RAEFF (Jim Able: Offworld Book 6) by Ed Charlton (best books to read fiction .TXT) 📗

the oar. And this...,” he moved his index finger, “is all the different oars from all the different fathers.”

The soldiers thought his account hilarious.

“Oh, I get it,” said Jim. “All very phallic.”

The captain elbowed Jim in the ribs and laughed and coughed at the same time.

“So you see,” he said when he had recovered enough, “you not only insult the mother but all the litters too. It is as bad as you can get—insulting the whole clan.”

“Sure,” said Jim. “I understand.”

The soldiers began to banter with each other about something Jim could not follow. Tamric’s voice interrupted them.

“Tell me, how long are your generations?”

“What?” asked the soldier next to him. “What did you say, monkey?”

“How long are your generations? How many years do you live?”

“What a strange question! My first-father is fifteen; my second-father was twenty-five when he died.”

“Mine lived to be twenty-nine!” called one of the soldiers in front.

Tamric frowned and asked, “’Second-father’ is your first-father’s father?”

“Of course. Yes.” The soldier nodded.

“I see. Thank you. Less than thirty years...interesting.”

The soldier gave Tamric a sideways look and turned to talk to his comrades in the front.

Jim smiled, looked out the window, and breathed in the thick sweet Lak-weed smoke.

“What happened to your ship?” the captain asked Tamric.

“We came through the storm. I think we were hit by something. There was a hole in the wing.”

The soldier between them laughed, “Probably a fireball. Stupid to fly through a storm. We never do it.”

“What’s a fireball?” Tamric asked in return.

“I don’t know what they’re made of, but they form in storms and blow up if they hit anything mechanical.”

“They’re attracted to magnetic fields,” one of the others said.

“And they happen a lot?”

“Oh, sure. We’d never fly in a storm!”

***

They reached a ramp that led them up onto the main road. While they waited for a convoy to pass, Jim noticed the external plates on nearly every vehicle. They were crude, bare metal sheets placed in a kind of shield down each side.

“What are the plates for?”

“What plates?” asked the captain with a frown.

“Down the sides of your vehicles—metal plates.”

“Oh, crash sheets.”

“Crash sheets?”

The captain nodded quickly. “When you have crashes, to stop the vehicles getting damaged. The sheets get mangled, but the shock is absorbed...most of the time.”

“You guys crash a lot?”

“All the time. Don’t you?”

“Well, no, not really.”

“We do. It’s no big deal.”

He took a deep lungful of smoke and turned to talk quietly in his own language to the other soldier. Jim looked over at Tamric. The monk was blinking and tearing in the smoke. He did not look happy. Jim, however, felt great. He had a growing sense of extreme well-being.

Within a few minutes they came to what Jim could see was one of the access points that Tamric had identified. It was a complex intersection of roads coming down from the north, all ending at this main highway. There was a phenomenal amount of traffic. The convoy they were following turned off at the first road. Another joined behind them at the second.

Jim squinted out the window but could see nothing that looked like water. Tamric saw him staring and understood that they should be in a position to see the lake.

“I thought there was a lake around here?” he said to no one in particular.

The boisterous chatter of their guards stopped. They all looked to their captain for their lead. He smiled and said quietly, “That’s where you’re going...to the lake.”

“I’m sorry,” said Tamric innocently. “I don’t understand.”

“You will. There is no lake. Our base is under camouflage. Look up, monkey. Look up!”

Tamric pressed his face against the glass to see upward.

The support pylons along the road continued upward to a height of eighty or a hundred feet. Suspended from their tops was a canopy. The underside seemed to be the same dull gray as the sky. Now that they were on the main road, and now that he knew what he was looking at, Tamric could see the canopy stretching on into the distance.

“That’s amazing!” he said. “How does it let so much light through?”

The captain shrugged. “How would I know? But it covers our base from prying eyes.”

With that, he gave them both a suspicious look.

“May I see?” asked Jim.

Again the captain shrugged. Jim stood and steadied himself against the bench and made his way to the seat in front of Tamric.

He stared for a while into the distance but could not work out any details. There were two lanes in each direction on the highway, and many vehicles were overtaking theirs. As they came near the next knot of intersections, the traffic got heavier and slowed. Several times the crash sheets brushed against those of another vehicle. Shock absorbers diminished the impact but not the noise.

“What’s this I hear about a Gul-Raeff? Who is he?” Jim asked.

“What?” asked the captain in surprise.

“The Gul-Raeff, who is he?”

“He’s our Raeff. The Muthlec-Raeff. Won the war, so he’s Gul-Raeff now. He’ll lead us all on to greater victories.”

“He’s a strong character, I guess.”

“Sure,” said the Gul. “You want to learn some things not to say? Try ‘he’s a calaba.’”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a sort of fruit—no, a nut. You pick it and...,” he held up his paw and shook it to and fro, “the nut rattles inside.”

“His brains?”

The captain nodded and said, “You’re smart for a monkey. You got it!”

“But,” said Jim, frowning, “how did he get to be in charge?”

It was the captain’s turn to frown. “Who else would you elect?”

“If his brains are loose, how can you trust him?”

The Gul seemed genuinely concerned that Jim did not understand. “No, no! It’s not like he’s so much a calaba that he thinks he’s a fish. We turn those out into the desert. No, he’s a Raeff, a prophet! They see things differently.”

“Differently?”

“He has the spark, the insight. He’ll take chances, act on things that no one else sees.”

“Your leadership isn’t based on who has the money?”

“Stench no!” He waved a paw in front of his nose. “We elevate the