City of Golden Shadow (93 page)

Paul took a step backward, baffled and more than a little frightened. The professor was spouting incomprehensibilities, but some of them seemed as though they should mean something to him.

"Professor!" The cartographer had almost reached them. His jade-tinged skin was shiny with perspiration. He did not look as well suited to the climate as the nimbor laborers. "Gracious sir, forgive my interruption, but you are wanted for a conversation on the radiophonic device."

Bagwalter turned, his impatience obvious. "For God's sake, what is it? Who would be calling?"

"It is the Tellari Embassy in Tuktubim."

The professor turned back to Paul. "I'd better take care of this. Listen, old man, if I've said something offensive, it was unintentional. Please put the whole thing out of your mind." He tried to hold Paul's gaze as if searching for something, his expression almost yearning. For a moment, Paul thought he could sense a very different face looking out from behind the mask of the phlegmatic Englishman.

Troubled, Paul watched Bagwalter head back toward the main circle of tents.

Vaala was awake and sitting up in bed when he arrived, her wings partially unfurled. There was something both confusing and gloriously appropriate about the great feathered sweeps that extended on either side of her, but Paul was already full-fed with half-memories. As he told her the complete story of her rescue from the Soombar's palace, he gave her the tea, which was finally cool enough to drink. She took it in both hands and lifted it to her mouth for a tentative sip.

"It's good." She smiled. Her look of pleasure made his insides ache. "Strange, but I like it. Is it an Ullamari drink?"

"I think so." He sat down on the tent floor, his back against the stiff canvas. "There are a lot of things I don't remember, of course. So much that I don't know where to start thinking, sometimes."

She gave him a long, serious look. "You should not have taken me from the priests, you know. They will be angry. In any case, they will only choose another daughter of Vonar for the sacrifice."

"I don't care. That may sound terrible, but it's true. I have nothing but you, Vaala. Can you understand that? You are my only hope of finding out who I am, where I come from."

"But how can that be?" Her wings lifted and extended, then folded behind her once more. "Before I came here for festival Season, I never left my world, and in all my life I have only met a few of you Tellari. I would remember you, surely."

"But you said you remembered something-a leafy place, trees, a garden, something like that. And you said my name sounded familiar."

She shrugged her slender shoulders. "It is strange, I admit."

Paul was becoming increasingly conscious of an odd grinding sound coming from outside, but he was unwilling to be distracted. "It's more than strange. And if I know anything in the world, it is that you and I have met before." He moved closer and took her hand in his. She resisted for only a moment, then allowed him to possess it. He felt as though he could draw strength from the mere contact. "Listen, Professor Bagwalter-he's one of the people who helped rescue you-he asked me some very strange questions. I felt they should mean something to me, but they didn't. He called this place a simulation, for one thing."

"A simulation? Did he mean an illusion, like the trickery practiced by the Soombar's priests?"

"I don't know. And he mentioned names, lots of names. 'Shongloor' was one of them. The other was something like 'June Bough.' "

There was a rustle at the tent door. Paul turned to see Gally pulling the flap aside. The harsh whining noise was markedly louder. "Paul, come see! They're almost here. And it's the most wonderful machine!"

Paul was irritated, but it was hard to ignore the boy's excitement. He turned back to find that Vaala had pushed herself against the tent wall, her black eyes wide.

"What is it?"

"That name." She lifted her long-fingered hands as though to keep something away, "I . . . I do not like it."

"Which name?"

"Paul, come on!" Gally was pulling at his arm. The grinding was very loud now, and there was a deeper noise beneath it that he could feel through the very sand beneath the tent floor. It was almost impossible to ignore.

"I'll be back in a moment," he told Vaala, then allowed Gally to lead him out the door of the tent, where he stopped in astonishment.

Waddling down the valley toward the camp was the strangest machine he had ever seen or could ever imagine seeing, a huge four-legged device almost a hundred feet long that looked like nothing so much as a mechanical crocodile made of metal beams and polished wooden panels. The head was as narrow as the prow of a ship; the back, except for three giant smokestacks belching steam, was covered with striped tenting. Flywheels turned, pistons plunged up and down, and steam whistled from the vents as the thing slowly made its way down the slope. Paul could just dimly see several tiny figures standing in a recessed space on the top of the head.

"Isn't it grand!" shouted Gally over the racket.

Professor Bagwalter appeared around the corner of one of the tents and approached them. "Frightfully sorry about all this!" he bellowed. "They just called on the radiophone. Apparently they're from the Tellari Embassy. Supposed to perform some kind of check on our arrangements before we leave for the back of beyond. Some little irritation devised by the Soombar's mandarins, I have no doubt. Our embassy wallahs are always trying to stay on the Soombar's good side, which usually means bad luck for the rest of us."

"Do you think it has anything to do with rescuing Vaala?" Paul shouted, watching in helpless fascination as the monstrous vehicle crawled to a halt a few dozen yards outside the camp, shuddering and piping like a tea kettle as its boilers were vented. A golden sun was painted on its side, surrounded by four rings, the inner two and outermost white, the third bright green.

"Oh, I rather doubt that, old man. You saw how slow the thing is. They would have had to set out a couple of days ago."

As the clamor of the device died down, Paul heard Vaala's wings rustling behind him. He blindly reached out a hand; a moment later, he felt her fingers close around his.

"What is it?"

"Someone from the Embassy. But it might be a good idea if they didn't see you," he said.

The great mechanical head had settled to within only a few feet of the ground. Now the side of it opened up, tumbling outward in an array of hinged plates that formed a stairway. A pair of figures moved out of the shade of the awning toward the steps.

"I suppose I'd better make myself useful," said Bagwalter, starting toward the strange crocodile-machine.

