get him killed faster.
As the days passed, Gelan found that acting normal stretched his nerves almost past bearing.
Inspections, chores, guard duty . . . wondering which of the guards and which of the prisoners
were in on the plan, and yet again what the plan was. It had to be more than just killing him.
Bacarion might take pleasure in killing Methlin Meharry's little brother, but she would not have
finagled an assignment here just for that. If only he knew what was going on . . . but although it
became increasingly obvious that something was that he was being left out of meetings and plans he
could not find anything out.
He had not considered himself a trusting soul, but now, trying to trust no one, he realized that
he had the normal human desire to be part of a group, not a complete outsider.
Margiu Pardalt had accepted a position as junior instructor in the Schools, and discovered that
she enjoyed teaching. As the weather eased, bringing the occasional cool breath from the far
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north, her spirits lifted. Xavier had never been quite as hot as Copper Mountain in summer, and
she looked forward to winter here. Unlike some of the others, who never took to planetside life,
she enjoyed learning more about the world she was on. The Regular Space Service had facilities
scattered around the planet, from the frigid polar caps to the balmiest of tropical islands. Most
were used for training of some kind, or testing equipment; it did not occur to Margiu to wonder
why a space force would do so much training and testing on a planet. Instead, she hoped she would
have a chance to see the steppes near Drylands, so much like her homeworld, and maybe climb a
mountain when she had some leave coming.
Her first chance to travel came in the break between class sessions, and she didn't even have to
use leave time. Priority directives of very high classification had to be hand-carried from base
to base. Ensign Pardalt was the obvious choice.
So on a morning that was not quite crisp, but at least not stifling, she accepted a case full of
the directives, locked it to her belt, and climbed aboard one of the regular supply aircars headed
for Camp Engleton. She sat on a sack of something lumpy and uncomfortable for two hours the supply
aircars had no passenger slings and watched the red-sand brush country give way to dirty-green
coastal grasslands and then dark-green trees standing in brown water.
She had only fifteen minutes to deliver the directives to the base commander, but fifteen minutes
of the sticky heat and sulfur stench of the swamp forest was more than enough to quench her
curiosity. She was glad to climb back into the aircar, now headed for Drylands. The lumpy sack
she'd been sitting on had been unloaded, along with others, and the crew chief now had room to rig
a seat of sorts.
That flight took several hours; she fell asleep in the noisy cargo compartment, waking when the
aircar came down through the late afternoon sun. This far north, a chill wind rattled the few
fading leaves left on the trees planted around the base's central drill field, and the short
prairie grass had turned various shades of russet and maroon. She handed the base commander his
copy of the directives, and signed into the TOQ for the night. When she walked around outside, she
could almost believe she was on Xavier until dark, when the night sky looked very different. Were
they really that close to the Scarf?
Next day, she was scheduled for a long-distance flight to the west coast bases, Big Trees and Dark
Harbor (she wondered again who had been allowed to name these places) and then she would embark on
the more dangerous journey to the Stack Islands bases.
The long distance flight was not by aircar, but in a pressurized aircraft flying much higher than
the 'cars; beneath her the land faded into a dim patchwork of dun and wrinkled brown, with white
tips on the tall mountains she hoped to see in person some day. Also on the flight were
replacement officers and enlisted; she was crammed into her seat with only a brief glimpse through
the window whenever the neuroenhanced marine beside her leaned back for some reason.
Still, it was travel. She had come to learn, and this was learning. She memorized everything she
could about the inside of the aircraft.
They landed at Big Trees, the runway a long gash in the forest. She had grown up among trees,
clumps and woodlots and scattered groves on the meadows, but those trees had been rounder, softer.
She had seen more, and taller, trees during her years at the Academy. But the trees had always had
space around and between them. Despite the pictures, she had not really imagined what this forest
would be like great spires many times the height of the buildings on base. After delivering her
package to the base commandant, she found she could not get transport to Dark Harbor until the
next day.
"You should see our trees," she was told. "There's nothing like them anywhere else."
So she wandered out into the afternoon light, and up to the margin of the forest. Behind her
mowers buzzed, trimming the emerald grass in the quadrangle; she could hear the closer click of
feet on the walkways. Looking away from all that, she faced a massive dark bole like a slightly
curved wall. Ferns the height of her head grew near it, trimmed back in a straight line on the
base side. Between the chinks of its bark she thought it must be bark other plants grew, mosses
and ferns and something with bright yellow flowers like tiny fireworks.
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She edged around the tree, following a vague path. Under her feet, the ground felt spongy, and
when she had cleared the curve of the great tree's bole, she realized she could not hear the base
. . . the great tree lay between, soaking up the sound. Uneasy in the thick growth, she went back
the way she'd come, and then back across the quadrangle to base housing.
Her flight up the coast the next morning, again in an aircar, revealed how little of the land had
been touched by humans the great forest lay green and unbroken from the base to the foothills of
the mountains, and almost all the way to Dark Harbor, where it eased gradually into smaller trees,
and then into broken shrubland.
In Dark Harbor, she had to wait several days for a transocean flight to the Stack Islands bases. A [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]