Fliers of Antares

again. The woman tsk-tsked and glared; but Avec bestowed upon her so sweet and gallant a smile that she was forced to lower her eyelids.

I wondered if Avec in his bumbling way had overdone it. In a country so ridden with laws as Hamal the woman might easily stop the carriage and call the Amith drawing it to come and sort out this yetch who kept insulting her and damaging her fruit.

I was interested in knowing what Avec did, for he had never mentioned it, and I suppose I was assumed to understand what Niltch meant.

Avec struggled in his seat to get a wad of cham from his arm-purse. Avec was a great cham-chewer. He was also leaning over toward me as he tried to flick the purse-lid open, but the pesky thing had stuck. His legs were kicking about dangerously.

“I don’t mind telling you, dom,” he said, and his voice sank. We had forced ourselves not to use each other’s names in public, just in case. “But, you know the way the government and the Emperor regard this matter. I’m not a skilled man, as Havil the Green is my witness, although I would wish to be. Now, young Ilter is now.” He swore a little more loudly then, and wrestled with the purse. We both hoped no one would have overheard his careless use of the name. The woman was trying to move her basket away, and a shonage looked about to slide off at any minute. I was looking at the shonage, and thinking my tangled thoughts about emperors and their laws and how poor folk could not afford to ride in a voller and sail through the air, and so avoid knocking into old ladies and damaging prime shonages. Avec rambled on, under his breath, leaning over more and more, struggling with the arm-purse.

“We are all vowed to secrecy, of course. Penalty death. Oh, yes — death! But I will tell you what I can, and hope you will come with me to Sumbakir, and I’ll put in a word for you. We’ll be safer there, too, for the guards are fierce, by Krun!”

The woman rescued her shonage. I let my breath out. Avec ripped furiously at his arm-purse. He also spoke softly to me as the purse-lid came free.

“You must know, dom, what I do, from what I have already told you, and my name, and where I work.”

His thick arm jerked with the violence with which he dragged the purse open, the elbow driving toward me as he told me.

“I build vollers, dom.”

My surprise was complete. I could not stop the instinctive start of shock. Avec’s solid elbow hit me as I jumped and my body lunged forward in exact time to a corner-turning lurch of the carriage. It threw me forward putting my face and shoulders slap-bang squash into the woman’s basket of ripe shonages.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Vollers of Sumbakir

At this time Sumbakir and the voller yards were organized on military lines; instead of foremen and gang- leaders and time-keepers and floor-managers there were Deldars and Hikdars and Jiktars to run the shops. I fitted in well enough with Avec the Niltch to guide me, and Ilter Monicep as a smith was quickly at home in the smithy where the angle irons, brackets, and control rods were produced. Slaves, of course, swarmed everywhere. They wore the common gray slave breechclout, and they did the hard and onerous tasks set them by the slave-masters, who took their orders from the Deldars of Slaves. Truly, I would not have welcomed such a life. But I think you will fully understand my motives. For most of my life on Kregen I had been cursed by the dark knowledge that at any time a flier might break down and so precipitate me — and those dear to me — into danger. The people of Vallia and Zenicce and Balintol and many other of the places where Hamalian and Hyrklanian vollers were sold lived with this knowledge. A voller was not to be trusted. Yet I knew that within the bounds of Havilfar itself -

certainly in Hamal and Hyrklana — airboats were perfectly sound.

The desire to uncover the secret, perhaps to take away with me the knowledge of the construction of vollers, fired me to a determination that made me do things I detested. Even if this meant I would miss the date on which I could fly back to the Shrouded Sea and pick up my life again with Delia and my friends, even this I would do to secure the secret knowledge.

I have some skills as a carpenter and can turn my hand to that trade when necessary, as a ship’s officer of a wooden navy must be able to, if he is a tarpaulin lieutenant without prospects. Learning my way about the yards took little time after our arrival, and Deldar Naghan the Triangle took to me, with Avec’s coarse comments to spur him on.[5]

The long open sheds resounded with the blows of ax and adz, the chirr-chirr of saws, the sliding hiss of planes and the sharp staccato cracks of hammers. I’ll admit they built well. The wooden frames were fashioned from seasoned wood, and the Kregans know what there is to know about seasoning and steam bending as about compass timbers. Sometimes the coverings were mere canvas and hide, at others sliced planks produced with extraordinary skill by slaves trained from birth to the work. The timbers were beautifully jointed and glued. As well they were on occasion pinned. Over at Conelawlad, so Naghan the Triangle told me, they built their frames from metal. Ilter said he would stick by that fambly of an uncle of his, for the nurdling onker would as well cut his thumbs off as saw a straight line. We were a harum-scarum bunch, as I see now, looking back. Under the harsh laws of Hamal we still found time to skylark. The lot of the slaves was far less enviable. They were guarded by the prowling black-and-white-striped forms of the werstings. These four-legged hunting dogs are extraordinarily vicious, and when they draw their lips back from their fangs it is time either to face front with a weapon or to run. But, running, you would be brought down in an instant. The wersting packs kept the slaves under guard, and the guards kept intruders out, and in Sumbakir there in south-central Hamal we built fliers.

Looking at the black and white stripes of the werstings reminded me of Jumnee of Nycresand, that Hikdar of a wersting pack, and on the morning the Kov of Apulad paid us his customary once-a-sennight-visit, I thought of Jumnee and wondered what he was doing now. This morning the Kov was in a foul temper. This was quite normal. Only once had I seen him come in smiling, and that morning the rumor was that one of the Emperor’s daughters had had a miscarriage.

“I run Sumbakir for the glory of the Emperor!” This Ornol ham Feoste, the Kov of Apulad, was fond of declaiming.

He stalked into our shed and everyone straightened up from their tasks and bent their heads, even me, Dray Prescot who was called Chaadur. The four guls the Kov had had whipped last week were back to work, and we all knew that the Kov was out to find fault. Any one of us might find the thongs around his wrists and his shirt stripped down his back, and the Deldar of the Lash laying on. Ornol ham Feoste stalked between the lines of petal-shaped vollers, for we were working on an order that called for simple four-place fliers at the time. He ran his hand down the wood to test its smoothness, then he would wrench away at joints hoping they would come apart in his hands. As usual, I did not look at his wife. The Kovneva, however, as usual, looked at me. The silly woman wore her fine sensil veil swathed across her face so that her large dark eyes could look boldly upon whatever and whoever she wished. Her gown, a gaudy combination of emerald and ruby and diamond stripes sewn against a white soft material spun from the wool of the Methydrian ponsho, clung to her body as she moved. This was scarcely the dress a Hortera would wear to visit a workshop. The custom of elderly Earthwomen never to wear silk out of doors is a strange custom not followed upon Kregen; but this dress was too flamboyant by half.

In her arms she carried a wersting pup. The thing grew bigger week by week, and now the Lady Esme, Kovneva of Apulad, held a thin golden chain in her dainty hand, a chain that fastened to a gem-studded golden collar around the pup’s neck.

We were all standing there, and many of the guls were trembling in a thinly controlled way that indicated they were almost beyond control. We were all wondering what the Kov would find fault with this week, for we knew that find fault he would. We stood there, hating the cramph, for in a very real and meaningful way he was the chief blot upon the landscape.

Ornol ham Feoste, Kov of Apulad, broke the joint that young Lenki had just made. I saw Lenki sway and his hands wring together behind his back. The Kov turned to him quite slowly, and the Kov’s face bore a look that chilled the human soul in Lenki.