Orion Shall Rise (25 page)

‘Oh, darling, darling,’ she gasped through tears, ‘I’ve been so afraid for you, alone hour after hour –’

‘I’d have been more afraid for you, if you hadn’t stayed in safety.’ He stroked her hair. How soft it was. Thank you for keeping that promise. Thank you for everything you’ve done.’

‘It was, was wretchedly little.’

‘No, it was much.’

He wasn’t sure how truly he spoke. He had almost had to browbeat her into taking an active role. At first her letters (schoolgirl hand, convoluted phrases with bursts of passion) insisted that she need only leave Iern and he leave Irmali, and he had been tempted, but Ucheny Mattas brought him to acceptance of his destiny and he wrote sternly to her. Yet he had neither trusted her gifts for conspiracy nor wished her to attempt anything dangerous. Her part had been to supply information, mainly to sound out individuals she met and identify those to him whom she deemed were potential supporters of his cause.
But that was important,
he thought.
There I was, isolated in the mountains … oh, yes, I had my agents, but who else could have done precisely what you did for us? And exceeding your instructions, you recruited your brother Lorens directly, as valuable a man as I have. Yes, you have earned well of the Life Force, beloved.

‘Hold me close again,’ she begged.

He did, and inhaled the fragrance of her. ‘Poor dear,’ he murmured, ‘I can imagine the strain you’ve been under.’

She gulped and nodded her head against his breast. ‘Not afraid, really, most of the time, but, but, oh, torn. I always had faith in you, never doubt I had faith in you, Jovain, but – poor Iern. He does have good intentions, mostly.’ She pulled free. The eyes that stared upward were white-rimmed. ‘How is he? Is he all right?’

Jovain scowled. ‘I’m sorry to tell you he – well, he was reckless today, a madman. But he’s not been hurt. If he’ll come to his senses – You do know, don’t you, I wish him no ill, in spite of everything?’
I just wish him dead in some convenient fashion. Afterward I’d be glad to deliver a carefully phrased eulogy and sponsor a modest monument.
He related briefly what had happened.

She shuddered. ‘But then he’s hiding, by himself, I suppose, hungry, desperate. I never wanted that!’

Jovain strengthened his embrace. ‘Nor I,’ he said,
though if ever anybody deserved it, Talence Iern Ferlay does.
‘Have no fears. He’ll surely do the intelligent thing and surrender tomorrow. I’ll do what
I can to save him from the consequences of his folly. Now, though – Faylis, now is ours. After two years, ours.’

He drew her to him. She was slow about growing lively and warm in his arms. Finally they sought the bed. He found he was too worn and worried for the achieving of her desire.

4

Iern rose and pressed for a time display. The data screen came aglow with numerals: 2051. ‘I’d better start off,’ he said.

Vosmaer Tess Rayman, Senior in her Clan and colonel in the Weather Corps, gave him a troubled look from her chair. This early?’ she asked. The guards should be drowsy later on.’

‘Not if they’re well disciplined, madame, which they’ve certainly been acting like. And the longer a period of night I have ahead of me, the better my chances of making myself untrailable.’

‘I thought you might rest some more. You never did succeed in falling asleep.’

Too high-keyed. It’d be strange if I weren’t.’

‘Your scheme is dicey at best, you know.’

Iern shrugged. ‘What will happen if I stay aloft, playing mouse to Jovain’s cat? I reckoned they’d be too busy at first to search for me, and I could safely hole up with somebody I knew I could trust. But I’ll
give
you any odds you want, madame, tomorrow they’ll check every apartment, and ransack the rest of Skyholm meter by meter, nor stop till they have me.’ He grinned. ‘Or till they’re convinced I escaped. Let them wonder how.’

The lean, white-haired woman did not share his eagerness. ‘I think they’ll guess right, but I hope they won’t be able to trace it back to Dany.’ That was her son, come along as her aide, whom she had summoned to her lodging after Iern appeared and had sent after the gear that Iern wanted.

‘I hardly think so, madame. Things were confused, while technical services must go on. Most of the interlopers seem to be groundlings, completely unacquainted with the rountines here. Who’d pay any special attention to a fellow that calmly opened a locker and walked off carrying an altitude suit? They’d take for granted he had a job to do outside.’

‘If he left with you – you’d have a companion, a comrade in arms, and Zhesu knows you’ll need one.’

