Diamond Mask (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (28 page)

“Is it dangerous?”

“Nay, it puffs off harmlessly now and then and the prevailing winds carry the ash out over the sea. The only habitation anywhere near it is the Daoimean Dubh Mines, and they’re safe enough tucked in a gorge of the Tuath Peninsula. But there are other volcanoes in southern BB that bear careful watching. Not only for lava flows and ashfall, but because their eruptions can melt snow and glacier ice and cause lahars—terrible fast-moving mudflows. The reason Beinn Bhiorach was the last continent to be settled is because it has the most active volcanoes. But they do good as well as ill. Their gases and drifting bits of mineral dust help make good soil in some places and also nourish the airplants. It’s when the fiery mountains are quiet that the luibheannach an adhair grow scarce and the airfarmers have hard times.”

“Has—has it been hard like that for Daddy?”

Kyle nodded. “He’s been struggling in poortith for over five years, not even able to afford a full slate of workers. It’s been a long dormant period for the local firepots. They’re cooking nicely now, though, and things will be fine at the farm once this bonanza harvest is safely in. But listen to me, lass. You mustn’t shame your Dad asking questions about the bad years.” It was one of the reasons your mother left him.

“Oh, no! I’d never do that.”

Dee was silent then, thinking about what Grandad had told her and sometimes watching the view of Beinn Bhiorach below. Frequent openings in the clouds revealed an elongated landmass with high mountains and glaciers calving icebergs into the sea. More volcanoes, smoking gently, appeared now and again along
the continent’s western coast or among the islands offshore. Masha and Ken awoke and admired the blue sun, which gradually became greenish, then golden, then brilliant vermilion. As it finally sank beneath the thickening cloud deck great fan-shaped rays of purple and red appeared, expanding until nearly half the sky was dyed the color of burgundy and the backlit dark clouds nearest the western horizon looked like a bed of glowing embers.

The navigation unit of the Porsche chimed and said: “ETA Glen Tuath Farm airspace five minutes. Cirrostratus veil eleven-pip-three kloms, broken stratocumulus layer two-pip-three with base at zero-pip-niner. Visibility below clouds twenty-one, precipitation none, sea-level wind north one-zero, sea-level air temp plus zero-eight. Attention! Abundant aerial vegetation vicinity Goblin Archipelago, Daoimean Mountains, Loch Tuath, Rudha Glas, and Tuath Peninsula between eight-pip-three and six-pip-seven kloms altitude may constitute a hazard to unshielded rhocraft, reaction-engine flyers, and powered aerostats. Please select auto or free flight landing option now. Failure to exercise navigation decision within five minutes will result in your vehicle being inserted into a holding pattern.”

Kyle keyed the RF communicator. “Eesht, Glen Tuath! It’s Kyle Macdonald here ready to drop down your chimney with some rare cargo! Ian! Are you there, laddie? Can I fly in free as usual?”

“Janet Finlay comin’ back,” a grating female voice responded. The accent was strange—definitely not Scottish or British. “Ian’s still out but he and the rest of the crew have full cargo cells and we expect ’em any minute. Use the auto landing option and be damn sure your sigma is activated this time.”

Kyle rolled his eyes, but his voice was cordial. “Why certainly, Janet, luvvie. I wouldn’t dream of frying the darlin’ wee floaters! Tell me you’ve set aside a plass baggie of the finest for the two of us to share tonight.”

“Save your lame humor for your sleazy books,” the voice snapped. “Glen Tuath out.”

Kyle burst out laughing and Gran Masha said to him in Gaelic, “You should be ashamed of yourself, teasing the poor woman like that.”

Kyle replied in kind. “Och, Thrawn Janet will survive, whether or not she ever succumbs to the lure of the flirting-weed.”

“You will
not
discuss the pharmacology of airplants or make
vulgar jokes about them in front of the children! Is that understood, you great blabbermouth?”

The egg navigation unit said: “ETA Glen Tuath airspace one minute. Please select auto or free flight landing option now. Failure to—”

“Aye, you bloody thing,” Kyle growled, using Standard English. “Auto landing. Go!”

What in the world had Gran Masha and Grandad been talking about in Gaelic? Dee hadn’t a clue, but it didn’t matter. The egg was plummeting down and soon she would meet her Daddy.

“Watch now!” Kyle exclaimed. “You see those patches of greeny-pink fog? There, we’re into it. It’s the airplants!”

