The Witling

Seventeen

Jump. A groaning, ripping sound came through the speedboat’s belly. The deck split down the middle and Yoninne was looking straight up into the morning sky—then down at the water. Around her timbers and planking flew in all directions. Finally she came to rest, hanging upside down from her harness. For a moment she swung gently back and forth on the straps. All was silent except for a faint drip drip drip somewhere behind her. From the marshy ground a meter below her head, scraggly brush thrust stiff fingers within ten centimeters of her face, bringing an odor of muck and decay.

Yoninne pulled the harness release and the universe spun around her as she swung down onto the boggy ground. She staggered to her feet and walked dazedly around the wreckage.

Dawn had come to the desert: peeking over the jumbled plain to the east, the sun turned the rocks and sand to tan and orange, the brush to dusty green.

Very pretty. But the speedboat was an unrecognizable pile of junk. Bre’en had renged them into some kind of marsh. The boat had skidded out of the water and rolled across the ground to the marsh’s edge, where it broke apart on jagged rocks. But the ablation skiff was undamaged. It had bounced clear of the wreckage to sit, a dull black sphere, in the brush surrounding the marsh.

There were voices now from within the wreckage, and she thought she heard meeping, too. She poked around the split timbers that thrust deep through the brush into the marshy soil. “Ionina!” Pelio called. She found him under what was left of the boat’s bottom plates. Except for the beginnings of a massive bruise along his jaw and neck, he looked okay. She clambered through the wreckage to reach him. Together they eased back the curved planking that pinned him to his couch. For an instant, Yoninne’s hand rested on his arm, and they looked at each other silently. Then Pelio smiled at her—the first time in how many hours?—and they turned to recover the others.

In half an hour they were all sitting around the edge of the marsh, huddled down in the bushes. Considering the damage the boat had taken, they had come out awfully well. Bre’en had a broken ankle (which could only serve to make him more manageable), and Ajão had come through without even a bruise. Sam was a different story: the watchbear seemed alert and comfortable as he lay in the brush next to Pelio, but the fur across his shoulder was matted with blood…

The sun stood almost ten degrees above the horizon now, its glare blotting the eastern plains from view. The air turned dry and hot, and something—animals hidden in the rocks?—set up a terrible buzzing. What had—by contrast with the antarctic—seemed warm before, had been nothing but the chill of a desert night. By noon this place would be hotter than anything she’d seen in the Summerkingdom.

Bre’en looked sourly at the heat ripples rising over the brownish green marsh. Pelio had used one of the boat cables to tie the Snowman to the biggest, sturdiest bush in sight. Bre’en couldn’t reng away from them, but he had what freedom of movement his broken ankle permitted. “So?” the haggard Bre’en said, grimacing at the pain that must be shooting up his leg. “At most you’ve gained yourselves an hour of freedom. Right now my king’s army and their allies are checking every mudhole inside ten leagues. And the Desertfolk know these lands: to them water is terribly important. You’ll be lucky to—”

“Oh? They know where every last drop of water is, eh?” Yoninne broke in nastily. “Then why don’t your friends have a settlement here?”

Bre’en pointed at the circle of rocks that peeked through the scrub around the marsh. “Someone was here once; thev even had a transit lake. If I remember right, there are ruins on the other side of the bog… buildings burned right down to their foundations.”

“The water is so thoroughly poisoned that only scragweed can drink it,” said Pelio sharply.

Bre’en nodded, almost smugly. “Some of my… some of the partisans were overeager on that score. They felt your Summerfolk were a bit discourteous, planting your towns in the margin of their desert.”

Pelio started to reply, then waved angrily at their hostage. “You’re wasting our time, Bre’en.” He turned to Yoninne. “We’ve got to decide what to do. Should we hide out here, or take another chance with the Desertfolk’s roads? Your strange sphere”—he gestured at the ablation skiff—“could hold us all, and it certainly seems sturdy enough to be used as a road boat.”

