by Julian May
Tony's world reeled. An enormous dark-colored mass reminiscent of a deep-sea diving rig was materializing behind the rebel leader. As if in a dream, Tony heard Kalipin and Alice being ordered to stack the materials close to the suit of armor. Then a voice in his own brain said:
Stand very still. It would be best if you held your breath and closed your eyes although our translation through the gray limbo will occupy only the merest fraction of a second.
Tony screamed: Don't! Don't take me! I don't want to die in hyperspace! JesushelpmeOGodRowane...
Zang.
Tony felt the appalling pain attending penetration of the superficies, familiar from many a superluminal voyage between Milieu worlds. For the merest instant he felt frozen, suffocated, on the verge of having every body cell explode.
Zung.
He sprawled on hands and knees, opened his eyes, and saw Alice and Kalipin goggling inastonishment. A smoky Fennoscandian landscape. Scattered bones. Charred rubble. A towering suit of black armor with a Bosch blaster leaning against it. Purloined equipment and containers and Tony and all—right back where they had started from!
Zang.
GodGodGodnooooAAAAAGH! Ooh.
Zung.
Dusty stubble covered with soot and ash. A severed human pinkie (not his) with two flies crawling on it. Babble from the Howler and Alice's mind screeching for the King on thedistance-spanning farspeech mode. Much nearer, a sepulchral metallic roar:
Quel putain de gâchis what are they playing at back there?...Rubberband effect ... try it this time without the external load—
The armored form disappeared, leaving Tony and the cargo behind.
Trembling and sobbing, eyes screwed shut, he waited to be snatched back into the gray limbo and the pain. But nothing happened. He lifted his head and saw sweet old Alice, whoknelt beside him radiating a mishmash of horror and tentative relief. She said, "I think he's gone, baby. But if he pops back out of the hype, I'll cook him in his own can." She hefted the Bosch. "I bespoke the King. He's sending a flyer with help."
Tony gently lowered his face to the ground and began taking deep breaths.
***
Within the matrix of gray negation, the mind clung to the all-important pseudolocus and concentrated on the far end of the catenary.
It terminated properly. He had not miscalculated the curve nor the coefficient of penetration. He completed the jump, attained the superficies, and willed the generation of the upsilon-field that would form an aperture into the normal universe.
Nothing. It would not open. There was no field.
Rubberhand back! Attain the antiterminus will the u-field the u-field the u-field!
Nothing. There was insufficient energy. The incandescent brain felt itself cooling; emergency life-support modules operating independently of the enhancer circuitry and its transdimensional power source kicked in, sustaining him. He would not freeze, drown, smother, or decompress for at least five days, until the armor's internal resources were drained.
Barebrained, he slid back along the catenary to the Kyllikki end. The path seemed to glow faintly in the pervasive gray. He poked and thrust at the stubborn interface but it would not yield.
He was trapped in limbo.
***
The full moon rising above the sea of dry grass was almost like another sun—swollen, slightly flattened at top and bottom, and an awful reddish color in the thick haze.
Chief Burke used his paddle for a rudder as the canoe swept around a wide bend in the Seine, bearing north now instead of east. The trees here were sparse and almost leafless from drought. There were no land animals except the ubiquitous crocodiles, and very few birds. He knew he would have to find a safe campsite soon; but something urged him to continue on for just a bit more, to come fully around the bend so he would have a clear view of the waterway the next morning...
Then he saw it ahead, riding the bloody water: a huge argosy with a full spread of gleaming golden sails, moored fore and aft in midstream.
Cursing, he angled the canoe to the right bank, where a partially undermined tree leaned branches into the water and provided a thin screen. It had to be Kyllikki. He pulled out his monocular and studied her. She was less than 200 meters away, motionless in the evening calm. There was no hint of any mechanical or metapsychic barrier around her. The decks seemed deserted.
Burke slipped the little scope back into its case, touched his golden tore, and called:
Aiken. I've found her.
...Thanks Chief I'm on my way.
***
Inside the barricaded stern hold of the schooner, Patricia Castellane's voice rose in a despairing scream.
