by Paula Volsky
She stood in a hushed, empty foyer, which had probably once been impressive, but now seemed merely gloomy. To her right the great staircase spiraled its way along the curving glass wall. To the left stood a couple of doors, one of them ajar. She went to the open door and looked through into a big, dilapidated salon, currently unoccupied. A sad place.
She was procrastinating. She was a little uneasy, she realized; even a bit afraid. There was still time to retreat, but she did not seriously consider it. Touching her pocket once again, she began to climb the stairs.
The afternoon sun shone muted through the heavy red glass of the dome, washing the stairwell with strange light. Luzelle looked through the wall to behold Lanthi Ume spread out below, her palaces unnaturally incarnadined, her canals apparently brimming with wine.
It was a long way up. She was breathing hard by the time she reached the top floor and the door she sought. She knocked, the door opened at once, and her eyes widened.
She had harbored no definite expectations, but was nonetheless surprised to confront a grizzled, crinkle-bearded man clad in long, voluminous black robes blazoned with a double-headed dragon at the shoulder. She had seen just such a robe decorated with just such an emblem only hours earlier, clothing the person of the luckless Preeminence Perif Neen Cezineen. The man before her had to be another Lanthian savant of the Select.
“Miss Devaire. Welcome,” he said in good Vonahrish. “Please come in.”
She hesitated a moment, then entered cautiously, to find herself in a gigantic chamber shaped like an inverted red bowl. Great panes of colorless glass set into the walls and ceiling admitted natural light. The sole furnishings consisted of a very large circular table edged with many chairs, some of which were occupied. The familiar faces jumped at her. Girays v’Alisante, whose expression was unreadable. Bav Tchornoi. The Festinette twins, looking unwontedly subdued. Mesq’r Zavune. There were several others that she didn’t know—two more black-robed savants, and a couple of youngish men clad in ordinary street garb. Her trepidation vanished.
“Who are you?” she inquired of the crinkle-bearded savant. “And why have you asked me here?”
“Please be seated, and I will tell you what I can.”
She eyed him levelly and then complied, choosing the vacant chair next to Zavune.
Crinkle-beard likewise seated himself and declared, “Custom and courtesy dictate mutual introductions at this time, but the circumstances are unusual and ordinary convention must lapse.”
What in the world is he talking about? Luzelle wondered.
“It is best for all,” the savant continued, “that you travelers remain ignorant of our names. Enough for you to know and believe that we are Lanthian, that we oppose the Grewzian presence in our city, and that we will do all in our power to effect the restoration of Lanthian autonomy.”
They were members of the resistance, Luzelle perceived; all of them subject to summary execution, should they fall into Grewzian hands. And their associates and accomplices right along with them, foreign nationality notwithstanding. They were placing lives at risk by inviting the racers to their meeting, and what could they possibly hope to gain by it?
“You doubtless question our motives in bringing you here,” Crinkle-beard continued. “I will answer that our intentions are simple and straightforward—we wish to discomfort, discredit, and generally plague the Grewzian invader to the greatest extent possible. In this particular case our aims happen to coincide with your own. As of today Lanthi Ume’s harbor has been shut down by order of the Overgeneral Brugloist. The overgeneral has permitted, however, the departure by steamship of the sole Grewzian competitor in the Grand Ellipse—a concession all but assuring Grewzian victory. It is our resolve that the Grewzians shall not turn the abuse of Lanthian liberties to such profitable use. Therefore we have invited you contestants here today in order to offer our assistance.”
“How can you assist us?” demanded Bav Tchornoi, his eyes and voice unwontedly clear.
“Yes,” chimed in Stesian Festinette. “You fellows are tremendously kind, and we appreciate the good will, but—”
“What can you actually do?” concluded his twin.
“You’re not planning to sink the Inspiration, or anything like that, are you?” asked Luzelle. “I mean, there are innocent people aboard—” Karsler.
“And there are certain fairly striking omissions,” Girays observed calmly. “Porb Jil Liskjil. Founne Hay-Frinl. Dr. Phineska. They reached Lanthi Ume aboard the Karavise along with the rest of us, but I don’t see them here this afternoon. Jil Liskjil in particular is the sole Lanthian among the racers and, as such, the obvious beneficiary of your concern. If you are all that you claim, then why have you not summoned your own compatriot?”
