by Greg Bear
“He wants lightning to hit him. Might be better for all of us,” Oresias said. “There’s been a revolt. Elements in the Mouseion, I gather…and the Jews. The Lokhias is under siege and the palace has been locked up. Soldiers loyal to the queen have dropped bombs on the Mouseion—”
“No!” Rhita felt the word leap out of her, a futile, outraged countermanding order.
Oresias grimaced in shared pain. “We should have known from the attitude in Bagdade and Damaske. We have no protection on the way back. For all we know, the Hunnos and Rhus border stations are being alerted now. I don’t think they have a radio fix on us yet, but they will if we have to send any more messages.”
Lugotorix stood tall and protecting over Rhita, his eyes dark under a heavy frown.
“What do we do here?” Demetrios asked, apprehensive but not fearful.
“Our mission,” Oresias said. “We have two hours before I order a pull-out and we try to get back. We’ll unload what we need from the cargo plane.” He ordered several soldiers to organize the transfer of supplies. Outside, the tanker’s engines roared over the storm. The fuel had been transferred, and now it was taking off. “A long, leisurely expedition is no longer possible, but we can investigate this gate, learn as much as we can, and save our skins before the Kirghiz or Kazakh Tatars or their Rhus masters are upon us.”
Atta had given up imprecations against the thunder and joined them under the tent. “Lightning hit the gate,” he said breathlessly. “It glowed like a lantern.” Simultaneously, he and Oresias looked at Rhita.
“My turn, isn’t it?” she said.
“I will bring the Objects,” Lugotorix said. She looked at the Kelt’s retreating back with some surprise. Everybody pushes me to this. I don’t like the feeling I have; my instincts say no….
Or was she simply afraid?
“Will lightning strike the clavicle, too?” Oresias asked.
“I don’t know,” she said softly.
“What?”
“I don’t know!” she shouted. Demetrios nodded phlegmatically and she turned away from him with a flash of disgust contradicting her earlier attraction. He can’t help. Nobody can help. I’m trapped.
Lugotorix returned with the large case. She unlocked it with her keys and removed the clavicle, holding it low before her, feeling its power in her hands and thoughts. It tries to reassure me. The Kelt adjusted his machine pistol and shifted from one foot to the other behind her. Oresias smiled and pulled aside the tent door.
Without hesitation, refusing to show any weakness to anybody, disgusted with herself and everything else—especially with her weak-minded notions of adventure the day before—she stalked out into the driving rain.
She stopped and turned, eyes blinking against the pounding drops. “That way,” Demetrois said, pointing her in the direction of the swale.
“It’ll flood soon,” she called over her shoulder. The men followed her, all but the Kelt hunched over. Lugotorix strode through the storm like a walking tree, hair plastered across his face, eyes mere slits, teeth bared in a grimace.
The bottom of the swale was already ankle-deep in rushing water. She slipped and stepped gingerly down the bank, somehow staying upright with both hands gripping the clavicle, until she splashed across the bottom and stood beside the shivering lens of the gate, seeing it with her eyes and also in her mind, undisturbed by the storm or the lightning strike.
The clavicle showed her how wide the storm was, and odd symbols flashed through the display, bunching up at one point in the clouds and blinking green—
Just as lightning brightened the grassland yet again.
The clavicle kept her informed about all conditions around the gate. A pity Grandmother didn’t tell me about all this, she thought. She might not have known.
“It’s still here, and it hasn’t changed,” she called to the men. Only Lugotorix followed her into the swale. Demetrios stopped halfway down the bank, not, she surmised, out of fear, but in deference to her position, her control of the situation.
“Do you need help?” he asked, holding out his hands.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never done this before.”
What do I do to widen the gate? she asked the device. She assumed that was what they were all after, with no time to be extra cautious. She could hardly conceive of who or what might be waiting for them on the other side: ogres or gods.
She was still a child of Rhodos, however sophisticated she might pretend to be. She did not have her grandmother’s upbringing.
