Diamond Mask (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (41 page)

Flying as fast as the lumbering bins could go, the harvest team left the fjord, passed above the sharp-nosed cape called Rudha Glas, and moved out over the wave-pounded islets and reefs of the Goblin Archipelago. (Their official name was Eileanan Bòcan, which no one ever bothered to use. Dee had quickly found out that even though Gaelic was a required subject in school, Caledonians spoke Standard English most of the time, and their pronunciation of the ancient tongue was often strange and their usage ungrammatical. No one minded except a few ultraethnic fanatics.)

The farm’s computerized tracking system had calculated that today the volume of airplants would be most dense in the area just north of the Goblins, where a thin stratum of smoglike volcanic ash from Ben Fizgig had spread out, providing a perfect concentration of nutrients that the weeds craved. One by one, the individual flitters were guided to their hunting grounds. Dee watched their images on her console monitor as they scattered over an area of 800 square kilometers. Finally, her own machine reached its assigned block of airspace and a mechanical voice said: “Glen Tuath NAVCON to GT-11. You have entered Block 4 of preassigned harvest area. Resume manual control of aircraft
within two minutes or your aircraft will be inserted into a holding pattern.”

“GT-11 on manual,” she said, and felt a little shiver of joy as the control stick came alive. Block 4, which she would share with her father, was at the northeasternmost corner of the rectangular search area.

“You keep to the bottom of the box, Dorrie,” Ian said inside her helmet. “Go easy at first. There’s a nice cloud seven-pip-niner kloms high that should be showing bright and clear on your target display. See it?”

“Affirm, Leader.”

“Go for it, lass. Sonas is àdh ort!”

“Good luck to you, too, Daddy,” she said, and soared off in pursuit of the precious weeds.

By lunchtime, Ian Macdonald pronounced his daughter to be “more or less competent,” but she knew he was really saying that she was very good indeed.

“I’m going to Block 3 now to help Aonghas,” he said. “You eat your lunch and then carry on here. Remember to ascend to an altitude safely above the weeds before hovering, and be alert for wandering torachan. And don’t forget to put your oxygen mask back on between bites of food. We don’t want you blacking out.”

“Affirm, Leader.”

Her father’s new black aerostat moved off to the west and was soon lost to sight among the small cumulus clouds that had begun to form. Dee neutralized the thrusters of her flitter and let it seek its altitude of equilibrium, rising among the swirls and drifts of aerial organisms, gently sucking them in as it ascended.

Individual plant species of Caledonian balloon-flora ranged in size from minute specks like red pepper to rarer things as big as apples that resembled masses of greenish soap bubbles. The commonest kinds of airplants had balloons the size of cherries or large peas, mottled bubblegum-pink and iridescent green. Photo-synthetic organs provided most of the energy for their life-processes, and they also took up water vapor and gained essential minerals from airborne dust and debris. All airplants stayed aloft by means of thin-walled pneumatophores, float-chambers containing lighter-than-air gases. The “body” of the plant might hang from its balloon, or be embedded within the float, or spread over the pneumatophore’s exterior like a weird growth on the surface of an odd-shaped little plass bag.

The luibheannach were highly sensitive to abrupt pressure changes in the atmosphere around them that might signal the presence of predators. When airplants perceived danger, special organs generated additional gases that enabled them to zip about under jet propulsion. The largest and most commercially valuable plants were also the speediest and most apt to drift around in a solitary fashion at lower altitudes. Dee had managed to capture respectable numbers of them this morning in spite of The Cheese’s clumsiness.

Now that her flitter had reached the upper section of the harvesting space, blue and brick-red fairy-critters began sailing into view, feeding on the abundant smaller plants. The aerial grazing animals looked something like elongated little jellyfish with complex bodies and dangling branched tentacles, with which they gathered their food. Dee knew she was supposed to blast every fairy she encountered with her thread-laser, not only because they fed on the valuable airplants, but also because their tough trailing arms could clog the pump mechanism of a harvester, making it necessary for the pilot to clear the intake orifice by hand. This meant climbing out of the cockpit, up the pylon, and out onto the exterior framework of the superstructure, secured by a lifeline. Dee had practiced the maneuver often. It was not especially dangerous, only a tedious waste of time.