“Because we cannot find him or the others you speak of,” one of the anonymous Lanthians clad in ordinary street wear answered in labored Vonahrish. “We search as best we may, but they are nowhere.”
“It is more than probable that Master Jil Liskjil, possessing many resources here in his home city, has arranged his own affairs,” suggested a hitherto silent savant.
“I see.” Girays arched a skeptical brow.
“You’ve offered your help, and we thank you, gentlemen.” Luzelle attempted diplomacy. “The note I received mentioned the fastest transportation to Aennorve. Would you please explain what that means?”
“Willingly, Miss Devaire.” Crinkle-beard resumed his role as spokesman. “Your departure from Lanthi Ume by sea is prevented by the harbor blockade. You are now obliged to embark for Aennorve from an alternate port, the nearest of which is Hurba, a good two days’ journey north overland from here.”
“Two days!” echoed Luzelle, dismayed. She thought of the Inspiration, already at sea, steaming full speed toward Aeshno. “That long?”
“The roads are poor at this time of year,” came the discouraging reply. “As for the railroads, their service is not reliable. Two days to Hurba by land would be good time.”
“We’re dead, then,” shrugged Trefian Festinette, without visible concern. “Let’s be good sports about it. Why don’t we all repair to one of these excellent local restaurants and console ourselves with Vonahrish champagne?”
“You go drink that fizzy puppy-dog water, little boy,” Bav Tchornoi advised. “I do not give up, me.”
“I am go also,” declared Mesq’r Zavune.
“Have you an alternative to recommend?” Girays inquired of his host.
“We do,” Crinkle-beard told him. “Quite a good one, for those among you ready to avail yourselves of it.”
“You sound as if you think we might not be ready,” Luzelle hazarded.
“Possibly not. Hear me through, and then judge,” the savant advised. “All of you are foreigners, but you probably recognize the double-headed dragon insignia that you see here today, and you know approximately what it means. You understand that my colleagues and I belong to a very old Lanthian organization devoted to the investigation of obscure phenomena. One such phenomenon encompasses the swift and precise conveyance of large objects from one point in space to another. The room in which we now gather has belonged to one member of the Select or another, as long as the Mauranyza Dome has stood. The proof of our tenancy is both tangible and relevant.”
What in the world is he on about? Luzelle wondered again.
“Come, and I will show you,” Crinkle-beard answered the unspoken query. “Come with me.” Rising from his chair, he made for the far side of the room, where a threadbare, almost colorless circular rug of ancient workmanship drably masked a section of floor. His listeners followed and watched with interest as the savant flipped the rug aside, uncovering a hexagonal slab of black glass. Beneath the polished surface thousands of golden flecks glittered like a galaxy, seeming by some trick of design to extend an immeasurable distance.
“You see before you an ancient glass of transference known as an ophelu,” explained their host. “The origin and history of the device
need not concern you now—suffice it to say that the Select have guarded its secret for generations. By application of the discipline that we Lanthians call ‘Cognition,’ the ophelu may be stimulated to induce a negative-temporal shift of cargo.”
“Negative-temporal?” Girays prompted, intrigued.
“The object of transference,” Crinkle-beard told him, “reaches its destination a moment or so before it sets off. This displacement is so slight and unnoticeable that it may be called negligible, but is interesting nonetheless.”
“How do you know that such a displacement occurs? How have you measured its duration, and under what circumstances?” probed Girays. “What do you regard as negligible? What is the cause of this anomaly, and during its term, are we to assume that the object of transference exists simultaneously in two separate locations? Speaking of which, does the nature of the object—organic or inorganic, living or dead, insectile or human, et cetera—in any way affect the outcome, and if so—”
“Will you for once stop pushing?” hissed Luzelle.
“I’m not pushing. Will you for once stop and think—”
“Your questions might be answered, Master v’Alisante,” the savant interrupted, “but only at the cost of some time, which you can ill afford. Will you consent to postpone the interrogation?”
