Elizabeth was silent. The surrounding air had attained a supernatural clarity. Even without exerting her farsensing eye, she seemed able to detect each separate leaf on the jungle trees, each tuft of dry grass between the ruts of the dusty road, each pebble and grasshopper and rock-rose of the arid verge. She finally said, "We had seven hundred eighty-four human planets in our Milieu, including Old Earth.
How many worlds were daughter-colonies of Duat at the time of your exile?"
"More than eleven thousand four hundred," Dionket replied. "Even with the attrition from the Galactic Civil War, the total population approached one hundred fifteen billion."
"Half that of our Milieu," Elizabeth mused, "and yet more than adequate for coadunation of the Galactic Mind, if you had not followed the dead end of the golden tores."
"So you say."
Minanonn addressed Elizabeth with a certain bluff impatience. "My mind is a simple one, suited to porter duties and other tasks requiring more brawn than subtlety. Nevertheless, I hope that someday you will explain to me exactly what this 'coadunation' might be—and why we Tanu are so deprived not to have it! In our Peace Faction, we enjoy a fellowship that is both consoling and stimulating. Can your Unity be so much greater?"
"Perhaps you'll find out for yourselves," Elizabeth said faintly. An image formed in her mind that made the three exotic men gasp.
"A time-gate to the Milieu?" Dionket's question was incredulous.
"And we might be permitted to pass through?" cried Minanonn.
Elizabeth said, "If the device can be built—and operated without danger to the Milieu itself—then all persons of goodwill in the Many-Colored Land will have the option of passing through. You know how skeptical I have been about Brede's calling me the 'most important woman in the world.' Well ... lately I've wondered whether she might have seen me in the role of time-gate shepherdess. Certainly it would make more sense than my merely serving as dirigent to a continent full of barbarian hordes and exiled Milieu malcontents."
"You would go back?" Creyn asked. "Leading us?"
"If it seems right that I should." But the old uncertainty was plain beneath the ambiguity.
"How will you know?" Creyn asked.
She said, "It's premature to think too deeply about it now. Too many things could go wrong. The gate may never reopen—we may find ourselves in the Nightfall War at last!—if we can't help Aiken regain his mental strength."
Minanonn said, "We approach the caravan camp. Render us invisible to casual surveillance, Lord Healer."
"It is done," said Dionket.
They flew over an area of prairie between two streams. Scattered about were open groves of silverleaf poplar and ash. The all-terrain vehicles of the North Americans were parked in a tidy circle, surrounded by a more casual collection of Tanu pavilions and tethered chalikos.
"I see Bleyn's forces have arrived," Minanonn remarked. He asked Elizabeth, "Can you farsense the King's presence below?"
She exerted her metafaculty. "He's safely gone. Would you like a closeup view of the newcomers?"
When the three assented she showed them a group gathered beneath a large dining pavilion. Supper was being served. Two long tables were separated from the others by a distinct psychic veil. At the head of one sat a burly young man in his late twenties who scowled as he listened to a slighter, foxy-faced companion. "Hagen Remillard," Elizabeth noted. "Except for the dark blond hair and a somewhat shorter stature, he bears a rather strong physical resemblance to his father. The mental resemblance is not so strong." She showed them Cloud, who headed the second table, then panned the other twenty-seven adults and the five little children.
"All of them are so young," Creyn said. "Are their minds exceptional?"
Elizabeth said, "I know very little about them as yet, except for what Aiken has told me about the Remillards. As to their metafaculties—they're all fully operant, but only imperfectly trained by their parents and the other ex-Rebels. Considering their heritage, they probably represent a wide spectrum of talent and strength. I wouldn't be surprised if the majority were quite formidable. Let's not forget that they helped Felice to blast open Gibraltar."
"And drown thousands of people," Minanonn added tonelessly.
The exotics studied the innocent-appearing diners. A young black man at Cloud's table was regaling his companions with a funny story. Parents wiped the messy chins of childrenand admonished breaches of etiquette. A plumpish brunette was teased by her tablemates for taking two pieces of Calamosk torte.
