War Games (21 page)

The two elves recognized Grychn. She had raised her helmet visor. They howled like banshees and then started hugging her and slapping her on the back, all the while jumping up and down in the air. I guess they were pleased to see her. I stayed put. I wanted to be sure she had a chance to explain about me.

She waved for me to come forward. I advanced slowly, eying the cannon mouths all around. But they weren’t going to shoot me with those. A waste of energy.

“Marc, I’d like you to meet a couple of old friends of mine, Lanaan and Aleel.”

I raised my visor and nodded to the two elves. They were a male and a female, both quite young. “Any friend of Grychn’s ...”

“You’re not elf-friend yet,” Lanaan said, cutting me off. “That takes both time and proof. Until then, be careful.”

“Rather gruff, isn’t he?” I whispered to Grychn.

“That’s the nature of elves,” she answered.

Lanaan went back to the sentry post. Aleel led us down a faint trail. She stopped at the edge of a cliff. I peered over the rim. An elf city lay below, the largest I’d seen.

A grove of crystal trees grew next to cliffs of ice. The trees were giants, standing over a hundred meters high, with trunks twenty meters in diameter. Elf-houses blistered the sides of the trees like clusters of iridescent grapes. Elves swooped in the air. Hundreds of them. All carrying weapons. Mouths of tunnels pocked the ice face of the cliff.

Aleel jumped over the edge, catching herself with her wings, and began gliding down in tight spirals. Grychn folIowed, slowing her descent with thrusters.

What the Frisco!

I jumped.

WE FLOATED
down
among trees of glass, past glistening elfhouses. Aleel glided in spirals around Grychn and me. Elf children swooped out to greet us, chattering like winged monkeys, darting in to touch me with their hands. Counting coup, I thought. They learn early.

We headed toward a globe suspended between the two largest trees in the grove. This sphere was fifty meters in diameter. As usual, a round entrance was located at the bottom. Aleel alighted gently, and gracefully swung through the hole. Grychn was almost as adept, dropping below the opening, then firing her thrusters to pop her through. I wasn’t as good and almost hit my shoulder on the edge. That probably would have cracked the elf-house rather than me.

The inside of the globe was filled with elves. Literally. Glass saplings grew toward the center from the inside surface, forming a crystal reticulum. Elves hung from the saplings by an arm or a leg or a tail—one limb seemed to serve as well as another. Several elves came to greet Grychn. She had removed her helmet. They kissed her lips through her O
2
bubble. I’m glad nobody got carried away and tried to kiss me. There was something about furry faces with lemur eyes and bat ears that made me not want to kiss their monkey lips. Bigotry? If you say so. But I always thought I was just being particular. I didn’t know where those lips had been.

The globe was either well insulated or acted like a solar collector. Probably both, since it was quite warm inside—nearly zero degrees. Grychn and I handed our battle packs to Aleel, then shucked off our armor. That’s right, in front of hundreds of elves. They had never developed a body taboo—with fur, they had no need for clothing anyway. I’d lost whatever modesty I’d had as a combrid. And Grychn had lived among the elves.

Someone brought us jumpsuits made of space fabric. Grychn put hers on. She was already shivering from the cold. I handed mine back, deciding to go native. All I wore was an O
2
converter around my neck like a neon necklace, with its oxygen bubble around my mouth and nose. You’re not forgetting I was still a combrid inside? Brown adipose would keep me warm in much colder climes than this.

Grychn took off across the inside of the elf-house, swinging from glass saplings. I followed her. Once you got the hang of it, brachiation wasn’t all that difficult. (Get it? The hang of it? I guess you had to be there.) We climbed to the ceiling, where we hung from cross branches.

Another elf greeted us there, kissing Grychn and offering his hand to me. I shook it. Suction cups pulled at my skin. They were dry, anyway. Lemur eyes regarded my nakedness. They blinked. A monkey face grimaced.

“Ah, now I understand,” the elf said. “You were a combrid once.” He looked me over, noting my genitals were retracted into their pouch. “A good job of cybersurgery. You could pass for standard Terran anywhere.”

“A professional opinion?” I asked.

“Why not?” The elf laughed. I guess that was the barking sound he made as he grimaced. “You know my name, then?”

“Everyone on Titan, elf or not, has heard of the notorious Dr. Maizay.”

“I suppose that’s so. But few remember I am also a genosurgeon. Thank you for that.”

