Eyes of the Calculor (3 page)

Captain Raffe Terian seldom steered the Titan. As captain he tended the running and security of the town-sized wing, managing the provisions, waste disposal, security, and maintenance of the living areas. He had a bridge from which he could adjust the course, but in practice this was little more than his office. This trip was quite routine, it was merely to transport aviad refugees from the humans' Carpenteria mayorate of the far north to Tasmania Island, where the mayorate of Avian was barely six years old. It was ironic that so many aviads were often born to human parents, so that the humans who hated them were their best source of recruits. Terian noted that they were above the Central Confederation's lands, but borders made little difference at a height of twelve miles. Even crawling along at an airspeed of just seventy miles per hour they would be above Tasmania Island in twelve hours.

"It is hard to believe that there is a battlefield down there," said Watch Officer Varel, standing at the observation plate with her arms folded behind her back.

"The Central Confederation and the Southmoors, I believe," replied Captain Terian. "It is nice to see humans killing each other instead of us."

"With respect, Fras, I never like to see anyone killing anyone," retorted Varel.

"Spoken like someone shielded from the tender attentions of a human mob, Watch Officer. What has been your background with humans?"

"I have been shot twice and raped once during the course of recruiting five dozen aviad brethren from among the humans. I have also killed eleven times."

Terian shook his head. "After all that, you still have a trace of compassion for the human exterminators?"

"They are just afraid of us, Fras Captain. Aviads are so much better in so many ways."

"That does not make it any more pleasant to be killed by them. Some factions say we should kill them all—"

The console before the captain suddenly hissed, then billowed acrid smoke. The light strips blackened and failed too, but clear panels in the roof allowed light from Mirrorsun to illuminate the interior of the Titan. Everything electrical had smoked, melted, or exploded at the same instant.

"What in all hells has happened?" demanded Captain Terian, fanning at the smoke between him and the ruined console.

"The nearest engine pod is trailing smoke, Fras Captain," reported Varel, staring through a roof panel. "Its propeller is just spinning unpowered."

"Get up to the navigation bubble, check if any others have failed."

Watch Officer Seegan burst into the bridge as Varel was climbing the steps. He reported that there was smoke everywhere, and that the passengers were beginning to panic.

"All engine pods are trailing smoke, Fras Captain," called Varel from the navigation bubble. "Some propellers have jammed, others are just spinning unpowered."

"All?" cried the incredulous captain.

"All that I can see from here."

"Then we are going to lose the sunwing."

By now the smoke was dispersing, but in the distance someone was having hysterics and screaming that they were all going to die.

"Even with total loss of power this thing will take over two hours to glide to the ground," Terian pointed out as he hurriedly thought through some figures he had learned for an examination years earlier. "That gives us space to breathe."

"Fras Captain, breathing could actually be a problem; we are also losing air pressure," reported Seegan, staring at a large me-

chanical dial. "We will be dead ninety minutes before the air can be breathed."

Terian closed his eyes and put his hands over his ears as he thought for a frantic moment.

"Perhaps not," he decided. "Draw your guns, come with me."

Although there had been safety drills aboard the Titan, there was no precedent for total failure of all electrical systems with no warning whatsoever. They were at twice the height of Mount Everest, although none of them knew of Mount Everest as anything more than a folktale.

The first thought of the passengers was to escape from the smoke, and the evacuation drills had made the location of the parachutes common knowledge. One of the musketeers strapped on a parachute, then led a group of passengers to the ferry bay of the Titan. The ramp was normally released by electrical relays when at lower altitudes, but now the switches remained firmly locked. Selecting an area of the low, sloping roof, the musketeer began slashing at the tough fabric. The already depleted air rushed out all the more quickly, sucking acrid smoke and fumes from the sunwing.

Eight of the passengers tumbled out through the hole, but within minutes five of them were dead, suffocated as they hung from their parachute straps in the rarefied air. Three others knew that survival depended upon reaching breathable air quickly, and did not open their parachutes. By the time they had reached denser air, however, they were dead from the wind chill. They had been dressed for the warm, comfortable cabins of the Titan.

