Young Bleys - Childe Cycle 09 Read Online Free PDF Page A

to me," answered Henry, without looking down at him, "and let me hear no more 'sirs' from you, boy—Bleys. 'Sir' implies rank; and there's no rank, in our church."
    "Yes, Uncle," said Bleys.
    They continued for some distance, until the parked vehicles thinned out. At last they came to a number of other vehicles, motorized, but with wheels, rather than the skirts around their bottom edges that marked the hovercraft or magnetic-field style of transport which made up most of the ranks they had passed through so far.
    Eventually, beyond these, they came at last to unmotorized transports. These varied from carts to wagons, and finally to something that was neither cart nor wagon, but something of both, but which like the rest had a team of goats harnessed to it and tethered in place. Beside it stood Bleys' single small bag.
    "How did they get it here so quickly, Uncle?" asked Bleys, fascinated to see the expensive case glittering beside the unpainted, goat-driven cart.
    "They drop off a luggage container on landing, before taxiing to the terminal," answered his uncle, shortly. "It's done automatically. Put your bag in the back and we'll cover it with a tarp. It'll likely rain before we're home. You and I sit in the cab, up front."
    Bleys moved to help; but his uncle was too quick for him. The bag was loaded and covered before Bleys had done more than begin trying to help.
    "In the other door with you, boy," said Henry, opening the left side door of the wooden cab for himself. Bleys ran around
    and let himself in on the right side, closing the door behind him and securing it with a loop of rope that seemed to act as a door-lock.
    Within, the cab was much more obviously home-built than it had appeared to be, looked at from the outside. It was like a closed wagon on the inside, with cut-out holes for the reins in a dashboard below a windscreen made of some transparent material—not glass, for it was bent and creased in places.
    Reins to the goats ran through the holes. He and his uncle were seated on what seemed like an old bench, thinly covered with something like the tarp they had used to cover the luggage in the open back of the vehicle, and padded underneath the tarp-material with straw or dried grass, of which ends stuck out. The back, where there was a backrest to their seat, was similarly padded.
    Bleys had been eager to get into the cab. He was dressed for shipboard. In fact, he had never owned anything but warm-weather clothes in his life, since his whole life had been spent either inside buildings or at places that were at a season of summer temperatures. But the cab, aside from the fact that no wind blew through it, was just as damp and cold as it had been outside.
    He was shivering.
    "Here!" said Henry MacLean, gruffly. He picked up what turned out to be a jacket, not unlike his own, but smaller— though still too long in the sleeves and wide in the shoulders for Bleys. He helped Bleys into it with one arm. Bleys gratefully closed it about him, buttoning the front up tightly, with its row of awkward, primitive buttons.
    "Thought you wouldn't have anything to wear," said Henry. For a moment there was a blunting of the edge to his harsh voice. "Think you'll be warm enough, now?"
    "Yes, Uncle," said Bleys; and with the warmth to prompt him, his mind began to work again. A lifetime of surviving by giving grown-ups the responses they thought proper and correct brought the answer to Bleys' lips without conscious thought. "I thank God for your kindness, Uncle."
    Henry, who had picked up the reins and looked ahead again, stopped abruptly. His head snapped around to stare at Bleys.
    "Who told you to say that?" His voice was totally harsh again, and threatening.
    Bleys stared back at him with a look of utter innocence. Actually Henry himself had given him the words, with Henry's opening speech to the lounge attendant. But the question triggered a panic in him. How could he ever explain to this almost-stranger how he had learned