Raft

11

The assault of the mine craft on the Raft had been under way for only thirty minutes, but already the air around the Platform was filled with the cries of wounded.

Pallis crawled through the foliage of his tree, working feverishly at the fire bowls. A glance through the leaves showed him that his blanket of smoke was even and thick. The tree rose smoothly; he felt a warming professional satisfaction — despite the situation.

He raised his head. The dozen trees of his flight were arrayed in a wide, leafy curve which matched the arc of the Raft a hundred yards above: they were just below the Platform, according to his charts of the underside. His trees rose as steadily as if attached by rods of iron; in a few minutes they would sweep over the Raft’s horizon.

He could see the nearer pilots as they worked at their fires, their thin faces grim.

“Can’t we speed it up?” Nead stood before him, his face stretched with anxiety and tension.

“Keep at your work, lad.”

“But can’t you hear them?” The young man, blinking away tears, shook a fist toward the thin battle noise drifting down from the Platform.

“Of course I can.” Pallis willed the temper to subside from his scarred mask of a face. “But if we go off half-cocked we’ll get ourselves killed. Right? On the other hand, if we stick to our formation, our plan, we’ve a chance of beating the buggers. Think about it, Nead; you used to be a Scientist, didn’t you?”

Nead wiped his eyes and nose with the palm of his hand. “Only Third Class.”

“Nevertheless, you’ve been trained to use your brain. So come on, man; there’s a job of work to be done here and I’m relying on you to do it. Now then, I think those bowls near the trunk need restocking…”

Nead returned to work; for a few moments Pallis watched him. Nead’s frame was gaunt, his shoulder blades and elbows prominent; his Scientist’s coverall had been patched so many times it was barely recognizable as a piece of cloth, let alone a uniform. When his eyes caught Pallis’s they were black-ringed.

Nead was barely seventeen thousand shifts old. By the Bones, Pallis thought grimly, what are we doing to our young people?

If only he could believe in his own damn pep talks he might feel better.

The flight swept out of the shadow of the Raft, and leaves blazed golden-brown in the sudden starlight. Pallis could feel the tree’s sap churn through its branches; its rotation increased like an eager skitter’s and it seemed to leap up at the star which hung in the Raft’s sky.

The Rim was mere yards above him now. He felt a growl building in his throat, dark and primeval. He raised a fist above his head; the other pilots waved their arms in silent salute.

…And the line of trees soared over the Platform.

A panorama of blood and flames unfolded before Pallis. People ran everywhere. The deck was crowded with blazing awnings and shelters; where the roofs had been blasted away Pallis could see papers burning in great heaps. The sudden down-wash from the trees’ branches caused the fires to flicker and belch smoke.

Three mine craft — iron plates fitted with jets — hovered a dozen yards above the Platform. Their jets spat live steam; Pallis saw Raft men squirm, the flesh blistering away from incautious limbs. Miners, two or three to a craft, lay belly down on the plates, dropping bottles which bloomed fire like obscene flowers.

This was the worst assault yet. Previously the miners had targeted the sites of the supply machines — their main objective — and had largely been beaten off, with low casualties on either side. But this time they were striking at the heart of the Raft’s government.

There was little sign of organized defense. Even Pallis’s flight had been near the end of its patrol of the underside when the miners attacked; if not for a pilot’s sharp eyes the Raft might have been unable to mount any real counter-thrust. But at least the Platform’s occupants were fighting back. Spears and knives lanced up at the hovering plate craft, forcing the miners to cower behind their flying shields—

— until, as Pallis watched, one spear looped over a craft and made a lucky strike, driving through a miner’s shoulder. The man stared at the bloody tip protruding from his muscle, grabbed it with his good hand, and began to scream.

The craft, undirected, tipped.

The other occupants of the craft called out and tried to reach the controls; but within seconds the plate, swaying, had fallen to within a few feet of the deck. Raft men braved live steam to force their way to the craft; a hundred hands grabbed its rim and the steam jets sputtered and died. The miners were hauled, screaming, from the plate, and were submerged by the flailing arms of the Raft men.

