“Nice!” In spite of her discontent, Reigner Three smiled. These people – or rather, their distant ancestors – had once looked down their noses at her when she was only a singer who was Orm Pender’s mistress.
“Yes, but you must on no account tell Vierran that these people are near by,” said Reigner One.
They paused while a rather obtrusive waiter took away their prawn glasses and brought them steak, chips and coleslaw.
“I apologise about Vierran,” said Reigner Three. “What is this white stuff that looks like cat sick and tastes like cardboard?”
“An aberration,” said Reigner One, “made of cabbage. Cabbage is a vegetable that came to Earth from Yurov along with the earliest convicts. I accept your apology, my dear. Upon reflection, I saw that this solved at least one of our problems. So on Yurov I ordered Vierran to go into the field of the bannus and breed with the Servant.”
Reigner Three actually laughed. “So that’s what got into her!”
“Yes. Once she has, it will be your task to kill the Servant as quickly as you can. You should enjoy that,” Reigner One said amiably. “I was going to put her cousin to him, but I fancy Vierran is better breeding stock. Make sure she’s pregnant and then bring her safely out of the field for the appropriate medication, if you would.”
Reigner Three looked suspiciously from him to her steak. “What made you change your mind? I thought you wanted the Servant stassed so that you could clone from him.”
“Clones are no fun,” said Reigner One. “The fun is in breaking in a different set of children each time. No, my dear, we must cut our losses, you and I, and get used to doing without a Servant until Vierran’s brood is trained. This one’s been too long in the bannus field. We want him finished quick before the real danger arises.”
“I wish you wouldn’t be so mysterious! What real danger?” Reigner Three demanded. But she was thinking, He said “you and I”! He has written the other three off. Oh good!
“I’ll show you.” Reigner One put a miniature cube on the table between the little cardboard mats on which their wineglasses stood. “Have you finished eating already?”
Reigner Three pushed aside her uneaten steak. “Yes.”
Reigner One continued eating placidly himself. “Here’s a map of this area,” he said, and activated the cube with a wave of his fork. The picture expanded until it was about the size of the place mat with the coach and horses on it. Three leant forward and saw the map was of an irregularly shaped island. Rather like an old witch riding a pig, she thought. There were coloured dots all over the island. “The key to the dots,” said Reigner One, “is something I normally keep only in my head – though I believe if you worked hard, you could put it together from the classified stuff here and on Albion. The blue dots are Reigner installations, including some very secret ones, yellow are the permanent portals, and green, orange and red are other secret sites of great potential danger.”
“Where are we?” asked Three. Reigner One showed her with the tip of his knife. She looked quizzically sideways at the large coloured cluster. “About the only thing I can’t see here is a portal,” she said.
“Correct. That would have been asking for trouble,” said Reigner One. “Wait, and I’ll give you a closer view.” The tip of his knife went out and expanded the picture but not the size of the map. The old-witch island sped out of sight at the sides, giddily. It was like plunging nose-forward in a stratoship, with the additional giddiness of wriggling contours, mile-wide lettering and madly branching road systems. Three looked away until it had stopped.
When she looked back it was at a sort of octopus of roads that gradually melted into square blocks at the edges. Sprawling across it were the symbols HEXWOOD FARM ESTATE. In the lower, octopus-like half, a small green dot beside a blue square seemed to have run and spread a green haze over the wriggle of roads round it.
Reigner One’s knife pointed at this. “The bannus. The pale green is its field as my monitors show it at this moment. It’s spread a bit since Five went, but not much. Here is our motel.” His knife moved to show a small black square towards the top right-hand corner. “Were well out of range, as you see.” The knife tip went on to another, larger blue square almost at the top of the map. “That’s the Reigner factory I mentioned earlier.”
There was one of the bright red dots just beside this large blue square, and two more dots, both orange, spaced out beyond it. Reigner Three looked at them. “And?” she said.
