The barge bearing Ruiz and his people slid past; then all the barges stopped. The boy and girl stepped aboard, and, holding hands, turned and waved to the crowd. The old folks watched them stonily; the others clapped and cheered.
The young couple disappeared behind the statue’s vast breasts.
The barges began moving again with a slight jerk, and the landing receded. Just before it disappeared behind them, Ruiz saw the old people begin to file away, and the young ones lie down on the grass in twos and threes.
Nisa colored and turned away. “How strange,” she said. “Why would they wish to do that so publicly?”
Ruiz shrugged. “Another mystery.” The whole spectacle had made him even more uneasy about their benefactors — it had the flavor of a decadent religious rite. Unsettling thoughts circulated through his mind. Were they captives of one of the numerous outlawed cults that infested Sook? Some of those practiced extremely unpleasant sacraments. It was, he thought, time to see if they could leave the barge.
He turned to the others. “If we can, we should try to leave. I’m going to see if I can jump off. If I succeed, follow.”
Molnekh frowned. “I’m not sure Flomel is that strong yet.”
Ruiz shrugged. “He can’t stay. Make sure he jumps quickly, one way or the other.”
“As you say, Ruiz Aw.”
“Be careful,” said Nisa, her expression solemn.
Ruiz led them to the lower deck, where Molnekh untied Flomel and prodded him to the waist of the barge. Flomel glared at Ruiz with equal amounts of hatred and fear, baring his teeth in a defiant grin.
Ruiz ignored him, stepped to the gunwale, gathered himself. Just before he threw himself outward, a bell-like voice sounded in his head. No, it said calmly.
He couldn’t arrest his movement completely, but the voice startled him sufficiently that he didn’t hit the barge’s containment field with as much force as he otherwise might have.
Still, the impact jarred the voice from his head. The field flared a brilliant yellow.
He rebounded to the deck, falling into a nearly unconscious heap.
The next instant he felt Flomel land on his back, punching at him. “Now’s our chance!” Flomel shrieked. “Help me kill him.”
Then Flomel’s weight disappeared. Ruiz rolled to his feet, and saw Flomel curled up against the figure’s knee, clutching his ribs, gasping.
Dolmaero was hopping up and down, holding his foot, grimacing with pain.
Ruiz grasped the situation quickly, though he was still dizzy from his encounter with the containment field. He nodded to Dolmaero. “Thanks, Guildmaster. There’s a trick to kicking villains.”
“So I see,” said Dolmaero, setting his foot down gingerly and wincing.
“How is it?”
“Not broken, I think….”
“Good.”
Molnekh, looking somewhat less cheerful than usual, fastened the leash to Flomel, heaved him to his feet, and marched him back to the pit.
“Are you all right, Ruiz?” asked Nisa.
“More or less. But I’m afraid our cruise isn’t over.”
Chapter 7
Corean lifted the survey sled from the slope where her damaged airboat lay, leaving Lensh and Fensh behind. Lensh waved up at her cheerfully and crawled back under the boat.
“Are you happier now?” Marmo asked.
Corean glared at him. “It’ll take them three days to fix the boat, if they work harder than I expect them to.”
“But at least it’s repairable.”
“That’s something, I suppose.” She flew toward the pass, covering in a few minutes the distance that Ruiz had taken hours to walk.
“What’s the worst case? If he’s reached the canal, he may have caught a barge, but the barges are slow. He can’t have reached SeaStack yet, if he went south — and where else could he find high-speed transport? If he went north, the sniffers will catch him long before he reaches the IceGate launch rings.”
Corean was still sullen. “You make it sound so simple.”
“Isn’t it?”
“I used to think so, but he’s a slippery snake.” Her mouth quirked downward, and she fell into a silence.
Finally Marmo spoke again. “Such a sour expression! If you don’t stop abusing your face, you’ll lose it. Didn’t it cost more than a dozen airboats?”
“It’s guaranteed for a hundred years,” she said — but she smiled with artificial brilliance, then smoothed her hands delicately over her cheeks. “Do you really think it might go bad?”
“No,” he said. “I was just teasing.”
She laughed, and the hard line of her mouth relaxed a little.
She frowned again when they reached the landing. “They’ve been here,” she said.
Marmo peered through the armorglass. “Send out the Moc first. It’s a good place for an ambush.”
“I will… but they’re gone. I feel it.”
“Perhaps.”
A few minutes later they stood on the landing, looking at a heap of empty food wrappers.
“I wonder how long they’ve been gone,” she said, looking at her sniffers — two tall, spidery mechs equipped with olfactory analyzers and trank guns. One went striding off to the north and one went south.
“Maybe they didn’t catch a barge; maybe the sniffers will catch them a few miles down the bank.”
“Sure,” Corean said scornfully.
The sniffers soon returned unsuccessfully, unable to pick up a scent. She was unsurprised. She raised the survey craft and drove it arrowing south. “It’s a couple of days to SeaStack, even by the fastest barge,” she said. “We’ll take a quick run that way first. If we don’t see him, we’ll go north. If we can’t spot him from the air, we’ll come back here and set the sniffers.”
“A good plan,” Marmo said agreeably.
Ruiz held his aching head, while Nisa rubbed gently at his neck. That pleasant sensation couldn’t completely distract him from the unhappy reality of their situation. They were the prisoners of unknown beings. They traveled toward an unknown destination, to face an unknown fate.
On the far side of the upper deck, in low voices, Molnekh and Dolmaero discussed the possible motives of their captors.
Dolmaero took a gloomy view. “They’re slavers; what else? In the wider universe, it seems that all are either slaves or slavekeepers.”
“Would slavers feed us so well? Would you go to so much trouble to ensure the comfort of your slaves? Well, perhaps you would, Guildmaster, but you’re not typical.”
Molnekh was overly influenced by the culinary evidence, in Ruiz’s opinion.
Dolmaero shook his head. “Perhaps it’s no trouble at all. Many things I regarded as impossible seem to be easy here: flying, raising the dead…. Perhaps, for these folk, hot muffins and fresh-squeezed juice are as easy to provide as stale bread and water.”
“It’s a possibility,” Molnekh said, looking unconvinced.
Ruiz ignored them and studied the forest. It grew increasingly less wild, interrupted more frequently with cut-over tracts, cultivated fields, manicured pastures. Occasionally they passed habitations. Many were crude huts, some were hunting lodges built elegantly of wood and stone, and once they passed a palazzo built of some glistening blue ceramic material, all slender spires and graceful flying buttresses.
“What is it?” Nisa asked.