Land and Overland - Omnibus (95 page)

Toller unconsciously touched the haft of his sword and he felt his face grow warm. The commodore was subjecting him to unnecessary ignominy by giving him a dressing down in the presence of lesser ranks. The most Toller could do to register a protest was to hint that he viewed Sholdde's remarks as a waste of valuable time.

"Sir, if the commissioner looks as poorly as you say…"

"All right, all right, begone with you." Sholdde glanced briefly at Steenameert. "Has this man become a Maraquine family retainer, part of your personal entourage?"

"Sir, Corporal Steenameert is a first-class skyman and his services would be invaluable to me on—"

"Take him!" Sholdde turned and strode away without any kind of salute, an action which could only be interpreted as another direct insult.

So that's it,
Toller thought, alerted by the commodore's reference to the "Maraquine family".
My grandfather was the most famed warrior in Kolcorronian history; my father is one of the most brilliant and most powerful men alive
—
and even the likes of Sholdde resent me for it. Is that because they believe I secretly make use of family influence? Or is it because, by overtly
not
making use of it, I proclaim a special kind of egotism? Or can it be that I shame or annoy them by refusing to grasp opportunities for which they would give…?

A prolonged blast on the skyship's burner, echoing in the huge cavity of the balloon, interrupted Toller's reverie. He touched Correvalte's shoulder in farewell, ran with Steenameert to the gondola and climbed over the side. The ground crew sergeant who was at the burner controls, keeping the ship in readiness, saluted and nodded towards the passenger compartment.

Toller went to the chest-high cane partition and looked over it. Commissioner Kettoran was lying on a pallet and, in spite of the heat, was covered with a quilt. His long face was extremely pale, with lines of age and weariness graven into it, but his eyes were alert. He winked when he saw Toller and twitched a thin hand in an attempted greeting.

"Are you travelling alone, sir?" Toller said with concern. "No physician?"

A scornful expression briefly animated Kettoran's features. "Those blood-letters will never get their hands on me."

"But if you are ill…"

"The doctor who could cure my complaint has yet to be born," Kettoran said, almost with satisfaction. "I suffer from nothing less than a dearth of time. Speaking of which, young Maraquine, I was under the impression you also were anxious to make a speedy return to Overland."

Toller mumbled an apology and turned to the sergeant, who immediately moved away from the burner controls and clambered over the gondola's side. Pausing for a few seconds on the outside ledge, he explained to Steenameert where all necessary provisions, including skysuits, had been stored. As soon as he had dropped out of sight Toller fed a plentiful charge of hot gas into the pliable dome of the balloon above him and pulled the anchor link.

The skyship surged upwards, its acceleration enhanced by the lift created as the curved upper surface of the balloon moved into the current of air flowing over the enclosure. Well aware that the extra buoyancy would be cancelled as soon as the balloon fully entered the westerly airstream and began to move with it, Toller kept the burner going. The skyship—in spite of being so much below its maximum operating weight—performed a queasy slow-motion shimmy as it adapted to the changing aerial environment, causing Steenameert to clutch theatrically at his stomach. From Commissioner Kettoran, hidden behind his wicker partition, came a moan of complaint.

For the second time in less than an hour the sprawling panorama of Ro-Atabri began to recede from Toller, but now it was retreating downwards.
I can scarcely believe that all this is happening to me,
he thought dreamily, almost stupefied by the flux of circumstance. Only minutes earlier he had been racked by fears that he would never see Vantara Dervonai again—now he was on his way to her, keeping an appointment which had been specially arranged for him by the forces of destiny.

Soon I will be able to see Vantara again,
he told himself.
For once, things are working out in my favour.

Toller had not eaten anything for a day, and had taken only a few sips of water, barely enough to replace the bodily moisture lost by exhaling into the arid air of the middle passage. Toilet facilities on a skyship were necessarily primitive and unpleasant to use at the best of times, but in weightless conditions the disadvantages—including the sheer indignity—were so great that most people chose to suspend their natural functions as completely as possible for a day on either side of turnover. The system worked reasonably well for a healthy adult, but Commissioner Kettoran had begun the voyage in a severely weakened state, and now—much to Toller's concern—appeared to be using up the last dregs of his strength merely to stay alive.

