Rift (22 page)

Now Kalid leaned forward. “Yesterday you were afraid to tell me the truth. And now are you still afraid to tell me the truth?”

One thing Reeve was learning: Clavers didn’t like lies. Why these ruffians should be so scrupulous, he didn’t know, but he was already in trouble about the few lies he’d told so far. He went on: “If you saw the light in the sky, you have evidence I’m telling the truth now. The Station exploded. We were at war among ourselves. One group tried to force us down to the planet, to get the old domes working again, to terraform—to make Lithia like it was.”

“I know what
terraform
is, Reeve Calder. I am not entirely uneducated, although I do not know electrical systems.” He enunciated
electrical systems
carefully, and got it right.

“No offense. We know little of your ways, being strangers here.”

Slowly, Kalid moved back, resuming his position, his silver-tipped boots pointing at Reeve’s nose. “So
you might say. But you’ve been among us long enough to learn something. You are not a child, seeking what to do with your life. In our world, a man your age is in his full power, and soon to decline. Understand this, Reeve Calder. When my lord questions you, do not act the fool. We might think you are looking down on us, and you don’t want to look down on Lord Dante. He is proud, and notices a slight.”

Reeve was soaked in sweat. It was a fine line to walk between talking above this claver, and talking beneath him. “I thank you for your advice. I’ve often been in trouble for saying the wrong thing.”

Kalid put the knife in a sheath at his belt. “Here is what I would know: How many soldiers have come among us, and in how many shuttles?”

“I’m not sure of the number. On my own shuttle, only Marie and I survived. I know at least one other shuttle also escaped. We had four shuttles total. The other one might be at the Rift Valley, one crew member told me.”

“And what Rift Valley is that?”

“The great valley to the west. But I don’t know if they made it. We barely escaped the explosion, and our shuttle was damaged. Theirs may have been also.”

“A shuttle can carry how many?”

“Forty at the most.”

“With what weapons?”

“The shuttles carry no weapons. But the crew have guns and maybe explosives. Other weapons might be fashioned, if they put their minds to it. But I believe their intention is to defend themselves and concentrate on terraforming.”

“And can you yourself fashion weapons?”

“I have no experience in such things. It takes big … it takes the right technology. But I have some knowledge, and with the right parts I might come up with something.” Perhaps they would hesitate to throw a fashioner of weapons to the sharks. As Kalid mulled
this over, Reeve slipped in his own question: “What will your Lord Dante do with us?”

“You are weak and would make a poor servant of my lord. He may hang you for a zerter. Your Spar is an oddity. This may amuse my lord, and he may be allowed to die fighting. The old woman offers no amusement. And the Loon creature is wrong in the head and may be traded.” He shrugged. “But it is impudent to guess what my lord will do. And seldom successful.”

He stood, taking a few steps over to built-in drawers in the bulkhead, drawing forth the music box in its clean but tattered cloth. “It would amuse me if you could make the box sing again.”

Kalid called for the backpack, which arrived in the grasp of a very large individual of surly demeanor. “You will have to persuade my man Bunyan which tools in your pack might be needed. He will be watching you to be sure you proceed in good faith.”

Reeve looked up into the guard’s face, wondering if the man understood what it meant to
proceed in good faith
, or if the ape would kill him at the first opportunity. After Kalid left, Reeve carefully began removing the bottom plate of the music box. As he worked, clamor from the deck resounded in the semidark hole where he worked. Soon the creaking and crash of the oars shook the bulkheads, and Bunyan peered out the high portal of the cabin at the goings-on.

Sometime later Reeve replaced the panel and wrapped the box in its cloth. Substituting the flashlight’s power assembly had no effect, and without the right tools he couldn’t assess the state of the memory tab. Shivering in the breeze from the open portal, he thought about Kalid’s intimation that one must be either amusing or useful. He looked down on the bundle containing the broken music box. He would much rather fix things than
amuse
people, but in this, as in so much more, he was apparently to have little choice. Under Bunyan’s scornful gaze, he carefully placed the
bundle down on the cot, bitter at his failure and the vanishing possibility of a reward.

Instead of returning to the brig, however, Reeve was led up to the deck, where the other prisoners were already assembled against one side of the railing, staring out at a bubble in the sea.

In the distance a giant dome rose from the waters. A jagged maw defined a collapsed section toward one side, like a jigsaw puzzle with one piece missing. Boats thronged around this edifice, hugging its sides, some with sails like their barque, but most barges, rafts, and canoes. The sea bristled with activity near and far, laden boats heading to and from the dome.

“Trading center?” Reeve asked Bunyan.

Bunyan smiled, showing teeth the size of walnuts. “Not for you” was his answer.

From below deck, the grunts of crew bearing down on the oars could be heard in rhythmic pulses. The great paddles, zooming upward toward the sun, became mirror-bright before falling in unison below his vision.

“Where are we? Where is the Tallstory River from here?” Not expecting the brute to answer, he was surprised to hear Bunyan say:

“Yonder.” He nodded toward the dome, presumably to some point beyond it. “Atlantis commands the sea and the river here. As it now commands you.”

Visions of slavery and barbarity sprang to Reeve’s mind; he hoped he was wrong. Turning from the panorama of this so-called Atlantis, Reeve saw the huddle of the claver women, sticking together, disdaining to mingle with Spar and Loon. The one he’d fought with—Nerys, she was called—swept her gaze across him with undisguised contempt. Some distance away, Spar squinted into the sun, eyeing the dome with the disgust he had formerly reserved for Reeve. Marie stood at the deck railing, also mesmerized by the
dome. Loon, however, was watching
him
. He approached her.

