Cloud Castles (41 page)

There was another explosion, even louder. Flame spewed down through the hatchway, knocked the cover off the catch and slammed it down. The airship rocked sickeningly, the motors laboured and stuttered; but the gondola was untouched.

‘Why’re we still here?’ she demanded, almost angrily.

‘The
Hindenburg!’
I yelled. ‘Haven’t you seen the film? People got out of that – hydrogen burns
upwards!’

I slid along the floor, and hauled myself up by the control panel. We were still circling, but losing altitude fast. I hated to think of the inferno developing overhead. Another minute, another couple of bags going off, and
we’d come down somewhere in the rocky lower slopes. The rudder was broken, but the control surfaces might still do something. I slammed up the port surface, hard, and gunned the faltering motors on that side. The ship lurched, swung around and went sliding on in.

Suddenly something brushed at the window, and it smashed. For an instant I thought it was one of the tentacles. It wasn’t; it was a tree-top. And with it an awful burden weighed down on my heart; because when you’ve already abandoned hope, it can be the most agonizing thing of all.

We had seconds, no more, to reach that door. And that cage was too much for us now. Angrily I tore it open, hesitated an instant before touching the thing it held. Alison baulked at the Spear. We giggled idiotically. What had we to lose?

We grabbed them both. Nothing happened, except that the rough granite scraped my fingers. The ship lurched violently as another gasbag went, and we crawled for the door. I moaned a bit; even sliding it along, the weight of that lump of stone tore at my lacerated shoulder. But Alison wrapped her free arm around my waist, and suddenly, for all the pain that creased her face, she was grinning.

‘Out of the frying-pan—’

The gondola bumped and squeaked across another tree-top, another blast of orange flame blossomed above us, and because jumping was beyond us, clutching our swords and our burdens to us, we rolled out.

The next instants were a blur; lashing branches, stinging pains, rushing air and sudden sickening impact. I must have lingered a moment awake, because I have one last memory of the blazing airship lurching by overhead, a grasping tentacle blasting apart as another gas-holder exploded, and another, leaving the ship an arrow of leaping flames falling right as I’d aimed it.

Onto that barren mountain crest, and right into that awful face.

The sound was fearsome, louder far than the airship exploding. It had too many components, as I heard them; volcanic rumbles, liquid sizzlings and spittings, mindless yelling and in amidst it all, yet somehow audible, one anguished but articulated, all too human cry. The whole ground juddered, those
demonic tentacles flew up, fell inward, fragmented in mid-air into a cascading rain—

Then blackness, abrupt and stifling.

But the blackness wasn’t empty. I was condemned to death, and I was asking why why, why. I was tapping it out on a computer keyboard because that was all they’d given me. If I could just get through to somebody important with my plea it might help – Alison, if not me. But all I kept getting was that bloody error message:

– over and over and over until I wanted to scream.

It couldn’t have lasted long, though – seconds, according to Jyp, because they were already running towards us as we fell. ‘If it was the Baron,’ he explained, ‘we kind of wanted to get our hands on him. Where is he, anyhow?’

I struggled to focus my swimming thoughts; and then Jyp noticed my shoulder, and stopped shaking me. ‘Jehoshaphat! A mite lower and he’d have skewered your heart!’

‘Not … quite. Alison?’

‘She’s here. But she’s bad. The bullet wound, a broken leg, maybe something internal. Lucky, at that; if the forest hadn’t been so tangled and all this goddamn underbrush that thick, you’d’ve been succotash. Mall’s getting some branches for a stretcher. Don’t know if we can get you folks away from here, but we’re damn well going to try.’

