Defiance, page 28
It had been years since he had been separated from his aishid for so long, and then only to go back to Mospheira. Being separated from them on the mainland was . . . beyond unsettling; and he had the feeling it upset them no less.
Over the com came a long, slow breath, a rustle of leather and a final wiggling of the flaps.
“Are you set up there?” A perfectly cheerful question, also over the com. They were to be careful about names and titles. They had agreed to that. “Do you have any problems?”
“No problems.” He tried not to sound terrified.
“Nothing loose.”
He had been to space and back. “Absolutely nothing loose.”
“Excellent!”
The propeller moved, turned—the plane jolted. That was not the engine. Someone was out there turning it, full around—he could feel the contact, if not see it. Was that how it started?
“Oil,” Reijiri said. “It settles. Stand by.”
The engine coughed, barely audible, but he could feel it through the plane itself. Could feel that engine make several tries. And fail.
A chuckle from the com and: “We did come in on the final fumes! Do not worry! The next try should do it.”
It actually took two more attempts before the propeller continued to turn, an irregular beat that swiftly became a blur, through which one saw a darkening sky, and winter treetops, as the engine roared, then settled to what sounded like a clicking purr from inside the protective headset. With a little jerk of released brakes, the plane began to roll.
They were committed. There was no stopping at this point.
Bren cast a desperate look left, through the misfit goggles, caught a glimpse of black uniforms amid the colors of the crowd and raised a gloved hand, hoping the black belonged to his people. Children ran along with the plane, quickly left behind.
The engine roared and rattled, and the bumps came faster and faster and faster, a slight slew as the tail lifted from the grass . . .
Then the tail did a waggle, corrected, and his heartbeat accelerated right with the plane as bumps ceased and everything smoothed and grew heavier at once.
Heavier, as the engine sang. Heavier still, as they lifted up and up, until there was no view but one early star. There was absolutely no view but sky in front of him.
“Can you see?” he asked. It seemed—a reasonable question.
“Not as much as you can,” Reijiri answered. Then: “My angle is no better than yours, nandi-ji.”
God.
Logic. But—
Weight said they were climbing. The sound of the engine—with its crown of cylinders—up around the propeller—was a steady powerful rumble on the far side of his headset, through the walls, through the seat.
His heart raced. The wind whipped his face. A flash of the downhill run on Mount Adams. Sincerely not caring if he broke his neck. Highlight of his youth. At once the captive and master of gravity. Broad, sweeping turns, a sudden weightlessness as he caught air. This was the reverse, a defiance of gravity, a climb into the wind itself, to the high, steady sound of the engine. His hands ached with a death grip, not on poles but on the bags and their straps, which did him, when he traced that pain to its source, not a damned bit of good.
The plane tipped, banked was the right word, and the star swung out of view, and down became, visually, between the two starboard-side wings, treetops grown miniature, still glowing with the last rays of the run. His body and mind argued as gravity pressed him one way and the acceleration of the turn pressed another.
Oh, the g-force going askew he had felt. In the station, with the rotational artificial gravity.
On the slopes with unexpected dips and fast turns, moments of force, moments of weightlessness.
But never quite like this. Not even airliners or shuttles. He tried to ignore the sensation, sought landmarks he knew. There was the great house. The meadow, the people, a scatter of lights, then the orchard, and sky, and then it all disappeared as the plane leveled off abruptly, and they were climbing again.
He closed his eyes then, letting his body rule his sense of direction . . . and his heartbeat went wild. He was in the wind. A part of it. There was a texture, a solidity to it, little bumps and sways, eddies and flows that a jet never reacted to. And down settled finally in a normal direction, with sky in front of him.
“Are you all right?” the question came, sharp and metallic in his ear. Worried. And he realized he was breathing heavily.
He had not felt the like in years. Still felt it, breathing into the wind, sucking up air that tingled in his nose.
