The sun cleared the ridge behind him and seemed to smite him between the shoulder blades. Out of breath, feverish, he thrust the staff into the earth of the steep trail again and again and hauled himself along. Dust from his shuffling feel hung about him in the still air. The shrubs were pungent with resin. Insects buzzed and the plates of his armor rang discordantly with the clumsy motions of the staff.
Where am I going? . . . Why am I here? . . . Yes. To call. To send a telepathic message, telling the others that I live. Climb high, above the thought-obstructing rock. Otherwise the diminished farspeech would have no range . . .
He gained the height at last, still in the midst of a dense thicket of maquis and twisted jumper. It was easier to walk now, though, and there was a slight breeze. Call to them . . . the survivors of the Host, his blood brothers and sisters. Call and wait for rescue.
He came to the promontory’s tip, to the open spot where the umbrella pines grew and ashes and charcoal from Huldah’s last bonfire (the one celebrating his awakening) lay strewn on a burnt circle of soil. And there he had his first view of the New Sea that had drowned his world—vast and blue, not milk-white, as the shallow lagoon had been—extending to a misty termination on the far horizon and north and south to the limit of his mind’s feeble eye.
Nodonn clutched the staff with both the gauntleted hand and the wooden one as he began to fall. On his knees, still transfixed by the scene, he groaned aloud. The memory came back: the gigantic wave overwhelming them, the ones of the drowning ones. And echoing over chaos, laughter as harsh as a raven’s croak . . .
He rested under one of the scraggly pines and managed to remove his armor. Almost miraculously, he found tiny straw berries on plants creeping among the rocks and gathered enough to assuage both thirst and hunger. Then he crept to the brink of the headland and summoned his farsight again.
North: Formerly, Kersic had had salt flats stretching from its northernmost rocks to the continental scarp east of Var-Mesk, a small city whose proximity to soda-ash beds made it a center of glass production. Now all the flats were inundated and Kersic was a true island.
South: More salt water, all the way to Africa. In that direction had been one of the deepest parts of the old lagoon.
East: The interior of Kersic, rugged and forested.
West: Aven . . .
Oh, Goddess, yes. There it lay, dimly perceived. The peninsula shrunken, salt water creeping far up the valleys, and Muriah broken and silent and overgrown with jungle, while waves lapped at the cracked steps of the Thagdal’s palace. The plantations deserted, the antelopes unharvested, the chalikos and hellads reverted to the wild, and a timorous remnant of domesticated ramas scuttling about the ruins, waiting in vain for their overlords’ commands to reanimate their cold little torcs.
What was left? Who was left? What should he do?
The questions floated in his brain as crazily as the specks of goldleaf in a stirred goblet of starwater liqueur. A roaring of blood filled his ears and pulsating colored masses swam across his blurred vision.
Call for help.
No!
Why did the precognitive flare of warning admonish him? Why did every instinct shriek that he should take care, make no overt sign until he had recovered more fully—until he learned what had taken place during the six lost months he lay unconscious in the Kersican cave?
What was there to hide from? Who?
He slipped into unconsciousness. When his eyes opened again he knew that he must not call to his brothers and sisters, nor to the faint telepathic focuses that marked the mainland cities. There was only one person he dared reveal himself to, one who could be trusted to tell him the truth about the postdiluvian Many-Colored Land. Weak as he was, he could still direct his thought on the intimate mode and eventually reach her. She would have known that he lived. She would still listen for his call, even though logic insisted he was dead.
If anyone could come to him, she would.
Summoning his remaining strength, he fashioned a small bright needle of thought, a farspoken call that arrowed over the New Sea and spanned Europe, to be perceived by one mind alone:
Mercy.
2
THE STAR WAS K 1-226 IN HIS CATALOG, BUT AS SOON AS HE focused on that oddball three-planet system he knew it had to be Elirion. And second from the sun, six million years younger and in the midst of one of its miniature Ice Ages, was Poltroy. The inhabitants, who would in the Milieu be admired for their urbanity and diplomatic equipoise, were roughly at the pithecanthropine level of mental development. Pudgy little cannibals swathed to their ruby eyes in fish-fur romped over glaciers with nothing on their precoadunate minds but the ambush of their neighbors and the subsequent breaking of their skulls for a euchanstic brain-feast.
