"Don't fret it, I agree with you. My fa'ali clanks like a cracked bell when he's around. Unfortunately that's as intangible as your unsupported observations. He reports to our Hanifa regularly, feeds her suspicion, I don't know how, I didn't realize what he was doing until a few days ago." She shook her head. "I'll talk with Swar and Pels, we'll watch him, if he tries anything," she sighed, "maybe we can stop him."

Aslan got to her feet. "Have you seen the Jajes? They were my excuse to come up here, so I'd better find them and see if I can get an interview."

k.u.mari swung her feet around, stretched out on the pad. "They went toward that clump of trees down there by the hook inlets, I think those ancients remind them of home."

"Maybe they'll feel more like talking there." She brushed her hair back from her face and started off, trudging along the lakesh.o.r.e vaguely dissatisfied though she was glad she'd finally spoke her speech about Parnalee.

25 days after the meeting on Gerbek. Conference on Chicklet's bridge: Quale,Pels, k.u.mari.

Quale scratched at his jaw, his eyes on the screen and the swarm of very a.s.sorted beings moving about outside. "How many we have so far? I haven't bothered keeping track."

k.u.mari called up the figures. "One hundred and twenty on the list, one hundred fifty altogether. You two keep acquiring extras."

"Money total?"

"306,900.".

He grinned. "I could live with that."

"Add in the targets in the Palace, it's close to 400,000."

"Which brings up why I had us meet. We can't use the skips to clear out the Palace targets. We'd have to make, what? four, five trips even using both of them. Better to take the tug and get them in one. Which means we have to wait on that till the Hanifa is ready to jump. You talked with her this morning, Kri, what do you think? If we moved Lift-off forward say four days, make it tomorrow, could she handle the speedup?"

"Four days, what's the point, Swar? Better stick to the schedule. If you feel like keeping clear of Kuzey-whiyk cities, we've got some targets here on Guney-whiyk."

"I don't see how you can say those sneezes with a straight face, Kri."

"Practice, Swar. I've had to learn the Cousin Speech you babble in and Interlingue. If you knew the liquid crystal loveliness of Pilarruyal, you wouldn't ask questions like that."

"Mmp. All right, see what you can do about maps. The Proggerdi won't be any help down here."

"Which brings up something I think you ought to know. Day before yesterday I left Adelaar on the com and took a book up to the lake to get some rest and reading. Aslan followed me up there about an hour later. Listen. . . ." She sketched out what Aslan told her.

Quale stroked his fingers along his moustache. "Chatting up the Hanifa?"

k.u.mari nodded. "Trust you to put your foot on the main point. Yes. Every night. Soon as you and Pels are gone. He's talked our Hanifa into hiring him as a watchhound. We haven't a hope of leaving him behind."

"You mean she'd actually shut down Lift-Off if we refused to take him?"

"It'd be a tight call, but I suspect, yes she would. She never trusted us all that much and he's been working on her."

"You've been monitoring him, why didn't you stop it?"

"Because I was too dumb to know what he was doing. Not until he'd been doing it long enough to really get under her skin. When I did, what was I supposed to do about it? If you can explain how, it's more than you've done before this."

"s.h.i.t."

"Precisely."

"Well, I suppose we do what we have to. And watch our backs."

26-28 days after the meeting on Gerbek.

Ayla gul Iltika, gul Mizamere, gul Pudryar, one by one Quale and Pels dipped into the Littoral cities of Guneywhiyk and pulled out slaves, some on the list, some of them extras they couldn't leave behind without telling the world there were Outsiders on Tairanna.

Ayla gul Ukseme was the largest city on Guneywhiyk, in size as well as population; it was a confused sprawl thrown along the inner curve of a skewed half-moon bay. Out where the baywater mingled with the sea there were several Sea Farms, small offshoots of the elder Farms off the coasts of Kuzeywhiyk.

There were dozens of freighters tied up at the wharves, linear cl.u.s.ters of one- and two-story warehouses, open-air markets that never shut down; beyond these were stores and Houses spread out along a web of winding streets which climbed over hillocks like horripilation on a cold man's arms. When he saw the satellite fots, Quale swore fervently and nearly gave up on the city, but k.u.mari did some snooping and discovered that some of those on the list belonged to theFehdaz who rented them out during the day and made sure they were back in the pen at the Fekkri by day's end. Which was very helpful of him. Made it easy to locate them after dark.

