The Ship Who Won ккп-5

by Энн Маккефри

  The Old Ones were indeed upright creatures of bilateral symmetry who could use the chairs reposing in Chaumel's art collection, but that was where their similarity to humanoids ended. Multi-jointed legs with backward-pointing knees depended from flat, shallow bodies a meter wide. They had five small eyes set in a row across their flat faces, which were dark green. Lank black tendrils on their cylindrical heads were either hair or antennae, Keff wasn't sure which from the description below.

  «Erg,» Keff said, making a face. «So now we know what the Old Ones looked like.»

  «Oh, yes,» Brannel said, casually standing up on the back to look, as if he flew a hundred kilometers above the ground every day. «My father's father told us about the Old Ones. They lived in the mountains with the overlords many years past.»

  «How long ago?» Keff asked.

  Brannel struggled for specifics, then shrugged. «The wooze-food makes our memories bad,» he explained, his tone apologetic but his jaw set with frustration.

  «Keff, something has to be done about deliberately retarding half the population,» Carialle said seriously. «With the diet they're being forced to subsist on, Brannel's people could actually lose their capacity for rational thought in a few more generations.»

  «Aha!» Keff crowed triumphantly. «Tapes!» He plucked a sealed spool out of the back cover of one of the folders. «Compressed data, I hope, and maybe footage of our scaly friends. Can you read one of these, Carialle?»

  «I can adapt one of my players to fit it, but I have no idea what format its in,» she said. «It could take time.»

  Keff wasn't listening. He was engrossed in the second folders contents.

  «Fascinating!» he said. «Look at this, Cari. The whole system of remote power manipulation comes from a worldwide weather-control system! So that's what the ley lines are for. They're electromagnetic sensors, reading the temperature and humidity all across Ozran. They were designed to channel energy to help produce rain or mist where it was needed . . . Ah, but the Old Ones didn't build it. They either found it, or they met the original owners when they came to this planet. Sounds like they were cagey about that. The Old Ones adapted the devices to use the power to make it rain and passed them on to you,» he told Plennafrey. «They were made by the Ancient Ones.»

  «The Ancient Ones,» Plenna said, reverently, pulling the folder down so she could see it. «Are there images of them, too? None know what they looked like.»

  Keff thumbed through the log. «No. Nothing. Drat.»

  «Rain?» Brannel asked, reverently. «They could make it rain?»

  «Weather control,» Carialle said. «Now that does smack of an advanced technological civilization. Pity they're not still around. This planet is an incipient dust-bowl. Keff, I'm within fifty klicks of the rendezvous site. Beginning landing procedures . . . Uh-oh, power traces increasing in your general vicinity. Company!»

  Keff heard cries of triumph and swiveled his head, looking for their source. A score of magimen, led by Potria and Chaumel, had just jumped in and were homing in on them along a northwest vector.

  «They've found us!» Plenna exclaimed, her dark eyes wide. Keff stood upright and grasped the back of her chair.

  ***

  The magiwoman started to weave her arms in complicated patterns. Brannel, realizing that he was in the firing line of a building spell, dropped flat. Plenna launched her sally and had the satisfaction of seeing three of the magimen clear the way. The rattling hiss of the spell as it missed its mark and vanished jarred Keff's bones.

  «Can you teleport?» Keff asked, clinging to the chair's uprights.

  «Someone is blocking me,» Plenna said, forcing the words through her teeth. «I must fight, instead.»

  «You'd be a sitting duck in here anyway,» Carialle interjected crisply, «because the tractor grabbed me again as soon as I touched down. Keep moving!»

  Plenna didn't need Carialle's message relayed to her. She took evasive maneuvers like a veteran fighter, zigzagging over the pursuers' heads and diving between two so their red lightning bolts narrowly missed each other. Keff saw Potria's face as he passed. The golden magiwoman had abandoned her look of elegant boredom for a grim set. If her will or her marksmanship had been up to it, she would have spitted them all.

