Galactic Milieu - Diamond Mask Part 14

He's a fair man, but he can't abide crybabies or layabouts, and he'll be disappointed and impatient if you get squeamish or frightened about the new things you're going to encounter out in Beinn Bhiorach. Do you hear what I'm saying?" ... You'd better hear or you'll find yourselves well&truly up it!

Ken nodded gravely but his thoughts were a panicky howl: I'm going to be eversobrave for Dad yes even if I have to eat creepyfood but whatabout Dee she could make Dad angry doing her scaredybabys.h.i.t and whatabout her d.a.m.nstupidmindpowers if she gets sent back to Earth then Dad might make ME go too it's not fair why did I have to have a weirdheadsister like her I think I hate her- "Glen Tuath's in a very lonely part of the world, but the big house is comfortable and there's lots to explore and do in your spare time. A pair of paleontologists are staying at the place and digging up fossils. You can go boating on Loch Tuath, and visit the diamond and buckyball mines, and watch Ben Fizgig volcano blow its stack. There'll be other children for you to play with-the workers' kids and the three nonborn fosterlings that Ian's taken in. They're older than you, but you'll manage. Every few weeks your Dad'll take you to Grampian Town or Muckle Skerry for a wee bit of excitement while he gets supplies, and I'll egg in now and then and steal you both for a holiday in New Glasgow or in some other amusing place. As soon as you're a bit older you can learn to fly and tend the skyweeds."

Ken said, "Wow! I'd love that!" But I bet Dee would be tooscared to learn and toodumb besides.

"You must promise me not to fash your Dad by moping or getting homesick for big-city Earthside ways," the writer warned them. "He won't take kindly to that sort of ha.s.sle." He's got troubles enough keeping the farm from going under and fending off Thrawn Janet ...

"I understand," Ken said.

"Me, too," Dee added quietly. "I'm very mature for five."

"We're in luck," Kyle told them, as they all boarded the egg. It was a sporty white Porsche, nearly new, with stubby heat-dissipation fins. Dee overheard Gran Masha thinking: How in the world can he afford it? Or has he found a way to make Rebellion pay?

When the writer took off his cap, he revealed a polished dome of bare freckled scalp protruding from an encircling tangle of gray. Dee stared at the unusual disfigurement, fascinated. She had seen pictures of bald men, of course; Shakespeare was bald! But a simple genetic engineering procedure developed over forty years earlier had all but abolished male pattern baldness on Earth. Why hadn't Grandad grown new hair?

"We'll have decent weather for sightseeing as we fly across Clyde and also at northern BB around the farm," Kyle said. "In between's rather a filthy mess with one storm after another, but we'll fly high above them until we put down for lunch on Strathbogie. I'll do a little travelogue in the clear spots and you bairns can decide for yourselves whether or not Caledonia's a barbarian backwater as your lovely Grannie says. Of course she's never been here so she might possibly be wrong."

"H'mph," snorted the professor. She had the rear banquette of the egg to herself while the children sat on either side of their grandfather in front.

Hazy sunshine had turned the Caledonian sky the color of skim milk. Except for the colorful foliage, the environs of Wester Killiecrankie did not seem particularly exotic when seen from the air. The cl.u.s.ters of warehouses, offices, and industrial buildings near the s.p.a.ceport did not look much different from those in the commercial parts of Edinburgh, while the houses and apartments resembled those of the Scottish metro hinterlands. Many dwellings were built of handsome white-painted stone and the majority stood in the midst of s.p.a.cious gardens or fronted onto landscaped commons. As the egg followed an urban Vee-route northward along the coast the children saw a golf course, a big gla.s.s-roofed shopping mall, and business parks adorned with plantings and tiny lakes.

"Are all the cities on Caledonia as pretty as this?" Ken asked.

"Hardly," said the writer with a wry grin. "The Wester Killiecrankie Starport's quite new, only twenty years old or so, and it was carefully planned to be a showplace for arriving visitors, with quakeproof buildings and all ... We do get the occasional temblor now and then! The older settlements like my own hometown of New Glasgow have some run-down parts that need spiffying up-and some of the mining towns are ugly as sin. But by and large, we Callies have kept the planet tidy."

