Lorinda shook her head in the privacy of the monitoring module. Not impossible—it had happened. And certainly not natural. Of that, she was all too sure.
V
THE SCIENTIST IN the pale blue tunic ran her left hand through her shortcut sandy hair, then tapped the light stylus on the console.
Looking up for a moment around the small windowless room, she pursed her lips. The gesture gave her face an elfin cast, which vanished as she concentrated and touched the keyboard.
On the screen before her, a title appeared in the formal script of Westra: “Project Vanish—Case III.”
Her fingers played the keyboard again, and the angled script disappeared, replaced by a full-length view of a tall woman standing on a raised platform, surrounded by monitoring equipment. The subject wore a wide belt clustered with sensors over a plain singlesuit.
Abruptly, the woman on the screen vanished, leaving the platform empty.
The sandy-haired woman viewing the screen froze the image and studied it. Then she backtracked the visual, instant by instant. In one scan, the subject was present. In the next she was not.
Finally, the scientist touched the keyboard to remove the visual and replace it with the data from the monitoring equipment. The data read-outs showed the same pattern. The subject’s disappearance was instantaneous. No faded signals, no attenuation, only an absolute cut-off simultaneous on all equipment through the entire monitoring range.
The woman in blue pursed her lips again, ignoring the notation at the bottom of the arrayed data.
“Subject A-102-Green failed to return. No body found. No explosions noted simultaneously with disappearance. No other co-ordinated energy phenomena. Chronological analysis inconclusive.”
Her fingers touched the console, almost as if independently of her thoughts, and the index returned to the screen. For a time, she regarded the first page of the lengthy index.
Evidence—that there was plenty of—but verifiable, measurable results indicating success? None to date—except her own personal observations, and they would not be considered objective, not to mention the questions they would raise.
At last, she blanked the index and stood, a woman with an almost elfin, face, wearing the pale blue of a scientist. The severity of her hair and clothing hinted at the age she might have been. The smoothness of her complexion and the pale fairness of her skin indicated an age far younger than the expression in her eyes or the position which she held in the scientific hierarchy.
She sighed so softly that the expression was nearly soundless as she pressed the stud which put the computer system on standby. Just as soundlessly, she rose and stood before the darkened console, her eyes sweeping over the equipment for a last time, as if such a search could uncover the key she continued to seek.
Her steps were light, but slow, as they whispered her departure from the small modest office on an afternoon when most others had celebrated the holiday proclaimed by the emperor.
VI
ALL THE ANOMALIES centre here.” The technician pointed to a circled area on the screen. “The general direction of movement is toward the planetary southwest—right along that line.”
The officer frowned and gestured toward a series of triangles farther along in the direction outlined by the technician. “I assume those represent our planetary stocks.”
“Just what we have there, sir.”
“How much metal and support gear there?”
“About six months’ worth. That’s an estimate.”
“And if whatever these things are freeze that, we lose six months of production equipment?”
“More than that. Don’t forget we had to soft-land all of that, and we lost two of the landers doing it.”
“Verlyt!” For a time, the slender man studied the screen and the gradual motions, and the abrupt temperature drops. Then he pointed again. “What’s here, if anything?”
“That’s the break between the two networks.”
“Could we direct the equatorial laser and the microwave collector to focus on that point when the sensors indicate that’s where these . . . these . . .”
“Frost Giants is what the recon types call them.”
“. . . things . . . these things are centred?”
“You want to fry them when they hit that point?”
“That’s the idea. We can get plenty of energy from the orbital stations. What we don’t have is more equipment, and for some reason that’s exactly what your Frost Giants are interested in freezing.”
“Do we know what will happen, sir?”
“No. But it can’t be much worse than losing the entire planet-forming project, can it?”
The technician frowned. “I guess not, sir. I guess not. But what if the Frost Giants object?”
“It’s their planet. If they kick us off, they kick us off, but there can’t be more than a few. We may have to rethink, and maybe we can’t complete the project, but we need to keep them away from the soft-landed equipment.
“That’s my first objective. Then we’ll see what happens.”
VII
FIRST, THERE WERE the rumours. The Academy was always a place for rumours.
“Sammis, did you hear about the problems on Mithrada? Parts of the planet are freezing . . .”
I didn’t even bother to answer. Astronomy had taught me enough about Mithrada to show how ridiculous that was. Hot enough to boil water, not to mention the higher atmospheric pressure there.
“. . . serious . . . they called my brother off leave . . .”
“. . . they’re lifting the banned weapons, the big nuclear ones . . .”
At that point, Old Windlass walked in. We didn’t have to stand, but were supposed to become silent, immediately.
“. . . rebels from Eastron . . . do you think?”
“. . . none of them left . . .”
“Master Olon, our lesson is Carnelia. I would appreciate it if you would turn your attention to whether Carnelia is a tragedy in the true sense of the word. You, too, Master Kryrel.” Old Windlass—that was what we all called him, although his real name was Dr. Wendengless— would have discussed literature if the world had been crumbling and the schedule said it was time for literature.
