Роберт Бюттнер - Orphan's Journey

Both men stared down at a Howler, lying still in the middle of the trail at their feet, like a rusty sack of feathers.

The howling died, and the air became so still that the only sound was the Falls’ distant whisper.

The First Mate sighed. “Young male on his muscle.” He glanced around. “That will back them off for an hour.” He walked back to the man the Howler had bitten, unwrapping a bandage, and turned to the others. “Right. Rest ten minutes.”

The man with the rifle knelt on the trail, drew a knife from his belt, and began to skin the dead lizard.

I walked to the kneeling man, and stood beside Jude. Howard bent, hands on knees, peering at the carcass. “With that pelvis, it’s a theropod. More parallel evolution.”

I said, “Parallel my ass. Wronks are like Earth carnosaurs. Duckbills are like Earth duckbills. Earth didn’t have dinosaur chimps.”

“Not parallel to Cretaceous fauna. To primates. This reptile occupies a niche the great apes occupy on Earth.” Howard swung his hand at the steep wall the trail clung to. “Besides, do you think an upland species’ skeletons are going to get buried in the river as often as fish bones? If we haven’t found primate-mimic dinosaurs on Earth, we just may not have looked in enough places yet. You see what this all implies about the people here, don’t you?”

I rolled my eyes. “No. Tell—”

Deep in the trees, a single Howler cried.

I looked down at the meat that had been a living thing minutes ago. Was the cry his mother’s?

Jude stared into the trees, toward the sound.

I tapped his shoulder, and pointed toward the trail ahead. “Time to move on.”

We saw no more Howlers, but six hours later, when we rejoined the ship and Wilgan, we could hear the lizard monkeys far behind us.

This planet scared us Earthlings. But our technology would scare Bren’s natives like we were space invaders. Which, of course, we were.

Therefore, that evening, as Wilgan sailed us on toward the coast, only us four Earthlings and Bassin clustered around the holo generator set up on the forecastle table to review the data Jeeb had gathered in his reconnaissances.

Bassin passed his fingers through the holo image, with his mouth widened into an “O.” “It’s done with light, then?”

Howard nodded.

Bassin shook his head, slowly. At least he didn’t call us warlocks.

Ord switched the display to map view, and there we were, a flashing red icon inching down the River Marin toward its delta, which was straddled by Bren’s one great city, Marinus.

Bassin unrolled parchments, borrowed from Wilgan, on the table, weighted their corners with brass map instruments, and looked back and forth between those charts and Jeeb’s images.

“Jason, your chart shows the bar we just passed, which was new after the past spring’s flood.” Bassin tapped the corresponding spot on Wilgan’s parchment, which showed blue water. “But Wilgan would have grounded if he relied on the Admiralty’s chart.”

I pointed at our map. “This is an embellished real-time image. You’re seeing the world through the eyes of the flying thing you saw me talking to when we were Casuni prisoners.”

“The insect is a machine?”

I pointed at the brass map scale in Bassin’s hand. “As much a machine as that thing.”

“The machine talks through the atmosphere, as real as my voice. But as invisible as my voice, too?”

“Basically.”

He closed his eye, and sighed. “I need a moment to absorb this.”

I asked Bassin, “Why are we going to Marinus?”

Bassin opened his eye and said, “We aren’t.”

He drew his finger across his map, down the river, past the city, to the mouth where the river emptied into the sea. “We’re bound for the Sea of Hunters.” He turned his finger and traced south along the coastline a hundred miles. “By this time of year, the Queen has taken to the Winter Palace. I’m going there because she prefers even bad news fresh.”

I glanced at Howard as I raised my eyebrows. Did Bassin also suspect that it was our arrival on this planet that had brought the Slugs down upon Bren like a dung storm? I said to Bassin, “Bad news?”

“We can’t talk through the air, like you can. The Queen will have no news of the Fair until I reach her.”

I pointed at a bold red line on the map that paralleled the coast, from a half mile to several miles out to sea, all the way from the north end of the chart to the south end. “What’s the red line?”

“Six fathoms.”

“Is that a territorial limit?”

The First Mate called down the hatch, “Colonel Bassin, we need those charts back up here, Sir!”

As Bassin rerolled the charts, he smiled. “You could say the Red Line marks territory, yes.”

The more I knew Bassin, the better I liked him. Except that he hoarded information like an Intel dick, based on what he thought was someone’s need-to-know.

The two days from that time until we reached the sea were a nice boat ride, punctuated by descents through two more sets of locks. After Bassin’s Locks, these locks were boring, with gates into and out of chambers that flooded and drained, lowering our ship in fifty-foot increments.

The ship got towed from chamber to chamber by hawsers attached to bellowing purple and brown draft animals bigger than elephants, with horns that had been sawed off by their handlers. Howard pronounced them analogous to ceratopsian dinosaurs.

So complete had been the Slugs’ destruction of the Marini trading fleet that I didn’t see another sailing ship on the Marin. But smaller local packets swarmed the river. A few moved under sail, but most of them were rowed by ranks of slaves, twenty-five to a side, like Greek galley rowers.

We ghosted through the Marin estuary in a single rainy night, so all we saw of the city were flickering lights and spots of red glow. Bassin said the glow marked the forges of the weapons foundries, which had burned continuously for three hundred years. Wilgan said the glow was the raging wickedness of places that separated sailors from their senses and their pay.

The next day dawned clear, with the ship already well down the coast. Wilgan and I stood alone on the rain-washed deck, side by side. The Ship Master steered as we ran south before the wind, while below, the others took breakfast. I had laid my armor out on deck to air, and Wilgan and I chewed warm biscuits the cook had brought us.

The shore lay a mile from us, and small boats from fishing villages already dotted the shallows as they put to sea.

A half mile distant, to the east, toward deep water, a smaller ship, black sails full and taut, passed us like we were anchored.

Wilgan glanced seaward at the fast mover and swore.

I smiled. “Are we losing a race?”

“Red Line runners are smugglers, not racers.”

“Red Line?” I pointed at the smaller ship. “That’s where the depth hits six fathoms?”

Wilgan nodded. “She’s bound for the Tassini ports south, with a belly full of rifles, by her draft.”

I nodded. “The smuggler stays on the Red Line so the government won’t stop him?”

“But if he strays too deep, the Coasties will be the least of his worries.” Wilgan glanced seaward again, and swore again. He locked the wheel, then stepped to the rail, where an ivory horn, carved from a tusk as big as an elephant’s, swiveled on an iron mounting. Wilgan swung the horn toward the smuggling vessel, blew into it, and a note echoed across the waves.

The black ship ran on, oblivious.

Wilgan blew another note, then pounded his fist on the huge horn, and shouted. “You’re too far out, you fool!”

“What’s wrong, Wilgan?”

The white-bearded sailor stretched his telescope, and peered through it at the other ship. “Put on that hat of yours with the spyglasses, and you’ll see.”