“What do we do, supposing we are in Laputa-Blish?” asked a girl with a stiff, gangly body.
“Do what we came to do without the virus, of course, you stupid bitch,” Flan Burke said as she rotated, knees to chin, through Zillah’s view. She looked both fierce and comfortable. “Do you think we came for a holiday?”
“Flan’s right,” Roz proclaimed. “We mount an attack regardless.”
The walls, seats, and ceiling had been rotating spirally about them as they talked, spinning everyone into a kind of plait along the length of the Celestial Omnibus. Now the motion changed again. Zillah found herself falling, gently and inevitably, together with half the floating company, toward the rear of the capsule.
“What’s going on now?” someone squawked from the other end of the aisle. That aisle now stood up from Zillah like a tube, and people hung there at the other end with outspread arms, inexplicably.
“Rotation, that’s all. We must be flipping over and over. Gives us gravity at both ends.”
Whoever said that must be right, Zillah thought, as her feet landed on the silvery wall that concealed the life support. She could hear it hissing beyond the metal. She hoped it was meant to hiss. It sounded nastily like a gas leak. She had a vivid vision of the capsule turning over and over in space, perhaps endlessly. She had been mad to bring Marcus. He was stirring and mumbling against her shoulder, disturbed by the hissing and the changes of gravity—perhaps also by Zillah’s own rising panic. In a moment she was going to be screaming like Judy, and that would wake Marcus.
She soothed him and she rocked him, trying to throw her panic into the distance, out, away, into whatever appalling emptiness surrounded the capsule. Marcus calmed. He slept steadily again. Zillah tried to convince herself that she was calm, too, by turning to the young man who had landed curled up on the backrest of the seat sticking out of the wall beside her. He was nice-looking. She did not know him well, but she thought his name was Tam—Tam Fairbrother, or something like that.
“Excuse me,” she said. “I know it seems silly, but I only got here at the last minute. What is the attack Roz and Flan were talking about? Can you put me abreast of the plans?”
Tam did not answer. This puzzled Zillah at first. It took her a long, difficult minute to realize that Tam was dead. So was everyone else at this end of the capsule.
* * *
3
« ^ »
Tod was given an all-over gossamer-thin suit with smickering suction-soles. The soles were the only things that impeded him as he walked into the big, tranparent bubble of the rescue port. The rest of the suit was Arth’s secret, some kind of time-tested magework that allowed a man to breathe and move normally while protecting him from vacuum, germs, and even fire. Exploring it as he walked, Tod thought it was simply a hundredfold thickness of any mage’s usual protective circle—in which case, it must have taken years to make. However it was done, it was a wondrous efficient thing. The High Head may have intended this as a punishment, but Tod felt like a schoolboy on a treat. He stared out and around into the cerulean blueness beyond the port’s bubble and finally detected the silvery flash-flash of the rogue capsule turning over and over as it fell toward the citadel from about the ten o’clock position.
“This is something like!” he murmured. Up till then he had hardly believed there really was a capsule.
It was coming fast, too, enlarging rapidly as he watched it. Behind him, safe inside the walls, a monitoring mage murmured reports of what he was able to gather from the shocked minds inside the thing. Another, from Calculus, spoke crisp figures about speed, position, and deflections due to the storm the thing itself was arousing. Some other higher Brother was relaying orders to ranked mages from Ritual Horn, who were supposed to apply the brakes to the hurtling object. Tod could also hear various kinds of rescue teams gathering in the bubble at his back, but they kept away from him because, of course, he was in disgrace.
“Now!” said the higher Brother. Tod felt the force go out.
They had done it, too! The rotating silver shape swept to one side and whirled out of sight beyond the blue wall of the citadel. But they had cut it fine to Tod’s mind. The thing had surely all but impinged on the nearly unseeable veil that held Arth’s atmosphere. Still, why grumble? They had deflected it. Now presumably they had to slow it down enough to maneuver it into the funnel of veiling that led to the rescue port.