"They've cut him off! He's trapped! Help me, Jeff—Cordelia—give me everything you've got. They haven't broken anything yet, only opened the CE main at the redundant terminal in the power room. I can bridge it! Just feed me—feed me to overload, dammit!—everything you've got. Marc, come through! Marc!"
The hold that had gone pitch-black with the power failure flared as three bodies appeared suddenly clothed in writhing discharges of psychic lightning. A triple mind-shout knifed the aether. Reactivated display panels and telltales showed that the equipment was online again. A black phantasm flickered and solidified on its customary wooden cradle.
From the loudspeaker of the computer clanged an inhuman voice: YOU IN THE POWER ROOM. STAND AWAY OR DIE. I COMMAND RECLOSING OF CE POWER MAIN NOW.
Jeff Steinbrenner and Cordelia Warshaw fell to the deck. Patricia supported herself with difficulty against the computer console and whispered, "It's all right. The power's back. You're safe, Marc..."
A simulacrum of his face smiled at her from the blind black helm. "Thank you, Pat. Dear Pat."
One hand was raised toward him. "Go. You'll have to teleport everything away. All the others—turned against us. Escape, Marc. Then it was worth it."
For the last time, the mind shone with a dirigent's creative-coercive power; then all thinking was extinguished and her body lay beside the two others on the rough oaken planks.
Marc's amplified voice echoed through the hull:
LEAVE THE POWER ROOM. ALL OF YOU.
Outside Kyllikki there was a tremendous sonic boom. The schooner rocked.
He sucked in energy, heedless of the risk, absorbed a greater input than he had ever attempted here in the Pliocene exile. Yes! Fully powered, he spun the upsilon-field and made the hyperspatial gateway enormous. His mind designated the pieces of equipment to be translated: the entire CE complex, some weapons, supplies, more than eleven tons of mass altogether. How easy it was to lift! How nonchalantly he pushed the load and himself through the gaping superficies—and slammed it shut in the Golden Adversary's frustrated face.
Z ang.
...A perfect place to hide, farseen weeks ago.
Z ung.
The materialization down inside the deep, dry watercourse would have been visible to the naked eye for less than a second. Then the absorptive camouflaging mechanism that had formerly sheltered Kyllikki clicked on, twisting the moonbeams to form an illusion that, viewed from above, roofed the gully with apparently solid ground.
After several hours the camouflager was turned off, and the gulley seemed to be as barren of life as ever. But the little cave where Madame Guderian and Claude Majewski had hidden was now greatly enlarged to accommodate a new tenant. He came out briefly after midnight and sat beneath the old acacia tree that slouched at the canyon lip, looking at the force-field hemisphere that shrouded Castle Gateway just up the slope to the south. A few hares and other night-prowling creatures ventured to creep up and inspect him—but they fled soon enough at the cold, terrible touch of his mind.
8
MINANONN THE HERETIC opened the door of the former feasting hallof the chalet, which had been converted into a nursery for the black-torc babies. The room was lit only by clusters of red faerie lights. He saw a double row of small cots with ten redactors seated on stools before them. The mothers were range
d behind the infants, observing. Dionket stood at the side, directing the operation, faintly veiled in carmine luminescence. Basil Wimborne played a quiet melody on his recorder and an aura of healing pervaded the chamber.
It's going to work, Minanonn thought. The new program is beginning to help the poor little things even now, before the coercive segment of the metaconcert is phased in. They'll be cured, whole-minded again, inside of a week or so. And not only that, they'll be operant: the first of the new generation Brede the Shipspouse had foreseen.
They must not be left to perish in Nightfall! Fortunately, the King's suggestion provides the perfect solution...
Minanonn waited. He caught sight of Elizabeth seated in a dark corner, her mind detached, her face covered by her hands—unneeded. Then the preliminary session came to a close; the young minds were awash in soothing endorphins and the pain was in abeyance. Basil absently mind-sang the human lullaby as he played his flute.
Joy will come to us at morning,
Life with sunrise hope adorning,
Though sad dreams maygive dread warning,
All through the night.
