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YEARDAY 253, 4110 A.D.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtUHcbLjC31
OOMKA 23, 2678 OLDGENRICHIAN201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQQbHaY4N5c
SECONDUS 41, 610 ROMANOVAN201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfSB2nWPCj3
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THE LOT DID IT FALL UPON IVAN DRAGOMILOV,201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNRPdfK3hOS
THE YOUNGEST OF ALL THE THREE,201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡu83xI2cV9y
THAT HE A STARLOOTING BANDIT SHOULD BE, 201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVOfu0ruKt5
BE,201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkZFyPUuHCP
BE,201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡR4zjMlVRxG
FOR TO MAINTAIN HIS TWO BROTHERS AND HE.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxfJSW1cupb
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Hovering silently at her rest, a measure and a half above the ground, the estate's droilodka never failed to remind Zakh of a crosshatched sketch of a 25-measure-long sunmelon seed.
In construction and appearance, she was a utilitarian, undecorated, and nonreflective gray where not open or transparent, the heavy wire mesh she had been fashioned from tarnished by the brutal sun and the crueler Genirichian cold. In form, she was as flat as a woodland tick, smooth, smooth-contoured, plump, round at her blunt stern, tapering to a flattened, slender point toward her brow.
Her design, if so formal a word were justified, had been laid down by unknown geniuses in dim antiquity, intended more for hauling cargo---farm and forest produce here on Genrich---than for transporting passengers. She herself had been fabricated---"woven" might have been a word of better choice---upon this estate for as much speed as the twin cones of her electrostatic impellers (wrought of somewhat finer mesh and powered by a modest purge-field annihilator, the only features interrupting the clean flow of her lines) were capable of pushing her to. This for the most practical purposes, as she had never been meant as the object of anyone's exhilaration. She contained not a single moving part. Zakh thought her an uncommonly beautiful sight for the unglamorous, old-fashioned means of transportation that she was. His opinion in this regard may have had to do with the fact that she had been the first article of the Holdings' large machinery he had ever been entrusted by his father or Terrible Ivan to operate, albeit under the most stringent supervision.
Whatever the humble purpose she was meant to serve originally was, she was being scrubbed clean of hay, manure, any bucolic remnant she had recently accumulated, in preparation for a brief, happy voyage to equatorial Elizavetaburg. This was an unpeopled cluster of ulsic-automated buildings a few hundred versts south of the Holdings, renamed not long ago in honor of the planet's newest mistress, now returning with her husband from their honeymoon. The task of readying the droilodka had not been made easier by the previous day's storm which had littered her from bow to stern---and, since she had lain unpowered all of yesternight, through and through---with the same bits of windblown rain-driven dirt and vegetation which Zakh had first noticed clinging to the workshop windows. Anyone, he thought, who believed rain to be a cleansing phenomenon had lived all his life indoors, with the curtains drawn.
"Splendid! Dry her off, boys!" Terrible Ivan shut the nozzle off and dropped the soapy, long-handled brush with which he had been directing, rather than contributing to, the cleaning effort. Two younger Genrichians, half-shadowed beneath her open-work fuselage, were finishing with rags along each section of the broad, curved, finger-width roddery which comprised most of the droilodka's underside. This extra heavy meshwork took the whole vehicle's weight upon those rare occasions when she rested her length upon the ground. At present, they were dripping with rinse water and fugitive suds. Meanwhile, a 4th individual unwound the workshop's hot-air blower from its reel.
Abaft, at the location of her annihilator, the vehicle was screened more solidly than elsewhere, the better to protect passengers from errant radiation (for the most part, imaginary) and disguise the workings cultured visitors might find unsightly. So close was this narrower mesh, skip-woven to produce dense, decorative whorls and swirls, that she came close to being opaque. Zakh remembered (the memory was dim, for he'd been ill) that Terrible Yvan had run off verts of the finer wire to replace more utilitarian sheathing when the droilodka had served to take her master and mistress off to Elizavetaburg, to begin with. Anticipating their return, she had been left as she'd been. Never again would she be the same gray, mundane work machine.
Now he purposed a grander embellishment. As the final drop of rinse water rolled off her glistening wirework onto the muddy ground, Terrible Yvan brought forth a vial, unscrewed the cap, and tipped its contents onto the droilodka's woven surface. A sizzling noise and peculiar odor issued forth as a blush of color began to spread. In moments, from the complex framing at her bow to the conical metallic cages of her electrostatic impellers, the entire vessel gleamed as if she had been sculpted of the purest gold.
The old man turned and winked at the boy. "Polymerizier spreighformed up last night after you left. I wish I'd thought of it at the wedding." He lifted a hand to caress the fabulous coating, which had cured instantly. "It is but a single molecule deep, but is it not pretty? Practical, too. I expect that your father will want it left for summer. She always did get a mite hot sitting in the sun."
