The Heretic (General)

4

Two weeks into the Redlands, and Abel’s company, his four squads and three command staff, were spread out along the backside of a defile, a gravelly wash about twenty paces wide. Pickets on the hill, a squad’s worth spread along the ridge, gazed down at a clump of huts below—it was impossible to call such a small and squalid gathering a village—that belonged to a clan of perhaps fifty Redlanders.

Abel crawled up next to Kruso, one of the pickets, and looked over the ridge himself. “Are we sure they’re not Blaskoye?” he asked.

“Not,” Kruso answered. “Downem thar crawlet me and South-waste accent tha talk.”

“South-wasters, huh? What do they call themselves?”

“Remlaps,” Kruso said.

“But the Blaskoye have conquered lots of tribes to the south,” Abel said. “How do we know these aren’t some of them?”

“Hidden,” Kruso replied. “Not from sich as weh, neither.”

“Yes, it is a cozy little valley they’ve found there. Couldn’t see it for a hundred leagues in any direction, then you come upon it and there it is, complete with a seep and green plants.”

“Found tham never withoutem that huntsman followen weh here back.”

“No, probably not.”

But they had found the Remlaps, and as far as Abel could determine, the Remlaps did not know his Scouts were here.

You have maybe a day before they do, Raj said. Desert folks don’t miss much, because there’s not much to look at out here, so they know every bush and rock. A cut twig, some chuffed ground, and you’re spoiled for surprise.

“All right,” Abel said to Kruso. “I don’t want them to catch fright, at least not yet. Can you go down there and bring me the chief, or somebody who looks like the chief?”

Kruso smiled. “Aye, Lieutenant,” he said. “Thet can I.”

“Take five,” Abel said.

“And what will I do with the one I don’t need?” Kruso asked, all innocence.

“Okay, four including yourself,” Abel replied. “And if you’re not back in a half watch, I’ll bring the company over the hill.”

“No worry fer thet, sir,” Kruso said. He carefully backed away from the hill crest, then pulled himself off the ground and headed down to round up his raiding party.

Abel remained watching, trying to pick out Kruso and his men. There was the shake of a tarplant here, a small puff of dirt there, all following a roundabout path. If he had not known they were on their way, he would have put it all down to wind, so stealthily did the group move.

The return trip was a bit more obvious, since they were dragging something large and trussed up. Abel met them by the group of bedrolls and travel satchels that defined his headquarters. He’d ordered no cookfires, and his dont-born supply train was two valleys over in a blind defile.

The chief had not surrendered easily, and there was a bloody bruise on his temple where Kruso, or one of his men, had had to apply forceful persuasion. Abel ordered the leather tongs that bound his wrists and legs undone, and attempted to dredge up what little he knew of the South-waste dialect.

I will be able to supply the lack, if you will only allow him a few words to begin with, said Center.

This proved easy enough, for when the gag was taken from the chieftain’s mouth, he immediately began cursing up a storm—which Center proceeded to analyze for grammatical components. By the time he was finished, Abel had become a competent speaker of the Remlap dialect, or at least Center had, which amounted to the same thing in present circumstances.

“You don’t understand,” Abel said to the man in his South-waste tongue. “You are here as a guest.”

The chieftain stopped cursing then, and gazed at Abel in complete, amazed silence for a moment. Then he let out a huge laugh. “A guest? And I know that you are a Trevilleman, speak as you will. I know what it is you do with guests.”

“What’s that?”

“I hope you gag on my balls when you eat them,” the chief answered.

Abel allowed himself a smile. “I see. We are cannibals.” Abel nodded his head. “Yes, I can understand that belief.”

“Get on with it, then,” said the chief. He set his teeth and let his arms fall to his side in angry surrender to fate.

“Sit down,” Abel said. “With me.”

He allowed himself to sink in front of the chief, and sat on his haunches. After another moment of amazement that he had lived another sensible stretch of time, the chief did so as well.

“My name is Dashian,” Abel said.

“Dasahn,” the chief said, attempting to pronounce a sound for which there was no equivalent in his own tongue.

“Close enough,” said Abel.

“I am Gaspar,” the chief said.

