"We have the spare CE rig armour I intended to use for Hagen, and we can build more-or simply construct a s.p.a.ce capsule. Pat, don"t you understand the implications? We don"t have to await rescue by another coadunate race. We"ll rescue ourselves!" His mood was abruptly serious. "But this is for the future. I"ll explain what I"ve been doing to all of you, tomorrow at the conference. It"s the end of our exile. We"ll soon be able to lay the groundwork for the coming of Mental Man. All of us! And the children as well, when they realize the truth."
"Yes," she said. "Oh, yes."
She lifted his hand, which she still held, and brushed the back of it with her lips. Then they sat together drinking tea, watching pink dawn stain the eastern horizon. It was, Marc a.s.sured her, a certain sign of fair weather ahead.
CHAPTER TWO.
The final hem adjustment had been completed by Mooliane Frog-Maid, and now Katlinel stood in the centre of the fitting room modelling the finished creation. The place was crowded with the little beings who had worked on the dress-portunes and korrigans and nereides and nimble-fingered trows-and these twittered anxiously as the head couturier, Bukin the Estimable, pursed his lips and strode around and around the Mistress of Nionel. He prodded an errant lace ruffle here, straightened a gilded wire there, leaned close to scrutinize a critical seam or a suspect bit of beadwork. Finally he stepped back, cleared his throat, and announced: "It will do. Bring the looking gla.s.s!"
All the goblin tailors and seamstresses squealed for joy and clapped their hands, paws, or other tactile appendages. Two st.u.r.dy kobold wenches hauled a three-way standing mirror into position, and for the first time, Katlinel saw herself in the gown she would wear as hostess of the first Grand Tourney.
It was cut from a stiff white fabric of a mysterious iridescence that glimmered pink and yellow and pale green, like the interior of a seash.e.l.l. The low-cut bodice and long sleeves fitted closely, as did the slender underskirt. Springing from the lowered waist were wired, tapering panels that curved outward and then in toward the knees, like the reflexed petals of a nacreous lily.
Beneath this was an overskirt of delicate golden lace, which flared out below the petals in a bright fluted cone. Gold lace also draped the pearly fabric of the sleeves and formed wide cuffs. The head and decolletage of the Lady of the Howlers was set off by a fantastic high collar, and she wore a delicate golden face-frame. As a finishing touch, the entire ensemble was adorned with crystal beads and briolettes, which reflected the ever-changing hues of the fabric.
Katlinel turned slowly in front of the mirrors, a reduplicated vision of aurora colours misted with gold. "The gown is magnificent," she said. "I"ve never seen anything so wonderful. Thank you, dear friends-and especially you, Bukin." She bent down and kissed the brownie designer on his corrugated pate. A flush rose from his neck to the tips of his hairy ears.
"Gracious Mistress Katy," he said gruffly, "my career spans three centuries. I have in that time conceived many a splendid garment-for you know that our misbegotten folk have no peers in the Many-Coloured Land in matters of personal adornment.
This creation, however, is my masterpiece-and that of all the artisans gathered about you."
A pixie voice piped, "The pearl lame is unique!" And another chimed in, "Fashioning that gold lace nearly drove us dotty!"
Bukin shuffled his feet. "This Grand Tourney will be the first time in eight hundred and fifty-six years that our Howler nation has partic.i.p.ated in a joint event with our nonmutant brethren.
We want to do so proudly. And since we are especially proud of you, we intend to glorify you before the a.s.sembled mult.i.tude.
Lady ... you are a flower sprung from Tanu and human stock, now blooming in a garden that must seem strange and bizarre.
But we rejoice to have you with us. You console us with your beauty and kindness. By showing your loving devotion to our Master, the most fearfully deformed of us all, you have brought fresh hope to us. You have seen fit to thank us for this gift, but we are the ones who should thank you."
"Thank you," sighed the monsters.
Then the outer door of the atelier was flung open and a greenhaired sprite shrieked, "He comes! Lord Sugoll comes to see our Lady!"
Katlinel held out her arms as the Lord of the Mutants entered, tall and terrible, trailed by the human geneticist, Gregory Prentice Brown, who beamed as the lovers embraced.
"I thought to save these gifts until the Tourney Eve," Sugoll said. "But I think it better to bestow them now, in the presence of these devoted friends. Gregory! The casket."
