How are the solar impellers holding up?"
"Very well," said the former starfleet strategist.
"Have Walter take us up at a modest cruise speed, then.
We"re in no hurry. Maintain the camouflage-and be sure it"s dense enough to foil aerial surveillance as well as farsight scan."
"We"ll be secure enough," Gathen said, "unless one of the King"s people actually eyeb.a.l.l.s us from the riverbank."
"We ought to make certain no stray thought betrays our position," Patricia said, glancing at Manion.
"I"ll count on you to take care of that," Marc said.
Cordelia Warshaw asked, "Do you have any further orders for us?"
"Relax," Marc told them all, the famous smile overriding the desolation in his eyes. "I myself intend to go fishing."
CHAPTER FIVE.
During that Truce before Nightfall, it seemed that almost everyone in the Many-Coloured Land was on the move.
The Tanu had always flocked to the games; but this autumn, the King issued an extraordinary proclamation, commanding that every human-even those who customarily remained at home caretaking the cities and plantations and other establishments-must attend the Grand Tourney. So they all came out to enjoy the holiday, people torced in gold and silver and grey, and the lowly bareneck serfs as well. The cities, with the exception of the capital and Roniah, which hosted the travellers, were left almost deserted but for the faithful ramas. The King"s invitation was extended to outlaw humans, too, and they came trickling out of the Spanish wilderness, the high Helvetides, and the Jura. The royal word reached into the swamps of Bordeaux and the Paris Basin and the haunted forests of darkest Albion.
Drawn as much by the prospect of fun and free food and drink as by curiosity over the import of the King"s decree, more than 45,000 human beings set out for Nionel and the Field of Gold-virtually all who resided in Pliocene Europe. Of them, perhaps 1500 were operant golds and twice that number were torced with the precious metal but lacking in significant mental powers. There were 4200 silvers, some 8500 greys, and under 20,000 barenecks who had willingly accepted Tanu servitude.
The free Lowlives numbered about 8000, but more than half of those were already residents of Nionel.
Tadanori Kawai was among the few who heard the King"s proclamation and politely demurred. He wished to husband his failing strength, and there was considerable work to be done preparing Hidden Springs for the rainy season.
Stein Oleson heard the proclamation and ignored it. His Viking intuition told him what the Fimbulvetr presaged, and he knew that the Field of Gold was no place for him or his family.
Huldah Henning, away on the Isle of Kersic, never knew of the royal announcement at all, nor would she have accepted its invitation. She was in her eighth month, and the tri-hybrid son of Nodonn Battlemaster rode turbulently in her womb.
To his metapsychically operant subjects King Aiken-Lugonn sent a more sombre message: Attend the Tourney, ready to cooperate in metaconcert, or risk the Foe"s conquest of our land.
The response was one of overwhelming fealty. Every goldwearer in the kingdom who was not at the threshold of Tana"s Peace or in Skin set out obediently for Nionel: some 2400 pureblooded Tanu and less than 5000 hybrids. Together with the operant human golds and silvers, the minds pledged to the King"s service in the event of Nightfall totalled just over 13,000.
Not counting the Howlers, there were more than 80,000 Firvulag.
On a day in mid-October, when the Roniah Fair was at its height and the air quivered in thirty-five degree heat and thunderheads skulked about the flanks of the steaming Mont-Dore volcano, the fearsome prodigy appeared!
Travellers on the Great South Road craned their necks and came to a standstill, peering into the dazzling afternoon sky.
Their minds and voices uttered cries of amazement, surprised recognition; or near panic-according to whether the observer was Tanu, human or Firvulag. Chalikos, h.e.l.lads, and the motley collection of hipparions and half-tamed antelopes that the Little People rode or drove spooked as they caught sight of the thing.
The highway, the Roniah fairgrounds, and the adjacent campsites were thrown into an uproar of plunging beasts, laughing humans, bemused Tanu, and outraged Firvulag.
It looked at first like a dark, floating fish. It had stubby fins and a needle nose and seemed to swim down through the heatthickened air with sinister deliberation, becoming more and more enormous as it neared the earth. Purple strings of fire, like a dimly glowing net, enshrouded it. (And revealed to the former Milieu citizens that it had to be none other than a rhocraft, albeit one of highly unorthodox configuration.) A terrified dwarf shot a bolt of psychoenergy at the thing hovering overhead, and his countrymen wailed aloud, fearful of retribution.
All that happened was that a vent in the thing"s belly opened.
It seemed to lay thousands upon thousands of buoyant yellow eggs, cascading them over the crowd like a hen-salmon strewing her redd. The aircraft glided to and fro, discharging its bounty; and a different sort of cry arose from the throng when it became clear that the sp.a.w.n of the sky-fish was nothing more than balloons. Each one, when popped, yielded candy or cold fruit or a pet.i.t four or a liqueur-filled sugar sh.e.l.l. (Arid a few of the Tanu whispered, "Mercy-Rosmar!" remembering her gentle manifestation of power at the last Grand Combat.) The cynosure of all eyes then lifted its pointed snout to the zenith and hung stock-still in midair, not more than 150 metres above the mobbed fairgrounds. It appeared to be gargantuan, like a f.l.a.n.g.ed broad arrow, black beneath the violet flickering.