Dionket said, "And the Unity of your Milieu is a goal so precious to them, that even such a terrible means seemed justified?"
"Their nurture," Elizabeth said, "can hardly have been ideal, from an ethical standpoint."
"If we are barbarians," Minanonn murmured, "what are they?"
"Children," Elizabeth replied. "Adult children."
"And your Milieu," Dionket said. "Would it welcome these youthful mass murderers?"
"It will accept any mind prepared to seek maturity—which is always a very painful process with ample opportunity for atonement. And the Milieu will know who strives sincerely and who does not. There is no deceiving the Unity ... not anymore."
The campsite was falling behind them. They flew now over foothills thickly clad with climax forest. To the west, the sky had become wholly dark except for the lightning. Thunder had swelled from a growl to a full tympanic rumble punctuated with heavier booming peals. Irregular gusts of wind rippled the treetops.
Minanonn pointed ahead and magnified the view for the others. "The cave lies there, on the side of that hill. The entrance is well concealed."
They descended into the wildly swaying jungle and landed on a slope where a rill flowed over mossy rocks and tangled lianas hung from huge sweetgum trees. The cleft in the rock was unobtrusive. As they came to it on foot, they saw that the web of a handsome black-and-yellow spider stretched across the cave entrance like some gossamer gate. The Heretic lifted the creature with his PK and sent it scurrying into the undergrowth. "The royal sentinel," he suggested with a wintry smile. "And you will note that we have arrived before the rain."
They stepped into what seemed to be a blind-ended chamber, clogged with rubble and dried leaves. But Minannon led them confidently into it, and at the rear they turned sharply into darkness. Their guide raised two fingers and kindled a steady yellow flame, lighting the way into a tortuous passage so low and narrow that the Tanu men had to move at an awkward crouch. As they descended, the tunnel widened and its walls glistened with seepage. The air washed back and forth in sinister rhythm and carried a metallic-oniony odor.
Finally they reached a cul-de-sac where the dark rock was richly veined with red and orange minerals. Set into the wall was a door of rotting wood. Faded Firvulag ideographs were barely visible on a tarnished plaque mounted low, where gnomish eyes might have conveniently read it.
Minanonn had to stoop. "Quicksilver Cave," he translated. "This is the place." He cocked his massive head alertly. "Listen!"
They strained their metafaculties, but it seemed that a psychic void lay behind the crumbling planks. The only audible sounds were water dripping and stones crunching underfoot.
Minannon put his hand to the latch and slowly extinguished his metapsychic torch. A flickering illumination shone through cracks in the door.
"Keep up your guard, Coercive Brother," Dionket cautioned.
The door swung wide without a sound. They looked down a shallow flight of steps into a pillared chamber hewn in living rock. At its center was a sunken area that seemed to be floored with a mirror at least five meters square. Light streamed obliquely out of an alcove on the right, throwing a shadow onto an otherwise featureless gray wall.
The shadow of a monster.
It swayed back and forth so that its dimensions were constantly changing and its true size was impossible to estimate. The shadow was enormous. The body was humanoid but grotesquely thick, with a bloated belly, protruding buttocks, and in
congruously slender legs. It had immense breasts with pointed nipples, which it seemed to be supporting with pipestem arms. From the broad shoulders sprang three elongate necks that intertwined like the bodies of pythons. The heads were less easily distinguished. One seemed to be birdlike, a second leonine, and the third reptilian, with multiple fangs and a forked tongue.
"Great Goddess!" Creyn whispered. "What can it be? It's not a Firvulag or a Howler throwing that shadow. We'd sense their aura. What . . .what's it doing? Tana—is it growing some monstrous tail?"
"No," said Dionket. "It's not a tail."