* * *
4
« ^ »
It was close and fuggy inside the Celestial Omnibus. That hissing, Zillah thought. We’re all going to die.
A voice spoke, from somewhere in the central part where no one could go. “Be calm,” it said. “Please attend.”
It was a deep male voice that struck ringing echoes from the walls in a way none of their own voices did. Marcus stirred at the sound of it and came awake quite peacefully. Even Judy stopped whimpering.
“I speak for the Brotherhood of Arth,” the voice continued. “Have no fear. The Goddess has permitted you to enter Arth. Our skills will bring you safely to the citadel. Be calm and you will see.”
The accent struck Zillah as Scottish at first, but it also had a burr to it that suggested Cornwall. Whatever, the deep, measured speech was decidedly soothing. Thank you! Bless you! she thought.
And thinking that, she found she could see the citadel the voice spoke of, in a sort of round white viewport that floated just in front of—or maybe just behind—her eyes. Marcus had no doubt that the sight was in front of him. He stretched out a starfish hand and made his pigeon noise. The place—building?—lay below like a toy, an improbable blue castle sprouting hornlike turrets in all directions from a flat base. Turrets and central block had windows of all sizes, but there seemed to be no doors. Some of the turrets supported open gold devices like crowns, multiple ladders, and many-petaled flowers.
A babble of exclamations greeted it from down the front end of the Celestial Omnibus, and Judy’s voice demanding, “What is it? What are you all looking at?”
He means just what he says—the voice—Zillah thought. If you don’t panic, you can see. Poor Judy.
She watched the castle enlarge with incredible swiftness. We are going fast. Will they ever stop us?
The thought had hardly entered her mind before something caught the Celestial Omnibus and steered it sharply away sideways. Gravity altered too, not so sharply, but inexorably. Zillah found herself able to stagger forward up the aisle and guide herself and Marcus into a seat not quite halfway along. Behind her, bodies of people she did not want to look at subsided to drape over seat-backs or flop into the gangway. Up front, Flan and Roz were forcing Judy into a seat.
None of this interfered with the vision of the castle. They were sweeping over it, above it, and down the other side.
“They’ve put us in a braking orbit, I think,” the gawky girl said very coolly from up front.
Must be that, Zillah thought, watching their dive to the flat base of the building and around underneath it. But here something decidedly odd happened. Instead of finding the Celestial Omnibus speeding along above the flat base, which surely ought to have appeared as a large disc, there was the merest blink of darkness, after which they were soaring up past the great blue walls of the fortress on the other side. It was as if the castle had no bottom at all—or one only a few feet across. There were exclamations from everyone about this, and then further exclamations as they all realized they were now much nearer the fortress and traveling at less than half the speed. As they swept over and above the multiple turrets this time, they were near enough to see several gardens, some in deep wells between turrets, and others niched high in among complex hornworks. A great open space appeared, beside the central block, and a tiny group of people hastening across it, who looked up and pointed. Then they were going down again, past blue walls and a hundred windows of many shapes.
This time, when they came up the other side after the blink of blackness, the Celestial Omnibus was virtually c
rawling. Now they were being maneuvered. The force that had sent them into that swift orbit had them again. This time it pulled. The Celestial Omnibus turned nose forward toward the vast building and jogged docilely inward.
Vast, Zillah thought, was too mild a word. The thing on a tower she had thought was like a golden flower must have been nearly a quarter of a mile across. It now—slightly—resembled a radio telescope dish. The multiple ladders on a more distant tower proved to be a structure several times the size of the Eiffel Tower. The walls of the outjutting horn-shaped tower they were approaching were built of square blocks of bluish stone that were each nearly the size of a house. Some of the windows were enormous. A slight shiver blurred her view as she wondered if the burring voice had belonged to a giant. Now they were approaching a medium-enormous bubblelike window.
“They have to be friendly after this,” Roz said. “Don’t they?”
“As long as they don’t find out where we come from,” Flan answered. “Let’s hope they believe our story.”
