“I presume we can go home now,” said Farmwife Suttle in a brittle voice “Now that Olly’s gone.”
Oracle put her hand to her forehead. “Ellel said we would be free to go if Olly guided them on their journey.” She pressed with her fingers, as though to soothe an ache, then said dazedly, “She lied, however. I should have realized that at the time Ellel lied.”
They stared at her, wonderingly, glancing at one another Abasio’s head came up. Tom stopped what he was doing and stared at Oracle.
“But surely you are free to go,” said Tom. “No,” she said. “No, none of us is free to go.” “Why not?” cried Drowned Woman. “I don’t know,” Oracle replied. “But she’s done something. She’s set some trap.” Oracle moved out across the adjacent terrace to the parapet, where she leaned over to peer down into the canyon below Her silence drew others to her side. There below them, along every inch of the wall that separated the Place of Power from the world at large, stood Ellel’s walkers, and those Mitty had considered his, and those of Ander, all the walkers except those on the shuttle, guarding the walls of the Place.
Tom exclaimed, “That’s where they went!” He ran out of the room, calling to someone in the corridor. After a time he returned, shaking his head angrily “They’re posted all the way around. They’re at the back gate as well as the front. They’re all along the wall.”
“Why?” asked Drowned Woman. “Why are they there?”
“To prevent our getting out, I should think,” said the old man. “This place and these people are Ellel’s place of power. She does not want to lose Mitty’s skill—or the pleasure of killing Berkli and me She wants to find us all here when she returns. She plans to deal with us before she moves on the rest of the world.”
Tom blurted, “When she returns with the weapons—” “Her ambitions extend far beyond the return of the shuttle,” muttered Berkli “Why didn’t we all realize that years ago?”
“We are all hostages now,” said Abasio tonelessly Perhaps that was why Olly had gone so quietly. Perhaps she had known it did not matter.
He turned to Oracle, as though hoping she would contradict his words or his thoughts, but she did not. She refused to meet his eyes as she murmured, “There are no acceptable solutions to some problems.”
“Well,” gasped Ander from his place beside his colleague in the shuttle “That was exciting. Are you sure we shouldn’t bring someone more experienced up here? Someone who knows what buttons to push?”
“There is no one ‘experienced,’ and we don’t push any buttons,” said Ellel. “According to Dever, the Werra offshoot does all that, quite automatically, without any intervention from us.”
She unbuckled her belt and floated free, awkwardly grabbing at handholds to move herself into position to see the booth where Olly sat, her head and face invisible beneath the helmet, her strange bird resting upon her lap, between her cupped hands. Olly had entered the booth by herself without being forced or assisted. She had held the bird in one hand while she had pulled the helmet down with the other. She had even pushed the button that started the insertion sequence, and she had not cried out when the mechanism had whined its way through her skull. Perhaps, Ellel thought, the helmet first provided an anodyne, though the replica she had used on several hundred infants and girls over the years had never done so. Her victims had always howled like skewered animals when the wires went in Olly hadn’t cried out during the test. She hadn’t cried out this time, either. Nor had the bird, which was looking at Ellel now with beady, seemingly intelligent eyes.
So all Ellel’s practice had been for nothing. Nothing! All those babies. All those little girls and silly maidens, all that hysteria and howling, for nothing. Well, it had been worth a try. Repeated tries. The very fact that only Olly had been successful proved the truth of Werra’s statement. A Gaddir child. Bred for this purpose. Well, the Gaddir child was meeting her destiny, and a high destiny it was.
“What do we do now?” called Ander, interrupting her train of thought.
Ellel caught at a handhold and answered absentmindedly. “We don’t do anything until we get to the station. According to Dever, that will be two days from now. Even when we arrive, we don’t have to do much. Our documents say the station has air, warmth, gravity, all supplied by solar power, so we don’t need to worry about that. Our families will occupy the station while we inventory what’s there and make decisions on what we’ll bring back, but the walkers will do all the work.” She moved herself about, enjoying the feel of it. She’d rehearsed this in her mind so many times, this floating, this flying.
