America 2040 - Golden World Part 27

"How many times did I ask for a transfer so that you could be near your work?" he retorted. There was a chill fear in his eyes. "What's it going to be, me or your work? It won't do you any good to stay, you know. Rodrick's not the kind to cheat on his new bride."

"You have a filthy mind!"

"What else am I to think? I'm your husband. You've a.s.sured me that you love me. If it's Rodrick you love, I think you'd better run to him now and tell him that you're ready for him, tell him not to marry Jackie."

She swallowed her shame and her anger. She felt just enough guilt, for still loving Duncan Rodrick, to be vulnerable. "There's to be no fighting, no armed resistance if they try to stop you?"

"No one will be hurt," he a.s.sured her.

"I'll pack," she said. "I'll need a full medical kit from the lab."

"It's already on a cargo crawler. Two of them, as a matter of fact."

"You've been planning this for a long time."

"Since Rodrick set the date for the wedding," he said. "We'll be gone while they're all weeping and smiling happily at the wedding. They won't use force to bring us back."

"No, they wouldn't," she said.

"I have things to do," he said, rising. "We're taking camp beds. All we'll take from here are personal necessities, clothing, the kitchen equipment. We're taking the electrical appliances as well. When we're settled, we'll trade for one or two of the wind generators. We won't be roughing it for long."

She wept as she packed her clothing.

"I'm going to ground that young man for six weeks," Stoner McRae fumed. It was ten minutes after eleven. Betsy was looking worried. "Now, don't worry," he said hastily. "Nothing has happened to them.

They're just running late. We've still got fifty minutes."

"But why haven't they called in?" Betsy asked.

Stoner had been wondering the same thing, but he wasn't going to let Betsy know that he was worried."Communicator failed, most likely. It happened to us once, remember? They get a terrific jarring around on a crawler."

Stoner went outside, looked up across the veld toward the north. He saw only a herd of silver-horned antelopes and the shimmer of heat over the plains. He walked to theSpirit of America . Ito Zuki had volunteered to act as communicator on the bridge during the wedding. He'd heard nothing from the admiral. It was twenty minutes past eleven. "Who's on standby alert?"

"Jack," Ito said. "Want me to get him?"

Stoner nodded. Soon he was explaining the situation to Jack Purdy. He suspected that Jack had volunteered to miss the wedding because he was still mourning the death of his wife, although he hid it well.

"Ito, " Purdy said, "Renato Cruz is in line after me. Get him here to hold the fort while I take the scout for a little run up north."

It was eleven-thirty when Jack lifted theDinahmite and started north at a speed that would give him visuals of the ground in case the crawler was somewhere on the veld.

Betsy, seething, drafted Tina Sells to wear the flower-girl's gown she so lovingly had made for Cindy. It took two tries to find a teenage boy who could wear Clay's suit. It was, by then, almost twelve. People were already seated in the meeting house. Others milled about outside in the pleasant sunshine, all dressed in their finest.

Recorded synthesizer music began to boom out of the meeting house. The stragglers hurried inside. Ito Zuki had the scene on one of his screens. He located Emi and thought she looked lovely in her best dress. Renato Cruz, just a little hung over, began to check all the detectors in weapons control. Shortly after twelve o'clock Dr. Robert Allano, the psychiatrist who was also a justice of the peace, took his place in front of the altar. The grooms' parties entered from a side room. Max Rosen's face was twisted up in agony. Rodrick was calm, handsome. He led Max to their a.s.signed places, then let his eyes play over the audience, which filled the meeting house to standing room only. In that brief glance he did not see the face he was looking for. He didn't blame Mandy if she hadn't come. Perhaps she was somewhere in the back.

The music masked the muted sounds of hydrogen engines from the equipment park on the opposite side of Hamilton. Renato Cruz saw several lights go on and pushed b.u.t.tons to see a caravan of crawlers begin to leave the park. He wasn't aware of any large-scale expedition scheduled to leave during the wedding, but he'd been on a weekend pa.s.s. He watched idly, seeing that Commander Miller was driving the last crawler to leave the park, and then Renato turned his attention to the wedding ceremony.

