The Adversary - 4 (57 page)

"I'm sorry it took so long. I was distracted by other matters, and the adaptation proved to be quite a challenge. I wanted to shorten the time of the operation as well as spread it among members of a manageable metaconcert. This is what I did."

And he displayed the construct.

"But it's so simple!" she exclaimed. "The way you've elided the tedious backtracking and shoring manoeuvres ... and incorporated the operancy resultant into the ongoing redactive trend.

Why didn't I think of that? Of course, every great solution looks simple in retrospect, doesn't it? Marc-thank you. It's magnificent."

The elegant mental edifice seemed to hover between them.

She enfolded it in her memory with meticulous care, and then Marc rose.

"No doubt you noticed," he said, "that the metaconcert does not include you."

She looked away. "That's for the best."

"Are you so very anxious to return to the Milieu?"

His voice and mind carried a warning flavour, and she suddenly felt her heart go cold. "You're going to oppose us after all! You've found some way to keep the gate from opening!"

His coercion compelled her to face him. "I must."

Her mental voice cried: Anatoly I told you so ...

He had taken her by the hand, and before she realized what had happened they had walked together to the other end of the garden. The noon sun was harsh and the two suits of armour, enveloped in heat-shimmer, loomed facelessly over her.

She heard him say, "I could show you another world where you would be truly needed. An educative work that would never pall. Challenge without end."

"No, Marc." Her voice was steady. She pulled her hand away.

He said, "I'll win, one way or another. You must tell Anatoly that the temptation was too great."

"Yes, I know," she said.

He took a step backward into blackness and in a moment the gravelled yard was empty.

Jordan Kramer came onto Kyllikki's bridge with obvious reluctance, closed the door behind him, then gave a curt exclamation of surprise as he spotted Alex Manion standing behind the chart table, out of casual view from the quarterdeck.

"Dammit, Walter-what's he doing here?"

"We both want to talk to you, Jordy," Saastamoinen said.

"I should be back in the stern hold with Gerry. Marc will be back soon from Black Crag-"

"That's why we want to talk to you now. Time's running out."

He thumbed several studs of the autowinch unit. "Half a mo', though. Little headwind coming up and we're sheet-heavy.

Liable to drag anchor. One disadvantage of solar-collection sails."

Manion the docilator headpiece firmly in place, fixed intent eyes on Kramer and said, "Marc ... ordered ... batteries ... recharged ... max. He's ... ready ... to ... flit."

"Jesus, he can override the docilator!" Kramer cried.

"But it's hard on him," Walter said. "Let him out, Jordy.

You've got the keying sequence."

"Are you out of your mind?" the shocked physicist asked.

Manion said, "You , .. are ... if ... you ... think ...

Marc ... plans ... let ... kids ... live." He drew a shuddering breath. Sweat poured from his head and stained his light knit shirt. "Do ... you ... love ... Marge ... Becky ... more ... than ... Marc ... or ... not?"

"What have my children got to do with this?" Kramer had gone white. "Walter-what the hell are you two up to?"

"Not just us, Jordy," said the skipper. "The whole damn fo'c'sle gang. And now we want you and Gerry. Van Wyk doesn't have any kids, but you can pressure him into cooperating. With threats, if nothing else. Unhook Alex. He's not going to attempt coercion. A coerced mind won't fit a metaconcert."

"It's a goddam mutiny, isn't it?" Kramer said.

"Very astute deduction. Precipitated by Marc's order for the express battery charge before he went jumping this morning.

He's made up his mind to go after the kids and force them to submit-kill Hagen and Cloud if necessary, and any others that stand in the way. He'll take Mental Man's genes from the dead bodies of his own kids and coerce whatever survivors there are into going away with him to the Goal world. He only needs seven or eight live ones for an adequate reproductive pool."

"You can't know what his plans are!"

"The big power requirement can only be for one purpose, Jordy. Marc is ready to teleport the entire CE complex off Kyllikki, to some safe hiding place where he can make his moves without having to worry about our fizzling loyalty. Do you think he's been blind to the mood on shipboard during the last two weeks? The only ones who are still committed to Marc and Mental Man are Castellane, Warshaw, and Steinbrenner."

"You're not making me out a traitor," Kramer blustered.

Then his expression changed. "Do you mean to tell me that Ragnar Gathen is in on this conspiracy?"

Manion said, "Elaby ... was ... among ... first ... to ... accept ... my ... insights."

