City of Golden Shadow (90 page)

"Do we have time for something else? It is important to me."

"Of course."

"Then come with me a little way farther." He led her forward. Although they walked what seemed to be only a few hundred yards, the hills were suddenly much closer, looming overhead like stern parents. In their shadow stood a small circle of grass shelters.

"This is unnatural, to move so fast, but I know our time is short." !Xabbu took her wrist and drew her to an empty stretch of sandy soil before one of the shelters. A pile of small sticks was already laid out there. "I must also do one more unnatural thing." He gestured. The sun began to move swiftly; in moments it had completely disappeared behind the hills and the sky had darkened to violet. "Now I will build a fire."

!Xabbu took two sticks from his pouch. "Male stick, female stick," he said with a smile. "That is what we say." He placed one into an indentation in the other, then held the second to the ground with his feet while he rapidly spun the first between his palms. From time to time he plucked bits of dry grass from his pouch and pushed them into the indentation. Within moments, the grass was smoking.

The stars had burst into view in the night sky overhead and the temperature was dropping rapidly. Renie shivered. She hoped her friend would get the fire going soon, even if that meant stretching accuracy a little.

As !Xabbu transferred the smoldering grass to the pile of sticks, she leaned back, looking at the sky. It was so wide! Wider and deeper than it ever seemed over Durban. And the stars seemed so close-she almost felt she could reach up and touch them.

The fire was surprisingly small, but she could feel its warmth. However, !Xabbu did not give her much chance to enjoy it. He took two strings of what appeared to be dried cocoons from his pouch and tied one around each of his ankles. When he shook them, they made a soft buzzing rattle.

"Come." He rose and beckoned. "Now we will dance."

"Dance?"

"Do you see the moon?" He pointed. It floated in the blackness like a pearl in a pool of oil. "And the ring around it? Those are the marks that the spirits make when they dance around it, for they feel it to be a fire, a fire just like this." He reached out and took her hand. Although a part of her could not forget that they were in separate tanks, yards apart, she also felt his familiar presence. However physics might define it, he was definitely holding her hand, leading her into a strange hopping dance.

"I don't know anything about. . . ."

"It is a healing dance. It is important. We have a journey ahead of us, and we have suffered much pain already. Just do as I do."

She did her best to follow his lead. At first she found it difficult, but then, when she stopped trying to think about it, she began to feel the rhythm. After a while, she felt nothing but the rhythm-shake, step, shake, shake, step, head back, arms up-and always there was the quiet whisper of !Xabbu's rattles and the soft slap of their feet on the sand.

They danced on beneath the ringed moon, before the hills that bulked black against the stars. For a while, Renie quite forgot everything else.

She pulled off her mask before she was all the way out of the gel, and for a moment found herself choking. Her father's hands were under her arms and he was pulling her out of the tank.

"No!" she said, fighting for breath. "Not yet." She cleared her throat. "I have to scrape the rest of this stuff off me and put it back in the tank-it's hard to replace, so there's no point dripping it all over the floor."

"You were down a long time," her father said angrily. "We thought the two of you gone brain-dead or something. That man said not to bring you up, that your friend say it's okay."

"I'm sorry, Papa." She looked over to !Xabbu, who was seated on the edge of his own tank scraping gel. Renie smiled at him."It was amazing. You should see what !Xabbu's made. How long were we under?"

"Almost two hours," said Jeremiah disapprovingly.

"Two hours! My God!" Renie was shocked. We must have spent at least an hour of that dancing. "I'm so sorry! You must have been worried to death."

Jeremiah made a disgusted face. "We could see that your breathing and heart and whatnot were all normal. But we were waiting for you to come back and join us because that French woman's been wanting to talk to you. Important message, she said."

"What? What did Martine want? You should have brought us back out."

"We never know what you expect," said her father, scowling. "All this craziness-how someone supposed to know when he going to get shouted at? What he supposed to do?"

"All right, all right. I said I was sorry. What was the message?"

"She say call her when you come out."

Renie wrapped a military-issue bathrobe around her still-sticky form, men called Martine's exchange number. The mystery woman was on the line within moments.

"I am so glad you have called. Was the experiment a successful one?"

"Excellent, but I can tell you about that later. They said you had an urgent message."

"Yes, from Monsieur Singh. He said to tell you that he thinks he may have found a way to beat the Otherland security. But he also said levels of use have gone up dramatically in the past few days-the network is very busy, which may mean something important is about to happen. Perhaps that was the meaning of the hourglass, the calendar. The ten days are almost up, in any case. We dare not wait for another opportunity."

Renie's heart sped. "Which means?"

"Which means that Singh will go in tomorrow. What he cannot do by planning, he will trust to luck, he said. And if you are joining us, you will have to do it then-there may not be another chance."

CHAPTER 30

NETFEED/NEWS: Malaysian Rebels Warn West To Stay Away

(visual: jungle fighting in North Borneo; rocket casualties)

VO: The Malaysian rebel group which calls itself "Swords of New Malacca" warned Western tourists and business travelers that they are entering a war zone. The rebels, who have waged a six-year war against the Malaysian federal government to overturn Malaysia's secular and pro-Western policies, killed three Portuguese diplomats in an attack last week, and say that they will now treat all Westerners in Malaysia, including Australians and New Zealanders, as "enemy spies."

(visual: Rang Hussein Kawat, New Malaccan rebel spokesman)

HUSSEIN KAWAT: "Europe and America have enforced a regime of hooliganism on the rest of the world for five hundred years, but their day is ending, in blood if necessary. Our own blood may flow, but it will no longer be poisoned by Western credits, Western ideas. The corruption of the federal government infidels in Kuala Lumpur is a stink in the nostrils of heaven."

