“Makes it easier to have just four main directions to search in.”
“Those tracks were made over a period of years or they wouldn’t be quite so visible since the last time they were used forty years ago.”
“True. So, eeny, meeny, miny, moe… which track will we follow now? East is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet,” he said in one of his whimsical moods.
“Nothing for north and south?”
“Well, we could go this way?” And he crossed his arms, pointing in two separate directions, neither of which was a cardinal compass point.
“North, I think, and then swing round…” Helva decided.
“In ever-increasing circles?” His tone was so caustically bright!
“Mountains, too. That’s good.”
“ ‘Purple mountains’ majesty, above the fruited plain’…” he quoted.
“That doesn’t sound right.”
“I’ve forgot how it goes,” he said, frowning.
“They do say that memory is the first thing that aging affects…”
“Thanks! I’ll remember that.”
Cloaked and at low altitude, she followed the northern track, noting the offshoots and realizing she had bit off quite a lot to chew if she was going to warn even half the inhabitants. She refused to allow the fact to discourage her from her chosen task. And night was falling on the continent.
“Ah-ha!” Niall pointed urgently at the view port. “Fires. Port three degrees.”
“And far too much forest for me to land in.”
“I don’t mind backtracking when you can find a landing spot… Oh, no, I can’t, can I?”
“No, you can’t, but I appreciate your willingness to offer. Especially since I need to show my little vid to stir them to action.”
“You could use the prosthesis,” he said in a wheedling tone, grinning at her.
She said nothing—pointedly—and he chuckled. She might have to at that if daylight didn’t show her settlements she could reach. She could hover… but she’d need something to project the vid on to for maximum effectiveness.
“I’ll just use the darkness for reconnaissance and find out how many places I’m going to have to visit.”
“Good thinking. I’ll make a list of the coordinates. You might need them if the Fleet does come to our aid and comfort.”
By morning his list of settlements, in all directions, had reached the three hundred mark. Some were small in the forested areas, but the plains or rolling hill country had many with several hundred inhabitants. All were ringed with walls, and these seemed to exude the power that showed up at every settlement, as well as a land-dike that Niall called a margin of no-woman’s-land. The largest congregation was sited at the confluence of two rivers.
“If they have such a thing as an administrative center, that is likely it,” she said. “We’ll go there first thing in the morning. When I’ve had a quick look at that island complex.”
“Whatever you say, love,” Niall remarked with unusual compliance.
So she—they—arrived bright and early as the sun rose over the cup of the mountains that surrounded the largest congregation of Ravel’s Chloe-ites.
“Rather impressive, wouldn’t you say?” Niall remarked. “Orderly, neat. Everyone must have a private domicile. Thought you said they were a cloistered order.”
The arrangement of the town, small city, did surprise Helva. Streets laid out in the center while garden plots and some large fields were positioned all around but within the customary low surrounding wall. There were main gates at each of the cardinal points of the compass but they weren’t substantiaclass="underline" a Kolnari war axe would have reduced them to splinters with the first blow. A power source was visible on her sensors but it seemed to power the wall. What could they be keeping out that wasn’t very tall or large or strong? Odd. Larger buildings set in the midst of fenced fields suggested either storage or barn shelters. She saw nothing grazing, though the season looked to be spring, to judge by the delicate green of cultivated fields, all within the walled boundary.
All four of the major avenues leading from the gates, for they were broad enough to be dignified with that title, tree-lined as well, led toward a large building which dominated the center. Part of it looked like a church, with an ample plaza in front of it for assemblies. Behind the church were low lines of buildings, possibly administration. This was a far-better-organized place than the original Chloe had been. Maybe they had learned something in the last century. She could hope.
“Hey, get that, Helva,” Niall said suddenly, pointing to a slim structure atop the front of the building. “Not a steeple after all—no bells in it—but it’s got something atop it.”
Their approach had now been sighted, for the avenues as well as the smaller lanes between the individual housing units were filling with figures, faces upturned. Most were racing towards the square in front of the church, or whatever the big building was.
“Early risers…” Helva remarked.
“Early to bed—that power source is limited to the wall, not any electricity—and early to rise, you know,” Niall said in a revoltingly jocular tone of voice. Then he altered to a practical tone, “And there’s just about enough space for you to land in front of that church.”
“So there is. But it’s also full,” she said, for they had arrived at the back end of the building and now that she had swung round, she could see that the plaza was filled with kneeling bodies. No one was working the fields.
“The more you squash the fewer we’ll have to save from the Kolnari,” Niall said.
“Oh, be quiet.”
“It’s over and out to you, Helva love. Sock it to them.”
The devout knelt with upturned faces. She could see their mouths open with dark O’s of surprise. But not fear. At some unseen signal, the kneelers rose and quickly, but without panic, moved back, out of the plaza.
“Be not afraid,” Helva said gently, using her exterior sound system and ignoring the rich chuckle of amusement from Niall.
“They’re not. Maybe you better alter your program, dear heart.”
“I need to speak with you.”
“Why don’t you just hover?”
She made sure she was on interior sound only before she said sharply, “Will you shut up and let me handle this, Niall?”
“Remind them that you saved them from the hellfire of Chloe, dear,” suggested Niall.
“That’s my next line,” she said in a caustic aside. “I am called Helva.”
“Hey, Helva, that’s you they’ve got mounted on that building.”
In her careful vertical descent, she was now level with the spire. Which wasn’t a spire but a replica of her earlier ship-self, vanes and all.
“Well, how’s that for being canonized!” Niall said, but she could hear a note of pride in his voice. “You may be able to pull this off after all, love.”
Rather more shaken by the artifact than she’d ever let him know, she completed her landing. One of the improvements on her ship body was the vertical cabin and a ramp directly to it, rather than the old and inconvenient lift from the stern.
“You even have a reception party of one,” Niall remarked, as a tall figure became visible on the starboard viewers. All around the square the others turned towards that figure, heads bowing in a brief obeisance.
“How else are you called, Ship Helva?” said the tall woman, the hood falling back and revealing the serene face of an older woman.
“Not bad at all,” Niall murmured. “She’d look even better in something feminine.”
Indeed, Helva agreed with him since the woman had the most amazingly attractive face. A pity she had taken up religion instead of a man and a family. The long cassock robe she wore was one of those amorphous affairs, probably woven or pounded out of indigenous fibers and strictly utilitarian.