Starquest: Scourge of the Spaceways, page 15
Three lanes of ancient brick, worn smooth from the passage of countless air-cars, wound away through the forest to different quarters. In the center was a three-sided stone post, inscribed on one side with the Theban cyphers of the ancient Sphingali, a witch-language, on the other two with Vulpino cursives and Hominid letters.
Flint could read all three. On the stone was written the names of towns and fair-markets to which the three roads led, and the distances. The witch-writing also gave the names of the roads, and of the patron constellations protecting and blessing them.
"This fine world is called Coma Berenices. For better or worse, 'tis as rich as rich, and always was. Great and low alike, nobles and peasants, have the souls of merchants, and an eye for gold. You may need this." The Grandmaster tossed a clinking pouch to Flint. "Walk a walk. See the sights. Come find me when your heart is settled. Look up! I'll post a sign in the heavens when I be settled to see you again."
Flint looked in the bag. Here were guineas of gold, pieces of silver, copper pennies. Seeing this, Flint hesitated. In the Empire, all transactions were by credits, so all could be tracked and taxed. Coin was used for smuggling or bribery. On the other hand, this was clearly some sort of rebellion world, so it was doubtless a nest of criminals. He shut the pouch and looked at the Grandmaster. "You wish me to buy supplies?"
The Grandmaster had already turned back, staff in hand, to climb the stile. He looked over his shoulder with a glint in his eye. "Why, no, lad. I wish you to buy yourself a birthday gift."
"A what?"
"The Empire brings you clone-boys into this weary life with no mother's love to soothe and fulfill you. You have been robbed of much! More than you know. So buy yourself a knickknack. Something bright to bring a smile to your eye! Or buy a new eye — I am sure somewhat here might sell them. The streets here be a-smothered up with peddler carts and vendor's booths. You can nary whirl a knout without giving one a clout."
"You — want me to buy myself a birth-gift? That's not regulation," Flint stammered. "I mean, ah, I have not, ah, have never… Besides, I do not know the date …" He wondered why his ears were burning. Was he blushing? He could not be blushing. There was no cause.
"Your natal stars told me today was yours," The old man grinned, "Many happy returns! Now be off! Stretch your legs. Breathe the air. Taste how water tastes to a free man. Go and see." The Grandmaster passed over the stile and vanished behind the hedge.
Flint stood alone for a moment, staring at the names written on the road-post.
Then he set off.
2. Rose Sun Rising
It was dark beneath the trees, and Flint had no lamp. He paused to find a stout branch, which he trimmed with his clasp-knife into a passable walking stick. This would also serve him as a quarterstaff, should he encounter any footpads he wished to dispatch without using his blaster.
It occurred to him that, since the whole world was in rebel hands, any traveler here would be a criminal in one sense or another. No one on this globe was regulation.
When he emerged from the wood, the brightness of the thickly clustered stars surprised him. He stood on a slope, with the road winding down through rolling hills of shadow to a glittering darkness that might have been a lake or an inlet of the sea, ringed by tall dikes.
The stars above were cloud upon cloud of weightless diamonds. Dots of light, thick as fireflies, seemed to move among them, but Flint could not tell if this were air traffic, or orbital, or natural satellites.
There was a dark zone, like a river of ink that cut through the crowds of stars, running from east to west. He could not tell what this was. Flint decided this must be within the atmosphere, because any ring system would have been above the shadow-cone of this world's night zone. But it seemed to be too regular for storm clouds, with sharp edges, but too large for aircraft. As time passed he saw no obvious changes in the contour.
On he walked. The scent of flowers was all about. He could see the square shapes of houses and cottages silhouetted against the bright stars on the hilltops as he passed, but there were no lamps in the windows.
The road grew broader, and the surface underfoot changed to hard clay, but he met no vehicles, which was strange.
A red light touched the horizon to his left, the color of wine, looking more like northern lights than dawn. A rose-colored disk, pale as a ghost, shed only the dimmest twilight even as it cleared the eastern hills.
