Getting a grip on his palsied nerves, he ventured to call his wife's name on the intimate mode. As he feared, there was no answer. The house walls were thick, proof against all but the most extraordinary telepathic penetration. He considered calling to the children, but his two sons and three daughters were all under ten years of age, totally unskilled at mental screening. They would surely betray his presence to the Foe.
He lay there for some time, his senses whirling, clutching the slug sack in anguished desperation. Then he made an effort to pull himself together. What was the Foe doing here? Tanu never ventured into remote Famorel. Once in a great while a pathetic outlaw human might wander up from Var-Mesk, but none of them lasted very long. Not with the likes of Tatsol Flamespitter and Ryfa the Insatiable lurking among the Maritime Alps! Because the region had always been secure, the Little People had no garrisons. The only trained fighters lived close to the viceregal capital, Famorel City, six days' journey to the southwest.
Purtsinigelee cogitated as he had never done before. More might be at stake here than the survival of his precious family! From what he could make out, the expeditionary forcenumbered at least fifty. Some of them carried gadgets that were all too likely the futuristic Lowlife weapons that everyone was buzzing about. It was necessary—obligatory!—that he pass along this information via the farshout relay.
Using the utmost caution, he crept backward the way he had come. It was only necessaryto go a few hundred meters in order to drop below the line of sight from the cottage. Once he was safe from view he began to run. He reached a fork in the trail and turned south, paralleling the ridge and the river, until he had placed the farsense-proof bulk of Pimple Knob between him and his invaded homestead.
He flopped down and caught his breath. His nearest neighbor was Tamlin the Mephitic, amusk-oil processor who lived a day's journey to the west. Because of the solitary nature of his trade he was the most dedicated telepathic gossip in the entire piedmont. Old Tam would see that the great hero Mimee himself learned of this outrage. Gathering all his mental resources, Purtsinigelee made the call. When he had finished he picked up the sackful of slugs and trudged resolutely back to his cottage without any effort at concealment.
He arrived to find the invaders gone. The only trace of them was a lingering cloud along the northern crest. His wife and children were quite safe, sitting numbly around the kitchen table.
"What happened?" he cried.
"They said they're going to climb Big Goddess," Hobbino told him. "They didn't hurt us. They wanted to buy provisions before heading into the high country." She began to laugh rather hysterically, then fumbled in the pocket of her skirt and took out a chamois pouch. "Look!" She undid the strings and tipped a glittering little pile of gemstones onto the homespun tablecloth. "More than we could earn in five years!"
"They emptied the cellar," said the oldest boy. "Took every last firkin and keg."
The youngest girl added solemnly, "But, Daddy—you should have heard the naughty things they said when they opened a keg and saw what they'd bought."
VEIKKO: Hagen.
HAGEN: Right here, keed. Hold on a sec while I freshen my drink.
VEIKKO: Lucky sod. The only liquor we have left here is designated medicinal.
HAGEN: Stick to herb tea or you'll end like your old man.
VEIKKO: Better like mine than like yours, asshole.
HAGEN: All right, all right, you win that one handsdown. Now cool it and report. It's been too long.
VEIKKO: [Edited replay.]
HAGEN: [Laughter.] I hope Irena's well fixed for escargot recipes.
VEIKKO: Listen, given a choice of climbing that mountain or staying here in base camp eating naked snails, I'll take the creepies à la mode every time. You should eyeball this Monte Rosa monster! It's not an isolated peak, it's a whole bloody range—like the wall of the world's edge, dripping glaciers. Who would've thought there'd be so much snow in the Pliocene? And it just shoots up out of the Po Valley flats: instant Alps—below sea level to nine thousand high inside of sixty kilometers.
HAGEN: Give me a firm position on your camp.
VEIKKO: 40-50-31 north, 7-48-13 east, 4322.3 meters up. We must be six kloms from the main summit as the crow flies. Too friggerty bad we're not crows! I'm gasping like a beached porpoise from altitude sickness. André fainted three times this afternoon, and some of the King's Men look like they'd like to. I think their tores keep 'em going. But the Tanu seem to feel fine, and Basil's Bastards are downright perky. Wimborne calls this place Camp Bettaforca. There's snow but we're cosy enough in the decamole huts except for the anoxia. The Bastard quacks say we'll probably get acclimatized in a few days.