From the open belly-hatch now came a flood of balloons like l.u.s.trous grapes. They seemed to be self-animated, and darted and swooped and soared in the sky like frenzied protozoa.
The aircraft proceeded to shoot them down. A blue-white ray lanced from its nose, while green, red, and yellow beams spat at a dozen different angles from the leading edges of the fins.
There were sharp detonations. The people screamed. Puffs of multicoloured smoke dissolved to wraiths of perfume and a shower of confetti glitter.
The upright dark thing began to change. Its stubby fins expanded into wings and it tilted so that all the observers could see a glowing golden emblem on its underside, the hand of King Aiken-Lugonn. Then the emblem also changed. The impudent digit gave way to a hand fully open and apaumy, with the fingers together in the dignified gesture that most humans recognized as the greeting between operant citizens of the Milieu.
The aircraft began to rise swiftly then, and there was applause from the King"s subjects and scattered mental cries of "Slonshal!" But then they all fell silent, for the ship emblazoned with the golden hand took its place at the point of a V-formation of others identical to itself that came gliding up from the south at an alt.i.tude of several thousand metres. There were twenty-seven flyers altogether, small against the sky like a flight of wild geese.
They stayed in view of the Roniah mult.i.tude for five minutes before going full inertialess and vanishing in a thunderous sonic boom.
Dougal, sitting in the copilot"s seat, vented a bemused sigh. "I might not this believe without the sensible and true avouch of mine own eyes ... Just how the devil did you manage that caper, my liege?"
Aiken laughed. "Creativity, lad. Sleight of mind. An illusion here, a genuine manifestation there, a scary black cerametal machine that"s all too real, and a spot of royal marksmanship to dazzle "em with science at the finale."
"Extremely gaudy," said Mr. Betsy, making a prissy face. He lounged in the navigator"s station of the flight deck, attired for the occasion in a mauve flying suit all slashed with gold zippers, a bouffant red wig, and a discreet little diadem with cabochon amethysts. "A great bluff, that"s what it was."
"I prefer to think of it as a show of strength," said the King.
He grinned over his shoulder at the Flight Instructor Royal.
Betsy said, "The eighteen pilot recruits were pushing their luck just to carry off a straight and level flyby, and you know it. We"ll be doing well to whip them into a minimally competent check-out state by Tourney time-much less teach them aerial combat technique."
"I have every confidence in you," the King said. "Look how well you taught Me!" He picked up the RF com and said to his squadron, "Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Our air show was a great success. Let"s hope it heartened our friends and dis...o...b..bulated the Foe. You may now return to Goriah base and take the rest of the day off."
Mr. Betsy adjusted the exotic sky-sweep scanner to watch the departure. He sighed. "What an abysmally sloppy peel-away.
It"s those wretched wings. Only a very decadent technology would put wings on a rhocraft."
"Yet thus equipped," Dougal said, "they are the more fearsome to the miscreant eye ... and the wings are also a d.a.m.n good place to mount the secondary zapper arrays."
Mr. Betsy gave a scathing snort. "Guns, dear zany, are only useful when you have competent gunners. May I remind you that Stan and Taffy Evans are the only persons with the appropriate training, while the other six b.a.s.t.a.r.d pilots and I are as hopelessly noncombatant as the recruits. I doubt if any of us could hit Mont-Dore at point-blank range-and Miss w.a.n.g goes into hysterics at the mere thought of a fire fight."
"If the Firvulag host gets between her and the time-gate,"
Aiken noted dryly, "she may find her backbone stiffening." He twiddled the controls and the sky outside the flyer turned from cobalt to star-spangled black. "There"s hope for you duffers, though. Yosh Watanabe is putting together some robot target locks for the weaponry. As long as the spooks don"t mount a Flying Hunt, the targeters should take most of the worry out of air-to-ground zapmanship."
"Only one thing will do that," Betsy said. "Aircraft forceshields that don"t have to be neutralized at every salvo!"
"I"m sorry," the King said uncomfortably. "All we have left are small sigmas. The weaponry we have available just isn"t compatible. You"ll have to turn the shield off before firing. I"m trying to work out a method of metapsychic shelter-a.s.sign several creative stalwarts to each ship. But I"m afraid that if war does come, I"ll need every strong mind I can scrounge for my own metaconcert. In an all-out attack, the Flying Corps may have to do the best it can with conventional weapons and screens."
"Blow, wind! Come, wrack!" Dougal declaimed. "At least we"ll die with harness on our back!"