“All gathered to spy on us and exploit us,” Maureen murmured. “I think you’re right too, Amanda.”
“So an attack on Laputa ought to devastate them,” said Amanda. “Of course, we’ll need to research it more thoroughly, but let’s plan on those lines provisionally. Now, how are we going to get a strike force to the place? Transition between universes is bound to cause all sorts of problems.”
* * *
6
« ^ »
The discussion continued all that night and went on at intervals over the next month. Paulie Lister grew exasperated.
“Conferences, conferences!” she exploded to her lover. “Tony, I’m sure Mark’s got a new woman, and I bet you it’s that Maureen Tenehan! He only comes home to sleep!”
“Why do you let that bother you?” said Tony.
Maureen’s dancers grumbled too. Maureen, it seemed, had strained a shoulder and was forced to make frequent visits to the only osteopath she trusted, who, it appeared, lived in Ludlow. But as her absences went on, little Flan Burke began to prove such a good deputy that most of the troupe foresaw that Maureen would lose her place to Flan and end up simply teaching the younger dancers. Maureen’s boyfriend took the view that Maureen was doing it to spite him.
Somewhat the same opinion was held by Professor Amanda Fenstone’s teenage children. They grumbled to their aunt that Mum’s career seemed to mean more to her than they did. Why else was she always away giving lectures?
Only Gladys was spared human grumbling, and she often came back from another place to find herself in an accusing ring of cats long past their feeding time. For she took to sitting, hour after hour, on the Normandy beach forest borders of the pirate world, watching through notional spyglasses for any activity in Laputa-Blish (as it came to be called). Her skin grew flabbier and more blotched. Her feet were often numb, despite tartan socks and furry slippers, and she was tired. The other three worried about her. But Gladys was firm. This was the part of the task that she had set herself. As she said, she was the only one among them who was canny enough to watch without letting Laputa-Blish suspect it was being watched.
And her work bore fruit. One of the first things she was able to report was that there was always at least one observer in Laputa-Blish watching Earth. Often there were many more. They seemed to sit regular watches, and whenever the time came around for a group to be watching Earth, she became fairly sure that at least one was always focused upon the activities of the Ring.
“Let’s give them something to watch then,” Maureen said. “I’ll start having everyone power up on the ecology from now on, something cruel.”
“They’ll be expecting us to,” Gladys agreed, and went back to watching. As she moved away in her mind, she chuckled. Maureen was into ecology anyway. On the rare occasions Gladys had visited Maureen, she had found the flat full of tasteful green packages labeled ozone friendly and ecologically sound. The toilet roll had had recycled toilet paper printed on every sheet. Could one recycle toilet paper? she wondered, grinning as she drifted away, and if so, how?
During this stint of watching, she saw Laputa-Blish put out tenuous threads and translate them down to an earthly plane. Before she could trace them, they were gone. But she was ready for them next time they happened. She made one of her rare linkages with Jimbo and let him take her down, right down to his disquieting native ether. There she lurked, watching like a fox in a hole, and found that, as she suspected, the threads connected with the pirate world itself. She was lucky. It was a big joining that went both ways in all the planes of matter, and it lasted until her strength was almost gone.
“I think people were going back and forth, or supplies, or both maybe,” she told Amanda, who came to put a rug around her shoulders and a mug of tea into her shaking hands.
“That stands to reason,” Amanda said, going back to her careful checking of Mark’s printouts. “It would be hard to make a pocket universe an entirely closed ecology. And I suppose the crew has to go on leave sometimes. Now, if only we could find out what sort of supplies they need regularly, we’d be home and dry. We could send our team in disguised as provisions.”
“I’ll see what I can get you on that,” said Gladys. Lord! Amanda made a lousy cup of tea! Too intellectual, that was her trouble. Mind above tea. “You really think we’re going to have to send people across?”
