The Adversary - 4 (48 page)

"Anything else?" enquired the King mildly.

"Some news about my wife!"

"Lady Katlinel is making inquiries. There's some problem.

Your Howler in-laws are a bit miffed that you ran out on their little girl, and are disinclined to cooperate. Lady Katy counsels patience."

Tony threw up his hands and stomped away. The King and Elizabeth moved on. When they were safely in the next room, she said, "My redactive faculty detects a whiff of level-two dysfunction in that man's psyche. I gather he's been through some rough times. I shouldn't let him get too highly stressed if I were you."

"He wants to work," Aiken said. "That's the best thing for him now. It'll distract him from this business about his Howler wife."

"I'd be glad to have Minanonn fly me to Nionel. Perhaps I could mediate with the irate parents-in-law."

"Thanks, Elizabeth." Aiken was glum. "But I lied to poor Tony back there-partly for selfish reasons and partly because it seems the kindest thing to do at this point. You know Lord Greg-Donnet, who was King Thagdal's Genetics Master?"

"The one they called Crazy Greggy ... " She nodded.

"He went to Nionel with Katy when she married Sugoll, and now he's pottering about with a scheme for alleviating the deformities of the mutants. Talented man, Greggy, in spite of his little quirks. Well-it seems he worked up an experimental thingummy, a sort of cross between the healing Tanu Skin and a Milieu-style regeneration tank. He thinks this Skin-tank might help restore the really grotesque Howlers to a more normal Firvulag appearance. He asked for a volunteer. Guess who he got."

"Oh, dear," said Elizabeth.

The King said, "Tony's wife, Rowane, thought he dumped her because she was a monster. Greggy's experiment looked like a golden opportunity to her. So there she floats, switch-off, for at least another four weeks, while Greggy and the Howler equivalent of redactors remould her protoplasm. Rowane might come out worse than before, she might die, or the experiment could be a great success. But I think we're wise to stall Tony."

"I agree. It's pathetic ... "

"Aren't we all?" said the King. He led the way into a sizeable chamber where a skeletal glass structure stood upon a platform.

It was a latticed box strung about with metallic cables that intertwined its vitreous members like multicoloured vine stems.

Many more of the flexible lines lay about on workbenches with their innards exposed to the probing attention of the workers.

Monitors, testing equipment, and a confusion of installation machinery crowded the platform.

"And there it is," Aiken announced. "The Guderian device-more or less."

"I hadn't remembered it being so large," Elizabeth said.

"We expanded it a trifle. Our tame dynamic-field boffin, Anastos, said it wouldn't hurt. That's him cursing out the fleck installer. The scrawny dark-haired bareneck. And of course you recognize the disapproving duo looking over his shoulder."

"I've farseen them. Is there some place we could speak in private?"

Aiken led her into an unoccupied window-sided cubicle that apparently served as a worker's lounge. There were soft seats and a table, and a few spartan refreshment amenities. Then he delivered a polite telepathic summons to Hagen and Cloud Remillard. The brother and sister came into the lounge, closing the door behind them. Their curiosity at the presence of the untorced female visitor was imperfectly concealed. Both of them wore white coveralls not much different from those of the other workers. Their hair was the same reddish-gold colour, but otherwise they were not particularly alike. Cloud had a high, rounded Celtic forehead that appeared almost polished, and nearly invisible brows. Her eyes were deep-set, of a piercing greenish blue, and fringed with sooty lashes. Her skin was transparent, lightly freckled, and her nose curved slightly, like a small, delicate blade. Seeing her in the flesh, Elizabeth could strip away certain characteristics inherited from Marc and perceive the ghostly image of a woman long dead. Hagen Remillard had his father's aquiline profile and powerful build, but there was something raw, almost blurred about his features. His aura was one of suppressed rage, without a trace of Marc's magnetic urbanity.

At the brief, hot touch of his mind, Elizabeth felt both pity and apprehension. From Cloud, in contrast, came open empathy.

Then the mental walls shut down, and the pair of them stood with empty smiles waiting upon the King's pleasure.

"May I present the Grand Master Redactor and Farsensor Elizabeth Orme," Aiken said. "She is an honorary member of my High Table and serves as de facto dirigent of Pliocene Earth."

