Treason

Chapter 11 -- Gill

Lord Barton's servant, Dul, had reached Gill ahead of me. That had been predictable. What I had forgotten was that if Dul heard enough of our conversation to want to poison us, he also heard enough to know that I was Lanik Mueller.

Did they believe him? Did they suspect that Lanik Mueller had survived, had reemerged from Ku Kuei after two years? Perhaps they doubted it at first, but once word reached Mwabao Mawa, there would be no more doubt. She would remember having seen me in Jones a year ago, and they would he certain.

It was an academic question at the moment, however. Whoever I was, Lanik Mueller or Lake-drinker or Man-in-the-Wind, I had discovered the existence of the illuders and I had to be destroyed. They had my description, and when I came to the gate of Gill, the soldiers took me, dragged me from my horse, and held me while the captain compared me with a written notice that, he had some trouble reading. "He's the one," he finally said, but there was a little doubt in his voice.

"You're wrong," I said. "I just look like him, whoever he is."

But the captain shrugged. "If somebody else comes in who fits the description, we'll kill him, too." The soldiers put me in a cart, blindfolded, and dragged me off through the streets.

I was concerned. If they believed that I was Lanik Mueller, and if they knew-- as the illuders surely did by now-- that Muellers regenerated, they would kill me much too thoroughly. I might really die from beheading or burning. It would be beyond my ability to save myself, and so I would have to escape before they performed the execution; and the only methods of escape I had were too demonstrative of my abilities to fail to raise a real alarm among the illuders.

I was lucky. Dul, whoever he was, was not bright enough or well-enough informed to realize that if I really was Lanik Mueller, they couldn't kill me in the ordinary way. Executions in Gill were by squads of archers. Arrows are easily taken care of by any Mueller, unless there are too many of them all at once, and to a rad like me, they didn't have enough arrows to destroy me beyond my body's ability to heal.

The soldiers were very businesslike. In Mueller every person-- stranger, slave, or citizen-- had the right to a hearing. In Gill, apparently, strangers were exempt from that particular formality. I was arrested, carted off in a wagon through the streets of Gill (the people apparently disposed of rotten fruit and vegetables by casting it as a parting gift into the executioner's wagon), pulled out of the city through a back gate, dragged from the wagon, and placed in front of a large pile of straw, so that misses wouldn't result in a lost or damaged arrow.

The archers looked bored and perhaps a little irritated. Had this been their day off? They lined up casually, selecting arrows. There were a dozen archers, and all looked competent. The captain of the guard, who had escorted me to the place of execution, raised his arm. There were no preliminaries, no last words, no final meal (a waste of food, of course), no announcement of what I was supposed to be guilty of. When he lowered his arm, the arrows loosed in a commendably uniform and accurate flight. All the arrows landed in my chest, and though two were stopped by ribs, the others all penetrated, with four piercing my heart and the rest wreaking havoc with my lungs.

It hurt. I knew that I didn't need to breathe, knew that my brain could stay alive far longer with scant oxygen than most people's, and while the arrows had stopped my heartbeat, as long as they were still in my body they also partly staunched the flow of blood from my heart. Still, the wound was serious enough, the pain sudden and drastic enough, that my body decided that it was dying, and collapsed.

They didn't rush over and pull out the arrows, unfortunately, so my heart couldn't yet begin to heal; and it would not be politic, I decided, to reach up and pull the arrows out myself. So I went into slowtime-- a mild slowtime that left me stiff to them, while their handling of my body left painful bruises, but that was nothing my Mueller body couldn't heal on its own. I figured they'd probably be rid of my body within fifteen minutes-- they showed no tendency to wait around-and that would be about five or six minutes of subjective time, leaving me a few seconds to remove the arrows and heal before my body started hurting for lack of blood. I could live for some time without breathing, but the blood had to flow.

