Ventus by Karl Schroeder (leveled readers .txt) 📕

charged, anticipatory. There was no way they were going to get to the manse in time.

It was ironic, she thought. In idle time before landing she had stood at the window of her ship, the Desert Voice, and contempated this world. Gazing down at Ventus, the human eye lost itself in jewel-fine detail. Her eye had followed the sweep of the terminator from pole to pole, gaining a hint of the varieties of dusk of which this world was capable. Sombre polar greys melted into speckled brown-green forests, along a knee of coastline reddened by local weather, and in a quick leap past equatorial waters her gaze could touch on this or that island, each drawn in impossibly fine detail and aglow with amber, green and blue. Each, if she watched long enough, summoned into night.

She had wondered then if the original colonists had felt the way she did now. When they first beheld Ventus and knew that a chapter of their life was ending, and a new one beginning, had they felt the same unease? And the anticipation?

She had tried to picture what their imaginations brought to the pretty little islands that had caught her eye. Standing above this canvas, each must have painted it with his or her own colors, drawing the boundaries of new states and provinces. It would be irresistible, at a new world, to wonder what the forest looked like from underneath; how the rain smelled; what it would be like to sleep under the stars here.

At that time the skies weren’t as empty as they now appeared. The Winds were still visible, like gossamer winged creatures dancing above the atmosphere. All frequencies were alive with their singing and recitative. They were almost as beautiful as the planet itself — as intended — and they took human shapes to communicate with the colony ships. This was expected; they had been designed that way.

The Winds sang, and danced in slow orbits in time to their singing. In those last moments before the nightmare began, the colonists’ eyes must have beheld a perfect world, an exact embodiment of their dreams.

Thunder grumbled. It was so different when you were down here, she knew now. The invulnerability of space was a dream. Calandria found her steps quickening, not so much because of the coming rain, but because once again she was reminded that Ventus was not the natural environment it appeared to be.

They rounded another arc of escarpment, and there it was, right where the Desert Voice had said it would be: a manse. Jordan hadn’t spotted the long rooftop yet, obscured as it was by trees. Calandria smiled at the prospect of warmth and comfort the manse promised.

Jordan was ignoring the view. In fact, he seemed to be sniffing at something. She raised an eyebrow, and cleared her throat. “What are you doing?”

“Death,” he said. “Something’s dead. Can’t you smell it?”

Damn if he wasn’t right. She should have been more alert. Jordan had walked several steps off the deerpath, and now gingerly parted a spray of branches. “Lady May, look at this.”

She looked over his shoulder. In a dark, branch-shaded hollow of loam and pine needles lay a giant bloated object. It looked like nothing so much as a big bag of mangy fur. At the top was a kind of flower of flesh, which, she realized uneasily, had teeth in it. As if…

“What is that?”

“Looks like it used to be a bear,” whispered Jordan. Its mouth had folded back to become a kind of red-lipped flower atop the bag of flesh, and its eyes had receded into the skin. She looked in vain for signs of its four limbs; save for the vestigial head, it was little more than a sack of fur now.

A sack in which something was moving.

She stepped back. For once, Mason seemed unfazed. In fact, he looked back, caught her obvious distress, and grinned.

“A morph’s been here, maybe two, three days ago,” said Jordan. “It found this bear, and it’s changed it. I don’t know what’s going to hatch out of it, but… looks like several things. Badgers maybe, or skunks? Whatever the morph thought there was a lack of in this part of the woods.”

Of course. She’d been briefed on morphs, she knew what they were capable of. It was a very different thing to witness the result.

“They’ll come out full-grown,” said Jordan as he backed away from the clearing.

Thunder crashed directly overhead. Calandria looked out over the escarpment in time to see a solid-looking wall of rain coming at them.

“Come on!” she shouted. “It’s only a little farther.”

Jordan looked at the rain and laughed. “Why hurry?” he asked. “We’ll be wet in two seconds.”

He was right—in moments, her hair was plastered down on her head, and cold trickles ran down her back. Still, Calandria hurried them away from the disturbing thing that had once been a bear. They continued to skirt the top of the escarpment for a hundred meters, then came out near what might normally have been a good deerpath down the slope; it was a torrent of muddy water.

“What’s that?” Jordan pointed. Perhaps two kilometers away, warm lights shone through the shifting grey of the rain.

“Our destination. Come,” she said, and stepped onto the downward path. Her feet went out from under her, and Calandria found herself plummeting down the hillside in a flood.

*

Jordan watched Calandria May get to her feet at the bottom of the hill. “I’m soaked!” she shrieked, laughing. It was the first time he’d heard her laugh in any genuine way.

She was a hundred meters below him, with no obvious way back up. He debated turning and running—but he had no idea where to go. Doubtless she’d be able to track him down, even if he got a half-hour’s head start. He sighed, and started picking his way down the hill.

