Clarion

CLARION 59

froth of rapids. Much of the valley was overgrown with vegetation, although Paul could see scattered patches of pale pink showing through. Natural outcroppings of stone, he thought at first. Then he looked closer and realized they were structures, but he couldn't discern their size or shape.

"Only the deacons and elders are permitted to live in Chalcharuzzi," Ogram said. "We aren't supposed to go there, but a few of us break the rules. Karyn says the Tal Tahir abandoned the city at least fifty thousand years ago."

"Karyn?"

"Karyn DiMemmo. You'll meet her. She's read all the old Vanguard reports. She knows about that stuff."

A gridwork of gray lines was prominent against the green backdrop of the ruins. Paul thought they were roads, then realized they were suspended above the city. They gleamed dully with reflected sunlight. He asked Ogram about them.

"Tubeways," Ogram explained. "Karyn says the Tal Tahir used them for transportation, with vehicles that ran inside them. They're big enough to walk through—the ones that are still standing, anyway. We use them to get into the city." As they approached the ruins, Paul saw that long sections of the tubes lay broken among the vegetation. He lifted his eyes higher on the vidscreen, beyond the ruins, where he could see a scattering of smaller buildings that stretched along the bank of the river. "That's Fairhope?"

Ogram nodded. "Such that it is. Primitive, by your standards."

"I've seen worse." Between Fairhope and the ruins of Chalcharuzzi were large areas of flat land that were squared off in checkerboard patterns. Each square was a different color. Obviously crops, although they were too far away to be identified. Then Paul realized that the scoutcraft was

60 CLARION 61

William Greenleaf

headed in a direction that would take it away from the village. "Isn't that where we're going?" Ogram shook his head. "We have a camp in the mountains." He looked a little embarrassed. "Actually, it's a large cave. Yonder." He pointed to the rolling hills beyond the ruins of the city.

"You live in a ... cave?"

"Five of us. We moved out there a year ago, when High Elder Brill had Sabastian arrested as a heretic. We broke him out, but we knew we couldn't go back to Fairhope. Brill knows we're up there, but he can't do anything about it."

"Why not? If you only have five people . . ."

"High Elder Brill won't let the deacons or the Sons of God come up to the cave. Good thing for us. They have better weapons than we have, and they know how to use them. They could sneak up before dawn, wipe us out and still get back to the temple in time for morning prayers."

"Why won't he let them do it?"

Ogram shrugged. "He says Lord Tern told him it was forbidden. Lord Tern is big on rules nobody can understand. According to him, the Holy City was put there for the elders. The deacons and the Sons of God live in dormitories around the temple, but they can't leave the roadways that go directly to the temple from Fairhope. They can't cross the river and they can't go into the area of the Far Peaks. They'd have to do one of those things to get to our cave."

Beep, beep, beep.

Startled, Ogram looked up at the vidscreens.

"Uh-oh."

Paul followed his gaze and saw a small dark point hovering in the middle of the aft screen, just above the horizon. "What's that?"

"Brill's flyer." He shot a suspicious look at Paul.

"Unless you arranged to have one of your Guard friends follow us."

Paul shook his head. "I wanted to, but Dorland wouldn't hear of it." Not even the staff knew where they had gone. As far as the staff was concerned, Dorland had been called away on a personal emergency. Only Jeffrey Hanes knew the truth, and he had promised not to interfere, although it was clear he hadn't liked it.

"They must've been waiting for us," Ogram said.

"How could they know we'd be coming?"

"Somebody must've tipped 'em off. The Holy Order has lots of spies."

The speck grew rapidly into the oval frontal view of a flying craft.

"Can we outrun them?" Paul asked.

"Not a chance. That flyer's a lot faster than this old scout. But we might be able to outsmart them. Brace yourself. They're going to—"

The blast threw Paul's head into the back of the seat. The scoutcraft veered as though slapped by a giant hand. Paul's ears roared. Ogram struggled with the controls, swearing.

"That was too damn close!" he said after the craft had steadied.

A quick glance at the readout screen told Paul they had lost five hundred meters. He twisted around to look into the passenger compartment. Dorland sat rigidly, his hands gripping the arms of the chair. His eyes were open.

"Are you okay?" Paul asked.

Dorland kept silent, but his head moved in a slight, affirmative gesture. Paul barely had time to make sure Doriand's safety straps were pulled tight when the craft jerked sideways under the force of another blast. Paul heard the whine of the stabilizer engines as they fought to keep it on course. Ogram pulled out the stream drive controls and keyed in a quick sequence. He muttered something, slapped a bar to cancel the sequence command and started over. On the aft screen, Paul could see the flyer 62 William Greenleaf

lining up for another shot. He braced himself again as light flared from the flyer's nose—

The scoutcraft lurched, leaving Paul's stomach somewhere behind. It took him a moment to

realize that they hadn't been hit. The scene on the vidscreen had changed. The other craft was gone. Paul stared at the screen, puzzled as much as relieved. "Did you hit them with something?"

"Naw." Ogram was grinning with undisguised pride. He folded the stream controls away and repositioned the flight wheel in front of him. The craft's nose turned down toward a wooded area below them. "We just skipped over to the far side of the Peaks where they can't see us. I'll take 'er down low. We shouldn't have any more trouble." Paul still didn't grasp Ogram's meaning until Dorland spoke up: "We made a local skip."

"Yeah, right!" Ogram exclaimed. "Something they can't do in that flyer. My father used to do it all the time."

Paul stared at the vidscreen. There was no sign of the ruins or the village of Fairhope.

Ogram leveled the craft at an altitude that was barely above the treetops. He glanced over at Paul.

"You look a little pale. Feeling okay?" Paul shook his head wonderingly. "I've never seen anyone skip that close to a mass-plus before."

"Mass-plus?"

"Clarion. The planet. The gravitational basis for the skip."

Ogram shrugged and turned back to the

vidscreen. Paul realized with growing horror that Ogram didn't realize how close he had come to killing all of them. Even a navigation computer needed a few seconds to compute the maneuvers that were required to move a craft through the kohlmann stream using a local mass-plus. And with the mass-plus less than a thousand feet below them ...