Hush, hush, moving slowly: the Caryatid and Impervia stuck close to the right hand wall of the tunnel, while Annah and I took the left. We advanced until we could see the source of the light.
The Caryatid's "feeling" had been right. The power plant's secret was a prison: a perfect cube, twenty by twenty by twenty meters, raised slightly off the floor. Its edges were sharp strands of violet light — so straight they had to be OldTech lasers, their beams crisp but with a grainy texture. Where the beams met at each corner, a small box of glass and chrome floated in the air… not suspended on wires or poles, but simply hovering as if supported by the light rays themselves. I suspected those boxes were the source of the lasers, each little machine projecting the light in razor-fine lines to the three adjacent corners. The faces of the cube, framed by violet, looked perfectly transparent — nothing there, as if you could simply step over the nearest edge-beam and into the cube's interior. I knew that couldn't be true. A prison is still a prison, even if you can't see the walls.
Inside that prison cage loomed a shapeless black bulk: a mound as big as a house, its surface like coal dust in the lasers' violet glow. As we watched, a ripple went through the heap, like a shiver in a horse's flank. It made a sandy sound… as if the mass before us was constructed of small dry grains rasping against each other with the motion. One could almost mistake the thing for a dark lifeless dune, and the ripple we'd seen no more than the drifting effect of an errant breeze; but there was no breeze so deep underground, and the mound radiated a brooding intelligence that pressed against my skull.
The thing in the cage was a living creature. And it was watching us.
This was what Jode had come to release. An old-style un-mutated Lucifer, of the kind Opal met in the tobacco field: dark and dry "like gunpowder" she'd said. And like gunpowder, this huge mound had dangerous explosive potential. It was a giant of Jode's kind: perhaps a hive mother, a queen that could spawn thousands of shapeshifting young.
But the creature in the cage wasn't only a pile of dark grains. Dozens of incongruous objects protruded from its surface, like animal bones jutting out of desert sand. I saw long glass tubes; lumps of metal; cards of green plastic with wires embedded; and frosted white pustules that resembled lightbulbs.
Lightbulbs. Like the live ones in Niagara's hotels, or the burnt-out rejects in souvenir shops. They bulged profusely from the dusty mass, as if the monster was a garish casino marquee that had just been turned off. Was the caged Lucifer eating the bulbs… or was it extruding them? Producing them.
Could Jode and its alien kind do more than mimic other people and things? Could they actually create such objects for real?
In our journey through the generating station, we'd seen no other facilities for high-tech manufacturing: nowhere the Keepers could make bulbs, appliances, or any of the other electrical goods in use throughout the tourist areas. We hadn't searched the whole plant… but looking at the caged alien, I knew we didn't have to. This creature was the source of Niagara's largesse. The Keepers must feed it a diet of metal scraps, hydrocarbons, and whatever other components were needed as raw materials; then the monster's unearthly biochemistry somehow assembled the basic elements into complex electrical devices.
One had to admire Spark Royal's efficiency — why let a prisoner loaf in idleness, when your captive could be put to work?
On the other hand, who'd be crazy enough to enter that cage and retrieve the beast's creations? No one was that desperate for lightbulbs. And at first glance, I couldn't see any way to enter the cube unless you turned off the laser barrier… a terrible idea, even if you only shut down the beams for an instant. What kind of fool would risk freeing a gigantic Lucifer, just so hotels could play bad OldTech music?
I was so distracted staring at the thing in the cage that many long seconds passed before I realized there was no one else visible in the room. No Sebastian, no false Rosalind, no Dreamsinger. I leaned my head out of the tunnel mouth to get a better view. There were open entrances on either side of the tunnel, leading into the two recesses where the Keepers had died at their gun-slits; but those were the only side-rooms and they contained nothing but corpses.
Our quarry had to be on the far side of the cage. Anyone over there would be hidden from us by the great pile of gunpowder dust. I glanced at Impervia and the Caryatid; they were looking at Annah and me with grim expressions on their faces. Ready? Impervia mouthed.
Annah and I nodded. Together, we four crept into the room.