Rocky Miller was giving instructions on a seldom-used radio frequency. The caravan was straggling as it left Hamilton, and he kept coaxing and ordering until the gaps were closed, and then he had to contend with the fervent complaints about the dust.

The well-traveled crawler road to the south allowed for speed, and soon the entire caravan was moving along in a cloud of dust at just under fifty miles per hour.

Grace and Jackie had decided on a full orchestral arrangement of the wedding march, and it thundered out with the fullness of an entire symphony orchestra and a volume that made Max wince. From his scout ship, Jack Purdy saw only empty veld. He had flipped on the homing-device detector and was getting no signal. The low, rolling foothills of the Renfro Mountains were ahead of him. He had the coordinates that the admiral had given Stoner by radio for the location of the probable bauxite deposit. He zoomed up and over the foothills and punched the coordinates into the navigation computer.

Max's Adam's apple bobbed when he saw Grace start down the aisle. She was so beautiful that it made his mouth go dry. His agonized expression became a look of such bliss that those who knew him well smiled and nudged others, and then turned to watch as Grace, smiling, swept down the aisle. There was a chorus ofohs andahs and murmured approval. When she took her place beside Max, he had never looked quite as handsome, quite as at ease as he did at that moment.

A new chorus ofohs andahs escorted another beautiful bride down the aisle-Jackie Garvey, in pink.

And behind her, looking positively angelic, the flower girl and ring bearer, Tina, all smiles, and the teenage boy holding himself stiff and stern.

Only ninety families, just over two hundred people, had decided to join the group that was seceding from the colony at fifty miles per hour. That, Rocky Miller felt, was enough. If the others were too cowardly to make the break, let them rot in that desert in back of Stanton Bay. The caravan was still moving through the veld, and Rocky had steered his crawler to one side to be able to keep an eye on the entire column. He had to watch for rough ground and an occasional old miner trap.

It was Clive Baxter's wife, riding beside her husband, who first saw the airships.

"Clive, what on Earth?" she asked, pointing.

Baxter was negotiating a curve in the well-beaten crawler track and couldn't take his eyes off the road.

"You should say what on Omega, dear," he said, feeling quite good, almost jolly. He'd had all the military rule he wanted. He was looking forward to freedom, to being able to carry on his work as he saw fit. He looked up just in time to see an apparition from the past, a lighter-than-air vessel, long, rounded on both ends. He threw on the brakes in shock, and the crawler behind him, its driver having also spotted the airship, slammed into the Baxter crawler from the rear at a speed of fifty miles per hour. Baxter, his head up at an unnatural angle, his mouth open, didn't expect the collision. His neck snapped, and there was one terrible moment of pain before a round, bulky object landed squarely on his stomach and blew bits of human flesh and shattered metals and plastics high into the air.

Two more crawlers slammed into the wrecked pair, and others steered wildly, shooting out at angles from the column, trying to avoid the wreckage.

"Weapons! Man your weapons!" Rocky Miller was screaming into a dead communicator, having forgotten to switch it on.

Mandy was looking at the airships that were converging on the halted column. She knew now what it had been that Allen Jones had salvaged from the bottom of Stanton Bay, because a boatlike gondola, open, long, and rounded, was suspended below each gasbag. And from the open gondolas a steady stream of winged things were leaping, forming up quickly in the air, swooping down toward the halted caravan.

Rocky flipped on the communicator to a confused jumble of screaming voices. "Man your weapons!" he bellowed.

A vee of flyers swept over the vehicles at a height of about one hundred feet and dropped bombs.Several of the crawlers erupted in smoke and flames. The hydrogen tanks on one were breached, and flames reached out, charring screaming men, women, and children.

Paul Warden, sitting beside Evangeline, was thinking how beautiful Sage would look in a white wedding gown. The music was still thundering as Jackie swept down the aisle. He turned his head and c.o.c.ked one ear. He thought he'd heard something but decided that it might just be Jack Purdy'sDinahmite going supersonic up toward the north. By the time the music stopped and Dr. Allano began to speak, the explosions had also ceased, and the screams of the members of Rocky Miller's separationists, several miles to the south, could not carry that distance.