“Maizay,” Grychn said, “this is Marc Detrs.”

His eyes widened and he peered at me like an owl. He must have heard of my Legion of Merit. Not many were handed out.

“Yes,” I said, confirming his suspicions. “Former Gunnery Sergeant Detrs, once of the First Ghost Cavalry. Now a noncombatant. Strictly neutral.”

Maizay laughed again. “Don’t worry, Elves hold no grudges. We admire valor in our enemies as much as in our own warriors.” He smiled, pulling back his black lips to show carbide teeth. “But your neutrality, I question. After all, you helped our little butterfly to escape. The spooks won’t love you for that. They consider you a traitor already. You may as well join our side now. We always need good warriors.”

“Do you think you can trust me?”

“Why not? You can’t go back either to Chronus or the Corps.” He grinned now. “We’re all that’s left.”

At least on Titan, they were. I couldn’t dispute that.

“But I’m neglecting my duties as your host,” he continued. “You must be getting tired.” He had noticed me
switching from one hand to the other as I hung from a branch. He made a hand signal. An elf came with a trapeze, which he hung from the branch. Grychn and I sat in the swing. Other elves came with food, both elven and Terran, and placed it in baskets hung before us.

“Please forgive the poor fare,” Maizay said. “We have few Terran visitors these days. Grychn has been gone for a long time—we’ve let our stocks dwindle.”

He selected a crystalline fruit from a basket, took a bite, and began grinding oxide matrix to dust. His saliva contained organic catalysts that began the reduction to elemental oxygen.

Our food was standard Corps garrison rations—protein bars, carbohydrate sticks, vegetable loaves. No doubt captured from a combrid base. But I couldn’t complain. Anything was better than the food concentrates we’d been eating for the past week. And there was a bottle of claret. That made up for a lot.

I listened as Grychn and Maizay reminisced. They told stories about various raids, fleeing from spooks and combrids both, hiding out in mountain sanctuaries. My mind constructed vivid images out of their words.

I already knew some of it, from what Grychn had told me earlier. But listening to an elf tell it made it different. I began to feel the old thrill again, like when I first came to Titan. The old excitement of combat came back to me—wicked and brutal. I knew Maizay felt the same way—he had the gleam in his eye. He genuinely enjoyed playing Cowboys and Indians. The elves would never give up their rebellion—they liked playing the game too much. Why not? There were worse games. I had played some myself. I was almost sorry I was out of the Corps.

For a time—maybe because of the gentle buzz produced by the wine—I was tempted to throw my lot in with the elves. I’d make a good guerrilla—and it would be fun. What difference did it make what side you played on? The game was the same. But I pushed the urge aside. I was tired of being small potatoes. When I found the timestone, I could build an empire for myself. Why waste my time in a nickel-and-dime rebellion, when there would be whole planets to conquer.

Dogs, megalomania felt good!

Another bottle of wine was brought to us. Maizay was smoking what passed on Titan for a mnemone stick—rolled leaves of living crystal. Oxides released oxygen which burned in hydrocarbon air, producing fumes from the polymer matrix of the leaf. The vapors were mildly intoxicating. They were also as pungent as L.A. But then elf lungs were used to breathing poisonous atmosphere.

I started getting mellowed out. I felt secure. The irony of it all didn’t escape me. Here I was, in the middle of an armed camp of bloodthirsty elven guerrillas, and I felt safe for the first time in months, And why not? The spooks were my enemies now. Kramr was my foe. An elven city was the safest place for me.

Maizay finished his smoke, “Come on,” he said. “Let me show you around. Few Terrans have ever seen my little city.”

He let go of his branch and dropped to the floor in a swan dive. He shot through the opening there. Grychn and I slid out of our swing and followed more cautiously, jumping from branch to branch.

Outside, Maizay waited. He handed each of us a set of pseudowings. We clasped them to ankles and wrists. Polymer fabric billowed.

Maizay and half a dozen other elves watched as I tried out my new wings. They knew Grychn was already skilled in their use. I’m sure they expected me to flounder about, so they were waiting to be amused. I was sorry to disappoint them.

You remember my adventures in Telluride, when I leaped from Club Ionosphere atop Pandora Tower, with nothing but a cape of wingcloth. I wouldn’t have done that if I had not been adept in the use of pseudowings.

