Hurriedly, they ransacked the tree for anything they could steal – the dead pilot’s scraps of food, a water skin, spare clothing, even the tipped-out fire-pot.
Then they lined up with their trussed-up prisoners at the tree’s rim. The whale, its huge eyes mournful, beat its flukes and approached the tree again. Timing their jumps to match the spin of tree and whale, the riders started to cross, leaping confidently through the air.
And, Lura realised with mounting horror, she was going to have to make that leap herself.
Otho and Anka got hold of Lura’s arms, one to either side. Lura could feel the tide-like tug of their bodies’ gravity fields, and Otho’s free hand roamed over her buttocks and thighs, though she squirmed to get away.
And they leapt with her, still holding her, with the whale seeming very far away.
In the air, she looked down at the expanse of the aerial Forest, and she saw the fighting everywhere, the whales skirting the turning trees, the riders dwarfed by their rolling animals. One tree came wheeling out of its formation, foliage ablaze, and as she watched its rim and branches began to disintegrate, and flaming chunks spun off into the air.
And, just before she landed on the whale, another tree rose up in the air above her, and she heard a man roar – Ord! She’d know that voice anywhere. He ran around the rim of his turning tree, throwing spears down at the riders. One spike caught Otho in the leg. He let Lura go, yelling his anger and agony, and without hesitation ripped the spear out of his flesh and muscle, braced and threw it back at Ord, who ducked. All this in mid-air, before Otho completed his leap and landed on his back on the whale’s flank.
Lura and the woman followed him down, hitting hard.
Soon all the riders were down, clinging to ropes to keep from being thrown off by the whale’s spin. Lura, beside Pesten, had ended up on her back in the whale’s dry, foamy outer flesh, and was held down by Otho’s massive arm.
But Ord, in his tree, wasn’t done yet. He held up his fire-pot, a wooden bowl from which flames still licked. The riders scrambled away, around the whale’s hull.
Lura yelled, ‘Do it, Ord! Burn these bastards!’
With a mighty throw Ord hurled down the pot, and he disappeared backwards, shoved away by the recoil. The pot splashed against the whale’s flank, spilling fire. Swathes of outer flesh caught fire and burned off in sheets, and the whale rolled and spasmed, its agony obvious. The riders clung to their ropes.
‘We need to get inside,’ Anka yelled at Otho. ‘We’ll be thrown off.’
He nodded. ‘Hold this she-rat.’ Leaving Anka with Lura, he wrapped his feet in the netting, blood still streaming down his leg from his wound. He took a wooden knife from his belt, braced himself, and slashed down through the whale’s skin and into the layer of tougher cartilage beneath. Then he backed up, dragging his blade through one pace, two, and foul, hot, moist air spilled out of the lengthening wound. He tucked away the knife and forced his arms into the slit he’d created, pushing the flanges apart. ‘In. Fast.’
One by one the riders piled through the orifice and into the whale’s body cavity. It got easier as the first of them made it inside, and were able to help hold the breach open.
Lura was shoved through, head first and bound up. The air within was foul and hot and stank of sweat.
Once inside she was rolled over away from the hole, onto a slick, moist surface. Pesten was dragged through the orifice as unceremoniously as she had been, and dumped beside her. Now the whale’s spin, instead of threatening to throw them off the outer skin, kept them pinned in place.
And Lura lay on her back, exhausted, shocked, breathing hard. She was inside the whale, and its translucent skin was a great shell all around her, with the riders’ clothing and blankets and weapons and spoil from the raid heaped up on its floor of flesh. The beast’s internal organs were massed around a digestive tract that spanned its diameter, from the face at the front to an anus at the back end, where lumps of muscle worked the great flukes, dimly seen from within the body. And at the front Lura found herself looking out through the whale’s huge face, an inverted mask that dwarfed the rider who worked there, held in place with a harness, jabbing goads into a tissue mass.
Otho stood over her, tying a strip of cloth around his wounded leg. ‘You caused us a lot of trouble, little girl. Took a spear for you. Time for Otho’s reward.’ He ran his tongue across his sharpened teeth. The others laughed, even the woman, Anka. He reached down.
She struggled against her bonds. ‘Leave me alone, you savage.’
‘Savage is right,’ he said. He rummaged at the strips of cloth that held her and pulled out the Mole. ‘So what’s this?’ He turned it around and spun it in the air, and he licked its casing. ‘Can’t eat it, that’s for sure.’
‘Leave that alone!’
Anka approached him, curious. ‘Never saw anything like it.’ She rapped the box with her knuckles. ‘Maybe we could smash it up. Make knives.’
‘No.’ Otho grinned down at Lura, who struggled against her bonds. ‘It’s driving her crazy. Let’s just throw it out of the whale. I like them wild.’
Pesten, bound and naked, glared at him. ‘You don’t know what you’re dealing with.’
‘Don’t I?’ Otho casually kicked Pesten in the kidney.
The Brother groaned and rolled, but he twisted his head and spoke again. ‘I mean it—’
Lura called clearly, ‘Status!’
‘Massive sensor dysfunction.’
Otho yelled and dropped the box; it fell and bounced on the resilient floor. ‘What did you do?’
‘Untie me or I’ll have my magic box kill you,’ Lura snarled, as confidently as she could. When they didn’t move, she called again, ‘Mole! Status!’
And, to her astonishment, the Mole replied with a phrase she’d never heard before. ‘Incoming signal received.’
7
‘My name is Coton. Can you hear me?’
‘Yes! You’re talking out of the Mole. But all the Mole ever said before was “Massive Sensor Dysfunction”. You’re not in the Mole, are you?’
‘No. I am speaking through the – what did you call it? The Mole? I am human, like you.’
‘Are you a man or a woman?’
‘I am a boy. Coton. What is your name?’
‘Lura! My name is Lura! I was born about eighteen thousand shifts ago.’
‘Shifts? . . . Please wait. Lura, we think a shift is about a third of a standard day. An old Integrality navy term. Very ancient! So that makes you . . . about sixteen years old.’
‘Years?’
‘You’re a bit younger than me.’
‘Are you talking to other people there? Are you asking them questions?’
‘Yes, there are people here. My grandmother, Vala. And we have other machines that help us understand what you say. Actually there are lots of machines, talking to each other in a kind of chain. Your language and mine were once the same, but that was a long time ago.’
‘Am I talking to you out of a machine too?’
‘No. Yes . . . In a way. Lura, the machine is in my head.’
‘How strange. Does it hurt?’
‘No. Well, I don’t think so. I don’t like it much.’
‘You said your grandmother is there. Where are your parents?’
‘Not here. We were moved. My father spent all he had sending me to safety. Not that I feel very safe where I am now . . . An enemy was coming. Well, it still is coming. Everybody had to move. What about your parents, Lura?’