Among the Powers (26 page)

“Then he’ll have to let us in. If he
doesn’t, then we’ll fight him. All we want is proof that they’re
still alive.”

The Skyler studied the Trickster’s face.
“You’re up to something, Geste,” she said. “I know you are, and
Thaddeus will know it, too.”

“My reputation,” he said with a mock sigh,
addressing himself to Bredon. “No one ever trusts me!”

“That’s right, and Thaddeus won’t, either,”
the Skyler said.

“But he’ll let us in anyway,” Geste said
with a smile, “because he’s absolutely certain that he’s smarter
than I am, and able to counter whatever scheme I might have.”

“Then you
do
have a scheme!” Imp
exclaimed.

Geste smiled again, wryly. “Not really,” he
said.

After a pause he added, “At least, not
yet.”

“‘
...I, Hsin of the River, will grant you a wish.
Anything you desire shall be yours!’ And he gestured grandly at the
surrounding magnificence.

“
Thedor blinked in surprise.

‘“
I want to go home,’ he said
uncertainly.

‘“
Of course,’ said Hsin. ‘My creatures will carry
you from this house, and from this island, and see you safely home.
That is not enough; I had intended to do that much in any case.
What else would you have?’

“
Thedor thought for a moment, and then he said,
‘My friends will not believe me when I tell this tale. Can you give
me some token to show that I do not lie?’

‘“
Again, you ask too little,’ Hsin said. ‘I tell
you that my creatures will escort you to your village, in plain
sight of all. Furthermore, if you return here, you will always be
welcome in the House of Fifty Peacocks, and although you may not
see me, my familiar spirits will always be ready to speak to you,
and to testify to whoever may accompany you as to the truth of what
you say. Now, what more would you have of me?’

“
Overwhelmed, Thedor thought long and hard, and
then said, ‘My grandfather, whom I loved, died last year. Could you
bring his spirit to speak to me, so that I might thank him for the
wisdom he taught me, and tell him how much I miss him?’

“
At this, Hsin was overcome with emotion. When he
could speak again, he said, ‘Death is hard, is it not, little one?
Alas, even I cannot bring back the dead, unless I have studied
their souls while they still lived. Is there nothing you would have
for yourself?’

‘“
I can think of nothing,’ Thedor said.

‘“
Then go in peace,’ Hsin replied, ‘and I will
have spirits watch over you and keep you safe from all harm, for as
long as you shall live...”

—
from the tales of Atheron the
Storyteller

The image of Thaddeus, bright against the gathering
dusk, stared at Geste in outraged disbelief. “You want
what
?” it demanded.

“Look, Thaddeus,” Geste answered calmly, “we
know that you’ve had Aulden there for wakes now. You could be
showing us recordings, or simulations, or androids, or
pseudoclones, or even the original bodies with the brains rebuilt.
We need to know that these are really who you say they are, and
there is nothing you can transmit that can’t be faked. We need to
see these people, talk to them, feel them, maybe run gene scans and
neuropattern tests with our own equipment.” Geste shrugged. “I
don’t think we’re being unreasonable at all. You’re asking us to
surrender ourselves to you in exchange for the lives of our
friends; well, we want to check your credit, so to speak, and make
certain that you actually have those lives and haven’t already
destroyed them. You couldn’t buy a ship back on Terra without a
credit check, and you can’t here, either.”

“If you think I’m bringing them out where
you can get at them with one of your sleight-of-hand maneuvers,
Geste, you’ve gone mad.”

The Trickster remained cool. “Then let us
in,” he said.

“So you can sabotage my fortress?”

“Take whatever precautions you like.”

Thaddeus paused, considering, and then
asked, in a far calmer tone, “You’d submit to a search and give up
all your equipment?”

“Everything that’s not built in, anyway. And
we might want some of it back to run tests with.”

“You’d have no objection to suppressor
fields?”

“I’d welcome them, Thaddeus; you couldn’t
run a simulation under full suppression.”

“How do you know that I won’t just keep you
all here?”

“You want our equipment and our help, and
we’ll leave orders for an all-out attack if we aren’t out after a
certain time—say, second sunrise tomorrow.”

