Against A Dark Background (67 page)

Sharrow and Feril looked up the white mountain slopes on their right, to see them covered with hazy white clouds, gradually spreading and enlarging.

`Oh, shit.’

`I believe those are avalanches.’

`So do I. Hang on.’

They raced along the white shelf of the ancient beach to the shelter of an outcrop of rock. The avalanches were a smoothly building roar of noise that terminated in a blast of icy air and a sudden dimming of the late-evening light; the sky above the summit of the outcrop disappeared. A tearing dim greyness flowed all around the sheltering rock-face and a whistling noise came through the throaty bellow of the avalanche. They were suddenly surrounded by their own heavy, swirling snowfall.

A noise like thunder sounded downslope as the tsunami of snow and ice hit the forest.

When the roaring stopped and the last few flakes had fallen around them, they brushed themselves down and went slowly on through a dim white haze across the ice-rubbled mounds of settling snow. She found the cockpit heater control and turned it up.

Feril leant over the side of the vehicle and peered underneath as they traversed one of the house-high pillows of snow.

`Impressive,’ she heard the android say. She glanced round.
The wheel beneath has ballooned to this width,’ Feril said, spreading its hands over half a metre apart,
and appears to grow spikes where it contacts the surface.’ The section of angled wheel protruding behind Feril was thin as a knife.

Yes,’ she said, turning to the front again.
Well, don’t lean back.’

The parallel road had all but disappeared under the icy debris and scattered falls of rock. Downhill, through a haze of settling snow, much of the forest had disappeared under the white flows, the shattered trunks of the trees sticking jumbled from the snow like broken bones.

She kept the monowheel on what felt like the right level until they saw a huge flute of ice and snow like a scree slope leading down through the wrecked forest to the flat valley floor. She swung the vehicle onto it and down while the last of the day’s light leached from the sky.

They followed the frozen river for an hour through the moonlit darkness, then stopped.

She parked the machine off the white highway of river in the shelter of a C-shaped bay of rocks topped by snow-dusted trees. Feril studied the lock on the Lazy Gun while she stretched her legs and inspected as much of the monowheel as she could by moonlight.

The single wheel was angled at about thirty degrees off the vertical; it looked solid but couldn’t be. She remembered the bike back in the warehouse in Vembyr, but even flex-metal couldn’t do what this material seemed to be able to. She got Feril to move the vehicle forward a little. The single wheel seemed to flow rather than merely revolve. It was the colour of dulled mercury; its chevron-corrugated tread looked like a giant gear-wheel.

The cannon muzzle was scooped into the chin of the vehicle on the centre-line. The shining tubes sticking from the rear, which she had mistaken for engine exhausts, were the recoilless weapon’s gasports. Feril checked the weapon-state screen and reported that they had another thirty-one shells left of various types.

I’m afraid the cannon will remain our most powerful weapon,’ Feril said sorrowfully, putting the Lazy Gun down and tapping the trigger-lock.
This is a cryptogenetic code-lock. It is impossible to open without the correct base-sequence key.’

Well, never mind,’ she said.
It was always a long shot.’

I am sorry,’ Feril said.
However, I believe I have worked out the link between your interest in the mark on the wrist of the man you looked at earlier and the reason you wish to go to the province of Udeste.’

She hauled herself back into the vehicle. `Took you a while,’ she said, yawning.

Yes,’ Fend said contemplatively.
I am a little disappointed myself.’

Well,’ she said,
you can redeem yourself by taking the night-shift. I’m tired.’

`I shall drive with all due care and attention.’

Yes,’ she said, sliding down into the footwell, yawning.
Lantskaar welcomes careful drivers.’

They put the Lazy Gun in the compartment behind the cockpit; Feril sat on the Gun with its legs either side of the driving seat. After a little experimentation, she found a comfortable way of snuggling down into the footwell while the android leant over to the controls in a position that would have been tortuously uncomfortable for a human but with which it assured her it was perfectly happy.

She slept while Feril drove through the night.

So far, so good.

Eh? What?

I said, So far, so good.

