Land and Overland - Omnibus (80 page)

"There's one! More than one!" The exclamations came from Wraker, who had raised the canvas cover to look outside, triggering a general rush to do the same.

"Remember, they must not see us," Toller said as he created a narrow gap between the material and the transporter's wooden siding. He peered out and saw they were passing through a village which to his eyes was remarkable in that it was so unremarkable. It seemed that craftsmen everywhere—masons, carpenters, smiths—came up with universal practical solutions to universal practical problems. The village, like the isolated houses seen earlier, might have been anywhere in the temperate zones of Land, but its inhabitants were a different matter.

They resembled humans, but were considerably shorter, and with quite different bodily proportions. Their hooded and layered garments, obviously designed to turn away rain, did not disguise the fact that their spines arched forward almost as semi-circles, predisposing them to waddle with out-thrust bellies and faces tilted upwards. Their legs were short and stubby, but not as truncated as their arms, which angled outwards from the shoulder and ended where the human elbow might have been placed. Massive hands, which seemed to have only five fingers, clenched and unclenched as they walked. It was difficult to see much of their faces, but they seemed pale and hairless, the features all but lost in folds of fat.

"Elegant little fellows," Bartan commented. "Is that the enemy?"

"Do not be complacent," Sondeweere said over her shoulder. "They are strong, and they seem to have little fear of pain or injury. They are also fanatical in their obedience to authority."

Toller saw that the Farlanders, possibly on their way to jobs, were regarding the passing transporter with interest, buried eyes emitting flickers of amber and white. "Have they noticed you?"

"Possibly, but such curiosity as their dull minds can muster is probably directed towards the vehicle—motorised transporters are still quite rare. I am privileged in a way."

"How well organised and equipped is their army?"

"The Farlanders do not have an army in your sense of the word, Toller Maraquine. A world state has been in existence for over a hundred years and internecine conflict has been outmoded, thanks to the symbonites, but there is an immense body of citizenry with a title I can best translate as the Public Force. They single-mindedly execute any task assigned to them—flood control, forest clearance, the building of new roads…"

"So they are not trained fighters?"

"What they lack in individual skills they make up for in numbers," Sondeweere said. "And I repeat—they are very strong in spite of their lack of stature."

Zavotle aroused himself from a contemplation of inner pain. "They are not like us, and yet… How can I put it? They have more points of similarity than of difference."

"Our sun is close to the centre of a galaxy, where the stars are very close together. It is possible that all the habitable worlds in this region of space were seeded with life aeons ago, perhaps more than once. An interstellar traveller might find humans or their cousins on many planets."

"What is a galaxy?" Zavotle said, initiating a long question-and-answer session in which Toller, Wraker and Berise participated, eager for the gifts of knowledge which Sondeweere had acquired both from the symbonites and her own powers of deduction, enhanced beyond the understanding of ordinary men and women. For Toller, the realisation that each of the hundreds of misty whirlpools visible in the night sky was a conglomeration of perhaps a hundred thousand million suns came as a blend of mind-stretching delight and poignant regrets. He was simultaneously uplifted by the scope of the new vision, and depressed by two other factors—his personal inadequacy when confronted by the scale of the cosmos, and sorrow over the fact that his long-dead brother, Lain, had been denied his rightful place at the intellectual banquet.

As the transporter continued its hissing and puffing way through a thickening chain of villages, it gradually came to Toller's notice that Bartan Drumme was the only member of the company to have excluded himself from the precious communion with Sondeweere. He looked uncharacteristically morose and apathetic, not even bothering to change his position to evade a persistent dripping of rain from a leak overhead, and—while drinking very little—was protectively nursing a skin of brandy he had brought from the skyship. Toller wondered if he was downcast at the prospect of going into battle, or if it was beginning to sink into him that the woman he had married and the omniscient, awesomely gifted being they had met on Farland were two quite different people, and that any future relationship between them could not resemble that of the past.

