There were other Powers, though. Bredon had
no idea what had become of Geste, for one thing, and there were all
those other Powers who had refused to help, any one of whom might
have reconsidered.
He needed to stall. Even if no one
intervened, he had to have a moment to think.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “We can talk about
this.”
As he spoke, a vague realization began
forming. He had control of the fortress machines, if he could
figure out how to use it. Surely, he could do something with
that!
He looked at the mysterious screens and
panels, hoping for inspiration.
“I don’t want to talk, savage,” Thaddeus
said. “Get down here!”
“All right, all right! Just a minute!” With
sudden inspiration, he added, “I don’t know the way!”
Thaddeus snorted in disbelief. “You got from
here to there,” he said.
“But I wasn’t watching the route, I just
rode that machine.”
Thaddeus paused, considering that, and
Bredon felt a sudden chill as he wondered if he had made a mistake
in mentioning his control of the fortress machines.
* * *
Geste was sure that he was on the right route. He
was also sure that somehow the escaping captives had not only
gotten the doors to open, but had gotten them to
stay
open.
No other explanation made sense, because the open doors were in a
direct path to the prison chamber.
He hurried along, eager to do what he could
to help, keeping one hand near his ear.
He rounded the final corner, then stopped,
frozen in astonishment.
The prisoners were just as he had left them,
still chained to the wall, and Thaddeus, surely the real Thaddeus
this time, was standing over them with something clutched tightly
in his hand. He was clad in black, rather than the brown the clone
had worn. His robe had been cut, and a severed scrap of cloth lay
on the floor by his feet.
“All right, savage,” he was saying, “I’ll
tell you how to get here. It’s easy.”
This was an irresistible opportunity, better
than anything he could have hoped for; if he was somehow making a
mistake, he could straighten it out later. He pulled out the stasis
generator, adjusted the range, and pushed the control.
Thaddeus froze, his face raised to Monitor’s
light, one hand raised in a gesture of admonition, the other
holding the disintegrator knife. His black garb seemed to expand
and fill the surrounding air as the field darkened around him, and
then he vanished completely as it crystallized into the familiar
mirrored sphere.
In the war room, as Bredon groped for
something to say, some new delaying tactic, he saw the stasis field
appear. He stared at the screen, baffled.
Then he relaxed and sank into Thaddeus’s
control chair, overcome with relief, as Geste stepped into view and
the prisoners, despite their chains, burst into applause.
“
...told among the people who live along the
banks of the river where the forests end and the grasslands begin.
There, a woman will often wake in the middle of the night to find
the furs beside her empty. When that happens, she knows that the
Nymph has called her man away for a few hours’ pleasure.
“
You might think that the women would be upset by
this, that they would be jealous, but in fact few are. They have
lived all their lives knowing that this happens, for it’s hardly a
secret. Scarcely a grown man in the area has not been called at
least once. In fact, the wife of a man who has been called back
repeatedly will often take pride in the fact—must her man not be a
wonderful and inventive lover, to have been so summoned?
“
It’s not as if another woman had seduced their
men. After all, who can compete with a Power? And they can take
comfort in knowing that for tensleeps afterward, after a dark or
two with the insatiable and perverse Nymph, their men are always
too tired and too jaded to bother straying to the beds of other
mortal women...”
—
from the tales of Atheron the
Storyteller
The disintegrator knife would have been handy for
cutting the chains, but it was trapped in the stasis field with
Thaddeus. Monitor refused to provide any assistance, and
eventually, at Geste’s suggestion and with Aulden providing the
necessary technical advice, Bredon sent a machine down that blew
Monitor out of the wall in microscopic shards.
While this was being done Bredon and Geste
exchanged accounts of what had happened, piecing together the
entire story of Thaddeus’s downfall. When they had the tale
straight, Bredon put a reassuring call through to the Skyland;
almost all the jamming and defensive fields had been shut down when
he gave his “abort” command to the entire war room, so
communication was easy.
