The Commonwealth Saga 2-Book Bundle (45 page)

“Dropped from the squad. It was horrible, Morty, he told me in front of everyone. He’s already brought in two new girls.”

“Oh. Right.” He patted her absently and took a sip of his drink. “Never mind, something else will come along, it always does.”

Mellanie pulled back slightly so she could study his face, her own expression was one of bewilderment. “What? Morty, didn’t you hear? It’s over for me.”

“Yes. I heard. So move on to something new. It’s about time anyway. You’ve wasted years on that stupid diving team anyway. You can get a proper life now.”

Her thick lips parted to form a distraught “O” as she took a step back. Then she was running into the bedroom, sobbing filling the air behind her.

Morton let out a tired sigh as the door slammed shut loudly.
Well, what did she expect? That’s the only trouble with the truly young, they have no perspective on life.
“No, thank you for asking,” he snapped after her, “my day did not go well.”

His e-butler told him there was a call from Chief Inspector Myo. He took a long drink from the glass. “Put it on the living room screen,” he told the e-butler.

Even magnified to a couple of meters high, Paula Myo’s face was essentially flawless. As Morton sat back in one of the leather couches, he found himself admiring her once again. Now somebody like that would make a real partner, they’d be equals, which was rare enough, and complementary rather than competitive. It was just that weird heritage of hers …

“This is unexpected, Chief Investigator, what can I do for you?”

“I need access to some financial documents, the old AquaState accounts. As you’re the chairman of the parent company, it’s simpler if I just ask you to release them to me rather than go through the courts.”

“Oh.” It wasn’t quite what he’d expected. “Do you mind if I ask why? What are you looking for?”

“I can’t discuss a case in progress. I’m sure you understand.”

“Yes. I’m very familiar with government procedures, especially today.”

“That sounds unfortunate.”

He grinned in his winning way. “Commercial confidentiality, I can’t tell you about it.”

“But can you release the files?”

“Yes, of course. Would I be right in assuming you’re making progress, then?”

“Let’s say, you’re on the right track with that assessment.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” He told his e-butler to release the relevant files to her. “May I ask if you’re currently seeing anyone, Paula?”

“I don’t believe that’s connected to the inquiry in any fashion.”

“It’s not, but it was a very sincere question.”

“Why do you want to know that?”

“I’m sure you’ve heard it enough times. But I want to be honest with you from the beginning; if you’re not involved with anyone then I would very much enjoy taking you to dinner one evening as soon as possible.”

The screen showed her head tilting ever so slightly to one side, mimicking an almost avian curiosity. “That’s most flattering, Morton, but right now I’m not able to say yes. I hope you’re not offended.”

“Certainly not, after all, you didn’t say never. I believe I’ll ask you again once this case is over.”

“As you wish.”

“Thank you, Chief Investigator. And I hope the files are useful.”

“They will be.”

The call ended. Morton wriggled down into the couch, looking at the blank screen where he could still see her elegant, composed face. Somehow, the day didn’t seem such a total loss after all.

....

It was the eighth day after he entered the forest that Ozzie had to delve into his pack for warmer clothes. They’d seen their last deciduous tree a couple of days ago. Now the path led through tall solemn alpine giants with dark trunks of stone-hard bark. Their waxy leaves were long and spindly, a fraction thicker than terrestrial pine needles, with colors shading from dark green to a maroon that was almost black. A thin tough layer of grass grew underneath them, and that was patchy around the trunks themselves where the acidic leaves had fallen. Here the chilly air meant it took a long time for them to decay into the kind of rich loam to be found elsewhere in the forest, and the air was heavy with their citric scent.

Sunlight seemed to have deserted Ozzie and Orion; the patches of sky they did glimpse were uniformly gray as low clouds bunched together in an unbroken veil. Patches of mist squatted across the path, reaching far above the treetops, some of them taking hours to trek through. Each one seemed progressively larger and colder than the last.

