The barman eyed him dubiously. “It's a mighty long walk, through some bad hill country-I don't know if horses could make it."
“But you said Mr. Grace is there, and the traders come and go…” John was honestly startled.
“They don't walk, though; they take the airship over the hills."
“Airship?” John was no longer merely startled, he was astonished. After a few seconds’ confusion, he asked, “Well, then, why can't we take this airship?"
“I didn't say you couldn't; you asked about the road, and where you were worried about prices before, I thought perhaps you couldn't afford the airship."
“Oh.” John was struggling to think about too many things at once. In the past hour he had seen weapons such as he had never imagined on the walls of an unimportant village, and wealth beyond believing-but had had his theory of offworld intervention severely damaged, leaving him with no good explanation for any of it. And now this innkeeper's assistant was calmly talking about an airship's fare as if it were an ordinary ferryboat. “How much is it?"
“Thirty credits."
“Thirty credits-oh.” Well, John told himself, at least ancient scientific miracles don't come cheap.
“That's each, if you take your wife-they don't let women ride free-and one way. Same prices coming back. No horses-you'll need to carry your packs yourself, or else pay another twenty credits to send them as freight."
“Oh,” John said again. He felt control of the situation slipping away from him, and grabbed it back. He had enough money-he had expected prices to be running rampant in Little St. Peter, and had brought enough for a three-week stay. He could not risk leaving Miriam behind, and the woolens would be needed to keep up his pose as a trader. That meant eighty credits each way. Eighty credits would be twelve hundred dollars; twelve hundred dollars each way would take a chunk out of his funds, but would be well worth it if it cleared up the mysteries once and for all and provided him with proof that the People of Heaven were the real threat to Godsworld. “When does it leave?” he asked.
Chapter Six
“Thou art to pass over Jordan this day, to go in to possess nations greater and mightier than thyself, cities great and fenced up to heaven."-Deuteronomy 9:1
The airship made its pickup at midnight, the entire loading and takeoff carried out in full darkness; it did not come into the town itself, but made its stop a few miles to the southeast, in a small valley, where men with dim lanterns escorted the passengers to an unlit waiting room.
That seemed rather sinister to John. He was unable to get a good look at the airship-which, he realized, was probably the whole idea. It was simply a looming darkness surrounded by more darkness; no lights of any kind were allowed.
John wondered at that. Quite aside from its evil connotations, and even given that the Heaveners wished to keep the ship's exact nature secret, he was puzzled how anyone could steer an airship in the dark. He had only a very vague idea of what controlling an “airship” would be like, but he had pictured it as a high-speed craft, probably as fast as a galloping horse; he knew that he would not care to ride a galloping horse at night.
John wished that Godsworld had a “moon", as described in Genesis, to provide a little illumination. He had no clear idea what a moon was, only what the Bible said and that Earth had one and Godsworld didn't, but even a “lesser light” would have been welcome.
He and Miriam were not the only passengers; three others, all men, made the flight with them, all closed into a small windowless chamber with golden walls that appeared to be-but of course, could not be-plastic, furnished with benches upholstered in a strange, soft fabric dyed a vivid red. The other passengers ignored John, Miriam, and each other. One of them seemed to have a mild congestion of some sort, and could be heard breathing, but the others might as well have never been for all the companionship they provided.
John debated trying to strike up a conversation, but decided against it.
The two crewmen who oversaw the loading of freight and the embarkation of passengers were tall dark men armed with pistols, men who spoke slowly and in an oddly slurred manner; John guessed, from Timothy's description, that these were People of Heaven.
As he felt the airship shifting beneath him, John began to wonder if he were making a wise move. Perhaps he should have stayed longer in Little St. Peter, learned what he could there, before venturing on. The airship might be a trap of some sort-could there really be an “airship” on Godsworld? Such wonders were the stuff of old legends of Earth, not everyday reality.
But then, machine guns and the luxuries of Little St. Peter weren't exactly commonplace, either.
Miriam fell asleep resting her head on his arm; judging by the man's slumped posture and steady breathing, the congested fellow also dozed off. In the silent tedium, John lost all sense of time and was unsure whether he was still really awake himself.
Just when he was becoming certain that he had fallen asleep, and that recent events were all a dream and he would awake to find himself back in Marshside, the door slid open.
“Everyone off,” a voice called, “We're here.” John noticed that it was a Heavener's voice, with the odd slurring-the words were actually more like, “Ehwhuh awh, wuh heh.” There were some variations in speech among the various peoples of Godsworld, but John had never heard so extreme an accent.
He stood up, letting Miriam's head fall; she awoke, and muttered in mild confusion.
“Come on,” John said, finding her arm and pulling her up. “We're here."
Dragging a groggy Miriam and the bundle of cloth that had occupied a third seat, John stepped out of the airship and found himself in a corridor. Startled, he looked closely, and made out a seam between the corridor and the wall of the airship. He marvelled that the pilot had been able to bring his ship in so close to the “dock", or whatever it was, that the corridor matched up to the side of the vessel with less than a two-inch gap anywhere.
He wished he were able to see something through that narrow slit, but only darkness was visible. The walls of the passageway were of the same substance as the walls aboard the airship, he noticed, the stuff that looked like plastic.
Behind him the other three passengers were waiting impatiently, eager to be off the airship and on about their business.
“Welcome to the Citadel of Heaven,” said a man standing halfway down the short corridor. He spoke with the Heavener accent; John looked at him closely and noticed that the buttons on his shirt were absurdly small, less than an inch across. The texture of the shirt was odd, too, and the cut of the collar was strange. The jeans seemed all right, though they were tighter than customary. He wore a gun on a singularly narrow and unobtrusive belt, a gun not like any John had seen before-there was no cylinder, no hammer, no slide, just a smooth breech and textured grip.
“Have you been here before, sir?” the Heavener asked.
“No,” John admitted.
“Straight ahead, then.” He pointed down the corridor to a bright red door-hellishly red, John thought. He ambled slowly past the guard, or greeter, or whatever the Heavener was, toward the indicated door, taking in his surroundings and watching for any indication that he should take action somehow.
Behind him he heard the Heavener ask the next passenger whether he had ever been in the Citadel before.
“Yes,” the man answered, “I have a trade license."
“May I see your card?"
John glanced back over both his own shoulder and Miriam's and saw the passenger handing the Heavener something small and thin, something that fit comfortably in the man's palm and gleamed silver. The Heavener accepted it and touched it to a spot on the wall that John had taken for decoration; letters appeared on the smooth surface of the wall above the spot, letters that John was too far away to read.