“Uhhh . . .”
“Come now. Is Carnelia a tragedy? Yes or no? Surely, you must have some opinion.”
“No, sir. Carnelia is a comedy disguised as a tragedy.” My idea was not setting well, and all my plans for stringing along with Windlass’s fondness for classifying everything as a tragedy had vanished because I had been listening to Jeen Kryrel and thinking why the rumours about Mithrada couldn’t be correct.
“A comedy? Pardon the pun, gentlemen, but surely you jest? A comedy?”
“Yes, sir. I mean no, sir. If you take away the trappings of a court, and all the formalities, the situation is really a farce. Just because she had a single romp with the wrong nobleman, she’s threatening to commit suicide? By throwing herself into a lily pond? And she drowns in waist-deep water? How can you take that seriously?”
“Master Sammis!” There was a pause. “How do you know the water is waist-deep in the Major Royal?”
“I checked in the Archives when I was in Inequital last week with my mother. The original plans say the pond was built to a quarter rod depth. It was later bricked up to a handspan, but at the time of Carnelia, I assume that it was the deeper level.” Actually, I really hadn’t done all that much research. I’d been discussing it with my mother, and she had mentioned the depths. But she was always right, and Old Windlass wouldn’t know the difference.
“And where in the Archives did you find this wonderful information?”
In the background information on the history of the Palace Major.” Windlass really looked confused, then. Started mumbling to himself, something about the material not being in the public domain. Finally, he looked up. “All right, Master Sammis . . . even if the Major Royal were only a quarter rod deep, you are missing the point through a tec
hnicality—
Jeen was trying to keep from laughing, and Trien was grinning, and if Windlass saw them I was going to be in big trouble.
“—that Carnelia, indeed all the early Western royalty, placed an inordinate emphasis on sexual purity, perhaps because of the lower-class stigma attached to sexually transmitted diseases before the availability of modern medical techniques, and partly because of the need to ensure a clear line of royal descent in order to avoid a repetition of the chaos created by the Fylarian Fragmentation . . .”
I had to hand it to Windlass. He could talk his way out of anything.
“. . . so you are correct in saying that in the modern context Carnelia’s actions seem farcical. But that is not the question, Master Sammis. Are her actions farcical for the time and the society in which she existed? Are they? Come now?”
“It still seems like she overreacted, but it’s hard to say, sir.” I could have argued it either way.
“Master Sammis, last week you were disciplined for your reaction to criticism by a comrade of your performance during the centreslot title game. In fact, upon one occasion you failed to place an inflated rubber bladder inside a loose section of netting in the middle of a grassy field. This failure did not affect your survival, your future, or your status. It should not have affected your self-esteem, given your overall athletic reputation, despite your size. Yet you were so threatened by a mere verbal criticism that you employed bodily violence.
“Carnelia’s whole value system and life may be threatened by her thoughtless action. Yet you, who react violently to a meaningless criticism of a generally meaningless game, are going to tell me that context is not important?”
Jeen was still grinning, but now he was laughing at me.
“No, sir.”
“So you might consider accepting that context is vital in evaluating value systems?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Master Kryrel . . .”
For some reason, freezing on Mithrada didn’t seem quite so impossible after Old Windlass finished with me.
VIII
SOME DREAMS NEVER quite go away. So it was with my dream of the crossroads with its blue and red and gold and black directions that were all the same and all different.
Some nights that dream would flash before me, and then I would dream no more. Other nights, I would find myself moved from the crossroads in one direction or another, buffeted on invisible currents that were no less strong for not being felt or seen, until I was carried almost through a black chill wall into some place or time. Almost, but not quite, carried through that barrier, as though I stood behind a curtain where I could see most of what went on.
One dream was especially vivid. Or perhaps I recalled it because it so closely paralleled what actually occurred.
I had been carried into those black chill curtains that looked into another world, or so it seemed, and stood within a tower that glittered, inside and out. The tower was suffused with an energy that made it a beacon of sorts on both sides of the black curtain. No matter how I tried to look at the walls, they refused to stay in focus, even less than the other objects and people I could see from my obscured perspective.
Yet one thing was clear. The tower did not exist. Yet it was concretely there in my night/dream vision. I could see people walking through that tower. Some few looked ordinary. Ordinary as they looked, they were suffused with the same sort of energy as the tower itself, on a lesser scale.
Far less frequently, I could see others, dressed in tight black uniforms, who radiated a far greater sense of energy. In the most vivid of these dreams, the one that stuck with me, I could see one of the men in black more clearly than the others. He was below average in height, and far smaller than the colourful and uniformed giant who stood beside him. Yet the power which suffused him left the taller figure a mere shadow beside him.
The smaller man seemed graceful, with a narrow face and sandy hair. The strange part was that he stopped talking to the giant and looked straight at me, though I was certain no one could see me, ghost shadow that I was behind the black curtains of time or space or whatever.