This was a bluff, of course, since Imp had
sabotaged the weapons systems, but Thaddeus had no way of knowing
that.

Thaddeus nodded.

“All right,” he said. “Come along, then, all
of you. I’ll have everything ready in, oh, three hours, and you’ll
be out again within thirty hours. Fair enough?”

“That’s fine.”

“I’ll send a floater to bring you in.”

“Fine.”

Thaddeus smiled almost pleasantly. “I’ll see
you then.” His image flicked out of existence, leaving the drifting
terrace lights and the fading glow in the west.

“There,” Geste said, turning to the others.
“We have three hours to come up with something.”

“Geste, can’t you shut up? He might be
listening,” Imp said.

“I’m not going,” the Skyler announced
suddenly, before Geste could answer Imp’s complaint. Startled, the
others all turned to her.

“I’m not going,” she repeated. “It’s crazy.
I’m not giving up the Skyland for anybody, not Thaddeus or Aulden
or you two, and I’m not going to walk into a trap, either. Three
hours! He could do
anything
in three hours!”

“But, Skyler...” Imp began.

“You shut up!” the Skyler said, almost
spitting at her in sudden rage. “You went and pulled the plug on
us! We might have caught him off-guard and stopped him, but
you
wrecked it all! I did my share, I brought you here with
all those infernal machines you rigged up, and then you ruined
everything!” She turned her attention to the Trickster. “I’ve gone
as far as I intend to, Geste. I’m sorry, I know you mean well, but
I can’t do any more. I’ll wait here until you come out—
if
you come out—but that’s all. I’m not coming in. If Thaddeus wins,
I’m sorry, but I’ll survive. It won’t last forever.”

“I’m sorry, too,” Geste replied. “But I
understand.”

For an awkward moment the three immortals
stood facing each other, while Bredon sat to one side, watching
uncomfortably. Then Imp turned to face Geste, pointedly giving the
Skyler no further attention, and said, “All right, we have three
hours—what do we do?”

“I wish I knew,” the Trickster said, as the
Skyler turned and marched away in the direction of her private wing
of the house. Lights and music sprang up before her.

Before Imp could snap at him, Geste added
hastily, “But I’ll think of something. Let’s see if we can do
anything useful with any of the weapons.”

Imp nodded, and turned toward the house,
Geste close behind.

Bredon watched them go, but stayed where he
was. He knew that he could be of no use with the weapons; he simply
did not know enough about the technology involved, despite his
high-speed training. He sat back in his floating chair to
contemplate the scenery and the situation. The gaseous lights
drifted overhead, and peacocks still stalked the lawns, but the
music had departed with its mistress.

Precisely three hours after the image of
Thaddeus had vanished a bright red floater, egg-shaped and glowing
and perhaps half a meter long, sailed up across the star-flecked
black sky. It turned and skimmed over the side of the Skyland, and
came whistling across the lawn toward the terrace.

Bredon was there waiting for it. The Skyler
had not been seen since she stalked off the terrace and into her
personal chambers. Geste and Imp were also somewhere in the house,
presumably still improvising gadgetry and schemes.

“Hello!” Bredon called.

The floater ignored him. It swept in about a
meter above the dark stone pavement, emitting a variety of low
beeps and whistles, then turned and cruised along the perimeter of
the terrace.

“Hello,” Bredon called again, waving.

The floater continued to ignore him. When it
had completed a full circuit it spiralled inward from the edges,
slowing steadily, until it came to a stop hovering above the center
of the terrace.

Seeing that this machine would not
acknowledge his existence, Bredon shrugged and called, “Skyland,
tell Geste and Imp that the floater is here.”

“I have already done so, sir, and they are
on their way,” the Skyland replied, in a calm, imperturbable tone
that struck Bredon as being a little too smug.

“Thank you,” he said, wondering what the
Skyland thought of the situation. It did not seem to have the same
sort of awareness and personality that Gamesmaster did, but surely,
he thought, it must have an opinion.

Before he could ask anything, Imp emerged
from the house, her long hair drifting about her in an uneven
auburn cloud as she strode onto the terrace. She had changed her
clothes, and now wore a black velvet garment that Bredon had no
name for. He stared, forgetting all about the Skyland’s
opinions.

