Overhead, smoke billowed. The plumes shook visibly as several rocking explosions concussed the air. The men in the hall were firing, either to repel attack or in preparation for one of their own. “Go!” Maia urged the navigator. “Make them hold on awhile longer!”
Without another word, he was on his feet and gone. “Help me up,” Maia told her sister, although leaving the fresh airstream was like tearing away from life itself. Coughing, they both managed to reach the sextant. “Aim downward!” Maia gasped as Leie seized one of the measurement wheels. It was increasingly difficult to see the image of the dim room, portrayed on the magic wall. It jiggled at Leie’s touch, then took a jerk upward. There was a glimpse of naked rock, some dark emptiness, a quick blaze of color, and then dark rock again.
“Don’t say it!” Leie snapped, bending over to focus on one thumb and forefinger, despite her body’s quivering. Maia marveled at her twin’s concentrated intensity. In her own case, it was all she could do to keep from folding over and vomiting.
The picture wall jittered, shifting in fits and starts.
Must break the sextant, if reavers get through, Maia reminded herself. Mustn’t let ’em see the simulation … or know that the wall can come awake.
More shattering booms echoed, and there were loud cries. Had battle been joined? If so, the scene outside was appallingly sinful even to imagine … men against women … a Perkinite propagandist’s dream come true. In fact, sex had almost nothing to do with the issues in question—crime versus law, ambition against honor. Gender was incidental, but legend would say otherwise, when and if word ever spread.
The picture jogged again. A bright wedge appeared across the upper fifth of the wall, hurtful in its brilliance. Leie grunted and tried again; the bright patch shot downward so that now the lower half of the screen blazed.
Blinking through the choking haze, Maia saw something she hadn’t expected. It was not a simulated image of a room, some chamber below this one, but an abstract set of nested rectangles. Against a radiant background, three squares contained distinct glowing symbols—a snowflake, a fire-arrow, and a sailing ship. As Leie gradually nudged the scene so that it filled the wall before them, the borders around each of the squares began to throb.
A red dot appeared. Responding to Leie’s controls, it wandered about. Both twins reached the obvious conclusion, at the same instant.
“I’ll pick the sailboat,” Leie said. But Maia shouted, “No!” She coughed, a series of rasping hacks, and shook her head. “Too obvious … go … with the arrow.”
Behind them, they now heard screams. More gunfire and an angry clamor of combat. Leie’s brow furrowed, running with perspiration, her eyes riveted on the screen. Wheezing from the effort, she brought the red dot into the square chosen by Maia.
A deep-throated tone rose beneath their feet. A growling, deeper than the groans coming from the hallway. Those shouts grew closer as Maia and Leie fell back from the podium, which began vibrating powerfully. Rumbling from age and disuse, a hidden mechanism rolled the heavy stone aside. Light spilled from the widening gap, along with a welcome rush of cool, fresh air.
Masked figures were tumbling down the aisle behind them. The first rush of males arrived in an orderly fashion, bearing wounded comrades. After them spilled others, panicky, near-doubled-over, their makeshift smoke veils askew. There was no time for organization. “In here!” Leie cried, guiding refugees toward a set of stairs that had appeared below the podium. Sailors tumbled downward, pell-mell, although Maia now wondered.
What have I done?
A rear guard fought on, five or six men wrestling desperately with twice as many smaller figures, expertly wielding trepp bills. A gunshot bellowed, and one of the men clutched his abdomen, falling.
“Come on, Maia!” Leie screamed, shoving her into the bright aperture. Howls of angry pursuit rose as three reavers broke free to leap down rows of benches after them. One tripped and fell, then Maia was too busy negotiating the steep steps to look back. At bottom, a waiting man took her arm, preventing her from turning.
It’s okay, Leie was just behind me, Maia told herself as she fled with other fugitives along a narrow hallway, under a low luminous ceiling, between cables and conduits. The constrained passage filled with sound as everyone seemed to be shouting at once. Alternate steps sent waves of pain swarming from her knee. At last, they reached a set of double doors made of sheet metal. An ad hoc squad of wounded men were using whatever they could find to wedge one of the doors shut. As soon as Maia was through, they started on the other. “Wait!” she cried. “My sister!”
