“All right,” she announced briskly as soon as we were alone. “Nobody will bother us here. This is a public datasphere lounge—but then, you should know that, shouldn’t you?” I was trapped, and we both knew it. Memories from the Library’s early indoctrination now swam to the surface of my brain, but too late. Since I had no way of accessing the datasphere, my education in its niceties had been neglected. I couldn’t blame the Librarian; I had strayed so far from our original, simple plan!
“You’ve been hiding something from me from the start,” Maire continued, her voice rising as she went on. “Timash, the Library, just being out in the middle of nowhere when you found me—not to mention Harros’ trying to kill you. And then at the same time you don’t understand the simplest machines, like the annunciator on the Lady—let alone the datasphere. Just tell me one thing: Who the hell are you?”
My brain, which had for the past several minutes been entirely incapable of making any connection with my tongue, finally got a signal through.
“It’s a long story,” I warned her feebly.
“Tell me,” she said flatly. Then she sat down at the table, crossed her arms, and waited.
I edited considerably, feeling that under the circumstances the details were unimportant—and some, such as the existence of Tehana City and Bantos Han’s involvement with the Thoran underground, were not mine to disclose. Still, when my summation was done a few minutes later, it left me feeling as though a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders.
Maire/Marella was frankly incredulous.
“I don’t know which is harder to believe: Time travel, telepathic viruses, tiger spiders, assassins… It’s too much.”
“You saw the assassin yourself. You—met him. And you can ask Timash about the virus and the spider attack. He was there.”
She shook her head, speaking almost to herself. “But time travel…?”
I sat down opposite her. “Read my mind.”
She made a face. “No! That’s disgusting!”
“Try,” I implored, reaching across the table. “Just try. I know it’s not done in polite society, but…just try.”
Mind reading, as opposed to mental communication, in a telepathic society is a gross violation of accepted ethical codes of conduct. Without the most stringent limitations, privacy would be impossible. Perhaps that explained the way pedestrians outside had avoided interrupting our line of sight; even the idea of an accidental intrusion was anathema to upright individuals. From Maire’s reaction it was plain that in her circle, at least, the notion had expanded from merely illegal to distasteful as well. Still, at my insistence, she took a deep breath, averted her eyes, and attempted to comply with my request. I could feel her shy touch skimming the very outskirts of my mind. After a moment she frowned and turned toward me.
“There’s nothing there,” she said at last in a confused tone of voice. “It’s like…not like you’re blocking me, it’s like you’re invisible.” She touched my hand as though to reassure herself that I was not, after all this, a hologram.
“Now do you believe me? According to the Library, the telepathic ability was only latent in my time. I learned to use it when that part of my brain was stimulated by being here amongst all of you, but my brain structure is so different from yours that you can’t pick up anything I’m thinking unless I want you to.”
“A time traveler with an invisible mind,” she breathed. “I sure can pick ‘em.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Oh!” She jumped. “Sorry, I was just thinking out loud. Hold on a second; I’m wondering if I want to risk a call to some friends of mine.”
“It should be safe, shouldn’t it? You said no one knew you by this name.”
“Yeah. But by the same token, nobody’s going to take my calls, either… Come on.”
Once Marella explained to me the principle behind the neural camouflaging, I had no further difficulty seeing the city for the buildings. She also explained to me that the project had been simplified (and the cost minimized) by situating all commercial and municipal buildings either completely or substantially underground. Beneath our feet was a warren of subterranean avenues, plazas, and moving sidewalks “almost as beautiful in its own way as the surface,” although since our travels did not take us down there, I had no way of determining the objective truth of her words.
The sidewalks themselves were visible, even above ground. This was fortunate, given their tendency to move you along at their pace, not yours. Had they been camouflaged, they would have presented a significant hazard. As it was, they offered an opportunity to enjoy the passing scenery at a brisk, but not breathtaking, rate.
The sensation of passing by buildings I could not see was odd. At times I heard sounds coming from an apparent void, and other times the wind would blow harder for no evident reason, the result of being forced between two adjacent structures. If I concentrated in the slightest, they shimmered before me like fairy towers. Even when I wanted to see them, they were insubstantial curvilinear edifices of glassy steel, the easier to adapt to the camouflage, yet so far as I could tell, privacy was never sacrificed. Mostly, I relaxed and let my mind wander over the scapes that Nature had built for herself.
Our journey ended far north of our starting place, before a low, walled manor on a bluff overlooking the sea. As soon as Marella named it as our destination, I could see it clearly. Unlike the skyscrapers of “downtown,” this two-story structure reminded me of the ranch houses of my native California. All of the ocean-facing walls were clear, the afternoon sun glinting in a hundred facets. We crossed the wall through an open gateway, immediately veering past the formal gardens, to our left.
“Where are we going?” I asked. “The entrance is over there.”
Marella kept walking around the side of the building. “We have to go around to the servant’s entrance. It wouldn’t do to have anyone see us march straight up to the front door. Lords and ladies don’t have grav techs and—” she glanced at me— “whatever you are, coming to dinner.”
