Forge of Heaven

  Gide writhed around and struck at him, wildly shouting something that had no sound, no sound at all.

  Angry at him. Blaming him. But he couldn't hear anything the man said. Just the ringing in his ears.

  He couldn't stand here. He couldn't be swept up by the police. He didn't know what he decided in the next few seconds, but he found himself out in the garden. And after that he was running down the street outside, past scattered shocked onlookers in this exclusive district. He tried to tap in to reach Project offices, but when he tried a pain lanced through his eyes, and he stumbled half to a stop.

  Couldn't do it. Couldn't call for help. He just ran after that, and Earthers being Earthers, people just stared at him without trying to stop him.

  He reached a lift station and called a car, and the woman who arrived in it got out in a hurry and let him have it to himself. He programmed it for the Project offices and didn't sit down, just hung on to the bar and hoped the police wouldn't be fast enough to stop it.

  The next thing he knew, he was walking sedately down a street nowhere near Project offices. He was outside Caprice's, and why he was there, he couldn't figure. His coat looked like hell. He brushed flecks of spattered plastic and white ash off his sleeve, but it smeared, and he took the coat off and dropped it on a bench along the frontage.

  This wasn't at all where he'd tried to go. There were blank spots in his mind. He couldn't remember how he'd gotten here from the lift, but he saw his reflection in the shop windows. He looked like hell, and he kept walking, thinking vaguely he had to get home, and he was supposed to buy a present, and call his parents, and keep Ardath happy. But he couldn't be conspicuous, walking around like this, deaf to the whole street.

  There was one route safer than the rest, for somebody who looked this bad, duck out of public view down the service alley, beyond Caprice's frontage. That was safe. That led back-wherever he had to go.

  To his neighborhood, at least, eventually.

  He had a splitting headache. He took his hair loose as he walked, hitting one elbow and then the other against the narrow walls of the service slot, but undoing the clip didn't help his head.

  He heard a buzzing on the tap, first sound he'd heard since. since he couldn't remember. The office, he thought. He tried to tap in, but he couldn't sustain the contact. He knew he'd done something wrong. That he shouldn't be here. Whatever had hit him, he didn't belong in the service alley.

  Headache stabbed behind his eyes and made his nose run. He wiped his face, forgetful where he was going, at the moment, but he was sure if he kept walking he'd come out in familiar surroundings, and if he got home he could sit down, and if he could just sit down a minute, then he'd remember what he was supposed to do.

  Earth wouldn't be amused, Reaux well knew, to find out that the governor's daughter was skipping from shop to shop in the Trend, growing less and less like Judy's daughter in the process. He knew that she'd had lunch for two at La Lune Noir, where Dortland's agents had just missed her-that fact had Reaux's blood pressure already at max. Highest security in the universe, that at Concord, and a fifteen-year-old with a hot credit card gave Dortland's best operatives the slip on a shopping binge.

  And she'd, yes, been with someone, God help him. He hoped it was no worse than Denny Ord, who was only amateur trouble. At least she wasn't alone.

  But he couldn't take time to stay with the succession of reports until they actually turned up something. He'd taken one anguished call from Judy in the hours since he'd gotten to the office, and since then claimed to be in a chain of meetings, when, in fact there was only one meeting the outcome of which he ached to know, that between Procyon Stafford and Mr. Andreas Gide.

  So long as Gide's ship was attached to the station, he had to assume his office phone was tapped. He'd asked Judy to keep off the phone with the family crisis, so Judy had wanted to go to her mother's. That meant her mother would be on the phone, what time she wasn't listening to Judy. And the media was still lurking.

  No, he'd said. Stay put. If Kathy comes home, be there.

  And did Judy do what he asked? No.

  He'd told Ernst, long since: "If Kathy calls, put her through immediately."

  Dortland's reports said at least two off-station interests and the local Freethinkers had attempted to hack the physical lines in the last twelve hours-but Gide's ship had actually succeeded, and succeeded with more than the phones, delving into things Earth government had no business meddling with, before bumping up against the separate system that was the Outsider network.

  There was, Dortland had reminded him, a Council agent on the station, who'd been reporting to Brazis, but who might be independent and without Brazis's knowledge. Did they think now, with this ship here, that this presence was coincidence? Maybe that was what Gide was really after.

  And Judy called him, crying that she was suffering stress.

  "Sir." Ernst opened the door in person-rare he did that. His face was white. "Sir. The ambassador's been attacked. Shot, along with the security team. Our two men are dead."

  Shot? My God.

  While Ernst stood there awaiting a sane directive from him, and he didn't have a clear thought, not for half a dozen heartbeats.

  "Gide's alive?"

  "He's alive, sir. Headed for Bonaventure Hospital, as the nearest. Mr. Dortland's going up there right now."

  "I'm going." It was the worst imaginable disaster. It was political, personal ruin. He couldn't think straight. "Brazis's man? Stafford. Where is he?"

  "He wasn't named in the report, sir. He may have been there at the time. Or not. That's all I know."

  "Call Brazis. Tell him what's happened. Tell him-hell. Tell him I'll talk to him when I know something. Ask him where his man is. Get a search out for anybody out of district."