Ander, watching her obvious enjoyment from the corner of his eye, thought it best not to mention the fact that his family had already studied the inventory and decided what to bring back. Every Ander on board was agreed about it.
“The workers will load the shuttle for us, will they? Before we go on to the moon?”
“Exactly. The moon lander is removed when we get to the station. That gives us room in the shuttle for the— material from the station, and while some of the walkers are loading it, the others go down to the moon in the lander.”
“How will you control them, Ellel? How will you give them commands?”
She shrugged. “There’s a control box back in my cubicle. Mitty told me how to do it from the station. Then, later …” Her voice trailed off. Later she would do it from the moon itself. Later—after the earth was conquered! After the cities were brought under sway, and the forest tribes, and the people of Artemisia.
“How long until we get back?”
“A few days,” said Ellel. “Only a few.”
“I hope those we left behind don’t get into any mischief back there,” Ander muttered. “I hope they don’t make problems while we’re gone.”
Ellel stared through him “They won’t. They can’t. I’ve set the walkers to box them in Nobody in, nobody out Aside from the fact they may be a bit hungry, everything will be just as we left it when we return.” She yawned, unable to control herself. “I told her, in there I told her we had to get back safe, or her friends would be forfeit.”
She turned and maneuvered her way back to the seat she had left, pausing en route to stare warily at Olly once more. Still nothing. Motionless. Like a machine.
She strapped herself into her chair. It would have been fun to bring Berkli along, but Oracle had confirmed Ellel’s own instincts. This way would guarantee a, better result. The Place was shut up behind her, and no one was able to do anything about it. There were only Ellels and Anders on the shuttle, including all those from either family who might have been likely to seize power in her absence. Virtually all. Forsmooth Ander had been too ill to come along, the old snake! The Anders were up to no good, obviously, but the walkers on the ship would control the Anders The walkers on the ship were completely dependable. She’d been saving them for decades, just for this trip. They’d never been used for anything at all. The walkers back on earth would control the situation until she returned, and once she had the weapons from the space station in the hands of her own family, she’d put the Mittys where they belonged! In the shops, maintaining her walkers and her weapons! They were hers. Her imperial army. Just as she’d planned In time, her family would learn to manufacture more of them.
She took from her pocket a slender booklet, its lined pages annotated in her own hand. The weapons that had been left behind in the space station when men went to the stars, noted from the inventory sheets in order of priority. Some massive, some small. It might take more than one trip to get them all. She read down the list again, the smudged lines as clear to her as though they were newly written She knew them In her mind she had held them, worked with them, used them against her enemies The great laser cannons. The fusion guns. The sonic disrupters. The biologicals and chemicals, array after array of them And all the lesser stuff, eyes to see with and ears to hear with and tiny devices that could kill leaving no trace.
She put the book away with an expression of sli
ght distaste. All was going precisely as she had planned. Why then this feeling of vague disappointment? Perhaps because there was nothing to see except the dark. Like a night sky. There were stars, of course. And the sun, if you looked toward it, which would be unwise, or so Dever had said. They couldn’t see the moon yet. Dever had explained that their journey was a long outward spiral. They wouldn’t be able to see the moon until they got much farther out. Right now they were headed away from it, being pulled by the gravity of earth into the proper path. So Dever had said.
“How are our people back there?” asked Ander. “In their cosy little cubicles?”
“Sleeping,” she replied. “Except for the two of us, they’ll sleep until we get there. It’s what our doctors recommended. If they sleep, they’ll avoid any unpleasant effects of this weightlessness, and there’ll be one-half earth gravity at the station.” This too had been planned, though she had felt no effects of weightlessness, and Ander seemed to have adjusted well.
“Shouldn’t we see the station?” he asked, leaning forward to peer sidewise through the portal “Where we’re going?”
She shook her head “Dever said not until we’re almost there.”