The Fekkri was a ma.s.sive pile with dozens of towers packed in cl.u.s.ters and a mooring post with a pair of midsized airships nose-locked one above the other.

The pen was a small excrescence tacked onto the backside of the pile, a low structure with a waist-high parapet around a flat roof cluttered with bales, crates and a.s.sorted discards.

As Quale came in over the city, the air was heavy with damp and the promise of rain. The winds near the ground were tricky, gusts to twenty kph one minute, almost nothing the next, downdrafts with the drag of an octopus, updrafts that threatened to capsize the skip. As a final irritation, the pen's roof was so cluttered with discards, the only open s.p.a.ce available was over the trap.

Quale landed the skip there and spent the next several minutes sweating and cursing under his breath as he and Pels shifted bales and useless sc.r.a.p so they could move the machine off their entry point; they had to lift and carry and set down gently, no tossing, no rolling, nothing to make their lives a bit easier; they had to keep the noise down so one of the guards wouldn't get a notion to check out why the rats in the rafters were so noisy that night.

He left Pels dealing with the lock and strolled to the parapet. On the way in as he was circling so he could put the skip's nose to the wind and make a smoother, quieter landing, he'd seen crowds in the streets; quiet crowds, no yizzies, no counting coups, no fires, just hordes of people. Something about them bothered him; he wanted a closer look to see if he could figure out what it was.

The street that went past the pen was a broad tree- lined avenue. He saw half a dozen dark forms standing under the trees. They weren't talking or even moving much. They simply stood and stared at the outer wall of the Fekkri. As he watched, several more figures came round a corner and joined them. By the time Pels summoned him, there was a small crowd down there, silent, motionless, eyes fixed on the wall in front of them. Spooky. He answered Pels' hissing call with a tooth whistle and turned away, glad to have an excuse not to look at them any longer.

He followed Pels through the trap, went down a steeply slanting ladder to a dusty littered storeroom. It's door was locked, but a quick jab of the autopick took care of that. The EYEs k.u.mari had run through here reported that there were three sleeping cells, four slaves in one, three in each of the others, ten in all. Seven of them were on his list. If Luck had been a trifle kinder the targets would have been in one room waiting for him, but this was her night to be a b.i.t.c.h.

While Pels stood guard, he slashed through the bolt and pulled the first door open. "Listen," he said, "You want out of here? Right. Is there one here . .

." he looked around; no jajes so he didn't bother reading those names, "called Roereirein Lyhyt or Ikas Babut se Vroly or Touw se Vroly?"

"I am Touw se Vroly. Ikas Babut is my mate, he sleeps the next cell over." She was an attenuated figure with a grace even weariness and the wear of servitude had not yet taken from her. He heard a faint clash as she pushed a pair of armbands up past her elbow, by the pallor of the metal they were silver or platinum. She looked around, caught up a shawl and draped it over her shoulders. "What of the others here?" Her arm bands clashed again as she made a wide curving gesture that took in the other two females in the cell, a Froska and a small shadowy figure with more hair than features.

He crossed to her, set the pick working on her collar lock. "What I'll do, I'll unlock the collars and the other two can stay here or leave by the street door, whichever they prefer. If they want they can give me their names and homeworlds and the names of kin I should notify, or you can do that later if you know them. I can't take all of you, the skip just won't hold that many."

Next cell. "Ikas Babut se Vroly, Roereirein Lyhyt?" The third in the cell was a Miesashch tetrapod with the jitters, his split hooves tick-tackingaggressively against the floorplanks. "I'll unlock the collars on all of you.

You, despois," he told the Miesashch, "can stay here or leave by the street door whichever you prefer. If you want you can give me your name and homeworld and the names of kin I should notify. I can't take more than those on my list, the skip just won't hold that many."

Next cell. "Weggorss Jaje, Otivarty Jaje, Krathyky Jaje, Imagy Jaje? Good. The Bialy Vitr think highly of the Bond Jaje, they have offered one thousand gelders for the return of each lobe of the Bond, there are four Jajes in my camp already, eight thousand in my hands when I set you all down on Helvetia's pavements. Be a.s.sured I shall take very good care of you."

