Jack Chalker - Priam's Lens

She nodded. “Sure. Against targets. Used to be a hobby of mine—ancient and medieval weaponry that didn’t require a lot of upper body strength. If they’d invented these gas cylinders back then, women wouldn’t have had such a tough time getting equality.”

“Doc—Katarina?”

“Kat. It’s easy and it’s kind of an identity thing, like a meow-type cat or maybe a lion.”

“Okay—Kat. I’m Gene. No use for rank here, except maybe with the colonel. So, how do you sight this?”

She showed him, as well as some of the other finer points. Actually getting decent enough to hit the broad side of a mountain with one of those bolts, though, would be a different story.

Other weapons included a Bowie-style knife with a serrated blade made of a substance that looked and felt like steel but could cut into softer rocks without problems, and a kind of formalized blackjack, a baton, which he knew from the military police. Weighted, it could knock people cold and crack heads, but it wasn’t considered a deadly weapon. In a close fight against too many of the enemy, it might just be an equalizer.

Beyond this there were a couple of weeks of concentrated rations, a bottle each of desalinization and sterilization pills, and a small medical kit. That was about it.

The colonel supplemented his rifle with a rather fancy saber which he wore in a scabbard, hanging from his pants belt, and he, too, had a baton but on the other side in its own carrier.

Each had all his or her spares in backpacks and they then buried the duffels in the sandy soil just in back of the driftwood, so tidal erosion wouldn’t uncover them. Only the Pooka, which the colonel had called Hamille, revealing a name for the first time, had no pack or apparent weapons. There was no telling what it ate or drank, but it was damned sure it had no shoulders to carry a pack, and it seemed quite happy to just be itself. Harker decided not to ask right then, but wondered whether the creature’s civilization was so industrialized and automated that they no longer had the means to produce these things that didn’t require power. Or perhaps the Pooka was in its own way as alien and inscrutable as the Titans.

Finally, they settled down in the bushes to wait until morning.

Nobody really slept, but nobody really wanted to talk and risk disturbing the others, either. The sudden heavy gravity, the bumpy ride down, the tensions and stresses and the anticipation of the unknown all combined to make each one feel older than the old diva who’d brought them all together, yet too young to die.

Harker could barely suppress his satisfaction at seeing the great Colonel N’Gana, legend and mercenary, seasick as a rookie in weightlessness training as they paddled their boats in toward shore. The colonel’s dark brown complexion seemed to have lost its luster. In its drab new exterior it had gained a little green and gray.

Of course, Katarina Socolov wasn’t doing much better. Clearly sailing wasn’t in her background, either. It was difficult to tell about the Pooka, who couldn’t row anyway, but it had withdrawn into a coil with its head near the bottom of the boat.

Fortunately, Mogutu seemed to either be experienced at it or at least have it in his blood; with the colonel and the Pooka in his boat, he was really the only one doing any real work at rowing them in toward shore. At least it wasn’t all that rough, not for open ocean, anyway. Harker suspected that there was a definite continental shelf not far below and that it probably had either a great deal of sand built up or some sort of reefs, perhaps coral-like, that broke up the waves.

He also had an extra pair of hands rowing, although they dared not get too far from Mogutu’s struggling boat. The supplies, among other things, were in that boat, and it was by no means certain that, if it tipped, either N’Gana or the Quadulan could swim. Father Chicanis seemed to be having a grand old time, not in the least bothered.

“You’ve sailed before on small watercraft,” Harker said to the priest.

“This very region, in fact, was where I learned to swim and to sail. We used to have regattas that went from Ephesus to Circe’s Island—well beyond Saint John’s, which is what we landed on. This was truly something of a paradise, Mister Harker. Warm climate, balmy breeezes, controlled moisture and well-managed lands, lots of natural organic farming of fruits and vegetables—not like the crap most folks in The Confederacy eat and think of as decent food. The greatest conflicts were boat races, and football of course, and chess, and arguing with the Copts over whose was truly the oldest tradition. Gentle stuff for a gentle world, Mister Harker. Gentle, yet swept so callously away… ”

His eyes grew distant and his voice trailed off, and Harker knew that he was seeing things as they were out here in the bright sunshine.

“Ship oars for a little, Father,” Harker called to him. “We’re leaving poor Sergeant Mogutu well behind.”

“Huh? Oh—yes, sorry. We ought to have tethered them to our boat, you know. Then we’d have at least three pairs of strong arms for this job and we’d not risk losing them.”

“We’d risk losing all of us in one unexpected swell if we did that,” Harker responded. “That’s all right. It’s nice to see those arrogant sons of—well, you know—taken down a peg. They’ll be all right if we have no unexpected nastiness, and if we do, it won’t be from this sea or from the weather, looking at the sky and the direction of the clouds.”

“No, it’ll stay this way if it starts out this way,” Chicanis agreed. “Where did you learn the water part of sailing, if I might ask?”

“It’s part of the training in the Navy, believe it or not. You not only learn how the Navy evolved from a seagoing one but the training centers are on worlds with oceans and bays and large rivers and you have to do a lot of work in small and medium-sized boats on them. These kind of boats, though—these were for Commando school. They didn’t let us have our fancy suits for the final exam. Stuck us in the water with one of these and very minimal supplies, a knife and a small concealed laser pistol like we’d crashed on some deserted water world. We had to make it into shore, after finding the shore, and, with no map, no real knowledge of where we were, we had to survive through the jungle and find our headquarters unit and report in. All we knew was that the unit was somewhere within a hundred and fifty kilometers of where we were dropped. Period. You just about couldn’t do it alone. They saw to that. You needed to find your mates, keep your own team together, and work as a unit. Everybody seemed to have some knowledge or skill the others lacked, or at least hadn’t paid attention to. That kept us from eating poisoned fruit or being strangled by a carnivorous vine. It was a problem a lot like this one, but with commonality of training.”

“You don’t approve of Doctor Socolov and me being along, I know,” the priest responded, “but, believe me, it’s part of the mix. Right now I know exactly where we are and what these waters are like. I know where we’re going to land.” He turned and looked at the land that seemed so close and yet was still several kilometers away. “Look at how gloomy and ominous it seems from here, with the clouds ringing and obscuring the mountains. And yet I spent many a summer in those mountains, hiking the trails, looking out on great natural beauty. Some of those peaks are close to six kilometers high. I never got that far, but even from a two-kilometer height down to sea level you can see forever, or so it seems.”

Harker looked at the mountains that seemed to form a ring around the flat plain to which they were now headed. “Do those mountains go around the whole continent?”