They were walking across the great entry hall. Even though it was still early in the evening, there were few people about.
Only the patient grey-torc soldiers of the palace guard were ubiquitous, still standing station in their gleaming bronze halfarmour and violet cloaks, but bearing Milieu-style weapons instead of the traditional gla.s.s blades.
"Marc is at Black Crag," said Elizabeth. "I"m here at his behest."
"So!" exclaimed the King. "Is he feeling more peaceable now that the scales are tipping my way? It must have been quite a blow to his plans, losing those X-lasers."
Elizabeth said, "Aiken, Marc brought Basil Wimborne to us from the top of Monte Rosa. Via d-jump."
The King stopped dead in his tracks. "Christ!"
Elizabeth regarded him in silence. The flippant insouciance had vanished.
"Is that what you came here to tell me?" Aiken demanded of her. "That Marc"s ready to close in, and we should abandon the Guderian Project?"
"No," she said.
"What then?"
"Marc has a proposal for you and Hagen and Cloud. I"d like to discuss it with the three of you together."
Minanonn said, "I think you"ll be as safe with the King as with me, Elizabeth. If you"ll excuse me, I shall visit with the Fa.r.s.ensing Lady Sibel Longtress. In times long gone she and I shared many a diverting hour-debating the merits of peace."
He went off, leaving Elizabeth smiling.
"Quite the protector, isn"t he?" Aiken"s tone was sour.
"He approves of you and your reign thus far."
"Well, hoo-rah," the King drawled. "Pity he"s not willing to fight for his high principles! I need every stalwart mind I can get these days. You know about my having to give Sharn and Ayfa the Sword-and what that could mean."
She nodded. "The Firvulag couldn"t initiate the Nightfall War without their sacred weapon-and now they have it. You"ve taken a big gamble."
His black eyes were snapping. "Maybe not." They stood at the entry corridor to the castle"s west wing, which was barred by a great bronze grille and guarded by elite gold troopers holding the leashes of spike-collared amphicyons. "I could call Hagen and Cloud up to the royal presence chamber to meet with us, but perhaps you"d fancy going down to them. I"ll take you on a fifty-pence tour of the Guderian Project laboratories-and I wouldn"t mind one bit if you told Marc just how we were progressing."
She said, "I"d be very glad to take your tour. To tell you the truth, I"ve been curious."
With a certain swagger, Aiken commanded the guards to unbar the gate. Then he led the way, pointing out the various security measures protecting the installation. Sensor systems ringed the entire wing where the young North Americans and the technical personnel resided. Elites were on duty inside, and the parapets were patrolled by heavily armed greys and silvers, programmed to report to their Tanu overlords any attempts to break out or in. The precincts about the single stairwell giving access to the modified dungeons, which had once held the "general store" of contraband, and now housed the laboratories, were guarded by Tanu stalwarts under the command of Celadeyr of Afaliah. The foyer was hedged with b.o.o.by traps, both mechanical and metapsychic, in addition to electromagnetic barriers of increasingly lethal potential. If one managed to negotiate these hazards, there still remained the last bastion: the great SR-35 sigma-field, with its airlock that would only pa.s.s those whose mental signatures were on file in the royal computer.
"You are on file now, sweets," Aiken told Elizabeth with a wink. "But just for today."
The mirrorlike wall at the end of the airlock dissolved before them at the King"s gesture, and they entered the laboratory anteroom. Elizabeth watched the dynamic field re-form behind them and tapped the pseudoslippery interface with one fingernail. "So this is the impregnable sigma that Marc hoped to breach with his X-lasers."
The King"s jovial mien shaded off into grimness. "It is. The kids brought it from Ocala. As long as we keep the project under it, we"ll be safe. Hagen says it"s proof against a psychoenergetic attack to the five-hundreth degree of magnitude. Felice might have been able to mind-blast her way in here-but Abaddon hasn"t a prayer. Not with the handful of minds he can muster in metaconcert these days."
"You can"t use the Guderian device here in Goriah," Elizabeth pointed out.
