Among the Powers (22 page)

Geste, for his part, did his best to keep up
a lively conversation even while wolfing down his meal, but it
quickly developed into a monologue. He accepted this, and began
telling long, complicated jokes, most of which made little sense to
Bredon.

The Skyland and the other various non-human
intelligences said nothing beyond polite inquiries about the
service, which was handled by several dozen tiny disk-shaped blue
floaters that extruded arms and hands as needed. These disks were
constantly buzzing and fluttering about, removing used tableware
and replacing it with fresh, carrying food back and forth,
refilling drinks through a bent-space siphon, and so forth.

Nobody, not even Bredon after the first few
minutes, paid any attention to the peacocks, or the music, or the
lawn that moved in graceful patterns without wind, or the lights
drifting above them, or any of the other wonders that made up the
decor.

Despite his nervousness, Bredon ate until he
could eat no more, stuffing himself shamelessly on the mysterious
and savory foods that were presented to him. When he had finished
he glanced around, and was astonished to see the three immortals
still eating. Imp was still only nibbling, but Geste and the Skyler
were clearly consuming even more than Bredon had.

A moment’s thought provided him with a
provisional explanation of how a woman and a small man could each
eat more than a large, hungry young man. These people had their
internal machinery to power. Each one carried at least one
symbiotic organism in his or her blood; each presumably had a
skull-liner drawing energy.

An old story about one of Geste’s pranks
came to mind, one Bredon had heard only once, as a very young
child. The Trickster had gotten himself invited to dine in the hut
of a poor family of outcasts, and had eaten their entire winter
store. Unable to refuse a Power, the household had grown steadily
more worried as they politely offered meal after meal and watched
Geste consume them all without hesitation, leaving the family with
less and less for the coming cold.

Finally, one of the children, seeing the
last of his mother’s sugar cookies disappearing, had begged Geste
to stop. Geste had just smiled and eaten the cookie.

With the polite facade cracked by the
child’s action, the family broke down and begged the Trickster to
stop eating, but he had kept on devouring everything in sight.

Bredon could not remember whether, as
Atheron told it, Geste burst out laughing first, or the family ran
out of food first, but in any case, they
had
run out of
food, and Geste
had
laughed, and while the parents were
still polite and respectful the children had grown resentful and
chastised Geste, which had only made him laugh harder.

Beyond that the details were fuzzy in
Bredon’s memory, but he knew the story had a happy ending, that
Geste had given the family an endless supply of wonderful new foods
that made them all wealthy. Atheron had meant the story to teach
the value of hospitality, he supposed, but Bredon had never really
believed the story to be true.

Watching the immortals eat, though, he began
to wonder.

It occurred to him that the story certainly
could
be true. Even a Power couldn’t actually eat an entire
winter store, but he could make it vanish, into invisibility or
into a bent-space receptacle of some sort, and the whole incident,
as Atheron had described it, fit Geste’s slightly cruel sense of
humor.

He sat, politely quiet, as the others
continued their meal, Imp and the Skyler in sullen silence, Geste
still babbling on with an endless anecdote about an intelligence
designed for piloting a starship that had accidentally been
installed in a floor-cleaner.

Imp eventually abandoned any pretext of
eating, and even the Skyler and Geste stopped doing more than
nibbling. The flying disks stopped bringing new foods, and devoted
themselves to removing the old and cleaning away every crumb or
drip that remained.

Finally, as the eastern sky began to fade
from black to blue with the approach of secondlight dawn, the disks
brought tall, thin, strangely-shaped glasses of something that
sparkled blue. Geste ended his current tale abruptly, and turned
toward the approaching service machines in time to accept his glass
before it could reach the tablecloth.

The women were less hurried, and allowed the
drinks to be set down before they picked them up.

“What is it?” Bredon asked, as he lifted his
glass with the others.

The Skyler threw him a resentful glance and
snapped, “This, barbarian, is an after-dinner cordial, a
beverage...” She cut herself off short.

“Thank you, lady,” Bredon said. He sipped
from his glass.

