An hour later they carefully topped the last hill and came within view of the Tunnel … to find four trolls standing guard at the entrance.
“Damn, damn, damn,” Danae snarled, pressing her chin harder into the rocky ground of the hill as they lay there side by side. “Damn him. I thought he seemed to know too much about us, Ravagin—the way he called us outlanders and all. And now he’s blocked the Tunnel—”
“I’m afraid it’s worse than that,” Ravagin interrupted her tightly. “Those trolls down there aren’t Simrahi’s.”
“They’re not—?” She caught her breath and took another look … and felt her hands curl into fists in front of her. The trolls’ color scheme was green/white/violet, not Numant Protectorate’s red/silver/black. Which meant—
Which meant the spirits had found the Tunnel … and after all they’d already been through, there was going to be yet one more battle to fight.
A battle she suddenly knew she couldn’t face.
“God,” she whispered, closing her eyes against it all. “I can’t handle any more, Ravagin—I just can’t.”
Ravagin reached over to squeeze her hand. “I don’t want to, either. But it looks like we won’t have to.”
“What?” she asked dully.
“Take a look.”
Frowning, she opened her eyes and peered off in the direction he was pointing. In the distance, riding through a gap in the hills and clearly making for the Tunnel, were a half dozen men in the red/silver/black of Castle Numanteal. Accompanied by a half-dozen trolls. “I don’t understand,” she muttered. “What are they doing here?”
“Searching for trouble near the castle, of course,” Ravagin said. Danae glanced at him, taken aback by the grim smile on his lips. “The other part, of my reason for dropping veiled threats on Simrahi. Don’t you see?—he’s got his soldiers out sweeping the territory for possible trouble.”
“And just happening to clear out our path for us in the process.” Danae looked back at the interloping trolls and shook her head, almost afraid to believe it. “I just hope this is going to be as one-sided as it looks.”
It was even more so. Again, the trolls’ complex and heavily layered battle/control/decision circuitry proved more than the spirits within them could handle efficiently under combat conditions. Within minutes of the Numant soldiers’ first challenge, all four interlopers were laid out on the ground, frozen into immobility. A few minutes after that four sky-planes arrived and they were loaded aboard, presumably to be taken back to the castle. The sky-planes rose and vanished behind the hills to the east, the patrol continued on its way—
And Ravagin cautiously rose to his feet. “Let’s go,” he said, head turning back and forth as he made one final scan of the area. “Straight to the Tunnel, but remember not to go in right away. It’s possible there might be someone skulking further in where the patrol couldn’t see them, and we’ll want to check things out carefully.”
“If anyone’s in there,” Danae said grimly, “we’ll kill him. Pure and simple.”
There was; and they didn’t.
He loomed out of the darkness just where the Tunnel began its curve toward the telefold, and for a moment they all stared at each other. “I was starting to think,” the other said at last, “that I was going to have to tackle that reception committee out there all by myself.”
Danae took a deep breath. “And you would have, wouldn’t you. You blithering idiot.”
Hart merely smiled. “Part of my job,” he said. “Welcome home, Ms. mal ce Taeger.”
Chapter 42
“AH; RAVAGIN,” CORAH LEA said, looking up as he came in. “Sit down, please.”
He took the proffered chair, noting with a sinking feeling that her face was a study in inscrutability. A bad sign.
“So.” She arranged her forearms across her desk and tried without much success to smile. “Well. I have to say, first of all, that your report is the damnedest bit of high adventure I’ve ever seen come out of the Hidden Worlds. I hear the thing’s been called up over eighty times in the past week alone—twenty of those requests coming from the folks upstairs. You’ve really made a stir.”
“It’s nice to be noticed,” he said. “You call me in here to get an autograph before the rush starts?”
She made another attempt at a smile, with even worse results. “I wish it was something that easy. Actually, you’re here because—well, I’ve just gotten word down from the Directors’ Council about your request to speak to them.”
Ravagin felt his jaw tighten. “They turned me down?”