I could feel his green eyes burning as he fixed them on me. And then he nodded and made a sign in the air that seemed like a benediction. The giant swung his head toward the smaller man, who answered before turning away from me and leaving me in that no-time place where reality and dreams seemed to almost meet.
The man seemed familiar, too familiar. Why had I seen him? What did the energy levels mean?
Before I could ponder the question, I stumbled from the blackness.
And was in trouble—serious trouble.
I did not wake in merely cold covers, or standing by my bed, as had happened once or twice when I had dreamed about the crossroads. I found myself standing in a winter rain, still wearing but a long night-shirt, and barefoot, at the foot of the stone walkway leading to the front door.
Whhhssssstttt . . . click, click, click, . . .
The half-frozen rain pelted down in sheets, as it always did in the Ninis storms, each sheet sweeping across the road and down the valley, followed by a break in the wind, cold ice drizzle, and then another pounding sheet of ice droplets striking hard enough to raise tiny welts on unprotected skin.
Most of my skin was either barely protected or totally uncovered.
Part of my mind was protesting. It was too early in the year for such a violent and chill storm. The afternoon before I had been picking chysts from the trees along the stone fence that separated our grounds from the Davniadses’, and I had taken my tunic off. That’s how warm it had been.
The changed weather wasn’t paying any attention to my mental protests, but continued to raise welts on my skin and drench my nightshirt.
So I hurried gingerly toward the overhang of the front doorway, each bare foot planted as carefully as possible on the slick stones.
Not carefully enough, I discovered, as my bare feet slipped from beneath me and my posterior and flailing hands slapped down on the cold stones.
Scrabbling and edging along across stones that were slick as glass and cold as deep winter, I finally managed to reach the overhang and dry stones underfoot. From there getting inside was easy. I opened the heavy door and took three steps until I stood on the polished slate of the entry hall in an instant pool of water, with a few icicles hanging from the edge of my nightshirt.
Only after I was inside the house did I begin to shiver, either from relief or the accumulated impact of cold.
In those days no one in Bremarlyn locked or bolted doors. Why would we? Westron was prosperous; what little crime there might be was punished severely; and few of the lower classes travelled.
The hall was chill, chill enough that normally I would have worn a robe, but that cold was like a warm hearth compared to what I had left outside. What chilled me most was my soaking nightshirt. I wasted little time in stripping it off and carrying it to the kitchen where I wrung it out. Still naked, I took some rags and went back into the entry hall and wiped up the puddle I had left.
According to the big clock at the foot of the formal stairs, dawn was still some time away.
During the whole episode, I heard nothing from the maid down below, or from my parents above, but that may have been because any slight noise I made had been drowned out by the wind and the sound of the ice rain on windows and walls.
Then I put the rags in the empty wash bucket, hoping that Shaera would either think she had overlooked them or not want to mention the problem when she discovered them on the morrow.
Taking my damp nightshirt with me, I tiptoed up the back stairs to my room. I opened the window briefly, got pelted by the rain again, and closed it. After laying the wet nightshirt on the stone sill, I rummaged through my closet and found my other nightshirt, which, as a proper scholar in training, I was not to wear for another day. I yanked it on and climbed under the cold quilts, and began to shiver in earnest.
How had I gotten outside? Had I been sleepwalking?
Did the dream have anything to do with it? What?
Surely I would have fallen on the ice going down the walk, and I swore that the chill of the ice underfoot and the rain had been too sudden for an awakening from a nightmare. Had I been sleepwalking, wouldn’t I have wakened as soon as the cold and rain struck me, not all the way down the walk?
The questions seemed endless, but, surprisingly, shivers or not, I fell asleep before I could figure out answers that made sense.
When I woke the next morning, it was to a blaze of light. My first thought was that I had been transported to the tower of my night dream vision.
I heard nothing for a moment, but I could smell the odour of burnt sausage, which meant that Shaera was attempting breakfast. While she kept the large house spotless, she attacked cooking as if, like cleaning, it were to receive the full force of her ability and vigour. Full vigour meant high heat and overcooked meats and scorched breads.
The blaze of light came not from some dream tower, but from the sun flaring through and reflecting off the ice that coated the trees, the ground, and even the stones of the roadway.
I struggled from under my quilts, seeing that my breath did not quite turn to steam in the air of my bedroom, and went to the window.
The nightshirt was semi-frozen, and I lifted my hands.
The hall light was on, and that told me that the solar power units on the roof had begun to operate. They had been expensive, my father said, but he had always worried about relying totally on the electric current delivered through the semi-ceramic cables from the Imperial power authority. The power authority, of course, received its electricity from the satellite links, which had been the primary reason for the Westron space effort.
By pressing my nose close against the glass, I could see most of the front walk from the window. I pressed and looked. The walk was coated in ice, although it was beginning to steam as the solar cells warmed the coils beneath. There were darker patches where the ice was thinner that could have been footprints. But there was really no way to tell.
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