Tatja Grimm's World

Thirteen

The astronomer royal was all wet. At Bayfast the Waterfall lasted more than forty days: nearly a fifth of the year. For the last thirty-eight days and nights it had rained without pause. The city’s troughed streets were filled with swift-moving water. Behind all sounds was the rumbly hum of myriad droplets striking stone and wood and water. After four years, the astronomer royal was still not accustomed to the monsoon climate of the Continent. At the back of his mind was the irrational thought that when the rain stopped, Seraph might be washed from the sky.

Svir Hedrigs considered returning to his carriage. It wasn’t worth it; he was already too wet. By the Bayfast logic, if the rain is warm—why stay dry? With a mixture of irritation and envy, he watched the guardsmen on the pier. They appeared to enjoy being wet to the skin. They wore their black uniforms with a cockiness that said being soaked was the height of fashion.

His carriage was parked on the roadway at the root of the pier. Beyond the roadway were the naval warehouses, constructed of marble bricks and rock paste. The quarries on the inland cliffs seemed inexhaustible, and the Crown’s Men had used them to build one of the most beautiful warehouse districts in the world. Architects claimed that this part of the port could survive artillery attack and was absolutely nonflammable. Svir wasn’t so sure about the first claim, but he was certain that during the Waterfall no fire would start outside the warehouses. The pier had an inch of water on it even though it was more than ten feet above the bay.

Perhaps he should have stayed in the dryrooms of the keep. But as astronomer royal, he felt this was a job which could not be delegated. The fastboat they expected was to bring the latest reports from the Doomsday observatory, four thousand miles upcoast and more than twenty-nine thousand feet above sea level—above the monsoonal precipitation. During the Waterfall, the Doomsdaymen were the most important source of astronomical information the crown possessed. Svir’s job was to arrange such reports for Marget’s consideration. And since Marget really needed no help in the interpretation of astronomical data, the astronomer royal frequently felt superfluous. So it did his ego good to come down to the most restricted area in the naval district and welcome a fastboat that was—incidentally—from a war zone.

In fact, thought Svir as he glanced around, he was the highest-ranking officer in the area. The only other first-level officer was a vice-admiral from naval intelligence. The broad band on Svir’s sleeve identified him as a high minister. He generally tried to conceal the tiny crown above that. The crown indicated he was an appointee rather than a member of the civil service.

The astronomer royal squished unhappily across the pier, toward the admiral. The navy woman saluted. “Good day, m’lord.” Svir suppressed some sarcasm as he noticed there was no humor in the admiral’s blue eyes. “I was told the fastboat would arrive by twenty-five hours.”

“That’s right, sir. But unless the wind is steady, the hydrofoils are useless and the boat is as slow as any other.”

Svir didn’t point out that, except during the Turnabouts, the Monsoonal Drag always blew right for high-speed travel along the coast. The admiral seemed worried enough. Svir casually covered the crown on his left sleeve with his right hand. Four years ago, who would have guessed that one day the most powerful people in the most powerful country in the world would address him as their superior? Even more fantastic, who would have guessed that he would be married to someone as wonderful as Coronadas Ascuasenya? Ever since that night in Krirsarque, his life had been like the story of the Little Sailmaker: success piled upon fantastic success.

But he did not delude himself. He was riding the bow wave of the most spectacular success story in the history of the human race: the career of Tatja Grimm, aka Marget of Sandros, Queen of Crownesse. Tatja’s rise to power had been miraculous, and her progress since even more so. Many of her projects seemed pointless, extravagant, half-witted. But a half-wit she was not. For every person who despised her, there were now three who worshiped her. And that ratio was improving. Her fastboat program had seemed ridiculous. Who wants to know what’s happening on the other side of the world within twenty days of the event? But that program had already repaid itself five times over. With a comparatively instantaneous picture of the world’s markets, Crownesse merchants came close to their wildest dreams of avarice. Such success gave people an excuse to overlook her other projects. As far as Svir knew, there were only two people besides Tatja who knew her ultimate purpose—and he was one of those two. He often thought his present post was pay for his silence. Marget was merciful.

Svir glanced at the admiral, and wondered what her explanation of the Marget Mystery might be. The officer was staring across the bay at the inland cliffs. On the ridge line stood the signaling mosaic that relayed messages from the seaward cliffs: the Somnai. Through the rain, Svir could barely see the shifting patterns on the mosaic. “That’s it, sir!” the admiral said. “The Somnai batteries have spotted the fastboat… It’s entering the bay right now.” Her relief was plain. The expedition sent to put down the Picchiu rebellion had been lightly equipped. It had been Marget’s idea to use fastboats to transport two thousand troops for a surprise pincer attack in cooperation with the Loyalists. This insurrection was the only blot on the queen’s record. Forty days earlier, fastboats from the north reported rumors claiming Marget was an impostor and that her accession had been accomplished by fraud. This claim was especially disturbing because it was true. Four years had passed since the accession, and except for the deposed Tar Benesh, no one had protested before (though Svir suspected that the highest members of the bureaucracy guessed the truth). Then the rumors blossomed into armed insurrection. Marget’s shock troops had departed just ten days ago. The returning fastboat would bring news of the battle as well as the astronomical reports that Svir was interested in.

A half-hour passed. The fastboat appeared in the rain-grayed distance. The bay was comparatively windless, and the boat’s crew was rowing it slowly toward the pier.

Svir shook his sleeves, hoping to free the sticky linen from his skin. He had had about enough of feeling like a drowned rat. He squinted, trying to get a clearer view of the fastboat. Its boom masts were in the vertical position and its sails were reefed, but there was something strange about it, nevertheless. Then he realized that the boat’s port side had only three masts while the starboard had four. He could see the stub of the amputated boom still hanging in the extended position. The boat listed slightly to port.

He pointed to the boat. “Admiral, that boat’s been shot up.”

The old woman stared for a few seconds. Then she glanced back at the astronomer royal, noticed the crown on Svir’s sleeve. “So it has.” Apparently the admiral reserved “sir” and “m’lord” for her real superiors: civil service people. She turned and walked quickly away, toward the end of the pier. Svir followed.

There were two large holes in the fastboats hull, barely above the water line. A suspicious brown stain covered portions of the foredeck. The Guardsmen made way for Svir as he walked to the edge of the pier. Now he was only a yard from the little craft. A sickly smell came from below-decks. He looked at the sailors.

They were busy making the boat secure. They moved quickly, efficiently, but their faces were strained and their eyes fixed.

Finally the main hatch opened and the commanding officer appeared on deck. His uniform was as sharp as fatigues ever are, but his arm was in a sling and the left side of his face was a smear of medicant and blood. Following close behind him came a sailor carrying the strongbox that was the fastboat’s cargo: the reports from upcoast, from the war zone.

Svir felt a bit nauseated. He knelt to give the wounded man a hand up. The fellow saw the gray band on his sleeve, came to attention, and saluted.

“Lieutenant Mori reports return Fastboat One Nineteen, m’lord,” he recited.

“Gods, man, what happened?” Behind him, Svir felt the admiral trying to maneuver him away from the edge of the pier. High minister or not, Svir’s question was a substantial breach of protocol—if not security. But the wounded Lieutenant Mori was too exhausted to notice much beyond the rank on Svir’s sleeve.

“The Rebels have artillery, sir. I don’t know how. They wiped out our main force in half a day. My recon group followed the Rebels into the Doomsday area. They fought the Loyalists at Kotta-svo-Picchiu. The city was razed. We left then. Apparently they saw us. Overtook us in one of our own fastboats.”

The admiral gasped, and Svir could imagine her surprise. Artillery? Reliable, accurate artillery? So the Crownesse military no longer had a monopoly on the ultimate weapon.

But the admiral was shocked by the wrong thing. Kotta-svo-Picchiu had housed the second-largest telescope in the world. The insolent Doomsdaymen often insisted that the queen use the Kotta Eye for her projects, rather than the High Eye at the top of Heavensgate Mountain. Marget was not going to be happy about this turn of events.

Fourteen

Svir leaned forward, delighted by the feel of a dry shirt sliding across his back. Thank goodness these ministerial conferences were held in a dryroom—at least the Bayfastlings wanted their maps and documents kept dry. The room was deep within the Crown Keep. Along the walls were racks of maps and overlays—one of Marget’s innovations. The ten top ministers of Crownesse sat at the table. All wore plain black uniforms. Sometimes Svir thought these bureaucrats were ostentatious in their worship of the utilitarian. Only once in a generation did they all wear their dress uniforms.

Tatja Grimm stood at the head of the table, a pointer in her hand. As Queen of Crownesse she was expected to dress lavishly at all times, but at cabinet meetings she could get away with a jeweled semiskirt and silk blouse, her red hair combed smoothly over her shoulders. The ruler of half the civilized world appeared to be around thirty years old. Svir knew that was due to artful makeup. In fact, she was not much past twenty, and in some ways still younger than that.

The report from upcoast had seriously disturbed her, though Svir might be the only minister who saw this. When she was truly upset, she often lost her ability to gauge the understanding of her audience; sometimes her speech became so elliptical only a mind reader could follow. Other times—as in the present case—she went to great lengths to explain the obvious. At the moment she was lecturing them about the Upcoast situation map. It showed the Continent stretching west and northward from Bay-fast. The four-thousand-mile-long Doomsday Mountain Range separated a narrow coastal strip from the Interior. That coastal strip was the breadbasket of Crownesse. Now the northernmost province, Picchiu, had revolted against the crown.

“Fortunately, Sfierro Province remained loyal to our rule, and has raised a large army to oppose the Insurrectionists. Ten days ago we sent two thousand troops to land north of the Picchiui—here.” She tapped the pointer on a spot some ten miles south of Kotta-svo-Picchiu, at the border of the Doomsday Province. “Doomsday refused to supply troops,” she grimaced, “but we hoped to trap the Insurrectionists between our well-trained troops on the north, and the Sfierranyii on the south.

“Gentlemen, we were stomped. Our so-called shock troops were decimated. If not for the ‘undisciplined’ Sfierranyii, the Insurrectionists would have it all now. Instead, the Loyalists chased the Rebels north, to the Picchiu River. In the most recent battle we know of, Kotta-svo-Picchiu was destroyed. We are now fighting a war on the very borders of Doomsday Province.

“In its way, this is as bad for us as if the Picchiui had been victorious. The Doomsdaymen need little excuse to declare their independence of us. Their lands are beyond the effective range of our military forces. The destruction of Kotta-svo-Picchiu—a Doomsday city, despite its name—gives them excuse. The forty-inch telescope just outside the city was destroyed.” She took a deep breath. “Gentles, you know I have my … quirks. One of them is a profound love for things astronomical. I needed that telescope. I also need the good will of the Doomsdaymen to give me access to their other telescope—the High Eye. We must not lose the Doomsday area.” She looked at the bureaucrats, and Svir knew she saw the signs of amusement and relief on the ministers’ faces. Doomsday Province was important to them for its metals production, not its astrological/astronomical cult. It was good news that her commands did not conflict with national interest. The bureaucrats were loyal, but some monarchs had set the nation back years with fanatical hobbies. It was nice to have a queen with innocuous interests. Tatja smiled back at them, and turned to the Minister of Information. “All right, Wechsler, what do your spies say?”

Haarm Wechsler stood and moved to the head of the table. Wechsler barely topped five feet, and weighed not more than one hundred pounds. But as Minister of Information, he was a man with a long lever; he controlled the most extensive espionage operations in history. He bowed spastically to Tatja. “Thank you, Marget. I’ve reviewed the reports Lieutenant Mori brought from my agents Upcoast. They mosaic an interesting picture. All we’ve known till now is that the Picchiul Assembly simply passed a resolution declaring that Your Majesty—your pardon—achieved power through fraud. This was so obviously ridiculous that we ignored it—until the assembly further resolved to sever its connections with what it claimed was an unlawful government here in Bayfast. Now my agents report this is all the work of one Oktar Profirio. Profirio is an elusive individual—and a preternaturally talented one. He is a member of the Provincial Assembly—an appointee, replacing a member who died last year. That appointment was on, uh, 17 Summer 936. Before that date he had no fame whatsoever.” Wechsler set his notes on the table and looked about the room impressively. “In fact, I suspect the name is an alias. Though Profirio sounds like an Upcoast name, there is no clan in Picchiu which bears it.”

Tatja interrupted. “It could indeed be an alias, Minister Wechsler. But about thirty years ago a family of poor nobles named Profirchte moved from the Tsanart Islands to Picchiu. I understand they changed their name to Profirio.”

The Minister of Information flushed. It was well known that he had the ego (and raw talent) of ten. Rarely was he bested. It was this occasional display of omniscience that more than anything else kept the ministers of Crownesse personally loyal to Tatja Grimm.

“Urn, yes, Marget, I was not aware of that. However, and be that as it may,” he rushed ahead, “Oktar Profirio is the behind the Rebel use of artillery. He designed accurate and stable gun tubes. Your Majesty is aware that, of all things, this is what makes artillery the deadly weapon it is. It took us nearly half a century to develop such tubes. Profirio achieved the same in less than half a year. He is either a magician or a defector from our own military. Personally, I have never believed in magicians.” No one laughed. “The troops we sent Upcoast were lightly armed—no art’ry, no cavalry, no weapons heavier than the standard crossbow. It is no surprise that they were smashed, now that we know the enemy’s advantage. Profirio’s men may be provincial rabble, but his guns are damn accurate.”

“Fortunately, the Loyalists have some artillery, too. The most recent reports are from my Picchiul agents; they aren’t too specific about the Sfierranyii. Apparently the Loyalists managed to steal some of Profirio’s guns. Without this theft, the perfidious Profirio would now control all Picchiu Province. Instead, the Loyalists chased him north, to Kotta-svo-Picchiu. The Rebel command took refuge in rooms beneath the observatory. Loyalist fire destroyed that complex, and parts of the city. We know Profirio escaped with a large part of his army—”

“Excuse me, Minister Wechsler,” said Svir.

“Certainly. Don’t hesitate to ask your question, my man.”

Svir ignored Wechsler’s tone. “About the men who report from some vantage point on the accuracy of the artillery fire—”

“You’re thinking of the Forward Art’ry Observators.”

“Yes, that’s who I mean. With all this rain, how can they report back to the artillery batteries with fire control directions? I mean, isn’t there some new communication technique involved here?”

Wechsler stared for a moment; obviously, the question hadn’t occurred to him. Without FAOs, artillery was blind, and therefore useless. Then he saw the answer and smiled. “I fear you have been studying the stars so long, you’ve forgotten the state of things on the ground. At the fortieth parallel, the latitude of Kotta-svo-Picchiu, there are a number of clear days, even during the Waterfall. So heliographs may be used efficiently and—”

“Besides,” spoke Tatja as she stood up, “we’re talking about the foothills of the Doomsday range. That’s rugged country. If the Sfierranyii art’ry were based on the highlands south of the river, the gunmen would be in line of sight of Kotta-svo-Picchiu—they wouldn’t need Forward Observators.” She walked swiftly to the head of the table and motioned Haarm Wechsler to be seated. Her comment had an absentminded tone.

Usually Tatja let cabinet meetings drag on and on, till the ministers actually thought the plans decided upon were their own. But when she was truly impatient, she would let the ministers talk for a bit, then break in and tell them—in great detail—how to do their jobs. This was exactly what she did now. “I think we have the facts. You’ve seen the other reports that the fastboat brought back. Through no fault of your own, we were smashed. According to the reports, Profirio still has thirteen thousand men and two hundred gun tubes of six-inch caliber. Apparently the Sfierranyii have something like eight thousand men and perhaps one hundred and fifty gun tubes. North of Profirio are the uncommitted Doomsdaymen.

“We’ve three goals: to prevent the destruction of any more astronomical artifacts, to destroy Profirio’s army, and to capture Oktar Profirio himself.” There was uneasy shifting among her audience; the high ministers saw no particular necessity for the first and third.

“Now, here is how we will accomplish these goals.” She sat down and spoke more rapidly and with less inflection. “In four or five days the Waterfall will end, and we will be in the Turnabout. Before that happens we will dispatch every fastboat in our command Upcoast. I will accompany the expedition.” Around the table, Svir saw the incredulous faces; the Crown never went on military expeditions. “We won’t bother with ships of the line. They’re too slow and would be caught in the Turnabout. I figure we can transport something like fifteen thousand men with supporting equipment and art’ry by fastboat alone. This time we won’t try a pincers. We’ll land on the Loyalist side of the lines and depend on the mountains and the Doomsdaymen to keep the enemy from retreating further north.

“Here is the order of operations: the 336th and 403rd Infantry Battle Groups will compose the landing force, with the direct support of the 25th and 50th Art’ry Batteries. At present the following fastboats are available: Five to Eight, Eleven, Thirteen, Seventeen to Thirty-five …” The high ministers recovered from their shock and began writing as fast as they were able; stenographers were barred from cabinet meetings. Once before, Marget had rattled off a battle plan like this. The awful thing was that no matter how off-the-cuff her comments seemed, they were consistent with the facts. Marget knew her military establishment like no leader in history. Her orders extended to the third level of organization. It would have taken the military staffs of the various services ten days of coordinated planning to produce the order she was creating now.

The first time this happened, there had been audible snickers from the ministers. They had repeatedly stopped and questioned her. That had been the only time Svir had seen Tatja enraged. Her outburst had equaled the tantrums attributed to the Mad Kings of the sixth and seventh centuries; several ministers had reverted to common status after that incident. Experience is a good teacher, and Tatja’s plans worked, so this time no one interrupted with questions or suggestions. It was probably the most efficient and one-sided committee meeting in history. Tatja spoke for half an hour.

Finally she stopped. The ministers looked at their notes, and saw with glazed relief that the order was complete. She smiled pleasantly and asked, “Are there any questions?” There was an exhausted chorus of “No” from around the table. It would be several hours before they or their aides could devise any questions. “Very well,” said Tatja, “I will be available to answer any questions that do occur to you. If there is to be a deviation from this plan, I want to hear of it immediately. With this matter, I don’t believe in delegating decisions. It’s another of my … quirks. I expect to be on my way by the night wake period on the third. I’ll see you then, if not earlier.”

It was a dismissal. Svir followed the others toward the door. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. The plan did not require his services. He had rather enjoyed watching the other ministers sweat a little, especially Wechsler. On the other hand, it all bolstered his suspicions that his post was a sop for his silence. With a great show of courtesy he offered Haarm Wechsler the door. Wechsler grunted and walked out. Just then Tatja spoke. “Stay a minute, Svir.” From the corner of his eye, Svir saw Wechsler’s retreating back stiffen at these words. He could imagine the other’s suspicion and puzzlement.

When the others were gone and the door shut, Tatja spoke again. “Have a seat, Svir. I didn’t include you in my order of operations because your duties will depend on factors I can’t predict, while the military situation will probably work according to plan—though not the plan I just gave our friends.” Svir sat back in the chair, rather enjoying being the confidant of the most powerful person in the world. “I have a feeling that we are going to be dealing with the Doomsdaymen. Ostensibly we needed their support in order to keep this Profirio from retreating further north. As an astronomer, you’re the only cabinet member who can speak to their priests with sympathy. And I know they respect your work in astrometry.”