HAGEN: Any fresh info on plans for the actual climb?
VEIKKO: The big conference is tomorrow. The climbing party doesn't actually have to reach the top of the sucker, you understand. Just kind of circle around to the other side where the aircraft are parked. The idea is to melt one out, fly it back here, then ferry up the rest of the folks and shuttle off to Goriah. It shouldn't be too tough getting the birds operational. After all, they haven't been on the mountain all that long—just since the end of July. The hard part is reaching the aircraft with the first assault team. Wimborne will use a kind of relay operation with support groups to get the principal climbing party over the top.
HAGEN: None of our peopleare involved in the climbing, are they?
VEIKKO: Well, Buckmaster and Collins volunteered. You know them.
HAGEN: Goddam dipshits! Tell 'em to forget it! Noneof our people risk their lives unless there's no alternative.
VEIKKO: Amen.
HAGEN: Who's slated for the principal assault team?
VEIKKO: Not sure. But they'll all be Bastards except for the boss Tanu, Bleyn, and one of his exotic underlings. Going along to make sure the Bastards don't nip off with the birds. You should see the boots this guy Nirupam whipped up for the climbing high-pocketers: big enough to boil a chicken in! God, I wish we hadsome chicken...
HAGEN: While this climbing is going on, the rest ofyou just sit tight and wait?
VEIKKO: Seems like.
HAGEN: [Doubt.] Listen, Veik. I've got a bad feeling about those Firvulag you contacted on the way up. The ones you bought the slimies from.
VEIKKO: Yeah. You think they might have betrayed us to spook HQ. But Elizabeth is supposed to be watching out for Little People pulling a sneak on us, and she hasn't reported any movement—
HAGEN: I wouldn't rely on her overmuch. These days, she's got more interesting things to do than play wetnurse to your lot. The lady has been entertaining Papa in her chalet!
VEIKKO: ?!
HAGEN: She admitted it to the King, cool as you please. She says she's anxious to reconcile Marc with all of us...
VEIKKO: Some hope! Any more sightings of your old man around Goriah?
HAGEN: Not since the King spotted him sampling the night life a week ago. But we're ready if he tries to attack the project. The castle dungeon is carved from bedrock, so he can't jump in, and all the access points are sigma-wrapped and guarded by armed troops. Cloudie has the mind-idents of every person authorized to enter the restricted area and checks them in and out on the castle computer. Papa won'tbe able to pull a simple masquerade. The really irreplaceable workers are being guarded as carefully as the component store, so he can't hit us that way.
VEIKKO: How's the materials search coming?
HAGEN: We managed to scare up a lot of good stuff. It looks likethe only real sticker is the one we anticipated all along—the dysprosium-niobium wire for the microassembly in the tau-generator mesh stacks. The Little King sent a scouting crew off to the Northland hunting ore, but that could take months. We needthose aircraft, Veik. And not just for mineral scrounging ... I tried to talk the King into flying out over the ocean and blasting Kyllikki out of the water with his wonderful psychocreative powers. But he turned the suggestion down flat. No reason. I knew there was some trick to the way he zapped us!
r /> VEIKKO: Is Kyllikki still coming strong?
HAGEN: Sailing fair in the westerlies, about halfway between Bermuda and the Azores. She'll be here in nineteen days at the earliest.
VEIKKO: [Fear.] With the X-zappers charged and ready. We sure better bring the birds home to Goriah before then.
HAGEN: How right you are. They're looking more essential every day. For instance—with Papa on the loose, how could we ever hope to carry the Guderian device to the gate site without air transport?
VEIKKO: Tell the truth, I was surprised you didn't just build the dingus there at Castle Gateway.
HAGEN: I pushed for it but the King vetoed. He wants us under his thumb, of course. And Goriah is a superior manufacturing localefrom a security and logistics standpoint, aside from being too close to the sea. The realproblem with Castle Gateway is that it's been pretty well abandoned since the Flood. Lastwinter a Firvulag raiding party got in past the skeleton guard force and did a lot of damage. The place is being fixed up now, ostensibly as a kind of hostel for travelers bound for the tournament that they're having up north at the beginning of November. The King sent Cloud's Tanu boyfriend off last week to oversee the Castle Gateway rehabilitation.
