John Rackham (7 page)

"But
you will be better off without me!" Jack retorted savagely. "Why do
you turn your face from that truth?"

Jasar
coughed loudly to interrupt. "This is nothing to do with me, at all. Ill
have
to leave you two to resolve it in your own fashion.
Again my gratitude and thanks, Madam Fairfax.
Jack,
I’ ll
not forget you." He offered his hand in a firm
grip, and then Jack saw him bow and stride off out into the gloom. By now his
half insane impulse had hardened into implacable purpose. He swung a stare on
his mother's anguished face.

"Think
not," he said, quietly but with great determination, "that I want to
leave you all alone. I would that it could be some other way. But it cannot.
Look at it fair and square, Mother. My existence stands between you and the
possibility of a full and happy life. Like it or not, and not by choice, I am
the head of this house, the landholder and freeman. Like it or not I have debts
that I cannot possibly pay. By this month's end, in my name, all that we have
will be forfeit, to be seized and possessed by the
church,
and we are both committed to serfdom. Even my Earl of Dudley himself, were he
here, could not alter that law.
As you well know.
But
if I am taken
...
missing
...
out of your way . . . dead, if you
please . . . then all is changed. And you cannot deny any of that, nor yet
argue against the sense of it."

But
she could, and did, at great and tearful length, until the tallow drip guttered
to its end and there was only the dying glow of the fire. Jack was set. He
would not be moved. In the end sheer fatigue made his mother retire to her bed
across the fireplace from him, weariness and the discreet pinch of herbs he
managed to slip into her nightcap of ale. Sleep was never farther from his
eyes, or his thoughts, as he waited in a fever of impatience for her breathing
to grow slow and steady. Time was slipping away. Would Jasar be gone yet? As
soon as ever he dared, he stirred out of the ingle-cot and set off, taking only
a moment to catch up his bow and quiver, and the long sheath-knife that had
once been his father's. Out in the starlit night he had no hesitation at all.
Trotting swift and silent he made for that sky-towering beacon-glow of blue.

It
seemed to grow and lean as he drew near, more and more enormous and impossible.
Crisscross strands of thinner blue now knitted the whole thing together like
some giant basket work in metal.

He
hesitated, had to nerve himself to run into the enclosure of the base. He felt
that familiar-by-now tingling on his skin, the lifting of his hair, that Jasar
called a force-field. Nervous as a cat in a thunderstorm he trod slowly in
toward the middle of that eight-sided space, intending to peer up, maybe to
see by what means Jasar's ship would climb so high, but as he went he was
attacked by a strange unsteadiness, as if he had become insubstantial, without
weight. He halted, starting to regret his mad impulse. He twisted his neck to
peer up. It seemed endless, a vast tube wrapped around by strand upon strand of
blue, and it drew him dizzily, like standing too near the edge of a great drop.
He staggered back to firmer footing. At least, so far as he could see, there
was no sign of Jasar and his ship.

"Pray
he has not already gone!" he whispered. "What to do?" He pulled
his stare back to ground level, to the nearest upright. Climb up?
All that way?
His heart sank at the thought. And yet, what
else was there? Strangely light-footed still he staggered to the blue beam and
laid a hand on it. It felt cool and firm, yet quivering as if alive. He hitched
his bow and quiver into security, and started climbing. At first it was a
struggle, for the upright was as thick through as his own body and smooth, but
it grew easier when he could reach the first of the cross-members and grasp it.
From there it was only a matter of nervy balancing, standing, reaching up, and
heaving
himself
on to the next bar. With a repitition
or two he was able to appreciate his curious lessened weight, and take chances
that were almost leaps. It became almost as easy as mounting a ladder. His arms
grew tired first, trembling in protest when he called on them to bend and heave,
and his fingers started to lose their clinging power. So he paused to rest, to
catch up on his breathing, and to look down.

That
was very nearly fatal. Trees were dark smudges down there, the cottage a
lighter patch that he would have been hard put to identify had it not been for
the winding silver thread of the river. Only a thread! It was a
long
way down! He grabbed for the sturdy upright, clung frantically to it
while his stomach spun one way and the whole midnight world out there went the
other. Sweat broke out all over his body, stung his eyes, clammied his skin,
was
salt in his mouth. He had a new fear, one he had never
known before, the dread conviction that he would hang here and die, slowly,
because he could
never
...
never
go back down again. Not
that
way.
Shivering, dragging in shaky breaths, he fought for calm, dared himself to look
out and down again to seek out the blue glow that was Jasar's ship. Of course
it wouldn't be there now, but perverse hope made him look. And then groan in
despair.
Because there it was.

"What
a straw-witted clod I am!" he mumbled.
"To think
that I could gain something by climbing all this way.
Small wonder Sir
Jasar
spumed
my offer of aid. I am a great fool
I
And what am I to do now? For sure I can never go back down. And if I
climb up farther, what then?" He hung, clinging to the upright, lashing
himself with scom, and shivering in earnest now that the fitful breeze could
search out his sweaty dampness. "I am a fool!" he declared. "Fit
for naught but farmer's work, and not even that, now!" He stared down once
more, trying to win the nerve to try lowering
himself
just one spar's length. And a sudden wink of bright blue fire, away down there,
caught his eye. The ship—that small spot below—it moved!

He
stared intently, seeing the blue dot slide along past the gray patch of the
cottage, around the palm's width of the cultivated strips, and swiftly to the
base of the grid. He felt the upright he cuddled suddenly sing as the ship
entered the field of force below. There came an eerie witch-wailing sound, so
high-pitched as to ache in his ears, and an upward fountaining of wind. It had
to be the ship, rushing upward. Scrambling precariously he reversed his stand
to be able to stare down into the vast well of the grid. Here it came, growing
rapidly larger, riding on that thin scream. Belatedly it occurred to Jack that
Jasar might easily go straight on past and never
see
him! He hung out crazily from one hand and waved the other wildly to and fro.