“But you would be just as competent to handle them.”

“Sure, and I’m competent to do anything my cabinet ministers can do. But there’s only one of me. During the next few days, there will be times when my actions are so contrary to the interests of Crownesse that the ministers will balk. Since the Mad Kings, the civil service has found ways of defending itself against the arbitrary ruler—and still maintain a tradition of selfless loyalty to the crown.

“There are only three people I really trust. You and Cor are two of them. You know enough of my motives to go along with my plans even when they seem absurd to my faithful ministers.” She gave a lopsided smile. “Cor’s going to have to take a vacation from her publishing business. I want you two to handle those chores I don’t have the time for—and which the others might… misunderstand.”

Ugh. This was beginning to sound like old times. Still, her frankness was a welcome change. It was nice to be on the inside of a conspiracy for once.

She sat back in her chair. Svir had seen this change before, but it always seemed spectacular to him. At one moment she was taut, intense, directing a mesh of plans that stretched across the planet and beyond. Then, in an instant, she was a relaxed, seductive woman.

“I only wish Ked Maccioso were here too. He has most of your qualifications—and he’s a native of Picchiu. By now he’s probably gotten over the way I used him and the barge.” The Tarulle company had received the Bayfast Fantasie collection and much more when Tatja had come into power.

She crossed her long, smooth legs, and leaned back. Her eyes were half-closed, her lips parted in a dreamy smile. Her figure was slender compared to four years ago—but both he and Cor agreed that these curves were her curves. Puberty had come late and lasted long, but Tatja Grimm was truly a young woman now, perhaps the equivalent of a fifteen-year-old. Svir felt sudden guilt to be here and watching and … attracted. He wanted so much to go to her, put his arms around her—all the more because he was sure that she wasn’t pretending, that in fact she had forgotten his presence. He hunted desperately for something to break the spell.

Then he guessed the cause of her sudden mood. “You really think Wechsler’s ‘Perfidious Profirio’ is a godling in disguise?”

“Mmmhmm… There’s a good chance. He could be a defector from our own art’ry labs, but I think Haarm Wechsler’s spies would have discovered that. If he’s not a defector, then he’s probably of my—caliber. There is no straightforward way to make practical artillery pieces from nonmetallics. A rather complete grasp of ceramic and impregnation chemistry is required. Even then, several years of trial-and-error experimentation are needed unless you use optimization techniques that I’ve never bothered to write up. And if Profirio has built all these gun tubes as fast as it seems, then he’s using factory schemes I’ve never seen before. If only he is what he seems.” A frown crossed her face, and her business personality nearly surfaced.

Svir got up and moved toward the door. The fact that her desire was not directed at him had no effect on his desire for her. He vaguely wondered what violence would greet an advance. And that thought made him feel even more guilty. If he left now perhaps he could forget the feeling.

As he reached the door, he remembered the folder he was carrying. Damn. His escape must be delayed a few moments. He returned and set the folder on the table before Tatja. “Marget”—he used the official name-of-address—“here are the latest reports from the High Eye.”

Her eyes opened wide, and her back straightened with a little start. She didn’t seem irritated at the interruption, just a little bewildered, as if she had been awakened. “Uh, oh yes. Thanks.”

He turned to go. “Stick around, Svir. You can have these back.” Tatja read the reports faster than he could browse light fiction. She paused only at the last sheet. Svir remembered the report. It was one of the most peculiar he had seen in a long time. He wondered what her reaction would be. He looked over her shoulder. There were the typical salutations which, in the case of the Doomsday astronomers, had to be sarcasm. The Doomsdaymen had always resented the crown, submitting only because that power could protect them from nearer enemies. They hadn’t counted on the rise of Tatja Grimm, who exercised an unwelcome interest in all things astronomical, and who required quarterly reports. At first they had patronizingly referred her to the standard journals, where a few of their results appeared. Even now that they sent her complete reports, Svir felt they did it with an air of condescension. The report began:

(Svir winced at this offhand reference to what must have been one of the most tortuous projects in the history of astronomy. He could scarcely bear to imagine sitting in the cold and rarified air, hours at a time—watching for a barely visible twinkle light-years away. The Doomsday astronomers were famed for this sort of sadomasochism.)

Tatja stared at the report for a full ten seconds. When it came, her laughter was explosive. She doubled up in her chair and her face became red. Finally she sat up and wiped tears from her eyes. “Talk about ‘words writ large upon the sky,’ ” she gasped.

Svir picked up the report and looked at it once more. He could guess what she meant by that remark, but he couldn’t see how the lights described could be a message. It certainly was an abnormal sequence, but did she think that every unexplained phenomenon was evidence of extraplanetary intelligence?

She saw his look. “You mean you don’t see it?”

He donned pedant’s armor. “With only the information in this report, I don’t. Perhaps you’re drawing on information I don’t have.”

“Oh, I suppose that’s possible,” she said slowly. “But you are an astronomer. At least that’s what you keep telling me. Perhaps you aren’t aware of the key facts necessary to solve this puzzle: there are four quarters to a year, fifty-five days to a quarter, forty hours to a day, sixty minutes to an hour, and sixty seconds to a minute. Light travels at one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second, and what’s more—” she pretended to strain after some subtle detail “—oh yes, the world revolves about the sun at a distance of ninety-two million miles, and not vice versa—as you may have been led to believe. Got all that?”

“Urk.” Svir felt his face grow hot; he guessed the point. And he a parallax astronomer! “I’ll give it another look,” he said, backing toward the door.

Fifteen

Svir was very suspicious of skoats. They were used mainly as draft animals in the Chainpearls. The fat brown quadrupeds were fine for pulling wagons, but now he was riding one! He watched the brown neck and pointed ears warily. Cor claimed this one was gentle; he was not convinced. The animal had the unsettling habit of bringing its head around and taking a so-called playful nip at his legs. And even if the beast was a great humanitarian, the ride was torture. His rear must be one big bruise. His legs ached from being splayed over the tubby animal’s back. What’s more, the skoat smelled, and its acrid sweat mixed itchily with his own.

He lurched forward as the skoat started downhill. The Crown’s Men were on a wide, paved road. It was almost ten feet across, the second-best highway in this part of the Continent. But they were well into the highlands south of the Picchiu River, and the road switched back and forth more miles than it went forward. Now their battle group was headed into a narrow valley. Almost two hundred feet below, he could see the stream that had—over millennia—gouged this channel through the limestone. As they descended, the sunlight filtered through progressively thicker layers of leaves until they rode through green twilight. It was cool and pleasant. The air moved slowly and was laden with the musty smell of hundreds of years of decomposing leaves. This scent was strange to Svir, who had never seen a deciduous tree before.

The tranquillity of the scene barely registered over his fatigue.

He crossed the stone bridge at the bottom of the valley, then twisted in his saddle and looked back. Where was everyone? Only one gun carriage behind him was visible, yet he heard the creaking of carriage wheels, the snorts and clatter of a thousand skoats. As his mount climbed the north side of the valley, he finally saw them. The splotch camouflage rendered the army virtually invisible in dense foliage, the wagons’ outlines like heat shimmers above a fire.

There was a louder clatter, and Svir saw a rider overtaking him. Cor. She urged her animal up the slope with baby talk and lots of enthusiasm. He couldn’t get over the fact that she was actually fond of the creatures—even thought she could talk to them. He put her superior riding ability to the fact that she had grown up on the Llerenitos, where skoats were popular.

“Hi, Cor,” he said. He leaned out to touch her shoulder. Kissing a girl on skoatback is virtually impossible.

Cor held his hand for a moment. Svir continued, “I thought you were supposed to stay in Marget’s wagon with Ancho.” Cor had been under strict orders to remain in the wagon, but he was happy she’d chosen to mutiny.

She retorted, “No, she tells me to stay with Ancho, period. And if you can’t see that’s what I’m doing, then perhaps I’ll take up some other male.” Svir looked more closely and saw that there was a bulge under her blouse where no bulge should be. A second later, brown eyes and a pair of pointed ears pushed out of that bulge.

“Besides,” said Cor, “we wanted to get some exercise, and be with you.”

“Um,” Svir felt a little jealous. No doubt she’d had some sleep this afternoon. The expedition from Crownesse had landed in Picchiu Province just after sunrise—nearly twenty-five hours ago. It had taken many hours to get equipment, troops, and skoats off the fastboats. They—Tatja and her generals—had decided to ride straight through the afternoon without sleep: in these longitudes there was no Seraph to twilight the night. The sun was still five hours above the horizon. Svir wondered whether he could hold out till dark. He was falling asleep in his saddle, a feat he would have sworn impossible just ten hours earlier. How the infantrymen kept going he couldn’t guess.

But the crown’s strategy was sound. Soon they would meet the Loyalists—and incidentally come under Rebel art’ry fire. How exciting.

Now they were moving up a gentle slope. The crest was about four hundred yards away. The tree cover was light, but there was still shade. To the east he saw the foothills of the Doomsday Range, green and gray. Beyond them, so far away and yet so clear against the sky, stood the great peaks of the range. On He’gate, the highest one, was the Doomsday observatory. The view brought him wide awake.

“Svir, look up front.” There were riders clumped together. Svir squinted. It was Tatja and the colonel in charge of point security. At least it was the colonel’s skoat. But what was that officer doing this far back? They were talking to someone on the ground. The dismounted fellow was suited in maroon, and wore a strangely plumed hat. A Loyalist.

The colonel wheeled and waved to the troops. The command was immediately translated by the sergeant driving the nearest team of art’ry skoats. “Hard hats!” the little sergeant shouted as she donned her own. Svir reluctantly reached for his own reinforced-web-plastic helmet, set it on his head, and fastened the chin strap. He had once thought the head armor looked rather dashing; well, everyone makes mistakes.

Around them, the column was changing into an extended rank, about fifty yards from the crest of the hill. This would take a while. He and Cor dismounted. Heaven!

Two hours later, they were back in the saddle. The expedition’s fifteen thousand troopers were assembled. For two miles in either direction the irregular line of skoats, guns, and men stood waiting to plunge into the field of enemy observation.

A whistle sounded. The army surged over the crest. Ahead of them the road descended gently, then rose toward a second ridge two or three miles away. Miles beyond the second, he could see another. But the peaceful scenery extended just four hundred yards to their front. Beyond that, the green was broken by craters and patches of blackened earth. On the far hill, a stretch of burnt trees stood like monstrous black mold. The usually pleasant smell of charred wood came strongly across the valley. Svir looked at his wife. She was gently talking her skoat forward. Ancho had disappeared inside her blouse.

The army descended rapidly, and Svir found himself praying they could escape enemy observation and gain the blackened hillside. Soon they would be out of sight to anyone beyond the next hill.

Then the sky exploded. Two hundred yards to the front, a line of orange-red fireballs hung forty feet in the air. A second later Svir’s head was snapped back and his helmet clanged. He reached up and felt a quarter-inch shrapnel fragment imbedded in his helmet. He watched glassy-eyed as the fireballs become innocent black puffs of smoke and blew away. What would it be like when the enemy got the range and timing?

The army broke into squares, one battle group forward, the next back, so as to avoid complete catastrophe if the curtain of fire ever came on target.

The corrected fire was thirty seconds coming. The nearest burst was high explosive, and it made the shrapnel sound like a popped paper bag. He felt the blow through his whole body. His skoat staggered to its knees. Svir was tossed backwards, out of the saddle. He grabbed air, his mind filled with visions of landing on the ground and being trampled. Then his mount surged to its feet and he found himself on its rear, behind the saddle. He scrambled forward as the animal broke into a gallop.

Cor! He looked wildly around and saw her riding out of the smoke. Her lower face was covered with blood. She came abreast of him and shouted, “You hurt bad?”

“That’s what I was going to ask you,” he shouted back. His jaw was bloody, too. They both had nosebleeds. “Come on.” They were falling behind their battle group. They swerved around a brushfire and regained their positions. The formation finally reached the bottom of the valley, where they would be hidden from enemy observation. The air cleared, and Svir no longer choked on dust and smoke. At their far right flank an impact-fused H.E. shell went off next to an art’ry piece. Svir watched in amazement as the gun tube rose high in the air.

They learned later that casualties had been light, that the whole affair lasted less than fifteen minutes.

His ears buzzed from the punishment they had received, and all sound came muffled. The land was black except for flickering halos of flame around tree skeletons. There was blue sky somewhere above the haze. They were now eighty yards from the crest. Shells still burst, but the enemy’s aim, at least for Svir’s battle group, was wildly inaccurate. Of the other battle groups, he could not be so sure. The ridgeline was cut by numerous defiles that made it hard to see cross-slope. The group’s forward motion ceased. Supply vehicles moved to the guns they were to feed. The air was filled with the sounds of whining skoats, creaking wagons, shouting men. These last were not confused sounds, but the efficient direction of officers who knew exactly what they wanted and were working with well-trained troops.

The group was preparing for art’ry battle. A gun carriage pulled up near Svir and Cor. The driver leaped down and raced to the front of her skoats. She unfastened their harnesses and led them away from the piece. The gunmen on top of the carriage moved just as efficiently. They were performing a much-practiced task, and there was no talk or wasted motion. Two of them unlashed the weapon as the other two passed a six-inch shell up from the supply wagon. Infantrymen ran past, their crossbows at port arms. Svir couldn’t imagine how they could run after the long day’s march, but the troopers were really moving. In seconds, they were gone in the smoke. Evidently that smoke was not due to enemy action—Svir could hear grenades popping. He looked back at the gunmen. The piece was loaded and the heavy plastic breach closed. A courier from the FAOs called out fire control directions. The greenish barrel was cranked up. Through the haze, Svir could see other gun carriages, and hear their breeches being slammed shut. The enemy was about to get a devastating reply. Then came a pause. The crown’s war machine awaited the command that would set it in motion.

Three minutes passed, and still no action. Through the buzzing in his ears, he heard Cor say something. He turned to her. “What’s that?”

“I ask, where are the Sfierranyii Loyalists?”

A good question. Everyone here wore Crown camouflage. The only provincial he’d seen all afternoon was the one talking to Tatja and the point colonel. What sort of trap … he looked around, half expecting to see enemy bowmen spring from hidey-holes.

Just then, an officer rode down the line, shouting indistinct commands. The gunmen looked up in surprise, then began unloading their weapons. As they did, the forward infantrymen came back down the hill. Svir gaped. This reminded him of stories about recruits commanding training units. Apparently, the people at the top could not make up their minds.

The troops reformed and resumed their march—though now they were moving east, parallel to the ridgeline. Svir sighed and urged his animal forward. It was at least an hour till sunset, and at this latitude twilight would last three hours.

He sidled toward the nearest gun carriage and called to the driver. “What’s the story?” The woman looked down at him—his camouflage bore no rank insignia. Her answer was an obscenity, roughly equivalent to “We were shafted.”

He fell back and walked beside a carriage. The gunman sitting there was more talkative. “That’s right. We got it up to here.” He motioned. “There’s only one decent reason for racing over that hill in daylight, and that’s to get our pieces in range and give the enemy a taste of our rock. If we weren’t going to engage, we should’ve stayed back there—” he waved at the hill to the south “—until dark, and then come across. Instead we lost men—for nothing!” The gunman seemed to realize he might be talking to someone in authority. “Somebody made a stupid mistake,” he finished.

Svir found himself nodding. Perhaps Tatja was out of action, but the Crownesse generals themselves were competent men. That left provincial treachery the most likely cause of the debacle.

Behind them, the sun sent rose and orange across the sky. The high peaks of the Doomsday Range stood bright, the world’s ragged edge. They left the burning land, and soon there was only the smell of grass and living trees. If Svir hadn’t been in the saddle for most of the last twenty hours, he might have enjoyed the scene. He slumped forward, trying to keep his balance in the waves of sleep that swept stronger and stronger over him. Cor rode beside him; he was thankful she didn’t try to make cheerful conversation.

The sky was dark now. Only the Doomsday peaks were still in daylight. They formed a jagged red band, hanging in limbo above the darkened, nearer lands. Somehow he had missed the sunset…

Then Cor was pushing at his shoulder, calling to him. He sat up and looked about. Twilight was nearly past. There were lots of stars, but Seraph’s familiar light was missing. “We’re here,” Cor said.

At first glance the forest around them seemed uninhabited. Then he saw the tents hidden in the brush. Further away he could hear the grunchunch of browsing skoats. The Crown’s Men had finally reached the Loyalists. Svir slipped from his saddle and leaned against the skoat. A shadow approached.

“Svo keechoritte bignioru?” it asked.

Svir was about to croak, “Sagneori Sfierro,” (I don’t speak Sfierro) when Cor cut in with, “Attrupa bignoro chispuer, sfiorgo malmu.” Sfierro was quite close to Cor’s native Llereno.

“Traeche ke,” the other said, and led them some hundred paces into the brush. The Sfierranyi stopped, pointed to an open space, and gabbled something more. “He says we can put our tent up here,” Cor said. Svir felt like crying. At this point he could scarcely unpack his skoat. The Sfierranyi solved that problem by unhitching the pack and dropping it to the ground. Then he grabbed the skoats’ reins and led them away.

Svir looked stupidly at the gray patch that was the folded tent. Itchybites buzzed in the moist, cool air. The tiny bastards would feed well tonight. He fell to his knees and tried to unfasten the tent buckles. Cor joined him. Soon they had the tent spread flat on the ground. He slipped the center pole through the tent fabric and hoisted it. Cor crawled inside and set the floor rods.

Then they were both inside. The ground seemed so soft. He reached for Cor, and she came easily into his arms. His kiss became a snore and he was asleep.

Cor grinned in the darkness. “This is no good, friend. Tomorrow, you get more sleep during the day.”

Sixteen

Listen, you pack of traitors. You cost us thirty-five men and three art’ry pieces this afternoon. We’re going to have an explanation or we’re going to have your heads!” In the flickering torchlight, Haarm Wechsler’s face was even paler than usual. “For the last two hours you’ve led us a merry chase all over this camp. But now we’ve found you.” He stopped and stood a little taller. The guardsmen behind him came to attention. “Now you can answer for your infidelity to Marget herself.”

Everyone in the room—Provincial and Bayfastling—came to his feet. Tatja entered the Sfierranyil command tent and looked around. Close behind her came three general officers. Her lips parted in a faint smile and she murmured to Wechsler, “Got’em softened up, Haarm?” She advanced to the table and sat down. “Please be seated, gentles.” Behind her, the Crownesse people uneasily took their seats. On the other side of the table the Sfierranyil commanders seemed equally upset. Most of the provincial commanders were old men. All but one she recognized from Wechsler’s dossiers. These weren’t the best campaigners in the world, but they should have been loyal.

Her tone remained pleasant. “Now that we are all together, perhaps things can be cleared up. You deceived us this afternoon. Your courier told us you needed immediate artillery support. When we came to your aid, we found you were moving away from us. This misunderstanding cost us men and equipment, and I ask for an explanation.” Her reasonable tone took some of the edge off Wechsler’s previous statement of the question.

