The figures of the human Commons were still gathered about him. Baro wanted to ask the Wise Man about what he had done in Yaffak’s dream, about the chilling harness and the tether that he had cut. But as he opened his mouth a fissure appeared in the air beside him and Guth Bandar, chanting loudly, seized the young man’s arm and pulled him through.
Baro found himself lying on his back on the trampled grass of the rest-stop, with Luff Imbry kneeling over him and methodically slapping his cheeks and shouting, “Come up! Come out of it!”
Bandar was standing over Imbry, eyes closed and chanting the same tones as in Baro’s dream. Now he ceased intoning the thran, opened his eyes, and seized Imbry’s upraised arm before the older man could deliver another slap. “It’s all right,” the noönaut said, “I’ve got him back.”
“I’m fine,” Baro said, sitting up. His cheeks stung and he touched his fingers to them, finding the flesh hot and tender. “What have you been doing to me?” he asked Imbry.
“You were gone,” his partner said. “We tried to wake you, but it was like no sleep I have ever seen. You had slipped into a coma.”
“I was in the Rovers’ Commons. I passed into Yaffak’s dream.”
“You could not have,” said Bandar, his face a mask of disapproval. “They would have torn you to pieces.”
“I think they accepted me as the Good Man, as we accept the Good Beast in our dreams.”
“Nonsense! Besides, there is no pathway. The Wall is absolute.”
Baro stood up. He felt refreshed and charged with vitality, although his cheeks still burned. “There is a way,” he said. “Through the Old Sea.”
Bandar raised a hand as if he meant to slap Baro, then he lowered it and stamped one small foot instead. “Worse nonsense!” he said. “It is death to enter the utoposphere. The consciousness hangs inert, then the devouring Worm comes.”
“I was not inert. The entities helped me. I took power from them, willed myself to move and I moved. I went under the wall, cut my way through, and emerged into Yaffak’s Commons. On his side, by the way, the wall is a hedge of black thorns.”
Bandar made a strangled sound and clenched his delicate fists under his chin. “It cannot be!” he said, the vehemence of his denial making his lips white. “That is a great secret, known only to a few. How would you know such a thing?”
“The Wise Man showed the way. I used the Hero’s sword and cut my way through.”
Bandar placed both hands atop his head as if he feared the skull might come apart. “This is too much!” he cried. “What have I ever done to you that you should casually yank the underpinnings from a lifetime of study and exploration?”
“There is more,” Baro said.
“Oh, there would be,” Bandar said. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“I think we have to,” said Imbry. “It may explain what happened here in the mundane world while you were dreaming or comatose, or in whatever definition of unconsciousness we may eventually decide to apply.”
“What happened?” Baro said.
“If you look about you,” his partner said, “you may notice that all the carts but ours are gone, along with their Rovers and passengers.”
Baro looked about him and saw that what Imbry said was true. The two agents and the historian formed one small group next to Yaffak’s cart. Another group consisted of Ule Gazz and Olleg Ebersol on the other side of the now-deserted clearing, the former standing while the latter lay stiffly at her feet, along with the two Fasfallian students sitting cross-legged and back-to-back. Ule Gazz was chanting the tatumpa, ta-tey with stubborn conviction, while Pollus Ermatage contributed an undertone accompaniment.
Flix constituted a group of one, standing at an equal distance from the other two, arms folded and back rigid, staring out over the long grass with an undisguised air of vexation.
“What happened?” Baro said again.
Imbry told him. All had been quiet. The ambulatory passengers who were not chanting to increase their chuffe were dozing. The stewards were playing some kind of game of chance. The Rovers were asleep.
Suddenly Yaffak had sprung to consciousness and to his feet. He had stood over his pack mates, teeth bared and nostrils flaring, the ruff on his neck standing upright, growling something in his own language. Then he ran and leaped onto the lead beast animal in his shuggra team and raced away to the north as fast as their long legs would carry him.