“Chief of the Remlaps?”

“That’s right.”

“What will you drink?”

The chief, Gaspar, smiled wickedly. “Beer?”

“Wine,” said Abel. He motioned for someone to bring the stoppered clay bottle. When he got it, he uncorked it, took a swig, and passed it to the South-waster.

Gaspar was a thin man. Underfed, thought Abel. And how would anyone feed well, or even adequately, out here? The Redlands were a land of meager resources, but the four-league-wide depression they presently occupied seemed particularly barren. Gaspar also seemed older, but then, after they passed the age of twenty, most Redlanders took on a wizened appearance that could be anywhere from thirty to sixty years old and kept it until they died. The chief wore the customary robes of a nomad, but these were a faded yellow, and not the white of the Blaskoye. He wore no sandals, and his feet were a mass of calluses that might be thicker than the actual foot that sat atop them.

Remlap swallowed the wine, sighed. “It has been a while since I have tasted such.”

“Why don’t you ask your friends the Blaskoye to give you wine?” Abel asked.

“That would be like asking a bushfang to give you his venom,” the chief answered. “He might be very willing to give it to you, but perhaps in a manner that makes you wish you hadn’t asked in the first place.”

“You are not on good terms with your neighbors?”

“We would like to be, though we have seen what happened to others who thought they were on good terms with the Blaskoye. Suddenly, even though they were there, in the same huts, in the same camp, they weren’t themselves anymore. Instead, they became harsh in manner, and told us that our lands and our flocks were not actually ours, that they didn’t belong to us, but to ‘Greater Redland,’ even though it seemed like our land was ours, and even though it had seemed like it was ours for many, many years. In fact, what we thought was ours was theirs. But they were not themselves anymore. And when we asked them who they were, they told us they were Redlanders, and their leaders were the Blaskoye, who understood what this Greater Redland meant.”

The chief relaxed a bit, sat back on his own haunches, and took another long drink from the wine jug.

“Isn’t that both marvelous and strange?” he continued. “That some people can completely transform into other people so easily? Hartzmans to Redlanders. Mbunga to Redlanders. And all of them somehow Blaskoye at the same time. It is very confusing. We Remlaps are not very good at doing that sort of thing. This is our fate in the world, I fear, to be very good at being only ourselves, however poor selves we are, and not very good at being someone else. So when the Blaskoye asked us if we would like to be Redlanders and be ruled by them, they did not take it well when we declined the great honor that they wish to bestow upon us. Perhaps this was ungrateful, I admit, but what can one do? We are only poor Remlaps, after all.”

“Maybe that’s too bad,” said Abel. “It might’ve made things a lot easier, like you say.”

“And now here I sit captured by—oh, I’m sorry, I mean the guest of—people from the Land itself. These people would like to hear me tell tales of the wonderful and generous Blaskoye, where they are gathering, where they will strike next, only I cannot on account of my own tribe’s stubborn and troublesome inability to be pliable and flexible, not to mention all those other words that the Blaskoye employ when they might have adopted the single command: ‘Bow down and do as we say.’ It is very tiresome to be the leader of such a truculent group of misfits as the Remlaps.”

“I feel for you,” Abel replied. “But maybe you can answer one question.”

“Certainly,” said Remlap. “I would be very gratified if I could be of at least some use to you.”

Abel looked the man straight in the eyes. “Tell me where to find the Blaskoye with the silver knife that shines like water.”

It was as if the brushfang the Redlander had spoken of before had actually bit him. He recoiled from the question in a physical way, as if he were flinching from a real blow. “Oh, you don’t want him,” said the chief.

“So you know who I’m talking about?”

“Most assuredly. That is not the same thing as knowing where he might be found. In fact, there is no one place he will ever be found. That is part of his charm, they say.”

“What’s his name?”

“He goes by several.”

“What do you call him?”

Gaspar broke Abel’s gaze, looked away.

“It’s better not to speak of such things, such people, lest one call them down upon oneself.”

“And you do not think I am dangerous?”

“I think you are dangerous.”

“But not as dangerous.”

“No.”

“Should I kill some of your children? Take a woman or two and give her to my men? Would that convince you?”

