Thorn settled then. And the whup-whup-whup grew louder, the aircraft tilting as it lifted, tilted and swung its tail about as the countryfolk ran in the dust the blades kicked up.
Wh-wh-wh-! Sky in one view, ground in the other. He gave a look at Thorn, saw the cords in Thorn’s neck stand out as he braced himself. Another grip of claws. Thorn visibly relaxed. Turned his face to Duun’s with studied serenity.
So. Duun slipped his finger down Thorn’s arm, to the place on Thorn’s wrist where veins lay next the surface. The pulse throbbed beneath his finger-pad as if the heart that drove it was going to burst.
“Keep your eyes on the horizon,” Duun said into Thorn’s ear. “Helps your stomach.”
“I’m not scared,” Thorn shouted back. But the copter turned off for the west then, sharply, and Thorn’s fingers clenched on his armrest.
The great flat, more hills, an hour and more of trees and roads and herds that raced beneath them in a brown tide. Suddenly the great sheet of a bay spread itself beyond a brown rim of trees, water shining silver in the sun and going on forever to the south. Thorn forgot his terror and pointed-“What’s that?”
“Djohin Bay,” Duun shouted back. “That’s the sea out there, minnow! That’s the great wide sea!”
Land came up eastward beyond that shining surface: outthrusts of the city, a stain against the sky. “What’s there?” Thorn yelled into the rotor noise.
“That’s Pekenan,” Duun said. “That’s the port town. The city’s coming up. There-that’s the shuttle-port, see that gray ribbon there.”
“What’s a shuttle-port?” Thorn asked. “What’s a port town?” His skin was white in the sunlight that streamed through the copter’s side windows. He sweated. It was too soon to have traveled. Sights and strangeness multiplied. (Don’t faint on me, minnow, not here, not now. There’s more.) “Here.” Duun fished out an inhaler from the kit at his feet. He had brought it with their gear. “Put that in your mouth- Breathe in hard.” He pushed the spray and Thorn choked, coughed. Fell back against the seat with a shocked offended look. But he lost the waxen taint. His pupils dilated. “There. Want more?”
“No, Duun,” Thorn said earnestly. He turned and looked out the window.
Duun had little desire to look. He knew what he would see. The capital. Dsonan. The tall buildings where shonunin lived one on top of the other.
“Look at those!” Thorn cried suddenly, pointing at the city-center.
“I’ve seen them, minnow.” Tall buildings failed to interest him. “We’re going to land on one. We’re going to live there. Inside.” To explain more than that took too much shouting. The rotor noise depressed him. He remembered the perspective of the concrete canyons, the buildings passing under them. He took Thorn by the wrist and held his finger on the pulse.
Thorn looked at him, knowing what he was doing, looking as if he were vastly ashamed of a heart he could not control. “Look down,” Duun said as they began to fly over the city. “Get used to it.”
Thorn did not flinch. The pulse sped as the perspectives shifted beneath them. (“What’s that?” Thorn asked, when a train whisked below them.) What’s that? Duun had not wanted questions yet. There would have been time. The pulse fluttered beneath his fingertip with unbearable rapidity. “Are we coming down?”
“They never miss,” Duun said. “Watch the roof, minnow. See the circle there. That’s where we land.”
* * *
* * *
VI
The window gave them a brook, a woodland. Duun cared nothing for it. The wind from the air-conditioning brought wood-scent. It was, like the opal sand on the floor, synthetic and expensive. Thorn marveled at it, touched the window-“Are we turning?”-because the scene moved. “No,” Duun said with acerbity. “Have you forgotten? There’s city behind that wall. Behave yourself. You don’t own this. I don’t. It’s all here, that’s all. Don’t be impressed with it.
(“Whose is it?”)
Duun regretted then bringing up the matter.
And perhaps Thorn suspected then that he had been in the company of more than one illusion maintained for him. Thorn’s ebullience ebbed away and left a look of pain, the fine-drawn look of someone scant of resources. The lack of sleep for days, the purgative, the hunt, the wounds; a heart which had worked harder than the engines had in the copter flight-which had had, perhaps, all a heart ought to bear for a while. Duun went into his room, delved into his kit and took out a sedative, went into the kitchen and mixed it in milk.