Land and Overland - Omnibus (16 page)

“I am, Majesty.” Glo glanced at Leddravohr and the dark-jowled Chakkell as though daring them to object. “We can fly to Overland.”

“How?”

“By means of very large hot air balloons, Majesty.”

“Go on.”

“Their lifting power would have to be augmented by gas jets—but it is providential that in the region where the balloons would practically cease to function the jets would be their most effective.” Glo was speaking strongly and without hesitations, as he could sometimes do when inspired. “The jets would also serve to turn the balloons over at the midpoint of the flight, thus enabling them to descend in the normal manner.

“I repeat, Majesty—we can fly to Overland.”

Glo’s words were followed by an air-whispering silence during which Toller, bemused with wonder, looked down at his brother to see if—as before—the talk of flying to Overland had come as a shock to him. Lain appeared nervous and ill at ease, but not at all surprised. He and Glo must have been in collaboration, and if Lain believed that the flight could be made—then it could be made! Toller felt a stealthy coolness spread down his spine to the accompaniment of what for him was a totally new intellectual and emotional experience.
I have a future
, he thought.
I have discovered why I am here
…

“Tell us more, Lord Glo,” the King said. “This hot air balloon you speak of—has it been designed?”

“Not only has it been designed, Majesty—the archives show that an example was actually fabricated in the year 2187. It was successfully flown several times that year by a philosopher called Usader, and it is believed—although the records are … hmm … vague on this point—that in 2188 he actually attempted the Overland flight.”

“What happened to him?”

“He was never heard of again.”

“That hardly inspires confidence,” Chakkell put in, speaking for the first time. “It’s hardly a record of achievement.”

“That depends on one’s viewpoint.” Glo refused to be discouraged. “Had Usader returned a few days later one might be entitled to describe his flight as a failure. The fact that he did
not
return could indicate that he had succeeded.”

Chakkell snorted. “More likely that he died!”

“I’m not claiming that such an ascent would be easy or without its share of … hmm … risks. My contention is that our increased scientific knowledge could reduce the risks to an acceptable level. Given sufficient determination—and the proper financial and material resources—we can produce ships capable of flying to Overland.”

Prince Leddravohr sighed audibly and shifted in his chair, but refrained from speaking. Toller guessed that the King had placed powerful restraints on him before the meeting began.

“You make it all sound rather like an aftday jaunt,” King Prad said. “But isn’t it a fact that Land and Overland are almost five-thousand miles apart?”

“The best triangulations give a figure of 4,650 miles, Majesty. Surface to surface, that is.”

“How long would it take to fly that distance?”

“I regret I cannot give a definite answer to that question at this stage.”

“It’s an important question, isn’t it?”

“Undoubtedly! The speed of ascent of the balloon is of fundamental importance, Majesty, but there are many variables to be … hmm … considered.” Glo signalled for Lain to open his roll of paper. “My chief scientist, who is a better mathematician than I, has been working on the preliminary calculations. With your consent, he will explain the problem.”

Lain spread out a chart with trembling hands, and Toller was relieved to see that he had had the foresight to draw it on a limp cloth-based paper which quickly lay flat. Part of it was taken up by a scale diagram which illustrated the sister worlds and their spatial relationships; the remainder was given over to detailed sketches of pear-shaped balloons and complicated gondolas. Lain swallowed with difficulty a couple of times and Toller grew tense, fearing that his brother was unable to speak.

“This circle represents our own world … with its diameter of 4,100 miles,” Lain finally articulated. “The other, smaller circle represents Overland, whose diameter is generally accepted as being 3,220 miles, at its fixed point above our equator on the zero meridian, which passed through Ro-Atabri.”

“I think we all learned that much basic astronomy in our infancy,” Prad said. “Why can’t you say how long the journey from the one to the other will take?”

Lain swallowed again. “Majesty, the size of the balloon and the weight of the load we attach to it will influence the free ascent speed. The difference in temperature between the gases inside the balloon and the surrounding atmosphere is another factor, but the most important governing factor is the amount of crystals available to power the jets.

