The Adversary - 4 (50 page)

He thumbed the top stud.

Nothing happened.

Mouthing incredulous blasphemies, the King tried the other three superior settings. None worked.

"That treacherous bastard! That conniving little trickster!"

Sharn punched the lowest stud. A green flash obliterated a single swan. The rest of the flock scattered, terrified by the concussion.

"The Sword is still entirely adequate for its legitimate purpose," Betularn noted austerely, "and its symbolic value is unimpaired. The Foe has been extremely clever."

Sharn choked back his rage. "I suppose you're right. But to be cheated in this flagrant way! It's-it's-"

"Typical of the times," said the Lord of the Howlers in a calm, sad voice. He reassumed his humanoid shape. "The heat becomes most oppressive, my liege. Shall we return to the peace of Nionel?" Sugoll bowed slightly to Betularn. "I offer you and your troops our hospitality as well, White Hand."

"My thanks," said the general, "but we may as well get on with making camp here in the Field, in anticipation of the games.

I'll come by for supper after I get the lads and lasses squared away."

Sugoll nodded. "Only a few guests are in the hostel buildings as yet, but the facilities are quite ready for occupancy. Or have you brought your own equipment?"

"Everything we could possibly need," Betularn replied, "plus a little bit more."

WALTER: Do you hear, son?

VEIKKO: Dad! At last. Jeez, you're loud. You must be awfully close.

WALTER: Less than 300 kilometres north of you there in Goriah, up in the Gulf of Armorica.

VEIKKO: How?

WALTER: All those storms. We ran before 'em.

VEIKKO: You ran ... in Kyllikki? Oh, my God. You must be out of your mind! Or were you doing your best toWALTER: What do you think?

VEIKKO: Marc didn't realize?

WALTER: He hasn't been here that often, and he's never voyaged aboard Kyllikki before. Remember that back in the Rye Harbour Yacht Club, the most boat he ever had under him was a 20-metre Nicholson. Nice craft, but it doesn't clue you to the whims of a four-poster schooner. Besides, I played it straight, conned her the best I could. If we'd taken the plunge it would have been kismet. Actually, Marc was rather gratified at the turn of speed I managed. And our keeping inside the storm track must have played hob with attempts to farsense us.

VEIKKO: Nobody in Goriah has the faintest notion where you are. Hagen was out of his mind. He got me to try farsensing you. [Chuckle.] Somehow I just couldn't get a fix ... Then he wanted to send a flyer to hunt and zap, but the King nixed that. Something funny's going on, Walter. This morning Cloud, Hagen, and the King took off with Elizabeth and some hot-shot Tanu stooge of hers. Body-flying, for chrissake, when we've got these perfectly good aircraft. Nobody here knowsWALTER: It's Marc.

VEIKKO: ?

WALTER: His final appeal to you children.

VEIKKO: You mean, if Hagen doesn't agree to stop work on the time-gate, it'll be no holds barred from now on?

WALTER: That's about the size of it. You realize, don't you, that Marc has been the voice of sweet reason all along, refusing to harm you if there was any possible alternative. Castellane and Warshaw and most of the other magnates favoured hitting you kids with the full load, at the first possible opportunity.

VEIKKO: You evened the odds for us, Walter. You and Manion.

I told Diane what her father did. She wasn't surprised. Hagen was.

WALTER: He would be, poor devil.

VEIKKO: ... What shall I do now? I can't target you for the King, Dad. I can't.

WALTER: Now that we're near the mainland, it's going to be tough for anybody to farsense us. Ragnar Gathen and ArneRolf Lillestrom wired up a psychoelectronic fuzzer during the voyage. Crude, but probably effective enough to defeat longrange peeking. Has the King got any mechanical scanners?

VEIKKO: An IR with a range of about 70 kloms, and the aircraft have some kind of ground-combers. Can't you get away?

WALTER: Don't worry about it.

VEIKKO: But I do ... You know I do.

WALTER: If Marc's proposing to tell Hagen and Cloud what I think he is, you may find all our problems solved.

VEIKKO: ? !! ... No matter what Marc promises, we're going to build the Guderian device.

WALTER: Possibly.

VEIKKO: We're all agreed, Dad. Well ... most of us. And the King's on our side.

WALTER: Wait, just the same, until you hear the proposal.

VEIKKO: Walter, you're not switching to his side? God!