They cut it close, and for one terrible moment as they carried me by a furnace I was afraid they practiced cremation, in which case all bets were off. Instead they dumped me in a hole in the ground and yanked the arrows out of my chest, tearing open my heart where it had started to heal around the arrowheads, but allowing it, at last, to start healing properly. As soon as they had quit shoveling on the dirt, I went mto realtime, muscled the dirt out of the way enough that I could remove the arrows, and lay there healing for a while. Once I was in reasonable health again, I went back into slowtime-- no point in trying to endure hours of being shut up in a grave if you can avoid it-- and only came out when I estimated it would be evening.

It was nearly dawn. I woke the earth around me, and it raised me gently to the surface. I spread my arms, and the earth took its firm shape under me. I looked around to see if I had been observed. I had not.

The graveyard, like the place of execution, was near the southern edge of the city, outside the wall. The sea was nearby, and festering garbage on the shore, mixed with the smell of the normal number of clumsy crabs that couldn't remember which way the water was, made the place unforgettable to my nose, if not to my other senses.

I refused to be stupid the same way twice. This time I would enter the city more subtly.

I pushed into quicktime and made my way among the hovels clustered around the walls until I found what I dubbed "garbage gate" and went inside. I saw only the seamy side of Gill. In the years since then, I've seen many cities, but for slime and sludge Gill is queen of them all. Their position at the isthmus between Landlock and Slashsea won Gill a role as the largest merchant Family in the East. Yet the wealth didn't show up in the city of Gill itself-- people with property moved east into the mountains, building wood or stone mansions that would make princes in other Families jealous.

In Gill, poverty and business made an uneasy division of the town. Warehouses and manufactories and wholesale houses made way for slums and whorehouses and gaming rooms. In the nighttime, the gaiety must have been something to see; in the early morning, the city seemed weary. And still a little drunk.

There were corpses on the roads leading to the garbage gate. I passed a wagon loaded with dead bodies, stopped in the middle of the road. Several men who looked little healthier than their cargo wearily hoisted another piece of human flesh into the cart for the trip to the graveyard. There are few places where life isn't cheap, but this was the first place I had found where even the poor (especially the poor, who are often kinder to their dead than the rich) had so little regard for the dead that they were cast like garbage into the street.

The palace of the governor of Gill, now the headquarters of the East Alliance, rose from the warehouse district like a wart among moles: there was no attempt at grace, only a great grey block of stone brooding among smaller and yet somehow more inviting structures that stocked cloth, salted meat, and leather.

Gaining entry to the palace was difficult. The doors were all closed, and guards stood with their backs against them. There would be no subtle way to enter, even in quicktime-- not through the doors. It attracts too much attention to knock over a guard. And the force of my passage, in quicktime, might well kill him.

I would have to wait until later in the morning, when people were passing in and out. So, for nostalgia's sake (and probably with an unconscious plan for petty vengeance) I sought out the gate where I had been taken the day before. As I walked along the streets I became more and more depressed. I wondered if Gill were really exceptionally vile, or if all cities, even Mueller-on-the-River, were this bad to those who had no money. The harsh hill country of Humping was kinder to its residents than this artificial desert of stone and dirt.

I saw in the distance as I neared the gate that the executioner's cart was already in business. What a busy day it had ahead of it! I toyed with the idea of breaking an axle, but decided it wasn't worth the time or trouble. Instead I went on to the gate, hardly glancing at the cart and the hooded prisoner as I ran past, and found what I was looking for. The captain who had so silently taken me to my death the day before was in a guardroom whose door was latched. I unlatched it and walked in. Placing myself directly in front of the captain, who was alone, I slipped back into realtime. I had seen the effect often enough in Ku Kuei-- from his point of view, I simply materialized out of thin air.

"Good morning," I said.

"My God," he answered.

"Ah, first question answered. You can speak. It was quite irritating not even to be greeted yesterday before you took me off and killed me."

His look of terror was delightful. "I am not a vengeful man, but now and then this kind of thing does wonders for the soul. I won't bother you long. I'm just checking up on this murder business you have here. For instance, who decides who's going to die?"