VEIKKO: Hard luck for her.
HAGEN: Um. She says she and Kuhal are finished. But I notice they still keep fairly regular head-skeds. No doubt having serious discussions about the meaning of life and suchlike dreckola.
VEIKKO: How's Diane?
HAGEN: Giving me a hard time, if you must know. Suddenly she has qualms about the kind of reception we might get in the Milieu. Because of Gibraltar. Because of ... who we are. She's half convinced herself it would be better to stay here.
VEIKKO: God! After all we've been through?
HAGEN: And a way to go yet...
VEIKKO: She might be worrying about her father.
HAGEN: Alex can take care of himself. Now that Papa's started d-jumping, he needs Manion more than ever. Still—have you tried to farspeak Walter in Kyllikki recently?
VEIKKO: It wouldn't have been much use, with us camping in valleys every night to keep out of easy farsense range of the Firvulag. Would I try for Walter when I couldn't even raise you?
HAGEN: Well, do it. Now that you're parked halfway up the highest mountain on Earth, you might have a chance of making contact.
VEIKKO: All right. If my brain cells haven't blunk out from oxygen starvation. Anything specific you want to know?
HAGEN: Morale conditions aboard ship. Whether the magnates still favor snuffing us. Whether Papa still leans toward the steel-fist-in-velvet-glove approach. Hints on how he plans to use the X-lasers. On his d-jumping itinerary and maneuvering with the King and Elizabeth.... Would Walter tell you the truth about any of that?
VEIKKO: Jeez, Hagen, I don't know. He wants us to get away just as much as Alex does. But—
HAGEN: Uh-huh. I'd be more inclined to trust him ifhe wasn't driving that schooner so efficiently.
VEIKKO: I'll try to farspeak him tonight. In the wee hours of the morning, that is. He usually took the midwatch in the old days. But don't get your hopes up. I'm not the farspeaker Vaughn Jarrow was.
HAGEN: You're not the fucking idiot Vaughn was, either. Do your best.
VEIKKO: One other thing.
HAGEN: ?
VEIKKO: Now that we're camped in an exposed position, we're liable to be spotted by more than Firvulag ... Hagen, what if Marc shows up here? I know he can't carry any weapons. But he wouldn't need to. If those mountain climbers are mushing along in a tricky place, just one little push—
HAGEN: God, yes. At that conference tomorrow, warn Basil and the others of the possibility.
VEIKKO: And?
HAGEN: Don't take any chances. If Papa comes onto that mountain, kill him on sight.
***
Irena O'Malley carried a fresh load of steaming plates out of the cook-hut, plopped them onto the buffet table, checked the coffee urn, then decided to take a short break from her chores to see how Veikko was getting along. She climbed the slope above the camp to where he was sitting, alone on a flat rock in the sunshine, among scattered patches of old snow. He was still immured in misery, his slight body hunched in an untidy lotus posture while he seemed to contemplate the precipitous foreslope, which reared above them like a petrified tsunami wave crested with hanging glaciers. To the east was the huge Gresson Icefall; and beyond it, the cloud-plumed summit of Monte Rosa.
"Headache still bad, sweetheart?" Irena inquired. Veikko responded with a wan smile. She gestured at his nearly untouched breakfast. "Didn't you care for the squiche?"
"It tasted great, Rena. Really. I'm just not hungry. Altitude, maybe." She knelt beside him among tufted alpine plants, a tall and robust young woman with glossy black hair done up in no-nonsense pigtails. Laying a solicitous hand on his shoulder, she tried to slide her redaction into his mind, only to come up against the same barrier of mysterious grief that had frustrated her earlier attempt at comfort. "If you'd only let me in, I could help! What is it with you this morning? And don't you try to fob me off with rubbish about altitude sickness."
He bit his lip and refused to meet her eyes. As she put her arms around him, he shed the last vestiges of self-control, struggling like a trapped wild creature. "Tell me," she insisted.