"Is that what the citizens call themselves-Callies?" Ken asked.

"That's right. And in the Gaelic 'caladh' means 'a safe haven,' so we often call the planet Callie, too."

"The steep hills with the patches of different colored trees look like they're wrapped in great big tartans," Dee said softly.

"Right you are, la.s.s." Kyle gave her an approving nod. "Back in the beginning, after the Great Intervention, the Simbiari Proctors were setting up the first batch of ethnic worlds, and the Scots being an especially dynamic group had their pick of three or four that were all surveyed and had reasonably high human compatibility. This planet won hands down, even though it's a wee bit rugged and shy of dry land, because of the plaidie look of its forests and the fine crags and waterfalls and louring mountains."

"Sheer romanticism," huffed Gran Masha. But Grandad only laughed.

Once they were out of the controlled airs.p.a.ce around the city, the writer began to show off his piloting ability, free-flying the powerful Porsche along the Clyde coast at barely subsonic speed so that they could admire the dramatic fringe of steep, tusklike islands north of the starport. With nonchalant skill he zigzagged among the towering skerries at a perilously low alt.i.tude with the sigma off. Their wind-of-pa.s.sage made an eerie howl, Ken shrieked with excitement, and Dee used her redaction to keep from becoming ill. Gran Masha ignored the aerobatics while she read an academic journal.

Then Kyle turned inland and ascended into a mid-alt.i.tude transcontinental Vee-route, relinquishing control of the rhocraft to the computerized traffic system. There were only moderate numbers of other vehicles moving with them in the arterial airway-nothing approaching the congestion of central Scotland, where the skies always seemed circus-bright with endless streams of colored flying eggs on hundreds of intermeshing programmed vectors.

Traveling now at nearly 2000 kph they traversed Clyde's interior Lothian Range, a wilderness of jagged black-and-red peaks that comprised the remnants of extinct volcanoes. The highest of them had glaciers on their northern slopes even though the continent was near the planetary equator. Fast-flowing rivers, gleaming like twisted platinum threads, carved out precipitous valleys heavily forested with bronze-colored, bluish-green, and scarlet trees. Nestled amongst the high ridges were chains of lakes, often bordered with vivid golden patches of vegetation that the writer called "fearsome bottomless peat bogs." Very few roads traversed the highlands, and the settlements there were small and widely separated. Kyle kept up a running commentary, telling the children the names of the geographical features below and making them laugh by describing adventures of the first intrepid settlers, who had had to contend with "fierce skelly-eyed native beasties," tsunamis, volcanoes, and now and then certain peculiar eruptions called diatremes.

"But things are fairly calm nowadays except for the occasional ground-rumble," he rea.s.sured them. "Sixth-degree ecological modification lets us grow quite a few Earth crops, and we also have wholesome local veggies thanks to genetic engineering. The most enthusiastic of the hostile critters have been herded off to preserves in uninhabited regions, and the seismic shivers we can't nip in the bud are mostly predictable well in advance so that they don't endanger people."

East of the Lothians the terrain was rolling and more congenial to civilization, obviously longer-settled with larger towns, extensive agricultural areas, and spectacular stretches of rainbow-hued deciduous woodland. The planetary capital of New Glasgow was situated on a great arm of the sea, predictably named the Firth of Clyde; but a small patch of storm clouds unfortunately hid most of the city from view as they pa.s.sed to the south of the estuary. The writer did point out the verdigris-copper dome of the Caledonian a.s.sembly, Dirigent House, where intrepid old Graeme Hamilton worked to keep his planet of hardheaded Scots toeing the Milieu line, and the University of New Glasgow, a cl.u.s.ter of white stratotowers in the midst of a multicolored campus.

The fertile lowlands along the firth sh.o.r.es were parceled into neatly delineated farms. Some crops were conventionally green, while others were an exotic purple, pale pink, and even orange.

