Look to Windward (27 page)

“Social visit, it says,” the avatar told him.

Ziller tapped a gimbaled horizontal dial. “You sure this compass works?”.

“Are you accusing me of not having a viable magnetic field?” the Hub asked.

“I was asking you if this thing works.” Ziller tapped the instrument again.

“Should do,” the avatar said, putting its clasped hands
behind its head again. “Very inefficient way of determining your heading, though.”

“I want to head into the wind on the next turn,” Ziller said, looking ahead to the hill they were approaching and the stubby pylon at its scrubby summit.

“You'll need to start the propeller.”

“Oh,” Kabe said. “They have propellers?”.

“Big two-bladed thing stowed at the back,” the avatar said, nodding to the rear, where two curved windows cupped a broad paneled section. “Battery-powered. Should be charged up if the generator vanes are working.”

“How do I determine that?” Ziller asked. He pulled his pipe from a waistcoat pocket.

“See the big dial on the right just under the windscreen with a lightning flash symbol?”.

“Ah, yes.”

“Is the needle in the brown-black section or the bright blue section?”.

Ziller peered. He stuck his pipe in his mouth. “There is no needle.”

The avatar looked thoughtful. “That could be a bad sign.” It sat up and looked about. The pylon was about fifty meters away; the ground was rising underneath them. “I'd ease off on that mizzen sheet.”

“The what?”.

“Slacken the third rope from the left.”

“Ah.” Ziller loosened the rope and tied it off again. He pulled on a couple of the levers, braking the car and readying the steering wheels above. He clicked a couple of large switches and looked hopefully toward the rear of the car.

He caught the avatar's gaze. “Oh, let the fucking emissary move to Aquime,” he said in an exasperated voice. “See if I care. Just keep us apart.”

“Certainly,” the avatar said, grinning. Then its expression changed. “Oh-oh,” it said. It was staring straight ahead.

Kabe felt a spark of worry leap in his breast.

“What?” Ziller said. “Is Tersono here already?” Then he was thrown off his feet as, with a crashing, tearing noise, the cable car decelerated rapidly and came to a shuddering, swaying stop. The avatar had slid along the couch. Kabe had been thrown forward, only stopping himself from falling on his face by putting out one arm and bracing himself on the brass rail separating the passenger compartment from the crew's area. The brass rail bent and came away from the bulkhead on one side with a creak and a bang. Ziller ended up sitting on the floor between two of the instrument binnacles. The car rocked to and fro.

Ziller spat out a piece of his pipe. “What the fuck was that?”.

“I think we snagged a tree,” the avatar said, sitting upright. “Everybody all right?”.

“Fine,” said Kabe. “Sorry about this rail.”

“I've bitten my pipe in half!” Ziller said. He picked one half of his severed pipe up from the floor.

“It'll repair,” the avatar said. It pulled back the carpet between the couches and lifted open a wooden door. Wind gusted in. The creature lay on the floor and stuck its head out. “Yes, it's a tree,” it shouted. It levered itself back inside. “Must have grown a bit since the last time anybody used this line.”

Ziller was picking himself up. “Of course it wouldn't have happened if you'd been responsible for the system, would it?”.

“Of course not,” the avatar said breezily. “Shall I send a repair drone or shall we try and fix it ourselves?”.

“I have a better idea,” Ziller said, smiling as he looked out of a side window. Kabe looked too, and saw a mainly rose-colored object flying through the air toward them. Ziller slid open a window on that side and turned to his two companions with a smile before hailing the approaching drone. “Tersono! Good to see you! Glad you're here! See that mess down below?”

10
The Seastacks of Youmier

A
nd was Tersono equal to the task?”.

“More than equal physically, Hub tells me, despite its protestations that it risked tearing itself apart. However I think protestations that whatever empowers its will is also charged with maintaining its dignity and so is normally pretty much fully occupied with that.”

“But was it able to free your car from the tree?”.

“Yes, finally, though it took its time and it made a terrible mess of things. It shredded the car's mainsail, broke the mast and cut away half the tree.”