There was a sound, a soft animal cry from three disparate throats, forced out in a series of grunts timed to the writhing of the creature's body. The sound swelled in volume as the contortions became more and more frenzied. Something columnar thrust from the lower torso, stiff as a tree trunk and nearly three times the breadth of the legs. The creature staggered, overbalanced by the weight, and the thing grew to shoulder height and above, throbbing, while the spidery hands tried in vain to support it and the spine arched and the three heads twisted and howled a demonic trio. The knees collapsed and the shadow-body leaned backward over its heels, still pumping its hips. The breasts jutted toward the chamber ceiling, as did the overwhelming member, which seemed to have grown longer than all the rest of the body. The animal cries were deafening as the shadow organs attained their culmination, and then the picture was obliterated in a triple gush of blazing white light. A dwindling three-note moan echoed from pillar to pillar. The shadow had vanished. The chamber was dark except for a fitful golden glow emanating from the general direction of the original bright light.
"A chimaera," said Elizabeth softly. "Come." And she hurried down the steps.
Beware! cried Minanonn's mind, and he flung a mental shield ahead of her. But she turned back and shook her head. The giant coercer let his barrier fall. He and his fellows drew close to form a protective cordon about Elizabeth as she went quickly across the chamber, past the big sunken mirror, and into the alcove on the right. There was complete silence except for their footsteps. The aether was empty.
They entered the subsidiary chamber and found a meta-activated jewel-lantern, dim as a dying ember, standing on the floor. Lying on his face in front of it was Aiken Drum. His body was normal and so was his face, which was turned toward them. His eyes were open and he breathed through slightly open lips.
He had been wearing his golden storm-suit. The strong leather was split in every seam and lay in rags on his pallid skin.
Elizabeth knelt beside him, lifted the scraps of his crested hood away, and touched his cheek. The faintest of smiles appeared.
"You did come," he said. "Now it's going to be all right."
***
Aiken dreamed.
He stood on the mirror, which reached from horizon to horizon, and above him was a brilliant night sky splashed with the Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way as seen from his former home planet of Dalriada. Looking down, he saw reflected stars, his own naked body and wondering face, and peering over his shoulders—
With a startled exclamation he looked up and behind him. Nothing. Nobody. But when he looked down again the two of them were back, austere and faintly disapproving in their expressions.
A man and a woman he had never seen before. He dark-haired, with snapping black eyes, a prominent nose, and a mouth compressed to a tight line. She with dark red frizzy hair, a high brow, and tiny regular features too stern to be beautiful.
"Where have you been?" he scolded them. They exchanged glances, looked back at him with dubious, fractional smiles, then vanished. Bitter reproach welled up in him. He heard some small creature squalling, and the sing-song mockery of children, and his own powerful adult voice shouting vicious obscenities.
Under his feet, the mirror undulated like mercury, became fluid. He sank into it and found himself standing in the middle of a rather ordinary landscape: short grass with a few scattered flowers, the edge of a forest a stone's throw away...
He stooped to pick up a stone to throw. There was lettering on the smooth white surface:
I WAS NOT, I CAME TO BE.
I WAS, I AM NOT: THAT IS ALL.
AND WHO SHALL SAY MORE WILL LIE.
I SHALL NOT BE.
There was a whole line of the stones, half hidden in the grass. He picked up another, but there were no words on it. He hesitated, put both stones back into place, and studiedthe lineup uneasily. It seemed to mark a boundary, one that it might be extremely dangerous to cross. Staring at the stones and his own feet, he discovered that he was shod in his good old golden boots with the stash compartments, and wearing the suit of many pockets, each one containing some useful item for a prudent wayfarer.
"Why the hell not?" he asked himself saucily, and stepped over the boundary, confidentonce again.
He was swimming for his life.
Salt water filled his mouth and nose and strangled him. He struggled upward toward a green light that steadily became more golden, and burst onto the surface, coughing and choking, so weak that he knew he would sink again in only a moment.
But something was bobbing nearby, drawing closer. He saw it was a cauldron, a vessel of salvation, and he kicked feebly and beat the water with his hands, and in that way swam a few strokes and reached for one of the handgrips mounted below the kettle rim.
