demonstrably with child. A hundred days seemed a reasonable target, but the very act of setting a term had somehow increased and aggravated his unease about the fleeting passage of time. How was he to strike the proper balance between leaving early and only being able to travel slowly, and leaving late — when the swiftness of a deer might prove insufficient?
“What are you brooding about?” Gesalla said, removing the boiling pot from the heat.
“About you — and about preparing to leave here in the morning.”
“I told you, you aren’t ready.” She knelt beside him to inspect his dressings and the touch of her hands sent a pleasurable shock racing down to his groin.
“I think another part of me is starting to recover,” he said.
“That’s something else you aren’t ready for.” She smiled as she dabbed his forehead with a damp cloth. “You can have some stew instead.”
“A fine substitute,” he grumbled, making an unsuccessful attempt to touch her breasts as she slid away from him. The sudden movement of his arm, slight though it was, produced a sharp pain in his side and made him wonder how he would fare trying to get astride the bluehorn in the morning.
He pushed the worry to the back of his thoughts and watched Gesalla as she prepared a simple breakfast. She had found a flattish, slightly concave stone to use as a hob. By mingling on it tiny pinches of pikon and halvell brought from the ship, she was able to create a smoke-free heat which would not betray their whereabouts to pursuers. When she had finished warming the stew — a thick mixture of grain, pulses and shreds of saltbeef — she passed a dish of it to him and allowed him to feed himself.
Toller had been amused to note — echo of the old Gesalla he thought he had known — that among the “essentials” she had salvaged from the gondola were dishes and table utensils. There was a poignancy about eating in such conditions, with commonplace domestic items framed in the pervasive strangeness of a virgin world; with the romance which could have suffused the moment abnegated by uncertainties and danger.
Toller was not really hungry, but he ate steadily with a determination to win back his strength as quickly as possible. Apart from occasional snuffles from the tethered bluehorn the only sounds reaching the cave from elsewhere were the rolling reports of brakka pollination discharges. The frequency of the explosions indicated that brakka were plentiful throughout the region, and were a reminder of the question which had first been posed by Gesalla — if the other plant forms of Overland were unknown on Land, why did the two worlds have the brakka in common?
Gesalla had collected handfuls of grass, leaves, flowers and berries for joint scrutiny, and — with the possible exception of the grass, upon which only a botanist could have passed judgment — all had shared the common factor of strangeness. Toller had reiterated his idea that the brakka was a universal form, one which would be found on any planet, but although he was unused to pondering such matters he recognised that the notion had an unsatisfactory philosophical feel to it, one which made him wish he could turn to Lain for guidance.
“There’s another ptertha,” Gesalla exclaimed. “Look! I can see seven or eight of them going towards the water.”
Toller looked in the direction she was indicating and had to change the focus of his eyes several times before he picked out the bubble-glints of the colourless, near-invisible spheres. They were slowly drifting down the hillside on the air flow generated by the night-time cooling of the surface.
“You’re better at spotting those things than I am,” he said ruefully. “That one yesterday was almost in my lap before I saw it.”
The ptertha which had drifted in on them soon after littlenight on the previous day had come to within ten paces of Toller’s bed, and in spite of what he had learned from Lain the nearness of it had inspired much of the dread he would have experienced on Land. Had he been mobile he would probably have been unable to prevent himself from hurling his sword through it. The globe had hovered nearby for a few seconds before sailing away down the hillside in a series of slow ruminative bounds.
“Your face was a picture!” Gesalla paused in her eating to parody an expression of fear.
“I’ve just thought of something,” Toller said. “Have we any writing materials?”
“No. Why?”
“You and I are the only two people on the whole of Overland who know what Lain wrote about the ptertha. I wish I had thought of telling Chakkell. All those hours together on the ship — and I didn’t even mention it!”
“You weren’t to know there would be brakka trees and ptertha here. You thought you were leaving all that behind.”
Toller was gripped by a new and greater urgency which had nothing to do with his personal aspirations. “Listen, Gesalla, this is the most important thing either of us will ever have the chance to do. You have got to make sure that Pouche and Chakkell hear and understand Lain’s ideas.
“If we leave the brakka trees alone, to live out their time and die naturally, the ptertha here will never become our enemies. Even a modest amount of culling — the way they did it in Chamteth — is probably too much because the ptertha there had turned pink and that’s a sign that.…” He stopped speaking as he saw that Gesalla was staring at him, her expression of odd blend of concern and accusation.
“Is there anything the matter?”
“You said/had to make sure that Pouche and.…“Gesalla set her dish down and came to kneel beside him. “What’s going to happen to us, Toller?”
He forced himself to laugh then exaggerated the effects of the pain it caused, playing for time in which to cover up his blunder. “We’re going to found our own dynasty, that’s what is going to happen to us. Do you think I would let any harm come to you?”
“I know you wouldn’t — and that’s why you frightened me.”
“Gesalla, all I meant was that we must leave a message here… or somewhere else where it will be found and taken to the King. I’m not able to move around much, so I have to turn the responsibility over to you. I’ll show you how to make charcoal, and then we’ll find something to.…”
Gesalla was slowly shaking her head and her eyes were magnified by the first tears he had ever seen there. “It’s all unreal, isn’t it? It’s all just a dream.”
“Flying to Overland was just a dream — once — but now we’re here, and in spite of everything we’re still alive.” He drew her down to lie beside him, her head cushioned on his shoulder. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to us, Gesalla. All I can promise is that…how did you put it?… that we are not going to surrender life to the butchers. That has to be enough for us. Now, why don’t you rest and let me watch over you, just for a change?”