“And what of Ziller's pipe?”.

“Bitten in half. Hub repaired it for him.”

“Ah. I was wondering if I might have made him a present of a replacement.”

“I'm not sure he'd take it in the spirit it was meant, Quil. Especially as it's something he would be putting in his mouth.”

“You suspect he might think I was trying to poison him?”.

“It might occur to him.”

“I see. I still have a way to go, don't I?”.

“Yes, you do.”

“And how much further do we have to go here, on our walk?”.

“Another three or four kilometers.” Kabe looked up at the sun. “We should be there nicely in time for lunch.”

Kabe and Quilan were walking along the cliff tops of the Vilster Peninsula on Fzan Plate. To their right, thirty meters below, Fzan Ocean beat against the rocks. The haze horizon swam with scattered islands. Closer in, a few sailboats and larger craft cut through the spreading patterns of the waves.

A cool wind came off the sea. It whipped Kabe's coat about his legs and Quilan's robes snapped and fluttered about him as he led the way along the narrow path through the tall grass. To their left the ground sloped away to deep grassland and then a forest of tall cloudtrees. Ahead, the land rose to a modest headland and a ridge heading inland notched with a cleft for one branch of the path they were on. They were taking the more strenuous and exposed route along the cliff top.

Quilan turned his head to look down toward the waves falling against tumbled rocks at the cliffs base. The smell of brine was the same here.

~ Remembering again, Quil?

~ Yes.

~You're close to the edge. Mind you don't fall.

~ I will.

•   •   •   

Snow was falling in the courtyard of the monastery of Cadracet, sinking gently from a silent gray sky. Quilan had brought up the rear of the firewood foraging detail, preferring to walk in solitude and silence as the others trudged up the trail ahead. The other monks had all gone inside to the warmth of the great hall's hearth by the time he closed the postern door behind him, scuffed through the light covering of snow on the courtyard's stones and dumped his basket of wood with the rest under the gallery.

He dallied a moment, soaking up the fresh, clean smell of the wood—he remembered a time when they'd taken a hunting cabin in the Loustrian Hills, just the two of them. The axe that came with the cabin was blunt; he'd sharpened it with a stone, hoping to impress her with his handiness, but then when he'd come to swing it at the first piece of wood the head had sailed off and disappeared into the trees. He could still exactly recall her laughter, and then, when he must have looked hurt, her kiss.

They had slept under furs on a platform of moss. He remembered one cold morning when the fire had gone out overnight and it was freezingly cold in the cabin and they had coupled, him straddling her, his teeth nipped gently in the fur at the nape of her neck, moving slowly over and in her, watching the smoke of her breath as it billowed in the sunlight and rolled out across the room to the window, where it froze in curving, recursive motifs; a coalescence of pattern out of chaos.

He shivered, blinking away cold tears.

When he turned away he saw the figure standing in the center of the courtyard, looking at him.

It was a female, dressed in a cloak falling half-open over an Army uniform. The snow fell between them in soundless spirals. He blinked. Just for an instant … He shook his head, brushed his hands together and walked out to her, putting up the hood of his griefling robe.

He realized as he made those few steps that he hadn't even seen a female in the flesh for half a year.

She did not look like Worosei at all; she was taller, her fur was darker and her eyes looked more narrowed and wizened. He guessed she was ten or so years older than him. The pips on her cap identified her as a colonel.

“Can I help you, ma'am?” he asked.

“Yes, Major Quilan,” she said in a precise, controlled voice. “Perhaps you can.”

•   •   •   

Fronipel brought them both goblets of mulled wine. His office was about twice the size of Quilan's cell, and cluttered with papers, screens and the ancient fraying string frames which were the holy books of the order. There was just enough room for the three of them to sit.

Colonel Ghejaline warmed her hands around the goblet. Her cap lay on the desk at her side, her cloak across the seat back. They had exchanged a few pleasantries about her journey up the old road by mount and her role during the war in charge of a space artillery section.

