Her fingers tightened on his. “Poor Olga. The poor children. Should I call her tonight or, or what?”
He stayed in the orbit of his own thoughts. “Rumors of a deliverer—not merely a political liberator, but a savior—no, a whole race of saviors—that’s what’s driving the Aeneans,” he said. “And not the dominant culture alone. The others too. In their different ways, they all wait for an apocalypse.”
“Who is preaching it?”
He chuckled sadly. “If I knew that, I could order the party arrested. Or, better yet, try to suborn him. Or them. But my agents hear nothing except these vague rumors. Never forget how terribly few we are, and how marked, on an entire world…. We did notice what appeared to be a centering of the rumors on the Orcan area. We investigated. We drew blank, at least as far as finding any proof of illegal activities. The society there, and its beliefs, always have been founded on colossal prehuman ruins, and evidently has often brought forth millennialist prophets. Our people had more urgent things to do than struggle with the language and ethos of some poverty-stricken dwellers on a dead sea floor.” His tone strengthened. “Though if I had the personnel for it, I would probe further indeed. This wouldn’t be the first time that a voice from the desert drove nations mad.”
The phone chimed again. He muttered a swear word before he returned to accept the call. It was on scramble code, which automatically heterodyned the audio output so that Desai’s wife could not hear what came to him a couple of meters away. The screen was vacant, too.
She could see the blaze on his face; and she heard him shout after the conversation ended, as he surged from his chair: “Brahma’s mercy, yes! We’ll catch him and end this thing!”
XIV
Jade Gate had Hearty reached the Linn when the Terrans came.
The Cimmerian Mountains form the southern marge of Ilion. The further south the Flone goes through them, until its final incredible plunge off the continental rim, the steeper and deeper is the gorge it has cut for itself. In winter it runs quiet between those walls, under a sheath of ice. But by midsummer, swollen with melt off the polar cap, it is a race, and they must have skillful pilots who would venture along that violence.
At the port rail of the main deck, Ivar and Jao watched. Water brawled, foamed, spouted off rocks, filled air with an ongoing cannonade and made the vessel rock and shudder. Here the stream had narrowed to a bare 300 meters between heaped boulders and talus. Behind, cliffs rose for a pair of kilometers. The rock was gloomy-hued and there was only a strip of sky to see, from which Virgil had already sunk. The brighter stars gleamed in its duskiness. Down under the full weight of shadow, it was cold. Spray dashed into faces and across garments. Forward, the canyon dimmed out in mist. Nevertheless he spied three ships in that direction, and four aft. More than these were rendezvous-bound.
As the deck pitched beneath her, the girl caught his arm. “What was that?” he shouted through the noise, and barely heard her reply:
“Swerve around one obstacle, I’m sure. Nothing here is ever twice the same.”
“Have you had any wrecks?”
“Some few per century. Most lives are saved.”
“God! You’ll take such risk, year after year, for … ritual?”
“The danger is part of the ritual, Rolf. We are never so one with the world as when— Ai-ah!”
His gaze followed hers aloft, and his heart lurched. Downward came slanting the torpedo shape of a large flyer. Upon its armored flank shone the sunburst of Empire.
“Who is that?” she cried innocently.
“A marine troop. After me. Who else?” He didn’t rasp it loud enough for her to hear. When he wrenched free and ran, she stared in hurt amazement.
He pounded up the ladder to the bridge, where he knew Mea stood by the pilot. She came out to meet him. Grimness bestrode her countenance. She had bitten her cigar across. “Let’s get you below,” she snapped, and shoved at him.