The last notes of the song died away. Dionket and the redactor company looked at one another and smiled, and then the healers rose and filed out. Minanonn's urgent summons brought the Lord Healer and Elizabeth to him, and they left the chalet by a side door and went into the twilit rock garden where the full moon was just rising above the hills.
"There have been important developments," the Heretic said. "I didn't want to interrupt the work. Here is a message sent to me by the King within the last half hour." He displayed a picture of the portentous events that had taken place on the Upper Seine.
Elizabeth's mind darkened in dismay. "Then Marc's at large with his mind-enhancing equipment!"
"But deprived of his base of operation and his confederates," Dionket said. "Surely that's encouraging news. Even with his infernal machine, the Adversary is unable to break into Castle Gateway. And the King will surely take precautions against any renewed attemptagainst the dysprosium miners."
Elizabeth frowned. "I wonder if the Guderian Project is vulnerable to any other indirect attacks?"
"The King declared it was not," Minanonn said. "Save for the one critical element, theworkers have all the raw materials and manufacturing equipment safe in Castle Gateway. A few more days will see the completion of the Fennoscandian operation. According to the King, the time-gate device should be completed sometime during Grand Tourney week."
"How appropriate." Elizabeth's mind was once again curtained and unfathomable. "The Field of Gold isn't too convenient to Castle Gateway—but of course there are the aircraft..."
The three of them came to an ornamental grotto, a shallow cave with a spring tricklingout of it, surrounded by ferns and night-fragrant plantings of damewort and mignonette. An oil lantern dangling from a tree cast warm light on the surrounding rocks and a pair ofrustic benches. They sat down.
Dionket said, "Brother Heretic, you hold something back from us. What was the rest of the King's message?"
The former Battlemaster's attitude was one of dejection. His massive shoulders slumped and he picked up pebbles from the pathway and tossed them into the little stream. "The King captured the Adversary's large sailing ship. He interrogated the twenty-two surviving North Americans aboard, those who mutinied against Remillard. A certain Rebel named Manion believes that the next phase of the Adversary's scheme may involve the Firvulag. As participants in an offensive metaconcert led by Remillard."
Dionket burst out laughing. "The idea is ludicrous! The Foe would never permit any human to direct them—much less him."
"I call to your mind certain sacred traditions," Minanonn retorted. "The Adversary is no mere observer in Nightfall."
His confidence shaken, the Lord Healer said, "But the Little People aren't fools! Subordinating themselves to Remillard in an Organic Mind setup would be to risk permanent mental slavery. As it is, Sham and Ayfa command a mind-force that may very well be superior to Aiken's. They require no assistance from this human interloper—"
"Not if the Firvulag really know how to make metaconcert work," Elizabeth said in a low voice. "If they can put the structure together so that the whole is greater than the sum of the small parts—the comparatively weak individual mind-units—and keep the thing working efficiently under their direction. But we've already had plenty of hints that Firvulag mastery of the orchestration technique is far from complete. They tend to fall apart, go every mind for itself, when they're backed into a corner. That was the point Sugoll and Katlinel hoped to pound home in their conciliation efforts, warning Sharn and Ayfa that they'd never be able to match Aiken's disciplined and efficient counterforce. But if Marc comes along promising to reorganize the Firvulag metaconcert in return for their helping to break the Castle Gateway defenses..."
"This is what the King fears," Minanonn said. "All the Adversary need do is bide his time. Make his offer known. Suggest ways that the royal pair might work with him while still maintaining independence. Wait for the inevitable flaws in Firvulag mental cooperationto manifest themselves. In time, Sharn and Ayfa will find his temptation to be irresistible."
"Irresistible," Elizabeth repeated. She stared at her hands, at the small diamond ring that had been the symbol of her profession back in the Milieu. Lawrence had worn its twin. Now the stone's sparkle was forlorn in the lamplight.
"What are we going to do?" Dionket asked.
"Flee," said Minanonn flatly.
"To the Milieu?" Elizabeth laughed. "Marc's collusion with those eighty thousand Firvulag minds will dispose of that option, I assure you. He won't even need the Little Peopleon the scene at Castle Gateway. He can channel the psychoenergy from a distance—from Nionel—just as he did when he smashed Gibraltar and put down Felice."
