The Adversary - 4 (56 page)

(Admiration) SUGOLL: Are all the flying machines armed, as was your flagship?

AIKEN: We're working on it. Refitting a rhocraft is tricky because of the reticular field that covers the skin. With luck, most of the fleet will be zapper-equipped by tournament time.

MORNA-IA KINGMAKER: Woe! O Goddess forfend! That I, a First Comer, should live to see a renewal of those dread hostilities from which Brede Shipspouse sought to save us!

CELADEYR: A pity we only have Elizabeth ...

AIKEN: You have Me.

ALL: Yes.

SUGOLL: And there is also the time-gate.

(Consternation.) CELADEYR: No true warrior of Tana's battle-company would turn tail and flee the Foe!

AIKEN: There are worse perils than the Little People. [Image.] KATLINEL THE DARKEYED: In my veins runs Tanu and human blood, and my heart is linked to the Firvulag race of my husband. Well do I recall the words of that spokesman for peace, Dionket Lord Healer, when he bade Sugoll and me to be a bridge. We will willingly undertake a mediation role, and pursue it from now until the Grand Tourney. If Tana wills, we may move the hearts of the Little People, dissuading them from war. Night may not fall.

SUGOLL: But if it should, our people claim the option proffered by King Aiken-Lugonn in exchange for our fealty: If doom cannot be averted, our Howler and human subjects will seek sanctuary in the Milieu.

CELADEYR: Galloping Goddess-what if the damn time-gate device is finished before the Tourney?

AIKEN: Not fewkin' likely. There's a snag. I'm going to look into it later today.

KUHAL EARTHSHAKER: Sisters and brothers, let us gratefully accept the offer of the Lord and Lady of the Howlers to mediate with the Firvulag, their kin. At the same time, let us prepare for the worst, marshalling all stalwart torced minds under the executive of the Shining One, following him without hesitation or question. This has not been our Way in the past, for we are a proud and stiff-necked people, loving turmoil and glorying in contention. Now we must act in concert or perish. And I remind the pious that if Night falls, it will be the hand of the Adversary that brings it to pass rather than Tanu or Firvulag.

He is the true Foe.

(Silence.) AIKEN: Thanks for meeting Me here today. I'll see you all in Nionel, at the games.

Swollen by the heavy rains in the jungles to the south, the River Nonol ran deep and swift beneath the Rainbow Bridge.

Upstream the watercourse was crowded with small boats, carrying sports lovers of three races to the landing stages at the Field of Gold. But the tiny dock at the foot of the bridge's rightbank abutment pier was deserted except for a laden decamole canoe that strained at its painter and two people standing in the afternoon shadows beside it, their minds linked by the fellowship of the golden torc. One was a splendidly dressed hybrid woman, Tanu in every feature except for her brown eyes. The other was a massive Native American with straggling iron-grey hair, wearing only a breechclout, moccasins, and an elaborate wrist navigation unit.

Misgiving tinged the hopeful mind-veneer of Katlinel the Darkeyed. "I wish we had one of the sigma-field devices to give you in addition to the weapons, Chief Burke."

He smiled, radiating ironic reassurance. "If it's really Marc Remillard in that schooner I'm hunting, a little sigma-shield would be about as much protection as a sheet of durofilm. Not to worry, Lady Katy. Us Redskins are just naturally adept at lurking and sneaking-and my training as a lawyer makes me wilier than most. I'll take care that the gang on Kyllikki don't spot me, assuming she is sailing up the Seine."

"The King thinks it most likely. He did an inconclusive scan from his aircraft."

"I call it weird," Burke said, "that with all the high-powered minds and contraband gadgetry at the King's disposal, he can't track this boat except with a pair of tired old human eyeballs."

"Nevertheless, that seems to be the case. It does seem terribly unfair that you must undertake this scouting mission now, risking your life and perhaps your chance to pass through the time-gate ... "

Burke shrugged. "If Remillard has his way, there won't be any gate. No-the King's arguments were very persuasive, and he sure as hell picked the right man for the job. With the river up the way it is, I should be able to comb the entire five hundred odd kilometres between here and the sea in a week to ten days.

I'll farspeak the King on a regular sked all the way. If his schooner's not there, I'll have had a nice excursion to liven up my last days in the Pliocene."

