Helm Read online

  In some regions the fungus couldn’t attach to the rock, or there wasn’t enough water, or sunlight, or there was too high a concentration of heavy metals, or it was too hot, or too cold, or any of a hundred other versions of just not right. But elsewhere, in the cracks, in drifts of crumbling rock, and in basins of dust, they thrived, the fungal layers absorbing minerals and water while the algae did their photosynthetic magic with CO2 and sunlight.

  Right behind the lichens came the decomposers, bacteria and fungi critical to the breakdown of biological material. The fungal filaments of lichen found tiny cracks and flaked off bit after bit of rock. And as parts of the lichen aged, or conditions changed, they died, and the decomposers went to work, mixing with the dust and water—a simple sort of topsoil was born.

  Later the grasses, clovers, and other complex groundcovers came, along with simple aquatic plants, and desmids and other freshwater plant plankton, more ablative capsules put in deliberately decaying orbits and entering the atmosphere like clockwork—ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years after the lichens. Freeze-dried bundles of bacteria, fungi, and seeds encased in nutrient pellets fell like rain to die, flourish, or lie in wait.

  These early arrivals were limited to those varieties that could self-pollinate or spread asexually, by budding and branching. Their root systems were, for the most part, shallow. Except for pockets and basins where natural forces had concentrated dust and rubble before the arrival of life, the new soil was thin and tenuous, easily disturbed by wind and water.

  The first insects arrived by parachute, in capsules targeted on the highest concentrations of reflected chlorophyll spectra. While the capsules still floated high above the ground, small openings ejected newly revived impregnated queens of the honeybee, the Asian carpenter bee, and the bumblebee, as well as fireflies, caddis flies, nonbiting midges, cockroaches, and lac bugs. Closer to the ground, the capsules scattered earthworms, butterfly larvae, crane-fly larvae, and crickets.

  Specialized capsules delivered animal plankton—rotifers, copepods, and cladocerans—to bodies of water large enough to detect from orbit.

  The next spring came the predators: praying mantises, ladybugs, ground beetles, and other insects. Spiders included the orb weaver, trapdoor, tarantula, jumping, and wolf. The capsules scattered them wide, ejected kilometers above the surface in gossamer packets of protein webbing that slowed their fall. On the ground, the webbing broke down, oxidized within minutes of creation, freeing the spiders and insects to hunt and eat.

  To the waters came protozoa, minute crustaceans, hydras, dragonfly larvae, diving beetles, and other aquatic insect predators.

  The vertebrates came with man.

  In Agatsu’s more turbulent past, a freak crack had formed in brittle crust and iron-rich magma had thrust its way up a narrow fissure in the seabed, trying to reach the lesser pressures above. Fifty million years later, after wind and water had done their work with the surrounding shale, the hardened rock raked the sky, a dagger of rusty granite sixty meters across at the base and over three hundred meters tall. When the sun neared its zenith, the tip of the spire would flash brightly, reflecting light that could be seen clearly over five kilometers away.

  They called it the Needle, and Guide Dulan de Laal had forbidden any man, woman, or child, on pain of Dulan’s wrath, to climb it.

  Lit by the planet’s ring, the Needle was an ivory tower against a dark sky. It sprang abruptly from the forested side of a low hill and climbed sharply into the night sky.

  Three kilometers from the Needle, below the massive structure of Laal Station, the town Brandon-on-the-Falls was brightly lit. It was the last day of the fall harvest, and the festival had begun. The Station was also ablaze with lamplight, and a steady stream of traffic curved down the mountain road from the fort to the town.

  Leland de Laal wiped sweat from his brow as he watched the castle and the town begin the festival. He smiled for a moment, picturing his three older brothers dancing and drinking in the town. Even little Lillian would be there under the watchful guidance of Guide Bridgett. And where would Father be? Oh, yes—the judging and blessing—spring ale, fruit, and grain. Doubtless he’d drafted Guide Malcom to help.

  The rope was biting into his chest. Leland decided he’d rested enough and shifted on the tiny ledge, bringing the rope over his head. He edged his way over to the six-inch vertical crack he’d chosen earlier and began working up it, jamming his boots sideways and reaching his hands back as far as they could go. Centimeter by centimeter, he climbed his way up the rock face.

