The Many-Coloured Land - 1 (28 page)

Creyn said, "Our boat is waiting for us at the end of the landing stage. We must be on our way." But as they all went down the dock, the Tanu man reached out to Elizabeth on a narrow-focus mode that spoke to her mind alone:

Did you see how he did that?

Primitive/effective. Even versus me unprepared. Concerned?

Appalled actually.

How effective torc restraint?

Adequate now while he still unuse full potential. Later silver never suffice will seize gold. Educators face dilemma that one. May require termination. Not my decision Tanabe thanked.

Capable vast mischief even when latent. Rare old human-type uncommon in Milieu: clown meddler.

Type not unknown among Tanu alas. Predict kid smash hit Muriah. Query Muriah survive impact.

Ironical just deserts to you slave masters. Humanity prey-perilous.

Ah Elizabeth.

Deny? Laugh. Manipucraftylators! Desotialization/re-socialization exiles shrewdly essayed. Example: castle environment anxietyprovoke. Follows party warmfriendshippower-sexgoodies. Reinforce lesson severed heads. Crude goodguy/ badguy punish/reward terror/relief mindforming. Aiken + Raimo + (Sukey?) yours. Both Hunts victorious.

How else integrate minimal delay? Some types e.g., Aiken superhazard.

More like you than you?

Perceptive Elizabeth. Angelic aloof overflyer despising pathetic exile misfits.

"Ah, Elizabeth. We get to know one another better and better."

The skipper who welcomed them to the unusual boat that would take them downriver wore khaki pants and a sweat-stained T-shirt His belly overflowed his waistband. A crinkly peppered-salt mustache and fringe-beard bracketed the jovial smile on his mahogany face. He flicked Creyn a casual salute, one finger tapping the bill of a decrepit U.S. Navy cap of twentieth-century vintage.

"Welcome aboard, milord and ladies and gents! Skipper Highjohn at your service. Take any pew you like, but the best view is up forward. Bring that stretcher over here and lash it to the tie-downs."

The human travelers came onto the strange craft and settled somewhat apprehensively into the seats, which were pneumatically cushioned and form-fitting, with elaborate harnesses that the skipper helped them to fasten.

"Is the river very rough, Captain? " Sukey inquired. She had positioned herself near Stein and kept darting uneasy glances at the sleeping giant while the attendants secured him with strong webbing.

"Don't you be concerned. I've done this Rhone-Med run for sixteen years and never lost a boat." Highjohn flipped a lid on the chair arm and revealed a hidden container. "Little barf-bucket if you need it."

Aiken piped up, "You may not have lost a boat, but how about a passenger? "

"You look like you got a strong ticker, boy. If things get too wild for you, Lord Creyn will program a calmative into your torc. Everybody set now? We'll be stopping for lunch at Feligompo Plantation around noon for any of you who have appetites. Tonight we'll be at Darask, which is below the site of the future Avignon. You know, the place with the bridge. See you later."

With a friendly wave, he went forward. The attendants from the mansion who had carried on Stein and their baggage now trooped ashore. Deckhands began scurrying about the vessel, preparing it for castoff. The passengers watched with mingled interest and unease.

The riverboat was similar in design to most of the others at the quayside, measuring about fourteen meters from its high, knife-sharp bow to its glutcally rounded stern. It was a distant cousin to the inflatable rafts and foldboats used by sportsmen and explorers on the whiter waters of the Galactic Milieu. The hull, stenciled on both sides with the name of the boat, Mojo, was a tough air-filled membrane with fat exterior corrugations and pillow-like fenders jutting out at regular intervals along the waterline. It looked as if it could be deflated and disassembled for shipment upstream via caravan. Tightly covered hatch openings fore and aft gave access to cargo holds, while the passenger accommodation was in an open area amidships that was arched over with a series of half-hoops. The dockworkers quickly covered this frame with panels of deeply tinted transparent film resembling decamole. When the last section of the bubbletop was sealed, an air blower began to operate inside the boat, providing venI'llation for the occupants and rendering the waterproof canopy rigid.

Sukey turned to Elizabeth, who sat in the seat beside her. "I didn't like the way the Captain talked. What are we getting into?"

"An interesting ride, at any rate, if the signs and portents add up, Bryan, do you know anything at all about the River Rhone?"

