either.'
'I'm not exactly in favor of taking any chances, either, Sir, but it's almost three hundred miles from Fort Shaylar to Fort Brithik, and it's another twelve hundred miles from Fort Brithik to Fort Ghartoun. That's the next best thing to sixteen hundred miles of nothing but horse trails and wilderness, and Lamir's relay station is five hundred miles this side of Brithik. I can't think of anything that could cover that much ground in just three days!'
'Neither can I,' Velvelig said mildly. 'On the other hand, two months ago I couldn't have imagined anything that threw honest-to-gods fireballs or lightning bolts, either. Under the circumstances, it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to accustom ourselves to stretching our mental horizons, don't you think? And if it should happen that for some strange reason we drop off the Voicenet, I'd like to think someone might notice.'
'Yes, Sir. I understand.'
'Good, Senior-Armsman. Now-' Velvelig made a shooing motion with his right hand '-go do it.'
Chapter Twenty
'Now that's a sight for sore eyes, Sir. If you don't mind my saying so.'
Platoon-Captain His Grand Imperial Highness Janaki chan Calirath drew rein as they topped out across the modest ridge line, then looked across at Chief-Armsman Lorash chan Braikal with a quizzical expression.
'I don't mind at all, Chief,' he said mildly. 'In fact, I agree. Although, to be honest, it's not my sore eyes I'm thinking about.'
The chief-armsman's mouth twitched, but he'd been an Imperial Marine for seventeen years, and his expression had learned to behave itself … more or less.
'As the Platoon-Captain says, of course, Sir,' chan Braikal responded after a moment. 'Far be it from me to confuse the Platoon-Captain's anatomical parts.'
'I should certainly hope not, Chief.' Janaki's voice was admirably severe, but his eyes twinkled, and chan Braikal snorted. Then the noncom's expression turned more serious.
'All joking aside, Sir, I really am glad to see that,' he said, waving one hand at the incredible energy raising the thick clouds of dust under the baking sun of the Queriz Depression. Black banners of smoke from the funnels of steam shovels and bulldozers mingled with the dust, hanging in a lung-clogging pall, and they could see the long, gleaming line of steel rails stretching out towards the southern horizon beyond it.
'I am, too,' Janaki agreed, and uncased his binoculars. He raised them to his eyes, and the distant scene jumped into sharp focus as he turned the adjusting knob.
There had to be at least a thousand workers immediately visible down there, he reflected, and every one of them was as busy as an entire clan of beavers. Bulldozers and shovels chewed the roadbed out of the bone-dry, mostly flat terrain, rampaging through their self-induced fog of dust like steam- and smokesnorting monsters. Steam-powered tractors followed along behind them on caterpillar treads, dumping heavy loads of gravel for more bulldozers, scrapers, and steamrollers to level into place and tamp firmly.
Then more tractors followed behind, hauling heavy trailers stacked high with railroad ties and rails.
Workers balanced precariously atop the loads tossed ties and rails over the trailers' sides with the easy rhythm of long practice, and each balk of timber, each gleaming length of steel, landed precisely where it was supposed to be.
More workers moved forward, adjusting the ties, setting them into the waiting gravel ballast of the steadily advancing roadbed. Gangs of track-layers followed them, lifting the rails, swinging them into place on the heavy, creosote-soaked ties, holding them there while plate men fished the rail ends, then stood aside while flashing hammers drove the spikes.
The Crown Prince of Ternathia-who was well on his way to becoming the crown prince of all of Sharona- lowered the binoculars and shook his head. This was scarcely the first Trans-Temporal Express railhead he'd ever watched advancing across a virgin universe, but right off the top of his head, he couldn't remember ever seeing such a focused, frenzied, carefully choreographed boil of energy.
And just why should you find that particularly surprising, Janaki? he asked himself sardonically. You've never seen them laying track towards something that looks entirely too much like an inter-universal war, either, have you?
'That sore part of me that isn't eyes is really looking forward to parking itself in a passenger car's seat,' he informed chan Braikal as he returned his binoculars to their case. 'Of course, after this long in the saddle, my memory of what passenger cars are like has become a bit vague.'
'I'm sure it will all come back to the Platoon-Captain,' chan Braikal said. 'And I hope you won't take this wrongly, Sir, but the main reason I'll be glad to see those passenger cars has more to do with speed than places to sit. The further and faster towards the rear we get these prisoners-and you-the better I'll like it.'
Janaki grimaced and started to say something, then stopped himself and looked away once more. His own feelings at being bundled safely off to the rear, however important the job they'd found to give him as part of the bundling process, remained profoundly ambiguous. The part of him which had been trained as his father's heir recognized the logic in Company-Captain chan Tesh's decision to send him back to Sharona. Indeed, that intellectual part of him recognized that it would have been the height of insanity for chan Tesh to do anything else. But what his intellect recognized as sanity and what his emotions insisted he ought to be doing were two quite different things.
'Sir,' chan Braikal said quietly, 'I know this isn't really what you want, but you know it's the right thing for you to be doing.'
Janaki looked back at the older man, and chan Braikal smiled sadly.
'You'd have done just fine, Sir,' the chief-armsman told him. 'I've seen quite a few platoon-captains in my time. Brought along my share of 'em, for that matter, if you'll pardon my saying so. Some of them, to be honest, scared the shit out of me. Others … well, let's just say I wasn't too sure where I'd find them standing on the day it finally fell into the crapper on us. But you?' He shook his head. 'You might've ended up screwing up-I don't think you would have, but anybody can. But if you had, at least I'm pretty sure all of the holes would've been in the front.'
'Thanks, Chief … I think,' Janaki said wryly.
'Don't mention it, Sir.' Chan Braikal grinned at him, and Janaki snorted.
'Well, however that might be, I suppose we should get this show back on the road.'
'Yes, Sir.'
The chief-armsman turned in the saddle to bawl a few pithy suggestions to the other men of Janaki's platoon. The recipients of his requests responded promptly, and the ambulances containing the Arcanan POWs Janaki was responsible for escorting to the rear moved briskly forward.
Janaki watched them roll past him behind their double teams of mules, each ambulance flanked by its pair of assigned, watchful mounted Marines, and admitted to himself that he felt a profound sense of relief. Despite any ambiguity (and he was honest enough with himself to realize chan Braikal had put his finger squarely on the question which bothered him the most), he would be overjoyed to get those prisoners back to Sharona. And not just because he knew how vital their interrogation was likely to prove, either. From the reports he'd received down the Voicenet, it sounded as if his father had more than enough forest fires to put out. No doubt Emperor Zindel could find any number of useful things for his heir apparent to be doing as part of the extinguishing process. And according to those same reports, his sister Andrin had been forced to shoulder a huge share of the heir's responsibilities in his absence … and she wasn't even eighteen yet. It was time he got home and took that off her shoulders.
Of course, there was that bit about marriages.
Janaki grimaced. He'd never doubted that his eventual marriage would be carefully considered and weighed. It couldn't have been any other way for the heir to the Winged Crown of Ternathia, and there'd been no point pretending it could have been or whining about the factthat it wasn't. But given the … testy relations between Ternathia and Uromathia, he'd never anticipated being required to marry into the family of Chava Busar, and he couldn't say he found the idea very appealing.
