Land and Overland Omnibus

CHAPTER 12



A great deal of thought and effort had been put into making the garden look as though it had been established for centuries. Some of the statues had been deliberately chipped to give them semblance of antiquity, and the walls and stone benches were artificially weathered with corrosive fluids. The flowers and shrubs had either been grown from seeds brought from Land, or were native varieties which closely resembled those of the Old World.

In a way Toller Maraquine sympathised with the intent—he could imagine that being in the garden would help counterbalance the aching emptiness of the sunset hour—but he had to wonder at the psychology involved. King Chakkell's personal achievements since arriving on Overland would guarantee him a place in history, but somehow that was not enough to satisfy him. He obviously craved all that his predecessors had enjoyed—not only power itself, but the trappings and emblems of power. Identical motivation had just brought about the death of the King of the New Men, reinforcing Toller's belief that he would never be able to comprehend the mentality of those who needed to rule others.

"I am well pleased with the outcome," King Chakkell said, stroking his paunch as he walked, as though having enjoyed a banquet. "The expense of it all was proving a great drain on our resources, but now—with Rassamarden dead—I can rid myself of all those floating fortresses. We will drop them on Land and, with any luck, kill a few more of the diseased upstarts."

"I don't think that would be a good idea," Toller said impulsively.

"What is wrong with it? They have to fall somewhere—and surely better on them than on us."

"I say the defences should be maintained." Toller knew he would be called upon to marshal logical arguments, but was having difficulty in concentrating his thoughts on impersonal matters such as the strategies of war. He and Berise had landed their skyship only hours earlier—and now it was necessary for him to speak to his wife.

Chakkell spread his arms, halting their progress through the garden. "What do you say, Zavotle?"

liven Zavotle, who had a hand pressed into his stomach, looked blank. "I beg your pardon, Majesty—what was the question?"

Chakkell scowled at him. "What's the matter with you these days? You seem more preoccupied with your gut than with anything I have to say. Are you ill?"

"It's just a touch of the bile, Majesty," Zavotle said. "It may be that the food from the royal kitchen is too rich for my blood."

"In that case your stomach has reason to be grateful to me—I propose to dismantle the aerial defence screen and drop the fortresses on Land. What do you say to that?"

"It would advertise our lack of defences to the enemy."

"What does it matter if they lack the means or the will to attack?"

"Rassamarden's successor could be just as ambitious," Toller said. "The Landers may yet send another fleet."

"After the total destruction of the last one?"

Toller could see that the King was becoming impatient, but he did not want to yield. "In my opinion we should retain all the fighters, plus enough stations to support them and their pilots." To his surprise Chakkell gave a hearty laugh.

"I see your game!" Chakkell said jovially, slapping him on the shoulder. "You still haven't grown up, Maraquine. You always have to have a new plaything. The fighters are your toys and the weightless zone is your playground, and you want me to go on footing the bill. Isn't that it?"

"Certainly not, Majesty." Toller made no attempt to hide the fact that he was offended. Gesalla had often spoken to him in a similar vein, and he … Gesalla! I have betrayed our love, and now I must confess to you. If only I can win your forgiveness I swear to you that I will never again…

"Mind you," Chakkell went on, "I have a certain sympathy with your viewpoint now that I have met your little playmate."

"Majesty, if you are referring to Skycaptain Narrinder I…"

"Come now, Maraquine! Don't try to tell me you haven't bedded that little beauty." Chakkell was enjoying himself, eagerly resuming the private game now that he had discovered an unexpected area of vulnerability in his opponent. "It's obvious, man! It's written all over your face! What do you say, Zavotle?"

Thoughtfully massaging his stomach, Zavotle said, "It seems to me that if we burned the command stations and fortresses, the ashes could fall anywhere without harming us or betraying information to the enemy."

"That's an excellent thought, Zavotle—and I thank you for it—but you have not addressed the subject."

"I dare not, Majesty," Zavotle said humorously. "To do so I would either have to disagree with a King or insult a nobleman who has a reputation for reacting violently in such instances."