The Skyler, though relieved, had no
intention of entering Fortress Holding. She would wait where she
was, she said.
The same machine that destroyed Monitor,
under careful direction, was able to remove the shackles from the
seven captives and lead them all, as well as Geste, to the war
room.
As they made their way through the passages
Bredon, growing more confident in his abilities, summoned other
machines, and by the time the Powers reached the room he had a
steady stream of service devices bringing food and drink.
This done, he stood and turned to face the
door.
Brenner was the first to arrive; he burst
into the war room smiling, directly behind the guiding machine. The
machine wheeled itself quickly to one side, letting the Powers into
the room. “Well done, boy!” Brenner called. “Well done indeed!” He
started to cross the room to address Bredon more directly, but then
stopped at the sight of the machines bearing food and redirected
his steps.
“
Very
well done!” he called as he
stuffed a handful of delicacies in his mouth.
Khalid and Madame O arrived close on
Brenner’s heels. They said nothing, but headed directly for the
refreshments.
Lady Sunlight hung back, looking at the
vast, machinery-lined room.
Geste, Rawl, and Sheila were more polite.
The three of them crossed the room to congratulate Bredon on his
part in their victory.
“I think we make a pretty good team,” Geste
said, holding out his hand to Bredon. “If you hadn’t kept him busy
like that I couldn’t have gotten him. And if you hadn’t jumped him
when you did, and disabled most of his machines, he probably would
have killed me.”
Bredon accepted this praise calmly, but felt
compelled to point out, “It was Aulden’s password that made it all
possible. I couldn’t have done anything if he hadn’t set it up for
me.”
“So you’re all wonderful,” Sheila said
mockingly.
Aulden and Imp, who had fallen behind the
others, arrived then, ambling into the war room with their arms
about each other. Aulden disengaged himself and promptly settled
into a nearby chair. Imp bounced across the room, kissed Geste,
kissed Bredon, and then flung herself back in Aulden’s arms,
letting her white prison gown bunch up to her waist as she nestled
onto his lap.
Bredon looked away, slightly embarrassed by
Imp’s lack of modesty.
Close beside him, Sheila draped herself on
Geste and began to kiss him repeatedly, working her way downward.
Startled, Bredon stepped back and again looked away.
Over by the food-bearing floaters and carts
O, Brenner, and Khalid draped arms around one another.
To Bredon’s shocked surprise these embraces
led to other actions. Aulden raised his own gown and pushed Imp’s
higher as her hand fell between his thighs. Sheila pulled Geste’s
gown from his shoulders and worked his arms free, so that the
garment dropped to the floor, followed by her own.
In short order the victory celebration
turned into an orgy. Bredon stood to one side, watching.
He glanced around. Rawl was paying no
attention to the others as he studied the walls of machinery, and
Lady Sunlight was still standing quietly by the door, but the
others were all enjoying each other, oblivious to their rather
inappropriate surroundings.
Bredon stepped back against the banks of
controls and closed his eyes. The thought came to him that at any
moment, Rawl and Lady Sunlight would follow the example of their
companions; he suppressed the thought, but kept his eyes shut. He
did not want to see that.
Lady Sunlight watched the others
uncertainly. She was still somewhat disoriented. Thaddeus had
thrown her entire view of the universe into doubt; in her
understanding of reality, no one kidnapped or tortured anyone.
That was over, though. She was free
again.
There were still unanswered questions,
however, such as just who this “Bredon” person was. He certainly
didn’t fit her image of the natives. He was not noticeably crude or
unclean, and in fact he had proven very useful.
Perhaps it was time she reconsidered some of
her long-held opinions.
Besides, there was an orgy going on, and she
did not want to be left out. Rawl was never much fun, and could be
so very irritating at times. O was hogging both Khalid and Brenner.
That left Bredon.
She crossed the room slowly, wisps of doubt
still lingering, and almost shyly put an arm around his waist.
