Orion Shall Rise (4 page)

Iern’s radarscope glowed a warning at him. He was close to hillhigh waves; he had done what he could, and his next duty was to escape. He reeled out of turbulence, into the central quietness, stood his vessel on its tail, and climbed. Above him the sky was a disc of purple wherein a star trembled.

He broke free, arched above the monster, and streaked eastward. ‘Iern Ferlay reporting,’ he sang into the microphone at his throat.

‘Finished and safe. Did you copy my transmission?’

‘Yes. Well done, Lieutenant.’

‘What about the rest?’

‘They’re safe too. We’ll be ready for action in minutes. Get clear. Set course for Tournev.’

Iern nodded and obeyed. His plane, like the others, required inspection, and perhaps repairs, of the sort that only the facilities at the headquarters city could perform. As for the pilots, they would get the traditional conqueror’s welcome, followed by at least a week of ease and celebration.

Whether or not they were conquerors – Not every attempt succeeded.

Slowly Iern realized that he had spoken and acted automatically. His awareness had been elsewhere, in some unknown place, and was just now returning to him. He could not quite recollect how he rode the storm; the experience had been transcendental, he had been one with his adversary. … His body throbbed and ached. Padded
jacket or no, the safety harness had probably striped him with bruises. But peace and joy welled up within him … yes, it
had
been a kind of lovemaking.…

The excitement wasn’t over! The real show was about to start.

He had won fame, promotion, honor for his family and Clan. He had not won the right to waste a single liter of fuel by hanging around to watch the spectacle. He could, though, fly high and slowly, unbuckle, kneel on his seat and look backward. Barely soon enough, he remembered to don dark goggles.

The laser beams struck.

Throughout each day, never hindered by cloud or mist or rain, sunlight played across the aerostat. On a sphere two kilometers in diameter, that was an input measured in gigawatts. A fraction of it, shining through the double skin, kept hot the air at the center, and thus held Skyholm aloft. More went into solar collectors or thermal converters and became electricity. Of this, a portion ran the jets which maintained station against stratospheric winds, and supplied other needs on board. A portion, sent earthward, powered synthetic fuel plants and similarly essential industries. However, those were few, and except for them and local generators here and there, the Domain had no electricity; metal for conductors was too costly. Most of the sun cells waited idle, against a day of war or of tempest.

Now circuits closed, shutters opened, a tide of current flowed into the great accumulators and thence to the outsize lasers. Fiercer than lightning, the beams leaped off to battle.

They were not random thrusts of wrath. Cool minds aimed them, guided by those data the Stormriders had snatched out of destruction’s self. Their energy was small compared to that which drove their target. Its intensity, focused on well-chosen spots, was something else.

What Iern saw were firespears out of heaven. Air blazed and thundered around them. Where they struck the darkness, brilliance fountained. Without his goggles, he would have been blinded for at least a while, maybe for always. As was, his vision quickly filled with dazzle and he dared watch no longer.

Again and again accumulators discharged and collectors refilled them. Some beams held steady, drilling, eroding; others flashed briefly, upsetting the balance at single places, turning the hurricane’s own force upon it. Pitiless, Skyholm stabbed, slashed,
ripped, while Iern and his comrades fled.

The struggle fell behind him, and he flew above a Franceterr darkling beneath stars. The aerostat still shone bright, catching rays of a sun he could no longer see, but would soon fade. He wondered if that would happen before the task was done.

Incandescence winked out. Triumph bawled in his earphones: ‘That’s it! The pattern’s broken!’

‘Prediction?’ asked tones that remained dry. Iern recognized Colonel Tess.

‘Ah-h-h … a preliminary evaluation, madame. We’ve dissipated the fringes. The core continues active, but much reduced in force and veering northwest. Strong winds and heavy rains along the coast, trending north, for the next two or three days. But nothing disastrous, and further energy input would too likely drive the core against Eria.’

‘Which would be inhumane, as well as angering little countries that bid fair to become good trading partners of ours. Aye, we’ll let well enough alone. … Weather Command to all Stormriders, congratulations, thanks, and welcome back!’

Iern flew on. At his altitude, on his left he glimpsed a piece of Brezh – Ar-Goat, not Ar-Mor, yet Brezh. A sudden wish to see his mother tugged at him.