Elirion was the last star in Marc Remillard’s search-sequence and clearly useless for his purposes; nevertheless he lingered more than two hours past the allotted scrutiny time, fascinated by the primitive Poltroyans. He told himself that it was intellectual curiosity about this familiar world and its one-day-to-be-famous people. His superego sneered and suggested that he would use any excuse to delay homecoming and the nasty surprise that very likely awaited him.
The paleolithic Pottroyans hipped and hopped and bipped and bopped, and genuflected politely to their dead victims before starting the ritual trepanning operations. The blood-thirsty chieftain of one little clan was a doppelgänger for Ominen-Limpirotin, Fourth Interlocutor of the Concilium . . .
Marc withdrew his farsight at last. He told the search-director EXPLICIT. Immediately he was back in his own body, enclosed in the opaque armor that sustained his life during the period of hundredfold cortical overload. He could see someone waiting in the observatory anteroom and for one hopeful instant his heart lifted and he thought the premonition false. But it was not Hagen out there. Patricia Castellane had come, fully mind-blocked, and the intimation of disaster was confirmed.
DISENGAGE AUXILIARY CEREBROENERGETTCS. His brain began to cool. There was a nauseating implosion of pseudosensation somewhere behind his eyeballs.
REESTABLISH NORMAL METABOLIC FUNCTION. An interval of suspensory coolness, quiet marble solidity after cometary flight.
SEVER DRIVE LINKAGE, ACTIVATE CARRIAGE DESCENT KILL FENSIVE X-LASER ARRAYS REPORT BODY FUNCTION.
“Normal parameters all operator body functions,” the scanner reassured him. At this point, Hagen should have taken over, supervising removal of the brain-probes and freeing his father from the armor after double-checking his vital signs.
No help came There would never be any now.
Aloud and telepathically, he gave his own divestment commands:
WITHDRAW CEREBRAL ELECTRODES WITHDRAW CEREBELLUM AND STEM CONTACTS REMOVE GODDAM FUCKING HELMET.
Imperturbable, the computer transmitted his orders. Helmet dogs clicked open, clamps latched on, the heavy cerametal casque rotated a quarter turn, and the hoist’s vibration reached him through the attached cables. There was warm humid air, indirect light, and the familiar digital chronograph reminding him that this was Pliocene Earth.
23:07:33 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16.5. +27
The body armor fell apart in two halves and the carriage tilted to allow him egress. He did a few isometrics in place, absently touched one of the tiny wounds on his forehead left by the psychoelectronic crown of thorns, and noted that the blood had already clotted. Below the neck he was clad in a black, skintight pressure-envelope coverall, studded with receptacles for the circulatory shunts. The coverall was sopping wet and stinking of the dermal lavage he had floated in for the past twenty days. He told himself that he really ought to reformulate the gunk with a more pleasing scent.
Marc. May I come in?
The gut-clutch that had been only temporarily sidetracked by the divestment routine got in its licks. Time for the really bad news.
He climbed out of the armor and sent it off to the equipment bay. The dome-room door opened and there
was Patricia, carrying two tall iced drinks garnished with lime. She wore a backless formal dress of pale blue shot with golden threads. She looked much younger and her hair, unbound, had become the color of the maple-sugar candy Marc remembered from his New Hampshire youth.
He accepted her kiss, as briefly melting as a snowflake’s touch, then took the drink and let the alcohol-laced citrus soothe his throat. He asked, “How many others went with Hagen?”
“Twenty-eight. All of the children and the five grandbabies as well. They took all of the ATVs and smashed every boat on the island over six meters length overall.”
“Equipment?”
“Five tons of assorted weaponry, the portable sigma generator, all of the mechanical mind-screens, a very odd selection of manufacturing and processing units, miscellaneous supplies. They left four days ago. We went after them in the small boats, but Hagen and Phil Overton and young Keogh generated a squall that nearly wiped us out. And without you, our attempt at long-range coercive synthesis failed.”