There was a spate of whispering among the Jajes, they were using their highest register; the fugitive sounds tickled his ears and gave him the beginnings of a headache. The boldest of the four moved a step toward him, a velvety black female invisible in the twilight inside the cell. "This one is Otivarty Jaje.

What is the calling of the Presence who speaks us?"

"Swardheld Quale, ship Slancy Orza out of Telffer."

More whispering. Otivarty stepped away from her Bond again. "The calling is known, the word is acceptable, we will come."

Quale started for the storeroom and the ladder, his seven hustling along behind him, anxious to be out of there. Equally anxious, the extra three hurried the shorter distance to the street exit; the Froska had Quale's cutter, she sliced through the lock tongue and began lifting the bar.

Pels was in the storeroom already and on his way up the ladder. Quale shooed his herd of ex-slaves through the door and was about to follow when he heard a rumbling mutter, then an exclamation of shock and fear from the Froska as the door was wrenched from her hand and sent crashing against the wall.

Blankfaced muttering Hordar came stomping in, hands like claws reaching for the outsiders, mouths open, lips fluted to produce a whistling growl, eyes wide with no one home behind the shine. The extras took one look at them and ran the other way. Quale waved them past him, played his stunner across the front rank of the mob. Five Hordar fell. The Hordar behind them marched over them, stomping heedlessly on them, crushing them.

"s.h.i.t," he said. "Oh s.h.i.t." He slammed the door, reached for a bar that wasn't there. The door quivered as the Surge crashed against it. He went up the ladder faster than he'd come down it, slammed the trap and yelled at the ex-slaves to help him shove bales on it.

They got the first bale in place as the trap shuddered and started to rise, rolled another over beside it, then a third. The bales quivered as the Hordar below pounded and shoved at the trap, but they had to stand on the ladder to reach it and couldn't get enough leverage to shift the weight piled on it. The barrier held.

Quale scowled at the faces turned hopefully toward him. The se Vrolys were both slender, the four Jajes added together wouldn't make one of him. Lyhyt was vaguely vegetative like Kinok, though not Sikkul Paem; he was broad and tall, but maybe not as ma.s.sive as he looked. The Froska female wouldn't take much s.p.a.ce and would suffer in silence for pride's sake, but the Miesashch could be a problem if he panicked. The third from Touw's cell was a fragile nocturnal whose species Quale didn't recognize, but she at least looked fairly calm. "Listen," he said, "I'll take a chance I can lift off with all of you.

It's a wild gamble, you might be safer finding a place to hide up here where you can ride that mess out. . . ." He broke off, looked up as he heard the tinny clatter of a yizzy.

A fireball came straight at him. He dived away, rolled over, dived again, rolled behind a stack of crates.

The second fireball missed him by the width of a hope, splashed on the roof and started it smoldering. The others had scattered almost as quickly, hunting cover, but the inklin didn't waste more fire on them. The yizzy swept past, went soaring up to the mooring tower; the rider began working on the airships. Moreyizzies converged on the towers. The airships were as fire safe as chemistry could make them, but with a dozen fire throwers heating them up, even the heavily sized yosscloth was beginning to smoke. Before long the heat would kindle the hydrogen in the ballonets and the conflagration that followed would melt more than the tower.

While Pels was helping the ten pack themselves into the skip, Quale risked another look over the parapet.

The street was packed with Hordar moving and breathing as if they were limbs of a single beast. The whole city was coming to press against the Fekkri, the Hordar flowing like a river of ants over the few Ta.s.salgan guards stupid enough to try stopping them. The Surge tore them apart, tore off arms, legs, heads, anything one of the many beasthands could get a grip on. He saw a pair of guards trapped in a doorway trying to shoot themselves clear; pellet guns on automatic, they emptied clips one after another at the mob, the pellets scything across the front ranks, knocking down dozens of men and women. The Surge ignored them, came on without noticing the dead and injured, cast them aside like sloughed skin cells. The guards panicked, tried breaking into the House behind them. They couldn't get away. The Surge threw off a tendril which flowed after them and pulled them back to the street; it hurled them against a wall, knocked them again and again into the stone, rocked them back and forth under casual undirected blows, it kicked them off their feet and stomped them into stewmeat. The chatter of the guns, the yells of the guards, their final screams were lost in the SOUND coming from the Surge, a hooming howl/growl without words, only a rage so tangible that the hair stood up on Quale's arms and rose along his spine. He backed away and ran for the skip.