"Full of beta-carotene, the bloinigean-garaidh," Kyle remarked about the latter. "Very good for a body. We eat the plant like spinach-in salads or cooked with baconfish."

"Ick!" Ken grimaced. "I hope there's Earth food here, too. We had some really foul swill for brekkers. Poached eggs with brown yolks, kippers with the heads still on so you could see the fishies' ugly little teeth and dead white eyes-and the milk was yellow!"

"That's because of harmless pigments in the local silage our cows eat," Kyle said, chuckling. "You'll get used to it, laddie." Or else.

"The food tasted very good," Dee said quickly. "I just wish I could have had porridge."

"They'll have that at the farm, la.s.s. Oats are one Earthside crop that does very well on Caledonia. And barley, too, G.o.d-be-thankit." Or there'd be no lovely malt and I'd die from having to quench my thirst with naught but beer.

To the children's astonishment, Gran spoke up sharply from the backseat in fluent Gaelic. " "S an t-ol a chuir an dunach ort!"

Grandad shot back a reply in the same language. "Mo nuar! 'S e do bhoidhchead a le?n mi."

Then the two of them started a fine argle-bargle back and forth that left Ken utterly mystified; but Dee made the translation with ease, eavesdropping on the exchange while pretending to study the ma.s.ses of islands that clogged the mouth of the firth. Gran Masha had scolded Grandad for drinking, and he had said she was so beautiful it made him sick.

"Save your honeyed flattery," Masha told her husband in Gaelic. "Both of us know you're only interested in embalming your brain in alcohol and cooking up f.e.c.kless conspiracies with your drunken friends. Your thoughts betray you as always."

"I'm happy you remember the mother tongue I taught you," Kyle retorted. "But I'll thank you to stop reading my poor leaking mind and putting your own cruel interpretation on what's in there. I do what I have to do and do it quite well, thank you."

"But you don't! All you write now are political diatribes against the Milieu. You haven't done a decent piece of fiction for years, and what a pitiful waste of talent it is. You were never a great literary light, but at least you were competent and amusing. Fit for better things than trying to teach creative writing to adolescents and fomenting sedition in your spare time to keep from being bored to death."

"Abab, you gorgeous hag! I've had a bellyful of your b.i.t.c.hing. How much more must you shame me before the children?"

"The little girl knows only a few words of the Gaelic, the boy next to nothing. And the shame is your own if you're still a slave to the drink and still talking treason."

"If I do tip off a mutchkin from time to time it's you who've driven me to it, Mary my jewel. As for the treason, remember what the Poet said: 'Freedom and whisky gang thegither!' You were once sympathetic enough toward the Rebel cause yourself-a worthy daughter to your learned and valiant mother. You're the one gone astray, lovely creature, not I."

"Don't talk nonsense."

"Is it nonsense that you still care for me?"

"Nar leigeadh Dia!"

"Oh, aye! Then tell me why you're here with your hair down and gold rings in your ears and perfume on, dressed to the teeth in that scandalous suit? As if you didn't know what the sight of you, bonny as the buds of May, would do to me! Ah, Mary, Mary, all that's needed for my salvation is you, best-beloved, warming my bed and charging my loins and lashing me to creative frenzy again with your luscious forked tongue. And you're young! Young!"

"And you're a pathetic, sodden, baldpated wreck of a bramaire and I loathe you."

"Do you! One part of me's still as youthful as ever, and eager and ready to take you to the seventh heaven and beyond. You can't have forgotten! As for the rest of my battered carca.s.s ... it could be cobbled back together, given proper incentive. I'd swan-dive into the vat of rebirth in a trice if I knew you'd be waiting for me when I crawled out. Waiting and ready to help me fight for humanity's freedom from the exotic seducers."

"It's too late, Kyle. Not only for you and me, but for your callow seditious schemes as well. The vast majority of metas and nonoperants on Earth believe that-"

"Earth!" He let loose a bark of rough laughter. "An old, tired world blinded and led astray by the mighty Galactic Milieu! The generous Milieu! The tyrannical Milieu! But you're not on Earth anymore, woman. Out here among the far stars is a new kind of humanity-swelled-heads and deadheads working together to build worlds that we'll do with as we please."

