When the dome had vanished the disk on which they stood sank down, merging seamlessly into the gray stone floor, its red color fading gradually into the gray.
When the disk was gone the egg-shaped floater retracted the rod that had become their craft. The egg itself hung in their midst for a moment, then whirred softly and sped away, leaving the three humans momentarily unattended.
They stood in the center of an octagonal room, with a door in the center of every second wall. The ceiling above them was white glass, glowing softly. A faint scent of dampness and ozone reached them. No music played.
“Where's the Skyler?” Thaddeus's voice asked from somewhere overhead.
The three of them glanced at one another. “She changed her mind, decided not to come,” Imp explained.
“What's that savage doing here?"
“You told the transport that you wanted three humans, so we brought three humans. Bredon wanted to come, so we brought him,” Geste said.
“If he gets in the way, I'll kill him."
“I'm sure Bredon understands that,” Geste answered.
Bredon nodded.
“Have it your way,” Thaddeus said. “I don't suppose it matters, and I don't really give a damn. Take off your clothes."
Bredon glanced at his companions. Imp glanced at Geste. Geste looked up and demanded, “Why?"
“You know why,” Thaddeus's voice replied. “You could have whole arsenals tucked away."
“What if we refuse?"
“Then you don't see Aulden and the rest."
Geste looked at the others, shrugged, and began peeling off his tunic.
Imp did something to the waistline of her dress with her fingertips, and the entire garment slipped free and fell to the floor. She wore nothing else. Bredon blushed, and looked to his own clothing.
When they were all naked, the loud voice overhead said, “Step through the door beneath the red light."
Bredon turned, and saw a tall doorway with a small red spot glowing above it. The door that had filled that doorway was gone, perhaps slid aside, perhaps dissolved, he had no way of telling. He followed the others through the opening, trying to be as calm about his nudity as they were. He knew, from references the others had made and things he had seen back in Arcade, and even from the childhood tales he remembered, that the Powers did not worry about sexual propriety much, but his own upbringing had been fairly traditional, and he was not accustomed to walking about naked in the company of a woman he was not about to take to his bed. He had not seen Kittisha the Weaver naked until his second night with her, and then only by dim firelight, yet here Imp was parading before him in full view.
The doorway led into a short corridor with gleaming metal walls, and as Bredon stepped into it he felt an odd sensation, as if his skin were buzzing silently. A sudden flash, so brief that he was not sure he had actually seen it, turned the tingling to an uncomfortable warmth, like the bad sunburn he had once gotten as a child. He looked, and saw that his skin was reddening slightly.
That old burn had resulted from a full light of carelessly lying in bright sunlight, after a long spell of convalescence from prickle-fever had left him pale and weak; it did not seem credible that a near-instantaneous flash could have caused the same thing, but his skin certainly felt burned. He marched on, ignoring the discomfort.
Then he was through the corridor and in a small room panelled in white. Three simple white robes hung in the air.
Geste took one, and Bredon another; Imp hesitated before donning the third. “Where is Aulden?” she demanded.
She received no reply. For a long moment the three of them stood there, waiting for whatever was to happen next. Bredon took the moment to notice that Imp's robe reached almost to her ankles, and Geste's to mid-calf, while his own came only to his knee.
Then the wall opposite their entrance slid aside, revealing a larger room, of gray stone like the octagonal chamber they had first arrived in. This room, however, was not empty, as the others had been.
Chained to the far wall were seven people, four men and three women, all wearing white robes like those Bredon, Geste, and Imp had just put on. All seven sat slumped against the stone, their wrists, ankles, and necks bound by massive bands of metal, linked by tangles of heavy chain to each other and to ring-bolts in the wall behind them. All seven appeared to be sunburnt in varying degrees, presumably by Thaddeus's machines.
Bredon immediately recognized the woman in the center as Lady Sunlight; even without her shimmering garments, even with her hair matted and bedraggled and her skin an uncomfortable shade of red, she was unsurpassably beautiful, and he felt something twisting and churning inside himself at the sight of her chained. He fought for control of himself, struggled not to simply run to her side.