The fabric covered her shoulders, breasts,
and belly smoothly and tightly, as if stretched into place, while
leaving most of her upper body bare. From the waist down it flared
out into a flowing, voluminous skirt that moved as if with a life
of its own, sometimes wrapping and coiling itself about her hips
and legs, other times drifting out in a cloud of cloth that seemed
indistinct about the edges, as if the material were dissolving into
the air.

Bredon found this garb both startling and
devastatingly attractive. He stared, and forced himself to remember
that he wanted Lady Sunlight, not Imp.

His body still responded in its own way,
undaunted by any message from the conscious mind.

Imp did not notice. She did not look at him
at all, but hurried to the floater. She reached out to pat the
machine, but it shied away.

She turned and called, “Hurry up, Geste! We
don’t want to keep him waiting!”

Bredon wondered whether she meant Thaddeus
or Aulden.

Geste appeared almost before Imp had
finished her sentence, his flying platform gliding at his heels.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”

“The platform may not come,” the red egg
announced in a harsh monotone. “I am to bring three humans. No
other self-propelled beings or devices are permitted.”

“Three?” Geste asked. “Not four?”

“Three,” the floater repeated.

Geste threw Imp a worried glance. “Maybe
Thaddeus
did
eavesdrop, if he knows the Skyler isn’t
coming.”

Reluctantly, Bredon suggested, “I don’t
think that’s it. I think he didn’t want
me
along.”

“Oh,” the Trickster said, momentarily
looking foolish. “Oh, of course.”

Imp looked at Bredon with interest. “I think
you’re right. I don’t think Thaddeus thinks of you as human at all.
He probably sees you as Geste’s pet.”

Bredon grimaced. “I’m not a Power,” he
acknowledged.

“Thaddeus may think Bredon’s an android or
some sort of Trojan horse,” Imp said, turning to Geste.

“He may indeed,” Geste agreed. “It’s too bad
we didn’t think to make him one.” He asked the floater, “Did your
master tell you which three humans you were to bring?”

“The three humans to be found on this
terrace,” the machine answered.

“No further description?” Geste
persisted.

“No further description,” the machine
replied.

“Well, here are three humans, then. Let’s
go.”

“Acknowledged.” Something extruded from the
underside of the egg, something as red and gleaming as the egg
itself. At first it was a slim cylinder, but a few centimeters
above the stone pavement the cylinder stopped. Its lower end
transformed into a disk, which expanded swiftly and silently.

To Bredon, it looked as if the egg were
spilling blood, pouring it in a steady stream into a circular
puddle, a pool spreading across an invisible barrier three
centimeters above the terrace.

When the red disk was almost three meters in
diameter the expansion abruptly stopped. Imp and Geste stepped
forward, and up onto the disk.

Bredon was more hesitant; he had trouble
believing that the disk could actually hold him. The egg had
seemingly created it from thin air, and although he knew from his
crash course in modern technology that the necessary material might
have been retrieved from bent-space storage, or synthesized out of
the air itself, his years of experience in his own society left him
emotionally convinced that it had to be an illusion.

Cautiously, he forced himself to put a foot
on the disk.

It seemed as firm and solid as the terrace
itself. Reluctantly, Bredon lifted his other foot and stepped
forward.

Immediately, the disk material began
spreading again, but this time the outer edge grew vertically
instead of horizontally, rising up to form a cylinder around the
three humans. At a height of about a meter and a half it curved
inward, forming a dome.

Even as it grew, the floater was moving; as
the Skyler’s home vanished behind the rising walls it was already
receding. By the time the dome had closed overhead, Bredon knew
they were off the Skyland entirely.

As with all the tranportation the immortals
used, however, there was no sensation of movement. It was as if the
three of them had stood on the motionless disk while the Skyland
sped away from them.

When the dome was complete, the last circle
of blue sky closed away, they were left without any point of
reference at all. The original egg glowed warmly, providing them
with light, and a soft, musical hum emanated from floor, but they
had nothing to see except the egg, the blank red walls, and each
other. They stood in uneasy silence.