Under Strange Suns (31 page)

Silence for a moment, then, “Matamoros says we can do that. Then what?”

“Keep us up to date on their movements, speed, deployment. Knowing what they are doing might make all the difference.”

The signal began to weaken as the
Yuschenkov’s
orbit drew the ship out of range. Doctor Yuschenkov provided landmarks to allow the crew to pinpoint the location of Girdled-by-Fields. They set a rendezvous time for three days later and agreed to twice-daily radio contact.

The two men stared at each other after the conversation terminated in a stutter of static. Then they broke out into grins. Yuschenkov lunged forward, wrapping Aidan in a bear hug.

“Right, then,” Yuschenkov said, “we’ve got some packing to do. Then we need to get started. We’re not going to get home as fast as we got here.”

* * *

A few hours later Aidan understood the reason behind Yuschenkov’s last statement. The doctor wanted to cart back a lot of gear to Girdled-by-Fields. Well, ‘cart’ was the wrong expression. What they cobbled together was more of a travois, though a couple of wheels–little more than casters, really, harvested from the remains of a piece of exercise equipment–provided some small reduction of friction.

They loaded their travois with the amplifying transmitter, batteries, a solar panel, spools of cable, and a box full of tools. That amounted to a substantial load. But then Doctor Yuschenkov revealed his true treasure: a functioning Y-Drive. Disassembled, of course, but all the pieces were intact.

Piled in with the rest of the gear, the Y-Drive rendered pulling the travois a challenging endeavor. Getting back to Girdled-by-Fields was going to be a slow process, no question.

Aidan tackled the first difficult stage–ascending the ridge. He was puffing and perspiring by the time he tugged the travois to the top of the rise. It had required all three of them to heave the contraption over wheel-trapping depressions and sundry obstacles.

“On the bright side, Aidan, that was the worst of it. I’ll take it downhill, with Echeckok as brakeman.”

“Thanks, Doc. I feel a lot better now.” Aidan took a long pull from the water bladder. He squeegeed sweat from his forehead with the flat of his hand. “I know the joon haven’t domesticated any drayage animals. But you’ve been here twenty years. Haven’t you had time to manufacture a pickup truck?”

Yuschenkov grasped the twin ends of the travois poles and stood with a grunt. Echeckok trailed, linked to the rear of the contraption by a rope looped through his belt.

“I’m still laying the groundwork for an industrial revolution,” Yuschenkov said, as he started downhill with precise, short steps. “I have actually been working with Khorknevot on a boiler for a steam engine. I figure a catastrophic explosion would diminish enthusiasm for something the joon weren’t asking for in the first place, so I want to make sure we get the metal thickness right and the welds flawless. If you’d crashed here a couple years from now, we might have been able to ride a train.”

“A couple of years from now, Girdled-by-Fields might no longer exist.”

“Thanks, Aidan. You are a ray of sunshine. Look, all we can do is pull as fast as we can. Try to get back before the Lhakovi have invested the town.”

They continued the rest of the day, mostly in silence. Echeckok spelled the two humans in his turn, though only for short periods. Aidan had rigged a sort of yoke that fit about the joon’s hips and he was able to pull the travois over even stretches of ground. But some sections required two hands to manipulate the travois, so his help was appreciated but did not achieve the level of full participation.

The next day was more of the same. Aidan tried to encourage Echeckok to continue his language lessons, but the joon seemed morose, not the inquisitive, eager kid he’d been at the outset of the excursion. He responded to Aidan’s questions, providing the names of the objects Aidan gestured at, but his answers were perfunctory. He didn’t return to the role of teacher with the exuberance he’d earlier displayed.

Aidan thought about that. The obvious culprit behind the malaise was the absence of Frejhig. Aidan accepted that but considered there might be an underlying reason, a biological component. Possessing only a single arm each, joon were of necessity cooperative creatures. It seemed to Aidan that a solitary joon would be–if only unconsciously–ill-at-ease, even depressed. Checkok hadn’t struck him that way, but the Esaul was older and accustomed to Yuschenkov’s company, thinking of him almost as a joon. Echeckok probably did not feel that level of comfort with the humans and was thus out of his element.