The man who was really the Lazy Gun was sitting in the monowheel cockpit alongside her. There wasn’t room for him, but he was there.

What do you want now? she asked the Gun. I want to sleep.

I beg your pardon. I just wanted to say, well done. Sorry I can’t do any destroying yet, but like I said, we’ll see what we can do…

Yes, yes, she said. Now go away, I’m tired.

All right. Good-night, Lady Sharrow.

Good - Fate, I don’t believe this; I’m saying good-night to my own subconscious.

Of course you are, the Gun said.

Now sleep.

The air was warm around her as she spun through it, safe in the midst of the surrounding cold. The android was at the controls. The antique machine hummed beneath her, transporting her among reflections.

In her dream she hugged the broad neck of the trafe bird.

The sky was an insane blue; an endless curve of land died before the wheel, forever reeling away towards an expanding horizon. The mountains became snow-dusted hills, which became tundra. They rolled across the plains of frozen lakes among the mountains, found old tracks through the hills and skirted the marshy tundra until they found an old turnpike, its metalling cracked like the surface of an ancient painting and dotted with the erupted blisters of ice hummocks.

They avoided settlements and once swung off a better-maintained length of the tundra road to let a military supply road train pass, but otherwise saw no sign of people. Feril’s internal knowledge of Golter’s geography didn’t cover northern Lantskaar and the Embargoed Areas in great detail, and the monowheel seemed to have no strategic navigational systems whatsoever, but the android was what it described as cautiously certain they were now around the centre of the Areas, near the Farvel coast, a thousand kilometres due west of the fjord where they had found the Gun. They had travelled approximately seven hundred kilometres from the Keep.

They saw many aircraft contrails, and on one occasion heard but did not see low-flying jets while speeding through a low forest by the side of a long lake.

The monowheel absorbed the shock of potholes and boulders, leapt larger depressions, and turned its wheel into a tall ellipse to ford rivers. Once, when she was driving quickly up a shallow slope on a hillside towards a long bridge that had fallen into a ravine, the vehicle slammed to a stop as she was still squinting at the revealed rim of broken concrete and thinking about braking.

She turned round to Feril.

`Did you do that?’

`No,’ the android said.
The vehicle would appear to be what is sometimes called “smart”.’ Feril sounded slightly condescending.
Though not sentient, of course.’

`Of course.’

`I myself was just about to suggest braking.’

`Right,’ she said. She looked for a way down into the ravine, then whirled the monowheel around towards a hairpinning side-road descending into the forest.

She walked, windmilling her stiff arms, by the side of a waterfall in low hills they thought must be near the north-western limits of the Areas. The android stood in the pool at the foot of the waterfall, waves lapping round its thighs. She was determined not to ask it why it was doing this.

`Hey,’ she said, peering under the rear of the vehicle.
There’s a mark, a gouge or something here.’ She looked at the android.
What happened to the due care and attention?’

Oh,’ Feril said quietly, staring into the water.
That will be a bullet mark.’

`A bullet mark?’ she said.

Feril nodded slowly, still staring at the water. `We picked that up last night at the Lantskaarian border.’ It looked at her briefly, head turning smoothly to and fro.
It all happened very quickly,’ it said reassuringly.
By the time I had an opportunity to waken you, we were out of danger. I thought it best to let you sleep.’ Its voice was soft.

She was not sure what to say.

Feril stooped, dipping suddenly, one hand flicking into the water, then it straightened and walked towards her, a half-metre-long fish flapping powerfully in its hand.

She looked at it.

You said you were hungry,’ Feril explained.
I suggest we grill the fish with the laser.’

She nodded, wondering why they had not thought to ask the android’s help when they had all been starving at the fjord.

Thank you, Feril,’ she said. She no longer felt hungry, but she supposed she had better eat.
I’ll get the gun.’

They reached the Security Franchise strip that afternoon, traversing several military roads in the forested hills while Feril monitored leakages of comm and sensory wavelengths. It guided them away from the roads and the areas where the electromagnetic clutter was thickest; they took to tracks, then paths, then the forest floor, thick with rotting leaf-scales and mosscovered boulders.

