CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
We woke up early, gathered our gear, and were out of the Ruth about half an hour before sunrise. Badgeman Zilor wasn’t at his usual post, but the same unmarked car was there with two different badgemen inside holding silent vigil. Whatever Zilor had told Kreega about possible Patth activity in the port, she’d apparently taken it seriously.
The mountain road was even more nerve-racking in the dark, and the rising sun blazing into the windshield just made it worse. But finally, we were there.
“Okay,” I said as we climbed up the ladder to the platform. “Dealer’s choice. You want to go directly to the fenced-off area, or look around a little first?”
“Look around where?” Selene asked, doing a slow three-sixty as she sampled the air.
“I thought we might check out the area we spotted yesterday,” I said, pointing along the footbridge angling off to a different part of the mountains. “I’m curious as to whether there’s another Loporr colony at the end or if it’s something else of interest.”
“Do we really care?”
“I think we do,” I said. “Remember that the only reason we think the portal is downslope is that the Patth have fenced off that area. They could be wrong.”
“Or deliberately trying to decoy us,” Selene said thoughtfully. “Though I don’t remember seeing any spot at the end of the other bridge where even one of the smaller Gemini portals would fit.”
“Neither did I,” I said. “But the bridge could end in a trail or ravine that leads farther in.”
“Possibly to a field or gap that would hold a portal,” Selene said. “Yes, that could be the case. Shall we try that one first?”
“Sounds good to me.” I took hold of the two rope handrails, stepped out onto the bridge—
And dropped like a rock as the wooden slats disintegrated under my weight and the right-hand handhold snapped.
“Gregory!” Selene gasped, grabbing my backpack’s strap as I dangled over the five-meter drop. So far the left-hand rope was holding, but I didn’t expect that to last much longer.
Fortunately, Selene was already on it. Still gripping my backpack, she swiveled my body toward her, pivoting me around my lone handhold until my right could reach the edge of the platform. The rough wood provided only marginal purchase, but adding a second anchor point eased some of the strain off the rope.
But not enough. Even as I tried to figure out my next move, the rope snapped, and an instant later I found myself once again hanging by one hand and Selene’s grip.
And with the platform offering no options, and Selene’s strength diminishing toward its own breaking point, there was only one thing left to try.
“Let go,” I ordered, stretching out my left hand and getting a grip on a section of the right-hand rope lattice that had been holding up the slats, the lattice that from my new viewpoint I could see was as frayed and untrustworthy as the slats themselves. “Let go now.”
With a worried and frustrated hiss, Selene did so. As my backpack came free, I let go of my right-hand grip on the platform and grabbed the section of lattice I was already holding onto with my left.
And as my full weight came onto the rope, the lattice began to unravel.
Unravel, but not disintegrate. As my brief close-up of the interwoven ropes had hinted, the mesh came apart in sections, cross-straps breaking in sequence while the longer side rope I was holding mostly together. Each cross-strap held a fraction of a second after the one beside it broke, as did the one after that and the one after that, turning an otherwise catastrophic fall into a marginally but adequately zipline-style controlled descent.
Five seconds later I was on the ground, landing harder than a civilized step off a ladder but way more lightly than an unhindered five-meter drop would have cost me. All in all, I could definitely call this one a win.
“Gregory?”
I looked up to find Selene looking anxiously down at me. “I’m all right,” I assured her, taking another look at the underside of the footbridge. “Wish I could say the same about the bridge.”
The thing was a mess. Without the strain of my weight, the cascading unraveling had stopped, but the first six meters of the bridge were a complete shambles. The lattice was gone, the slats broken by the stress or hanging intact but limply onto one of the side ropes. The far lengthwise rope was still more or less solid, but at this point I guessed even a slightly overweight squirrel would hesitate to try his luck with it.
“I assume we’re not going that direction anymore?” Selene suggested, a hint of relieved humor replacing the brief surge of tension and fear.
“I think that’s a safe assumption,” I agreed in kind as I returned to the ladder and started up. “Let’s hope the other bridges have weathered the years a little better.”
“Yes,” she said. “Let’s.”
She was sniffing carefully along the single rope still connecting the demolished footbridge to the platform when I reached her. “Does it smell as rotten as it looks?” I asked.
“The broken ones are very distinctive,” she said. “Interestingly, the intact boards don’t reveal the decay as strongly as the ropes do. The outer shell must contain most of the scent.”
“But you can tell the difference between those and the good ones, right?”
“I think so,” she said. “So far, the bridge we need seems safe.”
So far. Meaning that somewhere along the line we might unexpectedly find ourselves dangling over rocks, streams, or dense forest. And as Braun had pointed out so elegantly, there was nothing down there but predators and scavengers.
And both our phones were back on the Ruth.
But the only other options were to tackle the Patth encampment head-on or go back to the admiral and tell him we’d failed to find his precious portal. We’d have better odds with the predators and scavengers. “I don’t know why the Icari even bothered with these things,” I groused as I walked to the edge of the platform. “Ridiculous concept, ridiculous design. Were these clients of theirs too stupid to fly aircars or something?”
