Pliocene Exile - The Adversary Part 104

It struck the dome offeree capping Castle Gateway. The great sigma drained away into bedrock via a hundred metapsychic grounding channels. There was a profound roaring noise and the earth heaved. As the low-hanging clouds reflected the bluewhite corona of the conquering Adversary, Castle Gateway rocked, broken by the tremors that shook the plateau, and crumbled slowly into piles of rubble. At its heart was a lesser silver hemisphere, steadfast in the midst of destruction.

The incandescent brain laughed as it transposed its energies to the d-jumping function and teleported into the dusty ruins.

Then it struck again, hammering the stacked lesser sigmas and the internal metapsychic s.h.i.+eld generated by the King. The shelter attenuated like frost melting from a windowpane.

The brain perceived the two familiar minds, caught them as they hovered on the brink, forestalling their suicide, claiming them.

Now, it cried.

Now!

The armoured black form gave way to the body of a living man. Dismissing both his Firvulag minions and the artificial energies of the enhancer, he stood on the platform in front of the Guderian device, looking at his paralysed son and daughter.

One side of his mouth was lifted in a gentle smile. Then he turned to Elizabeth. She knelt on cracked flagstones next to the control console, surrounded on three sides by motionless workers. Aiken lay unconscious in front of her.

"As you see," Marc said, "I've won. You knew I would."

Elizabeth lifted the King's head and smoothed his dishevelled hair. "Another ten or fifteen seconds and they would have been gone. The machine is ready. If only Aiken had let me operate the controls." She was very calm. "I should plead with you, Marc."

"Open to me instead."

Her eyes widened. He only nodded. Aiken's heart beat again and the currents in his brain had the steady cycle of dreamless sleep. She kissed his brow and laid him softly on the stones.

Then she stood facing Marc. "Very well."

Her mental walls dissolved. There was no fear, no submission, only a pa.s.sage of free entry and a dropping of a fiery mask.

Marc said, "Ah." He stepped to the control console over Aiken's body, activated the tau-generator, and sent the four people inside the gazebo through the grey limbo, into Madame Guderian's rose garden in the hills above Lyon, in the France of the Galactic Milieu.

Dawn came to the Field of Gold, and the squad of Howler referees staggered as they held up the huge leather ball filled with sand. It was white with black markings, and in the fitful overcast of the lurid sunrise it looked like a misshapen skull all smeared with blood.

The Marshal of Sport intoned: "Grand Tourney contestants!

This event, called variously hurley or s.h.i.+nty, marks the culmination of this first year's games. As you know, the winner in this contest will also be proclaimed victorious in the Tourney as a whole, and be awarded the Singing Stone. The game will be fought in a single ten-hour match, beginning as the sun lifts above the horizon and concluding as it sets. The playing ground is the entire Field of Gold, sixteen square kilometres. The Firvulag own the north goalposts and the Tanu own the south.

Both physical and metapsychic prowess may be employed, but no weapons. The team with the greatest number of goals wins.

There are no other rules or restraints ... Now let the team captains salute their n.o.ble opponents."

A bedlam of cheering greeted Sharn and Ayfa, marching out to the face-off circle at the head of their phalanx of stalwarts.

Then the Tanu Great Ones sallied forth-leaderless.

Heymdol Buccinator proclaimed: "Inasmuch as King AikenLugonn is presently unable to take the field, the Tanu team will be captained by Bleyn the Champion."

Groans arose from the human and Howler spectators and delighted catcalls from the ebon host of Little People, who now rushed helter-skelter onto the sandy expanse in front of the grandstands like a swarm of glossy black beetles. Suddenly there was a flash of amber light and an earsplitting sonic boom that made the ground tremble. A flyer emblazoned with an open hand hovered above the Rainbow Bridge. From its open bellyhatch plummeted a sizzling little golden comet.

Bleyn said: "I gladly yield the captaincy of the Tanu team to King Aiken-Lugonn!" And the mind-shouts of the humans and mutants drowned out the Firvulag's furious hoots.

Landing, Aiken strutted to the face-off circle and raised the visor of his golden helmet. "Morning, Ayfa. Morning, Sharn.

Ready for our little bash?"

"You should be dead!" they cried.