"…not like the burning of fuel, as in a furnace," Sondeweere was saying. "Atoms of the lightest gas present within a sun combine to form a heavier gas. The process yields great amounts of energy and that is what makes a sun shine. I'm sorry I cannot give you a clearer explanation at this time—it would take too long to expound the underlying principles and concepts."

"Could you explain it in your silent voices?" Toller said. "As you did when we were still in the void."

Sondeweere glanced back at him. "That would help, undoubtedly, but I dare not enter into any telepathic communication. I told you that the symbonites are aware of me at all times, and the closer I get to their ship the more I will become a focus of their attention, because it is the one place in all the land which is forbidden to me. Were they to pick up the slightest wisp of telepathic activity their interest in my movements would at once be translated into direct action—and that is something which will happen soon enough."

"They should have destroyed the ship," Berise commented, traces of sourness still in her voice.

"Perhaps—but they have no way of knowing how many symbon spores may remain on Overland waiting to create more human symbonites." Sondeweere cast Berise a smile which perhaps hinted that her preoccupations were far removed from personal rivalries. "Also, the ship was not built without considerable sacrifice on their part."

"The sacrifices may not all be on one side."

"I know," Sondeweere said simply. "I told you that at the outset."

The transporter made an abrupt turn to the left and within minutes its comparatively smooth movement had given way to a bumpy and lurching progress which drew creaks from the chassis. Toller raised himself and looked out in front, past Sondeweere's white-clad figure, and saw they had left the road and were now heading across open grassland. The horizon seen through rain-spattered glass was almost flat and the terrain was quite featureless except for a scattering of squatly conical trees.

"How far now?" he said.

"Not far—about twelve miles," Sondeweere replied. "This will be uncomfortable for you, but we must proceed with all possible speed from here on. Until now the symbonites had no real cause for alarm, because the highway leads to many destinations, but on this course there is only…" She broke off with a sharp intake of breath and her grip on the tiller failed momentarily, allowing the vehicle to pull to one side. Those beside Toller sat up straighter, hands straying towards weapons.

"Is anything wrong?" he said, half-knowing what had happened.

"We are discovered. The alarm has gone out—and sooner than I had expected." Her voice betrayed no anxiety, but she advanced a lever and the sound from the engine increased. The protests from the chassis grew louder as the vehicle gained speed.

Toller felt a stirring of the old squalid excitement. "Can you tell us anything about what lies ahead? Fortifications? Weapons?"

"Very little, I'm afraid—intelligence of that nature is hard to gather." Sondeweere went on to say that, to the best of her knowledge, the symbonite ship was kept in an ancient meteorite crater which served as a natural revetment. She believed it was further protected by a high fence along the crater's rim. There would be armed guards, whose numbers she could not predict, and their weapons were likely to be swords, and perhaps pikes.

"No bows? No spears?"

"The native physique does not readily lend itself to the use of the bow or any kind of throwing weapon."

"How about firearms?"

"There are no brakka trees on this world, and the Farlanders' knowledge of chemistry is not yet sufficiently advanced for them to have invented artificial explosives."

"This sounds quite encouraging," Wraker put in, nudging Toller. "The defences seem to be disproportionately light."

"In the normal scheme of things there would have been no need to defend the ship against anything but troublesome wild animals," Sondeweere said. "There would have been no point in my trying to get near it alone—and no logical person could have anticipated the arrival of a ship from Overland before another four or five centuries had elapsed." She smiled and a note of warmth crept into her voice. "In the symbonites' eminently reasonable view of the universe people like you five simply do not exist."

Wraker grinned in return. "They'll learn about us soon enough—to their cost."

Toller frowned. "We must not allow ourselves to become too confident. How long will it take the symbonites to call up reinforcements?"

"I don't know," Sondeweere said. "There are large-scale road works to the north of the site, but I cannot say how close they are."

"But you knew
our
exact position when we were many thousands of miles away in the void."