"And if you find it-"

"I'm no Crazy Horse. All I do is report her position and haul my tush on out of there full speed ahead. From the mouth of the Seine to Goriah is about a week's journey by sea. A little mazel, I won't even have to miss the Grand Tourney!"

He untied the line, jumped lightly into the canoe-which barely rocked as he settled onto his haunches-and lifted his paddle in salute.

"Tana guide you," said the Lady of the Howlers.

Burke lifted his instrument-equipped wrist. "And the Messrs.

Plain."

"Well, what's the hoo-ha?" the King asked Tony Wayland.

The metallurgist thrust a sealed bottle containing a silvery rod under Aiken's nose. "This. It's taken the prospecting team all this time to locate a suitable dysprosium ore, what with dodging renegade Howlers and having the Norwegian locale turn out a bummer. And now that they've settled in to refine thalenite instead of the xenotime and we finally have an abundant source of ore, the bloody idiots are sending down dreck like this."

"What's the problem?" The King controlled his impatience.

"Contaminated," said Hagen gloomily.

"Simply lousy with holmium," Tony said. "And any sort of impurity in the dysprosium core screws up the resistivity factor of the wire something chronic-I mean, quite badly."

"Is it the fault of the equipment, or what?" asked the King.

"The machinery we sent up should be able to do the job,"

Tony said. "They have a high-speed Ramsgate extractor for the ion separation and a nice little electroliser for production of the metal. I think they're skimping on quality control somewhere.

Perhaps in the beginning stages of the ore feed."

"I sent up Candyman, our industrial chemist," Hagen said, "but he couldn't spot the problem. He's really an organic specialist. The crew on the job are experienced mining engineers. They ought to be able to-"

Tony glowered darkly. "You remember that I expressed certain reservations about Yobbo Ruan and Trevarthen when I first learned they'd been put in charge. They may have done well enough mucking about the Amalizan gold mines, but rareearth refining demands finesse."

"The niobium-dysprosium wire is vital to the project," Hagen said. "This fuck-up means delay at best, and failure if we can't lick it."

The King studied the bottle with its pencil-sized ingot. "You can't complete the purification process here in the labs at Castle Gateway?"

Hagen said, "We'd have to take the extractor away from the mining crew, and we only have the one. Since we need forty kilos of the stuff, and the basic run-through will take three weeks-"

"Oh, for shit's sake," said the King irritably. "You know there's only one answer to this. Get properly refined metal from Fennoscandia in the first place. Solve the problem at the source."

Hagen nodded. "I want to be sure you appreciate the risk, though. Some species of gigantic Howler lives up there.

Yotunag, they're called, and they're outside Sugoll's sway.

We've already lost Stosh Nowak and John-Henry King in raids on the mining camp. I wanted your personal authorization before we risk Tony. After all, you paid a high price for him."

"Coo!" cried the metallurgist in vast alarm. "Now wait just a damn minute!"

The King fixed him with an icy gaze.

"Could you see that the refining is done properly if we send you to Fennoscandia?"

"I'm needed here!" Perspiration started out on Tony's forehead. "I'm at a critical stage in the setup of the cladding device-the gizmo that'll actually make the wire!"

"Answer my question," Aiken demanded. "Could you get the pure metal, or couldn't you?"

"Probably," Tony admitted sullenly.

"Right," said Aiken. "Start packing." He turned on his heel and left the cubicle, with Hagen trailing after.

Hagen said, "One of my people, Chee-Wu Chan, will be able to finish up the cladding device easily."

"Good," said the King. "As long as I'm here, I'll do a quick inspection. See how you've settled in here at Gateway." The door closed.

"Oh, bloody hell," Tony moaned. He clutched his golden torc in both sweaty hands, seeking solace. "Here I go again."

In the cool of evening, the fisherman trolled for giant catfish from a dinghy being towed far astern of Kyllikki. The catfish were hardly the fighting fools that the Florida tarpon had been; but they routinely weighed in at 200 kilos and measured better than four metres in length. They were scrappy enough when their stomachs were empty at the start of a night's feeding cruise, and as a bonus, they were excellent eating.

Catfishing was a quiet occupation, which suited the fisherman very well. With his small boat trailing out from under the thoughtproof screen, he could let his unaugmented farsight range about the Many-Coloured Land. There was also ample time for contemplation of his personal quandary, away from the increasing tensions aboard the schooner.

