Pliocene Exile - The Adversary Part 52

The new-risen sun glanced off the small golden torc clasped about Marc Remillard's wrist. The molecules of his body were attenuating into the upsilon-field and he had become as transparent as water. He seemed about to speak but transmitted only a wisp of perplexity, then disbelief.

Creyn said, "I do not lie. Perhaps we will talk next time."

The shadow shrugged and extinguished itself.

When his experience warned him that Elizabeth was on the brink of some explosive reaction, Brother Anatoly took her away from the celebration to the chalet's kitchen, all dim and warm from the night baking and quite deserted.

"The child's healing is a great excuse for a party," the friar said, "but you need peace and quiet now."

He made her sit down at the big trestle table while he prepared a quick breakfast-scrambled eggs and duck's livers and new bread with strawberry jam. As she ate, he encouraged her to talk about the mental feat that she and Marc had accomplished, even though her detailed explanation was all but incomprehensible to him. Nevertheless, Anatoly was able to infer that Brendan's cure was both gratifying and unprecedented. He also strongly suspected that Elizabeth's own life had somehow been at risk during the procedure, even though she refused to confirm this.

"That aspect doesn't matter, Brother," Elizabeth said. "What matters is that it's done-and done right. G.o.d! I can't tell you how marvellous it feels to do the kind of work I was trained for, preceptive redaction, instead of mucking around incompetently the way I seem to have been doing ever since I came to the Pliocene."

The friar was at the stove, making coffee. "I wouldn't call Aiken Drum's personality integration an amateur effort."

"He accomplished most of his healing himself. All I did was guide. But this child was another thing altogether. How can I explain? It was teaching rather than operating! The kind of work I did professionally back in the Milieu. The thing I'm good at.

Even Marc saw-" She trailed off, frowning at her plate.

"What did he see?" Anatoly asked.

She poked at her eggs, then put down her fork and began to slather jam on a slice of bread. "Marc was good at preception, too," she said, in a puzzled tone. "Whoever would have thought it? A man like that. A world wrecker."

"Is that how you see him?" Anatoly found two big gla.s.s mugs and filled them with the steaming brew. He pulled a silver flask from under his scapular and laced Elizabeth's coffee with the contents. "Martell Reserve du Fondateur. For heaven's sake don't tell Mary-Dedra I've been treating it so cavalierly." He thrust the cup at her. "Drink!"

Elizabeth laughed helplessly. "You're almost as impossible as Marc." The fumes of the cognac brought tears to her eyes as she drank. "How else would I look upon him, except as a fanatic who would have destroyed the Unity? And all those people who died because of his obsession-"

Anatoly said, "You must remember that I came to the Pliocene before his Rebellion. I never knew him personally, of course, but he was a public figure for many years, a magnetic leader whose ideals were by no means self-evidently evil. He was a great man, widely admired. The debacle came only when he felt constrained to use force. And a great many good people sided with his Rebellion-not merely the human chauvinists."

Elizabeth emptied her cup and sat back limply, eyes closed.

"I must admit, he was different ... from what I expected.

After we had worked together, I found it hard to reconcile my impressions of him with my pre-conceived notions."

The priest laughed. "How old were you at the time of the Rebellion?"

"Seventeen."

"No wonder you thought of him as Satan incarnate."

Elizabeth's eyes opened. Her tone was bitter as she said, "He's still proud as the devil-and determined to have his own way." She told how Marc had taken over the final stages of the redaction, forcing her into the subordinate mode of the mental linkage. "He had me utterly within his power. He could have killed me, could have kept me subservient. But he didn't. That's even stranger than his original desire to a.s.sist me with the baby's healing! Brother-what does he want?"

"G.o.d knows," said Anatoly. He emptied the last of the cognac into Elizabeth's mug. "Drink."

She did, savouring the redolence that rose from the still warm gla.s.s. "Marc has searched the stars for twenty-seven years, trying to find a single planet with minds at the coadunate level.

But when I asked what he intended to do if he found such a world ... he only laughed."

The friar shook his head. "I'm only a poor old Siberian priest without a metafunction in my skull. How should I know what motivates the likes of Marc Remillard ... or you?"

Elizabeth eyed him for a moment in silence. He was smiling modestly into his half-empty coffee mug. "It's a shame," she said at last, "that you never met an old friend of mine named Claude Majewski. The pair of you would have got on famously.

He was another sly old codger with a wide streak of low cunning."

"Funny, Sister Roccaro mentioned that, too." He gave the brandy flask a futile shake, then capped it and put it back in the pocket of his habit. "I certainly hope there's more of that Martell hidden away in Black Crag cellars. Beats Lourdes water all hollow. You want to go to confession?"

She started. "No!"

He lifted his hands, palms up, the little smile still in place.

"Easy does it. Just thought I'd ask." He headed for the kitchen door. "Any time, though."

"Why don't you ask him?" she shot out.

"Oh, I did. Three or four days ago, after I'd stolen his coverall, thinking it would prevent him from leaving the chalet via his infernal machine."

"You what"

Anatoly paused with his hand on the latch. "A futile gesture, as it turned out. He doesn't need the coverall to d-jump. It's only a monitoring convenience. So I gave it back to him."

"And your offer of spiritual a.s.sistance?"

The friar chuckled, went out the door, and shut it behind him.

CHAPTER FIVE.

"I beseech you to reconsider," Old Man Kawai said.

He stood on the stoop of Madame Guderian's cottage, holding a tawny little cat in his arms. Three kittens tumbled groggily about his feet. Occasionally one would essay a tentative growl at the two riders on chalikos who loomed in the grey mist of the dooryard.

"You are the one who should remember, Tadanori-san," said Chief Burke. "Any day now, the Firvulag are likely to attack Hidden Springs-no matter what Fitharn Pegleg says. He's friendly, but he's only a single individual. And Fort Rusty was the straw that broke the hippy's back. We simply can't trust the Little People any longer. Sharn and Ayfa have lied too many times."

"It was the Iron Villages that the Firvulag King and Queen wanted to destroy," the elderly j.a.panese said. "Because they const.i.tuted a threat. One that is now removed."

"Eighty-three died at Rusty," Denny Johnson said. "Couple hundred more slaughtered in dribs and drabs over the months we've been slowly forced out of the other iron settlements on the Moselle-and at least that many Wounded or missing. This neck of the woods is just too close to the hostiles, Old Man.

Ol' Sharn's been saying 'Hop frog' to us for a long time now.

We just finally clevered up and decided to jump! And you will too, 'less you're ready to die. n.o.body's asking you to go on the Roniah raid. You can join the caravan heading for Nionel.

Lowlives are welcome there, bless the Howler's ugly hearts."

"I cannot go," Kawai said, stroking the cat. "I understand why the rest of you wish to leave this place, but I must stay."

Burke leaned down from the saddle, proffering a Husqvarna stun-gun. "At least take this for self-defence."