Dee and Ken plastered their faces against the transparent part of the egg’s dome. But they were descending so rapidly that the drift of strange organisms seemed to flash past in an instant. This time there were no destructive flashes; the slick sigma force-field Kyle had turned on deflected the plants without igniting their flammable gases or otherwise harming them.

“I see something bigger out there!” Dee exclaimed. “A bird!”

“Likely a faol na h-iarmailt, a sky-wolf. But he’s not after the weeds. Those things prey on the daoine sìth—the tiny grazing creatures that feed on the airplants. Their Gaelic name means ‘fairy folk’ and they’re fascinating and a wee bit dangerous as well. Sky-wolves are usually harmless to people unless they catch a pilot climbing around on the superstructure of the flitter. Then they can be vicious devils, dive-bombing you with their stony excrement and trying to bite with their toothed beaks.”

“Slow the egg down, Grandad,” Ken pleaded. “We want to see the fairies and the airplants close up.”

“Sorry, laddie. We’re in the grip of the farm’s NAVCON and Thrawn Janet would wax my tail if I did an override. You’ll see processed specimens of the airplants soon enough, and when your Dad has a free moment he’ll likely enough take you up in the big flitter to see the whole aerial ecosystem live.”

Hesitantly, Ken asked, “Who’s this Janet, Grandad? And what does that word ‘thrawn’ mean?”

Kyle began to hem and haw and looked embarrassed. Gran Masha said reprovingly, “It’s a derogatory term in Scots dialect that your grandfather mistakenly thinks is funny. You children are never to use it in connection with Citizen Janet Finlay, who is your father’s house and office manager. She—she seems rather a stern person, from what little I know after talking to her
on the teleview, but you are to be polite and respectful to her. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Gran Masha,” they said meekly. But Dee had readily discovered the meaning of the odd word from overtones of the professor’s thoughts: thrawn meant “unpleasant” or “misshapen.” Grandad had intended both terms to apply to Daddy’s house manager, and Dee felt a slight shiver of apprehension. In her concern about her father, Dee had never considered what the other people living on the farm might be like. Not only Janet, whom Grandad made fun of because he was a little afraid of her, but also the other farm workers and the three nonborn children Daddy had taken as fosterlings when Mummie left him and took her and Kenny away. Gran had willingly explained the Caledonian custom of fosterage on the starship. But she had changed the subject when Dee wanted to know what a nonborn was, and the professor’s associated thought-image was so complex that Dee had been unable to understand it. Kenny hadn’t the foggiest, either, but he pretended he did and declared that a nonborn was some kind of orphan. Dee knew there was more to it than that, but there was no such entry in the Drumadoon Bay’s library and so her curiosity had remained unsatisfied.

The egg reached the cloud deck, decelerated, and began a long, slow, 180-degree turn through thick clouds. Eventually they emerged into a clear zone of gray twilight and saw the northern end of Beinn Bhiorach spread out below. The Porsche continued to descend at greatly reduced speed, flying now on a southerly course down a huge fjord with steep walls of dark rock interrupted here and there by scree slopes or canyons. Dee knew from her studies of the egg’s map-displays that it was Loch Tuath. Snow-tipped peaks and sawtooth ridges rose on either side and the calm black water was dotted with picturesque wooded islets and rocks. Kyle pointed out the massive extinct volcano called An Teallach that loomed 50 kloms to the east, its summit hidden in the clouds.

At the head of the sea-loch the land opened out and became somewhat less precipitous and barren. A medium-sized riverbed, clogged with boulders and having very little water in it at this time of year, ran through the valley. To the left of its mouth was a small cove with a dock where two cabin runabouts were tied up. A dirt road led up the left bank. Further to the east was a snug portable cabin set up next to an excavation among the rocks. Lamplight shone from the plass dwelling’s windows. A
Range Rover, a hop-lorry, and several large pieces of equipment covered with tarpaulins stood beside it.

“Those are the fossil-diggers,” Kyle said to Masha. “Salvage archaeologists named Logan and Majewski from the Old World. They’ve been working there nearly half a year. Ian plans to level that area eventually for a new warehouse, and by law the fossickers have to pick it over first so that nothing of scientific interest is lost or destroyed. We must invite ourselves to a nosh-up at their place while you’re here, Maire a ghràidh, for they’ve got the only supply of decent plonk on this end of Beinn Bhiorach—and the Logan woman makes barbecued ribs to die for.”

