The Princes of the Air by Ford John M

Author:Ford, John M. [Ford, John M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780671444822
Publisher: Tor
Published: 1982-09-15T07:00:00+00:00

Condor called Cordell Hull settled to the surface of Periwinkle and sank beneath it.

There was nothing on the world but ocean and frozen ocean; the nearest land was fifty meters below water. There were floating towns, and a city on the southern icepack, but the life of the planet was under the sea. So the ships that could—most of them—and would—a lesser number—closed intakes and submerged.

There were thuds and thumps as water passed Condor’s hull. The water surface shone above like a Blue in a monochrome OutSide. Shortly, lights appeared below, and the spheres and cylinders of Peri Prime became visible. A Remora subtug pulled alongside Condor, latched on by suction. The tug’s pilot was a semimer, working dry inside the glass cabin but with gilltubes visible on her bare shoulders; two true merfolk, their gills fully internal at the expense of their lungs, swam alongside.

Condor locked down to a seapad, and the merfolk sealed a boarding tunnel to the hatch.

Obeck, in full formal whites but without any badges or bands of rank, tucked the largest of his “borrowed” dispatch cases under his arm and waited for the hatch light. “See you in ninety minutes,” said Kondor; that, according to Simpson-Liu’s Intelligence report, was how long Dr. Bishop had spent off the Montjoie II here; its crew had never left, so neither would Kondor and Bajan.

Obeck checked his wristec as the hatch flashed green. “I hope it’s you I see,” he said, smiling but not really joking, and went through.

They were, just now, flying through dust with instruments out: Dr. Bishop had, said Intelligence, spent his ninety minutes at the Embassy—but with whom? Not the Ambassador-Global, who was at Peri Polar. And what was he doing? The report was unstrangely silent.

Obeck took a chair from a public rack, unfolded it and sat down on a passenger belt, and waited for something to happen.

He tried to like Peri Prime, but he did not much succeed. The corridors were confined and ugly, with exposed pipes and valves everywhere and constant mechanical noises. There was only a low-speed belt, no expresses. Out the ports was no sky, no starfield, just blue-green hydrosphere with a vague light filtering down, and no terrain but some rough rocks and sand, more barren than Riyah Zaini desert—and dimming to nothing a few meters away. Occasionally a swimming creature fluttered by, but none stayed to let him look, and all seemed quite drab. It was rather the same with the people he saw: few and unexceptional, even the semimer….

He passed a sealock labeled with street directions, and it showed him the vector to the truth: this was only a tiny corner of Peri Prime, the dry corner. Ninety percent of the city, of the population, lived in water. The true mer, who had built this city as the first here, had built it for themselves; the air swallowers—and even the semimer, who had to come up for two-thirds of their time—had to make do with the back doors, the cellars.

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