The Adversary - 4 (5 page)

Across the Atlantic on Ocala Island, Marc Remillard had been watching. Now he was prepared to put his own plans into action.

It was 25 August. Exactly one year before, Aiken and the other members of Group Green had passed through the timegate into the Pliocene.

Now read the fourth and final volume of The Saga of Pliocene Exile, which begins with a flashback to the time of the great fight with Felice at the Rio Genii-and then picks up the main thread of the chronicle immediately after Aiken's victory over Nodonn.

PROLOGUE ONE

It had happened, just as Elizabeth had known it would; and there was no metapsychic prolepsis involved in the foretelling, only logic and inevitability, given those protagonists: Aiken Drum, Felice Landry, and Marc Remillard.

The last reverberations of the great psychocreative blast had dissipated. The four observers still hung high above Spain, out of range, inside the protective bubble spun by the mind of Minanonn the Heretic.

"Felice is surely dead," he observed.

"Her thoughts and her image are snuffed out." Creyn was noncommittal.

"Which proves nothing," muttered Dionket Lord Healer.

Elizabeth's ranging farsenses, so much more powerful than those of the three Tanu, could provide no positive reassurance at that high altitude. Felice, if she lived, was buried beneath the enormous landslide. "I think it's safe for us to descend," she said. "We must take the risk. There are casualties needing help ... "

A swift warning passed between Dionket and Minanonn: Maintain your shield at maximum strength Brother!

The three exotic men and the human woman felt no flow of air as they glided down through smoke-layered twilight. They were isolated from the stench of the burning jungle, the steam rising from the diverted Rio Genii, the dust still rolling up from the rockfall that had pushed the river from its bed and overwhelmed part of Aiken's flotilla.

"So many dead and wounded at the margin of the landslide," the Heretic mourned. "There lies Artigonn, my late sister's son.

And Aluteyn Craftsmaster, may Tana grant him peace! He would not abjure the ancient battle-religion, even though his heart rejected it."

"I see the King." Dionket's farsight showed a vision of Aiken flung up on a gravel bank downstream, his body in its golden suit stiffened, his heart stopped, and mind contracted to a screaming nub.

"You and Creyn go to him," Elizabeth said. The four touched down upon a great flat rock crusted with burnt vegetation, an island amid foaming dirty water. "You'll be able to keep him alive until I come. There are plenty of uninjured survivors. The majority escaped harm, I think. Organize rescue parties for the wounded. Minanonn and I will join you ... after I find out what happened to Felice." After I search this place where she fell, a meteor self-consummate; and how my mind still shrinks from the memory of her mind's last cry: agony and regret, to be sure-but triumph?

"The monster is dead, as Minanonn said. And the Goddess be thanked!" Creyn's face was crimson-lit by flames. "Let us go, Lord Healer." Borne by Dionket's psychokinesis, the two redactors vanished into the murk.

Elizabeth and Minannon stood on the charred ruin of the islet, the protective sphere of psychoenergy now extinguished.

All around them half-submerged trees thrust from the water, trailing broken lianas in the debris-laden current. A few were still afire. In others, terrified monkeys and other jungle creatures shrieked and hooted piteously.

Elizabeth's eyes were closed, her mind searching again, exerting itself to the utmost in order to farsense underground. Drifting bits of ash and soot settled onto her hair and jumpsuit.

Minanonn towered beside her, a bearded blond giant wearing a tunic with a triskelion badge. Under one arm he carried a cubic container that measured perhaps half a metre along the edge. It was made of a dark exotic substance with fragile patterns on its surface, filaments of red and silver that glowed in the deepening night like wisps of interstellar gas. The box held the powerful force-field projector that Brede Shipspouse had called the room without doors.

Elizabeth searched.

A body clad in broken glass armour drifted past on the wreck of a pneumatic barge. Somewhere in the rockfall on the right, lost in lurid shadows, a partially buried warrior woman sent out a telepathic plea for aid.

Soon Sister, the ex-Battlemaster reassured her. And his mindvoice lifted to encourage others: Soon help will come.

Elizabeth searched.

Had Felice really been killed? Had she flashed into extinction at the climax of the gigantomachy, taking Culluket with her?

Reconstitute the memory; dissect and analyse it. Resolve the paradoxes by focusing on the critical moment of the girl's rematerialization after the split-second leap to North America, her dimensional translation. Aiken Drum, in the extreme of desperation, had called up the full force of his metaconcert. In replay, Elizabeth saw the slow crawl of psychoenergy vouchsafed to the King by the thousands of linked minds-and the diabolical augmentation by Marc just as the mental blast was about to pass through the helpless conduit of Felice's Beloved.