A militiaman stood and bowed, his chest of medals glinting in the torchlight. He wiped his hand through tangled white hair, the picture of a general disgraced; even his epaulets drooped. His Spräk was excellent, however. “Marget, what you say is true. There was deception. We can only beg your mercy. We deceived you because we were deceived ourselves. We, uh, our training is not as thorough as might be desired by Your Majesty. We are operating far outside our province. To the north is our enemy and the Doomsdaymen—which latter refuse us aid. To the south is Picchiu Province—whose army is our enemy.” The old man paused. His rambling had taken him so far afield he couldn’t remember his point. Tatja grabbed Wechsler’s elbow before that worthy could make some cutting comment about Sfierranyil mental acuteness. After all, she found normal people almost as dopey as this one.

The militiaman had regained the thread. “Marget, the campaign has taken us further and yet further inland, as we followed the forces of the Rebel Profirio. We never guessed that your aid would come to us from the south—or that it would arrive so soon. We mistook you for Picchiul reinforcements pretending to be Crownesse troops. Thank the gods that you were so numerous that we could not attack you—only trick you into Rebel fire.

“So. That’s why we deceived you. And that’s why, even when you arrived here, we were circumspect in admitting you to our command area.” The fellow’s head bobbed up and down miserably. Behind Tatja there was some easing of tension: the explanation was credible.

Tatja nodded. “Where is Profirio’s main force now?”

“Uh, we believe it’s across the river, about five miles upstream.”

She raised an eyebrow. “How is that possible? This afternoon we were attacked by his artillery—and that was almost fifteen miles downstream from here.” She produced a small piece of parchment and wrote rapidly upon it.

The young provincial sitting opposite Tatja touched the militiaman’s sleeve and said, “Deche mau, Sam.” The old man nodded gratefully and sat down.

As the young man stood, Tatja handed the parchment to a messenger and whispered something to him. The courier nodded and left. She turned back to the provincials. The young fellow was dark, his beard close-trimmed. The expression on his narrow face was unworried, almost sardonic. He wore the uniform of a full general in the provincial militia, but his chest bore not a single medal—which was unusual, since the Sfierranyii Militia gave medals for things like having clean fingernails.

“And who are you?” came Wechsler’s voice.

“Marget, I am Jolle. Until present difficulties I was a commercial chemist, but war makes different things of people, and the Provincial Assembly elected me military commander of this expedition.” There was a faint snort of disgust from the Crown’s Men. They had a saying in the civil service that a nation which elects its generals elects defeat.

Jolle spoke rapidly. He had the right words and syntax, but there was a Sfierro lilt to his pronunciation. “You see, Profirio has split his art’ry from his infantry. So, in fact, our misunderstanding this afternoon may give us a decisive advantage over the Rebels.”

“Hmm, that would take some explaining.”

Jolle nodded. “This Profirio fellow wants desperately to reach the mountains. We think he figures on persuading the Doomsdaymen to join his cause. After today’s encounter, we know the man has decided to gamble, to leave his art’ry behind and gain himself speed. I suspect he intended to put his troops between us and O’rmouth, so our artillery fire would provoke the Doomsdaymen to enter the contest on his side. At the same time, his own art’ry could follow both armies, along the Riverside Road. Thus he would end up with his art’ry on our flank and the Doomsdaymen against us, too.

“Unfortunately for him, the scheme hinged on our ignorance of it. This is why our misunderstanding of this afternoon is for the good: Profirio’s art’ry commander was flustered by your appearance. He opened fire, and destroyed his master’s plan. Knowing that his art’ry is hopelessly far behind, we can use the Riverside Road with impunity. Thus we can get inland the faster, and achieve just the position he wanted for himself.”

Tatja considered. Profirio’s gamble had the ingenuity and daring she expected. It had failed because of a subordinate’s mistake and the unexpected appearance of her troops. There were still edges and ends that didn’t fit, but the more she saw, the more she was convinced that her goal was near.

How quiet everything was. It was late, and the animals of these lands had no Seraph to light their nights. The only sounds were insects creaking. It was hard to believe they were sitting in the midst of an armed camp. Inside the tent, things were quiet too. Even the officers who pretended to be awake sat with their eyes glazed. A sound suspiciously like a snore came from behind her. These poor weak people—given thirty hours of hard work, they were dead on their feet.

She looked up and found Jolle’s dark eyes gazing back. There was something unnatural about this one’s accent. Her next question was not directly related to the events of the day. “Have you any idea where the Rebels got their art’ry in the first place?”

Jolle shrugged. “No. Though he raided the ammunition stockpiles Your Majesty keeps in the provinces. I’ve heard the man is a foreigner.”

“Yes, I’ve, uh, suspected that. But where did you Loyalists get your artillery?”

“Well, the ammunition as Profirio did.”

“And the gun tubes?”

Jolle spread his hands in self-deprecation. “I am a chemist. I beg forgiveness if it displeases the crown, but I designed most of the artillery you see among the Sfierranyii. Without it we would have had no chance to protect Your Majesty’s interests.”

In that instant the silence seemed complete. One dark face filled the sensory universe; time itself slowed as she considered one fantastic possibility and then another.

Svir came awake with the lightheaded alertness that follows a short, uneasy sleep. He swallowed painfully, trying to remove a nauseous taste from his mouth. “What do you want?” he heard Cor say to the figure silhouetted in the entrance to the tent.

The shape whispered, “Ma’am, I have a message for you.” The courier reached forward, fumbled a parchment into Cor’s hand. Svir hunted about in his pack and came up with matches. The light was almost painfully bright.

The courier blew the flame out. “We’re under light security, sir. You can’t do that,” he said.

Svir’s voice was as close to a scream as a whisper can be. “How the hell can we read this without a light!”

“I didn’t make the rules, you—”

Svir was speechless for a second. Then he remembered that he was a person of authority and pulled rank. The messenger backed out of the tent, cowed. Svir carefully unsealed the flap, then lit another match, shielding it with his hand. The message was cryptic and simple: “Azimuth 30°. Do it now—T.”

“Oh, boy. Tatja wants us to go ahead with the Plan.” He began assembling the tripod and signaling equipment. Meanwhile Cor woke Ancho and fed him. The dorfox was not lively; they could expect trouble with him. Finally Cor convinced the little animal that there was a job to do. Ancho clung to her neck as she crawled out of the tent. Svir followed, dragging tripod and signaler.

For the moment, every sensation seemed intense. But his balance was poor and he still had that awful taste in his mouth. This was actually the middle of the night wake period, as practiced in Bayfast. In fact, for him it was nearly lunchtime. The long daylight march and the different sleeping customs of the Upcoast people had inverted his normal schedule. He felt alert only because his natural time sense told him he should be.

The trees were close set. Insect sounds were loud and there were no signs of human activity. Svir peered up through the branches at the stars. He couldn’t see enough sky to recognize constellations. He and Cor moved cautiously along an indistinct path. The air was cool, but his uniform was still damp with sweat. He couldn’t remember having felt more dirty and chilled.

He guided Cor—northward? Upslope, anyway.

There was a man-sized blotch about fifty feet away. He touched Cor’s shoulder, pointed the fellow out to her. He felt her nod. She reached to caress the dorfox. When she was satisfied that Ancho was alert and radiating, they resumed their walk. Svir breathed a nearly audible sigh of relief as they passed the sentry unchallenged. They were almost thirty yards past the hallucinated soldier when a low, determined voice spoke. “Halt. Who goes there?”

Svir froze. Damn. The first sentry was a decoy. They were lucky the second guy bothered to challenge them at all.

“I said, ‘Who goes there?’ Respond or I shoot.”

Svir gulped and said, “Erl Bonnip, trying to find the latrine.” As he spoke, Cor turned and walked toward the voice in the bush. Now that Ancho had noticed the other fellow, he was radiating I’m-not-here. Since the sentry was already alerted, the signal couldn’t cover Svir’s existence; he must stand exposed.

“Advance and be recognized.”

Svir moved cautiously toward the voice. At best he would be turned back—and that only if the sentry didn’t notice the tripod and signaler he was carrying…

There was a dull thunk and a muffled groan. Then Cor emerged from the thicket.

“It’s okay,” she whispered. “I didn’t hit him hard, but Ancho gave him a good dose.”

They continued along the trail. The night no longer seemed particularly tranquil. He knew this job was not the trivial errand Tatja had made it sound. If they weren’t shot by Sfierranyil or Crownesse sentries, there was always the possibility that Rebel infiltrators might get them. The ground sloped down now. Technically they were in the Picchiu River valley. A darkness at the bottom of the sky was the far side of the valley, seven miles away. Svir thought he could see the river itself, glinting here and there between trees. A fatbat cooed somewhere near. How many human eyes watched this scene?

The forest thinned, and they moved quietly into the open. Their first objective was to get far enough from the camp so its position wouldn’t be given away. He swore silently. If Tatja were sure of her theory, why bother? She’d gone over the plan in mind-numbing detail during the voyage from Bayfast. She thought an alien was marooned here, was using native materials and native armies to attain its incomprehensible goals. Now the presumed alien must be contacted, and since this was an operation at cross purposes with the crown’s official goal, he and Cor must do it on their own. They could get killed, all for an unsupported speculation.

He led Cor into a thicket; they settled down. He looked into the sky, found the Hourglass, and extended its base to intersect the long bar of the Northern Cross. Now that he had north fixed, he could find the azimuth in Tatja’s message: the azimuth of the Rebel camp.

As he set the tripod on the ground and screwed the signaler on it, Cor took out paper and pen, ready to record any answer. He pulled the starting strip and felt the box warm. He grasped the shutter trip and recalled the exact words Tatja wanted sent. The message was in Savoy Mercantile Code, the most common signaling code of Crownesse: AS THE ISLAND APE SAID TO THE SHIPWRECKED SAILOR: MAY I AID YOU? Since island apes are brainless, only a very peculiar person would get the point.

He began tripping out the message. The lamp’s shutter flew open and shut with barely audible clicks. The air was clear, and the box was well shielded. He saw no sign of the beam he was casting across the valley. He had barely finished the third word when he saw a light flicker down by the river. He ignored it, concentrated on his own message. Behind him, Cor whispered the letters she was recording from the other signal lamp: “KZTPQ MPAPF RPTOZ DZRNR.”

He finished the message and folded the tripod. “Let’s go. I’ll bet you iron that was one of our own spies reporting that someone was signaling the enemy from here. If Profirio doesn’t land a shell on us, we’ll be shot by our own people.”

They scrambled out of the brush and trotted across open ground. Svir dropped the signaler; they were no longer red-handed. He guided Cor by the waist. She paid little attention to the ground, but kept her face turned toward the river valley. On her shoulder, Ancho made whimpering noises.

Cor stopped, and Svir followed her gaze. Across the valley, at the top of the far crest, a signal lamp winked on and off. Cor took her book out and recorded every letter. The message was short: just two words, and the first was nonsense. More military signals? He felt Cor shrug. “I think the friend yonder plays Tatja’s game; maybe she can translate.” They watched for nearly half a minute, but there was nothing more. Further up the hill they were stopped by a party of guards. Ancho was either asleep or afraid, because he didn’t radiate anything effective. Svir identified himself as the astronomer royal and demanded to be taken to the command area to report a “disgraceful breach of security.”

Fifteen minutes later they walked through the light trap of the command tent. Though large and well appointed, the interior had a crudeness that labeled it provincial. A single oil lamp hung from the center pole. Svir and Cor walked past the officers and guards who sat bleary-eyed behind the queen. Tatja’s face was strangely slack. She glanced up and didn’t seem to recognize them. What had happened? Svir looked at the provincials. Nothing strange there. Apparently she had been talking to the young underofficer who faced her across the camp table.

Cor handed her the notebook. She stared at the message for a long moment: JOLLE JESTS. Her slack expression was replaced by a faint smile. She looked up at them, then at the fellow standing on the other side of the table. She spoke very softly. “We were wrong, Cor. There are two of them.”

Svir looked more carefully at the other man. There were enough bars on his sleeve to make him very high ranking. His chair was set ahead of the provincial generals. He returned Svir’s gaze with a puzzled frown. Then he smiled and leaned forward. His voice was low. “How many more are there like you three?” Tatja replied just as softly, “How many more are there like you two?”

“Just we two. You see, I’m a gendarme, a policeman. The thing called Profirio is—a monster.”

Seventeen

It was said Riverside Road in Picchiu Province passed through the most beautiful country in the world. Svir did not dispute the assertion. The road ran along the Picchiu River, straight through an open forest whose trees often extended their branches to form a roof across the road, a roof that scattered green and gold highlights on the pavement.

They were nearly ten thousand feet above sea level, and though the air was thin, it was wonderfully crisp, and dry. For the first time since they had left Bayfast, Svir felt really clean. That morning, he and Cor had taken a quick swim in the icy waters of the Picchiu. Even now, he could hear the river rolling by just a few feet away. That sound would come louder as they moved upstream, as the valley became a gorge and the riverbed steepened.

It was when the forest roof parted that things got really impressive. Still miles away, the main peaks of the Doomsday Range rose thousands of feet above the road. Except for a cloud band at the fourteen-thousand-foot level, every detail was visible. Much of the flanks were free of snow, and the bare bones of the young mountains stood black and gray and yellow and brown. Svir thought he could see every crystalline striation there. In the nearer distance, rugged hills ranged on either side of the river valley. Downstream those hills were gentle, covered by the same deciduous forest as the valley proper. Here they bore dark-needle looproot trees. And they were fast becoming too rugged for the looproot—great sections of bedrock were visible. The hillsides would soon become cliff faces.

But no matter how formidable the valley walls might seem, Svir knew there were paths there. And somewhere up there, the enemy’s infantry and supply trains made their slow, difficult way. By now those forces must be several miles behind the Crownesse-Sfierranyil army, since the Crown’s Men were using the wide, straight Riverside Road.

Through the trees bordering the road, Svir could see foot soldiers paralleling the cavalry and art’ry. The Sfierranyii battle groups had been annexed to the crown’s, summing to nearly twenty-four thousand men and five hundred art’ry pieces. From their position in the second group, Svir and Cor couldn’t even see the head of the column—some thousand yards ahead. Before and behind them was the line of creaking supply and art’ry wagons, puffing skoats, and silent infantrymen. The line stretched nearly nine miles. It wasn’t the biggest army in the world, but the crown’s battle groups comprised the best men and equipment from the best military organization in the world.

And of all the people marching along this road, only four knew the real reason they were here. Last night he had witnessed the strangest revelation of his life.

Tatja had adjourned the conference in the tent. This was a relief to most of those present. They had been up all afternoon. Not even Haarm Wechsler had noticed that Tatja and Jolle stayed behind when the others left. Empty, the tent was like a cave. The flickering torch lighted four faces; everything beyond was darkness. Then Jolle revealed the secret behind all recorded history. Humans were not accidental castaways on Tu. The world was a breeding farm. Slaughtering operations would begin as soon as the creature called Profirio regained contact with his superiors.

There had been a long silence. Svir felt himself caught in a nightmare that would disappear if he could only show its implausibility. “For food?” he asked.

The other shook his head. Svir wondered if Jolle were his real name. Profirio was certainly an alias, since it had a distinctive Upcoast flavor. “Well, then what does he want to kill us for?”

Jolle spoke a single word. “Golems.”

Svir looked blank.

Jolle stared at them for a moment. Then he spoke to Tatja. “There’s really only one of you, right?”

She nodded. “Yes, and I’ve looked.”

“Tough,” Jolle commiserated. He waved at Cor and Svir, and Tatja replied, “Fingers.”

“Hmm,” said Jolle, “perhaps I should have, too.”

“But surrogate pain. Is there?”

“No. Ten trillion. Human too.” He nodded. “You’re it and foxily burnt.”

Tatja smiled shyly.

Svir’s jaw dropped. What were they talking about? Occasionally Tatja would carelessly address him in this fashion, but his blank look had always forced her to be silent or to make sense. Now she had found someone on her own level, and there was no need for “redundancy.”

He was about to ask for a translation, when Jolle said, “Excuse me Minister Hedrigs, Miss Ascuasenya. If you’re going to be in on this, you should know what’s going on. I just assumed from the way you worked together that you… Perhaps golem is not the right word, but what shall I say? Have you ever heard this term?” He made a meaningless sound. “No? Well, not much Anglic would survive their processing, especially a term without referent. So I’ll use 'golem’ to mean thinking machine. If your technology were just fifty years more advanced, you would think you knew exactly what I mean. … As it is, I am constrained to the vocabulary of superstition. Perhaps that’s for the best. A word like 'golem’ will never give you the false sense of understanding you might have if… The golems I refer to are much more like magic than any science you can imagine. Even you, Marget. Until you have training, I suggest you accept the magical connotation. Then you won’t be fooled by false analogies with the thinking machines that you are capable of inventing…”

Jolle had little accent, and he ordered his words properly. Nevertheless his speech was strange. He spoke rapidly, running one sentence into another. If a sentence were especially long, his voice would drop and he would mumble the ending, as if the words were a redundant, painful ritual. His hands never stopped moving. The overall effect was impressive. Svir could imagine how the provincials had been overwhelmed by a man who spewed forth ideas faster than he could speak them.

Sometimes Tatja sounded like this, though she was perfectly capable of slow, natural exposition—after all, she had grown up here. Was Jolle’s manner an affectation, or was he unable to slow down? It had never occurred to Svir that it might be difficult to act stupid.

Jolle continued, “Though they are necessary to the function of society, golems are expensive to construct. There is, however, a cheap—and highly immoral—way of improvising golems. That method is to, hmm, destroy the souls of lesser creatures and so reduce them to golems. Pröfe—Profirio—is in the employ of an … organization that has spent two thousand years preparing this planet as a cheap golem-production plant. First they chose a resource-poor planet far from civilization. Then they seeded it with your ancestors, Minister Hedrigs, people they kidnapped from the backwaters of civilization. They wrecked your minds and bodies, dumped you here, and waited. My type lives a long time and can afford to be patient. Every so often, the organization sent a scout vehicle—crewed by the likes of Profirio—to analyze your population, technology.”

“Yes,” broke in Tatja. “Even without me, people would soon guess parts of this.”

“Really?”

“We observed one of your vehicles enter our system last year,” said Svir.

“You saw our drive stutter. You’re further along than they planned. But that was one of the reasons for these scouting missions. They want the planet’s population to reach a billion before they start harvesting; but just as important, they want you planet-bound—even an interplanetary flight technology would mean a drastic increase in the cost of operations. In one sense, their motivation is quite understandable: they want the maximum gain for the least effort.”

“What would then happen,” asked Cor, “if Profirio were successful?”

“Once he tells his superiors that you are ready for … harvest, they will set up a slaughterhouse on Thriy—Seraph you call it. One percent of your population will be spirited away every year. There is no escape from such abductions. It will all seem quite supernatural. Technological progress will stop; inventions will disappear, experiments explode. Other than that the organization will have no interest in what you do. As long as your population growth rate remains constant, the operation will show a profit.” He spread his hands in a gesture that seemed to put the prediction in the subjunctive.

“Their plans have come perilously close to success. But no matter how expensive artificial golems, and no matter how necessary golems are to our activities, only a small fraction of my kind are warped enough to buy ones produced by the slaughter of innocents. My friends and I have known for nearly a thousand years that Profirio’s organization was planning something like this, but we didn’t know where they were operating. I have spent four hundred years ingratiating myself to these criminals. Finally my efforts were rewarded. I was hired to accompany Profirio on the present survey of your world.