Organized flights swept the length of the wrecked caravan. Spears lanced down with deadly accuracy.

People ran to escape, only to be skewered by the long spears. A group of the flyers landed, quickly discarded their wings, and began to pick off the screaming, running survivors with arrows.

"We've got to go for help," Rocky said, his face white. He gunned the engine of the crawler, and the vehicle slewed in a circle, throwing dust, attracting the notice of a vee of flyers.

"Let me have your laser," Mandy said.

"Got to get help," Rocky panted.

She jerked the weapon out of his holster, turned in her seat, braced her hands on the back of the seat, and sent a lance of fire upward. One of the flyers screamed shrilly and tumbled, but others released spears, and she saw them coming, spelling death. She kept pulling the trigger to see another and then another of the flyers go out of control.

There was a sound like a dropped watermelon beside her, a gasping gurgle, and she felt the crawler swerve violently. A spear had entered Rocky's neck just at the base of his skull and the point had exited at his crotch to make a little hole in the plastic cover of the seat. She knew that he was dead. The spear held him in an erect, seated position for a moment, and then, as the vehicle swerved again, he toppled against her. The crawler was moving faster and faster; his foot was jammed on the accelerator. Spears fell around her, and she glanced up to see three flyers soar past to the front. She raised her pistol, and the crawler, at that moment, hit an old miner trap, the front of the treads dropping. She was thrown over the windscreen, taking a nasty b.u.mp on her knee. She saw the gra.s.s coming up and felt a thud, and then all was black.

Each bride and groom recited the ancient rituals. The teenage ring bearer had to scratch his ear and almost dropped the velvet-covered tray on which rested two double sets of wedding rings. Max said his "I dos" in a loud, almost belligerent voice. Grace squeezed his hand and winked at him.

A relieved ring bearer saw all four rings disappear from his velvet-covered tray and watched as the ring vows were mutually exchanged, couple by couple. And then the quiet voice of the justice of the peace was saying the old, beautiful words, and Max was grinning down at Grace as he heard, "I now p.r.o.nounce you husbands and wives." Max and Grace were already lifting Grace's veil when the justice said, "Gentlemen, ladies, you may now kiss your spouses." Max had his lips puckered. He didn't care if everyone in the whole d.a.m.ned colony was watching. His eyes were on Grace's, then shifted down to her parted, full lips. He bent toward them.

"Red One. Red One. Captain to the bridge. Scouts to your ships. Mopro to vehicle park."

The words blasted out from Rodrick's communicator. There was a single intake of breath in the meeting house, then an explosion of movement as the service personnel leaped to their feet and ran toward the exits.

For a second, Rodrick suspected a prank, but only for a second. Ito Zuki was not the kind of man to joke about anything as serious as a Red One alert, which indicated maximum danger to the ship or to the colony.

Rodrick grinned at Jackie. "I think, Mrs. Rodrick, you might be excused from your duty post long enough to change into more practical garments."

Jackie smiled back. "Aye, aye, sir," she said, and then he was gone, communicator in hand, his voice demanding information.

Max was bending toward Grace's lips. For a split second a look of pain came onto his face, and then the mild, pleasant smile was back and he kept bending until his lips touched hers. His arms went around her and lifted her. She tried to talk through the kiss, but it was m.u.f.fled and he wouldn't let her go as people hurried from the auditorium to their a.s.signed emergency stations. He held the kiss for long seconds, half a minute, a full minute. Grace ceased to try to talk, surrendering herself to his kiss. Then, with a sigh, he pushed her away. "Now, d.a.m.n it, " he said, with the old, pained grimace, "now I'll answer the d.a.m.ned Red One."

The admiral had been working on the laser rifle. "Doing any good?" Clay asked, looking over his shoulder.

The admiral shook his head. "About one in a million crystals will shatter," he said.

"Fine time to hit us with one in a million," Clay grumbled.

"Hey, you guys," Cindy said, "don't worry. There'll be a scout here any minute."

"Sure," Clay said uncertainly. He looked around. The stickmen on the ridge were hidden among the trees. To the east the other group had withdrawn into the shelter of the rocky area below the southern rim of the valley.