  Prohibitions or not, he was already three-quarters up the Needle.

  His grip began slipping from moisture on his fingertips, so every time he pulled one hand from the crack, he’d wipe his fingers across his shirt. This left dark streaks across the white cloth—blood from abraded skin.

  Step up—set the foot. Free a hand—wipe it—reach higher. Repeat as needed.

  Don’t waste any strength on moans or grimaces. Ignore the grinding of rough stone into raw fingertips. Just climb.

  Fifty meters from the top he paused. The wind pulled at him, a gentle breeze that cooled his sweat-soaked clothes and threatened to pluck him from his precarious handholds. He freed one hand and took another iron spike from his belt. Carefully he wedged it in a small crack on the right, then took up the hammer hanging from his neck on a lanyard.

  His aching arm muscles twitched as he swung at the spike, causing him to strike the head off center. He cursed as the spike flew past his right shoulder and fell into the dark. The sound of it bouncing off the face of the Needle far below came to him once, and then nothing.

  Tiredly he groped for another spike and his hand closed on two sticking out of the loops in his belt. Two? He groped further. Only two out of the thirty spikes he’d started with remained. For the twentieth time since he’d left the trees below, he considered quitting and going back down.

  He leaned out and craned his head back, gripping the crack tightly. The tip of the needle floated above, ethereal in the moonlight. So close!

  With far greater care, he placed and drove in the next-to-last spike.

  Hanging from the spike in the rope and plank chair, he collapsed against the rock face and let his muscles shake.

  Time passed and the wind died softly to the barest sigh. Leland’s muscles began to chill and stiffen from inaction. He forced himself to eat cheese and bread from his belt pouch, chewing automatically after muttering the categories. He was mildly surprised when his blindly searching fingers came out of the pouch empty.

  In the distance, the town and Station still swarmed with activity as the festival neared its peak. On the flat plain between the town baths and the castle moat, a bonfire blazed and three rings of dancers circled the flames while the castle band and town symphony played. Leland could just make out the high seat where his father should be presiding, and, if he held very still, the music floated gently to him.

  Enough, sluggard. He eased back to the crack, almost crying when the dried blood on his fingers cracked open again. His muscles screamed protest as he recovered the plank chair and began climbing again.

  Five meters from the top, the crack narrowed to a hairline fracture too fine even for his last spike. There were no hand—or footholds within reach.

  So close? The Needle was less than two meters thick where Leland perched, and it narrowed rapidly up to the narrow, meter-wide circle that was the Needle’s point. Only another two meters and I could get my arms around it. He started to slump against the rock, disappointed.

  Arms around it…why not?

  The trick was going to be tying a knot with one hand.

  Leland reached behind himself for the rope that hung coiled from the back of his belt. It was his way out, a length of rope twice sufficient to lower him from spike to spike. He stuck his head through the coil and used his teeth and free hand to untie the knot that held it together. Then, a free end in his mouth, he pulled the last spike from his belt and tried f
or several frustrating minutes to tie a knot around it. By the time he’d succeeded, his legs and arms were trembling and he’d had to switch his grip several times to wipe off slippery blood.

  Lowering the rope slowly, he began swinging the spike from side to side, banging it against the stone first to one side, then the other. He played out the line as the speed increased, gradually wrapping farther and farther around the circumference of the Needle as the period became larger and larger. As the rope’s length neared what was needed to circle the Needle’s diameter, the violence of Leland’s swinging threatened to pull him from his perch. Just as he felt sure he could hold no longer, the rope completed its farthest swing and slapped across the back of his leg. He flipped the lower part of his leg up, leaving himself perched dangerously with one foot and one hand wedged in the crack, but also with the rope stretching from his right hand all the way around the Needle to end up hanging from the back of his left knee.

  Sweat trickled into Leland’s eyes. His heart pounded heavily in time to quick, deep breaths. Still holding tightly to the rope, he worked his right hand back to the crack and wedged it, rope and all, above his other hand. Then he released his left hand and groped for the rope trapped in the crook of his knee. When he had it in hand, he was able to return the left foot to the crack.