“Perhaps,” said the other with a thin smile. “But you might have trouble finding the children, as we have hidden the remaining ones rather better than we have hidden ourselves. Even I do not know where they have been taken, and you might find our women a bit…used. For the Blaskoye have visited us, you see. Our camp was in better country, closer to the oasis, in former days.”

“The oasis,” said Abel. “I would like to go there.”

“I do not think you would enjoy it very much,” the chief answered with a dry chuckle. “Unless you particularly like the taste of your own gonads. But then, there’s no accounting for taste among you people of the Land.”

“I’m sorry, let me correct myself. I would like to go near there,” Abel replied. “You know how the saying goes—”

How does the saying go, Center?

I have several possibilities that might be appropriate. Try: “missed the target, but slew the dak,” Center replied.

Abel repeated the aphorism. Evidently, it was the right one, for the Remlap chief nodded in agreement. “True words, true words,” he murmured.

“I can pay you to guide me. A dont and a dak. One to ride now. One later.”

“Two, a dont and a dak?” The man said, suddenly taken aback, but just as suddenly seeking to cover it up so that his bargaining position wouldn’t be compromised. “Such an amount may seem a generous present to one from the Land, where they are used to pull a pointy stick through the ground, or are yoked, the poor things, to teams of others to pull an overloaded wagon. But here in the Redlands, we are shepherds of a flock and not farmers. We require more for existence, in the same way that you require a large harvest of rice or barley for yours. By the way, I have tasted both grains, and I salute you for your bravery in consuming them day after day.”

“One,” Abel said. “The dak. You can ride with someone else, I suppose.”

The other looked extremely displeased that the bargaining was going in the opposite direction than what he had hoped. “But this is unjust.”

“Would you like to go for none?”

“I protest most stringently. You’re using strong-arm tactics on me! Most uncivilized.”

“Not ten minutes ago you were worried about whether or not I was going to eat you,” Abel observed. “Perhaps that is still an option.”

“Two then,” said Gaspar. “The dak now, too.”

“No,” Abel said.

“All right,” said Gaspar. “Dont now, dak later.”

“No,” Abel said. “All on delivery. I am beginning not to trust my donts. They might up and walk away with you before we’ve completed our business. Perhaps I’ll fetter them properly until we arrive. Get me to the First Oasis and you walk away with both head.”

Gaspar flinched, rubbed his eyes.

Buying some cogitating time, Abel thought.

Wouldn’t you?

Why would I need to? I have you to do my thinking for me.

Not amusing even in jest, lad.

Abel smiled. It wasn’t easy to get Raj’s goat, but he thought he’d just done so.

“You find this humorous?” said Gaspar. “An old man’s dilemma? For how can I trust you?”

Abel shrugged. “You could remain useful. Even after we arrive. That way, I would wish to pay you with the dak in order to make use of your services again.”

“And how might myself or my people be of use a second time? What do you hope to accomplish out here, so far from home, Landsman?”

“I don’t know yet,” Abel replied. At least not the particulars, Abel thought. “What say we ruminate on that very thought along the way? Perhaps one so wise as you can answer it for me.”

Another smile from the Remlap chief. “Agreed.” He spat into the sand, dipped his hand into the spittle and fine reddish-brown dirt, then reached out to shake Abel’s. “Dont now, dak later.” Abel did the same, and they shook dusty hands.

“Now you can just let me go back to the tribe and—”

“Oh, no,” Abel said, standing up, towering over the Remlap chief in the process. “I insist you remain as our guest.” He reached down to help the other man up, and, after a moment’s hesitation, the Remlap chief accepted his assistance. “Besides, I can’t send you back to your people so skinny. We need to fatten you up, if only for our own honor. I know you won’t deny us this. And, you’ll pardon my forwardness, great chief, but from the looks of you that might take a while. A long while.”

Gaspar shook his head, smiled sadly. “Then I will have to impose a bit longer on your hospitality.” He looked around avidly, as if the food would appear instantly.

This man really is hungry, Abel thought. Or else a greedy son of a bitch.

Malnutrition is evident, Center replied. And his people are starving.