“Aulden!” Imp shrieked. She dashed forward and flung herself upon the man at the far left of the group, a sturdy, sandy-haired man with a long nose and only a faint pinkness to his skin. Bredon remembered his face from the quick glimpse Thaddeus had given them.
Aulden looked up just before Imp landed on him. His expression was a compound of surprise and joy at the sight of her, but Bredon thought he saw an underlying hopelessness.
“I don't believe this,” Geste muttered, standing in the doorway. “Chains! Genuine steel chains!"
Distracted for a moment from Lady Sunlight, Bredon started to ask what else Thaddeus would have used, but stopped himself. He could have used any number of methods of confinement, from barrier fields to neural repatterning.
Chains, however, worked quite well enough.
Imp and Aulden were smothering each other with kisses, and the other six were looking up with some interest at the newcomers. Bredon suddenly found himself overcome with shyness, faced with so much attention from strangers.
“Hello, Geste,” one of the women said, a brown-haired, round-faced woman.
“Hello, Sheila,” the Trickster replied.
“Who's that with you?” she asked. “Has someone got a new body?"
“No, no, nothing like that; this is Bredon the Hunter, from a village out in the grasslands."
Bredon bowed in acknowledgement, looking only at Lady Sunlight, hoping to see some sign in her reaction that she saw him as something more than an ordinary savage.
Lady Sunlight said nothing, did not react visibly at all.
“Pleased to meet you,” Sheila replied. “Forgive me if I don't stand up.” She rattled her chains with a wry shrug. “So, what brings you here?"
Geste smiled.
Bredon tore his eyes away from Lady Sunlight, forcing himself not to stare at her any longer, and looked at the other captives; they were not impressed with Sheila's banter. The dark, intense little man he guessed, from descriptions in old legends, to be Rawl the Adjuster. The third woman, sallow-skinned and black-haired, had to be Madame O. Both the other two men were big, black-haired, and brown-eyed, but one was pale and heavily bearded, while the other was swarthy and had only a light, grey-flecked beard; Bredon had no way of guessing which was Brenner of the Mountains and which was Khalid.
“Are you going to get us out of here?” the swarthy one demanded.
Geste's smile vanished. “I wish I knew,” he said.
“That,” said Thaddeus from behind them, “is not the answer I wanted, indicating, as it does, a certain lingering hope that outright surrender can be avoided."
Geste and Bredon turned around slowly; Imp, still wrapped in Aulden's arms, paid no attention.
Thaddeus stood in the doorway from the metal corridor, a towering black-haired figure in brown leather—or a synthetic approximation of leather. Bredon was not certain just how he could tell, but he had the impression that this was a real person, not a transmitted image. Perhaps it was because this Thaddeus stood his awesome full height, at least two and a half meters.
“Hello, Thaddeus,” Geste said.
“Hello, Geste. Are you satisfied now that I have not tampered with my captives?"
“Well, n
o, not yet. I just got here."
“Imp, are you satisfied?"
Imp looked up, brushing hair out of her face. “It's Aulden—but how could you treat him like this, you monster?"
Thaddeus shrugged. “I don't love him as you do."
“Thaddeus, we have to talk this over. You don't need to do all this,” Geste said.
“Oh, I don't? What do you know about it?” Thaddeus sneered.
“I know that it's stupid! What can you get from ruling an empire that you can't get peacefully?"
Thaddeus smiled with bitter amusement. “Are you really asking that?"
“Yes, I am! Look, can we go somewhere and talk about this?"
“You don't want these people to hear?” Thaddeus asked, with a wave at the others.
“No, that's not it,” Geste said. “All right, we can talk here."
“No, no,” Thaddeus said, holding up a hand. “We'll find someplace more comfortable. Come along, Imp."
“No!” she said. “No! I won't leave Aulden!"