  He flipped at the end in his left hand, alternately pulling and flipping the rope, getting it to climb the sloping rock until it was slightly above him on the other side of the Needle. Then, maintaining the tension, he moved his left hand as far out to the side as he could and pulled his right hand from the crack.

  His heart seemed to stop as he leaned backwards, then thudded to clamorous life as the rope, one end in each hand, held him, logger style to the Needle.

  So far, so good. Leland walked up the crack, maintaining tension on the rope to keep him from falling away from the face. When he reached the top of the crack, he took up the tension in the line and flipped it higher on the far side. This entailed leaning forward quickly, flipping the rope, and then taking up the tension again just this side of disaster. Luck was with him for the rope found some projection higher on the other side and caught. Leland took his right foot out of the crack and planted it on the rough, sloping granite.

  Up he went, not daring to pause, for his arms were trembling and his nerve was almost gone. Soon it became more of a scramble, as the Needle narrowed to a mere meter and a half. Then foot and handholds appeared near the top, and with a last desperate lunge he was over the edge and hugging the shining metal post that cradled the Glass Helm.

  Leland trembled, shook. His legs and arms cramped and his eyes stared vacantly at Agatsu’s ring. The rope and assorted climbing paraphernalia draped over the sharp edge and dangled, like his feet, over the abyss. At first he was just drained, empty of all feeling. Even the cramping in his arms and legs seemed remote, like they belonged to someone else. He concentrated on just getting air into heaving lungs.

  I won’t spoil this minute by throwing up!

  Then, along with biting pain and nausea, the exhilaration flooded into his body. Not bloody bad for the bookworm! He struggled to sit, still hugging the ten-centimeter-thick post where it sprang from the rock. This movement brought his head level with the Glass Helm.

  I am looking at a legend, Leland thought, awestruck. By the Founders, it’s beautiful!

  The gleaming metal post terminated in a stylistic model of a human head, full scale, with mere suggestions of facial features represented by smooth depressions and curves. With crystalline grace the Glass Helm crowned the metal head, a brilliant cascade of reflected moonlight and odd patterns buried deep within the transparent matrix.

  When was the last time a human looked at this? Did the Founders put it here with their flying cars? Does the legend come from them?

  Leland reached out and gently ran a fingertip over the surface. Smooth, so very smooth. “What?”

  Blood from his torn finger had seeped onto the glass. Almost immediately, the Helm began to change. Minute flashes of phosphorescence seemed to run along the patterns (wires?) buried deep in the glass. From cold immobility to warm, barely perceptible pulsing, the Helm seemed to come to life. There was a visible movement as the part of the Helm that gripped the metal head’s temples spread a full centimeter. Leland touched the Helm again, and it moved freely, no longer bound to the post. He shrank back from the Helm as far as he could without actually going over the edge or releasing his grip on the post.

  How many have made this climb and stopped at this point? He squeezed his free hand into a fist and winced at the pain this caused. Father be damned, fear be damned, and Founders be damned! Not me!

  He stood (because it seemed right) and lifted the Helm from its stand. Then leaning firmly against the post to steady himself, he lowered the Glass Helm onto his head.

  Guide Dulan de Laal, Steward of Laal, Sentinel of the Eastern Border, and Principal of the Council of Noramland, was relatively content. The summer’s harvest had provided a large trading surplus above and beyond satisfying the categories, and the sugar in this year’s grapes was very high, meaning good wine by spring—even better for the trading. The festival was winding down for the night, though it had two more days to go, and he and Guide Malcom de Toshiko, Steward of Pree, were listening to the town symphony play a requiem for the day.

  “A good festival, Dulan. You treat me like this every time I visit and you’ll have a permanent houseguest.” He looked sideways at Guide Dulan, smiling.

  Dulan snorted and shook the huge mane of silver hair that closely framed his face. “Do it, dammit. What keeps you in that drafty hall of yours? Kevin is holding it quite well.”

  Malcom sighed. “And when I’m there, we fight tooth and nail. Don’t think I’m not tempted. It’s been two years since Mary died and I still can’t walk into any room in the place without expecting her to be there.”