Girays inclined his head.
“You say this send us to Hurba before we go?” inquired Mesq’r Zavune.
“Imagine—for a single shining instant—four of us!” Stesian Festinette elbowed his brother exuberantly.
“That beats the Demon Tax Collector stunt, Tref, I swear it does!”
“Not straight to Hurba, sir,” Crinkle-beard answered Zavune’s query. “The sundered half of this ophelu lies in a castle, well beyond the city limits of Lanthi Ume. Once you are there, one of our people will guide you across the Gravula Wasteland to a second glass, which will in turn transport you to the caverns of the Nazara Sin, whose inhabitants—traditional friends of the Select—will send you on to Hurba.”
“Sounds complicated,” observed Luzelle. “Are you sure it wouldn’t be fastest for us simply to—”
“If all goes well, your entire group should reach your destination by sunset today.”
“If?” demanded Trefian.
“We’re not likely to pop up inside a cow or something, are we?” Stesian worried.
“I care nothing for the risks,” Bav Tchornoi proclaimed. “I only ask—this thing, this glass here—it works?”
“It works,” Crinkle-beard assured him.
“Then I will use it,” Tchornoi announced. “These others may do as they please, but I will go.”
“I also,” said Zavune.
“Include me,” requested Luzelle. Really, there was no choice. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Girays shoot her a quelling glance, but she ignored him. He ought to know by now that she was hardly one to fear unconventional methods of travel. Let him back down himself, if he thought it so dangerous.
“I’ll go,” said Girays without enthusiasm.
The Festinettes traded glances, and bobbed their heads in unison.
“Excellent.” Crinkle-beard nodded. “The larger the illicit exodus, the greater the affront to the Grewzians. But the ophelu cannot bear all of you at once. Your group of six must split in half.”
“I go first,” declared Tchornoi, glaring a challenge that was superfluous, for nobody opposed him. “Who comes also I do not care, but I go first. When do you send me?”
“Now.”
“Good. What do I do?”
“Step onto the glass slab.”
Tchornoi complied. Smiling as if they imagined themselves about to embark on a pleasure jaunt, the Festinette twins joined him. When all three stood upon the ophelu, one of Crinkle-beard’s colleagues produced a tiny jar full of white crystalline matter, depositing small heaps of the stuff at the vertices of the hexagon.
“What is this?” Tchornoi squinted suspiciously. He received no answer.
Crinkle-beard bowed his head and spoke. As the rhythmic syllables flew from his lips, the six powdery mounds ignited. Flames leapt and circled the ophelu. Ghostly vapors arose. The savant spoke on, and the vapors thickened, paled, and whirled in crazy spirals.
Cognition. The real thing. Lips parted in wonder, Luzelle watched.
Tchornoi and the Festinettes were invisible now, lost in the roiling mists; their cries, if any, drowned in the roar of a Cognitive hurricane. Luzelle pressed her hands to her ears, straining her eyes in vain to pierce the white blindness. She could see nothing, hear nothing intelligible, but sensed the psychic assault of vast forces.
And then it was over, the white hurricane abruptly stilled, the surging alien energy exhausted. The riotous mists vanished in an instant to reveal an ophelu shining and empty. Tchornoi and the Festinettes were gone.
Nobody stirred, nobody said a word.
“They are safe.” Crinkle-beard finally broke the staring silence. No reaction from the stunned Ellipsoids, and he added, “They stand beneath the roof of Castle Io Wesha, some leagues beyond the city limits. Come, are you dazed? Surely you had some idea what to expect.” No reply, and he inquired at last, “Are the three of you still willing to follow them?”
Wordlessly Mesq’r Zavune stepped onto the hexagonal slab. In silence Luzelle and Girays joined him. She wished that Girays would hold her hand, but would have died rather than let him know it. She stole a glance at his profile, noting the grim set of the jaw, and wondered if it would be the last look—wondered if the two of them stood within moments of uncanny annihilation.
What if we simply vanish? Forever? Her mouth was dry, which was a pity, for there were many things she wanted to say to him, she realized belatedly, and perhaps there would never be another chance.
Too late.