The other Rovers had jumped up as if they would pursue him. But once he was gone they seemed to lose interest in the fugitive. As one they called impatiently to the passengers and stewards to mount the carts. The chief steward had demanded that some provision be made for Baro’s group, but there were no empty seats in the other carts and the pack leader seemed not far from violence.
In the end the chief steward had left with the rest, saying that the landship’s gig was to rendezvous with the Rover-drawn carts not far east of here; he would call it on his communicator and divert it to collect the stranded party. He gave Imbry an energy weapon in case a wandering fand or woollyclaw came by, which he said was unlikely with the scent of angry Rover so thick in the air.
“Or in case Yaffak returns and means us harm,” Bandar added when Imbry had told the tale. “He seems to have gone mad.”
“He will not harm us,” Baro said. “I did him a service.” He told about the invisible harness and the leash he had cut. “What does it mean?”
“I’ve never heard the like of it,” said Bandar. “But it’s merely improbable, compared to the several sheer impossibilities you have already claimed.”
Baro was stung by the noönaut’s attitude. “Is it because they are impossible, or merely because they have not been done before, a circumstance which offends your philosophy?” he said.
“More than my philosophy is offended, young man,” said Bandar. “You have taken laws and strictures that have governed my science for years beyond memory and bounced them idly on your ignorant knee!”
“Ah,” said Baro, “we come to the nub! It is not what has been done that disturbs you but who has done it. If I were a long-bearded savant from your clique—what did you call it, the Predilective School?—you would festoon me with laurels of achievement and medals of excellence. But because I am an outsider and a mere tyro, you climb your tower of arrogance and precipitate a gob of saliva upon me.”
Bandar said nothing. He turned his back and looked in any direction but Baro’s.
Imbry stepped in. “This solves nothing,” he said. “Let us pull the cart into the center of the clearing and climb aboard. As we now stand, if a fand comes stalking it may take its choice of tasty flesh conveniently arranged about the edges of the circle.”
The chanters broke off and came across the clearing while Imbry and Baro repositioned the cart. They all climbed aboard, though not without a certain amount of turning of shoulders and averting of eyes as various members of the group impressed their disapproval upon selected others. Again, Flix was last to board and would not pull up the tailgate until Imbry pointed out that she might be the first to be pulled from her seat by a hungry beast.
When they were all seated, Imbry held up the energy pistol and said, “In my inexpert hands, this probably poses more danger to us in here than to any marauder out there. Is anyone qualified in its use?”
Baro said, “I am rated a marksman,” and Imbry passed the weapon to him. Baro knew the model. He expertly broke it down and reassembled the elements, finding that its coils were in good order and fully charged. He set the aperture for minimum spread and therefore maximum intensity, made sure the safety catch was engaged, and placed it on the floor of the cart beneath his seat.
Luff Imbry rubbed his palms together and said, “Well, what shall we do until the gig arrives?”
“Obviously, we should chant the ta-tumpa, ta-tey,” said Ule Gazz. “My partner agrees with me.”
Baro’s opinion, that Ule Gazz’s partner had probably spent a lifetime agreeing with her just to get a
modicum of peace and quiet, went unspoken. Instead he said, “I have a pressing need to understand what happened when I entered Yaffak’s dream. I had the impression that something important was at issue.”
Guth Bandar made a dismissive noise and turned his shoulder even further against the young man.
It occurred to Baro that Ule Gazz had never entertained an opinion she had left unvoiced, because now the Lho-tso practitioner said, “The Commons is merely a compilation of what has been. It has no relevance to what is, and what is is what shall be.”
Baro was annoyed. “Do you ever listen to yourself?” he said. “‘What is’ is that your beloved partner has the lassitude. If that is also ‘what shall be’ why are you chanting so hard to create another outcome?”
“These things are not clear to those who have barely risen to the first tier of being,” said the Lho-tso adept, “and I may be too charitable in assigning you even that distinction. From the eighth tier, the view offers a wider scope. One learns to distinguish between ‘is’ as a descriptor of phenomenality, which is by definition mutable and ever changing, and the ‘is’ that encompasses an unchangeable metareality. Thus is is not always is. By corollary, ‘not is’ is sometimes only a means of emphasizing what is is, rather than what is not, or what is is not.”