Reigner One’s knife indicated the red dot beside the factory, a short stab. “Stass-tomb,” he said. Then, reluctantly, hating to have the secret dragged out of him, he gave her a name that made Three sit bolt upright in hatred and shock. “Martellian, one-time Reigner One. My predecessor, you might say.”
Reigner Three’s face went murderous, as she thought of their old enemy still there and still, after a fashion, alive. Martellian had been hardest of all to dislodge after Orm Pender had worked his way among the Reigners. Even after Reigners Two and Five had been co-opted, Martellian still hung on, on the other side of Homeworld. It had taken all five of them, using the bannus the way Orm showed them, to dislodge Martellian and force him into exile on Earth. And even there he had continued to cause trouble.
“It gave me great pleasure,” mused Reigner One, “to use his own descendants – those two girl Servants, remember? – to put him down into stass.”
Reigner Three made impatient tapping-motions at the two orange dots. “And these?”
“Stass-tombs too.” Reigner One calmly flicked the picture off and summoned the waiter, from whom he ordered coffee and a cigar. Reigner Three waited with one hand clenched so that its pearly red nails bit into her. She would gladly have murdered One if she had been able – particularly when he lit the cigar.
“Must you?” she said, fanning with her other hand.
“Among the best inventions of Earth, cigars,” he said, and looked at her with placid expectation.
She realised he had expected her to work whatever-it-was out for herself. She was even more annoyed. “How can I understand? You haven’t told me all the facts!”
“Surely you remember?” he said. “The two orange dots are the most troublesome of Martellian’s children. I forget their names. One is from the brood he got when he was calling himself Wolf – the one who wounded Four so badly when we brought in the worms from Lind – and the other is from the second lot, when he was calling himself Merlin.”
“You lied!” Three spat at him. “You told us all those children were dead!”
“But these are grandchildren,” Reigner One said, calmly blowing smoke. “Or possibly nephews. Martellian did a certain amount of inbreeding, rather as I do with the Servants, in order to breed back to true Reigner traits. These are the two where he succeeded. They are virtual Reigners and I had to stass them myself.”
Three’s hand went over her mouth.
“Ah, you’re with me now, I see,” Reigner One observed.
“Four of them, with the Servant!” Three said, husky with horror. “Orm, that’s damn near a proper Hand of Reigners!”
“Or could be a whole Hand, if they co-opted an Earthman with the right ancestry,” Reigner One agreed. “Like that John Bedford. He seemed to me to have more than a touch of Reigner blood. I didn’t like the look of him at all. But there’s no need to be so horrified, my dear. The theta-field from the bannus hasn’t nearly reached them yet. We got here in time.”
Reigner Three’s groping hands found a red paper cloth. She tore it tensely to shreds. “Orm,” she said, “whatever possessed you to park the bannus so near them?”
“Then you don’t understand,” One said, carefully detaching the ash off his cigar into the dish provided. “I hope your mind isn’t going, my dear, after all this time. The bannus, as you know, is primarily designed to select Reigners – to single out a proper Hand of them and then to elect them. This was in the bad old days when Reigners were legally obliged to be reselected every ten year
s, one from each of five Houses. Those repeating programmes it runs were supposed to test their ability to control it, and only secondarily to aid them with their decisions after they were elected. The elected Reigner controls the bannus. Right? But the bannus also has to be strong enough to control the deselected Reigners. In fact, it’s the only thing that can control a Reigner.”
“I know all that,” Three said, shredding red shreds of paper napkin. “So why?”
Reigner One beamed at her. “Two birds with one stone. We had to get rid of the bannus. And the bannus, even under seal, always puts out a small mild field – not theta-space, just influence. We placed those stass-tombs just on the edge of that field of influence, and used it to keep the sleepers under. And we double-sealed it so that it could never draw full power. And we left it on Earth, as far away from Homeworld as it could get, so that it wouldn’t force us to reselect ourselves every ten years. You owe your long reign to my foresight, my dear.”
