Land and Overland - Omnibus (79 page)

Berise was the first to speak, and when she did so her voice carried an unmistakable note of anger. "It seems to me that you were somewhat high-handed in tampering with our ship," she said to Sondeweere. "Had you told us the full story when you came on board, we could have dropped you off again and returned to Overland unmolested."

"But would you have done so?" Sondeweere gave them a wan smile. "Would any of you have chosen to be so … logical?"

"I can't speak for the others, but
I
certainly would," Berise said, and all at once Toller intuited that the challenge to Sondeweere had less to do with the ship and the outcome of the expedition than with rivalry for Bartan's affections. He found time, in spite of the extremeness of their plight, to be once again awed by the female mind and to become slightly afraid of Berise. She was another Gesalla. Now that he thought of it, all women seemed to be Gesallas to one extent or another, and a man was no match for them in their chosen arena.

"The skyship has not been harmed beyond repair," Sondeweere pointed out. "I purposely brought you to a remote area where you are unlikely to be discovered by Farlanders, so there is ample time for the work to be carried out."

Then what was the point of collapsing the balloon?
Toller thought.
The woman has more to tell us…

Bartan took a step towards Sondeweere. "The others may leave if they wish—I will stay here with you."

"No, Bartan! Have you forgotten why I was brought here in the first place? The symbonites would slay me rather than permit me to associate with a functional male of my own race."

Toller, with his soldier's interest in tactics, was locked into the problem he had set himself.
The reason Sondeweere collapsed the balloon had to be that she intended the ship never to fly again. In which case…

"There is an alternative course open to all of you," Sondeweere said. "I will describe it for you, but you must make the decision for yourselves. If you decide against it, I will help repair your ship and will undertake to guide you back to Overland, while I remain here. If you decide in favour of it, you must be apprised of all the dangers and…"

"We decide in favour," Toller cut in. "How far is the symbonite spaceship from here? And how well is it guarded?"

Sondeweere turned to face him. "I am surprised by you, Toller Maraquine."

"There is no need," Toller said. "I am not a clever man, but I have learned that there are some issues which—no matter how wise and learned the disputants—can be settled in only one way. It is a way I understand."

"The killing way."

"The way of justifiable force, of blocking an enemy sword with a sword of my own."

"Say no more, Toller—I am in no position to make moral judgments. It was my idea to take the ship, because it offers my only hope of escape from this drear and unfulfilled existence, but there are many dangers."

"We are prepared to face danger," Toller said. He glanced around his companions, associating them with the statement.

"But why should any of you be prepared to risk death on my behalf?"

"We all had our own good reasons for taking part in this expedition."

Sondeweere moved closer to Toller, all the while gazing into his face, and for the first time since their meeting he sensed she was employing her extraordinary powers of mind.

"Yours was not a good reason," she said sadly.

"How long must we stand around in this freezing quagmire?" he demanded, stamping his feet on the squelching ground. "We are likely to die of the ague unless we stir our bones. How far from here is the ship?"

"A good ninety miles." Sondeweere spoke with a new briskness, apparently having accepted that an irrevocable decision had been reached. "But I have a transporter which can take us there."

"A wagon?"

"A kind of wagon."

"Good—this is no country for a forced march." Relieved at having been spared any further deliberation, Toller ran with the others to the gondola for the unloading of weapons and food supplies. He took one of the five muskets for his own use, but without much enthusiasm. The net of pressure spheres which accompanied it was likely to be an encumbrance in close combat, and the time it took to lock on a new sphere before each shot detracted seriously from the weapon's efficacy.

"Look what I have found." Zavotle, who was shivering violently, extended an unsteady hand in which he was holding a brakka shaft around which was rolled the blue-and-grey flag of Kolcorron.

Toller took it and hurled it into the ground like a spear. "That's our obligation to Chakkell taken care of—from now on we go about our own business."

