The platform lurched to the left, and Glinn was nearly thrown into her lap. Brom was still driving as if he was alone, taking sharp curves too fast, and braking hard around obstructions.
She wished she was riding her own bike, and imagined that she felt it calling to her to free it from the connection with the others. There shouldn’t be any residual possessiveness, she thought, chiding herself. This bike wasn’t a long-treasured possession. It had been bred up from a paperclip only days before. Why did she feel so uncomfortable about riding a multiple-passenger transport? She slept in camps that they used the crucible to construct for them all. It was because the bike had been made for her particular use, and conscripting it for the party was like taking away part of her individuality. She was more attached to the bike than to any section of a camp, like a stove, or a latrine.
She could tell from the sub rosa murmur that everyone else was thinking the same thing. They could all feel their identities leaching away into the gestalt, combining like this mass monstrosity under their feet, and they didn’t like it. It made them edgy.
Private thoughts were at a premium. The group would go through periods where each could hear everything the others were thinking, then a kind of reaction when everyone rebelled against the “togetherness,” blocking all other minds. Taboret used one of those precious moments to think that perhaps she should leave another sign for Roan to follow.
It worried her that it had seemed too easy to subvert those police officers back in Reverie. This journey no longer bore any semblance to a legitimate experiment. It was becoming . . . unlawful. She had felt truly upset by Roan’s accusations. Maybe Roan should be allowed to stop them until everyone could think things through. She was beginning, to her horror, to doubt what Brom said. She disliked having a role in a criminal action. The only way the King’s Investigator would find them was if she left another clue to mark their trail.
The appalling transport drew up to a crossroads, and Brom paused to allow a file of feathered honkers to cross. Taboret seized the moment of privacy in her own mind. Should she?
Brom caught the edge of her insecurity, and turned to look fully at her. His glowing eyes burned with suspicion. Taboret felt her heart pounding. She tried to look down, but her gaze was held firmly. Taboret felt as if she would faint with terror.
Fear was as catching as a yawn. Someone else in the link was touched by the edge of her fear, and sent out an emotional icicle of his own. Taboret gasped as an unfamiliar sense of fright came back to her, and swiveled her head to look. Was there something else threatening them? Everyone’s insecurities came out in a rush, adding to the emotional soup. What were they doing there? Who were these strangers they’d been traveling with? The experiment couldn’t really work, could it? The feedback of fear cycled through faster. If bicycles could be turned into one single vehicle by the crucible, couldn’t that happen to people? Them?
Brom sensed the buildup, and rose to his feet with his hands raised.
“Calm! I demand calm!” he shouted. But it was too late. The platform began to heave and shake under his feet.
Taboret was bucked out of her saddle-seat at the extreme left edge of the vehicle, and landed painfully in the low ditch next to the road. There was a loud crash behind her, and the unmistakable hum of an Alarm Clock bell. She covered her head with both her arms and lay there until the noise stopped. Taboret rolled up to her hands and knees, and rested there, shaking her head. The hair dangling around her face was red, not blonde, the way it had been since that morning. They must have run into another cloud of influence.
But, no. When she looked up, the vehicle had turned back into a clattering herd of single motorcycles, with the litter at a crazy angle in the middle of it, its cover askew. Acton and Maniune were on the scene in moments, helping to pull Brom and the others free. Some of them had been thrown clear, as she was, but the ones on the inside, near the Alarm Clock, were unlucky. They were stuck in the road, where the chiming of the bells had changed it to syrup.
The damage didn’t stop there. The plants around them had mutated from gum trees to . . . gum trees, complete with colored paper bark and foil leaves, and small animals fled through the brush, changed into who knew what.
Glinn put a hand out for help, and she and two of the others hurried to help him, turning over motorcycles, and carefully avoiding the litter. Everyone was bruised, and the motorcycles were all dented and scratched.
