fan drew together into three thicker lines, more clearly visible from the air: the Three Rivers that flowed from the Asilas, spilling around the enormous outcropping of Castle Knob. Centuries of wear, of the Asilas’s water rushing past, had done little more than chip the edges of the volcanic plug; rather than carving a hole through it, the river had split around it, forming three new channels. A light was flashing from the top of the knob, and Heikki could see a light on her own console flashing in perfect synchronicity. She was receiving the beacon at Weather Station Green perfectly. She touched keys, checking her own course plot, and was not surprised to see the numbers match precisely.
There was a stirring behind her, and Nkosi stepped off the ladder and into the instrument bay. “We are just passing Castle Knob Beacon,” he began, and then broke off, looking at the tank. “Ah, I see you have it. Good.”
“Who’s minding the store, Jock?” Djuro called.
“Jan, of course,” Nkosi answered, managing to sound regally surprised.
“I’m glad you trust him,” Djuro retorted.
“He has been flying us for the past hour,” Nkosi answered. “Do you have any complaints?”
“Not me,” Djuro answered, and bent his head over the controls. Nkosi nodded, and started for the toilet at the back of the compartment, walking straight through the image in the tank. It was a startling effect, as though he’d stepped through an empty space. Even Heikki, who’d seen the illusion more than once, caught her breath as he stepped into apparent nothingness, walking through and over the image of the beacon and the verdant hills as though they weren’t there. And of course they’re not, Heikki thought, not really, but she could not help holding her breath until he was safely on the other side. At the map console, Alexieva shook her head slowly, but said nothing.
Heikki cleared her throat as Nkosi emerged from the little compartment, made herself not watch as the pilot waded back through the image. “We’re coming up on our first marker,” she said, on the general frequency, and Alexieva nodded in hasty agreement.
“Yes, the falls, where the Asilas comes off the massif.”
Nkosi paused at Heikki’s console, staring over the woman’s shoulder at the shifting image. “We do not actually make a course change here, do we?”
Heikki shook her head. “No, this is just to calibrate my instruments and Alexieva’s maps. We follow the river another three hundred kilometers or so—” She touched keys again. “Three hundred seven point five, actually, and then turn onto the new heading. We’ll cross the latac’s verified course about an hour after that.”
Nkosi nodded, still watching the tank, and then turned away. “I will let Jan fly us for a while, then,” he said, over his shoulder, and disappeared into the bubble.
Heikki nodded back, and bent her attention to her console. So far, at least, Alexieva’s maps and the terrain below seemed to match with better than average precision. She checked the last set of numbers, then leaned back in her chair. “It looks good, Alexieva. Everything checks out perfectly.”
Unexpectedly, Alexieva smiled, the expression transforming her rather grim features. “Thanks. I spent about three years in the massif, mapping.” Her face clouded again. “I didn’t get very far, though.”
“Grant money run out?” Heikki asked, not quite idly, and Alexieva shook her head.
“No, Lo-Moth ended the project. They were really only interested in mapping the edges of the massif— still are, for that matter. God knows, I’ve tried to get them to sponsor a trip to the center! But they say their flights don’t cross the core, so there’s no point in spending money on a really detailed survey.”
“That sounds damn shortsighted of them,” Djuro said.
Alexieva shrugged. “They’ve been pretty reluctant to spend money, ever since the home office changed management.”
“Home office?” Heikki said. “Do you mean Tremoth, or the higher-ups at Lo-Moth?”
Alexieva looked down at her console as though she regretted having said even that much. “Tremoth, I guess. I don’t really know—I only worked for them the once.”
Heikki did not pursue the point, saying instead, “You’d think somebody would put up the money.”
Alexieva shrugged again, the same sullen, one-shouldered movement Heikki had seen before. “Who’s got it to spend?” She fingered her keyboard. “I’m switching maps.”
