AIKEN: Well? I"m ready. Say the word, and I"ll come.
ELIZABETH: To Black Crag-?
AIKEN: Unless you"ve learned to deep-redact at distance. The ATV train leaves Calamosk within the hour. It"ll take us less than two days to reach the Amalizan cutoff where we rendezvous with Bleyn and split off the Alpine expedition.
Black Crag is only eight kloms from there as the golden falcon flies. I think I can just about make it. Say-on the evening of September fifth.
ELIZABETH: Aiken ... I"m expecting Marc to return here. It wouldn"t be safe for you to come. Not even with the sigma.
He mustn"t ... I don"t dare ...
AIKEN: [Anger + fear.] Maybe you think I"m joking about my mental state! Well, I"m not. During the day when I"m busy it"s not so bad. But every night they get bigger, more out of control. They"re doing it that way so that last joke will be on me. I won"t just die, I"ll die ridiculous!
ELIZABETH: I don"t understand. You say you"re experiencing hallucinations now along with the metapsychic weakening and the pain?
AIKEN: It"s not a delusion! It"s real [image] real grotesque I"m so ashamed it can"t be happening [image] not to Me and Mine they"re dead there"s no way they can be doing it [image] making me swell and burn and drain away again [image] and again [image] not real or real it doesn"t matter because it"s ruining me Me me ELIZABETH HELP ME!!
[Supremely obscene montage abruptly cut off.] ELIZABETH: Yes. Of course I"ll help. I"ll come to you.
AIKEN: Come?
ELIZABETH: Be easy, "dear. I"ll come. Minanonn will bring me-and Dionket and Creyn as well. We"ll help you.
AIKEN: Alone. Come alone. (n.o.body must know! n.o.body must know!) ELIZABETH: I"ll need help, just as I did when I redacted you on the Rio Genii, after the battle with Felice. Trust me.
AIKEN: You"ll really come?
ELIZABETH: Yes. Now listen to me. We"ll need a secure place.
We don"t want to use the sigma. The thing is a virtual beacon to a long-distance fa.r.s.ensor and Marc mustn"t suspect that I"m working on you.
AIKEN: (n.o.body must know! Him above all! Humiliation! Ridicule! A jest on the jester!) ELIZABETH: There are more important reasons for secrecy. I can only help you to set up a skeletal structure for your reintegration. A mental framework for you to mount the subsumed faculties on.
AIKEN: I won"t be cured ... ?
ELIZABETH: You"ll be freed of distressing symptoms if the redaction succeeds, able to reestablish your metafaculties by yourself. You"ll heal, just as you did after the Rio Genii. But you don"t want your enemies to know your weakness.
AIKEN: (n.o.body must know the shame.) ELIZABETH: Listen. I"ve asked Minanonn, and he says there"s a suitable place about twenty kilometres southwest of the trails junction. [Image.] It"s a disused Firvulag cave, abandoned centuries ago when the Little People withdrew from southern France.
AIKEN: Yes. I see. You want to meet me there?
ELIZABETH: Try to be inside the cave before sundown on the fifth. Marc seems to do his d-jumping by night to minimize solar interference with the upsilon-field.
AIKEN: They grow at night, too. Even if I sleep under the sigma.
ELIZABETH: You"ll be better soon.
AIKEN: Are you sure?
ELIZABETH: No, I"m not. What you did-the subsumptionis unprecedented. But I"m going to do my best to help you.
AIKEN: Please. Please. Try anything. Oh Elizabeth they"re so freakish so enormous and now It"s bigger than all the rest of my body controlling me punishing me making me Its slave making me hate It because I used It I didn"t know it would happen didn"t think why how I did itELIZABETH: Tell yourself it"s only a delusion. A dream. Not real.
AIKEN: Not happening to my body?
ELIZABETH: No, dear. Be easy. Wait for me in the cave. It will be all right. (Please let it be.) AIKEN: Yes. I told myself that.
ELIZABETH: Goodbye, Aiken. (Goodbye poor demiG.o.dling, poor rampant Loki, poor priapic Fool, poor Mentu-Ra with the fiery mentule, poor Ithyphallikos. Now we both know what a terrible thing it is to live the myth of our own choosing.) The storm, racing along the front of the Pyrenees, came into view shortly after Minanonn carried Elizabeth, Dionket, and Creyn over the valley of the Proto-Aude to the Great South Road. Anvil-headed cloud cells formed a long rank from the Gulf of Lions into the angry sunset. They were filmy white at their stratospheric tops and purplish black below, tinged with lurid brushstrokes of copper on their western flanks, where the lowering sun still sulked. Lightning flickered in their hearts and beneath the grey-curtained bases. A low rumble of thunder became almost continuous as Minanonn bore his pa.s.sengers farther south.
"Don"t worry," the former Battlemaster rea.s.sured Elizabeth.
"We"ll be at the cave ahead of the rain."
"It will mean an end to this awful heat wave, at any rate," she said.
"Has it seriously distressed you?" Dionket asked in surprise.
"I found it pleasant myself. Reminiscent of Duat. We could have used a bit more humidity, though, to make it genuinely homelike."
"You First Comers!" Creyn said, amused. "Nostalgic for the ancestral h.e.l.lhole."
"Nonsense, lad," said Minanonn. "Duat was much more comfortable than this planet. A soft haze to temper the sun"s glare, never these prolonged droughts for part of the year and half drowning the rest. On Duat, the rains came fairly uniformly all year round. And the temperature was rarely low enough to chill, even at aphelion."
"He speaks of the Tanu motherlands, of course," Dionket explained. "We lived in the equatorial regions and the Firvulag at the poles, where the really high mountains were. Ghastly country, that of the Foe. Constant winter."
"No changing seasons at all?" Elizabeth asked.
"None to speak of," said the Lord Healer. "Our planetary axis had a minimal tilt."
"A stiff-necked world," Creyn observed, "like the peoples it bred. Fortunately, the sp.a.w.n of Duat"s daughter-planets proved more flexible. It was they who engendered the peaceful galactic federation that rejected Duat"s attempt-our attempt-to reintroduce the ancient battle-religion."
"Brede told me something of your history," Elizabeth said.
Her gaze was fixed on the looming line of thunderheads. "At the time of your exile, were the Duat colonies the only planets in your galaxy that had an interstellar socioeconomy?"
"The only planets," Dionket said, "but not the only people.
There were the Ships."
"The Ships." Elizabeth"s voice was tinged with wonder. "They seem incredible, even though I have Brede"s gla.s.s model. How could highly intelligent life-forms evolve in a void?"
"There is no void," said the Lord Healer. "The s.p.a.ce between the stars is pervaded by matter and energy. All of the organic molecules necessary for the generation of life are present in the clouds of dust that drift through the galaxies. This one, as well as the star-whirl of Duat that is its sister."
Elizabeth was silent. The surrounding air had attained a preternatural clarity. Even without exerting her fa.r.s.ensing eye, she seemed able to detect each separate leaf on the jungle trees, each tuft of dry gra.s.s between the ruts of the dusty road, each pebble and gra.s.shopper and rock-rose of the arid verge. She finally said, "We had seven hundred and eighty-four human planets in our Milieu, including Old Earth. How many worlds were daughter-colonies of Duat at the time of your exile?"
"More than eleven thousand four hundred," Dionket replied.
"Even with the attrition from the Galactic Civil War, the total population approached one hundred fifteen billion."