“Can you see any other way to get close enough to blast them and cope with all the surprises they’re going to heave at us?” Amanda asked. “The Trojan horse idea still seems the best bet to me.”
“You’re probably right,” Gladys agreed mournfully. Probably because she was so recently out of linkage with Jimbo, she found her mind full of earthy sadness, playing over all the brightest and best and most beautiful of the young folk associated with the Ring—feisty little Flan Burke, that lovely boy Tam, the nice-looking blond fellow who was Paulie Lister’s lover, bossy Roz Collasso, and many, many more. Any of these could be chosen as storm troopers bound for Laputa-Blish. Such a waste. Such a shame. But no point mentioning that to Amanda.
“I’ll have a look at the supplies they’re getting,” she promised. Disguise the kids as corned beef? Unless the citizens of Laputa-Blish turned out to be vegetarians. That would cause problems.
She was out of luck the next few watches, however. Laputa-Blish neither received nor sent anything concrete. All it did was move.
“Move?” Mark asked, startled.
“Bless you, they all move, these universes!” Gladys said. “Ours wriggles about, and theirs wanders up and over and around ours, and all the others do it too. Every time I go, there’s a difference. Cup of tea, Mark, please.”
Mark, who had spent his stint looking after Gladys in laboriously exploring ways and means of transferring matter between universes—the pirates had proved it could be done, otherwise he would have despaired—sprang to the kettle, and then stopped. “What about Laputa-Blish? Does that move?”
“Yes. It sort of jostles in a circle around theirs. The first time I went back to look for it, I thought it had gone,” Gladys confessed. “But it was just around the back of them after all. I was in quite a panic till I realized.”
“I’ll need its course plotted,” he said. “If it’s moving about, our capsule could miss it and simply disintegrate in the void between. That void’s giving me nightmares anyway. All sorts of things could happen to our team there. I must have a chart of how Laputa-Blish moves.”
“You’ll get it. When do I get my tea?”
“Now—at once,” he said, diving to the stove through the jungle trees. They kept the kettle perpetually simmering these days. “Amanda left you some soup in a thermos. Want some?”
“Not if it’s like her tea,” said Gladys.
“It’s not. She said her sister made it.” Mark brought her the soup with her tea, and she did not refuse it. As he got back to work, she said sharply, “Did you feed my cats?”
“They make damn sure I do,” he said. She chuckled. When he next looked, she was off again, or perhaps asleep, with Jimbo a dark, leggy, motionless heap on her lap. He got down to work again, grateful for the heavy warding Gladys kept around her house. Someone kept trying to contact him. He was fairly sure it was Paulie. It was sharp and possessive and had a female feel to it. Whoever it was had some difficulty penetrating Gladys’s wards as more than a little nagging whisper. At any other time he would have answered at once, just on the off chance it was Zillah—even though Zillah was never possessive and had anyway made it plain that everything between them was finished—but not now. Transfer was fiendishly difficult. He kept wondering why, when the pirates could do something of this order, they needed to steal from Earth at all.
Gladys burst out laughing.
Mark jumped around to find her leaning back in her chair cackling, and Jimbo capering around her legs. “Are you all right?” he said cautiously.
“Oh, dear me, yes!” she said, wiping a tear of laughter away with her blotchy knuckl
es. “Oh Lord! You’ll never believe this, Mark! I’ve found out what those big linkages are. I was fairly sure they were transferring people, and they are. They’re women, Mark—girls for the troops! They just sent the lot of them back.”
“Are you sure?” he said. Her earthy cackle unnerved him. He felt prudish dismay.
“Of course I’m sure! Every soul in Laputa-Blish at this moment is a man. Think I don’t know the difference?”
“Then we’ve got our strike force,” he said, divided between distaste and relief.
“That’s right, dear,” Gladys said. “Trojan women. Girls for the troops. Jael smote Sisera sleeping, and a few Jezebels for luck. I almost wish I could be going myself!”