The star-lit land around him took on an eerie and elfin appearance, for now he could see the shapes of feathery trees and the glint of slender poles lining the road side, and the shadows of hedges and fences gleamed with pink in a land of dark red shadows. Statuettes stood on the gateposts, and grinning faces were carved into the stiles leaping the hedgerows.
In the distance, as silhouettes, he now could see delicate towers and steeples rising from the square shadows of a faint and unlit township, streets and squares, canals and courtyards. This was a strange and soothing sight: all things were well-tilled and tidy, as seen in some misty dream.
The gloomy half-light seemed unearthly. Flint realized the rustic land was strange, not for what it held, but what it did not. He smelled no burning trash heaps in the distance, saw no broken windows, stepped over no unburied corpses. For lawless rebels, these were very orderly people.
And even dark as it was, the town should have shown some scars of battle, broken towers, or craters from orbital bombardment. There were no gun emplacements pointing skyward. All these houses were sitting out in the open, as if no one lived in bunkers or bomb-shelters.
But the worlds still held by the rebels were besieged, battered, and embattled by the invincible legions of the Empress, starved, desperate, miserable, and about to fall. This world seemed unaware of all this.
And who grew flowers and flowers, and nothing but flowers? Flint knew of no hominid race who ate flowers.
A jangling of bells made him turn. A slender figure, which might have been a woman or a long-haired youth, slid down the lane on the far side on a fragile looking contraption balanced on two wheels, like a hover-bike built for land. If the contraption had a motor, it was silent.
The slender cyclist wore tight leggings, but the upper blouse was filmy, and fluttering with many a festive scarf. Long sleeves flapped behind like whispering wings as the stranger slid swiftly by, and long hair danced in the wind. The figure raised one arm in friendly salute.
Flint was not expecting the rebels merely to pass by without a challenge, without a word, so he merely gaped for a moment, frozen by uncertainty. By the time he raised his hand to wave back, the two-wheeled machine blended with the reddish fairy-shadows of the road ahead, and was gone. The tinkling bells could be faintly heard long after the cyclist was hidden by the twilight gloom.
He stood staring down the silent road. It seemed unreal to see a woman or a child traveling alone but unafraid on a lawless world. But as sometimes happens in a dream, in this dreamlike half-light, the unreal did not seem unusual.
3. The Second Sun
Not long after, another sun rose up, chasing the first. This one was smaller, brighter, and gleamed like an orange-red flame, an angry coal. Immediately, the flowery fields around him seemed to be covered in rose, and the trees in scarlet leaf. The poles lining the roadside here and there were not utility poles, as he had thought, but furled umbrellas. The windows of distant farmhouses were still dark, but now they glinted like rubies with reflected light. This orange sun was stronger than its red sister, but the light was still too dim to cast shadows.
He looked overhead, startled. The dark band was now painted with orange and flame-yellow gleams and glows, almost too dim to see, which picked out the contours and swirls of the cloudbank. He saw, or thought he saw, the faces of titanic beings, majestic birds wide-winged and cruel-beaked, lions with swirling manes, bulls with wide-spread horns. And here and there he saw, or thought he saw, the outline of letters amid the black clouds, but written in words too large, or too ill-lit, to see.
The road forked. Here was a pillar, but the carven words were almost too dim to read. The name of the town beyond was Insomniapolis. The city of unsleep.
While he puzzled over the meaning of that name, he heard churchbells in the distance, and dogs barking, and voices raised in song, but he saw no lights, no lamps. It seemed like an elf city, cloaked from human eyes, for he could hear the inhabitants, but not see them.
Flint was startled by a small noise close at hand. He turned. Among the stones of a low wall that abutted the roadside, a figure in a hooded cloak was seated. For a moment, he wondered if the Grandmaster had been following: but no, when the person raised his hand, it was the feathery fingers of a Fuliguline.
The Duck-man was no bigger than a child. When Flint found himself gripping his hiking stick defensively, shame made him place the tip between his feet and lean on it with both hands, so he could not use it as a quarterstaff.