The matter had to be faced. Morale among his old associates was deteriorating rapidly, as was inevitable once he let his own resolution waver. Too many of the Rebels found it difficult to recast the vision of Mental Man around Cloud and Hagen, from the lonely outpost in Fennoscandia. It was a cry from the heart that combined yearning for someone named Rowane with sundry curses upon the rare-earth element dysprosium.

Abruptly, the thought was cut off.

And a great catfish swallowed Marc's hook and set the reel screaming.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Brother Anatoly picked the last of the Mangetout peas in the Black Crag garden and Elizabeth sat on a bench beneath a twisted stone pine, reweaving a hole in his brown-wool scapular.

They waited for Marc, who for reasons unspecified had asked to be met outdoors, and quarrelled over the friar's scandalous absolution of the arch-Rebel.

"Only a sentimental innocent would think that Marc Remillard repented of the Metapsychic Rebellion," Elizabeth said.

"He'd do the same thing all over again without half a second's thought."

"I keep forgetting what a great mind reader you are," Anatoly said.

"And to absolve him when he didn't even confess-"

"Why do you think he made me stay there and listen to what he told his children? You expect a man like that to go down on his knees and say, 'Bless me, Brother'? So he did what his pride allowed him to do, the poor khuy, and if you were any kind of psychologist you'd know he's been sorry for twenty-seven years without knowing it."

"Poppycock!" She jabbed at the fabric with the big needle and narrowly missed impaling her finger. "You might as well talk of reconciling Adolf Hitler or some other infamous monster."

"Look who strains the quality of mercy-Miss Scrupulosity, who wore out Amerie's ears and patience, the one who's afraid to trust anybody but herself!" Anatoly popped a handful of crisp pea pods into his mouth and chewed ferociously.

"We're not discussing me," she snapped, "we're talking about a man who instigated an interplanetary war, who was responsible for the deaths of four billion people and who nearly destroyed the Milieu because of his twisted ambition. How you could even think of offering him forgiveness-"

"Nu, the Prodigal Son would get a chilly welcome at your place!"

"Don't be ridiculous."

"What's ridiculous is a high-and-mighty pizda trying to put limits on the pity of God."

"If you think," she said coldly, "that you can avoid lack of charity by calling me vulgar names in Russian, let me remind you that any metapsychic can-"

The words died in her throat. Anatoly whirled around to see an apparition forming at the far end of the garden, where there was a gravelled drying yard. Not one but two black cerametal hulks materialized, their great mass pressing down the stones with an ominous crunching sound. Behind them stood a large computer console and a collection of instrumentation cabinets that occupied most of the yard.

"Bozhye moi!" whispered the priest.

The righthand suit of armour seemed to go momentarily transparent. Then Marc was standing outside it and the cerametal was us substantial as before.

"Good morning, Elizabeth. Brother."

The friar offered a lame grin and a wave. Elizabeth simply nodded.

Marc indicated the twin CE rigs and the auxiliaries. "The other suit is empty. This is by way of a demonstration, to show you of my progress in teleportation. I can't quite manage the power-modules yet."

"Is this-demonstration the only reason you asked to meet with me?" Elizabeth asked.

"Of course not." Marc flashed his smile. "I've brought you the adaptation of Brendan's program."

She gave a joyous shout, dropped the scapular and sewing kit, and ran toward the black-clad figure. Then she suddenly pulled up short and her arms fell back to her sides. Marc's smile faded.

Anatoly hoisted the basket of peas, grabbed the fallen scapular in passing, shot a disgusted "V'yperdka!" at Elizabeth, and stomped off to the kitchen.

Elizabeth flushed. She said to Marc, "I'm sorry if I appeared ungrateful."

"It's quite all right. I understand. And Anatoly is a churlish old peasant, isn't he? If it's any consolation to you, he's called me much worse names. It seems to be his customary spiritual counselling technique: the tough crust over the creamed ham pie ... He worries about you, Elizabeth."

The two of them sat down on the bench under the tree and Marc drew off his gloves. The pressure suit was completely dry and there was no trace of the usual brow wounds. His mind bore an impress of profound excitement.

Elizabeth said, "When we didn't hear from you after a week had gone by, I assumed the solution to the redactive problem had eluded you."