No fairies had turned up during her first hours of work. Dee had been glad, because the creatures were strangely beautiful and she felt squeamish about killing them. Now, instead of firing the laser, she urged the little animals to get out of her way.

“Shoo! Truis! Mach as m’fhianuis! Get lost!”
GO SOMEPLACE ELSE!

As she formulated the final coercive thought, every one of the fragile grazers whisked away, leaving behind tiny puffs of vaporous “exhaust.”

Well done!
said her angel.

Dee gave a cry of dismay. What had she done? “No,” she whispered into her mask. “I didn’t!” But she did not dare to look inside her head to see if she had opened another of the dreadful boxes.

You did!
the invisible angel crowed.
And about time, too! Your coercive metafaculty was ready to break out spontaneously, and that might have been embarrassing, or even dangerous.

“I won’t use the power again,” she declared obstinately. “You can’t make me. I’ll hide it like I did the others and go on being normal forever!”

Don’t be silly. You’d better tell your brother about this. His own coercion became operant over four years ago. It’s not as strong as yours—but he’s been using it very effectively to keep Gavin Boyd from hassling him.

“Oh!” Dee felt oddly betrayed. Why hadn’t Kenny stopped the nonborn boy from being mean to
her?

The angel said:
He did this morning, so that Gavin wouldn’t spoil your first day of harvesting. Don’t you remember? Before that Ken was afraid to. Don’t be hard on him. Not everybody can be brave … Now go ahead and farspeak him. He’s going to need your help in a few minutes.

“Oh, all right! Now go away and let me alone! You’re not fooling me at all. I know what you’re
really
up to. You and that Jack.”

The angel said nothing.

The ascending Big Cheese finally emerged from the last billow of airplants into a clear region nearly ten kilometers above the Caledonian surface. The cirrus veil was very thin and the sky overhead was nearly blue. Below, little cumulus clouds seemed to float like miniature marshmallows in a crazy mix of vapor that looked like melted pistachio and strawberry ice cream. There was no sign of any of the other aerostats.

Feeling rather glum, she unwrapped her peanut-butter sandwich, unhooked her mask, and took a bite. Oh, yuck! Janet had put bacon in it again, even though Daddy had said it was all right for Dee not to eat meat. Well, perhaps Janet just forgot …

Dee nibbled around the edges and discarded the rest in the cockpit’s little fairy-incinerator. Then she summoned the position of Ken’s aircraft on the console monitor. The labeled blip showed that GT-10 had already departed the harvest area and was heading back southeast over the Goblins at an altitude of 5.5 kloms.

Kenny?

Uh? Oh it’s you is it.

Yes. Did you get a good load?

Jammed to busting … Don’t you think it would be smarter if we switched to RF com?

No. Listen Kenny … my coercing faculty came online.

Troch ort!

I know you’ve got it too.

[Hastily squelched obscenity.] Well for chrissake keep a lid on it dumbunny or both our asses will be Earthbound&down … not that the idea seems so tumturning to me anymore. This place
is the pits. More weird viruses than I can ever learn to redact away. If I lived somewhere with decent medics maybe I wouldn’t be such a rotten sickie bréochaid. And it’s stone boring here in wintertime. I miss AuldReekie something chronic never a dull mo in Edinburgh. Didja ever think that it might be
fun
bringing our powers up to snuff and having other operant kids for friends?

No! Don’t even think about it!

[Envy.] Why not?
I’m
not
*** {Daddy’s Little Princess} ***
like you.

Kenny please don’t be horrid. I can’t help it if—

AAAACK! OshitOJesusOmyGod … Dee!

[Fear.] Whatwhatwhat? Kennyanswerme!
Answer me!

Thingstherearethings pokingholesBIGHOLES God THINGS inside my storagecells insideALLthe cells tearingthewalls letting the plants out—

Dee used all her coercion:
Kenny call Daddy now.

Yesyesallright. “Mayday mayday GT Leader GT-10 has torachan!”

“Torachan!” said Sorcha MacAlpin’s voice. “Mother of God!”

An anonymous voice cursed and abruptly cut out.

“Kenny,” said Ian Macdonald, “be calm. How many storage-cells have ruptured?”

“The—the readout says twenty-seven. That’s all except three!”

“I’m on my way, laddie. Go into hover mode. D’you hear me? Hover!”

