The Ragged Astronauts

Chapter 16

The cave was in the side of a ragged hill, in an area of broken terrain where numerous gullies, rocky projections and a profusion of spiky scrub made the going difficult for man or beast.

Lain Maraquine was content to let the bluehorn pick its own way around the various obstacles, giving it only an occasional nudge to keep it heading for the orange flag which marked the cave’s position. The four mounted soldiers of his personal guard, obligatory for any senior official of the S.E.S., followed a short distance behind, the murmur of their conversation blending with the heavy drone of insects. Littlenight was not long past and the high sun was baking the ground, clothing the horizon in tremulous purple-tinted blankets of hot air.

Lain felt unusually relaxed, appreciating the opportunity to get away from the skyship base and turn his mind to matters which had nothing to do with world crises and interplanetary travel. Toller’s premature return from the proving flight, ten days earlier, had involved Lain in a harrowing round of meetings, consultations and protracted studies of the new scientific data obtained. One faction in the S.E.S. administration had wanted a second proving flight with a full descent to Overland and detailed mapping of the central continent. In normal circumstances Lain would have been in agreement, but the rapidly worsening situation in Kolcorron overrode all other consideration.…

The production target of one thousand skyships had been achieved with some to spare, thanks to the driving ruthlessness and Leddravohr and Chakkell.

Fifty of the ships had been set aside for the transportation of the country’s royalty and aristocrats in small family groups who would travel in comparative luxury, though by no means all of the nobility had decided to take part in the migration. Another two-hundred were designated as cargo vessels which would carry food, livestock, seeds, weapons and essential machinery and materials; and a further hundred were for the use of military personnel. That left six-hundred-and-fifty ships which, with reduced two-man crews, had the capability of transporting almost twelve thousand of the general population to Overland.

At an early stage of the great undertaking King Prad had decreed that emigration would be on a purely voluntary basis, with equal numbers of males and females, and that fixed proportions of the available places would be allocated to men with key skills.

For a long time the hard-headed citizenry had declined to take the proposal seriously, regarding it as a diversion, a regal folly to be chuckled over in taverns. The small numbers who put their names forward were treated with derision, and it seemed that if the skyship fleet were ever to befitted it would only be at swordpoint.

Prad had chosen to bide his time, knowing in advance that greater forces than he could ever muster were on the move. The ptertha plague, famine and the abrupt crumbling of social order had exerted their powerful persuasions, and — in spite of condemnation from the Church — the roster of willing emigrants had swollen. But such was the conservatism of the Kolcorronians and so radical the solution to their problems that a certain degree of reserve still had to be overcome, a lingering feeling that any amount of deprivation and danger on Land was preferable to the near-inevitability of a highly unnatural death in the alien blue reaches of the sky.

Then had come the news that an S.E.S. ship had voyaged more than halfway to Overland and had returned intact.

Within hours every remaining place on the emigration flight had been allocated, and suddenly those who held the necessary warrants were objects of envy and resentment. There was a reversal of public opinion, swift and irrational, and many who had scorned the very notion of fly ing to the sister world began to see themselves as victims of discrimination.

Even the majority who were too apathetic to care much either way about the broad historical issues were disgruntled by stories of wagons loaded with scarce provisions disappearing through the gates of Skyship Quarter…

Against that background Lain had argued that the proving flight had achieved all its major objectives by successfully turning over and passing the midpoint. The descent to the surface of Overland would have been a passive and predictable business; and Zavotle’s sketches of the central continent, viewed through binoculars, were good enough to show that it was remarkably free of mountains and other features which would have jeopardised safe landings.

Even the loss of a crew member had occurred in such a way as to provide a valuable lesson about the inadvisability of cooking in weightless conditions. The commander of the ship was to be congratulated on his conduct of a uniquely demanding mission, Lain had concluded, and the migration itself should begin in the very near future.

His arguments had been accepted.

The first squadron of forty skyships, mainly carrying soldiers and construction workers, was scheduled to depart on Day 80 of the year 2630.

That date was only six days in the future, and as Lain’s steed picked its way up the hill to the cave it came to him that he was curiously unexcited by the prospect of flying to Overland. If all went according to plan he and Gesalla would be on a ship of the tenth squadron, which — allowing for delays caused by unsuitable weather or ptertha activity — was due to leave the home world in perhaps only twenty days’ time. Why was he so little moved by the imminence of what would be the greatest personal adventure of his life, the finest scientific opportunity he could ever conceive, the boldest undertaking in the entire history of mankind?

Was it that he was too timorous even to allow himself to think about the event? Was it that the growing rift with Gesalla — unacknowledged but ever present in his awareness — had severed a spiritual taproot, rendering him emotionally sere and sterile? Or was it a simple failure of the imagination on the part of one who prided himself on his superior qualities of mind?

The torrent of questions and doubts subsided as the bluehorn reached a rock-strewn shelf and Lain saw the entrance to the cave a short distance ahead. Grateful for the internal respite, he dismounted and waited for the soldiers to catch up on him. The four men’s faces were beaded with sweat below their leather helmets, and they were obviously puzzled at having been brought to such a desolate spot.

“You will wait for me here,” Lain said to the burly sergeant. “Where will you post your look-outs?”

The sergeant shaded his eyes from the near-vertical rays of the sun which were stabbing past the fire-limned disk of Overland. “On top of the hill, sir. They should be able to see five or six observation posts from there.”

“Good! I’m going into this cave and I don’t want to be disturbed. Only call me if there is a ptertha warning.”

“Yes, sir.”

While the sergeant dismounted and deployed his men Lain opened the panniers strapped to his bluehorn and took out four oil lanterns. He ignited the wicks with a lens, picked the lanterns up by their glasscord slings and carried them into the cave. The entrance was quite low and as narrow as a single door. For a moment the air was even warmer than in the open, then he was in a region of dim coolness where the walls receded to form a spacious chamber. He set the lanterns on the dirt floor and waited for his eyes to adjust to the poor light.

The cave had been discovered earlier in the year by a surveyor investigating the hill as a possible site for an observation post. Perhaps through genuine enthusiasm, perhaps out of a desire to sample Lord Glo’s noted hospitality, the surveyor had made his way to Greenmount and lodged a description of the cave’s startling contents. The report had reached Lain a short time later and he had decided to view the find for himself as soon as he had time to spare from his work. Now, surrounded by a fading screen of after-images, he understood that his coming to the dark place was symbolic. He was turning towards Land’s past and away from Overland’s future, confessing that he wanted no part of the migration flight or what lay beyond it.…

The pictures on the cave walls were becoming visible.

There was no order to the scenes portrayed. It appeared that the largest and flattest areas had been used first, and that succeeding generations of artists had filled in the intervening spaces with fragmentary scenes, using their ingenuity to incorporate bosses, hollows and cracks as features of their designs.

The result was a labyrinthian montage in which the eye was compelled to wander unceasingly from semi-naked hunters to family groups to stylised brakka trees to strange and familiar animals, erotica, demons, cooking pots, flowers, human skeletons, weapons, suckling babes, geometrical abstracts, fish, snakes, unclassifiable artifacts and impenetrable symbols. In some cases cardinal lines had been graven into the rock and filled with pitch, causing the images to advance on the sight with relentless power; in others there was a spatial ambiguity by which a human or animal form might be defined by nothing more than the changing intensity of a patch of colour. For the most part the pigments were still vivid where they were meant to be vivid, and restrained where the artist had chosen to be subtle, but in some places time itself had contributed to the visual complexity with the stainings of moisture and fungal growths.

Lain was overwhelmed, as never before, by a sense of duration.

The basic thesis of the Kolcorronian religion was that Land and Overland had always existed and had always been very much as they were in modern times, twin poles for the continuous alternation of discarnate human spirits. Four centuries earlier a war had been fought to stamp out the Bithian Heresy, which claimed that a person would be rewarded for a life of virtue on one world by being given a higher station when reincarnated on the sister planet. The Church’s main objection had been to the idea of a progression and therefore of change, which conflicted with the essential teaching that the present order was immutable and eternal. Lain found it easy to believe that the macrocosm had always been as it was, but on the small stage of human history there was evidence of change, and by extrapolating backwards one could arrive at… this!

He had no way of estimating the age of the cave paintings, but his instinct was to think in millennia and not in centuries. Here was evidence that men had once existed in vastly different circumstances, that they had thought in different ways, and had shared the planet with animals which no longer existed. He experienced a pang of mingled intellectual stimulation and regret as he realised that here, in the confines of one rocky cavity, was the material for a lifetime of work. It would have been possible for him to complement the abstractions of mathematics with the study of his own kind, a course which seemed infinitely more natural and rewarding than fleeing to another world.

ould I still do it?

The thought, only half serious though it was, seemed to intensify the coolness of the cave and Lain raised his shoulders in the beginnings of a shudder. He found himself, as had happened several times recently, trying to analyse his commitment to flying to Overland.

Was it the logical thing to do — the coolly considered action of a philosopher — or did he feel that he owed it to Gesalla, and the children she was determined to have, to give them a divergent future? Until he had begun examining his own motives the issue had seemed clear cut — fly to Overland and embrace the future, or stay on Land and die with the past.

But the majority of the population had not had to make that decision. They would be following the very human course of refusing to lie down until they were dead, of simply ignoring the defeatist notion that the blind and mindless ptertha could triumph over mankind. Indeed, the migration flight could not even take place without the cooperation of those who were staying behind — the inflation crews, the men in the ptertha observation posts, the military who would defend Skyship Quarter and continue to impose order after the King and his entourage had departed.

Human life was not going to cease overnight on Land, Lain had realised. There could be many years, decades, of shrinkage and retrenchment, and perhaps the process would eventually produce a hard core of unkillables, few in number, living underground in conditions of unimaginable privation. Lain did not want to be part of that grim scenario, but the point was that he might be able to find a niche within it. The point was that, given sufficient will, he coflld probably live out his allotted span on the planet of his birth, where his existence had relevance and meaning.

But what about Gesalla?

She was too loyal to consider leaving without him. Such was her character that the very fact of their drifting apart mentally would cause her to cleave to him all the more in body, in obedience to her marriage vows. He doubted if she had even yet admitted to herself that she was.…

Lain’s eyes, darting urgently over the time-deep panorama surrounding him, fastened on the image of a small child at play. It was a vignette, at the triangular juncture of three larger scenes, and showed a male infant absorbed with what appeared to be a doll which he was holding in one hand. His other hand was outstretched to the side, as though carelessly reaching for a familiar pet, and just beyond it was a featureless circle. The circle was devoid of coloration and could have represented several things — a large ball, a balloon, a whimsically placed Overland — but Lain was oddly tempted to see it as a ptertha.

He picked up a lantern and went closer to the picture. The intensified illumination confirmed that the circle had never contained any pigment, which was strange considering that the long-dead artists had shown great scrupulousness and subtlety in their rendering of other less significant subjects. That implied that his interpretation had been wrong, especially as the child in the fragmentary scene was obviously relaxed and unperturbed by the nearness of what would have been an object of terror.

Lain’s deliberations were interrupted by the sound of someone entering the cave. Frowning with annoyance, he raised the lantern, then took an involuntary pace backwards as he saw that the newcomer was Leddravohr. The prince’s smile flicked into existence for a moment as he emerged from the narrow passage, battle sword scraping the wall, and ran his gaze around the cave.

“Good aftday, Prince,” Lain said, dismayed to find that he was beginning to tremble. Many meetings with Leddravohr during the course of his work for the S.E.S. had taught him to retain most of his composure when they were with others and in the humdrum atmosphere of an office, but here in the constricted space of the cave Leddravohr was huge, inhumanly powerful and frightening. He was far enough removed from Lain in mind and outlook to have stepped out of one of the primitive scenes glowing in the surrounding half-light.

Leddravohr gave the entire display a cursory inspection before speaking. “I was told there was something remarkable here, Maraquine. Was I misinformed?”

“I don’t think so, Prince.” Lain hoped he had been able to keep a tremor out of his voice.

“You don’t think so? Well, what is it that your fine brain appreciates and mine doesn’t?”

Lain sought an answer which would not frame the insult Leddravohr had devised for him. “I haven’t had time to study the pictures, Prince — but I am interested in the fact that they are obviously very old.”

“How old?”

“Perhaps three or four thousand years.”

Leddravohr snorted in amusement. “That’s nonsense. You’re saying these scrawls are far older than Ro-Atabri itself?”

“It was just my opinion, Prince.”

“You’re wrong. The colours are too fresh. This place has been a bolt hole during one of the civil wars. Some insurgents have hidden out here and.…“Leddravohr paused to peer closely at a sketch depicting two men in a contorted sexual position. “And you can see what they did to pass the time. Is this what intrigues you, Maraquine?”

“No, Prince.”

“Do you ever lose your temper, Maraquine?”

“I try not to, Prince.”

Leddravohr snorted again, padded around the cave and came back to Lain. “All right, you can stop shaking — I’m not going to touch you. It may interest you to learn that I’m here because my father has heard about this spider hole. He wants the drawings accurately copied. How long will that take?”

Lain glanced around the walls. “Four good draughtsmen could do it in a day, Prince.”

“You arrange it.” Leddravohr stared at him with an unreadable expression on his smooth face. “Why does anybody give a fig about the likes of this place? My father is old and worn out; he has soon to face flying to Overland; most of our population has been wiped out by the plague, and the remainder are getting ready to riot; and even some units of the army are becoming unruly now that they are hungry and it has dawned on them that I soon won’t be here to look after their welfare — and yet all my father is concerned about is seeing these miserable scrawls for himself. Why, Maraquine, why?”

Lain was unprepared for the question. “King Prad appears to have the instincts of a philosopher, Prince.”

“You mean he’s like you?”

“I didn’t intend to elevate myself to.…”

“Never mind all that. Was that supposed to be your answer? He wants to know things because he wants to know things?”

“That’s what ‘philosopher’ means, Prince.”

“But.…” Leddravohr broke off as there was a clattering of equipment in the cave entrance and the sergeant of Lain’s personal guard appeared. He saluted Leddravohr and, although agitated, waited for permission to speak.

“Go on, man,” Leddravohr said.

“The wind is rising in the west, Prince. We are warned of ptertha.”

Leddravohr waved the sergeant away. “All right — we will leave soon.”

“The wind is rising quickly, Prince,” the sergeant said, obviously deeply unhappy at lingering beyond his dismissal.

“And a crafty old soldier like you sees no point in taking unnecessary risks.” Leddravohr placed a hand on the sergeant’s shoulder and shook him playfully, an intimacy he would not have granted the loftiest aristocrat. “Take your men and leave now, sergeant.”

The sergeant’s eyes emitted a single flash of gratitude and adoration as he hurried away. Leddravohr watched him depart, then turned to Lain.

“You were explaining this passion for useless knowledge,” he said. “Continue!”

“I.…” Lain tried to organise his thoughts. “In my profession all knowledge is regarded as useful.”

“Why?”

“It’s part of a whole… a unified structure… and when that structure is complete Man will be complete and will have total control of his destiny.”

“Fine words!” Leddravohr’s discontented gaze steadied on the section of wall closest to where Lain was standing. “Do you really believe the future of our race hinges on that picture of a brat playing ball?”

“That isn’t what I said, Prince.”

“That isn’t what I said, Prince,” Leddravohr mocked. “You have told me nothing, philosopher.”

“I am sorry that you heard nothing,” Lain said quietly.

Leddravohr’s smile appeared on the instant. “That was meant to be an insult, wasn’t it? Love of knowledge must be an ardent passion indeed if it begins to stiffen your backbone, Maraquine. We will continue this discussion on the ride back. Come!”

Leddravohr went to the entrance, turned sideways and negotiated the narrow passage. Lain blew out the four lanterns and, leaving them where they were, followed Leddravohr to the outside. A noticeable breeze was streaming over the uneven contours of the hill from the west. Leddravohr, already astride his bluehorn, watched in amusement as Lain gathered the skirts of his robe and inexpertly dragged himself up into his own saddle. After a searching look at the sky, Leddravohr led the way down the hill, controlling his mount with the straight-backed nonchalance of the born rider.

Lain, yielding to an impulse, urged his bluehorn forward on a roughly parallel track, determined to keep abreast of the prince. They were almost halfway down the hill when he discovered he was guiding his animal at speed into a patch of loose shale. He tried to pull the bluehorn to the right, but only succeeded in throwing it off balance. It gave a bark of alarm as it lost its footing on the treacherous surface and fell sideways. Lain heard its leg snap as he threw himself clear, aiming for a clump of yellow grass which had mercifully appeared in his view. He hit the ground, rolled over and jumped to his feet immediately, unharmed but appalled by the agonised howling of the bluehorn as it threshed on the clattering flakes of rock.

Leddravohr dismounted in a single swift movement and strode to the fallen animal, black sword in hand. He moved in quickly and drove the blade into the bluehorn’s belly, angling the thrust forward to penetrate the chest cavity. The bluehorn gave a convulsive heave and emitted a slobbering, snoring sound as it died. Lain clapped a hand over his mouth as he fought to control the racking upsurges of his stomach.

“Here’s another morsel of useful knowledge for you,” Leddravohr said calmly. “When you’re killing a bluehorn, never go straight into the heart or you’ll get blood all over you. This way the heart discharges into the body cavities, and there is very little mess. See?” Leddravohr withdrew his sword, wiped it on the dead animal’s mane and spread his arms, inviting inspection of his unmarked clothing. “Don’t you agree that it’s all very…philosophical?”

“I made it fall,” Lain mumbled.

“It was only a bluehorn.” Leddravohr sheathed his sword, returned to his mount and swung himself into the saddle. “Come on, Maraquine — what are you waiting for?”

Lain looked at the prince, who had one hand outstretched in readiness to assist him on to the bluehorn, and felt a powerful aversion to making the physical contact. “Thank you, Prince — but it would be improper for one of my station to ride with you.”

Leddravohr burst out laughing. “What are you talking about, you fool? We’re out in the real world now — the soldier’s world — and the ptertha are on the move.”

The reference to the ptertha went through Lain like a dagger of ice. He took a hesitant step forward.

“Don’t be so bashful,” Leddravohr said, his eyes amused and derisive. “After all, it wouldn’t be the first time you and I had shared a mount.”

Lain came to a standstill, his brow dewing over with cool perspiration, and he heard himself say, “On consideration, I prefer to make my own way back to the Quarter on foot.”

“I’m losing patience with you, Maraquine.” Leddravohr shaded his eyes and scanned the western sky. “I’m not going to plead with you to preserve your own life.”

“My life is my responsibility, Prince.”

“It must be something in the Maraquine blood,” Leddravohr said, shrugging as he addressed a notional third party.

He turned his bluehorn’s head to the east and urged the beast into a canter. Within a few seconds he had passed out of sight behind a shoulder of rock, and Lain was alone in a harsh landscape which suddenly seemed as alien and unforgiving as a distant planet. He gave a shaky, incredulous laugh as he took stock of the predicament he had placed himself in with a single failure of reason.

Why now? he demanded of himself. Why did I wait until now?

There was a faint scraping sound from nearby. Lain wheeled in fright and saw that pallid multipedes were already writhing upwards out of their burrows, disturbing small pebbles in their eagerness to converge on the dead bluehorn. He lunged away from the spectacle. For a moment he considered returning to the cave, then realised it would offer only minimal protection during daylight — and after nightfall the entire hill was likely to be swarming with globes, patiently nuzzling and probing. The best plan was to head eastwards to Skyship Quarter with all possible speed and try to get there before the ptertha came riding down the wind.