"You can take those slops away from me," Kettoran said in a grouchy whisper. "I refuse to be suckled like a babe at my time of life—especially from a revolting dug like that."

Toller unhappily fingered the conical bag of luke-warm soup he had been proffering. "This will do you good."

"You sound just like my mother."

"Is that a reason for not taking sustenance?"

"Don't try to be clever, young Maraquine." Kettoran's breath issued in white clouds from a small opening in the mound of quilts in which he had ensconced himself.

"I was only trying to—"

"My mother could make much better food than any of the cooks we ever employed," Kettoran mused, paying no heed to Toller. "We had a house on the west side of Greenmount—not far from where your grandfather lived, incidentally—and I can still remember riding up the hill, going into our precinct and knowing immediately, just by the aromas, whether or not my mother had chosen to prepare the evening meal. I went back there a few days after we landed in Ro-Atabri, but the entire district had been burnt out a long time ago … during the riots … gutted … hardly a building left intact. It was a mistake for me to go there—I should have preserved my memories."

At the mention of his namesake Toller's interest picked up. "Did you ever see my grandfather in those days?"

"Occasionally. It would have been hard
not
to see him—a fine figure of a man, he was—but I more often saw his brother, Lain … going back and forth between his house and the Lord Philosopher's official residence in Greenmount Peel."

"What did my grand—?" Toller broke off, alarms clamouring silently in his mind, as there was a subtle but abrupt change in his environment. He rose to his feet, holding a transverse line to keep himself from drifting clear of the deck, and looked all about him. Steenameert, muffled in his skysuit, was strapped into his seat at the control station. He was firing the main jet in the steady rhythm needed to maintain the ship's ascent, and he appeared completely unperturbed. Everything seemed absolutely as normal in the square microcosm of the gondola, and beyond its rim the familiar patterns of stars and luminous whirls shone steadily in the dark blue sky.

"Sir?" The swaddled, anonymous bulk of Steenameert moved slightly. "Is there something wrong?"

Toller had to survey his surroundings again before he was able to identify the source of his unease. "The light! There was a change in the light! Didn't you notice?"

"I must have had my eyes closed. But I still don't…"

"There was a drop in brightness—I'm sure of it—and yet we have more than an hour till nightfall." Baffled and disturbed, wishing he could have a direct view of the sun, Toller drew himself closer to the control station and looked up through the mouth of the balloon. The varnished linen of the envelope was dyed dark brown so that it would absorb heat from the sun, but it was to some extent translucent and he could see a geometrical design of panel seams and load tapes radiating from the crown, emphasizing the vastness of the flimsy dome. It was a sight he had seen many times, and on this occasion it looked exactly as it had always done. Steenameert also looked into the balloon, then lowered his gaze without comment.

"I tell you something happened," Toller said, trying to keep any hint of uncertainty out of his voice. "Something happened. There was a change in the light … a shadow …
something."

"According to the height gauge we are somewhere close to the datum plane, sir," Steenameert said, obviously striving to be helpful. "Perhaps we have come up directly beneath the permanent stations and have touched their shadows."

"That is virtually impossible—there is always a certain amount of drift." Toller frowned for a moment, coming to a decision. "Rotate the ship."

"I … I don't think I'm ready to handle an inversion."

"I don't want it turned over yet. Just make a quarter-rotation so that we can see what's above us." Realizing he was still holding the food bag he tossed it towards the passenger compartment on a descending curve. It fouled a safety line, swung round it and floated out over the gondola's side, slowly tumbling as it went.

Toller pulled himself to the rail, straining to see upwards, and waited impatiently while Steenameert fired one of the tiny lateral jets on the opposite side of the gondola. At first the jet appeared to be having no effect, except that the slim acceleration struts on each side of Toller emitted faint creaks; then, after what seemed an interminable wait, the whole universe began a ponderous downwards slide. The whorled disk of Land moved out of sight beneath Toller's feet, and above him—stealthily uncovered by the ship's balloon—there came into view a spectacle unlike anything he had ever seen.