“All right, Toller.” Gesalla made herself comfortable, fitting her body to his whilst being careful of his injuries, and in an amazingly short time she was asleep. Her transition from anxious wakefulness to the tranquillity of sleep was announced by the faintest of snores, and Toller smiled as he stored the event in his memory for use in future bantering. The only home they were likely to know on Overland would be built of such insubstantial timbers.
He tried to stay awake, to watch over her, but the vapours of an insidious weariness were coiling in his head — and the last Overlander’s lantern was again glowing in the rock pile.
The only way to escape from it was to close his eyes.… The soldier standing over him was holding a sword.
Toller tried to moves to take some defensive action in spite of his weakness and the encumbrance of Gesalla’s body draped across his own, then he saw that the sword in the soldier’s hand was Leddravohr’s, and even in his befuddled state he was able to assess the situation correctly.
It was too late to do anything, anything at all — because his little domain had already been surrounded, conquered and overrun.
Further evidence came from the shifting of the light as other soldiers moved around beyond the immediate area of the cave mouth. There were the sounds of men beginning to talk as they realised that silence was no longer required, and from somewhere nearby came the snorting and slithering of a bluehorn as it made its way down the bill. Toller squeezed Gesalla’s shoulder to bring her awake, and although she remained immobile he felt her spasm of alarm.
The soldier with the sword moved away and his place was taken by a slit-eyed major, whose head was in near-silhouette against the sky as he looked down at Toller. “Can you stand up?”
“No — he’s too ill,” Gesalla said, rising to a kneeling position.
“I can stand.” Toller caught her arm. “Help me, Gesalla — I prefer to be on my feet at this time.” With her assistance he achieved a standing position and faced the major. He was dully surprised to find that, when he should have been oppressed by failure and prospects of death, he was discomfited by the trivial fact that he was naked.
“Well, major,” he said, “what is it you want of me?”
The major’s face was professionally impassive. “The King will speak to you now.”
He moved aside and Toller saw the paunchy figure of Chakkell approaching. His dress was subdued and plain, suitable for cross-country riding, but suspended from his neck was a huge blue jewel which Toller had seen only once before, when it had been worn by Prad. Chakkell had retrieved Leddravohr’s sword from the first soldier and was carrying it with the blade leaning on his right shoulder, a neutral position which could quickly become one of attack. His swarthy well-padded face and brown scalp were gleaming in the equatorial heat.
He came within two paces of Toller and surveyed him from head to toe. “Well, Maraquine, I promised I would remember you.”
“Majesty, I daresay I have given you and your loved ones good cause to remember me.” Toller was aware of Gesalla drawing closer to him, and for her sake he went on to rid his words of any possible ambiguity. “A fall of a thousand miles would have.…”
“Don’t start rhyming at me again,” Chakkell cut in. “And lie down, man, before you fall down!”
He nodded to Gesalla, ordering her to ease Toller down on to the quilts, and signalled for the major and the rest of his escort to withdraw. When they had retreated out of earshot he squatted in the dirt and, unexpectedly, lobbed the black sword over Toller and into the dimness of the cave.
“We are going to have a brief conversation,” he said, “and not a word of it is to be repeated. Is that clear?”
Toller nodded uncertainly, wondering if he dared introduce hope to the confusion of his thoughts and emotions.
“There is a certain amount of ill-feeling towards you among the nobility and among the military who completed the crossing,” Chakkell said comfortably. “After all, not many men have committed regicide twice in the space of three days. It can be dealt with, however. There is a great air of practicality in our new statelet — and the settlers appreciate that loyalty to one living king is more beneficial to the health than a similar regard for two dead kings. Are you wondering about Pouche?”
“Does he live?”
“He lives, but he was quick to see that the subtleties of his kind of statesmanship would be inappropriate to the situation we have here. He is more than happy to relinquish his claims to the throne — if a chair made from old gondola parts can be dignified with that name.”
It came to Toller that he was seeing Chakkell as he had never seen him before — cheerful, loquacious, at ease with his environment. Was it simply that he preferred supremacy for himself and his offspring in a seedling society to preordained secondary role in the long-established and static Kolcorron? Or was it that he possessed an adventurous spirit which had been liberated by the unique circumstances of the great migration? Looking closely at Chakkell, encouraged by his instincts, Toller experienced a sudden upwelling of relief and the purest kind of joy.
One reality dissolved around Toller and he found himself standing on a rocky outcrop to the west of Ro-Atabri. He was gazing through his telescope at the sprawled body of his brother, reading that last communication which had nothing to do with revenge or personal regrets, but which — as befitted Lain’s compassionate intellect — addressed itself to the welfare of millions as yet unborn.
“Prince… Majesty.…” Toller raised himself on one elbow the better to confront Chakkell with the truth which had been placed in his keeping, but the incautious torsion of his body lanced him with an agony which stilled his voice and dropped him back into his bedding.
“Leddravohr came very near to killing you, didn’t he?” Chakkell’s voice had lost all of its lightness.
“That doesn’t matter,” Toller said, smoothing Gesalla’s hair as she bent over the renewed fire of the wounds in his side. “You knew my brother and what he was?”
“Yes.”
“Very well. Forget all about me — my brother lives in my body, and he is speaking to you through my mouth.…“Toller went on, battling through riptides of nausea and weakness to paint a word-picture of the tortured triangular relationship involving humankind, the brakka tree and the ptertha. He described the symbiotic partnership between brakka and ptertha, using inspiration and
