A Rarefied View At Dawn by David Farland (ereader with android .TXT) 📗

The droid finished opening the gate, and timidly Bann stepped outside, following his mother. A pair of Valkyries led the way.

Almost immediately a shadow fell over them. Bann looked up as a pod of sky-whales slowly swam through the fog overhead, their wide wings undulating as they fed on micro-organisms in the sky.

Bann wondered what his father would look like. He'd never seen a man.

They walked down a trail, into the gloom, and soon strange pseudo-plants began to rise all around them. Violet-colored vines twined around each other madly, forming a canopy overhead. Bann could hear three vines straining, making cracking sounds, as they sought to pull down a larger tree. It suddenly shattered, and light opened in the canopy. But almost as soon as it opened, the competing vines and trees leaned in to claim the meager sunlight.

Enormous beasts could be heard in the shadows, so the Valkyries powered up their rifles and slowed.

"You'll have a decision to make soon," Tuyallah told Bann. "I want you to think hard."

What decision, he was going to say. But suddenly they turned a corner, and reached a small wooden fortress made of sharpened poles. It wasn't large, perhaps only big enough to hold a couple of hundred sisters. A creature sat atop the wall, bearing a magnetic rifle. Bann had seen pictures of apes and chimps, hairy creatures that once lived in trees on Earth. This looked like one. Long hair covered its face, and it wore a tunic that left its chest, arms, and legs exposed. Hair covered them, too--not as thick as a goat's hair, but the creature was obviously more animal than human.

"Ohhh," it crooned in a deep voice, eyes going wide at the sight of Bann and Tuyallah. "Now there's a likely pair of screamers. Come for a thick one, have ya, ladies?"

Bann stared at the creature, and fear seized his tongue. He hadn't heard that apes could speak.

"No, thank you," Bann's mother said. "I'm looking for a man. His name is Bann. Bann McKenzie. He's a pilot."

The ape grunted, scratched at its crotch. "Bann, Bann the sailor man. Haven't seen him in years. But if it's a man you want, I'm hard enough for you, and you know what they say, 'A hard man is good to find.'"

Bann gaped. He had assumed that the creature was an ape, but it claimed to be a man!

"Bann McKenzie is the one I want," his mother said.

"Maybe his ship is in port. Or maybe someone else knows where to look. Go right on in." The creature kicked a lever, and a wooden door flung open beneath him. Bann and his mother entered.

The fortess was small indeed. A shanty town made of rough wood opened onto an empty square. One stall held a man who was skinning goats in the open air.

Bann heard a cry and glanced to his right. Two boys, little older than Bann, were tussling in the street. One cried out in pain, and Bann shouted, "Mother!"

Both boys looked up at the sound of his voice and grinned, as if to prove that no harm had been done.

"It's all right," his mother said. "They're just playing.

"But . . . someone could get hurt," Bann objected.

His mother said softly, "Boys often play . . . by fighting each other."

The boys continued to wrestle, and Bann watched, heart hammering. Such violence was forbidden in the sanctuary.

"Come along," Tullayah whispered. "The Valkyries are getting too far ahead."

Indeed, the droids had taken a good lead. They were heading to the far side of the fortress, where a pair of Floater ships hung at port. Some rough-looking men were loading bales of Kara Kune cotton on one of the gondolas, along with crates of electronics.

Tuyallah hurried down the mud street, past men who came out the shops to gawk at her and her son. Bann saw a woman, too, a feral woman dressed in men's leather pants, with daggers sheathed in her boots, an open leather vest barely concealing her breasts. She watched Bann knowingly, smiled and blew a kiss at him.

Bann's mother stopped just beneath the stabilizer bar on the first Floater, a scarred old ship called "The Ether Sea." She did not seem to know who to address, so she clapped her hands for attention and called out, "I am looking for a man, a pilot, named Bann McKenzie."

One rough man who was wrestling a barrel up a ramp peered at her. His eyebrows were so thick that they looked like an extension of his beard, but the hair on top of his head seemed to have fallen off. Bann wondered what illness would cause such a hair loss.

"McKenzie? Haven't crossed paths with that old scoundrel in what--five years? Back then he was runnin' guns between Buddha's Reef and King's Tit."

Bann had never heard of Buddha's Reef, but King's Tit was pirate country--a mountain base hidden beneath the fog. It was high enough so that there was still some light, low enough so that it couldn't be seen from the air.

Bann's mother bit her lip, frustrated. "Can you send him a message? Tell him that he has a son?" She clenched Bann's shoulder. "A fine son."

The man smiled sadly, studied Bann. "A son is it?" he said, shaking his head. "Not much of a boy. Looks more like a girl to me. Not fit for a man's work--at least not yet."

"Nevertheless, his time is coming," Tuyallah said.

The man shook his head, as if there was little that he could do. "I'll beam a few messages to passing ships, but I can't guarantee anything. Haven't seen McKenzie in years. Pirates could have got him. Or maybe he crossed the Sizzle to Far-And-Away. Why don't you take the boy home? Forget about McKenzie."

"You will deliver the message?" Tullayah begged.

"For all of the good it will do."

"Thank you,