"P-Percy. The king. It isn't my fault. I don't decide anything."

"Never mind all that, I don't do the judging around here. How many people a day do you take from the city gates straight to the graveyards?"

"Not very many. Honest. You yesterday, Lord Barton today, and I can't remember anybody for months before that. And usually they're taken as they're leaving, not as they arrive."

I tried not to look shocked. Barton! He'd ignored all my advice and come here anyway.

"You handle it very efficiently," I said.

"Thank you," he answered.

"What happens to you if something goes wrong?"

"Nothing does."

"But if it did?"

"I'd be in trouble," he said. He was beginning to act a bit more confident with me, and I suspected that in a moment he'd reach out a hand to see whether I was solid or spirit.

"Then you're in trouble," I said. "Because Barton isn't going to die. And if you should succeed in killing him, I'll be back for you within the hour. No matter how much trouble you get in for his failure to die, just remember it's better than what you'll get if you actually kill him. Now have a wonderful morning." I slipped into quicktime, pausing before I left to turn an inkwell upside down on his head.

I ran down the streets in earnest, and soon found the executioner's cart. If I had looked closely before I would have recognized Barton's clothing-- he was dressed as he had been that day in the cliff house. I climbed into the cart, then slowed to normal time long enough to say, "Don't worry, Barton, I'm with you." Then I was back in quicktime and out of the cart. The driver hadn't noticed me, and if any passerby saw me, he'd only blink and wonder whether the alcohol from the night before was still in his blood.

I got to the place of execution and waited out of sight among the stacks of straw. It took a half hour for the cart to arrive, and then the routine of the day before was followed-- the archers lined up, very casually, and their leader, not the captain from the gate, raised his arm. I slipped into quicktime and walked out into the space between Barton and the archers. I paced back and forth (I become visible when I stay in the same place too long) until the leader's arm fell and the arrows were loosed. Then I collected the arrows in midflight, took the hood gently from Barton's head, and stuck the arrows through the hood into the straw directly behind Baxton's chest. Then I walked back to my concealed observation point and watched.

It took a second in realtime before the archers realized that Barton's hood was off and no arrows were sticking into his chest. Then, angrily, the leader of the archers told them to go collect their arrows, furious that they had missed. When they found the arrows sticking through the hood in the straw, however, even the leader became alittle less outspoken. There was no natural way those arrows could have ended up directly behind him.

Barton was smiling.

"I don't know what kind of tricks you're pulling," the leader said furiously (yet there was fear behind his voice), "but you'd better stop 'em."

Barton shrugged and the leader formed up his archers for a second try. I slipped back into quicktime. In order to put an end to this quickly, I took the arrows in midflight and this time shoved them through the pulling wrist of each of the archers. For good measure, I took a few more arrows out of one archer's quiver and impaled the leader's hand, fastening it firmly to his thigh, while similarly sticking the three men lounging around watching the execution. Then I was back to my observation post and into realtime.

A howl of pain from a dozen throats told me that my work had been effective. The archers dropped their bows, clutching at the arrows in their wrists. The pain was nowhere near as bad as the shock. It isn't every day that you fire an arrow and have it turn around and hit you.

Barton's presence of mind was astounding. He haughtily said, "This is your second warning. There won't be a third."

"What's going on!" shouted the leader.

"Don't you know me? I'm the emperor's father. I'm Lord Barton of Britton. And it's a crime for commoners to shed royal blood."

"I'm sorry!" cried the leader. Several of the archers chimed in-- most were too preoccupied stanching the bleeding.

"If you're sorry, you'll go back to your quarters and cause me no further trouble today."

They were sorry. They went back to their quarters and caused him no further trouble that day. As soon as they were gone, he looked around for me and found me lying against a pile of straw, laughing. He came over looking a little upset. "You didn't have to wait until the last minute, did you?"

"I told you not to worry."

"You try not worrying with a dozen arrows pointed at your heart."