"Kyle-"

"Tosd! We've havered enough in the Gaelic. The children are getting restless."

"Oh, no! You don't go fobbing me off quite yet. Is Ian involved in this d.a.m.ned conspiracy with you?"

"He's my true and firstborn son. Not like the three bread-and-milk operant brats you turned against me, sgoinneil! And if you think you can change his mind-"

"I may try just that."

"Aha! So you are thinking of staying here. I might have known you were up to miching mallecho! But I'll remind you, my lovely darling, that Rebellion is quite legal these days."

"For now," Masha said sweetly. "Just wait until the next session of the Concilium."

"And what's that supposed to mean, Madam Magnate?"

"Burraidh!" she snapped. "Na lean orm na's faide!"

And Dee knew that the fascinating and baffling conversation in Gaelic had come to an end, for Gran Masha had called Grandad a b.u.mbling fool and told him not to bother her anymore.

They left Clyde behind and ascended to 20 kilometers alt.i.tude so that they could fly at top speed above the violent weather of the northeastern sea. Ken engaged his grandfather in conversation about the history of the colony, but Dee pretended to sleep while she consulted the angel.

Is it true, she asked apprehensively, that Daddy wishes we hadn't come?

She saw an unmoving silhouette deep within her mind. Behind it the imprisoned lights inside the neatly stacked imaginary boxes seemed to flare in mockery at the foolish question to which she already knew the answer.

Her mind cried out to him: I didn't want to eavesdrop on Grandad's thoughts. Why don't you help me so I don't have to listen to bad things that make me sad and afraid? Now I know that Daddy doesn't want me. And Grannie is worried about us living here, and still thinks I might be a head. Even Kenny is thinking awful thoughts about me. I hate being able to read minds. I don't want this power. It's awful! Please take it back. Please!

The angel was silent. The boxes glowed, three of them open, including the big new violet one, and all the rest shut.

Angel, I want Daddy to love me! Tell me how to do that if you can't do anything else.

For a long time there was no response. The angel was entirely wrapped in his wings, hidden as completely as a cob of maize within its shuck. Finally his mind-voice bespoke her reluctantly.

You will have to be the kind of child Ian Macdonald finds lovable: quiet, obedient, uncomplaining, useful. And you must give no hint of your operant metafunctions nor even of the latent ones, for they will frighten your father.

Frighten? ... But Daddy is a grownup man! The powers scare me, but- Grownups can also be frightened by them. And it is impossible to love what you fear.

At least help me keep the closed boxes shut up tight forever!

Someday you will need what is inside them, and so will many other people. Not for a long time yet, but someday. And when all the powers within the other boxes are freed you will have to become a grownup yourself and leave Caledonia and learn how to do your life's work.

No! I'll stay here forever! I will I will and I HATE my rotten powers and I'll always keep them hidden so that- Enough. Be still, little Illusio. Rest behind your blue rampart. Sleep in the peace of your rosy pool, I don't want to! I won't! You're not my good old angel at all. You're HIM and I don't like you anymore!

Sleep. Forget ...

She felt herself sinking, sinking into warm calmness walled round with impenetrable safety. She forgot the angel, forgot the man called Ewen Cameron who seemed to speak through her mind's guardian, forgot all the things that had vexed and worried her.

Dee did not awake until hours later, when Grandad landed the egg for lunch on the continent of Strathbogie.

They came down in the crowded public egg park of a compact town situated on a bay between two curved promontories. A number of large container ships were moored in the deeper water and many smaller craft-commercial fishing vessels, motor sailors, and a few private yachts and runabouts-were tied up at the docks or moving slowly about the harbor.

It was raining lightly. Torn swatches of cloud straggled down the slopes of immensely tall mountains that seemed to shoot up almost vertically a kilometer or two inland. The close-packed houses and shops were painted in bright colors, as if to liven the somberness of the landscape. Many of them had fences of whitened stone, and coleus trees and cheerful flowers had been planted in the dooryards and on the median strip dividing the busy high street.