It was after riding through one for over three hours with no respite that Ozzie decided enough was enough. His thin leather jacket was dripping with moisture that was cold enough to be ice, and it hadn’t shielded his checked shirt at all. He dismounted and hurriedly stripped off the soaked shirt; changing into a dry one, shivering strongly as he did. Before the mist had time to sink into the fresh cotton he pulled out a slate-gray woolen fleece with an outer waterproof membrane. Much to Orion’s amusement he wore soft leather chaps on his legs to cover his cord trousers. Once he’d finally slicked down his rebellious hair, he crammed on a black bobble hat. Only then, when he’d dressed and remounted, did he put on his doeskin-palm gloves.

Almost immediately, he was too hot. It made a nice change. That morning, his own shivering had woken him as the dawn frost settled over his sleeping bag. A veteran of many long treks on foot and horseback, he favored modern semiorganic clothes that could heat, cool, and dry the wearer as required. They were inoperative on any Silfen world, of course, but he was pleased enough by how the old simple fabrics were performing.

Orion, who had brought little in the way of rough-weather gear, he loaned a baggy sweatshirt to wear under his thin waterproof cagoule, and a spare pair of oilskin trousers, which were perfect over trousers for his skinny legs.

The two of them urged the animals onward. Ozzie had no idea where they were anymore. With the clouds hiding the sun and the stars there was no way he could check their direction. They’d taken so many forks, traveled around so many half-day curves that he’d completely lost track of their progress. For all he knew, Lyddington could easily just be a couple of miles ahead, though he didn’t really think it was, not with this weather and the tall morose trees.

“You ever been this far in before?” Ozzie asked.

“No.” Orion wasn’t talking so much now. This wasn’t the airy summertime forest he was used to; the gloom and cold were pulling his mood down. It had been three days since they’d last caught sight of any Silfen, a group heading away from them on a diverging path. Before that they’d encountered almost one group of the fey aliens every day. They’d stopped to greet them each time, and not once had Ozzie managed to get any real sense from them. He was beginning to resent how right the SI had been: there was some deep schism between their neural types that prohibited any truly meaningful communication. His admiration for the Commonwealth cultural experts was growing correspondingly. He simply didn’t have anything like the patience they possessed to painstakingly decipher the Silfen language.

There was no discernible twilight. The grayness simply dropped into night. Ozzie had been relying on his antique clockwork Seiko watch to give him some warning, which it had done faithfully so far. But that night, either darkness fell early, or the unseen upper clouds had contrived to thicken into opacity.

When Ozzie called a halt, they had to light the two kerosene lamps that Orion had thoughtfully brought along. They hissed and fizzed as they cast a flickering yellow glow. The nearby trees loomed large and oppressive above them, while those at the edge of the radiance seemed to cluster into a dense fence, hemming them in.

“Tent tonight,” Ozzie declared as cheerfully as he could manage. Orion looked as if he were about to burst into tears. “You sort some food out, I’ll cut us some wood for a bonfire.”

Leaving the boy searching lethargically through the packs, he took out his diamond-blade machete and started to work on the nearest tree. Yet even though the blade came to an edge a couple of atoms wide, it still took him a good forty minutes of hard work to slice through the tree’s lower branches, cutting them into usable logs.

Orion stared glumly at the pile of water-slicked wood. “How are we going to get it going?” he asked miserably. “It’s all too wet for your lighter.” Nothing was dry. The mist had thickened to an almost-drizzle; water dripped continually from leaves and branches.

Ozzie was busy splitting one of the logs lengthways, turning it into slim segments of kindling. “So, like, I guess you were never in the Boy Scouts, then?”

“What’s that?”

“Group of young camping enthusiasts. They all get taught how to rub lengths of wood together so they spark. That lets you start a fire no matter where you are.”

“That’s stupid! I’m not rubbing logs together.”

“Quite right.” Ozzie concealed his grin as he opened a pot of flame gel, and carefully applied a small layer of the blue jelly to each of the kindling sticks. He pushed them into the middle of the logs, then took out his butane lighter—it was actually older than his watch. “Ready?” He flicked the lighter once, and keeping it at arm’s length, pushed it toward the kindling. The gel ignited with a loud
whoomp
. Flames jetted out around the logs, engulfing the whole pile. Ozzie only just managed to pull his arm back in time. “I thought they banned napalm,” he muttered.

Orion laughed in relief, and clapped his gloved hands together. The flames burned intently, spilling out across the remaining logs. In a couple of minutes, the whole pile was spitting and blazing keenly.