"Jasar!" he yelled, and the shout
merged in that thin scream and came out bent and strange.
"Jasar!
Jasar!"
The updraft grew to a gale as the ship
hurried close
...
and then stopped,
bobbing there in midair opposite where Jack hung and waved. There were half
seen movements within, then an eight-sided facet moved away to make a hole.

"What
in time are you doing there, you young fool, trying to kill yourself the hard
way?" The voice was stem, but Jack sensed some sympathy in it.

"I
could not have you go without me, Jasar. And I cannot go back now!"

"Neither
can
I
now, as it happens. My deadline is too tight,
for just one thing. You crazy young idiot! Oh
...
all right
...
come on.
Jump!"

"Jump?"
Jack eyed the intervening gap, swallowed painfully, felt sweat break
out on his face again, nerved himself, and sprang headfirst, aiming at the
hole. To his sickening dismay he fell
...
it felt like falling
...
slowly
across the gap, as if in a dream-world, flailing his arms helplessly until
Jasar leaned out and seized him in a strong lean hand by the slack of his tunic
shirt and hauled him inside. He collapsed in a heap on cushions, gasping, heard
the opening click shut behind him, and gasped again as the cushions surged up
against him.

Jasar
chuckled grimly. "You've let yourself in for some rare surprises, lad.
Space knows how I'm going to explain any of them to you, or if
I’ ll
have the time to try."

Jack
struggled to sit up, sensing the rebuke and feeling he had earned it.
"Just command me; tell me how I can help," he said. "That I do
not understand is no great matter. Just tell me what I am to do; that is
enough."

"Easy to say, not so easy to do.
Come and look over my shoulder and
I’ ll
try to explain what is happening right now. Sit there
in the copilot seat."

What
Jack saw on a picture screen was a series of circles that grew out rapidly
from a point, like ripples from a dropped stone. "Those are
magneto-lines," Jasar told him, "lifting us level by level, step by
step. In a while we will be at the twist-out point. Then we'll have to wait for
a few things to match up. The brain will calculate the precise moment and
direction for our jump, and set the power-levels, until everything corresponds
with my calculations. Then we go, just like that!" He snapped his fingers
briskly. "Meantime we have nothing to do but wait."

"All
this machinery," Jack struggled with the unfamiliar word, "does so
much for you. Yours must indeed be a strange world, where men do nothing but
sit and wait while machines do all the work!"

"Now just a minute!"
Jasar warned. "Don't get too sharp. Men
make the machines to do work for them while they get busy with other things
that machines can't do."

Encouraged
by the hint of argument, Jack was bold enough to retort. "I would not want
any machine to do my walking, or my climbing, for me.
Or
anything that
I
am
well able to do for myself!"

"Wouldn't,
eh? Rather do it yourself? Tell me one thing. How far can you throw one of your
arrows, with just your hand and arm?"

Jack
opened his mouth to reply, thought better of it, thought again, and then shook
his head humbly. "You are too clever for me, Sir Jasar."

"Maybe.
Maybe I have a little more experience and a better education. A bow,
lad, is a machine. It was designed, worked out, by many men over a long time.
When you apply your arrow, and then your strength to bend the bow, you are
piling up energy, gathering it, collecting it together. Then when you let go,
you let all that energy and strength go all at once, and the arrow flies far and
fast. That's the machine part of it, storing the energy and releasing it. But
it takes you, a man, to aim, to select a target, and hit it. In this ship of
mine I have a lot of machinery, a lot of energy and power. I have weapons,
too. But they all need me, my brain, my orders,
my
guidance to see that they all do what I want. If you think of a machine as an
obedient servant, you'll be a bit closer to the truth of it. And . . . we're
almost there!"

The expanding circles slowed and became a
steady set focused on a spot of light in the center. And Jack grabbed in panic
at the arms of the chair he sat in as he felt himself falling.
And falling
...
yet
without moving.
Jasar grunted and then sighed. "That's one you'll
have to take as it comes, Jack. I wouldn't know even how to begin explaining
zero-gee to you, even if we had all the time in the world. And we don't. But I
can reduce the fright of it a bit." He reached across and touched a button
in Jack's chair-arm, and stout bands of leathery stuff moved across and
restrained his thighs and chest against solidity, held him secure.
"There!" he said. "That ought to help."

It
helped a great deal and, although his stomach told him that he was still
falling, Jack could now summon up enough nerve to turn and study the dim
interior of this curious ship in more detail. Not that it meant any more than
when he had seen it first.

"Have we already departed from my
world?" he wondered.

"No, not yet.
We are sitting at the apex of the
grid." Jasar reached across again, touched a burton or two, and a screen
lit up in front of Jack's eager eyes, a picture to look at in awe. 'Turn this
control left or right, and the picture will move with
it,
and this one for up and down. Have fun!"

And,
after a little preliminary fumbling before he could work his fingers together
with each other, it was fun to be able to sweep over such a wondrous view. The
river now was really a thread, barely visible, and he could see all the way to
Castle Dudley, the pale stone of the walls catching the moonlight. The rest of
the countryside wasn't too well known to him. He had never had a lot of
inducement to travel far from his own fireside, and it was
M
_excitement at all to see, even this way,
places he had "never visited. But when, daringly, he trained the viewer
upward to the stars, he was caught breathless.