Startled, he opened his eyes. He started to
draw away, embarrassed, then stopped. This was something he had
dreamed of, to have Lady Sunlight’s arm around him, and he was not
enough of a fool to throw it away.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
Bredon blushed and shrugged.
She remembered that, clean and intelligent
as he was, he was still a native of Denner’s Wreck, and guessed
what was bothering him. The natives were fairly conservative,
sexually—natural enough in a society with poor medical care and
contraception. She looked at her companions and smiled. “Ah, yes,”
she said. “Not quite befitting the dignity of demi-gods, is
it?”
“No,” Bredon replied, still struggling with
the realization that at long last Lady Sunlight was speaking to
him, and that she even had her arm around him. He tried to get up
the courage to put his arm around her, as well, but could not quite
bring himself to do it.
“Well, we’re human, really, as I suppose
Geste and the others have told you, and we don’t get this many of
us together in one place very often, and we don’t usually have such
a good cause to celebrate. I suppose they just got carried away.”
She smiled again, this time directly at Bredon.
“I suppose so,” Bredon agreed.
“You saved our lives, probably,” Lady
Sunlight said, suddenly serious. “Thaddeus was crazy. You must have
done a lot of damage, to drive him down there undefended while
Geste was still loose.”
Bredon shrugged again. “Aulden made it
easy,” he said.
“Still, you did very well,” Lady Sunlight
insisted.
Bredon did not reply.
“How did you get involved with us, anyway?”
she continued. “Just what were you and Geste doing together? Imp
told me a little, while we were locked up, but she never said how
you came to be with Geste in the first place.”
Bredon blushed again and looked away, then
looked back. “He played a joke on me,” he said.
“Oh, he did? That’s no surprise.” Her voice
was tinged with her habitual anger and disgust at Geste’s
pranks.
“Yes,” Bredon said, “I... I got upset about
it, and he promised me that he would do me a service as an
apology.”
Lady Sunlight nodded. “That was nice of him,
I suppose. Was it a particularly nasty trick he played?”
“Well, no, not really... he made a horse
talk, and wouldn’t let me catch it.” Bredon felt desperately
stupid, trying to explain himself to her.
“You catch horses?” she asked, puzzled, her
head cocked slightly to one side so that her hair tumbled in a
golden stream over one shoulder. She had never given much thought
to what the natives did with themselves.
“I’m a hunter,” Bredon explained.
“Oh,” Sunlight said, clearly neither
understanding nor very interested. “So he played this trick on you,
then promised you something to make up for it. What did you ask
for?”
Bredon knew, in a flash of intuition, that
this was his chance, the best opportunity he would ever have,
perhaps the
only
opportunity. He turned and looked her in
the eye.
“You,” he said.
Taken aback, Lady Sunlight said, “Me?”
Bredon nodded.
Her anger at Geste grew. He had obviously
thought that the whole thing was funny, this poor native lusting
hopelessly after her. Bredon deserved better than that. Geste had
even made a joke of his apology to the poor boy!
Sunlight looked at Bredon, eye to eye, and
he realized that they were the same height. She glanced over at the
bodies tangled on the floor, then back at Bredon. She spread her
arms wide.
“Well,” she said, “here I am.”
“
...She appears rarely, but when she does, the
people all fall to their knees and then prostate themselves, all
calling out, ‘Glory to Starflower! Glory, glory!’ For some this is
sincere devotion to the Power that protects them, but for others
the only motivation is fear, for they know that her anger can be
terrible and her retribution swift if her followers dare to
disobey...”
—
from the tales of Atheron the
Storyteller
Sixteen wakes had passed since Geste put Thaddeus
into the stasis field, and at long last all twenty-eight of the
immortals resident on Denner’s Wreck were gathered aboard the
Skyland. Both of Thaddeus’ unconscious bodies were safely tucked
away in storage, the original still in stasis and the clone’s needs
being supplied by symbiotes and life-support machines. The other
twenty-seven Powers were gathered in the Skyler’s main lounge.
Cheerful music played in the background.