* * *
5
« ^ »
Nice work, Brothers! Tod thought, as the battered metal thing glided to a joggling halt between calipers that were the wrong shape and size to hold it. Whoever had made the object, on the other hand, had not done nice work at all. He could see welded plates starting apart all over it. More ominously, atmosphere was steaming in white clouds both from the rear and from the hatch, or door, in one side. The thing looked as if it had never been meant to withstand the forces between the worlds.
Tod sensed barriers go up behind him. The Brothers were protecting themselves and the rest of the rescue team from whatever was steaming out of the capsule. After that, veiling fell over capsule and calipers together, isolating Tod in with it.
“Can you manage to open that door, serviceman?” a telepathic voice inquired coldly.
No, Duty Mage, I am but a poor fool from the Pentarchy and only a seventh child at that. “I’ll have a try, sir,” Tod replied. Up with the old birthright then.
It took only the slightest shift of the Wheel to spring that leaking hatch cover right out and send it spiraling down the citadel wall below. As it clanged loose, Tod found himself gagging in the air that gusted forth. Someone had thrown up in there. Someone else was definitely dead. The rest had sweated like pigs. The veiling over his face cut none of that out at all. Why can’t they design it like a Frinjen wet suit? he wondered as he climbed inside. “Here comes the help! Anyone home?”
He met a chorus of thanks and relief. Two women thrust a third at him, who was blubbering and weeping. “Can you help Judy out? She’s gone to pieces.” Tod helped her to the platform with a will. Hysterical and red-eyed as she was, the girl was a good-looking blonde. Tod had not had his hands on a blonde for two months now. He discovered he missed the feeling after all. And missed brunettes too, he thought, as Roz and Flan jumped to the platform after Judy. The tall one in boots looked a bit masterful and strident, but the little ’un struck him as a sweetie. What fun! And what an embarrassment for the Brothers!
Tod was grinning, despite the stench, as he jumped up inside again and helped another woman down—this one a thin, staid creature who said gruffly, when he asked her, that the name was Helen.
“And I’m Roderick. Call me Tod,” he said. He turned to help the next, who was shaking all over, and found her, to his perplexity, to be an Azandi. “Hey! What are you doing here, my lady?” he asked.
“Wish the hell I knew, man,” she answered, in an accent that was most definitely not Azandi. “If I’d known this was going to happen, I’d have stayed safe in London. I’m Sandra. And the rest are dead. The crossing killed them. Believe me.”
She was right there. Just beyond the hatchway, the corpse of a good-looking boy lay half-across that of a comely young woman. Tod stepped over them and took a look along the capsule to make sure. And found Sandra had made a mistake. The best-looking one of all—an absolute wow-wow!—was coming slowly down the metal gangway carrying an infant.
“Not dead after all then?” Tod said to her. The infant responded with a broad, companionable smile.
“Ike boo how,” it remarked.
Zillah saw with interest that this cheerful young man, whose face gave her a feeling it was encased in an invisible nylon stocking, only hesitated an instant before correctly translating Marcus. “Like the blue house, do you, laddie? Well, that makes one of us. Your son, is he?” he asked Zillah.
She nodded. “Marcus. I’m Zillah. We were up the other end.”
There was more to it than that, Tod suspected. Why, he hadn’t even seen her until she was most of the way down the gangway. Nor, it seemed, had the other women. When Zillah climbed out through the doorway, she was greeted with astonishment.
“Good Lord! It’s Zillah—and Marcus!”
“Zillah, what the hell are you doing here? Why are the others dead?”
“Who is she?”
“Zillah Green, Helen—she’s Amanda’s sister.”
Zillah mumbled some reply, sounding so embarrassed that Tod turned away to the nearest corpse and began hauling it along the floor. But a man does not have six elder sisters for nothing. He did not make nearly as much noise dragging the dead young man as the castaways thought. He clearly caught the rapid whispering between the two brunettes and Zillah.
“Look, Zillah, how much do you know?”
“Well, the outline—What killed them? I don’t know—”
“Not the cover story and all that?”