The stuff was sweet and sharp and strongly
alcoholic, which Bredon had not expected; he stopped before more
than a trace had passed his lips, to avoid any risk of an
unbecoming splutter. The people of his own village ended their
meals with sweets, but never with alcohol. Their potent corn liquor
was reserved for celebrations or as relief from long drudgery, and
while this elaborate meal had certainly not been a celebration,
Bredon had not considered it drudgery, either.

He sipped again, and now that he knew what
to expect he found the drink very good indeed. “This is excellent,
lady,” he said.

The Skyler threw him a distrustful glance,
then grudgingly replied, in a tight, brittle voice, “Thank
you.”

Emboldened, Bredon groped for something else
to say. Before he could devise anything suitable, the Skyland
interrupted.

“Excuse me,” it said, “but I’m afraid I have
bad news.”

“What?” the Skyler demanded. Her voice
broke, indicative of her extreme state of nervous tension.

“The High Castle has been breached,” the
Skyland said. “The attackers have broken through a full seven
levels of defense, counting the stone of the walls, and have
entered the main structure at three separate points. Of the
observers reporting to me, none can detect any further evidence of
activity on the part of the defenders.”

The four humans looked at one another.

“How long until we get there?” Imp asked,
putting down her drink.

“We should arrive in the vicinity in about
an hour,” the Skyland replied.

Bredon noticed that Geste had his head
cocked strangely to one side, and guessed that he was listening to
something the others could not hear.

“What do we do now?” the Skyler said, an
edge of hysteria in her voice and her blue cordial still in her
hand.

“We go on,” Imp said flatly. “Aulden’s still
in Fortress Holding, and the others may be holed up somewhere in
the High Castle. I’d be surprised if Brenner didn’t have a
bolt-hole of some kind, one that he kept out of Mother’s
records.”

“He did,” Geste replied, “but Thaddeus found
it.”

The two women turned to him, startled;
Bredon had been watching him all along, and had expected some sort
of dramatic announcement.

“What are you talking about?” the Skyler
asked, annoyed and frightened.

“I’ve got scouts of my own working on this.
You know that, of course. Brenner did have an escape tunnel, a
bent-space one right through the mountain, heavily fortified and
thoroughly hidden. Unfortunately, as Thaddeus and I both know, it’s
possible to locate and map any kind of bent-space construction, and
that’s exactly what Thaddeus did. He has a small army of creatures
and machines waiting at the mouth of the tunnel, but so far no one
has emerged. Brenner probably had some way of checking, and saw
them there, so he didn’t go out that way.”

“Are you sure he just has the one tunnel?”
Imp asked.

Geste shrugged. “It’s the only one I’ve
found. I had thought we might be able to go in that way, if we
really needed to get inside.”

“He might have had a normal-space one,” Imp
said. “You wouldn’t have found one like that, would you?”

“Not necessarily. I had my machines mapping
all the bent-space work around the High Castle—there isn’t much, I
guess Brenner doesn’t like it—and I know there aren’t any other
bent-space tunnels, but I can’t say for sure about anything else. I
had machines scouting normal space all around there, too, but they
might have missed something. If he
does
have one, it’s
pretty well hidden.”

The Skyler said, “There must be some way to
find it.”

“Sure, lots of ways. The easiest would be
seismic mapping. I didn’t try that because I don’t have the right
equipment, and it could be spotted if Thaddeus is watching closely.
Which he probably is.”

Imp asked, “Did you watch to see if
Thaddeus
did any seismic mapping?”

Astonished, Geste’s smile vanished as he
turned to the diminutive redhead. “I didn’t think of that,” he
said. “And I don’t think any of my machines did, either.”

“Is there any way to check?”

“Wait a minute.” Geste’s eyes rolled back
disconcertingly for a moment, then dropped down again.

“Damn!” he said. “Damn it!”

“What?” the Skyler demanded. “What is
it?”