She kept screaming while they finished, ignoring her pummeling assaults. It was the doctor who took Maia’s face in his hands and repeated, over and over, “There was reavers behind ya, honey. Just reavers, a little ways behind ya!”
In confirmation, the doors shook resoundingly as they were struck from the other side, again and again. “Go on!” one dark, bloodstained man urged, leaning against the portal. “Get outta here!” Blinking, Maia recognized her recent fellow investigator—the navigator.
“But—” she complained, before being lifted into the arms of a massive sailor, who turned and ran, leaving crimson blemishes behind him on the cold stone floor.
What followed was a blur of shaking, wild turns, and sudden reverses. Yet, combined with pain and fear and loss came a strange sensation, one she had not experienced since infancy—of being carried and cared for by someone much larger. Despite knowing countless ways men were as frail as women—and sometimes, much frailer—it came as a kind of solace to feel engulfed by such gentleness and power. It coaxed a deep part of her to let go. Amid a headlong plunge through eerie corridors, chased by despair, Maia wept for her sister, for the brave sailors, and herself.
The passage seemed to stretch on and on, at times descending like a ramp, at others climbing. They mounted a steep, narrow stair where some men had to duck their heads and others lagged behind. Sounds of pursuit, which had faded a while back, now grew closer once more. At the top, the diminished band of fugitives found another metal door. Several men laid down their wounded comrades and formed one last rear guard, vowing to hold on while Maia, her bearer, the doctor, and the cabin boy hurried ahead.
What’s the point? Maia thought miserably. The men seemed to believe in her ability to work miracles, but in truth, what had she accomplished? This “escape route” was intrinsically no good if the foe could follow. Most likely, all she had done was lead the reavers straight to Renna.
Her original thought was that she had found a secret path to the old defense warrens, which the Council in Caria had kept preserved for millennia. Now Maia knew they had traveled much too far, no doubt threading narrow stone bridges through one after another of the Dragon’s Teeth comprising the Jellicoe cluster. Except for Renna, they might be the first humans to tread these halls since the great banishment, after the Age of Kings.
They heard no more clamor at their rear. The last detachment must still be holding out at their barricade. Upon coming to a flat stretch, Maia insisted that the panting sailor let her down. Gingerly, she put weight on her knee, which throbbed, but deigned to let her walk. The sailor expressed willingness should she need help again. “We’ll see,” Maia said, patting his huge forearm and hobbled ahead.
Soon they came to another set of doors. On pushing through, the group stopped, staring.
A vast chamber stretched ahead, taller than the temple in Lanargh, wide as a warehouse. She marveled that the entire spire-mountain must be hollow. Maia’s eyes couldn’t take it all in at once, only by stages.
To the right, a series of semicircular bays had been gouged out of the rock, ranging from ten to fifty meters across, each containing jumbled mechanisms or piles of stacked crates. But it was the wall to the left that drew them, in awe. It appeared to consist of a single machine, stretching the entire length of the chamber, consisting of a numbing combination of metals and strange substances embedded in stone, plus crystalline fo
rms like the huge, dimly flickering entity she and Brod had glimpsed, back in the Defense Center. At intervals along its length, there were what appeared to be doors, though not shaped for the passage of people. Maia guessed they were meant for the entry or egress of materials, and speculated as much to the doctor.
The old man nodded. “It must be … We all thought it lost. The council had it. Or else it was destroyed.”
“What?” Maia asked, drawn by the man’s reverential tone. “What was lost?”
“The Former,” he whispered, as if afraid of disturbing a dream. “Jellicoe Former.”
Maia shook her head. “What’s a former?”
As they walked, the doctor looked at her, struggling for words. “A former … makes things! It can make anything!”