"And Ragnar's with us for the sake of his son's memory-and for Cloud," Walter said, "just as you have to join us for the sake of Becky and Marge. Marc's hatched some new scheme, I tell you. Boom-Boom Laroche came to him in the library studying the specs of the Guderian device. And he made a casual remark to Ragnar two nights ago about farsnooping the Firvulag at this tournament gathering upriver. Something to do with the gnomes making droll, inefficient efforts at metaconcert.

Do you realize what implications that could have?"

Manion said, "Eighty ... thousand ... Firvulag."

Kramer's eyes darted from one man to the other. "This is all pure speculation-"

Walter leaned closer, fury blazing from his weatherbeaten face. "Listen to me, Jordy! Once Marc teleports the CE equipment off the boat, we'll be helpless to stop him. We have to act now-put together a mind-meld strong enough to overpower Castellane and the other two, and then sabotage the powermodules."

"Trap ... Marc ... in ... grey ... limbo."

The pair of them stood back, quietly waiting. Kramer had his hand on the door latch. His teeth bit his lower lip and a whirlwind of conflicting thoughts seeped through undermined mental defences. "Let me think ... God, you can't expect me to make a decision like this right off the top of my head!" He tugged at the door. It remained firmly closed.

Alex Manion sang: What though the night may come too soon, We've years and years of afternoon!

"We need you, Jordy," Walter said. "You're a magnate, the last unit we need in the offensive combo. We can't hack it without you, and it's got to be done right away."

A farspoken thought impinged upon all three of their minds, a call from Gerry Van Wyk down in the stern hold, broadcast with typical sloppiness on the declamatory rather than the intimate mode: Jordy get down here man. Marc's at superficies.

"Well?" Walter said to Kramer. "We're ready to act the very next time he d-jumps. If you're with us."

Kramer took a deep breath. He came away from the door and stood in front of Alexis Manion. With a complex signal he keyed the docilator shutoff, then supported the surfacing mind until it was in full control of its faculties.

The bridge door opened by itself. Walter said, "Thanks, Jordy."

"Set it up," said Kramer, and hurried away.

Manion massaged his temples and blinked. He did not attempt to remove the headpiece and his eyes were as mild and unfocused as ever. "When it's safe," he said to Walter, "find out from Jordy when Marc plans his next excursion. I'll see that the others are ready."

Because the exhaust of the electroliser unit was outside the fivemetre diameter of the little sigma-shield, Tony Wayland and his fellow captives, Kalipin the Howler and Alice Greatorex, a middle-aged chemical engineer, could pass the time turning dysprosium chloride into the pure element. Outside the forcefield, the mob of Yotunag ogres gnashed their bloody tusks impotently and howled inaudible epithets.

"Eventually they'll get tired and go away," Kalipin predicted.

But he'd been saying that for nearly three hours now.

"When we miss the eighteen-hundred-hour sked, the King will send help," said Alice.

Tony gave a hollow laugh. "If the battery on this puny sigma doesn't go flat first! And with my luck-"

The timer on the electroliser pinged. Tony opened its small hatch and removed a pencil-sized cylinder of metal with a pair of forceps. Alice held out an open bottle. He slid the ingot inside, tossed a deox packet after it, and snapped on the lid.

Alice numbered the bottle and set it with the other four.

"You guys realize this is our two-hundred-fifty-eighth slug of Dy? Only fifty-five more of these little suckers and we can pack up and leave beautiful Fennoscandia and its quaint native peoples."

Outside, the devastated mining camp was dimly visible, as through a one-way mirror. A fresh group of deformed monsters came loping up from the direction of the diggings and joined their mates in whacking at the slippery surface of the force-field with granite hammer-axes.

"Persistent," Tony commented. "You think they could have finally done for Amathon and the other Tanu trapped in the tunnel?"

Kalipin screwed his illusory face into an expression of resignation. "My savage kinfolk usually stick to a job until they finish it." He emptied the dross from the electroliser and began charging it for the next batch. A faint tang of chlorine wafted about their imprisoning hemisphere before slowly diffusing out through the semipermeable field. "The feathers do resemble those on the crest of Lord Amathon's helmet. Coercer blue.

And since he was the stoutest mind among those cornered in the shaft, I fear for the worst. You might also note the fresh stains on the hammers of the newly arrived Yotunag."