"No," the King conceded. "Bit of bad planning on my part, that. I should have set up the labs at the Castle Gateway site in the first place, and devil take the inconvenience. But it"s no use crying over spilt milk. The SR-35"s no good for aerial operation, but we"ll work out something when the time comes to move.
You can tell that to Marc, as well as all the rest of it."
They pa.s.sed through a seemingly endless series of small workrooms where components of the tau-generator were being a.s.sembled and tested. Aiken knew what was going on in every chamber and greeted the technicians and senior scientists and their North American supervisors by name. The laboratories were crowded and deceptively chaotic in appearance. Much of the a.s.sembly was being done under micromanipulators, and to the uninitiated observer it was rather unexciting. The chemical engineering rooms were slightly more dramatic, full of burbling gadgetry and elusive stenches as critical materials were cooked up, then sent on to the manufacturing units.
In one of the larger workrooms of this type, Tony Wayland accosted the King.
"I"ll need at least three more diamonds," he said, "twelve carats or better. Also an industrial laser that can drill holes five to forty microns in diameter, a cerametal whisker grower, some Canada balsam or an equivalent syn-resin, another bottle of argon, and a new room-mate. That miserable Hewitt snores like a sawmill."
"Anything else?" enquired the King mildly.
"Some news about my wife!"
"Lady Katlinel is making inquiries. There"s some problem.
Your Howler in-laws are a bit miffed that you ran out on their little girl, and are disinclined to cooperate. Lady Katy counsels patience."
Tony threw up his hands and stomped away. The King and Elizabeth moved on. When they were safely in the next room, she said, "My redactive faculty detects a whiff of level-two dysfunction in that man"s psyche. I gather he"s been through some rough times. I shouldn"t let him get too highly stressed if I were you."
"He wants to work," Aiken said. "That"s the best thing for him now. It"ll distract him from this business about his Howler wife."
"I"d be glad to have Minanonn fly me to Nionel. Perhaps I could mediate with the irate parents-in-law."
"Thanks, Elizabeth." Aiken was glum. "But I lied to poor Tony back there-partly for selfish reasons and partly because it seems the kindest thing to do at this point. You know Lord Greg-Donnet, who was King Thagdal"s Genetics Master?"
"The one they called Crazy Greggy ... " She nodded.
"He went to Nionel with Katy when she married Sugoll, and now he"s pottering about with a scheme for alleviating the deformities of the mutants. Talented man, Greggy, in spite of his little quirks. Well-it seems he worked up an experimental thingummy, a sort of cross between the healing Tanu Skin and a Milieu-style regeneration tank. He thinks this Skin-tank might help restore the really grotesque Howlers to a more normal Firvulag appearance. He asked for a volunteer. Guess who he got."
"Oh, dear," said Elizabeth.
The King said, "Tony"s wife, Rowane, thought he dumped her because she was a monster. Greggy"s experiment looked like a golden opportunity to her. So there she floats, switch-off, for at least another four weeks, while Greggy and the Howler equivalent of redactors remould her protoplasm. Rowane might come out worse than before, she might die, or the experiment could be a great success. But I think we"re wise to stall Tony."
"I agree. It"s pathetic ... "
"Aren"t we all?" said the King. He led the way into a sizeable chamber where a skeletal gla.s.s structure stood upon a platform.
It was a latticed box strung about with metallic cables that intertwined its vitreous members like multicoloured vine stems.
Many more of the flexible lines lay about on workbenches with their innards exposed to the probing attention of the workers.
Monitors, testing equipment, and a confusion of installation machinery crowded the platform.
"And there it is," Aiken announced. "The Guderian device-more or less."
"I hadn"t remembered it being so large," Elizabeth said.
"We expanded it a trifle. Our tame dynamic-field boffin, Anastos, said it wouldn"t hurt. That"s him cursing out the fleck installer. The scrawny dark-haired bareneck. And of course you recognize the disapproving duo looking over his shoulder."
"I"ve fa.r.s.een them. Is there some place we could speak in private?"