Land and Overland - Omnibus (47 page)

Now he was reaping the reward for his manipulation of himself and others, and something in Trinchil's manner was making him fear that the reward might contain an element of physical pain. Alarmed, Bartan shaded his eyes from the sun and studied the shimmering marshland again, hoping to pick out some feature which would have a stimulative effect on his memory. Almost at once he noticed a kink in the horizontal line which was the area's far boundary, a kink which might indicate a narrow extension of the marsh in a river-bed. How would that look from the air? A thin white finger pointing west? Was he deceiving himself again or was there just such an image buried in some recess of his mind? And was it linked to an even fainter vision of lush, rolling grasslands traversed by clear streams?

Deciding to take the final gamble, Bartan produced a loud peal of laughter, using all his vocal skills to make it sound totally natural and unforced. Trinchil's silver-stubbled jaw sagged in surprise and the discontented babble from the rest of the group abruptly ceased.

"I see nothing amusing in our situation," Trinchil said. "And even less in yours," he added ominously.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry." Bartan giggled and knuckled his eyes, the picture of a man fighting to control genuine merriment. "It was cruel of me, but you know I can't resist my little jokes—and I just
had
to see your face when you thought the whole venture had come to naught. I do apologise, most sincerely."

"Have you lost your reason?" Trinchil said, hands clenching into huge leathery clubs. "Explain yourself at once."

"Gladly." Bartan made a theatrical gesture which took in the whole of the marshy basin. "You will all be delighted to hear that yonder dish of mildewed porridge is the very landmark for which I have been aiming since the outset. At the other side of it, just beyond those hills, you will find an abundance of the finest agricultural land you have ever seen, stretching for league upon league in every direction, as far as the eye can see. My friends, we are almost at journey's end. Soon our days of toil and tribulation will be over, and we will be able to lay claim to the…"

"That's enough of your wind," Trinchil shouted, raising his hands to damp the rising note of excitement among some of the onlookers. "We have suffered this kind of rhetoric from you too many times in the past—why should we believe you this time?"

"I still say we should turn north," Raderan said, stepping forward. "And if we're going to do that it would be best to do it from here rather than waste time circling that swamp on the say-so of a fool."

"Fool is too kindly a word for him," said Raderan's hulking gradewife, Firenda. After a moment's thought she suggested what she considered a more appropriate description, bringing a gasp from several of the other women, and an even more ecstatic howl of laughter from the children.

"It is well that you are protected by your skirts, madam," Bartan protested, privately doubting his ability to stand up to the giantess for more than a few seconds, and to his dismay she immediately began to fumble with the knot of her waistcord.

"If it is only my shift that deters you," she grated, "we can soon…"

"Leave this to me, woman!" Trinchil had drawn himself up to his full height and was conspicuously asserting his authority. "We are all reasonable people here, and it behoves us to settle our disputes through the exercise of reason. You would agree with that, wouldn't you, Mister Drumme?"

"Wholeheartedly," Bartan said, his relief tempered by a suspicion that Trinchil's intentions towards him had not suddenly become charitable. Beyond the circle of people he saw the yellow-haired figure of Sondeweere part the canopy of a wagon and begin to descend to the ground. He guessed she had hung back, knowing he was in fresh trouble and not wishing to increase his discomfiture with her presence. She was wearing a sleeveless green blouse and close-fitting trews of a darker shade. The garments were quite standard for young women in farming communities, but it was evident to Bartan that she wore them with a special flair which distinguished her from all the others, and which signified equally rare qualities of mind. Even with his present difficult situation to occupy his thoughts, he was able to take a keen pleasure in the graceful, languorous movement of her hips as she climbed down the side of the wagon.

"That being the case,
Mister
Drumme," Trinchil said, moving towards Bartan's wagon, "I think the time has come to rouse your sleeping passenger and make her start paying her way."

This was the moment Bartan had been hoping to avert since the beginning of the expedition. "Ah… It would occasion a lot of hard work."