Brom sprang up and pulled the cover off the Alarm Clock. It seemed intact, apart from a slight scratch on the brass casing, but that small mark seemed to drive the chief scientist into a frenzy.
“You fools!” he exclaimed, steam spouting out of his ears. “Do you realize what your emotional outburst could have done? Look at that!”
“We can buff that out, sir,” Glinn said, waiting patiently while Basil and Carina lifted a motorcycle off his leg. “We have the metal polish and cloths with us in the repair kit.” His calm voice seemed to placate Brom momentarily, but not before the chief had turned and glared at Taboret. She quailed, knowing she had been responsible for the collapse. Glinn must have sensed her fear, because he reached out and put a hand on her arm, keeping her from withdrawing any farther. “There are no broken bones or cogs. It is only a temporary setback, sir. We can be ready to proceed in just a few minutes.”
“All right,” Brom said, unappeased, his eyes half-lidded. “But we will have to start over. And this time, everyone will concentrate fully. There must be no more dissension.” His eyes met Taboret’s, but Glinn’s warm grasp kept her from panicking. “No, sir,” Taboret said, evenly. In fact, she didn’t even feel frightened by Brom. The moment Glinn touched her, she experienced that near-telepathic sharing that followed the gestalt link, and she knew that he liked her and thought she was intelligent and attractive. He felt-thought that sitting next to her on the short-lived bus was more than pleasant. He yearned to have that experience repeated, if possible. Taboret tried to conceal her feelings of pleasure from the others, and admitted that she liked him, too. She enjoyed his presence and support, and knew in that moment he had picked up on her thought-feelings to that effect. When Brom turned away to scold someone else, Glinn caught her eye, and smiled warmly. The deep brown eyes he had today were good for soul-searching. Taboret felt a little tingle of pleasure as she bent to work again.
Once the motorcycles were all upright, the Alarm Clock yanked out of the syrup, and the apprentices’ bruises seen to, Brom had them form the gestalt.
“Plan Sixteen,” he said. “This time, get it right. You know the specifications.”
But the plans didn’t work this time, either. Taboret watched in dismay as the motorcycles huddled together, looking weary. The more the gestalt tried to force them to meld and change shape, the more they wilted.
“We will have to carry on on individual steeds as before, sir,” Glinn said, breaking the circle. Taboret felt the white haze fade with relief, echoed by the others through the link. “They can’t change again so drastically so soon. They’re only matter, after all. They have only minimal energy of their own to bind them. If we overstress them, we may lose them entirely.”
Brom checked the motorcycles for himself, and assumed a bored expression that masked his irritation, still palpable in the air. “Oh, very well. We shall try again later.”
Everyone pulled his or her growling bike out of the mass of steeds, and mounted up. Almost everyone had a bruise or two. Every bike had a dent. Basil had been almost behind the Alarm Clock. He was moving very slowly, favoring his right leg. Bolmer clutched his left forearm with his right hand. This was his second big accident, and he was snappish.
“If the rest of you had really been concentrating,” he snarled, massaging the swelling down, “that would have held together, and none of us would have gotten hurt.”
“As if you’re the tower of strength,” Carina said, with a sneer.
“It was her fault,” Lurry said, pointing at Taboret. “She started it.”
“Yes,” Gano said, with a sympathetic look for Taboret. “It’s not like anyone has to pedal. Come on.”
Taboret was grateful, but she pulled back toward the end of the line, hoping to ride by herself, as far away from everyone’s tempers as she could get. Her bruises were mostly on her left side. A good thing indeed that they did not have to pedal. To her dismay, Bolmer elected to limp along beside her on his dented bike.
The engines started up, not without some protesting sputters, and the party rolled on. At the front of the line, flanked by the pair of mercenaries, Brom sat on his steed with his back straight and his head craned forward. Taboret knew he wasn’t thinking about them any more. His mind was far away, probably solving the mass-transportation problem. Bolmer began some carping complaint, which Taboret immediately allowed to enter one ear and leave by the other. Quick, her brain said, feeling the weight of the chief ’s regard leave her, what about that clue?