  Contrarily, Chaumel seemed to enjoy toying with them. He shot his bolts, not so much to wound, but more as if he were seeing what Plennafrey would do to avoid them. He seemed to have observed that she wasn't spelling to kill, obviously a novelty among Ozran mages.

  Plennafrey dived low into the valleys, defying the magifolk to chase her through the nooks and crannies of her own domain. Keff felt the crackle of dry branches brush his shoulders as she maneuvered her chair through a narrow passage and down into a concealed tunnel. While the others circled overhead squawking like crows, she flew through the mountain. Brannel's keening echoed off the moist stone walls. Just as swiftly, they emerged into day.

  Keff thought they might have shaken off their pursuers, but he had reckoned without Chaumel's determination. The moment they cleared the tunnel mouth, the silver magiman was there in midair, winding nothingness around and around his hands. Brannel gasped and threw his hands over his head to protect it.

  Plenna flattened her hands on her belt buckle, and a translucent bubble of force appeared around her.

  «Oh, child.» Chaumel grinned and flicked his fingers. The chair started to sink toward the ground.

  «He made the force shield heavy!» Keff said. «We're falling!»

  Abandoning her defensive tactic at once, Plennafrey popped the sphere and threw a few of her own bolts at Chaumel. Almost lazily, the other gestured, and the lightning split around him, rocketing toward the horizon. He made up another bundle of power, which Plenna averted. She returned fire, sending a handful of toroid shapes that grew and grew until they could surround Chaumel's limbs and neck. Two made contact, then fell away as open arcs, snaring and taking the other rings with them.

  A moment later, Potria and Asedow appeared.

  «You found them!» Potria called. The pink-gold magess was jubilant. Plenna turned in her seat and fired a double-barrel of white spark lightning at her. Potria shrieked when her fine clothes and skin were burned by some of the hot sparks. At once she retaliated, weaving a web with missiles of force around the edge that propelled it toward the younger magess.

  Asedow chose that moment to drive in at them from the other side. His methods were not as smooth as his rivals. He produced a steady stream of smoky puffs that hung in the air like mines until Plennafrey, trying to avoid Potria's web, was forced back into them.

  Keff was nearly shaken off when the first exploded against his back. Plennafrey turned her chair in midair, seeking to steer her way clear of the obstacles. No matter how she turned, she collided with another, and another. By then, Potria's web had struck.

  All around him Keff felt rolls of silk fabric, invisible and magnetic, drawing him in, surrounding him, then smothering his nose and mouth. As the spell established itself, it threatened to draw every erg of energy out of his body through his skin. He gasped, clawing with difficulty at his throat. He was suffocating in the middle of thin air. Plennafrey, her slender form slumped partway over one chair arm, her skin turning blue, still fought to free them, her hands drawing primrose fire out other belt buckle. Her will proved mightier than the other female's magic. The sunlight flames consumed the air around her, then caught on the veils of web clinging to Keff and Brannel, turning them into insubstantial black ash. She was about to set them all free when they were overcome by dozens and dozens of bolts of scarlet lightning, striking at them from every direction.

  As Keff lost consciousness, he heard Potria and Asedow shrilling at each other again over who would take possession of him and his ship. He vowed he would die before he would let anyone take Carialle.

  ***

  A sharp scent introduced itself under his nose. Unwittingly, he took a deep breath and recoiled, choking. He batted at the bad smell, but n
othing solid was there.

  «You're awake,» a voice said. «Very good.»

  With difficulty, Keff opened his eyes. Things around him began to take focus. He lay on his back in the main cabin of his ship. Beside him was Plennafrey, also in the throes of regaining consciousness. Brannel lay in a motionless heap under Plenna's feet. And leaning over Keff with a distorted expression of solicitousness was Chaumel.

  Chapter Eleven

  Carialle fought against the blackness that abruptly surrounded her, refusing to believe in it. Between one nanopulse and the next, Chaumel had appeared in the main cabin, past the protective magnetic wall she had set up, and stood gloating over the contents of a captive starship. Outraged at the invasion, Carialle set up the same multi-tone shriek she used on Brannel to try and drive him out. Chaumel threw up protective hands, but not over his ears.