Toller gave him an amiable nod. "What you're saying is that a man's private life should be his own."

"Private life?" Chakkell shook his brown-domed head in amusement. "Toller Maraquine, my old adversary, my old friend, my old court jester—you cannot row upstream and downstream at the same time. Messengers in fallbags preceded your arrival in Prad by days, and the news of your honeymoon flight with the delectable Skycaptain Narrinder has travelled far and wide.

"She has become a national heroine, and you—once again—have become a national hero. In the taverns your union has already been blessed with a million beery libations. My subjects, most of whom appear to be romantic dolts, seem to see you as a couple chosen for each other by destiny, but none of them is faced with the unenviable task of explaining that to the Lady Gesalla. As for myself, I almost think I would rather go against Karkarand."

Toller gave the King a formal bow, preparatory to taking his leave. "As I said, Majesty, a man's private life should be his own." Riding south on the highway which connected Prad to the town of Heevern, Toller reached a crest and—for the first time in well over a year—saw his own home.

Still several miles away to the south-west, the grey stone building was rendered white by the aftday sun, making it sharply visible among the green horizontals of the landscape. Within himself Toller tried to manufacture a surge of gladness and of affection for the place, and when it failed to materialise his feelings of self-reproach grew more intense.

I'm a lucky man, he told himself, determined to impose will on emotion. My beautiful solewife is enshrined in that house, and—if she forgives the sin I have committed against her—it will be my privilege to be her loving companion for the rest of our days. Even if she cannot absolve me at once, I will eventually win her over by being what she wants me to be, by being the Toller Maraquine I know I ought to be, and which I genuinely crave to be—and we will enjoy the twilight years together. That is what I want. That is what I WANT!

From Toller's elevated viewpoint he could see intermittent traces of the road which joined his house to the north-south highway, and his attention was caught by a blurry white speck which betokened a single rider heading towards the main road. The stubby telescope which had served him since boyhood hinted at a bluehorn with distinctive creamy forelegs, and Toller knew at once that the rider was his son. This time there was no need to contrive gladness. He had missed Cassyll a great deal, primarily because of the ties of blood, but also because of the satisfaction he had found when they were working together.

In the unnatural circumstances of the aerial war he had somehow almost managed to forget about the projects he and Cassyll had been engaged on, but much remained for them to do—more than enough to occupy any man's days. It was absolutely vital that the felling of brakka trees should be brought to a halt for ever—otherwise the ptertha would again become invincible enemies—and the key to the future lay in the development of metals. King Chakkell's reluctance to face up to the problem made it all the more imperative for Toller to rejoin his son and resume their work together.

Toller increased his speed towards the juncture of the two roads, anticipating the moment in which Cassyll would notice and recognise him. The intersection was the one where the unhappy incident with Oaslit Spennel had begun, but he pushed the memories aside as he and Cassyll steadily grew closer together on their converging paths. When they were less than a furlong apart and nothing had happened Toller began to suspect that his son was riding with his eyes closed, trusting the bluehorn to find its own way, probably to the ironworks.

"Rouse yourself, sleepyhead!" he shouted. "What manner of welcome is this?"

Cassyll looked towards him, with no sign of surprise, turned his head away and continued riding at unchanged speed. He reached the road junction first and, to Toller's bewilderment, turned south. Toller called out Cassyll's name and galloped after him. He overtook his son's bluehorn and brought it to a halt by grasping the reins.

"What's the matter with you, son?" he said. "Were you asleep?"

Cassyll's grey eyes were cool. "I was wide awake, father."

"Then what…?" Toller studied the fine-featured oval face—previewing the forthcoming meeting with Gesalla—and any joy that was within him died. "So that's the way of it."

"So that's the way of what?"

"Don't fence with words, Cassyll—no matter what you think of me you should at least speak forthrightly, as I am doing with you. Now, what troubles you? Is it to do with the woman?"

"I…" Cassyll pressed the knuckles of his fist to his lips. "Where is she, anyway? Has she, perhaps, transferred her attentions to the King?"