The smooth, newly paved roadway didn’t suggest any means for her to leave a message behind for their pursuers. There was no convenient scree of stones to twist a tire in, causing a handy fall. The trees flanking the road in clusters were young and narrow. There was hardly room to daub Look Out on any of them with a finger, and what would she say if one of those bruisers doubled back and saw her message? No, it had to be a distinctive item that wouldn’t be on this road for any other reason, and it had to be something she could pass off as having fallen by accident.
They passed through a tiny town. Brom ordered them to disguise the Alarm Clock as a haywain, to avoid commentary. Taboret had no privacy of thought until they were past the last house.
Her opportunity came almost immediately thereafter, at the next crossroads. On the map in her mind’s eye that she shared with everyone else in the gestalt, she knew it led toward the border of Wocabaht and Rem. Brom was so busy seeing the Alarm Clock safely negotiate the left turn that the riders at the back of the queue were very much on their own.
“Halt!” Brom called. “Lurry, you and Basil apply your wits. We require a deterrent to be left here at this point. Just in case.”
“But Roan and his people are in Reverie, under arrest,” Glinn protested.
“Arrest is temporary,” Brom warned him. He turned to Basil. “Remain here until you have completed the assignment, then catch up.”
Taboret could feel Basil’s reluctance, but he rolled his bike to the side of the road. Quickly, she wrenched off the top button of her tunic. As she came around the corner, she dropped it on the new road very close to the bushes so the followers would understand which way they had gone, and be warned something was ahead. There. It was done.
If Roan or his friends got this far, they’d see it.
The rest of the afternoon was uneventful. Everyone began to relax again, and the link began to fill with smatterings of thought. Taboret damped down the fear she felt that the chief might have seen her treasonous act. She tried to avoid getting sucked into the mass database of thought, but she had to cooperate and be part of the gestalt, or explain to Brom why not. Fortunately, Gano, Basil, and Carina were beginning to be upset by the invasion of their private mind-places, too. And no one was happy to know personally the intimate thoughts of the Countingsheep brothers, who were as offensive inside as out. Thank the Seven—if they existed, and Taboret fervently hoped they did—for Glinn. Was that warm, fuzzy feeling just the link talking? Was she now permanently joined to the whole group, in the laboratory and out? Would they contract a mass-marriage or some similar bond when this was all over? The idea repulsed her thoroughly.
No, she thought, examining her feelings carefully, she still didn’t feel any attraction to Brom or Doolin and Dowkin. She supposed that it could happen later on, and sincerely hoped it wouldn’t. The feelings she had were all for Glinn. Occasionally, she felt a return spark from him through the link. More than anything, she wanted the day’s ride to be over, so she could take him aside in private, and find out if she had made up the tantalizing pictures she was getting in her mind.
With the delightful prospect to occupy her, she forgot all about the button until they reached Brom’s appointed stopping place for that night.
“Taboret, your tunic’s torn. Look, the top button is missing,” Gano said, helpfully, on the way past to park her motorbike in the makeshift corral. Taboret couldn’t help blushing.
“Is it?” she asked, trying to look innocent. She felt the loose threads, and every thought she’d had that afternoon came flooding back to her.
“She must have lost it in the scrum when the transport fell apart,” Glinn said, coming to her rescue. “It’s a wonder no one was hurt.” She shot him a grateful look.
“Slovenliness,” Brom snapped, appearing beside them like an unwelcome burst of lightning. Taboret jumped. He eyed her tunic and gave her a look of utter disgust. “Repair it. It detracts from your appearance.”
“Um, er,” she stuttered, clutching at her throat. She wished Glinn would help out again, then wondered at her difficulty in framing a simple reply. She had never needed anyone to speak for her before. What was the matter with her? The strain was beginning to fog her brain. “I haven’t got a sewing kit, sir.”
