The paint circle sprayed by the missile overlapped two of Doc's defensive conjurer's circles. Gaby watched as the missile's second tier of sprayers laid down the crude symbols just within the ring.
There was a crackle of energy and men appeared—four fair world gunmen and Adonis. They stood in a circle, facing out, just as the attackers disguised as musicians had done.
The men brought their guns up. Then, as one, they doubled over as pain from Doc's defensive devisement hit them. Most of them were throwing up by the time they hit the floor.
Adonis lost height and gained girth as if it were a putty man squashed by a child. Its face registered surprise. Then it stretched up to its accustomed height, shook itself, and looked impassively at the fallen men.
One of them, his face twisted with pain, tried to talk to him, words that were so low Gaby couldn't hear them.
Adonis looked around, scanning the hangar. It focused a moment on the talk-box, looking straight at Gaby, then turned away. It spotted what it wanted on the wall near the rotorkite and headed that way.
A switch on the wall. Adonis threw it, and in the top of the picture frame Gaby saw the hangar roof shudder as the overhead door began to lift.
Uncoiling ropes snaked down in to the hangar, and dark-armored men rappelled down beside the rotorkite.
Gaby grimaced. If men just came physically through the roof hatch, the conjurer's circles would do no good.
She went looking for Doc.
The voice buzzed through the speaker in Duncan's ear. "Sir? This is Greencoat." The man sounded uncertain; he'd been uncomfortable with the new grimworld equipment.
"I'm here."
"The missile team isn't answering because they're all sick. But Adonis did find the switch. We are in and we have the hangar."
"Sick. Some trick of Doc's." Duncan hissed his frustration. "Very well. The laboratory team has stopped answering. We have to assume they've been beaten. Don't send any men down the building exterior; we need to concentrate our forces. Send the entire force in through the hangar and kill everyone."
"Yes, sir."
Duncan leaned back, irritably drumming his fingers on the arms of his chair. The signal still showed a large number of grimworlders alive on one of Doc's floors. Whoever these men were, they had managed to break the first wave of Duncan's attack.
But only the first. He had more in store for them. The thought made him smile.
Gaby first tried the topmost viewer in the west stairwell, only a floor or two below the hangar—and there Doc was, Ixyail beside him, racing up the stairs, in sight only for a moment.
That was only a viewer; Gaby couldn't talk through it, couldn't warn him.
Wait. Maybe she could.
She lashed out at the viewer in anger.
Alastair flinched as the viewer above his head burst and rained sparks down on him. "Gods!"
Above, at the landing, Doc skidded to a stop and looked back. Ixyail and Noriko barely slowed in time to keep from running into him. Doc said, "I wonder what it did to make her mad at it."
But with the four of them stopped, their clattering footsteps no longer obscured the noises from above—cries of orders over the cries of pain and sound of men being sick.
There were men up there, and they were active, not brought low by Doc's conjurer's circles.
Gaby reopened the eye into the laboratory. Athelstane's men were shackling captured gunmen; most of the attackers, though badly hurt, appeared to have survived, saved by their grimworld armor. Harris was in view, talking rapidly with Athelstane. Gaby heaved a sigh of relief. "Athelstane."
The lieutenant and Harris turned to look at her.
"There's a problem in the hangar. Doc's going there. I think you and your men should join him."
She heard one of the guards, a woman, say, "Gods, not more stairs."
Athelstane shot a dirty look at the woman. "Quiet, you. Very well, goodlady, we're on our way." He waved a hand at his guards and trotted out of frame.
Harris moved to follow.
"Harris, don't!"
"Gaby, if there are problems—"
"Listen . . . " He'd survived one encounter already. There had to be some way she could convince him to stay behind now, not to charge into another dangerous situation. The answer came to her in a burst of enlightenment. "I think Duncan's in the talk-boxes. Using them to track our movements. I want you to make like Mister Actor Guy. Stay in front of this one and talk to Doc and everybody else as if they're still in the room with you. It might screw him up."
Harris looked after Athelstane and grimaced. "Dammit. All right. But wait a second. Let's see if we can do to him what he's doing to us." He ran out of frame.
He was back in a moment with a radio headset. "This was on one of the grimworlders. Check it out." He put it on, fiddled with it. "Testing, one, two, three . . . "
Gaby switched away from the laboratory talk-box and listened. Then she heard Harris again, two voices; one was crisp and clear, the other distant and fuzzy. She went looking for the fainter signal.
The first of the soldiers descending the stairs rounded the turn, coming into view on the landing. Alastair and Ixyail opened up with their autoguns. The attack caught the first two men by surprise. They fell; those behind brought up their guns to fire. Alastair and Ish ducked behind the cover of the banister and backed down the stairs.
"This will not work," Doc shouted over the gunfire. "We can't hold here long against those weapons. And if they have any sense, they're covering the other stairways and elevators."
"We could perhaps lure some of them ahead of the others," Noriko shouted back. "Take their weapons and use them against the rest. When the enemy is stronger, you must use his strength against him."
Doc nodded. "That's partly correct." He clapped Alastair on the back. "Fighting retreat," he told the healer.