Something about the men moving down the stairway struck Paul with a pang of unease. The first was thin and angular, something glinted on his face as though he wore spectacles like the professor's. The second, only now emerging from shadow, was so grotesquely fat that he seemed to be having a difficult time descending. Paul stared, his fear growing. There was something dreadful about this pair, something that radiated chill through his thoughts.

Vaala was moaning in his ear. As he turned toward her, she jerked her hand away and took a stumbling step back. Her eyes were so wide with horror that he could see white all the way around her dark pupils.

"No!" She shivered as though with a fever. "No! I will not let those two have me again!"

Paul grabbed at her, but she had already moved out of reach. He darted a glance back at the new arrivals, who were just reaching the bottom of the stairs. Hurley Brummond and Joanna were stepping forward to welcome them, and the professor was only a few yards behind.

"Come back," he called to Vaala. "I'll help you-"

She spread her wings, then took a few steps away from the tents and brought the great pinions down; they beat the air with an audible crack. They flapped again and again and her feet began to lift from the red sand.

"Vaala!" He sprinted after her, but she was already six feet off the ground and rising. Her wings spread wider, catching the thin desert breeze, and she vaulted higher still. "Vaala!" He jumped, reaching hopelessly, but she was already as small and far away as-the notion came to him without source or explanation-an angel atop a Christmas tree.

"Paul? Where is she going?" Gally seemed to think it was some kind of game.

Vaala was moving rapidly toward the hills, flying strongly now. As Paul watched her growing more distant, he could almost feel his heart turning to stone inside him. Below, the fat shape and the thin shape were in some kind of heated conversation with the professor. They radiated a terrible wrongness- even a quick glance at them now filled him with the terror that must have forced Vaala into flight. He turned and dashed down the slope toward the far side of the camp.

"Paul?" Gally's voice was growing faint behind him. He hesitated, then turned and ran back toward the boy.

"Come on!" he shouted. Every moment wasted seemed an eternity. His past, his entire history, was disappearing rapidly toward the hills, and something dreadful was waiting for him at the bottom of the valley. Gally stared, confused. Paul waved his arms frantically. As the boy finally began to trot toward him, Paul turned and bolted toward the anchored airships.

He had already scrambled onto the nearest ship, the one that had brought them, when Gally caught up. He leaned down and pulled the boy aboard, then raced toward the helm.

"What are you doing? Where did the lady go?"

Bagwalter and the others had finally noticed that something was amiss. Joanna, shielding her eyes with her other hand, was pointing at Vaala, now little more than a pale spot in the blue sky, but Hurley Brummond was pelting toward the airship at a great pace. Paul forced himself to examine the mahogany panel that contained the controls. There were a number of small brass levers. Paul flipped one. Deep inside the hull, a bell rang. Paul cursed and flipped the rest. Something began to throb beneath his feet.

"Damn it, man, what do you think you're doing?" Brummond shouted. He was only a few dozen yards away now, covering ground swiftly with his great tigerish strides. His look of irritated disbelief was hardening into fury, and he was already fumbling for the saber at his belt.

Paul pulled back on the wheel. The airship shuddered, then began to rise. Brummond reached the spot where it had been and jumped, but fell short and tumbled back to the ground in a cloud of dust. The two new arrivals were hurrying forward, arms waving.

"Don't be a fool, Jonas!" Professor Bagwalter shouted, his hands cupped around his mouth. "There's no need to. . . ." His voice became too faint to hear as the airship rapidly gained altitude. Paul turned his eyes upward. Vaala was only a pinpoint on the horizon, already traveling above the sawtoothed hills.

The camp quickly fell away behind them. The ship rocked and pitched as Paul struggled to decipher the controls, then abruptly rolled sideways. Gally slid down the polished floor of the cockpit, only saving himself by a last-moment clutch at Paul's leg. Paul wrestled the ship back more or less level, but it was not stable, and they were receiving rough handling in the windier skies above the hills.

Vaala was a little closer now. Paul felt a moment's sense of satisfaction. They would catch her, and the three of them would flee together. Together, they would solve all the riddles.

"Vaala!" he called, but she was still too distant to hear him.

As they came across the crest of the hills a sudden gust of wind pushed them sideways once more. Despite Paul's straining hands on the wheel, the ship's nose dipped down. Another gust set them spinning and he lost control. Gally clung to his leg, shouting in terror. Paul pulled back on the wheel until his joints were aflame with agony, but the ship kept tumbling. First the ground leaped up at them, then they were falling into the sky, then the ground was springing at them once more. Paul had a brief, cracked glimpse of the Great Canal writhing below them like a dark serpent, then something smacked against his head and the world exploded into sparks.

CHAPTER 31

NETFEED/MUSIC: Dangerous Sonics Banned

(visual: young woman in pressurized hospital tent)

VO: After a series of injuries and one death during the latest tour by the power wig band Will You Still Love Me When My Head Comes Off, promoters have banned the use of sound equipment that operates outside the range of human hearing. The ban was prompted when American and European insurance companies declared they would no longer insure events where "dangerous sonics" are used.

(visual: clip from "Your Blazing Face Is My Burning Heart")

WYSTLMWMHCO and other power wig groups have in turn threatened to boycott the US and Europe if necessary, saying they cannot allow bureaucrats to interfere with their artistic expression.

Renie hated it when her father sulked, but this was one time she had no intention of indulging him. "Papa, I have to do this. It's for Stephen. Isn't that important to you?"

Long Joseph rubbed his face with knob-knuckled hands. "Of course it's important, girl. Don't you be telling me I don't care about my boy. But I think all this computer monkeyshines is foolishness. You going to make your brother better with some kind of game?"