"Not as much hard work as crossing those hills and perhaps finding a swamp or desert on the other side."

"Yes, but…"

"But what?" Trinchil tugged at the wagon's stained canvas cover. "You
have
got an airship in here, and you
can
fly it, can't you? If it transpired that you had turned my niece's head with a pack of lies I would be very angry. More angry than you have ever seen me. More angry than you can even
imagine."

Bartan glanced at Sondeweere, who was just reaching the edge of the group, and was taken aback to see that she was gazing at him with an expression which was frankly questioning, not to say doubtful. "Of course, my airship is in there," he said hurriedly. "Well, it's more of an air
boat
than an airship, but I can assure you that I am an excellent pilot."

"Ship, boat or coracle—we're listening to no more of your excuses." Trinchil began unfastening the cover and other men willingly went forward to help him.

Not daring to object, Bartan watched the operation in a mood of increasing gloom. The airboat was the only object of any value he had inherited from his father, a man whose passion for flying had gradually impoverished and eventually killed him. Its airworthiness was extremely dubious, but Bartan had concealed that fact when presenting the case for his being allowed to join the expedition. An aerial scout could be of great value to the commune, he had argued, and Trinchil had reluctantly assigned wagon-space to the craft. There had been several occasions during the journey when reconnaissance from the air would indeed have been worth the trouble of sending the boat aloft, and each time Bartan had tested his ingenuity to the limit by devising plausible reasons for remaining on the ground. Now, however, it looked as though the day of reckoning had finally arrived.

"See how eagerly they scrabble," he said, taking up a position beside Sondeweere. "It's like a sport to them! Anyone would think they doubted my ability as a pilot."

"That will be soon put to the test." Sondeweere spoke with less warmth than Bartan would have liked. "I only hope you're better as a pilot than as a guide."

"Sondy!"

"Well," she said unrepentantly, "you must admit you've made a fine pig's arse of everything so far."

Bartan gazed down at her in wounded bafflement. Sondweere's face was possibly the most beautiful he had ever seen—with large, wide-spaced blue eyes, perfect nose and well-delineated voluptuous lips—and his every instinct informed him she had an inner loveliness to match. But now and then she would make an utterance which, taken at its face value, indicated that she was quite as coarse as some of the slovens with whom circumstances of birth had forced her to associate. Was this a matter of deliberate policy on her part? Was she, in her own way, warning him that the agricultural life he was about to embrace was not for milksops? His thoughts were abruptly diverted to more practical matters by the sight of a farmer aboard the wagon picking up a green-painted box and preparing to drop it to the ground.

"Careful!" Bartan shouted, darting forward. "You have crystals in there!"

The farmer shrugged, unimpressed, and lowered the box into Bartan's hands.

"Let me have the purple one too," Bartan said. When he had received the second box he tucked one under each arm and carried them to a safe resting place on a flat-topped boulder. The green pikon and purple halvell crystals—both extracted from the soil by the root systems of brakka trees—were not really dangerous unless allowed to mingle inside a sealed container. But they were expensive and difficult to obtain outside the largest communities, and Bartan was very solicitous with the small quantities remaining to him. Accepting that he was now virtually committed to making a flight in spite of the hazards involved, he began to supervise the unpacking and assembly of the airboat.

Although the little gondola was extremely light he had no worries about its strength, and the jet engine—being made of brakka wood—was practically indestructible. Bartan's main concern was with the gasbag. The varnished linen of the envelope had been in doubtful condition when he had packed it, and the long period of stowage in the back of the wagon was likely to have caused further deterioration. He inspected the material and the stitching of the panels and load tapes as the gasbag was being rolled out to its full length on the ground, and what he found added to his misgivings about the proposed flight. The linen had a papery feel to it and there were numerous loose ends of thread wavering on the tapes.

This is madness,
Bartan thought.
I'm not going to get myself killed for anybody.

