The boy followed him with his eyes.
“Pah is an ancient Sodde Lydfan god.” Pemot gazed across the Sea of Leaves. Somewhere out there, they knew, more enemies were on the way. “Originally a primitive deity named for the sun—or perhaps the other way around, I’m not altogether certain—in any case, a simple, unassuming sun god, although the practice of worshipping Pah has become more sophisticated and abstracted over the centuries. Your grandfather, on the other hand, was an Earthian, concentrated upon different abstractions. The distinction may not mean a great deal to you, but these things matter to some individuals.”
“They sure do.” Mac’s tone was grim. “On Earth, people used to torture and kill each other over matters like that. Maybe you were wrong after all, Pemot, wasting ‘a few well-chosen words’ over somebody whose final efforts were spent on an act of calculated hate. It’s all so dumb. He went to all that trouble, all those years, just to end up here, like this!”
Pemot sighed. “Perhaps you’re right, MacBear. If so, I plead temporary humanity. People used to torture and kill each other on my planet, as well. It’s one of my fondest hopes, with the coming of the Confederacy, that those days are behind us.”
With an exoskeleton, it shouldn’t have been visible, but Pemot seemed to take a deep breath, brace himself and turn—in fact, he didn’t do that, either—back into the hovercraft.
“Now, hand me your spear again, if you will, Middle C. Let’s attend to getting the crate open. Perhaps our salvation lies with its contents. If not, then perhaps, damaged as it is, we should attempt to repair this much-abused machine.”
Chapter XXII: The Confederate Air Force
“That’s got it!” Mac exclaimed.
With a final squeal of protest, the top of the crate yielded to Middle C’s spear point. As the taflak stood back out of the way, the human and the lamviin seized the other end of the container and slid its contents out onto the floor of the hovercraft.
“My word!” Pemot ran a finger over the surface of the suit, refusing to believe his eyes.
Mac, too, had trouble taking in what he was seeing. The cast, chrome-plated replica back at Spoonbender’s had been nothing but the crudest approximation. Even if the Brightsuit had turned out to be the failure everyone had thought it was for so long, it was the most beautiful failure he’d ever seen.
In outline, of course, it was humanlike, from the smooth, featureless oval of the head, down the well-formed chest and back, the narrow hips and legs, to the integral and graceful boots which formed the feet. Not a single wrinkle or protrusion marred its unbroken lines, not even the dual operating keypads which were a customary adornment on the forearms of the ordinary smartsuit.
“It’s like a medieval suit of armor rendered in Swedish Modern.” Pemot breathed.
Mac, who’d never heard of Swedish Modern, and whose idea of the Middle Ages was somewhat vague, based on dramatic programs about Robin Hood, Ivanhoe, and King Arthur, frowned at the verbal intrusion. The thing before him was too lovely for words.
Even Middle C was speechless, leaning closer on his single leg, humming wordlessly and tunelessly as he examined his own curve-distorted reflection.
Some remnant of the Brightsuit’s titanic energy must have augmented what they all saw. No mirror had ever been made which could produce a clearer, more flawless image. It was as if the finish on the surface was spring water, fathoms deep. Whatever else the three companions noticed, it occurred to each of them that, despite all of its rough handling, its many years of storage and neglect, the Brightsuit didn’t show the slightest sign of wear or of accumulated grime: not a dent, not a scratch, not so much as a dust speck or a fingerprint.
At last, Mac had to touch it. To his surprise, it was as flexible as any smartsuit, perhaps even more so. Beneath his fingers, which left no print behind when he lifted them, it felt like sheer silk covering warm human flesh.
The wreckage of the hovercraft rocked with the force of a nearby explosion.
Another explosion thundered, even closer this time. The noise was excruciating.
Leaving the Brightsuit, Mac and his companions rushed to the open gull-wing door. From the north-east, they saw the Antimacassarite vehicle A.L.N. Compassionate bearing down upon them, its twin screws turning as fast as the slaves could be driven around the threads. As they ran, flames spurted from the weapons along the flying forecastle, threatening to roast anyone who got in the vehicle’s path.