There was no annunciator at the side entrance, but an actual pushbutton. I will call the man who answered the summons a footman, for lack of a better term. He was Thoran, as all the servants proved to be.
“Yes?”
Marella said nothing, but merely stared at him with uncommon concentration. Whatever telepathic communication passed between them was unintelligible to me, but within a few seconds the footman had stepped back to allow us entrance.
“Follow me, please. I will inform Mr. Beene.”
Mr. Beene, obviously the senior houseman, collected us without a word or change to his aristocratically serene face. We were led for a short while along airy halls, some interior, some exterior, the former decorated with the sort of dark, overly dramatic portraits that the rich had favored even in my own time. I was again impressed to see how little Man had changed. Eventually we were asked to wait in a comfortable sitting room while Mr. Beene summoned “his Lordship.” For a moment as he left his composure slipped in the most minute degree and I caught the merest wisp of thought: He was hoping we wouldn’t sit on any of the furniture.
Nor was that the extent of his distrust. Surrendering to my paranoid leanings, I tried the door. It was locked. We were trapped.
Chapter 48
In the House of a Friend
Marella was more sanguine than I concerning our plight, when I informed her of the locked door.
“Well, naturally he locked us in,” she said, rolling her eyes as if suddenly realizing that I lacked the breeding to be admitted into the homes of quality. “My cousin would fire him in a minute. He has no idea who we are; he can’t leave us to run around the house unsupervised.”
I frowned. “Then why did he let us in?”
“I knew the password. But even that will only get you so far.” She glanced around at the walls. “What do you think of his pictures? I think they’re ghastly.”
In subject they were not so different as those dec
orating the walls of the manor houses of England (or at least those few to which I had been granted entry), which I supposed not surprising given that the human (or Nuum) visage has not changed all that much, even in a million years. I stared particularly at a grand lady whose disapproving brows glowered over the hearth (another innovation that had come down from the caves). My eyes ran over the lines of the drawing and puzzled over the subtle wrongness of the piece. I stepped closer and realized that there were no brush strokes—but that wasn’t it. Not until I was standing quite close did I see that the woman in the picture was breathing. I jumped back with a start.
“What’s wrong with you?” Marella asked with more amusement than concern.
“She—she’s alive!”
Marella tsked. “Hardly. She’s been dead for over a hundred years. And good riddance, from the looks of her.”
I slowed my breathing, eager to recover quickly in the face of my companion’s disdain.
“She does appear to have been an old battleax, as we’d say back home. I wonder who she was.”
“My great-aunt,” Marella replied carelessly. I was saved from further embarrassment by the opening door.
The man who stepped into the room was tall and thin, with receding copper hair. His skin was an almost shocking shade of white, his nose so aquiline it could have been copied from a Roman coin. His green eyes flickered over both of us without recognition. Behind and to one side, Mr. Beene stood in a stance more bodyguard than servant, and thinking back on Marella’s words, I had little doubt my impression was accurate. His lordship’s eyes focused on Marella.
“You wished to see me?” His voice blended courtesy with command, neatly masking the impatience he could not resist radiating. “I have guests…”
Again, instead of answering directly, Marella simply stared deeply into his eyes. And again, although I could pick up nothing of the private communication, its import was immediately clear.
His eyes widening and his mouth open in a wordless cry of joy, his lordship swooped Marella up in his arms; she returned his embrace with a sob. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mr. Beene retire from the room. The door silently slid closed behind him.
“Maire!” his lordship breathed when finally they released one another and he held her at arm’s length. “Where have you been? How did you get here?”
Maire, for that was who she apparently was once more, wiped a happy tear away, reached for me and pulled me forward.
“Allow me to introduce Keryl Clee. Keryl, this is my cousin Lottric Valeuse, Baron Altaiv.” We exchanged greetings, and I saw the baron’s face go slack for an instant in what was becoming a familiar expression: He was querying the datasphere about me.
Almost as familiar was loss of color he showed a moment later when he realized I wasn’t in the datasphere.
“Maire, he’s a ghost!”
“Farren sent one of his barges to kill me, Lottric. Keryl saved my life.”
“He should be arrested!” But Lottric was relaxing even as he said it. “This does explain a great deal,” he said more thoughtfully. “Do you have any proof?”
“No.” Maire shook her head. “And I don’t know if it would do any good if I did.” She tugged at her cousin’s tunic. “Lottric, what’s happened to my father?”
Our host waved us into chairs, not without one last wary glance in my direction.
“I’m not sure. The official word from the palace is that he’s been taken ill, but no one’s allowed to see him—not even me. The Council of Nobles has been swarming into the city like ants, but I don’t know if even they’ve been allowed to see him.” Seeing the look on Maire’s face, he rushed on. “I’m sure he’s all right. Not everyone on the Council is a friend of Farren’s—a lot of them have known your father for years. Farren wouldn’t dare try anything unless he was sure of his position.”
“Which explains why he wanted you out of the way, Maire,” I contributed. “Until you’re gone, Farren can’t have himself appointed your father’s heir.”
Lottric shot me a look. “What are you talking about? Do you know something?”
Maire, knowing as she did that my understanding of her country’s political structure was negligible, was staring at me with even greater surprise.