"It was all cut up with dams and locks and bypass channels in our time," the anthropologist replied. "The gradient is probably a lot steeper here in the Pliocene, so there are bound to be rapids. When we approach the Avignon region about a hundred-fifty kloms south of here, we'll be in an area that very likely has a deep gorge. In the twenty-second century it was stoppered by the Donzere-Mondragon Barrage, one of the largest dam projects in Europe. What we'll find down there now . , . well, it can't be too bad or they wouldn't try to navigate it, would they?"

Aiken uttered a shaky laugh. "Good question. Well, ready or not, guys, we're off to the races."

A rather stout telescoping mast was rising up behind the passenger compartment. When it reached its full height of four meters, the top section opened to disgorge a boom with a roller sail, looking for all the world like an old-fashioned portable movie screen. The sail unfurled and gave a few tentative swiveling motions. Deckhands cast off the boat's mooring warps, and vibration in the deck betokened the operation of a small auxiliary engine. The Mojo began threading in and out of the other shore traffic on its way to the mainstream, leading Bryan to deduce that it must uI'llize more than one rudder for maximum maneuverability.

They angled sharply away from the shore. As the current took them, the walled city of Roniah fell away astern with amazing swiftness. It was not easy to estimate their speed, since they were a good two hundred meters from either shore; but Bryan guessed that the sediment-laden flood was racing along at a minimum of twenty knots. What would happen when this great volume of water was compressed between high rock walls farther downstream challenged the imagination of the anthropologist. His speculations were of a decidedly queasy sort.

Raimo, in the seat next to him, had found his own brand of solace. He took a pull from his replenished silver flask and offered it to Bryan rather half-heartedly. "Tanu popskull. Hardly Hudson's Bay standard, but not too bad."

"Maybe later," Bryan said, smiling Raimo grunted and took another swallow. The euphoria of his morning adventure had faded away, leaving the ex-forester brooding and ill at ease. Bryan tried to draw Raimo out with questions about the previous night's revelry but received only the curtest replies.

"You hadda be there," Raimo said, and lapsed into silence.

For nearly an hour they moved easily through a wide bluff-sided channel, the forested foothills of the Alps on their left hand and arid tablelands rising above the near-jungle of the humid bottoms on the right Occasionally, Creyn pointed out the location of a plantation; but the threes were so thick that it was impossible to see any details of the settlements ashore. They glimpsed smaller boats plying the shallows and once they overhauled a long covered barge riding deep in the water, bare-masted and having only a small bubble over the midships steersman's cockpit. The bargee greeted them with a toot from his airhorn, to which Skipper Highjohn responded with a syncopated blast of his own.

The river made a wide curve and the channel passed between a tall headland and a group of craggy islets. Small mechanical sounds announced the furling of their sail, the boom's folding, and the withdrawal of the telescoping mast back into its housing. Far from losing speed, the boat moved along faster rounding the point. It seemed to Bryan that they must be making thirty knots or more. Simultaneously he became aware of a deep vibration transmitted by the water through the sealed hull of the boat, the inflated headrest of his seat, and the very bones of his skull. The vibration increased to an audible roar as the boat came charging around a sharp bend. The walls of a canyon rose on both sides.

Sukey screamed and Raimo yelped an obscenity.

Ahead of them the narrowing Rhone slanted downhill at a one-in-five gradient, the river lashed to a foaming frenzy by the rocks of its I'llted bed. The boat seemed to dive into the rapids and a great avalanche of ochre water crashed over the canopy and temporarily engulfed them. Then Mojo broke free and came to the surface, planing along among monstrous standing waves and granite boulders, rolling so steeply that yellow water climbed halfway up the watertight bubble first on one side, then on the other. The noise was almost insupportable. Raimo's mouth was wide open but his yells went unheard amidst the uproar of the cascading Rhone.

A dark mass loomed ahead. The boat heeled nearly sixty degrees to starboard as they went whipping around a tall rock pinnacle into a crooked slot between files of huge boulders. The air was so filled with flying spume that it seemed impossible that their skipper could see where he was going. Nevertheless the boat continued to zig and zag among the rocks with only an occasional bump against the pneumatic fenders.