“They couldn’t use aircars up at the Loporr colony,” Selene said, her pupils looking puzzled. “There’s nowhere for them to land.”
“What about that big grassy area?” I asked. “The place where they all got together for lunch.”
“The rock there is frangible,” she said. “I saw that when we went through. Land too much weight there or run thrusters too close and the whole structure will collapse down the mountain.”
“Really,” I said, trying to pull up the memories of our hurried passage through the area. But it was no use. Focused on the Loporri and getting us out of there, I hadn’t picked up on any of the physical parameters she’d clearly been paying attention to. “And I suppose the cavern openings onto the ledges or the sheer cliffs where their bird-trap holes are have too much wind for anyone to safely hover?”
“Probably,” Selene said. “Actually, I think the footbridges are an excellent solution.”
“Provided you properly maintain the things,” I growled. Bracing myself, I got a grip on the side ropes and stepped gingerly onto the first slat. It didn’t offer even a protesting creak in return. At least the Icari had kept some of their squirrel trails in working order. “Let’s go.”
* * *
Estimating distances when driving on twisty mountain roads was always tricky, and for some reason Seven Strands didn’t show up on the official Bilswift maps. But our best estimate had put the eastern edge of the Patth fence to be about three kilometers away, with the farther, western edge another eight.
A minimum of three kilometers on a rickety, swaying collection of old rope and old boards. Just as a nice bonus, the footbridge was currently on a ten-degree downward slope, which meant the return walk would be the same ten degrees upward.
More than once the grumpy thought occurred to me that people who had the genius to create Icarus portals surely could have figured out something easier to use.
The first kilometer was the hardest. I was fully and painfully aware of my every step, watched the slight wind-driven swaying of the bridge with trepidation, and winced at each squeak from whichever board I was currently standing on. But the bridge held, and the occasional creaking remained at an almost pleasant cricket level, and after about twenty minutes I finally started to relax.
Of course, as my father used to say, Sometimes the only reason the universe eases up its choke hold on you is so that it can get a better grip. But for once even his cynicism was overly pessimistic. The second kilometer took us down past the treetops into the forest, where the builders had set up the same sideways tethering system we’d seen on our trip to the Loporr colony. But aside from a new set of sounds as guy lines stretched or contracted, and less overall swaying of the bridge, everything remained the same.
We were nearing our estimate of three kilometers when I spotted the jeep trail we’d driven from the main road through the trees to the river.
“We’re here,” I muttered a warning over my shoulder. “Time to make like little field mice.”
A minute later, we were over the Patth fence.
I strained my ears as we continued on, a fairly useless effort as the Patth were hardly likely to have set the fence to blare a loud and obvious alarm centered at the source of the intrusion. We kept going, moving as quietly as possible, until the fence and the jeep trail were lost to view behind us. “Anything?” I murmured again to Selene.
“There are definitely Patth somewhere in here,” she said, as if we needed that confirmation. “Not nearby, though. At least a couple of kilometers farther west. And . . . ”
“And?” I prompted.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “I need to get closer.”
“Okay,” I said, touching the butt of my plasmic just to reassure myself that it was still there. “I guess we get you closer, then.”
We’d walked another fifteen minutes when she suddenly moved up right behind me. “It’s here,” she breathed. “I can smell it. It’s here.”
I stopped and looked around, an eerie sense trickling through me. So Graym-Barker’s information had been right. There was indeed a portal hidden in the wilds of Alainn.
Distantly, I wondered if I’d ever get used to close encounters with these things. Probably I wouldn’t. “Where?”
“I think it’s straight ahead.”
Again, exactly as our theory predicted. The Icari had craved silver-silk as much as the Spiral’s current crop of rich and powerful, and had spent one of their precious portals in order to get access to it. “Okay,” I said, picking up my pace.
And then, quite suddenly, we were there.
Or at least we were somewhere. The bridge came to an end, not at another platform like at Seven Strands, but fastened to a thick-trunked tree. “End of the line,” I announced, looking down the trunk. It was a good seven meters to the ground, but the tree had a branch pattern that looked reasonably straightforward to climb. “I’ll go first,” I added, ducking under the rope handrail and getting a grip on the two nearest branches. “Wait until I’m on the ground before you start.” Trying to simultaneously watch handholds and footholds, I started down.
The route had looked straightforward. It turned out to be not only straightforward but actually pretty easy. The bark on the branches was just rough enough to provide good traction for hands and feet, and both the horizontal and vertical spacing was nearly perfect for an average-sized human. Maybe the Icari engineers who designed these things hadn’t been completely incompetent.
I reached the bottom and made a short inspection tour of the immediate area, watching in particular for signs of predators. The area was patterned with thick tufts of tall grass—or possibly strangely built bushes—that could hide an average cat, but I didn’t see any movement that might suggest any of them was currently occupied. Other trees were surrounded by leafy bushes or saplings. It wouldn’t be a Sunday stroll, but the area looked reasonably passable.
