. But it would take nine months in Skin to regrow the hand and lower arm and I won't stand for it. I'll go against Aiken just as soon as I can gather a force While his mind is still weakened."

Mercy drew back, her mental walls up "You'd fight him with one hand?"

"The Sword-wielding one is in fine shape." He flexed the wooden fingers expertly with his PK. "It may not be much to look at, but it serves "

She lifted the prosthesis, turned it slowly. "Wood? Ah, no. Nothing so base will suit you, my daemon lover!" Her glance darted around the cell. "Gold would do, but we have only our two torcs, alas!" Her eye fell on the ornate eating utensils that Moreyn had furnished his distinguished guest. "Silver! Silver you shall have, from the mind of the Lady Creator herself. My loving gift to you, Battlemaster."

She gestured, and the gleaming plate and bowl and cup and pitcher shimmered, fused, went amorphous, then seemed to whirl in a scintillant metallic cloud at the end of his outstretched arm. "Silver!" she cried again. "Nodonn of the Silver Hand'"

It was done. The crude device carved by Isak Henning had vanished. In its place was a perfect replica of the missing member, mirror-bright, so subtly articulated that the sliding joints were invisible. Mercy bent over the hand and kissed each finger, and finally, the palm.

"I will wear it until I destroy Aiken Drum," he vowed. "Until I am King of the Many-Colored Land and you are my Queen."

He drew on the two glass gauntlets and opened the door for her Neither one of them paid any heed to the foul cataract as they climbed back to the surface by the light of their shining faces.

Z

"READY ON THE TEST BOARD?" CAME BETSY'S HOLLOW VOICE

from inside the flux-tap reticulator.

"Yo," said Ookpik, untangling the cables.

"Tickle the input to the tertiary MHD-flow regulator," Betsy ordered. AH that was visible of him was a great mound of farthingale skirts lying on the cerametal decking. His upper body seemed to have been swallowed by the exotic mechanism he was working on.

"Oh, yeah, the MHD-three realty looking good," Ookpik reported.

From the access hatch came a hand with chipped enamel on the fingernails, groping in air. "It's make-or-break time. Let's have the number-ten therm needle, that pink chip with the two-cent hardwires, and the exotic component thingy with the code like a deuce of spades."

"You got 'em " Ookpik slapped the items into Betsy's hand There was an obscure sizzling sound. A few wisps of smoke floated out around the engineer's tightly corseted waist. Then came a falsetto shriek as Betsy struggled frantically out of the reticulator's bowels, tearing at his throat and uttering picturesque Elizabethan epithets. "Set my damn ruff on fire soldering," he explained, once the blackened bit of lace was npped off. He adjusted his pearl-studded wig, fitted the magnifying optics back over his eyes, and dived back into the machine. There were additional sizzlings and a loccatina of elfin chimes.

"That's got the bitch!" Once again Betsy emerged. "Now test the entire external web circuitry, sneetch and all!"

The Inuit technician punched out the requisites and studied the readout with increasing excitement. "Hot zot, Bets, we're in business!"

Betsy yelled. "Ready on the flight deck?"

"Flight deck aye," came the dulcet reply of the Baroness.

"Light her up!"

As Betsy clapped the hatch back into place and fastened it, the deeply resonant hum of all sixteen operating generators filled the belly of the exotic aircraft. He and Ookpik linked pinkie fingers and grinned. Then he called out, "Power input to the external web, Charly."

"X-web aye," said the Baroness. "You guys just groundtesting, or do we fly at last?"

Betsy dusted himself off. The apricot brocade of his gorgeous gown was stained and torn and most of the ruching around the cuffs was scorched away. But the rope of pearls still gleamed magnificently above his cleavage and the upstanding collar of golden lace was hardly damaged at all. He look off the magnifying goggles and stowed them in his reticule, then went forward.

"Ail the engine-cluster idiot lights are cyan," said Baroness Charlotte- Amal ie von Weissenberg-Rothenstein. She gestured out the ports on either hand. "And as you can see, we're about as well webbed as possible. I vote for flight-test. We've got time before supper."

Betsy squinted at the craft's anomalous swept-back wings, which crawled with the purplish fire of the rho-field. "Oh, fudge! Take her up!"