Hagen and Cloud responded formally. The King bade everyone be seated and served them tea and biscuits with his own royal hands while asking brief questions about this or that aspect of the project. The young Remillards replied with terse competence. They expressed hope that the geological expedition would be successful in tracking down the critical ores.

"The aircraft should rendezvous with the land party tomorrow," said the King. "Now those prospectors can comb Fennoscandia properly, from the air, without having to constantly keep on the lookout for trolls and Yotunag."

"Well, they'd better get a move on," Hagen said. "We've managed to cannibalize the niobium we need from other devices, but there's no way we'll get the rare-earth metal except through ores. Half the damn gazebo cables have cores woven of niobiumdysprosium wire."

"Once you have the wire, how long might it take to complete the device?" Elizabeth asked.

Hagen gave her a penetrating look. "Thinking of joining the exodus, Grand Master?"

Elizabeth flushed. She said levelly, "I had considered it, yes."

Hagen chuckled. "Then I hope you use your good offices to stave off Marc-or I'm afraid our chances of re-entering the Milieu are rather slim."

She looked at him in silence for a moment. "I'd forgotten you were born there ... But the others of the younger generation are all Pliocene natives?"

"And all at least three years younger than Hagen and I," said Cloud. She gave her brother a reproving frown. "To answer your question, it might take us a month or more to complete the device, given the core wire. We have the most talented scientists in the Many-Coloured Land at work here, with manufacturing equipment of every description. It's incredible what some time-travellers thought to bring to the Pliocene! And, of course, we ransacked Papa's store of materiel before we left Ocala-"

Hagen interrupted her. "The Grand Master knows that, Cloudie. She knows all about us."

There was a pregnant pause. Hagen faced Elizabeth defiantly.

"Would the Milieu let us in-knowing who we are?"

"Yes," said Elizabeth.

"Knowing what we helped Felice to do?" the young man added softly.

"If you hope to be embraced by the Unity, you'll have to pay your debt. The circumstances were extraordinary, but your act was still a crime."

"Not against free human beings," Hagen said. "Against exotic oppressors and their corrupt minions!"

"Nearly fifty thousand people perished in the Gibraltar Flood," Elizabeth said. "Many of them were entirely innocent."

"We only intended to kill the exotics. It's not as though they were human beings-"

"Both Tanu and Firvulag will contribute to the Homo sapiens stem," Elizabeth said. "I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that remnants of both groups persisted on Earth almost into historic times, mating with human stock just as they have mated with time-travellers here in the Pliocene. Our myths and legends and the other heritage of the collective unconscious confirm it."

"But that's impossible!" Cloud cried. "There are no fossils, no other concrete evidence-"

Elizabeth was unperturbed by the shocked reaction of the Remillards. She noted that Aiken seemed similarly equable.

"Have you any idea," she asked them, "how scanty the fossil evidence is for the supposedly well known races of early hominids? For Ramapithecus? For Homo erectus? For the Neanderthaler race of sapiens? ... A pathetic handful of fragments for the first. Only scattered skulls and broken bones for the second.

And fewer than eighty specimens of Neanderthal Man left of the millions who must have walked Pleistocene Earth!"

"You'd think at least one specimen of Tanu or Firvulag would have turned up," Hagen protested.

"Anomalies have been found," Elizabeth told him. "Many of them. And not only skeletal remains. King Aiken-Lugonn's computer library has admirable references that I've been able to consult over the past few months. But since the atypical finds didn't fit in with more acceptable data, they were dismissed.

Other explanations were put forth to account for the anomalies, so as not to discompose the scientific establishment." A mischievous expression came over her face. "It's one of the more tempting motives one could have for returning to the Milieu.

To watch the cat among the paleontological pigeons."

Cloud was sombre as she returned to the serious matter at hand. "But we would be punished for helping Felice."

"The world you wish to enter is very different from the one Marc and his Rebels left. There's still crime and there's still punishment. But for those who are genuinely sorry, the atonement consists largely of reeducation and public service."

The brother and sister looked at Elizabeth dubiously. Aiken said, "No statute of limitations? Extenuating circumstances?

Non compos mentis?"

"It would be up to the forensic redactors to determine individual culpability," Elizabeth said.