The decision made, Lain began to run through the murmurous heat. Near the base of the hill he emerged on an open slope which gave him an unrestricted view to the east. A far-off plume of dust marked Leddravohr’s course and a long way ahead of him, almost at the drab boundaries of the Quarter, a larger cloud showed how far the four soldiers had gone. He had not appreciated the difference in speed between a man on fpot and one mounted on a galloping bluehorn. He would be able to make better progress when he reached the flat grassland, but even so it would probably be an hour before he reached safety.

An hour!

Is there any hope at all of my surviving for that length of time?

As a distraction from his growing physical distress, he tried to bring his professional skills to bear on the question. The statistics, when looked at dispassionately, were more encouraging than he might have expected.

Daylight and flat terrain were conditions which did not favour the ptertha. They had virtually no self-propulsive capability in the horizontal plane, depending on air currents to carry them across the face of the land, which meant that an active man had little to fear from ptertha while he was crossing open ground. Assuming they had not blanketed the area — something which rarely happened in daytime — all he had to do was observe the globes closely and be aware of the wind direction. When menaced by a ptertha, it was simply a matter of waiting until just before it came within the killing radius, then running crosswind for a short distance and allowing the globe to drift helplessly by.

Lain stumbled to a halt in a gully, his mouth filling with the salt froth of exhaustion, and leaned on a rock to recover his breath. It was vital that he should still have reserves of strength and be nimble on his feet when he reached the plain. As the tumult in his chest gradually subsided he indulged himself in a visualisation of his next encounter with Leddravohr, and — incredibly — he felt his gaping mouth trying to form a grin. This was the irony of ironies! While the renowned military prince had fled to seek refuge from the ptertha, the mild-mannered philosopher had strolled back to the city, in need of no armour but his intellect. This was proof indeed that he was no coward, proof for all to see, proof that even his wife would have to.…

I’ve gone mad! The thought caused Lain to moan aloud in sheer self-loathing. I have truly lost what used to be my mind!

I permitted a savage to breach my defences with all his crossness and malice, his celebration of stupidity and glorification of ignorance. I let him debase me until I was prepared to throw away life itself in a weltering of hatred and pride — what laudable emotions! — and now I’m indulging in fantasies of childish revenge, so gratified by my own superiority that I haven’t even taken the basic precaution of making sure there are no ptertha at hand!

Lain straightened up and — sick with premonition — turned to look back along the gully.

The ptertha was barely ten paces away, well within its killing radius, and the breeze coursing along the gully was sweeping it closer to him with mind-freezing swiftness.

It swelled to encompass his view, its glistening transparencies tinged with purple and black. In one part of his mind Lain felt a perverse flicker of gratitude that the issue had been decided for him, so quickly and so finally. There was no point in trying to run, no point in trying to fight. He saw the ptertha as he had never seen one before, saw the livid swirlings of the toxic dust inside it. Was there a hint of structure there? A globe within a globe? Was a malign proto-intelligence knowingly sacrificing itself in order to destroy him?

The ptertha filled Lain’s universe.

It was everywhere — and then it was nowhere.

He took a deep breath and looked about him with the ruefully placid gaze of the man who has only one further decision to make.

Not here, he thought. Not in this blind and circumscribed place — it isn ’t at all suitable.

Recalling the higher slope which had afforded the good view to the east, he retraced his steps along the bed of the ancient stream, walking slowly now and emitting occasional sighs. When he reached the slope he sat on the ground with his back to an agreeably shaped boulder and arranged his robe in neat folds around his outstretched legs.

The world of his last day was laid out before him. The triangular outline of Mount Opelmer floated low in the sky, seemingly detached from the horizontal ribbons and speckled bands which represented Ro-Atabri and the derelict suburbs on the shores of Arle Bay. Closer and lower was the artificial community of the Skyship Quarter, its dozens of balloon enclosures an illusory city of rectangular towers. The Tree glittered in the southern heavens, its nine stars challenging the sun’s brilliance, and at the zenith a broad crescent of mellow light was spreading insensibly across the disk of Overland.

The whole span of my life and work is in that scene, Lain mused. I have brought my writing materials and should try to make some kind of a summation… not that the last thoughts of one who precipitated his own demise in such a ludicrous fashion would be of much interest or value to others… at most I could record what is already kno wn — that pterthacosis is not a bad death… as deaths go, that is… nature can be merciful…as the most horrific shark bites are often unaccompanied by pain, so the inhalation of ptertha dust can sometimes engender a strange mood of resignation, a chemical fatalism… in that respect at least, I appear to be fortunate… except that I am deprived of feelings which are mine by ancient right…

A burning sensation manifested itself below Lain’s chest and spread radial tendrils into the rest of his torso. At the same time the air about him seemed to grow cold, as though the sun had lost its heat. He put a hand into a pocket of his robe, brought out a bag made of yellow linen and spread it on his lap. There was a final duty to be performed — but not yet.

I wish Gesalla were here…Gesalla and Toller… so that I could give them to each other, or ask them to accept each other… irony piles upon irony… Toller always wanted to be different, to be more like me… and when he became the new Toller, I was forced to become the old Toller… to the final extent of throwing down my life for the sake of honour, a gesture which should have been made before my beautiful solewife was ravaged and defiled by Leddravohr… Toller was right about that, and I — in my so-called wisdom — told him he was wrong… Gesalla knew in her head that he was wrong, and in her heart that he was right…

A stab of pain in Lain’s chest was accompanied by a bout of shivering. The view before him was curiously flat. He could see more ptertha now. They were drifting down towards the plain in groups of two and three, but they had no relevance to what was left of his life. The dream-flow of his fragmentary thoughts was the new reality.

Poor Toller… he became what he aspired to be, and how did I reward him?…with resentment and envy…I hurt him on the day ofGlo’s interment, only able to do so because he loves me, but he responded to my childish spite with dignity and forbearance… brakka and ptertha go together…I love my “little brother#148; and I wonder if Gesalla even yet realises that she too… these things can take such a long time…of course brakka and ptertha go together — it’s a symbiotic partnership… only now do I understand why it was not in my heart to fly to Overland…the future is there, and the future belongs to Gesalla and Toller…could that be the underlying reason for my refusing to ride with Leddravohr, for choosing my own Bright Road?… was I making Toller’s way clear?… was I excising an unbalancing factor from the equation?…equations used to mean so much to me…

The fire in Lain’s chest was becoming hotter, expanding, causing him to struggle for breath. He was sweating profusely and yet his skin felt deathly cold, and the world was merely a scene painted on rippling cloth. It was time for the yellow hood.

Lain lifted it with clumsy fingers and drew it over his head — a warning to anyone who might come by that he had died of pterthacosis and that the body was not to be approached for at least five days. The eye slits were not in the right place, but he allowed his hands to fall to his side without adjusting them, content to remain in a private universe of formless and featureless yellow.

Time and space ran together in that undemanding microcosm.

Yes, I was right about the cave painting…the circle represents a ptertha… a colourless ptertha… one which has not yet developed its specialised toxins…who was it who once asked me if the ptertha used to be pink?… and what was my reply?… did I say the naked child is not afraid of the globe because he knows it will not harm him?…I know I have always disappointed Toller in one respect, by my lack of physical courage… my disregard for honour… but now he can be proud of me… I wish I could be there to see his face when he hears that I preferred to die rather than to ride with… isn’t it strange that the answer to the riddle of the ptertha has always been visible in the sky?… the Tree and the circle of Overland, symbolising the ptertha, co-existing in harmony… the brakka pollination discharges feed the ptertha with… with what?…pollen, green and purple, miglign?…and in return the ptertha seek out and destroy the brakka’s enemies… Toller should be protected from Prince Leddravohr… he believes himself to be equal to him, but I fear… I FEAR I HAVE NOT TOLD ANYONE ABOUT THE BRAKKA AND THE PTERTHA!… how long have I known?… is this a dream?… where is my lovely Gesalla?… can I still move my hands?… can I still…

Chapter 17

Prince Leddravohr picked up a looking glass and frowned at his reflection. Even when resident in the Great Palace he preferred not to be attended by body servants, and for his morning toilet he had spent a considerable time in honing a brakka razor to a perfect edge and softening his facial stubble with hot water. As a result, annoyingly, he had pared away too much skin at his throat. There were no real incisions, but droplets of blood were oozing through the skin, and no matter how often he dabbed them away more appeared in their place.

This what comes of living like a pampered maiden, he told himself, pressing a damp cloth to his throat and postponing the act of dressing until the bleeding had stopped. The mirror, made from two different kinds of glass bonded together, was almost totally reflective, but when he faced the window he could discern its brilliant rectangles through the glass sandwich, apparently occupying the same space as his own body.

It’s only appropriate, he thought. I’m becoming insubstantial, aghast, in preparation for the ascent to Overland. My real life, the only life that has any significance, will be over and done with when… His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of running footsteps in the adjoining apartment. He turned and saw in the doorway of the toilet chamber the square-shouldered figure of Major Yachimalt, the adjutant responsible for communications between the palace and Skyship Quarter. Yachimalt’s anxious eyes took in the fact that Leddravohr was naked and he made as if to back out of the room.

“Forgive me, Prince,” he said. “I didn’t realise.…”

“What’s the matter with you, man?” Leddravohr snapped. “If you have a message for me, spit it out.”

“It’s a signal from Colonel Hippern, Prince. He says a mob is gathering at the main entrance to the Quarter.”

“He has a full regiment at his disposal, hasn’t he? Why should I concern myself with the activities of a rabble?”

“The signal says that the Lord Prelate is inciting them, Prince,” Yachimalt replied. “Colonel Hippern requests your authority to place him under arrest.”

“Balountar! That miserable sack of bones!” Leddravohr threw the looking glass aside and went to the rack which held his clothing. “Tell Colonel Hippern that he is to hold his ground, but to make no move against Balountar until I arrive. I will deal with our Lord Scarecrow in person.”

Yachimalt saluted and vanished from the doorway. Leddravohr found himself actually smiling as he dressed quickly and strapped on his white cuirass. With only five days to go until the first squadron departed for Overland the preparations for the migration were virtually complete and he had not looked forward to a span of enforced idleness. When there was no work to be done his thoughts all too easily turned to the unnatural ordeal which lay ahead, and it was then that the pale maggots of fear and self-doubt began the insidious attack. Now he could almost feel grateful to the ranting Lord Prelate for presenting him with a diversion, the opportunity to be fully alive and functional once more.

Leddravohr buckled on his sword and the knife he wore on his left arm. He hurried out of his suite, heading for the principal forecourt, choosing a downward route on which there was little chance of encountering his father. The King maintained an excellent intelligence network and would almost certainly have heard about Lain Maraquine’s suicidal behaviour of the previous aftday. Leddravohr had no wish to be quizzed about the absurd incident at that moment. He had given orders for a team of draughtsmen to go to the cave and copy the drawings, and he wanted to be able to present the transcription to his father at their next meeting. Instinct told him that the King would be angry and suspicious if, as was almost certainly the case, Maraquine proved to be dead, but it was possible that the drawings would mollify him.

On reaching the forecourt Leddravohr signalled for an ostiary to bring forward the dappled bluehorn he normally rode and in a matter of seconds he was galloping towards the Skyship Quarter. Emerging from the double coccoon of netting which enveloped the palace he entered one of the tubular covered ways which crossed the four ornamental moats. The sheath of varnished linen was proof against ptertha dust and provided safe passage into Ro-Atabri itself, but the sense of being enclosed and herded was irksome to Leddravohr. He was glad when he reached the city, where the sky was at least visible through the overhead mesh works, and he could follow the embankments of the Borann to the west.

There were few citizens abroad and most of those he saw were making their way towards the Quarter, seemingly guided by an extra sense which told them of significant events taking place far ahead. It was a hot and windless morning, with no threat from ptertha. When he reached the western limit of the city he ignored the covered way which ran to the perimeter of the skyship base, riding south of it in the open air to where he could see a crowd gathered at the main entrance. The side panels of the flimsy tube had been furled, enabling the crowd to form a continuous obstruction across the security gate. On the far side of the gate he could see a line of pikes projecting into the air, indicating the presence of soldiers, and he nodded in approval — the pike was a good weapon for demonstrating to unruly civilians the error of their ways.

As he neared the mass of people Leddravohr slowed his bluehorn to a walking pace. When his approach was noticed the crowd parted respectfully to make way for him, and he was surprised to note how many were dressed in ragged garments. The plight of the ordinary citizens of Ro-Atabri was obviously worse than he had realised. Amid much whispering and jostling, the edge of the crowd flowed outwards to create a semicircular space at the focus of which was the black-robed figure of Balountar.

The Lord Prelate, who had been haranguing an officer on the other side of the closed gate, turned to face Leddravohr. He started visibly at the sight of the military prince, but the expression of anger on his squeezed-in features did not change. Leddravohr rode to him at a leisurely pace, dismounted with a deliberate display of lazy confidence and signalled for the gate to be opened. Two soldiers drew the heavy gate inwards and now Leddravohr and Balountar were at the centre of a public arena.

“Well, priest,” Leddravohr said calmly, “what brings you here?”

“I think you know why I am here.” Balountar waited a full three seconds before adding the royal form of address, thereby detaching it from his first remark and creating a deliberate insolence. “Prince.”

Leddravohr smiled. “If you have come to beg a migration warrant, you are too late — they have all been disbursed.”

“I beg for nothing,” Balountar said, raising his voice, addressing the crowd rather than Leddravohr. “I come to make demands. Demands which must be met.”

“Demands!” Nobody had ever dared use that word to Leddravohr, and as he repeated it a strange thing happened to him. His body became two bodies — one physical and solid, anchored to the ground; the other weightless and ethereal, seemingly capable of drifting on the slightest breeze. The latter self severed the connection between the two by taking a step backwards. He felt as if he were no longer in contact with the surface of the plain, but poised at grass-top height, like a ptertha, with a comprehensive but detached view of all that was taking place. From that vantage point he watched, bemused, as his corporeal self played out an immature game.…

“Do not dare speak to me of demands!” the fleshly Leddravohr cried. “Have you forgotten the authority invested in me by the King?”

“I speak with a higher authority,” Balountar insisted, yielding no ground. “I speak for the Church, for the Great Permanence, and I command you to destroy the vehicles with which you plan to desecrate the High Path. Furthermore, all the food and crystals and other vital supplies which you have stolen from the people must be returned to them immediately. Those are my final words.”

“You speak truer than you know,” Leddravohr breathed. He unsheathed his battle sword, but some lingering vestige of regard for the processes of law dissuaded him from driving the black blade through the Lord Prelate’s body. Instead, he moved away from Balountar, turned to the watchful army officers nearby and addressed himself to a stony-faced Colonel Hippern.

“Arrest the traitor,” he said sharply.

Hippern gave a low command and two soldiers ran forward, swords drawn. A curious growling, grumbling sound arose from the crowd as the soldiers took Balountar by the arms and marched him, in spite of his struggles, inside the line of the Quarter’s perimeter. Hippern looked questioningly at Leddravohr.

“What are you waiting for?” Leddravohr stabbed a forefinger towards the ground, indicating that he wanted the Lord Prelate forced to his knees. “You know the punishment for high treason. Get on with it!”

Hippern, face impassive beneath the rim of his ornate helmet, spoke again to the officers near him and a few seconds later a burly high-sergeant ran towards the two soldiers who were restraining Balountar. The Lord Prelate redoubled his efforts to break free, his black-swathed body undergoing inhuman contortions as his captors forced him to the ground. He raised his face to his executioner. His mouth opened wide as he tried to utter a prayer or a curse, creating a target which the sergeant chose unthinkingly on the murderous instant. The sergeant’s blade drove into Balountar’s mouth and emerged under the base of his skull, severing the spine, ending his life between heartbeats. The two soldiers released his body and stepped back from it as a moan of consternation went up from the crowd. A large pebble arched through the air and skittered through the dust near Leddravohr’s feet.

For a moment the prince looked as though he would launch himself at the mob and attack them single-handed, then he wheeled on the high-sergeant. “Get the priest’s head off. Elevate it on a pike so that his followers can continue to look up to him.”

The sergeant nodded and went about his grisly work with the unruffled dexterity of a pork butcher, and within a minute Balountar’s head had been raised on a pikestaff which was then lashed to a gatepost. Rivulets of blood spead swiftly down the staff.

There was a long moment of utter silence — a silence which burrowed into the ears — and it seemed that an impasse had been reached. Then it gradually became apparent to those watching from within the base that the situation was not truly static — the semi-circle of ground visible beyond the gate was slowly shrinking. Those on the edge of the mass of human beings appeared not to be moving their feet, but they were advancing nonetheless, like ranks of statues which were being inched forward by an inexorable pressure from behind. Evidence of the tremendous force being exerted came when a fence post to the right of the gate creaked and began to lean in wards.

“Close the gate,” Colonel Hippern shouted.

“Leave the gate!” Leddravohr faced the colonel. “The army does not cower away from a civilian rabble. Order your men to clear the entire area.”

Hippern swallowed, showing his unease, but he met Leddravohr’s gaze directly. “Thesituation is difficult, Prince. This is a local regiment, mostly drawn from Ro-Atabri itself, and the men won’t take to the idea of going against their own.”

“Do I hear you properly, colonel?” Leddravohr altered his grip on his sword and a worm of white light coiled in his eyes. “Since when have common soldiers become arbiters in the affairs of Kolcorron?”

Hippern s throat worked again, but his courage did not desert him. “Since they became hungry, Prince. It was ever the way.”

Unexpectedly, Leddravohr smiled. “That’s your professional judgment, is it, colonel? Now observe me closely — I am going to teach you something about the essential nature of command.” He turned, took several paces towards the triple row of waiting soldiers and raised his sword.

“Disperse the rabble!” he shouted, sweeping his sword downwards to indicate the direction of attack against the advancing crowd. Soldiers broke rank immediately and ran to engage the foremost of the intruders, and the comparative silence which had pervaded the scene was lost in a sudden uproar. The crowd fell back, but instead of fleeing in complete disarray its members compacted again, having receded but a short distance, and it was then that a significant fact emerged — that only one third of the soldiers had obeyed Leddravohr’s command. The others had scarcely moved and were gazing unhappily at their nearest junior officers. Even the soldiers who had confronted the mob appeared to have done so in a tame and half-hearted manner. They were allowing themselves to be overcome easily, losing their weapons with such rapidity that they had become an asset to the surging throng. Cheering was heard as a large section of the covered way was pulled to the ground and its framing broken up to provide even more weapons.…

The other Leddravohr — cool, ethereal and uninvolved — watched with a mild degree of interest as the body-locked, carnate Leddravohr ran to a fresh-faced lieutenant and ordered him to lead his men against the crowd. The lieutenant was seen to shake his head in argument and a second later he was dead, almost decapitated by a single stroke of the prince’s blade. Leddravohr had lost his humanity, had ceased to register on the senses as a human being. Craned forward and shambling, black sword hurling a crimson spray, he went among his officers and men like a terrible demon, wreaking destruction.

How long can this go on? the other Leddravohr mused. Is there no limit to what the men will stand?

His attention was suddenly drawn to a new phenomenon. The sky in the east was growing dark as columns of smoke ascended from several districts of the city. It could only mean that the ptertha screens were burning, that some members of the community had been driven by anger and frustration to make the ultimate protest against the present order.

The message was clear — that all would go down together. Rich man and poor man alike. King and pauper alike.