Half the sky was occupied by a vast circular sheet of white fire.

The sun was slipping out of sight behind the eastern edge, and at that point the brilliance was intolerable, a locus of blinding radiance which sprayed billions of prismatic needles across the rest of the circle.

There was a slight falling off in the intensity of light across the disk, but even at the side farthest from the sun it was enough to sting the eyes. To Toller the effect was akin to looking upwards from the depths of a sunlit frozen lake. He had expected to see Overland filling a large area of the heavens, but the planet was hidden behind the beautiful, inexplicable,
impossible
sheet of diamond-white light, through which rainbow colours raced and danced in clashing zigzag lines.

As he stood at the rail, transfixed, he became aware that the incredible spectacle was drifting down the sky at undiminished speed. He turned and saw that Steenameert was staring out past him, jaw sagging, with eyes which had become reflective white disks—miniature versions of the phenomenon which was mesmerizing him.

"A
quarter
turn I told you," Toller bellowed. "Check the rotation."

"Sorry, sir." Steenameert stirred into action and the lateral jet mounted low down on Toller's side of the gondola began to spew miglign gas. Rings of condensation rolled away from it through the gelid air. The sound of the jet was puny, quickly absorbed by the surrounding void, but it gradually achieved the intended effect and the skyship came to rest with its vertical axis parallel to the sea of white fire.

"What's going on out there?" The querulous voice of Trye Kettoran issuing from the passenger compartment helped bring Toller out of his own tranced condition.

"Have a look over the side," he called out for the commissioner's benefit, then turned to Steenameert. "What do you think yonder thing is? Ice?"

Steenameert nodded slowly. "Ice is the only explanation I can imagine, but…"

"But where did the water come from? There is the usual supply of drinking water in the defence stations, but that amounts to no more than a few barrels…" Toller paused as a new thought struck him. "Where are the stations, anyway? We must try to locate them. Are they embedded in the…?" His voice failed altogether as related questions geysered through his mind. How thick was the ice? How far away from the ship was it? How wide was the enormous circular sheet?

How wide is the circle?

The last question suddenly reverberated in his consciousness, excluding all others. Until that instant Toller had been overawed by the brilliant spectacle confronting him, but it had inspired no sense of danger. There had been a feeling of wonder—but no threat. Now, however, certain facts of aerial physics were beginning to assume importance. A disturbing importance. A potentially
lethal
importance…

He knew that the atmosphere which enveloped the sister planets was shaped like an hourglass, the waist of which formed a narrow bridge of air through which skyships had to pass. Old experiments had established that ships had to keep near the centre of the bridge—otherwise the air became so attenuated that the crews were bound to asphyxiate. Largely because of the difficulty of taking measurements in the region, there was some uncertainty about the thickness of that core of breathable air, but the best estimates were that it was no more than a hundred miles in diameter.

The enigmatic sea of sun-blazing ice was rendered featureless by its brilliance, and in the absence of spatial referents it could have been hovering "beside" the skyship at a distance of ten miles, or twenty, or forty, or … Toller could think of no way to ascertain its distance, but he could see that it spanned almost one third of the visual hemisphere, and that gave him enough information to perform an elementary calculation.

Lips moving silently, he stared at the radiant disk while he dealt with the relevant figures, and a coldness which had nothing to do with the harsh environment entered his system as he reached a conclusion. If the disk proved to be as much as sixty miles away—which it could quite easily be—then, by the immutable laws of mathematics, it was sufficiently wide to block the air bridge between Land and Overland…

"Sir?" Steenameert's voice seemed to come from another universe. "How far would you say we are from the ice?"

"That is an excellent question," Toller said grimly, taking the ship's binoculars from the control station locker. He aimed them at the disk, striving to pick out detail, but could see only a shimmering field of brightness. The sun was now fully occulted, spreading its light more evenly over the vast circle, making an estimate of its distance more difficult than before. Toller turned away from the rail, knuckling round green after-images from his eyes, and examined the height gauge. Its pointer was perhaps a hair's breadth below the zero-gravity mark.