“Things went well at first. We left our … scoutboat in orbit about six hundred thousand miles out. Any closer and if you had good telescopes—as it turns out you do—you would spot the thing immediately. We landed in the outback of Sfierranyi Province. I won’t go into the gruesome details, but I botched things and Profirio caught on to me. We had quite a fight out there in the hills last spring. I’m a little surprised the pyrotechnics were not observed—but a typhoon was moving inland at the time and I guess everybody was too busy to notice. Our battle destroyed almost all the equipment we had brought down for our survey.

“Our scoutboat is still out there, and the man who communicates with it will be victorious. I have one instrument left—it’s similar to your signalers. But to use it, I must know the exact position of the boat. I need a large telescope to accomplish that. We’ve continued the struggle with local resources.

“We both needed armies. We are persuasive individuals—but the natives need some excuse to provoke them to war. Profirio chose to revolt against your central government. I did the logical thing and led the local militia on a campaign against the Rebels. It is blind luck that it worked out this way; that your forces and mine met as allies. But I apologize for using your army this afternoon to trick Profirio’s art’ry into revealing itself.

“Unless you people are hiding something, there are only two large observatories in this part of the world. That’s why we had the battle at Kotta-svo-Picchiu. Profirio got there first and was hoping to hold out until dark. I had to destroy the scope to keep him from using it. With that gone, we are forced to go after the High Eye.”

“Excuse me,” spoke Svir, “but why did you bother with armies? On a good skoat you could have made it to O’rmouth in just a few days. Then you could have applied your powers of persuasion directly to the astronomers.”

Tatja answered that one. “Jolle and Profirio view armies as you might a shirt of armor. If one of them took off alone, the other could grab an army and use it to destroy a single unarmed opponent. It’s a question of balancing the speed with the risk.”

“That’s right,” said Jolle. “Eventually, Profirio may be reduced to personal action, but it will be a sign of desperation. He’ll have to persuade the Doomsdaymen to cooperate with him rather than us, and his identity will be clearly …” Jolle took a deep breath, interrupting his own rushing flow of speech. “One of us will control the High Eye—and the future of this planet will be determined.”

Eighteen

The call to dismount brought Svir back to the present. It was late morning, and they had been on the road five hours. It was time to water the skoats. The place was right, too: Here the road swung close to the Picchiu River. There was a three-hundred-yard stretch where it was easy to bring the animals down to the water.

He and Cor scrambled off their skoats and waited for further directions. Water call was conducted with more precision and ceremony than most supply functions. He had read somewhere that the efficiency of a mounted command could be measured by observing water call. He had to admit that watering a battle group was not simple; they could be here all day if things got out of hand.

Finally it came time for them to go to the river. The art’ry skoats were released from their gun carriages, and animals and men moved over the rocky ground to the river. Behind them, gun crews loaded their weapons and received fire control directions. Then came the concussive crump, crumpcrump as the battery lofted six-inch shells into the sky. Ten miles downstream, those shells would tear wide the road they had so recently traversed; the enemy’s artillery would not be allowed to catch up. Too bad about the road. The expeditionary force had already stopped five caravans bound for the coast—caravans carrying hundreds of ounces of copper and iron from O’rmouth. Such interference with Doomsday commerce was not going to win the crown any friends, but Tatja intended to stay ahead of the news of her vandalism.

The Picchiu River was one hundred feet wide here. The water foamed and showered as it moved through a rapids; only a canoe could have navigated the torrent. Quartermasters had assembled several hundred watering troughs, since water directly from the river was much too cold for the animals. The skoats had to be urged to the troughs, but when they began drinking, it was with characteristic greediness. Svir examined the animals critically. It was amazing how much they had changed. They were no longer sleek and furry. Now their bodies were covered with superficial cuts and gashes. Though they were fed four times a day, tendons and bones showed clearly through their skin. He commented on this to Cor.

“Yes, I know,” she responded in a subdued voice. “On the fastboats I thought the collars seemed small for the animals. Now I understand. This march burns the flesh from them. Most of the collars are now too big for the creatures. We lost thirty of them in the artillery attack, but three times that many have died from exhaustion. See—” She pointed at a quartermaster veterinarian. The fellow walked slowly down the rank of skoats, lifting their blankets and painting antiseptic on the raw sores and cuts he found. The Loyalists’ animals were in much poorer shape than the crown’s skoats—they had been in the campaign five times as long. Even with all the quartermaster’s care, this was still killing work. By the time he reached the end of the watering line, the vet had marked three skoats to be dropped from the train. Those animals were in no shape to continue with the expedition, even as unburdened reserve. “For no fault of their own and for no gain of their own, they lose their lives.”

For the first time, Svir felt affection for the poor animal that had carried him so far.

This was a rest stop for the humans, too. Behind the skoats, the troops of the battle group lay or sat on the ground. Most of the Provincial Loyalists lay motionless. They had been part-time militiamen, yet they had been on this campaign forty days. Their uniforms were tattered. Their boots were held together with ragged cloth bands. In some cases, blood and pus discolored the cloths. The Crown’s Men had better equipment and were fresh—besides, they were trained for this sort of thing. They kept apart from their unprofessional counterparts. But even among the professionals, there was evidence of strain. There was little of the good-natured talk of earlier rest stops.

The hospital wagon arrived with the last of the battle group. Since they were moving through wild lands, the Crown’s Men were forced to carry their casualties with them, at least so long as those casualties weren’t too numerous. At present there were probably a hundred wounded—and about twelve in this battle group. The wagon had its cloth sides rolled up so that the occupants were exposed to the open air. Svir found it difficult to look away from that wagon. There was nothing repulsive about the interior, no gore. Everything looked clean and comfortable. Some of the patients were even sitting up, and these looked better than most of the “ready” troops. But others in the wagon lay quite still, with only their heads exposed. They might have been corpses except for the trouble the crown was taking to bring them along.

Two medics moved to the back of the wagon and drew one of those long white forms off the platform. They carried it to the far side of the wagon. A colonel and three enlisted men followed the medics into the brush. The enlisted men carried entrenching tools. Svir recalled that a field grade officer was required to participate in the burial of all combat victims.

Cor made a strange laugh. “I used to like stories of fate and the gods. It made Rey so mad. ‘We are no one’s doormat!’ he would say at me so fierce… Strange, that fantasies should be the greater truth. They use us up like the skoats.” She looked at Svir levelly. “It is wrong.”

“Don’t think fuzzy, Cor.” The voice came from behind them. Svir felt Cor start with surprise. They turned and saw Tatja. Instead of her usual camouflage uniform, she wore a feminine outfit which wouldn’t have been out of place in Bayfast—but which here seemed as appropriate as a jester at an execution. The oppression that clouded everyone’s mind did not touch her. Never before had she seemed quite so callous to the problems of the people she used.

“What’s fuzzy about it?” he said angrily.

“You seem to think that people would live in peace if left to themselves. That’s rarely true. If you study history you’ll find that most wars occur because the people see some personal advantage in victory. I imagine that most Sfierranyii figure their support of the crown will get them Picchiul lands after the war. Many of these militiamen thought they would win booty in this adventure—though I doubt they feel that way now.”

“Hell, Ta—” The exclamation came out a shout. He lowered his voice and continued with quiet intensity, “So what? We’re not talking about the general case. If it weren’t for your kind, we would have peace.”

Tatja smiled. “It’s true that Jolle and I are manipulating everyone. But don’t forget the reason. Our men and the militia believe they die for a cause that we know is trivial, but in the final analysis, this war is more important and more just than any in the history of this planet. If we fail, the future will be darker than any war could make it.” She had him there. The sacrifices seemed necessary—even if the people who made them were ignorant of the ultimate justification. But he wondered if this argument would appeal if he were one of those who was going to get cut to pieces.

The last skoats were being led from the troughs. Some squads were already being assembled. The art’ry fire had stopped. Soon the next battle group would arrive. No one came near Cor and Svir and Tatja. Unless the Queen wished otherwise, she had privacy—even when she walked in the open.

Cor spoke. “But Marget, how do you know that you aren’t also being used?”

“What?” Tatja seemed nonplussed, but Svir had the feeling his wife had uncovered a bombshell.

“Why should we believe the story of the monster and the gendarme? Grant the story, how do we know that Jolle, rather than Profirio, is the gendarme?” The bombshell detonated with soundless violence. “Wouldn’t the criminal tell us the same story as the one who tries to save us?”

Tatja shrugged. “I suppose so. But there is no way we can test the story except by sitting tight and watching things develop. Besides—” and now she was smiling again “—I trust my judgment and intuition much more than I trust yours.” She looked around, evidently dismissing the problem. “You’d better get your skoats. This battle group is moving out and I want you to stay with it.” She turned and walked toward the command wagon of the next battle group, which was just creaking into the clearing. In her short skirt and lacy blouse, she might have been at a picnic instead of a war.

What had happened to Tatja? For the first time in four years, they didn’t have a friend who had all the angles figured, who could solve virtually any problem. He looked at Cor, and saw the same thought on her face. They had a life-and-death problem—and if they didn’t solve it, no superior being was going to bail them out. There was a monster loose; somehow they must discover who it was.

Nineteen

The sun was halfway to the horizon when they made their move. Svir sat up and pushed aside the insect netting which hung over their sleeping cots. The loud, unwavering hum of a three-year cicada was an overpowering soporific. The generals had finally recognized the fact that people need some sleep in the day (or perhaps it was simply that they could move as easily along the Riverside Road by night as by day, so it was possible to permit a reasonable sleep schedule).

No human sounds could be heard: apparently the sentries were in static positions. But all around them were the insect and bat sounds, and the river burbled in the near distance. Pink flowers crowded between the leaf needles of the looproot about them, and the scent was nearly overpowering in such concentration. Through gaps in the branches he could see the walls of the river gorge rise thousands of feet overhead. They had nearly reached the mouth of the glacier. O’rmouth was hidden beyond the northern wall, above the glacier. The gorge was so deep that they couldn’t see He’gate’s summit—their ultimate goal. Near the top of the gorge Svir saw a broadwing daybat soaring lazily back and forth across the updrafts as it scanned the ground with its sharp eyes.

Cor sat up. “Ready?” he whispered. She nodded. “Now remember how we’re going to play this. I think we’ll be safe even if we’re discovered. The key is to have Tatja nearby, so Jolle can’t kill us without her knowing it. You’re going to go to her tent while I take Ancho to Jolle’s wagon. I’ve got a noise bomb. If you hear it, bring Tatja as fast as you can—I may still be in one piece.” This recapitulation was needless, but it put off action for a few more seconds.

She squeezed his arm. “Let’s… let’s have me go to Jolle’s wagon instead. After all, I can now handle Ancho better than you.”

He blushed, shame and courage mixed. “No,” he finally said. “If we need Tatja, you can talk to her better than I. C’mon, Love.” They stood beside their cots and looked about. Svir felt a little faint. They were twelve thousand feet above sea level, and he was learning firsthand the symptoms of hypoxia. The only good thing about the altitude was that even in the middle of the afternoon it was not particularly hot.

As they walked through the looproot grove, Ancho scrambled back and forth across Svir’s shoulders. The little animal was normally most active at this time of day, and for once his large friends weren’t trying to make him keep still so they could sleep.

During the day, security was less strict than at night. Unless they tried to leave the bivouac, they would probably not even be challenged. They parted company near the center of camp. Cor took the path that led to Tatja’s tent, and Svir walked toward the provincial headquarters area. Here the thick arches of the looproot were more closely set. In places the branches and needle leaves reduced the sunlight to a gray-green twilight. The underbrush was shaded out. Tents and cots were scattered at random through darker portions of the grove. The scene was quite different from the display bivouacs he had seen back in Crownesse, where tents and vehicles were set in pretty rectangular formations that looked so neat and military.

The moment he left Cor, he began working on Ancho. It seemed that as the years went by the animal became better and better at responding to the tactile instructions of his masters, and Svir was pretty confident that Ancho would not fail him now. He tried not to think what happened the last time he invaded a godling’s privacy. This was different: get some information and split. With luck, Tatja would protect them later.

The first sentry he passed came to attention and saluted. Good. The sentry probably identified him as Jolle. Fifteen feet ahead, the grove thinned and sunlight flooded a mossy clearing. Parked at the edge of the clearing was the camouflaged hulk of Jolle’s wagon. The wagon’s tent had been pulled out and assembled. If Jolle were in the tent, would it rupture the sentries’ credulity when another Jolle appeared outside the tent? He would know in a moment.

He walked briskly toward the wagon’s rear entrance. The guards around the wagon saluted. No one attempted to stop him.

He had been identified as Jolle again. He walked purposefully to the little doorway. The entrance had a standard lever-latch. He pulled at the latch. It didn’t budge. He pulled again, harder. He found himself sweating as he wondered what the sentries thought of his inability to enter “his own” wagon. Perhaps one of the guards had a key, but he didn’t dare ask. Besides, he noticed on closer inspection that no lock mechanism was visible. He had no chance of getting in here.

He leaned against the side of the wagon and pretended to admire the flowers drooping from the branches that sheltered the wagon from snoopers further up the gorge. There was only one other place he could try; the tent entrance. Jolle probably wasn’t there; but if he were, he might react so abruptly that Svir wouldn’t be able to set off the noise bomb.

Well, he had come this far; it seemed ridiculous to back out now. He reflected with some irritation that in general his courage derived from the fear that he might be taken for a coward. He walked to the tent at the other end of the wagon. The vents were open, but it was too dark for him to see anything inside. The guard at the entrance saluted, addressed him as Jolle.

He took a deep breath and decided to commit himself. “I’m going to be in and out all afternoon. I don’t wish to be disturbed.” That might help take care of inconsistencies if the sentry later saw Jolle outside the tent.

“Very good, sir,” the woman replied.

Svir pulled back the entrance curtain and stepped into the dimness. All was quiet. It was warm, but not hot. There was even a faint breeze. Sunlight lay on the carpeted floor, and after a few seconds he could see the interior clearly. No one home. The room was lavishly appointed; Jolle had a penchant for the good life. From one corner came the pleasant odor of burning perfume. Beside the tent mast stood a low couch and a table supporting a coolchest and bottles of drink.

He moved quickly across the room to the wagon’s entrance. The deep carpet made his movements silent: the loudest sounds were the cicadas and the daybats. Even in the dimness, he could see that this entrance was different from the one at the rear. When the troops were in march, the tent was stowed in the front of the wagon, behind a pair of clamshell doors—which now stood open. Beyond those doors, a beautifully painted partition of fine-weave spider silk was stretched taut from one side of the wagon to the other. A doorway was mounted at the center of the partition. The spider silk was so fine that Svir would be clearly visible to anyone behind it.

He pulled at the leverlatch on the little door. This one didn’t move either. Again, there was no evidence of a locking mechanism. The only explanation was that the door was barred from the inside. But this would imply that there was someone in there. What now?

Then he heard Tatja’s voice outside the tent. Jolle was with her. They were coming into the tent. Even now Jolle was telling the sentry at the entrance to move away, that secret matters were to be discussed. Svir stood frozen for a moment, and Ancho echoed his discomfort, whimpering where he crouched on the astronomer’s shoulder. Svir’s only chance was to hide and hope that the dorfox would give him some protection with his I’m-not-here signal. If Jolle were like Tatja it was indeed a slim hope, but Ancho might be able to dull the godlings’ senses to merely human levels. He ducked behind the ornate stand that supported the burning perfume. The stand was directly in front of the door into the wagon.

Ancho had barely changed the illusion he broadcast when Tatja and Jolle entered the tent. He couldn’t risk looking around the corner of the stand. He held his breath and waited to be discovered. Although the perfume was pleasant in small doses, in high concentrations it brought a nearly overpowering desire to sneeze. He heard them sit on the low couch, and wondered how the interior of the tent could ever have seemed dim. The sunlight coming down from the ceiling vents splashed over the blue-green rug. Why, his footprints might still be visibly impressed in the pile!

“Feral or sport?” Tatja’s soft voice came from the area of the couch.

“Feral. Shipwreck, maybe an ambush.” Jolle’s voice sounded perfectly calm. Perhaps Svir hadn’t been detected. On impulse, he reached behind him and pulled again at the leverlatch. It moved smoothly downward and the door swung open. Svir came close to squeaking his surprise. He looked through the little doorway. There was no one in the darkness beyond. Now he had an unpleasant choice: he could remain behind the perfume stand or he could sneak into the wagon. If he moved quickly and quietly, he could probably make it. The doorway was hidden from the couch by the high perfume stand. He would never have dared it without Ancho. Ordinarily Tatja seemed able to hear the faintest sounds. Without the dorfox broadcasting a signal that would put a battle group out of action, she—and probably Jolle—could have heard his heart beating.

In the final analysis it was his curiosity that decided him:

He turned, slipped through the entrance, and quietly shut the door. No alarms sounded. Except for the blood singing in his ears, there was no sound in the wagon. The spider-silk screen provided an almost transparent window on the more brightly lit tent area. Tatja and Jolle were sitting on the couch, and were facing almost directly away from him. There was no sign that he had been discovered. He felt Ancho purring against the side of his neck as the little animal continued to broadcast deception.

Tatja was dressed even more gushily than that morning. A party shawl of virtually transparent silk covered her shoulders. Svir could see the top of her low-cut blouse. Jolle wore a militia uniform. He was pouring drinks. Svir pulled his attention away from the tent and inspected the wagon. It was hot, poorly ventilated. Except for the perfume drifting through the silk screen, he smelled nothing. But it wasn’t completely dark here. Along the length of the wagon, red and orange prisms had been set in the roof. A dim, hellish light filtered through. Everything was a jumble. Along one side he saw a bed and bath. The rest of the room was filled with books and ornately carved cabinets. This seemed more like a wizard’s den than the quarters of a man from the stars. It was hard to believe that just twenty inches away the sun was shining, bats were flying, and pink flowers scattered blue mist through cool mountain air.

Svir looked back through the silk screen. Jolle handed Tatja a goblet of clear wine. They sipped in silence. Then Jolle spoke. “It was sloppy language. But—” he waved broadly “—we’re all the same species. They just don’t have the benefit of engineering of self.”

“Natural state?” Tatja sounded incredulous.

“Sure. My grandparents even. No. Call it magic.”

“Please?”

Jolle laughed sympathetically at the pleading tone in her voice. He reached out to caress the smooth, clear skin of her neck. She moved closer, and even through the silk screen she seemed dazed.

“Well,” replied the alien, “I can try. But it will just mislead you. You’re asking for an education, not an explanation. There’s drugs, genetic manipulation, and direct amplification. The last was first because it’s easiest, but the deadliest—as the first discovered.”

Svir followed every word closely. He was almost onto what they were talking about. If he could just fill in the blanks—

“Why deadly?” she asked.

“Last last, please,” he answered, and extended his arms around her shoulders, drew her against his chest. She came slowly but without reluctance. Her body had none of the tension that was her usual armor.

Now Jolle’s voice was low, barely audible. His black hair mixed with Tatja’s red. “First first: information?”