What was worse, tumbling cylindrical projectiles were rising in high-topped arcs from launchers on the quarterdeck, falling to one side or the other of the Compassionate, and burying themselves deep in the moss where they exploded, showering vegetation and metal fragments back up in a wide-mouthed, deadly funnel.
“Depth charges!” Mac pounded on the lamviin’s carapace. “I’ve watched enough old submarine movies to recognize depth charges when I see them! They must be trying to stop somebody from boarding! Maybe Middle C’s people!”
Oblivious to the punishment being inflicted on him by his friend, Pemot blinked. “Wasted effort, for the most part, observe—” The xenopraxeologist was pointing a finger westward, where they could just make out the taflak warrior’s tribesbeings locked in combat with their own kind—villagers working for the First Wavers. A lot of screaming and shouting was being done, to the tune of high-pitched hoots and whistles. Thrower-launched spears were flying everywhere. Middle C’s people, outnumbered at least ten to one, were being driven backward toward the hovercraft Mac and Pemot occupied.
“I cannot,” stated Middle C, taking up his thrower and reclaiming his other spear from Mac, “with honor permit my tribespeople to perish without perishing myself. I look for you after the battle, here, or in eternal darkness at the bottom of the Sea of Leaves where all of Majesty’s dead must go in the end.”
With this, he leaped out the door, clearing the hull of the Trekmaster, and cartwheeled away.
“I say, cheerful fellow, isn’t he?”
Ignoring Pemot’s remark, Mac had stripped off his pistol belt and his beaten-up old smartsuit, seized the Brightsuit and begun looking and feeling for the entry seams.
“I don’t know how this is going to work out—the darn thing’s way too big for me.”
Pemot blinked. Having lived on Earth among human beings he wasn’t unfamiliar with their naked appearance, but until now he’d always believed them to be as shy about displaying their unprotected bodies as his own people were.
In any other circumstances, he’d have gotten out his notebook and begun scribbling. “By all means, MacBear, try it anyway. We certainly haven’t anything to lose now.”
Meanwhile, Mac had found the seams. “You can say that again—hey! Pemot, it’s shrinking around my legs! It’s making itself fit!”
The lamviin gave his equivalent of a shrug. “I don’t suppose they call them smartsuits for nothing. Here, get your left arm in here, and consider yourself lucky not to have nine limbs to deal with, squeezing into this suit. Getting dressed always seems to take me forever.”
Mac smoothed the front seam in place. He took the flexible hood in his hands, where, like all smartsuit hoods in proper repair, it lay hanging across his chest.
“Well, Pemot, here goes!” He lifted the hood over his face, sealed it at the back of his head, and took an experimental breath. The air collected and processed by the surface of the suit was clean, cool, and dry. The inside surface of the garment began cleansing the boy’s skin, treating minor cuts, bruises, and abrasions he’d been accumulating, killing microorganisms, adjusting his metabolism to conditions in which the human race hadn’t evolved and couldn’t adjust to by themselves. It was the first time he’d been comfortable since coming to Majesty.
“But I still can’t—oh yes I can! Pemot, all I had to do was think about being able to see, and suddenly I could!”
“Certainly,” the lamviin replied, “your cerebrocortical implant detected the desire and transmitted it to the Brightsuit as a command. Your ol
d suit must have been in terrible condition, MacBear, as this feature is nothing at all revolutionary, any more than is the fact we can hear one another perfectly, although separated by near-perfect insulation. However, I’d be careful, young friend, with this new suit. Considering its alleged capabilities, such a response to your wish could be a dangerous thing, indeed.”
“I will be, Pemot.”
He stood up, an eerie, mirror-surfaced mannikin, an animated chromium statue. If anything, the Brightsuit’s reflectivity had increased since Mac had put it on.
He stepped to the door. “Now I’m looking out over the Sea of Leaves, toward the Compassionate. I just thought of being able to see better, and the Brightsuit’s optics zoomed right in. Leftenant Commander Goldberry’s out on the quarterdeck, supervising the depth bombing—and I’ve got a notation in glowing letters at the bottom edge of my field of view: five percent ultraviolet has been integrated into the picture.”