Now the tree flight was perhaps a dozen yards above the Rim and was noticed for the first time by the combatants. A ragged cheer spread through the chaotic ranks of the defenders; the miners turned their heads and their faces went slack. Pallis felt a crude pride as he imagined how this awesome dawn of wood and leaves must look to the simple Belt folk.

Pallis turned to Nead. “Almost time,” he murmured. “Are you ready?”

Nead stood by the trunk of the tree. He held a bottle of fuel; now he lit the wick with a crude match and held the burning lint before his face. His eyes were deep with hatred. “Oh, I’m ready,” he said.

Shame surged through Pallis.

He turned to the battle. “All right, lad,” he said briskly. “On my count. Remember, if you can’t hit a miner douse your flame; we’re not here to bomb our own people.” The tree swept over the melee; he saw faces turn up to his shadow like scorched skitter flowers. The nearest plate ship was mere yards away. “Three… two…”

“Pallis!”

Pallis turned sharply. One of the other pilots stood balancing on the trunk of his tree, his hands cupped to his mouth. He turned and pointed skywards. Two more mine craft flew above him, their ragged edges silhouetted against the sky. Squinting, Pallis could make out miners grinning down at him, the glint of glass in their hands; the miners were obviously trying to get above his trees.

“Shit.”

“What do we do, Pallis?”

“We’ve underestimated them. They’ve caught us out, ambushed us. Damn it. Come on, lad, don’t just stand there. We’ve got to rise before they get above us. You work on the bowls near the rim, and I’ll get to the trunk.”

Nead stared at the encroaching forms of the miners as if unable to accept this distraction from the simple verities of the battle below.

“Move!” Pallis snapped, thumping his shoulder.

Nead moved.

A floor of smoke spread beneath the trees, spilling over the battlefield. The great wheels lurched up and away from the deck… but the mine craft were smaller, faster and far more maneuverable. Effortlessly they moved into position above the flight.

Pallis felt his shoulders sag. He imagined a fire bomb hitting the dry branches of his tree. The foliage would burn like old paper; the structure would disintegrate and send blazing fragments raining over the deck—

Well, he wasn’t dead yet. “Scatter!” he yelled to his pilots. “They can’t take us all.”

The formation broke with what seemed ponderous slowness. The two mine craft split up, each making for a tree…

And one of them was Pallis’s.

As the plate descended the tree-pilot’s eyes met those of the miner above him. Nead came to stand close by the pilot. Pallis reached out, found Nead’s shoulder, squeezed hard—

Then a cold breeze shook the tree and a shadow swept across his face, shocking and unexpected. A huge form sailed across the face of the star above the Raft.

“A whale…” Pallis felt his jaw drop. The great beast was no more than a hundred yards above the deck of the Raft; never in his life had he known a whale to come so close.

When the miners attacking Pallis saw the great, translucent ceiling mere yards above them they called out in panic and jerked at their controls. The plate wobbled, spun about, then shot away.

Bewildered, Pallis turned to survey the Platform battle. The whale’s cloudy shadow swept across tiny, struggling humans. Men dropped their weapons and fled. The remaining miners’ craft squirted into the air and sailed over the lip of the Raft.

Save for the dead and wounded, the Platform was soon deserted. Fires flickered desultorily from a dozen piles of wreckage.

Nead was sobbing. “It’s over, isn’t it?”

“The invasion? Yes, lad; it’s over. For now, at any rate… Thanks to that miracle.” He stared up at the whale, imagining the confusion it must be causing as people looked up from the Raft’s avenues and factories at this monster in the sky. “But the miners will be back. Or maybe,” he added grimly, “we’ll be forced to go to meet them…”

His voice tailed away.

Clinging to the belly of the whale, waving feebly, was a man.

At the outbreak of the miners’ attack Gover had joined the mob crowding down the stairway from the Platform, using his fists and elbows to escape the flying glass, the screams, the fire. Now, as suddenly as it had begun, the attack was over. Gover crawled from his shelter under the Platform and climbed cautiously back up the stairs.

Fearfully he scanned the burning shelters, the blackened bodies — until he saw Decker. The big man was stalking through the devastation, bending to assist medical efforts, throwing a kick at the scorched ruin of a bookcase. His motions had the look of a man caged by frustration and anger.

