The Ragged Astronauts

breakfast.”

“It’s a big day for him. For us all.”

“Yes.” Something in the timbre of Conna’s voice told Dalacott that she was under a strain. “A wonderful day.”

“I know it’s distressing for you,” he said gently, “but Oderan would have wanted us to make the most of it, for Hallie’s sake.”

Conna gave him a calm smile. “Do you still take nothing but porridge for breakfast? Can’t I tempt you with some whitefish? Sausage? A forcemeat cake?”

“I’ve lived too long on line soldier’s rations,” he protested, tacitly agreeing to restrict himself to small-talk. Conna had maintained the villa and conducted her life ably enough without his assistance in the ten years since Oderan’s death, and it would be presumptuous of him to offer her any advice at this juncture.

“Very well,” she said, beginning to serve him from one of the covered dishes on the table, “but there’ll be no soldier’s rations for you at the littlenight feast.”

“Agreed!” While Dalacott was eating the lightly salted porridge he exchanged pleasantries with his daughter-in-law, but the seething of his memories continued unabated and — as had been happening more often of late — thoughts of the son he had lost evoked others of the son he had never claimed. Looking back over his life he had, once again, to ponder the ways in which the major turning points were frequently unrecognisable as such, in which the inconsequential could lead to the momentous.

Had he not been caught off his guard during the course of a minor skirmish in Yalrofac all those years ago he would not have received the serious wound in his leg. The injury had led to a long convalescence in the quietness of Redant province; and it was there, while walking by the Bes-Undar river, he had chanced to find the strangest natural object he had ever seen, the one he still carried everywhere he went. The object had been in his possession for about a year when, on a rare visit to the capital, he had impulsively taken it to the science quarter on Greenmount to find out if its strange properties could be explained.

In the event, he had learned nothing about the object and a great deal about himself.

As a dedicated career soldier he had taken on a solewife almost as a duty to the state, to provide him with an heir and to minister to his needs between campaigns. His relationship with Toriane had been pleasant, even and warm; and he had regarded it as fulfilling — until the day he had ridden into the precinct of a square house on Greenmount and had seen Aytha Maraquine. His meeting with the slender young matron had been a blending of green and purple, producing a violent explosion of passion and ecstasy and, ultimately, an intensity of pain he had not believed possible.…

“The carriage is back, Grandad,” Hallie cried, tapping at the long window. “We’re ready to go to the hill.”

“I’m coming.” Dalacott waved to the fair-haired boy who was dancing with excitement on the patio. Hallie was tall and sturdy, well able to handle the full-size ptertha sticks which were clattering on his belt.

“You haven’t finished your porridge,” Conna said as he stood up, her matter-of-fact tone not quite concealing the underlying emotion.

“You know, there is absolutely no need for you to worry,” he said. “A ptertha drifting over open ground in clear daylight poses no threat to anybody. Dealing with it is child’s play, and in any case I’ll be staying close to Hallie at all times.”

“Thank you.” Conna remained seated, staring down at her untouched food, until Dalacott had left the room.

He went out to the garden which — as was standard in rural areas — had high walls surmounted by ptertha screens which could be closed together overhead at night and in foggy conditions. Hallie came running to him, recreating the image of his father at the same age, and took his hand. They walked out to the carriage, in which waited three men, local friends of the family, who were required as witnesses to the boy’s coming-of-age. Dalacott, who had renewed their acquaintanceship on the previous evening, exchanged greetings with them as he and Hallie took their places on the padded benches inside the big coach. The driver cracked his whip over his team of four bluehorns and the vehicle moved off.

“Oho! Have we a seasoned campaigner here?” said Gehate, a retired merchant, leaning forward to tap a Y-shaped ptertha stick he had noticed among the normal Kolcorronian cruciforms in Hallie’s armoury.

“It’s Ballinnian,” Hallie said proudly, stroking the polished and highly decorated wood of the weapon, which Dalacott had given him a year earlier. “It flies farther than the others. Effective at thirty yards. The Gethans use them as well. The Gethans and the Cissorians.”

