Under Strange Suns (20 page)

Finishing his breakfast and his idle speculation, he left the fortification. He stood at the end–or the beginning–of the road leading down the mountainside. If his parachute had deposited him further to the east he might have made the ascent on the path, saving him significant effort. On the other hand, he might have been more easily spotted by the hunting party and caught out in the open.

He turned his back on the trail, got a fix on the pass, and began climbing.

“Climbing” was the appropriate term. The day before was a gentle ascent, comparatively speaking. At the ruined fortification, the terrain transitioned from a steepening gradient to a rocky escarpment. From this point on, he would encounter areas that would require use of all four limbs to ascend.

He passed above the tree-line within the first thirty minutes. He checked his backtrail periodically, watching for any sign of pursuit. Whenever possible he walked over solid rock, trying to avoid leaving any prints. An hour later, he encountered the first patch of snow. The temperature was still comfortable, a bit chilly, but nicely so given his exertions.

The pass didn’t appear to be any nearer, but he had clambered up and down enough mountainous country to expect that. Perspectives and distances never seemed to have the same properties up here as they did on level ground.

He wanted to rush, to push himself up and over as fast as possible. That, of course, would be the surest way to injury, so he held himself in check. Every moment might count for the two in the shuttle, but he couldn’t be of any assistance whatsoever if he snapped an ankle or tumbled into a ravine and never reached them.

Not that he held out a great deal of hope. The smoke plume he had seen indicated a wreck, not a controlled crash.

Damn Thorson anyway. He had to be a fucking hotshot rocket-jock. Couldn’t follow the flight plan like any responsible pilot. And it had probably gotten him killed.

Was that some sort of karmic justice? Aidan couldn’t see how, as Burge had gone down with him. How could Burge’s death be any part of just retribution for Thorson’s arrogant negligence?

Hell, Thorson had screwed over more than Quentin Burge. The
Yuschenkov
now had no access to the moon. And Aidan had no way off.

No, this was no sign of a higher power pressing a godly digit onto the scale of cosmic justice. Whatever justice was. As near as Aidan could figure, “justice” was defined arbitrarily by each individual, and inconsistently at that from case-to-case. It had no objective definition.

Motion from a crag above drew his attention. A creature–no, two of them–were observing his passage. These seemed to have thicker pelts than the animals he’d encountered at lower elevations, densely covered with wool-like growth, white and thickly curled. Long, triangular faces surmounted by forward curving bony projections (too short to call horns) were set atop deep muscular chests. Two legs supported the creatures in front, while a single leg held up the hindquarters–or should that be hind-third?

They didn’t appear concerned by his presence. They watched with seeming placidity, bending their heads from time to time to nibble at yellow fronds peeking up from the snow drift atop the crag.

He left them to their meal. Too soon to sample the native mutton.

The temperature dropped as he climbed. He released the tabs holding his jacket cuffs at their normal length. The cuffs unrolled to give him about another six inches of sleeve, covering his hands to beyond his fingertips. The jacket was busy, the interior power supply (continuously recharged by Aidan’s own motion) heated the temperature regulating fluid and circulated it through the tubes threaded through the liner. The smart camouflage had picked up the terrain cues and was shifting to a blotchy white and rust pattern. His feet were colder than he’d like, but he didn’t feel in any danger of frostbite. Not yet at any rate.

He stopped for lunch a couple hours later, spreading his groundcloth on the snow. The air was growing a trifle thinner, but that only made it more Earth-like. All to the good.

The planet was beyond its zenith and the secondary was catching up with it; a distant crimson eye glaring past the enormous blue god, down at the moon. Down at Aidan.

He stripped off his jacket to change the bandage. He slapped a fresh dressing on and donned his jacket before the cold became unbearable.

Time to move again.

The primary sun tinged the eastern horizon teal by the time Aidan registered that he was making progress, that he was in fact nearing the summit of the pass. It was about that time as well that he noticed the big cat staring at him from a gray-orange boulder jutting at a sharp angle from a snow bank about twenty meters to the right.

