CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

The Oldworlders said that men had once lived in palaces—huge structures that they built as level upon level rising higher than the cliffs above the caves. Jemmo had decided that caves were dark, damp, inhospitably shaped, and unbecoming of his status. He wanted to build himself a palace.

The line of rock outcrops connected by earth ramparts that had once been the defensive barrier enclosing the front of the caves was now forming parts of dwelling huts, inner works, and animal pens. The population had grown. And nobody any longer lived down in the swamps, all the people having migrated up to the caves. The extended settlement around the caves was now bounded by a wall built from rocks cemented by dried mud. On the outside of it was a ditch, and on the inside a protected step for defenders, raised posts to provide elevate positions for watchmen and archers. Access was via two gates, one backing the other, made from thick root-wood and branches brought up from the swamps, and woven with thorns. On the heights above the caves was a lookout tower, also built from mud-cemented rocks.

The Oldworlder Wakabe had become Jemmo’s builder. Jemmo wanted him to build the palace. But whatever Jemmo wanted, always, it seemed, all anybody could tell him were the problems. He didn’t want to hear about what couldn’t be done. Just for once, couldn’t someone just agree and do it? The problem with building a palace, he was told, was that of bridging the roof.

He scowled as he stood with Wakabe and a couple of Wakabe’s helpers in front of the four-walled enclosure that Wakabe had built to try out his latest attempt at a solution. The space between the walls was spanned by a mat of woven vines with mud worked into it to form a solid shell. When the mud dried, Wakabe had added another layer on top, and when that dried, another, the intention being that it would become strong enough to support additional loads above. But the work was showing cracks that had spread and widened more since yesterday, Jemmo wouldn’t have risked walking under it, never mind have trusted his weight on top.

“The mud needs to be bound,” Wakabe explained. “It has no strength against extension. We’ve never used it this way before. In the walls it has always been compressed, not extended. It needs grass mixed in to bind it. Or reeds might be better. I have to try different things.”

“You said your Oldworld people built palaces higher than the cliff,” Jemmo grumbled. “Yet you can’t build me just one roof?”

“They had trees then. Beams of wood as thick as a man’s thigh, as long as five times a man’s height. And metal ones, even longer and stronger. We have to learn to work without such things.”

Jemmo seethed inside. But it would only make him look foolish to try and command what could not be. He wanted the cave settlement strengthened and secured in preparation for a campaign to extend his domain to the east. Long-range scouting parties despatched in that direction had encountered other humans survivors from the Great Terror and the Long Night, and engaged them in several skirmishes. But he was still uncertain as to their numbers. It could turn out that he and his people became objects of similar ambitions coming the other way, and so a strong defense was the first essential.

He pointed toward the middle of the space with the rifle he was holding. The bullets had all been used long ago, but he still carried it as an emblem of status, along with his red headband and hide cape fastened with a clasp. “You need to support it there. Why can’t you make a pillar from stones and mud, built as you do with the walls? It needs support in the center.”

“Yes. That might help a lot,” Wakabe agreed deferentially. “It will be done.”

Jemmo felt satisfied, having been seen to add something constructive. He was about to add more, when a shout sounded from the tower above the cliff. People were drawing into groups, chattering excitedly, looking up at the sky. “There!” Wakabe exclaimed, pointing. Jemmo looked.

Outside the wall, something long and pointed, the shape of a spearhead, gray in color, was descending from the sky. It was like a gliding bird, but smoother and straighter in its lines, and much larger—a metal bird such as the Oldworlders spoke of. Others had told of seeing such things in the sky recently, but never this close to the caves. Jemmo had never observed one personally. It moved slowly along the far side of the wall, following its line, as if searching the ground inside. Then it made a sudden move closer, bringing it immediately above the wall, at the same time swinging around to point toward where Jemmo and the others were standing. Jemmo had the eerie feeling that it was searching him out personally. Cold fingers of the fear that comes from confrontation with the totally unknown clawed in his stomach. But he forced them back down and strode several paces forward to glower up at the object defiantly. “My war club!” he called to Iyala, his henchman, who was never far away. “Summon spearmen and archers.” But Iyala was already giving the orders.