"And they'd know?" asked Hagen.

"Oh, yes," the Grand Master replied.

"But after we-atoned," Cioud said. "Then they'd accept us into the Unity?"

"I'm certain of it," said Elizabeth.

"There you are, kids!" Aiken vouchsafed the pair a bright smile. "If we take our licks, we get to join the grownups. Still think it would be worth it?"

Hagen was bland. "Do you, High King?"

"Who knows what I'll do?" Aiken replied airily. "You haven't built the time-gate yet, and Night may not fall."

"And Papa may still figure out some way to use that brainroasting CE rig of his to blast us all to kingdom come," Hagen said.

Elizabeth's concern embraced the three of them. "That's why I came here tonight to speak to you. Marc's d-jump faculty now includes the ability to transport significant quantities of matter in a field generated outside of his cerebroenergetic enhancer.

He's transported a living man without harming him, and before too long he'll be able to do considerably better than that."

Hagen barked a bitter obscenity and she held up a monitory hand. "You know that Marc has always maintained his love for you children. He also possesses no malice toward Aiken. He's asked me to act as his emissary and mediator, so that we can resolve the present crisis peaceably. He'd like you to meet with him in my chalet on Black Crag."

"Not on your life!" Hagen exclaimed. "We told him once before-he can farspeak any deal he has in mind. I'm not getting within three air kloms or a twenty-power sigma of dear Papa.

No more coercing!"

"He gives his solemn word that he won't try it," Elizabeth said. "And he let me probe him, so I know he spoke the truth.

In any case, if the King attends the meeting, his coercive ability would be entirely sufficient to neutralize Marc's."

"I can believe that," Hagen muttered.

Cloud said, "But nothing has really changed. Papa and his confederates will never agree to our opening the time-gate."

Elizabeth said, "Marc asked me to tell you that he has something completely new to discuss with you. He said-and I confess I have no idea what he means-he said it concerned the answer to your old question about your genetic heritage."

"God-he said that?" Hagen's voice was hoarse. His mind engaged that of his sister on the intimate mode and both Elizabeth and the King perceived the agitation of the exchange.

Hagen and Cloud were desperately afraid-and at the same time, fascinated.

"Elizabeth," the King asked, "do you know whether or not Marc can use that CE device on more than one metafaculty at a time?"

"I can answer that!" Hagen exclaimed. "God-can I! Papa instructed me thoroughly enough in the damn thing's operation.

He was ready to chain me to a backup suit of armour he had all ready when we escaped from Ocala-"

"Pull yourself together." The King's barely leashed coercion hovered about the young man. "This is important!"

Hagen swallowed. "The rig can enhance only one metafunction at a time. For instance, when Marc performs a djump, the rig is locked onto his upsilon-field-generating faculty.

When he was doing the star-search, it enhanced his farsight."

"And when the bunch of you got together with Felice to zap Gibraltar," Aiken interposed, "he was augmenting his creativity?"

"That's it," Hagen agreed. "When he's phased into the thing-when the needle-electrodes are in his brain and it goes white-hot-he has only a single preprogrammed superfaculty.

The others are in peripheral mode. They're there, but only in his usual barebrained order of magnitude. He'd have to jump back to the directive computer if he wanted to switch."

"That's all right then," Aiken said, considerably relieved. "I was afraid he could use the rig to mind-zorch us in Black Crag."

"Not possible." A twisted smile spread over Hagen's face.

"He won't be able to pull that off until he's capable of teleporting the whole CE setup around with him-power supply, auxiliaries, and all. Ten tons of junk."

"Then we've got time," Aiken said. "I say we go see what Marc has to say. If he's barebrained, I'll take a chance."

"Could you burn him?"

Hagen asked quietly.

"No!" cried Cloud.

Elizabeth said, "All of you must give me your solemn word to keep the peace-and let me probe you redactively now and at Black Crag to be sure you mean it."

"Agreed," said Cloud at once.

Hagen took a bit longer, but finally he nodded his head.

Elizabeth looked inquiringly at Aiken. He screwed up his brow in a mock attitude of deep thought. "If I did mind-zorch Marc-just supposing I could beat him in barebrain combat-it would save all of us a lot of potential grief."