“We’ll just go a little way,” Richard said.
He slipped one arm around the engineer’s waist to steady her. They went out of the pool of firelight, leaving the others still talking, and walked to the far side of the camp clearing. Only stars illumined the tangle of maquis, for the new moon had gone down. Above them was the overgrown slope with its narrow trail leading to the crater rim. They could not see the refurbished flyer, but they knew it was up there waiting.
“We’ve been happy, Richard. Can you figure it? A pair like us.”
“Two of a kind, Marty. I love you, babe. I never thought it could happen.”
“All you needed was a good old-fashioned sexy girl.”
“Fool.” he said, and kissed her eyes and cold lips.
“When it’s all over, do you think we could come back?”
“Back?” he repeated stupidly.
“After the Finiah attack. You know we’re going to have to teach others how to fly the machine and maintain it so that they can carry out the other two phases of Madame’s plan. But you and I needn’t worry about those. Well have paid our dues. We can have them fly us back here, and then…”
She turned to him and he held her. Too frail and racked by cramps and hemorrhage to endure any further intercourse, she had still insisted upon consoling him. They spent every night in each other’s arms, sharing one of the decamole huts.
“Don’t worry, Marty. Amerie will know how to fix you up for good. We’ll come back here somehow and get a flyer just for ourselves and find us a good place to live. No more Tanu, no more Firvulag or Howlers, no more people at all. Just you and me. We’ll find a place. I promise.”
“I love you, Richard,” she said. “Whatever happens, we’ve had this.”
In the morning. Richard waved goodbye to the others and went up to where the bird stood. It still looked pretty scruffy in spite of the scraping, but he’d soon fix that.
He settled into the pilot’s seat and patted the console in the manner of an equestrian soothing a skittish mount “Oh, you beautiful, droop-snoot, swivel-winged thing. You wouldn’t badass the old Cap’n would you? Course not. We’re gonna fly today!”
He lit her up and went through the checklist. A familiar sweet hum of rho-field generators came to him there on the flight deck and he grinned at the thought of microscopic thermonuclear reactions hitting nicely on all sixteen, ready to weave a net of subtle forces that would free the metal bird from gravity’s domain. All of the engine idiot lights gleamed cyan-for-go. Keeping her firmly latched to Earth, he fed juice to the external web. The bird’s scabby skin glowed faintly purplish in the bright sunshine as the rho-field reticula clothed it lightly. All the crud that he’d been unable to remove sizzled away, leaving the surface a smooth cerametal black, just what you’d expect for an aircraft with orbiter capability.
He cut in the environmental system. Oh, yeah, little bluey-green lights telling him that no matter where the ship carried him, his life would be duty supported. Ease off on the field-web runup. Crank back the wings to minimum area until he got used to them. No use risking overcontrol on his maiden flight, wallowing all over the sky like a shot duck. Gotta do this with class, Cap’n Voorhees.
Okay… okay… and upsy daisy!
Straight up and dead level and hold at squiggle-hundred meters according to the readout on the indecipherable altimeter display. Call it 400. Down below, the Ries crater was a great blue cup with little spread-winged birds strung around its western lip, politely waiting for permission to drink. There were forty-two of them, with one missing where a section of the rim had collapsed in a landslide, and one empty slot for his own aircraft.
Damn those wings when the wind caught him at hover! He’d better move. Slowly… slowly… bank and zoom. Figure eight and vertical five and stop and start and swoop and glide and pendulum arc and, hot damn, he was doing it!
Down on the ground, four small figures were jumping up and down. He did a creditable imitation of a wing-waggle to let them know that he had seen them, then laughed out loud.
“And now, my friends, fare thee well, for I must leave you! We’ll save the touch-and-goes for later. Now the old Cap’n is gonna give himself a few lessons in how to drive this here flying machine!”
He slammed the rho-field into full inertialess web, stuck a burr under her tail, and took off vertically for the ionosphere.
CHAPTER NINE
Would volunteers come?
As the days of September dwindled and the preparations at Hidden Springs were completed, this question was paramount among the followers of Madame Guderian. Her influence, and indeed, the benefits of her Firvulag-Human Entente, did not extend much farther than the tiny settlements of the Vosges and the upper Saône wilderness, a region that would be able to muster not more than 100 fighters. Communication with other Lowlife enclaves was minimal because of the danger from Hunts, gray-torc patrols, Howlers, and even nominal subjects of King Yeochee who were reluctant to give up their human-harassing ways.
Before leaving High Vrazel, Madame and Chief Burke had discussed this problem with the shrewd old Battlemaster of the shape-changers, Pallol One-Eye. It had been agreed that the only hope for recruitment of more distant humans lay in the hands of the Firvulag. Only the illusion-spinners could hope to shepherd groups of Lowlife fighters from the far villages to Hidden Springs in time for the Finiah attack; but it was clearly going to take more than a simple call to arms to budge skeptical humans from their swamps or mountain fastnesses, especially if the invitation to the war was delivered by the little exotics.
Madame and Peo had recorded joint appeals on AV letter-plaques and left these with Pallol; however, the Firvulag messengers would have to establish credibility for the enterprise, and to this end a certain stratagem proposed by the Battle-master was ultimately agreed upon. At the same time that Madame’s expedition left High Vrazel for the Ship’s Grave, picked Firvulag teams, including King Yeochee’s most tactful Grand Combat referees, had set out on journeys to the south and west to summon all of the Lowlives in the known world to participate in the strike against Finiah.
The Little People went laden with gifts. And it happened that lonely huddles of cabins tucked away among the volcanoes of the Massif Central were visited at night by benevolent pixies. Bags of finely milled flour, flagons of honey and wine, luscious cheeses, candy, and other rare dainties appeared mysteriously on human doorsteps. Missing geese and sheep unaccountably found their way back to their pens; even lost children were guided home safely by butterflies or will-o’-the-wisps. On the mountain slopes of the Jura, a poorly tanned deerskin pegged to the wall of a Lowlife hovel might disappear, and in its place the delighted inhabitants would discover well-cobbled boots, fur jerkins, and butter-soft suede garments. Deep in the swamps of the Paris basin, the fen-dwellers would find that rotting punts were exchanged for new decamole dinghies stolen from Tanu caravans; great nets of waterfowl were left where outlaw human hunters could find them; plass containers of Survival Unit insect-repellent, more precious than rubies, appeared on the windowsills of the stilt-legged marshland houses where no passerby could possibly have reached. In scores of Lowlife settlements, humans were amazed when odd jobs were done by invisible helpers. Sick folks were nursed by elfin women who vanished with the dawn; broken things were mended; empty larders were filled; and always there were gifts, gifts, gifts.
Finally, when the Firvulag messengers ventured to appear en clair and present the awesome plan of Madame Guderian (who was, of course, known to all of the fugitives), the Lowlives were at least willing to listen. Fewer numbers agreed to respond to the appeal for fighting volunteers, for there were many emotional burn-outs and physical cripples among them, as well as a sizable percentage who cared only for their own skins. But the bolder, the healthier, and the more idealistic spirits were fired by the notion of striking a blow against the hated Tanu, while others agreed to participate in the attack when the subject of loot was delicately broached. So the Firvulag emissaries began to return, and those at Hidden Springs exulted because they brought with them a total of nearly 400 men and women recruited from places as far away as Bordeaux and Albion and the tidal estuaries of the Anversion Sea, These were welcomed in the name of Free Humanity, briefly trained, and equipped with weapons of bronze and vitredur. None of the newcomers, it had been agreed, would be told of the iron until the very day of the attack; and only the most competent of the volunteer fighters would be armed with the precious metal.