Back aboard the crippled sunwing another three had died, suffocated by the smoke, but the captain had been quick to grasp what options were available for those aboard the doomed craft. Crippled the Titan might be, but it was descending in a long, shallow glide and would take a very long time to hit the ground. He and the two officers left the smoking control deck, shouting for all that could hear to make for the captain's cabin, and to ignore the parachutes. He got a mixed reception from the passengers, and even his authority could not convince them that true safety did not lie with immediate

escape. The captain seized a woman who was leading her two children aft, shouting at her to come with him. A confused man knocked him to the deck and tried to lead the family away. Watch Officer Varel shot the man dead.

Fifteen minutes after the catastrophic failure, three more passengers on the Titan were dead, asphyxiated in the corridors whose air pressure had by now become equal with the rarefied atmosphere outside. After half an hour the sunwing had shed six miles of its height and was down to thirty thousand feet. In the captain's cabin, two men, three women, and two children were huddled together in the increasing cold, yet they could still breathe. The cabin was airtight, and had contained no electrical devices. Through the single forward observation plate they watched as detail on the Mirrorsun-lit ground gradually grew more distinct. They moved little. One of the crew, a monk of the Avianese Gentheist Church, talked them through meditative breathing exercises. They were down to eighteen thousand feet at the end of the first hour. Slowly the captain bled the air from the cabin, and breathing became more difficult.

"I thought the idea was to save air," said the mother of the children.

"The Titan is descending more slowly in the denser air, so I don't know how long it will take to reach a level safe for parachuting."

"What do you mean?"

"The pressure in here is that of two thousand feet above the ground, and we are nine times higher. The air outside can be breathed but it is very thin. Decompression sickness will soon kill us if we open the door and jump now, so we need to slowly accustom our bodies to the lower pressure."

"And if we are approaching the salt water before we are accustomed?"

"Then we take a chance and jump anyway."

After two hours they were a mere mile above ground.

"We are over Southmoor territory," said the captain. "Not a good place to jump."

"Fras Captain, will we reach the Rochestrian Commonwealth?" asked the watch officer.

"Yes. In ten minutes, I estimate. Now listen to me, and listen carefully. The pressure outside must be nearly the same as in here, so I am about to open the door. Go to your cabins and collect all your money and papers. Put on the heaviest clothing and boots that you have, then come back here for your parachutes."

The air outside the cabin was cold but breathable as they emerged, but Captain Terian discovered another problem. There had only been twelve parachutes aboard the Titan. Eight had been taken by those who had jumped at twelve miles.

The passengers quickly returned, dressed in coats and boots. The officers shed their jackets for bush coats.

"The mother, Watch Officer Varel, Frelle Tarmia, and yourself will have parachutes," the captain said to Seegan as he helped him into a parachute's harness. "You and Varel can hold a child each as you jump."

"That is only six of us, Fras Captain."

"I know. You will have to look after the group on the ground. Get them to Rochester and the safe house."

"You are going down with the wing?"

"In the absence of any realistic suggestions to the contrary, yes. I hereby surrender my authority to you, beginning when the Titan crashes."

Two hours and forty-five minutes after the invisible pulse of electromagnetic energy had crippled the Titan, the captain helped the six other survivors out through the rent in the sunwing's fabric made by the musketeer. In another five minutes all six were alive and gathering together on the ground in the darkness while the sunwing glided on, trailing smoke from the central section. Aboard the Titan, the fires set by the captain consumed sensitive documents and maps while he exchanged clothing with one of the dead passengers.

The ground was very close as the captain selected a bulkhead and put his back to it. A minute went by, another, then yet another. With a ground speed of fifty miles per hour, the Titan scraped trees, fences, and bushes, then ploughed into lush grass and rich soil. Branches, posts, and rocks gouged through living cellulose spars, ribs, and fabric. Bushes and small trees were torn from the ground,

and electrical engines were ripped from their mountings and went tumbling across the fields. Then there was silence and stillness.

