Pliocene Exile - The Adversary Part 102

"I wouldn't dream of it. You taught me my lesson very effectively."

The King herded Elizabeth and the others to the exit. He said over his shoulder, "Nothing personal, Marc-but when I get back I'd better find you gone. We've about come to the end of the line in this friendly enemies routine. Fair warning."

Marc nodded. "En garde, then, Little King." And to Elizabeth: "Au revoir."

The true disparity between the Tanu and Firvulag numbers became evident as preparations for the mental tug-of-war neared completion. Emptied of all nonmetafunctional humans, the Tanu grandstand had ominous expanses of empty seats, but the accommodation of the Firvulag was jammed to overflowing.

Greggy and Rowane had been banished from the royal enclosure of the Little People along with the rest of the nonpartic.i.p.ant Howlers. But rather than joining Sugoll and Katlinel on the sidelines, they sneaked down to the booth between the stands that housed the control room of the Staging and Properties staff.

"Rank do hath its privileges," the Genetics Master crowed to his awed protegee. "And down here, we'll see not only the dragons but also the monitoring panels showing which minds are faltering and ready to drop out of the metaconcert."

"Ooo!" said Rowane.

Out on the Field of Gold an astonis.h.i.+ng contrivance had been erected in place of the morning's fiery fountain. Its base was an artificial hill as wide as the paired grandstands and fifteen metres high, it was roughly conical in shape, with large cavelike apertures on the right and left flanks and a summit crater.

The sham mountain harboured monstrous twin serpents.

The one on the righthand Firvulag side was glistening black with fangs and eyes as red as carbuncles. Its opposite number had golden scales, and eyes and teeth of bright amethyst. The heads of the snakes protruded from their respective lairs with jaws agape. It seemed that somewhere in the depths of the mountain their bodies met, entwined, then reared upward from the central crater mouth to form a great knot high in the air.

From this sky-knot the tails of the serpents curved down in identical arcs, the black tail apparently being swallowed by the golden serpent and the golden tail by the black. The overall effect given by the huge stage prop was that of an enormous wheel, half golden and half black, mounted in an upright position and partially embedded in the base of imitation rock.

"I call it the double Ourobouros," the senior of the two human technicians in charge of the spectacle informed Greggy and Rowane. "But old Lars, over there at the grandstand grounding monitors, likes Siamese Mithgarthsormr better."

"Will you explain its functioning, Master Baghdanian?"

Rowane requested. "You must pardon my simplicity, but I am not quite able to grasp how such a device is to be used in a metapsychic tug-of-war."

"I'm all at sea, too!" Greggy giggled. "My golden torc's honorary, you know. But I must say, the gadget is madly impressive."

"Wait till you see the electrostatics in action," Lars offered with a grim smile. "I just wish the voltage was high enough to fry these exotic sonsab.i.t.c.hes insteada just making their brains twinge."

Baghdanian gave his colleague a resigned look. "Just ignore Lars' xenophobia, folks, and observe instead the displays in front of him that monitor the Tanu and Firvulag grandstands.

Red lights for Little People, amber for the Tanu and human torcers. Intensity of light roughly proportional to cerebral wattage."

"The twinkling yellow jobbie on the Tanu display is our s.h.i.+ning Hope, Aiken-Lugonn himself," Lars said.

The senior man listened to some message coming through his comset headpiece. He thumbed a few switchpads, checked out something or other, and said, "We'd better make this quick, folks. We're almost ready to start. Okay ... all the people in both grandstands are incorporated into the game's electrical circuitry just as long as they keep their seats. They stand up, that means they resign the game. Got that?"

"Mm," said Greggy, suppressing a snicker. "Fundamental antagonism!"

"You know about mindpower, metafunction having electromagnetic components?" the technician asked rather dubiously.

Greggy sighed. "In my less irrational moments I am a doctor of medicine, of genetic science, of philosophy, and of humane letters (honorary)."

"Right," said Baghdanian. "Now just take a careful look at the snake setup out there. What we've really got is a gigantic ring, standing up like a skinny ferris wheel. The tails of the snakes going into the mouths make a complete circle through the inside of the mountain and also through the knot up top.

The central twisty-twiney part just disguises the frame that supports this big scaly ring made of electroconductive material."

"The whole ring's not conductive," Lars interrupted.

Baghdanian gave him another look. "As I was about to say, the conductivity of the ring is broken by insulating material-gla.s.s-in two places: up inside the knot where you can't see it, and just inside the jaws of the two snakeheads. The entire arc section through the central mountain is nonconductive at the moment.

But!

If the ring rotates-say, to our right-it'll look like the black Firvulag serpent has let the golden tail of the Tanu serpent slip out of its mouth. At the same time, of course, the Firvulag serpent's bod would go deeper and deeper into the gold snake's mouth."

"But really into the mountain." Greggy nodded sagely.

The technician's eyes had an odd glint. "Inside the hill, we have multiple arrays of Van de Graafs-electrostatic generators similar to the ones in the old Frankenstein movies. If your snake's tail gets gulped just a little, you'll feel a small mental shock. But the farther that tail goes down the enemy gullet, the more intense the mind-zap."

"Merciful heavens!" Greggy exclaimed.

Baghdanian said, "Notice the large jewelled cuffs that clasp the tail of each snake about three metres away from the enemy teeth. We call those bracelets. Those are the places where the minds have the grip-and pull. The more powerfully your team hauls away on the tail bracelet of your snake, the deeper the tail of the other team will be swallowed."

"And the more agonizing it is for the opponent to hold on,"

Lars added.

Greggy shuddered. "What a perfectly beastly piece of ingenuity!"

Baghdanian gave a modest shrug. "Twenty-two years in the special-effects department of Industrial Light and Magic."

"How is the winner known?" Rowane asked.

"The guys who get their bracelet devoured," Lars said, "not only lose, but end up with skulls full of half-fried neurons."

Baghdanian wore an abstracted look as he listened to his comset, watched a digital clock, and monitored the occasionally flickering patterns on the Tanu and Firvulag grandstand monitors. "Two minutes."

"Start praying," Lars told Greggy and Rowane. "If the Firvulag lose big, maybe they'll call off the Nightfall War. Then us humans will be free to go home through the time-gate and forget we ever saw this crazy place!"

"Not all humans want to leave," Rowane protested uneasily.

"Some hate the future world and have loving ties to this one."

"Don't you believe it," Lars scoffed. "Show any sane human being a time-gate leading back to the Milieu, he'd take a running jump. Even King Golden Britches himself! Stands to reason." He pointed rudely at Greggy. "Wouldn't you go?"

"Well-er-" the geneticist mumbled.

"My Tonee wouldn't go!" Rowane cried. "He wouldn't!"

The chief technician said, "ESGs on full. FX crew stand by with pyrotechnic intro. Music track go! Tanu metaconcert established. Firvulag ditto. On your mark ... get a grip ... heave ho!"

Out on the Field of Gold, the colossal twin serpents seemed to coil amid a thicket of bramble-branched lightnings. The maws of the fabulous reptiles belched luminous clouds of green smoke that rose up into the low-hanging overcast that now made an eerie roof over the tournament ground. Another ten centimetres of black tail went down the golden weasand.

"Hold, Tanu, hold!" yelled the sidelines crowd, humans and Howlers together. The mutants no longer bothered to pretend that they were on the side of their Firvulag cousins.

Up in the enclosure of King Aiken-Lugonn, the combined aura of the triumphing Great Ones was a solar flare, the subordinate minds sleeving it in a golden swarm of blazing bees. This astral arm appeared to grip the bracelet of the Tanu serpent and haul firmly upwards.