I pushed him aside, because I hadn’t the words, and levered myself up on my elbow. Alison was beside me, face grey, lips dark, the Spear lying limp in her fingers; the slab of stone had fallen from my arms, only a few feet away. I looked at the mountain crest, a howling, heaving mass of flame in which something thrashed and spouted, setting the whole mountainside quaking, and the milling, baying shadows running in renewed panic – chaos rampant. The fire was spilling down among the trees now; that meant it would soon be spreading
wholesale. Who was Jyp kidding? And the little knot of people gathering around him, the survivors. Here a Byzantine archer without his horse or his bow, helping along a wounded doughboy still clutching the shattered stock of his rifle, bayonet attached. There, two of the partisans, quietly slipping cartridges from their pockets into the magazines of their Schmeissers while an English archer covered us with his last shaft. There were others, but not many; fourteen, fifteen, maybe, from all our force. The centurion was gone; Hastein was there, one arm in a bloody sling. They watched over us, these battered warriors, their eyes wide in wonder; and they waited. ‘This … is all?’

‘All,’ echoed Mall sombrely. ‘No man or woman more, no horses. Nor any food or water, or aught to ease your pain – no clean herb grows in this place.’

‘Save … yourselves,’ said Alison faintly. ‘Take the Graal and the Spear. Steve might still make it. Leave me …’

I reached out to her; but my hand touched something else.

‘No,’ I said.

Mall chuckled faintly. ‘The very word I fumbled after! Well, now that’s reasoned out, let’s to our road—’

‘No,’ I said again, feeling the hair on the back of my neck prickle. ‘Mall, help me up—’

‘And have you bleed your life out on me? I’ll do no such thing—’

‘
Help me up, damn you!
You don’t know what’s going on.’ I’d been going to swear at her again, but I softened my tone. ‘There’s another way, – and it’ll work! You see – you see – they told me all along – all along—’

Without another word Mall took my good arm and hauled me to my feet. It did start the wound bleeding again, but that didn’t matter. I took two steps, to that slab of stone, and I knelt again, before it. The pain was jarring, and as I struggled to raise my arms above my head it made my head sing and my guts heave; but none of that mattered now, not in the slightest. In my hands I held a power that was greater than the Brocken, greater by far; for its schemes reached farther and longer, and even when those schemes failed, they carried within them the germs of new success. When they succeeded, however high the cost, the success was absolute. They’d told me; they’d prepared me for this, all along, knowing there was no way I could
possibly understand until now – until I held both Graal and Spear together in my hands.

I guessed it now, I saw the relationship between them; and once seen, I saw what the Graal had once been, in what guise it had appeared to the first shamans of the first men, stumbling after knowledge and succour in their desperate struggle to survive. I might have laughed, if I hadn’t been so filled with awe. I knew what that ancient ceremony must have been, and in imitation of it, with reverence and even with fear, I swung the Spear high above my head. Alison saw, and summoned energy enough to scream,
‘No, Steve! You haven’t the right! Only one man—’

Too late.

The spearhead struck; but not into the base of the rough stone chalice. Into the shimmering pool of light it contained.

Interface—

And the light overflowed, and spilled, and came racing up the shaft to envelop my hands and draw me down, down to the death I expected, and out of my pain embraced. My momentum carried me on and down, down like a swimmer into deep waters.

There were clouds, clouds everywhere, and they closed over me like waves, and I thought I was going to drown. Involuntarily, stupidly I kicked out, and rose to the surface again. Looking up, I saw the shadowy coastlines of the cloud archipelago high overhead, and above them the great arching tunnel of cloud that framed a glittering arc of starry sky, moonless and clear. And coursing through it, sails billowing with moonlight, spray leaping from beneath her bows, rose the high stern of a mighty merchantman, ablaze with lanterns, laden with strange cargoes for stranger destinations. It was the same surreal seascape I’d commissioned so carefully for my office wall. But this was its great original, those eerie seas of cloud and night, those shadows the waters of the Core cast deep into the Spiral, infinite where they were only endless, the oceans over the airs of the Earth, the seas I’d sailed so often. Never without peril; yet never, also, without friends.

Now, in all their vastness, I drifted
alone. No barque to bear me, no ship to succour me; and my strength was failing. The cool clouds closed over me, and I sank back—

There was a soft discreet hiss, and the chair’s pneumatic damper stopped me. I crossed my legs and settled back comfortably, enjoying the luxurious give of the white kid upholstery, contemplating the seascape with detached pleasure. Then my intercom chimed discreetly, and I sighed and touched the hidden control.