He descended from the gondola and was placing his supplies with the others when it occurred to him that Sondeweere was no longer with the company. He scanned the darkness and in that instant heard a strange sound, one which was made up of other sounds—the hissing of a giant snake, the snorting of a bluehorn, the creaking and rattling of a wagon. A moment later he discerned the squarish outline of a vehicle which was slowly approaching the ship. Curious as to what kind of draught animal was responsible for such a cacophony, he went forward to meet Sondeweere, and halted—confounded—as it became apparent that the lurching vehicle was moving under its own power.

The rear of it resembled a traditional wagon covered with canvas supported on stretchers, but in front was a fat cylinder from which ascended a tube belching white vapours into the murky air. Sondeweere was visible as a pale blur behind the glass screen of a cabin-like structure which formed the forepart of the vehicle's main body. It drew to a halt on wide, black-rimmed wheels, the noise from it decreased to a ruminative snuffling and Sondeweere leapt down from the cabin.

"The wagon propels itself by harnessing the power of steam," she said, forestalling a barrage of questions. "I sometimes use it as a caravan when I'm travelling long distances, and it is well suited for our purposes."

The journey across that region of Farland was one of the most singular Toller had ever undertaken.

Part of the strangeness sprang from the unique governing circumstances and the ambience. In spite of the protection offered by the transporter's canvas top, the five astronauts were oppressed by a clammy coldness unlike anything in their previous experience. Dawn came, not as a fountaining of golden light and heat as on Overland, but as a stealthy change in the colour of the environment, from black to a leaden grey. Even the air within the vehicle became tinged with grey, a mix of exhaled breath and dank mist seeping in from outside which seemed to curdle around the passengers and chill their blood. Only Sondeweere, clad in substantial tunic and trews, was unaffected by the penetrating cold.

Toller and the others parted the canvas frequently, hungry for the sight of an alien world and its inhabitants, but found little to inspire wonder in the glimpses of blue-green grasslands swept by curtains of rain and fog. Toller noted that the road on which they were travelling was paved and well maintained, much superior to anything on Overland. As it gradually widened they got their first glimpse of Farlander dwellings.

The buildings drew some comment, not because they were exotic in any way but because of their sheer ordinariness. Had it not been for the steeply pitched roofs the unadorned single-storey cottages could have blended in with the local architecture almost anywhere on the twin worlds. There was no sign of their inhabitants so early in the morning, and Toller thought it entirely reasonable that they should choose to remain abed for as long as possible, rather than venture out in such an inhospitable clime.

"It isn't always as cold and gloomy as this," Sondeweere explained at one stage, speaking from her isolated position at the vehicle's tiller. "We are in the mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere, and you happen to have arrived in the middle of winter."

Toller was familiar with the concept of seasons, thanks to his upbringing in one of the philosophy families of old Kolcorron, but it was new to the younger members of the group, mentally conditioned by living on a world whose equator was exactly in the plane of its orbit around the sun. At first the idea that Farland was tilted was quite difficult for them to grasp, and then as it began to take hold they questioned Sondeweere extensively, intrigued by the thought of days and nights which constantly varied in length, and the consequences thereof. For her part, Sondeweere seemed pleased to be able to put aside the symbon component of her identity for a while, and to react naturally as a human among humans.

Listening to the intercourse, Toller was occasionally overcome by a sense of unreality. He had to keep reminding himself that Sondeweere had undergone an incredible metamorphosis, that the group was on its way to do battle with alien beings for the possession of a ship which had been wrought out of miracles and magic. And, above all, that every member of the group could easily die in the hours that lay ahead. The young warriors appeared to have dismissed that thought, supremely confident—as he had once been—that death could not touch them.

Stay that way as long as you can, he advised them mentally, aware that the nerve-thrumming exhilaration which had always sustained him on the eve of battle was totally absent. Was it the reaction of a sun-dweller to this bleak and mist-shrouded world whose clammy coldness penetrated him to the marrow? Or were premonitions at work? Was the capacity for any kind of pleasure being withdrawn from him in preparation for the final disillusionment?