“I withdraw my question,” said Baro. “Clearly you do listen to yourself, a lifetime of which has left you as mad as a boiled bean.”
“True understanding comes from a lifelong consolidation of grims between soul mates,” said Pollus Ermatage, patting the still hand of her paralyzed cohort. “Of course, it is too late for all of you to experience it.”
“But it is good of you to let us know what we have missed,” said Luff Imbry.
Guth Bandar’s lips had grown thin and he elevated his nose. “I thank all of you for your advice. I shall give it every morsel of the consideration it deserves,” he said and turned to regard the Swept.
“We would all be better off chanting the ta-tumpa, ta-tey,” Ule Gazz insisted. “Indeed, now that I am surrounded by fakes and posers”—here she turned her narrow head to grant both Flix and Baro a squinting eye—“I am certain that my chuffe has diminished substantially.”
“Chuffe!” Baro almost snorted the syllable. “There is no chuffe! It is a figment! Father Olwyn is none other than Horslan Gebbling, a petty fraudster. Behind him straggles a long line of dupes, of which you are but the latest.”
Imbry turned and put out a warning hand, but Baro kept right on, “The moment we encounter him he will be restrained on charges of mountebankery.”
“By what power?” said Ule Gazz and Baro saw that the other ambulatory passengers were regarding him with expressions that ranged from surprise to hostility.
Baro recognized that he had let his temper overrule his judgment. Indeed, temper had shoved judgment into a hole and rolled a rock over it. Without good cause, he had violated Ardmander Arboghast’s specific order. But, he reflected, a quick tongue must own an even quicker hand to capture words before they touch a listener’s ear. Now there was no alternative to an assertion of lawful authority. He produced his plaque. “We are agents of the Bureau of Scrutiny.”
Ule Gazz was not cowed. “Hoo-hah!” she said. “And scroots never err? My chuffe is self-evident, and would be to any person of discernment.”
“I do not understand,” said Pollus Ermatage. “If Father Olwyn is a fraud, how does he stand to gain from this exercise?”
“A good point,” said Bandar, turning to join the discussion. “We are none of us wealthy, and this must have cost him dearly.”
Baro sent Imbry a warning look and said, “All shall be made clear at the appropriate time. We cannot discuss a case that is under investigation.”
“Yet you just informed us that charges are imminent,” said the historian. “It appears that you cast aside your own rules as casually as you defy the laws of nature.”
“I thought you were not speaking to me,” Baro said.
“Until moments ago, my only conceivable reason for communicating with you would have been to express my intense disapproval of your conduct,” Bandar said. “But now a new situation has emerged. With your plaque you can call for a rescue. I am breaking my silence to say, ‘Please do so.’”
“We are under orders to maintain communications silence until Gebbling is apprehended,” Baro said.
“Listen,” Flix began.
Although she did not move from her seat, Ule Gazz pounced. “Presumably, you were also under orders not to flash your credentials in an attempt to overawe decent folk. Yet you do so with typical scroot arrogance. Call for help! My chuffe dwindles !”
“Listen!” It was Flix again.
“Leave the boy alone!” Luff Imbry weighed in.
“We require a rescue,” said Guth Bandar.
“Can we not all just get along?” cried Pollus Ermatage.
The loudness of Flix’s voice almost rocked the lightweight cart. “Will you just shut up and listen?” she roared and turned to cock her head toward the sky, one ear cupped in a slim hand.
There was a faint thrum of well-tuned gravity obviators, growing louder as the cart’s passengers poked their heads out from under its canopy to search the sky.
Pollus Ermatage shaded her eyes and peered east. “There!” she said.
A shadow rushed toward them over the grass, then the aircraft was a dark blot against the orange sun, gliding down toward the clearing. The Orgulon’s gig touched down on the flattened grass, First Officer Kosmir at the controls with Security Officer Haj in the co-operator’s seat.