Dalacott returned the indulgent smiles the boy’s show of knowledge elicited from the other men. Throwing sticks of one form or another had been in use since ancient times by almost every nation on Land as a defence against ptertha, and had been chosen for their effectiveness. The enigmatic globes burst as easily as soap bubbles once they got to within their killing radius of a man, but before that they showed a surprising degree of resilience. A bullet, an arrow or even a spear could pass through a ptertha without causing it any harm — the globe would only quiver momentarily as it repaired the punctures in its transparent skin. It took a rotating, flailing missile to disrupt a ptertha’s structure and disperse its toxic dust into the air.

The bolas made a good ptertha killer, but it was hard to master and had the disadvantage of being too heavy to be carried in quantity, whereas a multi-bladed throwing stick was flat, comparatively light and easily portable. It was a source of wonder to Dalacott that even the most primitive tribesmen had learned that giving each blade one rounded edge and one sharp edge produced a weapon which sustained itself in the air like a bird, flying much farther than an ordinary projectile. No doubt it was that seemingly magical property which induced people like the Ballinnians to lavish such care on the carving and embellishment of their ptertha sticks. By contrast, the pragmatic Kolcorronians favoured a plain expendable weapon of the four-bladed pattern which was suitable for mass production because it was made of two straight sections glued together at the centre.

The carriage gradually left the grain fields and orchards of Klinterden behind and began climbing the foothills of Mount Pharote. Eventually it reached a place where the road petered out on a grassy table, beyond which the ground ascended steeply into mists which had not yet been boiled off by the sun.

“Here we are,” Gehate said jovially to Hallie as the vehicle creaked to a halt. “I can’t wait to see what sport that fancy stick of yours will produce. Thirty yards, you say?”

Thessaro, a florid-faced banker, frowned and shook his head. “Don’t egg the boy into showing off. It isn’t good to throw too soon.”

“I think you’ll find he knows what to do,” Dalacott said as he got out of the carriage with Hallie and looked around. The sky was a dome of pearly brilliance shading off into pale blue overhead. No stars could be seen and even the great disk of Overland, only part of which was visible, appeared pale and insubstantial. Dalacott had travelled to the south of Kail province to visit his son’s family, and in these latitudes Overland was noticeably displaced to the north. The climate was more temperate than that of equatorial Kolcorron, a factor which — combined with a much shorter littlenight — made the region one of the best food producers in the empire.

“Plenty of ptertha,” Gehate said, pointing upwards to where purple motes could be seen drifting high in the air currents rolling down from the mountain.

“There’s always plenty of ptertha these days,” commented Ondobirtre, the third witness. “I’ll swear they are on the increase — no matter what anybody says to the contrary. I heard that several of them even penetrated the centre of Ro-Baccanta a few days ago.”

Gehate shook his head impatiently. “They don’t go into cities.”

“I’m only telling what I heard.”

“You’re too credulous, my friend. You listen to too many tall stories.”

“This is no time for bickering,” Thessaro put in. “This is an important occasion.” He opened the linen sack he was carrying and began counting out six ptertha sticks each to Dalacott and the other men.

“You won’t need those, Grandad,” Hallie said, looking offended. “I’m not going to miss.”

“I know that, Hallie, but it’s the custom. Besides, some of the rest of us might be in need of a little practice.” Dalacott put an arm around the boy’s shoulders and walked with him to the mouth of an alley created by two high nets. They were strung on parallel lines of poles which crossed the table and went up the slope beyond to disappear into the mist ceiling. The system was a traditional one which served to guide ptertha down from the mountain in small numbers. It would have been easy for the globes to escape by floating upwards, but a few always followed such an alley to its lower end as though they were sentient creatures motivated by curiosity. Quirks of behaviour like that were the main reason for the belief, held by many, that the globes possessed some degree of intelligence, although Dalacott had always remained unconvinced in view of their complete lack of internal structure.

“You can leave me now, Grandad,” Hallie said. “I’m ready.”

