Page 6 (1/2)

Chapter Six

Lighted Fliers

"Grumman?" said the black-bearded fur trader "From the Berlin Academy? Reckless I met him five years back over at the northern end of the Urals I thought he was dead"

Sam Cansino, an old acquaintance and a Texan like Lee Scoresby, sat in the naphtha-laden, slass of bitingly cold vodka He nudged the plate of pickled fish and black bread toward Lee, who took a mouthful and nodded for Sam to tell him more

"He’d walked into a trap that fool Yakovlev laid," the fur trader went on, "and cut his leg open to the bone Instead of using regularthe stuff the bears use - bloodmoss - some kind of lichen, it ain’t a truewith pain and calling out instructions to his et the ue, and boy, he had a tongue like barbed wire A leanYou knoas a Tartar, by initiation?"

"You don’t say," said Lee Scoresby, tipping lass His daemon, Hester, crouched at his elbow on the bar, eyes half-closed as usual, ears flat along her back

Lee had arrived that afternoon, borne to Nova Zembla by the wind the witches had called up, and once he’d stowed his equipht for the Sa station This was a place where e news or look for ees for one another, and Lee Scoresby had spent several days there in the past, waiting for a contract or a passenger or a fair wind, so there was nothing unusual in his conduct now

And with the vast changes they sensed in the world around theather and talk With every day that passed came more news: the river Yenisei was free of ice, and at this ti strange regular for had snatched three fishermen out of their boat and torn the continued to roll in from the north, dense and cold and occasionally drenched with the strangest iuely seen, and ether it was a bad time to work, which hy the bar of the Samirsky Hotel was full

"Did you say Gru the bar, an elderlydaemon looked out soleht I was there when he joined that tribe I saw hi his skull drilled He had another name, too - a Tartar name; I’ll think of it in a minute"

"Well, how about that," said Lee Scoresby "Letfor news of this man What tribe was it he joined?"

"The Yenisei Pakhtars At the foot of the Seet what it’s called - a river that comes down from the hills There’s a rock the size of a house at the landing stage"

"Ah, sure," said Lee "I remember it now I’ve flown over it And Grumman had his skull drilled, you say? Why was that?"

"He was a shanized him as a sha It goes on for two nights and a day They use a bow drill, like for lighting a fire"

"Ah, that accounts for the way his teahest bunch of scoundrels I ever saw, but they ran around doing his bidding like nervous children I thought it was his cursing that did it If they thought he was a shaman, it’d make even more sense But you know, that man’s curiosity was as powerful as a wolf’s jaws; he would not let go He made me tell him every scrap I knew about the land thereabouts, and the habits of wolverines and foxes And he was in so laid open, and he riting the results of that blood notes on every dae man There was a witch anted him for a lover, but he turned her down"

"Is that so?" said Lee, thinking of the beauty of Serafina Pekkala

"He shouldn’t have done that," said the seal hunter "A witch offers you her love, you should take it If you don’t, it’s your own fault if bad things happen to you It’s like having toyou can’t do is choose neither"

"He ht have had a reason," said Lee "If he had any sense, it will have been a good one"

"He was headstrong," said Sam Cansino

"Maybe faithful to another wo else about hiic object, I don’t knohat it ht be, that could protect anyone who held it Did you ever hear that story?"

"Yes, I heard that," said the seal hunter "He didn’t have it himself, but he knehere it was There was a man who tried to make him tell, but Grumman killed him"

"His daele, a black eagle with a white head and breast, of a kind I’d never set eyes on, and I didn’t kno she ht be called"

"She was an osprey," said the bar about Stan Grule"

"What happened to hiot -land Last I heard he’d been shot," said the seal hunter "Killed outright"

"I heard they beheaded hi," said the barman, "and I know, because I heard it from an Inuit ith him Seems that they were camped out on Sakhalin somewhere and there was an avalanche Grumman was buried under a hundred tons of rock This Inuit saw it happen"

"What I can’t understand," said Lee Scoresby, offering the bottle around, "is what thefor rock oil,philosophical? You said so about measurements, Sa the starlight And the aurora He had a passion for the aurora I think his s"

"I knoho could tell you more," said the seal hunter "Up theto the Imperial Muscovite Academy They’d be able to tell you I knoent up there more than once"