The fact that he tried to bargain with you at all is a sign of how tough the old bird is, Raj added.

“If I may be so bold,” said the chief, interrupting Abel’s flow of thoughts. “Since I am now determined to stay to assuage your discomfiture, how long until the noonday meal? I would very much like to start seeing to the maintenance of your honor sooner rather than later.”

“First, the name,” Abel said.

“The name?”

“The Blaskoye,” Abel said. “He with the silver knife. The one who stole your children and raped your women. Then we’ll have a bite to eat. And I promise that bite won’t be you.”

This brought forth the first genuine smile he’d seen from Gaspar.

“Like you, we call him Silver Knife,” said the chief. “But he has a given name. They call him Rostov. Dmitri Rostov.”

* * *

Two rises of the three-day moon, Levot, passed—nine days—as they rode through the Voidlands and into the Highsticks. Gaspar of the Remlaps was a plumper man.

He ought to be, thought Abel. He’s been chewing on something constantly, walking, standing, sitting, except when he’s asleep, and sometimes I swear he manages to chew on something even then.

The Highsticks was the name of the elevated plains on the extreme east of the Redlands. Beyond the Highsticks, all vegetation gradually gave out. Volcanism increased, and the soil became toxic for most forms of life. Beyond that lay the Tables, an unbroken coating of basalt that stretched, according to Center, for thousands of leagues, and was a half-league thick in all places.

There is no way for the Redlanders to cross that area, said Center. The water table has been made completely inaccessible by a magma eruption that occurred three million years ago. There has been no rain there in over one hundred Duisberg years. There are therefore no tanajas or natural cisterns. And the basalt gives way on the east not to another desert and riverine system, but to the Eastern Sea. Thus there is not the slightest possibility for Redland eastward migration. The only population spigot for the Redlanders is the Valley. It has ever been thus, and this is exactly what Zentrum counts on in his Stasis regulation equations.

And the pot is set to boil right about now, Raj said. Over the brim, and down the Valley.

The Highsticks were not the Sulfur Plains or the Tables, however. They were a tough country, but quite habitable for a desert people.

Abel and his company had travelled two hundred leagues. They had completed a half circle of the Redlands, southwest to northeast, always keeping contact with tribes, interior and outlying.

Taking Raj’s advice, Abel arranged the regiment in a left echelon of squads. They were attempting to encircle the enemy’s presumably teardrop-shaped disposition stretching from the west, and the edge of the Valley, to a terminus in the east at Awul-alwaha. The Scouts approached from the southwest. The goal was to keep contact with concentrated forces as well as to survey the tribes who were not participating in what was looking to be a great gathering of the desert nomads. The purpose of this gathering was all too evident: war on the Valley.

The lead squad sought contact, mostly visual, but not unwilling to give and take fire when they met an armed Blaskoye group. It was for these times that the echelon arrangement came into play, for—as Raj had predicted—the Redlanders, however many there were in an area, would invariably rush all their forces toward the first sound of trouble. This not only pulled them out of areas that squads to the left of the lead squad could then reconnoiter, it also left them entirely open to an unexpected flank attack in wave after wave as the deployed squads caught up with the lead and joined the fighting from an easterly direction. Sometimes the Scout reinforcements arrived directly in the Blaskoye’s rear and set the Redlander donts scurrying in all directions, scattering the terrified Redlanders like a puff of wind on an open hand full of grain.

Occasionally, the point squad passed too far to the east of the enemy and another squad would make contact. In these instances, signal mirror contact and flag wigwag became paramount. Long experience had made moving yet maintaining sightline contact second nature, and a forward unit would circle back in a variety of spirals, depending on terrain, if signaling were lost for longer than a few minutes.

The engagements took their toll, but produced what were, to Abel, surprisingly few casualties on either side. He had had visions of having to lead a line of wounded, gangrenous men across the barren landscape, and being constantly hampered by his train of wounded. So far, he’d only lost five men from his original ninety, and one of those was a fall from a cliff while dismounted and taking a piss. The body of that one, a Scout named Largo, they’d had to leave where it lay, or risk more casualties retrieving it. The others they’d managed to bury. Their places of rest were duly marked on the map Weldletter was constructing. Their graves were then trampled to obliteration.