WALTER: I'm on your side, Veik. Always. Now listen. Don't try to contact me again unless you do agree to Marc's proposal.

It'll be too dangerous for both of us. You're almost within Castellane's tracking range now, and if she told Marc what we were doing ... Well, I still might be useful to you if I stay alive. Dead, I'm only useful if I take Kyllikki with me.

VEIKKO: But what'll IWALTER: Wait. It can't be much longer. Goodbye, Veikko.

VEIKKO: Goodbye, Dad.

CHAPTER THREE

Basil opened his eyes to blurred obscurity. There was red illumination overall and superimposed upon it, subtly writhing, an intricate branched pattern like veins. He heard the soft, regular hiss of surf. He heard a muffled cardiac drumbeat: dum-dum (skip) dum-dum (skip) dum-dum (skip). His memory furnished a tune to fit-"Zwei Hertzen in Dreivierteltakt." He thought: No, it's only one heart in three-quarter time. Mine. In an artificial womb. Constatne?

"Quite right, old friend."

A pale-coloured blob hovered above eye level. The haziness was abruptly clarified as something crackling and transparent, resembling plass membrane, was stripped away from his face.

He saw an El Greco angel wearing a golden torc. He said to it, "Well, Creyn. Have I been in Skin?"

"For two days."

"I feel very comfortable," Basil said. The light brightened a bit and took on a more normal spectrum. He was aware of other Tanu standing in the shadowed recesses of the chamber. The carved timbering, stucco walls and baroque window shutters were certainly those of the Black Crag chalet. "So he brought me here. How perfectly splendid! ... But surely my bones can't have knit already?

"We'll see." Creyn continued to unwrap him, stuffing the used Skin membrane into a scarlet pouch. He said over his shoulder, "Lord Healer, will you do the microscan?"

A taller Tanu, dressed like Creyn in red-and-white robes, stepped closer. His eyes with their pinpoint pupils were faded blue with glints of other colours, like certain opals. Except for deep lines about the mouth, his face was youthful. He had hair like fine-spun platinum.

"Remarkable," said Dionket at length. "The accelerated tissue-repair program of the Adversary has restored the ankle completely. The tibia still has some incomplete regeneration about the medullary cavity but appears quite adequate for normal load-bearing function."

Five Tanu minds intoned: Praise be to Tana.

Basil appended fervently: In saecula saeculorum!

He felt some kind of frame withdrawing support from his body. Then he was standing on his own two feet and realized he was stark naked. He stepped down from a sort of pedestal.

Creyn smiled at him. "Do you feel weak?"

"Not a bit of it, old chap. Just ravenously hungry."

Creyn helped him into a white-cotton robe and slippers.

"These healers who have helped you are Dionket, once President of our Guild of Redactors, Lord Peredeyr Firstcomer, Meyn the Unsleeping, and Lady Brintil."

Basil said, "I thank you for your-er-professional ministrations. I'm amazed that you could do the job so quickly. I thought that Skin treatment for injuries such as this took considerably longer."

"It usually does," Dionket said, "when traditional redactive techniques are employed. But we used an experimental method on you-a concerted, intensive operation involving five healers rather than one."

"Mm," said Basil. "Glad I was able to take advantage of it."

Dionket and the three touched Basil's mind briefly through his grey torc, then filed out. The don said to Creyn, "I must also thank my rescuer for bringing me off Monte Rosa. I don't suppose Remillard is still here?"

Creyn's face showed no expression. "He is. It was his modification of the Skin program that we used to heal you."

"Judas priest! Then I owe him double thanks, don't I?" They came out of the infirmary and mounted an open stairway that led to the first floor of the lodge. "I don't mind telling you it was a shocker, having him show up on the mountaintop, all armoured like some archetypal god of the machine. I didn't see anything of the man himself. The prospect of seeing him face to face is a trifle unnerving ... the challenger of the galaxy, the metapsychic paragon who became the deepest-dyed villain our race has ever known ... "

"He eats mushroom omelettes and popcorn with Brother Anatoly," Creyn said. "And puts his feet up on the hearth fender to warm them on stormy nights like this. And forgets to put the lid down on the toilet."

Basil laughed. "Point taken. One of us after all, eh?"

"No," said Creyn. "But I think he would like to be."

Basil paused at the head of the stairs. His eyes met those of the Tanu who had become his friend on the long exodus from drowned Muriah. "There were hints dropped by Bleyn the Champion while we were on our expedition: that Remillard has actually been working mind to mind with Elizabeth. Is it true?"