“Cold. I’m sorry, Ravagin. I can see how much this means to you.”
“What it means to me isn’t important—” He broke off, struggling to get his temper back under control. None of this was her fault, after all. “Did they read the petition? All of it?”
“Ravagin—” Lea spread her hands helplessly. “Look, I read your petition, too, and even knowing you as well as I do I can’t really blame them. You offer not a single shred of objective proof that anything’s seriously wrong on Karyx or Shamsheer, and yet you want them to summarily close down both Tunnels—”
“No proof? my God, Corah, just what the hell do they think that report of mine is? Spirits openly attacking us on Karyx, spirit-controlled machinery on Shamsheer—”
“Nordis’s report disputes your version of whatever it was happened on Karyx,” Lea cut him off. “And as to Shamsheer, there’s no direct, objective proof there were spirits involved in any of that.”
“What about my contact with the sky-plane? Using a Karyx spell, I might add?”
“That could have been a psychological illusion,” Lea shrugged. “Or maybe it was a real contact, but with the sky-plane itself—after all, the stuff could be semi-sentient.”
“Oh, come on Corah—”
“I’m sorry, Ravagin, but you have to remember that the kind of spirit intrusion you’re talking about is supposed to be impossible. You’re bucking a hundred years of theory and experiment here, and with that kind of inertia behind it you need more than just a packet of fuzzy speculation.”
“Inertia be damned,” Ravagin snapped. “The theories are wrong.”
“How, then? How did these spirits of yours manage to cross the telefold?”
And that was the crux of it all. He’d suspected—no, damn it, he’d known—that without that critical piece his report and recommendation would get exactly this kind of reaction. But to commit to the record the technique for calling spirits into Shamsheer or even Threshold itself … “I don’t know,” he lied with a sigh. “But it’s possible. It has to be. What happened to me—to all three of us—can’t be explained any other way.”
Lea licked her lips. “Ravagin … look, even if it was true, and you could prove that beyond a doubt … you can’t seriously believe the Directors would actually shut Triplet down, let alone seal off the Tunnels. They’d be putting themselves out of prestigious jobs, and at the same time opening themselves up to a hell of a lot of ridicule. That’s just not how the universe operates.”
“Not even with the word and experience of their best Courier to go on? Not to mention the name mal ce Taeger on the report along with it?”
Lea grimaced. “And you’d be surprised at how much more important the latter seemed to them than the former,” she said with a touch of bitterness. “But no, not even that was enough. Not even close. They’re going to send an investigation team in to Karyx to get Melentha’s side of the story, but I get the feeling it’s more a pro forma response than a real expectation of gleaning any information out of it. She’ll deny your accusations, of course, the investigators will funnel the report upstairs, and that’ll probably be the end of it.”
“Yeah.” Ravagin exhaled between clenched teeth. Hart had been right, he thought bitterly; but he’d felt the direct approach would be worth the effort. And now it had cost them two weeks … “If that’s all, then, I’ll be going.”
“Well, actually … no. There’
s more.” She took a deep breath. “You remember that request for a leave of absence you filed a few months ago?”
He’d forgotten all about it, actually. “I do now, yes.”
“Well … it’s been approved. Starting immediately.”
He stared down at her, an icy hand clutching at his heart. “Immediately?” he said slowly. “As in … when?”
Her eyes slipped away from his. “As in right now. As soon as you leave my office.”
Or in other words, his attempt to do this the direct way had actually been worse than useless. He’d been branded a troublemaker—possibly even an unstable one—and they were countering by kicking him out of contact with the entire Triplet system until they could figure out whether that vacation should be made permanent. “Corah, they can’t do this. I withdraw the application—”
“I’m sorry, Ravagin, but that won’t do any good.” She looked back at him with moisture in her eyes. “The decision’s been made, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
His hands tightened into fists, the pressure of his fingernails against the skin bringing back the memory of that lonely combat with the parasite spirit in the sky-plane. The spirit hadn’t stopped him—all the spirits in Karyx hadn’t stopped him—and he would not be stopped now.