These men know cover when they see it, as do the Blaskoye, Raj told him. And since neither of you have conquest in mind, but simply driving the other off, there’s no instinct to go for the throat and destroy the other completely. The time will come when that will change.

Similarly, they killed few Blaskoye, and what wounded they found were usually well enough for interrogation and eventual release. There was no way to keep prisoners, and Abel had no desire to execute those hapless enough to get shot and caught. Besides, releasing a wounded man in a desert was not doing him any favor, however good he might be at living off the land.

Nomad encampments were a bit more tricky, and Abel avoided direct contact with these groups whenever possible, with the regiment dividing itself and quickly flowing around them. It helped that, unlike traveling bands, the families in the camps had a tendency to stay in place long enough to allow him and his men to clear out of the area. But the position of the camp was duly noted on the map and in logging scrolls. Each camp was, as Gaspar said more than once, probably in a traditional spot that would remain constant. Even though Redlanders were always on the move, they tended to congregate in favorite feeding and watering grounds for their measly (by Valley standards) dak herds.

The going was hard, but not so hard as it would have been without a destination in mind—and Abel had a destination in mind he had not shared with his father. He’d also not mentioned it to Raj and Center, but by now it was fairly obvious what his plan was.

Spiral in toward Awul-alwaha, the First Oasis.

* * *

Josiah Weldletter was not a man who was at home in the desert. First of all, he was as overplump as Gaspar had been underfed. And, in a sort of negative reflection of Gaspar, he had steadily reduced in size even while the Redlander was growing larger. Strangely enough, the two men got along well after getting over the fact that both thought the other a barbarian. For Gaspar, the map was in his head, and had always been. The very idea of a detailed map on a scroll of papyrus had never occurred to him, but the moment that he did understand the idea was a moment of revelation. He couldn’t get enough of Weldletter’s map.

The two would ride ahead, with a guard of three or four Scouts, find a knoll or rise, and together they would fill in the blank places on the developing map. Gaspar showed an uncanny ability to predict what would lie over the next rise, the depth of a declivity, and, after he understood the idea of scale, the altitude of the hill in the distance as expressed in elbs, paces, or fieldmarches. He was particularly excited when Weldletter showed him how contour lines worked. It was as if a flitter that had known it had a song within itself suddenly found the voice that had been missing all these years and burst forth with its native call.

For his part, Weldletter had never met someone who truly had a better imagination for the folds of land than he, and for him it was the first time he’d had a conversation with someone he believed to be his equal in this regard. The two became so inseparable that Abel felt the necessity of pulling Weldletter aside and reminding him that, given the chance, Gaspar might gladly cut his throat if it gained his tribe some sort of advantage in the Redlands.

“He would be sorry,” Abel said. “And I believe he might even shed real tears, if he has had enough to drink in the past day or so, but he will go ahead and slit your throat. And then, if he hasn’t eaten in a while—”

“All right, all right, Lieutenant,” Weldletter had answered, cutting Abel off. “You have a great deal of your father in you, particularly the ability to put the facts before a person in a visceral manner. I will watch myself.”

“Oh, let’s do better than that,” Abel said. “Let’s show him everything. Maps he never dreamed of, even.”

“What do you mean?”

And Abel told him.

* * *

So it was Weldletter and Gaspar and their retinue of porters, aides, and guarding outriders who first found the nishterlaub execution site.

By the time that Abel rode up, this group had descended into the small valley where the executions had taken place and had disturbed some of the remains. But when he crested the hill above, Abel got a good view of the tableau.

There were dozens of men staked out with their backs down and their faces and bellies up to the sun, naked, their arms and legs tied to hold them in that position. They were bent over what looked like metal arches. The metal itself was brown and rusted, but it was strong enough to hold them up exposed to the sun.

They have been tied to the roofs of ground cars, said Center. These groundcars were, at one time, electrostatically powered vehicles that your ancestors used pre-Collapse to journey into the planetary wastelands. There were many dwellings in what you now know as the Redlands. People use the area as a recreational getaway and journeyed from the Valley on holidays. As you see now, the ground cars have become little more than clumps of rust preserved these three thousand years only by a process of something like petrification, with the sand filling their declivities to the point that they are almost sedimentary rock now instead of metal.