Further careful observation confirmed that the resident population of Laputa-Blish was indeed all male. Amanda and Maureen gleefully set about choosing a group of the gifted, committed, and good-looking from which the strike force could be selected.
“It serves them right,” Amanda said, briskly ticking names on her list, “for confining the use of magic to the male sex.”
“Oh, but they don’t,” said Gladys, and her eyes met Mark’s. “That poor girl in the hospital was a proficient, wasn’t she?”
“We’d better get in touch with her,” he said uneasily.
“All in good time. When she’s ready to talk.” Gladys stroked her animal. “Jimbo says she’s still in shock yet. He thinks the pirates don’t really understand about rebirth the way we do.”
* * *
II
Arth
* * *
1
« ^ »
The High Head of All Horns and King’s Vicar on Arth performed the final motions that transferred his visitors from Arth to their homes in the Fiveir of Leathe. Instead of doing it with his mind, which was the usual practice, he drew the symbols of the weave in the air with his hands and took vicious satisfaction in the way they burned green across his sanctum. Ozone crackled from wall to wall. Those ladies were in for a rough ride. Having done this, he sank into a seat, slung his heavy mitre onto its stand, and loosened his uniform with savage relief.
Nag, nag, nag! He could see them now, all the pretty faces gathered about his conference table, all the expensive and no doubt fashionable clothes, each one assaulting his nose with her own particular thick perfume—not to speak of assaulting his psyche with their dozen individual soft accusations. All claiming he had hurt them, for the Goddess’s sake! Didn’t they think he could see into their souls at least as well as they could see into his? Hurt, indeed! He knew them all to be as hard as nails, each one softly and inexorably set on having her own way. Well, they commanded in Leathe maybe, but not here in the separate small universe of Arth.
When he learned that this year’s high-tide transfers would be bringing the entire Inner Convent of Leathe to see him, he rightly interpreted it as another attempt by Lady Marceny to get his soul under her domination. Report had it that she, and her mother before her, had possessed his predecessor in soul and mind too. The High Head had no doubt that the report was true. Marceny was the hardest and most inexorable of all the women of Leathe. She possessed most of the power in Leathe, but she was not satisfied with that, nor with having made a vicious puppet out of that son of hers. Not she. She wanted Arth as well.
The High Head had taken precautions, swiftly. Not only did he evoke the strongest possible wards for his own soul, but he made sure that every soul under his command was equally well protected. Arth’s citadel had hummed with the application of powers—he could feel the wards pulsing away into the etheric spokes of the Wheel at this moment, withdrawing now the need for them was over. Unfortunately, the nature of the tides between universes meant that the ladies would have to stay overnight. The High Head made sure that they only came into contact with the strongest minds Arth could muster. Only those with a truly armored integrity were allowed to wait on them. This went for personnel from Maintenance Horn to clerks, cooks, and those who waited at table—everyone. He had even had to debar his friend and deputy, the Horn Head of Healing, from any dealings with the ladies and give his duties of attendance to junior mages. Poor Edward had deep uncertainties where females were concerned.
“You have surrounded us with woman-haters, Magus dear,” was almost the first thing Lady Marceny said, opening her blue eyes wide and injured in his face. “Why?”
It was the first salvo of the hostilities. He bowed, smiling. “Oh, I don’t think so, my lady. Just an average cross section of the men. You’re simply sensing the pride we here in Arth take in keeping to our Oath.”
“Really? You have made such changes since dear Peter’s time, Magus,” she replied, all honey and perfume and wide, wide eyes.
Thereafter it was assault and battery. Assault of the soul and battery of the mind, the High Head thought, running his hands through his hair. His hair was thinning and caught in strands between his fingers. He rather feared it grew thinner every time he had any dealings with Lady Marceny. There was something peculiarly avid and hungry in her that seemed to draw and suck the life out of you. Though the conditions of Arth tended to prolong a man’s life far beyond the usual, he was sure Lady Marceny would have him old well before even home time. He sighed.