"There is a natural and very powerful empathy between us because we come from the same human stock. The Farlanders' minds are all but closed to me."

"I see," Toller said. "Obviously we cannot decide our tactics in advance, but I have one final question … about the ship itself."

"Will I be able to fly it? The answer is yes."

"In spite of never having seen it?"

"Again, this cannot be explained to you, not even by telepathic means—and I am deeply sorry about that—but the ship is not governed by mechanical controls. For a person who comprehends all the operating principles it will do exactly as it is bidden; without that necessary understanding it will not move a single inch."

Toller fell silent, chastened by the reminder that Sondeweere, in spite of her perfectly normal appearance and demeanour, was in actuality an enigmatic superbeing. The fact that he and the others could communicate with her on what felt like equal terms had to be almost entirely due to skilled indulgence on her part—as a venerable philosopher contrives to amuse a two-year-old child.

He glanced at Bartan, freshly made aware of the young man's unprecedented situation, and saw that he was staring fixedly at the back of Sondeweere's head, his expression broody and almost sullen. Becoming conscious of Toller's scrutiny, Bartan mustered a wry smile and raised the skin of brandy to his lips. Toller reached out to prevent him drinking, saw the beginnings of defiance on the young man's face and reflexively turned his hand palm upwards.
I'm growing soft,
he thought as he accepted the skin and took a sizeable drink from it,
but perhaps not before
my
time.

"How about you, Sondy?" Bartan said as though issuing a challenge. "Would you like a warming drop of brandy?"

"No. The warmth is spurious, and I find the taste unpleasant."

"I thought you might," Bartan said, and now an aggrieved and surly note was plain in his voice. "What do you subsist on these days? Nectar and dew? When we return to the farm you will be able to have your fill of those, but I trust you won't object if I go on preferring stronger potions."

Sondeweere gave him a single pleading glance. "Bartan, you have the right to force the issue—even though some of what I have to say to you would be best said in private—but we…"

"I have nothing to hide from my friends, Sondy. Proceed! Explain to all of us that it would be unseemly for a princess to bed down with a peasant."

"Bartan, please do not cause yourself needless pain." Sondeweere was speaking loudly to overcome the sounds of the transporter at speed, but there was a concerned tenderness in her voice. "Even though I have changed a great deal, I would still have been a wife to you, but it can never be … because…"

"Because of what?"

"Because I have a higher duty to the entire human population of Overland. I refuse to deprive my own people of their evolutionary heritage by founding a dynasty of symbonites which would dominate the ordinary humans and eventually drive them into extinction."

Bartan looked stunned, obviously having heard something totally outside his expectations, but he was still nimble enough of mind to respond quickly. "But there is no need for us to have children. There are ways … maidenfriend is only one of them… I never wanted to be burdened with noisy offspring anyway."

Sondeweere managed to laugh. "You cannot lie to me, Bartan. I know how much you want children,
true
descendants—not alien hybrids. If you have the great good fortune to return to Overland alive, your only chance of happiness will lie in settling down with a normal young woman who will bear you normal children. That, believe me, is a future worth looking forward to and fighting for."

"It is also a future I reject," Bartan said.

"The decision is not in your hands, Bartan." Sondeweere paused as the transporter hit a rough patch of ground and the thunder of it made conversation impossible. "Have you forgotten about the symbonites of this world? If we do succeed in stealing their ship and getting back to Overland with it, they will build another and go after me. They will take no chances on my surviving, possibly with child. It is my belief that the second ship will have weapons, terrible weapons, and the symbonites will be prepared to use them."

"But…" Bartan drew his fingers across his wrinkled brow. "This is terrible, Sondy. What will you
do?"

"Assuming I survive the next hour, there is only one course open to me," Sondeweere said. "I will take the ship and fly off into the galaxy, perhaps into many galaxies, beyond the reach of this world's symbonites. It will be a solitary existence, but it will have its compensations. There is much to see before I die."