How long ago was the execution? Abel thought.

Much more recent, answered Center. Within the previous three-moon, plus or minus an eight-day.

And your count?

Fifty-seven adult males. Similar garb and physique indicates that they are likely all members of the same tribe.

And they were staked out alive? To die in the sun stretched across nishterlaub in this grotesque sacrifice?

It is difficult to tell due to the state of decay of the bodies, but I would assume so. We will have to get closer for me to verify.

Of course that’s what happened, Raj put in. And you can be sure that they wounded them in some manner so that an enterprising sort would not have the wherewithal to get himself free and to free the others. Probably broke their legs. That’s what I’d do.

Would you? Have you?

No, Raj said. But I’ve seen and had to countenance worse. And now you understand what they are prepared to do to you and your kin if you do not submit, so perhaps it is a good lesson after all.

Abel rode down among the bodies. He descended a stone-strewn path that looked to be more of a game-animal route than anything humans would use, but his dont retained its sure footing. And as he went down the side of the hill, an odd sound began to assail his ears. It was as if the valley were filled with the dry sizzle of the sort of insectoid plague he’d only seen in the Valley during rice ripening days. Surely the Redlands couldn’t sustain so many bugs?

The arms and legs of the executed had not been tied to the nishterlaub groundcars with rope of any sort, but with the hacked off branches of a local pricklebush. It was a sort that grew straight up with many thorn-covered shoots about the thickness of two fingers, and sometimes ten elbs long. The thorns had not been stripped from the shoots and had been used to secure the knots in the flesh of the victims.

Most of the eyesockets were empty, having been eaten out by desert scavengers. This in itself was a clue to Center, who said: One would expect at least some closed eyes, but you’ll notice that there are not any. It seems that they all died with their eyes open.

You mean with their eyelids sliced off, Raj roughly cut in. So they were to go blind first, before the dehydration got to them.

Abel leaned over, gazed at the gaping mouth and eyeless sockets of one of the victims.

Yes, the eyelids were sliced off, said Center. But on one side only, the right. I believe I can project a likely reanimated image of the process, if it becomes necessary to—

No, thought Abel. Please don’t.

It was then that he realized what the strange scraping and crackling insectoid murmur actually was: the flapping of the dried-out skin of the victims as the desert wind blew through the declivity.

Yes, imagine trying to keep one eye closed while the other shrivels like a raisin in the sun, Raj said. Seems as if they couldn’t manage it, poor bastards, and died with both eyes open.

And then they rode up to Gaspar, who approached on foot and looked up at Abel mounted on the dont. “These are Schlusels,” he said. “I think they killed them all and either took the women and children, or slaughtered them, too, but without the honor of a lingering death.”

“And who were these an example for, do you imagine?”

“Around here are good lands. There are larger tribes in the Highsticks. Or there were. We are all Redlanders now,” Gaspar said with a dry laugh. “This is what Rostov intended to do to the Remlaps, too, had I not convinced him that pursuing us into the Voidlands, that place you came across us, would take too much of his precious time and kill off too many of his precious donts.”

“Well, it seems this is the fate you dodged,” Abel replied, gesturing toward the staked-out tribesmen.

“Indeed,” Gaspar said. “Although there was the slower contingent trailing behind our main group, some older people and very young children. The Blaskoye got those.” Gaspar poked a pricklebrush wand into the arm of one of the corpses. It had practically turned to leather, and the wand did not puncture it, but merely left an indentation. “We didn’t expect him to be so fast, you see. He has bred his stock with donts he’s stolen from the Valley. Racing donts, I wouldn’t doubt.”

“Taken, or just as likely traded for,” Abel replied. “In any case, this Rostov seems to be a very organized and dedicated man.”

“He is a thrice-cursed handful of shit, is what he is,” Gaspar said. “It is my belief that the donts run fast because they want to shake him and his kind off themselves and get clean. But they never can, and so they keep running when other animals might tire.”