“You mean like an autofactory? Where they produce radios and—”
He shrugged. “The Council keeps some lesser ones runnin’, so as to not to forget how. But legends tell of another, the Great Former, run by the folk of Jellicoe.”
Blinking, Maia grasped his implication. “Men made this?”
“Not men, as such. The Old Guardians. Men an’ women. All banished after the Kings’ revolt, even though the Guardians had nothin’ to do with macho traitors.
“The Council an’ Temple were scared, see. Scared of such power. Used the Kings as an excuse to send ever’one away from Jellicoe an’ the other places. We always thought Caria kept the tools, for themselves.”
“They did, some of them.” And Maia spoke briefly of the Defense Center, elsewhere in this honeycombed isle, maintained by specialized clans.
“Just as we thought,” the doctor said moodily. “But seems they never found this!”
Till now, Maia pondered unhappily. It might have been better if they had all died, back in the sanctuary. Over the short term, this windfall would give Baltha and her reavers more power, wealth, and influence than they needed to set up their own dynasties, enough to win high places on the social ladder of Stratos. Once established, though, they would quickly become defenders of the status quo, like any conservative clan. In the long run, it would not matter that criminals first seized this prize. Council and Temple would control it.
This must be what made the weapons Brod and I saw, that were used against the Enemy. Now Caria will be able to manufacture all it wants, to shoot down Renna’s ship and any other that dares venture close.
Oh, Lysos, what have I done?
“If only we had time,” the doctor went on. “We could make things. Guns to defend it. Radios to call our guild, an’ some honorable clans.”
As they hurried along, he turned to survey the row of storage bays to the right. “Maybe the Guardians left somethin’ behind. You see anything useful?”
Maia sighed. Most of the enclaves contained machines or other items that were completely unrecognizable. Nevertheless, she learned something from what she had just seen and heard. Lysos and the Founders didn’t turn completely away from science. They felt it needful to hold onto this ability. It was a later, frightened generation that clamped down, scared of what trained, independent minds might do.
It made her angry. The councillors in Caria didn’t know about this place—not yet. But surely the savants at the university had books containing the basic wisdom all this technology was built upon. How? she wondered. How could people with access to so much knowledge turn away from it?
The question underlay so much of her pain at all the death and futile struggle. Like a trail of broken pieces, she had left in her wake first Brod, then Leie and so many others. And ahead … Where was Renna? Was she a judas goat, foiling his brilliant escape?
Now the bays on the right revealed frayed remnants of curtains, drooping from teetering rods. There were beds, chairs, items of clothing. “Legend says, after the banishment, a secret lodge stayed at the Former.” The doctor sighed. “No one knows what for. In time, those with the secret died out.”
On Stratos, continuity was reserved to clans. Commercial companies, governments, even the sailing guilds, had to recruit members from the offspring of hives, who controlled education, religion. These barracks—this sad tale of perseverance—had been doomed to futility. Perhaps the effort lasted many generations … still too little time to make any difference.
Maia wondered if Renna had slept in one of these alcoves. Had he combated ennui, and slaked his curiosity, by piecing together the melancholy tale of this lost refuge? Had he found anything to eat? Maia feared discovering his corpse, and thereby knowing that all of this—losing everything—had been for nothing.
They had crossed more than three-quarters of the vast chamber when the cabin boy noticed a sound. “Listen!” he urged. They paused, and Maia detected it. A bass thrumming, which came from somewhere up ahead. “Come on,” she said.
The doctor looked longingly at the mammoth machine, the Former. “We might try …”
There came another sound, a faint bang of metal far behind them, accompanied by shrill, excited exclamations. “Come on,” urged the big sailor. They limped forward and made it through a set of doors at the chamber’s far end, just in time to look back and see a crowd of women warriors pile through the distant entrance. The reprieve won by the brave rear guard was over.
The fugitives plunged into a new corridor, this time as dark as a mine. Only a single glow ahead eased their way. As Maia and the others approached, they saw that it was a hole in the right-hand side of the passageway. She sighed at the welcome touch of sunlight and fresh air. For a moment, despite the dread of pursuit, the four of them paused to look out upon the lagoon, and each, in his or her own way, expressed astonishment.