Skyholm rose and waxed in his view. With only starlight upon it, it was a moon vast but ashen, save where electric lamps sparkled. And now, also before him, the Loi River hove in sight, a silver thread looped across rich lowlands. He began his descent.

3

Originally Tournev was an outgrowth of Old Tours, some of its material quarried from abandoned parts of the latter. Folk settled thereabouts to get not simply protection, but the comforting nearness of Ileduciel. They rebuilt because most former structures were either fallen into ruin or had been taken over for the special uses of the Aerogens. They made it a distinct town because those early Clanspeople-to-be, few in numbers and badly overworked, did not want the day-to-day responsibility of governing it. Time passed, industrial plants wore out or grew obsolete; the easy and sensible thing was to start new ones in the thriving new city. By degrees, Tournev became the lower capital of the Domain, as Ileduciel was
the higher. Old Tours was an enclave, a cluster of piously restored buildings where none but caretakers and shopkeepers lived and none but the curious visited.

Nevertheless it was a romantic setting. Iern stood on a tower at twilight, a young woman by his side, and felt himself falling in love.

The air held a chill, breath smoked, but hooded cloaks kept them warm and likewise did hand linked with hand. Beneath them lay roofs and darkened streets. Beyond, windows throughout Tournev were coming aglow, and gas lamps along the boulevards. Elsewhere lanterns bobbed like fireflies as workers sought homeward. Farther on shimmered the river, around darknesses that were moored barges and boats. From its right bank the ground swelled northward, flecked by farmhouses and hamlets, to the hill of the Consvatoire. Those ivied walls were not wholly nighted; here and there, across kilometers, another light burned where a scholar sat late. In immemorial belief, which endured among many pysans, that site was hallowed. It was the highest ground along an arc where at certain times of year you saw sun or moon pass behind Skyholm.

Seven and a half times the size of either in heaven, the aerostat hung directly overhead. Still touched by the sun, as it was for about twenty minutes after nightfall and before daybreak, it cast muted radiance across the land. In that light, Ashcroft Faylis Mayn seemed to Iern almost a being of Breizheg legend, a haunter of woods and dolmens, too beautiful to be real.

‘How often have I lingered here and dreamed,’ she said low. ‘But I never dreamed I would do it with … a saint.’

Her musical Bourgoynais accent redeemed a thin voice. And apart from that – Iern’s pulse thuttered. She was small, delicately featured, with large gray eyes and long, lustrous golden hair. She was intense and intelligent, a student of history at the Consvatoire yonder. She was no girl to tumble straight into bed, but a well-born maiden. His kinsman Talence Jovain Aurillac had introduced them a few days back, and Iern quickly lost interest in tumbling the harbor girls.

‘Oh, come,’ he said, with an awkwardness that seldom burdened him, ‘you’re no back-country shepherdess, you’re a Clanswoman and know we’re all human. I, well, I did my job, nothing more.’

Her gaze sought his. ‘But we carry our ancestral anims, don’t we? I think yours may come from the First Captain himself.’

‘What? No, surely our present Captain – Anyway, not only do you flatter me, but frankly, I’m skeptical about that belief.’

She smiled. ‘And I … frankly. Yes, I’d rather suppose you’re a –’ She hesitated. ‘An organelle that is truly evolving.’

Taken aback, he swallowed. ‘Are you a Gaean?’

‘Oh, no. I think the Gaeans have certain insights, but – but I’m simply a little delver in dusty old books. A dreamer –’ She looked upward and sighed. ‘I do believe there is a purpose behind existence. Else nothing would make sense, would it, Iern? Just consider history. How could we, you and I, stand here this evening, safe and happy, if a fate, a force, had not possessed our ancestors?’

‘Well –’ He searched for words but gave up. Why argue and risk spoiling the hour? His own view of the past was prosaic.

Immediately after the War of Judgment, when chaos and radioactivity rolled to and fro across Uropa, the original crew members moved Skyholm from its station above Paris to one above Tours. The latter city had escaped obliteration. It did not escape famine and pestilence in the years that followed, but the aerostat held off desperate outsiders. Thus a measure of recovery became possible relatively fast.