‘No. Thank you, but we’ve covered this before. He’s inconspicuously back in his bachelor dormitory. If he turned up missing tomorrow, though, that’d point straight to you.’

Tess lifted her head. ‘You’re right. In fact, Iern, you’re proving smarter than I, frankly, expected. It gives me double reason to stay and do whatever I can on your behalf at the Council.’

‘You’re a valiant lady, madame. Which
I
frankly expected, or I wouldn’t have come to you.’

Her sharp profile turned toward a photograph of her late husband. ‘I try to do what Aric would have wanted.’

Iern went into the bedroom, where the equipment lay. He started to draw the curtain. ‘Nonsense,’ the colonel said. ‘Leave that open and we’ll talk while you change.’ It muffled sound. ‘I won’t peek, if the idea makes you blush.’

‘Well –’ He laughed. ‘Madame, I confess that when I first joined your command, I regretted the age difference between us. Is it a court-martial offense to daydream about a superior officer?’

‘Oh, I knew you did,’ she answered calmly, ‘and enjoyed knowing, but was rather glad of the age and rank gap. It would never have done, my becoming one more trophy.’ Her tone sobered. ‘In that respect, Iern, you have yet to grow up. I wonder what it may have had to do with bringing on the disaster today.’

Grimness took him.
I likewise. If my brother-in-law has joined the enemy, what of my wife? I think of so many things she’s said and done, or left unsaid – No. Can’t be.
He shed his clothes and busied himself with the altitude suit. In this cramped room, he must do it on top of the bed.

Tess’ voice went on: ‘We won’t really know how to act, we loyalists, until we understand the whole situation. I don’t look for a full accounting tomorrow, either. But Jovain will be persuasive, oh, yes; less than candid, but persuasive. And he has avowed allies on the Council, and doubtless others who haven’t avowed it; and still others are less than satisfied with you, and will listen if Jovain brings charges – Don’t let the news you hear shake you, Iern. It’s sure to be bad, whatever it is. And don’t take foolish chances. I believe we’ll have to abide our time and see what develops, before we can even decide what countermeasures to take. Perhaps we’ll have to decide against taking any.’

He worked the inner layer onto his feet and up his body, centimeter by centimeter, smoothing the slick black fabric to make
its engineered molecules adjust their configurations and cling to him like an extra skin.

‘Yes, I’ll lie low,’ he promised.

‘Can you tell me where?’

‘No. Depends on the winds tonight. Dordoyn is ideal guerrilla country, but Brezh has its own advantages for me – to name the two most obvious.’

He could almost hear how she frowned. ‘Don’t think of resorting to arms, Iern. Not yet.’

‘Oh, no. I meant that I can hide in the Dordoyn hills, and the pysans will help me. But maybe I should go abroad.’

‘That might be your best hope.’ Tess was quiet for a space. ‘May I live to see our hope flower.’

Having sheathed himself to the neck and secured the slide fastener, Iern donned a heavy coverall. Its chief function was to protect the material beneath, lest that suffer a rip and expose him to stratospheric near-vacuum, but it gave him pockets and loops as well, to carry various necessities which he stowed in them.

He returned to the living room and Tess helped him with the rest. Socks and boots protected his feet. The helmet shell went over a padded coif and, at its base, sealed itself to the inner skin. He left the faceplate open. After he had passed arms through straps and buckled the harness, an oxygen tank was riding between his shoulderblades. Tess connected it for him and adjusted the valves. Those were critical. He must breathe, and he must sweat. The elastic that would keep his blood from boiling also blocked perspiration, but the air unit would vent sufficient water vapor given off from his head that heat prostration would not strike him.

The parachute rig that followed was not the standard type required for workers when outside. A fall off the aerostat being rare, they got verbal instructions, not a practical training that might claim lives. Hence the equipment must needs be simple. Dany had brought a pack of the kind favoured by experienced skydivers, some of whom jumped from the aerostat itself.

Iern had done that once, years ago. Tess heard of it, called him on the carpet, and forbade him explicitly and profanely to repeat the stunt ever again. ‘We spent a fortune qualifying you for your wings,’ she snapped, ‘and yesterday you risked spattering yourself over half the Domain, for a thrill!’

Tonight is different,
he thought. He drew on his airtight gloves.
She snugged them to his wrists.