The able-bodied tumbled from the cart, the two lassitude sufferers being helped onto their come-alongs by their companions. Flix showed a new facet of her personality by holding back to assist Ule Gazz with Olleg Ebersol.
Mirov Kosmir remained at the controls while Raina Haj dismounted and lowered the gig’s rear gate. Baro went forward to tell her that he had revealed his identity and his mission. In the back of his mind was another thought: that now they could associate as fellow professionals rather than as officer and civilian.
“Uh huh,” was her response, along with a shrug of the eyebrows. “It’s your career.” She waived the passengers toward the gig’s stern, saying, “Let’s get aboard, people. We saw something moving in the grass not far out and the best trouble’s the one you never encounter.”
Flix was last in line. “Are you taking us back to the Orgulon?” she asked.
“No. We’ll take you to where the other passengers are camped just beyond the Monument. There are tents and a luncheon service. Father Olwyn is scheduled to appear and offer you an experience he calls the inculcation. The Orgulon arrives late tonight.”
“Then we go home?” Flix said.
“I believe so,” said the security officer.
“Beyond the Monument is the town of Victor,” said Flix, “I want to be taken there so I can arrange passage home.”
“The matter is not yours to decide.”
“Yes, it is,” said the artist’s companion. From behind her back she brought the pistol Baro had left in the cart. Excited to see Raina Haj, he had forgotten it. Now it was pointed at the security officer, and none too steadily: Flix grasped the heavy weapon in a two-hand grip, her outstretched arms trembling from its weight and her nervousness.
“Wait,” Baro said and took a step toward the young woman. She in turn stepped back, firing a bolt of energy into the ground not far short of where his next footfall would have landed. A stench of burning grass stung his nose.
“Stay back,” Flix said.
“I will,” said Baro. He froze.
Flix looked at Kosmir. “Mirov, get her weapon.”
The first officer dismounted from the gig and walked warily around Raina Haj to approach her from the rear and lift the sidearm from its holster. He positioned himself beside Flix, the stolen pistol leveled at the passengers. They were still lined up to board the aircraft at its stern, Luff Imbry at the head of the q
ueue and Baro at its rear where he had been speaking to the security officer.
“Move away from the gig,” he said.
“Wait,” said Raina Haj. “Flix, you don’t have to do this.”
“Shut up,” said Kosmir.
The security officer kept talking. “I know you didn’t kill Monlaurion.”
“It was an accident,” Flix said. “He fell.”
“It was no accident,” Haj said.
“Shut up,” Kosmir said again, aiming the pistol at the security officer, but before he could fire Flix pushed his arm down.
“What are you saying?” she asked Haj.
“She’s lying,” Kosmir said.
“I want to hear her.” Doubt was blooming in Flix’s face. She moved a little distance away from Kosmir and her energy pistol swung partway toward him.
Kosmir did not hesitate. He leveled his weapon at the young woman and sent a burst of white force through her torso that left a charred hole the size of a double fist. What had been Flix fell to the ground.
Pollus Ermatage screamed and toppled forward in a half faint. Her collapse might have offered a chance for the other able-bodied to rush the killer, but Kosmir remained cool. He stepped back, swinging the pistol to cover them again, and the moment was past before they had recovered from the shock of the casual murder.
“So you know,” said Kosmir.
“Yes,” said Raina Haj.
“Well, then.” He raised the pistol again.
“How will you explain it?” Baro said.
Kosmir flicked his eyes in Baro’s direction, then went back to Raina Haj. “Easily. Flix was unstable. Being lost on the Swept unhinged her. She killed you all. When the gig came she hid in the cart and fired at us, killing Security Officer Haj instantly and wounding me. I seized Haj’s gun and reluctantly brought about the end of poor, deranged Flix.”
While Kosmir spoke, Baro reached into his side pocket and palmed the grumbler’s disk. He let Imbry see it, then under the guise of thoughtfully stoking his chin he applied it to his throat. Imbry, meanwhile, slipped the earpiece into place while appearing to give his earlobe a contemplative tug.
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