Forge of Heaven

“Patience.” He was very long on that virtue, where mountains were concerned. Human beings were another matter. “I will have the boy back, Ian, and I shall have Drusus, and Auguste.”

“That seems likely,”Ian said, “but, Marak-omi, theondat seem to have assisted in the fight. And, it seems, they have slipped a maker into Procyon, with which they can contact him—and, through him, you—at will. They have entered the downworld system through this boy. Brazis counsels us all to be watchful, and patient.”

There was no answer to that situation. He was silent for a moment, simply trying to understand what was a very significant move. The ondatwould touch the world. A change. Another change in the world as it had been.

“This boy is under my husband’s protection,” Hati said angrily, in his meditative silence.

“And continues to be, Hati-omi. Theondat have always shown the greatest respect for your husband, above the rest of us. I am somewhat optimistic about this move. Theondat protected this boy.”

“It is worth seeing what will happen,” Marak said. He was disturbed, but not angry. The blood moved quicker in his veins. He was not accustomed to think beyond the sky. He might have to learn new thoughts, become adept in new horizons. “Where have they gotten this maker, Ian?”

“A very good question,”Ian said.

“Indeed,” Marak said.

“I have other news,”Ian said. “Your man Fashti broke camp when he heard you were coming up. He is proceeding down the ridge to intercept you.”

“Meziq?”

“They are carrying him, as I understand. And the tent, the essential poles, the tack, and considerable supplies. The going is very slow, and they are dragging most of it, but they are making progress.”

They were going home. And they could ride up the spine to meet the retreat, load up the beshti, and send a party back to collect what they had had to abandon.

“I can send a plane,”Ian said, “to meet you at the edge of the plateau.”

“You can send your plane to bring Meziq out,” Marak said. “If the weather settles. If you wish to take the trouble. If Meziq himself wishes it. He may not. We will tell you which.” He broke off the contact, determined to get under way now, the last climb up to the ridge, where the boys and a majority of their equipment would be a welcome sight.

A great deal of help Ian’s machines would be, bogged in mud or swept away by torrent in this shift in the weather. But he did not open that argument with Ian, not yet.

Had Luz, meanwhile, apologized for the situation her schism with Ian had created? He heard no hint of that from her.

Had the Ila admitted to her meddling in the heavens? He expected nothing at all from that quarter.

“Procyon will be back,” he said to Hati as they started their upward journey. “So will Auguste and Drusus. I shall have that clear with Brazis. For the meanwhile, we have Ian.”

Hati cast him a sidelong look in the gloom of morning. A lightning flash showed it clear, and a moment later thunder resounded across the pans.

“I shall have a talk with Luz when we get back,” Hati said.

“In moderation, wife.”

“Am I ever immoderate?”

A wise husband let that question pass unanswered. And in a moment more, Hati laughed.

The light grew as thunder migrated across the pans. And as they made the last climb to the ridge, a glance down and back showed a strange leaden sheen across the western part of the basin, a sheen that made the air above it thick with fog.

“Water,” Marak said. “Cold water.”

They had seen their new sea. It was coming, with a rapidity that made them glad they were getting off the ridge soon. If some weakness in the rock began to fountain water through the ridge they stood on, which by then would have become a dam holding the sea from the hollow Needle Gorge, it would be wise to make no long camps on the spine.

“Three days to reach safer ground,” he said. “And I think we should go there.”

15

TWO DAYS ANSWERING QUESTIONS, two days in which Procyon rested in a small hospital room with only the three robots for company; and then the two cleaner-bots strayed out when the meal cart arrived and failed to come back. They had disappeared into the ubiquitous cleaner slots, he hoped. He hoped he wasn’t involved in some Project notion of kidnapping the bots and taking them apart to see their circuitry. He still had flashes of dark, the illusion of smelling ammonia. He waked in sweats, with the sensation of a cool, spongy touch on his face.

He sat in front of the small room computer unit and played computer solitaire to keep from going crazy, while the remaining repair bot sat and watched him. He ate, he slept, he answered questions that popped onto the screen, and sometimes he heard one or the other of two competing taps fussing at him, trying to gain his attention. “Braziss,”one hissed, sending chills through his spine, and the other: “How are you doing, Procyon?”in a warm and maternal voice.

“I don’t know when I can see Brazis,” he answered the one. “I’m sorry.” And to the other voice, clearly a Project tap: “I’m doing all right, ma’am. No problems.”

He waited. He answered every detail he could remember, to occasional queries from the motherly voice. He didn’t ask about his sister, his family, or the other taps. He didn’t want to get any of them into more difficulty than they already had met on his account. Maybe that failure to ask was itself a problem, but if it was, it was his own problem, and he kept up that policy.

He slept again, and the repair bot was gone when he waked up. He worried about it. He never had named it: naming it had seemed to him to be a little crazy. But he had begun to think of it as a presence, and when it left him he felt strangely alone and depressed, at loose ends, even his endless solitaire games incapable of occupying his attention.

“Procyon,”a voice said. This time it wasn’t the woman he was used to. It was another one, younger, harsher. Authority.

“Yes, ma’am. I hear you.”

“The Chairman wants to see you.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The Chairmanwanted him. It was a high-level disposition, then, not a quiet disappearance into the hospital and the security system. He experienced a little surge of hope that he hadn’t gone invisible, that he might still have some useful function. The wild surmise, which had begun to fade in recent days, that Marak himself might have insisted on his surfacing.

“Procyon.”Brazis, this time. Procyon stopped, in the act of dressing.

“Yes, sir. I’m sorry. I’m hurrying.”

“No great hurry. To relieve your anxiety, I’m satisfied with your answers. Everything’s fine. Now get in here.”

“Yes,sir.” He had a pair of pants, the ones he’d arrived in, cleaned. The shirt wasn’t in great shape, and he didn’t have a coat. He put on his shoes. Idiotically, pathetically, he missed the damned robot, which ordinarily would be sitting there blinking at him.

He got up, tried the door, walked out into the corridor and ran into uniformed Project police, to his distress. He said nothing, just went with the two women into the hospital lift system and, through a side hall, over to the restricted lifts, headed for the Project offices.

“HOW’S THE DAUGHTER?” Brazis asked Reaux, through Jewel, who had taken up her post in the governor’s suite of offices. “I hear she did phone.”