"What d’you want to know for, anyway, Lee?" said Sam Cansino

"He owes me some money," said Lee Scoresby

This explanation was so satisfying that it stopped their curiosity at once The conversation turned to the topic on everyone’s lips: the catastrophic changes taking place around them, which no one could see

"The fisherht up into that neorld"

"There’s a neorld?" said Lee

"As soon as this daht into it," the seal hunter told them confidently "When it first happened, I was out innorth, just by chance I’ll never forget what I saw Instead of the earth curving down over the horizon, it went straight on I could see forever, and as far as I could see, there was land and shoreline, reen trees, and fields of corn, forever into the sky I tell you, friends, that was soht like that I would have paddled up the sky into that cal"

"Ain’t never seen a fog like this," grumbled Sam Cansino "Reckon it’s set in for a month, maybe more But you’re out of luck if you want money from Stanislaus Gruot his Tartar name!" said the seal hunter "I just re It sounded like Jopari"

"Jopari? That’s no kind of naht be Nipponese, I suppose Well, if I want ns Or o ask at the observatory, see if they have an address I can apply to"

The observatory was soe and driver It wasn’t easy to find so, but Lee was persuasive, or his reed to take hi

The driver didn’t rely on a coated by other signs - his Arctic fox daee keenly scenting the way Lee, who carried his compass everywhere, had realized already that the earth’selse

The old driver said, as they stopped to brew coffee, "This happen before, this thing"

"What, the sky opening? That happened before?"

"Many thousand generation My people reeneration"

"What do they say about it?"

"Sky fall open, and spirits move between this world and that world All the lands ain The spirits close up the hole after a while Seal it up But witches say the sky is thin there, behind the northern lights"

"What’s going to happen, Uain But only after big trouble, big war Spirit war"

The driver wouldn’t tell hi slowly over undulations and hollows and past outcrops of di, until the old man said: "Observatory up there You walk now Path too crooked for sledge You want go back, I wait here"

"Yeah, I want to go back when I’ve finished, Umaq You make yourself a fire, my friend, and sit and rest a spell I’ll be three, four hours maybe"

Lee Scoresby set off, with Hester tucked into the breast of his coat, and after half an hour’s stiff clis suddenly above hiiant hand But the effect was only due to a , and after a reat dome of the main observatory, a sroup of adhts showed, because the ere blacked out permanently so as not to spoil the darkness for their telescopes

A few roup of astrono them, for there are few natural philosophers as frustrated as astrono he’d seen, and once that topic had been thoroughly dealt with, he asked about Stanislaus Grumman The astronomers hadn’t had a visitor in weeks, and they were keen to talk

"Gru about hilishman, in spite of his name I remember - "

"Surely not," said his deputy "He was a member of the Imperial German Academy I met him in Berlin I was sure he was Gerlish His coe was iree, he was certainly a ist - "

"No, no, you’re wrong," said soist I had a long talk with hiist"

They were sitting, five of them, around a table in the roo roo else Two of them were Muscovites, one was a Pole, one a Yoruba, and one a Skraeling Lee Scoresby sensed that the little colad to have a visitor, if only because he introduced a change of conversation The Pole had been the last to speak, and then the Yoruba interrupted: "What do you ists already study what’s old; why do you need to put another word’old’ in front of it?"

"His field of study went back much further than you’d expect, that’s all He was looking for reo," the Pole replied

"Nonsense!" said the Director "Utter nonsense! TheCivilizations thirty thousand years old? Ha! Where is the evidence?"

"Under the ice," said the Pole "That’s the point According to Grued dramatically at various times in the past, and the earth’s axis actually moved, too, so that temperate areas became ice-bound"

"How?" said one of the Muscovites

"Oh, he had soht have been for very early civilizations was long since buried under the ice He clairams of unusual rock formations"

"Ha! Is that all?" said the Director

"I’ hi had you known Gruentlemen?" Lee Scoresby asked

"Well, let o I met him for the first time"

"He made a name for himself a year or two before that, with his paper on the variations in the netic pole," said the Yoruba "But he came out of nowhere I mean, no one had known him as a student or seen any of his previous work" They talked on for a while, contributing reht have becoht he was probably dead While the Pole went to brew some more coffee, Lee’s hare dae, Lee"