Pemot had pulled his own hood up.
“Presumably to cut through atmospheric moisture. Another perfectly conventional smartsuit feature. I’m seeing much the same view. Try the Securitasian ship.”
“It isn’t very different from the Intimidator, except for some weird, complicated structure running along the—Pemot! It’s a catapult of some kind! One of the overseers is just lighting up the payload basket, a big ball of fire!”
“My word, you’re seeing more detail than I am. Is it pointed at the Compassionate or at us?”
“What do you think? If they get us, they can divvy up what they get for the Brightsuit, which they can’t hurt by roasting us alive. Uh oh, the captain’s got a lanyard in his hand. He’s sighting along the beam toward us, and—”
“MacBear!” Pemot’s startled shout followed Mac’s reflexive leap into the air, upward and forward, toward the Securitasian vehicle. He met the fireball at the top of its ballistic arc, and batted it with both hands. It fell almost straight backward, along its former course, missing the individuals who’d launched it by a few dozen yards.
Ordinary smartsuits do not fly.
Hanging in the air, Mac—no less surprised than Pemot when the suit had translated this unconscious wish into action—looked down on the Sea of Leaves. The danger they were in was worse than either of them had guessed. He could see several other vehicles coming now, characteristic of both nation-states.
Uncoordinated as they may have been, they formed a solid ring of death around Dalmeon Geanar’s ruined hovercraft and the offworld travelers who’d discovered it. But something else was happening as well, something vaster and more ominous. Inside the deadly circle formed by the enemy vehicles, not a thousand yards from the spot where Pemot stood, the Sea of Leaves appeared to be boiling.
The moss churned and rippled with the force of something coming up from beneath it.
Something enormous and powerful.
It was at this point Mac noticed he’d left his Borchert & Graham behind in the hovercraft.
He was distracted by a puff of smoke from aboard the A.L.N. Compassionate. Polished, helpless-looking target in the sky that he appeared, he’d begun to draw enemy gunfire. Without his prompting, a hair-fine beam of brilliance, blinding even through his hood, leaped out from the Brightsuit near the back of his hand. Another puff blossomed in mid-air as it vaporized the rising bullet.
This first shot was followed by a ragged and spontaneous volley. Each bullet was converted to plasma hundreds of feet away from its intended destination. Mac watched with amplified vision as Leftenant Commander MacRame shouted at the rifle squad, lined them up, and commanded them to make their fire simultaneous.
A dozen beams flashed out to counteract the Leftenant Commander’s military discipline.
Mac was just as surprised when—perhaps because he’d thought of how exposed and conspicuous he was, perhaps because the Brightsuit was reaching the limit of its bullet-destroying capacities—he was whisked upward several hundred yards. At the same time, the surface of the Brightsuit was transformed from perfect reflectivity, to a perfect match for the pure blue of the sky.
Down on the surface of the sea, it must have looked to everyone as if he’d vanished.
He thought about rising higher. Microscopic tachyon lasers in the skin of the suit flared and his wishes were obeyed. Rendered inertialess by the fields it generated, the Brightsuit carried him further into the air every fraction of a second.
Mac scanned the world below.
There’s gotta be someone around somewhere who can help us!
But he was wrong.
The lamviin scientist, his Sodde Lydfan sand-sled, Dalmeon Geanar’s wrecked Preble Trekmaster, the Securitasian and Antimacassarite vehicles grew smaller until they were no more than indistinguishable dots. Even the broad, churning storm of tentacles, spears, and huge, gleaming eyes which were the contending tribes of taflak dwindled to the tiniest of smudges on the face of the Sea of Leaves.
Mac continued gaining altitude.
The sky darkened, blue to purple to black.
Above him, stars winked into sudden visibility, burning bright and steady overhead.
The boy even thought he could discern the curvature of the planet’s surface.