Selene reached the ground and joined me. “Anything?” I asked.
“Patth, as I said before,” she said, sampling the air. “And portal metal. And something else. Something familiar, but it’s too faint for me to identify.”
“Well, when it gets closer you can take another shot at it,” I said. “In the meantime, let’s find the portal.”
“Yes.” She pointed to an empty space between two trees. “This way.”
* * *
Looking ahead from the footbridge, I hadn’t spotted any real break in the tree cover. It was therefore something of a shock when we passed around a wide bush and found ourselves at the edge of an actual, real-life clearing. “Whoa,” I said, stopping and looking around. “Where did this come from?”
“Not from logging,” Selene said, sniffing. “All of Bilswift’s logging operations are to the north and south of the city. You’d also need an air grappler to take anything out of here. Maybe it was a lightning strike that burned and sterilized the ground too much to support trees or other large plant life.”
“Yeah,” I said, my stomach tightening. “Or maybe it was cleared out by a crash-landing portal.”
“That can’t be,” Selene pointed out. “The Icari vanished thousands of years ago. How can the forest not have come back by now?”
“Maybe this one was in orbit like the Alpha portal and didn’t crash until more recently.” On the other hand, there was no sign of the widespread shock-wave damage that usually accompanied crashed space objects. “Or maybe portal metal is nastier to plant life than we know. Or at least this plant life.”
She shivered. “Yes,” she murmured. “Maybe. It’s this way.”
She set off across the clearing, sniffing as she went. I stayed at the tree line, not wanting my scent to interfere with her search, and took another look around. The short viny ground cover we’d seen during our hike seemed to be doing just fine, and there were occasional tufts of the tall cat-sanctuary grasses. But there weren’t any plants larger than that. Maybe Selene was right about the lightning strike, and the local flora was simply taking its time growing back.
“Gregory?”
She was standing halfway across the clearing beside one of the tall tufts, her back stiff. “You find it?” I asked, walking over to her.
“Yes,” she said, pointing to her feet. “Here.” A flicker of emotion crossed her pupils. “I know who it is, Gregory. The person I’m smelling.” She shifted her finger to point west. “It’s Huginn.”
My stomach instantly formed itself into a double knot. “Oh, hell,” I muttered, peering in that direction as if the short, wiry man might suddenly spring into view. Huginn was an Expediter, one of the cadre of elite, high-ranking operatives who served the Patth with the kind of training, skill, and devotion that would impress even an EarthGuard commando or Commonwealth special agent.
And the last time we’d encountered Huginn, he was attached to Sub-Director Nask.
In hindsight, of course Huginn would show up here. Nask himself was probably sitting in distant orbit aboard the Odinn, keeping long-distance watch over the team searching the Bilswift forest. “How close?”
“At least three kilometers away,” Selene said. “Probably more. There was a gust of wind—”
“Yes, yes, got it,” I cut her off, taking off my backpack and pulling out the collapsible shovel. “Let’s get this done before they get any closer.”
Given that Selene had smelled the stray molecules of metal that had managed to sift their way through the dirt told me the portal wasn’t buried too deeply. Sure enough, I’d dug down barely fifteen centimeters when I heard the unmistakable clink of metal on metal. I dug my way around to one side until I found the mark of one of the hatches, then cleared out the square meter of ground around it.
Finally, we were ready. “Here goes,” I said. I reached for the hatch control—
“Wait,” Selene said suddenly.
I frowned up at her. There was a fresh kaleidoscope of emotions flicking across her pupils. “Gregory, there’s something wrong,” she said. “Something . . . ”
I looked back at the portal. It looked like every other Icari portal I’d ever seen. Not that that was a huge list. “You mean like a booby trap?” I asked.
“No, it’s . . . ” She inhaled deeply. “You can open it. You can try.”
I frowned. I could try?
Sitting around wondering what she meant would get us nowhere. Carefully, ready to throw myself flat on the ground, I keyed the control.
For a few seconds nothing happened. Then, almost reluctantly, that section of metal unfastened itself from the surrounding hull and swung downward.
But instead of folding itself up and melding with the inner hull like portal hatches usually did, it just hung there.
For a long minute I stared at it. Then, with a sense of dread, I lowered my arm through the opening.
Both the receiver module and launch module of an Icari portal had artificial gravity fields, pointed radially outward from the center of each sphere toward their respective hulls. Reaching through the hatch I’d just opened should have immediately given that part of my arm a sense of gravitational pressure pushing back at me.
But there was nothing. No pressure at all. With my other hand I brushed some loose dirt into the opening and watched it drop freely into the darkness.
I looked up at Selene. “Selene?” I asked carefully.
She nodded, her pupils brimming with disbelief and misery. “Yes,” she whispered.
“It’s dead.”