“Greater fuel economy would be achieved by allowing the balloon to rise to its maximum height—slowing down all the while—and not using the jets until the gravitational pull of Land had grown weak. That, of course, would entail lengthening the transit time and therefore increasing the weight of food and water to be carried, which in turn would…”

“Enough, enough! My head swims!” The King held out both his hand, fingers slightly crooked as though cradling an invisible balloon. “Settle your mind on a ship which will carry, say, twenty people. Imagine that crystals are reasonably plentiful. Now, how long will it take that ship to reach Overland? I don’t expect you to be precise—simply give me a figure which I can lodge in my cranium.”

Lain, paler than ever, but with growing assurance, ran a fingertip down some columns of figures at the side of his chart. “Twelve days, Majesty.”

“At last!” Prad glanced significantly at Leddravohr and Chakkell. “Now—for the same ship—how much of the green and purple will be required?”

Lain raised his head and stared at the King with troubled eyes. The King gazed back at him, calmly and intently, as he waited for his answer. Toller sensed that wordless communication was taking place, that something beyond his understanding was happening. His brother seemed to have transcended all his nervousness and irresolution, to have acquired a strange authority which—for the moment, at least—placed him on a level with the ruler. Toller felt a surge of family pride as he saw that the King appeared to acknowledge Lain’s new stature and was prepared to give him all the time he needed to formulate his reply.

“May I take it, Majesty,” Lain said at length, “that we are talking about a one-way flight?”

The King’s white eye narrowed. “You may.”

“In that case, Majesty, the ship would require approximately thirty pounds each of pikon and halvell.”

“Thank you. You’re not going to quibble over the fact that a higher proportion of halvell gives the best result in sustained burning?”

Lain shook his head. “Under the circumstances—no.”

“You are a valuable man, Lain Maraquine.”

“Majesty, I don’t understand this,” Glo protested, echoing Toller’s own puzzlement. “There is no conceivable reason for providing a ship with only enough fuel for one transit.”

“A single ship, no,” the King said. “A small fleet, no. But when we are talking about…” He turned his attention back to Lain. “How many ships would you say?”

Lain produced a bleak smile. “A thousand seems a good round figure, Majesty.”

“A
thousand
!” There was a creaking sound from Glo’s cane frame as he made an abortive attempt to stand up, and when he spoke again an aggrieved note had crept into his voice. “Am I the only person here who is to be kept in ignorance of the subject under discussion?”

The King made a placating gesture. “There is no conspiracy, Lord Glo—it’s merely that your chief scientist appears to have the ability to read minds. It would please me to learn how he divined what was in my thoughts.”

Lain stared down at his hands and spoke almost abstractedly, almost as though musing aloud. “For more than two-hundred days I have been unable to obtain any statistics on agricultural output or ptertha casualties. The official explanation was that the provincial administrators were too severely overworked to prepare their returns—and I have been trying to persuade myself that such was the case—but the indicators were already there, Majesty. In a way it is a relief to have my worst fears confirmed. The only way to deal with a crisis is to face up to it.”

“I agree with you,” Prad said, “but I was concerned with avoiding a general panic, hence the secrecy. I had to be certain.”

“Certain?” Glo’s large head turned from side to side. “Certain? Certain?”

“Yes, Lord Glo,” the King said gravely. “I had to be certain that our world was coming to an end.”

On hearing the bland statement Toller felt a unique emotional pang. Any fear which might have been part of it fled at once before curiosity and an overwhelming, selfish and gloating sense of privilege. The most momentous events in history were being staged for his personal benefit. For the first time in his life, he was in love with the future.

“…as though the ptertha were encouraged by the events of the past two years, in the manner of a warrior who sees that his foe is weakening,” the King was saying. “Their numbers are increasing—and who is to say that their foul emissions will not become even more deadly? It has happened once, and it can happen again.