Toller repressed a surge of anger. "I don't know what you have heard—but Berise Narrinder is a fine woman."

"As harlots go, that is," Cassyll sneered.

Toller had actually begun the back-handed slap when he realised what was happening and checked the movement. Appalled, he lowered his gaze and stared at his hand as though it were a third party which had attempted to intrude on a private discussion. His bluehorn nuzzled against Cassyll's, making soft snuffling sounds.

"I'm sorry," Toller said. "My temper is… Are you on your way to the works?"

"Yes. I go there most days."

"I'll join you later, but first I must speak to your mother."

"As you wish, father." Cassyll's face was carefully expressionless. "May I go now?"

"I won't detain you any further," Toller said, struggling against a sense of despair. He watched his son ride off to the south, then resumed his own journey. Somehow it had not occurred to him to take Cassyll's feelings into account, and now he feared that their relationship had been damaged beyond repair. Perhaps the boy would relent with the passage of time, but for the present Toller's main hope lay with Gesalla. If he could win her forgiveness quickly his son might be favourably influenced.

The crescent of sunlight was broadening on the great disk of Land, poised overhead, reminding Toller that aftday was well advanced. He increased the bluehorn's pace. Here and there in the surrounding fields farmers were at work, and they paused to salute him as he rode by. He was popular with the tenants, largely because he charged rents that were little more than nominal, and he found himself wishing that all human relationships could be so easily regulated. The King had joked about facing up to Gesalla, but Toller could remember times when he had genuinely been more apprehensive on the eve of a battle than he was at this moment, preparing to run the gauntlet of his wife's reproach, scorn and anger. Loved ones had an intangible armoury—words, silences, expressions, gestures—which could inflict deeper wounds than swords or spears.

By the time Toller reached the walled precinct at the front of the house his mouth was dry, and it was all he could do to prevent himself from trembling.

The bluehorn was one borrowed from the royal stables, and therefore Toller had to dismount and open the gate by hand. He led the animal inside and while it was ambling to the stone drinking trough he surveyed the familiar enclosure, with its ornamental shrubs and well-tended flower beds. Gesalla liked to look after it personally, and her skilled touch was evident everywhere he looked—a reminder that he would be with her in a matter of seconds.

He heard the front door opening and turned to see his wife standing in the archway. She was wearing an ankle-length gown of dark blue and had bound her hair up in such a manner that its stripe of silver made a natural coronet. Her beauty was as complete and as daunting as Toller had ever known it to be, and when he saw that she was smiling the weight of his guilt became insupportable, turning his own smile into a nerveless grimace, rooting him to the spot. She came to him and kissed him on the lips, briefly but warmly, then stepped back to examine him from head to foot.

"You're not hurt," she said. "I was so afraid for you, Toller … it all sounded so impossibly dangerous … but now I see you're not hurt and I can breathe again."

"Gesalla…" He took both her hands. "I must talk to you."

"Of course you must—and you're probably hungry and thirsty. Come into the house and I'll prepare a meal." She tugged at his hands, but he refused to move.

"It might be best if I stayed out here," he said.

"Why?"

"After you hear what I have to say I may not be welcome in the house."

Gesalla eyed him speculatively, then led the way to a stone bench. When he had sat down she straddled the bench and moved close to him so that he was partly within the triangle formed by her thighs. The intimacy both thrilled and embarrassed him.

"And now, my lord," she said lightly, "what terrible confessions have you to make?"

"I…" Toller lowered his head. "I've been with another woman."

"What of it?" Gesalla said in a calm voice, expression unchanged.

Toller was taken aback. "I don't think you under… When I said I'd been with another woman I meant I'd been in bed with her."

Gesalla laughed. "I know what you meant, Toller—I'm not stupid."

"But…" Toller, knowing he had never been able to predict his wife's reactions, became wary. "Aren't you angry?"

"Are you planning to bring the woman here and put her in my place?"

"You know I'd never do a thing like that."