While they tried, in a rough-and-ready fashion, to be benign rulers, the Thirty – twenty-two men, eight women, from half a dozen nations which no longer existed as anything but terrains and memories – had their own survival in mind. Aloft, they were safe. But they must eat and drink; aircraft perched on landing flanges must have fuel and spare parts; the skin of their home demanded replacement about once a decade, panel by panel, as the ultraviolet and ozone of the stratosphere gnawed at its material; their needs were countless, and nothing could supply them but an advanced technology whose industrial base was gone.

Around the world, sister aerostats fell for these reasons. The Thirty were fortunate. Guarded and reorganized, the people of the area could divert their scant excess energies to restarting or rebuilding the essential facilities. They were willing. If Ileduciel went, most likely what little they possessed would soon go from them too. Poor in equipment, resources, trained personnel, the plants were inefficient at first, their output barely sufficing to maintain Skyholm and its machines. Yet it did suffice, and meanwhile farms were becoming more productive again, and a little trade
revived, and some persons found leisure to rescue books from decay and study them.

Meanwhile, also, the power of Skyholm spread. This began almost willy-nilly, a matter of suppressing raiders or marshaled, covetous enemies. Later, generation by generation, it became a matter of policy – of duty and destiny. Sometimes the Aerogens used groundling troops, with flyers to help and the lasers in reserve. Oftener an area was glad to be annexed, by way of shrewd diplomacy, dynastic marriages, or the like. After all, entry into the Domain conferred many benefits. Peaceful borders and free trade were the most obvious. Surveillance from above increased public safety, spotted incipient crop diseases or rich fishing grounds, provided up-to-date maps. Weather forecasts and occasional weather modification were of incalculable value. The Consvatoires which Clansfolk founded were schools, libraries, laboratories, museums, repositories and wellsprings of knowledge; from them came physicians, agronomists, learned men and women of every kind. Nor did Skyholm require much in return: modest tribute, enactment of a few laws which chiefly concerned human rights, cooperation in business of importance to the whole Domain. Otherwise, except for the region around Tournev, states remained autonomous.

Or so the theory went, and for centuries theory counted for a great deal – or myth did, awe, a sense of fate, a hope that this race, divinely chosen, would restore the whole world.

That could not be, of course. The limit of achievement came at last, in debatable lands where Skyholm was on the horizon. To move it closer to them would have been to remove its protection from others whose fealty was ancient. The Aerogens could not master the planet; despite all, its members were only mortal.

The globe overhead grew dim. Stars blinked forth. ‘I must go back,’ Faylis said. ‘I wish I didn’t have to, but my reputation and –’ She broke off. He could barely see her lashes flutter.

‘And mine?’ he ventured. His heart leaped. ‘You’re safe with me.’ A chuckle. ‘Curse it. But you are.’

‘I know. And I wish – But we met such a short while ago!’

‘What difference does that make?’ She did not resist when he drew her to him. In a minute she was learning how to kiss a man.

It stopped with that. He dared not push his luck further, yet. Aided by his flashlight – emblem and perquisite of an elect
few – they made an unsteady way down the stairs, out the door, and along the streets. Several times they laughed together, or skipped over the paving stones.

When they entered Tournev, they had better be more decorous. They were not in the riverside district, but a section for Clansfolk and wealthy groundlings. Ordinarily she lived in a dormitory at the Consvatoire, but this chanced to be a holiday week, Harvest. For that period she had moved over to the comfort of a mansion belonging to the Aurillac family, together with several fellow students. It had ample space, and such courtesies to their kind were usual.

The ranking occupant at present was Talence Jovain Aurillac, here on business of the estate he governed in the Pryny Mountains. As the butler admitted Iern and Faylis, he came out of a writing room. Lamplight cast shadows over his face, making it a lair for his eyes. ‘Great Charles, girl!’ he exclaimed. Where he came from, the name of the First Captain was seldom used as an oath. ‘What have you been doing? Do you know what the time is?’

She bridled. ‘
Do you
know what right you have to ask me, sir?’ she responded. ‘None!’

Jovain stiffened. After a second, his stare swung to his kinsman, and Iern thought he saw a birth of hatred.

It mattered nothing to the Stormrider, then.