Something to discuss with Yuschenkov. Perhaps after the next radio contact.

B
ROOKLYNN HADN’T FELT SHIPBOARD MORALE THIS
positive since first leaving Earth’s solar system over four months past. She was still coming to grips with her own joy. The unexpected nature of the multiple revelations of good news only increased their euphoric impact. Uncle Brennan, alive. Aidan, alive. And the seemingly insoluble problem of Y-Drive failure now apparently reparable after all. All of her hopes for this expedition–and more–seemed within reach.

The loss of Thorson and Burge still hurt. Aidan’s confirmation of their deaths did not lessen the pain. It remained a constant ache underlying every thought. But the removal of all doubt eliminated fluctuating hope; the downward slope from hope to pessimism always refreshed the pain. That roller coaster was now gone. In its place rolled in the tide of good news, laying down a level of happiness over the pain, like sediment.

The good news was almost too much.
This sort of overabundance
, she thought,
I’d like to have more of
.

Most of the others seemed to be handling it well. Matamoros took to her bunk for several hours after learning for certain that Thorson had not survived. She’d emerged looking pale, but dry-eyed, and immersed herself in work. McAvoy was piloting the mining craft toward one of the moon’s satellites. He said he needed a few tons of ore for his landing scheme. The man was in his element now. Last radio contact, she had actually caught him whistling.

Gordon Foster had rebounded. Matamoros suggested placing four geosynchronous satellites in orbit of the moon and Foster had taken the idea and run with it. He had cobbled together four bowling-ball size devices to relay communications. Park had gone EVA with the satellites, letting them drift at the coordinates Matamoros supplied. The ship was now capable of contacting the two men on the ground at any time.

Doctor Roberts was eager to examine Brennan Yuschenkov, discover what effects twenty years of lessened gravity and an alien diet had had on him. And she was buzzing with excitement regarding the news of an alien species. She had requested permission to accompany McAvoy when he landed in order to have an opportunity to view the aliens personally. Brooklynn had to turn her down, but she mollified the doctor by instructing McAvoy to record as much of his dirt-side experience as practical.

Brooklynn herself had worked ceaselessly with Matamoros reviewing camera footage. The two of them had shared with the computer all the information the two men on the ground could provide concerning the location of Girdled-by-Fields. They had been able to pinpoint it after two more orbits. With those coordinates nailed down, they’d begun sweeping the mountain passes with every bit of data-capturing equipment they could train that direction, searching for any sign of military activity, any indication of the location and speed of the bad guys that they could share with Aidan.

As it was time for scheduled radio contact, she would do just that.

“Ship to Doctor Yuschenkov,” Matamoros was repeating. She seemed uncomfortable both calling Brooklynn’s uncle by his first name and referring to the ship by his last name when addressing the man directly. Brooklynn hid her amusement.

“
Yuschenkov
, this is Aidan, over.” Aidan’s voice came through clearly, the relay satellites performing admirably. Brooklynn reminded herself to offer her kudos to Gordon Foster. He could use it.

“Aidan, Brooklynn,” she said, taking over from Matamoros.

“Brooklynn, you sound good. I mean, you are coming in clearly. Over.”

She smiled. “We placed a few coms satellites in orbit. Static is so Twentieth Century.”

“Good work,” came Uncle Brennan’s voice. “I was going to suggest that. You’re stealing my thunder.”

“Sorry, Uncle Brennan. We lapsed into competence up here. It won’t happen again. Except for this one last instance: we located your army, Aidan.”

“Shit. What’s the bad news?” Aidan asked.

“Pessimist. The good news is they are still on the far side of the mountains. We located them climbing a pass southeast of your town. We don’t have the resolution to give you an accurate head count, but the computer estimates two thousand, assuming roughly human size beings.”

“Two thousand?” said Brennan. “Oh, hell. That’s almost the population of Girdled-by-Fields, including the farmers.”

“Could you estimate their speed?” Aidan asked. “What does the computer give as their ETA?”

“We ran a few scenarios. Best guess is four days. I’m sending you some orthography, marked with the location of the town and the bad guys’ most recent position. Oh, and your current position as well.”