It was not, of course, actually a cat. But Aidan was struck by its feline aspects. It massed about as much as a mountain lion and bore a thick furry pelt, complete with a ruff or mane behind a bucket-shaped head. As with the two sheep-like animals he’d encountered further down slope, it bore a tripod configuration. Unlike the two sheep, the cat had one leg in front and squatted back on the haunches of two muscular legs. All it lacked was a twitching tail, though admittedly the head was not in the least cat-like, reminding him more of a reptile. A particularly fangy reptile. With large eyes locked on Aidan.

Aidan returned the gaze. The cat did not blink. Was it hungry, or only curious? Aidan couldn’t possibly smell like prey. But perhaps the cat wasn’t a scent hunter. Maybe movement would trigger an attack reflex.

He eased the pistol from its holster. He’d rather not have to shoot the animal. He might need the rounds later, and if he was still being tracked the noise would assist his theoretical pursuers. And he would like to get through an encounter with one of this moon’s inhabitants without killing it.

“Can’t we all just get along?” he said.

Ears the shape of hermit crab shells unfurled from the dense mat of fur at the base of cat’s head. They swiveled toward the sound of Aidan’s voice. The cat pushed itself to a more upright posture, weight on its foreleg.

“Go on. Beat it,” Aidan said, more loudly.

The cat rose, turned its back on Aidan, and hopped off its perch into the snow bank. Covering ten feet at a leap, it disappeared up the mountainside to the right, its locomotion appearing to Aidan incongruously rabbit-like.

“Chalk up one to diplomacy,” Aidan said, and continued the climb.

He wondered if he should be taking notes on the topography as he went. He was sure McAvoy would have shown a professional interest in the boulder the cat had perched on.

He entered a cloud bank. That slowed his progress. He retrieved the sword and used it as a probe, reminding himself constantly to take his time. He’d do Thorson and Burge no good falling to his death.

Emerging from the fog he was confused for a moment by what he saw. Then he realized he was seeing the sky ahead instead of the rise of the pass. He had reached the crest. The crags and precipices of the two mountains he was passing between loomed to either side. Below him, before and behind, spread a blanket of cloud. A bowl of sky capped him, a bowl of mingled colors. The secondary sun and the planet were engaged in a creeping race to the western horizon, that half of the sky painted with melded crimson, rose, and cerulean. Eastward the sky transitioned to turquoise and teal.

He wanted to pause, savor a moment of triumph, but his body began trembling with cold if he stopped for too long, and he didn’t want the trembling to lead to uncontrollable shaking. The low temperatures had long since exceeded his jacket’s design parameters. He pushed on, allowing himself only a smile.

Descending was no less hazardous than ascending. In fact it could be more dangerous for the climber who started believing that the worst was behind him. Aidan was experienced enough to be wary of this, and clamped down on his nascent euphoria.

He dropped into the cloud bank again and descended gingerly, probing for purchase before committing his weight to any step. Slow going, but it got him clear of it in one piece. And it placed him in a position to view for the first time the far side of the mountain range.

The peaks on either side of him still hemmed in the vista, so he viewed the land below as if through an aperture. A panorama would have to wait until he passed clear of the ridges and scarps. The pass before him fell and sloped through snowfields and jagged rock outcroppings down to forest and–far below–open plain. And Aidan was almost convinced he could see the ocean glimmering on the northern horizon, a band of gray underpinning the opalescent hues of the sky.

He fished out the binoculars to ascertain if he was in fact glimpsing the ocean. But something else captured his attention as he elevated his magnified view, traversing an arc to the horizon. It was a trickle of smoke. He focused in, zooming to a higher power. Yes, there. Maybe two klicks beyond the forest, into open plain. Furrows gouging blue turf. Mangled sections of the shuttlecraft indicating the initial point of impact and the direction of the wreck. Aidan would hardly call it intact, but it wasn’t scattered in a thousand pieces across the landscape. Instead it appeared that large, discrete sections left a linear path cut through the plain.