The clavicle instructed her below a level she could follow with her conscious mind. Her hands tingled; the effect was almost painful. Her muscles jerked minutely, growing used to new directives, new channels of command being blazed through her nervous system in just a few seconds. For a moment, Rhita was both tired and nauseated, but that passed and she straightened.
Surprised, she blinked away a few drops of water. The rain had stopped and she hadn’t noticed. Had she fainted or blacked out? She turned and saw Lugotorix behind her, eyes focused over her head. Demetrios halfway down the bank, and Atta and Oresias and the soldiers along the edge, all stared at the gateway.
Rhita looked up.
The lens had risen and expanded, flattening. It gleamed oddly in the fresh rays of a morning sun shining at a low angle between parting clouds. She consulted the clavicle.
The gateway’s changed. What’s happening?
We have made it expand, the clavicle told her. You ordered it so.
Can I go through it?
Not advisable, the clavicle said.
Why?
We cannot know what is on the other side.
Rhita thought that made a great deal of sense, but their time was limited. There’s no way we can find out?
None.
But it is open?
Yes.
Can someone come through from the other side?
Yes.
The enormity of what she had done began to sink in. She stood below and to one side of the gate, admiring its uncanny beauty, like a suspended raindrop, or the lens from the eye of some huge fish.
Water had risen above her ankles in the swale. It tumbled in glassy sheets over the bent grass, muddy foam catching against the bank. Rhita glanced down at it, annoyed, and decided it would be wise to climb up the bank, away from any possible flood. She stood beside Demetrios, holding the clavicle level with her knees, breathing heavily. “It’s open,” she told him quietly. He glanced at Atta and Oresias, then back at her.
“Don’t you want to tell them?”
“Of course,” she said, “It’s open,” she called back over her shoulder. “I opened it. The clavicle opened it.”
Atta nodded, lips drawn down, eyes squinted in speculation. Oresias gave her a short smile. “We can pass through?”
“It says we can, but that we shouldn’t. It doesn’t know what’s on the other side.”
Oresias walked down the bank. “We came here to investigate,” he reminded them. “Whatever’s happened in Alexandreia, that’s our mission. You’re too valuable to send through,” he told Rhita, “and we need Atta to command the pilots and soldiers in an emergency. Which this situation is, probably. Demetrios—”
“I’d love to go,” the mekhanikos said, eyes sparkling.
“No.” Oresias lifted his hands and shook his head. “You didn’t sign on to take risks. I did.”
Lugotorix watched them all closely, his eyes following the circle of conversation.
“Bring down the second Object,” Oresias ordered one of the soldiers. The man ran off to comply.
“I don’t know how to use it,” Rhita said. “Grandmother didn’t tell me.”
“Careless of her,” Oresias said, face glowing with the challenge. “We’ll see if it still works, and whether or not we can work it. If it works, I go through. If not—”
“I’m responsible for all of the Objects,” Rhita said.
“And I’m responsible for you,”
Oresias said. “If it doesn’t work, we can at least poke one of our caged animals through first, and then I’ll follow—if the animal comes back alive.” He touched Rhita’s arm lightly. “I’m not a complete fool, and I don’t want to die. We’ll be cautious.”
The case containing the second object was brought down into the swale by the soldier. Rhita opened the lid while he held it, and brought out the control box and recirculation box, both attached to a thick black belt. “It’s very old,” she said.
Oresias held up his arms and she wrapped the belt around his waist. “How would you make it work?”
Rhita thought for a moment, then touched the control box with her hand. The device did not communicate with her mind; apparently it was less sophisticated than the clavicle. What would Grandmother do? she asked herself.
She’d talk to it.
“Please turn on,” she said in Hellenic. “Please protect this man.” Nothing happened. She thought about that for a while, and then decided to use her grandmother’s English, a difficult language she was not at all fluent in. “Please turn on,” she said. “Protect this man.”
Again, no response.