They crossed what they guessed was the border into Caltasp by wading the monowheel through a rushing stream beneath a ramshackle, electrified fence; the vehicle reduced the portion of the wheel under its body almost to nothing at one point, and at another was actually afloat, in a dark pool under the everleafed trees. Even then, it remained perfectly stable and level in the water, gyros whining distantly. A light flashed on the instruments and Feril suggested pressing the glowing area; when she did the monowheel surged forward through the water, leaving a foamy wake.

The machine purred out of the water, rose smoothly up the muddy bank and entered the forest again.

`Great toy,’ she said.

`Quite.’

They returned through the concentric layers of surfacetravelling civilisation to forest paths, then tracks, then winding metalled roads in the foothills, then a narrow turnpike, heading arrow-straight through the plantations of low crop-forests. Vapour trails wove a net through the clear blue sky, and twice again they heard low-flying jets.

A third group of jets went right over them; this time there was no warning build-up of noise, just an impression of their shadows - a single flicker across the road - followed by a stunning, titanic slap of sound and the scream of their engines fading in both directions at once while the trees on either side of the road whipped back and forth in the sudden storm, losing scales, twigs and whole branches. The monowheel reacted to the gust by squatting slightly, but otherwise remained level.

They rolled on.

She had never seen a turnpike in Caltasp so deserted.

`Where is everybody?’

It’s a little worrying,’ Feril said above the slipstream noise.
I’ve been monitoring the public broadcast channels, and several of them appear to consist only of a soundtrack of what I believe is called martial music. Other channels have been showing nothing but old entertainments. There have been a couple of weak EMPs in the last hour, too.’

She looked round at it. `You mean nukes?’ she asked.

`Perhaps not; they may have been caused by charged-particle weapons.’

She turned back, watching the trees stream past on either side. `Either way,’ she said.

They side-stepped two military convoys by taking once to the forest and once to the hummocked tundra. The turnpike avoided towns and other settlements as a matter of course.

The tundra became huge prairies of grain. ‘

They ploughed a course through one vast field to avoid a road block, then on an ordinary but straight road accelerated to out-pace a helicopter that seemed to be trying to follow them.

She switched roads several times immediately after that, always heading north or west through the dying light of the cold afternoon.

Finally the military traffic became too thick, and they left the metalled ways altogether. They took to tracks and forest fire-breaks, old drove-ways and canal tow-paths. They passed hill villages and dark-looking towns, old orchards and walled compounds; the monowheel rose and fell and banked and paced through the gloaming.

She thought she smelled something in the air as they rolled down the bed of a half-dried river, over water-meadows and sand banks and through clear shallows between hills bright and clear in the winter dusk. The river splayed out, deepening to become a treestudded estuary; they took to the bank, then summited a sand dune.

They were facing the sea.

Feril drove through the depths of the night, once she had gone to sleep. They had made good time along the cold beaches of the coast and watched the skies to the south and east flicker and pulse with different-coloured lights. Feril picked up officially sanctioned broadcast reports of limited engagements taking place between Security Franchise units - backed by World Court licensed forces -and the armed services of Lantskaar, following acts of aggression and an invasion by the latter; the situation was being contained and there was no need to worry. The broadcast ended abruptly in another, strong, electromagnetic pulse.

Stretched forward over the cockpit, Feril only glanced at the monowheel’s nightsight display now and again to check on its sensitivity. Sea, surf, beach and dunes were bright in the moonlight. The strand was flat and smooth in places, strewn with braided streams and shallow pools in others; the monowheel thrummed across it all as though over glass.

She was on a station platform, in the middle of a snowy plain. An old steam train huffed behind the crowd of people. The Gun was there again, but it wasn’t saying anything this time; it stayed in the background while she said good-bye to Miz and Dloan and Zefla and Cenuij. They were whole and fit and well, as she’d have liked to remember them. She tried not to cry as she hugged them and said good-bye. She kept thinking there was somebody else there, too; somebody she could only see from the corner of her eye, a faceless figure in a wheelchair, but whenever she turned to look at the figure, she disappeared.