At the thought of the King, alone and vulnerable in the Great Palace, the other Leddravohr’s composure disintegrated. Vital and urgent work had to be done; he had responsibilities whose importance far outweighed that of a clash involving a few hundred citizens and soldiers.

He took a step towards his complementary self, and there came a swooping sensation, a blurring of time and space…

Prince Leddravohr Neldeever opened his eyes to a flood of harsh sunlight. The haft of his sword was wet in his hand, and around him were the sounds of turmoil and the colours of carnage. He surveyed the scene for a moment, blinking as he sought to reorientate himself in a changed reality, then he sheathed his sword and ran towards his waiting bluehorn.

Chapter 18

Toller stared at the yellow-hooded body without moving for perhaps ten minutes, trying to understand how he was to deal with the pain of loss.

Leddravohr has done this, he thought. This is the harvest I reap for allowing the monster to stay alive. He abandoned my brother to the ptertha!

The foreday sun was still low in the east, but in the total absence of air movement the rocky hillside was already beginning to throw up heat. Toller was torn between passion and prudence — the desire to run to his brother’s body and the need to remain at a safe distance. His blurred vision showed something white gleaming on the sunken chest, held in place by the waistcord of the grey robe and one slim hand.

Paper? Could it be, Toller’s heart speeded up at the thought, an indictment of Leddravohr?

He took out the stubby telescope he had carried since boyhood and directed it at the white rectangle. His tears conspired with the fierce brilliance of the image to make the scrawled words difficult to read, but at length he received Lain’s final communication: PTERTHA FRIENDS OF BRAK. KILL US BECAU WE KILL BRAK. BRAK FEED PTERTH. IN RETURN P PROTEC B. CLEAR-›PINK-›PURPLE P EVOLV TOXINS. WE MUS LIVE IN HARMONY WITH B. LOOK TO SKY

Toller lowered the telescope. Somewhere under the thundering turmoil of his grief was the realisation that Lain’s message had a significance which reached far beyond the present circumstances, but for the present he was unable to relate to it. Instead he was overwhelmed by a baffled disappointment. Why had Lain not used the dregs of his mental and physical energy to accuse his murderer and thus pave a straight path for retribution? After a moment’s thought the answer came to Toller, and he almost managed to smile with affection and respect. Lain, even in death, had been the true pacifist, far removed from thoughts of revenge. He had withdrawn his personal light from the world in a manner befitting his way of life — and Leddravohr still endured.…

Toller turned to walk across the slope to where the sergeant was waiting with the two bluehorns. He was fully in control of himself and there were no longer any tears to interfere with his vision, but now his thoughts were dominated by a new question which was raking his brain with the force and persistence of waves clawing at a beach.

How can I live without my brother? The heat reflected from slabs of stone pressed against his eyes, entered his mouth. It’s going to be a long hot day, and how am I going to live through it without my brother?

“I grieve with you, captain,” Engluh said. “Your brother was a good man.”

“Yes.” Toller stared at the sergeant, trying to suppress his feelings of dislike. This was the man who had been formally entrusted with Lain’s safety, and who remained alive while Lain was dead. There was little the sergeant could have done against ptertha in this kind of terrain, and according to his story he had been dismissed by Leddravohr; and yet his presence among the living was an affront to the primitive in Toller’s character.

“Do you want to go back now, captain?” Engluh showed no signs of being discomfited by Toller’s scrutiny. He was a hardlooking veteran, undoubtedly skilled in the art of preserving his own skin, but Toller could not judge him as being untrustworthy.

“Not yet,” Toller said. “I want to find the bluehorn.”

“Very good, captain.” A flickering in the depths of the sergeant’s brown eyes showed his awareness of the fact that Toller had not fully accepted Prince Leddravohr’s terse account of the previous day’s events. “I’ll show you the path we took.”

Toller mounted his bluehorn and rode behind Engluh as they worked their way up the hill. About halfway to the top they came to an area of laminated rock bounded on its lower edge by an accumulation of flakes. The remains of the bluehorn lay on the loose material, already stripped to a skeleton by multipedes and other scavengers. Even the saddle and harness had been shredded and gnawed in places. Toller felt a coolness on his spine as he realised that Lain’s body would have suffered a similar fate but for the ptertha poison in the tissues. His bluehorn had begun to toss its head and behave nervously, but he guided it closer to the skeleton and frowned as he saw the fractured shinbone. My brother was living when that happened — and now he’s dead. As the pain raged through him with renewed forced he closed his eyes and tried to think about the unthinkable.

According to what he had been told, Sergeant Engluh and the other three soldiers had ridden to the west entrance of Skyship Quarter after being dismissed by Leddravohr. They had waited there for Lain and had been astonished to see Leddravohr returning alone.

The prince had been in a strange mood, angry and jovial at once, and on seeing Engluh was reported to have said, “Prepare yourself for a long wait, sergeant — your master disabled his mount and now he is playing hide-and-seek with the ptertha.” Thinking it was expected of him, Engluh had volunteered to gallop back to the hill with a spare bluehorn, but Leddravohr had said, “Stay where you are! He chose to play a dangerous game with his own life — and that is no sport for a good soldier.”

Toller had made the sergeant repeat his account several times and the only interpretation he could place on it was that Lain had been offered transportation to safety, but had wilfully elected to flirt with death. Leddravohr was above the need to lie about any of his actions — and still Toller was unable to accept what he had been told. Lain Maraquine, who had been known to faint at the sight of blood, would have been the last man in the world to pit himself against the globes. Had he wanted to take his life he would have found a better way — but in any case there had been no reason for him to commit suicide. He had had too much to live for. No, there was a mystery central to what had happened on the barren hillside on the previous day, and Toller knew of only one man who could clear it up. Leddravohr may not have lied, but he knew more than.…

“Captain!” Engluh spoke in a startled whisper. “Look over there!”

Toller followed the line of his pointing finger to the east and blinked as he saw the unmistakable dark brown shape of a balloon lifting into the sky above Ro-Atabri. A few seconds later it was joined by three others climbing in close formation, almost as though the mass ascent to Overland was beginning days ahead of schedule.

Something has gone wrong, Toller thought before he was stricken by a sense of personal outrage. The death of Lain would have been more than enough to contend with on its own, but to that had been added aggravating doubt and suspicion — and now skyships were rising from the Quarter in contravention of all the rigid planning that had gone into the migration flight. There was a limit to how much his mind could encompass at a single time, and the universe was unfairly choosing to disregard it.

“I have to go back now,” he said, urging his bluehorn into motion. They rode down the hill, rounded a briar-covered shoulder and reached the open slope where Lain’s body lay. The unrestricted view to the east showed that more balloons were rising from the line of enclosures, but Toller’s gaze was drawn to the dappled sweeps of the city beyond. Columns of dark smoke were rising from the central districts.

“It looks like a war, captain,” Engluh said in wonderment, rising in his stirrups.

“Perhaps that’s what it is.” Toller glanced once towards the inert anonymous shape that had been his brother — You will live in me, Lain — then spurred his mount forward in the direction of the city.

He had been aware of the growing restlessness among Ro-Atabri’s beleaguered population, but he found it hard to imagine how civil disturbances could have any real effect on the ordered course of events within the Quarter. Leddravohr had installed army units in a crescent between the skyship base and the edge of the city itself, and had seen to it that they were controlled by officers he could trust even in the unique circumstances of the migration. The commanders were men who had no personal wish to fly to Overland and were stubbornly committed to preserving Ro-Atabri as an entity, come what may. Toller had believed the base to be secure, even in the event of full-scale riots, but the skyships were taking off long before their appointed time.…

On reaching flat grassland he put the bluehorn into a full gallop and watched intently as the base’s perimeter barrier expanded across his field of view. The west entrance was little used because it faced open countryside, but as he drew closer he saw there were large groups of mounted soldiers and infantry behind the gate, and supply wagons could be seen on the move beyond the double screens where they curved away to the north and south. More ships were drifting up into the morning sky, and the hollow roars of their burners were mingling with the clacking of the inflation fans and the background shouting of overseers.

The outer gates were swung open for Toller and the sergeant, then slammed shut again as soon as they had entered the buffer zone. Toller reined his bluehorn to a halt as he was approached by an army captain who was carrying his orange-crested helmet under his arm.

“Are you Skycaptain Toller Maraquine?” he said, mopping his glistening brow.

“Yes. What has happened?”

“Prince Leddravohr orders you to report to Enclosure 12 immediately.”

Toller nodded his assent. “What has happened?”

“What makes you think anything has happened?” the captain said bitterly. He turned and strode away, issuing angry orders to the nearest soldiers, who had an overtly sullen look.

Toller considered going after him and extracting an informative reply, but at that moment he noticed a blue-uniformed figure beckoning to him from the inner gate. It was Ilven Zavotle, newly commissioned to the rank of pilot lieutenant. Toller rode to him and dismounted, noting as he did so that the young man looked pale and troubled.

“I’m glad you’re back, Toller,” Zavotle said anxiously. “I heard you had gone out to look for your brother, and I came to warn you about Prince Leddravohr.”

“Leddravohr?” Toller glanced upwards as a skyship briefly occulted the sun. “What about Leddravohr?”

“He’s insane,” Zavotle said, looking about him to ensure the treasonous statement had not been overheard. “He’s at the enclosures now… driving the loaders and inflation crews… sword in hand… I saw him cut a man down just for stopping to take a drink.”

“He…!” Toller’s consternation and bafflement increased. “What brought all this about?”

Zavotle looked up at him in surprise. “You don’t know? You must have left the Quarter before…Everything happened in a couple of hours, Toller.”

“What happened? Speak up, Ilven, or there’ll be more swordplay.”

“Lord Prelate Balountar led a citizens’ march on the base. He demanded that all the ships be destroyed and the supplies distributed among the people. Leddravohr had him arrested and beheaded on the spot.”

Toller narrowed his eyes as he visualised the scene. “That was a mistake.”

“A bad one,” Zavotle agreed, “but that was only the beginning. Balountar had the crowds worked up with religion and promises of food and crystals. When they saw his head on a pole they started tearing down our screens. Leddravohr sent the army against them, but… it was an amazing thing, Toller… most of the soldiers refused to fight.”

“They defied Leddravohr?”

“They’re local men — most of them drawn from Ro-Atabri itself — and they were being ordered to massacre their own people.” Zavotle paused as a skyship overhead produced a thunderous roar. “The soldiers are hungry, too, and there’s a feeling abroad that Leddravohr is turning his back on them.”

“Even so.…” Toller found it almost impossible to imagine ordinary soldiers rebelling against the military prince.

“That was when Leddravohr really became possessed. They say he killed more than a dozen officers and men. They wouldn’t obey his orders…but they wouldn’t defend themselves against him either… and he butchered them.…” Zavotle’s voice faltered. “Like pigs, Toller. Just like pigs.”

In spite of the enormity of what he was hearing, Toller developed an unaccountable feeling that he had another and more pressing cause for concern. “How did it end?”

“The fires in the city. When Leddravohr saw the smoke… realised the ptertha screens were burning… he came to his senses. He pulled all the men who remained loyal to him back inside the perimeter, and now he’s trying to get the whole skyship fleet off the ground before the rebels organise themselves and invade the base.” Zavotle studied the nearby soldiers from beneath lowered brows. “This lot are supposed to defend the west gate, but if you ask me they aren’t too sure which side they’re on. Blue uniforms are no longer popular around here. We should get back to the enclosures as soon as.…”

The words faded from Toller’s hearing as his mind made a rapid series of leaps, each one bringing him closer to the source of his subconscious alarm. The fires in the city…ptertha screens burning…there has been no rain for many days…when the screens go the city will be indefensible… the migration MUST get under way at once…and that means…

“Gesalla!” Toller blurted the name in a sudden accession of panic and self-recrimination. How could he have forgotten her for so long? She would be waiting at home in the Square House… still without confirmation of Lain’s death… and the flight to Overland had already begun.…

“Did you hear me?” Zavotle said. “We should be.…”

“Never mind that,” Toller cut in. “What’s been done about notifying the migrants and bringing them in?”

“The King and Prince Chakkell are already at the enclosures. All the other royals and nobles have to get here under the protection of their own guards. It’s a shambles, Toller. The ordinary migrants will have to get through by themselves, and the way things are out there I doubt if.…”

“I’m indebted to you for meeting me here, Ilven,” Toller said, turning to mount his bluehorn. “I seem to remember you telling me when we were up there — freezing to death and with nothing to do but count the falling stars — that you have no family. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“In that case you should get back to the enclosures and take the first ship that becomes available to you. I am not free to leave just yet.”

Zavotle came forward as Toller swung himself into the saddle. “Leddravohr wants us both as royal pilots, Toller. You especially, because nobody else has turned a ship over.”

“Forget that you saw me,” Toller said. “I’ll be back as soon as lean.”

He rode into the base, taking a route which kept him well away from the balloon enclosures. The ptertha nets overhead were casting their patterns of shadow on a scene of confused and frenetic activity. It had been intended that the migration fleet would depart in an orderly manner over a period of between ten and twenty days, depending on weather conditions. Now there was a race to see how many ships could be despatched before the Quarter was overrun by dissenters, and the situation was made even more desperate by the fact that the vulnerable ptertha screens had been attacked. It was fortunate that there was no perceptible air movement — a circumstance which aided the skyship crews and kept ptertha activity to the minimum — but with the arrival of night the livid globes would come in force.

In their haste to load supply carts workers were tearing down the wooden storage huts with their bare hands. Soldiers belonging to the newly formed Overland Regiment — their loyalty guaranteed because they were due to fly with Leddravohr — roamed the area, noisily exhorting base personnel to make greater efforts and in some cases joining in the work. Here and there amid the chaos wandered small groups of men, women and children who had obtained migration warrants in the provinces and had arrived at the Quarter well in advance of their flights. Above and through everything drifted the racket of the inflation fans, the unnerving spasmodic roar of skyship burners and the marshy odour of free miglign gas.

Toller attracted scant attention from anybody as he rode through storage and workshop sections, but on reaching the covered way which ran east to the city he found its entrance guarded by a large detachment of soldiers. Officers with them were questioning everybody who passed through. Toller moved to one side and used his telescope to survey the distant exit. Compressed perspectives made the image hard to interpret, but he could see massed foot soldiers and some mounted groups, and beyond them crowds thronging the sloping streets where the city proper began. There was little evidence of movement, but it was obvious that a confrontation was still taking place and that the normal route to the city was impassable.

He was considering what to do when his attention was caught by shifting specks of colour in the scrubby land which stretched off to the south-east in the direction of the Greenmount suburb. The telescope revealed them to be civilians hurrying towards the centre of the base. From the high proportion of women and children Toller deduced they were emigrants who had breached the perimeter fence at a point remote from the main entrance. He turned away from the tunnel, located an auxiliary exit through the double ptertha meshes and rode out towards the advancing citizenry. When he got close to the leaders they brandished their blue-and-white migration warrants.

“Keep heading towards the balloon enclosures,” he shouted to them. “We’ll get you away.”

The anxious-faced men and women called out their thanks and hurried on, some carrying or dragging infants. Turning to look after them, Toller saw that their arrival had been noticed and mounted men were coming out to meet them. The sky behind the riders made a unique spectacle. Perhaps fifty ships were now in the air over the enclosures, dangerously crowded at the lower levels and straggling out as they receded into the zenith.

Not pausing to see what kind of reception the migrants’would receive, Toller spurred his bluehorn on towards Greenmount. Far off to his right, in Ro-Atabri itself, the fires appeared to be spreading. The city was built of stone, but the timber and rope with which it had been cocooned to ward off the ptertha were highly flammable and the fires were becoming large enough to create their own convection systems, gaining ground with no assistance from the elements. It was only necessary, Toller knew, for a slight breeze to spring up and the whole city would be engulfed in a matter of minutes.

He urged the bluehorn into a gallop, judging his direction from the groups of refugees he met, and eventually espied a place where the perimeter barricade had been pulled to the ground. He rode through the gap, ignoring apprehensive stares from people who were clambering across the stakes, and chose a direct route up the hill towards the Square House. The streets he had roamed as a boy were littered and deserted, part of the alien territory of the past.

A minute after entering Greenmount district he rounded a corner and encountered a band of five civilians who had armed themselves with staves. Although obviously not migrants, they were hurrying towards the Quarter. Toller divined at once that it was their intention to harass and perhaps rob some of the migrant families he had seen earlier.

They spread out to block the narrow street and their leader, a slack-jawed hulk in a cloak thonged with dried pillar snakes, said, “What do you think you’re doing, bluecoat?”

Toller, who could easily have ridden the man down, reined to a halt. “As you ask so politely, I don’t mind telling you that I’m deciding whether or not I should kill you.”

“Kill me!” The man pounded the ground imperiously with his staff, apparently in the belief that all skymen went unarmed. “And exactly how…?”

Toller drew his sword with a horizontal sweep which lopped the staff just above the man’s hand. “That could just have easily been your wrist or your neck,” he said mildly. “Do any or all of you wish to pursue the matter?”

The four others eyed each other and backed away.

“We have no quarrel with you, sir,” the cloaked man said, nursing the hand which had been jarred by the fierce impact on his staff. “We’ll go peaceably on our way.”

“You won’t.” Toller used his brakka blade to point out an alley which led away from the skyship base. “You will go that way, and back to your dens. I will be returning to the Quarter in a few minutes — and I swear that if I set eyes on any of you again it will be my sword that does all the talking. Now go!”

As soon as the men had passed out of sight he sheathed his sword and resumed the ascent of the hill. He doubted if his warning would have a lasting effect on the ruffians, but he had spared as much time as he could on behalf of the migrants, all of whom would have to learn to face many rigours in the coming days. A glance at the narrowing crescent of light on the disk of Overland told him there was not much more than an hour until littlenight, and it was imperative that he should take Gesalla to the base before then.

On reaching the crest of Greenmount he galloped through silent avenues to the Square House and dismounted in the walled precinct. He went into the entrance hall and was met by Sany, the rotund cook, and a balding manservant who was unknown to him.

“Master Toller!” Sany cried. “Have you news of your brother?”

Toller felt a renewed shock of bereavement — the pressure of events had suspended his normal emotional processes. “My brother is dead,” he said. “Where is your mistress?”

“In her bedchamber.” Sany pressed both hands to her throat. “This is a terrible day for all of us.”

Toller ran to the main stair, but paused on the first flight. “Sany, I’m returning to the Skyship Quarter in a few minutes. I strongly advise you and.…” He looked questioningly at the manservant.

“Harribend, sir.”

“…you and Harribend — and any other domestics who are still here — to come with me. The migration has started ahead of time in great confusion, and even though you don’t have warrants I think I can get you places on a ship.”

Both servants backed away from him. “I couldn’t go into the sky before my time,” Sany said. “It isn’t natural. It isn’t right.”

“There are riots in the city and the ptertha screens are burning.”

“Be that as it may, Master Toller — we’ll take our chances here where we belong.”

“Think hard about it,” Toller said. He went up to the landing and through the familiar corridor which led to the south side of the house, unable to accept fully that this was the last occasion on which he would see the ceramic figurines glowing in their niches, or his blurred reflection ghosting along the polished glasswood panels. The door to the principal bedchamber was open.

Gesalla was standing at the window which framed a view of the city in which the dominant features were the seemingly motionless columns of grey and white smoke intersecting the natural blue and green horizontals of Arle Bay and the Gulf of Tronom. She was dressed as he had never seen her before, in a waistcoat and breeches of grey whipcord complemented by a lighter grey shirt — the whole being almost a muted echo of his own skyman’s uniform. A sudden timidity made him refrain from speaking or tapping the door. How was one to impart the kind of news he bore?