"Yes, I do know that, Toller. You are a good-hearted man, and nobody is more aware of that than I, after the years we have had together." Gesalla smiled and gently placed one of her hands on his. "So I have no reason to be angry with you, or to reproach you in any way."

"But this is wrong!" Toller burst out, his bafflement increasing. "You were never like this before. How can you remain so placid, knowing the way I have wronged you?"

"I repeat—you have not wronged me."

"Has the world suddenly been stood on its head?" Toller demanded. "Are you saying that it is perfectly acceptable and seemly for a man to betray his solewife, the woman he loves?"

Gesalla smiled again and her eyes deepened with compassion. "Poor Toller! You still don't understand any of this, do you? You still don't know why for years you have been like an eagle pent up in a cage; why you seize every possible opportunity to put your life at risk. It's all an impenetrable mystery to you, isn't it?"

"You make me angry, Gesalla. Please do not address me as though I were a child."

"But that's the entire point—you are a child. You have never ceased to be a child."

"I grow weary of people telling me that. Perhaps I should come back on another day when, if fortune smiles, I will find you less disposed towards talking in riddles." Toller half-rose to his feet, but Gesalla drew him back on to the bench.

"A moment ago you spoke of betraying the woman you love," she said in the softest, kindest tones he had ever heard, "and there lies the source of all your heartache. You see, Toller…" Gesalla paused, and for the first time since their meeting her composure seemed less than perfect.

"Go on."

"You see, Toller—you no longer love me."

"That's a lie!"

"It's the truth, Toller. I have always understood that the long-lasting embers of love are of more importance than the brief bright flame which marks the beginning. If you also understood that, and accepted it, you might go on being happy with me—but that was never the way with you. Not in anything. Look at all your other love affairs—with the army, with skyships, with metals. You always have some impossible idealistic goal in mind, and when it proves illusory you have to find another to put in its place."

Toller was hearing things he had no wish to hear, and the hated worm of disenchantment at the centre of his being was beginning to stir. "Gesalla," he said, making himself sound reasonable, "aren't you allowing yourself to be carried away with words? How could I have a love affair with metals?"

"For you it was easy! You couldn't simply discover a new material and plan to experiment with it—you had to lead a crusade. You were going to end the felling of brakka for ever; you were going to initiate a glorious new era in history; you were going to be the saviour of humanity. It was just beginning to dawn on you that Chakkell and his like would never change their ways when the Lander ship arrived.

"That saved you, Toller—provided you with yet another shining goal—but only for a short while. The war ended too soon for you. And now you are back in the ordinary, humdrum world … and you are getting old … and, worst of all, there is no great new challenge ahead of you. The only prospect is of living quietly, on this estate or somewhere else, until you die a commonplace death—just as every commonplace mortal has done since time began.

"Can you face that prospect, Toller?" Gesalla locked solemn eyes with his. "Because if you cannot, I would prefer that we lived separately. I want to spend my remaining years in peace—and there was precious little of that for me in watching you search for ways to end your life."

The worm was eating hungrily now, and within Toller a dark void was spreading. "There must be some comfort for you in possessing so much knowledge and wisdom, in having such mastery over your feelings."

"The old sarcasm, Toller?" Gesalla tightened her warm grip on his hand. "You do me an injustice if you think I have not wept bitterly over you. It was on the night I stayed with you at the palace that I finally saw through to the heart of this matter. I became angry with you for being what you could not help being, and for a time I hated you—and I shed my tears. But that was in the past. Now my concern is with the future."

"Have we a future?"

"I have a future—I have decided that much—and the time has come when you must make your own choice. I know I have caused you great pain this day, but it was unavoidable. I am going back into the house now. I want you to remain out here until you have reached that decision, and when you have done so you must either join me or ride away. I make only one stipulation—that the decision be final and irrevocable. Do not come into the house unless you know in your heart that I can make you content until your last days, and that you can do the same for me. There can be no compromise, Toller—nothing less will suffice."

Gesalla rose weightlessly to her feet and looked down at him. "Will you give me your word?"