But he was obviously far too busy to have observed that Gover had made himself scarce during the battle. With relief Gover hurried toward Decker, eager to be noticed now; his footsteps crunched over shattered glass.

A shadow swept across the littered deck. Gover quailed, twisted his head and looked up.

A whale! And no more than a hundred yards above the Raft, drifting like a vast, translucent balloon. What the hell was going on? His agile mind bubbled with speculation. He’d heard tales that the whales could be trapped and hunted. Maybe he could have Decker send up some of those damn fool tree-pilots; he had a gratifying vision of standing at the rim of a tree, hurling his fire bombs into a huge, staring eye—

Someone thumped his arm. “Get out of the way, damn you.”

Two men were trying to get past him. They half-dragged a woman; her face was ruined by flame, and tears leaked steadily from her remaining eye. Gover, annoyed, prepared to snap at the men — these weren’t even Committee members… but something about the tired tension in their faces made him step aside.

He glanced up once more, noticing without interest that a tree was rising toward the whale… then he made out a dark, irregular blot on the whale’s hide. He squinted against the almost direct starlight.

By the Bones, it was a man. A coarse wonder blossomed in Gover, and for a brief moment his self-centeredness evaporated. How the hell could a man end up riding a whale?

The whale rolled slowly, bringing the man a little closer. There was something naggingly familiar about the whale rider’s dimly seen frame—

Gover had no idea what was going on; but maybe he could make something out of this.

His breath hissing through his teeth, Gover worked his way through the wounded and battle-weary, searching for Decker.

In the hours after he had “persuaded” the whale to leave its school, Rees had often wished he could die.

The whale climbed steadily out of the Nebula’s depths, convulsed with loneliness and regret at leaving its companions. It drowned Rees in a huge pain, burnt him with the fierce, enormous agony of it all. He had been unable to eat, sleep; he had lain against the stomach wall, barely able to move, even his breathing constricted; at times, barely conscious, he had found himself squirming across the belly floor’s warm slime.

But he kept his concentration. Like match flames in a wind he held before his mind’s eye images of Hollerbach, Pallis and the rest; and with the Raft fixed in his thoughts, he crooned the whales’ song, over and over.

Shifts had passed as Rees lay there, dreading sleep. Then, quite abruptly, he sensed a change; a breeze of confusion had been added to the whale’s mental storm, and the beast seemed to be sweeping through tight curves in the air. He rolled onto his belly and peered through the murky cartilage.

At first he could not recognize what he saw. A vast, rust-brown disc which dwarfed even the whale, a sparse forest of trees turning slowly over unlit avenues of metal…

It was the Raft.

With sudden strength he had torn at the cartilage before his face, forcing his fingers through the dense, fibrous material.

The tree rose steadily toward the rolling bulk of the whale.

“Come on, boy,” Pallis snapped. “Whoever’s up there saved our skins. And now we’re going to save him.”

Reluctantly Nead worked at his fire bowls. “Surely you don’t think he brought the whale here intentionally?”

Pallis shrugged. “What other explanation is there? How many times have you seen a whale come so close to the Raft? Never, that’s how many. And how often do you see a man riding a whale?

“Two impossible events in one shift? Nead, the law of the simplest hypothesis tells you that it’s all got to be connected.” Nead glanced at him curiously. “You see,” Pallis grinned, “even Scientists Third Class don’t have the monopoly on knowledge. Now work those bloody bowls!”

The tree rose from its blanket of smoke. Soon the whale filled the sky; it was a monstrous, rolling ceiling, with the passenger carried around and around like a child on a roundabout.

As the tree closed, its rotation slowed jerkily, despite all Nead’s efforts. At last it came to rest altogether perhaps twenty yards beneath the belly of the whale.

The whale’s three eyes rolled downwards toward the succulent foliage.

“There’s nothing I can do,” Nead called. “The damn smoke’s thick enough to walk on, but she just won’t budge.”

“Nead, a tree has about the same affection for a whale as a plate of meat-sim has for you. She’s doing her best; just hold her steady.” He cupped his hands and bellowed across the air. “Hey, you! On the whale!”