I apologized profusely, explaining that I wanted to spread a little fear of the supernatural among the people of Gill. He agreed at last to overlook the matter, since I had saved him and since he had disregarded my order that he remain in Humping. We headed out of the place of execution, toward the city. "The one thing they, won't expect us to do," he said, "is come into the city after they've tried to kill us both." Then he laughed. "It was funny. I wouldn't like to be the soldier who has to report this to my dear son Percy. What are you, anyway?" he asked.

"Man-in-the-Wind," I answered.

"I don't know what's going on in the world," he said. "Everything seemed so reasonable and scientific until I discovered my son was a fraud with the ability to hide my own memories from me. And now you come along. The captain at the gate told me you were executed and buried yesterday."

"He spoke to you? He didn't say a word to me," I said.

"Don't change the subject, young man. I'm accusing you of violating the laws of nature."

"Nature's virtue is intact. I just know some different laws."

By then we were at the garbage gate. The guards weren't too bright, and, not surprisingly, no alarm had yet gone out. However, we looked conspicuous if only because of the contrast between us, Barton in expensive clothing and I dressed like a Humper, quite countrified. I had to get Barton off the streets while I carried out my original intention of paying a visit on Percy. So I led him to a whorehouse I had noticed on my earlier trek up the street.

The manager was a crusty old man who looked more than a little irritated at being disturbed in the morning. "We don't open until afternoon," he said. "Late afternoon."

Barton had money-- quite a bit of it. I was surprised the executioners hadn't removed it. Maybe they had planned to wait until he was a corpse, so he wouldn't know he was being robbed. it was a touch of delicacy I hadn't previously suspected the soldiers of having. The money, spread on the table, served to open the house for business a little earlier than usual.

"Full service?" the manager asked.

"Just a bed and silence," I said, but Barton glared at me.

"I feel like a nineteen-year-old, and you expect me to sleep all day in a place like this? I want your youngest girl who doesn't have any foul diseases," he said. Then he caught himself and said, "But of course she must be of age." The manager looked as if he were trying to figure out what age he meant.

"Over fourteen," I said helpfully.

"Sixteen," Barton said, horrified. "Do they really offer them younger?"

The manager rolled his eyes heavenward and led Barton off. As soon as they were gone, I pushed into quicktime and made my way back to the palace.

When I arrived someone was just passing through the door. It was tight, but I skinnied through beside her without jostling her-- it would bruise her painfully. I passed on into the palace. I followed the path which the most guards impeded and soon found my self in an impressive throne room. Then I made my way to an unobtrusive corner and looked over the people assembled there. I tried to look carefully at every face in the room, so that if any of them changed I'd know it. And then I slipped into realtime.

The old woman sitting on the throne became a youngish man with a remarkable resemblance to Barton. Most of the officials around him remained unchanged, but I recognized Dul among the crowd. He had been a smallish young man in a plain brown tunic. A few other faces changed, too. I passed back and forth from realtime to quicktime several times to make sure I had spotted them all. There were eight.

I had come with the full intention of killing them after finding out where they came from. Now I wondered how I'd manage either. I couldn't talk to them in quicktime, which meant exposing myself to the dangers of a realtime confrontation. And how could I kill them without attracting the attention of all the other illuders? Warned against me, they might be able to defend themselves.

At least I knew that I could spot them by switching from realtime to quicktime and back again. But killing them in quicktime-- that would not be easy. Oh, of course, it would be simple enough to perform the act itself. But it would be a far different thing for me to plunge a knife into the heart of an unaware man than to do the petty tricks I had played in quicktime up to now. I was trained for battle; I had fought and killed before. But always my enemy had a chance to defend his life. I had no stomach for striking when a person was utterly helpless.

The Ku Kuel had killed animals by hitting them on the head in quicktime. And I had condemned them for it. But they were right-- you don't cut off your feet just when you're starting a race. If they were not to take over the world, I would have to use my acquired advantages to kill the illuders. There was no hope of treating with them-- they had already proved their determination to get and keep power at any cost. Justice would not be offended by their deaths. And if the only way to kill them was to creep up like a coward.