"How good are you with a projectile pistol?" the admiral asked.

"I'm better with the laser," Clay admitted.

"You've done well," the admiral said. "I saw no wasted shots. When I expend the remainder of my bullets, I'll take the laser-not because I'm a better shot than you but because my reaction time is faster."

"Okay," Clay said. "But I don't think they're going to come at us again." He was saying that for Cindy's sake. He knew he was blowing smoke and knew that she knew it when a giant lighter-than-air ship nosed up over the western ridges and cruised to hover, almost motionless, over the far side of the lake.

The airship was near enough for them to get an idea of its construction. The gasbag seemed to be fabric.

The gondola was wood, like the thing they'd thought was a boat, and there was a curious contraption extending forward from twin airscrews at the stern of the gondola.

The admiral, having an advantage with his better-than-human eyesight, said, "They use muscle power,Clay. If you look closely, you'll see a series of sprockets and chains."

"I see. Like pedaling a bicycle."

"Probably hydrogen in the bag," the admiral said.

"If it is, then all we have to do is put one of your explosive rounds into it, " Clay replied.

"I hesitate to destroy it," the admiral said. "Take a look down there." Clay pointed. The stick-men to the east were grouping. "Let me see your gun for a second. "

He aimed carefully, holding the heavy pistol in both hands. The recoil kicked the weapon high, and he waited for, the flare of burning hydrogen. The round blew a hole a foot across in the fabric, but there were no flames.

"Helium?" the admiral guessed, a bit amazed. Hydrogen separation was enough to strain his belief, but the more technically difficult isolation of helium would be an incredible feat for a society that used spears and bows.

Winged warriors leaped down from the gondola while two others scrambled up to the gasbag, toward the rent in the fabric, holding onto lines that Clay couldn't see. Other stickmen leaped onto seats along the center of the gondola, and Clay guessed they were pedaling furiously. The ship, sinking all the time, moved toward the sh.o.r.e of the lake.

The reinforcements from the airship glided down to join the group to the east on the sh.o.r.e. The airship just made it to the gra.s.sy margin of the lake before settling. The bag obviously had a rigid skeleton, because it was holding its shape.

The arrival of the new group seemed to postpone the attack. The stickmen to the east faded back into the rocks. Clay sat down beside Cindy. The admiral was at the outer edge of the rocks, on the alert.

"Clay, we're in trouble," Cindy said.

"C'mon, Cindy, I've gotten you out of bad spots before," Clay said, deepening his voice. He was thinking of the time he'd saved Cindy's life by killing the madman who'd held her captive on board the Spirit of America .

She reached for his hand. "Yes, you have," she said. "But unless someone comes, we're in trouble." She wasn't acting scared, Clay saw, just serious. "Clay, you know that my mother and father hoped we'd get married someday."

He blushed. "Yeah. I guess I'd rather marry you than anyone."

"Me, too," she said. "I've never asked you this, but when you first came to live with us, Mother had a long talk with me. I'll bet my dad had a talk with you, too, didn't he?"

Clay grinned. "Did he! He said if I ever laid a hand on you, he'd have my hide."

"Clay, I don't want to go against my parents, but I don't want to die without ever having kissed you."

She was blushing, too, and was unable to look at him. His first thought was that Stoner would skin him alive. "No one's going to die," he answered harshly.

"Well," she said, smiling, "isn't one excuse as good as another?"

"I guess so," he said, grinning.

"Do you know how?" she asked.

Clay had been twelve years old when he stowed away on theSpirit of America . He hadn't been interested in kissing girls back then. And since then, aboard theSpirit , Cindy had been his almost constant companion.

"You don't have to be ashamed," she said. "I've only kissed one boy."

He felt a flash of jealousy. "Yeah? Who?"

"I'm not going to tell."

"When was it?"

"Aboard ship."

He made a face. "Not that skinny Tom Blaekman?"

"I only kissed him twice," she said. "Are you mad?"

"Naw," he said. Then, "What did you want to do that for?"

"Oh, just to see how it felt."

"How'd it feel?" he asked, his face glum.