The Skraeling had spoken very little Lee had thought he was naturally taciturn, but pro the next break in the conversation to see the ht orange eyes Well, that hat owls looked like, and they did stare; but Hester was right, and there was a hostility and suspicion in the dae of

And then Lee saw so with the Church’s syraved on it Suddenly he realized the reason for the man’s silence Every philosophical research establishment, so he’d heard, had to include on its staff a representative of the Magisterium, to act as a censor and suppress the news of any heretical discoveries

So, realizing this, and re he’d heard Lyra say, Lee asked: "Tell entlemen - do you happen to know if Grumman ever looked into the question of Dust?"

And instantly a silence fell in the stuffy little roo, though no one looked at him directly Lee knew that Hester would remain inscrutable, with her eyes half-closed and her ears flat along her back, and he put on a cheerful innocence as he looked from face to face

Finally he settled on the Skraeling, and said, "I beg your pardon Have I asked about so it’s forbidden to know?"

The Skraeling said, "Where did you hear mention of this subject, Mr Scoresby?"

"Froer I flew across the sea a while back," Lee said easily "They never said what it was, but fro Dr Gruht have inquired into I took it to be so, like the aurora But it puzzled me, because as an aeronaut I know the skies pretty well, and I’d never come across this stuff What is it, anyhow?"

"As you say, a celestial phenonificance"

Presently Lee decided it was time to leave; he had learned noHe left the astronobound observatory and set off down the track, feeling his way along by following his daeround

And when they were only tenswept past his head in the fog and dived at Hester It was the Skraeling’s owl dae and flattened herself in tiht; her claere sharp, too, and she was tough and brave Lee knew that the Skraeling himself must be close by, and reached for the revolver at his belt

"Behind you, Lee," Hester said, and he whipped around, diving, as an arrow hissed over his shoulder

He fired at once The Skraeling fell, grunting, as the bullet thudded into his leg Ato fold her wings

Lee Scoresby cocked his pistol and held it to the ht, you damn fool," he said "What did you try that for? Can’t you see we’re all in the sa’s happened to the sky?"

"It’s too late," said the Skraeling

"Too late for what?"

"Too late to stop I have already sent a isteriulad to know about Grumman - "

"What about hi for hiht And that others know of Dust You are an enemy of the Church, Lee Scoresby By their fruits shall ye know the at their heart"

The oas s fitfully Her bright orange eyes were fil red stain in the snow around the Skraeling; even in the fog-thick di to die

"Reckon o my sleeve and I’llharshly "I alad to die! I shall have the martyr’s palm! You will not deprive me of that!"

"Then die if you want to Just tell me this - "

But he never had the chance to complete his question, because with a bleak little shiver the owl daeone Lee had once seen a painting in which a saint of the Church was shown being attacked by assassins While they bludgeoned his dying body, the saint’s daemon was borne upward by cherubs and offered a spray of pal’s face now bore the same expression as the saint’s in the picture: an ecstatic straining toward oblivion Lee dropped hiue

"Shoulda reckoned he’d send a "

"What the hell for? We ain’t thieves, are we?"

"No, we’re renegades," she said "Not by our choice, but by his malice Once the Church learns about this, we’re done for anyway Take every advantage we can in theand stow it away, and mebbe we can use it"

Lee saw the sense, and took the ring off the dead looed by a steep drop into rocky darkness, and he rolled the Skraeling’s body over It fell for a long time before he heard any i, although he’d had to do it three ti that," said Hester "He didn’t give us a choice, and we didn’t shoot to kill Damn it, Lee, he wanted to die These people are insane"

"I guess you’re right," he said, and put the pistol away

At the foot of the path they found the driver, with the dogs harnessed and ready to move

"Tellstation, "you ever hear of a man called Grumman?"

"Oh, sure," said the driver "Everybody know Dr Grumman"

"Did you know he had a Tartar name?"

"Not Tartar You mean Jopari? Not Tartar"

"What happened to him? Is he dead?"

"You ask me that, I have to say I don’t know So you never know the truth from me"

"I see So who can I ask?"

"You better ask his tribe Better go to Yenisei, ask them"