“It only stands to reason,” I said. “It’s been done a hundred times before.”
“Where you come from, perhaps,” Lottric muttered darkly. “But not here.”
“No,” Maire said slowly. “He may have something. Farren’s been trying to marry onto the throne for years. Maybe he just got tired of waiting.”
“Or perhaps he’s looking to turn the Thoran situation to his advantage. The Council may be willing to listen to a new voice,” Lottric mused, “but that only helps Farren if he can get on the Council.”
“Which he could do if he took the throne of Dure!” Maire finished.
Lottric nodded. “He might, I suppose, if we can’t produce you soon. If the Council thinks your father is really ill, they’ll want to appoint a regent, at least. And with Farren’s connections, he’ll be in.”
“It should be you,” Maire said.
Lottric nodded unhappily and sighed. “But it won’t be. Which is why you have to get to the palace and present yourself to the Council. Farren won’t have a chance if you’re around.”
“If she’s alive, you mean,” I cut in.
“Surely you don’t think Farren would shoot her right in front of the Council of Nobles!”
“What if he did? Who’d stop him?”
Lottric drew a breath as if to protest my thought, but Maire spoke first.
“He’s right, Lottric. You have no idea the lengths Farren went to, to try to assassinate me. He not only bribed my crew to mutiny, he sent one of his own to clean up after them and eliminate the witnesses. If Keryl hadn’t stopped them, I, my crew, the rowers—we’d all be dead, and Farren would be on the throne already. I don’t think he’d stop at anything.”
“But I still think if you should present yourself to the Council…”
“Even if I could, I don’t have any proof that Farren’s done anything.”
“But there has to be a way…”
“If you would allow me,” interrupted a soft, pedantic voice that I had learned to love, “I may have a plan.”
And the Librarian materialized in our midst, an impish smile playing around the wrinkled corners of his mouth.
Chapter 49
Before the Council of Nobles
I kept my eyes straight ahead, only their involuntary blinking betraying the difference between me and the android statuary that lined the sides of the immense plaza before the palace of the duke. The statues, legendary heroes and historic leaders of the Nuum, assumed the poses and repeated the speeches of their models to whomever strolled near, a fantastical tourist attraction that would have held me spellbound for hours in more normal times. But today my duty held me even more inanimate than they—with the demeanor befitting a member of the personal guard of Valeuse, Baron Altaiv.
Both the baron and Maire had initially voiced skepticism over following a plan conceived by a computer, and a mere branch library, at that. I, on the other hand, had spent a year huddled in the mud and snow following the plans of fellow human beings who had far less knowledge than the Librarian, and whom, I had often suspected, cared far less for my welfare. At least I knew the Librarian’s plan was based on historical research—he made a point of annotating each and every one of his ideas until Maire surrendered and Lottric’s objections collapsed under the sheer weight of history.
At last our turn came and Lottric was ushered inside, close-followed by his personal attendants and guards; only six of us, but all he was allowed. The entire Council of Nobles was meeting in emergency session, and we were, it was made clear, simply a symbolic gesture. Our weapons were limited to the Nuum sword-staffs, but to be fair, such was the fear of the nobles of assassination that energy or projectile weapons of every sort had been banned from the chambe
rs despite the protective scanners. I made a mental note to congratulate Bantos Han, should we be fortunate enough to meet again this side of Paradise: His partisans and allies had certainly made their presence known! I struggled not to show my pride on the surface before we crossed the threshold and underwent the mental scans.
Lottric had adamantly refused to believe that the servers would not detect my thoughts, and without being able to take him completely into my confidence, I could hardly blame him. In the end, it was only Maire’s personal plea that convinced the baron to allow the plan to proceed; she could not tell him how I was to escape the scans, only pledge her complete faith that I would. He was even less enamored with the second part of the Librarian’s plan, which involved smuggling Maire herself inside the palace, but on that point she could add assurances of her own: “I live there, Lottric. You think I’ve never sneaked out without Security knowing it? And sneaking out’s no good if you can’t sneak back in again.”
I crossed the threshold, the line of no return, with my fellows, and nothing happened. If I felt even a tingling, it was my own “anticipation:” it would not befit my station to admit to nervousness.
In the first several moments of my habitation of this legendary building, I was unaware of any special attributes, as our marching orders kept me staring straight ahead. This was not the time to gawk like a doughboy on his first trip to Paris. And the bulk of my vision was occupied by the head of the guard who preceded me.
But the human mind is not limited to the sense of sight (nor even to a tightly-controlled telepathic sense). The skin on my bare arms prickled at the small but steep temperature decline as we moved inside, and my ears seemed to strain for something that they could not detect and I could not consciously identify. It took me a few moments before I realized that the echoes were missing.
In every cavernous hall, one hears whispers of far-off conversations, the shuffling of feet on the floor, the occasional banging of a distant door. None of these—save our own footsteps—were present, and even our steps seemed to fade away without ever returning in echo. Breaking orders, I allowed my eyes to flicker right and left. Let someone notice—my break in decorum was nothing compared to what would soon commence.
The Stolen Future Box Set Page 34