Rhita felt a flush of anger at her own ignorance. Why didn’t Grandmother teach me how to use all the Objects? Perhaps, toward the end of her life, Patrikia’s brilliance had faded. “I can’t think of anything else to try…” she said. “Unless…it might work if I’m wearing it.”
Oresias shook his head firmly. “If her Imperial Hypsēlotēs still sits on her throne, she’d have my head if I put you in any danger. We’ll try the animal first.” He ordered that a cony be brought forward.
“I’ll go,” Lugotorix told Rhita in confidence, speaking softly in her ear. She shook her head; everything was confused. They were amateurs; none of the others—probably not even her—had any idea of how momentous this occasion was, how dangerous and not just for them.
The cony arrived, a small bundle of fur in a wicker cage, twitching a pink nose, its cage suspended by a metal hook on a long wooden pole. The water had not risen appreciably, so he took the far end of the pole and stepped into the stream, walking awkwardly with the cage dangling before him. “Where should I put it?” he asked.
Despite herself, Rhita grinned. “In the center.”
Lugotorix seemed to find this amusing, too; the Kelt seldom found anything worth smiling about.
Oresias lifted the long pole and maneuvered the cage up to the center of the glimmering lens. “Like this?” he asked. The cage and cony disappeared, as if by some magician’s sleight of hand.
“Yes,” Rhita said softly, awed. She tried to visualize Patrikia falling through such a lens, landing in an irrigation channel…
“I’ll leave it there for a few seconds,” Oresias said, the pole trembling in his grip.
Rhita heard a deep pounding sound to the north. Jamal Atta looked up from the swale and flinched. “Tatars—Kirghiz!” he shouted. “Hundreds of them!”
Oresias’s face blanched, but he continued to hold the pole in position. “Where?”
Lugotorix leaped to the rim of the swale. Rhita was torn between staying near the gate and Oresias and following the Kelt to find out what was happening. Soldiers shouted around the beecraft. The pounding grew louder.
“Horsemen and infantry!” Lugotorix called down to her. “They’re close—a couple of stadia.”
“What banner?” Oresias asked, his entire upper body trembling with the weight of the cage and pole. The lens hung steady and undisturbed, absorbing the cage just as an invisible doorway swallows the top of a magician’s rope.
“No banners,” Jamal Atta said. “They’re Kirghiz! We must leave!”
Oresias pulled the cage from the gate convulsively. Rhita saw a limp blur of red and gray in the cage as Oresias swung the pole out over the stream to the bank. They both peered down at the cony. It was dead; it hardly resembled an animal at all.
“What happened to it?” Rhita asked.
“Looks like it exploded, or something tore it apart,” Oresias said. He fingered the wooden bars; they were intact, their contents dripping a thin fluid of blood onto the grass and dirt. He unhooked the cage and stuffed it hastily into a rubberized sack. Lugotorix came down the decline to grab her arm. “We go now,” he said firmly, machine pistol in hand. She did not resist.
They stood on the edge of the swale for a moment to get their bearings. Soldiers ran through the grass to the beecraft with boxes of supplies. One stumbled and fell, screaming; Rhita thought he had been shot, but he regained his footing and picked up his load. She looked to the north, beyond the beecraft, and saw a line of dark riders moving rapidly toward them, horses up to their withers in grass. Clods of mud flew up behind them, and their voices joined in a heavy, ululating song above the pounding of hooves. Some waved swords and long rifles in the air. Hidden by a low hill until just this moment, a flimsy multiple-winged gullcraft suddenly vaulted into view behind the riders, buzzing like a summer dragonfly. The gullcraft flew over the line, gained more altitude, and passed above them at about fifty arms, wings dipped almost vertical as the kybernetes and one observer in a rear seat tried to see the invaders. She clearly made out a long black telescope in the observer’s hands, and then Lugotorix lifted her by her arms, pinned to her sides by his huge hands, and ran with her to the nearest beecraft. Oresias tried to keep up with them. She turned and saw Jamal Atta scrambling with arms outflung, cape billowing, in the direction of a clump of soldiers bearing yet more boxes of supplies from the cargo gullcraft.