"Buying, selling, or begging?" said the hooded figure by way of greeting.
"Walking," said Flint. "My master told me to stretch my legs." Then he scowled at himself. When had he been adopted as Grandmaster Jaywind's squire? Was he not his own man, and loyal to the Empress? Or was he?
"No use walking in the dark," said the other. "You from offworld? We don't get many nights, not in this latitude, except when the year-cycles all line up. Usually never last but a few minutes, maybe a quarter hour during half double-season. This is a rare one. Argent is due in a few, but with Rose settling toward noon-dark, all still a bit dim."
"You don't have lamps?"
"What for? Ten minutes of darkness every two years? Usually Melkarth is in the sky, our gas giant, and he is always shining even if every other sun is down. This long night you are in is the kind of thing only happens once a long while, years and years — we used to have a festival, and pretend the sight of the stars was driving us crazy, so we could all drink. But the Princess said the Nightfall Festival was bad for business, and we did not want to spook the visitors. So now we just sing, no wild beer parties or torch parades. We have two rules on this world: never break a deal, and never upset the Princess."
"You are not crazy? You sure? I hear singing in the darkness. That cannot be regulation."
"Well, work stops when the long night happens. But we don't go crazy. That was sort of an inside joke. There is an old poem. Ever read it? "If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore…" No? Don't recognize it? I thought all the visitors to our world read it. Well, no big deal. They don't sing the night vigil on your world?"
Flint wanted to say that any world surrendering to unscientific superstition would have been incinerated as an example to the others, but he bit back the words. Instead he said, "We sleep after curfew."
"Like I said, we get ten minutes of night every two years, more or less, but longer during conjunction — so if we waited for lights-out for shut-eye, we'd be dog-tired. Heh. Might get work like dogs, though. Don't tell the Princess. Might give her ideas. We have two rules on this world: never break a deal, and never give the Princess no smart-alecky ideas."
"Who is this Princess?"
"That would be Narasing. Officially, she is not the queen while Angrima is alive, but Angrima, you know what befell her!"
Queen Angrima of Coma Berenices, Angrima the Abundant, had been the wife of Sacrapant Lord Famine. He was Master of the Locust Legion, a loyal servant of the Emperor, many years ago assassinated by the evil Witch-lord Orlando. She had been beheaded by the rebels after peasants stormed the charity hospital she maintained to benefit crippled orphans.
But instead of saying this, Flint merely grunted a noncommittal comment.
The hooded figure made a snapping noise with his duck-beak and guffawed. "It was kept out of the newsfeeds, but everyone knows. They did not hang the wives and children of collaborators after the Empire fell, and there was an amnesty for anyone who swore to the Constitution and renounced his devil-worship, so Angrima is still living large somewhere, swanking it about! But she daren't show her face around here, so she abdicated in favor of Narasing, her half-sister." He raised a feathery finger and pointed up at the dark. If he were gesturing at one of the titanic faces floating in the dark zone, the light was too dim to see which one.
Flint had never met Queen Angrima. She had been widowed half a decade before Flint had been born, and died when he was a child: one of many innocents killed by rebels.
Flint was not willing to believe a random stranger loitering at a crossroad could be mistaken about such a matter, or would tell so pointless a lie.
During his tour of duty on Imperiala, when his Deathguard troopers were guarding palace doors or escorting dignitaries to and from the court, he had overheard older courtiers speaking of Lord Sacrapant and his death; and they whispered about the indignities befalling his lady wife and her body both before and after her beheading. Flint could not imagine the courtiers would be mistaken about such a matter, or lie to each other when making small talk among themselves.
So she was dead. And yet, here, she was alive.
These were only two possibilities. Both seemed impossible.
Flint turned. The road here split, and a sign pointed one way and the other. Without a word of farewell to the talkative Fuliguline, Flint selected one of the two roads before him at random, and continued on. He felt as if he were walking in a trance. He felt as if he were in a world of ghosts.