“Four days.” The dark-circled eyes were more haunted than ever. “They planned it well. By now, they’re out of my coercive range.”
“But not beyond a massed creative thrust, if you furnish primary impetus. There’s no place on Earth they can escape a psychozap . . . if you choose to use it. They’re gambling that you won’t, of course.” Patricia’s mental aspect was neutral. But then, she had no offspring among the fugitives.
“I’ve got to think.” Marc ran a hand through his damp wiry curls. The chemical smell of the coverall seemed irrationally offensive to him; and as always after a star-search, he was famished. “I’m going to shower and change. Have you had supper?”
“I waited for you. You’re late.”
The characteristic one-sided smile flashed as they came into the dressing room. “I dawdled over the last star system, postponing the inevitable.”
“You expected this?” Her expression showed the dismay that her mind-shield had kept hidden from him.
“I’m beginning to think that I deliberately provoked it.”
He stripped off the coverall and entered the old-fashioned shower cubicle, luxuriating in its preprogrammed small comforts: pulsing needlejets of warm fresh water and liquid Canoe soap, salt spray, and the final icy deluge. As she handed him the toga-towel, Patricia let her eyes roam over his body in a frank appraisal that was only half jesting.
“What a pity the star-search makes you lose your tan. Otherwise . . . the same old frosty-haired Adonis with the Mephisto eyebrows. God, how I hate a self-rejuvenating man.” And covet your membrum virile!
“Sorry, luv. Another casualty of the search. For now, at any rate.” Until I get mad enough to start the life-juices flowing again.
She sighed. “Two wasted weeks in the regen tank to perk up my faded allure. Why do I bother?”
“You’re magnificent. I like the new hair. Just have patience.” And she would—ever considerate, ever faithful, and never ruining it by loving him. Patricia Castellane, who had directed the obliteration of her own home-planet in support of his Rebellion, was the only woman to share his bed since the death of Cyndia, back in the apocalypse on Eider Earth.
“Shall I summon the others?” she asked.
He pulled on a ruffled shirt. “We might as well get on with it. Call Steinbrenner, Kramer, Dalembert, Ragnar Gathen, Warshaw. Van Wyk if he’s sober. Strangford whether she is or not. And the Keoghs.” He wound a scarlet cummerbund around his waist.
“Alexis Manion?”
“To hell with him I’m surprised he didn’t take off with the kids! Encouraging that damn Felice scheme—” He broke off. The interrogatory thought flared.
One part of Patricia’s mind responded to Marc as another sent out the telepathic summons “Felice killed Vaughn Jarrow in their first encounter with her. Cloud and Elaby and Owen are all right, but the mission is in disarray.” A reprise of Owen’s reports from Spain passed instantly from Patricia’s memory to Marc’s own. He knew about Felice and Elizabeth, and about the coronation and marriage of Aiken Drum. “With Felice out of the picture for the moment,” Patricia concluded, “Elaby and Cloud are concentrating on saving Jill. They still profess loyalty to you in spite of the defection of the other children, and say that they expect to follow your directives.”
Marc allowed himself a bark of cynical laughter. He ran a comb through his hair, then offered Patricia his arm. They left the observatory and walked along the shore of Lake Serene toward his house. The young moon had gone down and the semitropical sky blazed with diamond stars. None of the constellations had the twenty-second-century pattern, of course, but the exiled rebels had named new ones. Mars hung low in the west, a baleful cockade on Napoleon’s Hat.
“Elaby and Cloud will have given up on Felice, now that she’s gone to Elizabeth,” Marc observed. “I think we’re safe in assuming that the new target will be Aiken Drum.”
“A direct assault on him when the other children reach Europe?”
“Not unless Elaby and Cloud have lost their minds.”
“A proposal to join forces, then?”
Marc paused, looking over the lake. There were boats on the glimmering water carrying his old co-conspirators toward his dock, the men and women who had been magnates of the Concilium until they linked their fates with his dream of human ascendancy in the Galactic Milieu. Debarring Manion, there were only eleven principals left alive—counting Patricia and Owen—and thirty-one subordinates.
