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communicated to their superiors, then Worosei might find out all the quicker
that he was alive, but there was a superstitious, cautious part of him that
was afraid of doing that, because he could imagine her being told  that hope
against hope fulfilled  and imagine the look on her face at that point, but
he could also imagine himself dying even yet, because they hadn t been able to
treat his injuries properly and he was feeling weaker and weaker all the time.
That would be too cruel, to be told that he had survived against all the odds,
and then discover later he had died of his wounds. So he did not press the
point.
Had there been any chance of paying for rescue or even faster passage he might
have made more of a fuss, but he had no immediate means of payment, and the
Loyalist forces  along with any privateers that might have been acceptable to
both sides  had dropped even further back into home space around Chel,
regrouping. It didn t matter. Worosei would be there, with them. Safe. He kept
on imagining the look on her face.
He lapsed into a coma before they got to what was left of the city of Golse.
The ransom and transfer took place without him being aware that anything was
going on. It was quarter of a year later, the war was over and he was back on
Chel before he discovered what had befallen the Winter
Storm, and that Worosei had died in it.
He left during the GSV s night, when the sun-line had dimmed and disappeared
and a deep red light bathed the three great ships and the few lazily flying
machines weaving about them.
He was on yet another vessel, a thing called a Very Fast Picket, on the last
leg of his journey to
Masaq Orbital. The craft disappeared through the interior stern fields of the
Sanctioned Parts
List and a little later exited and separated from the silvery ellipsoid s
exterior, curving away to set course for the star and system of Lacelere and
leaving the GSV to begin its long loop back to Chelgrian space, a vast bright
cave of air flashing through the void between the stars.
Airsphere
Uagen Zlepe, scholar, hung from the left-side sub-ventral foliage of the
dirigible behemothaur
Yoleus by his prehensile tail and his left hand. He held a glyph-writing
tablet with one foot and wrote inside it with his other hand. His remaining
leg hung loose, temporarily surplus to requirements. He wore baggy cerise
pantaloons (currently rolled up above the knee) secured with a stout
pocket-belt, a short black jacket with a stowed cape, chunky mirror-finish
ankle-bracelets, a single-chain necklace with four small, dull stones and a
tasselled box hat. His skin was light green, he was about two metres standing
straight on his hind legs and a little longer measured from nose to tail.
Around him, beyond the hanging fronds of the behemothaur s slipstream-ruffled
skin foliage, the view faded away to a hazy blue nothing in every direction
except up, where the creature s body filled the sky.
Two of the seven suns were dimly visible, one large and red to right and just
above Assumed
Horizon, one small and yellow-orange to left about a quarter off directly
below. No other mega fauna were visible, though Uagen knew that there was one
nearby, just above Yoleus top surface.
The dirigible behemothaur Muetenive was in heat and had been for the last
three standard years.
Yoleus had been following the other creature for all that time, diligently
cruising after it, always hanging just below and behind, paying court, arguing
its case, patiently waiting to reach its own season and insulting, infecting
or just ramming out of the way all other potential suitors.
By dirigible behemothaur standards a three-year courtship indicated little
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more than an infatuation, arguably no more than a passing fancy, but Yoleus
seemed committed to the pursuit and it was this attraction that had brought
them so low in the Oskendari airsphere over the last fifty standard days;
usually such mega fauna preferred to stay higher up where the air was thinner.
Down here, where the air was so dense and gelatinous that Uagen Zlepe had
noticed his voice sounded different, it took a great deal of a dirigible
behemothaur s energy to con- trol its buoyancy.
Muetenive was testing Yoleus ardour, and its fitness.
Somewhere above and ahead of the two  perhaps another five or six days at
this slow rate of drift
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 was the gigalithine lenticular entity Buthulne, where the pair might
eventually mate, but more likely would not.
It was far from certain that they would even get to the great living continent
in the first place.
Messenger birds had brought news of a massive convection bubble that was
looking likely to well up from the airsphere s lower reaches in the next few
days and which would, if intercepted correctly, provide a rapid and easy
ascent to the floating world that was Buthulne; however the timing was tight.
Gossip amongst Muetenive and Yoleus assorted populations of slaved organisms,
symbiotes, parasites and guests indicated there was a good chance that
Muetenive would dawdle for the next two or three days and then make a sudden
maximum-speed dash for the air space just above the convection bubble, to see
if Yoleus was capable of keeping up. If it was and they both made it, then
they would make a splendidly dramatic entrance into Buthulne s presence, where
a huge parliament of thousands of their peers would be able to witness their
glorious arrival.
The problem was that over the last few tens of thousands of years Muetenive
had proved itself to be something of an incautious gambler when it came to
such matters. Often it left such sportive or mating sprints until too late.
So they might not make it to the appropriate region until the bubble had gone, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]