“Mother reports that somebody, identity
unknown, set off a pulse charge near the High Castle about ten
wakes ago, before Thaddeus began his attack. At that time Thaddeus
had several machines scattered in the area. It’s a safe bet that he
set off the charge, and those machines were mapping the echoes. If
Brenner
does
have a normal-space tunnel, Thaddeus knows it,
and we don’t.”

“But Brenner would check, wouldn’t he? He
wouldn’t rush out blindly.” Imp did not sound very certain of
herself.

“You’re right,” Geste reassured her. “He
wouldn’t. So if Thaddeus had a party waiting outside both
tunnels—if there
is
a second tunnel—Brenner ought to know
about it, and he wouldn’t go out that way. Unless Thaddeus managed
to fool him somehow.”

“But then where
would
he go?” the
Skyler wailed.

“Nowhere; he must still be in the castle,”
Imp said.

“But Thaddeus broke in!”

“Skyler, we don’t know what Brenner has in
there. He and the others might be safe in a stasis field, or a time
warp, or he might have split a bent-space section off into a pocket
universe, or he might have whole layers of internal defense that we
never even thought of.”

The Skyler took little comfort from Geste’s
words. “Or they might all be dead,” she retorted.

“Yes, they might, or Thaddeus might have
caught them—my observers say there have been ships leaving the High
Castle, carrying loot, and they might have been aboard one.”

“What would he
do
with them?”

“
I
don’t know.”

Bredon felt helpless and out of place
listening to this conversation. He knew he was not one of these
people, did not really belong here. He wanted to ask about Lady
Sunlight, even while he knew that the others knew no more than he
did and would not welcome the interruption. To distract himself,
while the others spoke in an intent little knot he let his gaze
wander the horizon.

The eastern sky was pink and gold, and the
sun would appear in seconds. Bredon looked up past the glowing
balls of gas to where the sky was still a deep dark blue, high
overhead.

Light flashed, and his first thought was
that the sun had passed the horizon, but then he realized that the
light came from the northwest and was far too bright. “What...?” he
began.

The others had all seen the flash as well,
he realized. Imp flung her arms up in front of her face, and Geste
dropped to the ground shouting a strange syllable,
“
Nuke
!”

The Skyler simply stood, too astonished to
move.

“‘
...Are you a warrior?’ the stranger
demanded.

“
Proud of his strength and skill, Walren
foolishly answered, ‘Yes, I am!’

‘“
Then face me in combat!’ the stranger called.
And he flung a weapon like a long, thin knife, longer than a man’s
arm, to the ground before the lad. He drew a similar knife from a
sheath on his belt, and waited.

“
Walren began to be afraid, now. He thought the
stranger was a madman. He stooped and picked up the strange knife.
‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘“
It’s a soared, of course,’ the stranger
replied. And then he leapt forward, his knife stabbing out at
Walren.

“
Walren jumped aside and swung his own long
knife, but the stranger knocked it away easily and slashed Walren
across the breast with his blade.

“
Astonished, Walren looked down at the blood
seeping from his chest, just in time to see the stranger’s blade
plunge into his heart.

“
Everything went black, and he knew that he was
dead.

“
But then, to his surprise, he awoke, lying on a
pile of leaves in the forest, with the stranger standing over
him.

‘“
That was pitiful,’ the stranger said. ‘How can
you call yourself a warrior if you can’t do any better than
that?’

“
Walren raised his head and looked at his chest,
and saw that although his blouse was still cut open, and blood
still stained the fabric, the wounds had closed up and left not
even a scar.

‘“
Who are you?’ he asked the stranger.

‘“
I’m called Lord Carlov,’ the stranger replied
with a bow...”

—
from the tales of Atheron the
Storyteller

“I can’t believe this is happening,” Lady Sunlight
moaned, stirring uncomfortably on the unyielding bench.

“It’s happening,” Rawl told her calmly.
“Accept it.” Inwardly, he marvelled that the woman could have lived
for so long without learning that anything could happen. He did not
understand why so many of the immortals led such limited lives. It
was always by their own choice; were they so desperate for security
as to give up all risk and experimentation, and turn completely
inward?