“Could Bre’en jump us all the wav into County Tsarang?” The Snowman smiled crookedly and shook his head. “I doubt it,” said Pelio, confirming Bre’en’s wordless assertion. “The county has always been well guarded against unwelcome pilgrims. He could reng us to a border lake, but that’s about all.”

“Then I don’t see what good it would do to get back on the road,” Yoninne said glumly. “At least the Snowmen don’t know where we are now.”

Bjault broke the long silence that followed. “You said this was once a Summerfolk village, Bre’en. It must be close to land that’s still under Summer control.”

The Snowman tried to laugh but it was a hollow, croaking sound. “It is, vou brown-faced fool, it is. County Tsarang lies just beyond those mountains.” He waved toward the west. “It would be one quick jump if you had someone who could seng the way. But it’s a death march if you try to walk it without water.”

“Hmm,” said Bjault, as if this were some very encouraging answer. The archaeologist rose stiffly and walked over to the skiff.

Pelio watched him for a moment, then said to Yoninne, “You told me once that yonder sphere can fly.”

“Yes, but only downward, to slow a fall.” She didn’t try to explain the workings of the parachute. Face it, girl: we’re stuck. Even if Bre’en were exaggerating—even if the walk to the mountains were a piece of cake—it still wouldn’t do them any good. They needed the skiff, too. Without it, they couldn’t carry out Ajão’s plan for getting to the telemetry station on Draere’s island.

As they talked, Bjault stood silently, looking first at the skiff and then at the ragged line of mountains to the west. Suddenly he shouted in Homespeech, “That’s it! Look, Yoninne: we have a good parachute and we have Bre’en. We can teleport high-velocity air into the chute and lift ourselves right up by our bootstraps!” A grin split his dark face from ear to ear.

Leg-Wot realized her mouth was hanging open. Why, Bre’en could sail their skiff right over the mountains into County Tsarang. Suddenly she was on her feet, running through the brush to Ajão and the skiff. She pulled open the hatch, and clambered into the still-cool darkness. A loud sprong sounded as she pulled the chute release, and the olive-colored, fiberene parachute burst from the top of the skiff’s heat-scarred hull. She grabbed a fold from the heavy pack and pulled streamer after streamer of gauzy fiberene onto the ground. Bjault tried ineffectually to help.

All the while, Pelio and Bre’en looked on with expressions of wonder and—in Bre’en’s case—suspicion. Yoninne turned to them. “I was wrong, Pelio.” She waved at the hundreds of square meters of olive chute spread across the rocks and bushes. “Using Bre’en’s Talent, we can fly.” She explained what the Snowman would have to do.

Thredegar Bre’en had risen to his knees to stare at them. He swayed slightly from side to side, and his face was filmed with sweat. But he seemed to understand what she wanted, even if he didn’t see what the effect would be. Finally he said, “You’ve been working me for hours. How much longer do you think I can go on?”

She glanced at Pelio, saw that the prince couldn’t tell if Bre’en were faking or not. Bre’en certainly hadn’t been getting as much rest as their pilots had during the trip to the North Pole. But had those rest-stops been a matter of comfort or necessity? Then she remembered the med-kit in the skiff. The kit contained booster drugs. Perhaps they wouldn’t help—perhaps they would blot out what Talent the Snowman could still use—but the alternative was simply to threaten the fellow, and that ploy had already been used for all it was worth. She started toward the skiff’s hatch and said to Bre’en, “I’ve got some, uh, potions here that should bring your strength back.” She might as well seem confident, anyway.

For an instant she saw stark terror in the Snowman’s face, and realized how thoroughly his people must respect the witlings’ “magic.” Bre’en’s fear turned to dark anger, and the man straightened, his fatigue visibly diminished. What she had offered as help was actually the greatest threat she could have made.

“All right, then,” Pelio said to Bre’en. “Let’s get aboard.”