“Hmm.” Tatja seemed half asleep, but after a moment of thought her voice came muffled against Jolle’s chest. “Something like the log inverse probability of the signal.”

“Okay. What about noisy, ah, channels? It’s possible to reduce the error rate to arbitrarily low levels with clever coding. True?”

A long silence. She appeared more interested in his neck than the question. Finally her voice came, so low pitched it hardly seemed her own. She was obviously thinking of more important things. “Yes, though it’s more complicated than that. I never thought about that before…”

Svir came near groaning aloud. The conversation had passed beyond intelligibility just when he thought he might be able to follow it. He looked at the door that had opened so conveniently for him. Perhaps there was some clue as to why it had done so. There was. The door could be locked from the inside by a heavy wooden bar. In a way this was ridiculous, since anyone with a sharp knife could have cut through the silk screen. On the other hand, when the tent was not set up, there was probably a wooden panel fitted over the screen. One end of the bar was enclosed in a metallic collar—an expensive and wasteful ornament. Touching this collar was an (iron?) bar. Around the bar were wound several hundred turns of yellow wire sheathed in transparent resin. There was a fortune in metals here—to what purpose? The wires led away from the bar to a large wooden chest. If he were going to search the wagon, this was the place to start.

He glanced back through the silk screen. The high-powered conversation was over. He couldn’t see Tatja at all, but now her blouse was draped over the back of the couch. He looked away from the screen, blushing. Being a snoop in a good cause didn’t hurt his conscience, but voyeurism was out of his league. No wonder Tatja was so dense when it came to discussing the possibility that Jolle was a bastard. When a goddess is in love, she’s just as irrational as anyone else.

Svir turned and followed the yellow wires to the chest. It was an expensive Sdan piece. He felt the ghoulish hardwood faces, hunting for the tongue-catch the Sdan carpenters worked into their designs. There was a faint buzzing near the box, but he couldn’t see the bug that made the noise. His searching fingers found the catch and the lid came up with silent, counterbalanced precision.

A blue glow radiated from that opening. For an instant he was frozen by the flickering, actinic gleam. He leaned forward. His first impression was that the box was filled with treasure: glowing jewels. The colors and intensities were constantly changing, so it was hard to know the exact size and shape of the gems. Silver boxes were set along the inside walls. The shifting reflections made them seem almost transparent. After a moment, he noticed that the copper wires from the wagon door were connected to one of those little boxes. He looked deep into the pile of “jewels.” Though they were motionless, the changing colors made the pile shimmer like foam on an island shore.

The buzzing sound was louder now. An alarm! The buzz reached a crescendo and became a screeching, inhuman wail. “Master! Help me! I will be stolen!” From the tent, he heard Tatja’s surprised exclamation and the sounds of rapid movement. Svir scrambled to the other end of the wagon. From the inside it was easy to flip the crossbar up and push the door open. As he plunged into the blinding daylight, he heard Jolle enter the wagon.

By luck Svir landed on his feet. As he fell forward, he dug long legs into the ground and sprinted away. Ancho clung to his shoulder and radiated for all he was worth. The nearest guards were more than forty feet away. They knew something strange was happening, but Ancho’s efforts kept them from taking effective action. Even so, a couple of crossbow bolts zipped by him as he fled into the forest. He could hear no pursuers. Apparently Jolle was still in the wagon, inspecting his—slave?

Soon he was deep in the grove, the looproots an arched hallway before him. Only dim and shifting pencils of light penetrated the branches and leaf needles above. The ground was covered with a deep, resilient layer of white fungus. The shouting behind him had faded. He was still in the bivouac area—that was more than two thousand feet across—and could see occasional tents and wagons. Ancho protected him from the sentries. It took him fifteen minutes to circle back to his own sleeping area.

Now he moved cautiously. If Jolle had identified him, there would be a welcoming committee here. He stayed in the forest shadows and looked out at the sun-dappled cots. Cor was lying on her cot—next to someone else! He did a double take, and examined the figure beside her. It didn’t move. In fact, its face was a brown piece of cloth.

Good girl! When she discovered that Tatja was going with Jolle to his tent, she had done the only thing possible—return to their sleeping area and construct an alibi. He moved quickly out of the shadows, pulled the netting aside, and lay down beside his wife. She jerked with surprise. Her hands were clenched white, and there were tears on her cheeks. Together they disassembled the crude dummy, and Svir told her what he had seen, what had happened.

I hey lay in each other’s arms, and whispered their fears. “He’ll kill us, Svir. We’ve got to talk to Tatja.”

They needed protection, but, “We can’t talk to her yet. She’s probably still with Jolle. And—she’s not herself. She’s worse than this morning. We’ll have to wait until we can get her alone.”

“I can convince her; I know I can.”

“Look, I don’t think Jolle saw me. We’ll be safe as long as we play innocent.” Ancho wormed his way between them, and Svir petted him. There was really nothing more to say.

Twenty

We have to tell Tatja. All through the day, that imperative had driven Coronadas Ascuasenya. And Cor had to be the one to do the talking; she’d made that clear to Svir. After all the years, there might still be a bond from those first days on the barge. Tatja might be willing to listen, and to see out of the trap into which she had fallen. We have to tell Tatja. The thought was easier than the deed. For what seemed hours, Cor stood near the back of Tatja’s command post, waiting for some break in Marget’s schedule. The queen was managing a war … and now that she had Jolle, she had no need for her pets.

“—and you can be sure we understand all this, Observer Reynolt. I have no desire to hold your hands under my direct control.” The Tatja that spoke was the Tatja of old: composed, persuasive, tactful. She had made no attempt to use her ostensible position as the absolute ruler of all the Continent to overawe the Doomsdayman confronting her.

And every bit of her diplomacy would be required to mollify the angry Doomsday priest. In the starlit darkness, his triplepointed mitre made him look more a seven-foot obelisk than a human being. He spoke with the sarcastic servility of a subordinate who thinks he has the upper hand. “Your Majesty must know that we Doo’d’en would never ascribe such motives to Your Sacred Person. But in our ignorance, we beg to know why you destroyed parts of the Riverside Road, why you razed Kotta-svo-Picchiu, why you destroyed the sacred eye there, and why you now set an army on the farmlands beneath our capital.”

Tatja was a vague shadow by the low field table, but her voice was clear and distinct. “Observer, for all four incursions we tender our apologies, and for the first three we offer reparations. However, when you understand the situation, I believe you will thank us. You reprove us for acts of war, committed to protect your most holy places from the Rebel army, which even now masses below us. Do you realize what will happen if the Rebels are not defeated? They are the ones who first invaded your territories. They are the ones who desecrated the Kotta Eye before it was destroyed. Though I cannot present proof now, the Rebels’ ultimate goal is the destruction of the High Eye itself.”

The priest had no immediate answer to this. He turned to the window-hole of the stone farmhouse that was Tatja’s command post. From outside came the creak and crunch of Doo’d’en wagons carrying bombs and men to their positions, but there was very little for Observer Reynolt to see. Somewhere above them was O’rmouth, capital of Doomsday, and thousands of feet above that, the observatory itself. Two thousand feet below the farmhouse was the Picchiu River, and the mouth of the glacier that fed it. And somewhere down there were twenty-three thousand Loyalists and an unknown number of Rebels.

The crown’s generals stood uneasily behind their queen. Cor heard Haarm Wechsler whispering indignantly at Imar Stark, the crown’s chief of staff. The military didn’t think the Doomsdaymen should be cajoled. If these provincials refused to fight for their queen, they should be ignored until after the battle, and then dealt with as traitors. It seemed a waste of time to stand here debating while the opposing armies took their positions. And it seemed doubly strange that a militia leader should be in charge of that deployment. At this moment Jolle and midrank staff officers were down there in the darkness, deploying crossbow men, ground obstacles, FAOs, and art’ry pieces. Soon there would be nothing peaceful about the night.

Finally Observer Reynolt spoke. Some of the false servility was gone from his voice. “Yes, Marget, we realize this. We are very unhappy about the situation: you have caused us as much damage as the Rebels. But in the past you have been just and have truly protected us. What aid do you require? Your army—if our reports are accurate—is much larger than any trained force we Doo’d’en could field. And we have none of the bomb throwers which both you and the Rebels have.”

Tatja laughed softly. “My troops are great. They can whip twice their number—at sea level. But now we’re at fourteen thousand feet. I am sure you understand—even if my own advisors do not—what these altitudes do to unacclimated troops. My forces already hold decisive advantages: high ground, artillery superiority. But to be sure of victory I want two or three thousand Doomsday fighting men, uh, Celestial Servants.” She turned to her chief of staff. “How much time do we have, Immy?”

“The Provincial claims the Rebels won’t be in position for another six hours. Twilight begins about seven-thirty this morning, so we can expect engagement in six to eight hours.”

“Observer Reynolt, it is now thirty-nine-thirty,” she said. “Can you get a battle group of Celestial Servants into my command by four-thirty tomorrow morning?”

“Marget, permit me to signal O’rmouth. If my superiors approve, the Servants will be at your disposal in less than four hours.” The priest gave a shallow bow which was somehow more respectful than the extravagant obeisance he had made earlier.

On Reynolt’s departure, the generals moved in to discuss the details of the deployment. Strangely, Tatja made no move to dominate or even to participate in the conversation.

Soon she left the small stone building. Cor and Svir followed her. The newly plowed field outside was steeply sloping, and several times Cor nearly wrenched her foot in the narrow furrows. Ancho held tight to her neck. She had never imagined that ground this rough could be cultivated. Even though terraced, the fields had twenty-degree slopes. Only the hardiest vegetation could survive at these altitudes and in this soil.

Tatja stopped at the edge of the terrace and sat down. Cor felt Svir clutch her elbow. He wanted to pull her back, set himself in front of her. She disengaged his hand, held it for a moment. They had argued this over and over. If anyone could make the point that had to be made, it was she and not Svir.

Tatja’s voice was soft against the creaking of wagon wheels. “Sit down, you two.” They sat. “What do you think of the situation?” Here was the moment they had waited fifteen hours for: Tatja was alert, no longer the soft, yielding girl she had been with Jolle; that was obvious from the way she had just handled the Doomsday priest. They would never have a better chance to try to convince her of Jolle’s real objectives. In fact, they might never have another chance. If Profirio were destroyed this night, which seemed likely, Jolle would be left unopposed, and would have no further need of Tatja. Yet now Cor’s throat seemed frozen. She remembered what Svir had seen in the tent. Tatja had finally gotten what she wanted, an equal and a friend. How could they possibly persuade her to give up Jolle?

The silence stretched on for an endless moment. Finally it was Svir who answered the queen’s question in a voice a bit too high and forced to be natural. “I thought it was really something of a masterstroke, that of convincing the priest to let us use his men.” Tatja laughed for the second time that night. “No,” she said softly, “just the natural thing to do. And he really had to do what we asked. They know Profirio has caused much of the damage, and I have treated them fairly in the past. Too bad they’re such a bunch of fanatics. I wonder what their reaction will be when they find out that my side intends to desecrate the High Eye with its presence. I can just imagine their scream of ‘Betrayal.’ ”

“But Marget,” said Cor, puzzled. “You already say that we are poor fighters, even at fourteen thousand feet. We’ll be much worse at O’rmouth, and the observatory is nearly ten thousand feet above that. How can you expect success there?”

“You’ll see. I assure you, there will be nothing subtle about it. Jolle and I are sure it will work. In the meantime, we have a competent adversary down there below us. I’d give a lot to know what he is planning.”

So the conversation was back to that. She must speak now, Cor realized. Jolle would soon return from the front lines, and then it would be impossible to bring the matter up. Even if the alien didn’t kill them before they could finish the story, he could certainly persuade Tatja that it was a fabrication.

She tried to remember Tatja as she had been in her first days on the barge, when she hung on Cor’s every word, and her gratitude had been an obvious thing. Over the years, there had been occasional flickers of that, times when she was a confidante, almost a big sister … and not a pet. Was there anything left of that? When Cor finally spoke, the effect was strange—like listening to someone else talking or remembering a previous conversation.

“Tatja, you remember our talk yesterday morning at the watering stop?”

“Uh-huh.”

Cor didn’t lose stride. “We said the possibility that perhaps Jolle was lying, that Profirio was the gendarme, and Jolle the criminal.”

“Yes, I remember all that.” Tatja’s tone was good humored, if a bit distracted.

“You said that we must wait and watch. Well, Svir and I …

uh … we thought that the situation was so dangerous maybe more could be done. If Jolle were the evil one, maybe he lied about what he salvaged from his fight with Profirio. In fact, if these golems are so popular and if Jolle was the one who … uh … slaughters humans, then he might even have one with him.” There could be no more evasion. If she didn’t say it now, Grimm would get ahead of her.

“Tatja, this is exactly what we discovered. Jolle is the criminal. He has a golem with …”

“You were the one in the wagon.”

“We had to, Tatja! Jolle is the slaver. His golem can even talk, and no machine—”

“You peeping bitch, I’ll teach—” In the darkness Cor had no warning. The lower right side of her face went numb and splinters of pain spread through her head. Simultaneously Tatja’s other fist buried itself in her middle. The nylon webbing of Cor’s shrap vest could not protect her from the ramming force of the blow. It bowled her over the edge of the terrace and she tumbled down the slope. Ancho went flying off into space.

There was the sound of a body block, and Svir’s voice, “Don’t hit her again! It was me, me! I’m the peeper.” Cor’s head struck a rock, and for a moment all she knew was tiny yellow lights floating lazily before her eyes. She was lying at the base of the terrace slope; Tatja and Svir were scrambling toward her. She coughed back blood and felt the beginnings of triumph. Tatja had used nothing but her fists—and those ineptly. If they could survive just a few more seconds, Tatja would cool off, and Cor might really have a chance to convince her.

From behind her, Cor heard men moving through the darkness. One of them was running. Running? In this dark? The footsteps stopped. Strong hands lifted Cor to her feet, and a calm voice sounded in her ear. “Say friend, what’s the problem?” It was Jolle.

Twenty-one

To Svir’s amazement, they both still lived. He looked around dazedly. But for how long? This was Jolle’s territory:

Though the bunker had been hastily and crudely constructed, it was an effective job. The Crown’s Engineers had used a cleft in the terracing. It had been a simple matter to fill the open end with dirt-packed bags and to construct a roof of timber covered with three or four feet of dirt. The occupants of the bunker could survive all but a direct hit from a six-inch shell. Since the enemy was supposed to be without six-inch guns, the bunker should be safe unless it was overrun. There was no real floor to the room, just the curving rocky surface of the cleft. Despite the primitive aspect of the chamber, it was obviously a command post. A field table had been set in the middle of the chamber, and on it were detailed maps and overlays of the area. From the roof over the table hung a peculiar lamp that looked very much like the algae pots used in Crownesse and on the Islands. Its cool blue radiance lit the maps and the men standing around them. Underofficers moved back and forth through a curtained doorway. They were bringing information that was immediately posted on the overlays. Runners occasionally departed through the tunnel to the outside.

Svir felt distant amusement to see that even here, his curiosity was alive: The strange light, for instance. Algae pots were terribly hard to keep alive this far from resupply. Why not use an oil lamp? At night no smoke would be visible to give away their location.

Cor huddled against him, looking even more dazed than he. She had taken the brunt of Tatja’s rage. Svir had wiped the blood from her face, but there was a great bruise growing across her jaw. Ancho hung solicitously at her shoulder. No doubt his attention was both comforting and painful.

Cor looked at him, her eyes wide. “Have you seen her … or him?” she whispered.

He shook his head. “Neither. I … I thought Jolle would kill us when he found us with Tatja like that. But he calmed her down, and had you carried here. I don’t know what he’s planning, but—”

At that moment the subject of their conversation pulled back the curtain and stepped into the room. In the dim light, Jolle’s face was shadowed. His black hair glinted metallically. He nodded casually at them and walked to the map table. There they could see his features more clearly. He seemed relaxed—as Tatja did in such situations. His uniform looked freshly pressed. To him, the officers at the table might have been discussing party plans.

Jolle addressed Imar Stark. “We just received a signal from Marget; she is at her command post. Our position is to be the prime command post unless it be knocked out by enemy action. As she mentioned before in your presence, she has delegated immediate command of all operations to me. You may check this reading of her message with your own signalman.” He nodded at the curtain.

Stark nodded stiffly. He obviously had no love for the situation, but the queen had been explicit, and besides, this bearded provincial hadn’t tried to control the minutiae of operations with the same prickliness that Marget often did.

Jolle continued. “I am putting the militia under you. My generals have already agreed to that, since you are my subordinate in this matter. If our scouts are to be believed—and I suspect some of the signal reports are fakes—the enemy is in position below us. I am saving my artillery until they mass for an assault. When that happens, we’ll use the plan discussed before.” He glanced at the map. “Good. I didn’t know the Celestial Servants were in position. General Stark, we can expect engagement at any moment.”

“Yes, sir.” The old military man didn’t salute, but his voice was respectful. The alien turned, and then walked to the curtain. As if by afterthought, he glanced at Svir. “I’d like to talk with you for a moment, please.” His words were mild, but they brought a chill to Svir’s spine. Where Tatja had raged, this creature calculated. If he wished them death, then he and Cor would die.

Jolle appeared to mistake the reason for Svir’s immobility.

“Miss Ascuasenya is welcome to come, if she feels up to it.” He gestured beyond the curtain.

Svir stood, felt Cor’s hand tight in his. She came to her feet, and looked into Svir’s eyes. “It will be together,” she said softly.

Beyond the curtain it was completely dark. No light escaped from the map room, even as they moved past the curtain. The cloth was thick and layered double to prevent leaks. They felt their way to a wooden bench, and sat. There was a long silence. The wall beside him was made of dirtpacked bags. He realized there were slit windows at about chest level. The wall was so thick that he couldn’t see the sky. There was only a gray glow and a faint breeze to indicate the night outside. Jolle stood by the windows for a moment and said nothing. From breathing sounds, Svir realized there was at least one other person in the cool darkness, probably behind Cor. He listened carefully, but all he heard now was a fatbat cooing in the distance. At these altitudes even insects were rare and the night silence was profound. The sounds of people talking could be heard for miles, unless precautions were taken. It was suddenly clear why Tatja’s meeting with the Doomsdaymen had been held a thousand feet higher up and in the midst of wagon noises.

Finally Jolle spoke—or rather whispered, “Take a break, Captain. I can record any messages incoming.” The fourth occupant of the room could be heard standing and walking past the curtain. Then Jolle spoke to Cor and Svir. “We’re set. Things are going to rip apart in fifteen minutes unless he anticipates me. I may not have another chance to talk with you before tomorrow—and I want to get this over with before we arrive at O’rmouth.”

A cornered animal can only act aggressively, and Svir certainly felt cornered. He hissed back, “That’s assuming you win the battle tonight, you bastard.” Why didn’t the monster make his move?

“Hey, not so loud,” Jolle answered quietly. “Part of the reason for this pause is that both sides are making a sound recon. I don’t want to get bombed out of my own command post. No. Don’t start screaming until I finish my story. Okay?”