“Very well, young man.” Dalacott moved back a dozen paces to stand line abreast with the other men. It was the first time he had ever thought of his grandson as being anything more than a boy, but Hallie was entering his trial with courage and dignity, and would never again be quite the same person as the child who had played in the garden only that morning. It came to Dalacott that at breakfast he had given Conna the wrong assurances — she had known only too well that her child was never coming back to her. The insight was something Dalacott would have to note in his diary at nightfall. Soldiers’ wives were required to undergo their own trials, and the adversary was time itself.

“I knew we wouldn’t have to wait very long,” Ondobirtre whispered.

Dalacott transferred his attention from his grandson to the wall of mist at the far end of the netted enclosure. In spite of his confidence in Hallie, he felt a spasm of alarm as he saw that two ptertha had appeared simultaneously. The livid globes, each a full two yards in diameter, came drifting low and weaving, becoming harder to see clearly as they moved down the slope to where the background was grass. Hallie, who had a four-bladed stick in his hand, altered his stance slightly and made ready to throw.

Not yet, Dalacott commanded in his thoughts, knowing that the presence of a second ptertha would increase the temptation to try destroying one at maximum range. The dust released by a bursting ptertha lost its toxicity almost as soon as it was exposed to air, so the minium safe range for a kill could be as little as six paces, depending oft wind conditions. At that distance it was virtually impossible to miss, which meant that the ptertha was no match at all for a man with a cool head, but Dalacott had seen novices suddenly lose their judgment and coordination. For some there was a strange mesmeric and unmanning quality about the trembling spheres, especially when on nearing their prey they ceased their random drifting and closed in with silent, deadly purpose.

The two floating towards Hallie were now less than thirty paces away from him, sailing just above the grass, blindly questing from one net to the other. Hallie brought his right arm back, making tentative wrist movements, but refrained from throwing. Watching the solitary, straight-backed figure holding his ground as the ptertha drew ever closer, Dalacott experienced a mixture of pride, love and pure fear. He held one of his own sticks at the ready and prepared to dart forward. Hallie moved closer to the net on his left, still withholding his first strike.

“Do you see what the little devil is up to?” Gehate breathed. “I do believe he’s.…”

At that moment the aimless meanderings of the ptertha brought them together, one behind the other, and Hallie made his throw. The blades of the cruciform weapon blurred as it flew straight and true, and an instant later the purple globes no longer existed.

Hallie became a boy again, just long enough to make one exultant leap into the air, then he resumed his watchful stance as a third ptertha emerged from the mist. He undipped another stick from his belt, and Dalacott saw that it was the Y-shaped Ballinnian weapon.

Gehate nudged Dalacott. “The first throw was for you, but I think this one is going to be for my benefit — to teach me to keep my mouth shut.”

Hallie allowed the globe to get no closer than thirty paces before he made his second throw. The weapon flitted along the alley like a brilliantly coloured bird, almost without sinking, and was just beginning to lose stability when it sliced into the ptertha and annihilated it. Hallie was grinning as he turned to the watching men and gave them an elaborate bow. He had claimed the necessary three kills and was now officially entering the adult phase of his life.

“The boy had some luck that time, but he deserved it,” Gehate said ungrudgingly. “Oderan should have been here.”

“Yes.” Dalacott, racked by bitter-sweet emotions, contented himself with the monosyllabic response, and was relieved when the others moved away — Gehate and Thessaro to embrace Hallie, Ondobirtre to fetch the ritual flask of brandy from the carriage. The group of six, including the hired driver, came together again when Ondobirtre distributed tiny hemispherical glasses whose rims had been fashioned unevenly to represent vanquished ptertha. Dalacott kept an eye on his grandson while he had his first sip of ardent spirits, and was amused when the boy, who had just overcome a mortal enemy, pulled a grotesque face.

“I trust,” Ondobirtre said as he refilled the adults’ glasses, “that all present have noticed the unusual feature of this morning’s outing?”

Gehate snorted. “Yes — I’m glad you didn’t attack the brandy before the rest of us got near it.”