Pels had got the weight of the pa.s.sengers distributed as well as he could, but the machine was still dangerously overloaded. Quale eased into the pilot's seat and punched on the liftfield, cycling it gradually higher as the drives warmed and tried to take hold. They whined and shuddered; after a tense moment when he was sure they weren't going to bite, the skip lumbered clumsily into the air. He held her an arm's length off the roof while he tested her handling. She was sluggish and crank, the slightest misjudgment on his part might flip her or send her into a slip and that would be that for all of them.

He eased her higher, a hand span at a time until she was finally high enough to clear the parapet.

Two yizzies backed away from the siege on the airships and came swooping at them. Quale turned the skip through a wide gentle arc, gradually accelerating, cursing under his breath at the impossibility of losing the inklins fast enough. Pels slid over Touw se Vroly's lap so he could snap loose Quale's stunner which had a longer reach to it than his own. One of the inklins squirted fire at them, but a gust of wind carried it wide. Back in his cubby, Pels bared his tearing teeth, hissed with satisfaction and put that inklin out; he got the second inklin before she could release more fire. The two collapsed in their saddles; strapped in so they didn't fall, they went drifting off, ignored by guards on the ground and their fellows in the air.

Quale relaxed and nursed the laboring skip through the city, picking a circuitous route that avoided the taller buildings, the speakers' minarets, mooring towers, and the like. Below them the Surge went on, spreading from precinct to precinct, leaving death and destruction behind it as it moved.

Quale brought the skip down slowly, carefully, landing her in a gra.s.sy swale between two groves, one a collection of nut-bearers, the other ancient hardwoods. There was a small stream wandering vaguely westward across the middle of the swale and a tumbledown shelter tucked away under a lightning-split cettem tree still alive and heavy with green nuts. He left Pels and four of the ex-slaves there to wait for his return and took the others to Base.

He started back at once, reached gul Ukseme shortly before dawn; he circled over the city to see how the Surge had developed. It was very dark, both moons were down and the storm that had threatened at dusk was on the verge ofbreaking. No yizzies. The streets were empty. The Fekkri was a burnt-out husk.

There were bodies everywhere, trampled into rags on the paving stones, men and women, impossible to say which body was which; dead children who were recognizable as children only because they were littler than the others. He was too high to smell the stench, but it was thick in his nostrils despite that; he'd seen more wars than he cared to count, he'd seen his own body, the one he was born in, flung down in a ragged sprawl, he knew that smell, he knew the look of bodies thrown away, flattened, empty. He'd never gotten used to the smell or the look of the violently dead. Grim and angry at the futility of it all, he swung the skip around and got out of there; fifteen minutes later, with wind hammering at him and rain in cold gusts drenching him, he picked up Pels and the Jajes and went back to Base where life was marginally saner and the folk living there full of juice and hope.

30 days after the meeting on Gerbek.

The muster in the Chel, semi-arid land between the Inci Mountains and the southern edge of the gra.s.slands. The chill gray hour just after dawn.

Knots of talk as the muster is getting organized: "Any time now. Soon as you're ready to load." Quale looked round at the untidy ferment scattered over half a kilometer of scrub. "Adelaar's got a clawhold on the shipBrain through the tap; she's routing the scanners away from this sector, but I don't want to lean too hard on that, it's complicated working blind like she is with two sets of alarms to avoid. The sooner you can get this lot ..." he waved his hand at the noisy congeries about them, "sorted out, the better for all of us."

Elmas Ofka looked past him at the tug. "The systemships have lifts; how do we get into that thing?"

"Right." He lifted the com. "Pels, open her up."

Karrel Goza threaded through the clumps of rebels, forces from every part of Kuzeywhiyk brought together for this thing no one had believed possible before Elmas Ofka put it together; he knew most of them because he'd given most of them a lift at one time or another when the bitbits were hot after them; he waved a greeting to those who yelled his name but didn't stop until he reached one of the knots near the outside, seven quiet men who were sitting on their packs or squatting beside them, ready to go when the word came. He dropped to a squat beside them. "Not long now," he said.

Jamber Fausse snapped a twig in half, began peeling the stringy bark from the dry white wood. "Mm." He scratched at a patch of rot. "I know you, Kar, you want something."

