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In The Wind
Glen Cook
IN THE WIND
Glen Cook
Here is a story set in a more distant future when humankind travels to far stars routinely. Exobiology, the
study of life forms beyond the earth, is a young enough branch of biology to be called "applied science
fiction" as practiced by a science specialist of one kind or another. Studies in this field include
characterizing hypothetical planetary environments, the native life which might exist in such alien
ecologies, and how such life might be observed, directly or indirectly. But short of actually traveling to the
planets of other solar systems, the only life which we might be able to detect at a distance around other
stars is intelligent life. Drawing on background from astrophysics, exobiology, planetary composition,
Glen Cook creates an alien environment inhabited by intelligent life vastly different from us. And in what is
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 also an exciting adventure story, he manages to raise serious ethical dilemmas about our possible
relationship to such intelligences.
G.Z.
I
It's quiet up there, riding the ups and downs over Ginnunga Gap. Even in combat there's no slightest
clamor, only a faint scratch and whoosh of strikers tapping igniters and rockets smoking away. The rest
of the time, just a sleepy whisper of air caressing your canopy. On patrol it's hard to stay alert and wary.
If the aurora hadn't been so wild behind the hunched backs of the Harridans, painting glaciers and
snowfields in ropes of varicolored fire, sequinning snow-catches in the weathered natural castles of the
Gap with momentary reflections, I might have dozed at the stick the morning I became von Drachau's
wingman. The windwhales were herding in the mountains, thinking migration, and we were flying five or
six missions per day. The strain was almost unbearable.
But the auroral display kept me alert. It was the strongest I'd ever seen. A ferocious magnetic storm was
developing. Lightning grumbled between the Harridans' copper peaks, sometimes even speared down
and danced among the spires in the Gap. We'd all be grounded soon. The rising winds, cold but
moisture-heavy, promised weather even whales couldn't ride.
Winter was about to break out of the north, furiously, a winter of a Great Migration. Planets, moons and
sun were right, oracles and omens predicting imminent Armageddon. Twelve years had ticked into the
ashcan of time. All the whale species again were herding. Soon the fighting would be hard and hopeless.
There are four species of windwhale on the planet Camelot, the most numerous being the Harkness
whale, which migrates from its north arctic and north temperate feeding ranges to equatorial mating
grounds every other year. Before beginning their migration they, as do all whales, form herds-which,
because the beasts are total omnivores, utterly strip the earth in their passage south. The lesser species, in
both size and numbers, are Okumura's First, which mates each three winters, Rosenberg's, mating every
fourth, and the rare Okumura's Second, which travels only once every six years.
Unfortunately. . .
It takes no mathematical genius to see the factors of twelve. And every twelve years the migrations do
coincide. In the Great Migrations the massed whales leave tens of thousands of square kilometers of
devastation in their wake, devastation from which, because of following lesser migrations, the routes
barely recover before the next Great Migration. Erosion is phenomenal. The monsters, subject to no
natural control other than that apparently exacted by creatures we called mantas, were destroying the
continent on which our employers operated.
Ubichi Corporation had been on Camelot twenty-five years. The original exploitation force, though
equipped to face the world's physical peculiarities, hadn't been prepared for whale migrations. They'd
been lost to a man, whale supper, because the Corporation's pre-exploitation studies had been so
cursory. Next Great Migration another team, though they'd dug in, hadn't fared much better. Ubichi still
hadn't done its scientific investigation. In fact, its only action was a determination that the whales had to
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 go.
Simple enough, viewed from a board room atGeneva. But practical implementation was a nightmare
under Camelot's technically stifling conditions. And the mantas recomplicated everything.
My flight leader's wagging wings directed my attention south. From a hill a dozen kilometers down the
cable came flashing light, Clonninger Station reporting safe arrival of a convoy fromDerry. For the next
few hours we'd have to be especially alert.
It would take the zeppelins that long to beat north against the wind, and all the while they would be
vulnerable to mantas from over the Gap. Mantas, as far as we could see at the time, couldn't tell the
difference between dirigibles and whales. More air cover should be coming up. . .