About halfway down he took a long look at the lights burning in the distance, and felt a chill greater than the rain settle on him. He ran the last few meters a bit recklessly, but arrived next to May still on his feet.

“Don’t you know that’s a Wind manse?” he said, pointing at the distant lights. “If we go in there, we’ll be killed!”

She had that serene, unconcerned look about her again. “No we won’t. I have protection,” she said. Ahead of them, tall stately red maples stood in even ranks. The underbrush was sparse, as if someone regularly cut it back.

Jordan shook his head. They jogged through tall wet grass and into the shelter of the trees. Calandria pointed to a brighter area ahead. “Clearing. I guess there’s extensive grounds around this one.”

She led him on. After a minute he said, “So you’ve been in other manses?”

“Yes. I have a way of getting in.” She stopped and rooted around in one of her belt pouches. “This.” She brought out a thick packet of some gauzy material, which she shook out into a square about two meters on a side. “We wear this over us, like we’re playing Ghost.”

She held it out to him and he touched it. The material was rather rough, and glittered like metal. It crackled a bit when it folded.

“Stand close.” Reluctantly, Jordan did so. She pulled the sheet over both their heads. It was easy to see through, but a little awkward to walk with, as it tended to bell stiffly out. They had to take handfuls of the stuff and hold it close. “Put your arm around my waist,” she directed him when it became apparent they were not walking in rhythm. Jordan did so with the reluctance of someone touching a snake.

He forgot his wariness when they came out from under the trees. His hand tightened around her and he gasped. Calandria stopped as well, and smiled.

The forest was cleared here in a perfect rectangle almost a kilometer long. They stood at one end of a green, clipped lawn dotted here and there with artfully twisted trees. Square pools of water trembled now under the onslaught of the rain; under clear skies they would be perfect mirrors. Softened by the haze of rain, made shadowless by the cloud, a great mansion rose up at the far end of the lawn. Its pillars and walls were pure white, the roofs of grey slate. The windows were tall and paned in glass, which lit up every few moments with reflected lightning. Behind some of the windows, warm amber light shone.

Jordan indicated the lit windows with his chin. “They’re home. How can we get in when the Winds are home?”

“They’re not home.” She nodded sagely. “That’s part of the secret. The Winds never visit these places. You have a lot to learn, Jordan.”

“Everybody knows the Winds live here,” he said sullenly.

“I know they don’t. You may have a lot to learn, but you are going to learn it, never fear. Let’s call this a good first lesson for you. This way.” She stepped onto the lawn and led him along the edge. “Wouldn’t want to be hit by lightning on the way in,” she said.

There were no horses tethered at the front of the huge building. Though light glowed from its windows, Jordan could see no movement within. The marble steps leading up to the tall doors were well swept, but there were no servants visible. He hung back as May trotted up the steps; she took his arm and pulled him gently but inexorably after her.

He held his breath as she reached out to the door handle and turned it. She pushed the door open, letting a fan of golden light out into the blue-grey afternoon. “Come,” she said, and stepped in.

He hesitated. Nothing happened; there was no sound from within. Reluctantly, he put his head around the doorjamb.

“I’m soaked!” Lady May yanked the water-gemmed sheet off and tossed it down. “Look at this.” Her legs and backside were covered in mud.

Jordan stared past her uneasily. It was warm here, and dry. Light came from a great crystalline chandelier overhead. That meant there must be servants to tend the lights. They were bound to show up at any moment.

“Close the door please, Jordan.” He eased in, closed the portal but kept his back to it.

This place was bigger than Castor’s mansion. They stood in a bow fronted vestibule at least two stories tall. Two wide marble staircases curved up to either side. Ahead was an arch leading to darkness. There were tall wooden doors at the foot of both staircases. Everything looked clean and straight, but the style was ancient, as if he’d stepped into one of the etchings in his father’s book of architectural mannerism.

He looked up past the chandelier. Gold arabesques over the windows. The ceiling was painted with some torrid mythological scene, framed at the edges by ornate gold guilloches.

Lady May followed his gaze. “Derivative,” she said. “Venus restraining Mars.”

Jordan had heard of neither of them. He looked down. They were both dripping on the polished marble floor. Suddenly horrified at how wet, muddy and disreputable he must look, he said, “We have to get out of here.”

“Find the lavatory,” she said.

“No, what are you saying? They’ll catch us!” He fought a rising tide of hysteria, which clicked in his throat.

“Jordan,” she said sharply. “There is no one here. No one to take notice of us, anyway, as long as we keep this with us.” She held up the silvery gauze square. “It disrupts their sensors.”

He shook his head. “The chandelier—”

“—needs no tending,” she said. “And is tended by nobody. There are things here, and I suppose they’re servants of the winds, but they’re