Three shakily put a handful of red shreds down on the table. “That’s as maybe,” she said. “I’m going to take a look at those stass-tombs first thing tomorrow.”
“Excellent plan,” Reigner One said warmly. “I was going to suggest the same thing myself.”
Yam loomed over Mordion. The newly mended slash in his tegument caught the last of the sun in a jagged orange glitter.
Mordion roused himself with difficulty. He had been sitting here outside the house for hours now, trying to force himself to a decision. He knew he was ready to make a move. But what move, in which direction, when he was unable to think of the reasons for it? All he knew was that he must advance, and that any advance would bring him face to face with things he would rather not know. He sighed and looked up at Yam. “Why are you standing over me, clanking?”
“It was an error,” Yam said, “to worst Hume in battle—”
“He deserved it,” said Mordion.
“—because he is now trying to leave the wood,” Yam said.
“What?” Mordion was on his feet grabbing for his staff before Yam had finished intoning the news. “Which way did he go? When?”
Yam pointed to the river. “He crossed about five minutes ago.”
Mordion set off in great leaps down the cliffside, and in more cautious leaps from rock to rock across the white water. Halfway across, the corner of his eye caught sight of Yam, sedately stepping from stone to stone too. “Why didn’t you go after him straightaway?” Mordion said, as they both reached the opposite bank.
“Hume ordered me never to let you out of my sight,” Yam explained.
Mordion swore. What an obvious trick!
“Many years ago,” Yam added, “After you sat on the high rock.”
“Oh.” Mordion found he was touched – though no doubt Hume was finding that order very useful just at this moment.
He strode forward into the damp half-light of the wood, wondering how far it was to the edge of it this way. They could be too late. Ann had always given him the impression that it was not far. And, annoyingly, the wood was now too dark for running. Rustling blackness crowded against him and thwacked at Yam’s tegument. Both of them stumbled on roots. A branch clawed Mordion’s beard. They seemed to have walked straight into a thicket.
A short way ahead, Hume yelled. It was only just not a scream of terror.
Without thinking, Mordion raised his staff with a blue ball of light on the end of it. Hawthorns sprang into unearthly green all around. Yam, an improbable glittering blue, swung round beside him and plunged into what was evidently the path they had missed. Mordion squeezed after him among the may blossoms, a heady oppressive scent, holding his staff high.
Hume was coming towards them down a wider section of path. His head was held sideways in a queer angle of terror. Mordion could see his teeth chattering. Hume was held – led – pulled – by two thorny beings that were insect-stepping along with him on tall legs that ended in sprays of twigs. Each being had a twiggy hand wrapped round one of Hume’s upper arms. Their heads seemed to be trailing bundles of ivy, out of which dewspots of eyes flashed blue in Mordion’s light.
“Great Balance!” The muscles across Mordion’s stomach and shoulders rearranged themselves in a way he absent-mindedly recognised as their fighting position. “Hume!” he bellowed.
Hume came out of his trance of terror, saw them, and dived towards them, dragging the creatures with him, rustling and bumping on either side. “Oh, thank goodness!” he babbled. “I didn’t mean it – at least I did, but I don’t mean it now, not any more!” He flung one arm round Yam and twisted the other into Mordion’s rolled cloak. “They came. They rustled. Don’t let them!”
The creatures appeared to subside to the ground on either side of Hume. Mordion moved his staff jerkily towards the nearest, trying to see it clearly, or meaning to fend it off – he was not sure which. The light shone bleak and blue over a small black heap of dry twigs. There was a second heap just beyond Yam. Mordion stirred the nearest pile with his boot. Just twigs.
“The wood brought Hume back,” Yam announced.
“I won’t do it again!” Hume said frantically.
“Don’t be an idiot, Hume,” Mordion said. He was angry with fading terror. “You won’t need to do this again. We’re going to set out for the castle tomorrow.”
“Really!” Hume’s delight was almost as extreme as his fear had been. “And I can really train to be a knight?”