They stood before each other while silence grew. ‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘I, um, I’d better be on my way. Thank you for everything.’

Her grin wavered. ‘See to it that you make me a proper return, you rascal. I’m angling for grandchildren, and I want them to enjoy all we’ve had.’

She rose on tiptoe and kissed him, fleetingly as swallowflight. ‘Farewell, Talence Iern Ferlay. Fare always well.’

More awkward than he was wont, he departed. She waved as he went out the door.

Thereafter he strode purposefully. The faceplate, halfway lowered, should veil him, unless somebody saw him loitering along and wondered why. He met no one. Skyholm had drawn back into itself to await the morning.

A green-clad guard did stand at the airlock to C-3. He lifted a rifle. ‘Halt!’ he called. Echoes shivered in the locker-lined space. He spoke nervously, with a thick Eskuara accent. ‘Where do you go?’

‘Outside, on regular duty,’ Iern said. ‘Let me by.’

‘Have you a pass?’

Iern was prepared to edge close, whip out a knife, and kill. He would rather not take the chance of failure in the attack; and abruptly he discovered that he would rather not succeed, either. ‘Why should I need a pass for a piece of routine?’

‘What do you want?’

Iern sighed elaborately. ‘Look here, compadre. That isn’t a parking dock out there, or a laser emplacement, or anything else you can imagine I might sabotage. It’s nothing but a small observation platform. I’m supposed to inspect as much of the skin as I can see from there. Afterward I go on to the next platform, and the next. Ultra-violet light and ozone make the material deteriorate. We want to replace every panel before it blows out. Your interference today kept us from checking. Pressure changes at sunset generate stresses. My chief told me to make certain nothing is about to pop. Now may I do my job?’

The sentry was quick to stand aside. ‘Yes, go, go,’ he said.

Iern leered inwardly. Except for pretending to be at work, he had uttered no lie. He had merely put urgency in his voice, and omitted to mention that, the average lifetime of a panel being ten years, inspections were performed annually, using precision instruments, and never at night. He had implied that a blowout would bring
Skyholm crashing down, when this was not even true of the buoyant inner sphere; outward movement of air would automatically unroll an adhesive patch, good for hours of service, before pressure had dropped noticeably. The ancestors had built some big safety factors into their creation.

But they never imagined it would be betrayed.

Iern closed his faceplate and cycled through. Having done so, he must needs spend minutes looking, for this might be his last sight from on high.

Eastward the full moon glowed dazzling bright in a hyaline blackness. Elsewhere stars crowded heaven, unwinking ice-glints of a hundred different hues, and the galatic bridge swept sword-sharp from horizon to horizon. The night was cloudless below him, he saw Gulf and Channel and outlines of land, here and there a river or lake or snow-crown glimmered, but otherwise Earth lay blurred, all grays and silvers and moon-haze, more distant and less real than ever he had known it before.

Stranger still, somehow, was the vast opalescent curve of the captive stronghold. Its lattice showed faint; he thought of veins blue in a woman’s milk-swollen breast and then, so keenly that he gasped, of his mother. Sun energy stored during the day kept the sleeping giant aloft, in place, alive. When he gripped the platform rail, he felt a slight quiver as air surged from two of the jet engines, and imagined he could hear its
br-r-roo-oo-oo-m-m
that had challenged the upper winds for eight hundred years.

He shook himself, as if he had just come out of a wintry river. ‘Time to start, lad,’ he muttered.

Awe faded, excitement crackled. What a leap he was about to make!

He swung his legs over the rail, poised for a second, and jumped.

At first it was dreamlike. Weightless, disembodied, he passed through silence and moonlight. He tumbled, but slowly and gently; Earth revolved through his vision, followed by the white globe from which he, thistledown, drifted. Did he hear the air sing, or was it too thin? Surely it was cold enough to freeze his eyeballs, but in his suit he floated womb-warm, encompassed by stars. The part of him that gauged and calculated made no call upon his awareness, any more than heart or lungs did. His true self had dissolved into the distances around.

Must delay chute release till the right atmospheric density, else
the rig will most likely foul and become a winding sheet for my meteorite corpse. When, though? I could overheat and be cooked, streaking unchecked into those lower levels. About fifteen kilometers’ altitude, but when I did this last time, I had instruments –Make an estimate, bird-boy, and act on it.