Svir felt Cor tense beside him. Apparently she had had the same thought. He closed his mouth, and wondered whether Jolle had seen him preparing to shout or had just concluded that he was likely to try. He might as well forget the idea. Jolle could probably kill him before he could yell.

Jolle continued. “There is no chance we will lose this engagement. We have the high ground, we have the art’ry, and we have some acclimated troops. But this is not the final showdown that our forces think it is. Unless we are lucky, the one called Profirio will survive. This battle is merely an intermediate step, and tomorrow, after our victory, we must move on to the next. That is where I need you.”

Cor’s words came awkwardly from her injured mouth, but the emotion was clear: “I’ll bet it pleases you to pull off the wings of batlets, too. Why don’t you finish it? We know you—slaver!”

“You two have jumped to some easy but false conclusions. Have you ever considered that I might have brought you here to kick some sense into your heads?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “This is really my fault, I suppose. I should have picked you up right after you went through my wagon. Yes, I knew Svir was the burglar. But we were very busy, and I hadn’t counted on Marget reacting as violently as she did to your revelation. You’ll have to forgive her; she’s—uh—a little unbalanced right now. Even I didn’t realize how heavily she’s fallen for me.

“But that’s passed. I want you back on my side and I have only minutes. What do you think you saw in my wagon this afternoon, Svir?”

They weren’t to be killed! At least not yet. Svir straightened. “Well, I saw a golem, and it talked with a human voice. So Profirio must be the policeman and you the monster.”

The alien sighed. “If only your technology were fifty years more advanced. If only you had more iron on this world. Svir, what you saw was a machine, not too much better than what your own people can make nowadays. It can think only in the most primitive ways. It displayed abilities that made it seem alive to you—but actually it performed only a few simple tricks. If that box had really been humanly intelligent, do you think it would have let you into the wagon? And consider the means it used to lock and unlock the wagon doors. That was a simple—uh—damn, you have no word for it. Call it an optional magnet. If you knew anything about—” again he seemed to search for words “—current changes, you would see the trick was elementary. Someday I’m going to find out how you people come to have such a good theory of chemistry without knowing about… After all you have the valence concept…” He was silent for a moment, as if considering some puzzle.

“And as for the voice you heard calling for my help, that was as mindless as the trip alarms you have in your homes. They make a screaming wail without words. My little box has an alarm that is just a group of words that are repeated endlessly and without consciousness. Look, you already have machines that can record pictures. Why not sound?”

Tiny doubts had been sown by this speech. When he thought back on it, Svir realized that the “golem” had shown no adaptive behavior. Perhaps it was just a mechanical alarm. Now he saw why the alien had insisted on using magic to explain his science. What would sophisticated machines be like if this sentry device were considered primitive? Yet Svir was not convinced. Perhaps both Profirio and Jolle were devils and this was all a little game where none of the gods were killed and the locals provided the blood. Everything could be a lie. His mind grasped wildly for some working assumption: the only useful one was to believe the story of monster and gendarme. Until he and Cor could make some decision as to which was which, they should appear to cooperate with the alien.

He was just opening his mouth when Cor said, “I think you’ve convinced us that we can’t be convinced of anything. So what do you want from us?”

“I guess that is all I could hope for. As to your cooperation, I—Listen.” Across the night, the sounds came unnaturally clear: voices, occasional screams. The sounds were so precise and yet so faint. They reminded Svir of a miniature painting seen under a glass—small and yet filled with complicated details.

The nylon curtain moved, and someone entered the room. “Sir, we have action at Backtrack Five. We believe more enemy troops are moving into that area.”

“Very well, Stark, you may initiate Olive Bat. And send the signal officer in here.”

“Right.” As the chief of staff left for the map room, Cor struggled to her feet. For a moment she sagged against him, but she wouldn’t sit back down. He helped her to the sand-bagged wall, where she leaned against the damp bags and looked out the slits. On the other side of his wife he could hear the signalman taking his position.

The window slits were cunningly constructed to protect against a wide range of art’ry bursts and still allow good visibility. Except for a scattering of stars in the narrow strip of visible sky, there was no light.

“There’s nothing to see yet,” commented Jolle. “And if we’re lucky, the actual fighting will stay below our line of sight.”

Svir noticed the flickering light of first one signaler and then another. “The third, fourth, and seventh art’ry batteries acknowledge our command,” said the signalman.

Jolle spoke to Svir and Cor. “See, that first flicker was the command from this post. We can’t afford to give away our position—in case Pröfe has a suicide squad or a couple of art’ry pieces—so we use runners to take messages from the map room to our signaler. That’s about a hundred yards down the hill from here. Then the command is flashed to our units.” The explanation had been purely for their own edification, Svir realized.

Then came the crump of a single art’ry piece firing. Seconds passed, and suddenly there was green daylight over the valley. Back in Bayfast Svir had seen art’ry flares fired over the inland cliffs during maneuvers, and this was much the same. The light moved slowly, dimming and then glowing brightly. But this was not Bayfast. Here the mountains extended thousands of feet above the top of the flare’s arc. The otherworldly green light illuminated the sides of the gorgelike valley, and in a distortion of perspective the light seemed a tiny green match flickering in a darkened room, casting shadows upon the walls and floor. It was nearly as bright as quarter-phase Seraph, and he wasted several seconds watching the shadows slowly shift as the flare drifted across the sky. But even the flare couldn’t reveal the extent of the mountains that shouldered over it. To those hulks it was indeed a tiny match flame. As the light dimmed for the last time, Svir looked at the ground below. The terraced fields stretched down a slope of nearly thirty degrees for a distance of some two thousand feet. Beyond that he could see the road that led from the Picchiu River. The road stretched transversely across the face of the slope. Beyond it, the ground dipped out of sight. Except for the flare moving across the sky and the sounds of battle below, there was no sign of human activity.

The flare dimmed, winked out. All was dark again; Svir couldn’t even see the stars now. Signal lamps flickered as the crown’s observers reported on enemy positions they had sighted. He judged that most of the signalers were near the edge of the drop-off. In the bunker, the signal officer was scratching away. He spoke to Jolle. “Sir, they say—”

“Never mind, Captain. Just take it into the map room. The men who are going to use this information already have it.” As he spoke, the men he referred to took action. In a space of fifteen seconds, the art’ry pieces of the combined crown and provincial forces fired. It was no longer necessary to whisper. Though the firing was a couple of thousand feet away, the racket was loud enough to cover most other noises. As the barrage continued, Svir noticed pale lights flickering in the darkness below their position. Even with fiashless powder, the guns emitted a pearly, oval radiance when they fired. It was probably invisible from below the guns’ positions, but the command bunker was in line of sight with most of them. They must be well camouflaged; when the flare had shined, he had looked at the road and seen no sign of them. “He’s way ahead of the reports,” Jolle said mildly.

A second flare went up. This time there was more to see. At the edge of the drop-off, several hundred Rebels were in contact with friendly forces. It was impossible for Svir to tell whether the loyal forces were Provincial, crown, or Celestial Servants. Even after the barrage, the noise of their fighting was loud—they were within fifteen hundred feet of the command post itself, though still considerably below it. He realized that even with the flares, the art’ry wasn’t very effective. The flares had pinpointed the enemy, but only after they were almost on top of the guns. In daylight, the enemy could have been destroyed while still several miles away, but now the friendly troops had to fight just to protect their guns.

That defense was not entirely successful. There was an ear-popping concussion, and the floor of the bunker rapped their feet. At same time, a minor avalanche of dirt sifted down through the timbered roof, and fine dust filled the air. Svir and Cor held onto each other, coughing in the smoke-like dust. Ancho cringed at Cor’s feet. As the floor steadied, she bent down and picked him up, trying to brush the dust from his coat. Svir could feel heavy dirt in his hair and down his neck; the dust stuck to his skin everywhere.

“Damn,” spoke Jolle. “T hey’ve captured one of our own guns. Unless—” In the green flarelight, Svir saw him pick up a pair of binoculars and inspected the terrain before them. He didn’t look at the fighting men moving toward them, but concentrated on the lip of the drop-off, further away. The flare burned out, but he kept watching. The FAO lights flickered back to the art’ry and command positions.

The signalman stepped back into the room. “Captain,” said Jolle, “the enemy has broken our art’ry direction code. The following FAO positions—” he rattled off some map coordinates “—are enemy men pretending to be ours.” He paused and watched the messages flickering up from below. “They are directing shells toward our own men. Have those positions shelled.”

“Yes sir.” The signalman started for the curtain. “We’ll throw an acknowledge test at them just to make sure.”

“You’ll destroy them immediately, mister.”

“But sir, if they have the main code, how can you tell who the impostors are? And you’re just estimating their position. You at least need a—”

Jolle’s voice seemed quiet next to the art’ry fire below, but it cut through all the random noises with a cool deadliness. “Captain, I gave you an order. Obey it, or join the enemy.”

For a moment the captain struggled to find his voice. “Y-yessir. They’ll be destroyed immediately.” He disappeared.

“That was a clever move,” continued Jolle, “though I’m sure Profirio knew it would be obvious to me. But then, what he really wants is confusion, so he can escape from his own forces—which are sure to lose—and insinuate himself into the Doomsday group.” Why did the alien trouble to explain these intrigues to mere playing pieces? Did he really think such apparent frankness would convince them of his sincerity?

More enemy forces had cleared the drop-off; now shells were landing on the terraces in sight of the bunker. They lit the battlefield with stop-action flashes. Red, orange, even blue glimmered in the bursting shells—and there seemed to be a fiery structure inside the explosion. The shrap’ bombs were less impressive, but from the screams and turmoil, Svir guessed they were doing more damage. A third flare arched across the valley. Several thousand more enemy soldiers had passed the road. They were close! Somehow they had made it to the lip of the drop-off. But this was no unstoppable horde: these men were in the open now. They ran across the terrace, their only cover an occasional tree. Fire fell, burning the fields, torching the trees. The gunmen didn’t need any directions to bring their fire directly in on the enemy troops, though many guns were too near to be effective.

And only two men knew what the soldiers were dying for—knew whether they were dying to save the world or to destroy it.

The army that was now a mob swept past them, and the art’ry fire followed. The shell bursts still cast light across the fields, but they were not directly visible. The noise was muted, coming through the dirt behind them. There was a strange sound he hadn’t noticed before. It was a snapping, popping, like the clatter of a broken printer. The sound came from the left side of the front. He leaned forward, and saw a white flashing. It was something like a signaler, but faster and without the dots, dashes, and intermeds of a signaling pattern. Jolle saw the white flickering too. “He’s bringing on his secret weapon, but it won’t help him.”

“Yes, but what is it?” To Svir, the flashing light seemed innocuous.

“It’s, uh, a handheld gun. Pröfe looted the warehouses in Kotta-svo-Picchiu. He got something like a thousand ounces of iron there. Apparently he used some of it to make a repeating gun that’s small enough to be carried. I don’t think he’s actually built a nonmetallic repeater—I tried that, couldn’t do it. He has at least five men down there—” He stopped as art’ry shells blossomed over the twinkling lights, outshining them. When the orange faded, the white sparkling was gone too.

The battle sounds were sporadic now. Guns still fired and men still fought, but it was the tempo of grease sputtering in a pan rather than fire running before a strong wind.

“See that?” Jolle pointed to one of the signal lights. “We’ve destroyed the enemy’s main force. The engagement lasted only thirty minutes, and we’ve achieved complete victory. We’ll capture most of the survivors. Things moved so fast, we may have actually caught Pröfe, too.” He turned to the signalman, who had just returned. “Captain, go back to the map room and ask Stark to assemble the staff.”

Svir looked at Jolle. The shelling had set fire to a nearby tree, and the alien’s face was visible in the light. He seemed to be smiling. What if the engagement had destroyed Profirio? Then the whole matter was decided, no matter who was the monster.

“I’ll be leaving you in a few minutes,” said Jolle. “I want to inspect the prisoners. Marget handled that during the battle, but she would have big trouble if Pröfe were captured.

“Before I go, let me tell you what I want from you. Later this morning, the command group is going to O’rmouth. The Doomsday people think this is all some sort of victory celebration, and we won’t say otherwise till we’re in conference with the Archobservers. I don’t think I’ve convinced you that Pröfe is the monster … but I need you. If you have any questions or tests to put to me, think them over tonight and maybe I can give you some proof before we go up there. When we’re actually in conference, I want—”

“Sir?” It was Imar Stark at the curtain. Jolle walked across the room to talk to the general.

Svir stifled a curse, and Cor squeezed his hand. Patience. He looked outside, at the burning tree. Its twisted limbs gave it a horrible, manlike appearance. It was a terrible symbol of all this night’s suffering. Cor must have thought the same. Ancho stirred nervously on her shoulder, and she pulled at Svir’s hand, urging him away from the window slit.

Then the tree spoke. It was a human voice: ponderous, deep, and menacing. The words weren’t Spräk or Sfierro. To his Island mind they sounded something like, “Ter äshe gaul, Jolle.” And he never forgot those words, for simultaneously two other things happened which bent his life out of time.

Jolle’s hand jerked Svir back from the slit window. “Prö—”

The world ripped open and the light of hell itself shone through. With that bloody light came a painfully loud explosion just inches from his face. Then the rent was mended. He was lying on the ground, and everything was dark except for the painful afterimages floating in his eyes. He felt Cor beside him. Jolle was pulling him to a sitting position. He allowed himself to be raised, then reached for his wife. “C’mon Cor, get up.” No answer. Then he was back on the ground, feeling for wounds… trying to wake her… burning fur … Ancho…

That stroke of artificial lightning had come through the slit near his left side—where Cor had been standing. And the explosion had been… He still couldn’t see anything, but he could hear someone screaming her name over and over. Strong hands pulled him up and someone was slapping his face. The tiny room was filled with people. Or rather he had been moved into the map room. The streak afterimage of Pröfe’s weapon still hung before his eyes, but now there was another, fainter light. He was lying on his back, and the room’s lamp was shining above him like a broad blue cloud. It seemed so much fainter than before. Everything was dark and blurred.

He rolled over in the dirt. People stood or knelt by something on the ground. Others ran back and forth, but they were irrelevant. The kneeling one was a medic, he could see now. And beside him on the ground—his sight was very blurred, and the impression was vague, but—The explosion at the end of the red thunderbolt had been—Cor’s face.

The tired medic muttered, “It was quick at least.” The platitude sent Svir into a flat dive hat ended at the medic’s throat. He was on top of him, then under, and the noise around him seemed bright with surprise and anger. Then everything became dark again.

Twenty-two

The colonization of the West Coast had begun a thousand years before. Llerenito farm settlements were scattered from the twentieth to the fortieth parallel—the seeds whence grew Sfierro and Picchiu. About the same time, people of the Chainpearls founded a major colony at Bayfast. Much later, Chainpearl fishermen began living on the rocky coast north of the fortieth.

In the beginning, these northerners had the same language, the same heritage as the Bayfastlings. The names they laid on their grim land were meaningful to Bayfast ears: Doomsday, Heaven-gate, Overmouth. But the years passed; hardship and distance brought a parting. After five hundred years, though they still spoke a language understandable to Bayfastlings, their view of the world was utterly alien. These “Doomsdaymen” raised their own religion—which would probably have become Seraph worship if only the Doomsday Range had lain beneath the sky that held Seraph. Instead, the cult’s central belief was that the sky of night is the physical manifestation of the most powerful spirit, and that by studying its countenance, all problems can be solved. In the hills near Kotta-svo-Picchiu there were ruins of the astrological temples of the cult’s early Observers.

The Doomsday religion would have remained a crackpot cult dominating some minor fishing villages, except for two things. The first was the invention of the telescope, a divine endorsement of the cult’s technique. The second was the discovery of copper and iron in the Doomsday Mountains. In one century the fishermen became miners, and very rich ones. Their coastal villages disappeared, except for Kotta-svo-Picchiu, which ballooned into a large port. Scores of mining towns grew in the highlands, and some became cities. The Archobservers found themselves the absolute rulers of one of the wealthiest and most inaccessible countries in the world. Now they had the resources to watch the face of God as befitted that sacred undertaking. As the search for iron carried the ex-fishermen higher into the mountains, the priests noticed that the nights were clearer, the stars brighter.

Thus was born the notion of a cathedral at the top of the world. They would find the highest point in the Doomsday Mountains and construct there the largest telescope possible. The priests guessed the job would take a century and empty their treasure houses; if they had known the truth, even they might have quailed.

It took them fifty years to reach a point ten thousand feet below the peak they judged the highest in the world, and fifty more to build a town there. Overmouth, that “resting spot” was called, since it stood above the largest glacier in the range. In the years that followed, the priests nearly gave up the idea of proceeding higher. Perhaps the heights above were meant for angels, and mere humans should construct their observatory at O’rmouth. Even there, the unacclimated lived less than ten quarters, and most children died in their cradles.

It was only in the last forty years that this terrible thinness of air had been conquered and a means of reaching the top of the world discovered. By then O’rmouth had a population of thirty thousand and rich ore fields had been found in the area, so the city was both the religious and economic center of the region. The drive to the top of the world could be undertaken. It cost thirty more years, and five thousand lives, to set the sixty-inch Eye in its shrine.

“So? We are grateful. We are so grateful that we will not ask Your Most Sacred Majesty to pay for the damage her armies did to the Riverside Road, to Kotta-svo-Picchiu, to the Kotta Eye, and to our farmlands below O’rmouth.” Mikach the Perceptive, First Archobserver, spoke with unconcealed sarcasm, but with all the dignity of his station. He wore a powder-blue robe, indicating he spoke as a temporal power. A necklace of copper and rubies was draped across his chest. The hair on his face and head was braided into two thick tails, one going down his back, the other down his front. Beside him at the iron-topped table sat other Archobservers. Behind them stood unbearded Observers.

“Yes, and for our part, we are grateful for your help in defeating the Insurrectionists.” Tatja spoke quickly but without apparent effort. While the priests had their rubies and copper, her dress was constructed of thousands of tiny gems, each glittering with its own color. Over this were strewn larger gems and curved plates of the principal metals. Spider silk floated about the ensemble. Her shining red hair flowed smoothly from beneath a silver circlet. There must be no doubt who had the greatest wealth here.

Beside her sat the highest advisors to the crown. First on the right was Jolle, still in the uniform of a Provincial militia. Behind them sat military commanders and cabinet officers. No lowlander was standing—at these altitudes, it took some effort just to walk. Except for the Doomsdaymen, the only people who seemed at ease were Jolle and Tatja. All the others struggled with the dizziness and nausea. Just minutes before, Imar Stark had been carried from the room with bloody vomit on his lips.

Tatja continued, “But we do believe that your debt to us is greater than ours to you. We have only a small request of you. You grant me—at least claim to grant to me—the ultimate temporal sovereignty over your lands. I wish to visit the High Eye, and to perform there a simple experiment.”

Mikach the Perceptive stiffened, and there was angry muttering among his peers. When the Doomsdayman spoke, it was with deep and frank indignation. “Marget, you know us well, well enough to know your request is entirely beyond the limits of hospitality. Only the trained and faithful may approach that sacred instrument. You are at O’rmouth because of your—titular—sovereignty. If you insist, we will permit you to use the ten-inch instrument here—and you must know what a concession this is. But if you continue to blaspheme, you will be cast down from our heights—by my temporal power.”