He was answered by a tentative wave.

“Listen, we can’t get any closer. You’ll have to jump! Do you understand?”

A long pause, then another wave.

“I’ll try to help you,” Pallis called. “The whale’s spin should throw you across; all you have to do is let go at the right time.”

The man buried his face in the flesh of the whale, as if utterly weary. “Nead, the guy doesn’t look too healthy,” Pallis murmured. “When he comes this way he might not do a good job of grabbing hold. Forget the fire bowls for a minute, and stand ready to run where he hits.”

Nead nodded and straightened up, toes locked in the foliage.

“You up there… we’ll do this on the next turn. All right?”

Another wave.

Pallis visualized the man parting from the whale. He would leave the spinning body tangentially, travel in a more or less straight line to the tree. There should really be no problem — provided the whale didn’t take it into its head to fly off at the last second—

“Now! Let go!”

The man raised his head — and, with agonizing slowness, curved his legs beneath him.

“That’s too slow!” Pallis cried. “Hold on or you’ll…”

The man kicked away, sailing along a path that was anything but tangential to the whale’s spin.

“…Or you’ll miss us,” Pallis whispered.

“By the Bones, Pallis, it’s going to be close.”

“Shut up and stand ready.”

The seconds passed infinitely slowly. The man seemed limp, his limbs dangling like lengths of rope. Thanks to the man’s release the whale’s spin had thrown him to Pallis’s right — but, on the other hand, his kick had taken him to the left—

— and the two effects together were bringing him down Pallis’s throat; suddenly the man became an explosion of arms and legs that plummeted out of the sky. The man’s bulk crumpled against Pallis’s chest, knocking him backwards into the foliage.

The whale, with a huge, relieved shudder, soared into the sky.

Nead lifted the man off Pallis and laid him on his back. Under a tangle of filthy beard the man’s skin was stretched tight over his cheek bones. His eyes were closed, and the battered remnants of a coverall clung to his frame.

Nead scratched his head. “I know this guy… I think.”

Pallis laughed, rubbing his bruised chest. “Rees. I should have bloody known it would be you.”

Rees half-opened his eyes; when he spoke his voice was dry as dust. “Hello, tree-pilot. I’ve had a hell of a trip.”

Pallis was embarrassed to find his eyes misting up. “I bet you did. You nearly missed, you damn idiot. It would have been easy if you hadn’t decided to turn somersaults on the way.”

“I had every… confidence in you, my friend.” Rees struggled to sit up. “Pallis, listen,” he said.

Pallis frowned. “What?”

A smile twisted Rees’s broken lips. “It’s kind of difficult to explain. You have to take me to Hollerbach. I think I know how to save the world…”

“You know what?”

Rees looked troubled. “He’s still alive, isn’t he?”

Pallis laughed. “Who, Hollerbach? They could no more get rid of that old bugger than they can get rid of you, it seems. Now lie back and I’ll take you home.”

With a sigh, Rees settled among the leaves.

By the time the tree had docked Rees seemed stronger. He emptied one of Pallis’s flasks of water and made inroads into a slab of meat-sim. “The whale flesh kept me alive in the short term, but who knows what vitamin and protein deficiencies I suffered…”

Pallis eyed his remaining food warily. “Just make sure you relieve your protein deficiencies before you start on my foliage.”

With Pallis’s support Rees slid down the tree’s tether cable to the deck. At the base Pallis said, “Now, come back to my cabin and rest before—”

“There’s no time,” Rees said. “I have to get to Hollerbach. There’s so much to do… we have to get started before we become too weak to act …” His eyes flickered anxiously around the cable thicket. “…It’s dark,” he said slowly.

“That’s a good word for it,” Pallis said grimly. “Look, Rees, things haven’t got any better here, Decker’s in charge, and he’s neither a fool nor a monster; but the fact is that things are steadily falling apart. Maybe it’s already too late—”

Rees met his eyes with a look of clear determination. “Pilot, take me to Hollerbach,” he said gently.