He had shut his eyes, and now tears forced their way beneath trem bling lids. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. But you'll have to know sooner or later. They all will!"
"Veikko, tell me."
"Last night I finally managed to farspeak Walter on Kyllikki. He told me—something terrible's happened. Helayne Strangford went over the edge. Turned violent. Ten days ago, she—- she—Marc was away d-jumping and none of the others on board suspected what she was up to. You know what a clever screener she is. And—she killed people."
Irena's fingers dug into Veikko's shoulders. "Who?"
"Barry Dalembert's father. And the two Keoghs—not that Nial will give a damn, that coldhearted swine!"
"Shh, baby ... who else?"
Veikko buried his head in her breast as his mind tolled the list of casualties: Frieda Singer-Dow, mother of Chee-Wu Chan; Claire Shaunavon, mother of Matiwilda; Audrey Truax, mother of Margaret and Rebecca Kramer; Isobel Layton and Alonzo Jarrow, parents of Vaughn Jarrow; John Horvath, father of Imre; Abdulkadir Al-Mah-moud and Olivia Wylie, parents of Jasmin Wylie; Eva Smuts, co-mother of Kane Fox-Laroche; Ronald Inman; Everett Garrison; Gary Evans; and...
He was weeping now. "I'm sorry, Rena. Arky, too. He was one of the injured ones. Steinbrenner did his best, but he's not as skilled in surgery as the Keoghs were, and there's no regen tank set up on Kyllikki. Arky died three days ago."
His mind opened at last and she melded, pouring psychic balm on his supersensitive emotional structure, rocking him to and fro while the equinoctial sun warmed the southern flank of the mountain.
She said, "It's strange. I dreamed about Daddy—then. It was a long dream, full of details. Probably a recapitulation of stories he used to tell me when I was small, and the books and the Tri-D cassettes we shared. In the dream, we traveled all over the Milieu. We visited the human colonies of Volhynia and Hibernia first to see how our ethnic kin were taming the wilderness, and then we rested on the cosmop world of Riviera, the vacation place. From there we toured exotic planets. We met funny little Poltroyans and repulsive entities that dripped green, and tall hermaphrodites with enormous yellow eyes—all coadúnate metapsychics, in spite of their odd appearance. We saw the Krondaku, who aren't quite as scary in person as they look in a holo; and had a kind of'séance with the Lylmiks, and learned that their race is so ancient that it might date from the previous universe. Finally we came home to Old Earth, to New Hampshire in America, where the O'Malleys and the Petroviches worked in the paper mills and had little farms early in the twentieth century. We saw Mount Washington, where the Intervention started, and the old Remillard house in Hanover. Arky and I saw it all together: our grandparents' place, and the schools and churches
and stores and restaurants and other landmarks of the real world ... He was a nice old villain, Veikko. He liked you, too, even though he tried hard not to show it. He kept asking when we were going to have a child."
"Not here."
"I tried to explain. Why we couldn't believe in Marc or his star-search any longer. But he refused to understand. Now he's dead, and all those others."
Veikko wiped his face on his sleeve, found a comb and ran it through stringy fair hair. His face was thoughtful. "Not too many left now for Marc to manipulate, are there? Let's see. Six magnates, not counting Manion. Those are the minds we really have to worry about. Only Kramer and Warshaw have any children left alive, and the old lady's hard-assed as they come where loyalty to Marc's concerned. I'm not so certain about Kramer. He might balk if it really came down to zorching Marge and Becky along with the rest of us. Secondary grandmaster minds ... eighteen. Quinn Fitzpatrick and Allison Sherwoode are weak sisters, but the others are concert-fit. And that big stud Boom-Boom Laroche is worth a mind and a half in anybody's roster."
"Surely Walter wouldn't—"
All persons please assemble immediately under the large canopy.
"The conference." Veikko climbed to his feet. As they made their way back to the smallvillage of huts and parked vehicles, he said, "Don't delude yourself about my father, Rena. Walter's like a lot of other ex-Rebels. When he's outside of Marc's auraand thinks for himself he can understand our position and sympathize with us. But put him back within coercive range of the Angel of the Abyss and he's caught in the old spell—just as all of us were until Alexis Manion showed us how to escape."