Land and Overland - Omnibus (85 page)

Lieutenant Feer came to his side. "Continuous thrust to Prad, sir?"

If I ever get married,
Toller thought,
it has to be to that woman.

"Sir, I asked you if—"

"Of course I want continuous thrust to Prad," Toller said. "And bring Steenameert to my cabin—I want to talk to him in private."

He went to his cabin at the rear of the main deck and waited for the skyman to be shown in. The ship felt alive again, its timbers and rigging emitting occasional creaks as the structure as a whole adjusted to the tensions of flying into the wind. Toller sat at his desk and toyed abstractedly with navigation instruments, unable to put the Countess Vantara out of his thoughts. How had he managed to forget meeting her as a child? He could recall being dragged against his will to the Migration Day ceremonies, at an age when he scorned the company of girls, but surely even then he would have noticed her among the giggling, gauzy creatures at play in the palace gardens…

His musings were interrupted when Steenameert tapped at the door and came into the small room, still brushing food particles from his chin. "You sent for me, sir?"

"Yes. We were interrupted at an interesting point in our conversation. Tell me more about these empty cities. Did you see no living people whatsoever?"

Steenameert shook his head. "Not one, sir! Lots of skeletons—thousands of them—but, as far as I could tell, the New Men no longer exist. Their own pestilence seems to have turned against them and wiped them out."

"How far abroad did you travel?"

"Not far—two hundred miles at the most. As you know, we only had the three skyships … nothing with lateral thrusters … and had to rely on the winds to get us about. But that was enough for me, sir. After a while I had an uncanny feeling about the place—I
knew
there was nobody there.

"I mean, we first dropped down only a couple of miles out of Ro-Atabri, the old capital. We were in the heart of ancient Kolcorron itself. If there were any people living on Land, that's where they would be found. It stands to reason that's where they would be found." Steenameert spoke fervently, as though he had a personal stake in convincing Toller that his ideas were valid.

"You're probably correct," Toller said. "Unless, of course, it is something to do with the ptertha. From what I've been taught, the worst of them infested Kolcorron, while the other side of the globe was comparatively free of them."

Steenameert became even more intense. "The second great discovery we made is that the ptertha on Land are colourless—just like those on Overland. It appears that they have already reverted to their neutral state, sir. I suppose it was because the poison they developed for use against humans had done what was required of it; and now they are in a state of readiness to war against any other type of creature which threatens brakka trees."

"That's very interesting," Toller said, but—belying his words—his attention wandered as the image of Countess Vantara's face began to swim before his mind's eye.
I wonder how I can arrange to see her again. And how long will it take?

"It seems to me," Steenameert was saying, "that the logical thing to do now is to mount a proper expedition. Lots of ships, well-equipped and carrying settlers, to reclaim the Old World—just as King Prad predicted we would."

Toller had half-consciously noted earlier that Steenameert was unusually well-spoken for a ranker, and now it came to him that the man also seemed better educated than might have been expected. He examined Steenameert with new interest.

"You've been pondering this matter, have you?" he said. "Is it your wish to go back to Land?"

"Yes, sir!" The smooth skin of Steenameert's face grew pinker. "If Queen Daseene decides to send a fleet to Land I'll be among the first to volunteer for the journey. And if you were likewise inclined, sir, I'd consider it an honour to serve under you."

Toller considered the notion and his mind conjured up a sombre-hued picture of a handful of airships roaming over landscapes of weed-shrouded ruins wherein lay millions of human skeletons. The vision was made even more unappealing by there being no place in it for Vantara. If he went to Land, he and she would literally be worlds apart. It shocked him to find that he was already according her such a prominent place in his life scheme, and with so little justification, but it showed the extent to which she had breached his emotional defences.

"I can't help you get back to the Old World," he said to Steenameert. "I believe I have enough to keep me fully occupied right here on Overland."

