Among the Powers (17 page)

He failed miserably, and was overthrown once
again. He did manage to build a single starship on a planet that
had a technology little better than Bredon’s people had on Denner’s
Wreck, which was quite an impressive accomplishment in itself, but
he was unable to put together any sort of empire. This time, when
he was defeated, he fled from Alpha Imperium to Terra, where he
located his father.

What his purpose might have been in
rejoining Shadowdark Gamesmaster did not know and did not care to
guess. Whatever the reason, he stayed with Shadowdark and his
current group of companions—playmates, really—for a couple of
years, and accompanied them on their jaunt in search of Denner’s
Wreck. The other members of the party had optimistically assumed
that Thaddeus had returned to his senses and given up his dreams of
absolute power. After all, being free to use Terran technology on a
primitive planet should be power enough for any sane person.

Now, though, four hundred and sixty-two
years later, Geste suspected that Thaddeus might be returning to
his vicious and warlike ways, and feared that he planned to conquer
Denner’s Wreck and use it as a base to build a new empire.
Gamesmaster thought Geste was right.

Thaddeus had a good chance, too, because the
other immortals on the planet were disorganized and generally
harmless.

“Harmless?” Bredon yelped. “The Powers are
harmless?”

“To each other, yes,” Gamesmaster replied.
“Not to you mortals, no, but to each other.”

Of them all, it explained, only Aulden the
Technician really understood all the technology they used, only
Aulden had the capacity to create entirely new technology, and
Aulden had disappeared while visiting Thaddeus. Only Brenner of the
Mountains had ever maintained much of an arsenal, and Thaddeus was
in the process of wearing that down. Most of the rest would
surrender quickly, rather than bother to fight; their lives were
very precious to them, and they would assume that they could simply
outlive whatever scheme Thaddeus might have in mind.

One of the usual traits of an immortal is
the conviction that anything can be lived through, and that nothing
is worse than death. When one has infinite time in which to find a
way out of an unpleasant situation, one has little need to hurry or
do anything rash, and the idea of risking eternity is not at all
appealing.

And the mortals of Denner’s Wreck simply did
not have the technology to oppose Thaddeus. He would probably
either ignore them completely, or recruit a few as servants and
soldiers.

Geste was not willing to surrender, however.
He did not care to see Thaddeus at the head of an army again. Too
many people were likely to die. Even short-lifers’ lives were
precious, after all.

And Geste knew enough of Thaddeus’ history
to suspect that even if the other immortals surrendered, Thaddeus
might still kill them all, just to be on the safe side.

“Even Shadowdark?” Bredon asked.

“I guess so, kid.”

“His own father?”

“We don’t think that would stop him.”

Bredon mulled that over for a moment.

He had not followed all the details of the
story—much of it, such as all the stuff about empires, was simply
too alien—but he had caught the gist of it. Thaddeus wanted to
bully everybody. He had tried running things twice before, and
botched it both times. He was on this world, Bredon’s world,
because he had gone running to his father after the second
disaster, and had tagged along when Shadowdark came here.

Shadowdark puzzled Bredon. How could he be
so uninterested?

And why was he so hideous?

“Why does Shadowdark look like that?” he
asked.

“Just lazy, I guess. He’s got all the
technology he needs to keep him alive, but he doesn’t bother with
anything to keep him looking good. And he’s looked a little strange
for a long time; after all, he’s thousands of years old, and he
never stopped growing.”

“He
still
hasn’t stopped?”

“He still hasn’t stopped. He stands almost
three meters tall now, but he needs machines to help him stand at
all. Most of his body has broken down and been rebuilt or replaced.
He’s a mess.”

“Is it
worth
living forever, like
that?”

“I wouldn’t know, kid, I’m just a glorified
household gadget. All I know is silicon life; you’re the
carbon-based life, you tell me whether it’s worth it. Shadowdark
seems to think it is.”

Bredon shuddered slightly.