It was an unproductive line of thought, and anyway, Dul was moving away from the crowd in the throne room. I waited until I saw which door he was headed toward, then pushed into quicktime and passed through the door ahead of him. Murder was not on my mind-- only information. As he walked through the door, I, in realtime again, stepped out and took him by the arm. "Dul," I said, "what a pleasure to see you."

He stopped and looked at me, his face registering only mild surprise. "I thought you were still in Britton," he said, and then, though I could clearly see both his hands at his side, I felt a knife plunge deep into my chest. My poor heart would have to regenerate again, I realized. I also realized that there were going to be difficulties about dealing with illuders face to face. When a man can kill you without you seeing that he's moving his hands, he poses some unusual problems in a fight.

Quicktime, of course, and I saw him just pulling his hand back from the knife sticking in my chest. I took out the knife, stepped away, lay down on the floor, and waited in quicktime while my heart healed well enough to let me go on. It was a clean wound, but I dared not push myself too hard-- there were limits to what my heart could take without rebelling and insisting I spend a few hours in bed. Finally, though, I could go on. I got up and came back to Dul, who had brought back his hand; his face was beginning to register surprise that I was gone. I took the knife and, in order to convince him that I was serious about the need for his cooperation, pushed the knifeblade (iron of Mueller manufacture!) deep into his arm. Then I slipped back into realtime, watching him transform at the last moment from the young man I had stabbed into the tall and taciturn servant Dul. The stolidity didn't last long, however. He looked startled, gripped his arm, and in that moment the illusion flickered, faded; he changed back and forth before my eyes, until finally he resolved as himself, the smallish young man.

He leaped at me, dragging me to the floor. The knife was already out of his shoulder, was slicing toward my throat. I stopped it, and wrestled him for control of it. He was strong and young-- I was younger and a good deal stronger. Also, he was quite unskilled in the use of the knife. He probably had never had to use it in a situation where his enemy could see it coming.

I had him pinned to the floor and was demanding that he tell me where he was from before I killed him when I heard a sound from the door. I looked and saw no one-- but the door was still swinging open. If the illuders could do all I had already seen them do, they could probably make me think I saw no one: I was sure someone else was in the room. Interrogation would be impossible with an audience of illuders, and now they were warned. I had had one chance, not a very good one, to find out where they were from. Now I had lost it.

I pushed into quicktime and arose from where my erstwhile opponent lay on the ground. Not one but three illuders were already heading toward where I had been, knives ready. It was pointless, but I took the knives out of their hands and brought them with me into the throne room, where the old lady who was pretending to be Percy Barton sat on the throne looking bored. I placed the knives in her lap, blades pointing toward her, and then walked out of the palace. The message would be clear-- she could have been killed. But it was only a message, only a could-have-been, and I didn't know what to do next.

Kill them all? Pointless, utterly wasted if I didn't know where they were from. They would only be replaced by fellow illuders, and the plot would hardly be thwarted, only mildly delayed. As it was I did have some time to plan my next move, in quicktime, at least-- it would be a week before riders could get from Gill to another capital of any size, and with a week in quicktime I could accomplish a lot.

I left the palace. They would hardly leave records lying around saying, "The impostors in this palace come from the following Family." I would have to use reason alone to determine their homeland. And when it came to reasoning, I had learned to respect Lord Barton.

"You weren't gone long enough," he said after I sent the girl out of the room. "You impose on our friendship."

"I need your advice."

"And I need solitude. or dualitude. Do you realize that I was on the verge of accomplishing something that I haven't achieved in thirty years? Twice in a row. Twice in ten minutes."

"There'll be other opportunities. Listen, Barton, I've been to the palace. I've met your son. He's a woman, your age or older, and she's surrounded by fellow illuders, including your former servant. But I can't get anything out of them. They're a bit alarmed, in fact. They know that I know them; they've had a taste of what I can do. Within a week they'll be able to notify others, and I'll never be able to stay ahead of them. Do you understand the situation?"