She relaxed, letting the belt hold her, feeling her vague discontent fade away into a hazy euphoria. A kind of sweetness. She could not recall feeling such sweetness for a long, long time.
“I’m going to sleep, too, Ander I didn’t sleep all last night.”
“Of course,” he said “Of course. Neither did I.”
They had pills for sleep, and pills for the nausea of weightlessness, and pills for any of the Family who might get upset or hysterical, and pills for anything else that might go wrong. Pills and a sip tube for water, and behind her, in the cubicle, in her own space…
Drowsily she considered what was behind her, in her own space. All that long time ago Daddy had said it wasn’t a daughter’s business to go along. He was wrong. She’d told him they should stay together. Always stay together.
Ander kept his eyes on her face as she swallowed the pills, as she shut her eyes and squirmed briefly against the restraints that held her. Something obscene in that movement. Like the cuddling of a ghoul. The coupling of monsters. What was she thinking? What was she planning? What was under that featureless mask? Being this near her made him uncomfortable. Aside from the revulsion he felt at her physical presence, he was always expecting a stab in the back or, at the very least, a jabbed insult Nothing. Here she was, all relaxed, beginning to breathe softly, steadily.
He waited until she was quite asleep, then unfastened his own belt and drifted, as he’d wanted to do ever since they had started. It was wonderful! Exhilarating! He tugged himself here and there, actually giggling like a child. What fun!
He stopped, his eyes caught by the motionless figure in the booth, stopped and flushed. What was it she had said to him, just before the helmet went down? She had looked at his sleeves, reached out to touch them, and said, “I dyed that fabric. In Wilfer Ponde’s shop in Whitherby.”
“You?” he’d asked, suddenly aghast. “Not you!” Craftsmen—craftsmen were sacred to the Anders. If she—if this one.
“In Wilfer Ponde’s shop, in Whitherby,” she’d said again as the helmet had come down.
It was the last thing she’d said. There had been no time for him to do anything. The helmet was down, and she was silent. It was too late. Done, and too late Resolutely, he put it out of his mind. She could have been lying. She must have been. Though how she knew the name of the dyer’s shop where his fabrics came from, he could not imagine. What would a craftsman be doing here, in this place? He shook his head. He had to attend to business. Several Family members had seen Ellel’s servants bring something odd aboard. Something that might be—well, a weapon perhaps? Something the Anders needed to know about. Now that Ellel was asleep, drugged, unlikely to wake, it would be a good time to look into the matter.
He pulled himself back past the guidance system, without a glance at Olly, through the door, past the toilets and galley, into the long circular space with the cubicles all around it, each one with its sliding door, its own little window into space. The first door was Ellel’s The only one with a lock. Ander smiled. He had thought there might be some locked compartments on the space station, so he’d had Mitty’s people make him a gadget that could unlock them.
Which it did, in time. The lock beeped, the cubicle door opened. The long bundle he had seen brought aboard lay on the bunk, held down by straps. He unfastened the top one in order to untie the cords and fold back the blankets.
And then felt himself yelling, felt the vibration of his own vocal cords, the rawness of his own throat rasping with no one at all to hear him, no one to understand what he saw, no one but himself to see this thing lying on the bunk, this walker lying on the bunk with someone’s cut-off face sewn to its head, a face he knew, Jark III’s face, and someone’s cut-off chest laced around its torso, and someone’s—someone’s organ prominently displayed below, all dried, dried like leather, shriveled like old gloves, old shoes, all tied around a walker who looked up at him from dead eyes with its red, red glare and said in its dry voice, “Yes, yes, daughter, yes, princess, yes, yes, yes …”
• • •
On old Seoca’s terrace above the canyon, the group remained unchanged. Mitty had not come to join them. None of them had found reason to go elsewhere Oracle looked from face to face, wondering if the others found their minds wandering as she did, wishing to be in another place, another time. She caught old Seoca’s eyes and flushed. He knew what she was thinking.
It was Nimwes who broke the silence.
“What can we do? Will the walkers let us buy food in the marketplace?”