As he spoke, a giggling servant girl, assisted at the elbow by one of the male fuselage-polishers, clambered up the short hatch-ladder into the belly of the hovering machine, her arms laden with fresh-cut flowers. Others behind her were supervised by Mistress Maria. When they were through, the droilodka. When they were through, the droilodka would be filled, stem to stern, with a more colorful (and more aromatic) cargo than had ever burdened her before.
"All aboard!" Eugene fils shouted, striding across sun-dried flags hosed clean before the droilodka had been attended to. He was fastening a jacket quilted from a shimmering kefflar brocade, the lasted fashion craze to sweep the capital, which appeared in some lights a deep, cosmic blue, in others a dark, mysterious red. He disparaged it as his "peacock jacket" and never wore it without being persuaded by someone else. More and more, that someone was Mistress Maria. His brother Adam followed in his wake, less exuberant of attire. As seemed consistent with his personality (or maybe because he had no one to persuade him), he preferred to set sartorial tones more somber, affecting styles a trifle better tested by time and hues which remained, in any light, faithful to whatever they had looked like to start with. As was fitting for the occasion, Zakh, too, had donned his second-best, which he had been at pains to defend from the muddy misery of readying the droilodka. The best he had, trews and tunic of the same fabric as Eugene's jacket, he saved for that event to which all this fuss was but preliminary. After all, he had two wedding ceremonies to dress for, one of them retroactive.
Ducking beneath the machine, Eugene ascended the short ladder, kissed Mistress Maria upon her freckled forehead in open mockery of genteel custom which forbade him more than that and handed her down laughing. Adam and Zakh trooped aboard after him. Only the brothers were along for this excursion, as was proper, Mistress maria had explained to the boy, to greet their father and his bride. For the moment, these, and as yet none else, comprised the family Sorokin. Zakh winked at her who would soon become his sister. She returned the wink in smiles and blushes, a picture so pretty even a child of twelve could well appreciate her. That this particular child was more precocious than anybody guessed as yet, and, at that magic moment, set his standards for the years to come, no one would ever know, not even he who set them.
In any case, Eugene had added in his characteristic practical way, they would need space aboard to accommodate the returning party, consisting, like it would, of Eugene Senior, the Lady Veronica, their luggage and servants, the baggage, servants, bodyguard and person of Aidos Zaytseva, the Lady Veronica's father, and similar impedimenta of whomever else they had seen fit to bring back from the capital for the younger Eugene's wedding. Most likely, the droilodka would be called upon to make several such voyages.
Thus for once was Zakh without Terrible Yvan's amusing company and sage advice. As chiefmost among the family retainers, he and Mistress Maria (by Romanovan custom it would be presumptuous and unseemly for the bride-to-be to greet those soon to be her in-laws, as if she had already married into the family; in addition, until she was thus married, she was still in technicality a servant) would stay behind to manage things for the few hours the brothers would be absent. The youngest of the Sorokin scions must do without Zero, as well, a speeding droilodka being no place, in either of the elder brothers' opinion, for the curious and unpredictable glob.
As those who must remain removed themselves from proximity to the idling machine, Adam pulled a lever which allowed the hatch -ladder to regain the form it best remembered, returning to its nest in the droilodka's underside. He found a seat, one of several installed in recent days in what had been cargo s pace, sat, and let the seat-resisters close about his waist. Seated further forward, with a nod from Eugene close beside him, Zakh wiped nervous fingers upon a trouser leg, reached past the tiller bar, and passed his hand over a sensitive area of the steering pedestal. Aft, the droilodka's annihilator stirred from a partial somnolence which was never sleep in its entirety.
Lights upon the pedestal changed color. The glowing purge-field built up along the woven surface of the vehicle, allowing light through the brought mesh quite unhindered---Zakh could see Terrible Yvan dismissing the younger servants out of the way---but stifling sound from the outside, giving those inside a sudden shut-in feeling. With a gentle sigh passing through her fabric, the droilodka rose upon her repulsor-fields another half measure above the washwater dampness of her temporary berth, swung her narrow-pointed prow in a southerly direction, and began moving forward.
Inboard, seated behind a pressure-tiller and other simple controls that he knew in harshest truth to be redundant, Zakh nonetheless felt a thrill radiate through his body, echoing stresses singing along the vehicle's length. Maybe this was not the noblest of vessels, nothing to rival the great ships of the interstellar Deep. But she was here (as those great ships were not), operated upon the same principles, and, at least for the moment, responded to his command, however superfluous and well-supervised it might be.
