Among the Powers (18 page)

“But how do you
know
he won’t hurt
anyone? Thaddeus
does
have a pretty nasty record, even if
he’s behaved himself lately.”

“I know that, but give him a chance! You...
Look, Geste, I know you mean well, and I suppose you’re sincerely
concerned about this, but it’s none of my business if he and
Brenner are having a fight. You’re a lot younger than I am; maybe
you can still get worked up about what’s right and wrong instead of
what’s comfortable, but I’m just not interested. It’s not my
problem. If one of them starts interfering in
my
business,
then I’ll be glad to help, but if they only pick on each other, why
should I care?”

Geste had no clear answer to that.
“Honestly, Anna,” he said, “I really do think Thaddeus is trying to
do here what he did on Alpha Imperium. I think he may be recruiting
troops from the short-lifers for building a new empire. A lot of
people could get hurt if we don’t stop him.”

“Just short-lifers and trouble-makers like
Brenner. He’s not going to bother me, Geste, and he’s never going
to be able to bother any of the
civilized
planets—where
would he get the firepower? And as for the people here, what do I
care about short-lifers?”

“Well, they’re people, too, aren’t
they?”

“I suppose they are, but they’re all going
to die anyway. What difference will a few years make?”

Exasperated, Geste burst out, “Don’t you
have any sense of responsibility toward your fellow creatures?”

“No,” Anna retorted, “I don’t. I have my own
problems.”

“Ha!” Infuriated, Geste turned away and
marched across the turret roof, back to his waiting platform. The
turret was a hole in the lake beneath him, leading down into Anna’s
hold, but with his eyes dimmed he could see nothing but darkness
below.

The instant he had both feet aboard the
platform it lifted him upward, sailing toward the island that
floated above Lake Anna.

He looked up sullenly at the jagged black
rocks overhead, undimming his eyes as he did and wishing that the
Skyler had put her hold further east, where it would have blocked
the sun and left him debating Anna in its shadow, instead of
half-blinded by the sun.

He had never expected unanimity in opposing
whatever scheme Thaddeus might be hatching, but he was still
distressed by the results of his excursions. He had thought at
least
some
of his fellows would join him, if only as an
amusing diversion.

No one had. He had spoken to them all,
now—all who would agree to listen, at any rate. Anna had been the
last, and his only companions remained Imp and the Skyler. Two, out
of twenty-seven.

No, he corrected himself as the platform
slid up past the sharp stone edge of the Skyland’s disk and green
lawns appeared before him, Thaddeus did not count, which left
twenty-six, and seven of those had vanished or were under attack.
Two out of nineteen had chosen to join him.

That was still a really lousy ratio. He
grimaced, wondering if Thaddeus had intentionally attacked those
most likely to resist, or whether it was just luck.

The other seventeen might well come to
regret their decision. Arguing that Thaddeus might kill them all
had seemed so melodramatic, so impossible, that he had not even
suggested it to most of them, but nonetheless he believed it to be
true. Thaddeus was a vicious, ruthless killer, a sociopath; he had
demonstrated that repeatedly on Alpha Imperium. That he had harmed
no other immortal for five hundred years proved nothing. For all
they knew he could have killed dozens of short-lifer natives.
Besides, he had lived for seven thousand years, which was plenty of
time to learn patience.

The others must know that, being immortals
themselves, but still they refused to acknowledge that one of their
own comrades might be a danger. To them, Thaddeus was not the
Imperial Butcher, the man who had been reputed to eat small
children; he was just old Thaddeus, Shadowdark’s kid, arrogant and
foul-tempered, but harmless.

If they had thought otherwise, how could
they have justified not turning him in centuries ago, back on
Terra?

How, Geste asked himself, had
he
ever
justified not turning Thaddeus in?

He had gone along with the rest. Basking in
the subtle glory of keeping company with the oldest human alive,
none of them had wanted to risk offending Shadowdark. And Thaddeus
himself was the third-oldest human alive, millenia older than the
rest of them. No one had wanted to antagonize him.