“Improvise,” Brom said, tersely. He willed a small round stone to hop up to his hand from the ground. He pinched it flat between his thumb and forefinger, and two small holes appeared in it. He flung it at her.
Stung, Taboret caught the stone before it hit her in the face. With a burst of personal influence, she finished flattening it out and smoothed off the excess matter. Using just a little more, she lengthened the broken threads under her collar and tied the stone button in place. She had always hated sewing. Brom became bored with watching her fumbling with the threads, and went away to see to the safety of the Alarm Clock. At least he hadn’t questioned the circumstances under which she’d lost the button. Tying off the last knot, Taboret thanked her lucky stars, or whomever was looking after foolish young scientists, and hurried to assume her duties in helping set up the camp.
Chapter 27
Roan and his party rode on. It had taken him and Hutchings hours riding at a full gallop to catch up with Bergold. The moment he’d appeared, Bergold let his form go back to a version of his preferred shape, shorter, rounder, and more relaxed. He rode along beside his friend on his red gelding.
“Whew! It’s a strain being you,” Bergold said, with a broad smile for his friend. “I never properly appreciated how hard it is to stay the same.”
“It’s easier when you’ve done it for a long time,” Roan said, lightly.
“Did you see Her Highness before you left Reverie?”
“No,” Roan said. “Sir Osprey departed before you did.” He sighed, staring ahead forlornly at the far horizon. A few of the pogo-stick-hopping rats leaped across the scenery, black silhouettes against the yellow sky. The sun was going down. “They’ll be home by now.”
“She’ll be fine, lad,” Bergold said, reassuringly. Roan nodded.
“Well, I shall miss her,” Colenna said, turning around in her saddle and leaning her elbow on her handbag. “She was a gallant little girl.”
“I’ll miss her, too,” Roan said. The words were so inadequate, they felt like the cork in a bottle of emotion boiling up behind it. Any moment, all of it would burst out in a stream of eloquent speech about true love and the pain of separation. But, no. He couldn’t find anything to say. All the words he had were back in Reverie on reams and reams of paper. Instead, he was left with worry and frustration roiling inside him, knotting his heart and belly into one unhappy mass. At least she was safe from the danger that lay ahead.
“She’ll want news of our progress. I’d be happy to lend you some stamps, if you wanted to send her a message yourself,” Felan offered politely.
“I would be obliged,” Roan said, surpr
ised. The younger historian seemed more subdued than before. He wondered what kind of pressure the others had put on him after they’d left Reverie. Captain Spar was looking smug. Surely there hadn’t been any violence, but Felan spoke civilly and calmly, where he had been cheeky before. The others had noticed, too.
“Are you all right, dear?” Colenna asked. “Are you feverish?”
“I’m fine,” Felan said, without his customary rancor. “Maybe I’m tired. I’m not used to travel.”
“It was good of you to continue on with the group,” Roan said. “In spite of Captain Spar’s gentle persuasive techniques.”
“Hey?” the guard captain called from the front of the line, pretending to look innocent.
Felan laughed. “Not so bad, really. What did they do to you in Reverie?”
“Essay test,” Roan said, more shortly than he had intended, but he’d used up much of his vocabulary on the exam.
Felan shuddered. “You have my sympathy.”
“It’s starting to get dark,” Corporal Lum announced. “We ought to think about stopping soon. We could run flat into one of Master Brom’s pet monstrosities without seeing it.”
“I’d dearly love to see how he controls nuisances,” Bergold said thoughtfully. “What a help that would be.”
“Brom probably thinks we’re still back in Reverie,” Felan said. “He left before us.”
“Do not underestimate Brom,” Roan said, raising an eyebrow. “He’s intelligent, and he’s tricky.” He borrowed the map from Bergold, and held Colenna’s multipurpose lamp over it. “Not too far ahead is a low hilltop that overlooks a bend in the road. Providing it hasn’t flattened out in the meantime, that should make a fairly defensible and dry camp.”
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