The creature in the cage took no notice of our presence… no more than the occasional shiver across its powdery surface. I assumed it could see us, despite its lack of eyes; it could probably hear us and smell us too. But it showed no sign of caring as we entered the room — it just lay silent, watching.
Waiting till the lasers died from lack of power.
The cables coming out of the tunnel fanned out around the rocky walls of the chamber, circling the perimeter of the room and converging again on the other side of the cage. Because of the alien blocking our view, we couldn't see where the cables rejoined; but I assumed they connected to some machine on the far side, thereby feeding power to the lasers. The lasers were now subsisting on battery power… and I dearly hoped the batteries wouldn't fail as we were tiptoeing past the cage.
Impervia led, followed by the Caryatid and her fireball. Annah and I trailed behind; she walked with her finger on her Element gun's trigger, ready to fire at a moment's notice. I had my gun ready too… and I'd set the weapon to shoot all four barrels at once. Bullets, fire, acid, sound: tonight there was no such thing as overkill.
As we moved forward, Impervia drew her knife — not a fighting weapon, but just a jack-knife she carried for cutting tough meat and trimming candlewicks. I wondered what good that would do against Jode… but I decided she'd pulled out the blade more to bolster her spirits than to use in battle.
Unless she intended to slit her own throat if things got too rough. Magdalenes considered unwarranted suicide a mortal sin… but when death was truly inevitable, they approved of flamboyant gestures that robbed their enemies of complete victory.
Better to stab your own heart than allow an infidel to do it.
At last we reached a point where we could see behind the giant Lucifer. The electric cables from the turbines hooked up to a device that had to be the main controller for the laser cage. It was bigger than I expected: a box of black metal and plastic the size of a privy-shack. The box even had doors — one opening out into the cavern and another into the prison cube. Looking at it, I realized the shack was more than just a machine that controlled the lasers; it served as a sort of airlock that would let Keepers enter the cage to retrieve the lightbulbs and other things produced by the captive beast.
Again I shuddered at the idea of harvesting electric gadgets from the monster's dust-body. What prevented the Lucifer from devouring any Keeper who entered the cage? Or even worse, from planting black grains in the Keeper's robes, in the lightbulbs, in the toasters, smuggling bits of itself to freedom? But the Sparks would undoubtedly be prepared for such attempts. Anyone passing through that airlock shack must surely be scanned by both science and sorcery. Any nuggets of Lucifer trying to escape would be detected and eliminated.
As long as electricity kept flowing through the cables. Now that the power was cut, the small airlock shack might be a death chamber.
Standing by the door of that shack, his back pressed against it, was Sebastian Shore. We saw him as soon as we came around the edge of the cage — the boy leaned back like a man with nothing to fear, even if the door fell open and dropped him into the prison cube.
In his arms a girl snuggled against his shoulder, her lips nuzzling his neck. But the girl didn't look like Rosalind; it was my lovely cousin Hafsah, harem pants and all.
Dreamsinger.
For a moment I just stared dumbly: had Dreamsinger snared the boy with some love/lust enchantment, despite his psionic protections? No, of course not; this was the wo
rk of that irksome Chameleon spell Dreamsinger still wore. When Sebastian looked at the Sorcery-Lord, he saw the most beautiful woman he could imagine — his own dear Rosalind. Somehow Dreamsinger had swapped herself with Jode, replacing one false Rosalind with another.
That raised the question of where Jode was now. If we were lucky, Dreamsinger had vaporized the accursed Lucifer; but I doubted even a Sorcery-Lord could have pulled that off without Sebastian noticing. Whatever she'd done, it would have to be quick and quiet while the boy's attention was elsewhere — perhaps when he was slaughtering the Keepers behind their gun-slits. During those few seconds, Dreamsinger had somehow removed Jode and put herself in the alien's place.
Once again, I remembered our chancellor's story about the Lucifer in the tobacco field. Opal said Vanessa of Spark had tapped the alien's severed parts with a small rod that glittered red and green; the pieces had vanished ‹BINK›, as if ejected from our plane of existence. If Dreamsinger possessed a similar ‹BINK›-rod and used it on Jode when Sebastian wasn't looking… could it be the alien was gone, gone, gone? Dispatched to a different somewhere, removed from our lives forever?
