‘Thanks.’ Impulsively, Ronica leaned across the Lodgemaster’s desk and patted his hand. ‘You are a sweetheart, did you know? Don’t worry. I’m not a simple backwoods maiden. I’ll cope.’
Not a maiden at all.
Pain flashed. She’d had her love affairs in oh-so-sophisticated Vittohrya (if young Maurai are free to indulge, why not young us?), but the last had not been fun or romance or anything, it had been with a professor of hers who was a family man, and in the end they’d agreed they should not destroy his home. That was shortly before she graduated and took ship for Kenai.
The forest and the mountains, in them there is healing.
She rose. ‘Well, goodnight,’ she said. ‘I’m certainly willing to
talk further with Captain Karst, if he
is,
but have no fears for my virtue. The prospect of visiting some foreign countries is mighty interesting.’
A thrill went through her.
God damn and hell rejoice, but it is!
Karst had been much too casual about the deaths he described. Orion was supposed to liberate without killing. But done was done, and had apparently been necessary under the circumstances, and she had her own life to attend, clamorous within her.
With a whirr of propellers the dirigible left its mooring at Tournev airfield and ascended. It was among those which regularly carried goods and people to Skyholm.
Passengers were few this trip. Iern and Faylis could stand at the forward observation window during approach and see wonder grow huge before them.
‘O-o-oh,’ she whispered, and clasped his hand. Tears started forth. ‘Oh, darling.’
He smiled, brought an arm around to tilt the exquisite face up toward him, leaned down, and kissed her. The lips beneath his were cool but trembled in response. Ever since he had told her about his assignment, she had been more affectionate than at any time after their honeymoon.
Happiness brought that about, he supposed. It would be her first visit aloft, and for three whole months! She went about their town-house singing. She commissioned a new wardrobe, with furs and silks and embroideries and jewels, extravagance which he could not find the heart to scold her for.
She’s so young,
he told himself repeatedly – not much younger in years than he, but in experience, in spirit, like a child.
She loves the elegance she never knew before, luxury, gaiety, familiarity with important persons – prestige of her own, and few things carry more prestige than a station in Skyholm. I shouldn’t
worry about expenses. Beynac gives me a pretty good income. Maybe I can cut back on my private spending. And, yes, not let her coldness or her tantrums drive me away, but also give her more of my company than my habit has gotten to be.
Here was certainly a chance for that. He wouldn’t travel for thirteen weeks, except when he took his Cadets on short practice flights. Otherwise he would be lecturing, grading papers, doubtless giving occasional counsel. He had not drawn this duty before, since
it rotated among pilots, but felt he could probably handle it well. He might actually enjoy it. In any event, in his leisure time he could find ample diversion …
with Faylis, of course,
he reminded himself.
‘No picture shows this, really,’ she breathed. ‘None.’ She reached out and touched the glass. He thought of a baby reaching for the moon.
From behind the dirigible, the sun cast an almost shadowless radiance. Crystalline blue-black, the stratosphere made a chalice for the pearl which was Skyholm. Then as the craft drew nigh, that pearl became a moon indeed, a world.
Two full kilometers in diameter, it nonetheless kept an airiness, a grace to rival anything man had ever created. Transparent, the outer skin had a shimmer across it, a ghost of rainbows. Beneath were the interlocking hexagons of the tensegrity structure: slender, hollow girders and thin cables, as if the god of the spiders had been everywhere weaving. A hundred meters behind this was a vast ball of night, over which the web went agleam.
Its pattern disappeared at the equator. There homes, meeting places, workshops, laboratories, control centers, all the manifold spaces that humans used were nested among the ribs of Skyholm. They seemed a broad, intricately ornamented belt, mostly dark but with flashes of color and metal. Positioned around it were four observation domes, four laser complexes, two missile launchers, two flanges on which – dragonflies at this distance – jetplanes rested, and eight engines belonging to the aerostat itself. Small inspection platforms and banks of solar collectors studded the rest of the sphere.
Approach from ground revealed an opening at the lower pole, where the ribs gave away to a frame in the form of pentagram. It supported a great pipe leading to the interior. As a plane took off on some mission and dropped below the globe, on the far side, its image briefly quivered, troubled by the heat that poured forth.