“We in Ro-Atabri have been comparatively fortunate thus far, but throughout the empire the people are dying from the insidious new form of pterthacosis in spite of all our efforts to fend the globes off. And the newborn, upon whom our future depends, are the most vulnerable. We might be facing the prospect of slowly dwindling into a pitiful, doomed handful of sterile old men and women—were it not for the looming spectre of famine. The agricultural regions are becoming incapable of producing food in the quantities which are necessary for the upkeep of our cities, even allowing for our vastly reduced urban populations.”

The King paused to give his audience a thin sad smile. “There are some among us who maintain that there is still room for hope, that fate may yet relent and wheel against the ptertha—but Kolcorron did not become great by supinely trusting to chance. That attitude is foreign to our national character. When forced to yield ground in a battle, we withdraw to a secure redoubt where we can gather our strength and determination to surge forth again and overwhelm our enemies.

“In the present case, as befits the ultimate conflict, there is the ultimate redoubt—and its name is Overland.

“It is my royal decree that we shall prepare to withdraw to Overland—not in order to cower away from our enemy, but to grow numerous and powerful again, to gain time in which to devise means of destroying the ptertha in their loathsome entirety, and finally—regardless of how long it may take—to return to our home world of Land as a glorious and invincible army which will triumphantly lay claim to all that is naturally and rightfully ours.”

The King’s oratory, enhanced by the formalism of the high tongue, had carried Toller along with it, opening up new perspectives in his mind, and it was with some surprise that he realised no response was forthcoming from either his brother or Glo. The latter was so immobile that he might have been dead, and Lain continued to stare down at his hands as he twisted the brakka ring on his sixth finger. Toller wondered, with a twinge of guilt, if Lain was thinking of Gesalla and the baby which would be born into turbulent times.

Prad ended the silence by choosing, oddly in Toller’s view, to address himself to Lain. “Well, wrangler? Have you another demonstration of mind reading for us?”

Lain raised his head and eyed the King steadily. “Majesty, even when our armies were at their most powerful, we avoided going against Chamteth.”

“I resent the implications of that remark,” Prince Leddravohr snapped. “I demand that…”

“Your
promise
, Leddravohr!” The King rounded angrily on his son. “I would remind you of your promise to me. Be patient! Your time is at hand.”

Leddravohr raised both hands in a gesture of resignation as he settled back in his chair, and now his brooding gaze was fixed on Lain. The spasm of alarm Toller felt over his brother’s welfare was almost lost in the silent clamour of his reaction to the mention of Chamteth. Why had he been so slow to appreciate that an interplanetary migration fleet, if it were ever constructed, would require power crystals on such a vast scale that its needs could be met from only one scource? If the King’s awesome plans also included going to war against the enigmatic and insular Chamtethans, then the near future was going to be even more turbulent than Toller could readily visualise.

Chamteth was a country so huge that it could be reached just as readily by travelling east or west into the Land of the Long Days, that hemisphere of the world which was not swept by Overland’s shadow and where there was no littlenight to punctuate the sun’s progress across the sky. In the distant past several ambitious rulers had tried probing into Chamteth and the outcome had been so convincing, so disastrous that Chamteth had virtually been erased from the national consciousness. It existed, but—as with Overland—its existence had no relevance to the quotidian affairs of the empire.

Until now
, Toller thought, striving to rebuild his picture of the universe.
Chamteth and Overland are linked … bonded … to take one is to take the other
…

“War against Chamteth has become inevitable,” the King said. “Some are of the opinion that it always has been inevitable. What do you say, Lord Glo?”

“Majesty,!…” Glo cleared his throat and sat up straighter. “Majesty, I have always regarded myself as a creative thinker, but I freely admit that the grandeur and scope of your vision have taken my … hmm … breath away. When I originally proposed flying to Overland I envisaged despatching a small number of pathfinders, followed by the gradual establishment of a small colony. I had not dreamed of migration on the scale you are contemplating, but I can assure you that I am equal to the responsibilities involved. The designing of a suitable ship and the planning of all the necessary…” Glo stopped speaking as he saw that Prad was shaking his head.

“My dear Lord Glo, you are not a well man,” the King said, “and I would be less than fair to you if I permitted you to expend what remains of your strength on a task of such magnitude.”