Hurley Brummond stood at the helm of the airboat, wheel clenched in one hand, his stern, bearded profile silhouetted by the light of Ullamar's two moons.

"We'll tweak their noses, Jonas!" he bellowed over the roar of the wind. "The greenskin priests will learn they can't go fiddling about with an Earthman's fiancée!"

Paul wanted to ask a question, but he didn't have the heart to shout. Brummond had returned to his figurehead pose, staring down on the lantern-lit towers of Tuktubim. Paul had wanted to find the winged woman again, but he was not entirely sure that this was the way he wanted to go about it,

"Hurley's got his blood up now," said Professor Bagwalter. "It really won't do any good to fret. But never fear-he's mad as a March hare, but if anyone can get the job done, he can."

The airboat abruptly lurched downward, making the ship's brass fittings rattle. Paul put out a hand to steady himself, then reached to make sure Gally had not been knocked over. The boy was wide-eyed, but seemed more excited than frightened.

The airboat's angle of descent steepened. With the ship plunging downward at such an angle that it was all Paul could do simply to hold on to the railing, Hurley Brummond left his position at the helm, dragging himself forward hand over hand along the railing, then tugged at a great metal handle on the back of the ship's cabin. All the ship's lanterns, on the bow, on the sailcloth wings, and along the hull, suddenly went dark. The airboat continued to plummet.

A towertop suddenly leaped up on one side of the ship and flashed upward past them. Another daggered up just beyond the rail on Paul's side, so close he felt he could touch it. A third sprouted beside the first. Terrified, Paul looked through the carved railing. The ship was hurtling down toward an entire forest of needle-sharp minarets.

"My God!" Paul jerked Gally toward him, although he knew mere was nothing he could do to protect the boy."We're going to. . . ."

The ship suddenly bottomed out, throwing Paul and the others to the deck. A moment later it shuddered to a halt in midair, hovering in the midst of a thicket of pointed roofs. Brummond had scrambled back to the helm. "Sorry about the bump," he brayed. "Had to snuff the lanterns, though! We're going to surprise them."

As Paul helped Gally to his feet, Brummond was tipping a furled rope ladder over the railing. As it rustled down into darkness, he straightened with a satisfied smile on his face.

"Perfect. We're right over the Imperial Gardens, just as I thought. They'll never expect us to go that way. We'll be in and out with your fair lady in the blink of an eye, Jonas old man."

Professor Bagwalter was still kneeling on the deck, searching for his glasses. "I say, Hurley, that was a bit uncalled-for, wasn't it? I mean, couldn't we have made a bit more leisurely approach?"

Brummond shook his head with obvious fondness. "Bags, you old stick-in-the-mud! You know my motto: 'Move like the wind, strike like lightning.' We aren't going to give these ghastly priest chappies a chance to spirit our quarry away. Now, let's get cracking. Jonas, you'll come, of course. Bags, I know you're anxious for a little action, but perhaps you should stay here with the ship, be ready to take off. Besides, someone ought to keep an eye on the young lad."

"I want to go!" Gally's eyes were bright.

"No, against my rules." Brummond shook his head. "What do you say. Bags? I know it's hard cheese on you, but just this once perhaps you should give the adventure side a miss."

The professor did not seem unduly put out. In fact, Paul thought he seemed grateful for the excuse. "If you think it best. Hurley."

"That's settled, then. Let me just strap on old Betsy here. . . ." Brummond opened the lid of a trunk beside the steering wheel and removed a sheathed cavalry saber, which he belted around his hips. He turned to Paul."How about you, old man? Weapon of choice? I might have put a pistol or two in here, but you'll have to promise not to spark one off until I give the word." Brummond pulled out a pair of what to Paul seemed vaguely archaic sidearms and peered down their barrels. "Good. Both loaded." He passed them over to Paul, who shoved them in his belt. "After all, we don't want to let the priests know we're on our way any earlier than we have to, hmmmm?" Brummond continued to dig in the chest. "So you'll need something to start with, too. Ah, just the ticket."

He straightened up, holding an outlandishly ornate weapon that seemed part ax, part spear, and which stood two-thirds of Paul's height, "Here you go. It's a Vonari saljak. Surprisingly good for close-in work, and rather appropriate, since your fiancée's one of 'em. A Vonari, I mean."

As Paul stared at the strange, filigreed weapon, Brummond trotted to the railing and swung his leg over. "Come on, old man. Time to go." Feeling almost helpless, as though he moved through someone else's dream, Paul followed him over the railing.

"Be careful," said Gally, but Paul thought the boy looked like he was enjoying the prospect of violent danger more than he ought to be.

"Do try to keep Hurley from creating an interplanetary incident," added Bagwalter.

Paul found it difficult to climb with the saljak in one hand. A hundred feet below the ship-and still half that distance from the ground-Brummond stopped and waited impatiently for him.

"I say, old chap, you'd think it was someone else's sweetheart entirely that we were on our way to rescue. We're going to lose the element of surprise."

"I'm . . . I'm not really used to this sort of thing." Paul swayed, his free hand sweaty against the ladder's rungs.

"Here." Brummond reached up and took the saljak from him, then resumed his descent. Paul now found it easier to descend, and could even look around for the first time. They were surrounded still, but by oddly shaped trees rather than towers. The garden seemed to stretch a great distance in all directions: the warm Martian night was full of the scent of growing things.

There was something about the thick greenery and the silence that tickled his memory. Plants. . . . He struggled to remember. It seemed somehow important. A forest surrounded by walls. . . .

Brummond had stopped again, this time at the bottom of the ladder, a short jump from the ground. Paul slowed. Whatever memory the Imperial Gardens had called to now slid out of reach once more, replaced by a more recent concern. "You said that they would never expect us to come in this way, but I saw lots of airships tonight. Why will this surprise them?"