Thaddeus had claimed that he was not a
murderer, as the Alpha Imperials called him, but only a political
outlaw. He had been an absolute monarch at the time of his alleged
crimes, granted the power of life and death by the laws of Alpha
Imperium; his actions were not illegal, not murder, until
retroactively declared to be by the governments that had replaced
him.

Besides, his companions had told themselves,
even if he had committed mass murder, he was the product of ancient
times, when humankind was violent and wild. His father, Shadowdark,
had once admitted to having committed a string of murders during
his worst period, several thousand years ago, yet no one had ever
considered turning
him
in. Murder was said to have no
statute of limitations, but after five thousand years it became
hard to take it very seriously. No government existed that would
try Shadowdark for those crimes.

Excuses
, Geste thought in disgust,
simply excuses.
They had not turned in Thaddeus or
Shadowdark because they all found a rare and subtle thrill in the
presence of these strange and ancient men. Such thrills were not
lightly discarded by bored immortals.

And none of them, save he and Imp and the
Skyler—three of the youngest in the group—were willing to admit
their mistake and take action against Thaddeus now. Immortals,
Geste reminded himself bitterly, tended to become very set in their
ways.

The platform passed over the last of the
bare stone of the Skyland’s outermost rim and skimmed across a
close-trimmed lawn. A few of the Skyler’s creatures scampered past.
Ahead of him Geste saw the main house, its roofline like broken and
tumbling rocks, windows peeking out from beneath every angle.

The Skyler and Imp were seated on a
verandah, waiting for him, as the platform settled smoothly down
onto the grass a few meters from the house. He stepped off and
walked slowly up the gentle slope to join them.

“We heard it all,” Imp said, pointing toward
the ground to indicate what lay below. “Now what?”

“Can just the three of us do anything?” the
Skyler asked nervously, brushing at her bottle-green gown. A
floater hovered near her hand, holding a drink that Geste guessed
to be mildly sedative—or would she just have her symbiotes adjust
her mood? No, he thought, she was the sort of person who preferred
not to rely overmuch on her internal devices, organic or otherwise.
The drink was probably drugged.

“I don’t know if we can do anything or not,”
he said, “but we can try. Imp, back at the Falls, do you have
anything that we could use as a weapon?”

“I don’t think so,” she said slowly, “but I
don’t really know. After all, Geste, the Falls is Aulden’s hold,
not mine. I just live there, off and on, when I get tired of
wandering. I didn’t help design it. I don’t know what he might have
tucked away. But I do know that he never mentioned any weapons, and
I’ve never seen any.”

“Would any of your intelligences know?”

“I don’t know.”

“Ask them.”

Imp nodded, and held up a hand; a small,
amorphous floater, her primary long-range communications system,
wrapped itself invisibly around her upraised fingers and tapped
into her nervous system. Although he could not see the floater
itself, Geste recognized the gesture and the subsequent light
trance. Imp had never liked carrying her equipment internally, and
kept a small flock of floaters instead.

While she was communing with the device,
Geste asked the Skyler, “What about you? Do you have any weapons
aboard?”

The Skyler shook her head. “Weapons scare
me. I stay up here so I won’t need any; there’s nothing the
short-lifers here can possibly do that would reach the Skyland. And
until Imp called me about Thaddeus and Aulden, I didn’t think I
needed to worry about the rest of you.” She glared at him
accusingly.

Geste nodded. He had expected as much.

Imp finished her silent contact and
reported, visibly upset, “Aulden
did
have weapons, lots of
them, but he took them with him! Thaddeus didn’t even need to build
most of his arsenal; he just stole Aulden’s! Domo says there isn’t
anything left that could be of any use.”

That was bad news indeed.

“We may not have much time left to prepare,
if Thaddeus already has Aulden’s entire arsenal,” Geste said. “I
told my housekeeper to see what weapons it could come up with; I
think it’s time we went and picked those up and then headed for the
High Castle, to help those people while we still can. If Aulden’s
provided the weapons, Thaddeus can probably break in there any time
he wants to make the effort. He hasn’t yet—I’ve got the place under
surveillance—but I don’t know why not.”