Yes! Inexperienced though she was in the ways of offensive metafunction, Elizabeth saw how the Angel of the Abyss had planned this from the very beginning: the elimination of two great minds that threatened his schemes, and the coincidental death of the third, beneath contempt.

But Culluket, the unwilling mental fuse, was the key.

In memory Elizabeth saw Felice still poised within the synchronicity of the translation threshold, not yet fully emerged from her time-violating d-jump, seeing the mortal danger to her Beloved. Knowing instinctively how to thwart it and what the price would be.

The girl had inserted herself into the metaconcert structure, invading the hapless conductor before his mind could disrupt.

She had taken into herself the soul-bursting volume of energy, freely absorbing the entire quotient of destruction and thereby being transformed into an incandescent new Duality.

The King, hanging senseless in the flashover, was cut free-his body momentarily dead, his mind wrecked: Both were susceptible of healing. Not so the body of Culluket the Interrogator Beloved, which was gone beyond saving along with the mortal form of Felice. Only their fused minds remained, bound together in a tiny speck of matter transmuted from the psychic energies by an indomitable will.

Deep under thousands of tons of steaming rock at a shallow ford in the Rio Genii, a tiny thing like a ruby cylinder burned whitely at the core ...

"I've found Felice." Elizabeth opened her eyes, transmitted the image to Minanonn. "And Cull, too."

Elizabeth! They live?

You might call it that. Or suspension. Or limbo.

Such a state beyond understanding.

Not myunderstanding! I have been. [Fiery cocoon image.] Tana-! You humans. But Cull ...

... is there of his freechoice. Lifeclinging.

Suffering withoutend!

Alive nonetheless in pseudoUnity.

Lovetravesty! Abomination!

Minanonn they are damned soulmates I tried to save her yes how I tried and thought I had foolishpride but she will be her own Centre and centripetency and refusing grace determined to burn as are Cull & Marc & O God sometimes I think even I ...

Elizabeth your thoughts are riddles.

I know. Ignore them.

How can you compare yourself to others? I am simpleman warrior enlightened unto peace but still child before you & MarcAbaddon. If youtwo share sin it is one beyond myken. But Cull! He was Thagdalson mybrother. I knew his temptation.

Unlike poor Aluteyn & somany others he knew truth but mocked it aloof alone outside intheend bored to death afraid of death personifying death.

Now doomed to crave it. Enclosing her fire.

I mourn my poor brother.

As I mourn Felice.

We can only pray and sing the Song for them.

Something else I must do with your help. [Image.] Goddess! Surely no chance resuscitation?!

We dare not risk it.

... So this why you bring roomwithoutdoors!

Room programmed to my aura alone by Brede before her death. Once activated it admits me and no other. Not Aiken not even Marc. Understand! None must meddle with this terrible Duality hoping to revive and use it! I must make for it a dark temenos tabernaculum sanctuary inviolate where it will burn unmolested.

How long?

God knows.

It will be ... secure within?

No energy no matter no mind can break into this forcefield from outside. Room gravomagneticpowered enduring as long as Earth. Or until I myself return to enter and deactivate.

Then Duality safe imprisoned.

Not quite.

?You forget. Those inside room always free exit themselves.

But-how? Surely it never could! Look at thing Elizabeth.

Microscopic weakglowing at extinctionedge!

But refusing death.

Then we never free of threat?

Peace myfriend. I feel (perhaps Shipspouse would say know!) that this thing will never again menace ManyColouredLand.

Yours the dangerous judgment Lady.

This time I have no doubts.

... If you leave roomwithoutdoors here you deprive yourself of its protection. You will be vulnerable at Black CragEnough Minanonn. Help me now. Use your psychokenetic power to uncover the Duality for a moment so that I can erect its tomb. Then we must hurry to AikenHeal him and you heal nemesis.

Nevertheless I will. I owe him too much. He undertook the job I shirked.

PROLOGUE TWO

The middle-aged man with the prominent jaw and the unobtrusive apparatus clamped to his skull tended to his simple gardening chores. Inside the observatory, the other inhabitants of Ocala Island were rallying round their ruined leader in a battle that strained the very planetary aether. It was almost like the good old days!