  "That's under way, sir. I'll call an escort for you."

  "Armed escort didn't protect the ambassador, did it?" He was putting on his coat, and Ernst dived back to his desk, to call the security office. He was going to have his escort, like it or not.

  If things were going to hell, rule one, the government had to stay functioning. He couldn't abdicate the investigation to that ship out there or they'd start grabbing more and more power. The tripartite authority on Concord demanded that not happen, for the sake of the peace they maintained.

  He walked through Ernst's office, on his way out. "Call the advisory board into session. All police to duty."

  "Yes, sir," Ernst said. "Escort is on the way, sir."

  "Call the Southern Cross. Advise them there's been an unexplained incident, connect them to my handheld if they want to talk to me, personally, isolate the crime scene, and tell them we're doing everything we can for the ambassador. Tell Dortland I'm coming. No. Cancel that last. Phone lines aren't secure. Just call the ship. Get the translation staff all to duty: tell them prepare something, some explanation for Kekellen, fast, before he hears about this, do you hear?"

  "Yes, sir."

  He fastened his coat and walked out through the outer foyer, not surprised when four plainclothes security agents turned up somewhat breathlessly in his path and fell in with him.

  "Bonaventure Hospital," he told them. "Get me a priority through the lifts."

  "All secure, sir," the senior said.

  It might be the only thing on Concord that was.

  Procyon was off visiting some lord and had not returned. Three quakes had shaken the rocks in the last short while and sent pebbles and sand-slips cascading off the plateau.

  Auguste, meanwhile, reported a panorama Marak ached to see-the two streams spurting out of the Halfmoon cliffs had joined, ripping out rock, forming one great waterfall in the midst of the Southern Wall, and a deepening pool at the bottom. A cloud of spray obscured the lower view from the heavens. But Auguste said it was a great deal of water coming in. and when the rock above it failed, as it was likely to at any moment, it would be a sudden, cataclysmic flood.

  So here they were, he and Hati, patiently negot
iating the alternate descent of their terrace, with a sea forcing its fingers through a barrier to the west, threatening to become a waterfall of unimaginable proportions.

  Right now their new sea, so Auguste assured them, was only a spreading line of damp going out from that pool, saturating sand dry for millions of years. The pans would soak up a great deal of salt water and battered sea life as that shallow pool spread. The volume of inflowing water had tripled in one day. It could magnify a thousandfold without much warning, that was the worse problem, and if the worst happened, then how fast did they need to climb the terraces?

  Auguste said he would get back to him with that answer.

  The eyes in heaven had other, more pragmatic uses. The watchers on high had spotted their runaways down midway, stopped on what might be a plateau with no safe way further down. That might be good news. Topologists in the heavens were trying to plot a reliable route for them to reach that site, as well as mapping a safe path up, and meanwhile the beshti were busy eating the green growth down there. The young bull might try even an impossible slope, if he spooked; but he would delay to move the females, and the females, already run hard, would grow less and less inclined to move from lush graze and run again.

  Their base camp, up on the spine, Auguste had reported, luxuriated in hot tea and a leisurely morning. Their radio link had Fashti in contact with the Refuge, now that the relay was up and working. Meziq was in less pain today, and had nothing to do but sit, be waited upon, and heal, in their enforced wait. Fashti sent regards and wished them success, saying that they were all eating well.

  "The rascal," Hati said, when Marak told her that. She had banished her own watcher's chatter in frustration, during the last shiver of the land. Ian himself was proving a nuisance, this morning, arguing with Auguste that the heavens should not spend any effort to offer them a path to the beshti, which only encouraged their adventure. They should not go down farther, Ian argued. Auguste, however, agreed with them, that there might be time, even yet, to get the beshti back and give them a fast route off the spine, which-Auguste hinted-might not be that stable, once the flood reached it.

  Auguste had said meanwhile that Procyon was still engaged, that he, Auguste, intended to stay on duty through this shift and half of Drusus's. That Brazis would give his watchers both a few hours' sleep, leaving only Hati's watcher on duty during the coming night.

  Another shaking began. The beshti stopped where they were, and their riders bent down low to the saddles, to lessen the strain of a high load on the long-legged beshti's balance.

  "Husband!" Hati exclaimed, pointing straight ahead, as-at first silent, hazy in the distance-a section of the towering cliff face gave way, an immense promontory splitting from the ridge above and falling, falling down to the next terraces, where its ruin provoked a tremendous landslide and carried a plume of dust all along its course.

  That might have been above their heads. They were lucky.

  On the other hand, it might have spooked the beshti below them into another run.

  Marak stole a look up, not his first, as he had watched for cracks and flaws in the rocks of the cliffs above them. They had avoided one easy-looking descent as unstable. Harder, however, to judge the terrace directly underfoot. Hati was curt with her watcher's renewed attempt to question her, in no mood to give a detailed description.

  He, himself, had far rather Procyon's modest silence, at the moment, than Auguste's worried questions. And if, on the other hand, he ever wanted information from Auguste, that cautious watcher always said wait, he would find out. What he knew was never enough: he always wanted to ask the absolute latest before telling him a damned thing.