The s.h.i.+ning One lifted his bejewelled pauldrons in a rueful gesture. "The Adversary had other games to play. Are you two ready to get on with this one?"

The ogrish mates grinned then, showing white pointed tusks.

Sharn remarked, "So Remillard's gone, eh? Well, he left us a nice souvenir that we'll take great pleasure in demonstrating to you."

"You might call it a winning game plan," Ayfa added. "And you're going to be quite impressed with the postgame festivities, too!"

Aiken held up one plated finger. "Let me make just one little announcement." And his mind-voice rolled and echoed over the Field of Gold, silencing the tumultuous audience and the impatient teams.

I speak to the humans, Aiken said, and to those other persons of goodwill who seek to live in a world of peace. The time-gate leading to the Galactic Milieu is now open.

Sensation! Sharn and Ayfa gaped at each other, thunderstruck.

All throughout this Fifth Day of the Grand Tourney my aircraft will shuttle back and forth between here and the time-gate site.

They will transport any who wish to go. You may take with you only what can be carried in one arm and nothing that belongs to Me. I myself intend to stay and rule this Many-Coloured Land as High King after seating Myself in triumph upon the Singing Stone at the end to today's play. I invite those who love this place to stay also.

"Lowlife!" Sharn raged. "Upstart jackanapes!" screeched Ayfa.

The t.i.tanic ball rose into the air, impelled by the psychokinesis of Sugoll, Katlinel, and the Howlers. When it reached an alt.i.tude of about forty metres, the Marshal of Sport commanded: "Play ball!"

Cras.h.!.+ The heavy spheroid fell to earth. The opposing teams surged forward, the audience shrieked, and the final contest of the Grand Tourney began.

Ten persons per trip, twenty trips per hour.

After the young North Americans had been translated, and those of the Guderian Project who wanted to return to the Milieu, the time-gate exodus settled down into a fairly routine operation, organized and supervised by Chief Burke, Basil, and those of the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who weren't doing pilot shuttle duty. The commandant of the Roniah garrison, a cheerful little Walloon PK-head named LeCocq, helped maintain order with a small force of loyal greys.

Tony Wayland was caught trying to sneak off to Nionel on a returning aircraft. Burke frogmarched him back to the gazebo and gave him into the charge of an armed guard, with orders that Tony was to stay with the skeleton staff of gazebo technicians who had agreed to stand by in case the apparatus broke down again.

"But the King promised I could go to my wife!" Tony protested.

Burke picked him up by the scruff and dangled him nose to nose. "I still remember the Vale of Hyenas, White Eyes, and for two bits I'd give you a roundtrip in that time-machine and use your ashes to polish my tomahawk! Now sit there with the others and wait, dammit!"

Tony waited.

The next morning, the aircraft coming from Nionel were only half-full, carrying only the most homesick of the Pliocene exiles, those who had yearned for years to return to Elder Earth. As long as King Aiken-Lugonn and the Tanu put up a good sc.r.a.p in the hurley-burley, there seemed no need to rush into making the big decision.

Then, some time early in the afternoon, Sharn and Ayfa finally sorted out the fine points of Marc Remillard's metaconcert program and began to use it efficiently. Not only did the Firvulag come up from behind in the scoring, but they began to inflict serious injury upon members of the Tanu team, singling out stalwarts such as Celadeyr of Afaliah, Lomnovel Brainburner, and Parthol Swiftfoot, who had been especially skilled ball carriers. The three were savagely red-dogged and had to be retired to Skin.

With the tide of fortune turning toward the Little People, the mood of the human spectators darkened. They recalled the rumours of impending war-no mere brushfire action such as had taken place at Burask and Bardelask, but a conflict that might involve the entire continent. Pondering their sombre options, the Lowlives watched rampaging waves of Tanu and Firvulag surge about the devastated turf of the Tourney field like a living maelstrom. Nightmare illusions were everywhere.

The aether throbbed with a h.e.l.lish din. Mind-bolts, nauseating psychic eructations, and quasi-material missiles were flung in all directions. Frenzied ogres sought to tear their outnumbered Tanu opponents to pieces. Herds of stampeding dwarves stomped fallen torced humans into the b.l.o.o.d.y dust. Tanu redactors and the scuttling little cadres of Firvulag nurses could scarcely haul away the injured without being mortally endangered themselves.