He decided that he didn’t want to think
about Shadowdark or Thaddeus or any of the other Powers for awhile.
The reference to itself as a household gadget, although
incomprehensible to him in itself—as were the references to carbon
and silicon—suggested another, more appealing topic. “Tell me about
technology,” he said.

“Good grief, kid, that’s a hell of a tall
order. Where do you want me to start?”

“I don’t know. I want to know all about the
magic that Geste and the other Powers use, how they do all those
things—floating in the air and turning things invisible and all the
rest. And I want to know about the spirits they talk to, like you
and that thing on the platform and the one Geste called a
housekeeper at that place in the mountains.”

“I guess I could teach you how to work the
gadgets Geste has around the place. Do you care
why
they
work, or do you just want to know how to use them?”

“I just want to know how to use them—at
least for now.”

“Good enough. I can do that with imprinting,
I won’t need to spend hours showing you pictures. Okay, kid, you’re
on. I’ll teach you the whole routine, from tailored microbes to
pocket universes, whatever we’ve got on hand. Step right this
way.”

The surrounding darkness vanished, and
Bredon found himself once more in the vast white-ribbed chamber he
had seen upon first arriving. The enchanted grove still stood
nearby, and the vines still clung to the walls. He realized that he
had never left the room, despite the changes in color and light,
that most of the chamber had simply been hidden. All the spirits
and miracles that had attended him had been right there—he had been
bathed and fed and instructed all in this same spot.

Now everything except the walls, the vines,
and the forest had vanished.

The room was totally silent when neither he
nor Gamesmaster was speaking. Noticing the grove, Bredon wondered
why the leaves on the trees did not rustle, then saw that it was
because there was no wind to move them. That the little animals
that lived in them made no noise at all was rather more
surprising.

That was not particularly important,
however. The forest was just a distraction from what Gamesmaster
wanted to show him.

An oval door had appeared, two meters tall
and a meter wide, in the nearest white wall. The nearby vines
pulled aside and it irised open. Strange soft music spilled
out.

Bredon was obviously expected to go through
it, but he hesitated. Could he trust this familiar spirit?

“Come on, kid, it won’t bite you,”
Gamesmaster said. “Right this way, and I’ll teach you the basics of
running a modern household.”

Bredon gathered his courage, stood, and
strode across the room and through the door.

“
...rowed to the place where he had first seen
the lights in the water below, and there he waited, patiently, just
as he had before.

“
Darkness fell, and he looked down through the
water, but as always he saw nothing until the time was
right.

“
The midwake darkness deepened with the passing
of an hour, and then another hour, so that the middledark hour was
almost upon him, when he looked down over the side of his boat
again, and this time he saw them, tiny lights, red and green and
gold, twinkling in the lake, not far below him at all.

“
With the lights to guide him, he dove over the
side of his boat and plunged down into the lake, as he had before.
And, as before, when he was scarcely two meters into the water the
top of his head hit something, crack! And as before he fainted, and
would have thought he would drown had he not known what to
expect.

“
Of course, he did not drown; he awoke lying in a
fine bed in a richly-appointed chamber, and knew that he was once
again in the underwater palace of the Lady of the Lake.

‘“
Hello,’ he called. ‘Can you hear me?’

‘“
Yes, of course,’ said a voice, and he turned
his head to see the Lady herself approaching. ‘I see it’s you
again,’ she said. ‘What is it this time?’

‘“
I need a new boat,’ the fisherman told her. ‘A
bigger, finer one. The other fishermen say that a boat like mine is
nothing special, nothing worthy of the Lady of the Lake, and that
you could not have given it to me, for if you had I would have the
biggest, finest boat that ever floated.’

“
And the Lady’s eyes grew wide, and she puffed up
her chest, and she shouted at him in a fury, ‘You dare to come here
demanding another new boat? You dare? When you wrecked your own
boat against the invisible towers of my home, I took pity upon you,
for I saw that I had unintentionally harmed you, and so I gave you
a new boat, just like the one that was wrecked. But that boat was
not good enough—you had lost time from your work, and had been
injured, so you came back and I gave you a bigger, better boat. And
you came back and told me that the boat was too big for your old
nets, so I gave you new nets that can never break or snag. And you
came back again, and again, and each time I gave you what you
asked. But now you want an entirely new boat, and why? Merely so
you can brag more easily!’