"Elli."

"So?"

"We need her."

"Yeh. So?"

"She's got three sets of outsiders watching each other, she thinks that'll be enough to keep them from knifing her."

"Probably right. Usually is."

"Uh-huh. Safe is better'n sorry. She's got her isyas scattered to keep the squads on track."

"Kar ..." there was a weary patience in Jamber Fausse's rough voice, "we been going through the motions the past ten days. Why you keep telling me what I already know?"

"Just laying foundation, Jamo. You're scheduled for the drive chambers. Kanlan Gercik's willing to trade. I want you and them . . ." he jerked his thumb in a nervous half circle taking in the others who were listening without comment, without expression, waiting! with the patience of monks for the talking to be over, "next to her. Kan's all right, he's good in a pinch, but you've been dealing with Huvved since before you could walk, you can smell a trap before it hatches.""Mm." Jamber Fausse broke the length of denuded twig into smaller and smaller bits then threw them at a patch of dried gra.s.s and brushed the debris off his callused palms. "All right."

Aslan stood in the shadows and watched the fighters file past; she had the Ridaar running, flaking them as they came up the lift and into the hold. These male guerrilla bands and female fighting isyas were unlike the outcast, outlawed and rebel Hordar she knew from the Mines. They were harder, angrier, fined down by hunger, fear and pain; these Hordar had lived on the run for decades, no sanctuary for them, never enough food, never enough anything but ammunition for their guns, living with the knowledge that their capture alive or dead meant death or exile for their families; to the Huvved, blood was blood, corrupt in one set of veins, corrupt in all. She watched their faces and thought she wouldn't much like living on a world that these men and women had a hand in running. She didn't understand why Elmas Ofka had such a powerful hold on them, but she was glad of it, she liked the Hordar and wished them well. She watched the fighters and ached for them though they'd be furious if they knew it; in a few hours their rationale for living and doing what it took to stay alive, that rationale would be taken from them. If not in a few hours, certainly in a few days. Worlds have no place for fighters once the war is won. What were they going to do with the rest of their lives?

"Eh, Lan!" Xalloor danced over to her. "Why the long face? You're as melancholy as a poet with a prize." Behind her, Churri snorted; he leaned against the lock and said nothing.

Aslan pulled Xalloor closer so she could talk without shouting. "What in the world are you two doing here?"

"More insurance. We're supposed to keep an eye on you and your mum. And the rest of 'em. Churri's a poet which makes him respectable and I'm nothing much, someone she knows, someone too feeble to be a danger to her, just barely bright enough to watch-hound."

"I see about her, what about you? This isn't a stage, you could.get killed."

Xalloor grinned. "Dearie dai, you are a romantic. Stage. ..." The word turned into a giggle. "Once upon a time about a hundred years ago, didn't I say you've led a sheltered life?"

30 days after the meeting on Gerbek. Lift-Off.

On the bridge, her hands alternately at rest and work-ing with a swift sureness across several sensor pads, Adelaar sat half-lost in a recapitulation of her Listening Station, part environment, part sculpture, part haphazard stack of blackbox units, playing her sup-with-the-devil-games with target and tie-line, blocking approach alarms, feeding in false readings, singing the ancient shipBrain to sleep.

Quale was taking the tug up on a long gentle arc, moving west to chase the night, the ar-grav blending so smoothly with the drives that the only sense of movement the pa.s.sengers had, on the bridge or in the hold, came through the screens that showed Tairanna curving more and more beneath them.

Elmas Ofka stood beside Quale, watching the screens, her hands closed into fists, her body stiff. She'd had it with strangeness, her own world was complicated and difficult enough, she needed all her skills, her intellect and energy to deal with the disintegration of the society she'd been born into.