"This is Portknockie," Kyle said. "We're still nine thousand kloms southwest of Beinn Bhiorach continent, and there's naught but a few strings of volcanoes between Strathbogie and there." He took Gran Masha's arm in spite of her disapproving look and led the way into the bustling town center. The heads of both men and women turned to stare at the striking female visitor in her haute couture.

"Hee hee hee!" The writer strutted along the sidewalk, smirking with pride. "The ladies will be dashing for their sewing modules and the men cranking the shank over the glamorous sight of you, Maire."

She shook off his arm and drew the cape closer about her without saying a word. Kyle was unfazed.

"There's a seafood house on the quay that I fancy. Let's have a leg-stretch and a good lunch, since it'll be six hours or more before we put down at the farm. The d.a.m.ned express Vee-route between here and BB is out of service, and it's unsafe to fly free in stormy weather. You have to expect that kind of thing, the farther away from Clyde and Argyll you travel. The other ten inhabited Callie lands fall pretty much into the wild frontier category."

The groundcars on the streets of Portknockie were mostly pickup trucks, Ford Broncos, Toyota Land Cruisers, and other st.u.r.dy vehicles suited to primitive roads. In spite of the drizzle, large numbers of people were going about their business on foot, not bothering with umbrellas or minisig shelters. Their dress was more extravagant than that of the Clyde folk. Both men and women were as likely to wear kilts or gaudy trews as ordinary street clothes, and some had tartan plaids wrapped around their shoulders, fixed in place with huge Celtic brooches studded with amethysts, cairngorms, and striking colored pearls that Dee exclaimed over.

"You probably know that pearls are one of Caledonia's princ.i.p.al exports," the writer said to the children. "Portknockie is one of the pearling centers of this continent, and there are gold and silver mines in the outback as well. Jewelry-making is a big cottage industry here. Would you like to stop at one of the shops and look over the whigmaleeries? I'd been meaning to get you some welcome-to-Caledonia prezzies, and a body gets better value for the money here at the source than at the big stores in New Glasgow or the pokey little places at the Muckle Skerry Mall on Beinn Bhiorach." He turned to the professor. "What d'ye say, Maire a gaolach? There's a fine shop right here."

They had paused at a window display that seemed to Dee like the open mouth of a pirate's treasure cave. Strings of richly glowing pearls in every color imaginable hung from perches and gleamed in overflowing baskets. There were pearl bracelets, pearl earrings, armlets, pins, hair ornaments, and rings designed for humankind, while fantastic collars of woven seed pearls, wedding diadems with gems the size of cherries, and enormous pearl pendants larger than hen's eggs were intended to lure Poltroyan tourists.

"How kind," said the professor, not bothering to hide her lack of enthusiasm. "But I think not. Perhaps you can find something less extravagant for the children later. These things are much too ornate and expensive."

Kyle shrugged and they continued on to the restaurant. It was an unimpressive-looking place that stood on rickety pilings in the tidewaters, but the food turned out to be delicious and very Earthlike. Gran Masha had a bowl of hog-clam chowder and hot soda bread, while Grandad had a platter of local oysterish creatures that he called eisire and gobbled raw, winking at Gran all the while and sending very odd thoughts at her. Ken and Dee had something called portan au gratin on toasted m.u.f.fins, which tasted just like the best Dungeness crab with melted Cheddar cheese. The milk served to the children was still primrose yellow, but the pot of tea that the writer insisted Masha share with him was authentic Twinings Darjeeling with slices of real Brazilian lemon.

The professor shook her head disapprovingly at the extravagance. "Twenty dollars for a pot of real tea! The menu has Caledonian mint for a tenth of the price."

"Or two wee drams of the local deoch laidir for half." Kyle's eyes were twinkling and Dee knew he was talking about whisky. "But I remembered how you love tea, and you won't get it at Ian's. He's dead set against letting Thrawn Janet serve expensive food and drink-not that Miss Vinegar-Moosh would have any notion how to cook gourmet goodies if you gave 'em to her. Or other food, for that matter. Only Scots cook I've ever known who always ruins the scones." He sighed. "But she's a stone whiz with computers and keeps the hired hands and the nonborns toeing the mark." If only she'd face up to the fact that Ian'll never fancy her for sweet houghmagandie!

