"We and the Firvulag have a similar symbolic constellation that we call the Trumpet. See there? Just above your Pleiades.
Our galaxy is so remote that it is invisible, even in the telescopes brought by time travellers to this Many-Coloured Land. But we know that Duat lies out beyond the mouthpiece star of the Trumpet, uncounted light-years from Earth."
His arm was around her shoulder. He drew her toward the alcove opposite the fireplace where the force-field projector called the room without doors had formerly been installed. Now the little niche was empty except for another pair of gifts from the Shipspouse: a picture of a barred-spiral galaxy trailing two great arms, and hovering in front of it, an abstract sculpture of a female figure.
He said, "We trust-Minanonn and I and the rest of the Peace Faction-that Tana is truly caring. That there is a greater evolution than that of the physical universe, of body, of mind.
That there is an All toward which creation yearns, which each generation perceives ever more clearly, and in doing so, approaches. Those following the old battle-religion see the all in All as achievable only in death and annihilation. Hence their myth of the Nightfall War, which we thought would first engulf our tiny breakaway group of Tanu and Firvulag, and later destroy all the rest of the Duat worlds as well."
She said, "Brede spoke of it, and its being rooted in the torcs. She told me how the ancestral Tanu introduced the torc technology to the other Duat races, and how this was eventually seen by her as a metapsychic catastrophe, dooming the Mind of your galaxy to a dead end. And her intuitive insight was correct, Creyn. The torcany artificial mind enhancement that becomes a permanent crutch-is an intrinsic bar to Unity. Marc Remillard and his people proved that in the Milieu."
He said, "Those of us who trust believe that even this terrible paradox, the dead end of the Duat Mind, fits somehow in the greater pattern-and will be resolved."
Elizabeth turned her back on the statue and the star-whirl and moved to the fire. She took up a bronze poker and jabbed half-heartedly at the embers. A few sparks flew.
"I don"t think Brede took that view. In the end, she came to believe that the evolution of the Duat Mind could continue only in your merging with the human race. I think she may have envisioned some relict Pliocene population eventually mating with primitive h.o.m.o sapiens-planting metapsychic seeds in the huge, marvellous, empty Neanderthaler brains. Voila! Instant Cro-Magnon. The really funny thing is, the modern type of human did appear with suspicious suddenness, and leaped to metapsychic operancy in a paltry fifty thousand years or so."
She thrust emphatically at the dying fire. The logs, reduced almost entirely to charcoal, crumbled to bits. Her voice was flat and her mind tightly sealed. "If this is what you"d call the masterplan of a compa.s.sionate G.o.d, then your faith is more cold-blooded than mine, Creyn. We humans will have climbed to Unity using the doomed Mind of Duat as a stepping-stone.
Have you seen the army ants bridge a stream in the jungle?
Thousands of them link together and willingly drown so their luckier fellows cross over without getting wet feet."
"Elizabeth, the people in Duat don"t know."
"But I do." She carefully replaced the poker. "And I don"t think I can bear it. Not that, not any of it."
"You only toy with despair," he insisted.
"I know. Sister Amerie used to say that one twits the Holy Spirit only at one"s peril-but she couldn"t quite break me of the habit." Elizabeth smiled brightly. "Shall we go downstairs and take care of our intelligence briefing?"
When the big door to the lodge"s grand salon banged open, there was instant uproar. Elizabeth and the Peace Faction conferees, deeply engrossed in their mind-meld, were so taken aback that they did nothing. That left the friar free to elude Mary-Dedra and G.o.dal the Steward and the other two Tanu retainers, who had chased him up from the kitchen and who lacked the PK or coercive ability that would have restrained the old man in the first place. He barged right into the salon with the pursuers shouting and clutching at him and uttering telepathic apologies and belated pleas for help.
"Hold!" bellowed Minanonn, rising from the depths of the sofa like fulminating Jupiter.
The entire quintet of intruders froze in mid cry.
"Who in the world-" Elizabeth began.
Minanonn released his coercive grip on the Black Crag people, who pulled themselves together. The elderly human male in the tattered Franciscan habit remained completely paralysed, balanced on one foot and with hands raised and clenched.
His eyes were alive and glittering.
"We"d welcomed him," said Mary-Dedra indignantly.
"Helped him to find the place, then dried him and gave him a nice supper!"
"He seemed harmless enough," said G.o.dal the Steward, "until Dedra let slip that Elizabeth had come down at last to meet with you Exalted Ones-"
"And at that, the silly old coot yelled something about his mission," Mary-Dedra said, "and came charging up here before we knew what we were about! Now, if you please, we"ll be chucking him out the front gate."