Pallis, surprised, felt invigorated by Rees’s answer. Under his physical weakness Rees had changed, become confident — almost inspiring. But then, given all his fantastic experiences, perhaps it would have been stranger if he hadn’t changed—

“We don’t want any trouble, pilot.”

The voice came from the gloom of the cable thicket. Pallis stepped forward, hands on hips. “Who’s that?”

Two men stepped forward, one tall, both looming as wide as supply machines. They wore the ostentatiously ripped tunics that were the uniform of Committee functionaries.

“Seel and Plath,” Pallis groaned. “Remember these two clowns, Rees? Decker’s tame muscles… What do you boneheads want?”

Seel, short, square and bald, stepped forward, finger stabbing at Pallis’s chest. “Now, look, Pallis, we’ve come for the miner, not you. I know we’ve locked fists before…”

Pallis lifted his arms, letting the muscles bunch under his shirt. “We have, haven’t we?” he said easily. “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t we finish it off? Eh?”

Seel took a pace forward.

Rees stepped between them. “Forget it, tree-pilot,” he said sadly. “I’d have to face this crap sometime; let’s get it over…”

Plath took Rees’s arm, none too gently, and they began to make their way through the cable thicket. Rees’s footsteps were airy and unsteady.

Pallis shook his head angrily. “The poor bastard’s just hitched a ride on a whale, for God’s sake; can’t you let him be? Eh? Hasn’t he suffered enough?”

But — with only a last, longing stare from Seel — the little party walked away.

Pallis growled with frustration. “Finish up the work here,” he spat at Nead.

Nead straightened from his work at the cable anchor. “Where are you going?”

“After them, of course. Where else?” And the tree-pilot stalked away through the cables.

By the time they’d reached the Platform Rees felt his gait become watery, wavering; his two captors weren’t so much restraining him, he thought wryly, as holding him up. After they climbed the shallow staircase to the deck of the Platform he murmured, “Thanks…”

Then he raised a heavy head and found himself staring at a battlefield. “By the Bones.”

“Welcome to the Raft’s seat of government, Rees,” Pallis said grimly.

Something crackled under Rees’s tread; he bent and picked up a smashed bottle, its glass scorched and half-melted. “More fire bombs? What’s happened here, pilot? Another revolt?”

Pallis shook his head. “Miners, Rees. We’ve been at this futile war since we lost the supply machine we sent to the Belt. It’s a stupid, bloody affair… I’m sorry you have to see this, lad.”

“Well. What have we here?” A vast belly quivered, close enough for Rees to feel its gross gravity field; it made him feel weak, insubstantial. He looked up into a broad, scarred face.

“Decker…”

“But you walked the beam. Didn’t you?” Decker sounded vaguely puzzled, as if pondering a child’s riddle. “Or are you one of those I sent to the mine?”

Rees didn’t answer. He studied the Raft’s leader; Decker’s face was marked by deep creases and his eyes were hollow and restless. “You’ve changed,” Rees said.

Decker’s eyes narrowed. “We’ve all bloody changed, lad.”

“Mine rat. I thought I recognized you, clinging to that whale.” The words were almost a hiss. Gover’s thin face was a mask of pure hatred, focused on Rees.

Rees suddenly felt enormously tired. “Gover. I never imagined I’d see you again.” He looked into Gover’s eyes, recalling the last time he had seen the apprentice. It had been at the time of the revolt, he supposed, when Rees had silently joined the group of Scientists outside the Bridge. Rees remembered his contempt for the other man — and recalled how Gover had recognized that contempt, and how his thin cheeks had burned in response—

“He’s an exile.” Gover sidled up to Decker, his small fists clenching and unclenching. “I saw him approaching on the whale and had him brought to you. You threw him off the Raft. Now he’s back. And he’s a miner…”

“So?” Decker demanded.

“Make the bastard walk the beam.”

Stray emotions chased like shadows across Decker’s complex, worn face. The man was tired, Rees realized suddenly; tired of the unexpected complexity of his role, tired of the blood, the endless privations, the suffering…

Tired, And looking for a few minutes’ diversion.

“So you’d have him over the side, eh?”

Gover nodded, eyes still fixed on Rees.