Lord Cassyll Maraquine breathed deeply and pleasurably as he came out to the front steps of his home on the north side of the city of Prad. There had been rain during the latter part of the night and as a result the air was sweet and invigorating, making him wish he did not have to spend the morning in the stuffy confines of the royal residence. The palace was little more than a mile away—visible as a gleam of rose-colored marble beyond serried trees. He would have enjoyed making the journey on foot, but he never seemed to have time for such simple pleasures these days. Queen Daseene had grown highly irritable in her old age, and he dared not risk annoying her by being late for his appointment.

He went to his waiting carriage, nodding to the driver as he climbed in. The vehicle moved off immediately, drawn by the four bluehorns which were a symbol of Cassyll's elevated status in Kolcorron. Until less than five years ago it had been forbidden by law to have a carriage which required more than one bluehorn, because the animals were so necessary to the developing economy of the planet, and even now teams of four were something of a rarity.

The equipage had been a gift from the Queen and it was politic for him to use it when going to visit her, even though his wife and son sometimes bantered with him about growing soft. He always took their criticism in good part, even though he had begun to suspect that he was indeed becoming too fond of luxury and pampered ways of living. The restlessness and craving for adventure which had characterized his father seemed to have skipped a generation and manifested themselves in the young Toller. On a number of occasions he had come close to falling out with the boy over his recklessness and his outmoded habit of wearing a sword, but he had never pressed matters too far. In the back of his mind there had always lurked the idea that he was acting out of jealousy of the hero worship Toller accorded his long-dead grandfather.

The thought of his son reminded Cassyll that the boy had been commander of the airship which had arrived only the previous aftday with advance dispatches from the Land expedition. In theory the contents of the dispatches were secret, but Cassyll's secretary had already been able to pass him the word that the Old World had been found to be uninhabited and free of the deadly strain of ptertha which had forced humanity to flee across the interplanetary void. Queen Daseene had been quick to call a meeting of selected advisers, and the fact that Cassyll was required to attend was an indication of the direction in which her thoughts were turning. Manufacture was his field of expertise, and in this context the concept of manufacturing led inexorably towards skyships—which implied that Daseene wanted to reclaim the Old World and thus become the first ruler in history to extend her sway to two planets.

Cassyll had an instinctive distaste for the notion of conquest, reinforced by the fact that his father had died in a monumentally futile attempt to claim the third planet of the local system, but in this case none of the usual philosophical or humanitarian restraints applied. Overland's sister world belonged to his people by right of birth, and if there was no indigenous population to be subjugated or slaughtered he could see no moral objection to a second interplanetary migration. As far as he was concerned, the only questions would relate to scale. How many skyships would Queen Daseene want, and how soon would she need them?

Toller will want to take part in the expedition,
Cassyll thought.
The crossing is bound to have its dangers, but that will only serve to make him more determined to go.

The carriage soon reached the river and turned west in the direction of the Lord Glo Bridge, which was the principal crossing for the palace. In the few minutes that he was on the curving boulevard Cassyll saw two steam-driven carriages, neither of which had been produced by his own factory, and again he found himself wishing he had more time for practical experimentation with that form of transport. There were many improvements yet to be made, particularly with regard to power transmission, but all his time seemed to be taken up with the administration of the Maraquine industrial empire.

As the carriage was crossing the ornate bridge the palace came into view directly ahead, a rectangular block which was rendered asymmetrical by the east wing and tower which Daseene had recently built as a memorial to her husband. The guards at the main gate saluted as Cassyll passed through. Only a few vehicles were waiting in the main forecourt at this early hour, and at once he noticed the official Sky Service coach which was used by Bartan Drumme, senior technical adviser to the Chief of Aerial Defence. To his surprise, he saw that Bartan himself was loitering by the coach. At the age of fifty, Drumme still retained a lean and wiry figure, and only a slight stiffness in his left shoulder—the result of an old battle wound—prevented him from moving like a young man. A whisper of intuition told Cassyll that Bartan was waiting to see him in advance of the official meeting.