  Suddenly she could move nothing and all her visual receptors were down. She could still hear, though. The taunting voice boomed hollowly in her aural inputs, continuing his inventory and interjecting an occasional comment of self-congratulation.

  She spoke then, pleading with him not to leave her in the dark. The voice paused, surprised, then Carialle felt hands running over her: impossible, insubstantial hands penetrating through her armor, brushing aside her neural connectors and yet not detaching them.

  «My, my, what are you?» Chaumel's voice asked.

  «Restore my controls!» Carialle insisted. «You don't know what you're doing!»

  «How very interesting all of this is,» he was saying to someone. «In my wildest dreams I could never have imagined a man who was also a machine. Incredible! But it isn't a man, is it?» The hands drew closer, passed over and through her. «Why, no! It is a woman. And what interesting things she has at her command. I must see that.»

  Invisible fingers took her multi-camera controls away from her nerve endings, leaving them teasingly just out of reach. She sensed her life-support system starting and stopping as Chaumel played with it, using his TK. She felt a rush of adrenaline as he upset the balance of her chemical input, and was unable to access the endorphins to counteract them. Then the waste tube began to back up toward the nutrient vat. She felt her delicate nervous system react against pollution by becoming drowsy and logy.

  «Stop!» she begged. «You'll kill me!»

  «I won't kill you, strange woman in a box,» Chaumel said, his voice light and airy, «but I will not risk having you break away from my control again as you did when the magic dropped. What a chase you led us! Right around Ozran and back again. You made a worthy quarry, but one grows tired of games.»

  «Keff!»

  «I'm here, Carialle,» the brawns voice came, weak but furious. Carialle could have sung her relief. She heard the shuffling of feet, and a crash. Keff spoke again through soughing pain. «Chaumel, we'll cooperate, but you have to let her alone. You don't understand what you're doing to her.»

  «Why? She breathes, she eats—she even hears and speaks. I just control what she sees and does.»

  For a brief flash, Carialle had a glimpse of the control room. Keff and the silver magiman faced one another, the Ozran very much in command. Keff was clutching his side as if cradling bruised ribs. Plenna stood behind Keff, erect and very pale. Brannel, disoriented, huddled in a corner beside Keff's weight bench. Then the image was gone, and she was left with the enveloping darkness. She couldn't restrain a wail of despair.

  It was as if she were reliving the memory of her accident again for Inspector Maxwell-Corey. All over again! The helplessness she hoped never again to experience: sensory deprivation, her chemicals systems awry, her controls out of reach or disabled. This time, the results would be worse, because this time when she went mad, her brawn would be within arms reach, listening.

  ***

  Swallowing against the pain in his ribs, Keff threw himself at Chaumel again. With a casual flick of his hand, Chaumel once more sent him flying against the bulkhead. Plennafrey ran to his side and hooked her arm in his to help him stand.

  «You might as well stop that, stranger,» Chaumel advised him. «The result will be the same any time you try to lay hands on me. You will tire before I do.»

  «You don't know what you're doing to her!» Keff said, dragging himself upright. He dashed a hand against the side of his mouth. It came away streaked with blood from a split lip.

  «Ah, yes, but I do. I see pictures,» Chaumel said, with a smile playing about his lips as his eyes followed invisible images. «No, not pictures, sounds that haunt her mind, distinct, never far from her conscious thoughts-tapping.» The speakers hammered out a distant, slow, sinister cadence.

  Carialle screamed, deafeningly. Keff knew what Chaumel was doing, exercising the same power of image-making he had used on Keff to intrude on his consciousness. Against this particular illusion Carialle had no mental defenses. To dredge up the long-gone memories of her accident coupled with Chaumel's ability to keep her bound in place and deprive her of normal function might rob her of her sanity.

  «Please,» Keff begged. «I will cooperate. I'll do anything you want. Don't toy with her like that. You're harming her more than you could understand. Release her.»

  Chaumel sat down in Keff's crash couch, hands folded lightly together. Swathed in his gleaming robes, he looked like the master of ceremonies at some demonic ritual.