Thaddeus shrugged again. “Suit yourself. Monitor, watch her closely. Don't let her out of this room, or obey her orders. And don't disturb me.” All but the first phrase he addressed to a red light that gleamed above the door. It blinked an acknowledgement, and he turned back to the Trickster. “All right, Geste, come along.” He waved, and Geste followed.
Bredon started to follow as well, and Thaddeus gestured. “Leave that here, though,” he said.
Geste said nothing, but Bredon stepped back, and waited politely until Thaddeus and Geste were out of sight.
Chapter Twenty-Two
"’ ... so you have found me,’ Aulden the Technician said. ‘Now, what do you want of me?'
"'They say, in my village, that you can do anything,’ Golrol said. ‘Is it true?'
"Aulden stared at him for a moment, and then said, ‘Very nearly, at any rate.'
"'You can do anything?’ Golrol persisted.
"'Yes,’ Aulden said, ‘I can.'
"'Really?’ Golrol asked.
""Yes, I said,’ Aulden told him. ‘I can be anything and do anything.’ He instantly transformed himself into a giant, a hundred meters tall, and then vanished completely, and then reappeared as a sunflower with Aulden's own face, and then appeared human once more. ‘I can fly to the stars,’ he said, ‘or make their fire burn here on the ground. I know the secrets of time and space. I can make birds swim and fish fly. I can build a tower in a single night that will reach so high you cannot see the top. I can shake the earth and shatter the sky.'
"'So you say that you can do anything,’ Golrol said.
"'Yes, I told you,’ Aulden answered. ‘Try me; name a task, and I shall perform it.'
"'Can you bring me snow from the mountaintops, even now in midsummer?’ Golrol asked.
"'As easily as you can snap your fingers,’ Aulden replied, and he spun about, and held out a handful of snow.
"'Can you lift an entire mountain, then?'
"Aulden laughed, and said, ‘Easily.’ And he waved his hand, and with a rumble and a roar, one of the distant mountains tore itself free of the earth and rose into the sky, like the Skyland itself.
"'And can you create a mountain from nothing?'
"'Of course!’ said Aulden, and behold, with a great rending crash a mountain rose from the plain where none had stood a moment before.
"'And can you create a mountain so great that even you cannot lift it?’ Golrol asked innocently.
"And Aulden paused, and stared at him, and slowly a smile spread across his face, and he began to grin, and then to laugh, and then to roar with laughter.
"'Oh, mortal,’ he said, ‘you have me there. I should have known better than to boast so freely! Of course, I cannot. I am no true god. I can do many, many things that you cannot even imagine, but I cannot untangle such a paradox any more than you can ... ‘"
—from the tales of
Atheron the Storyteller
* * * *
When Thaddeus and Geste had vanished through the doorway Bredon turned back to the prisoners. Lady Sunlight still showed no sign of interest in him, so he addressed himself to the group as a whole. “Now what?” he asked. “Is there anything I can do to help?"
“I don't know,” replied Sheila—the Lady of the Seasons, Bredon remembered, the goddess of the weather, who brought the warm sun in summer and the cold winds in winter.
Except that the woman he saw before him, although she was healthy and attractive apart from her fading burn, was just a woman, not a goddess. The Powers were only human, and their power lay in their technology.
And the seasons had nothing to do with technology, in any case.
“I don't know,” she repeated. “But I hope so."
“I'd like to get you out of those chains, but I don't have a key or anything that will cut them."
“Thaddeus keeps the key with him, I think,” the small man Bredon had identified as Rawl said.
“Why are you people talking to this savage?” Madame O whined. “What good can he do?"
“Thaddeus obviously doesn't think he can do anything at all,” Lady Sunlight said, “but Thaddeus has been wrong before."
Bredon felt his pulse quicken as Lady Sunlight eyed him appraisingly.
“He's not wrong this time,” O spat.
“Maybe not,” Bredon admitted. “I can try, though.” He looked around the room, but saw nothing useful. The red light above the door caught his eye. “Monitor, where is a key for these chains?” he asked.
The intelligence hesitated. “I am uncertain whether you are authorized to ask that,” it said at last.