“Obviously she doesn’t. Suppose they question us?”
“They’re bound to. Zillah, keep quiet and play dumb, there’s a love!”
“We’ll talk a lot. You just follow our lead.”
Ay, ay! Tod thought, backing from the door with the dead young man’s ankles in his hands. What are you up to, sisters? If you’re up to no good in Arth, then that’s fine by me. I won’t say a word to stop you!
It amused him the way they all sprang to help him, to allay his suspicions just in case he had heard anything. Flan and Roz jumped to the corpse’s arms, while Helen and Sandra raced inside to collect the girl. Zillah put Marcus down beside Judy. “Marcus, look after Judy. Mum’s got to go and help. Judy, have a go at holding Marcus—he’s awfully comforting to hold.” As she climbed into the capsule, she asked Tod, “Are you all on your own? Isn’t there anyone else in this castle to help you?”
Tod shot a look at the dark, filmy screen between them and the Brothers. They were all watching in there, and it looked as if they were now doing some kind of decontamination work. They were not going to risk plague. The platform was alight with small flashes, each representing the death of a microbe. “Oh, I’m in disgrace,” he said cheerfully, struggling rather to drag the dead young man to one side, out of Judy’s line of sight. He did not look plague-ridden to Tod’s eye, but why crossing to Arth should have killed such a healthy specimen was beyond Tod to say.
Here the Brotherhood condescended to lower the weight of things out on the platform. The heavy bodies suddenly became quite easy to handle. Tod found he could manage the next on his own, and Judy, sitting cross-legged with Marcus in her arms, was hanging on to the child as if she thought he might float away. In fact, had it not been for the sad gruesomeness of the work—which Tod saw was upsetting all the women—he would have enjoyed himself. Here were six new people to talk to, and females at that—with all the while the chuckle welling up inside him at how wonderfully awkward this was for Arth.
But of course, it was over quite soon. Five minutes hard work later, Tod’s suit became a fizzing scintilla of dying germs. Oh, so they did get around to me! he thought angrily. Simultaneously the dark screen cleared and busy, blue-clad Brothers rushed forth to deal with the capsule. Others swiftly shrouded the sad row of corpses, speculating in murmurs as to whether the cosmic storm or oxygen-loss could have killed them. Tod and the living ones were ushered through ranks of staring mages and goggling cadets, to where the High Head was stan
ding, cloaked and mitred and stately.
The look on the High Head’s face, Tod thought he would never forget. It was almost horror, as the High Head realized all the survivors were women.
* * *
V
Arth
* * *
1
« ^ »
Tod was told to take the party straight to Healing Horn. Our High Head wishes for time to think, he told himself in considerable amusement as he led the women there.
He was quite right. The High Head was forced to retreat to his workroom and think furiously. What do you do with six women (and one infant) of uncertain origin and social status, when you are an all-male community under Oath of Celibacy? The worst of it was that the problem, however he solved it, would be with him for the best part of a year. The tides that permitted travel between Arth and the Pentarchy were two months past. The next were eight months off. Otherwise the High Head would cheerfully have decanted his unwanted guests to the Orthe and let the king deal with them.
There was always otherworld, of course. The ritual for sending people there was at everyone’s fingertips. But these people had already burst from another universe into this one, and a lot of them had died inexplicably on the way. A second transition would probably kill the survivors. Pushing them off to otherworld was the equivalent of allowing Defense Horn to explode the capsule when it first appeared—as well as a waste of a perfectly executed rescue operation. And the Goddess had permitted these women to come here.
This was a strong consideration. The High Head, although he presided daily at the most reverent worship of the Goddess, took a wholly pragmatic view of Her—some might even say cynical. She was the Power in the Wheel upon which Arth drew: therefore, you did not run counter to this Power. And the rogue capsule had passed through several hundred subtle and strong defenses set up in the name of the Goddess, designed to keep hostile intruders out. It followed that the intruders who survived were under the protection of the Goddess and harmless to Arth. It was in Arth’s best interests to treat them politely.