They had known better than to invite him to join them.

"Poor wand'ring one,"sang Alexis Manion in a plaintive tone.

"Dee-dah-dah d'hum-dum DAH-hah." He swept up a dead palm warbler and deposited it into the wheeled cart that trundled behind Mm, obedient to his irrepressible PK function. "Oh, yes, I have surely strayed. I am a disgrace to villainy." Humming, wearing the abstractly intoxicated smile of the docilated, he shuffled along the path. The gardens around Marc Remillard's star-search observatory simmered in late afternoon sun but there was heavy shade beneath the macrophyllas. Their blossoms, wide as dinnerplates against whorls of metre-long leaves, gave off a cloying scent that overwhelmed the subtler perfume of the granadilla vines. He tidied up a section of the white coquina walk that was littered with zapped butterflies. (Common heliconians, alas. Nothing suitable for his collection.) Then he tsked in sympathy as he spied another victim of the observatory's robot defences: a crumpled male golden egret, gorgeous in mating plumage, that had fallen close to the building wall.

A thought slowly formed in Manion's electronically dulled brain. He squinted up into the sun dazzle at the narrow parapet around the open observatory dome, where the barrels of the Xlasers protruded in a glittering chevaux de frise. Yes! There was the female egret's body as well, caught in the angle of the pendentive. Poor birdie lovers! Still, if one had to go ...

"And if you remain callous and obdurate, I," he carolled, "shall perish as they did and you will know why." A mental nudge sent the corpse tumbling down. He consigned it to the bin. "Though I probably shall not exclaim as I die-"

Alex. Come at once.

"Oh, willow," he whispered, carefully closing the lid. "Titwillow-"

Quickly dammit!

"Titwillow."

The coercive power of Jordan Kramer, clutching at Manion's mind, failed to get a grip on the docilated, preprogrammed mush. There were telepathic epithets.

Manion smiled his sad idiot smile (so at odds with the set of his jaw) and restored push broom and dustpan to their brackets on the side of the cart. He took up a pair of clippers. Overhead, the laser array lost its sparkle as the power was switched off. A cormorant winged above the slowly closing dome with impunity and soared out over Lake Serene. Manion waved at it, then began to snip spent blooms from a cluster of pink laelias nestled in the crotch of a gumbo-limbo tree. He started a new song: My boy, you may take it from me, That of all the afflictions accurst With which a man's saddled And hampered and addled, A diffident nature's the worst!

Now people were rushing from the observatory into the garden. There was a wild melange of farspoken thought: It's that goddam docilator Steinbrenner go fetch himRight. Pat comealong help coldturkey letdown.

Affirm hurryhurry!

SHEWASHERERIGHTHEREYESMONSTERFELICEWAS HEREODIDYOUSEEWASITILLUSIONOCHRISTNO REALDIDN'TYOUSEELaura you&Dorsey get tank ready Keoghs bring bodytransporter.Affirm/Affirm/Affirmaffirm.

GODBLANCHARDDIEDDIDYOUFEELITFUCKHIM WHATABOUTMONSTERFELICEDIDSHEFUSEMARC WHOTHEHELLKNOWSITWASADJUMPDJUMP CHILDRENWHATABOUTTHEMARETHEYSAFESHUT UPOGODISMARCDEADISFELICEDEADORDIDSHE SUBSUMEMARCYOUFUCKINGIDIOTSSHUTUPONO SHUTUPONOTHEGENESMENTALMANTHEGENES MARCMARCSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUT UP!

DJUMPDJUMPSHECOULDHAVEFUSEDSUBSUMED it was a d-jump I tell you ...

Silence!

Jordy you can't be certain.

It was a d-jump.

You don't dare divest until we confirm her excursion.

That's why they're bringing Manion you fool!

THE GENES. O GOD THE GENES.

Damn genes!

The children!

GathenDalembertWarshawVanWyk STAY Everybodyelse GO.

Must know children can't push me out damn Marc damn genes damn all of you ...

Steinbrenner when you get Manion out docilator put Helayne IN.

Affirm.

Oblivious, Alexis Manion pottered among the orchids. And there came big Jeff Steinbrenner, archquack and babykiller, all reeking with adrenalin overload! And pretty Pat Castellane, her steel eyes weeping! Amazing. Manion sang out: If you wish in the world to advance, Your merits you're bound to enhance.

You must stir it and stump it, And blow your own trumpet.

Or trust me, you haven't a chance!