And this was Skyholm, Ileduciel, Hemelhuis (the names were many), which men before the Judgment had dreamed of, and built in modules, and lifted on wings of helium to assemble in the uppermost air.
Faylis was long silent. When at last she spoke, her voice was small and timid: ‘Suddenly I realize how little I know about it. I mean, it’s always been there, like Earth. I don’t – well, nobody quite knows why and how it was made. Do they?’
‘What?’ asked Iern, startled. ‘And you set out to be a historian?’
‘You know my main interest has been Iberyan history.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘a lot of records were lost in the War of Judgment and its aftermath, but considerable was preserved, and the Thirty found time to chronicle certain matters themselves. A consortium of nations in West Uropa decided to have an Okress aerostat, as a few elsewhere already did. The crew made Angley – its ancestral version – their common language because it was, then, the standard language of aeronautics –’
She flushed. Indignation sharpened her tone. ‘I’m not a complete ignoramus, whatever you think. I learned that much in chapel school.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he answered fast. ‘I misunderstood you. What did you mean?’
She relented. ‘The technical reasons for the undertaking. I’m such an idiot where it comes to science. I remember my teachers explaining, but I don’t remember exactly what they said.’
‘Oh, there were plenty of uses for a base in the stratosphere,’ Iern told her. ‘Most of them were the same ones you’re familiar with, that we still have. Surveillance for both civilian and military purposes. Monitoring of weather and oceans. Communications relay. Nighttime illumination by searchlights, when necessary. A place for aircraft, missiles, astronomy and other research. Collecting solar energy – But you know that. In addition, there were plans to launch spacecraft from it.’ Sudden wistfulness locked his tongue. Once human beings had reached outward to the moon and beyond.
She didn’t notice. ‘Yes, dear. I’m afraid it remains arcana to me.’ She giggled. Her awe had been short-lived. Now, he guessed, she was again anticipating the life of a Skyholm officer’s lady.
Well, that’s better than dwelling on that Jovain wretch and his vicious Gaean foolishness,
Iern decided. ‘Why,’ she said, ‘I can’t even understand what holds the balloon up.’
He welcomed the chance to forget Luna and talk about yonder globe. Perhaps it was a minor triumph, when set against the briefest cosmic voyage, but it was among the few triumphs that had endured.
‘Not a balloon,’ he corrected. ‘A rigid configuration like this airship we’re on. Different principle, however. That framework saves weight by relying on tensile much more than compression strength. And the sphere isn’t full of hydrogen, with an anticatalyst against fire. It’s essentially two skins of polymer, the inner one
equipped with light absorbers. Sunlight gets trapped and heats the air at the middle; greenhouse effect, we say. The pressure stays the same because of that vent at the bottom, but the air inside is less dense because of its high temperature, so buoyancy equals thousands of tonnes. The sun supplies energy for everything else too, by way of solar cells and thermal converters. Energy to run all apparatus, maintain a comfortable environment, replenish nighttime radiation losses, power factories and synthetic fuel plants on the ground by microwave transmission – and those motors. Skyholm’s engines don’t burn anything; they’re electrically driven fan jets.’
He stopped for breath. ‘Thank you for the lecture,’ she said. ‘But it’s more information than I can absorb in five minutes.’
He swallowed, then saw wryly that he had been delivering a short version of a talk he intended to
give
the youngest of his students. They needed solid facts as well as whatever inspiration Skyholm itself, and he as a popular hero, could provide. The years between enrollment at
six
and graduation at twenty were arduous. They seemed interminable to a little boy or girl; those whom he would instruct in high-altitude flight were sixteen and over.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said as before, and wondered if he truly was. Other women did not require endless apologies and reconciliations. Sesi in Kemper danced across memory.
Yes,
he must go back – though mainly for companionship with Plik of the songs.…
Faylis left him, to seek the prismatic downviewer around which several fellow passengers were clustered. ‘Gaea!’ she cried softly.