Alastair nodded without looking back. Doc gestured for Noriko to follow him. Together, they trotted down three stories, past a set of armored doors that normally kept people from lower floors from reaching Doc's floors. Then Doc sat cross-legged in the center of the landing. Above, the gunfire went on and on.
Doc used his bronze penknife to prick his wrist. He drew a conjurer's circle around him in his own blood, took a moment to assure himself that it was unbroken. "I may be gone for a few beats," he told Noriko. "If I can't defend myself—"
"Don't worry," she assured him.
He closed his eyes and sank within himself.
And spoke. To a god. To the worst of them, the war-bringer, the conqueror.
"Hear me," he pleaded. "Weapons beg to be wielded. Grant me knowledge of them. Power over them. I will use them, and entertain you with noise and pain and blood."
It was a loathsome bargain. But he sent it out into the void like an outstretched hand, and when mad laughter began bubbling up within him he knew that it had been accepted.
The mirror remained a reflection, but suddenly Harris' second voice was much clearer: "—two, three. Testing—"
She switched back to the lab for a brief moment. "Got it." Then she returned to the new eye she'd found.
She extended her perceptions. She could feel other eyes not far away, a direction she'd never felt before.
She opened one of them and heard: "— heavy resistance in both stairwells, and they have the elevators locked off. But it should not take more than part of a chime."
Duncan's voice: "Very well."
But she couldn't see anything; this was a sound-only place.
A moment later, she found an eye that provided sight as well as sound. It looked out on a huge room. It was a vast metal framework crowded with what looked like rigid, upright bags attached to metal cross-braces. It all looked like steel, a shocking amount of bare steel for the fair world.
She opened another eye—and did not have enough time to see what lay beyond. She was suddenly swept away in a tidal wave of words and thoughts: dry, emotionless knowledge that tore through her with such force that
it left her no strength to think.
She yelled in sudden fright, unable for the moment even to remember her name or purpose, and tried to extend herself around the vastness that carried her along.
Names, hundreds of names, grimworld dates and grimworld money transactions, personal details, embarrassing facts that could twist men to the will of another, crimes of the past, evaluations of the psyche, technical specifications, techniques of industry, construction, history of the fair world, history of the grim world, comparisons and contrasts, projected trends, structure of the stock market, mountains of knowledge on physics and chemistry, biology and geology— She couldn't see anything; the knowledge was without form. Its cold impersonality numbed her. Its immensity crushed her. She gave one final cry and winked out of existence, conquered by the force she had encountered.
The mind-wisp that was Doc floated up to the first of the attackers in the stairwell. The man looked through him, could not see him.
Doc looked at the man, seeing not a human being but a machine made of meat and blood, carrying more machines and devices designed to make him more powerful, more lethal.
With just a glance, he understood all there was to know about the man's long gun, the M16, with its monstrous rate of fire and grenade launcher. More grenades in the man's belt pouch, tear gas and smoke. Ammunition. Body armor. Gas mask hanging unused in its case. Satchel charge in the backpack.
And they all cried to him, begging to be used.
He smiled benignly at them and began granting wishes.
He reached out to the smoke and tear-gas devices, imparting a bit of his strength to them. Then he moved on to the next man up the stairs and granted his blessing again. A third man, more wishes granted—
Behind him, there was a sharp bang as the devices in the first man's belt went off, flooding him and his immediate surroundings with black smoke and stinging fog. Doc laughed and flew on, touching another half-dozen men before he reached the top of the stairs.
Adonis he left alone. Adonis carried nothing that called to him, no weapon that begged for his attention.
More grenades went off behind him. Men cried out. Doc swept across the hangar, touching the men writhing on the floor; he reached the men standing at the elevators and granted his loving touch to their grenades. Then he floated on to the far stairwell, smiling at the music made by the men behind as their weapons erupted in smoke and pain.
More men on those far stairs, firing down at someone else.
It was getting harder to grant the wishes of the implements of war. Each one he touched took a little out of him. He could barely see his surroundings and knew there was not much more of him to give. Still he swept down the stairs, speaking approving words to the tools of destruction, giving them the power to act. Behind, there were more explosions and cries.
He travelled down a long stretch in which no weapons clamored for his attention. Then he met a new group of men.
He recognized the first of them. Athelstane of the Novimagos Guard. The lieutenant's weapons, too, begged for his attention, but Doc looked in vain for grenades. It was hard to think, so hard—and then his vision swam and he could see no more.
"Doc, Gaby, is there any word on those additional troops?" Harris felt like an idiot, talking to an unoccupied corner of the room. Not that he hadn't done it before, dozens of time, in college stage productions and rehearsals—but Ladislas and Welthy, guarding the door, kept smirking at him.
Harris reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the device there. Doc's device, the new one. Until this morning he'd been carrying a device that masked his signal, the telltale energies that marked him as a grimworlder. This recent replacement did just the opposite: magnified those signals so that anyone with a tracer would read him not as a single grimworlder but as a whole pack of them.
He left it on. Until Doc pronounced the building clear of enemies, Harris got to be the decoy for Duncan Blackletter.
An interesting role. He wondered if he'd get to see the old man again. He wondered what he'd do to the sick son of a bitch.