“This is …?” she asked, cocking her head at the dome.

“One of the old master domes for terraforming. This one was called the Jupiter Dome, if I remember my history.”

She dipped her forefinger into a splash of water on the rail, then sucked the finger in what seemed a childish gesture, but one he knew was something else entirely. “Spicy-sweet,” she said.

“Sweet?”

She nodded, turning to view the dome with new interest. “The good brown taste.” She glanced back at him, smiling an infectious and joyful grin, sharing with him whatever happiness this observation brought her.

Reeve put his hand on her far shoulder, and she stepped closer to him, allowing his arm to rest on her back. He wasn’t sure how this had happened, that he was now holding her in the circle of his arm as they watched their fate approach, but she felt warm at his side and that was enough at this moment. Spar, observing them, pursed his lips, no doubt refraining with difficulty from commenting on Reeve’s presumption.

Kalid stood at the prow, one leg braced on the gunwale and his hand resting on his knee, leaning into the wind and seeming to tow the ship behind him as he sped onward. While the bow smashed through the waves, Kalid rode the heaving deck as though bolted in place, a man at home in a way Reeve had not felt since that last coldwalk on Station.

As the barque drew near to the dome, they began to tilt their heads upward to view the great loft of the structure, several hundred feet high. With its slightly blue color, it looked for a moment like a partially submerged Earth sinking into a galactic deluge. Reeve wondered if any of the founding colonists had ever had that thought, or if, in their optimism, the dome was a
jewel in the crown of the colony’s achievement. Indeed, the latticework of hexagonal supports lent a cut-diamond look to the construct—save for the gash in its side, from which a long pier stretched out. Alongside this dock boats moored next to stacks of trade goods. Darkness filled the opening, cutting off a further view.

Other boats were now swarming alongside their ship. The sloop just starboard of them was piled high with junk—great heaps of rusted metal, sheets of fiber-fuse and arcane machine parts. Atop the mound of refuse rode cages of animals, including game birds. In the prow, a buffalo stood resolutely, its fur glistening with sea spray, two of its legs chained to rings in the deck. This boat and others began jockeying for slips at the pier, but if they thought to compete with Kalid, they were soon disappointed, for he ignored the pier and headed straight for the mouth of the dome, the holdfast of Dante.

4

Nerys refused to betray fear or dismay as they approached the dome. Clearly the rats had herded their prisoners on deck to behold the mighty stronghold and cower before it, crushing their spirits before commanding their bodies in slavery. Though only the tiniest victory, she kept her face strictly neutral. Meanwhile she surveyed everything hungrily, searching for any handhold to pull herself up. Every collection of humans had its stairway to power. Here in this warren of rats would be the lead rat and the top attendants; if there was a way to rise among them, she would find that way, for Anar’s sake.

On Eiko’s face she saw a slave mentality already crouching amid her slack features. Thallia was stalwart as ever, but her eyes, sunk to small black beads, betrayed her grim assessment of their future. To Nerys, however, if one looked beyond the sheer size of
the place and the multitude of slaves and traders, one could see the small details that might offer advantage.

The stronghold was well situated for defense. Located far offshore, the dome afforded its lookouts a view for miles in every direction. At the nearest shore, a gap in the cliffs formed a narrow wash that would pinch an invading force into columns. The exterior of the structure looked intact except for a collapsed section just large enough to stage a fast counterattack against an approach by water.

Despite these defensive advantages, though, the place looked less preoccupied with war than trade. Beside a long dock, dories and rafts surged three and four abreast to off-load their wares. As the rat ship passed these vessels, Nerys surveyed the chaotic variety of trade goods: machinery, lengths of pipe and timber, industrial drums, rolls of wire, canisters, and the occasional piece of furniture, some common and others grand.

She pulled Anar closer as the child trembled in the cold breeze. “Never forget, Anar, that I love you.” The child looked up at her as though hearing a far-off voice that she struggled to recognize.

The shouts of traders and dock leaders arose in a clatter of voices as the rats and the subrats haggled over price. Sometimes the price was people, Nerys saw, as a man in a canoe led a bound woman into his boat and paddled away.

Now the mouth of the dome rose above the rat ship, and the shadow of its gullet fell over the deck.

Lights bloomed from tall sticks along the interior wharf. They weren’t torches, but clean-burning lights, hissing gently as though fueled by some source in the stick. In the ghostly light a bewildering interior landscape emerged. The rat ship had snugged up to the dock next to a giant tank half the size of the ship. From this rounded mass sprouted parallel tubes that turned in unison and dove into a cylinder that soared hundreds
of feet above their heads. In the shadows behind the tank were coiled ducts and metal casings and strangely fashioned chambers. Remnants of bright-colored paint defined each drum and pipe, as though the builder of this place had striven for beauty amid utility.

Then the oaf named Bunyan shoved her in the back, and Nerys staggered forward with her daughter, down a plank hastily laid from pier to deck. The Stationer called Reeve preceded her. At his side walked the old woman, who had already lived twice as long as the common claver, yet breathed freely, with no trace of bluing. Her companion was a foul-tempered fellow indeed, for all his trappings of superiority. The smear of clear jelly around his mouth might be evidence of his mastery over the indigo death, Nerys mused, but couldn’t protect him from the rats.