“I think not,” said Tom “In fact, the traders are leaving now. The walkers are blocking the gates.”
“Are any of the walkers inside the Place of Power?” His Wisdom asked.
Tom went away and came back again to say there were none in the Place, which didn’t mean they couldn’t come inside anytime they decided to do so. Nothing prevented their doing so, so far as Tom could see.
“Are there provisions here?” asked Oracle “Such a large place should have provisions for a siege.”
“That’s the word I was reaching for,” the old man agreed, nodding at her. “A siege Ellel’s bottled us up, hasn’t she? We are under siege.”
“Like rats in a trap,” said Arakny “Until she gets back, at least.”
“What’s going to happen?” Cermit demanded of Oracle “You’re the soothsayer. Can we last until she returns?”
Oracle mused, “I can’t see her return.”
Abasio asked, “What do you mean?”
“I mean what I said. I can’t always see the future, I can’t always prophesy. This is one of the times I can’t. I don’t know what’s going to happen!”
The group was silent, staring at one another.
“They could be delayed, up there in space,” mused the old man. “There are provisions up there that would allow them to stay a long time, if they chose to do so. Long enough for us to become very hungry. If you choose to act, it might be wise to do so while you still have the strength.”
“Weapons,” said Abasio. “Surely there are weapons we can use against the walkers!”
“Some we can adapt,” admitted Tom. “We have some on the roof, but they’d have to be moved to the outside walls. Mostly they guard against attack from above Dragons Wiverns once, a long time ago.”
“I wish Mitty were here!” cried Berkli. He turned to Qualary, asking, “Do you know where Ellel controls the walkers from?”
“From a closet, in a room in her quarters It’s locked, and she told me not to trifle with it, for if I do, something dreadful will happen.”
“Perhaps that is why Olly went,” Abasio said to Arakny. “Perhaps she knew it made no difference whether she stayed here or went there, that death waited in either place.”
“Must it?” demanded Farmwife Su
ttle. “Can’t men kill those things?”
“I saw three men kill one,” whispered Qualary “In the marketplace, with little more than their bare hands.”
“Which is about the odds we’d need,” said Berkli in a deadly, matter-of-fact voice “Three to one might manage. As it happens, the numbers go the other way. There are approximately three of them to each able-bodied, adult one of us, if we included Anders and Ellels.”
“It seems we could drag matters out for some time,” said Burned Man. “But I have some experience of stretched-out dying, and I do not recommend it.”
All during the long day that followed, during which they came and went, taking inventory of what were obviously totally inadequate foodstores, his words came back to torment them.
CummyNup and Sybbis had added an additional dozen or so ex-gangers, townsmen, truckers, and who-knows-whats during their journey to what had come to be called the Mountain of Revelation, all of these persons willing to fall in with the larger group and each of them soon well versed in the many marvels attributed to Abasio the Cat. The stories had come to be called collectively the Adventures of Abasio the Cat or sometimes simply Cat-tales. Some of them had a fragment of truth at the heart of them, some of them had none, and some of them were stories originally told about other heroes, now foisted onto Abasio. It didn’t matter to the hearers, and as they were told and retold, it mattered less and less to CummyNup and Sybbis.
As they approached the Mountain of Revelation, anticipation mounted that they would soon find the Cat himself, who had gone on a courageous quest, disguised as an ordinary human and escorting an archetypal Orphan in the fulfillment of a prophecy. CummyNup said the words without thinking what they meant Sybbis visualized the Orphan as a dirty-faced waif of some five or six years, with gap teeth and scabby knees, and she visualized the prophecy as something like a highly ritualized tally, after which Abasio would return to her triumphant.
Though a few of those who joined the mob had subsequently died of one thing or another, most often of fighting among themselves, the rest seemed reasonably amicable and immune to the disease that had wiped the cities clean. Among them they counted a respectable armamentarium, and during their progress west they acquired a number of vehicles and a considerable store of fuel. All together, they constituted a larger gang with greater mobility and firepower than any seen in the cities for some generations.