No. I didn't believe it. Nothing was ever that easy. The alien would return; I could feel it in my bones. For now though, we had only Sebastian and the Sorcery-Lord to worry about… which was plenty enough.
The Caryatid and Impervia didn't hesitate after sighting the boy and Dreamsinger. My friends continued boldly forward, striding within five paces of the lovey-dovey couple and planting themselves side-by-side where they couldn't possibly be missed.
"Sebastian," said Impervia.
"Dear sister-in-sorcery," said the Caryatid.
The boy and the Spark Lord turned, their heads almost touching. Dreamsinger's face was dark with warning: her fierce glare suggested she wanted to rip us into component atoms. Lucky for us, the Sorcery-Lord couldn't behave so un-Rosalind-like.
Sebastian's expression was no more friendly than Dreamsinger's. "Didn't I tell you to stay away? I know you aren't who you look like."
I sighed with relief: he hadn't murdered us instantly. The boy's conscience allowed him to slay Keepers — people armed to the teeth, shooting at him and his beloved — but he balked at destroying someone who looked like one of his teachers, especially when she offered no threat. Better still, the Rosalind in his arms wasn't Jode… who would have been screaming, "Kill them!" to keep us from giving away the truth.
"We are who we look like," Impervia said. "We discovered you were missing a few hours after you left. In Dover, we found you'd chartered a boat named Hoosegow and sailed in this direction. We realized you were headed to Niagara Falls — to this building here. So we followed."
"I don't believe it," Sebastian said. "Rosalind says you're just doppelgangers created by her mother's sorcerers. Bags of skin filled with pus." He paused as if he was beginning to doubt his own words; then his face cleared. "It's true. That copy of Sir Pelinor was all gucky."
"No," said Impervia. "He was flesh and blood. So am I."
She lifted her hand: the one holding the small knife. I understood now why she'd taken it out. Slowly, deliberately, she pulled back her sleeve and placed the blade to her flesh, halfway between wrist and elbow. She had to press hard; the knife's edge was adequate for cutting T-bone steak, but not for slicing Impervia's hard-toned muscle. When she broke through the skin, blood oozed in a thick trickle.
The dim glow of the laser cage didn't cast enough light to show the blood's harsh scarlet… but suddenly a dozen small white suns materialized in the air. They were obviously Sebastian's work — illuminating the room with his psionics so he could see clearly. At last.
"Sister Impervia?" he said with horror in his voice.
"Yes," she answered. "It's me."
"No, it isn't," said a new voice. And Impervia erupted in flames.
23: FIRE IN THE HOLE
Another Rosalind had appeared — Jode, escaped from wherever one went when tapped with a red and green ‹BINK›-rod. The Lucifer had sneaked around the far side of the laser cage. While the rest of us were watching Impervia cut her arm, Jode had moved into position just beyond the cube's airlock shack. The Lucifer had obtained an Element gun from one of the fallen Keepers; and the gun was set to shoot flames.
Impervia's clothes ignited. Beside her, the Caryatid was also engulfed in fire… but the Caryatid waved the blaze away before it could singe a single hair. She turned and grabbed the flames surrounding Impervia as if they were solid matter; then the Caryatid yanked backward, pulling the fire with her, like tugging a crackling red cloak off Impervia's body. A quick flick of the Caryatid's wrists, and the flames winked out in mid-air. Curls of smoke wreathed Impervia from head to foot, but the woman beneath seemed unharmed.
Jode, alas, was a fast learner. The Lucifer must have tried flames to begin with because they'd cause the most agonizing death… but when fire proved ineffective, Jode switched immediately to bullets.
A burst of high-velocity slugs rattled toward Impervia and the Caryatid, some rounds striking home while others zinged past to ricochet off the rock walls. Annah threw herself to the ground; I joined her, but in the instant before I dropped, I saw the Caryatid point toward Jode and shout a single incomprehensible word. Her pet fireball shot across the room toward the alien, the ball's blazing heat augmented by fire from Jode's own flamethrower… and I prayed the inferno would hit its target with enough energy to incinerate Jode on the spot.
