Pliocene Exile - The Adversary Part 92

The firing stopped.

The sigma-field fizzled and died as its battery was exhausted.

A tall human being came strolling into the open, carrying his weapon jauntily over his shoulder and waving in an encouraging fas.h.i.+on. Tony and Alice and Kalipin stepped off their wooden island and ran to meet the rescuer, emanating farspoken cries of relief and thanks.

"Think nothing of it," the man said. He raised a protective visor from his deepset eyes and perched it on top of curly grey hair. He wore a tight-fitting black coverall studded with metal receptacles. "It was nervy of the creatures to antic.i.p.ate me. I should have kept a closer eye on things up here."

"Mother o' pearl!" Alice said softly. "It's Remillard himself!"

She and Tony made simultaneous attempts to farscream.

When that failed, they tried vainly to run. Only little Kalipin confronted the challenger of the galaxy with resolution. "So. Do you save us from the Foe only to destroy our minds, human?"

Marc laughed. Then his tone became adamantine. "I have no time to waste. Your King will be making his regularly scheduled evening call shortly. Where is the dysprosium?"

Tony was helpless under coercion. "Five rods, all we managed to refine today, in Kalipin's pouch."

The Howler handed over the bottles without a word.

"And the concentrate?" Marc demanded. "And the ion extractor?"

"There's one can of DyCl3 back where we were hiding under the sigma. The rest in that undamaged building over in the trees.

The extractor's there, too."

Marc said to Alice and Kalipin, "Get the machine and the salts and bring them here." Deprived of volition, they rushed off. Marc asked Tony, "Are there any other high-tech extraction devices available to the Guderian Project workers?"

"Not as far as I know," the metallurgist said listlessly. "You scarper with that one, the project's had it. I couldn't care less."

Marc lifted a surprised eyebrow.

Tony licked his lips, looked about to be sure the others were well out of earshot, then said, "Listen! I'm no ally of the King or his bunch of North American fanatics. I was dragooned into working on the project. Check my mind and you'll see I'm telling the truth! All I want to do is get back to my wife in Nionel. I-I don't suppose you'd consider letting me live?"

Marc said, "It seems the better part of prudence to deprive Aiken of your unique talents. There are other ways of processing lanthanons."

Tony's eyes misted over. "B-but it'll take months to sift out the Dy by ordinary chemical techniques, and the King wouldn't need me for that. All you have to do is destroy the ion extractor and the acc.u.mulated concentrate, and the project is hopelessly stalled-"

"I would rather keep my options on the matter open." Marc smiled in satisfaction as he saw Alice and Kalipin emerge from the building back in the trees. The Howler was trundling a loaded wheelbarrow and the woman had her arms full of canisters. "However, you needn't worry about me slaughtering you out of hand. The dysprosium and its manufacturing equipment will go back to my s.h.i.+p with me, via d-jump. And so will you."

Tony's world reeled. An enormous dark-coloured ma.s.s reminiscent of a deep-sea diving rig was materializing behind the rebel leader. As if in a dream, Tony heard Kalipin and Alice being ordered to stack the materials close to the suit of armour.

Then a voice in his own brain said: Stand very still. It would be best if you held your breath and closed your eyes although our translation through the grey limbo will occupy only the merest fraction of a second.

Tony screamed: Don't! Don't take me! I don't want to die in hypers.p.a.ce! JesushelpmeOG.o.dRowane ...

Zang Tony felt the appalling pain attending penetration of the superficies, familiar from many a superluminal voyage between Milieu worlds. For the merest instant he felt frozen, suffocated, on the verge of having every body cell explode.

Zung.

He sprawled on hands and knees, opened his eyes, and saw Alice and Kalipin goggling in astonishment. A smoky Fennoscandian landscape. Scattered bones. Charred rubble. A towering suit of black armour with a Bosch blaster leaning against it.

Purloined equipment and containers and Tony and all-right back where they had started from!

Zang.

G.o.dG.o.dG.o.dnooooAAAAAGH! Ooh.

Zung.

Dusty stubble covered with soot and ash. A severed human pinkie (not his) with two flies crawling on it. Babble from the Howler and Alice's mind screeching for the King on the distance-spanning farspeech mode. Much nearer, a sepulchral metallic roar: Quel putain de gachis what are they playing at back there?

... Rubberband effect ... try it this time without external loadThe armoured form disappeared, leaving Tony and the cargo behind.

Trembling and sobbing, eyes screwed shut, he waited to be s.n.a.t.c.hed back into the grey limbo and the pain. But nothing happened. He lifted his head and saw sweet old Alice, who knelt beside him radiating a mishmash of horror and tentative relief. She said, "I think he's gone, baby. But if he pops back out of the hype, I'll cook him in his own can." She hefted the Bosch. "I bespoke the King. He's sending a flyer with help."

Tony gently lowered his face to the ground and began taking deep breaths.

Within the matrix of grey negation, the mind clung to the allimportant pseudolocus and concentrated on the far end of the catenary. It terminated properly. He had not miscalculated the curve nor the coefficient of penetration. He completed the jump, attained the superficies, and willed the generation of the upsilon-field that would form an aperture into the normal universe.

Nothing. It would not open.

There was no field.

Rubberband back! Attain the ant.i.terminus will the u-field the u-field the u-field!

Nothing. There was insufficient energy. The incandescent brain felt itself cooling; emergency life-support modules operating independently of the enhancer circuitry and its transdimensional power source kicked in, sustaining him. He would not freeze, drown, smother, or decompress for at least five days, until the armour's internal resources were drained.

Barebrained, he slid back along the catenary to the Kyllikki end. The path seemed to glow faintly in the pervasive grey. He poked and thrust at the stubborn interface but it would not yield.

He was trapped in limbo.

The full moon rising above the sea of dry gra.s.s was almost like another sun-swollen, slightly flattened at top and bottom, and an awful reddish colour in the thick haze.

Chief Burke used his paddle for a rudder as the canoe swept around a wide bend in the Seine, bearing north now instead of east. The trees here were spa.r.s.e and almost leafless from drought. There were no land animals except the ubiquitous crocodiles, and very few birds. He knew he would have to find a safe campsite soon; but something urged him to continue on for just a bit more, to come fully around the bend so he would have a clear view of the waterway the next morning ...

Then he saw it ahead, riding the b.l.o.o.d.y water: a huge argosy with a full spread of gleaming golden sails, moored fore and aft in midstream.

Cursing, he angled the canoe to the right bank, where a partially undermined tree leaned branches into the water and provided a thin screen. It had to be Kyllikki. He pulled out his monocular and studied her. She was less than 200 metres away, motionless in the evening calm. There was no hint of any mechanical or metapsychic barrier around her. The decks seemed deserted.

Burke slipped the little scope back into its case, touched his golden torc, and called: Aiken. I've found her.

... Thanks Chief I'm on my way.

Inside the barricaded stern hold of the schooner, Patricia Castellane's voice rose in a despairing scream.

"They've cut him off! He's trapped! Help me, Jeff-Cordelia-give me everything you've got. They haven't broken anything yet, only opened the CE main at the redundant terminal in the power room. I can bridge it! Just feed me-feed me to overload, dammit!-everything you've got. Marc, come through! Marc!"

The hold that had gone pitch-black with the power failure flared as three bodies appeared suddenly clothed in writhing discharges of psychic lightning. A triple mind-shout knifed the aether. Reactivated display panels and tell tales showed that the equipment was on line again. A black phantasm flickered and solidified on its customary wooden cradle.