4. The Silver World
As he approached the town, a giant blue sun arose, silver in hue, huge as a hoplite's shield, filling an angle of the horizon wider than a man could cover with his hand. The face of this sun was dim as a moon, and Flint could look at it without blinking, and he saw clusters of spots and stripes shimmering in its immense surface.
The world was now painted with a soft, lunar-hued light, so the flowers were pale as lilies. The feathery trees were clear to see but white as snow, and the homesteads here now seemed to be shingled in silver.
The light of the argent sun made all dark colors seem darker. The long shadows of the newly-risen dawn were laid across the landscape like the stripes of a zebra.
Silently, and all at once, the tall umbrellas on posts lining the roadside opened like flowers meeting sunlight. Black parabolas of shadow stood starkly beneath the silver-white light.
What had been dreamlike now became fairylike, for it was clearer and closer. Cottages were set away from the road, and each held gardens of flowers. A footpath leading to each cottage met the road at a festive post, carved with faces and images. Each cottager had cut his post in a different and fantastic pattern of gargoyles and grinning masks. Below each post were stalls and awnings, and the road was lined with flowerpots holding bouquets of different blooms, as each different crofter produced.
But in a mile or two, the houses were taller, and closer to the road. Here and there were large square villas to the left and right, each surrounding a pool or pond. In the silver light of the giant sun, these ponds were turned to white fire.
These had gatehouses where their lanes met the main road, and their posts were set with placards and awnings woven with gargoyle shapes and smiling visages. He was not sure why farmhouse and villa alike set bundles of produce and flowers by the roadside.
Flint found himself staring at the quiet lines and at the little walls separating the farms and gardens. They were largely made of mossy stone, showing they had rested in their places for ages. Peaceful ages. All were short enough to leap over in this low gravity. There was no barbed wire atop, no optical pickups, no sentry guns, as real fences would have had.
There seemed no point to an unreal fence. If the farms had been assigned to certain work-gangs, the fields would have been set in uniform fashion, in rows and ranks, to make robotic harvesting more efficient. But the fields were arranged in a crazy quilt pattern, some large, some small.
Why was each farmhand domiciled in private quarters, like officers? Where were the barracks, the cafeteria, the cleaning pens, the stockade? Plantation workers were well known to be the laziest creatures in space. That must be true on this world as well. But, if so, where was the whipping post?
Ahead, the streets of the ghostly town were still empty, but slender figures were skating and pirouetting in an intricate dance on the face of the bay where the feluccas and caravels of the town were docked. The dancers carried slender wands in their hands, from which long filmy scarves dangled. It was far off, and he could only dimly hear the music to which they danced: glissandos of crystalline chords and sprightly trills. In the low gravity of this world, they seemed like nymphs or elfin creatures from a child's story, sliding and skipping on the surface of the silvery water. One or two made a leap too bold or cut a caper too daring, and fell headlong into the water, to the merriment of the other whirling dancers.
As he came close, he saw gathered along the shore, or leaning from the taffrails of yachts with silken sails, lordly figures in long robes and wide hats, or graceful ladies draped in veils of lace, who stood admiring the water-dance. Slender vials and goblets may have been in their hands, but the strange light of the silver sun made glass vanish, so wines bright or dark seemed to hover magically at the fingertips of the solemn onlookers. There were no guards for these nobles, if nobles they were, nor any sign of soldiers or police.
5. The Green Land
By the time he reached the town, two more suns rose, circling each other as they climbed higher. The fifth was large as a thumb held at arm's length, a yellow star shedding a strange hue of greenish-gold. The fourth sun was an acetylene dwarf, a blue-white so dazzling it seemed pale purple, but tiny as a pinpoint. Both were too bright to look upon. The mingled light was a rich cyan which gave every object a depth and definition it had lacked during the hour of silver light.
Each person, pole, tree, and house now cast three shadows, black where they overlapped, each a different pastel hue where they did not. The red and orange suns were too dim to cast shadows. The suns of silver, green-gold and mauve cast shadows of pink, baby blue, and saffron.
