“If they work,” muttered Clerk-Regnant Voriel. The Cessorian seemed to have a personal thing against Saluus. He had no idea why.
“Now, we’ve dealt with all that,” First Secretary Heuypzlagger said quickly, glancing at Saluus. “If there are any problems with the ships’ construction, I’m sure the inquiry will show them up. We have to concentrate now on what else we can do.”
Saluus was getting bored. Now was as good a time as any. “An embassy,” he said. He looked round them all. “That’s what I’d like to suggest. An embassy to the Dwellers of Nasqueron, to secure peace, make sure there are no more ‘misunderstandings’ between us and them, attempt to involve them in the defence of Ulubis system and, if possible, acquire from them -with their consent, preferably — some of the extremely impressive weaponry they appear to possess, either in physical or theoretical form.”
“Well,” Heuypzlagger said, shaking his head. “Oh. Now our Acquisitariat friend is a diplomat,” Voriel observed, expression poised between sneer and smile.
“Needing yet more supposedly gas-capable ships to protect it, no doubt!” Brimiaice protested.
“Haven’t we got one already?” Thovin asked.
Colonel Somjomion just looked at him, eyes narrowed.
The meeting only seemed to last for ever. Finally it was over. Saluus met up with his new lover that evening, at the water-column house on Murla, where he’d first really looked at her in the true light of day and decided, yes, he’d be interested. It had been at brunch, with his wife (and her new girlfriend) and Fass and the Segrette Twins, the day after their visit to the Narcateria in Boogeytown.
* * *
The RushWing Sheumerith rode high in the clear gas spaces between two high haze layers, flying into the vast unending jet stream of gas as though trying to keep pace with the stars which were sometimes visible, tiny and hard and remote, through the yellow haze and the thin quick amber clouds scudding eternally overhead.
The giant aircraft was a single slim scimitar of wing pocked with engine nacelles, articulated like a wave, ten kilometres across, a hundred metres long and ten metres high, a thin filament forever jetting like a swift weather front made visible across the waste of clouds beneath. Dwellers, hundreds of them, hung from it, each anchored like refuelled aircraft by a cable strung out from the wing’s trailing edge, riding in a little pocket of calm gas produced by simple shells of diamond, open to the rear and which, to the human eye, were shaped like a pair of giant cupped hands.
In a long-term drug-trance, downshifted in time so that the flight seemed twelve or sixty or more times quicker than it really was — the vast continents of clouds racing beneath like foam, the wash of stars wheeling madly above, wisp-banks whipping towards and past like rags in a hurricane — the wing-hung Dwellers watched the days and nights flicker around them like some stupendous strobe and felt the planet beneath them turn like something reeling out their lives.
Fassin Taak left the jetclipper and flew carefully in, matching velocities, then anchored the little gascraft, very slowly, to the underside of the diamond enclosure holding the Sage-youth Zosso, a slim, dark, rather battered-looking Dweller of two million years or so.
Fassin slow-timed. The wing, the clouds, the stars, all seemed to pick up speed, rolling racing forward like over-cranked screenage. The roar of engines and slipstreaming gas rose and rose in pitch, becoming a high, shrill, faraway keening, then vanishing from hearing altogether.
The Dweller above him, seeming to jerk and quiver in his little retaining harness, waited for him to synch before sending, — And what might you be, person?
· I am a human being, sir. A Seer at the Nasqueron Court,
in a gascraft, an esuit. I am called Fassin Taak, of Sept Bantrabal.
· And I am Zosso, of nowhere in particular. Of here. Good view, is it not?
· It is.
· However, I dare say that that is not why you are here.
· You’re right. It’s not.
· You wish to ask me something?
· I am told I need to make passage to somewhere I’ve never heard of, to follow a Dweller I need to find. I’m told you can help.
· I’m sure I can, if I choose to. Well, that is, if people still take any notice of what a silly old wing-hanger says. Who can say? I’m not sure that I would listen to somebody as old and out of things as I am if I was a young travelcaptain. Why, I think I should say something like, “What, listen to that foolish old—?” Oh, I beg your pardon, young human. I seem to have distracted myself. Where was it you would like to go?
— A place that is, apparently, sometimes called Hoestruem.
Drunisine himself, alone, had come to the quarters that Fassin shared with the two Dwellers, in the mid-morning of the day after the battle in the storm.
“We have delayed you long enough. You may go. A jetclipper is at your disposal for the next two dozen days. Goodbye.”
“Now there,” Y’sul had observed, “goes a Dweller of few words.”
— Hoestruem?” Zosso asked. — No, I’ve never heard of it either.
Night swept over them as he signalled, enveloping.
— In or near Aopoleyin? Fassin sent. — Apparently, he told the old wing-hanger, when the Dweller was uncommunicative for a few moments. — Somewhere associated with Aopoleyin.
All this was on Valseir’s advice. Fassin couldn’t find any mention of anywhere called Aopoleyin in his databases either. He was starting to wonder if the memory-scanning process he’d had to undergo before being allowed to leave the Isaut had scrambled some of the gascraft’s information storage systems.
· Ah, Zosso sent. — Aopoleyin. That I have heard of. Hmm. Well, in that case, if I were you, I’d talk to Quercer Janath. Yes, you’ll need them. I should think. Tell them I sent you. Oh. And ask for my mantle scarf back. Might do the trick. No guarantees, though. Mind.
· Quercer and Janath. Your mantle scarf back.
The old Dweller rolled a fraction, jerkily, and looked down at Fassin. — I’ll have you know it was a very good mantle scarf.
He rolled back, facing again into the never-ending rush of cloud and stars and day and night. — I could do with it up here. It’s windy.
FIVE:
CONDITIONS OF PASSAGE
Where?
“You want to go where?”
“Hoestruem, near Aopoleyin,” Fassin said. “We know where Hoestruem is.”
“We’re not stupid.”
“Well, I’m not. Janath might be.”
“I entirely fulfilled my Creat Minimum Stupidity Allocation by associating with you.”
“Forgive my partner. We were asking for confirmation more out of shock at your unspeakable alienness than anything else. So. You want to go to Hoestruem.”
“Yes,” Fassin said.
“And Zosso sent you.”
“Still banging on about that damn scarf.”
“Useful code, though.”
“Hoestruem.”
“Hoestruem.”
“Doable.”
“Yes, but it’s more the why of it, not the how.”
“The how is easy.”
“The how is easy. Problem is definitely why.”
“As in bother.”
“As in should we.”
“Well, should we?”
“More rhetorical.”
“Has to be a joint decision.”
“Absolutely.”
“Zosso asks.”
“Zosso does.”
“Do we accommodate?”
“We could just give him back his mantle scarf.”
“Was there ever a scarf?”
“A real scarf?”
“Yes.”
“Now you mention it.”
“Anyway.”
“Beside the point.”
“Always a dangerous place to tarry”
“Zosso. A travel request. This human gentleman in his gascraft esuit.”
“Ahem,” said Y’sul. “And his friend.”
“Not forgetting his friend.”
“And mentor,” Y’sul pointed out.
“Yes, that too.”
“Do we do or do we don’t?”