"Together, they cured the chalet housekeeper's baby of the black-torc syndrome. More than that-they raised the little one to full operancy. Torcless metafunction."

"Good God. And when Remillard brought me here-"

"The Adversary was intrigued when we proposed putting you into our healing Skin. He had never seen the psychoactive substance in use. When Dionket Lord Healer demonstrated our customary redactive programme the Adversary conceived this new technique, which he described as a spinoff from the more elaborate procedure used on the infant. Elizabeth bade us follow his instructions, saying he had been a paramount designer of metaconcert programmes in your Galactic Milieu. The result was your accelerated healing."

They came into a small sitting room where there was a fire.

Basil said, "That name you apply to Remillard: the Adversary.

Would you care to explain its significance?" He touched the grey metal at his throat. "I catch odd mental overtones from you, old chap. Just how deeply has Elizabeth become involved with this bastard?"

"I'll tell you everything I know, as well as the conclusions I've drawn and confided to no one ... Basil, you and I have both loved her without hope. We have seen her self-doubting and tempted to despair, not knowing where her destiny lies.

Now she fears this Adversary, at the same time that she is drawn inextricably into his orbit. We may be able to help her."

"For God's sake, how?"

Creyn helped him into a chair, drew up a footstool. "Rest here for a while. I'll be back directly with some food for you-and a golden torc."

Heavy rain sluiced against the French windows of the lodge's grand salon. The slow-burning oak logs in the great fireplace did little to dissipate the chill.

Marc said to Brother Anatoly, "They have arrived."

The lanky old friar arose from one of the settees and brushed crumbs of tetraploid popcorn from his scapular. "Then I'll be off to bed. You won't want me cluttering the family reunion. I don't think I can wish you good luck."

"I wish you'd stay. You might find yourself coming to appreciate my point of view." Marc knelt beside the wood rack, selecting some billets of stone pine. "So might the children.

None of you have all the data. When you do, perhaps you'll finally understand. Cloud and Hagen don't realize that they're absolutely vital to the Mental Man concept. Neither do most of my old associates who accompanied me to the Pliocene. If the children had never been born, I would have been content to die in my failed Rebellion and that would have been the end of it. But they were born. Call it providence or synchronicity or whatever. Now they have no choice but to fulfil their destiny."

"No choice?" Anatoly flared. "Ne kruti mne yaitsa, khui morzhoviy! A choice is exactly what they do have!"

Marc fed the fire, smiling. "God, you have an ugly mouth, priest."

"I know. It got me in trouble a lot back in Yakutsk. Lack of charity, the besetting sin of my life ... It could be yours, too, you Paramount Grand Master tinkling cymbal, if you persist in treating your children like specimens in some breeding experiment!"

"You have no notion of the importance of the Mental Man concept."

"Maybe not. But I do understand human dignity-and your children's right to a free choice."

"The birth of transcendent humanity is more important than the rights of two individuals, no matter who they are! Hagen and Cloud can't be permitted to withdraw. Not now, when I finally have the means to bring the project to fruition."

"Then make them believe in you," Anatoly said. "Convince them. Convince yourself! Prove that the Milieu's verdict on you was a mistake."

The flames were building as the resinous wood caught. Marc said, "The human race must fulfil its great potential. This can't be evil!"

"So," said the friar in a voice ominously quiet. "Instead of my reforming your erroneous conscience, you want to reform mine! One poor old zalupa konskaya tells you it wasn't a sin after all, that makes it all right? It's not me you have to justify yourself to, Marc-it's Hagen and Cloud."

Firelight shadowed Abaddon's eyes. "You'd better pray that I can, Anatoly. Because all I really require is their germ plasm."

There was a knock on the door.

Elizabeth's mind said: We've come.

Marc sprang to his feet and stood with his back to the fire, a silhouette in a black polo-necked sweater and black cord trousers. The salon's double doors opened. Four people were there, all wearing Tanu storm-suits with the hoods thrown back. Elizabeth stepped aside. Cloud and Hagen, both in white, stood there together. Behind them was the King.

Cloud said, "Papa!" Marc opened his arms and she ran to him. Their minds embraced and she kissed him, and he held her bright-haired head against his chest until she stopped weeping. Then she looked up at him with a plea naked in her eyes, moved away, and waited for Hagen.