Von Drachau came to Jaeger Gruppe XIII (Corporation Armed Action Command's unsubtle title for
our Hunter Wing, which they used as a dump for problem employees) with that convoy, reassigned from
JG IV, a unit still engaged in an insane effort to annihilate the Sickle Islands whale herds by means of
glider attacks carried out over forty-five kilometers of quiet seas. We'd all heard of him (most JG XIII
personnel had come from theSickleIslandsoperation), the clumsiest, or luckiest incompetent, pilot flying
for Ubichi. While scoring only four kills he'd been bolted down seven times-and had survived without a
scratch. He was the son of Jupp von Drachau, the Confederation Navy officer who had directed the
planet-busting strike against the Sangaree homeworld, a brash, sometimes pompous, always
self-important nineteen year old who thought that the flame of his father's success should illuminate him
equally-and yet resented even a mention of the man. He was a dilettante, come to Camelot only to fly.
Unlike the rest of us, Old Earthers struggling to buy out of the poverty bequeathed us by prodigal
ancestors, he had no driving need to give performance for pay.
An admonition immediately in order: I'm not here to praise von Drachau, but to bury him. To let him
bury himself. Aerial combat fans, who have never seen Camelot, who have read only corporate
propaganda, have made of him a contemporary "hero", a flying do-no-wrong competitor for the pewter
crown already contested by such antiques as von Richtoffen, Hartmann and Galland. Yet these
Archaicists can't, because they need one, make a platinum bar from a turd, nor a socio-psychological
fulfillment from a scatterbrain kid. . .*
Most of the stories about him are apocryphal accretions generated to give him depth in his later, "heroic"
aspect. Time and storytellers increase his stature, as they have that of Norse gods, who might've been
people who lived in preliterate times. For those who knew him (and no one is closer than a wingman),
though some of us might like to believe the legends, he was just a selfish, headstrong, tantrum-throwing
manchild-albeit a fighter of supernatural ability. In the three months he spent with us, during the Great
Migration, his peculiar talents and shortcomings made of him a creature larger than life. Unpleasant a
person as he was, he became the phenom pilot.
*This paragraph is an editorial insertion from a private letter by Salvador del Gado. Dogfight believes it
clarifies del Gado's personal feelings toward his former wingman. His tale, taken separately, while
unsympathetic, strives for an objectivity free of his real jealousies. It is significant that he mentions
Hartmann and Galland together with von Richtoffen; undoubtedly they, as he when compared with von
Drachau, were flyers better than the Red Knight, yet they, and del Gado, lack the essential charisma of
the flying immortals. Also, von Richtoffen and von Drachau died at the stick; Hartmann and Galland went
on to more prosaic things, becoming administrators, commanders of the Luftwaffe. Indications are that
del Gado's fate with Ubichi Corporation's Armed Action Command will be much the same.
-Dogfight
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 II
The signals from Clonninger came before dawn, while only two small moons and the aurora lighted the
sky. But sunrise followed quickly. By the time the convoy neared Beadle Station (us), Camelot's erratic,
blotchy-faced sun had cleared the eastern horizon. The reserve squadron began catapulting into the
Gap's frenetic drafts. The four of us on close patrol descended toward the dirigibles. The lightning in the
Harridans had grown into aYprescannonade. A net of jagged blue laced together the tips of the copper
towers in the Gap. An elephant stampede of angry clouds rumbled above the mountains. The winds
approached the edge of being too vicious for flight.
Flashing light from ground control, searchlight fingers stabbing north and east, pulsating. Mantas sighted.
We waggle-winged acknowledgment, turned for the Gap and updrafts. My eyes had been on the verge
of rebellion, demanding sleep, but in the possibility of combat weariness temporarily faded.
Black specks were coming south low against the daytime verdigris of the Gap, a male-female pair in
search of a whale. It was obvious how they'd been named. Anyone familiar with Old Earth's sea
creatures could see a remarkable resemblance to the manta ray-though these had ten meter bodies,
fifteen meter wingspans, and ten meter tails tipped by devil's spades of rudders. From a distance they
appeared black, but at attack range could be seen as deep, uneven green on top and lighter, near olive
beneath. They had ferocious habits. More signals from the ground. Reserve ships would take the mantas.
Again we turned, overflew the convoy.
It was the biggest ever sent north, fifteen dirigibles, one fifty meters and larger, dragging the line from
Clonninger at half kilometer intervals, riding long reaches of running cable as their sailmen struggled to
tack them into a facing wind. The tall glasteel pylons supporting the cable track were ruby towers linked
by a single silver strand of spider silk running straight to Clonninger's hills.