  «Before I lift a finger and free my prisoner"—he leveled his very long first digit at Keff—"I want to know who you are and why you are here. You didn't make the entire overlordship of this planet fly circuits for amusement. Now, what is your purpose?»

  Keff, knowing he had to be quick to save Carialle's sanity, abandoned discretion and started talking. Leaving out names and distances, he gave Chaumel a precis of how they had chosen Ozran, and how they traveled there.

  ». . . We came here to study you just as I told you before. That's the truth. In the midst of our investigations we've discovered imbalances in the power grid all of you use,» Keff said. «Those imbalances are proving dangerous directly to you, and indirectly to your planet.»

  «You mean the absences that occur in the ley lines?» Chaumel said, raising his arched eyebrows. «Yes, I noticed how you took advantage of that last lapse. Very, very clever.»

  «Keff! They're crawling over my skin,» Carialle moaned. «Tearing away my nerve endings. Stop them!»

  «Chaumel . . .»

  «All in good time. She is not at risk.»

  «You're wrong about that,» Keff said sincerely, praying the magiman would listen. «She suffered a long time ago, and you are making her live it over.»

  «And so loudly, too!» Chaumel flicked his fingers, and Carialle's voice faded. Keff had the urge to run to her pillar, throw himself against it to feel whether she was still alive in there. He wanted to reassure her that he was still out there. She wasn't alone! But he had to fight this battle sitting still, without fists, without epee, hoping his anxiety didn't show on his face, to convince this languid tyrant to free her before she went mad.

  «I've discovered something else that I think you should know,» Keff said, speaking quickly. «Your people are not native to Ozran.»

  «Oh, that I knew already,» Chaumel said, with his small smile. «I am a historian, the son of historians, as I told you when you . . . visited me. Our legends tell us we came from the stars. As soon as I saw you, I knew that your people are our brothers. What do you call our race?»

  «Humans,» Keff said quickly, anxious to get the magiman back on track of letting go of Carialle's mind. «The old term for it was 'Homo sapiens' meaning the 'wise man.' Now, about Carialle . . .»

  «And you also wish to tell me that our power comes from a mechanical source, not drawn mystically from the air as some superstitious mages may believe. That I also knew already.» He looked at Plennafrey. «When I was your age, I followed my power to its source. I know more than the High Mages of the Points about whence our connection comes to the Core, but I kept my knowledge to myself and my eyes low, having no
wish to become a target.» Modestly, he dropped his gaze to the ground.

  If he was looking for applause, he was performing for the wrong audience. Keff lunged toward Chaumel and pinned his shoulders against the chair back.

  «While you're sitting here so calmly bragging about yourself,» Keff said in a clear, dangerous voice, «my partner is suffering unnecessary and possibly permanent psychic trauma.»

  «Oh, very well,» Chaumel said, imperturbably, closing his hand around the shaft of his wand as Keff let him go. «What you are saying is more amusing. You will tell me more, of course, or I will pen her up again.»

  Sight and sensation flooded in all at once. Carialle almost sobbed with relief, but managed to regain her composure within seconds. To Keff, whose sympathetic face was close to her pillar camera, she said, «Thank you, sir knight. I'm all right. I promise,» but she sensed that her voice quavered. Keff looked skeptical as he caressed her pillar and then resumed his seat.

  «Keff says that our power was supposed to be used to make it rain,» Plenna said. «Is this why the crops fail? Because we use it for other things?»

  «That's right,» Keff said. «If you're using the weather technology as you have been, no wonder the system is overloading. Whenever a new mage rises to power, it puts that much more of a strain on the system.»

  «You have some proof of this?» Chaumel asked, narrowing his eyes.

  «We have evidence from your earliest ancestors,» Keff said.

  «Ah, yes,» Chaumel said, raising the notebooks from his lap. «These. I have been perusing them while waiting for you to wake up. Except for a picture of the inside of an odd stronghold and an image of the Old Ones, I cannot understand it.»

  «I can only read portions of it without my equipment,» Keff said. «The language in it is very old. Things have changed since your ancestors and mine parted company.»