Would not be stopped. “All right, Corah,” he said at last. “I’m calling in all the favors you owe me—all the favors that anyone in the entire Courier Corps owes me. You understand?”
“Ravagin—”
“I’m not here,” he interrupted her. “You haven’t seen me—haven’t been able to find me to give me this message—and therefore I cannot yet officially be barred from the Crosspoint Building or even the Hidden Worlds. You understand?”
“Ravagin, that’s crazy,” Lea snapped. “I can’t just forget to give you an order like that.”
“So you sent me the message to come here and I ignored it. Three days, Corah—just let me have three days. Please.”
She stared up at him … and slowly, the tears dried and her mouth settled into hard lines. “Two days,” she said at last. “I’ll give you two days. I can’t push it any farther.”
He hesitated, then nodded. “Two days,” he echoed. “Thanks, Corah.”
“You’ve spent sixteen years earning it.” She hesitated. “And I hope to God you’re as wrong about this spirit invasion as they think you are upstairs.”
There was nothing to say to that. So he said nothing, and left.
The Double Imperial restaurant in Gateway City was, from all appearances, one of the most expensive and exclusive eating places on Threshold—the kind, Ravagin thought only half humorously, where the salad vinegar was handled by the wine steward. The restaurant’s walls and ceiling were covered with art objects from all over the Twenty Worlds; the tableware was hand carved from petrified ballisand bone; the flatware was white gold with yellow gold accents. It was an unlikely place for someone of Ravagin’s station and income to find himself in, and he felt acutely uncomfortable as he waded through the deep carpet behind the maitre d’, sending surreptitious glances at the other immaculately groomed diners they passed. It was a place of elegance, a place for those with sufficient wealth to enjoy spending some of it while immersed in the most civilized atmosphere Threshold had to offer.
It was, in short, a thoroughly unlikely place for a council of war. Which was presumably why Danae and Hart had chosen it.
They were waiting for him when he reached the table. “Well?” Danae asked as the maitre d’ seated him and disappeared. “Any word?”
“Yes,” he said grimly, “and all of it bad. You were right, Hart—the directors don’t care for people who attempt to rock the boat. Not only was my petition turned down flat, but I’ve been kicked out of the Corps.”
“You’ve been what?” Danae frowned. “But they can’t do that … can they?”
Ravagin shrugged. “Officially, they’re simply approving my request for a leave of absence—the one I filed months ago, the one they refused to grant then so that they could have me take you into the Hidden Worlds.”
“A leave they can easily make more permanent once all the fuss you’ve raised has died down,” Hart murmured, sipping at his wine. “A simple-minded approach, but usually effective for all that.”
Danae reached across the table to squeeze Ravagin’s hand. “So what happens now?”
The wine steward appeared at Ravagin’s elbow before he could answer, filling his glass with a pale pink liquid. “I beat Corah’s fingers into giving me two more days,” he said when the steward had left. “But after that, I won’t even be allowed into the Crosspoint Building, let alone the Tunnel.”
“Two days,” Danae murmured, shaking her head. “That’s not much time.”
“No.” Ravagin focused on Hart. “Well, Hart, I guess this is where you get to show that same wonderful magic that got you out of the jail cell you were tossed into at the beginning of all this.”
“Whatever contacts and skills I have are at Ms. mal ce Taeger’s disposal,” Hart said. “What exactly do you have in mind?”
“Sealing up the Tunnel, of course,” Ravagin said grimly. “We’ll need a few thousand cubic meters of exocrete, or something even more permanent if you can find it. We’ll also need some kind of forged orders to get the stuff into the Dead Zone and on into—” He broke off at the expression on the other’s face. “Objection?”