Abel nodded and left the Remlap chief to his thoughts. He hobbled his dont and set it to forage, and then walked deeper into the mass graveyard. The other squads would arrive and ride through soon, but for now it was just himself and the advance party. He brought his carbine along on the general principle that it did not pay in the Redlands to be more than a pace or two from your weapon at any given time.

Gradually, the shock at the sight of the dead left him, and he examined more closely the object upon which they’d met their deaths. He tried to imagine these masses of what looked like pockmarked stone functioning as a water ram or a gate latch or—

Observe:

The Redlands at about eye-height for a man, but moving through the landscape quickly, as a hunting flitter on a low-gliding path might. Moving over hills, winding through a valley. Enclosed, surrounded by more glass than he’d seen probably in his entire life.

Windows on all sides. A solid roof above to keep out the unremitting sun.

No wind from the forward movement.

So this truly is a mere simulation.

Yes, but a complete one. The front windscreen blocked the wind. Sitting in a groundcar was as wind-calm as sitting in a room of stone.

So they—

Drove in comfort. There was also climate control within, of course.

Abel gave himself over to the experience. His hands on the steering mechanism, a wheel of some sort. Set an elb in front of him and just below sightline: a smooth black tablet or stone with lights and strange hieroglyphics upon it, not of the Land.

Dashboard, vehicle status readouts such as speed, amount of charge in the electrostatic capacitors, antigrav levitation height from ground. I am presenting to you a sports modification of the Maikler 3F Comet, which is a close approximation of what would have been locally configured models.

I want to see this thing! Can you take me outside?

Abel was flying alongside the onrushing groundcar. Its name was not quite accurate, for it hovered at least three elbs off the surface of the ground using some sort of magic.

Antigrav static generators.

It was a sleek creature, made for speed. It was a dark red in color and on the end—

Even in the vision, Abel felt startlement.

Silver. Silver exactly like the Blaskoye’s knife. What had Center called it?

Chrome. These are the bumpers of the groundcar. They are meant to ward off collision damage, but also serve the purpose of ostentatious display.

Rostov’s knife is a car bumper made into a blade?

That is an accurate assessment. Analysis indicates he acquired it from this former parking lot, in fact.

Enough. Take me back inside. I want to drive.

He was back behind the wheel.

How fast?

I will translate the velocity and acceleration readouts—

Abel could suddenly read them: twenty-one leagues per hour.

The control at your right foot affects acceleration.

He pressed down, and the speed increased.

Careful.

The landscape flashed by at eye level. This was better than the ride through the sky he’d taken in his youth. So low to the ground, the speed was exhilarating.

This isn’t real. I want to go even faster.

Your simulation is comprehensive. You can and will crash.

All right, I’ll slow down. Where am I?

You’ve driven about ten leagues from the site.

In how long?

The clock time on this internal simulation is ten point three seven minutes. Of course, barely an eyeblink has passed externally.

I could circle the Redlands in a day, he thought in amazement.

People frequently did. It was considered a fine holiday outing. There were waypoints with vistas or with eating and drinking establishments. There were inns where visitors could stay for an evening before returning to the Valley. This was the parking lot of such an establishment. The edifice itself is under a nearby sand drift. And, as I mentioned, some of the more affluent built houses in the Redlands for recreational use.

Like a garden plot or a steam house.

Precisely.

But a hundred leagues away.

More, if they wished to fly. There are self-contained dwellings—vacation homes—scattered all over the planet. Most were merely a patch of remains on the landscape at the time I completed my orbital survey. Duisberg has a harsh environment by human standards. It has a comparatively large iron-nickel core that is highly magnetized and extremely active plate tectonics. This is another reason that Zentrum’s plans are erroneous. He is incapable of integrating the entire range of facts simply because he is not a fast enough, big enough computer.

And you are?

Yes. I am a generation past Zentrum, and my capacity is based on quantum gravitational physics. His is a spin-physics-based mind. Highly serviceable for the tasks he was intended for: planetary defense, traffic direction, weather calculations, and such. But not amenable to the Seldonian calculus and its subsequent application in psychodynamic topography. But this is academic.