As he spoke, Tatja glanced at Jolle, who shook his head slightly. The others in her party came full alert at this threat, reaching for the crossbows and daggers they did not have.

Only the astronomer royal seemed unaffected by the threat. In fact, he was not listening. His gaze moved idly around the low room. To the right, tall windows showed O’rmouth and the glacier. He looked without interest across the narrow streets. The entire city was crammed into two hundred acres to take advantage of the avalanche shade. Nowhere in that low mass of carved stone and dirty snow was there a bit of green. Every building, even the lowliest residential cooperative, was built of stone. The granite walls were decorated with gargoyles, and the corners of larger buildings were studded with dovetailed stone cylinders. In some ways the Doomsdaymen had no imagination: The false-log effect was taken as a sign of ancient nobility. Even now, the roofs were under several feet of snow. During winter, the snow covered everything, arching between the buildings, turning the city’s streets into tunnels.

But today, children ran and played in the sun, unaware that such exertions were impossible for any but them. The Doomsdaymen believed in large families. Mortality was high and there was a chronic manpower shortage. One day soon those children would find that arduous labor was the fate of all but a few Doomsdaymen, and they would wear the dull brown uniforms of adult commoners.

Cor. For an instant, the screaming pain drove through his armor. Cor with the smooth black hair. Cor with the brown eyes, the creamy skin. Cor with the strength to support him through all problems, the mind of bright ideas. Cor with the face that—his mind veered from the horror.

It was still impossible to believe that she had gone away and would never come back. Life was like a tree limb growing smoothly in an anticipated direction. Last night the branch was snapped across. Reddish sap oozed out, but the end was dead. Life took a new unrecognized turn, leaving the branch bruised and torn. It would be a time before the new reality seemed inescapable. Until then, he could retreat into the world that was not, and forget what things had become.

And so Jolle’s quiet plea of that morning had gone uncomprehended. The words were from a nightmare, perhaps-not world, and he could ignore them. But time passed, and the screaming broke through more often. Eventually he would be pushed into the new reality. Then apathy would become hate. He would destroy the creature who had killed the only girl foolish enough to love Svir Hedrigs. Profirio had tricked many people, but he had here an enemy whose hate could turn back any persuasion. This last thought brought him close to the new reality: His friends, after all, were making plans that would result in the destruction of Profirio.

Tatja, using her most imperial manner, was still working on Mikach. “Very well, Archobserver, if we may not visit the Eye in person, I would like you to conduct an experiment there at our direction.”

The Perceptive One didn’t answer at once. Perhaps this approach might work. “What is the experiment?”

“A limited sky search.”

“How limited?”

“Between one and twenty hours of observation time.” In fact, it could take up to three hundred hours if Jolle’s intuition were in error by even a small amount.

“And what do you expect to find?”

In this case the truth was the perfect answer. Tatja smiled as she said, “My astronomer believes that the Tu-Seraph system has an external satellite.”

“Ridiculous. You’ve seen our reports. Don’t you read them? There is no satellite more than ten yards across nearer than one million miles. I certainly won’t allow such redundant use of the High Eye. We have done some experiments for you in the past, but in this request, you go too far.”

The Queen sat straight in her portable throne, touched her crown, and spoke flatly to Mikach. This was the last verbal weapon she had. “Subject, I demand your cooperation. Am I not sovereign?”

The other’s voice was just as grim. There was no hint of sarcasm, but the tone was unyielding and deadly. “You are sovereign as long as you remain in Bayfast and mind your own affairs. But here you are out of your element. Your forces outnumber ours, but each of us is worth five of you in combat, as you discovered last night. If you give up your demands, we will allow you to depart in peace, friendship, and lealty; we realize that you have the power to control Kotta-svo-Picchiu and the Riverside Road, and to choke our commerce. But if you persist in this imperialist heresy, we will destroy you.” He half-rose from his seat, then sat down abruptly. Standing in an enemy’s presence was bad luck, and Mikach was an Orthodox cultist. Now, the Reformist Observers were more interested in scientific research than past wisdom. They might have been more susceptible to Marget’s request; unfortunately, the Reformists were out of power in this decade.

“I am sorry Mikach. I won’t try to excuse what we’re going to do by calling you a disloyal subject. The overlord ploy was a stunt. I know I can’t control your people, at least not for indefinite periods. And we need your metals. So after this is over, please remember that we will always be ready to resume commerce with you.” The Archobserver’s anger dissipated before this nebulous attack. He obviously had no idea what was coming.

“Last night you saw our artillery; bomb throwers, I believe you call them.”

Several men in Doomsday blue caught the drift, and their eyes widened. Mikach was not so perceptive. “Yes, the catapults.” “They are more than that, Mikach. What you saw last night was a limited demonstration. We were operating at the minimum range possible—about six thousand feet. We can project bombs more than ten miles horizontally with these weapons. And the maximum vertical range is—”

Mikach interrupted with an inarticulate roar. He lunged to his feet, superstition forgotten. “You’ll die for this, infidel! To think we aided you because you ascribed your own treachery to your enemy.” Mikach turned to signal the doorman. There were armed Celestial Servants just outside. If he gave the word, there would be a massacre.

“Sit down, Mikach,” Jolle said. His voice was not remarkably loud, nor even tense, but the Archobserver turned back to face the crown.

Tatja took advantage of the break. “We aren’t foolish, Mikach. If we don’t return, the plan goes into effect automatically. So why don’t you do as General Jolle says? Sit down and hear the rest.” Mikach signed to the doorman, but he did not sit down.

“You know the power of a single high-explosive shell. Don’t doubt the accuracy of our fire. Though our guns are fourteen thousand feet below the target, my gunmen can put one out of two shells within one hundred feet of the mirror. In fact, the location of your Eye is one of the most precisely measured points in the world; the best mapmakers use its coordinates as a base.

“And I suggest that you do not attack our artillery pieces. They are vulnerable, but there are nearly two hundred of them. At this moment they are loaded and aimed. You could not destroy them all before they put out your Eye.

“Under this duress, we ask again: Let our party ascend to the Eye. We will not harm the instrument. Repara—”

“No! Better to destroy it cleanly than by taint.” The priest’s face was flushed and puffy. Behind him, there was a barely perceptible exchange of glances between Reformist Observers. They preferred taint to destruction.

It was Jolle who answered the dogmatism. “You blaspheme, Mikach. The face of God will still stand a billion light-years beyond your blue, whether your Eye is put out or spat upon. Spittle may be expunged, but if your Eye be destroyed, then you will be lost from God.”

It was a Reformist argument couched in Orthodox jargon. For a moment Mikach was silent. He realized that others were thinking what this dark-faced foreigner had just said. The priest’s face was calm again; only the trembling of his voice betrayed the struggle within. He neither nodded nor explicitly stated his submission, but asked, “When will you ascend, then?”

Tatja answered, “Sometime in the afternoon. Say twenty-six hours. We’ll stay here and rest until that time.”

Now the other nodded. “Very well. We’ll clear some quarters for you.” He leaned across the table, and for a moment his face twisted with the anger of a moment before. “My people will dedicate much of their remaining existence to punishing you.”

The generals smiled at this threat, made by the leader of a second-rate military power against the greatest nation in the world. Tatja didn’t smile. She respected the determination and technical competence that lay behind the Doomsday religion. Had she been nothing more than the Queen of Crownesse, this would have been a threat to fear. Mikach’s promise was the sort which starts crusades.

Twenty-three

Someone had given him a crossbow. It was a powerful model, its cross-spars steeply angled. One full winding could shoot its entire six-bolt magazine. And each bolt contained enough explosive to put a hole through three inches of wood.

At the moment Svir felt no curiosity as to why he, who barely knew how to sight a bow, had been given the weapon. He had not noticed that out of the two-hundred-member party, only Jolle, Tatja, and he were armed.

Jolle and Tatja had originally planned to make the ascent alone, but the ingenious Doomsdaymen had made that impossible. The priests claimed that all the picture-making equipment was at O’rmouth for a general overhaul. This was plausible, since the observatory was too small to contain a machine shop. Unfortunately, more than a hundred Celestial Servants were then needed to carry the gear necessary to Jolle’s project. The climb would take two days, with stops at Doo’d’en outposts along the way. So there had to be a number of Crown’s Men along to watch this mob of potential saboteurs. Everyone was surprised when Marget demanded they all go unarmed. The Servants were pleased with the requirement, the Crown’s Men frankly angry.

If he had thought about it, Svir would have understood why only the three of them were armed … but he was thinking about very little.

For two days, they had walked up a steep tunnel toward the top of the world. Above the snowpack ceiling, the wind hummed endlessly across the mountain face. Where light holes punctured the roof, the hum became a scream. Sunlight glared brilliant through those holes, splashed whiteness on the figures trudging slowly upwards.

For a thousand feet at a time, the tunnel climbed so steep there were steps cut in the ice. Yet this journey was a walk in paradise compared to the climb that had faced the first explorers. They had gone across the top of the snow, through the wind, with no shelters along the way. The atmospheric pressure here was only one-fifth that at sea level. It was difficult to maintain body temperature, much less to work. If it had not been for what the Doo’d’en called the “perfume of life,” no amount of sacrifice or faith would have been sufficient to build the observatory and live there.

The perfume of life—to “heathen” chemists, it was simply oxygen. At sea level the partial pressure of oxygen was about three pounds per square inch. At O’rmouth it was 1.4. It had been known for almost a century that the partial pressure of oxygen determines whether the air can sustain life. Thus, though scentless, oxygen is the perfume of life. For the last forty years Doo’d’en had used differential liquefaction to produce large amounts of oxygen. The gas was compressed into containers and allowed to slowly escape—as perfume might from an aerator. With some skill, it was possible to raise the partial pressure of oxygen at the observatory from 0.7 to 1.4 pounds per square inch, even though the total pressure inside the observatory was the same as outside. The procedure was simple and effective. No hermetic seals were needed.

Thirty men pulled the carts carrying the oxygen tanks. The aerators could occasionally be heard behind the hum of the wind. For the benefit of the Crown’s Men, Tatja had insisted on bringing enough tanks to maintain a partial pressure of 2.0 psi. The enriched air made their climb possible. Barely. And after two days in march, the Celestial Servants seemed as fatigued as the lowlanders; the Servants were carrying the equipment and hauling the carts. Several times the group became so spread out that the aerators couldn’t cover everyone. Then, without any warning, walking became impossible, and Tatja or Jolle would push them into a compact formation and move the tanks so everyone was within ten feet of “perfume.”

Each step sent bright spurts of pain up Svir’s calves. Each breath burned at his lungs. At first, the task of walking had made it easy for him to retreat from the events around him. No more. No more. For the first time in twenty hours, Svir found himself facing reality. Ancho was dead. Cor was dead. He believed that. And now that he did, the hate could blossom. Profirio must die—not because he wished to kill millions, but because he had killed the most important person in the universe. By himself, Svir had little chance against the monster. But he had two powerful allies, and he had a weapon. For the moment, he had a purpose.

Where the tunnel cut near the surface, the roof was pearly bright. Elsewhere, the light was fading. The sun would be lowering now, its light shining but indirectly through the roof holes. And in some places, the tunnel was very dark. Algae pots were useless in this cold, and a torch would consume more oxygen than one hundred men. The men around him were shadows, bent to their own pain. He knew that Jolle and Tatja were somewhere behind the whole group. It was a strategic certainty that one of those men who appeared so tired was actually alert, calculating. Walking behind the rest, the queen and the alien could watch with sensitive eyes. If they did not discover Profirio, they at least would not be surprised from behind.

Svir had ended up near the head of the column. Even with good lighting, his two friends would have been out of sight most of the time.

Hmm. If he were Profirio, he would walk up here, too. Svir looked around with new interest. Who seemed a bit too lively? That was probably the wrong thing to look for: Profirio would be a great actor. Under other circumstances these thoughts would have filled him with fear: It was dark, the figures were indistinct, and one of them, perhaps right behind him, was a monster.

Svir was abruptly aware of the cold. He pulled his parka close and tensioned his crossbow.

There was conversation nearby. Low muttering came past the sounds of the wind. There was more than one voice; maybe three or four. Some people can grumble even when they’re exhausted. And one of the speakers might be Profirio, gathering supporters. No doubt he could be as fiendishly persuasive as Tatja and Jolle. Svir dropped back till he was even with the sounds. His prospects were in front of the lead cart. Two of them were pulling it. The six-foot tank on the cart emitted its perfume in tiny hisses.

A hand closed on his shoulder. He leaped half a foot into the air, spastically squeezing his crossbow’s trigger. But the safety was set and he was spared the mortal embarrassment of shooting himself with an explosive bolt.

“Sorry, friend, I slipped.”

Svir turned to look at the other. It was possible the fellow really had slipped. Though the floor was covered with decomposed granite, there were open patches of ice. But at the head of the column, such patches were quite dry. The man released his arm. There was a glimmer from above, and Svir saw that he was fairly old, though muscular. This could be it! The other’s face showed just a bit too much fatigue. And the man was a Celestial Servant. Profirio would most likely pose as one of them.

Svir made no attempt to start a conversation. He had a dubious advantage over Profirio. The alien must nullify the armed men in the party. Since Svir was one-third of that force, Profirio would either manipulate him with conversation—or kill him. The ploys were limited, and for once it might be possible to compete with a mind like Tatja’s. When the “old soldier” finally spoke, Svir felt a flash of triumph.

“You’re one of the Crown’s Men, aren’t you?” The soldier’s voice quavered overmuch, Svir thought.

“That’s right,” he replied, with as much disinterest as he could muster.

“I don’t mean offense, but I see you’re armed. You must be important. Maybe you can tell me. Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?” His reply was not an evasion. The Servant’s question seemed disconnected from the dangers that floated through his mind.

“Why do you trespass here? Why do you insult a religion that’s never done you harm?” The voice had an innocent, bewildered tone.

The official reason was that this was Marget’s whim. To her generals she had presented no more explanation, though some of them were happy to humor her. They thought the Doomsdaymen needed a leash. Certainly Svir couldn’t blurt out the real reason for this trip; only Profirio would understand that.

“Perhaps you thought,” the Servant continued, since Svir seemed bound to silence, “that we didn’t show you proper respect. 1 love my people, sir, and I love my religion. But I’ve been south. I know that we’re a pretty mean group. We own a beautiful stretch of wasteland and the conviction we’re specially blessed by the Almighty. We must be arrogant. If we weren’t, we’d have no reason to stay here.”

Old soldiers could be this sharp, but no ordinary soldier could express himself so smoothly, and with such a vocabulary. Svir set his thumb on the bow’s safety.

The Servant continued, “We make a big show of fierceness, but this was the first time in a hundred years that Celestial Servants have been in combat. I always thought military drill was a frivolous, enjoyable pastime; no one ever died, as they so often do in mine and construction work. But this morning my men—” “Your men?” Svir broke in, trying to keep the right amount of curiosity in his voice.

“Yes, I’m a Celestial Servant with Stellar Effulgence. That’s about the same as a colonel in your army.”

Damn. That could explain his diction.

“It was strange to see men die, fighting. We thought we were protecting people and land. Now I see it was for nothing. What is the point?” He sounded hurt, bewildered, almost like Cor had sounded by the watering stop. Svir turned to give an honest reply, but the other had dropped back in the formation. Emotionally, Svir was convinced of the fellow’s sincerity. In a perverse way, that was the strongest sign that he had been speaking to the illusive Profirio; when you were sure they were sincere, then you knew you had been fooled. He brought his crossbow to port arms, turned, and let the oxygen cart creak past him. The other was lost in the mob that walked behind the cart.

Profirio? Maybe that was why the other moved away. But then, why hadn’t he killed Svir and taken the bow? The alien could certainly have done so, barehanded and without noise.

Minutes later, the tunnel leveled out, and the windsound died. The observatory! He tripped on a stone step. The walls, the floor—they were solid rock now. He saw the carts behind him being pushed over the step. Ahead, the darkness was absolute. If the whole observatory were built this way it must be a pretty dreary place, with no view except of heaven.

Someone brushed past him, moving fast. He lashed out, but his wrist was caught from behind. “It’s us,” Tatja whispered in his ear. He realized they were moving quietly to the head of the file, to be the first into the observatory. Jolle was taking no chances. Svir tried to follow them, but they were virtually running through the darkness. He had to slow down and cautiously feel his way… Far ahead, Jolle was pounding on a door and shouting.

It would be an interesting bit of treachery if the High Eye Observers chose not to open up; their visitors could never make it back to O’rmouth without more oxygen. But thousands of feet below, where there was still grass and air, the gunners had instructions to fire unless they received helios from Tatja at specified times. This point had been made excruciatingly clear to all concerned.

A trapezoid of sunlight appeared ahead, casting ragged shadows down the rough-cut granite of the hallway. Svir squinted into brilliance. Beyond that doorway, just a few feet away, was the end of their long journey.

Twenty-four

Dazzling sunlight was everywhere. Tall windows marched around the walls, and beyond them was the top of the world. The sky was indigo, as if the sun had already set. Look down and see the Doomsday Range, frozen waves of white tossed on a frozen sea. Here and there, clouds nestled between the peaks. Pale brown clung to one horizon, a trick of the westering sun … or the edge of the Central Desert?

The High Eye was not quite at the top of He’ gate: Some hundred yards west of the dome a scarp rose fifty feet higher, shielding the observatory from the winds that had pursued them here. The limestone stood brown and yellow above smooth snowdrifts. Svir turned; there was the stone hallway they had just been through. The snow lay powdery in the cracks and joints of the yellow masonry. Beyond the windshadow, it whirled with crystal violence around the stonework. Four hundred feet from the observatory, the hallway became a true tunnel, disappearing into the permanent snow pack. A large wind turbine stood north of the tunnel, its snout stuck into the gale; the derrick squatted on a contraption of gears and pistons. A covered trough extended from the turbine back to the observatory. The trough was sheathed by ice. A haze of steam or ice billowed up along its whole length.

A perfectly ordinary doorway was set between two of the windows. It swung open and a heavily clothed figure stepped inside. Though Doomsday born, the fellow swayed drunkenly, gasping for breath. He shut the door and sagged against the wall. Exterior maintenance must have been a killing job.

Inside the dome, a slow fan shuffled at the air. Dead air must be exhausted, and the “perfume of life” be kept properly concentrated. Thus the interior was not partitioned into rooms; the entire dome was visible at a glance. Here there was none of the ornament they had seen at O’rmouth, where there were laymen to be impressed. The floor was divided into sectors. Several were empty, reserved for the newly arrived equipment. Others were piled high with supplies, oxygen tanks, and astronomical equipment.

At the center stood the reason for it all: the High Eye itself. The telescope was the largest in the world; even if it hadn't been set at the top of the world, it would have inspired awe. The sixty-inch mirror was hidden in a plastic and ceramic webbing that extended fifty feet into the air to support the secondary mirror, which was huge in its own right. The secondary sent incoming light back slantwise to picture-making machines next to the main mirror. The entire structure could be turned to follow any point in the sky. Doo’d’en claimed that twenty-five thousand ounces of iron had gone into the steel for the bearings that supported it. No religious ornamentation was necessary to make it seem marvelous.