"I'd rather not, actually," Tony said. He turned on the little electric furnace and sat back in his chair. Outside, flames licked up in one corner of the ruined lab shed. After a few minutes the display on the electroliser went dead. "Shit! There goes the power line."

"Now you can be glad the sigma's on battery," Alice said comfortably.

Kalipin watched the spreading fire with apprehension. "Will we remain safe inside this shelter?"

Alice said, "Safe as in your mommie's lap, little friend. When the lab floor burns through we'll settle down a bit, that's all."

The blaze was becoming quite brisk. Some of the Yotunag hurled burning brands at the frustrating sigma bubble, to no effect.

"Damn them," Tony muttered. "They can't see us. Why the devil do they keep up the siege? For all they know, we've skipped out from under."

"They farsense our presence," Kalipin sighed. "The forcefield is, as you noted, a rather puny one."

Alice fingered her golden torc with fatalistic good humour.

"But quite strong enough to keep us from farshouting out." She checked the small sigma generator that sat in the middle of the cluttered lab bench. "You guys interested in knowing how much bumbershoot juice we have left?"

"No," growled Tony.

"I think the fire's accelerating the drain. It's going to be one of those days, I'm afraid ... And I was really looking forward to going back to the Milieu and thumbing my nose at NAICE.

How about you, Wayland?"

Tony was unloading the electroliser, replacing the dysprosium salts in their canister. He said dully, "I hoped to live here in peace with my wife. She's in Nionel."

"Tough," Alice said. "Whoops-the floor's starting to go.

Hang on to the equipment."

The flames stretched high and the broken walls of the lab building crashed all around them. As the conflagration dwindled they had a clear view of the camp compound. The shuttle aircraft that had landed shortly before the Yotunag onslaught was a smouldering ruin. A few mutant bodies lay about, but there was, ominously, no sign of human or Tanu remains.

Alice cuddled the small sigma generator solicitously while Tony braced the electric furnace and Kalipin saw to the safety of the bottled dysprosium. The lab bench bucked as the floor subsided. Small tools and the chloride canister went flying. The chairs fell over and a taboret dumped. The monsters outside, sensing the disturbance, capered and yawped and smote the crumbling floorboards with their hammers to accelerate the process of disintegration; but the sigma held, and eventually those inside stood on a stabilized wooden cutout, surrounded by smoking debris.

"Fire doesn't seem to bother the ghoulies much," Alice remarked to Kalipin.

The Howler shrugged. "Their feet are tougher than horn, and it's said they commonly use wildfire to harry game here in the northern wastes. The Yotunag are the most terrible of our mutant brethren. Not even the Howlers of the Bohemian mountains are so cruel and intractable. These creatures laughed to scorn my Master Sugoll's invitation to join him at Nionel, and they even dared to devour certain Ingatherers who attempted to pass through their territory on the way south from the Amber Lakes. Oh-Yotunag are rotten through and through! No doubt about it. And as crafty as they are ferocious, as the stealth of their attack today proves. It's not easy for Howlers to go invisible, you know."

"Why the hell couldn't they leave us alone?" Tony whined.

"We weren't doing any harm."

Kalipin held up the handful of glass vials with the dysprosium.

"We were taking something from the earth. A commodity useless to them, it's true, but one that was nevertheless their property. Ilmary and Koblerin the Knocker and I tried to explain to the man Trevarthen that we should pay for the stolen minerals with gemstones valued by the Yotunag. But he refused to listen, even when John-Henry and Stosh were ambushed and killed.

His response, and that of King Aiken-Lugonn, was to mount more grey-torc guards with Milieu weapons around the camp.

Well-we saw what happened as a result of Trevarthen's bad judgment."

"He's past caring now," Tony said, "along with all the rest of them caught outside the sigma."

Alice studied the display on the force-field generator. "And so will we all be-in about ten minutes, rough reckoning."

The monsters raged, circling amidst the smoke. There were forty or fifty of them, waving bronze-bladed spears and hammeraxes with stone heads the size of bed pillows. Great glee was manifested when a squad of brutes laden with bulging leather bags came shuffling over from the area of the diggings. The bags, emptied on the ground, proved to be full of roasted refreshments for the battle-company. The Yotunag fell to with a will, from time to time flinging bones or other grisly leftovers at the sigma bubble. Tony and Alice turned green and Kalipin settled down to recommend his soul to Teah's mercy.