Gesalla turned and looked at him with wise, sombre eyes. “Thank you for coming, Toller.”

“It’s about Lain,” he said, entering the room. “I’m afraid I bring bad news.”

“I knew he had to be dead when there was no message by nightfall.” Her voice was cool, almost brisk. “All that was needed was the confirmation.”

Toller was unprepared for her lack of emotion. “Gesalla, I don’t know how to tell you this… at a time like this… but you have seen the fires in the city. We have no choice but to.…”

“I’m ready to leave,” Gesalla said, picking up a tightly rolled bundle which had been on a chair. “These are all the personal possessions I’ll need. It isn’t too much, is it?”

He stared at her beautiful unperturbed face for a moment, battling with an irrational resentment. “Have you any idea where we’re going?”

“Where else but to Overland? The skyships are leaving. According to what I could decipher of the sunwriter messages coming out of the Great Palace, civil war is breaking out in Ro-Atabri and the King has already fled. Do you think I’m stupid, Toller?”

“Stupid? No, you’re very intelligent — very logical.”

“Did you expect me to be hysterical? Was I to be carried out of here screaming that I was afraid to go into the sky, where only the heroic Toller Maraquine has been? Was I to weep and plead for time to strew flowers around my husband’s body?”

“No, I didn’t expect you to weep.” Toller was dismayed by what he was saying, yet was unable to hold back. “I don’t expect you to feign grief.”

Gesalla struck him across the face, her hand moving so quickly that he was given no chance to avoid the blow. “Never say anything like that to me again. Never make that kind of presumption about me! Now, are we leaving or are we going to stand here and talk all day?”

“The sooner we leave the better,” he said stonily, resisting the urge to finger the stinging patch on his cheek. “I’ll take your pack.”

Gesalla snatched the bundle away from him and slung it from her shoulders. “I made it for me to carry — you have enough to do.” She slipped past him into the corridor, moving lightly and with deceptive speed, and had reached the main stair before he caught up with her.

“What about Sany and the other servants?” he said. “Leaving them doesn’t sit easy with me.”

She shook her head. “Lain and I both tried to talk them into applying for warrants, and we failed. You can’t force people to go, Toller.”

“I suppose you’re right.” He walked with her to the entrance, taking a last nostalgic look around the hall, and went out to the precinct where his bluehorn was waiting. “Where is your carriage?”

“I don’t know — Lain took it yesterday.”

“Does that mean we have to ride together?”

Gesalla sighed. “I have no intention of trotting along beside you.”

“Very well.” Feeling oddly selfconscious, Toller climbed into the saddle and extended a hand to Gesalla. He was surprised at how little effort it took to help her spring into place behind him, and even more so when she slipped her arms around his waist and pressed herself to his back. Some bodily contact was necessary, but if almost seemed as though she… He dismissed the half-formed thought, appalled by his obscene readiness to think of Gesalla in a sexual context, and put the bluehorn into a fast trot.

On leaving the precinct and turning north-west he saw that many more ships were now in the sky above the Quarter, dwindling into specks as they were absorbed by the blue depths of the upper atmosphere. A slight eastward drift was becoming apparent in their movement, which meant that the chaos of the departure might soon be made worse by the arrival of ptertha. Off to his left the towers of smoke rising from the city were being horizontally sheared and smeared where they reached high level air currents. Burning trees created occasional powdery explosions.

Toller rode down the hill as fast as was compatible with safety. The streets were as empty as before, but he was increasingly aware of the sounds of tumult coming from directly ahead. He emerged from the last screen of abandoned buildings and found that the scene at the Quarter’s periphery had changed.

The break in the barricade had been enlarged and groups totalling perhaps a hundred had gathered there, denied entry to the base by ranks of infantry. Stones and pieces of timber were being hurled at the soldiers who, although armed with swords and javelins, were not retaliating. Several mounted officers were stationed behind the soldiers, and Toller knew by their sleeved swords and the green flashes on their shoulders that they were part of a Sorka regiment, men who were loyal to Leddravohr and had no particular affiliations with Ro-Atabri. It was a situation which could erupt into carnage at any moment, and if that happened rebel soldiers would probably be drawn to the spot to turn it into a miniature theatre of war.

“Hold on and keep your head down,” he said to Gesalla as he drew his sword. “We have to go in hard.”

He spurred the bluehorn into a gallop. The powerful beast responded readily, covering the intervening ground in a few wind-rushing seconds. Toller had hoped to take the rioters completely unawares and burst through them before they could react, but the pounding of hooves on the hard clay attracted the attention of men who had turned to gather stones.

“There’s a bluecoat,” the cry went up. “Get the filthy bluecoat!”

The sight of the massive charging animal and of Toller’s battle sword was enough to scatter all from his path, but there was no escaping the irregular volley of missiles. Toller was struck solidly on the upper arm and thigh, and a skimming piece of slate laid open the knuckles of his rein hand. He kept the bluehorn on course through the overturned timbers of the barricade and had almost reached the lines of soldiers when he heard a thud and felt an impact transmitted through Gesalla’s body. She gasped and slackened her hold for an instant, then recovered her strength. The lines of soldiers parted to make way for him and he pulled the bluehorn to a halt.

“Is it bad?” he said to Gesalla, unable to turn in the saddle or dismount because of her grip on him.

“It isn’t serious,” she replied in a voiceiie could scarcely hear. “You must go on.”

A bearded lieutenant approached them, saluted and caught the bluehorn’s bridle. “Are you Skycaptain Toller Maraquine?”

“I am.”

“You are to report immediately to Prince Leddravohr at Enclosure 12.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do, lieutenant,” Toller said. “It would be easier if you stepped aside.”

“Sir, Prince Leddravohr’s orders made no mention of a woman.”

Toller raised his eyebrows and met the lieutenant’s gaze directly. “What of it?”

“I… Nothing, sir.” The lieutenant released the bridle and moved back.

Toller urged the bluehorn forward, heading for the row of balloon enclosures. It had been found, though nobody had explained the phenomenon, that perforated barriers protected balloons from air disturbances better than solid screens. The open western sky was shining through square apertures in the enclosures, making them look more than ever like a line of lofty towers, at the foot of which was the seething activity of thousands of workers, air crew and emigrants with all their paraphernalia and supplies.

It said much for the organising ability of Leddravohr, Chakkell and their appointees that the system was able to function at all in such extreme circumstances. Ships were still taking off in groups of two or three, and it occurred to Toller that it was almost a miracle that there had been no serious accidents.

At that moment, as if the thought had engendered the event, the gondola of a ship rising too quickly struck the rim of its enclosure. The ship was oscillating as it shot into clear air and at a height of two-hundred feet overtook another which had departed some seconds earlier. At the limit of one of its pendulum swings the gondola of the uncontrolled ship drove sideways into the balloon of the slower craft. The latter’s envelope split and lost its symmetry, flapping and rippling like some wounded creature of the deep, and the ship plunged to the ground, its acceleration struts trailing loosely. It landed squarely on a group of supply wagons. The impact must have severed its burner feed lines for there was an immediate gouting of flame and black smoke, and the barking of injured or terrified bluehorns was added to the general commotion.

Toller tried not to think about the fate of those on board. The other ship’s appallingly bad take-off had looked like the work of a novice, making it seem that many of the one thousand qualified pilots assigned to the migration fleet were not available, possibly stranded by the disturbances in the city. New dangers had been added to the already daunting array of hazards facing the interworld voyagers.

He could feel Gesalla’s head lolling against his back as they rode towards the enclosure, and his anxiety about her increased. Her lightweight frame was ill-equipped to withstand the sort of blow he had felt at a remove. As he neared the twelfth enclosure he saw that it and the three adjoining to the north were heavily ringed by foot soldiers and cavalry. In the protected zone there was an area of comparative calm. Four balloons were waiting in the enclosures, with the inflation teams to hand, and knots of richly dressed men and women were standing by heaps of ornamented cases and other belongings. Some of the men were sipping drinks as they craned to see the crashed ship, while small children darted around their legs as though at play on a family outing.

Toller scanned the area and was able to pick out a group at the core of which were Leddravohr, Chakkell and Pouche, all standing close to the seated figure of King Prad. The ruler, slumped on an ordinary chair, was staring at the ground, apparently oblivious to all that was happening. He looked old and dispirited, in marked contrast to the vigorous aspect which Toller remembered.

A youngish army captain came forward to meet Toller as he reined the bluehorn to a halt. He looked surprised when he saw Gesalla, but helped her to the ground readily enough and without any comment. Toller dismounted and saw that her face was totally without colour. She was swaying a little and her eyes had a distant, abstracted look which told him she was in severe pain.

“Perhaps I should carry you,” he said as the ranks of soldiers parted at a signal from the captain.

“I can walk, I can walk,” she whispered. “Take your hands away, Toller — the beast is not to see me being assisted.”

Toller nodded, impressed by her courage, and walked ahead of her towards the royal group. Leddravohr turned to face him and for once did not produce his snake-strike of a smile. His eyes were smouldering in the marble-smooth face. There was a diagonal spattering of crimson on his white cuirass, and blood was congealing thickly around the top of his scabbard, but his manner was suggestive of controlled anger rather than the insane rage of which Zavotle had spoken.

“I sent for you hours ago, Maraquine,” he said icily. “Where have you been?”

“Viewing the remainsof my brother,” Tollersaid, deliberately omitting the required form of address. “There is something highly suspicious about his death.”

“Do you know what you are saying?”

“Yes.”

“I see you have returned to your old ways.” Leddravohr moved closer and lowered his voice. “My father once extracted a vow from me that I would not harm you, but I will regard myself as released from that vow when we reach Overland. Then, I promise you, I will give you what you have sought so long — but for now more important matters must engage my attention.”

Leddravohr turned and padded away, giving a signal to the launch supervisors. At once the balloon inflating crews went to work, cranking the big fans into noisy life. King Prad raised his head, startled, and looked about him with his single troubled eye. The spurious festive mood deserted the various noblemen as the clatter of the fans impressed on them that the unprecedented flight into the unknown was about to begin. Family groups drew together, the children ceased their play, and servants made ready to transfer their masters’ belongings to the ships which would depart in the wake of the royal flight.

Beyond the protective lines of guards was a sea of apparently undirected activity as the work of despatching the migration fleet continued. Men were running everywhere, and supply wagons careered among the lumbering flatbed carts which were transporting skyships to the enclosures. Farther away across the open ground of the Quarter, taking advantage of the near-perfect weather conditions, the pilots of cargo ships were inflating their balloons and taking off without the aid of windbreaks. The sky was now thronged with ships, rising like a cloud of strange airborne spores towards the fiery crescent of Overland.

Toller was awed by the sheer drama of the spectacle, the proof that when driven to the limit his own kind had the courage and ability to stride like gods from one world to another, but he was also bemused by what he had just heard from Leddravohr.

The vow of which Leddravohr had spoken explained certain things — but why had he been asked to make it in the first place? What had prompted the King to single one of his subjects out of so many and place him under his personal protection? Intrigued by the new mystery, Toller glanced thoughtfully in the direction of the seated figure of the King and experienced a peculiar thrill when he saw that Prad was staring directly at him. A moment later the King pointed a finger at Toller, casting a line of psychic force through the groups of bystanders, and then beckoned to him. Ignoring the curious gazes of royal attendants, Toller approached the King and bowed.

“You have served me well, Toller Maraquine,” Prad said in a tired but firm voice. “And now it is in my mind to charge you with one further responsibility.”

“You have but to name it, Majesty,” Toller replied, his sense of unreality increasing as Prad gestured for him to move closer and stoop to receive a private message.

“See to it,” the King whispered, “that my name is remembered on Overland.”

“Majesty.…“Toller straightened up, beset with confusion. “Majesty, I don’t understand.”

“Understanding will come — now go to your post.”

Toller bowed and backed away, but before he had time to ponder on the brief exchange he was summoned by Colonel Kartkang, former chief administrator for the S.E.S. Following the dissolution of the Experimental Squadron the colonel had been given the responsibility for coordinating the departure of the royal flight, a task he could hardly have foreseen carrying out in such adverse conditions. His lips were moving silently as he directed Toller to a spot where Leddravohr was addressing three pilots. One of them was Ilven Zavotle, and another was Gollav Amber — an experienced man who had been short-listed for the proving flight. The third was a thick-bodied red-bearded man in his forties, who wore the uniform of a skycommander. After a moment’s thought, Toller identified him as Halsen Kedalse, a former aircaptain and royal messenger.

“…decided that we will travel in separate ships,” Leddravohr was saying as his gaze flickered towards Toller. “Maraquine — the one officer who has experience of taking a ship past the midpoint — will have the responsibility of piloting my father’s ship. I will fly with Zavotle. Prince Chakkell will go with Kedalse, and Prince Pouche with Amber. Each of you will now go to his designated ship and prepare to ascend before littlenight is on us.”

The four pilots saluted and were about to walk to the enclosures when Leddravohr halted them by raising a hand. He studied them for what seemed a long time, looking uncharacteristically irresolute, before he spoke again. “On reflection, Kedalse has flown my father many times during his long service as an aircaptain. He will fly the King’s ship on this occasion, and Prince Chakkell will go with Maraquine. That is all.”

Toller saluted again and turned away, wondering what was signified by Leddravohr’s change of mind. He had been quick to take the point when Toller had said he was suspicious about Lain’s death. My brother is dead! Was that an indication of guilt? Had some grotesque twist of thought made Leddravohr unwilling to entrust his father’s life to a man whose brother he had murdered, or at least caused to die?

The unmistakable sound of a heavy cannon being fired somewhere in the distance reminded Toller that he had no time to spare for speculation. He looked around for Gesalla. She was standing alone, isolated from the surrounding activity, and something about her posture told him she was still in extreme pain. He ran to the gondola where Prince Chakkell was waiting with his wife, daughter and two small sons. The pearl-coiffed Princess Daseene and the children gazed up at Toller with expressions of wary surmise, and even Chakkell seemed tentative in his manner. They were all deeply afraid, Toller realised, and one of the unknowns facing them was the nature of the relationship to be dictated by the man into whose hands chance had delivered their lives.

“Well, Maraquine,” Chakkell said, “are we about to leave?”

Toller nodded. “We could all be safely away from here in a few minutes, Prince — but there is a difficulty.”

“A difficulty? What difficulty?”

“My brother died yesterday.” Toller paused, taking advantage of the fresh anxiety he had glimpsed in Chakkell’s eyes. “My obligation to his widow can only be discharged by bringing her with me on this flight.”

“I’m sorry, Maraquine, but that is out of the question,” Chakkell said. “This ship is for my use only.”

“I know that, Prince, but you are a man who understands family ties, and you can appreciate that it is impossible for me to abandon my brother’s widow. If she can’t travel on this ship, then I must decline the honour of being your pilot.”

“You’re talking about treason,” Chakkell snapped, wiping perspiration from his bald brown scalp. “I… Leddravohr would have you executed on the spot if you dared disobey his orders.”

“I know that too, Prince, and it would be a great pity for all concerned.” Toller directed a thin smile at the watchful children. “If I weren’t here an inexperienced pilot would have to take you and your family through that strange region between the worlds. I’m familiar with all the terrors and dangers of the middle passage, you see, and could have prepared you for them.”

The two boys continued to gaze up at him, but the girl hid her face in her mother’s skirts. Chakkell stared at her with pain-filled eyes and shuffled his feet in an agony of frustration as, for the first time in his life, he had to consider subordinating himself to the will of an ordinary man. Toller smiled at him, falsely sympathetic, and thought, If this is power, may I never need it again.

“Your brother’s widow may travel in my ship,” Chakkell finally said. “And I won’t forget about this, Maraquine.”

“I’ll always remember you with gratitude too,” Toller said. As he was climbing into the pilot’s station of the gondola he resigned himself to having hardened the enmity that Chakkell already felt for him, but he could feel no guilt or shame this time. He had acted with deliberation and logic to achieve what was necessary, unlike the Toller Maraquine of old, and had the further consolation of knowing he was in tune with the realities of the situation. Lain — My brother is dead! — had once said that Leddravohr and his kind belonged to the past, and Chakkell had just vindicated those words. In spite of all the catastrophic changes which had overwhelmed their world, men like Leddravohr and Chakkell acted as though Kolcorron would be created anew on Overland. Only the King seemed to have intuited that everything would be different.

Lying on his back against a partition, Toller signalled to the inflation crew that he was ready to start burning. They stopped cranking and hauled the fan aside, giving him a clear view of the balloon’s interior. The envelope, partially filled with cool air, was sagging and rolling between the upraised acceleration struts.

He fired a series of blasts into it, drowning out the sound of the other burners which were being operated all along the line of enclosures, and watched it distend and lift itself clear of the ground. As it reached the vertical position the men holding the crown lines closed in and fastened them to the gondola’s load frame, and others rotated the lightweight structure until it was horizontal. The huge assemblage of balloon and gondola, now lighter than air, began to strain gently at its central anchor as though Overland was calling to it.

Toller leapt down from the gondola and nodded to Chakkell and the waiting attendants as a sign that the passengers and belongings could go aboard. He went to Gesalla and she made no objection as he unslung the bundle from her shoulder.

“We’re ready to go,” he said. “You’ll be able to lie down and rest as soon as you’re on board.”

“But that’s a royal ship,” she replied, unexpectedly hanging back. “I’m supposed to find a place on one of the others.”

“Gesalla, please forget all about what was supposed to happen. Many ships will fail to leave this place altogether, and it’s likely that blood will be shed in the fight to get on to some of those that do. You must come now.”

“Has the Prince given his consent?”

“We talked it over, and he wouldn’t even consider departing without you.” Toller took Gesalla by the arm and walked with her to the gondola. He went on board first and found that Chakkell, Daseene and the children had taken their places in one passenger compartment, tacitly assigning the other to him and Gesalla. She winced with pain as he helped her climb over the side, and as soon as he had shown her into the vacant compartment she lay down on the wool-filled quilts stored there.

He unbuckled his sword, placed it beside her and returned to the pilot’s station. A heavy cannon again sounded in the distance as he reactivated the burner. The ship was lightly loaded compared to the one he had taken on the proving flight, and he waited less than a minute before pulling the anchor link. There was a gentle lurch and the walls of the enclosure began to slide vertically past him. The climb continued well even when the balloon had fully entered the open air, and in a few seconds Toller had a full-circle view of the Quarter. The three other ships of the royal flight — distinguished by white lateral stripes on their gondolas — had already cleared their enclosures and were slightly above him. All other launches had been temporarily halted, but he still felt the air to be uncomfortably crowded, and he kept a careful watch on the companion ships until the beginnings of a westerly breeze had brought about some dispersion.

In a mass flight there was always the risk of collision between two ships ascending or descending at different speeds. As it was impossible for a pilot to see anything directly above him, because of the balloon, the rule was that the uppermost of a pair had the responsibility of taking action to avoid the lower. The theory was sound as far as it went, but Toller had misgivings about it because almost the only option available in the climb phase was to climb faster and thus increase the risk of overtaking a third ship. That risk would have been minimal had the fleet been able to depart according to plan, but now he was uneasily aware of being part of a straggling vertical swarm.

As the ship gained height the scene on the ground below was revealed in all its astonishing complexity.