A dragon reared up from inside and struck at him. Its fangs narrowly missed his questing hand. A drop of flying venom struck him in the left eye and he screamed with the burning pain of it and sank back. Immediately the hurt was soothed, and he let himself relax and drift in the warm darkening waters ... the waters that meant death.
No! he cried. Fury electrified him. Pain returned. Again he broke through into the air and found himself floating beside the golden Kral. But this time when Mercy darted at him, open-mouthed, he seized her and squeezed the dragon's neck and smashed the fangs against the rim again and again until the reptile was broken and bloody. Then he climbed into the bowl, safe.
Mayvar the Hag leaned over him and kissed the burnt blind eye. It was healed. Then she took him into her lap to nurse him, and the baby nestled down, content at last, and drank and slept.
He was on a plain of sparkling salt, wearing his gold-lustre armor.
The antagonist was nowhere to be seen. The coward! Where was he hiding? Why didn't he come out and fight?
Gripping his photonic Spear, he searched the glaring flatland through slitted eyes. A shadow raced toward him and he looked up, into the sun.
The golden eagle stooped, talons ready, and plummeted straight for his face. His visor was full open and he shrieked as the claws raked his right eye and the bird shrilled in triumph. He fell heavily onto his back. Blood was welling uncontrollably and the sky was red, as was the relentless sun. He knew he would lie there, half-blind and parched and stricken, until he died. The eagle wheeled high out of reach and he roasted in his armor under aloof and pitiless light, impotent.
But there was still the Spear.
With his last strength he lifted the glass lance, thumbed its highest power setting, and triggered the shot full in the face of the solar disk. Light drowned light. The patriarchal bird tumbled from a sky gone suddenly indigo. When it struck the salt it was a man in dulled glass armor, holding a broken Sword.
In mortal agony, Aiken inched toward the unmoving form of the Battlemaster, feeling his own life ebbing through his torn eyesocket. He stretched a trembling hand to the cracked helmet of his enemy and opened it.
The face inside was that of Stein Oleson.
With his mind spinning, Aiken slumped over the chest of the titanic knight. Beneath the glass cuirass with its sun-face blazon a heart was still beating. Astonished, revitalized, Aiken pulled himself up. He saw that the giant was smiling. His gauntleted hand lifted, proffering the broken Sword in a gesture of fealty. Aiken took it and felt life surge back into him. His sight cleared. He leaned over the dying man and kissed him on the mouth.
It
was deep night on the mirror.
From out of the quicksilver pool came the three-headed hermaphrodite, pulling itself onto the gleaming shore. The chimaera was no longer a threatening monstrosity. Even though it was still both male and female, the bodily distortions were gone and the limbs well-filled and proportionate. It stood poised in the starlight, graceful and tall. The central lion head was erect and proud; the dragon and the eagle faced it, slightly bowed. The radiance of the Sagittarius Arm gave it a reflection, not a shadow, that extended across the mirror of the quicksilver pool. Aiken saw that the reflection was himself.
"But what does it mean?" he exclaimed, rather testily.
"You are born," Elizabeth said.
He thought about that for a while. "On Dalriada, they called me a psychopath."
"You were. A suffering soul. Incomplete. Lacking eros. A freak and a cripple, almost inevitably damned. You were intelligent and charming and utterly self-centered. It was impossible for you to love anyone but yourself, even though you gave the illusion of caring when it suited you."
"They were going to lock me away—or kill me!"
"You were a menace, a liability to a structured society. You saved yourself by coming here. Your silver tore rechanneled the aberrant psychic energies. You were reassured and began to change when you saw you were able to exert genuine power."
"In the Milieu, that would have been impossible."
"There, your ambition didn't fit. But this Many-Colored Land is a simpler world. You were even able to love here. And you dared to do it unselfishly, twice. You reached a species of mental integration. But that wasn't enough. Not for you! You were drawn toward Mercy, and driven to challenge Nodonn. You wanted to be more than a powerful, successful person: You wanted to be King. And so, instinctively, you were drawn to two extraordinary minds—and you subsumed their attributes in an attempt to fulfill your ambition. Before the subsumption, you knew you were inadequate."