“Why?"
“I have no record of your existence."
“Monitor,” Sheila demanded, “answer this man's question."
“No,” the intelligence replied at once. “The prisoner Sheila is forbidden all service beyond stated necessities and emergency aid."
Imp looked up from Aulden's chest for a moment, then glanced at first Bredon, then Sheila, then back to Bredon. “Aulden,” she whispered, “Bredon took a lot of imprinting at Arcade; he's no technician, but he can run machines. Thaddeus doesn't know that, and he didn't give the machines any orders about him. What can he do to stop Thaddeus?"
Aulden's expression slowly lost its underlying hopelessness as he considered this. He glanced up at the red light, then motioned silently for Bredon to come closer.
The mortal came and knelt beside the chained technician.
“I can't do anything about the machines Thaddeus designed himself, like Monitor up there,” Aulden whispered, “but they're all pretty stupid, because Thaddeus is a lousy technologist, so most of the fortress is run by intelligences we brought with us from Terra, or ones I designed for Thaddeus. I think you can do something with those. Except for Monitor, none of the machines can hear any of us immortals any more, but they ought to be able to hear you. And Thaddeus doesn't use purely biological intelligent systems because he doesn't trust them, since they have a habit of turning independent, so you won't have to worry about creatures, just machines."
Lady Sunlight glanced up at the red light that represented Monitor, and asked, “Aren't you afraid that that machine will hear you, and tell Thaddeus?"
“No,” Aulden replied. “You weren't listening. Thaddeus told it not to disturb him, with no qualification. Even if it hears us it won't tell anyone. It's a really stupid machine."
“What should I do?” Bredon asked eagerly.
“First,” Aulden told him, “you need the emergency codes."
Two levels and a corridor away, Thaddeus settled into a grey floating chair and gestured for the Trickster to do the same.
Geste obliged. Something felt very odd about the room, and he realized as the chair adjusted itself that no music was playing.
When both were comfortably seated, Thaddeus asked politely, “Now, why do you think I should stop my efforts to rebuild my stolen empire?"
“Because it's stupid and pointless,�
�� Geste replied quickly.
“Oh?” Thaddeus's reply was cool.
“Yes,” Geste said. “Seriously, Thaddeus, what can you get by ruling an empire that you can't just buy now, with what you have? You can have any material possession you could possibly want; our galaxy is jammed with raw materials and energy, and all it takes is time and technology to make whatever you want—food, shelter, clothing, amusements, even women, whatever creatures you want. What good will an empire do you?"
Thaddeus cocked his head and smiled cruelly. “Can you really be that naive?” he asked. The smile vanished, and his voice turned hard. “I can have power. I will prove my superiority to all you young upstarts, with your foolish egalitarian beliefs and petty social rituals. I'll get the human race organized again, put an end to all this hedonistic anarchy."
“Will you?” Geste asked, almost sneering in mockery of Thaddeus's own behavior. “Do you really think you can do that?"
“Of course I can!” Thaddeus roared back. “I'm thousands of years older than you, Geste; show a little respect for your elders. I'm not a manufactured immortal like you, dependent on machines and symbiotes for longevity—I'm a natural immortal, a member of a superior race, one of the chosen people. My family is destined to rule over you ordinary humans. I have a head-start of more than two thousand years on any artificial immortal, and that two thousand years gives me experience and knowledge that you can't even imagine, with your pitiful few centuries behind you. You've lived all your life in pampered comfort, and you've been content with that, but I grew up in harder times, boy, I saw my mother's family murdered, my homeland destroyed, by you normal humans. I've lived through wars and disasters that would frighten you into catatonia, and I've learned from all of it."
“Have you? Then why did you fail twice before?"
“Because I was betrayed!” Thaddeus bellowed, rising from his chair, his face red with fury. “I trusted people, and they betrayed me!"
Geste resisted the impulse to taunt Thaddeus further. “All right, you were betrayed,” he said quietly. “Doesn't that show you that people don't want you to rule them?"
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