“Keep it well fed,” Ozzie said. “The new logs will have to dry out before they burn.”

While the boy enthusiastically dropped another log on every few minutes, Ozzie set the tent up a few yards away. The struts were simple poles supporting a double air-insulated lining that expanded automatically, inflating as soon as he twisted the valve open. Over that went the wind shell, tough waterproof fabric with long pins along its hem that he hammered deep into the ground. Not that any wind could ever penetrate the forest floor, but he was starting to get a bad feeling about this weather.

For once, Ozzie had allowed Orion to choose whatever food he wanted from the pack bag. The boy was becoming seriously depressed by their environment, he needed cheering up. So they settled down in the lee of the tent’s front flaps that had been hoisted up to form a little porch, with the warmth of the fire washing over them and drying their clothes, eating sausages, burgers, beans, with hot cheese poured on thick chunks of bread. To follow that up Orion heated a can of orange sponge with treacle.

After they’d taken care of the animals, they banked up the fire and went into the tent. Ozzie had his six seasons sleeping bag to curl up in. Orion’s bag wasn’t as good, but he had a couple of blankets to wrap around it. He went to sleep complaining it was too warm.

Ozzie woke to a bad headache and distinct lack of breath. It was light outside, though not the kind of brightness daylight usually brought. Orion was asleep beside him, his breathing short and shallow. Ozzie looked at the boy for a moment, his mind all sluggish. Then it all made sense. “Shit!” He got out of the sleeping bag fast, fingers fumbling with its zipper. Then he was crawling forward. The tent’s inner lining seal parted easily. Beyond that, the wind shell was bulging inward. He tugged at the zipper. A torrent of fine powdery snow fell in silently, washing up against his knees. Even when it finished moving, leaving him half-immersed in a broad mound, there was no sign of the sky. He pushed his way up against it and started to dig frantically. After a couple of seconds his hands were scrabbling in air. Bright white sunlight streamed in. He gulped down the freezing air, trying to slow his panicky heart.

Orion was sitting up behind him, eyes blinking. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, we’re okay.”

“I’ve got a headache. Is that snow?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, wow.” He crawled forward and scooped some of it up, grinning delightedly. “I’ve never seen any before. Is it covering everything like it does in the Christmas pictures of Earth?”

Ozzie, who was just about to start telling him to dress in his waterproofs, did a double take. “You’re shitting me, man. You’ve never seen snow before?”

“No. It doesn’t snow in Lyddington. Ever.”

“Right. Okay. Well, put your waterproofs on, we’ll go out and take a look.”

The snow was a foot deep on the ground, with several inches coating the top of every branch and twig. Right around the base of the trees it was thinner, and of course it had drifted high against the tent’s wind shell, completely covering the apex. Ozzie looked back at it rather sheepishly; if it had truly buried the tent then the wind shell wouldn’t have been able to take the weight. Nonetheless, it was a sharp lesson not to take anything for granted in the alien forest.

He called Orion over to help soothe the animals as they stamped their hooves and shivered in the cold. The unkempt pony didn’t seem to mind the snow too much, nuzzling up to Orion as soon as the boy found some oats for her. The lontrus simply shook its shaggy gull-gray coat as Ozzie checked it over; the creatures had a strange biochemistry that allowed them to withstand temperatures far more severe than this. It was Polly who had suffered the worst, she didn’t have a winter coat. Mr. Stafford of Top Street Stables had kept the mare nicely clipped for Silvergalde’s moderate climate. Ozzie thought about that as he stroked her trembling neck. He knew damn well he wasn’t in Silvergalde’s mild temperate zone anymore. Yet the temperature didn’t drop to anything like this for thousands of miles north of Lyddington. They’d made good progress in the last nine days, but not that much. The only rational explanation was that they’d gained a lot of altitude, though he wasn’t sure where, it wasn’t a single mountain, yet his virtual vision map showed no true highlands within nine days’ hard riding of Lyddington—nor within twenty days come to that.

He turned a full circle, then glanced up at the blank featureless sky, a slow satisfied smile lifting his face. “Definitely not Kansas anymore,” he said quietly.