Three
The barge Benares
entered the river port of Naiad an hour before sunset. Crew and
pilgrims pressed to the rail to stare at smoldering embers of what
once had been a city of twenty thousand people. Little remained.
The famous River Front Inn, built in the days of Sad King Billy,
had burned to the foundations; its charred docks, piers, and
screened balconies now collapsed into the shallows of the Hoolie.
The customhouse was a burned-out shell. The airship terminal on the
north end of town survived only as a blackened hulk, its mooring
tower reduced to a spire of charcoal. There was no sign whatsoever
of the small riverfront Shrike temple. Worst of all, from the
pilgrims’ point of view, was the destruction of the Naiad River
Station – the harness dock lay burned and sagging, the manta
holding pens open to the river.
‘God damn it!’ said
Martin Silenus.
‘Who did it?’ asked
Father Hoyt. ‘The Shrike?’
‘More likely the
SDF,’ said the Consul. ‘Although they may have been fighting the
Shrike.’
‘I can’t believe
this,’ snapped Brawne Lamia. She turned to A. Bettik, who had just
joined them on the rear deck. ‘Didn’t you know this had
happened?’
‘No,’ said the
android. ‘There has been no contact with any point north of the
locks for more than a week.’
‘Why the hell not?’
asked Lamia. ‘Even if this godforsaken world doesn’t have a
datasphere, don’t you have radio?’
A. Bettik smiled
slightly. ‘Yes, M. Lamia, there is radio, but the comsats are down,
the microwave repeater stations at the Karla Locks were destroyed,
and we have no access to shortwave.’
‘What about the
mantas?’ asked Kassad. ‘Can we press on to Edge with the ones we
have?’
Bettik frowned. ‘We
will have to, Colonel,’ he said. ‘But it is a crime. The two in
harness will not recover from such a pull. With fresh mantas we
would have put into Edge before dawn. With these two . . .’ The
android shrugged. ‘With luck, if the beasts survive, we will arrive
by early afternoon . . . ’
‘The windwagon will
still be there, will it not?’ asked Het Masteen.
‘We must assume so,’
said A. Bettik. ‘If you will excuse me, I will see to feeding the
poor beasts we have. We should be under way again within the
hour.’
They saw no one in or
near the ruins of Naiad. No river craft made their appearance above
the city. An hour’s pull northeast of the town they entered the
region where the forests and farms of the lower Hoolie gave way to
the undulating orange prairie south of the Sea of Grass.
Occasionally the Consul would see the mud towers of architect ants,
some of their serrated structures near the river reaching almost
ten meters in height. There was no sign of intact human habitation.
The ferry at Betty’s Ford was totally gone, with not even a towrope
or warming shack left to show where it had stood for almost two
centuries. The River Runners Inn at Cave Point was dark and silent.
A. Bettik and other crew members hallooed, but there was no
response from the black cave mouth.
Sunset brought a
sensuous stillness over the river, soon broken by a chorus of
insect noises and night-bird calls. For a while the surface of the
Hoolie became a mirror of the gray-green disk of twilight sky,
disturbed only by the leap of dusk-feeding fish and the wake of the
laboring mantas. As true darkness fell, innumerable prairie
gossamers – much paler than their forest cousins, but also of
greater wingspan, luminescent shades the size of small children –
danced in the vales and valleys of the gently rolling hills. By the
time the constellations emerged and the meteor trails began
scarring the night sky, a brilliant display this far from all
man-made light, the lanterns had been lit and dinner set out on the
aft deck.
The Shrike pilgrims
were subdued, as if still contemplating Colonel Kassad’s grim and
confusing tale. The Consul had been drinking steadily since before
midday and now he felt the pleasant displacement – from reality,
from the pain of memory – which allowed him to get through each day
and night. Now he asked, his voice as careful and unslurred as only
a true alcoholic’s can be, whose turn it was to tell a
tale.
‘Mine,’ said Martin
Silenus. The poet also had been drinking steadily since early in
the day. His voice was as carefully controlled as the Consul’s but
redness on his sharp cheeks and an almost manic brightness of eye
gave the old poet away. ‘At least I drew number three . . .’ He
held up his slip of paper. ‘If you still want to hear the fucking
thing.’
Brawne Lamia lifted
her glass of wine, scowled, and set it down. ‘Perhaps we should
talk about what we have learned from the first two stories and how
it might relate to our current . . . situation.’
‘Not yet,’ said
Colonel Kassad. ‘We don’t have enough information. ’
‘Let M. Silenus
speak,’ said Sol Weintruab. ‘Then we can begin discussing what we
have heard.’
‘I agree,’ said Lenar
Hoyt.
Het Masteen and the
Consul nodded.
‘Agreed!’ cried
Martin Silenus. ‘I’ll tell my story. Just let me finish my fucking
glass of wine.’