“Yes,” he said. “Absolutely.” And it was true. He was—not afraid, though it felt like fear. Not panicked, for all the world was coming too fast. His heart was speeding. He wanted to control what was going on and knew absolutely that was disaster. He was out of place up here. But he was always out of place. Thinking too slow.
But as fast as he could.
Far from where he was comfortable.
And entirely alive.
Something hit the windshield. He jumped. A splat of grease, was all, and not the first, from the streaks. Reijiri had warned him it did that. The tanker that had brought the fuel had brought a supply of that, too. The propeller had called it up.
One reason for the windshield, Reijiri had said.
It was. It did its job. The plane was level and they were up. And the engine was steady.
Mount Adams had been the adversary, back in his skiing days. He could lose, he could draw . . . but he could not win against the mountain. And the end had not truly mattered then. The doing had been the rush. The difference was . . . he had had no allies to call on, then.
Now he did have. The best. And he was not used to getting out in front of them. He wanted them with him. He wanted to be back there, at that speed. In one piece.
The plane tilted over again. The last color was leaving the sky, leaving only a residual glow and highlighted clouds. The moon not yet risen. The plane banked slowly, side to side. The irregular darkness of trees was below them, and then what might be water, featureless dark, darker than the sky. It made him uneasy. Or maybe that was just the sway of the plane.
“Getting my bearings,” Reijiri said. “We will move quickly now. I have calculated a heading for Separti, but we shall cross to Ashidama Bay first and approach from the east, along the water—to be certain, and to avoid notice as long as possible. But I would like to get a look at Jorida before we lose all the light—to see how it lies.”
“And see what is in port,” Bren agreed. “That, too, would be useful.”
“The moon is rising. That will help in the actual drops.”
The clouds to the east had indeed begun to show the moon’s arrival.
The plane dipped the left wing, took a slightly new heading, the nose dipped, and the engine roared. The wind came harder, colder, but the winter coat was enough. There was little to see in any direction, and for a time, flying, from exhilarating, became a lot like suspension in a dark grey room, just the wind and the engine sound to say they were moving at all.
Over the left side, there was nothing.
There was what seemed a long, long time of nothing in any direction. The darkness grew, purer, blacker. Stars appeared, two at first.
Then on the right—there were brighter lights. Kajiminda? Not unless they had flown in a circle. They were over water, and the faraway lights were on the right, in the north if he had his bearings right.
“Separti over there?” Bren suggested.
“Yes. I think it is. We are quite losing our twilight. But we are nearly there.” The plane banked slightly to the left, and indeed there were a few scattered lights on what might be the Ashidama Peninsula shoreline.
A little motion of the plane and brighter lights definitely appeared ahead, a line of them, and a slanted scatter further on. A sharp-edged silhouette stood above the water.
Jorida Isle, and its citadel.
“Well,” Reijiri said briskly. “I have seen their height, I think. It is what I have heard of it. I am satisfied. And if they have heard our arrival, they have none the less left the lights on. Let us meander up and see what Talidi looks like. They are smaller, yes?”
“Half the size of Separti. With wharves, however. We think maybe seven thousand population. If that.”
“We shall practice on them, shall we?”
The plane suddenly banked left.
Alarmingly so. Bren swallowed hard, very glad not to have had that supper.
“Those would be the Dojisigi ships down there,” Reijiri said.
Two masted ships, spottily lit by the shore lights of Jorida, rode moored near one another.
There were other, smaller boats. The two Dojisigin ships loomed among them, a threat to the whole coast.
If only they had something to throw besides paper, Bren thought.
But they had what they had, and that was far more than paper, if those sheets fell into enough willing hands.
The plane leveled out to the northwest, with the stars above and to the front, nothing but black below, and it was as if they were hung in space. Frozen.
For a long, long time.