Decker murmured, “Shame you weren’t so brave while the miners were in the sky.” Gover flinched. A cruel smile surfaced through Decker’s tiredness. “All right, Gover. I agree with your judgment. But with one proviso.”

“What?”

“No beam. There’s been enough cowardly killing this shift. No. Let him die the way a man is meant to. Hand to hand.” Gover’s eyes widened, shocked. Decker stepped back, leaving Rees and Gover facing each other. A small crowd gathered around them, a ring of bloodstained faces eager for diversion.

“More bloody games, Decker?”

“Shut up, Pallis.”

From the corner of his eye Rees saw the two heavies — Plath and Seel — clamp the tree-pilot’s arms tight.

Rees looked into Gover’s twisted, frightened face. “Decker, I’ve come a long way,” he said. “And I’ve something to tell you… something more important than you can dream.”

Decker raised his eyebrows. “Really? I’ll be fascinated to hear about it… later. First, you fight.”

Gover crouched, hands spread like claws.

It seemed he had no choice. Rees raised his arms, tried to think himself into the fight. Once he could have taken Gover with one arm behind his back. But — after so many shifts with the Boneys and riding the whale — now he wasn’t sure…

Gover seemed to sense his doubt; his fear seemed to evaporate, and his posture adjusted subtly, became more aggressive. “Come on, mine rat.” He stepped toward Rees.

Rees groaned inwardly. He didn’t have time for this. Come on, think; hadn’t he learned anything on his journey? How would a Boney handle this? He remembered the whale-spears lancing through the air with deadly accuracy—

“Watch it, Gover,” someone called. “He’s got a weapon.”

Rees found the half-bottle still in his hand… and an idea blossomed. “What, this? All right, Gover — hand to hand. Just you and me.” He closed his eyes, felt the pull of the Raft and Platform play on the gravitational sense embedded in his stomach — then he hurled the glass as hard as he could, not quite vertically. It sparkled through the starlit air.

Gover showed his teeth; they were even and brown.

Rees stepped forward. Time seemed to slow, and the world around him froze; the only motion was the twinkling of the glass in the air above him. Everything became bright and vivid, as if illuminated by some powerful lantern within his eyes. Detail overwhelmed him, sharp and gritty: he counted the beads of sweat on Gover’s brow, saw how the apprentice’s nostrils flared white as he breathed. Rees’s throat tightened and he felt the blood pump in his neck; and all the while the half-bottle, small and graceful, was orbiting perfectly through the complex gravitational field…

Until, at last, it dipped back toward the deck. And slammed into Gover’s back.

Gover went down howling. For some seconds he writhed on the deck, the blood pooling over the metal around him. Then, at last, he was still, and the blood ceased to flow.

For long moments nobody moved, Decker, Pallis and the rest forming a shocked tableau.

Rees knelt. Gover’s back had been transformed into a mash of blood and torn cloth. Rees forced his hands into the wound and dug out the glass, then he stood holding aloft the grisly trophy, Gover’s blood trickling down his arm.

Decker scratched his head. “By the Bones…” He half-laughed.

Rees felt a cold, hard anger course through him. “I know what you’re thinking,” he told Decker quietly. “You don’t expect the likes of me to fight dirty. I cheated; I didn’t follow the rules. Right?”

Decker nodded uncertainly.

“Well, this isn’t a bloody game!” Rees screamed, spraying Decker’s face with spittle. “I wasn’t going to let this fool kill me, not before I make you hear what I’ve got to say.

“Decker, you’ll destroy me if you want to. But if you want any chance of saving your people you’ll hear me out.” He brandished the glass in Decker’s face. “Has this earned me the right to be heard? Has it?”

Decker’s mask of scars was impassive. He said quietly, “You’d better take this one home, tree-pilot. Get him cleaned up.” With one last, narrow glare, he turned away.

Rees dropped the glass. Abruptly his fatigue crashed down. The deck seemed to quiver, and now it was rising to meet his face—

Arms around his shoulders and waist. He raised his head blearily. “Pallis. Thanks… I had to do it, you see. You understand that, don’t you?”

The tree-pilot would not meet his eyes; he stared at Rees’s bloody hands and shuddered.