“Drop them! Get to your craft!” he ordered. But it was too late. The horsemen were already riding through the camp, some plunging into the swale, barely missing striking the gate, and up the other side, horses chuffing and flinging ribbons of foam, their nostrils flaring.
The riders wore black leggings and dark gray pants, with loose magenta tunics belted and tied around the wrists with rope. Their hats were made of skins, ear coverings flapping loose as they bounded around the tent, pointing their rifles and laughing and screaming. Soldiers cowered in the grass, on their knees, or stood their ground with wide eyes, cringing this way and that, not daring to bring up their own weapons.
They were clearly outnumbered. To add to the confusion, it began to rain again.
Lugotorix lifted her into the beecraft and leaped up after her, pushing her behind a bulkhead with one boot while he took a position with pistol behind his back near the open hatch. Other soldiers hid in the craft, and some crawled beneath it, seeking refuge from the pounding hooves. There were at least three hundred riders.
The second beecraft started its jets. Rhita crawled to a low window on the opposite side and saw the props rotate ponderously, jet pods low, almost in the grass. Horsemen rode around it, rifles pointing at the forward compartment, shouting and swinging their free hands down. Oresias crawled up beside her. Demetrios coughed behind him. “They won’t let any of us leave,” he said. Jamal Atta strode with some dignity between four riders on plunging and rearing horses, glancing this way and that with a fierce grin. He’s showing them he has no fear, Rhita thought. Atta turned and approached the area of the rotating blades. The pods were picking up speed now, the props rising slowly and the grass bending outward. The horsemen rode clear, rifles still at ready. Atta shouted at the beecraft, but from inside their own vehicle, they could not hear what he said.
“He wants them to stop the engines,” Oresias guessed.
Demetrios found his own position near a second window. “What happened to the cony?” he asked.
“It’s dead,” Oresias answered bitterly. “Our luck has been steady throughout this expedition.”
“Dead how?” Demetrios persisted.
“Like something ate it and spit it out!” Oresias replied, eyes wild. “We may all be dead in a few minutes anyway.”
Encircled by riders, Jamal Atta spoke with a brawny fellow in a thick black wool coat, shiny with rain, that made him seem twice his already formidable size. The Kirghiz swung a
long curved sword idly near Atta’s ribs. Atta seemed to pay little attention to this, maintaining an admirable calm despite being soaked to the skin, his hair hanging in long strings. Other riders herded scattered soldiers before them. The second beecraft’s engines moaned sadly, turbines dropping in pitch, and the props swung to halt, pods undulating.
“He’s surrendering,” Oresias said. “Not much choice.”
Rhita still held the clavicle. She had ignored the device for several minutes, yet she clutched it firmly in both hands. Lowering her head from the window, shaking her aching hands out one by one, she returned her full attention to what the device was telling her. Her thoughts filled with the display again. She saw the gate—still represented by a red cross—and she saw what must have been a haze of rain drops around the swale. The riders did not seem significant to the clavicle—she could detect no symbols indicating their presence. But something was happening to the red cross. It was surrounded by one red circle, and then by another, and a third. The circles broke into three equal segments and spun about the cross.
What’s happening?
The gateway is still expanding, the clavicle told her.
How?
Controlled from the opposite side.
Rhita’s heart fell. She had not been truly frightened—exhilarated, shocked, surprised, but not afraid—until now. “What have we done?” she murmured. Once again she prayed to Athene Lindia and closed her eyes, wishing Patrikia were here to advise her.
A trio of riders seemed to rise up out of the ground before the beecraft hatchway, screaming and waving their rifles and swords. Oresias stood and faced them, hands outstretched to show he was unarmed. The lead rider, bareheaded, bald and with a long, thin mustache, leaned forward in his minimal saddle and motioned for Oresias to approach.
“You speak Hellenic?” the rider asked.