"You have my word," Toller said numbly, racked by fears that this was the last time he would ever see his solewife's face. He watched her go into the house. She closed the door without glancing back at him, and when she was lost to his view he stood up and began aimlessly pacing the precinct. The shadow of the west wall was spreading its domain, deepening the colours of the flowers it engulfed, bringing a hint of coolness to the air.

Toller looked up at Land, which was steadily growing brighter, and in an instant traced the course of his life, from his birthplace on that distant world to the quiet enclosure where he now stood. Everything that had ever happened to him seemed to have led directly to this moment. In retrospect his life appeared as a single, clear-cut highway which he had followed without conscious effort—but now, abruptly, the road had divided. A momentous decision had to be made, and he had just learned that he was ill-equipped for the making of real decisions.

Toller half-smiled as he recalled that only minutes earlier he had regarded his dalliance with Berise Narrinder as something of importance. Gesalla—far ahead of him, as usual—had known better. He had reached the fork in the road, and had to go one way or the other. One way or the other!

As he wandered the precinct the sun continued its descent to the horizon and the daytime stars became more numerous. Once the transparent globe of a ptertha sailed overhead on a breeze which could not be detected within the vine-clad walls. It was not until silver whirlpools were beginning to show themselves in the eastern blue that Toller abruptly ceased his pacing, stilled by an accession of self-knowledge, by an understanding of why he was taking so long to choose the future course of his life.

There was no decision point before him! There was no dilemma!

The issue had been decided for him, even as Gesalla was putting it into words. He could never make her content, because he was a hollow man who could never again make himself content—and the subsequent delay had been caused by his craven inability to face the truth.

The truth is that I am halfway to being dead, he told himself, and all that remains for me is to find a suitable way to finish what I have begun.

He gave a quavering sigh, went to the bluehorn and led it to the precinct gate. He took the animal outside, and while closing the gate looked for the last time at the drowsing house. Gesalla was not at any of the darkening windows. Toller got into the saddle and put the bluehorn into a slow-swaying walk on the gravel road to the east. The workers had departed the fields and the world seemed empty.

"What comes next?" he said to the universe at large, his words swiftly fading into the sadness of the surrounding twilight. "Please, what do I do next?"

There was a tiny focus of movement on the road far ahead of him, almost at the limits of vision. In a normal frame of mind Toller might have used his telescope to gain advance information about the approaching traveller, but on this occasion the effort seemed too great. He allowed the natural progression of events to do the work for him at its own measured pace.

In a short time he was able to discern a wagon driven by a solitary figure, and within another few minutes he could see that both the wagon and its occupant were in a sorry state. The vehicle had lost much of its siding and its wheels were wobbling visibly on worn axles. Its driver was a bearded young man, so caked with dust that he resembled a clay statue.

Toller guided his bluehorn to the side of the road to give the stranger room to pass, and was surprised when the wagon drew to a halt beside him. Its driver peered at him through red-rimmed eyes, and even before he spoke it was apparent that he was very drunk.

"Pardon me, sir," he said in slurred tones, "do I have the honour of addressing Lord Toller Maraquine?"

"Yes," Toller replied. "Why do you ask?"

The bearded man swayed for a moment, then unexpectedly produced a smile which in spite of his filthy and dishevelled condition had a boyish charm. "My name is Bartan Drumme, my lord, and I come to you with a unique proposition—one I am certain you will find of great interest."

"I very much doubt that," Toller said coldly, preparing to move on.

"But, my lord! It was my understanding that as Chief of Aerial Defence you concerned yourself with all matters pertaining to the upper reaches of the sky."

Toller shook his head. "All that is over and done with."

"I'm sorry to hear it, my lord." Drumme picked up a bottle and drew the cork, then paused and gave Toller a sombre stare. "This means I shall have to seek an audience with the King."

In spite of all that was pressing on his mind, Toller had to chuckle. "Doubtless he will be fascinated by what you have to say."

"No doubt at all," Drumme agreed, comfortable in his intoxication. "Any ruler in history would have been intrigued by the idea of planting his flag on the world we call Farland."