The image that accompanied Grandad's appended thought was so extraordinary that Dee nearly gasped aloud. Her grandmother caught the involuntary remnant of farspeech, too, and another sharp argument in Gaelic commenced. But Dee had had enough of grownup squabbling and overhearing nasty secrets. She shut both the spoken words and the thoughts of the adults out so she could enjoy her food in peace.

Dee had come to the conclusion that Gran Masha was not nearly so hostile toward Grandad as she pretended to be. Why then did she continue arguing and pretending to be stuck up? It was baffling.

Toward the end of the meal the writer excused himself, saying he had an errand to do and would meet them back at the egg. He was gone before the professor could object. Gran seemed to have some idea of what he was up to, however, because her face tightened into a frown, and on the way back to the parking lot she let slip into the aether a surprising string of powerful subvocal profanity that Dee could not help perceiving. The words were new and interesting.

The reason for Gran's ill temper became evident when Kyle reappeared at the egg carrying a string bag with three parcels in it. Grinning like a wolf, he thrust one package into Dee's hands, one into Ken's, and tossed the third carelessly into the backseat with the professor. Then he lit up the egg and sent them rocketing into the sky.

The children exchanged glances and opened the presents. Dee's was a delicate gold chain with four iridescent peach-colored pearls s.p.a.ced on it Ken received a little silver model of a Strathbogie decapod sea monster. Its claw-studded tentacles writhed realistically and its six eyes were black pearls.

"Thank you, Grandad!" the children chorused happily.

Gran Masha said nothing and her gift was left unopened. But she used her deepsight to inspect it, and Dee suddenly heard a farspoken exclamation: Kyle you fool you obstinateb.l.o.o.d.y fool! And for the briefest instant the girl beheld what her grandmother's ultrasense perceived-a curiously wrought necklet shaped like the letter C. It was formed from thick twisted strands of gold and at the ends were two dragon heads facing each other. The eyes of the beasts were glowing crimson pearls and their teeth held two diamonds.

During most of the remainder of the journey, their egg flew at an alt.i.tude of ten kilometers in a lonely zone of sky having an undulating floor of unbroken rain clouds and a ceiling of very thin cirrus. From time to time they saw strange atmospheric phenomena that Kyle said were common on Caledonia: vast elliptical rainbows suspended above the cloud deck, brightly colored haloes and arcs drawn in the ice-haze that veiled the sun, and patches of luminescence near the solar disk called parhelia or sun dogs, which sometimes appeared to jump magically about the sky.

Toward the end of the afternoon, when both Ken and Gran Masha were napping in the backseat and Dee was thoroughly tired of watching game shows, cartoons, and news broadcasts on the egg's Tri-D, the sea of cloud below began to break apart, revealing tantalizing glimpses of a deep-green sea and occasional strings of islands clothed in spa.r.s.e vegetation. Then a formation of towering clouds reaching all the way to the cirrus ceiling appeared ahead of them and to the left. In the midst of the cloud-ma.s.s was a billowing shape that appeared darker and somehow more solid than an ordinary thunderhead. As the course of the egg brought them even with the heaped clouds the sinking sun, which up until then had resembled a whitish paper cutout or a dazzling ball made fuzzy by ice crystals, was completely blotted out. When the sun reappeared it had turned an amazing azure blue color.

"Oh, Grandad! Look!" Dee exclaimed.

"It's the dust from that erupting volcano floating in the stratosphere that does it," he said. "The mountain's name is Stormking. We're flying around sixty kloms east of the Reekie Isles, an active chain south of Beinn Bhiorach. A major volcanic zone extends northward all along the western rim of the continent. There's even a small belcher called Ben Fizgig a hundred kloms or so from your Dad's farm, in the Goblin Archipelago."

"Is it dangerous?"