Down below, where two sailing ships had lain moored to a narrow dock, only one stood partially intact—the smaller Reckless, whose sails were burned away, its masts singed. Of the Manitou, just the burnt prow remained, still tethered to the smoke-stained pier. The sailor and cabin boy moaned at the sight. But there was more.
The sheltered harbor now thronged with other vessels. One, Maia saw clearly, bore at its pointed bow the figurehead of a sea lion. Rowboats set forth even as they watched, carrying stern-visaged men toward the sanctuary entrance. Perhaps, she hoped, one of them was Brod, having somehow managed to escape and call his guild-mates.
“Look!” The cabin boy pointed much higher. Maia craned her head and was able to make out the tops of the sleek, stony monoliths opposite. She gasped at a vision of power and loveliness. A zep’lin, far bigger and more powerful than the mail couriers she had known, hovered above one scarred, flat-topped peak, tethered to a straining cable.
Your presence has been noted … She recalled the placard, within the Defense Center. It might have been wise to take the Council at its word.
Meanwhile, the thrumming sound was growing louder, causing vibrations to be felt through the soles of their feet. “We must go,” intoned the big sailor. Despite fascination with the view outside, Maia nodded. “Yeah, let’s hurry.”
They hastened with the light now on their backs, striving to reach the far end before the desperate reavers, with their long rifles, came into sight behind them. Yet it took some will to approach the growling sounds ahead. There were now two tones, one a grumbling, urgent, bone-shaking basso, and another climbing in pitch and penetration with each passing second.
The cabin boy banged through the far set of doors and light spilled around him. More sunlight, this time pouring down from above. They stared across a vast, cylindrical volume, its stone walls lined with machinery. Overhead, the source of the rumbling grew apparent—an iris made of crimson metal was widening with each passing second.
But what had the four fugitives transfixed was an object filling the center of the room—a vertical multi-twined spiral coil of translucent crystalline material, which started high overhead and plunged downward into a central cavity. The coil throbbed with imprisoned lightning. Inside those windings, they glimpsed a slender, pointed shape, burnished gold, which had already begun descending slowly down the tub
e. In moments, its tip vanished from sight. “Come on!” Maia called to the others, and rushed, limping, ahead.
They reached the coil but were held back by a force they could not see, which palpably resisted all efforts to approach closer. Their hair stood on end. Maia could now see that the pit plunged vertiginously some indeterminable distance, girdled all the way by spiral coil. Within that tight embrace, the slender javelin-shape continued its descent.
“Wait!” she screamed. “Oh, wait for us!”
It was almost impossible to hear her own voice over the rising keen. Someone yanked her arm. She resisted, then blinked in surprise as a strange, tiny object entered view. A tapered cylinder of metal, no larger than her smallest toe, had arrived from her left, pushing forward into the unyielding field, decelerating rapidly. It came to rest, then reversed course, accelerating swiftly the way it came, to be expelled with a report of riven air.
The same thing happened again. This time, Maia’s brief glance recognized a bullet, before it, too, was ejected backward toward its source. She stopped fighting the tug on her arm. Accompanied by a roar and swarming vertigo, the four of them ran tangentially to the coils and the surrounding, impenetrable field. To her left, Maia glimpsed kneeling markswomen, firing at them, while others, armed with trepps and knives, approached cautiously, their flushed faces alive with conflicting emotions—wrath versus frightened astonishment.
“Uh!” the big sailor cried, and foundered, clutching his thigh. Maia and the cabin boy took his arms and helped him stumble toward another set of doors at the far end of the chamber. While more bullets pinged around them, they could feel awesome power building nearby, intensifying toward some titanic climax.
The doors were still thirty meters distant when the big sailor collapsed again. “Gowon!” he cried hoarsely. “Get ’er outta here!” he urged the other males. But already bullets were striking the metal doors. Maia pointed. “Over there!”