The full span of the Titan lay like a crumpled blue ribbon across the green pastures of the northern Rochestrian Commonwealth, still complete to a distant viewer, but internally shattered, with its belly torn out. Over two dozen sheep had died as they slept, shepherds had run screaming, mothers in nearby hamlets had dragged their children under the beds, the Kyabram town militia had been called out, and every dog that had been under the Titan's glide path was barking hysterically. It was dawn before anyone dared to approach the immense wreck, and it was to be several days before it had been completely explored. No survivors were found.

Some distance away, Watch Officer Seegan quickly gathered the survivors together and had the parachutes bundled and buried. He led his charges across a field, then along a hedge-fringed lane, walking for a dot on a line map that he had salvaged. As they hurried through the darkness, they rehearsed their story and roles.

"So who are we?" Seegan asked the youngest child for the third time.

"We're hikers, returning from a picnic."

"And where do we come from?"

"The Central Confederation. We're going to the paraline wayside, to take the pedal train to Rochester."

"Good, good. And what do you say if anyone asks you if you saw the huge flying thing?"

"My mother told me not to talk to strangers."

"Excellent, you have it."

By now they had turned onto a cattle track and were picking their way wearily among the muddy puddles and piles of droppings.

"How much further?" asked the child peevishly.

"According to the map five miles, but walk slowly; we want to arrive after dawn. Now try to look as if you enjoy this sort of thing. Remember, everyone, we are aviads and this is a human mayorate. The actual killing of aviads has been illegal in the Rochestrian Commonwealth for the past twenty years, but a lynch mob of yokels will not bother about fine points of legislation."

It took many hours of hard and determined tramping to reach the wayside. The dot on the map that denoted Stanhope wayside was transformed into an earth and timber platform, a rain shelter, the wayside master's cottage, some sheep pens, and a dozen cottages. As the sun rose the children sat sullenly, huddled together for warmth. The adults bought tickets and bread at the wayside kiosk.

"Did you see that thing that flew over?" asked the serving girl.

'The long thing, trailing smoke and flames, yes, we did, from our camp," replied Watch Officer Seegan.

"I was so frightened. My Garren and I, we were awake and, well, we were awake. He grabbed his birdshot musket and set off after it with the Stanhope town militia. Garren's so brave."

"But it was flying. How could they catch it?"

"Oh, it crashed. You can just see the wreck from the town's lookout tower."

"Oh. Does he think it might be dangerous?"

"Silly, it's not alive," the girl giggled. "It's like a paraline train, just a machine. Except that it's pushed by forbidden engines, not honest muscle. Garren says they might capture evil heretics in the wreck and turn them over to the Gentheist church."

"Ah, yes. Good, good."

"They're bird people, those aviads. Dirty folk, they sleep in big nests made of twigs, and lay eggs."

"Really? I have never met any."

"Strange things happenin'. Why, a couple of hours before that thing crashed, the wayside master's new clock and desk calculor both burned, and at exactly the same time, too. Both powered by electrical essence, they were. Electrical essence is really lightning, you know. What I says is that lightning is always lightning, you just can't tame it. My, we were runnin' about with pails of sand and water, he were lucky that the cottage didn't burn down."

"How amazing! We were far from all that. Close to nature. That is the saying of all hikers: Close to nature, close to Deity."

"Aye, yes, that's good. Where are you folk from? You don't sound like locals."

"Hah, you are very observant. We are from the Central Confed-

eration, on a holiday. The Confederation Guild of Accountants Hiking Club. See, my papers."

"Oooh. Sorry, like, I don't read."

"We have just hiked from Kyabram. Lovely city."

"You hiked from Kyabram? Gor, you're lucky to still be alive and carryin' your purse. Dangerous country, freebooters, you know."

"Really? We were not told."