  "Do you judge it safe to continue?" Auguste asked of him, however, wavering in his support.

  "Safe? Do we seem to be fools? It is by no means safe with the cliffs coming down, but our other choice is no better."

  Not wise to berate Auguste into silence. He was usually more patient than that. He was running out of resources, he was down to two watchers. And he had no wish to drive Auguste and Drusus toward Ian's side of the argument.

  "Forgive me." He wanted a favor from Auguste and decided not to antagonize the man. "No, we are not in a safe place at the moment." They urged their nervous beshti into a judicious descent down a sandy stretch. Beneath his left foot, in the crook-legged posture in which one sat a saddle, he had empty air. A cloud of dust still lingered where the section of cliff had come down, the last of the ruin just now reaching the basin floor.

  Let the oncoming flood begin to saturate the ground, however slow its advance, then more of the cliff might come down. He foresaw that event, looking very differently at the ridge above and around them. The watchers aloft could not see the rocks as they were, split with ancient cracks, sandstone that had resisted wind and rain, but which might not resist saturation, basalt layers which occurred in natural pillars, already fractured, that strong current could carry apart. Seawater rising and lapping about the base of these cliffs could seep through cracks, eating toward the spine to the layered rock of the Needle Gorge itself, so that this might not be the future shore-only a half-drowned island.

  The rock fall and its earthshaking thunder played over and over in memory. He felt an unaccustomed fear, and thought that, on this occasion, Ian could have been right about the rocket, but Ian was not right now. Ian and his trucks or an arriving column of riders could not be fast enough to rescue them.

  And knowing that Ian and Auguste were likely engaged in debate on his case, he did what he rarely did: he tapped into the dialogue.

  "Marak," Ian said, recognizing his arrival. "Where are you now?"

  "I thought you knew."

  "In general, yes, well down off the ridge, not taking advice from anyone. Give up this chase, Marak, in all friendship. Your position is growing far too precarious."

  "Once the sea arrives, very much too precarious. This whole expanse of cliffs is fissured and apt to give passage to water going toward the gorge, Ian. A section of the cliffs just gave way in the last quake. All our arguments aside, we are not safe here. We need the beshti now to get ourselves and the boys out of here, back toward the Plateau."

  A small silence. Ian was considering his argument. "If it's that dire, go down now, do you hear me? I can send a plane to the basin."

  "I have young men waiting up on the rim."

  "If you need rescue that badly, Marak, you and Hati. I can save you. If it comes to that. Don't refuse the thought. I can get you out, if you don't wait too long. or divert yourselves in a useless chase. Go straight down now. I'll send a caravan after the others. But get yourself and Hati out."

  Hati's danger was, Ian knew damned well, the thought hardest for him to bear. He was hardly subtle.

  "Save your plane, Ian. We shall find the beshti and get us all off the ridge, quite handily. Auguste has promised us a safe trail along the terrace. It saved us being in the path of a landslide just now."

  "A rocket is going out within the next hour to deliver our reserve relay to Halfmoon."

  Doing what they had failed to do. What he had argued against, months ago. "I truly wish it luck."

  Luck, which a soft-landing in that place certainly needed. They had as well drop it from a height.

  "It's a spectacle out there, Marak, a long, long waterfall that ends in a plume of spray. I have the transmissions from Concord and the satellite. I hate to say, if you had stayed here and gone by plane in the first place, you might have both seen it and gotten pictures."

  Ian tormented him. Ian had to make his point, even now, while he had empty space beneath his left foot and little sand-slips sliding down from every step the beshti made.

  "Send out your rocket," Marak retorted, and let fly his own annoyance. "Send your plane to the Wall and get your pictures. You were right, Ian, I entirely admit it. We shall not be there to see it. We are here, on the face of this cliff, which is our just reward. But we deserve more help than we have gotten from the heavens in the last tw
o days, do you hear me, Ian-omi? Now Brazis is saying Hati's watchers will give Drusus relief tonight. By noon, tell Brazis so, I wish all my watchers back as they were. This is not a moment to indulge some foreign lord's whims, and the threat to our camp does not take the night off because two men are tired. I ask you make this clear to him, Ian."

  "Marak, be patient."

  "Is there reward for us in patience? We had little warning of this event. Where was my warning, Ian? Was all-seeing heaven perhaps distracted from watching us, while it was watching this foreign lord?"

  "You know the difficulties of prediction. Your position is between us and the epicenter."

  "Excuses, Ian."

  "You cannot argue with physics."

  "I can argue with distraction and delay of information." He grew angry much more slowly than Hati. He took far longer to let it build, but here, on this slope, after the ruin that had cascaded down to the basin, and with the gnawing thought that if he had managed better, and used Ian's damnable wire-cored rope, he would not be chasing the beshti, his temper was very near the boiling point. "I find it remarkable that when we should have had some slight warning, Brazis was busy reassigning my watcher to this foreign lord, and he either has not explained to Drusus why this is, or has told Drusus to lie to me, promising me Procyon's return soon, soon, soon, which has not happened yet.-Are you listening, Auguste? Ask Brazis when we will have his full attention."