We circled wide and slow at two thousand meters, gradually dropping lower. When we got down to five
hundred we were replaced by a flight from the reserve squadron while we scooted to the Gap for an
updraft. Below us ground crews pumped extra hydrogen to the barrage balloons, lifting Beadle's vast
protective net another hundred meters so the convoy could slide beneath. Switchmen and winchmen
hustled about with glass and plastic tools in a dance of confusion. We didn't have facilities for receiving
more than a half dozen zeppelins-though these, fighting the wind, might come up slowly enough to be
handled.
More signals. More manta activity over the Gap, the reserve squadron's squabble turning into a brawl.
The rest of my squadron had come back from the Harridans at a run, a dozen mantas in pursuit. Later I
learned our ships had found a small windwhale herd and while one flight busied their mantas the other had
destroyed the whales. Then, ammunition gone, they ran for home, arriving just in time to complicate traffic
problems.
I didn't get time to worry it. The mantas, incompletely fed, spotted the convoy. They don't distinguish
between whale and balloon. They went for the zeppelins.
What followed becomes dulled in memory, so swiftly did it happen and so little attention did I have to
spare. The air filled with mantas and lightning, gliders, smoking rockets, explosions. The brawl spread till
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 every ship in the wing was involved. Armorers and catapult crews worked to exhaustion trying to keep
everything up. Ground batteries seared one another with backblast keeping a rocket screen between the
mantas and stalled convoy-which couldn't warp in while the entrance to the defense net was tied up by
fighting craft (a problem unforeseen but later corrected by the addition of emergency entryways). They
winched their running cables in to short stay and waited it out. Ground people managed to get barrage
balloons with tangle tails out to make the mantas' flying difficult.
Several of the dirigibles fought back. Stupid, I thought. Their lifting gas was hydrogen, screamingly
dangerous. To arm them seemed an exercise in self-destruction.
So it proved. Most of our casualties came when a ship loaded with ground troops blew up, leaking gas
ignited by its own rockets. One hundred eighty-three men burned or fell to their deaths. Losses to mantas
were six pilots and the twelve man crew of a freighter.
III
Von Drachau made his entry into JG XIII history just as I dropped from my sailship to the packed earth
parking apron. His zepp was the first in and, having vented gas, had been towed to the apron to clear the
docking winches. I'd done three sorties during the fighting, after the six of regular patrol. I'd seen my
wingman crash into a dragline pylon, was exhausted, and possessed by an utterly foul mood. Von
Drachau hit dirt long-haired, unkempt, and complaining, and I was there to greet him. "What do you want
to be when you grow up, von Drachau?"
Not original, but it caught him off guard. He was used to criticism by administrators, but pilots avoid
antagonism. One never knows when a past slight might mean hesitation at the trigger ring and failure to
blow a manta off one's tail. Von Drachau's hatchet face opened and closed, goldfish-like, and one
skeletal hand came up to an accusatory point, but he couldn't come back.
We'd had no real contact during theSickleIslandscampaign. Considering his self-involvement, I doubted
he knew who I was--and didn't care if he did. I stepped past and greeted acquaintances from my old
squadron, made promises to get together to reminisce, then retreated to barracks. If there were any
justice at all, I'd get five or six hours for surviving the morning.
I managed four, a record for the week, then received a summons to the office of Commander
McClennon, a retired Navy man exiled to command of JG XIII because he'd been so outspoken about
Corporation policy.
(The policy that irked us all, and which was the root of countless difficulties, was Ubichi's secret purpose
on Camelot. Ubichi deals in unique commodities. It was sure that Camelot operations were recovering
one such, but fewer than a hundred of a half million employees knew what. The rest were there just to
keep the wind-whales from interfering. Even we mercenaries from Old Earth didn't like fighting for a total
unknown.)
Commander McClennon's outer office was packed, old faces from the wing and new from the convoy.
Shortly, McClennon appeared and announced that the wing had been assigned some gliders with new
armaments, low velocity glass barrel gas pressure cannon, pod of four in the nose of a ship designed to
carry the weapon system. . .immediate interest. Hitherto we'd flown sport gliders jury-rigged to carry
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