During one of his periodic inspections of the dreary landscape his attention was caught by the sight of a distant building which, as at last befitted an alien world, was unlike any he had seen before. Nested in a narrow valley, it was little more than a silhouette of near-black among dark greys, but it was huge in comparison to the Farlander houses and had numerous chimneys which plumed smoke into the sullen sky.

"An iron foundry which supplies factories throughout this region," Sondeweere explained in response to his query. "On Overland the various operations would be carried out in the open air, but here—because of the climate—it is necessary to have an enclosure. The native Farlanders would doubtless have produced similar structures in due time, but the symbonites have artificially accelerated the process of industrialisation. It is one of their crimes against nature in general and against the people of this world in particular."

But you too are a symbonite,
Toller thought.
How can you criticise the activities
of
your own kind?

The question, far-reaching though he sensed it to be, was at once displaced by others, less philosophical in nature, which had begun to swarm in his mind. Previously, far out of his intellectual depth, he had conjured a simplistic vision of superbeings effortlessly taking control of a primitive world—but now it was dawning on him that the symbonites had been in a situation similar to that of a platoon of well-armed Kolcorronian soldiers facing a thousand Gethan tribesmen. In a straight and simple conflict, no matter how superior their weaponry, they were bound to be overwhelmed—therefore other strategies had been called for.

"Tell me," he said to Sondeweere, "have the Farlanders never offered any resistance to the invaders?"

"They are unaware of any intrusion," she replied, eyes fixed on the dull-gleaming road ahead, "and who could possibly make them aware? You were quite unable to accept anything that Bartan told you about me—so just imagine how you would have reacted had he told you that King Chakkell and Queen Daseene and their children, plus all the aristocrats in the land and
their
children, were alien conquerors in human guise! Would you have believed him and tried to lead a rebellion? Or would you have dismissed him as a raving lunatic?"

"But you speak of the ruling classes. You told us that the symbon spores descended on this world at random, and that they had no choice as regards their hosts."

"Yes, but can't you see that symbonites in any society would quickly infiltrate and dominate the power structure?" Sondeweere went on to outline her view of the developments on Farland over the previous three centuries. In the beginning was the gulf of incomprehension which exists between the masses and the rulers in any primitive society. As far as the indigenous Farlanders were concerned, their lords and masters—already mysterious and god-like—gradually became more innovative, more inventive. They introduced new ideas, such as steam engines for heavy work, and with each step forward their position became more unassailable.

They were forcing the pace of industrial development, but with a sure hand and with patience. Having started with perhaps as few as six symbonite individuals, they well understood the need to proceed with caution, but as decade followed decade they laid down the foundations for a symbonite culture which was destined to dominate an entire world. They mingled freely with the native population, but also had retreats in which no Farlander ever set foot, secret places where they carried out research work and experimented with scientific ideas which might have excited alarm had they been made public. It was in one of those protected enclaves that the symbonite spaceship had been designed and built.

As Sondeweere was speaking Toller began to piece together from stray references a picture of her own lonely existence on the unprepossessing planet. The native Farlanders saw her as a grotesque caricature of a normal being, a freak which for some inscrutable reason was under the protection and patronage of their masters. They tolerated her presence among them, but made no attempts to communicate.

To the self-interested symbonites she was a mild encumbrance, a threat which had been neutralised. At first they had tried to establish a rapport with Sondeweere, but in return she had displayed all the traits which had led them to forestall the emergence of human-based symbonites—resentment, contempt, hatred and implacable hostility among them—and since then they had been content to keep her under continual telepathic surveillance. They learned what they could from her, stole what they could from her mind, and waited for her to die. Time was on their side. They were a new race and as such potentially immortal; she was an individual—vulnerable and impermanent…