  Dulan nodded at his old friend’s confession. “I know. It’s the same for me with Lil, and she’s been gone these eleven years. It’s almost heartbreaking to look at Lillian and see her mother’s eyes looking back at me.” He lifted a pitcher of ale from the table beside him and freshened both their tankards with a muttered grain. “Perhaps we should remarry?”

  “Ha! And inflict our ghosts on innocent women? Better to take a harmless tumble when the need becomes too great. Like your sons, eh?” He pointed to the edge of the green where Dexter, Dulan’s second oldest son, was walking into the dark with a town girl.

  Dulan frowned, then smiled slowly. “I saw Dillan and Anthony vanish likewise, earlier. They better be careful…if the wrong lover got hold of them. Well, even Cotswold’s fingers reach this far.”

  Malcom frowned. “Surely you’ve trained them against that?”

  “Oh, of course. Just an old man’s fears.”

  “And even little Leland, eh?” said Malcom, sipping from his tankard.

  “Doubt it. He’s old enough—fifteen? No, by the Founders, sixteen, and seventeen next month. Where does the time go? But Leland is a strange one—more likely in the library wasting candles.”

  “Dulan!”

  “All right. Not wasting. And I wish his brothers had half the time for the scholarship. But there’s the other side, too. He’s timid—doesn’t get out enough. Well, he did work in the fields this harvest—like a dog. He does pursue whatever interests him with a passion. But he never stands up for himself.”

  “Oh? Is he beaten regularly?”

  “No, he backs away when there’s any sort of confrontation.”

  Malcom smiled. “Maybe he knows more about fighting than you think.”

  Dulan snorted. “I doubt it. Anyway, it makes him look weak, and that only makes him a more likely target.” He stretched his arms and looked up at Agatsu’s ring, then looked carefully around for listeners. “My agents in Cotswold are nervous. The people are hungry and the Customs are being twisted. Siegfried is directing their attention this way. This may lead to a confrontation that Leland ca
nnot avoid.”

  “When?”

  “Well, next harvest at the earliest. Even as poor a farmer as Siegfried Montrose was able to harvest enough this season for the coming winter, though he’s hardly filled the categories. The rains have never been better. But next year will be much drier, and Cotswold doesn’t have the watershed we do. They’ll probably strike after we’ve done the work of getting in the harvest.”

  “Risky, that. Then you’re stocked for a siege and they won’t have supplies to outlast you.” Malcom looked thoughtful. “Laal Station has never been taken, either by storm or by siege.”

  “True—but how long has it been since someone tried? Eighty years. Our population has doubled since then—they won’t all fit in the Station now. Even half would cause problems with sanitation.” Both men touched their foreheads automatically.

  “Enlarge the Station?”

  “Well, we could go into the mountain, I suppose. But the manpower…” He shook his head. “Doing it by next autumn would require skipping next year’s harvest.”

  Malcom frowned. “Then what will you do?”

  Dulan tapped the gray, curly hair that covered his temples. “I’ve a few ideas,” he said with a surprisingly boyish grin. “I’ve a few ideas.”

  The music changed to a waltz and several of the crowd came forward to dance.

  Malcom stood and asked Guide Bridgett onto the “floor.” After entrusting Lillian to Dulan’s care, she accepted.

  Little Lillian crawled up in her father’s lap and promptly fell asleep. Dulan cradled her and smiled, stroking her hair and watching the swirling dancers on the grass. He was as surprised as any when the music died discordantly, one instrument at a time, ending with a lonely flute note that hung in the air leaving a phrase achingly incomplete.

  Dulan stood and carefully placed the still-sleeping Lillian on his chair. Then he looked over the heads of the crowd, trying to determine the cause of the interruption.

  There must have been fifteen hundred people in the clearing, fully ten percent of Laal’s population. The muted roar of that many people talking, wondering aloud, and supposing filled the air. Then Dulan heard a shout from the forest side of the clearing, near where the musicians sat, and he saw the crowd at that edge split and spread apart, forming a path leading in the direction of his seat. The steward frowned and stood on tiptoe, but he couldn’t see what the crowd made way for. And he was damned if he’d clamber onto a chair like a child to see, so he waited stoically for whatever was coming.