Dionket the Healer said, "First, we"d better hear what he wants."
"Let him speak, Minnie," said Peredeyr Firstcomer.
"But keep a firm hold on the rest of him," said Meyn the Unsleeping.
The friar, still immobile from the neck down, licked his lips and cleared his throat. He fixed his eyes on Leilani-Tegveda the Fairbrowed and said, "Am I addressing the Grand Master Elizabeth Orme?"
"I am she," said a much less imposing woman who wore a severe black gown.
The paralysed priest looked somewhat relieved. In spite of his ludicrous posture, he spoke with dignity. "My name is Anatoly Severinovich Gorchakov and I am a brother of the Order of Friars Minor. Your friend Amerie Roccaro has sent me to be your spiritual adviser."
Elizabeth stared at him, speechless.
"You can turn me loose now," Brother Anatoly told Minanonn. "I"ll go back peaceably to my supper and you can get on with your conference." He said to Elizabeth, "I just wanted you to know that I"ll be waiting when you"re ready for me."
Minanonn looked at Elizabeth, who nodded.
The coercive grip faded. Anatoly lowered his foot, unclenched his hands, and resettled his rope belt. He managed a rather sketchy sign of the cross. "When you"re ready," he repeated, then turned and walked out the door.
CHAPTER FIVE.
The very first visit of the ghastly houri to Tony Wayland had come closest to being the final one.
Half-mad with fear and still befuddled by his interrogation at the hands of Their Awful Majesties Sharn and Ayfa, Tony had been certain that only torture and death awaited him. He was astonished but not inclined to ask questions when the seductive creature entered his cell in the dungeon at High Vrazel. Perhaps she was there to provoke him with fresh treasons against humanity; perhaps she was merely the Firvulag equivalent of a last cigarette for the condemned. Whatever ... she was lissome and lubricious, more or less humanly proportioned, and although her coal-black skin and scarlet hair and ecu betrayed her exotic origins, he never would have suspected the truth. He had already embraced her, and was well on the way to the point of no return, when doom was averted in a most unlikely way.
Karbree the Worm, the giant who had captured him, came tramping into the dungeon and hammered on the cell"s wooden door with both mailed fists, bellowing: "Skathe! I know you"re in there, you snaggle-c.u.n.t ramaf.u.c.ker! Ha-ha! Bad luck for you, comrade! We"re off to Goriah right now."
This demonic charivari having deflated all Tony"s amorous aspirations, the houri leaped off him with a screech of rage and cursed the laughing monster on the other side of the door.
"Don"t blame me, sweeting," Karbree cooed. A slitted green eye glinted in the door"s peephole. "It was Sharn and Ayfa"s decision. They want emissaries on the spot as soon as possible after Nodonn fries the brains of the Lowlife usurper. We"re to press him for the return of our sacred Sword before he manages to think of some reason to repudiate the bargain he made with us. The royals command that we leave High Vrazel within the hour-so forget that unholy experiment of yours, and get your a.s.s armoured and hopping!"
The houri leaned over Tony, curtaining him in glorious hair.
Her hands caressed his pectorals. "Later, dear Tonee," she whispered, letting one blood-red fingernail trace a line from his sternum to his navel. He felt the cell whirl about him. She kissed him with lips that tasted of strawberries, and for one split second he believed she was his abandoned, goblin wife and cried: "Rowane, don"t go!"
Then the illusion vanished and he uttered a sob of horror.
Standing over him, her head grazing the stone ceiling, was the appalling ogress official called the Dreadful Skathe. She grinned, showing a mouthful of tusks like crooked ivory daggers.
"Pretty good, was I?" She chucked Tony under the chin. Her fist was ham-sized, and the tickling finger had a talon that would have done credit to a firebacked eagle. "Let"s see now," the monster mused. "I don"t see any reason why we can"t take you with us. We"ll be travelling fast and light on this f.u.c.king royal mission, but you can ride pillion. We"ll find our magic moment somewhere along the way."
For more than two sleepless days, the Firvulag heroes and their human supernumerary travelled west, halting only to exchange ruined chalikos for fresh ones. Then news of Nodonn"s defeat reached them at Burask, and the original mission was aborted.
Hoping to resume her interrupted experiment, Skathe booked an expensive suite at the best hotel in town, which had been the local pleasure dome when Burask belonged to the Tanu.