He said, “The most likely course for the children to follow would be some kind of peaceful overture to Aiken Drum. We still don’t have any clear idea of his full potential or his vulnerabilities. Given the children’s lack of experience, their judgment of King Aiken-Lugonn is going to be even more flawed than our own.”
“The Firvulag royalty tried a crudely concerted attack on him during the Grand Loving festivities. They failed. We weren’t able to analyze the reason for the failure because of the distance, but Jeff Steinbrenner thinks Aiken might have been wearing a stem-shield generator.”
“Perhaps. On the other hand, this nonborn kingling may simply have grown in power. He’s capable of it. A most interesting young man! His metapsychic faculties are only part of his arsenal, you know. He seems to be an instinctive politician as well.”
There was fear close below the surface of Patricia’s mind. “If Aiken Drum should respond favorably to the plan to reopen the timegate—” She left the rest unsaid. With a two-way passage between the Pliocene and the Milieu, agents of the Magistratum would see that justice was visited upon the surviving rebels, even after twenty-seven years.
Mare looked up at the countless stars and was silent for several minutes. Then he said, “Just a single world with a coadunate racial mind. That’s all I need to find, Pat. The altruism of the Unity would compel them to come for us if we asked for refuge . . . and they wouldn’t comprehend the truth about poor flawed humanity until it was too late. We’d have a fresh start, but this time there would be no mistakes. We’d spin our takeover bid across decades. Infiltrate while we engender an enormous new generation artificially. We could do it—even the handful of us who remain. If I could only find the star . . .
“Marc, what are we to do now? she cried.
He took her hand and placed it on his arm again. They resumed their walk to the house, where the dock lights had come on and at least six boats had already arrived.
“Come along and share my supper.” he told her, “and then we’ll talk about it with the others.” His redaction pressed gently against her still-firm mental screen. “Don’t be afraid to open to me, Pat. I’ve known for a long time that you and the others feel that my star-search is futile. Perhaps my own subconscious does, too. If that’s the case—and I’ll know the truth before we finish tonight—I may decide that it’s time for a completely new plan of action.”
“I’m not afraid to say it, if the rest of you are!”
Gerrit Van Wyk’s eyes were bulging and bright. With his
wide mouth slightly open, scalp shining in the verandah lamp-light, and trembling little hands clutching a drained glass with rattling ice cubes, he looked more than ever like a truculent frog. He took a deep breath.
“We’ve had plenty of hints that something like this might happen. The Felice affair was a clear indication of the way the children’s minds were working. And can we blame them? Face it. Marc! Your notion of finding another coadunate world is a long shot at best, and you’ve had twenty-five years to bring it home. More than thirty-six thousand systems scanned, and only twelve with rational beings—none even approaching coadunation of the racial Mind.”
Marc still sat with Patricia at the small dining table while the nine others stood about awkwardly or occupied the scattered wicker furniture. Patricia opened the waiter and removed two plates with mangos for dessert. Marc skewered his and began to peel it with a silver knife, catching the drippings by psychokinesis.
“This time out,” he said, “I found Poltroy.”
Eight of the nine gave vent to excited mental and vocal comments. But Cordelia Warshaw, the cultural anthropologist and psychotactician, knew better. “How far up the ladder were they?”
“Roughly erectus.”
Her head bobbed confirmation. “It figures, given their slower evolutionary pace. What a pity you didn’t find the Lylmik instead.”
Marc ate neat slices of the fiendishly juicy fruit while his mind displayed a reprise of the search-sequence, reminding them all that he had begun the hunt by examining the rare star-group containing the Lylmik home-sun. He had found no trace of the galaxy’s most ancient rational race.
“They’re out there somewhere.” He touched his lips with a napkin. “But God knows where.”
“The vague little masterminds did something to their sun,” Kramer said bitterly. “Marc and I went over the matter years ago. There’s no telling what spectroscopic signature it has here in the Pliocene. Some astrophysicists among the Krondaku speculate that they might have goosed the dying star back onto the main sequence a million years or so before the first coadunate fusion. If that’s true . . .” He shrugged.