Which was an effective end to the conversation, Heikki thought. She said nothing, however, merely noting the shift in her own records, and settled back in her chair to wait for the next course correction. The Asilas, a silver band almost two fingers wide, wound past in the tank, seeming to curve in time to the rhythmic drone of the engines. There was a flurry of movement on her board as they passed the Falls, looking from the air like a plume of smoke, and the jumper banked slightly, following the river’s northeasterly curve. Heikki checked her calculations again, matching her course with the latac’s last three position readings. They would intercept the first of those in a little more than two hours.
She sighed then, stretching, and pushed herself up out of her chair.
“Keep an eye on things, Sten,” she said, and Djuro nodded. Satisfied, Heikki turned forward, pulling herself up the short ladder into the pilot’s bubble.
Nkosi had the controls, and sat slumped in his chair, hands loose on the steering yoke, his eyes seemingly fixed on nothing at all. Sebasten-Januarias, in the left-hand seat, had his head turned toward the side of the bubble, but the direction of his gaze was hidden by his dark goggles. Iadara’s sky curved overhead, its brassy blue darkened by altitude, touched here and there by thin wisps of cloud. The trees of the massif formed a dense and dark green floor beyond the jumper’s nose, looking from the air like a coarsely knotted carpet. A lake flashed like a beacon as the sun caught it, and then disappeared again as the jumper slid forward. Heikki blinked, blinded as much by the lush beauty of the scene as by the brilliant sun, then cleared her throat.
“How’s it going?” she asked, as much to let the pilots know she was there as to hear an answer to her question.
Sebasten-Januarias turned toward her quickly, then looked away again without answering. Nkosi said, without turning his head, “Not badly at all. I do not like the look of those, however.”
He nodded toward the southeast, where a line of clouds showed like mountains on the horizon. Heikki leaned forward against the back of his chair, squinting past his shoulder at the distant shapes.
“What do you think, Jan?” she asked, after a moment.
The younger man shrugged, the goggles effectively hiding any changes of expression. “It’s hard to tell. We don’t usually get rain in the afternoon in the massif, not like you get around Lowlands.”
“Is Station Green saying anything?” Heikki asked, and was not surprised when Sebasten-Januarias shook his head.
“Not yet.”
“If we have to fly through them,” Nkosi said, delicately stressing the word “if,” “it will make it hard to hold a low altitude search. Of course, we can always work through the clouds.”
I know that, Heikki thought, scowling. She realized she was tapping the back of Nkosi’s chair, and stilled her fingers with an effort. “Sten,” she said, on the general frequency, “I know you’re tapping into Weather Station Green, but I want you to see if you can pick up Station Red Six as well. There’s bit of cloud in the southeast I want to keep an eye on.”
“No problem,” Djuro answered promptly.
Heikki stayed in the bubble for a few moments longer, lulled by the sunlight and the steady drone of the engines. The ground, darker and less defined than its image in the tank, slid past almost imperceptibly, without many breaks in the vegetation by which she could gauge their progress. To the southeast, the clouds hung steady on the horizon, while the occasional thread of cloud whipped past overhead, borne on the high air currents.
“Heikki?” Djuro’s voice in the headpiece woke her from her daze. “I’m monitoring Station Red Six like you asked. They’re showing a line of rain, all right, which they predict will pass us to the south.”
“Good enough,” Heikki said, and was aware of Sebasten-Januarias’s slow stare. He would have the right to say he told me so, she conceded silently, but to her surprise, the younger man said instead, “About how much longer till we turn onto the latac’s course?”
Heikki glanced at the chronometer set into the control board. “About another hour,” she said, and pushed herself away from Nkosi’s chair. “We’ll let you know, don’t worry. Yell if you need anything, Jock.”
“I will do that,” Nkosi said, tranquilly, not taking his eyes from the distant horizon. Heikki, satisfied, slid back down the ladder into the bay, and reseated herself behind her console.
The last hour passed excruciatingly slowly, until Heikki found herself rerunning tests that had been