This extra element of confusion threatened to wrench control from her and destroy any possibility of a return to order. At least, to the sort of order she remembered. If she could have expunged these aliens from the Horgul system, closed it away from the Outside as Adelaar planned to encyst an area of the shipBrain, she'd have done it without a second thought. Too intelligent to linger mournfully on impossible dreams, she forced herself to concentrate on limiting the damage the aliens could do. She could feel the one called Aslan watching her. The most dangerous of all of them, if Parnalee wasn't lying to her. Aslan knew toomuch. She was capable of too subtle a twisting; the play-maker Parnalee showed her how Aslan had turned the Prophet's Life on the lathe of her knowledge and imagination and used Pradix to rouse the Hordar out there watching, innocent victims of the woman's will to power. Ruthless, he said, you can never trust her because she can manipulate you without you knowing a thing about what was happening to you. She gazed at the back of Quale's head, cold dislike washing over her though she knew that was foolish. Thing. Bought thing. Cat on a leash, dancing for whoever pulls it. With regret and resentment she thought of the pouch of prime rosepearls she'd handed over once her fighters were loaded in the tug. No threat voiced, no threat in his posture, but he didn't need to make explicit what was implied by his control of the machine. No, she had no choice; the rosepearls bought her this standing s.p.a.ce, bought her a chance at the Warmaster, a chance at liberation for all Hordar. Divers did what they must to stay intact. Discipline was life. She disciplined her fears and forebodings and watched the screens, watched the War-master swimming smoothly toward them.

Though its image was at that moment little larger than her hand, its ma.s.s was palpable. And she knew from evidence of her own eyes how huge it was. Two days ago she'd seen it gliding south over the Mines. Two days ago it descended over them to smother them with its immensity, its power. Two days ago it went south to Guneywhiyk to burn a Sanctuary down to bedrock. It could have been the Mines. But for the Prophet's Hand over them, it could have been the Mines. Two days ago. She felt the dead cl.u.s.tering over her, swimming through the incense of all these alien souls, puff of unseen smoke, bouncing under the ceiling of this alien place. Forgive me, she breathed at them. She sang in her mind the Litany of Dismissal/ The Promise of Return. Return to a quieter, gentler world, a world of calm and order. She sang the litany over and over as the Warmaster grew until there was nothing in the screen but a cratered black surface whose pits and flaws were more and more apparent, a calligraphy of age. She sang the litany over and over, sang it for herself, gentling herself, sloughing off her responsibilities, her plans and fears . . . odd, when she had so many anxieties and frustrations, how free she felt. As if the moment would permit nothing less. Free. For the first time she began to understand the seduction of war. How it stripped away everything but the need to survive, how it narrowed life to the Now, how it freed you from the niggling irritations and ambiguities of ordinary life. She was enthralled and appalled.

The power of it. The temptation. She looked over her shoulder at Aslan; the woman's face seemed wide open, utterly without defense. She looked into those cool amber eyes, strange eyes, and saw . . . she didn't know what she saw, but it terrified her. Aslan knew her, knew what tempted her, knew so much it was an obscenity. Moments pa.s.sed before Elmas Ofka found the courage to look away.

She shook briefly with fear, then the Now took her again, she turned back to the screen and forgot to be afraid.

Karrel Goza leaned against the wall, its vibration playing in his bones, not shaking but a note sung in a voice so deep he felt it rather than heard it. He watched Tairanna drop away, savoring this pale small taste of flight.

Otherwise the tug gave him nothing, how could he feel himself flying without a symbiosis of soul and air; shut inside here how could he feel anything? He was sad. The skips were fast and reliable and nearly indifferent to storms. Within a generation they and their cousins would most likely replace the airships; they were too tempting and with Outsiders coming in and out with no controls on them, Family businesses would be replacing airships as fast as they could import these machines. Would start building them as soon as they had the necessary mechanics trained. Not all airships would go, cost still meant something; but yosspod bags would be left to claw out a poor living on the fringes of transport and hauling. More change.

He sighed. For over two decades, since a childhood he remembered as calm, slow, ordered, he'd watched the world pa.s.s through wrenching transformations because the Outside, the OutThere, intruded. What they were doing this day would wrench the world yet more violently from that remembered time, but itmight (only might, he couldn't see beyond the hour, let alone so long into the what-will-be), it might ensure the coming of a new tranquillity. If he were fortunate and outlived this day, he might see that time within this life; if not, he was content to wait for the next. He, like Elmas Ofka, surrendered to the point-Now and watched the Warmaster swimming toward them; he forgot sadness, forgot speculation. Immense. Gargantuan. Enormous. Colossal. Feeble, all those adjectives. No words were adequate. It seemed to him impossible that men had made that immensity, it seemed to him that it must have been some demon also beyond words which had laid so impossible an egg. Which was absurd.

Men had made it, of course they had. How many men labored how many years in that making?