"You bollixed it up."

"I took a chance and it missed. So now, since you were stupid enough to come here after you promised to stay in Humping--"

"Humping," he said wistfully.

"You might as well make yourself useful. I need to know where they come from. I need to know their homeland. Because unless we strike there, first and hard, we'll never stop them."

He began thinking at once.

"Well, Lanik, it's plain enough that we can't just pull numbers out of a hat and hope to find them. There are eighty Families-- it could be any one of them."

"There are ways to narrow it down. I've got a theory, a good one, I think, about what the Families are doing. In Nkumai I found a history of sorts. It listed what the different Families' founders specialized in. Nkumai, for example, was founded by a physicist. Their export product is physical and astronomical theory. In Mueller we exported the product of genetic research-- the first Mueller was a geneticist. You see?"

"How constant is that?"

"I haven't visited that many countries and been informed what their export product is. But it held true for Ku Kuei and Schwartz."

"A philosopher and a geologist."

I must have looked startled.

"I don't know why the information should surprise you. Britton was founded by a historian. Not a very likely field to turn into a viable export product, but we're fanatics about keeping records. The list of the original eighty traitors from Anderson to Wynn is memorized by every schoolchild, along with brief biographies that include their occupations. We're very thorough. I can also recite my genealogy from Britton himself to me. I haven't done so up to now because you haven't asked me to."

"I never will. You're a man of iron, Barton."

"The question is, what occupation could possibly have led to a Family becoming illuders? Psychologists would be most obvious, wouldn't they? Who was a psychologist? Drew, of course, but they live in their hovels in the north and have dreams of killing their fathers and sleeping with their mothers."

"That could be an illusion," I said.

"Only last year they attacked Arven across the mountains and were humiliatingly defeated. Does that sound like our enerny?"

I shrugged. How could we tell anything about the illuders?

"Besides, they've made little secret of what they've been working on for centuries. Somewhere along the line, the people we're looking for would have to have become secretive. Don't you think? Another psychologist, the only other one, was Hanks. I know nothing about them except that they rebelled against the East Alliance two years ago and my loving son went in with an army and burned the whole country to the ground. The stories said that only one in three people survived, and they lived by getting over the borders and living on charity in Leishman and Parker and Underwood. There is no charity in Gill. Again, it doesn't seem to be a likely spot for the illuders' homeland.

Again, he was right. "No more psychologists?"

"No."

"What other professions then?"

"Maybe they're an exception to your theory, Lanik. Maybe they came up with something new."

"Go through the list. We've got to try to find the most likely prospect, anyway."

So we went through the list. It was tedious, but he wrote it down, in a beautiful script that gave me even more respect for his education, though I could hardly read it. Our guesses were long shots. Tellerman was an actor, but that Family was well known to have literary pretensions. The Ambassador had rejected every book and play and poem they had offered in three thousand years. Their persistence was remarkable. There had been no illusionists or magicians among the original group exiled here, of course-- that was too crass a profession, since the rebellion had been a revolt of the elite against their exploitation by the democratic tyranny of the masses. With a few exceptions, the exiles on Treason were the cream of the cream, the prime intellects of the Republic. Which meant that except for the psychologists and a few other peripheral ones, probably involved in funding the revolt, most of the rebels were experts in a science.

When we had spent more than an hour exhausting, as we thought, every possibility, the answer suddenly seemed so obvious I couldn't believe we had overlooked it until now.

"Anderson," I said.

"We don't even know what he did," Barton said.

"As a profession, we don't. And yet he was head of the rebellion, wasn't he?"

"'Of traitors, traitor most foul,'" Barton intoned.

"Leader of the intellectuals, and yet not an intellectual hiniself."

"Yes. One of the inscrutable facts in history."

"A politician," I said. "A demagogue who got himself elected to the Republic Council, and yet the same man was able to win the trust of the finest minds of the Republic. Isn't that a contradiction?"