Mopping and mowing like an excited tamarin, Greg-Donnet Genetics Master held out a sizable silver-gilt box. Sugoll opened it, and as the horde of goblin workers squealed and whistled in astonishment, he removed a necklace of rare aurora-borealis stones. Working dextrously with two tentacles, he fastened it just beneath his wife"s golden torc. A third tentacle plucked forth a coronet set with the same strangely iridescent gems.
Katlinel took it and settled it on her elaborate coiffure.
"Now you are truly our queen," said Sugoll.
The mob of grotesques cheered and capered about. Greggy made a leg, kissed Katlinel"s hand, and murmured, "Smashing.
Truly smashing."
"Now," the Howler prince said to his folk, "I would ask you to leave us for a time while I confer with my Lady and Lord Greggy on matters of state."
"Lunch break-everybody out!" cried Bukin. "Scoot, you imps and s.p.u.n.kies and tankeraboguses!" The mutant workers fled helter-skelter, and in a moment Sugoll and his wife and Greg-Donnet were alone. The geneticist pulled up two chairs for Katlinel and himself, while the great abomination took his ease on the fitting room floor.
"There are odd doings afoot," Sugoll said. "King AikenLugonn has requested Howler guides for an excursion into Fennoscandia-seeking certain unusual ores."
"Whatever for?" Katlinel asked.
The little old geneticist giggled. "Precisely what we asked ourselves, Katy dear! The minerals in question are gadolinite and xenotime, sources of the so-called rare-earth elements. His Puckish Majesty was very cagey at first about his need for these peculiar substances. That his need was urgent became apparent when Lord Sugoll showed no inclination to cooperate!"
"And why should I cooperate?" growled the mutant ruler.
"What"s he done for us lately? Just seven weeks until the Tourney, and he hasn"t even sent us the first instalment of the Tanu share of the expenses. The fribbling little pecht! Probably blew his whole treasury on that shameless Grand Loving spectacle in May ... "
"Rare earths?" Katlinel, who had been a member of the Creator Guild and a High Table sitter before her defection, shook her bejewelled head in puzzlement. "I know little enough chemistry, but sufficient to say that there is scant use for such materials in Tanu technology."
"But not in that of the Milieu!" snapped Sugoll. "And when I balked, the golden wirling finally had to come clean and tell me why he wanted the stuff. He"s building a time-gate machine!"
"Almighty Tana," whispered the Lady. "Not-a portal leading into the future world?"
Greg-Donnet nodded with wry solemnity. "It seems he"s collected experts from all over the Many-Coloured Land, and plans to reopen the gate that the redoubtable Madame Guderian slammed shut. The potential for mischief making is formidable!"
"Naturally, given the facts, I pledged our full cooperation,"
Sugoll said.
Katlinel stared at him, taken aback.
Greggy said gently, "If the Howler people could pa.s.s through the gate into the world I came from, there would be no doubt that their deformed bodies could be remoulded, their genes engineered to the Firvulag norm once again. I"ve tried a few feeble experiments along those lines during my stay with you-but my piddling attempts are as nothing beside the scientific resources of the Milieu. Their scientists could do in a few months what it might take me decades to accomplish on my own here in the Pliocene."
"I can"t believe that Aiken-" Katlinel broke off, shaking her head. "He"s devilishly clever, we all know that. But this doesn"t seem possible. He must be hatching some other scheme ... perhaps using this time-gate ploy to divert Sharn and Ayfa from their warlike designs."
"If so," Sugoll put in, "then Teah send success to the Tanu King! And all the more reason for us to cooperate. I have delegated Kalipin to a.s.sist Aiken"s expedition, since he has had experience in dealing with Lowlives; and for the technical matters, Ilmary and Koblerin the Knocker, who know more about the minerals of the lands beyond the Amber Lakes than any among us."
"Let us not raise false hopes among the people," Katlinel pleaded.
"Don"t worry," Greggy said. "I"ll keep on with my own experiments, just as before." He winked merrily. "Actually, the Skin-tank device looks rather promising. I have several volunteers eager to try it."
"When does Aiken"s expedition set out?" Katlinel asked.
"The first scouts should be here in a few days," said Sugoll.
"From Nionel they sail north to the Big Bend of the Seekol, then cut across the Peneplain to the Anversian Sea."
"It"ll take them months to find those minerals," Katlinel said.
"If they ever do. And as for constructing a time-gate machine-it"s just too incredible!"