For a few moments Svir was absorbed by things he’d dreamed of all his life, but thought he’d never see.

Tatja’s voice came sharp, tense. “Move into the room slowly. Set down your equipment and line up against the wall.” She was facing into the tunnel, her crossbow aimed at the entrance. Jolle was inspecting the astronomers, in particular the fellow who had just come through the outside door.

From the tunnel came a puzzled question. It was Haarm Wechsler. “You refer to the Doomsday porters, of course.”

Tatja replied, “I mean everyone. There is a saboteur in the party and we intended to find him.” Jolle turned to face the tunnel; where he was standing, he could cover both the Doomsday astronomers and the visitors. Svir raised his bow and flicked off the safety. There was one in particular…

Crown’s Men and Celestial Servants stumbled into the light; many were too tired to care what was happening. They came through too fast. Tatja told them to come through in single file, but it was impossible to obey. Most of the carts were drawn by two or three men, and people inevitably walked in clusters behind the aerators. The carts were parked in a ragged formation. Then the visitors stood against the wall, in a single rank. The astronomers remained at the center of the room, their self-righteous anger changing to puzzlement. Why were lowlanders and Servants treated alike? Everyone was beginning to realize there was more here than a fickle queen’s whimsy.

Now every face was visible. Nowhere did Svir see that friendly, wrinkled one from the tunnel. Tatja glanced at Jolle. The alien shook his head slightly.

“I don’t think so,” he said quietly. Then, sharply, to the astronomers, “Where does that staircase lead?” He gestured with his bow. Stairs? Svir realized that what he had mistaken for an unevenness in the floor was something more. And the hole had been lost from view when the main party came into the dome. “Living quarters, may it please Your Most Illustrious Lordship.” Jolle ignored the sarcasm. “Is there any way from those quarters to the outside?”

“No. The only other entrance is by the Number Three Aerator.” Jolle stared at the speaker for several seconds. It seemed to Svir he was considering whether to chase into the basement for Profirio. That would decide things once and for all, but the other might be planning some special ambush. Since he was trapped, it might be best to leave him there.

Jolle glanced at Tatja, and she said opaquely, “No, that would be—wrong.” She turned back to the Crown’s Men and Celestial Servants. “It is my command that you remove yourselves below. Take two extra oxygen tanks.”

The Servants shuffled toward the dark stairway. Several of the crown’s generals stood their ground, and Minister Wechsler voiced their feelings. “Marget, you overstep yourself. The Crown’s subjects deserve your confidence. Your liaison with this fellow,” he waved at Jolle, “is—”

“Haarm, you’re in a bind you don’t understand. Get below or I’ll cut you to pieces.” She raised her crossbow.

The crown’s officers motioned their men toward the stairs. In three minutes they were all below. Tatja walked to the hole and shut the trap. She rolled one of the supply carts over the door. It might still be possible to open the trap from below, but it could not be done with stealth. She did the same at the other stairway, then walked slowly around the edge of the dome.

Jolle said, “We want you to do two things tonight, Svir. Be prepared to shoot any saboteur.” He accented the word so that Svir knew he meant one particular saboteur. “And help assemble the equipment.” He waved at the carts full of picture-making and analysis equipment.

The second job occupied Svir’s time for the next four hours. Even though Jolle and Tatja supervised, and even though the astronomers knew their equipment much better than he, there was plenty for him to do. The Doomsday picture-makers required large quantities of mixed reagents. The optical equipment was both bulky and delicate. At times the astronomers seemed to forget they were working under duress. Then Svir would notice eyes straying to the crossbow slung at his shoulder. These priests were revealing secrets they had sworn to guard forever. If they could think of a way to trick the queen’s gunmen below O’rmouth, they wouldn’t hesitate to kill him.

The sun set. Outside, the snow went from yellow to orange to red, and the red became deeper and deeper. Svir remembered seeing that red from many miles away, from far down by the Picchiu River… so many days ago, when there was still a reason, beyond revenge, for living. The thought almost drove him back into the world of what-might-have-been.

Then the stars came out. This side of the world had a sky much clearer and darker than anywhere beneath Seraph; except when in eclipse, the sister planet dimmed the fainter stars to invisibility. But here, thirty thousand feet above the sea and the mists, the stars were still brighter. They were so bright the snows glittered faintly beneath their brilliance. The wind turbine was shut down. Convection currents around the outside pipes would degrade the seeing. Besides—said the Doomsday archobserver—the building’s reservoirs now held enough hot water to support operations through the night. The Eye’s lid was pulled back, and aerators were opened full.

Jolle gave the astronomers an area one degree by twenty and specified a search pattern. He was looking for a new object of sixteenth magnitude. Jolle knew the orbital elements of his craft to several digits, but three quarters after having been marooned, he could know the position only approximately. Fortunately, the search area would be visible through most of the night. They would take dozens of pictures and compare them with the Doo’d’en archives brought from O’rmouth.

The Doomsdaymen moved surely about the dome, a tribute to their fanatic regard for their profession. Strange reddish light came from pillars scattered about the room. Another Doo’d’en secret. Svir reached up, touched one of the pillars. The glowing surface was flat, warm. The Doomsdaymen had something that glowed when differentially heated? That might explain their use of hot water.

Finally, the first picture plate was put in the optics beside the main mirror. The clockwork in the base of the instrument was wound, the Eye was aimed, and the exposure began. It would take half an hour for the plate to collect enough light to reveal objects of the sixteenth magnitude. Here was the prime advantage of the Doomsday technique over the greentint method used on the Tarulle Barge. Time exposures were nearly impossible with greentint.

After the first exposure, plates were changed and the telescope was repositioned. The exposed plate was the object of further chemical ritual; after twenty minutes, a priest announced that the picture might be viewed. He set it beside an archive plate of the same sky region, and positioned a double eyepiece over the pair. Svir recognized the procedure. Each ocular gave a magnified view of a separate plate. In this way, small differences between the pictures could be quickly detected. Svir stepped close to the table. The pictures glowed red where the light from the table showed through them. It took a moment to realize that light and dark were reversed here. Then he felt a stab of envy. The plates showed the Batswing Nebula—as Svir had never dreamed it. The gases extended, twisting, beyond the limits of anything seen in greentints taken with the Krirsarque thirty-incher.

Now the search could begin.

The hours passed. There was the routine of setting plates, aiming the Eye, treating exposed plates, and comparing them with previous pictures. But between events, time stretched empty. Jolle and Tatja took positions at the perimeter of the dome. Any intruder would set himself in silhouette against the high windows, unless he crawled along the floor.

It was nearly midnight when the man on the comparator called to Svir, “New object.” Svir leaned over the binocular eyepiece and looked at the red and black display. It was an undistinguished star field, nothing brighter than sixth magnitude. There was a whirring by his ear as the Doomsdayman turned a crank. The images flickered as first one and then the other lense was blocked. A faint streak was blinking in one corner of the image. Hmm. This wasn’t like the earlier ones. The streak was too long to be a reasonable asteroid.

He looked up to call Jolle, and found the other standing beside him. The alien bent over, and studied the scene for several seconds. Then, with the ease of one trained in the use of the instrument, he flipped a reticle into the optics. “That’s it. Just the right drift, just the right orientation.” There was a hint of triumph in his voice. “No more pictures, Observers. We have found what we came for.”

“Then you will leave us now?” came the voice of one of the more recalcitrant priests.

“Not quite yet. We will commit one more small desecration.” He glanced at the micrometer settings on the optics, and thought a moment. “Set the Eye back on the coordinates of plate fourteen.” He turned, walked quickly across the room. “Give me a hand, Svir.”

Above them, the Eye’s frame slewed fractionally, bringing the huge tube to near horizontal.

Jolle was already taking equipment out of a cart when Svir caught up with him. The small wooden cabinet was very familiar. Jolle looked up and continued quietly. “I’m going to use what you thought was a golem to operate my signaler.” He pushed the cabinet into Hedrigs’s hands and pulled an oblong box from the cart. Its smooth sides glittered metallically in the red light. “We’ve got to hustle. My boat is almost at the horizon; it’s already in haze, I think.”

Behind them, Tatja was herding the Doomsdaymen to the far side of the room. Just three people were needed now. Any intruder would be Profirio. For once there would be no trouble in penetrating others’ disguises and ruses. Everything was very simple.

Svir walked back to the scope, gingerly set the hand-carved cabinet on the floor beside the picture-maker. Above his head, the framework of girders and struts moved infinitesimally, tracking the stars beyond. Jolle opened the cabinet. The jewels glowed even brighter than Svir remembered. The shifting glitter sent blue-green ripples around the room. There was a collective gasp from the Doomsday astronomers, then an even more impressive silence. They had thought they were dealing with madmen. Now the world itself had gone mad.

Jolle drew a cable from the shimmering heap, attached it to the oblong box, and clamped the box to a telescope-alignment strut; evidently this was the signaler. Jolle stood, looked through a sighting scope. In the blue light, his face held a new intensity. “Damn. They didn’t leave it tracking properly.” He slung his crossbow, and adjusted the tracking wheels. “I could use my machine to do the aiming, but the scope is ready-made for—”

If Svir had not been looking directly into the maze of struts around the mirror, what followed would have seemed like magic. In one flashing motion, Profirio leaped from the scope to the floor, kicked over the glowing cabinet, and shouted, “Jolle killed her!” Svir’s weapon was pointed directly at Profirio’s middle—killing him was a matter of tightening one finger. But the other’s words held him back for a split second; then Tatja screamed “Don’t, Svir!”

Time slowed to a human pace. In a single second, Profirio had forced a stalemate. Svir realized this as he glanced at Jolle, who had his weapon nearly unslung—and could probably aim and shoot in a fraction of a second. But he didn’t move. Svir looked at Profirio, who appeared to be unarmed. This was the Celestial Servant who had talked to him in the tunnel. But now his face seemed younger, though very different from Jolle’s. Above his beard, Jolle’s face was smooth, deeply tanned. Profirio’s was paler, and creased with frown and smile lines.

Why didn’t Jolle shoot? Svir glanced at Tatja. Her crossbow was leveled and aimed—at Jolle. He looked at the glowing pile Profirio had spilled from the cabinet, and realized that at the instant he had accused Jolle of killing Cor, on a different level he had convinced Tatja that things were not as they seemed. Now that Jolle’s machine lay exposed, Svir could see there was a shape imbedded in its fiery matrix. That shape was horribly familiar: An oval lump, six inches across. From the lump led a ropelike strand, with finer strands splitting off it. Barely visible, the finest ones touched the silvery boxes that surrounded the pile. How many times had he passed that exhibit at U Krirsarque Museum, and shuddered at the pickled brain and spinal column there? Here the spinal column was bent into a circle to conserve space, but the rest was all the same.

As it lay on the floor, the pulsing treasure whimpered. Broken away from its machine tasks and left for a moment without a program, its high-pitched voice keened over and over, “Where am I, where am I, am I…” and the answer was nowhere anymore. Several of the astronomers fled outside, preferring hypoxia to the nightmare that had come to their shrine.

So Jolle was the slaver, after all. The revelation had strangely little effect on Svir; it was irrelevant what Jolle had done to strangers. The stock of his crossbow drifted back to the intruder. Svir’s universe shrank to Profirio’s blue-lit face. This murderer must die.

Less than five seconds had passed since the other’s appearance. Now he spoke for the second time. “And this is how he did it!” His hand whipped out to slap the side of the signaler. Red lightning. Even at ten feet, the heat of that beam scorched his face—just as it had once before. The beam clipped the dome, and shards of wood and glass showered down. Prompted by this cue, the thing on the floor spoke, its voice suddenly deep and male, “Ter äshe gaul, Jolle.”

The memory of the last time Svir saw that light was suddenly very sharp: Jolle had dismissed the signalman just before it happened. He had moved himself out of the way. Jolle put the golem in the tree and made it use the signaler to kill. Svir felt his muscles jerk. All men had been puppets to these three. Even now he was being maneuvered as unsubtly as a skoat. That didn’t matter. He was remembering a charred face; he would never quite be able to remember how Cor’s face had looked in life. His crossbow swung toward Jolle. The bearded one hardly seemed to notice. He was talking low and fast, to Tatja. “We can be. You love—”

Svir’s finger pressed the trigger. Jolle reacted with characteristic speed, bringing his weapon down before Svir could shoot. The alien’s left leg was blown off as Tatja loosed her bolt. The last thing Svir felt was the explosion as Jolle’s bolt smashed everything into darkness.

Twenty-five

The daybat fluttered through the intricately wound branches of the needle tree, settled beside a large pink flower, and folded its blue and orange wings. Its tiny, sleek head moved back and forth as it wiggled between the petals and licked the juices in the base of the flower. This far from human settlement, most animals were not shy of humans—the flower in question was barely fifteen inches above Svir’s head.

O’rmouth was one hundred miles away. The mountains dominated the horizon to the east—if one chose to look through the leaves and green branches in that direction. Here the air was thick and rich, just warm enough so that the breeze moving along the ground was pleasantly cool. Here the sunlight was muted by green leaves, not reflected with merciless intensity by snow and ice.

Three hundred feet away, their battle group was setting up bivouac. The universe had chosen to wear its mask of light and love today. Svir recognized the deception. The real world was snow and ice and red thunderbolts that…

There was a crackle of branches as Tatja entered the little open spot by the tent and sat down beside him. The daybat jerked its head from the flower and looked warily about, then went back within the pinkness.

They sat in silence for several minutes. Tatja wore a gray fatigue uniform. There was about her none of the purpose or intensity that had driven her before. The Doomsdaymen were far behind them. There were no more threats to face.

Tatja’s hand slipped onto his elbow. Then her face was before his and her eyes bore the same quiet, personal interest that he had seen more than four years ago in a certain tavern in Krirsarque—where this dream had begun. “A lot of people died in this adventure, and I am truly sorry it had to be … but Cor I miss the most. The most.”

He tried to produce an ironic chuckle but all that came out was a croaking sound.

“What?” asked Tatja.

He opened his mouth again. The words came fast, low, slurred. “I was just thinking if Jolle’s golem had been a bit more accurate he could have had me too an’ maybe saved himself later on.”

She raised her hand to his shoulder. “The golem was perfectly accurate, Svir. By killing her, Jolle made you into a tool and eliminated a major threat. Of all the people there, Cor was the only one I might have listened to.” Tatja’s voice faded. “In all the world, Cor and Rey Guille were the only ones I might have listened to… How I wish I hadn’t frightened Rey away. I was just a brilliant animal when I found Tarulle; they made me a person. For a while I had a home, people I could talk to. Rey’s telescope was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. He and Cor seemed so smart, almost like me. The first days on the barge were the happiest of my life. Now years have passed … and those I didn’t drive away are all dead. Friends deserve better.” She made a peculiar choking sound.

“No, Svir. Jolle meant to kill Cor. And it was only luck that his plan did not work. You see, Profirio was less than one hundred yards from the bunker when the golem shot Cor. Pröfe had already been separated from his supporters. He was trying to move across the no-man’s-land to our side. He saw the murder; eventually he learned who had been killed. He talked to you during the walk up the snow tunnel. By the time we reached the observatory, he knew how Jolle was using you, and he knew how to approach you.

“He did sneak below the main floor, as we thought. But you remember that the water from the wind turbines had to go into those quarters. The pipe was too small for him, but the ground around the entrance hole was not rock hard. Pröfe dug his way out during the first hours. Jolle was too near his goal to take everything into account and I … I wasn’t thinking very straight myself. Anyway, Pröfe got outside, and while you and Jolle were mounting the signaler, he crawled onto the dome and down into the telescope.”

Svir looked at her face, saw without comprehension the tears in her eyes. His attention wandered back to the bat on the branch above them. The flower’s juices splashed over the petals and a sweet smell drifted down. He had no interest in what had happened in the last hundred hours—in whether the world had been saved or not. His hands clenched and unclenched as he considered what he would do if that bat were so incautious as to come lower.

“Svir, you aren’t the only one who had his world kicked to pieces.” She laughed, but it was not a happy sound. “I loved Jolle. He manipulated me just as I have all the rest. If I hadn’t been fooled, most of this would not have happened. Cor would be alive.

“But this doesn’t change the fact that I really loved him. Jolle turned out to be evil, but he was also … someone strong, who seemed to like me. Pröfe is a kinder man. But he’s not Jolle.

“I’m going to disappear tonight, for good. So is Pröfe. 1 won’t go into the details—I’m afraid they wouldn’t be completely intelligible—but Pröfe signaled his vehicle last night, and we have transportation now. 1 imagine Haarm Wechsler will be quite relieved. The bureaucrats will have to find a Crown Surrogate, but after the way I treated them above O’rmouth, I don’t think they’re interested in having a ruler as unreliable as me. They may even believe I’m something supernatural. Yet everything I did was child’s play.

“Now … I’m so scared. After tonight, everyone I meet will be as smart as me. Once more I’m just a bright animal. Pröfe can’t lie nearly as well as Jolle: Pröfe is really not sure if I’ll ever fit in with his people. I may be lost forever, too bright for this world, too dim for Pröfe’s.”

She faltered. Then her voice filled with forced enthusiasm.

“Svir, things are hard for you just now, but see the good that can come: You are going to live through the beginning of the most exciting time in Tu’s history. In the next two hundred years, the people of Tu will move science along to the beginnings of what you have seen with Jolle and Pröfe. No slavers will deny you progress. In three centuries human nature itself will change, and all that went before will have been chrysalis. Your descendants will be like me.”

The bat undid its wings and fluttered to the next flower, ten inches from the first. It was less than fifteen inches from his head.

“You will never see me or Pröfe again … I guess you’re just as happy about that.” The bat turned, and one wing draped down so low that Svir could see the individual blue and orange hairs that composed its fur. “But people like us will never be far away. We can’t give back what was taken from your ancestors, but we will see that your grandchildren regain it. There are many wrong turnings possible. There are pestilences that could kill all life on the planet—if you misuse the discoveries you will make. We will do our best to protect you—in appropriate, undetectable ways.” Svir’s clenched hands became claws as they flashed up. Tatja caught his wrists in the first four inches of motion. Her grip was unshakable. And for once she misunderstood his motives. “Please, Svir. I don’t mean protection like you’ve had the last few days. People were killed and ruined because we were fighting a superman, not someone who could be maneuvered.” She looked closely at him. “I hadn’t realized how twisted this has left you. You got caught right in the middle, as I did; but I was their equal—and you were nearly destroyed. If Pröfe had any equipment with him, he could cure you, make you realize that there are still ways out…

“I take back one thing I said: I will return. Soon. The cure is simple, and I owe you more than that…” She let his hands fall back into his lap, and for a moment her lips brushed his cheek. She stood up slowly, and left the clearing. For several minutes he could hear her moving through the brush, toward the nearest camping area.

His eyes never left the beautiful mammal that moved so delicately on the branch. It had slid along the top of the branch, now edged back under. Its clear black eyes gazed down at him. In a moment…

Svir lunged up to catch the bat in a two-handed crushing blow. But the little animal was too fast, and it flashed from between the approaching hands. It fluttered up through the branches and into the blue spaces above.