“Lights can trick one at night,” Reijiri commented. “One can see a string of them and think them a horizon—when they are not—and that can be disaster. Or one can see a light ahead and think one has no air speed. In my first flight at night—I strongly felt the plane had stopped in mid-air, that the instruments were lying, and did very silly things trying to prove I was moving. It is a strange feeling. One could fly right into a lake, looking at lights on the shore.”
“Or into a very large bay,” Bren said.
“That is indeed quite a lot of water down there. But the ocean is wider still. I thought about flying to Mospheira when I was young. I thought I would fly over there and have a look. I had better sense by the time I acquired the plane.”
“Who taught you to fly?” He had always wondered. Small-craft aviation had existed from early days on Mospheira, but small aircraft on the mainland, despite the huge distances, were an extreme rarity. “Where did you get the plane?”
“Oh, the plane is Patinandi, one of the earliest. Back from early days, when they were figuring it all out. They were clearing their warehouse. But there was no one precisely to teach me to fly. I had the engineers’ notes and their checklist. The plane and I learned together. I have had to replace a few pieces over the years. Some expensive. But nothing too serious. The engine is unhappily right in line if I run into anything, and it is precious.”
“A very different looking engine.”
“A radial engine.” The term was Mosphei’. “Nine cylinders, the most fortunate of numbers. Nine cylinders acting as one, with some very clever machinery in the middle—nothing like it in all the world. Very hardy. Very agile. It lands and takes off in, as you saw, fairly restricted situations. And has considerable power.”
It conjured images. Arguing with a Mospheiran jet at Shejidan Airport, was one . . . when Reijiri had been, one calculated, still in his teens—and he himself had been new to the continent.
The big jets had been a world-changing gift in Wilson’s time as paidhi, a frighteningly fast course, from little planes to commercial jets, that had given humans and atevi the ability to reach each other frighteningly fast, as well. And within his own time as paidhi, with intervention from the returning starship—they had the shuttles, putting Mospheirans and atevi in space.
God, that was a lot of change.
And none of the changes had made it down to this bay, where the only sound was the sound of their own engine and the rush of cold wind over them. The plane had running lights, but there being no other aircraft in the sky—they were not using them. The only light was starlight on their wings. No lights even from the two instruments on his own panel, though one trusted Reijiri could see his. Or perhaps the starlight was all his atevi eyes needed.
No other plane. No airports. No radar to spot them as they flew, and not even scattered villages along the coast, no spark of firelight or electricity to guide them. Their distinction of earth and sky was the black pit that was the water below and the galactic belt in the heavens above, gloriously clear—
He was glad of the stars, for his own peace of mind. And he hoped—God, he hoped—Reijiri’s panel gave him more information than he had—or they could fly right out to sea. It was so black down there, utterly featureless. It was all, he was sure, water down there: and they had left Jorida at a northwesterly angle, over the bay.
Everything seemed stopped. The view did not change. It was illusion. He had been warned.
“We are coming up on Talidi,” Reijiri said, startling burst of sound.
He saw nothing. Yet. But Reijiri thought so. Perhaps it was hidden from him by the lower wing.
And he suddenly had a job to do. A reason for occupying this seat.
He selected the sack that was for Talidi, the smallest one. He hauled it out of the footwell and onto his lap, having to remove his gloves to unwind its ties. He shoved the gloves into his coat pocket, and tucked one hand under his leg for warmth, holding the bag in his lap with the other. Then he continued to watch the unmoving stars. The lower half of his face was feeling the chill, extremely.
“I have advice,” Reijiri said.
“I will more than gladly hear it.”
“I shall go over the town low and fast, which will startle folk out of their houses. Then we shall come back more slowly, banking to the left, over the residences. This will give you the best opportunity to scatter the messages. I shall do this more than once, so they need not all go at one pass. Release fistfuls of notes as rapidly as you can. At the last, we may empty the sack, but only on the turns. Turns will be steep. Under no circumstances release your seat belt.”
Steep? “One hears. I will not touch the seat belt.”
