The Ragged Astronauts

“Gesalla!” Toller blurted the name in a sudden accession of panic and self-recrimination. How could he have forgotten her for so long? She would be waiting at home in the Square House… still without confirmation of Lain’s death… and the flight to Overland had already begun.…

“Did you hear me?” Zavotle said. “We should be.…”

“Never mind that,” Toller cut in. “What’s been done about notifying the migrants and bringing them in?”

“The King and Prince Chakkell are already at the enclosures. All the other royals and nobles have to get here under the protection of their own guards. It’s a shambles, Toller. The ordinary migrants will have to get through by themselves, and the way things are out there I doubt if.…”

“I’m indebted to you for meeting me here, Ilven,” Toller said, turning to mount his bluehorn. “I seem to remember you telling me when we were up there — freezing to death and with nothing to do but count the falling stars — that you have no family. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“In that case you should get back to the enclosures and take the first ship that becomes available to you. I am not free to leave just yet.”

Zavotle came forward as Toller swung himself into the saddle. “Leddravohr wants us both as royal pilots, Toller. You especially, because nobody else has turned a ship over.”

“Forget that you saw me,” Toller said. “I’ll be back as soon as lean.”

He rode into the base, taking a route which kept him well away from the balloon enclosures. The ptertha nets overhead were casting their patterns of shadow on a scene of confused and frenetic activity. It had been intended that the migration fleet would depart in an orderly manner over a period of between ten and twenty days, depending on weather conditions. Now there was a race to see how many ships could be despatched before the Quarter was overrun by dissenters, and the situation was made even more desperate by the fact that the vulnerable ptertha screens had been attacked. It was fortunate that there was no perceptible air movement — a circumstance which aided the skyship crews and kept ptertha activity to the minimum — but with the arrival of night the livid globes would come in force.

In their haste to load supply carts workers were tearing down the wooden storage huts with their bare hands. Soldiers belonging to the newly formed Overland Regiment — their loyalty guaranteed because they were due to fly with Leddravohr — roamed the area, noisily exhorting base personnel to make greater efforts and in some cases joining in the work. Here and there amid the chaos wandered small groups of men, women and children who had obtained migration warrants in the provinces and had arrived at the Quarter well in advance of their flights. Above and through everything drifted the racket of the inflation fans, the unnerving spasmodic roar of skyship burners and the marshy odour of free miglign gas.

Toller attracted scant attention from anybody as he rode through storage and workshop sections, but on reaching the covered way which ran east to the city he found its entrance guarded by a large detachment of soldiers. Officers with them were questioning everybody who passed through. Toller moved to one side and used his telescope to survey the distant exit. Compressed perspectives made the image hard to interpret, but he could see massed foot soldiers and some mounted groups, and beyond them crowds thronging the sloping streets where the city proper began. There was little evidence of movement, but it was obvious that a confrontation was still taking place and that the normal route to the city was impassable.

He was considering what to do when his attention was caught by shifting specks of colour in the scrubby land which stretched off to the south-east in the direction of the Greenmount suburb. The telescope revealed them to be civilians hurrying towards the centre of the base. From the high proportion of women and children Toller deduced they were emigrants who had breached the perimeter fence at a point remote from the main entrance. He turned away from the tunnel, located an auxiliary exit through the double ptertha meshes and rode out towards the advancing citizenry. When he got close to the leaders they brandished their blue-and-white migration warrants.

“Keep heading towards the balloon enclosures,” he shouted to them. “We’ll get you away.”

The anxious-faced men and women called out their thanks and hurried on, some carrying or dragging infants. Turning to look after them, Toller saw that their arrival had been noticed and mounted men were coming out to meet them. The sky behind the riders made a unique spectacle. Perhaps fifty ships were now in the air over the enclosures, dangerously crowded at the lower levels and straggling out as they receded into the zenith.

Not pausing to see what kind of reception the migrants’would receive, Toller spurred his bluehorn on towards Greenmount. Far off to his right, in Ro-Atabri itself, the fires appeared to be spreading. The city was built of stone, but the timber and rope with which it had been cocooned to ward off the ptertha were highly flammable and the fires were becoming large enough to create their own convection systems, gaining ground with no assistance from the elements. It was only necessary, Toller knew, for a slight breeze to spring up and the whole city would be engulfed in a matter of minutes.

He urged the bluehorn into a gallop, judging his direction from the groups of refugees he met, and eventually espied a place where the perimeter barricade had been pulled to the ground. He rode through the gap, ignoring apprehensive stares from people who were clambering across the stakes, and chose a direct route up the hill towards the Square House. The streets he had roamed as a boy were littered and deserted, part of the alien territory of the past.

A minute after entering Greenmount district he rounded a corner and encountered a band of five civilians who had armed themselves with staves. Although obviously not migrants, they were hurrying towards the Quarter. Toller divined at once that it was their intention to harass and perhaps rob some of the migrant families he had seen earlier.

They spread out to block the narrow street and their leader, a slack-jawed hulk in a cloak thonged with dried pillar snakes, said, “What do you think you’re doing, bluecoat?”

Toller, who could easily have ridden the man down, reined to a halt. “As you ask so politely, I don’t mind telling you that I’m deciding whether or not I should kill you.”

“Kill me!” The man pounded the ground imperiously with his staff, apparently in the belief that all skymen went unarmed. “And exactly how…?”

Toller drew his sword with a horizontal sweep which lopped the staff just above the man’s hand. “That could just have easily been your wrist or your neck,” he said mildly. “Do any or all of you wish to pursue the matter?”