Balloons, inflated or laid out flat on the grass, were the dominant features in a matrix of paths and wagon tracks, supply dumps, carts, animals and thousands of people milling about in seemingly aimless activities. Toller could almost see them as communal insects labouring to save bloated queens from some imminent catastrophe. Off to the south, crowds formed a variegated mass at the main entrance to the base, but the foreshortened perspective made it impossible to tell if fighting was already breaking out between newly sundered military units.

Sketchy lines of people, presumably determined emigrants, were converging on the launch area from several points on the field’s perimeter. And beyond them the fires were now spreading more quickly in Ro-Atabri, aided by the freshening breeze, stripping the city of its ptertha defences. In contrast to the seething turmoil engendered by human beings and their appurtenances, Arle Bay and the Gulf of Tronom formed a placid backdrop of turquoise and blue. A two-dimensional Mount Opelmer floated in the hazy distance, serene and undisturbed.

Toller, operating the burner by means of the extension lever, stood at the side of the gondola and tried to assimilate the fact that he was departing the scene for ever, but within him there was only a tremulous void, a near-subliminal agitation which told of suppressed emotions. Too much had happened in the space of a single foreday — My brother is dead!

— and pain and regret had been laid in store for him, to be drawn upon when the first quiet hours came.

Chakkell was also looking outwards from his compartment, arms around Daseene and his daughter, who appeared to be aged about twelve. Toller, who had previously regarded him as a man motivated by nothing but ambition, wondered if he should revise his opinion. The ease with which he had been coerced in the matter of Gesalla indicated an overriding concern for his family.

Spectators could be seen at the rails of two other royal ships — King Prad and his personal attendants in one, the withdrawn Prince Pouche and retainers in another. Only Leddravohr, who seemed to have decided to travel unaccompanied, was not visible. Zavotle, a lonely figure at the controls of Leddravohr’s ship, gave Toller a wave, then began drawing in and fastening his acceleration struts. As his ship was the least burdened of the four he could leave the burner for quite long periods and still match the others’ rate of climb.

Toller, who had settled on a two-and-twenty rhythm, did not have the same latitude. As a result of what had been learned from the proving flight it had been decided that the migration ships could safely be operated by unaided pilots, thus freeing more lifting ability for passengers and cargo. During a pilot’s rest periods he would entrust the burner or jet to a passenger, though always continuing to monitor the rhythm.

“Littlenight is almost here, Prince,” Toller said, speaking courteously to make amends for his earlier insubordination. “I want to secure our struts before then, so I must request you to relieve me at the burner.”

“Very well.” Chakkell seemed almost pleased at having something useful to do as he took over the extension lever. His dark-haired boys, still shooting timid glances at Toller, came to his side and listened attentively while he explained the workings of the machinery to them. By the time Toller had hauled in and lashed the struts to the corners of the gondola, Chakkell had taught the boys to count the burner rhythm by making a chanting game of it.

Seeing that all three were engrossed for the time being, Toller went into the compartment where Gesalla was lying. Her eyes were alert and the strained expression had left her face. She extended a hand and offered him a rolled-up bandage which must have come from her bundle of possessions.

He knelt beside her on the bed of soft quilts, reviling himself for the flicker of sexual excitement the action brought, and took the bandage. “How are you?” he said quietly.

“I don’t think any of my ribs are actually broken, but they’ll have to be bound if I’m to do my share of the work. Help me up.” With Toller’s assistance she gingerly raised herself to a kneeling position, half-turned away from him and pulled up her grey shirt to expose a massive bruise at one side of her lower ribs. “What do you think?”

“You should be bandaged,” he said, unsure of what was expected of him.

“Well, what are you waiting for?”

“Nothing.” He passed the bandage around her and began to lap it tight, but his actions were made awkward by the constrictions of her waistcoat and gathered shirt. Time after time, in spite of all his efforts to the contrary, his knuckles brushed against her breasts and the sensation darted through him like ambersparks, adding to his clumsiness.

Gesalla gave an audible sigh. “You’re useless, Toller. Wait!” She pulled open her shirt and removed both it and the waistcoat in a single movement, and now the slimness of her was naked from the waist up. “Try it now.”

A vision of Lain’s yellow-hooded body turned him into a senseless machine. He completed the bandage with the efficiency and briskness of a battlefield surgeon, and allowed his hands to fall to his sides. Gesalla remained as she was for a few protracted seconds, her gaze warm and solemn, before she picked up the shirt and put it on.

“Thank you,” she said, then put out her hand and lightly touched him on the lips.

There was a blaze of rainbow colours and suddenly the ship was in darkness. In the other passenger compartment Daseene or her daughter whimpered with alarm. Toller stood up and looked over the side. The fringed, curved shadow of Overland was speeding towards the eastern horizon, and almost directly below the ship Ro-Atabri was a tangle of orange-burning threads caught in a spreading pool of pitch. When daylight returned the four ships of the royal flight had attained a height of some twenty miles — and were accompanied by a loose cluster of ptertha.

Toller scanned the sky all around and saw that one globe was only thirty yards away to the north. He went immediately to one of the two rail-mounted cannon on that side, took aim and released the pin which shattered the bilobed glass container in the gun’s breech. There was a brief delay while the charges of pikon and halvell mixed, reacted and exploded. The projectile blurred along its trajectory, followed by a glitter of glass fragments, spreading its radial arms as it flew. It curved down through the ptertha and annihilated it, releasing a fast-fading smudge of purple dust.

“That was a good shot,” Chakkell said from behind Toller. “Would you say we’re safe from the poison at this range?”

Toller nodded. “The ship goes with any wind there is, so the dust can’t reach us. The ptertha are not much of a threat, really, but I destroyed that one because there can be some air turbulence at the edge of littlenight. I didn’t want to risk the globe picking up a stray eddy and moving in on us.”

Chakkell’s swarthy face bore an expression of concern as he stared at the remaining globes. “How did they get so close?”

“Pure chance, it seems. If they are spread out over an area of sky and a ship happens to rise up through them, they match its rate of climb. The same thing happened on the.…” Toller broke off on hearing two more cannon shots, some distance away, followed by faint screaming which seemed to come from below.

He leaned over the gondola wall and looked straight down. The convex immensity of Land provided an intricate blue-green background for a seemingly endless series of balloons, the nearest of which were only a few hundred yards away and looking very large. Many others were ranged out below them in irregular steps and random groupings, progressively shrinking in apparent size until they reached near-invisibility.

Ptertha could be seen mingling with the uppermost ships and, as Toller watched, another cannon fired and picked off a globe. The projectile quickly lost momentum and faded from sight in a dizzy plunge, losing itself in the cloud patterns far below. The screaming continued, regular as breathing, for some time before gradually fading away.

Toller moved back from the rail, wondering if the screams had been inspired by groundless panic, or if someone had actually seen one of the globes hovering close to a gondola wall — blind, malignant and utterly invincible — just before it darted in for the kill. He was experiencing relief tinged with guilt over having been spared such a fate when a new thought occurred to him. The ptertha had no need to wait for daylight before closing in. There was no guarantee that one or more of the globes had not driven itself against his own ship during the spell of darkness — and if that were the case neither he, Gesalla nor any of his passengers would live to set foot on Overland.

As he tried to come to terms with the notion he slipped a hand into his pocket, located the curious keepsake given to him by his father, and allowed his thumb to begin circling on the ice-smooth surface.

Chapter 19

By the tenth day of the flight the ship was only a thousand miles above the surface of Overland, and the ancient patterns of night and day had been reversed.

The period Toller still tended to think of as littlenight — when Overland was screening out the sun — had grown to be seven hours in length; whereas night — when they were in the shadow of the home world — now lasted less than half that time. He was sitting alone at the pilot’s station, waiting for daybreak and trying to foresee his people’s future on the new world. It seemed to him that even native Kolcorronians, who had always been accustomed to living directly below the fixed sphere of Overland, might feel oppressed by the sight of a larger planet suspended directly above them and depriving them of a proportionately greater part of their day. Assuming Overland to be uninhabited, the migrants could be disposed towards building their new nation on the far side of the planet, in latitudes corresponding to those of Chamteth on Land. Perhaps a time would come when all memory of their origins had faded and.…

Toller’s thoughts were interrupted by the appearance of Chakkell’s seven-year-old son, Setwan, at the entrance to their compartment. The boy came to his side and leaned his head on Toller’s shoulder.

“I can’t sleep, Uncle Toller,” he whispered. “May I stay here with you?”

Toller lifted the boy on to his knee, smiling to himself as he visualised Daseene’s reaction if she heard one of her children address him as uncle. Of the seven people confined to the punishing microcosm of the gondola, Daseene was the only one who had made no concessions to their situation. She had not spoken to Toller or Gesalla, still wore her pearl coif, and ventured out of the passenger compartment only when it was absolutely necessary. She had gone without food or drink for three whole days rather than submit to the ordeal of using the primitive toilet when near the midpoint of the voyage. Her features had become pale and pinched, and — although the ship had since descended to warmer levels of Overland’s atmosphere — she remained huddled in the quilted garments which had been hastily manufactured for the migration flight. She answered in monosyllables when spoken to by her family.

Toller had a certain sympathy for Daseene, knowing that the traumas of recent days had been greater for her than for any of the others on board. The children — Corba, Oldo and Setwan — had not had enough years in the privileged dreamland of the Five Palaces to condition them irrevocably, and they had a natural sense of curiosity and adventure on their side. Chakkell’s responsibilities and ambitions had always kept him fully in touch with the everyday realities of life in Kolcorron, and he had sufficient strength and resourcefulness to let him anticipate a key role in the founding of a new nation on Overland. Indeed Toller had been quite impressed by the way in which the prince, after the initial period of adjustment, had chosen to involve himself with the operation of the ship without shirking any task.

Chakkell had been particularly scrupulous as regards taking long spells at the microjets which gave the ship some control over its lateral position. It was expected and accepted that all other ships of the fleet would be dispersed by air currents over quite a large area of Overland after a journey of five-thousand miles, but Leddravohr had decreed that the royal flight should be able to land in a tight group.

Different methods of tethering the four ships had been dismissed as impracticable, and in the end they had been fitted with miniature horizontal jets delivering only a small fraction of the thrust produced by the attitude control jets. When fired continuously for a long time they added a very slight lateral component to a ship’s vertical motion, without causing it to rotate around its centre of gravity, and assiduous use of them had kept the four royal ships in close formation throughout the flight.

The proximity of the others had furnished Toller with one of the most memorable spectacles of his life, when the group had passed the midpoint and it came time to turn the ships over. Although he had been through the experience before, he found something awesome and ineffably beautiful in the sight of the sister planets majestically drifting in opposite directions, Overland gliding out from the occultation of the balloon and down the sky while Land, at the other end of an invisible beam, climbed above the gondola wall.

And with the transposition half complete a new dimension of wonder was added. A receding, dwindling series of ships seemed to reach all the way to each planet, visible as disks which progressively shrank to glowing points. Several of those going in the direction of Overland had delayed turning over and could be seen from underneath with their gondolas, attachments and jet pipes scribed in ever finer detail on the shrinking circles.

As if that were not enough to brim the eye and mind, there was also — against deep blue infinities seeded with swirls and braids and points of frozen brilliance — the sight of the three companion ships carrying out their own inversion manoeuvres. The structures, which were so fragile that they could be crumpled by a boisterous breeze, remained magically immune to distortion as they stood the universe on its head, proclaiming that this truly was the zone of strangeness. Their pilots, visible as enigmatic mounds of swaddling, surely had to be alien supermen gifted with knowledge and skills inaccessible to ordinary men.

Not all of the scenes witnessed by Toller had possessed such grandeur, but they were imprinted on his memory for different reasons. There was Gesalla’s face in its varied moods and aspects — dubiously triumphant as she overcame the waywardness of the galley fire, wanly introspective after hours of “falling” through the region of zero or negligible gravity… the bursting of all the accompanying ptertha within minutes of each other, after a day of climbing… the children’s looks of astonishment and delight as their breath became visible in the surrounding chill… the games they played during the brief period when they could suspend beads and trinkets in the air to sketch simplified faces and build three-dimensional designs.…

And there had been the other scenes, exterior to the ship, which told of distant tragedies and the kind of death which heretofore had belonged to the realms of purest nightmare.

The royal flight had taken off at quite an early stage in the evacuation of the Quarter, and Toller knew that by the time they were a day and more past the midpoint they had above them an attenuated linear cloud of ships perhaps a hundred miles high. Had they not already been screened from view by the sedate vastness of his own balloon most of them would have been rendered invisible by sheer distance, but he had received disturbing proof of their existence. It took the form of a sparse, spasmodic and dreadful rain. A rain whose droplets were solid and which varied in size, from entire skyships to human bodies.

On three separate occasions he had seen crumpled ships plunge down past him, the gondolas wrapped in the slow-flapping ruins of their balloons, bound on the day-long fall to Overland. It was his guess that all vestiges of order had disappeared during the latter hours of the escape from Ro-Atabri, and that in the chaos some ships had been taken up by inexperienced fliers or had even been commandeered by rebels with no aviation knowledge at all. It looked as though some of them had driven far past the midpoint without turning over, their velocity being augmented by the growing attraction of Overland until the stresses in the flimsy envelopes had torn them apart.

Once he had seen a gondola plummeting down without its balloon, maintaining its proper attitude because of the trailing lines and acceleration struts, and a dozen soldiers had been visible at its rails, mutely surveying the procession of still-airworthy ships which was to be their last tenuous link with humanity and with life.

But for the most part the falling objects had been smaller — cooking utensils, ornate boxes, sacks of provisions, human and animal forms — evidence of catastrophic accidents tens of miles higher in the wavering stack of ships.

Not very far past the midpoint, while Overland’s pull was still weak and the fall speeds were low, a young man had dropped past the ships, so close that Toller could easily discern his features. Perhaps out of bravado, or a desperate craving for a last communion with another human being, the young man had called out to Toller, quite cheerfully, and had waved a hand. Toller had not responded in a way, feeling that to do so would have been to take part in some unspeakable parody of a jest, and had remained petrified at the rail, appalled and yet unable to avert his gaze from the doomed man for the many minutes that it took him to dwindle out of sight.

Hours later, when darkness was all about him and he was trying to sleep, Toller had kept thinking of the falling man — who by then might have been a thousand miles ahead of the migration fleet — and wondering how he was preparing himself for the final impact.… Comforted by the drowsing presence of Setwan on his knee, Toller was operating the burner like an automaton, unconsciously timing the blasts with his heartbeats, when daylight abruptly returned. He blinked several times and saw at once that something was wrong, that only two ships of the royal flight were holding level with him, instead of three.

The missing skyship was the one in which the King was flying.

There was nothing very unusual about that — Kedalse was an ultra-cautious pilot who liked to slow his descent at night, preferring to keep the other ships a little below him where he could easily monitor their positions — but this time he was not even visible in the upper sweeps of the sky.

Toller swiftly lifted Setwan and had just placed him in the passenger compartment with his family when he heard frantic shouts from Zavotle and Amber. He glanced towards them and saw that they were pointing at something above his ship, and in the same moment a gust of hot miglign gas came belching down out of the balloon mouth, bringing a startled whimper from one of the children. Toller looked up into the glowing dome of the balloon and his heart quaked as he saw the square silhouette of a gondola impressed upon it, distorting the spider-web geometries of the load tapes.

The King’s ship was directly above him and had come down hard on his own balloon.

Toller could see the circular imprint of the other ship’s jet nozzle digging into the crown of the envelope, endangering the integrity of the rip panel. There was a chorus of creaks from the rigging and from the acceleration struts, and a rippling distortion of the balloon fabric expelled more choking gas down into the gondola.

“Kedalse,” he shouted, not knowing if his voice would be heard in the upper gondola. “Lift your ship! Lift your ship!”

The faint voices of Zavotle and Amber joined with his own, and a sunwriter began to flash from one of their gondolas, but there was no response from above. The King’s ship continued to bear down on the overloaded balloon, threatening to burst or collapse it.

Toller glanced helplessly at Gesalla and Chakkell, who had risen to their feet and were staring at him in open-mouthed dread. The best explanation he could think of for the crisis was that the King’s pilot had been overcome by illness and was unconscious or dead at the controls. If that were the case somebody else in the upper gondola might begin firing the burner and separate the two craft, but it would need to be done very soon. And there was also the possibility — Toller’s mouth went dry at the thought — that the burner had failed in some way and could not be fired.

He strove to force his brain into action as the deck swayed beneath his feet and the fabric of the balloon emitted sounds like the cracking of a whip. The pair of ships had already begun to lose height too quickly, as was evidenced by the fact that the other two visible ships had acquired a relative upward movement.

Leddravohr had appeared at the rail of his own gondola, for the first time since the take-off, and behind him Zavotle was still emitting futile blinks of brilliance from his sunwriter.

It was impossible for Toller to get away from the King’s ship by increasing his own rate of descent. His craft had already lost gas and was coming perilously near the condition in which the air pressures of an excessive fall-speed could collapse the balloon, initiating a thousand-mile drop to the surface of Overland.

In fact, there was an urgent requirement to fire large quantities of hot gas into the balloon — but doing so, with the extra load imposed from above, was to risk increasing the internal pressure so much that the envelope would simply tear itself apart.

Toller locked eyes with Gesalla, and the imperative was born in his mind: I choose to live!

He twisted his way into the seat at the pilot’s station and fired the burner in a long thunderous blast, engorging the hungry balloon with hot gas, and a few seconds later he pushed the lever of an attitude-control jet. The jet’s exhaust was lost in the engulfing roar of the burner, but its effect was not diminished.

The other two members of the royal flight drifted downwards and out of sight as Toller’s ship rotated around its centre of gravity. There came a series of low-pitched inhuman groans and shudders as the King’s ship slid down the side of Toller’s balloon and came into view above him. One of its acceleration struts tore free of its lower attachment point and began wandering and circling in the air like a duellist’s sword.

As Toller watched, frozen into his own continuum, the sluggish movements so characteristic of skyships abruptly accelerated. The other gondola drew level with him and the free end of the strut came blindly stabbing down into the galley compartment of Toller’s ship, imparting a dangerous tilt to the universe. The shock of the impact raced back along the strut and its upper end gouged into the other balloon.

A seam ripped apart — and the balloon died.

It collapsed inwards, writhing in a perfect simulation of agony, and now the King’s ship was falling unchecked. The leverage it exerted through the strut turned Toller’s gondola on its side and Overland flashed into view, eager and expectant. Gesalla screamed as she fell against the lowermost wall and the looking-glass she had been holding spun out into the blue emptiness. Toller threw himself into the galley, risking going over the side in the process, gripped the end of the strut and — summoning all the power of his warrior’s physique — raised it and cast it free.

As the gondola righted itself he clung to the rail and watched the other ship begin its lethal plunge. At the height of a thousand miles gravity was at less than half strength and the tempo of events had again lapsed into dreamlike slow motion. He saw King Prad swim to the side of the falling gondola. The King, his blind eye shining like a star, raised one hand and pointed at Toller, then he was hidden from view by the swirls of his ship’s ruined balloon. Gaining speed as it settled into the fall, still seeking a balance between gravitation and air resistance, the ship dwindled to become a fluttering speck at the limits of vision, and finally was lost in the fractal patterns of Overland.