The Baroness's hands flew over the exotic controls, readying the gravomagnetic flyer for lift. Betsy sank gratefully into the righthand seat while Ookpik lounged against the navigation tank, chewing a comer of his mustache thoughtfully and eyeing the dupe panel readouts.

Inertialess, the craft rose vertically into the air without a tremor, then flew slowly along the crater rim toward where the others were parked.

The R.F communicator said, "Oho! Welcome to the flock, Number Two-Niner. Are you now a total go?"

"Keep us onscreen, Pongo," the Baroness replied laconically- "We're about to find out."

The landscape outside the flyer vanished in a blur. The sky went from cobalt to purple to black in less than two seconds. The people on the flight deck experienced no sensation of motion or acceleration. Only the tumbling vista outside the ports and the exotic flight instrumentation revealed that they were now traveling in the outermost reaches of Earth's atmosphere al a velocity approaching 12,000 kph, maneuvering in intricate zigzag patterns in response to the delicate promptings of the Baroness's joystick and throttle treads.

They plummeted, glowing dully in reentry. She homed on the crater lake north of the Pliocene Danube that marked the site where Brede's Ship had crashed a thousand years earlier.

Now the dull-black aircraft seemed to change from a missile into a bird. With its wings fully extended in glide configuration, it banked and swooped above the water as gracefully as a swallow. Down along the southern edge of the lake's cup stood twenty-eight other long-legged exotic flyers, wings drooping to the ground and pointed snouts bowed as in meditation. Further west and north were areas where the crater rim was torn and scarred and partially collapsed, and where fragments of twisted cerametal protruded from burnt maquis vegetation. Some of the flyers had crashed on testing- One had exploded on initial light-up. Others had proved impossible to repair and had been dumped into the lake after parts cannibahzation. Of the fortytwo aircraft that Basil's Bastards had found more than a month earlier, this twenty-ninth would be the last to be salvaged, thanks to the persistence of Betsy and his crew. Rehabilitating the exotic flyers had cost the lives of two pilots and four technicians; and Seumas Mac Suibhne, a bibulous engineer, had fallen out of a belly-hatch one night at the close of a long shift and broken both legs.

All in all, the expedition had thus far been a surprising success.

"She flies. We're coming in," said the Baroness to the RF corn- "This is Two-Miner coming in hot."

"Roj on the hot touch, Charly. And hoo-raw at last. We thought you guys were stuck with a deader for sure."

Betsy sighed deeply and said into the second headset, "I really thought I'd have to give up on her, Pongo. If Dmitri hadn't suggested that bypass on the MHD tertiary, we'd still be ground-bound. I've had it up to here trying to fix these barbarian clunkers."

"We knew you could do it if anyone could, Betsy," said another voice.

"Is that you, Basil?" asked the Baroness. The rhocraft was descending perpendicularly into the sitting flock of its fellows.

"I was watching you on the scope, luv," said Basil's voice. "Fine show. We're getting a celebration supper ready for you. Extra wild garlic in the old antelope stew."

Ookpik made a strangled sound.

"The last birdie out of the nest," murmured the pilot. There was a gentle jar as the field-clad landing gear touched. Smoke rose from bits of dried grass set on fire by the web of purple energy. Then the tail settled and the nose tilted down. The Baroness killed the rho-fietd, shut the rest of the systems down, and sat staring at the dead control panel with an abstracted smile. "I could have danced ail night."

Betsy patted her encouragingly on the shoulder. Ookpik was already opening the belly-hatch. "Come along, Charly dear. Mustn't keep our noble leader waiting. I'm dying to find out where he plans to hide the bulk of our fleet."

"If I could have just kept on flying," the Baroness said. "Out of this crazy place for good' To the other side of the planet. To Pliocene Australia or China where there aren't any Tanu or Firvulag or crazy runty humans bucking to be King of the World! Oh, Betsy, how I'd love to steal this aircraft'"

"A lot of us know your feeling. I'm afraid Basil does too, however."

The Baroness collected her paraphernalia. "The ostensible guarding of the fleet against Firvulag marauders was a pretty thin ruse, all right."

"And then there was Seumas." Betsy smoothed his goatee and lowered one purple eyelid knowingly.

"You're kidding, !"

"A very rash young man, for all his skill. I'm sure he and Thongsa must have had it all worked out between them. However, it was a sad miscalculation to think that Sophronisba Gillis would go along with the plot. She's completely loyal."

