The Florians by Brian Stableford

Author:Brian Stableford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: keywords
Publisher: Wildside Press
Published: 2012-03-08T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

As soon as the daylight came, we began the long march. There was no point in wasting time. We were cold, we were hungry...and we had a limited time in front of us before we were no longer capable of following any plan, however ill formed and crazy.

The idea—mine—was to double back in a long arc which would take us around Leander to the seashore north of the port. Then under cover of the next night’s darkness, we would sneak back into the inhabited area just far enough to find and appropriate a rowboat. We would then row to the island and set about trying to locate Nathan or learn whatever there was to be learned by careful eavesdropping. We had no cards up our sleeves...our final recourse was simply surrender.

Laboriously, we climbed the long slope at whose foot we had hid out for the night. We were hoping that at the top we might find a vantage point from which we could see the whole extent of the territory we had to cross, and thus identify an easy route across it.

I didn’t expect that there would be any organized pursuit or search. It hardly seemed worth it, from Jason’s point of view or Vulgan’s. There was nothing we could do out here...we didn’t even have enough local knowledge to live off the land for a week. Sooner or later we’d have to come to them, and the only question so far as they were concerned was which one of them would be afforded the dubious privilege of grabbing us. In the meantime, they would be very busy...the conflict had been joined and the sides would have to be drawn up.

From a crag atop the ridge—far above the wrinkled landscape we had traversed during our flight from the station—we could see the buildings of Leander and the harbor. We could also see the island—an irregular lump of rock looking, in profile, somewhat akin to a Poisson curve, with a tall building making up the tip of the modal point. It was some way to the north of the point at which the sun had risen from the sea, but it was still only a silhouette against the brightly lit sky and sea.

There was a spur of land projecting into the sea north of the town, pointing like a thick finger at the island. This spur formed the northern bank of a river whose estuary was so close to Leander harbor that it must have been a good deal easier for ships to leave than to arrive. The harbor traffic must creep in from the south and then move to the north, where the current of the river would carry it out to sea through a relatively weed-clear channel.

From where we stood we could inspect the country strung out between the ridge and the coast almost as if it were a gigantic map. It was hard to follow such minor colonial innovations as the dirt roads and the railroad because

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