The principle was simple, actually. A thin layer of grav-polymer was sandwiched between two layers of surface-effect fabric. Gravcloth neutralized the gravity field, so you were balanced between rising and falling. Surface-effect polymer caused air to flow across the wing-producing a slight forward thrust. By flapping your arms and legs, you could produce an undulation in the airfoil, magnifying this surface effect. With a little practice, you could fly like a bird—or like a bat, to be more precise.

I leaped into the air, caught some beneath my wings, then squirted it out behind, causing me to shoot upward. Then I dove toward the ground, opened my wings, and performed a couple of full loops with a half-gainer, timing my finish so I hovered in midair in front of the others.

They were suitably impressed. Maizay laughed. “Bravo, bravo! I see you’ve used wings before. That’s good. Follow me.” He took off, using his real wings. Grychn and I followed. I noticed a couple of armed elves were careful to flank both sides.

The city was about fifty hectares in area. There were about a thousand inhabitants. I wondered how it had escaped satellite detection. Maizay pointed upward. I figured out what he meant. Methane clouds hung from the cliffs above. Optical sensors would see only them. Also, the crystal foliage was quite dense overhead. He said radioactive and magnetic ores in the surrounding mountains interfered with other sensors.

Pretty clever, I had to admit.

Small garden plots were placed in clearings in the surrounding forest, where food oxides were grown. Most of the people working the plots were children or elderly—able-bodied men and women were working elsewhere. But everybody was armed. Toddlers barely able to stand brandished autopulsars as long as they were tall. Maizay told me they were proficient in the use of their weapons—I didn’t doubt it.

I didn’t see any evidence of technology—only elf-houses and gardens. There had to be factories somewhere, though. I soon found out where.

After we had toured the city and its surrounding forest, we flew to the ice cliffs to the west, where we alighted on a landing area that had been carved into the sheer face of a palisade. We entered a tunnel in the cliff. The mouth of the tunnel was heavily guarded—there were four bunkers carved into the rock face on either side, each bunker housing a quad-50. About a kilometer into the mountain, the tunnel opened into a series of chambers.

“An old isotope mine,” Maizay said. “Titan is riddled with old mines. But we have put them to more productive use than the Underground of Chronus.”

He was right about that. The chambers were now a munitions plant.

“We have a certain advantage.” Maizay laughed. “After all, we grow photonuclear crystals here on Titan.”

We went from chamber to chamber. Elves made their weapons entirely from scratch. Permaplastic was made from hydrocarbon atmosphere, then poured into injection molds. The parts were trimmed and assembled into weapon frames. Photonuclear crystals were cut and calibrated and then loaded into plastic cases. Electronics labs assembled sensors, targeting computers, and autosights. Other labs made chemical and biological agents. Quite impressive. But I wondered why Maizay was showing me all this.

“We have a hundred facilities like this, in a hundred different mines. The loss of one is unimportant. All the raw materials we need are here for the taking. All that’s left is the determination to continue our struggle. And we are determined... .”

We left the munitions plant by the same tunnel we’d used to enter. Maizay paused on the landing. Below us, two elves dueled in midair with ion sticks. A crowd watched them. Spectators were clinging to the ice cliff as well as perching on every available branch in the surrounding trees.

Ion sticks were the benign counterpart to sonic sabers. Both were the same length and weight. Ion sticks had charged particles on their surface instead of ultrasonic fire. They caused a brief paralysis when they touched, rather than slicing right on through. I was proficient with both, of course. Combrid training was anything if not complete.

The elves were good, I had to admit. Thrusts and parries and remises were difficult enough when standing on firm ground, much less in midair while hovering on wings. Their combat took the form of ethereal ballet—wings billowed, bodies undulated, swinging swords left trails of sparks marking their path. When a sword touched, the muscles beneath the blow went limp, and red light glowed from the spot. The duel continued until one of the contestants was too disabled to proceed. Then a challenger from the crowd of onlookers rose to test the champion. You could keep fighting until you lost.

The champion who was fighting now didn’t look like she would ever lose. She had not been touched in half a dozen matches. She dispatched her current opponent with a slashing blow along his side, paralyzing both arm and leg. Then she hovered on her wings, awaiting her next victim. She was good-looking, for an elf. There was something familiar about her. She stood close to two and a half meters, but weighed less than thirty kilos, with her barrel chest and hollow, pneumaticized long bones. Fingers and toes were long and supple. Her dense fur shone with vitality. Yellow eyes gleamed with confidence. Again, something seemed familiar about her.