One of the black-robed figures was already replenishing the mounds of crystalline matter at the vertices of the slab. Crinkle-beard bowed his head and he was speaking again, chanting rhythmic syllables that she couldn’t quite distinguish, but knew on instinct she would never understand.
The mounds ignited and the white vapors swirled back into being. Unthinkingly Luzelle seized Girays’s arm and felt rather than saw his eyes turn toward her. Her own eyes remained fixed on Crinkle-beard, all but obscured by the mists, but still incomprehensibly audible. And now another sound was audible as well, some sort of purely mundane commotion on the landing outside the bowl-shaped chamber—a clatter of footfalls, a vocal clamor, an imperative pounding of fists on the door.
The door gave way and a squad of Grewzian soldiers burst into the room, revolvers in hand. The Lanthians shrank back and one of them, not of the Select, made a desperate dash for the exit. Three or four revolvers spoke simultaneously, and the fugitive dropped in his tracks. A couple of shots flew wide of the mark to strike the walls, marring the glass of the Mauranyza Dome with a complex network of new cracks.
All of this Luzelle glimpsed imperfectly through the thickening mists. She saw one of the black-robed savants gesture in a manner that must have struck the soldiers as threatening or annoying, for they shot him down at once. And she saw that Crinkle-beard, wholly absorbed in his Cognitive endeavor, appeared unaware of the Grewzian presence. His chanting syllables flowed forth smoothly, and the blast of gunfire never so much as shook his rhythm.
“Cognizance Oerlo Farni of the Select,” the Grewzian sergeant, leader of the squadron, addressed the preoccupied Crinkle-beard, “I arrest you and your fellow enemies of the state in the name of the Grewzian Imperium.”
Crinkle-beard, or Cognizance Oerlo Farni, seemed deaf. His voice flowed, and the vapors whirling about the ophelu waxed in solidity and velocity. A distant wailing of arcane winds ghosted upon the mists.
“Hands atop your head, and keep them there,” commanded the sergeant. “Turn slowly and face me.”
Farni spoke on. The ghostly wail drew nigh and the white mists funneled intensely above the hexagonal glass.
“Silence
. Turn. Now.” The sergeant cocked his gun.
If Oerlo Farni heard the command, he ignored it. The syllables gushed, the wail of the wind rose to a howl, and the sergeant fired.
Luzelle heard the report echoing under the domed ceiling and dimly discerned the bearded victim’s body falling, but the vapors veiled the scene. The mists shuddered and convulsed, for one moment fading to the verge of invisibility, and in that moment she saw the savant, prone in a puddle of blood. Her shocked eyes rose to meet those of the Grewzian sergeant.
“You three—” he began.
His words drowned in the renewed roar of the Cognitive storm. Oerlo Farni lived yet, mind and will intact for a final moment.
The room and all its furnishing seemed to shiver, and then Luzelle felt herself snatched up and hurled headlong into wild white chaos.
6
SHE WAS TUMBLING HELPLESSLY, as if caught in a breaking wave; overwhelmed and overpowered. Her white-blinded eyes snapped shut, and her cry of alarm lost itself in the roar of the supernatural gale. Then it was over, and she was set down brusquely in a different place.
Luzelle opened her eyes. She stood on a hexagonal slab of black glass set into the floor of a quiet stone chamber. A mild, fresh breeze blowing in through the open window carried the scent of open spaces. She was still clutching her valise in one hand, and Girays v’Alisante’s arm in the other. She released him at once. Beside them stood Mesq’r Zavune, a little disheveled, but upright and seemingly confident as ever.
The stone room was well populated. Bav Tchornoi was there along with the Festinette boys, all manifestly whole and sound. With them stood a brace of strangers, one young and the other middle aged, both female, both arrayed in the dark robes with double-headed dragon insignia. Both appeared troubled, even alarmed.
“Something happened,” the elder stated without preamble and without doubt. “What was it?”
The three on the ophelu hesitated, and the younger, almost girlish-looking savant added, “The transference was disrupted in midprocess and nearly aborted. So severe a disturbance suggests trouble, perhaps an accident or sudden illness.”