Barton smiled. "You have something there. Of course he wouldn't have any ability like our current enemies. But he was able to make people think he was what he wanted them to think he was. And, except that they're better at it, isn't that what the illuders are doing now?"

I leaned back on my chair. "You at least admit that it's plausible then?"

"Plausible. Not probable. But none of the others are even possible, so far as I can see. Which makes Anderson the best bet, at least to try first."

I got up and started out the door.

"Isn't this a bit rude? Aren't you going to invite me along?"

"I'll only be gone a couple of days," I said.

"It's at least a week's ride across rough country in Israel till you get to the shore, and then you have to get a boat to cross the nastiest bit of water in the world, the Quaking Sea-- unless you're fool enough to try the Funnel. That's at least a fortnight's absence-- and you'd probably kill a couple of horses doing it that quickly."

"It won't take me that long. Trust me. Have I let you down yet?"

"Only when you sent the young lady out of the room. Don't worry, though. I won't try to follow you. If you say two days, I'll wait two days, or even more. A man who can make arrows turn in midflight can fly to the moons, if he wishes."

I had another thought. "Maybe you ought to wait somewhere else," I said.

"Nonsense. It's more risky to go out on the street. Besides, I have unfinished business. I want to set a record for myself. Three times within one hour. Send her back in here."

I sent her back in when I left.

It was infuriating that I arrived sooner when I walked the distance in quicktime than when I rode it in realtime on a horse-- all because I hadn't learned how to extend my bubble of time in Ku Kuei. It took me nine long days' worth of walking to get to the coast of Israel in the quickest quicktime I had ever attempted since leaving Ku Kuei. There had been a time in my life when solitude and exercise had been invigorating. Now I was weary of being alone, even wearier of endlessly walking from place to place, seeing people like statues in the fields, all so unaware of how they were being subverted by the illuders. I was out to save them, and they didn't even know they needed to be saved.

I was weary to the bone when I reached the promontory of Israel overlooking the Funnel, the narrow strait between Anderson and the continent. The waves of the sea were frozen, of course, in the middle of their furious rush northward into the slightly lower Quaking Sea. The crests of the waves reached nearly to the level of the promontory where I stood, like hills rising from a cataclysm of the earth.

There were few things I hadn't done in quicktime, but swimming in a realtime sea was one of them. In Ku Kuei, when I swam in quicktime I was always with someone whose timeflow was I strong enough to carry a portion of the lake, not to mention me along with it.

I gingerly stepped into the water. While air caused me no resistance at all in quicktime, the water was sluggish and bore my weight much better than it did in realtime. In fact, my passage across the Funnel was not properly swimming at all. I crawled, after a fashion, up the slope of a wave as if it were a muddy hill after a rainstorm. Then I slid easily down the other side. After a while it became exhilarating, if exhausting. It was still afternoon when I reached the other side and scrambled out of the sea onto the rocky shore of Anderson Island.

Once out of the reach of the giant seas, I looked around. The land was grassy, strewn with boulders, and sheep grazed here and there-- it was settled land. But it was also hot and dry and bleak. The grass was not thick, and each sheep that was moving at all had a small cloud of dust around it, which from my point of view seemed to hang in the air.

I walked along the crest of the slope leading down to the rocky coast, wondering how I would now go about discovering if this were indeed the home of the illuders. I couldn't very well go up to someone and say, "Good afternoon, is this where the bastards who are trying to take over the world hail from?" I had to have some plausible reason for being there. Remembering the sea I had just crossed, shipwreck seemed a likely possibility. All I had to do was make sure to struggle ashore conveniently near some shepherd's house. From there I could, I hoped, play it by ear.

When I came to a house only a few meters from the beginning of the rocky littoral, I scrambled back down the rocks to the sea. Recognizing how high the waves really were and how violent they must be in realtime, I prudently climbed to the crest of the first wave away from the shore. And then I slipped back into realtime.

I should have stood on a rock and let the spray get me wet.