Imp nodded. “Hurry! Once he’s sure he has
all the weapons he needs, he may
kill
Aulden!”

The Skyler hesitated, and Imp turned on her.
“Go! Go! Go, you silly woman! What are you standing there for? Get
this rock moving!”

The Skyler waved a command, and the Skyland
began moving southward, steadily picking up speed.

“
...she turned the next corner certain that it
had to be the last, that she would see the great wooden door
leading out onto the rocks above the sea, but instead she found
herself back in the little stone room once again, where Lady Haze
still sat before the fire, rocking and knitting, the strange music
box tinkling beside her.

‘“
Hello, my dear,’ said Lady Haze. ‘Have you
given up yet?’

‘“
No!’ the girl said. ‘I know I can find my way
out!’

“
Lady Haze sighed and put down her knitting and
got up from her chair. ‘No, my dear,’ she said, ‘you can’t find
your way out unless I permit it. I told you, I am the mistress of
this castle, and of the rocks on which it stands, and the fog that
surrounds it, and the sea below. Nothing happens here that escapes
me, and no one who comes here escapes me until I let her go. Within
these walls I am the absolute ruler of all. Now, if you will give
me back my jewel and swear that you will never enter my castle
again, I shall let you out, and you will be free to return to your
home. If you persist in this foolish attempt to leave, and still
deny that you stole it when I can see it in your pocket right now,
then you may well spend the rest of your life wandering about these
passages.’

“
And the girl broke down, defeated, and pulled
the glowing gem from her pocket and gave it to the woman, weeping
as she did so.

“
Lady Haze accepted the jewel, and then turned
and pointed. ‘There is your way out,’ she said.

“
And the thief turned, and to her astonishment
the great wooden door was right there, in the same room, where she
knew only a blank stone wall had been just a moment before. She ran
to the door and flung it open and stepped out, and found herself on
the wet black rocks outside, the sea roaring behind her and gulls
screaming overhead. She turned to look, and the door she had just
come through was gone; the castle wall behind her was bare stone.
The sky was grey and dim, the sun low in the west, and wisps of fog
were rolling in, so she knew that soon it would be full dark, and
foggy as well, making the rocks a very dangerous place to be; she
despaired of her task and fled for the village, leaving the castle
behind her, to vanish in the fog.

“
And I might end her tale there, save for one
curious detail. She was in Castle Haze for a wake or so, she
believed—a light and a dark and a light—having entered at first
dawn and left, she thought, at second sunset. But when she returned
to her village, she learned that she had been gone for almost a
season, more than eight tensleeps, and long since given up for
dead!”

—
from the tales of Atheron the
Storyteller

Bredon had long ago lost track of time, and it
occurred to him, as he sat at the entertainment console sketching
commands on a sensor with his thumb, to ask Gamesmaster how long he
had been in Arcade. Before him, naked women who had never lived
anywhere but his imagination danced obscenely. Several bore a
remarkable resemblance to Lady Sunlight, but he had never dared to
intentionally depict her.

The machine’s answer shocked him. He flicked
the sensor aside, and the holographic display he had been
manipulating vanished in a mist of pinkish sparkle, leaving only
the faint scent of female sweat that he had added for an extra
touch of realism.

“Four wakes?” he said, looking up at the
vermilion ceiling. “Just four wakes?”

“Well, seven lights, anyway; it’s just now
first sunset outside.”

“Is that
all
?”

“Hey, kid, it’s enough!” Gamesmaster
replied. “What did you think?”

“I’ve learned so much,” Bredon said,
marvelling. “It feels as if I’ve been here a season or more!”

Gamesmaster buzzed derisively. “Not hardly.
You’ve slept just four times; did you think you were going a couple
of dozen wakes at a time?”

“I don’t know; I lost track, spending all
that time under the ne...nyoo...”

“Neural-pattern imprinter.”

“That’s right, the imprinter. That seemed to
last forever, sometimes.”

“It generally took about ten seconds a
shot.”