Jo Clayton - Shadow of the Warmaster

Though its image was at that moment little larger than her hand, its mass was palpable. And she knew from evidence of her own eyes how huge it was. Two days ago she’d seen it gliding south over the Mines. Two days ago it descended over them to smother them with its immensity, its power. Two days ago it went south to Guneywhiyk to burn a Sanctuary down to bedrock. It could have been the Mines. But for the Prophet’s Hand over them, it could have been the Mines. Two days ago. She felt the dead clustering over her, swimming through the incense of all these alien souls, puff of unseen smoke, bouncing under the ceiling of this alien place. Forgive me, she breathed at them. She sang in her mind the Litany of Dismissal/ The Promise of Return. Return to a quieter, gentler world, a world of calm and order. She sang the litany over and over as the Warmaster grew until there was nothing in the screen but a cratered black surface whose pits and flaws were more and more apparent, a calligraphy of age. She sang the litany over and over, sang it for herself, gentling herself, sloughing off her responsibilities, her plans and fears… odd, when she had so many anxieties and frustrations, how free she felt. As if the moment would permit nothing less. Free. For the first time she began to understand the seduction of war. How it stripped away everything but the need to survive, how it narrowed life to the Now, how it freed you from the niggling irritations and ambiguities of ordinary life. She was enthralled and appalled. The power of it. The temptation. She looked over her shoulder at Aslan; the woman’s face seemed wide open, utterly without defense. She looked into those cool amber eyes, strange eyes, and saw… she didn’t know what she saw, but it terrified her. Aslan knew her, knew what tempted her, knew so much it was an obscenity. Moments passed before Elmas Ofka found the courage to look away. She shook briefly with fear, then the Now took her again, she turned back to the screen and forgot to be afraid.

Karrel Goza leaned against the wall, its vibration playing in his bones, not shaking but a note sung in a voice so deep he felt it rather than heard it. He watched Tairanna drop away, savoring this pale small taste of flight. Otherwise the tug gave him nothing, how could he feel himself flying without a symbiosis of soul and air; shut inside here how could he feel, anything? He was sad. The skips were fast and reliable and nearly indifferent to storms. Within a generation they and their cousins would most likely replace the airships; they were too tempting and with Outsiders coming in and out with no controls on them, Family businesses would be replacing airships as fast as they could import these machines. Would start building them as soon as they had the necessary mechanics trained. Not all airships would go, cost still meant something; but yosspod bags would be left to claw out a poor living on the fringes of transport and hauling. More change.

He sighed. For over two decades, since a childhood he remembered as calm, slow, ordered, he’d watched the world pass through wrenching transformations because the Outside, the OutThere, intruded. What they were doing this day would wrench the world yet more violently from that remembered time, but it might (only might, he couldn’t see beyond the hour, let alone so long into the what-will-be), it might ensure the coming of a new tranquility. If he were fortunate and outlived this day, he might see that time within this life; if not, he was content to wait for the next. He, like Elmas Ofka, surrendered to the point-Now and watched the Warmaster swimming toward them; he forgot sadness, forgot speculation. Immense. Gargantuan. Enormous. Colossal. Feeble, all those adjectives. No words were adequate. It seemed to him impossible that men had made that immensity, it seemed to him that it must have been some demon also beyond words which had laid so impossible an egg. Which was absurd. Men had made it, of course they had. How many men labored how many years in that making?

Parnalee stood across the room from Aslan, where she could see him and be afraid; he enjoyed her fear, though he knew she’d tried to thwart him. Useless. He was here. There was nothing she could do to him, but he could play with her until he was ready to finish it. Omphalos knew far more about these ancient battleships than any jumped-up tinkerer; whatever that woman did to the Brain he knew he could undo, if he had to. He had other strings to pull, more powerful ones than she could have any concept of. Once he had the Warmaster tamed to his hands… He drifted off in dreams of burning Huvved, of a world burnt clean of life, burning burning, of power like a god’s in his hands, HIS hands.

Quale nudged the tug up tight against the monstrous flank; Adelaar danced her fingers over her consoles. Like some gargantuan sex organ the pimply surface extruded a rubbery tube; it reached out and touched the tug’s side, closing like a mouth over the freight lock.

Clutching sickbags the fighters swam through the tube. Quale gave them a lecture before they left. Thirty to forty percent of you will suffer nausea when you hit the tube and go weightless. Unless you want to swim through vomit, you’ll see your kin and your friends have those bags ready and use them if they need them and they will, believe me, they will. It has nothing to do with strength of body or mind. Ever been seasick? Multiply by ten. Uh-huh. And those of you out there looking superior, even if you’re never sick at sea, that’s no predictor of your belly’s state when the weight comes off. Take the bags and use them.

Comforted by the seasickness analogy despite Quale’s warning, Elmas Ofka expected to swim undisturbed through that relatively short distance between the artificial gravity of the tub to the artificial gravity of the Warmaster. She was furious when the first convulsions shook her; Quale had forced a sickbag on her, she’d tucked it out of the way behind her belt, now she got it up just in time to catch her first spew. She glared at Karrel Goza who was pulling himself along untroubled.

Contorted with spasms of vomiting, pale with fury, she yanked herself along the travel lines anchored to the tubewall, ignoring the gulps, coughs, groans of her fellow sufferers. In spite of her difficulties, she took less than five minutes to reach the lock area where she surrendered with a relief that didn’t lessen her annoyance to the comfortable grip of a familiar weight. She wrenched off the sickbag, glared around.

Carefully not smiling, Quale slid back the cover on a disposal chute and took the bag from her. He dropped it into the hole, stood back to watch as the rest of the force came swinging out of the transtube, landing on their feet again, their bodies celebrating the return to weight as they looked round the lock, a trapezoidal chamber large enough to accommodate ten times their number. The Hordar who’d succumbed to nausea dumped their bags in the waste chute, took mouthfuls of water from their belt canteens and spat it after the bags. With a minimum of noise and energy expenditure, they gathered into bands and isyas and waited for the order to proceed. Lirrit Ofka drifted over to stand beside Karrel Goza; she was pale and still somewhat shaky, but she managed a wan smile as she touched his arm in a gesture close to a caress. “Absurd,” she murmured, “we’re starting our war like a clutch of colicky babies.” She pinched him, sniffed. “Some of us.”

Elmas Ofka moved to the center of the lock, beckoned Jamber Fausse to her. He went onto one knee, she stepped up onto the other, holding his hand to steady herself. With a two-finger whistle, she called her people to her. “Time is,” she said; her voice filled the chamber with passion and triumph. She watched them as they sorted themselves out, smiled as she saw an alertness and a confidence born out of years of deadly exchanges, even the youngest who’d been an inklin in gul Brindar before he joined Akkin Siddaki’s raiders, a baby-faced thief with legendary fingers. “Drive chamber, go.” She watched the isyas and the bands move off behind Kanlan Gercik, swinging along in a slouching trot that covered ground with a minimum of effort. “Duty stations, rest area, go.” Two more squads left. “Sleepers, go.” She stepped down. “Bridge,” she said. “Let’s go.”