Becoming aware of a fierce psychic pressure, Toller raised his head and looked at the two accompanying ships. Leddravohr was gazing at him from the nearer, and as their eyes met he extended both arms towards Toller, like a man calling a loved one to his embrace. He remained like that, mutely imploring, and even when Toller had returned to the burner he could almost feel the prince’s hatred as an invisible blade knifing through his soul. A grey-faced Chakkell was gazing at him from the entrance to the passenger compartment, inside which Daseene and Corba were quietly sobbing.

“This is a bad day,” Chakkell said in a halting voice. “The King is dead.”

Not yet, Toller thought. He still has quite a few hours to go. Aloud he said, “You saw what happened. We’re lucky to be here. I had no choice.”

“Leddravohr won’t see it like that.”

“No,” Toller said pensively. “Leddravohr won’t see it like that.” That night, while Toller was vainly trying to sleep, Gesalla came to his side, and in the loneliness of the hour it seemed perfectly natural for him to put his arm around her. She rested her head on his shoulder and brought her mouth close to his ear.

“Toller,” she whispered, “what are you thinking about?”

He considered lying to her, then decided he had had enough of barriers. “I’m thinking about Leddravohr. It all has to be settled between us.”

“Perhaps he will have thought the thing through by the time we reach Overland and will be of a different mind. I mean, it wasn’t even as if sacrificing us would have saved the King. Leddravohr is bound to admit that you had no choice.”

“I may have felt I had no choice, but Leddravohr will say I acted too quickly in rolling us out from under his father’s ship. Perhaps I would say the same thing if the positions were reversed. If I had waited a little longer Kedalse or somebody else might have got their burner going.”

“You mustn’t think that way,” Gesalla said softly. “You did what had to be done.”

“And Leddravohr is going to do what has to be done.”

“You can overcome him, can’t you?”

“Perhaps — but I fear that he will have already given orders for me to be executed,” Toller said. “I can’t fight a regiment.”

“I see.” Gesalla raised herself on one elbow and looked down at him, and in the dimness her face was impossibly beautiful. “Do you love me, Toller?”

He felt he had reached the end of a lifelong journey. “Yes.”

“I’m glad.” She sat up straighter and began to remove her clothing. “Because I want a child from you.”

He caught her wrist, smiling numbly in his disbelief. “What do you think you’re doing? Chakkell is on the burner just on the other side of this partition.”

“He can’t see us.”

“But this isn’t the way to.…”

“I don’t care about any of that,” Gesalla said, pressing her breast against the hand that was holding her wrist. “I have chosen you to father my child, and there may be very little time for us.”

“It won’t work, you know.” Toller relaxed back on the quilts. “It’s physically impossible for me to make love in these conditions.”

“That’s what you think,” Gesalla said as she moved astride of him and brought her mouth down on his, moulding his cheeks with both her hands to coax him into an ardent response.

Chapter 20

Overland’s equatorial continent, seen from a height of two miles, looked essentially prehistoric.

Toller had been staring down at the outward-seeping landscape for some time before realising why that particular adjective kept coming to mind. It was not the total absence of cities and roads — first proof that the continent was uninhabited — but the uniform coloration of the grasslands.

Throughout his life every aerial view he had seen had been modified in some way by the six-harvest system which was universal on Land. The edible grasses and all other cultivated vegetation had been arranged in parallel strips in which the colours ranged from brown through several shades of green to harvest yellow, but here the plains were simply…green.

The sunlit expanses of the single colour shimmered in his eyes.

Our farmers will have to start the seed-sorting all over again, he thought. And the mountains and seas and rivers all have to be given names. It really is a new beginning on a new world. And I don’t think I’m going to be part of it…

Reminded of his personal problems, he turned his attention to the artificial elements of the scene. The two other ships of the royal flight were slightly below him. Pouche’s was the more distant, most of its passengers visible at the rail as they journeyed ahead in their imaginations to the unknown world.

Ilven Zavotle was the only person to be seen on Leddravohr’s ship, sitting tiredly at the controls. Leddravohr himself must have been lying down in a passenger compartment, as he had done — except during the traumatic episode two days before — throughout the voyage. Toller had noted the prince’s behaviour earlier and wondered if he could be phobic about the boundless emptiness surrounding the migration fleet. If that were the case, it would have been better for Toller if their inevitable duel could have been fought aboard one of the goridolas.

In the two miles of airspace below him he could see twelve other balloons forming an irregular line which increasingly flared off to the west, evidence of a moderate breeze in the lowest levels of the atmosphere. The general area into which they were drifting was sprinkled with the elongated shapes of collapsed balloons, which would later be used to build a temporary township of tents. As he had expected, Toller’s binoculars showed that most of the grounded ships had military markings. Even in the turmoil of the escape from Ro-Atabri, Leddravohr had had the foresight to provide himself with a power base which would be effective from the instant he set foot on Overland.

Analysing the situation, Toller could see no prospect at all of his living for more than a matter of minutes if he put his ship down close to Leddravohr’s. Even if he were to defeat Leddravohr in single combat, he would — as the man charged with the death of the King — be taken by the army. His single and desperately slim chance of survival, for a term to be measured in days at most, lay in hanging back during the touchdown and going aloft again as soon as Leddravohr’s ship was committed to a landing. There were forested hills perhaps twenty miles west of the landing site, and if he could reach them with his balloon he might be able to avoid capture until the forces of the infant nations were properly organised in the cause of his destruction.

The weakest point of the plan was that it hinged on factors outside his own control, all of them concerned with the mind and character of Leddravohr’s pilot.

He had no doubt at all that Zavotle would make the correct deductions when he saw Toller’s ship being tardy during the landing, but would he be sympathetic with Toller’s aims? And even if he were inclined to be loyal to a fellow skyman, would he take the personal risk of doing what Toller expected of him? He would have to be quick to pull the rip panel and collapse his balloon — just as it was becoming apparent to Leddravohr that his enemy was slipping out of his grasp — and there was no predicting how the prince might react in his anger. He had struck other men down for lesser offences. Toller stared across the field of brightness at the solitary figure of Zavotle, knowing that his gaze was being returned, then he put his back against the gondola wall and eyed Chakkell, who was operating the burner at the one-and-twenty rhythm of the descent.

“Prince, there is a breeze at ground level and I fear the ship may be dragged,” he said, making his opening move. “You and the princess and your children should be ready to go over the side even before we touch the ground. It might sound dangerous, but there’s a good ledge all around the gondola for standing on, and our ground speed will be little more than a walking pace. Jumping off before touchdown is preferable to being in the gondola if it overturns.”

“I’m touched by your solicitude,” Chakkell said, giving Toller a tilt-headed look of surmise.

Wondering if he had blundered so early, Toller approached the pilot’s station. “We’ll be landing very soon, Prince. You must be prepared.”

Chakkell nodded, vacated the seat and, unexpectedly, said, “I still remember the first time I saw you, in the company of Glo. I never thought it would come to this.”

“Lord Glo had vision,” Toller replied. “He should be here.”

“I suppose so.” Chakkell gave him another searching look and went into the compartment where Daseene and the children were making ready for the landing.

Toller sat down and took control of the burner, noting as he did so that the pointer on the altitude gauge had fully returned to the bottom mark. As Overland was smaller than Land he would have expected its surface gravity to be less, but Lain had said otherwise. Overland has a higher density, and therefore everything there will weigh about the same as on Land. Toller shook his head, half smiling in belated tribute to his brother. How had Lain known what to expect? Mathematics was one aspect of his brother’s life which would forever remain a closed book to him, as looked like being the case with.…

He glanced at Gesalla, who for an hour had been motionless at the outer wall of their compartment, her attention fully absorbed by the expanding vistas of the new world below. Her bundle of possessions was already slung on her shoulder, giving the impression that she was impatient to set foot on Overland and go about the business of carving out whatever future she had visualised for herself and the child which, possibly, he had seeded into her. The emotions aroused in him by the sight of her slim, straight and uncompromising form were the most complex he had ever known.

On the night she had come to him he had been quite certain he would be unable to fulfil the male role because of his tiredness, his guilt and the unnerving presence of Chakkell, who had been operating the burner only a few feet away. But Gesalla had known better. She had worked on him with fervour, skill and imagination, plying him with her mouth and gracile body until nothing else existed for him but the need to pulse his semen into her. She had remained on top of him until the climactic moment was near, then had insensibly engineered a change of position and had held it, with upthrust pelvis and legs locked around him, for minutes afterwards. Only later, when they had been talking, had he realised that she had been maximising the chances of conception.

And now, as well as loving her, he hated her for some of the things she had said to him during the remainder of that night while the meteors flickered in the dimness all around. There had been no direct statements, but there was revealed to him a Gesalla who, while displaying chilly anger over a fine point of etiquette, was at the same time prepared to defy any convention for the sake of a future child. In the milieu of the old Kolcorron it had seemed to her that the qualities offered by Lain Maraquine would be the most advantageous for her offspring, and so she had married him. She had loved Lain, but the thing which chafed Toller’s sensibilities was that she had loved Lain for a reason.

And now that she was being projected into the vastly different frontier environment of Overland, it had been her considered judgment that attributes available through Toller Maraquine’s seed were to be preferred, and so she had coupled with him.

In his confusion and pain, Toller was unable to identify the principal source of his resentment. Was it self-disgust at having been so easily seduced by his brother’s widow? Was it lacerated pride over having his finest feelings made part of an exercise in eugenics? Or was he furious with Gesalla for not fitting in with his preconceptions, for not being what he wanted her to be? How was it possible for a woman to be a prude and a wanton at the same time, to be generous and selfish, hard and soft, accessible and remote, his and not his?

The questions were endless, Toller realised, and to dwell on them at this stage would be futile and dangerous. The only preoccupations he could afford were with staying alive.

He fitted the extension tube to the burner lever and moved to the side of the gondola to give himself maximum visibility for the descent. As the horizon began to rise level with him he gradually increased his burn ratio, allowing Zavotle’s ship to move farther ahead. It was important to achieve the greatest vertical separation that was possible without arousing the suspicions of Leddravohr and Chakkell. He watched as the dozen ships still airborne ahead of the royal flight touched down one by one, the precise moment of each contact being signalled by the shocked contortion of the balloon, followed by the appearance of a triangular rent in the crown and the wilting collapse of the entire envelope.

The entire area was dotted with ships which had landed previously, and already some sort of order was beginning to be imposed on the scene. Supplies were being brought together and piled, and teams of men were running to each new ship as it touched down.

The sense of awe Toller had expected to accompany such a sight was missing, displaced by the urgency of his situation. He trained his binoculars on Zavotle’s ship as it neared the ground and risked firing a long blast of miglign into his own balloon. On that instant, as though his ears had been attuned to the telltale sound, Leddravohr materialised at the gondola rail. His shadowed eyes were intent on Toller’s ship, and even at that distance they could be seen flaring with coronas of white as he realised what was happening.

He turned to say something to his pilot, but Zavotle — without waiting for ground contact — pulled his rip line. The balloon above him went into the heaving convulsions of its death throes. The gondola skidded into the grass and was lost from view as the dark brown shroud of the envelope fluttered down around it. Groups of soldiers — among them one officer mounted on a bluehorn — ran to the ship and that of Pouche, which was making a more leisurely touchdown a furlong farther away.

Toller lowered his binoculars and faced Chakkell. “Prince, for reasons which must be obvious to you, I am not going to land my ship at this time. I have no desire to take you or any other disinterested parties—” he paused to glance at Gesalla — “into an alien wilderness with me, therefore I’m going to go within grass level of the surface. At that point it will be very easy for you and your family to part company with the ship, but you must act quickly and with resolution. Is that understood?”

“No!” Chakkell left the passenger compartment and took a step towards Toller. “You will land the ship in full accordance with normal procedure. That is my command, Maraquine. I have no intention of subjecting myself or my family to any unnecessary hazards.”

“Hazards! ” Toller drew his lips into a smile. “Prince, we are talking about a drop of a few inches. Compare that to the thousand-mile tumble they almost embarked upon two days ago.”

“Your meaning isn’t lost on me.” Chakkell hesitated and glanced at his wife. “But still I must insist on a landing.”

“And I insist otherwise,” Toller said, hardening his voice. The ship was still about thirty feet above the ground and with each passing moment the breeze bore it farther away from the spot where Leddravohr had come down, but the period of grace had to come to an end soon. Even as Toller was trying to guess how much time he had in hand he saw Leddravohr emerge from under the collapsed balloon. Simultaneously, Gesalla climbed over the gondola wall and positioned herself on the outer ledge, ready to jump free. Her eyes met Toller’s only briefly, and there was no communication. He allowed the descent to continue until he could discern individual blades of grass.

“Prince, you must decide quickly,” he said. “If you don’t leave the ship soon, we all go aloft together.”

“Not necessarily.” Chakkell leaned closer to the pilot’s station and snatched the red line which was connected to the balloon’s rip panel. “I think this restores my authority,” he said, and jabbed a pointing finger as he saw Toller instinctively tighten his grip on the extension lever. “If you try to ascend I’ll vent the balloon.”

“That would be dangerous at this height.”

“Not if I only do it partially,” Chakkell replied, displaying knowledge he had acquired while controlling production of the migration fleet. “I can bring the ship down quite gently.”

Toller looked beyond him and in the distance saw Leddravohr in the act of commandeering the bluehorn of the officer who had rode to meet his ship. “Any landing would be gentle,” he said, “compared to the one your children would have made after falling a thousand miles.”

Chakkell shook his head. “Repetition doesn’t strengthen your case, Maraquine — it only brings to mind the fact that you were also saving your own skin. Leddravohr is now King, and my first duty is to him.”

There was a whispering sound from underfoot as the jet exhaust funnel brushed the tips of tall grass. Half-a-mile away to the east, Leddravohr was astride the bluehorn and was galloping towards the ship, followed by groups of soldiers on foot.

“And my first loyalty is towards my children,” the Princess Daseene announced unexpectedly, her head appearing above the partition of the passenger compartment. “I’ve had enough of this — and of you, Chakkell.”

With surprising agility and lack of concern for her dignity she swarmed over the gondola wall and helped Corba to follow. Unbidden, Gesalla came swiftly around the gondola on the outside and aided in the lifting of the two boys on to the ledge.

Daseene, still wearing the incongruous pearl coif like a general’s insignia, fixed her husband with an imperious stare. “You are indebted to that man for my life,” she said angrily. “If you refuse to honour the debt it can mean but one thing.”

“But.…” Chakkell clapped his brow in perplexity, then pointed at Leddravohr, who was rapidly gaining on the slow-drifting ship. “What will I say to him!”

Toller reached down into the compartment he had shared with Gesalla and retrieved his sword. “You could say I threatened you with this.”

“Are you threatening me with it?”

The sound of whipping grass became louder, and the gondola bucked slightly as the jet exhaust made a fleeting contact with the ground. Toller glanced at Leddravohr — now only two-hundred yards away and flailing the bluehorn into a wilder gallop — then shouted at Chakkell.

“For your own good — leave the ship now!”

“Something else to remember you for,” Chakkell mumbled as he let go of the rip line. He went to the side, rolled himself over on to the ledge and immediately dropped away to the ground. Daseene and the children followed him at once, one of the boys whooping with pleasurable excitement, leaving only Gesalla holding on to the rail.

“Goodbye,” Toller said.

“Goodbye, Toller.” She continued to stand at the rail, staring at him in what looked like surprise. Leddravohr was now little more than a hundred yards away and the sound of his bluehorn’s hoofbeats was growing louder by the second.

“What are you waiting for?” Toller heard his own voice cracking with urgency. “Get off the ship!”

“No — I’m going with you.” In the time it took her to utter the words Gesalla had climbed back over the rail and dropped to the gondola floor.

“What are you doing?” Every nerve in Toller’s body was screaming for him to fire the burner and try to lift the ship out of Leddravohr’s reach, but his arm muscles and hands were locked. “Have you gone crazy?”

“I think so,” Gesalla said strickenly. “It’s idiotic — but I’m going with you.”

“You’re mine, Maraquine,” Leddravohr called out in a strange fervent chant as he drew his sword. “Come to me, Maraquine.”

Almost mesmerised, Toller was tightening his grip on his own sword when Gesalla threw herself past him and dropped her full weight on to the extension lever. The burner roared at once, blasting gas into the waiting balloon. Toller silenced it by pulling the lever up, then he pushed Gesalla back against a partition.

“Thank you, but this is pointless,” he said. “Leddravohr has to be faced at some stage, and this seems to be the ordained time.”

He kissed Gesalla lightly on the forehead, turned back to the rail and locked eyes with Leddravohr, who was on a level with him and now only a dozen yards away. Leddravohr, apparently sensing his change of heart, struck his smile into existence. Toller felt the first stirrings of a shameful excitement, a yearning to have everything settled with Leddravohr once and for all, regardless of the outcome, to know for certain if.…

His sequence of thought was broken as he saw an abrupt change of expression on Leddravohr’s face. There was sudden alarm there, and the prince was no longer looking directly at him. Toller swung round and saw that Gesalla was holding the butt of one of the ship’s ptertha cannon. She had already driven home the firing pin and was aiming the weapon at Leddravohr. Before Toller could react the cannon fired. The projectile was a central blur in a spray of glass fragments, spreading its arms as it flew.

Leddravohr twisted away from it successfully, pulling his mount off course, but shards of glass pocked his face with crimson. He gasped with shock and hauled the galloping bluehorn back into line, rapidly making up lost ground.

Staring frozenly at Leddravohr, knowing the rules of their private war had been changed, Toller fired the burner. The skyship had been made lighter by the departure of Chakkell and his family and had been disposed to rise ever since, but the inertia of the tons of gas inside the balloon made it nightmarishly slow to respond. Toller kept the burner roaring and the gondola began to lift clear of the grass, Leddravohr was now almost within reach and was raising himself in the stirrups. His eyes glared insanely at Toller from a mask of blood.

Is he mad enough to try leaping on to the gondola? Toller wondered. Does he want to meet the point of my sword?

In the next pounding second Toller became aware that Gesalla had darted around behind him and was at the other cannon on the windward side. Leddravohr saw her, drew back his arm and hurled his sword.

Toller gave a warning cry, but the sword had not been aimed at a human target. It arced high above him and sank to the hilt in a lower panel of the balloon. The fabric split and the sword fell clear, spinning down into the grass. Leddravohr reined his bluehorn to a halt, jumped down and retrieved the black blade. He remounted immediately and spurred the bluehorn forward, but he was no longer overtaking the ship, being content to pace it at a distance. Gesalla fired the second cannon, but the projectile plunged harmlessly into the grass well clear of Leddravohr, who responded with a courtly wave of his arm.

Still firing the burner, Toller looked up and saw that the rent in the varnished linen of the envelope had run the full length of the panel. The edges of it were pursed, invisibly spewing gas, but the ship had finally gained some upward momentum and was continuing its sluggish climb.

Toller was startled by the sound of hoarse shouting from close by. He spun round and discovered that, while all his attention had been concentrated on Leddravohr, the ship had been drifting directly towards a scattered band of soldiers. The gondola sailed over them with only a few feet to spare and they began to run along behind and below it, leaping in their efforts to grab hold of the ledge.

Their faces were anxious rather than hostile, and it came to Toller that they had only the vaguest idea of what had been happening. Praying he would not have to take action against any of them, he kept on blasting gas into the balloon and was rewarded by an agonisingly slow but steady gain in height.

“Can the ship fly?” Gesalla came to his side, straining to make herself heard above the roar of the burner. “Are we safe?”

“The ship can fly — after a fashion,” Toller said, choosing to ignore her second question. “Why did you do it, Gesalla?”

“Surely you know.”

“No.”