The four others eyed each other and backed away.

“We have no quarrel with you, sir,” the cloaked man said, nursing the hand which had been jarred by the fierce impact on his staff. “We’ll go peaceably on our way.”

“You won’t.” Toller used his brakka blade to point out an alley which led away from the skyship base. “You will go that way, and back to your dens. I will be returning to the Quarter in a few minutes — and I swear that if I set eyes on any of you again it will be my sword that does all the talking. Now go!”

As soon as the men had passed out of sight he sheathed his sword and resumed the ascent of the hill. He doubted if his warning would have a lasting effect on the ruffians, but he had spared as much time as he could on behalf of the migrants, all of whom would have to learn to face many rigours in the coming days. A glance at the narrowing crescent of light on the disk of Overland told him there was not much more than an hour until littlenight, and it was imperative that he should take Gesalla to the base before then.

On reaching the crest of Greenmount he galloped through silent avenues to the Square House and dismounted in the walled precinct. He went into the entrance hall and was met by Sany, the rotund cook, and a balding manservant who was unknown to him.

“Master Toller!” Sany cried. “Have you news of your brother?”

Toller felt a renewed shock of bereavement — the pressure of events had suspended his normal emotional processes. “My brother is dead,” he said. “Where is your mistress?”

“In her bedchamber.” Sany pressed both hands to her throat. “This is a terrible day for all of us.”

Toller ran to the main stair, but paused on the first flight. “Sany, I’m returning to the Skyship Quarter in a few minutes. I strongly advise you and.…” He looked questioningly at the manservant.

“Harribend, sir.”

“…you and Harribend — and any other domestics who are still here — to come with me. The migration has started ahead of time in great confusion, and even though you don’t have warrants I think I can get you places on a ship.”

Both servants backed away from him. “I couldn’t go into the sky before my time,” Sany said. “It isn’t natural. It isn’t right.”

“There are riots in the city and the ptertha screens are burning.”

“Be that as it may, Master Toller — we’ll take our chances here where we belong.”

“Think hard about it,” Toller said. He went up to the landing and through the familiar corridor which led to the south side of the house, unable to accept fully that this was the last occasion on which he would see the ceramic figurines glowing in their niches, or his blurred reflection ghosting along the polished glasswood panels. The door to the principal bedchamber was open.

Gesalla was standing at the window which framed a view of the city in which the dominant features were the seemingly motionless columns of grey and white smoke intersecting the natural blue and green horizontals of Arle Bay and the Gulf of Tronom. She was dressed as he had never seen her before, in a waistcoat and breeches of grey whipcord complemented by a lighter grey shirt — the whole being almost a muted echo of his own skyman’s uniform. A sudden timidity made him refrain from speaking or tapping the door. How was one to impart the kind of news he bore?

Gesalla turned and looked at him with wise, sombre eyes. “Thank you for coming, Toller.”

“It’s about Lain,” he said, entering the room. “I’m afraid I bring bad news.”

“I knew he had to be dead when there was no message by nightfall.” Her voice was cool, almost brisk. “All that was needed was the confirmation.”

Toller was unprepared for her lack of emotion. “Gesalla, I don’t know how to tell you this… at a time like this… but you have seen the fires in the city. We have no choice but to.…”

“I’m ready to leave,” Gesalla said, picking up a tightly rolled bundle which had been on a chair. “These are all the personal possessions I’ll need. It isn’t too much, is it?”

He stared at her beautiful unperturbed face for a moment, battling with an irrational resentment. “Have you any idea where we’re going?”

“Where else but to Overland? The skyships are leaving. According to what I could decipher of the sunwriter messages coming out of the Great Palace, civil war is breaking out in Ro-Atabri and the King has already fled. Do you think I’m stupid, Toller?”

“Stupid? No, you’re very intelligent — very logical.”

“Did you expect me to be hysterical? Was I to be carried out of here screaming that I was afraid to go into the sky, where only the heroic Toller Maraquine has been? Was I to weep and plead for time to strew flowers around my husband’s body?”

“No, I didn’t expect you to weep.” Toller was dismayed by what he was saying, yet was unable to hold back. “I don’t expect you to feign grief.”

Gesalla struck him across the face, her hand moving so quickly that he was given no chance to avoid the blow. “Never say anything like that to me again. Never make that kind of presumption about me! Now, are we leaving or are we going to stand here and talk all day?”

“The sooner we leave the better,” he said stonily, resisting the urge to finger the stinging patch on his cheek. “I’ll take your pack.”

Gesalla snatched the bundle away from him and slung it from her shoulders. “I made it for me to carry — you have enough to do.” She slipped past him into the corridor, moving lightly and with deceptive speed, and had reached the main stair before he caught up with her.

“What about Sany and the other servants?” he said. “Leaving them doesn’t sit easy with me.”

She shook her head. “Lain and I both tried to talk them into applying for warrants, and we failed. You can’t force people to go, Toller.”

“I suppose you’re right.” He walked with her to the entrance, taking a last nostalgic look around the hall, and went out to the precinct where his bluehorn was waiting. “Where is your carriage?”

“I don’t know — Lain took it yesterday.”

“Does that mean we have to ride together?”

Gesalla sighed. “I have no intention of trotting along beside you.”

“Very well.” Feeling oddly selfconscious, Toller climbed into the saddle and extended a hand to Gesalla. He was surprised at how little effort it took to help her spring into place behind him, and even more so when she slipped her arms around his waist and pressed herself to his back. Some bodily contact was necessary, but if almost seemed as though she… He dismissed the half-formed