It didn't. Head down, I heard a clatter and a heavy whoof of air. When I looked up, the Element gun had been knocked from Jode's grip and all fires in the room were snuffed… including the flameball the Caryatid had sent toward the alien. Sebastian had obviously told his nanite friends to stop the violence until he could sort everything out.
Therefore Jode was still intact. The Caryatid had slumped to the ground, her face ashen; one arm hung limply, while the other hand pressed hard against her opposite shoulder. Blood seeped between her fingers from a deep wound just below her collarbone. There was another mess of blood near her waist where a second bullet had plowed its way through the plump rolls of flesh she called love handles… but the Caryatid didn't have a free hand to stop the bleeding down there. Perhaps she didn't even know about the second wound: the shot in her upper chest, piercing ribs and muscles and internal organs, might have eclipsed the pain of a straight in-and-out hole through simple fat.
Besides, the Caryatid wasn't concentrating on her own injuries. Her gaze had turned toward Impervia… who'd been knocked off her feet by the gunfire. When she hit the rock floor she landed in an awkward heap, with no attempt to make a graceful breakfall. Blood gushed out of her in a high-pressure fountain, an arc of it streaming into the air. The blood had to be pouring from an artery, but her body was so crumpled, I couldn't tell where she'd been hit. In the leg? The chest? The throat?
Abruptly the red geyser stopped… as if the heart supplying the pressure had ceased to pump. Impervia didn't move; nothing moved except the edge of the blood pool, trickling across the uneven ground, flowing toward the lowest point in the chamber.
I thought to myself, She would have preferred to die in righteous battle. But battle deaths are often the easy way out for people blind to other possibilities. If Impervia had to die, better that her last act was cutting her own arm. Not stupid fisticuffs, but proving she was human.
"What's going on?" Sebastian roared. At least, I think he wanted it to be a roar. It came out closer to a whine. He'd seen Impervia was flesh and blood; he'd also seen her gunned down by his precious Rosalind. Except that he could see two Rosalinds: Jode and Dreamsinger. "Who are you?" he yelled at the Lucifer.
"I'm Rosalind," Jode answered. "The real Rosalind."
"You aren't," the boy said… but he cast a furtive glance at Dreamsinger.
Jode caught the look. "That's another of my mother's doppelgangers. Created by sorcery. She rolled me aside when you weren't looking, but—"
Sebastian interrupted, "What do
you mean, rolled you aside?"
"Pushed me sideways. Out of this world. But I had a magic wand that let me come back."
Jode held up a small rod as wide as my pinkie-finger and twice as long. He pushed a button on one end, and suddenly the rod sparkled with lights, like red and green sequins glittering in the dimness. I bet when the rod touched you, it made a soft ‹BINK›.
Dreamsinger glared. "Where did you get that?"
"Stole it from one of my mother's sorcerers. A gullible man who always wore orange."
Jode couldn't hide the taunt in those words. The ‹BINK›-rod had come from the Spark in orange armor — Mind-Lord Priest, killed at the winter anchorage. With such a rod in hand, Jode had apparently avoided the fate of the Lucifer in the tobacco field: when Dreamsinger had "rolled" Jode aside, the alien shapeshifter could use its own ‹BINK›-rod to return. Apparently, such rods could both send you away and bring you back.
Even wearing Rosalind's face, Jode looked smug. And the Lucifer wasn't finished. "Do you want to see who's real?" Jode asked Sebastian. "Use your powers to dispel all the sorcery in this room. You'll see the whole truth."
Dreamsinger had time to narrow her eyes — her beautiful Hafsah eyes, so calm and perfect. Then something went thud in my head, like a concussion from the inside out: things rearranged themselves in my brain, making my body as weak as water. If I hadn't been down on the floor already, I think I would have collapsed. But the dizziness passed in seconds; when my vision stopped reeling, the woman in Sebastian's arms had changed.
The first thing I saw was red — full body armor colored sorcerer's crimson, made of plastic and molded in the shape of a chunkily voluptuous female figure. This was no graceful Hafsah in harem pants; the armor wasn't as bulky as plate mail, but it possessed a similar stolidity. The breasts and hips built onto the underlying shell had the crude excess of a Stone Age fertility carving… so extreme they were almost a parody. Especially in contrast to the woman beneath.
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