“Dad, something’s really wrong. The flitter is spinning around all crazy and—and I’m losing H-2 pressure besides venting cargo!”

“Roger, I’m coming,” said Ian. “Sit tight.”

Dee sat frozen in reaction to her brother’s disaster. The torachan were uncommon and insidious floating organisms, resembling medium-sized airplants except for their distinctive grayish color. They had developed a unique defense against the predatory fairy-critters. If they were seized they extruded long augerlike spines that impaled their aerial attackers. Torachan that were accidentally sucked into a harvester might remain dormant; but if the storage compartment was tightly packed with weeds, sooner or later the torachan would be irritated enough to explode into frenzied activity, puncturing and slashing the tough plasticized fabric like little high-speed drill bits going through gauze.

Having even a single tora trapped in a storage-cell meant losing
all of its cargo. Large numbers of them were sometimes able to cut through the reinforced inner wall of the gas envelope itself, releasing the hydrogen that provided lift to the aircraft.

Ken’s bin-flitter had evidently taken on a cargo contaminated with hundreds of the things. One of the pilots had been criminally careless.

Dee said: Kenny I’m coming to help too Daddy’s ship is faster but I’m a lot closer to you than he is!

She put The Big Cheese into a power descent. Once she was below the airplant stratum she went full-bore toward her foundering brother, continuing her telepathic reassurance.

Ken’s voice rang out piteously over the intercom. The torachan were cutting all of his cargo-cells to pieces. He was blinded, engulfed in a billowing cloud of escaping airplants. Jets of hydrogen gas venting from holes in one side of the envelope caused his flitter to spin and wallow as it sank.

“What’s your altitude and rate of descent, Ken?” Ian’s voice was grim. “All that mess around you is futzing your ponder.”

“Four kay high,” the boy wailed. “ROD nearly two hundred meters a minute. Daddy—I’ll crash into the sea!”

“Blow the pylon bolts. Do you understand? Cut the fuselage free.”

“Yes … all right … Dad! It doesn’t work. I pulled off the cap thing and punched the button, but nothing happened. And I’m going down faster! Three kay—”

“Sweet Christ,” said Ian. “Use the backup. Far right side, under the console. You’ll have to pry loose two safety clips to get the switch open.”

Dee’s mind’s eye could see the sinking bin-flitter, its gas-bag nearly collapsed. There was a sudden bright flash, followed a moment later by a stuttering detonation. He’d done it! The fuselage separated and tumbled end over end, falling free of the cloud of weeds while what was left of the envelope drifted off. Ken screamed over the intercom. He was less than 500 meters above the surface of the sea.

Ian Macdonald’s black aerostat came into Dee’s view, flying in from the west. She herself was now less than half a kilometer away from Ken. She could hear her father’s shouts of encouragement. The parafoil would deploy and bring the falling fuselage down safely—

Something colored red and white burst out from behind Ken’s canopy. Instead of opening into a supporting mattress shape it
streamed flat and fouled, its cords hopelessly twisted. The fuselage continued its fatal fall.

Help him
, said the angel to Dee.
You can. Reach out and take hold of the fuselage with your psychokinesis. Steady it and slow it. Use your enormous creativity to thicken the air.

Time stopped.

Dee saw a shrouded figure and two huge, glowing boxes. One was the golden color of a halide lamp and the other shone like an incandescent emerald. She seemed to be standing in a dark room in her silver flight suit with her hands at her sides, breathing the cool oxygen. There was silence. Nothing moved. Nothing in the world would move until she made her choice: her brother or herself.

It wasn’t a real choice at all.

Kenny.

Two masses of colored light erupted in a dazzling flare and faded, giving way to an eerie seascape. The fuselage with Ken inside was close by Dee’s flitter, utterly motionless. Scattered drifts of airplants halted in the gelid air and the waves of the sea less than a hundred meters below seemed frozen. Only Dee’s mind was able to move.

With her PK she untangled the parafoil’s lines, and then spread its fabric so the giant kite could fill properly. Time resumed and the world came to life once more. The waves leapt, the airplants swirled, and rushing atmospheric molecules filled the huge candy-striped parafoil. Dee held it and its suspended fuselage quite still until she was certain that the discarded superstructure frame with its rags of fabric had crashed into the sea. Then she made the wind blow. The parafoil carried Ken toward a flat little islet covered with grass.