Then Ladislas' expression changed to one of surprise. Harris followed the man's gaze.
There, on the talk-box, Duncan Blackletter smiled benignly out at him.
Harris set the device down. "I don't have time for you, Duncan."
"Nor I for you. But I'm delighted to find you are all together." Duncan turned to the clay man. "Joseph, I really have to insist that you kill Doc and Goodsir Greene here, and any other grimworlders you find. Except Goodlady Donohue. I do need to study her before I have you kill her, too. Oh, yes, and smash everyone who tries to stop you."
Joseph flexed his fingers. "I will smash you instead."
"Oh, I forgot. By your making, by your name, I command you to remember your master!"
Joseph shouted and staggered back. Letters of the old script of Cretanis appeared on his forehead. Smoke rose from him as the letters seared themselves into his flesh.
Harris scrambled across bodies and grabbed up his autogun. He fired at Duncan's face, taking the talk-box to pieces with a stream of lead.
He looked at Joseph.
The clay man was upright again. The letters were charred black on his forehead. He looked stricken. He turned to Harris, his eyes full of dismay.
"Oh, Harris," he said. "I am so very sorry."
He advanced, his hands outstretched.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Harris backed away from Joseph. "Please don't do this."
"I have no choice." Joseph's voice was full of pain. "Kill me, Harris, please. Because I have to kill you."
Harris bumped up against a table and was suddenly halted. He scrambled sideways to elude Joseph's grab. He brought up the barrel of his autogun but couldn't bring himself to fire.
He heard a familiar jackhammer roar and the flesh of Joseph's side erupted with craters.
Joseph nodded and turned toward his attacker. "Yes, Welthy. Do that again. Only much, much more." His face twisted with sadness. "Forgive me. I have to smash you now." He grabbed the corner of a lab table and hefted it as easily as if it were a cardboard box; a fortune in scientific equipment slid off to crash on the floor.
He spun the table through the air. Welthy tried to jump aside, but the corner of the tabletop caught her in the gut. It smashed her into the wall behind. A moment's agony crossed her features and she fell like a broken thing.
"Ladislas, get out of here!" Harris shouted. "Don't attack him! Joseph, I'm going to run now."
"Then I will go to Gaby and take her. I have to, and I know where she is. Stay instead and kill me."
Harris aimed and fired. He struggled to keep the gun in line as he poured ammunition into the body of his friend.
Joseph staggered. His chest deformed with the damage he took. He kept coming.
Harris heard the higher-pitched crack of a pistol shot. A crater sprouted in Joseph's forehead. But the flesh there reformed instantly, the burned letters unchanged.
Joseph grabbed another table and flung it at Ladislas. The table took the man in the chest, hurling him back into the wall. Harris saw Ladislas' brief look of surprise give way to blankness.
Harris fired again. Joseph's shoulder flowed like wax under the impacts. Then Harris' autogun ran dry.
Joseph's face twisted in sympathy. "You did very well," he said.
Alastair and Ish jumped as the stairwell above them erupted in smoke and shouts. Suddenly there were continuous muffled explosions above them, but no gunfire being directed against them. They held their position, peering into the thickening cloud above, then began to retreat as it started to flow down the stairs toward them.
They descended two stories and reached Doc's conjurer's circle. Doc sat slumped, and Noriko, half-frantic, slapped his cheeks, pried an eye open to peer at it. "He is unconscious," she told Alastair. "Help him."
He joined her. "You help Ish." Noriko rose, wordless, and left him.
Alastair gave Doc a quick look. He didn't need to; he kne
w the problem from many times before. Devisement-induced exhaustion and collapse. He reached in his pocket for the small kit of medical essentials he carried when his bag was inconvenient.
Noriko saw Adonis emerge from the wall of smoke above. The creature descended toward them, carefully navigating each step with absurd delicacy dictated by its great size and awkward build.
Ixyail swore loudly in Castilian, words Noriko didn't understand, and opened fire with the Klapper. Her long, continuous burst tore through Adonis, meeting little resistance, tearing away bloody hunks of red-black meat. Adonis, not inconvenienced, kept coming.
Noriko drew her blade and sailed up past Ish. She stopped just short of Adonis and, lightning-fast, slashed at the arm it reached toward her. A section of cloth and meat fell away and hit the stairs with a disgusting plop.
No, not meat. In her peripheral vision, Noriko saw the stuff separate into a hundred distinct worms that crawled off in different directions.
Adonis' counterstrike was slow, clumsy, inviting her to step in and gut him. She stepped in.
It was a feint. Its off-hand slashed at her face. Warned by Harris' experience with the creature, she went under the blow, stepped past Adonis so close that she brushed against its side, and spun against its unprotected back.
Her blade took Adonis in the side of the neck. It bit through flesh the consistency of rotted grapes, snapped something harder within, and emerged from the far side.
Adonis clutched its head . . . and lifted it clear of its body. It collapsed in a puddle of clothes and squirming sludge.
Noriko stepped daintily back and watched as the mess that had been Adonis spread across the stairs. Soon there was nothing but three manweights of worms crawling away from empty clothes and oversized human bones.
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