Abel had hardly been listening, but was coursing down a hillside at the fastest speed he felt he could safely muster, flying over shrubs and pricklebushes, leaving a cloud of dust in his wake, tearing forward, hugging the landscape—and completely exhilarated.

We’ll get this back? Driving? When the Republic shows up?

Rapid individual conveyance is a building block of technological civilization.

So this or something like it?

Yes.

But this is as close as I will ever get. Simulation.

Yes.

Then, thrice-damn it all, take me back. Set me free from this dream, or I’ll want to drive forever.

He was back in the valley of execution. The wind touched his face again, and the sun-baked skin of the dead flapped in the breeze.

He went to the end of one of the execution stones and kicked it, hard. Dust fell away, a few stones. He kicked it again.

The shine of chrome glinted through.

Silver knife.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said to no one in particular.

The expedition moved on. Abel debated routing most of his squads around the area but in the end decided to bring them through it. He doubted these men would take fright. It was more likely the case that such a site would create only more resolve in them to get the job done and get home with the information.

They avoided fighting whenever possible, but they could not avoid the fact that half the desert dwellers knew that they were there, somewhere out there, even if they didn’t know precisely where the Scouts were at any given moment. This meant that they had to keep moving at all times and must take a circuitous trail that had subterfuge as its object as much as reconnaissance.

They had brought along enough food, but there was the constant need to find water. The men of the Delta proved to be the better of the water finders. Some of them used dowsing rods to lead them, but the best of them merely looked at the landscape and predicted where they would find a sink, a tanaja, or even the occasional slow burbling spring.

The Delta men possess this particular skill because they spent childhood around water, said Center. There is, for example, water everywhere in the tendrils of the River’s final journey into the Braun Sea. Some have been sailors and fishermen, or knew people who were.

The only fishermen that Abel had ever met were the stock fish growers who tended the carp pens on the far side of Lake Treville.

For food, they had hardtack and pickled dakbelly for almost every meal. Occasionally they slaughtered a weaker dak from the train to divide among themselves. This proved very useful in both feeding them and reducing their footprint across the land.

Abel had to admit that this was far from the lightweight expeditions the Scouts usually engaged in. It was more like the movement of an army, and Abel was learning valuable lessons every day about what a packtrain could and could not be made to do.

Mostly, it could not be made to leave no sign of its passing. While he drove his Scouts onward at what would have been a breakneck pace for an army, he could not help but feel that a malevolent eye was upon him, that someone was slowly working out from sightings here, spoor left there and there, his exact location—or at least a fix on his position that was close enough to permit attack.

He was determined to see it coming, if so, and disbursed the Scouts to the farthest limits he believed advisable, communicating by one-flag wigwag the simple instructions they would need for the day.

He’d skirted the Redlands, stayed alive and relatively intact, and managed to roughly count concentrations and resources of ten nomad groups. The one consistency among them all: they were Blaskoye vassals now. They may be Tamers and Jackflits and Wei Weis and Miskowskis still, but within each encampment were a group of outsiders, men who were not Tamers or Jackflits or Wei Weis or Miskowskis. They wore the Blaskoye white, and in several instances Abel or his Scouts had observed these men beating, and even once dragging to death, a local tribesman.

These were subjugated peoples, and the men in white were their overseers.

And then it was time to use Gaspar to lead them to the Great Oasis, the prime watering hole, believed to be one of two or, perhaps, three, that the Redlanders possessed on the Eastern side of the Valley. On the western side, there were no oases at all, and precious little water to be had anywhere. So Center’s orbital survey had confirmed prior to the crashlanding of the capsule that had brought him and Raj to Duisberg.

Which is why Redland strength has always concentrated in the west, Center said. We will confirm the specifics in Lindron when we get there.

When are we going to Lindron? This was entirely news to Abel.

I am waiting for a series of dependencies to resolve, said Center. I assure you, you will be the first to know, Abel Dashian.

Thanks.

I suggest you concentrate on resolving the most pressing of those dependencies at the moment.

What would that be?

When and where the Blood Winds will begin to blow. Every indication is that it will be sooner rather than later.