"Good foreday!" Cassyll called out as he stepped down from his carriage. "I wish
I
could afford the time to dawdle around and take the air."

"Cassyll!" Bartan smiled as he came forward to shake hands. The years had scarcely altered the boyishness of his round face. Its permanent expression of humorous irreverence often deceived people who were meeting him for the first time into thinking he was an intellectual lightweight, but over the years Cassyll had learned to respect him for his mental agility and toughness.

"Are you waiting to see me?" Cassyll said.

"Very good!" Bartan replied, raising his eyebrows. "How did you know?"

"You were as furtive as an urchin dallying by the bakery window. What is it, Bartan?"

"Let's walk for a minute—there is time before the meeting." Bartan led the way into an empty quarter of the forecourt where they were partially screened from view by a bed of spearblooms.

Cassyll began to chuckle. "Are we going to conspire against the throne?"

"In a way it is almost as serious as that," Bartan said, coming to a halt. "Cassyll, you know that my position is officially described as scientific adviser to the head of the Sky Service. But you also know that—simply because I survived the Farland expedition—I'm somehow expected to have a magical awareness of all that goes on in the heavens and to advise her Majesty of anything of import, anything which might constitute a threat to the realm."

"Suddenly you make me uneasy," Cassyll said. "Is this anything to do with Land?"

"No—another planet."

"Farland! Say what you've got to say, man! Out with it!" Cassyll felt a coolness on his brow as the dread thought heaved in his mind. Farland was the third planet of the local system, orbiting at roughly twice the distance from the sun as the Land-Overland pair, and throughout most of Kolcorron's history it had been nothing more than an insignificant green speck amid the splendours of the night sky. Then, twenty-six years ago, a bizarre set of circumstances had led to a single ship venturing out from Overland and crossing millions of miles of hostile vacuum to reach the outer world. The expedition had been ill-fated—Cassyll's father had not been the only one to die on that dank, rainy planet—and three of its members had returned to the home world with disturbing news.

Farland was inhabited by a race of humanoids whose technology was so advanced that they had the capability of annihilating the Overlanders' civilization at a stroke. It was fortunate indeed for the humans that the Farlanders were an insular, inward-looking race with no interest in anything beyond the perpetual cloud-cover of their own world. That attitude of mind had been difficult for the territorially acquisitive humans to comprehend. Even after years had merged into decades with no sign of aggression from the enigmatic third planet, the fear of a sudden devastating attack from the skies had continued to lurk in some Overlanders' minds. It was, as Cassyll Maraquine had just discovered, never far beneath the surface of their thoughts…

"Farland?" Bartan gave him a strange smile. "No—I'm talking of yet
another
planet. A fourth planet."

In the silence that followed, Cassyll studied his friend's face as though it were a puzzle to be solved. "This isn't some manner of jest, is it? Are you claiming to have discovered a new planet?"

Bartan nodded unhappily. "I didn't discover it personally. It wasn't even one of my technicians. It was a woman—a copyist in the records office at the Grain Quay—who pointed it out to me."

"What does it matter who actually saw it first?" Cassyll said. "The point is that you have a really interesting scientific discovery to—" He broke off as he realized he had not yet been told the whole story. "Why do you look so glum, old friend?"

"When Divare told me about the planet she said it was blue in colour, and that made me think she could have made a mistake. You know how many blue stars there are in the sky—hundreds of them. So I asked her what size of telescope was needed to see it properly, and she said a very small one would do. In fact, she said it could be seen well with the naked eye.

"And she was right, Cassyll. She pointed it out to me last night … a blue planet … quite easy to see without optical aid … low in the west soon after sunset…"

Cassyll frowned. "And you checked it with a telescope?"

"Yes. It showed an appreciable disk even with an ordinary nautical instrument. It's a planet, all right."

"But…" Cassyll's bafflement increased. "Why has it not been noticed before now?"

Bartan's strange smile returned. "The only answer I can think of is that it wasn't
there
to be observed before now."