“If there is gunfire, I will take us out of range. I can do nothing else to protect us. We are quite thin-skinned. Should they hit the tank, I will try to bring us down near shore. The rest is forest, on the map.”
“It is. Kajiminda forest. Quite thick in this area.”
“Can you swim, Bren-ji?”
“Adequately,” he said. Daunting question. “But let us try not to be hit.”
“That would be my choice as well,” Reijiri said.
And moments later, with a faint glow on the starboard even his human eyes could see: “Talidi,” Reijiri said. “Drink shops near the harbor, most fishermen ashore at this hour. Betan said the harbor is too shallow draft for the Dojisigi ships. It is all fishermen and foresters and some local industry. Several distilleries. We will go over at speed and come back, the first pass fast, to see what we have, then as many slow passes as you need.”
“I hear,” Bren said. He opened the smaller sack, double-checked the line that secured it to the plane, with visions of it flying loose and hitting Reijiri, or their tail. It was a matter of waiting, then.
Talidi came clearer and clearer. The harborside lights showed fishing boats at their moorings, one visible wall that went clear to the waters of the bay, and houses piled beyond it, wooden houses, wooden roofs, a jumble of roofs and lower windows showing dim light, a scattered few streetlamps. It all passed below at speed.
Well beyond the town, Reijiri banked, so sharply Bren was staring at the trees between the wings, banked and turned about, bringing them back toward the town at a leisurely amble, slower, scarily slow, as rooftops and streets passed under them.
“Now,” Reijiri said, and tipped them far over.
Bren had already pulled out a thick fistful of papers, and let them go. The wind caught them. He grabbed another and another, releasing them as fast as he could, trying to ignore the scarily close rooftops. There were small explosions, faint and far, that might be gunfire. But nothing reached them and the plane’s fortunate engine kept a steady pulse.
They cleared the town. Reijiri brought the plane about on another right-hand pass, and now lights everywhere were on, doors were wide open. People were out in the street, and bits of paper were visibly blowing about. Bren flung out more and more, clear across the town, northerly.
They swung all the way about where lights gave out, and made another slow pass. Bren threw a final fistful, then brought the sack up and upended it.
“The bag is empty!” he said to Reijiri, and leaned to look over the side of the plane. People were staring up at them and pointing. Some waved and might be shouting at them, but the only noise was the engine.
Reijiri righted the plane and gunned it, rising. Acceleration—surprisingly strong—pressed Bren back in the seat, and the view ahead was a scatter of brighter stars, his eyes still dazed by the town lights.
He breathed hard, stuffed the empty bag under his right knee, and fished up the second one, the largest one.
“That was a bit of gunfire back there,” Reijiri said. “Betan said the Talidi folk were a thankless lot!”
“They seemed to be waving as we left,” Bren said. “I do not think in good cheer. I hope we have no holes.”
“I think we are in one piece,” Reijiri said, and in the dark that enveloped them, ailerons worked and the plane wobbled and wove. “We all work.”
“Separti?” he asked.
“Coming up. There will be turns to the left, and soon. We are no longer floating along. Can you manage?”
“Yes!” They were going markedly faster. Wind blasted at them. Bren conjured Geigi’s map as he recalled it, took his mental bearings, began to undo the binding on the second bag. His heart was still beating hard, and his fingers were chilled, fumbling on the ties. He pulled the gloves back on and tucked one hand under his leg, trying to guess the thoughts of the Talidi.
They had been shot at, but they had not been hit. And the second run had drawn no fire, that he had heard. He was . . . cautiously optimistic.
And Talidi Township, notorious among Edi, had its warning, granted they wanted to take it and take action. Fishermen and lumber workers, long at war with the Edi, had now more outsiders to worry about: outsiders that would affect Jorida, which was their market. Outsiders that might seem far more dangerous to their lives than the Edi. One doubted they would rush to embrace a new set of overlords from outside their small world. They had been ungracious enough toward the entire aishidi’tat, and not that compliant even toward the Master.