He was choosing between the alternatives of facing up to Trinchil and simply refusing to fly, or of surreptitiously disabling the boat by putting a hole in the envelope, when he noticed that a change was coming over the other members of the group. The men were asking questions about the construction and operation of the craft, and were listening to his replies with interest. Even the unruliest children had become more respectful in their manner. It slowly dawned on Bartan that the settlers and their families had never been close to a flying machine before, and a sense of wonder was stirring to life inside them. The boat and its strange mechanisms, seen for the first time, were proof that he really was a flier. Within minutes his status had improved from that of mistrusted novice farmer, a liability to the commune, to that of a man possessing arcane knowledge, rare skills and a godlike ability to walk the clouds. His new eminence was very gratifying—and it was a pity it was destined to be so brief.

"How long would it take to reach the hills with a device like this?" Trinchil said, with no trace of his usual condescension.

"Thirty minutes or so."

Trinchil whistled. "It is truly wondrous. Are you not afraid?"

"Not in the least," Bartan said, regretting that he could no longer delay making his position clear. "You see, I have absolutely no intention of trying to fly this…"

"Bartan!" Sondeweere arrived at his side in a swirling of yellow tresses and put an arm around his waist. "I'm so
proud
of you."

He did his best to smile. "There's something I ought…"

"I want to whisper." She drew his head down, at the same time applying her body to his in such a way that he felt the warm pressure of her breasts against his ribs and her pubis nuzzling into his thigh. "I'm sorry I was rude to you," she breathed in his ear. "I was worried about us, you see, and Uncle Jop was getting into such a dark mood. I couldn't
bear
it if anything got in the way of our marriage, but now everything is all right again. Show them all how wonderful you are, Bartan—just for me."

"I…" Bartan's voice faded as he became aware that Trinchil was staring at him with an inquisitive expression.

"You were about to say something." There seemed to be a rekindling of the old animosity in Trinchil's eyes. "Something about not flying."

"Not flying?" Bartan felt Sondeweere's hand slide down his back and come to rest on his buttocks. "No, no,
no
! I was going to say I'd be in no danger because I have no intention of trying to fly too fast, or of performing any injudicious aerobatics. Aviation is a business with me, you know. Strictly a business."

"I'm glad to hear it," Trinchil said. "I'd be the last man in the world to tell another how to conduct his business, but may I offer you a pertinent piece of advice?"

"Please do," Bartan replied, wondering why he found the older man's grin less than reassuring.

Trinchil clamped an enormous hand on each of Bartan's shoulders and gave him a mock-playful shake. "If, by any chance, you
fail
to find good land beyond those hills—keep on flying in a straight line and be sure to put as many leagues as you can between the two of us."

The boat was handling well and—had he not been fearful of a sudden and catastrophic failure of the gasbag—the experience of being airborne again might have produced an equivalent lift in Bartan's spirits.

Enigmatic though it had seemed to the farmers, the engine designed and built by his father had only three basic controls. A throttle fed pikon and halvell into a combustion chamber, and the hot miglign gas thus generated was exhausted through an aft-facing jet pipe to propel the boat. The pipe could be swivelled laterally by means of a tiller to give some directional control; and when required another lever diverted gas upwards into the envelope to create and maintain buoyancy. As miglign was lighter than air, even when cool, the assemblage was compact and efficient.

Bartan took the boat to a height of fifty feet and sailed it in a circle around the wagons, partly to please Sondeweere, mainly to check that the extra strain of turning would not be too much for the attachment gussets. Relieved at finding the craft still airworthy for the time being at least, he gave a stately wave to the watching farmers and set a course to the west. It was just past noon, with the sun very close to the zenith, so he was riding in the protective shadow of the gasbag and could view his surroundings with unusual clarity. The marshlands stretched out ahead of him like pastel-tinted snow, in contrast to which the distant hills seemed almost black. Apart from the occasional flash of an extra-bright meteor there was little to be seen in the sky. Its brilliance was overpainting all but the brightest stars, and even the Tree—the most important constellation in the southern heavens—was barely visible to his left.