He joined her. The sight was; old to him, but not the
less
imperial for that. Seen from thirty kilometers of altitude, their planet curved away across the length and breadth of the Domain, green, brown, white-swirled with clouds. Rivers, lakes, Gulf lay burnished, Angleylann and Eria like emeralds on the silver band of their channels. Along the edge of the world, a narrow blue-white ribbon deepened upward to azure and thence to the abyssal clarity which surrounded him.
With an effort, he dismissed from his mind the name she had uttered. It was not unnatural for her to use ‘Gaea’ for the living Earth. Quite a few people did these days who were anything but Gaeans. He laid an arm about her marvelously slim waist.
A steward entered the cabin from the control section of the gondola. ‘Sirs, ladies, we are preparing to rendezvous,’ he announced. ‘Please take your seats and secure your harnesses.’
‘Why!’ Faylis asked Iern. ‘It’s calm outside, isn’t it?’
He found relief in explaining. ‘The vent that I mentioned causes turbulence. Also, often Skyholm’s engines have to be on, to maintain position against winds. Yes, the stratosphere has winds; they’re thin but fast. A lighter-than-air ship
is
a clumsy thing, except for fuel efficiency. A jet operating nearby can bounce it around.’
‘I see.’ She swayed against him, and they settled down, and everything was glorious –
– until the dirigible moored, and a pressure tube extended through which they debarked, and waiting in the reception area was Talence Jovain Aurillac.
His greeting was courteous, though, and he was entitled to be here. True, he must have exchanged his term with somebody else; and he must have gotten the dates from Faylis. Yet Iern could not forbid anyone to make such bargains, nor forbid her to correspond with a friend who had met her before he did. Skyholm belonged to all the Clansfolk.
The Thirty took unto themselves wives and husbands from among the people over whom they had assumed authority, were fruitful and multiplied. Later generations built new living quarters for their larger numbers, until they reached a limit. More dwellers meant either sacrificing space devoted to scientific and military capabilities, which was unthinkable, or crowding unpleasantly close together. By then the original families had become the Clans, marrying only among each other save when they adopted worthy groundlings into their ranks; their properties in the Domain were widespread and prosperous; converting apartments into barracks would be absurd. Instead, they changed their law.
None but the Captain and his or her immediate kin might stay permanently aloft, and through the following centuries, few Captains chose to do so. If nothing else, background radiation in the stratosphere was stronger than it now was anyplace where nuclear weapons had wrought their havoc during the Judgment. From time to time an individual, generally a dedicated scientist, petitioned for an extended leave of residence, which was granted if the reason was valid, and of course that person’s spouse and children got the same privilege; but those cases were exceptional.
Gradually the population of Skyholm stabilized around two thousand, with slight fluctuations. About half were adults.
Approximately a hundred were officers and technicians, serving tours of duty, together with marriage partners of these. (Professional staff alternated three years here, with frequent visits ground-side, and three years at support facilities throughout the Domain.) More than half the subadult group were Cadets, in training for eventual commissions; it demanded several sessions in the aerostat.
The remaining persons were there for the month which was the right of every grown Clan member, every seven years. At certain times, others arrived – the Seniors, to decide matters of great moment, perform the rituals of summer and winter solstice, or
give
the most honored of the dead a funeral. It was fitting and proper that all should thus have their parts in the life of Skyholm. They shared no single creed; in the eyes of many, the services that the chaplains conducted were merely another of the traditions which it would be ill-bred to flout; but to each of them, in some deep and inexpressible sense, Skyholm was holy.
Or so the case had been through cycle after cycle of birth, begetting, and death. In the end, time wears everything away, even sacredness.
After the house in Tournev, not to speak of ancestral estates in different regions, an apartment in Skyholm felt still more meager than it was. Of its three chambers, the bedroom had just enough floor space that Faylis and Iern could reach the bed. The one that combined kitchen and dining area was scarcely bigger, equipped with only a sink and a minuscule electric stove. Refrigeration lockers, like the bathroom, were at the end of a corridor onto which opened the doors of those half-dozen couples who shared them. For the first time in her life, she must do her own cooking, housecleaning, and laundry. She hated the chores and did them badly, with bursts of rage or tears. Before long she and Iern were eating their suppers in the aerostat’s single restaurant; other meals consisted chiefly of sandwiches.