The first complaint on the ladies’ agenda was that there had been so few results from other world. The High Head was naturally ready with figures. He pointed out that a steady stream of innovations was now flowing between otherworld and the Pentarchy, things both technological and magical. Particularly magical, he stressed. Since his predecessor, Magus Peter (under prompting from Lady Marceny’s mother), had so cunningly reseeded the otherworld with the principles of magery, it had responded with a burst of fertility.
The ladies did not deny this. But the Lady Istoly, who was spokeswoman for home affairs, said reproachfully that the dear Magus seemed a little out of touch with the needs of the real world. “While you live peacefully here on Arth, the Pentarchy is in ever greater trouble,” she told him. “I won’t bore you with accounts of the other continents, but you do know—do you?—that at home the Sea of Trenjen has now joined up with Corriarden Bay in the north, making us into an island continent. Unless we can find some way to stop the oceans rising, the Pentarchy as we know it may vanish over the next century or so.”
To which Lady Katny added, in dire, deep tones, “Leathe is beginning to erode.” And Lady Moury spread papers on the table, saying, “I have here an outline of your plan to perform parallel mageworks on the otherworld, to cause waters to rise there by affecting its climate, and thereby elicit a solution to our own flooding. What became of this plan, Magus? Surely we should be getting some results by now?”
In vain did the High Head point out that this was a very large magework indeed; that although the work had been most satisfactorily performed, it took time for something that size to take effect; that they were even now getting preliminary results—
How much time? the ladies wanted to know.
“At least a decade,” the High Head said firmly. “A fact which you will find stated in the plan, Lady Moury.”
“But Magus dear,” Lady Marceny said, all wide blue eyes again, “from our point of view, a decade is what you have now had. Aren’t you getting any real results at all?”
He had defended himself by explaining such results as there were in detail. True, there was as yet no relevant mageworking, but on the technological front, moves were being charted. He went on to remind them that, just as time passed at different rates on Arth and in the Pentarchy, so it passed at another rate again in otherworld. “And,” he said, “of course, you ladies all know that the relationship between our time and that of otherworld is notoriously capricious—possibly even chaotic. Sometimes five of their minutes pass to five of my months and nearly three of your years. Sometimes they seem to have had decades in half an Arth day. So for all we know, not enough time has passed yet in otherworld for those in charge of mageworks to have come up with any answers.”
; “I would have thought that all those observers you employ ought to have established some kind of ratio between our time and theirs by now,” Lady Marceny retaliated. “Are you sure these men are quite competent?”
He bit back his anger and assured her they were. Only the fact that they both served the same Goddess kept him civil. The ladies were under no such restraint. They left him in no doubt that they wanted results and they wanted them now.
And it went on like this. They wanted him to do this, or that. He tried to make it plain that although his function was to serve the Pentarchy, this did not make him their servant (thank the Goddess!), and that he was only answerable to the king. But they were used to having menservants and blandly ignored the king. And Lady Marceny set continual traps for him. Over and over again she wondered aloud whether Observer Horn was quite efficient. Was it worth trying another system? Was any system that had to straddle two universes likely to be foolproof?
Each time he restrained his anger and assured her that Arth’s method had stood the test of centuries now. If he opened himself to rage, he knew she would have him. He felt her all the time nudging at his wards, greedily waiting for him to lose control. So he did not lose his temper, much as he felt like screaming—and he could cheerfully have flung her several universes off, or even down to hellband, when, during the best dinner that Arth could provide, she went back to the subject of observers yet again.
“I only ask,” she said, leaning sweetly toward him across the table, “because I’ve been trying a new method of observation for quite a while now, and I seem to have met with a hitch. This makes me sure that you must have your troubles too. In my case, it’s maddening. Just as I was sure there was something firm to observe, the connection seems to have been lost. I must confess that I came to Arth hoping I could reestablish it, but I’m still getting nothing.”