At the bottom edge of his field of view, inside the Brightsuit’s hood, an amber warning light appeared, indicating the absence of breathable air about him. This was no problem inside the suit’s protective and replenishing envelope, but still no sight presented itself, horizon to horizon, of a Confederate presence, no hovercraft, no high-tech equivalent of the tribal rafts used by the natives.
At last, Mac flexed his mind, ordering the Brightsuit to keep him where he was. Hanging at the edge of space, he looked down at the planet. Straight beneath his dangling feet was the equator, where Pemot might be minutes, even seconds, away from death. Somewhere in that direction, lay the north pole of Majesty and the settlement of Geislinger. Somewhere in the opposite direction, at the south pole, was Talisman. Both were invisible, far below the horizon at this altitude.
A peculiar surge of pressure ran up his spine.
He realized the Brightsuit had “overheard” his thoughts and begun rising again to some altitude from which he might see the poles. He stopped it where the sky was even blacker than before. The stars seemed like hard, cold chips of diamond.
What should he do now? Where should he go? All he knew for certain was that his friends, Pemot and Middle C, needed help, and none was to be found within thousands of miles. He’d help them himself.
Firming his will, he ordered the Brightsuit to take him down. As friction with the thickening air heated the outside surface of the suit, it began to throw off excess energy in the form of radiation in the visible spectrum.
Inside, the temperature remained constant.
At last, glowing much too bright to be looked at, he swooped like a bird of prey to meet the foe.
The first to feel his wrath was the Compassionate, just a few yards from collision with the ruined Trekmaster—where Pemot stood, pistol braced and ready, just inside the door—and already spewing uniformed and moss-shoed rifle bearers. A brilliant beam from each wrist of the Brightsuit traced fiery lines along the Compassionate’s bow and quarterdeck, splitting the vessel into ponderous, reeling halves which wandered away from one another, spilling slaves who tumbled off into the leaves.
With another gesture Mac drew a line of flame between the hovercraft and the advancing troops. One or two foolish enough to surge onward, despite his warning, exploded like popcorn kernels at the touch of a blinding wire-fine beam.
The rest halted and threw down their weapons, which sank into the sea like stones in pond water.
A Securitasian crankapillar three times the size of the Intimidator launched a pair of fireballs straight at the helpless hovercraft. Fire met fire as Mac’s energy beams turned the flaming spheres into puffs of harmless smoke.
He beamed down the crankapillar’s deck officers, and the machine slowed to a halt.
Last o
f all, he turned his attention to the battle between the rival taflak tribes. This wasn’t quite as easy as fighting First Wavers. In the first place, he couldn’t tell one side from another. True, they’d slowed their fighting to watch the spectacle he was creating. Also, he could pick out Middle C waving at him from the middle of the turmoil. But how could he stop it?
“People of the Sea of Leaves!” His shout, rendered in the best taflak he knew, was amplified a million-fold by the Brightsuit. “Stop fighting and go home!”
And, to Mac’s enormous relief, they obeyed him, splitting into several groups and drifting—from his viewpoint, high above; from their own they were fleeing for their lives (he was gratified to see they took time to rescue most of the floundering Antimacassarite galley slaves who, otherwise, might have perished)—away.
All but one.
Mac swooped down toward Middle C, just in time to see him jumping up and down and gesturing toward the hovercraft. Mac turned in mid-air and watched in horror as the sea surface bulged upward an obscene ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred feet, carrying the Trekmaster and its remaining living passenger aloft with it. Pemot had both guns out, his Sodde Lydfan reciprocator and Mac’s plasma pistol, firing slow, heavy slugs and five megawatt bolts of fury into the rising surface.
Mac streaked toward the machine, dived for the door, seized his lamviin friend, and swooped away, splashing whatever lay beneath the vehicle with his brightest, strongest energy beams. Whatever it was became obscured by orange and yellow flames and by thick coils of black, greasy smoke from the burning vegetation, but it subsided, sinking, taking the hovercraft with it into the depths.
When it had gone, nothing but a shallow, smoldering, conical depression remained.
And even this had soon begun to fill in, softened and eradicated by the restless Sea of Leaves.