"I didn't contemplate fleeing through the time-gate, Elizabeth," the Heretic said. "I asked the King, in the name of the Peace Faction, for the great ship Kyllikki. He agreed to give it to us, subject to his removing most of the armament. A prize crew of Tanu stalwarts and armed humans are taking it at full speed back down the Seine. It will be provisioned at Goriah for a return voyage across the ocean to the Blessed Isles. The surviving North Americans have asserted that they will cooperate fully and accept the Peace Faction's governance."
Elizabeth was speechless.
Dionket slowly raised both hands. "The Isles! Of course. The sanctuary of our ancient legends ... the Land of Youth! We can complete the work on the black-torc infants in the week remaining before the Tourney, and take them with us!"
Minanonn said, "Our Peaceful Folk can be diverted from Nionel to Goriah, traveling the Western Track and then boating down the Laar. There is still time. I will petition the King for a flying machine to evacuate those confined to the Pyrénées by the snows. And we here on Black Crag—"
Elizabeth finished ironically, "Can slip away quietly, while Aiken fights the Nightfall War and Marc Remillard destroys his own children."
"The King thought the plan a most excellent one," Minanonn protested. "He told me he would be heartened, knowing that you and the children and the Peaceful Folk would be preserved against the fall of Night. If anyone can save this poor Many-Colored Land, he can. Nevertheless, he seeks to repay what he considers to be his debt to us three, in gratitude for saving his life at the Rio Genii and his sanity at Quicksilver Cave."
"I'm not going with you on Kyllikki," Elizabeth said.
"But you must!" Dionket exclaimed. "We'll need your help to raise the newly operant young ones to their full potential."
She had shut herself away from them. "Lord Healer, I don't have the courage to begin all over again in your Fortunate Isles. I've had enough of exile. I'll teach you and Creynas much of the preceptorial material as I can—the educational shortcuts, the special mind-expanding techniques that you can't infer or deduce yourselves. The children won'tgrow up Milieu-adept, but they'll do well enough. And with Marc's adaptation of Bren
dan'sprogram, you'll be able to modify the brain of each newly bom baby so that the tores willnever be needed again."
"But we need you!" Dionket exclaimed.
"You don't," she retorted. "Why won't you understand? Is it because you refuse to? Must I show you my self naked before you'll accept what I tell you and let me be?"
Minanonn said, "Elizabeth, we love you and want you with us!"
"So does Aiken," she said. "I've decided to stand by him, to give him whatever help I can in the war."
"He hasn't asked this of you," Dionket said. "This doom-seeking choice of yours is born of despair, not love for your friend."
"And what if it is?" she shot back. "It's my life, isn't it? I've tried to do my best for all of you—God knows I have. But I can't bear any more! I want to help Aiken precisely because he hasn't begged me to. He knows I'm not some maternal abstraction, some all-wise personification of your Goddess sent to light and guard and rule and guide. I'm just his friend. And I'm going to sit beside him at the games and forget about Nightfall for a few days, and not think about anybody but myself!"
"Elizabeth, reconsider," Minanonn begged her. "You could be such a great help to us. It would be satisfying work—"
"Oh, yes?" she said quietly; and before they realized what was happening her barriers had fallen to show the cocoon of fire. "I've tried that, friends. Done my very best—just as I promised you when I left Redactor House in Muriah after the Flood. A little of what I accomplished lifted me, but the fire was always just out of sight, waiting for the pendulum to swing to the failure side again. You wanted me to be Brede, but I was only a misfit—just as out of place here in the Many-Colored Land as Marc Remillard was in the Galactic Milieu." And like me he could have done so much good his dream his power his immortality all wasted why wasn't he Jack why was I separated from Lawrence why am I too weak alone why is he too determined to be strong alone why if God lives does he let the misfit minds suffer so misunderstand themselves so refuse touch refuse love why was I afraid even knowing he was sorry reaching gratified by Brendan why couldn't I have touched him even at the last told him the answer his real work (Creyn knew!) helped him find it in spite of fearing now it's too late he's lost I'm lost let it pass let itall pass let me go friends if you care let me go let me fly away...