“Four days, and coming from the southeast,” Aidan said, sounding to Brooklynn’s ears as if he were talking to himself. “Could be worse, I suppose. Look, Brooklynn, we could use some explosives. I know Park can scrounge up the makings for some incendiaries. If you can send them down with McAvoy, maybe we can scare off the Lhakovi before things get too bloody. And the rest of the ammunition, if you please.”

“I’ll see what we can do for bombs. We’re not a warship, you know.”

“I know. That’s what you hired me for.” Aidan sounded a touch–resigned?

“Only four days,” he continued. “Crap, we were planning to bunk down early. We’re hauling a lot of gear and I think we were all hoping for some rest. But we’d better keep on for a couple more hours. Let’s cut this call short.”

“Roger, Aidan. Take care.” She gestured to Matamoros to cut the signal. And at the same time she felt some of the euphoria leak away. A positive outcome no longer seemed so certain.

“Well, shit,” she said to Matamoros. “Let’s see what kind of ugly Park can put together.”

* * *

Aidan pushed on hard. But Doctor Yuschenkov was not a young man and, despite his whipcord lean physique, did not have the stamina to keep up forever. And Echeckok was not the physical equal of either of the humans when it came to pulling the travois. So Aidan called a halt earlier than he would have liked.

He woke them early and took the first stint at the travois himself, setting a fast pace. When at last he paused to look back, allowing Echeckok to spell him, he saw that the travois had left a trail through the blue groundcover stretching back for miles, interrupted here and there where hidden gullies and depressions had intersected their path. The ridge had dwindled until its rise was imperceptible. They appeared to be trekking over an endless expanse of plain, with only the mountains towering to the south to provide any relief from the featurelessness.

“I imagine this will all be farmland, someday,” Aidan said.

“Hmm? Probably,” Yuschenkov said. “It is suitable for these scrub grasses at least. It isn’t as rich as the land about Girdled-by-Fields, but once they begin to irrigate it should prove fertile enough.”

“Not natural diggers, I figure,” Aidan said, “though they were piling up barricades quickly enough when we left, one-handed or not.” Of course the centrally mounted arm didn’t appear as a handicap to the joon. Nonetheless, Aidan marveled at their facility with the single limb and the tools designed for one-handed use. That reminded him, however, of his musings the previous day.

“They do seem to prefer working in pairs, even when it isn’t the male-female partnerships you told me about. I was thinking about that yesterday. Echeckok has been sulky since Frejhig disappeared. I was wondering if that might have something to do with joon psychology–some reaction to being alone.”

“It could well be. I’ve no training in exo-psychology, but it sounds reasonable. You continue to surprise me, Aidan.”

“Well, shucks, Doc. I’m blushing. No, seriously, I hope that is all that’s wrong. Echeckok’s a good kid. I hate to see him moping.” He addressed the joon directly, then, using the phrase Echeckok had taught him a couple days prior: “Dhekor funeg Ghark”–the joon equivalent of “how are you doing?”

The young joon turned to look. He raised his hand in a wave, at which moment the fletching of a crossbow bolt appeared to sprout from Echeckok’s midriff. He emitted a grunt, a massive exhalation of air, and then sank to his knees, held upright only by the line attached to his belt from the travois. A thread of blood trickled from his mouth, his head drooped.

* * *

Ghemel had found little to enjoy about the last few days. Assignment to Captain Akhistal’s company was intended as punishment. Well, punishment it certainly was. Unwarranted, overly severe given the nature of the transgression. It seemed clear to him that–as all good Lhakovi knew–the Watchful God decreed all. A man’s fate was foreordained. He–Ghemel, son of Khezek–was one of the fortunate. It was no doing of his own, it was the will of the Watchful God. Health, wealth. Born the scion of a prosperous family. All this dropped in his path, none of his doing. What lay in his path was placed there by the Watchful God, and it was only right that he accept it. The farm girl was in his path. It was perverse that of all joon, the Pontifex-General failed to grasp that Ghemel was only accepting yet another bounty provided by the Watchful God.