Fronipel settled himself slowly into his second-best curl-chair—the best had been given to the Colonel—and
said, “I asked Colonel Ghejaline to come here, Major. She is familiar with your background and history. I believe she has a proposal for you.”

The Colonel looked as though she would have been happy to have spent rather more time approaching the reason for her visit, but gave a shrug of good grace and said, “Yes, Major. There is something you might be able to do for us.”

Quilan looked at Fronipel, who was smiling at him. “Who would the ‘us' here be, Colonel?” he asked her. “The Army?”.

The Colonel frowned. “Not really. The Army is involved, but this would not strictly speaking be a military assignment. It would be more like the one you and your wife undertook on Aorme, though even further afield and on a quite different level of security and importance. The ‘us' I refer to would be all Chelgrians, but especially those whose souls are currently held in limbo.”

Quilan sat back in his seat. “And what would I be expected to do?”.

“I can't tell you exactly yet. I am here to find out if you will even consider undertaking the mission.”

“But if I don't know what it is … ”.

“Major Quilan,” the Colonel said, taking a small sip of her steaming wine and then—after a minimal nod to Fronipel to acknowledge the drink—putting the goblet down on the desk, “I'll tell you all I can.” She drew herself up a little straighter in the seat. “The task we would ask you to undertake is one that is very important indeed. That is almost all I know about that aspect of it. I do know a little more but I'm not allowed to talk about
it. The mission would require that you undergo a considerable amount of training. Again, I can't say much more about that. The clearance for the mission comes from the top of our society.” She took a breath. “And the reason that it doesn't matter too much at this stage exactly what it is you are being asked to do is that in one sense what's being asked of you is as bad as it gets.” She looked into his eyes. “This is a suicide mission, Major Quilan.”

He had forgotten the sheer pleasure of staring into a female's eyes, even if she was not Worosei, and even if that pleasure, like some emotional internalization of physical law, created an equal and opposite feeling of grief and loss and even guilt. He gave a small, sad smile. “Oh, in that case, Colonel,” he said, “I'll definitely do it.”

“Quil?”.

“Hmm?” He turned to face the tall, triangular bulk of the Homomdan, who had bumped into him.

“Are you all right? You stopped very suddenly there. Did you see something?”.

“Nothing. No, I'm fine. I just … I'm fine. Come on. I'm hungry.”

They walked on.

~ I just recalled. The Lady Colonel told me this is a one-way mission.

~ Ah, yes, there is that.

~ It is all coming back, isn't it?

~ Unlike us, yes. That's the way they've arranged it. That's what we both agreed to. It seems to have worked so far.

~ You knew, too, then.

~ Yes. That was part of Visquile's briefing.

~ Which is why they kept you backed-up in that substrate.

~ Which is why they kept me backed-up in that substrate.

~ Well. I can't wait for the next installment.

He reached the summit of the cliff path and saw the town; a scimitar of white towers and spires lying cradled in a bowl of wooded valley bordered by rising chalk cliffs, its bay protected from the sea by a spit of sand. Waves beat whitely on the strand. The Homomdan joined him, standing massively at his side and all but blocking out the wind. There was a hint of rain in the air.

•   •   •   

The following day she left her mount in the monastery stables with her uniform. She dressed in the waistcoat and leggings of a Handed; he was to impersonate a Grafted, so wore trousers and an apron. They both put on nondescript gray winter cloaks. He said goodbye to Fronipel but to nobody else.

They waited until all the work parties had left before leaving the monastery, then they walked down the lower path through the falling snow and the bare husks of spall trees, past the distant wood-gatherers—their songs heard through the quietly falling snow, as though they were the voices of ghosts—down through a level of wispy cloud where the Colonel's gray cloak seemed almost to disappear at times and then through the drumming rain beneath and the dripping forest of dark leaves that descended toward the valley floor, where they turned and followed the deeply shaded track above the river rushing whitely in the chasm below.

The rain slackened and ceased.