“
Her eyes were red with fury, and her fingers
sprouted long, curving claws as she said, ‘I have had enough! I
wronged you, and I tried to atone, but you, in your greed, will not
leave well enough alone. I am out of patience, and your greed has
been your downfall!’

“
And then the room vanished from about him, and
he found himself being swept up into the sky atop a waterspout. The
Lady of the Lake had vanished, but he could still hear her
voice.

‘“
You are a fisherman no more! If you ever again
venture out onto the water, for any reason, then I shall send
demons to tear you to ribbons and feast on your screaming
soul!’

“
And then the waterspout vanished as the sun
appeared in the east, heralding secondlight, and he found himself
alone and naked, cast up on the beach with nothing at all, his boat
gone, his clothes gone, everything that he had had,
lost...”

—
from the tales of Atheron the
Storyteller

Light sparkled from the rippling water around the
invisible turret, and Geste blinked; the glare was too diffuse for
his optic symbiote to handle readily, leaving him to the more
primitive methods of his own reflexes and eyelids.

“Has it ever occurred to you,” Anna
demanded, glaring at him as harshly as the scattered sunlight, her
hands on her naked hips, “that maybe Brenner brought this on
himself? You know as well as I do that he probably started the
fight himself, took a pot-shot at Thaddeus over some stupid little
squabble. That would be just like him—him and that damned arsenal
of his. Only this time, Thaddeus was ready—or maybe he had Aulden
ready, I don’t know. But it was probably Brenner. You just think
it’s Thaddeus who’s at fault because of what he did on Alpha
Imperium, and that’s not fair, holding all that against him. That
was hundreds of years ago. And not only was it hundreds of years
ago, but it was on a different planet and in an entirely different
situation. He hasn’t caused any trouble here on Denner’s Wreck, has
he? He certainly hasn’t bothered me.”

“He’s causing trouble now,” Geste pointed
out.

“No,” Anna corrected, waggling a finger.
“He’s
involved
, but you don’t know he
caused
it. I’ll
bet Brenner started it.”

“Maybe he did,” Geste conceded desperately,
blinking again, “but it’s getting out of hand. If you don’t care
about Brenner, what about Sheila, and Sunlight, and Rawl, and
Khalid, and O?”

“Khalid and O probably aren’t even there,”
Anna retorted. “They’re probably off somewhere together by
themselves with an airskiff of sex toys. It’s been decades since I
saw either of them play with another human being, unless you want
to count Khalid’s little flings with the native girls, and they’re
both of them overdue for a bit of quiet companionship.”

“Mother tracked them to Fortress Holding,
though.” The rippling sunlight was unbearable; he darkened the
lenses of his eyes, even though it left him half-blind and reduced
Anna to a shadow. He did not really care to see the details of her
nude body, in any case, nor did he need to watch her expression for
nuances of emotion; her words made her attitude perfectly
clear.

“Maybe they left by the back way, shielded.
They went there of their own free will, didn’t they? How do you
know they aren’t staying there as Thaddeus’s guests?”

Geste saw that he was not getting anywhere
on that tack, and rather than chase any further through Anna’s
unlikely scenario he switched his ground. “All right, we don’t know
about them, but what about the others?”

Anna snorted in a manner hardly befitting
the dignity of a demi-goddess. “Rawl deserves a little trouble, the
way he keeps poking his nose into other people’s business! He came
by here a few years back and ruined my entire day, lecturing me
over some stupid argument I’d had with a fisherman.” She waved in
the direction of the nearest village.

“But Sheila and Sunlight...” Geste
began.

“All right, all right,” Anna said, raising
her hands briefly in mock surrender, as if she were making a great
concession, “I guess they got caught in the middle, but I’m sure
Thaddeus isn’t going to hurt them. He probably won’t even hurt
Brenner, just teach him a lesson by blowing apart that stupid
castle of his. It would serve him right.”