“Love came back to me.” She gave him a peaceful smile. “After that I had no choice

The fulfilment Toller should have felt was lost in black territories of fear. “But you attacked Leddravohr! And he has no mercy, even for women.”

“I don’t need reminding.” Gesalla looked back at the slow-moving, attendant figure of Leddravohr, and for a moment scorn and hatred robbed her of beauty. “You were right, Toller — we must not simply surrender to the butchers. Leddravohr destroyed the life in me once, and Lain and I compounded the crime by ceasing to love each other, ceasing to love ourselves. We gave too much.”

“Yes, but.…” Toller took a deep breath as he strove to accord Gesalla the rights he had always claimed for himself.

“But what?”

“We have to lighten the ship,” he said, passing the burner control lever to her. He went into the compartment vacated by Chakkell and began hurling trunks and boxes over the side.

The pursuing soldiers whooped and cheered until Leddravohr rode in among them, and his gestures showed that he was giving orders for the containers to be carried back to the main landing site. Within a minute the soldiers had turned back with their burdens, leaving Leddravohr to follow the ship alone. The wind speed was about six miles an hour and as a result the bluehorn was able to keep pace in a leisurely trot. Leddravohr was riding slightly beyond the cannons’ effective reach, slouched in the saddle, expending little energy and waiting for the situation to turn to his advantage.

Toller checked the pikon and halvell magazines and found he had sufficient crystals for at least a day of continuous burning — the ships of the royal flight having been more generously provided than the others — but his principal concern was with the ship’s lack of performance. The rip in the balloon was showing no sign of spreading past the upper and lower panel seams, but the amount of gas spilling through it was almost enough to deprive the ship of its buoyancy.

In spite of the continuous firing of the burner the gondola had gained no more than twenty feet, and Toller knew that the slightest adverse change in conditions would force a descent. A sudden gust of wind, for example, could flatten one side of the envelope and expel precious gas, delivering Gesalla and him into the hands of the patiently stalking enemy. Alone he would have been more than prepared to contend with Leddravohr, but now Gesalla’s life also depended on the outcome.…

He went to the rail and gripped it with both hands, staring back at Leddravohr and longing for a weapon capable of striking the prince down at a distance. The arrival on Overland had been so different to all his imaginings. Here he was on the sister planet — on Overland! — but the malign presence of Leddravohr, embodiment of all that was rank and evil in Kolcorron, had degraded the experience and made the new world an offshoot of the old. Like the ptertha increasing their lethal powers, Leddravohr had extended his own killing radius to encompass Overland. Toller should have been enthralled by the spectacle of a pristine sky bisected by a zigzag line of fragile ships which stretched down from the zenith, emerging from invisibility as they sank like windborne seeds in search of fertile ground — but there was Leddravohr.

Always there was Leddravohr.

“Are you worried about the hills?” Gesalla said. She had sunk to a kneeling position, out of Leddravohr’s view, and had one hand raised to work the burner’s lever.

“We can lash that down,” Toller said. “You won’t need to keep on holding it.”

“Toller, are you worried about the hills?”

“Yes.” He took a length of twine from a locker and used it to tie down the lever. “If we could get over the hills there’d be a chance of wearing Leddravohr’s bluehorn out — but I don’t know if we can gain enough height.”

“I’m not afraid, you know.” Gesalla touched his hand. “If you would prefer to go down and face him now, it’s all right.”

“No, we’ll stay aloft as long as possible. We have food and drink here and can keep up our strength while Leddravohr is slowly losing his.” He gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “Besides, littlenight will be here soon, and that’s to our advantage because the balloon will work better in the cooler air. We may yet be able to set up our own little colony on Overland.”

Littlenight was longer than on Land, and by the time it had passed the gondola was at an altitude of slightly more than two-hundred feet — which was a better gain than Toller had expected. The lower slopes of the nameless hills were sliding by beneath the ship, and none of the ridges he could see ahead seemed quite high enough to claw it out of the sky. He consulted the map he had drawn while still on the skyship.

“There’s a big lake about ten miles beyond the hills,” he said. “If we can fly over it we should be able to.…”

“Toller! I think I see a ptertha!” Gesalla caught his arm as she pointed to the south. “Look!”

Toller threw the map down, raised his binoculars and scanned the indicated section of sky. He was about to query Gesalla’s remark when he picked out a hint of sphericity, a near-invisible crescent of sunlight glinting on something transparent.

“I think you’re right,” he said. “And it has no colour. That’s what Lain meant. It has no colour because.…” He passed the binoculars to Gesalla. “Can you find any brakka trees?”

“I didn’t realise you can see so much with glasses.” Gesalla, speaking with childish enthusiasm, might have been on a pleasure flight as she studied the hillside. “Most of the trees aren’t like anything I’ve ever seen before, but I think there are brakka among them. Yes, I’m sure. Brakka! How can that be, Toller?”

Guessing she was purposely distracting her mind from what was to come, he said, “Lain wrote that brakka and ptertha go together. Perhaps the brakka discharges are so powerful that they shoot their seeds up into… No, that’s only for pollen, isn’t it? Perhaps brakka grow everywhere — on Farland and every other planet.”

Leaving Gesalla to her observations with the binoculars, Toller leaned on the rail and returned his attention to Leddravohr, the relentless pursuer.

For hours Leddravohr had been slumped in the saddle, giving the impression of being asleep, but now — as though concerned that his quarry could be on the point of eluding him — he was sitting upright. He had no helmet, but was shading his eyes with his hands as he chose the bluehorn’s path through the trees and patches of scrub which dappled the slopes he was climbing. Off to the east the landing site and the line of descending balloons had been lost in blue-hazed distance, and it was as though Gesalla, Toller and Leddravohr had the entire planet to themselves. Overland had become a vast sunlit arena, held in readiness since the beginning of time.…

His thoughts were interrupted by a sudden flapping sound from the balloon.

The noise was followed by a downward rush of heat from the balloon mouth which told him the ship had blundered into turbulent air flung up from a secondary ridge. The gondola abruptly began to yaw and sway. Toller fixed his gaze on the main crest, which was now only about two-hundred yards away on the line of flight. He knew that if they could scrape over it there might be time for the balloon to recover, but in the instant of looking at the rocky barrier he realised the situation was hopeless. The ship, which had been so reluctant to take flight, was already abandoning the aerial element, sailing determinedly towards the hillside.

“Hold on to something,” Toller shouted. “We’re going down!”

He tore the extension lever free of its lashings and shut the burner off. A few seconds later the gondola began swishing through treetops. The sounds grew louder and the gondola bucked violently as it impacted with increasingly thicker branches and trunks. Above and behind Toller the collapsing balloon tore with a series of groans and snaps as it entangled itself with the trees, applying a brake to the ship’s lateral movement.

The gondola dropped vertically as it took up the slack in its load cables, broke free at two corners and turned on its side, almost hurling its two occupants clear amid a shower of quilts and small objects. Incredibly, after the jolting and dangerous progression from treetop height, Toller found himself able to step down easily on to mossy ground. He turned and lifted Gesalla, who was clinging to a stanchion, and set her down beside him.

“You must get away from here,” he said quickly. “Get to the other side of the hill and find a place to hide.”

Gesalla threw her arms around him. “I should stay with you. I might be able to help.”

“Believe me, you won’t be able to help. If our baby is growing in you, you must take this chance for it to live. If Leddravohr kills me he may not go after you — especially if he is wounded.”

“But.…” Gesalla’s eyes widened as the bluehorn snorted a short distance away. “But I won’t know what has happened.”

“I’ll fire one of the cannon if I win.” He spun Gesalla around and pushed her away with such force that she was obliged to break into a run to avoid falling. “Only come back if you hear a cannon.”

He stood quite still and watched until Gesalla, with several backward glances, had disappeared into the cover of the trees. He had drawn his sword, and was looking about him for a clear space in which to fight, when it came to him that ingrained behaviour patterns were causing him to approach the clash with Leddravohr as though he were entering a formal duel.

How can you think that way when other lives are at stake? he asked himself, dismayed by the extent of his own naivety. What was honour got to do with the plain task of excising a canker?

He glanced at the slow-swinging gondola, decided on Leddravohr’s most probable line of approach to it, and stepped back into the concealment of three trees which grew so closely that they might have sprung from the same root. The same excitement he had known before — shameful and inexplicably sexual — began to steal over him.

He quieted his breathing, ridding himself of his humanity, and a new thought occurred: Leddravohr was nearby a minute ago — so why have I not seen him by now?

Knowing the answer, he turned his head and saw Leddravohr about ten paces away. Leddravohr had already thrown his knife. The speed and distance were such that Toller had no time to duck or move aside. He flung up his left hand and took the knife in the centre of the palm. The full length of the black blade came through between the bones with so much force that his hand was driven back and the knife-point tore open his face just below the left eye.

A natural instinct would have been to look at the injured hand, but Toller ignored it and whipped his sword into the guard position just in time to deter Leddravohr, who had followed up on the throw with a running attack.

“You have learned a few things, Maraquine,” Leddravohr said, as he too went on guard. “Most men would be dead twice over by this time.”

“The lesson was a simple one,” Toller replied. “Always prepare for reptiles to behave as such.”

“I can’t be goaded — so keep your insults.”

“I haven’t offered any, except to reptiles.”

Leddravohr’s smile twitched into existence, very white in a face made unrecognisable by traceries of dried blood. His hair was matted and his cuirass, which had been blood-stained before the migration flight began, was streaked with dirt and what looked like partially-digested food. Toller moved away from the constriction of the three trees, turning his mind to combat tactics.

Was it possible that Leddravohr was one of those men, fearless in all other respects, who were laid low by acrophobia? Was that why he had been seen so little throughout the flight? If so, Leddravohr could hardly be fit enough to embark on a prolonged struggle.

The Kolcorronian battle sword was a two-edged weapon whose weight precluded its use in formalised duelling. It was limited to basic cutting and thrusting strokes which could generally be blocked or deflected by an opponent with fast reactions and a good eye. All other things being equal, the victor in single combat tended to be the man with the most physical power and endurance. Toller had a natural advantage in that he was more than ten years younger than Leddravohr, but that had been offset by the disablement of his left hand. Now he had reason to suppose that the balance was restored in his favour — and yet Leddravohr, vastly experienced in such matters, had lost none of his arrogance.…

“Why so pensive, Maraquine?” Leddravohr was moving with Toller to maintain the line of engagement. “Are you troubled by the ghost of my father?”

Toller shook his head. “By the ghost of my brother. We never settled that issue.” To his surprise, he saw that his words had disturbed Leddravohr’s composure.

“Why do you plague me with this?”

“I believe you are responsible for my brother’s death.”

“I told you the fool was responsible for his own death.” Leddravohr made an angry stabbing movement with his sword and the two blades touched for the first time. “Why should I lie about it, then or now? He broke his mount’s leg and he refused a seat on mine.”

“Lain wouldn’t have done that.”

“He did! I tell you he could have been at your side at this minute, and I wish he were — so that I could have the pleasure of cleaving both your skulls.”

While Leddravohr was speaking Toller took the opportunity to glance at his wounded hand. There was no great pain as yet, but blood was coursing steadily down the handle of the knife and beading off it to the ground. When he shook his hand the blade remained firmly in place, wedged to the hilt between the bones. The wound, though not a crippling one, would have a progressive effect on his strength and fighting capability. It behoved him to get the duel under way as soon as possible. He forced himself to disregard the lies Leddravohr was uttering about his brother, and to seek a reason for the noteworthy fact that a man whose potency must have been diminished by twelve days of dislocation and illness appeared overweeningly confident of victory.

Was there a significant clue he had overlooked?

He studied his opponent again — tenths of a second passing like minutes in his keyed-up state — and saw only that Leddravohr had sleeved his sword. Soldiers from some parts of the Kolcorronian empire, principally Sorka and Middac, had the practice of covering the base of a blade with leather so that on occasion one hand could be transposed ahead of the hilt and the sword used as a two-handed weapon. Toller had never seen much merit in the idea, but he resolved to be extra wary in the event of an unexpected variation in Leddravohr’s attack.

All at once the preliminaries were over.

Each man had circled to a position which materially was no better than any other, but which satisfied him in some indefinable way as being the most propitious, the most suitable for his purpose. Toller went in first, surprised at being allowed that psychological advantage, starting on the backhand with a series of downward hacks alternating from left to right, and was immediately thrilled with the result. As was inevitable, Leddravohr blocked every stroke with ease, but the blade shocks were not quite what Toller had expected. It was as though Leddravohr’s sword arm had given way a little at each blow, hinting at a serious lack of strength.

A few minutes could decide everything, Toller exulted as he allowed the sequence to come to a natural end, then his survivor’s instinct reasserted itself. Dangerous thinking! Would Leddravohr have pursued me this far — alone — knowing he was unequal to the struggle?

Toller disengaged and shifted his ground, holding his dripping left hand clear of his body. Leddravohr closed in on him with startling speed, creating a low sweep triangle which almost forced Toller to defend his useless arm rather than his head and body. The flurry ended with a mighty backhand cross from Leddravohr which actually fanned cool air against the underside of Toller’s chin. He leapt back, chastened, reminded that the prince in a debilitated condition was a match for an ordinary soldier in his prime.

Had that resurgence of power represented the trap he suspected Leddravohr of preparing for him? If so, it was vital not to allow Leddravohr breathing space and recovery time. Toller renewed his attack on the instant, initiating sequence after sequence with no perceptible interludes, using all his strength but at the same time modifying fury with intelligence, allowing the prince no mental or physical respite.

Leddravohr, breathing hard now, was forced to yield ground. Toller saw that he was backing into a cluser of low thorn bushes and forced himself closer, awaiting the moment when Leddravohr would be distracted, immobilised or caught off balance. But Leddravohr, displaying his genius for combat, appeared to sense the presence of the bushes without having to turn his head.

He saved himself by gathering Toller’s blade in a circular counter parry worthy of a smallsword master, stepping inside his defences and turning both their bodies into a new line. For a second the two men were pressed together, chest to chest, their swords locked at the hilts overhead at the apex of the triangle formed by their straining right arms.

Toller felt the heat of Leddravohr’s breath and smelled the foulness of vomit from him, then he broke the contact by forcing his sword arm down, making it into an irresistible lever which drove them apart.

Leddravohr aided the separation by jumping backwards and quickly sidestepping to bring the thorn bushes between them. His chest was heaving rapidly, evidence of his growing tiredness, but — strangely — he appeared to have been buoyed up rather than disconcerted by the narrowness of his escape from peril. He was leaning forward slightly in an attitude suggestive of a new eagerness, and his eyes were animated and derisive amid the filigrees of dried blood which covered his face.

Something has happened, Toller thought, his skin crawling with apprehension. Leddravohr knows something!

“By the way, Maraquine,” Leddravohr said, sounding almost genial, “I heard what you said to your woman.”

“Yes?” In spite of his alarm, a part of Toller’s consciousness was being taken up by the odd fact that the disgusting odour he had endured while in contact with Leddravohr was still strong in his nostrils. Was it really just the sourness of regurgitated food, or was there another smell there? Something strangely familiar and with a deadly significance?

Leddravohr smiled. “It was a good idea. About firing the cannon, I mean. It will save me the trouble of going looking for her when I have disposed of you.”

Don’t waste breath on a reply, Toller urged himself. Leddravohr is putting on too much of a show. It means he isn’t leading you into a trap — it has already been sprung!

“Well, I don’t think I’m going to need this,” Leddravohr said. He gripped the leather sleeve at the base of his sword, slid it off and dropped it to the ground. His eyes were fixed on Toller, amused and enigmatic.

Toller looked closely at the sleeve and saw that it seemed to have been made in two layers, with a thin outer skin which had been ruptured. Around the edges of the split were glistening traces of yellow slime.

Toller looked down at his own sword, belatedly identifying the stench which was emanating from it — the stench of whitefern — and saw more of the slime on the broadest part of the blade, close to the hilt. The black material of the blade was bubbling and vapouring as it dissolved under the attack of the brakka slime, which had been smeared there by Leddravohr’s sword when the two were crossed at the hilts.

I accept my death, Toller mused, his thoughts blurring into frenzied battle tempo as he saw Leddravohr darting towards him, on condition that I don’t journey alone.

He raised his head and lunged at Leddravohr’s chest with his sword. Leddravohr struck across it and snapped the blade at the root, sending it tumbling away to one side, and in the same movement swept his sword round into a thrust aimed at Toller’s body.

Toller took the thrust, throwing himself on to it as he knew he had to were he to achieve life’s last ambition. He gasped as the blade passed all the way through him, allowing him to drive on until he was within reach of Leddravohr. He gripped the throwing knife and, with his left hand still impaled on it, ran the blade upwards into Leddravohr’s stomach, circling and seeking with the tip. There was a gushing warmth on the back of his hand.

Leddravohr growled and pushed Toller away from him with desperate force, simultaneously withdrawing his sword. He stared at Toller, open-mouthed, for several seconds, then he dropped the sword and sank to his knees. He pitched forward on to his hands and remained like that, head lowered, staring at the pool of blood gathering below his body.

Toller worked the knife free of the bones clamped around it, mentally remote from the pain he was inflicting on himself, then clutched his side in an effort to stem the sopping pulsations of the sword wound. The edges of his vision were in a ferment; the sunlit hillside was rushing towards him and retreating. He threw the knife away, approached Leddravohr on buckling legs and picked up the sword. Forcing all that remained of his strength into his right arm, he raised the sword high.

Leddravohr did not look up, but he moved his head a little, showing he was aware of Toller’s actions. “I have killed you, haven’t I, Maraquine?” he said in a choking, blood-drowning voice. “Give me that one consolation.”

“Sorry, but you hardly scratched me,” Toller said as he cleaved downwards with the black blade.

“And this is for my brother… Prince! ”

He turned away from Leddravohr’s corpse and with difficulty steadied his gaze on the square shape of the gondola. Was it swinging in a breeze, or was it the one fixed point in a see-sawing, dissolving universe?

He set out to walk towards it, intrigued by the discovery that it was now very far away… at a remove much greater than the distance from Land to Overland…

Chapter 21

The rear wall of the cave was partially hidden by a mound of large pebbles and rock fragments which over the centuries had washed down through a natural chimney. Toller enjoyed gazing at the mound because he knew the Overlanders lived inside it.

He had not actually seen them, and therefore did not know if they resembled miniature men or animals, but he was keenly aware of their presence — because they used lanterns.

The light from the lanterns shone out through chinks in the rock at intervals which were not attuned to the outside world’s rhythm of night and day. Toller liked to think of Overlanders going about their own business in there, secure in their tumble-down fortress, with no concern for anything which might be happening in the universe at large.

It was the nature of his delirium that even in periods when he felt himself to be perfectly lucid one tiny lantern would sometimes continue to gleam from the heart of the pile. At those times he took no pleasure from the experience. Afraid for his sanity, he would stare at the point of light, willing it to vanish because it had no place in the rational world. Sometimes it would obey quickly, but there were occasions when it took hours to dim out of existence, and then he would cling to Gesalla, making her the lifeline which joined him to all that was familiar and normal.… “Well, I don’t think you’re strong enough to travel,” Gesalla said firmly, “so there is no point in carrying on with this discussion.”

“But I’m almost fully recovered,” Toller protested, waving his arms to prove the point.

“Your tongue is the only part of you which has recovered, and even that is getting too much exercise. Just be quiet for a while and allow me to get on with my work.” She turned her back on him and used a twig to stir the pot in which his dressings were being boiled.