“If you want” Mordion sighed, knowing that Hume, and maybe Yam too, thought his decision was for Hume’s sake. But Hume had little to do with it. He had known all along, really, that he had to go to the castle and face what had to be faced there.
Vierran lay on her bed in the motel and switched from channel to channel on the flat over-bright television-thing, trying to find something that would save her from having to think. There was no escape that she could see. She was alone on Earth with Reigner One’s compulsion pressing crampingly on her mind. If she tried to run away, the compulsion would go with her, and Reigner One would follow. And he would give orders to terminate her family. At length, she switched the television off and, very slowly, removed the bracelet from her arm. There was always the micro-gun.
As she unclasped it her eye fell on the message cassette so cunningly designed to look like part of the clasp. Father really had spent a small fortune on this thing. She could hardly see it for tears. Father and she had always been particularly close. And – it only just now dawned on her – he would surely have sent her a message.
She put the bracelet against her ear and activated the cassette. It whirred irritatingly. Then out of the purring, her father’s voice spoke. “Vierran. This is a terrible gift if you’re going to use it the way I think you may have to. The darts are poisoned. The choice is up to you. No time for more – I have to get this to Siri. They’re just on their way up to arrest me. Much love.”
Tears poured down Vierran’s face. She sat like a statue with the bracelet still clamped to her ear. Oh Father. Worlds away.
And then, out of the whirring that she now hardly noticed, a second voice spoke, high and trembling, in Earth-talk this time.
“Vierran. This is Vierran speaking. Vierran to myself. This is at least the second time I’ve sat in the inn bedroom despairing and I’m beginning to not quite believe in it. If it happens again, this is to let me know there’s something odd going on.”
Vierran found she had sprung off the bed. “Damn Bannus!” she said. She was laughing as much as she was crying. “I’ll say there’s something odd going on!”
Four soundless voices fell into her head. It was like getting back the greater part of herself. You keep blanking me out, said the Slave, as always the faintest. Do keep talking, said the Prisoner. Go on with the story, said the Boy, and, Oh, there you are! said the King. What happened? You were in the middle of sorting out what happened in the wood.
The Bannus interrupted, Vierran told them dourly. How long ago would you say I stopped speaking to you?
r /> The Boy said decisively, Three-quarters of an hour ago.
In other words, just time for the raid on the shops followed by the walk back to the motel.
One more question, Vierran said. I know it sounds silly, but with that Bannus messing up reality all the time, I have to ask. Who do you all think I am?
The four voices answered simultaneously, I think of you as the Girl Child.
This was not as useless as it sounded. Not Ann Stavely? Vierran asked.
I was puzzled by that name, the King said.
The messages from you are not always clear, the Prisoner told her. Time and space and language interfere. But I was confused by that one.
Go on with the story, the Boy repeated.
Please, said the King, I want to hear more. I am currently attending a religious ceremony of unbelievable tedium. I rely on you to amuse me.
As always, Vierran was uncertain whether they could hear one another. Sometimes, she was sure, they could not and she had to pass messages between them. But at least her head was back to normal. “I’ll get you for this!” Vierran promised the Bannus. It had rendered her journey from the House of Balance correctly enough, but it had cut out all the disembodied conversations. Those had been a lifeline to Vierran as she trudged behind the two Reigners laden with luggage. Think of something else, the Slave had suggested. This is what I do. Masters take pleasure in seeing one struggle. And when Reigner One had smiled and told her of his plans for her, she surely would have despaired but for the Boy riding in her head and saying, Go on, resist! I know you can! and the Prisoner surprising and delighting her by asking suddenly, Who is this Baddydaddy? Vierran had hung her sense of humour on these kind of remarks for years now, and during that journey she had hung on to her voices gratefully. Even her shock when Reigner One had terminated that poor Associate Controller had been lifted slightly from her when the King remarked wryly that he wished it had been that easy in his day and age.