“Yeah, Dloan!” Zefla whooped.
“This might be them,” Dloan said. Sharrow saw him at one of the blown-out windows in the Huhsz carriage; he was fiddling with something.
“What are you doing now?” Sharrow said, puzzled.
“Tying a bit of string to this briefcase,” Dloan said, as though it should be obvious. “Nobody underneath this carriage?”
“All clear,” Sharrow told him. Dloan threw the large briefcase out of the smashed window; it jerked open as the string tied inside the carriage came taut; there was a crack and the whine of flechettes; the briefcase bounced into the air on a cloud of smoke, then fell back, swaying on the end of the string; a series of what looked like large, black books tumbled out of it and thumped dustily to the karst.
“Ah-ha,” said Sharrow.
She stood on top of the waste silo; a dusty yellow mound on the side of a dusty yellow hill with the karst desert behind them, a field of pale, frozen flames in the fierce glare of the afternoon sun. Miz sat in the All-Terrain, talking on the transceiver. The silo’s valve-heads were protected by a small blockhouse covered in ancient, fading radiation symbols and death-heads. Dloan attached a thermal charge to the door’s lock; the charge burned brighter than the noon sun and Dloan kicked the door open.
The interior of the blockhouse was black after the glare of the burning charge and the blinding sunlight; it was roastingly hot, too. Sharrow held the five Passports. They were solid and heavy, even though they were fashioned largely from titanium and woven carbon fibre. The external text, addressed to officials and responsible individuals everywhere, commanding their complete cooperation under the laws of the World Court, and threatening untold punishments for anybody who tried to destroy the Passports, was engraved on thin, flat sheets of diamond secured to the covers. The matricial holes were blue carbuncles embedded in one corner of each of the solid documents; a sequence of recessed buttons along their spines controlled the Passports’ circuitry, which could produce a hologram of the World Court judges and a recording of their voices, also commanding complete cooperation from all and sundry before going into the details of their pan-political authority and legal provenance.
Cenuij swung the metre-long, bullet-shaped slug away from the top of the silo’s access shaft. The radiation monitor cuff on his wrist whined quietly.
Cenuij and Dloan together heaved the shaft lock open; the massive shutter made a protesting, creaking noise and the radiation cuff sirened louder. Sharrow approached the dark well of the shaft.
“Well,” Cenuij said to her, “don’t stand there admiring the damn things; chuck them down before we all get fried.”
Sharrow dropped the Passports into the shaft. They made a vanishing, dunking noise. She helped Cenuij hold the shutter; Dloan primed the bundle of explosive, thermal charge and assorted ammunition rounds, sealed them inside the inspection slug and then manoeuvred the bullet-shaped slug into place above the shaft while Cenuij’s radiation monitor warbled away.
The slug slid into place, securing the shutter; they let it go while the slug disappeared down the shaft, cable unwinding from a reel in the ceiling.
“Okay,” Dloan said, heading for the door.
They got back into the cool interior of the All-Terrain.
Miz grinned at Sharrow. “Done it?”
“Yes,” Sharrow said, wiping sweat from her face.
“Great,” Miz said, pulling on the car’s controls to take them away from the silo. They bumped off its domed top and back onto the track leading into the hills.
“Is that plane on the way yet?” Cenuij demanded from the rear of the bouncing All-Terrain.
“Pilot had a problem with customs in Hapley City,” Miz said.
“Sorted out now; meeting us two klicks north of here. She’ll be keeping low to stay out of surface radar; there’s a bit of fuss about the train.”
“What about satellites?” Cenuij said.
“By the time they process what they’ve got, we’ll be away,” Miz said. “Worst happens, the plane’s impounded.” He shrugged. “We’re leaving it at Chanasteria Field anyway.”
“Five seconds,” Dloan said. Miz stopped the All-Terrain on the track just before it entered a shallow canyon; they all watched the bulge of the waste silo.
There was an impression of noise; an almost sub-sonic concussion in the air and from the ground. A little dust drifted from the door of the blockhouse.
“That ought to slow the bastards down,” Miz said, restarting the vehicle.
Sharrow nodded. “With any luck.”
“I hope it was worth it,” Cenuij said.
“Well, yahoo for us,” Zefla yawned. “This calls for a drink.”
“Maybe Bencil Dornay’ll fix you a cocktail if you ask him nicely,” Miz told her, gunning the All-Terrain’s engine as they rumbled into the canyon.
Sharrow looked out of the window at the drifting dust.
8 The Mortal Message
She swam above the landscape. The water was a quiet milky-blue; the landscape below glowed green. Diving towards it, she could see tiny roads and houses, glittering lakes and patches of dark forest. She touched the cool crystal, her naked limbs pulsing, forcing, keeping her down; her black hair floated around her head, a slow cloud of darkness, swirling languidly.
She stilled her arms and legs and rose gently upward through the warm water.
On the surface she rolled over and lay floating, watching the vague shadow her body cast on the pale-pink tiles of the ceiling. She shifted her limbs this way and that, watching the fuzzy figure on the ceiling respond. Then she kicked out for the side, pulled herself out and took a towel from a table. She went to the parapet, where a breeze from the valley blew in, bringing a scent of late summer richness. The cool air flowed over the parapet and round her wet body, making her shiver. She put her arms on the wooden rail of the glass-fronted parapet and watched the hairs on her forearms unstick themselves from the beads of moisture there and rise, each on its own tiny mound of flesh.
The view led across the valley to evergreen forests and high summer pasture. The mountains above held no trace of snow yet, though further on, beyond the horizon, the centre of the range held peaks with permanent snow-fields and small glaciers. Beyond the lip of rock above, high streaks of clouds and vapour trails crossed the pale-blue vault like spindrift.
She put the towel round her shoulders and walked to the edge of the pool, looking down into the gradually calming, green-glowing waters. The landscape below trembled and shook, as though convulsing in the throes of some terrible quake.
The house of Bencil Dornay was built under an overhang on a great mountain in the Morspe range overlooking the Vernasayal valley, three-and-a-half thousand kilometres south of Yadayeypon, almost within sight of Jonolrey’s western coast and the rollers of Southern, Golter’s fourth ocean. The house clung beneath an undercut buttress like a particularly stubborn sea crustacean determined to stay clamped to its rock even though the tide had gone out long ago. The house’s most unsettling feature was its swimming pool, which was on the very lowest of the dwelling’s five floors, and which was glass-bottomed.
Faced with the green glow rising from the pool and the dim but otherwise unobstructed view it offered of the valley far below, people of a nervous disposition being shown round for the first time had been known to turn a remarkably similar shade. Hardier, more adventurous guests willing to display their trust in modern building techniques rarely missed an opportunity to take a dip in the pool, even if it was just to say they’d done it.
Sharrow stood there and waited for some time, until the water beading her skin had mostly dried and the chopping water in the pool had stilled completely, so that the view of the valley five hundred metres below was clear and distinct and heart-stopping, then she dived gracefully back in.