The Baroness smothered a guffaw. "You think Phronsie chucked old Shame out of the belly-hatch that night when he suggested that the three of them scarper off with the flyer?"

Betsy shrugged. "Seumas could still continue to work in spite of his broken legs. And his great and good pilot friend has had a certain air of suppressed terror about him ever since the incident. As any sensible soul would, with the indomitable Miss Gillis watching for any old excuse to whup his ass into the dirt."

"Phronsie the enforcer. My God."

"Basil is a fine leader. Devoted to his Bastards. But long years in the jungles of academe have given him a knowledge of human nature- Basil takes his responsibility seriously, and these flyers are such a dreadful temptation, even to the best of us."

They moved off the flight deck into the belly-compartment. The Baroness said, "Odds on that Taffy Evans is another of Basil's watchdogs. And Nazir! And that Scowegian hunk, Bengt Sandvik. Yes, now that you mention it, I can see that one or another of them was always in the crew whenever a fresh aircraft went operational, oops\"

She stumbled over one of the haywire testing cables. The dainty hand of the Elizabethan transvestite steadied her in an iron grip, in spite of the fact that she outweighed him by fifteen kilos. With a startled gasp she looked down into his lovely green eyes. "You too, eh, sport?"

"Our supper is waiting," Betsy said. He gestured to the exit ladder. "After you, darling."

The leading aircraft descended to 10,000 meters and hung in the air above the blindingly brilliant cluster of peaks.

"Fan-bloody-taslic," exclaimed Pongo Warburton He eased them into a slow holding pattern. "How high she be, Basil?"

The exotic terrain-clearance indicator had been equipped with an improvised converter Basil and Aldo Manetti worked with this for a few minutes, surveying the central section of the massif and making a permanent chart on a large durofilm sheet Basil said, "The principal summit, Monte Rosa, is 9082 meters. The neighboring peaks are all above 8000-" The don's voice was vibrant with excitement.

"How high was Everest?" Pongo wanted to know.

"Around 8850," said Aldo, "depending on how much snow was in that year's monsoon And how recently the garbagecollecting crews had been there, cleaning up after the outworld daytnppers." '

The pilot adjusted their altitude, bringing them closer to the pristine mountain

"Sublime," Basil whispered "And virgin," Aldo added "I could cry I am crying."

"Is it the highest on Pliocene Earth?" Pongo asked.

"Undoubtedly," Basil said, "if geologists are correct in their premise that the Alps exceeded the Himalaya in height during this epoch. Of course, these Helvetides will be greatly worn down during the coming Pleistocene Ice Age, and there will be tectonic adjustments as well, rising and falling of the entire Alpine region. Poor Monte Rosa will eventually yield pride of place to Mont Blanc as highest peak in Europe. In our own Milieu she will only be second highest. And only the locals and a few keen climbers such as Aldo and I will know her name .."

The RF communicator of the aircraft said: "Number One, this is Twelve. All of us now in position at twenty kloms high and holding."

"Maintain altitude," said Basil. "Enjoy the view while Aldo and I decide which portion of the cold-storage locker to use "

"We're gonna put the rhoboats herel" said an anonymous voice in accents of acute dismay. Every one of the Bastards had perforce come along on this first phase of the ferrying mission. Only the Howler guide, Kalipin, had remained at the crater lake.

"That's my plan, yes," said Basil.

There were sinister female chuckles. "Any of you mothers figuring to sneak back overland later on and rip off a bird, don't forget your fur-lined jockstrap. And your ice pick."

"We'd sooner try to melt your heart, Phronsie," said the dispirited voice.

Basil said, "The inaccessibility of the place is one of its great advantages, of course. No chaliko-riding exotic or human could possibly get in here. Not even levitating. The beasts would be subject to anoxia and hypothermia, as would unacclimated riders."

"Some of the Tanu body-fly," said the voice of Taffy Evans. "And so does that friggerty Aiken Drum."

"We can't make the craft completely secure," Basil admitted. "But up here, if we choose a hiding place with care, the aircraft will be concealed by snow cover very quickly, making their detection by, er, mass-scanning farsense very difficult. And, of course, the Lowlife leadership will be in possession of the only chart showing the parking site. When we're ready to retrieve the flyers, they can be melted free by soft heat-beam fire."