Survivable? Perhaps.

“All right. Hold on, guys. I’m coming.”

P
ONTIFEX-GENERAL VONGÜK STRODE THE NEAT, RAMMED-EARTH
streets of Bountiful Orchard, his manner genial. And he was, he thought, genial, following the dictate to “present a cheerful beacon in reverential imitation of the Watchful God.” His demeanor might mask his probing watchfulness, but it was not a dishonest mask.

The evidence of orderliness pleased him. The buildings, none higher than two stories tall lest their overweening displease the Watchful God, were clean and freshly painted. The Keepers of the Dictates were careful to ensure that the colors of adjacent buildings conveyed no blasphemous meaning. The streets were swept free of debris. Town-women remained modestly behind latticed second story dormitories. Each man he encountered raised his hand before his face in respectful obeisance.

The immediate world was in order, as it should be. Beyond the outskirts of Bountiful Orchard–no protective walls encircled it, of course, as such a sign of lack of faith in the protective hand of the Watchful God would be unthinkable–Vongük saw that a section of the neatly ranked trees that gave the town its name were being tended by the field-women.

He passed by the school. He heard the boys within reciting a selection from the Dictates in unison. Next to the school, older boys sparred in the exercise yard. Vongük paused to observe. He might well need to lead these joon into battle some year to help bring the benighted within the embrace of the Lhakovi. Observing their progress as warriors thus held more than entertainment value.

Vongük felt as if the scabbard containing his gem-inset sword of rank squirmed at his back. He longed to draw the blade and wade in, offer a convincing display of dominance. But such was unbecoming a joon of his position.

He saw a smaller boy drive back his larger opponent with a flurry of feints and lunges. The boy showed promising skill, making up for his lack of stature. The taller boy stumbled, dropped his foil and slapped down his hand to prevent a painful sprawl upon the hard-packed ground. The smaller boy raised his sword and stepped back, waiting for the other to regain his feet and collect his sword from the russet colored dust.

Vongük strode forward, calling for the boys to halt. He beckoned the smaller joon. “You, boy. Attend. Your opponent displayed a weakness. Do not the Dictates tell us that ‘It is the duty of the strong to employ his strength, it is the role of the weak to submit?’ You must employ your strength. When you see a weakness, you must exploit it. It is not only the course of wisdom, it is the will of the Watchful God.”

Vongük let them return to sparring and he continued his perambulation. He was thinking of weakness now, and he felt his serenity disturbed. The news received that morning hinted of a weakness. He foresaw a threat to the order he maintained as Pontifex-General of this northern outpost of the Watchful God’s Protectorate.

Of the scouts he had sent to investigate the object that had detached from the mysterious streak of fire in the sky, only eight had returned. The story they told was preposterous. Yet he was aware of no motive for dishonesty. And they had been tasked to locate the mystery. It should not be too great a surprise that they had found it, nor that it should prove deadly.

But that they had been defeated by one–creature, doubtless a demon from the red hell–spoke of a weakness. Weakness displeased the Watchful God.

He paced the streets to the eastern limits of Bountiful Orchard. He turned to the north, lifting his gaze above the fruited boughs of the aghar trees, to see the Wild Wall–the distant, white-topped range that marked the northern limit of the Protectorate. Beyond the Wild Wall lived benighted joon who knew not the Dictates, the true path of the Lhakovi given them by the Watchful God. It was upon the slopes of that range that the demon had slain Vongük’s scouts. And it was beyond the Wild Wall that–twice in his lifetime–mysterious streaks of fire had fallen.

He had allowed those joon to stagnate in ignorance. The range was a formidable obstacle, a severe hindrance to passage of any significant military force. Scout patrols or spies could cross the mountains with relative ease, and had done so at his orders. It was thus theoretically possible to march an army of Lhakovi over the peaks. But the sheer logistic difficulties had–until now–stayed his hand. His hand, the hand of the Northern Protectorate’s Pontifex-General.