‘Your visitor is here,’ said Claire’s voice.

‘Oh,’ I said, trying not to sound nonplussed or admit I’d completely forgotten I was expecting anyone – you never knew if they could hear. ‘Thanks, yes. Please ask him to come in!’

I sat up hastily, glanced around the office, wished I’d remembered to clear away those reports. No matter; just time to straighten my tie, and the door was opening. I was glad I’d closed the blinds; the sunlight through the outer office was blinding. That thought brought on a moment of confusion. Claire wasn’t my PA any more, hadn’t been for – what? Twelve years or more. So why – perhaps she’d brought whoever this was up, that must be it. Something from Personnel, then: oh, God. And who the hell was this, opening the door with the sun behind him?

Part of me shrivelled with potential embarrassment. Had I met him before, this character? I must have; but the face eluded me. It was a strong, distinctive face, and yet it was somehow hard to pin down; he looked very much like a number of well-groomed middle-aged businessmen, right down to the quietly immaculate suit and the silvery streaks at his temples – a touch handsomer, perhaps, and fitter, but nothing exceptional. And yet I kept seeing flashes I recognized, his tall build – only a little heavier than mine – a lithe energy in his walk, the general outline of his head, the wry lop-sided lift to his smile as he held out his hand to me, his deep resonant voice as he spoke my name. Resonant, but not just deep; it echoed all kinds of accents, but with relentless clarity. All told, an impressive-looking character, not the sort you forget meeting; yet damned if I could put a name to him, or remember where.

That made me a touch too effusive as I seated him in my best guest chair, and he waved an apologetic hand as he settled back. ‘Very comfortable,’ he remarked, looking
around. ‘Like the rest of this office, in fact. Well-designed, elegant even, yet, if you don’t mind my saying so, not at all pretentious. None of this investment art rubbish.’ He nodded at my skyscape. ‘A nice mixture of the romantic and the practical. A strong expression of personality, both the company’s, and your own. I remember liking the old atlases. I’m glad you kept those.’

An old client, from my early days in the office; that would be it. ‘Yes, I inherited those from Barry,’ I said as I poured him coffee, wondering vaguely who had brought the tray in, and where all these compliments were leading. ‘He had an even bigger collection once, but it was destroyed in a burglary.’

‘Ah yes,’ said my visitor, ‘I believe I heard. Well, Mr Fisher, I expect you’re wondering why I’m here and what I’m leading up to. I know you’ve a lot on your mind just at the moment, going through a busy period, people depending on you …’

‘Well, since you put it that way …’

‘Exactly. But I assure you, this will take little or no time, and it may be well worth your while. Mr Fisher,’ he said seriously, as I settled back into my chair, ‘you’re very comfortable here, that’s evident. And I don’t doubt you look equally at home over at C-Tran, though I don’t like those high-tech offices as much. But comfort isn’t always satisfaction. Are you satisfied? Mr Fisher, you have shown considerable skill at creating companies that run themselves.’

‘No company does that,’ I objected, a little nettled. ‘If they seem to, that’s just slow stagnation. You need active minds at the top, always – questioning, reshaping, continually seeking new business or new ways of operating. Like the old joke about the swan, you know? Floating serenely above the water, paddling like hell underneath.’

He grinned. I liked that grin; I just wished I knew where I’d seen it before. ‘Of course that’s so. And you’ve built in mechanisms to keep that happening. You yourself are part of them, but your scope is limited. You leave most of the running of this company to David Oshukwe.’

‘Of course. He’s better at it than I am. And there are people at C-Tran who I hope will be able to take over in the same way from me and Baron von Amerningen—’ Something jarred in my head, and I stopped, uncertainly.

‘And that’s precisely my point!’ said my visitor. ‘Mr Fisher, you are or will soon be as rich as most men ever feel the
need for. You have no real motive to struggle, to compete. Are you not a little lacking in … challenges? Are you not ready to try something new?’

I steepled my fingers. I didn’t like having my thoughts read. ‘Now
that,’
I said severely, ‘is a loaded question, the kind that affects share prices and brings speculators circling around in droves.’