A respite came in the form of a deep cut where the river flowed free. But the voice of Highjohn called, "One last time, folks!" and Bryan realized that they were rocketing through the defile toward a veritable fence of sharp crags, fanglike chunks of broken granite against which the yellow river waters crashed in overlapping curtains of spray. There seemed to be no way through. The stunned time-travelers gripped the arms of their seats and braced for the inevitable impact.

Mojo raced toward the tallest of the rocks, pitching violently. It crashed into the foam, but instead of hitting solid rock or sinking, it rose higher and higher on some unseen surge. There was a thrumming blow against the port side as they bounced off a rock face, completely drowned in the opaque pother. The boat seemed to roll a full 360 degrees and then wallow free to sail through the air. It landed with a bone-jarring impact, water dosing again over the top of the canopy. Almost immediately it popped to the surface, floating in complete tranquility across a broad pool that spread between low walls. Behind them was the cut they had just traversed, spewing a horsetail cataract, like the outflow of a titanic drain, into the basin thirty meters below.

"You can unfasten your safety belts now, folks," the skipper said. "That'll be all the cheap thrills for this morning. After lunch, it really gets rough."

He came back into the passenger compartment to check the canopy for possible leakage. "Didn't take in a drop!"

"'Congratulations," whispered Bryan. With one trembling hand be fumbled with the buckles of the harness.

"Give you a hand?" suggested High John, bending over to help.

Released, Bryan rose weakly to his feet. He saw that all the others, including Creyn and Elizabeth, were motionless in their seats, eyes closed, apparently asleep.

Fists on hips, the rivermen surveyed the passengers with a slow shake of his head. "Every goddam time. These sensitive Tanu types just can't take Cameron's Sluice, being afraid of water as they mostly are. So they zonk out. And if the torc-wearing humans show any distress, the Tanu just program a zonk for them, too. Kinda disappointing, you know? Every artist likes to have an audience."

"I take your point," Bryan said.

"I don't often get a rarey like you, no torc and all and man enough to come through it without a case of the yammering fantods. This lady without the torc", he pointed to Elizabeth, "must have just fainted away."

"Not likely," Bryan said. "She's an operant metapsychic. I dare say she just did her own calming mental exercise and napped through the excitement, just as Creyn did."

"But not you, eh, sport? I suppose you've been on rough water before."

Bryan shrugged. "Hobby sailor. North Sea, Channel, Med. The usual thing."

Highjohn clapped him on the shoulder. His eyes twinkled and he gave Bryan a comradely smile. "Tell you what. You come on forward with me and I'll show you a thing or three about driving this tub before we reach Feligompo. If you enjoy it, who knows? There's lots worse jobs you could settle into in this Exile."

"I'd enjoy riding with you in the wheelhouse," Bryan said, "but I won't be able to take you up on your offer of an apprenticeship." He grinned ruefully. "I believe the Tanu have other plans for me."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Claude awoke. A cool breeze blew through hanging strings of wooden beads that screened all four sides of the prisoners' dormitory and kept insects from flying in. Two guards paced around and around outside the shelter, bronze helmets turning as they scanned the inmates, compound bows strung and ready, resting lightly on their shoulders where they could be drawn in an instant.

The old man tested his limbs, and by God, they worked. His field adaptation system was still Go after all the years. He sat up on his pallet and looked around. Almost all of the other prisoners were still lying as though drugged. But Felice was up, and Basil the Alpine climber, and the two Japanese ronin. Faint yapping sounds came from a closed basket next to a sleeping woman. There were snores and a few moans from the other sleepers.

Claude quietly watched Felice. She was talking in low tones with the three other men. Once one of the ronin tried to protest something she was saying. She cut him short with a fierce gesture and the Oriental warrior subsided.

It was very late in the afternoon and quite hot. The space within the walled fort was deep in green shade. A smell of cooking wafted from one of the buildings, making Claude's mouth water. Another meat stew, and something like fruit pies baking. Whatever its other flaws, the Exile society certainly ate well.

Having finished her discussion, Felice crept across the crowded floor to Claude's resting place. She looked keyed up and her brown eyes were wide. She wore the sleeveless kilt-dress that was the undergarment to her hoplite armor, but had put off the rest of the uniform with the exception of the black shin guards. The bare areas of her skin were lightly sheened with perspiration.