Feeling the tiller vibrate of its own accord (it didn't swing from side to side, but answered, without moving, to pressure put upon it by controlling hands) he watched the droilodka lift her sleek nose, surge forward, and gather speed with such ponderous deliberation that her acceleration was all but unnoticeable, even without the all-enveloping, inertialess purge-field. Noticeable or not, her headway was sufficient that, in a few score heartbeats, the broad and close-cropped meadow before the Holdings had given way to dense forest, and the forest, in its turn---upon either side of the greenway unrolling before them---had soon melted into a solid, indistinguishable blur.
Quite unlike a proper road was the greenway to Elizavetaburg. It seemed to open before him like cloven waters, but this was an illusion. Much like the droilodka herself, it had been constructed by a simple method; only a flying craft (unknown on Genrich) might have traveled over a road less well prepared. An open, grassy bed had been cut, by men and machinery, upon a direct line southward across field and forest, only the grosser tree stumps and upthrust boulders cleared away. Now the former lay in bleaching clawlike tangles at the edges, amongst piles of the latter. Die-straight and indifferent to the lay of the land, the greenway, fifty sahzens wide, might have been no more than a forester's firebreak---indeed, it served the purpose well---except whenever it intersected a line of hills where ridges had been furrowed by deep land-cuts, only to disappear again when the hills did.
Having been created by so laborious a method, the pathway required a minimum of further concern. The shockblast which accompanied passage of the droilodka at top speed, less than three sahzens above the ground, was sufficient to discourage any new vegetation from overgrowing it, all save the sparsest weedery from which the road derived its naming.
Soon the droilodka was boring through the countryside at the greatest speed of which she was able, just below that of sound, almost twelve hundred verts per technic hour. Softened by the streamlined purge-field, the wind of her passage howled about her and was gone.
Extending invisible fingers, the droilodka's purge-field groped ahead for verts along the terrain flowing towards her, matching her thunderous progress to the gentle contours of the land so that she always stayed the same distance from the ground. As she felt that way, she kept watch for unexpected: landslide, rockfall, upthrust tentacles of a wind-killed tree, some pedestrian beast or human crossing the greenway. If given ample warning, the droilodka could leap such obstructions, maybe to the shocked discomfort of those riding within---and the certain consternation of pedestrians---preserving all in greater safety than might otherwise be imagined.
Had too high or abrupt an obstacle materialized, the field would give alarm, transfer its lifting engines against the motion induced by the comical impellers, shut the impellers down, and slow the droilodka to a stop, spilling kinetic energy into the meshwork as waste heat, or, failing that, into the fabric of unoccupied portions of the vehicle itself. These might flash into incandescence or vanish altogether in the white heat of vaporization. The vehicle might sacrifice her very existence, yet the passengers survive to build and ride in others. It was not a perfect system, but it was a simple one and, in most cases, worked----or so Zakh had been told. He had never experienced an emergency himself---it being an axiom that nothing interesting ever happens in the presence of a bored 12-year-old---and wished, secretly, at least just once, that he could.
Time passed with a swiftness which another axiom, not limited to 12-year-olds, about life's few good moments, describes but does not explain. In due course, their passage brought them to a geographical feature a trifle more spectacular than a mere string of hills. These were real mountains, bordering the equator of the planet in this region, rising to a height at which an unprotected man would need to carry oxygen. The droilodka would climb them, but at a less-steep angle than that of the slopes which rose before Zakh's eyes. For the first time the greenway departed from its plumbline, swung in a long, gradual curve towards an easier approach, as it deepened into a roadcut first carved, from orbit at no small expense, by the mighty weapons of the great ship which had brought the Sorokins' forebears to this planet.
As the droilodka plunged into the shadow of the roadcut, lifted her prow, and began to climb, a sudden noise shook her and her passengers. The blue-white of Genrich's thin overcast, visible through the notch ahead, turned black as the sides of the cut erupted outward. Under an onslaught of forces that she was not designed to withstand, she swayed, fish-tailed, ground her starboard bow against the riven hillside, throwing sparks, turning end-for-end before resuming something like a straight and level course. The mesh of which she'd been fashioned groaned in one part, screamed in another, as acceleration stresses and the purge-field fought to see which would control her destiny.
Reaching out both hands to steady his younger brother, Eugene was torn from the deceptive safety of his chair and tossed aside as if he weighed nothing. Adam screamed, wide-mouthed and open-lunged. Somehow Zakh clung to the tiller post, battered upon face and shoulders by his involuntary motion against the handle of the steering mechanism, as the inbuilt ulsic attempted---in desperation, it seemed to the boy---to stabilize the droilodka.
The vehicle struck the hillside again, raising a cock's tail of spark-punctuated dust behind her, shot onto the tableland beyond, spun end for end a final time, and stabilized. She did not stop. She had been designed never to stop in circumstances like this.
To stop was death!
ns 15.158.61.17da2