As warriors began arriving, consternation broke out anew among the onlookers. Four more shapes were approaching fast, coming in over the swamplands in a tight group. They were even larger than the metal bird. They swooped on over the wall with a roaring noise and descended toward the area of ground immediately in front of Jemmo and the assembling warriors, causing the people around them to fall back, and then break and flee in fear. Two of the birds were larger than the other two. One of the larger and one smaller came down ahead, the others a short distance behind them. Openings appeared in the sides, from which figures poured at a run. Figures wielding guns! Before Jemmo could even take in what was happening, they were spreading out quickly on either side… . He watched in a daze as his personal guards ran forward and were shot down without even slowing the pace of the attackers. Then a tightly grouped formation emerged in the center, coming straight at him. Jemmo knew he was defenseless, that there could be no resistance. But his pride refused to let him budge. He tightened his grip on his club and brought it back determinedly.

But then, he realized, it was over. While the flanking parties waved back the remaining guards, who had also seen the futility of opposing, the center group converged upon him, covering him with their guns but staying out of his reach. He wouldn’t have survived making one false move in any case, even if they came closer.

And then the ranks opened and a figure came through at a shuffling gait, dragging one leg, wearing a strange headdress and sleeveless jacket of thick Oldworlder material. He was also carrying a gun, but slung across his shoulder was a vicious edged club of Oldworld metal that Jemmo had seen before. His face was a mask of gloating delight. He had been waiting a long time for this.

“Will you hand over your weapon like a warrior who accepts defeat?” he asked. “Or would you be seen to have it taken from you like a child?”

Rakki had returned for his revenge.

Heeland was bringing the probe in high, using its wide-scan imager to view the general area. He reported that the analyzers had picked up the signature of another probe circling close in below at not much above ground level; it wasn’t being controlled from the Varuna and must have been sent by the ground-control operation at Serengeti, which Zeigler’s people had taken over. He had located the four flyers at the edge of some broken highlands, where the ground below sloped away toward a low-lying region of lakes and swamps. They didn’t seem to be moving. The zoom cursor centered on them, and the view expanded.

“Still can’t see anything,” Keene croaked, fumbling the handset in his frozen hands.

“I’m taking it down lower, coming out more to change the angle,” Heeland’s voice said from the unit. “It looks like they’ve landed… . They’re at the bottom of a line of cliffs, inside some kind of perimeter that doesn’t look natural.” Keene could just make it out on his tiny screen—an embankment or wall curving out for some distance and then back again to form an enclosed area against the face. “I think there are caves there,” Heeland said. “Huts, people… It’s some kind of settlement with a wall around… .”

“Something’s going on—between where the flyers are and the wall.” Keene squinted to try and resolve the detail. “Are those people there, all bunched together? What are they doing, Kerry?”

Figures—a dozen of them, maybe—were standing close together in a line along the inside of the wall. Another line stood facing them from a short distance away, with others formed up behind and to the sides. Another group was clustered around flyers farther back, while what looked like the rest of the population crowded in a background semicircle.

“I can’t make out what they’re doing,” Heeland said.

Keene stared at the screen on the handset. To him it was too obvious. What experience would a Kronian have of such things? “That’s a firing squad,” he said. “They’re executing them.”

“Why? Who are they?”

“I know as much as you, but it can’t be good. Get me down there.”

“You’re still minutes away.”

“Then break it up. Buzz them with the probe.” That was all Keene could think of. It had worked at Joburg.

But instead of enlarging, the view on the screen shifted and tilted, and then sky appeared across one corner. Heeland had put the probe into a climb. A horizon materialized and then vanished, and the cliff line came into view again, this time from vertically overhead. The walled settlement was dead center. Enlarging rapidly…

For Heeland, on his high-resolution screen, had seen what Keene hadn’t. The figures lined up against the wall were natives, the one in the center wearing a red headdress and cape. The squad holding rifles and facing them were also natives, as were the ranks immediately behind. But the group of uniformed figures farther back, standing around the flyers and looking on, were in Kronian garb. The red shoulder tabs on the tunic of the one in the center marked him as the Acting Planetary Governor.

The picture of Gallian staggering back and falling replayed itself in Heeland’s mind. Owen Erskine shot down, dragged away, his dead companions… He centered the crosslines of the pilot graticule, gunned the probe’s motor up to maximum, his jaw clamped grimly. Surrounding details flowed off the edge of the image as it leaped upward. Heads lightened in hue as faces turned suddenly upward in alarm.

“Kerry? What in hell are you doing?”

Heeland thought he caught a glimpse of Zeigler’s features, eyes wide in disbelief, mouth gaping, an instant before the image blacked out. Maybe it was just wishful thinking and imagination. But it didn’t alter the satisfaction.