Pliocene Exile - The Adversary Part 98

She stiffened in his arms and there was a fearful chilling.

"Why?"

The mind spoke, enclosing her, vast and familiar and strong: Trust me. Let me look. For your sake and for all of us. Please.

I can'tPlease. I must know the truth.

There's fireI know. Poor Elizabeth. You're so proud and afraid. If you'd only learn to trust.

Brother Anatoly wants me to trust G.o.dJust trust Me. Let me come. There ...

She was suspended in silence, all alone. The blackness around her was not mental. She knew that somehow. It was a remote part of the physical universe, intergalactic s.p.a.ce, void of stars, without even a wisp of glowing gas. There was only a single object for her mind to fasten on, one respite from everlasting Night.

A pinwheel of bluish-white sparkling haze, tiny and exquisite.

A whirlpool of suns isolated from other cl.u.s.ters of galaxies. A barred spiral she might reach out and touch, and move.

She opened her eyes.

She was dancing with Marc Remillard.

"Creyn broke his promise," she said. "He was not to tell you.

The vision is his, not mine. Impossible."

"I agree. And yet-appealing. If only I were not committed to my own challenge, and so close to realizing it again. The years have been bitter, Elizabeth. I can't resist trying."

"I know." She did not dare look at him again. He was not dressed in exotic finery as the King had been but wore almost archaic tropical formal wear, a black dinner jacket and a ruffled s.h.i.+rt. She let her head rest on his breast, submitted to his lead, but without surrendering as she had to the King.

"You have three very persistent and brave friends, Elizabeth."

"I told them not to come here. They have no right to interfere.

And Creyn promised!"

"He told me more than his Duat vision," Marc said. "Creyn told me that you loved me, Elizabeth-and so did Aiken. Is it true?"

"It's impossible," she said, from behind the flames.

"I think so, too, but your friends are more stubborn. Basil has climbed the mountain and Creyn has helped make blacktorc children whole and operant and Anatoly-experienced a temporary triumph at my expense. As I said, they're stubborn.

They'd like to think nothing is impossible."

"We know better, Marc."

"Yes," he said, and they danced in blackness unrelieved.

Then it was Aiken who held her under trees starred by fireflies, and the music slowed at last and stopped.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

Shortly after dawn on the Third Day, with the King and his entire High Table and Elizabeth standing by as observers, the haggard workers on the Guderian Project gathered in the inner courtyard of Castle Gateway for the initial power-up of the taugenerator. Even the five tiny children of the North Americans were present, drowsy and solemn-faced, but more interested in the spectacularly costumed Tanu Exalted Ones than in the device that might transport them to the Galactic Milieu.

The apparatus was somewhat larger than the original machine built by Theo Guderian. It still bore an uncanny resemblance to an old-fas.h.i.+oned latticework pergola or gazebo draped in vines. In order to compensate for the rise in terrain that would occur over the six-million-year time span, the device stood on scaffolding slightly over two metres in height. Its frame was of transparent gla.s.sy material; at each joint was a nodular component of black, having obscure scintillations dimly visible within. The "vines", actually heavy cables of multicoloured alloys, emerged from the bare ground under the platform and crept in and out of the lattice. At a point fifteen centimetres above the gazebo roof the cables seemed to vanish, then reappear in a mysterious fas.h.i.+on to twine down again through the rear framework.

"What are you going to send off first?" Aiken asked Hagen.

The young man held out a small box carved from rock crystal, lifting its lid to show a thin wafer of metal with a blue-black tarnish.

"Pota.s.sium. After it makes the round trip, we run it through an ordinary kay-ay dater to be sure it's picked up twelve million years. According to theory, the focus of the time-gate is fixed.

If the machine works at all, it should take its cargo to the grounds of l'Auberge du Portail on the synchronous Milieu date of 2 November 2111, then whisk it back here as the tau-field recycles."

"Right," said the King. "Let's get on with it." He reached out and took the hand of Elizabeth, who was standing beside him, her face lacking expression and her mind inaccessible.

Hagen mounted the scaffold steps. One of his a.s.sociates handed him an ordinary four-legged wooden stool, which he positioned in the precise centre of the gazebo. He placed the crystal box on the stool and then withdrew to the front row of spectators, to stand with Diane Manion, Cloud, and Kuhal Earthshaker. He said to a young woman seated at the control console, "Do it, Matiwilda."

She said, "Going away."

There was no sound as the Guderian device was activated.

The power-drain was so minimal that the spotlights positioned around the castle yard never faltered in brilliance. The gazebo seemed to s.h.i.+mmer; then its interior was hidden, as though mirror panels had suddenly sprung up inside.

"I know the translation's supposed to be instantaneous,"

Aiken said, "but just give it a minute."

The two hundred people watching held their breath.

"All right," said the King at last.

Matiwilda threw the switch and the mirror effect winked out.

In a cometlike leap, Aiken was on the platform squatting before the entrance to the booth. Inside were two truncated pieces of wooden stool fallen to each side of an ash-covered crystal box.

"Suffering Christ!" the King said. "The tau-field only formed a beam yea-wide! Will you look at this, Hagen?"

Cursing, young Remillard rushed onto the platform. The other onlookers buzzed and groaned and set out a hodgepodge of telepathic execration.

"Anastos, get up here!" Hagen bellowed.

A swarthy man with an authoritative air pushed out of the crowd. After inspecting the gazebo he went to confer with the woman at the control console. Somewhere a childish voice piped, "Does that mean we can't go, Daddy?"

Aiken handed down the crystal box to Bert Candyman, who was standing by with the radio-dating a.n.a.lyser. The chemist pried open the container gingerly, disclosing a circle of dirty white powder. He offered the King a crooked smile. "Well, it's been somewhere.

Your Majesty!"