Hart cleared his throat. “Magic I can do, Ravagin; miracles are another matter entirely. Even setting aside the ethics of trapping a whole group of Twenty Worlds’ citizens in there, you’re talking about rolling an entire convoy of fully loaded reaction trucks through the Crosspoint Building. I’m not even sure there are any doors large enough to handle something that big. And you think no one will stop to question us, make a few phone calls—?”
“Okay; point taken,” Ravagin growled. “Then plan B: we get a small tactical nuke, juice it up with cobalt or something equally dirty, and set it off inside the Tunnel near the telefold. The radiation ought to last—”
“Until they get teams in to scrape the residue off the walls,” Hart interrupted. “Or were you expecting the bomb to irradiate the Tunnel walls themselves? Because there’ve been experiments done, and the walls won’t accept radiation.”
Ravagin stared across the table, annoyance at Hart’s glacial calm beginning to edge toward anger. “Maybe you don’t realize just what we’re facing here,” he bit out, hearing his voice tremble slightly as he fought to control it. “If that demon ever gets out onto Threshold the entire universe is up for grabs. That’s not melodramatics; that’s hard, cold reality.”
“Ravagin—” Danae began.
“Let me finish,” he cut her off. “We’ve already had a solid demonstration of how thoroughly spirits can invade and control electronic devices—that by itself would make them the worst threat the Twenty Worlds has ever faced. Add in the fact that they’ll probably still be able to affect people’s minds like they do on Karyx—and remember that none of the major control spells work here—and you’ve got an invasion that would be well-nigh unstoppable.”
“Ravagin,” Danae said quietly before he could continue, “we all realize what’s at stake here. But getting mad at Hart just because he points out logical flaws isn’t going to help any.”
Ravagin clenched his teeth. “You’re right,” he admitted as the anger drained reluctantly away. “You’re right. Sorry, Hart.”
The other shrugged the apology away. “You’re on the right track, though. Closing off the Tunnel is certainly the simplest way to keep the demon off Threshold.”
“Except that it’s impossible to do,” Danae said.
“It’s just a matter of finding the right way—”
“No: not difficult,” she cut him off harshly. “Impossible. Mathematically impossible.”
Both men looked at her. “What do you mean?” Ravagin asked, frowning.
She took a deep breath. “I’ve spent the past couple of d
ays researching everything known or postulated about the spatial mathematics of Triplet and the Tunnels. If you run computer simulations, it turns out there has to be at least a selective passage between each of the dimensions. Tunnels, by any other name.”
“Why?” Ravagin asked.
She shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s like a whorl—you know, the way a vector field has to contain at least one point whose vector has zero length.”
He took a moment to digest that. “So what happens if the passage isn’t there? Do the other dimensions just disappear?”
She shook her head. “On some models the passage simply reestablished itself in the same place, disintegrating whatever blockage I’d put there. On others the blockage stayed but the Tunnel popped out somewhere else. Somewhere completely random.” She gazed across at him, her eyes aching. “I’m sorry. It’s just not going to work.”
Ravagin gazed back at her for a moment, then dropped his eyes to his wine glass, bitterness welling up in his throat. Everything he’d pushed for the past two weeks …
He took a deep breath. They had just two days left; he couldn’t afford to waste any of it in self-pity. “All right, then. One more direct approach scrapped. What else have we got?”
Danae squeezed his hand, and seemed to let out a relieved breath. “I’ve been thinking about that, between computer runs,” she said. “It seems to me that if we can’t block off the Hidden Worlds, the next best thing would be to put things back the way they’re supposed to be.”
“Translation: get the spirits back to Karyx?” Ravagin chewed at his lip. “That’s a tall order. We still don’t know how any of the spirithandling rules work in Shamsheer.”
“We know at least one of them does,” Hart reminded him. “You used it against the sky-plane parasite spirit.”
“Yeah—and I have no intention of ever doing it again,” Ravagin told him, a shiver running up his back. “Especially since it’s not the parasite spirits that are our problem. They have no power whatsoever without their attendant demon; and I am not, repeat not, making that kind of contact with a full demon.”