After seven days the wounds on his face and left hand needed virtually no attention, but the twin punctures in his side were still discharging. Gesalla cleaned them and changed the dressings every few hours, a regimen which necessitated re-using the meagre stock of pads and bandages she had been able to make.

Toller had little doubt that he would have died but for her ministrations, but his gratitude was tinged with concern for her safety. He guessed that the initial confusion in the fleet’s landing zone must have rivalled that of the departure, but it seemed little short of a miracle to him that he and Gesalla had since remained unmolested for so long. With each passing day, as the fever abated, his sense of urgency increased.

We are leaving here in the morning, my love, he thought. Whether you agree or not.

He leaned back on the bed of folded quilts, trying to curb his impatience, and allowed his gaze to roam the panoramic view which the cave mouth afforded. Grassy slopes, dotted here and there with unfamiliar trees, folded gently down for about a mile to the west, to the edge of a large lake whose water was a pure indigo seeded with sun-jewels. The northern and southern shores were banked forests, receding and narrowing bands of a colour which — as on Land — was a composite of a million speckles ranging from lime green to deep red, representing trees at different stages of their leaf cycles. The lake stretched all the way to a western horizon composed of the ethereal blue triangles of distant mountains, above which a pure sky soared up to encompass the disk of the Old World.

It was a scene which Toller found unutterably beautiful, and in the first days in the cave he had been unable to distinguish it with any certainty from other products of his delirium. His memory of those days was patchy. It had taken him some time to understand that he had not succeeded in firing a cannon, and that Gesalla had made an independent decision to go back for him. She had tried to make little of the matter, claiming that had Leddravohr been victorious he would soon have advertised the fact by coming in search of her. Toller had known otherwise.

Lying in the hushed peace of early morning, watching Gesalla go about the chores she had set for herself, he felt a surge of admiration for her courage and resourcefulness. He would never understand how she had managed to get him into the saddle of Leddravohr’s bluehorn, load up with supplies from the gondola, and lead the beast on foot for many miles before finding the cave. It would have been a considerable feat for a man, but for a slightly-built woman facing an unknown planet and all its possible dangers on her own the achievement had been truly exceptional.

Gesalla is a truly exceptional woman, Toller thought. So how long will it be before she realises I have no intention of taking her off into the wilderness?

The sheer impracticability of his original plan had weighed heavily on Toller after his rationality had begun to return. Without a baby to consider it might have been possible for two adults to eke out some kind of fugitive existence in the forests of Overland — but if Gesalla was not already pregnant she would see to it that she became pregnant.

It had taken him some time to appreciate that the core of the problem also contained its solution. With Leddravohr dead Prince Pouche would have become King, and Toller knew him to be a dry, dispassionate man who would abide by Kolcorron’s traditional leniency with pregnant women — especially as Leddravohr was the only one who could have testified about Gesalla’s use of the cannon against him.

The task ahead, Toller had decided — while doing his best to ignore the gleam of the single, persistent Overlander’s lantern in the mound of rubble — was to keep Gesalla alive until she was demonstrably with child. A hundred days seemed a reasonable target, but the very act of setting a term had somehow increased and aggravated his unease about the fleeting passage of time. How was he to strike the proper balance between leaving early and only being able to travel slowly, and leaving late — when the swiftness of a deer might prove insufficient?

“What are you brooding about?” Gesalla said, removing the boiling pot from the heat.

“About you — and about preparing to leave here in the morning.”

“I told you, you aren’t ready.” She knelt beside him to inspect his dressings and the touch of her hands sent a pleasurable shock racing down to his groin.

“I think another part of me is starting to recover,” he said.

“That’s something else you aren’t ready for.” She smiled as she dabbed his forehead with a damp cloth. “You can have some stew instead.”

“A fine substitute,” he grumbled, making an unsuccessful attempt to touch her breasts as she slid away from him. The sudden movement of his arm, slight though it was, produced a sharp pain in his side and made him wonder how he would fare trying to get astride the bluehorn in the morning.

He pushed the worry to the back of his thoughts and watched Gesalla as she prepared a simple breakfast. She had found a flattish, slightly concave stone to use as a hob. By mingling on it tiny pinches of pikon and halvell brought from the ship, she was able to create a smoke-free heat which would not betray their whereabouts to pursuers. When she had finished warming the stew — a thick mixture of grain, pulses and shreds of saltbeef — she passed a dish of it to him and allowed him to feed himself.

Toller had been amused to note — echo of the old Gesalla he thought he had known — that among the “essentials” she had salvaged from the gondola were dishes and table utensils. There was a poignancy about eating in such conditions, with commonplace domestic items framed in the pervasive strangeness of a virgin world; with the romance which could have suffused the moment abnegated by uncertainties and danger.

Toller was not really hungry, but he ate steadily with a determination to win back his strength as quickly as possible. Apart from occasional snuffles from the tethered bluehorn the only sounds reaching the cave from elsewhere were the rolling reports of brakka pollination discharges. The frequency of the explosions indicated that brakka were plentiful throughout the region, and were a reminder of the question which had first been posed by Gesalla — if the other plant forms of Overland were unknown on Land, why did the two worlds have the brakka in common?

Gesalla had collected handfuls of grass, leaves, flowers and berries for joint scrutiny, and — with the possible exception of the grass, upon which only a botanist could have passed judgment — all had shared the common factor of strangeness. Toller had reiterated his idea that the brakka was a universal form, one which would be found on any planet, but although he was unused to pondering such matters he recognised that the notion had an unsatisfactory philosophical feel to it, one which made him wish he could turn to Lain for guidance.

“There’s another ptertha,” Gesalla exclaimed. “Look! I can see seven or eight of them going towards the water.”

Toller looked in the direction she was indicating and had to change the focus of his eyes several times before he picked out the bubble-glints of the colourless, near-invisible spheres. They were slowly drifting down the hillside on the air flow generated by the night-time cooling of the surface.

“You’re better at spotting those things than I am,” he said ruefully. “That one yesterday was almost in my lap before I saw it.”

The ptertha which had drifted in on them soon after littlenight on the previous day had come to within ten paces of Toller’s bed, and in spite of what he had learned from Lain the nearness of it had inspired much of the dread he would have experienced on Land. Had he been mobile he would probably have been unable to prevent himself from hurling his sword through it. The globe had hovered nearby for a few seconds before sailing away down the hillside in a series of slow ruminative bounds.

“Your face was a picture!” Gesalla paused in her eating to parody an expression of fear.

“I’ve just thought of something,” Toller said. “Have we any writing materials?”

“No. Why?”

“You and I are the only two people on the whole of Overland who know what Lain wrote about the ptertha. I wish I had thought of telling Chakkell. All those hours together on the ship — and I didn’t even mention it!”

“You weren’t to know there would be brakka trees and ptertha here. You thought you were leaving all that behind.”

Toller was gripped by a new and greater urgency which had nothing to do with his personal aspirations. “Listen, Gesalla, this is the most important thing either of us will ever have the chance to do. You have got to make sure that Pouche and Chakkell hear and understand Lain’s ideas.

“If we leave the brakka trees alone, to live out their time and die naturally, the ptertha here will never become our enemies. Even a modest amount of culling — the way they did it in Chamteth — is probably too much because the ptertha there had turned pink and that’s a sign that.…” He stopped speaking as he saw that Gesalla was staring at him, her expression of odd blend of concern and accusation.

“Is there anything the matter?”

“You said/had to make sure that Pouche and.…“Gesalla set her dish down and came to kneel beside him. “What’s going to happen to us, Toller?”

He forced himself to laugh then exaggerated the effects of the pain it caused, playing for time in which to cover up his blunder. “We’re going to found our own dynasty, that’s what is going to happen to us. Do you think I would let any harm come to you?”

“I know you wouldn’t — and that’s why you frightened me.”

“Gesalla, all I meant was that we must leave a message here… or somewhere else where it will be found and taken to the King. I’m not able to move around much, so I have to turn the responsibility over to you. I’ll show you how to make charcoal, and then we’ll find something to.…”

Gesalla was slowly shaking her head and her eyes were magnified by the first tears he had ever seen there. “It’s all unreal, isn’t it? It’s all just a dream.”

“Flying to Overland was just a dream — once — but now we’re here, and in spite of everything we’re still alive.” He drew her down to lie beside him, her head cushioned on his shoulder. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to us, Gesalla. All I can promise is that…how did you put it?… that we are not going to surrender life to the butchers. That has to be enough for us. Now, why don’t you rest and let me watch over you, just for a change?”

“All right, Toller.” Gesalla made herself comfortable, fitting her body to his whilst being careful of his injuries, and in an amazingly short time she was asleep. Her transition from anxious wakefulness to the tranquillity of sleep was announced by the faintest of snores, and Toller smiled as he stored the event in his memory for use in future bantering. The only home they were likely to know on Overland would be built of such insubstantial timbers.

He tried to stay awake, to watch over her, but the vapours of an insidious weariness were coiling in his head — and the last Overlander’s lantern was again glowing in the rock pile.

The only way to escape from it was to close his eyes.… The soldier standing over him was holding a sword.

Toller tried to moves to take some defensive action in spite of his weakness and the encumbrance of Gesalla’s body draped across his own, then he saw that the sword in the soldier’s hand was Leddravohr’s, and even in his befuddled state he was able to assess the situation correctly.

It was too late to do anything, anything at all — because his little domain had already been surrounded, conquered and overrun.

Further evidence came from the shifting of the light as other soldiers moved around beyond the immediate area of the cave mouth. There were the sounds of men beginning to talk as they realised that silence was no longer required, and from somewhere nearby came the snorting and slithering of a bluehorn as it made its way down the bill. Toller squeezed Gesalla’s shoulder to bring her awake, and although she remained immobile he felt her spasm of alarm.

The soldier with the sword moved away and his place was taken by a slit-eyed major, whose head was in near-silhouette against the sky as he looked down at Toller. “Can you stand up?”

“No — he’s too ill,” Gesalla said, rising to a kneeling position.

“I can stand.” Toller caught her arm. “Help me, Gesalla — I prefer to be on my feet at this time.” With her assistance he achieved a standing position and faced the major. He was dully surprised to find that, when he should have been oppressed by failure and prospects of death, he was discomfited by the trivial fact that he was naked.

“Well, major,” he said, “what is it you want of me?”

The major’s face was professionally impassive. “The King will speak to you now.”

He moved aside and Toller saw the paunchy figure of Chakkell approaching. His dress was subdued and plain, suitable for cross-country riding, but suspended from his neck was a huge blue jewel which Toller had seen only once before, when it had been worn by Prad. Chakkell had retrieved Leddravohr’s sword from the first soldier and was carrying it with the blade leaning on his right shoulder, a neutral position which could quickly become one of attack. His swarthy well-padded face and brown scalp were gleaming in the equatorial heat.

He came within two paces of Toller and surveyed him from head to toe. “Well, Maraquine, I promised I would remember you.”

“Majesty, I daresay I have given you and your loved ones good cause to remember me.” Toller was aware of Gesalla drawing closer to him, and for her sake he went on to rid his words of any possible ambiguity. “A fall of a thousand miles would have.…”

“Don’t start rhyming at me again,” Chakkell cut in. “And lie down, man, before you fall down!”

He nodded to Gesalla, ordering her to ease Toller down on to the quilts, and signalled for the major and the rest of his escort to withdraw. When they had retreated out of earshot he squatted in the dirt and, unexpectedly, lobbed the black sword over Toller and into the dimness of the cave.

“We are going to have a brief conversation,” he said, “and not a word of it is to be repeated. Is that clear?”

Toller nodded uncertainly, wondering if he dared introduce hope to the confusion of his thoughts and emotions.

“There is a certain amount of ill-feeling towards you among the nobility and among the military who completed the crossing,” Chakkell said comfortably. “After all, not many men have committed regicide twice in the space of three days. It can be dealt with, however. There is a great air of practicality in our new statelet — and the settlers appreciate that loyalty to one living king is more beneficial to the health than a similar regard for two dead kings. Are you wondering about Pouche?”

“Does he live?”

“He lives, but he was quick to see that the subtleties of his kind of statesmanship would be inappropriate to the situation we have here. He is more than happy to relinquish his claims to the throne — if a chair made from old gondola parts can be dignified with that name.”

It came to Toller that he was seeing Chakkell as he had never seen him before — cheerful, loquacious, at ease with his environment. Was it simply that he preferred supremacy for himself and his offspring in a seedling society to preordained secondary role in the long-established and static Kolcorron? Or was it that he possessed an adventurous spirit which had been liberated by the unique circumstances of the great migration? Looking closely at Chakkell, encouraged by his instincts, Toller experienced a sudden upwelling of relief and the purest kind of joy.

Gesalla and I are going to have children, he thought. And it doesn’t matter that she and I will have to die some day, because our children will have children, and the future stretches out before us… on and on… on and on, except that…

One reality dissolved around Toller and he found himself standing on a rocky outcrop to the west of Ro-Atabri. He was gazing through his telescope at the sprawled body of his brother, reading that last communication which had nothing to do with revenge or personal regrets, but which — as befitted Lain’s compassionate intellect — addressed itself to the welfare of millions as yet unborn.

“Prince… Majesty.…” Toller raised himself on one elbow the better to confront Chakkell with the truth which had been placed in his keeping, but the incautious torsion of his body lanced him with an agony which stilled his voice and dropped him back into his bedding.

“Leddravohr came very near to killing you, didn’t he?” Chakkell’s voice had lost all of its lightness.

“That doesn’t matter,” Toller said, smoothing Gesalla’s hair as she bent over the renewed fire of the wounds in his side. “You knew my brother and what he was?”

“Yes.”

“Very well. Forget all about me — my brother lives in my body, and he is speaking to you through my mouth.…“Toller went on, battling through riptides of nausea and weakness to paint a word-picture of the tortured triangular relationship involving humankind, the brakka tree and the ptertha. He described the symbiotic partnership between brakka and ptertha, using inspiration and informed imagination where real knowledge failed.

As in all cases of true symbiosis, both parties derived benefit from the association. The ptertha bred in high levels of the atmosphere, nourished — in all probability — by minute traces of pikon and halvell, or miglign gas, or brakka pollen, or by some derivation from the four. In return, the ptertha sought out all organisms who threatened the welfare of the brakka. Employing the blind forces of random mutation, they varied their internal composition until they chanced on an effective toxin, at which point — the path having been signposted — they concentrated and refined and aimed it to create a weapon capable of scourging the scourge, of removing from existence all traces of that which did not deserve to exist.

The way ahead for mankind on Overland lay in treating the brakka with the respect it deserved. Only dead trees should be used for their yield of super-hard materials and power crystals, and if the supply seemed insufficient it was incumbent on the immigrants to develop substitutes or to modify their way of life accordingly.

If they failed to do so, the history of humanity on Land would, inevitably, be repeated on Overland.…

“I admit to being impressed,” Chakkell said when Toller had finally finished speaking. “There is no real proof that what you say is true, but it is worthy of serious consideration. Luckily for our generation, which has seen its full share of hardships, there is no need to make any hasty decisions. We have enough to worry about in the meantime.”

“You must not think that way,” Toller urged. “You are the ruler… and you have the unique opportunity… the unique responsibility…” He sighed and stopped speaking, yielding to a tiredness which seemed to dim the very heavens.

“Save your strength for another time,” Chakkell said gently. “I should let you rest now, but before I leave I’d like to know one more thing. Between you and Leddravohr — was it a fair contest?”

“It was almost fair… until he destroyed my sword with brakka slime.”

“But you overcame him just the same.”

“It was required of me.” Toller was experiencing the mysticism which can come with illness and utter weariness. “I was born to overcome Leddravohr.”

“Perhaps he knew that.”

Toller forced his gaze to steady on Chakkell’s face. “I don’t know what you.…”

“I wonder if Leddravohr had any heart for all of this, for our brave new beginning,” Chakkell said. “I wonder if he pursued you — alone — because he divined that you were his Bright Road?”

“That idea,” Toller whispered, “has little appeal for me.”

“You need to rest.” Chakkell stood up and addressed himself to Gesalla. “Look after this man for my sake as well as your own — I have work for him. I think it would be better not to move him for some days yet, but you seem quite comfortable here. Do you need any supplies?”

“We could use more fresh water, Majesty,” Gesalla said. “Apart from that our wants are already satisfied.”

“Yes.” Chakkell studied her face for a moment. “I’m going to take your bluehorn because we have only seven all told, and the breeding must begin as soon as possible, but I will post guards nearby. Call them when you deem you are ready to leave here. Does that suit you?”

“Yes, Majesty — we are indebted.”

“I trust your patient will remember that when his health is recovered.” Chakkell turned and strode away towards the waiting soldiers, moving with the energetic assurance peculiar to those who feel themselves to be responding to the calls of destiny. Later, when silence had again returned to the hillside, Toller awoke to see that Gesalla was passing the time by sorting and arranging her collection of leaves and flowers. She had spread them on the ground before her, and her lips were moving silently as she thoughtfully placed each specimen in an order of her own devising. Beyond her the vivid purity of Overland sparkled and advanced on the eye.

Toller cautiously raised himself in the bed. He glanced at the mound of rocky fragments intherearofthe cave, then turned his head away quickly, unwilling to risk seeing the tiny lantern gleaming at him. Only when it had ceased to shine altogether would he know for certain that the fever had entirely left his system, and until then he had no wish to be reminded of how close he had come to death and to losing all that Gesalla meant to him.

She looked up from her emergent patterns. “Did you see something back there?”

“There’s nothing,” he said, mustering a smile. “Nothing at all.”

“But I’ve noticed you staring at those rocks before. What is your secret?” Intrigued, and playing a game for his benefit, Gesalla came to him and knelt to share his line of sight. The movement brought her face very close to his, and he saw her eyes widen in surprise.

“Toller!” Her voice was that of a child, hushed with wonder. “There’s something shining in there!”

She rose to her feet with all the speed of which her weightless body was capable, stepped over him and ran into the cave.

Prey to a strange fear, Toller tried to call out a warning, but his throat was dry and the power of speech seemed to have deserted him. And Gesalla was already throwing the outermost stones aside. He watched numbly as she put her hands into the mound, lifted something heavy and bore it out to the brighter light at the entrance to the cave.

She knelt beside him, cradling the find on her thighs. It was a large flake of dark grey rock — but it was unlike any rock Toller had ever seen before. Running across and through it, integral to and yet differing from the stone, was a broad band of material which was white, but more than white, reflecting the sun like the waters of a distant lake at dawn.

“It’s beautiful,” Gesalla breathed, “but what is it?”

“I don’t.…” Grimacing with pain, Toller reached for his clothing, found a pocket and brought out the strange memento given to him by his father. He placed it against the gleaming stratum in the stone, confirming what he already knew — that they were identical in composition.

Gesalla took the nugget from him and ran a fingertip across its polished surface. “Where did you get this?”

“My father… my real father… gave it to me in Chamteth just before he died. He told me he found it long ago. Before I was born. In the Redant province.”

“I feel strange.” Gesalla shivered as she looked up at the misty, enigmatic, watchful disk of the Old World. “Was ours not the first migration, Toller? Has it all happened before?”

“I think so — perhaps many times — but the important thing for us is to ensure that it never.…” His weariness forced Toller to leave the sentence unfinished.

He laid the back of his hand on the lustrous strip within the rock, captivated by its coolness and its strangeness — and by silent intimations that, somehow, he could make the future differ from the past.