The course of the river up the glen into the misty southern highlands was marked by bordering stands of the multicolored coleus trees, already beginning to shed their leaves at this far northern latitude. The farm fields, completely enclosed in repellor-fencing, began about three kloms upstream from the sea-loch where a small bridge crossed the river. On both banks were pastures of proper green grass that gave way to rock or moorland as the terrain rose. A double-rut track zigzagged away westward into the Daoimean Mountains, leading to the mines. Little red West Highland cattle as shaggy as yaks grazed in one meadow and a herd of black miniature horses dotted another. Sheep wandered the stonier uplands. A flight of white birdlike creatures soared below the slowly drifting egg, heading north toward the open sea.

Ian Macdonald’s establishment consisted of more than a dozen sturdy buildings, all with steep, silver-striped black roofs that would heat up to melt winter snow or ice. The elegant gabled farmhouse that Viola Strachan had designed stood on a rise surrounded by rock gardens and genuine gnarled Scots pines. The house was painted light Wedgwood blue picked out with white and was discreetly crowned with two satellite dishes, a navigation dome, and a podded device that looked for all the world like a small laser cannon. At the foot of the knoll lay an unusually large egg-pad with two rhocraft parked in front of an open hangar. Across the landing area from the house was an important-looking barnlike structure. Steam vented in a thin plume from machinery at the rear of it.

“That’s the primary processing factory for the airplants,” the writer said. “Mostly automated. Over there’s the main stock barn, a warehouse, and a combination pub and general store that Janet operates for the sake of the workers and the occasional drop-in patron. Nearer the river are three cottages for the farmhands
and their families, who usually move into apartments in Muckle Skerry when fast winter sets in up here. The other buildings are the implement shed, the repair shop, and the utility-powerhouse.”

“Kyle, some sort of very odd aircraft are coming.” Gran Masha was gazing intently up the valley, obviously exerting her farsight. “A large yellow one and four smaller ones of different colors. They’re flying very slowly. I’ve never seen anything quite like them.”

“Flitters,” he said, tapping away at the pads of the console viewer, “more formally known as aerostatic harvesters.”

A close-up of the parade of flying machines appeared on the viewscreen and the children leaned forward eagerly to look. The craft were shaped like fat wedges of cheese with blunt, bullet-shaped fuselages suspended beneath.

“The top part of the flitter is a rigid hydrogen balloon with inflatable external storage compartments for the airplant harvest,” Kyle went on. “The operator rides in an enclosed cockpit below, but he sometimes has to climb outside in mid-air to fix things that go wrong with the pumps up in the balloon that slurp the floating plants. The fairy-critters clog the intake all the time, even though the farmer zaps as many of them as he can with thread-beam lasers, and once in a while the harvester sucks up a certain kind of really bad plant that can drill holes in the thin walls of the storage cells and let the other plants escape. Och, airfarming isn’t a job for the fainthearted.”

“Now I can see the flitters coming!” Ken said. “Does Daddy fly the big yellow one?”

“Not usually,” his grandfather said. “It’s slow and clumsy and usually acts as a storage dump for the others at the same time it chugs along harvesting. Your Dad usually drives the silver jobbie. It’s so maneuverable that the wee things have a hard time escaping it. The three other flitters belong to the hired hands.”

“Are flitters rhocraft?”

“No, lad. There’s some technical reason why even sigma-shielded rhocraft can’t be used to harvest airplants. The flitters maneuver by means of high-compression air jets, but the machines are held up by hydrogen in the balloon section. Your Dad knows more about how they work than I do.”

The Porsche egg flew slower and slower, until it hovered motionless 200 meters above the farm. Kyle explained that the loaded flitters had priority to land first, then NAVCON would let
their egg come down. The aerostats arrived in a stately train: yellow, red, blue, and Ancient Gordon tartan, with the silver flitter bringing up the rear. They landed neatly in a row with their noses at a white line drawn on the tarmac in front of the factory. Two people emerged from the building to meet the harvesters. Through the egg’s panel viewer Dee watched a man and a woman in coveralls pull corrugated tubes from small hatches in the pavement and begin attaching them to the superstructures of the aircraft.

“Unloading the skyweeds,” Kyle explained. “Have to sip ’em out very, very gently or they—hah! Now it’s finally our turn.”