by Джеффри Лорд
She was plucking at his trousers, trying to get his attention again.
«Yes, Truja.»
«Tell-Himgar. No time-wish I had-«
«I know. I'll tell him. You rest.»
«No. Idrana-«
«She's dead.»
«I know. Put-spear-myself. Looked like-Senar did it. Got-me-with sword-didn't step back. But she's dead. Had to-honor-future of Brega City-oh, Mother Kina!» The last was almost a scream. Truja clenched her teeth and for a moment her body contorted like a worm on a hook. Then she slumped back, blood trickling from her mouth. A moment later her eyes drifted closed, and her breathing stopped.
Chapter 19
Blade became aware of someone standing behind him. He turned around, and saw Himgar. The man's face was frozen in the expression of one who would like to cry but can't spare the time or energy. His voice was steady as he said:
«Blade, the battle is over. And our victory-your victory-is complete.»
Blade straightened up, rubbed his smarting eyes, and looked around the battlefield. At least the first part of Himgar's statement was correct. There were no organized groups of the enemy anywhere in sight. Miles away in all directions Blade could see little scattered groups of fugitive Senar. All of them were running as fast as they could and making no attempt to turn and fight their pursuers. Closer in, where the main battle had been fought, there was not a single square yard of ground without at least one body. Most of the bodies — men, women, Blenar, Senar-were motionless and already stiffening. Some were still writhing and twisting. Blade saw both Purple River and city fighters searching out the living, ending their struggles if they were enemy, trying to help them if they were friendly. The fighters of the two allies were also watching each other cautiously. Their shared victory was not enough to create mutual trust after so many centuries of mutual hostility and misunderstanding.
But that trust would have to come sooner or later, or all the dead of the city and the Purple River today would have died for no purpose. Blade sighed. The second part of Himgar's remarks was hardly correct.
«The victory is not complete,» he said sharply. «We still have to win over the city, the way Truja hoped we would be able to do. And that will take more work.»
Himgar almost groaned out loud. Blade couldn't really blame him. He himself was fighting an almost overwhelming temptation to sit down and rest. It took an effort even to think about doing anything else.
But Blade found the energy to think, and to plan, and eventually to act. His orders went out, and bit by bit they were obeyed. The bodies were piled up and parties sent to cut wood for funeral pyres. The wounded of both allied armies were placed, under the care of the doctors from the city, with their more advanced knowledge.
Meanwhile the fleeing Senar and their pursuers both passed out of sight. Between those pursuers and the local farm women, few of the Senar would escape. With his memories of Nugun, Blade could not help wishing there was something else to do with the Senar than mercilessly slaughter them. Some day the new society growing in Brega should be able to reach out and take in even the Senar. Perhaps its medicine could discover and eradicate whatever malignant influence distorted their bodies and stunted their minds.
But that was for a future many generations distant. For the moment, the fewer Senar who got back to their homes, the longer it would be before they considered another attack on the city. And the city would need a good many years of peace.
There were still a fair number of women in the city who seemed determined to continue living in the past, of course. The battle had not been over for two hours before some of the Blues and Greens were using up the last of their energy slashing at each other. Blade shouted angry orders, and the farm women waded in with their tools and clubs like riot police, beating and shoving the combatants apart.
Blade noticed, in fact, that the farm women were almost strutting in front of their sisters from the city. They, the despised and half-heretical women of the westlands, had seen what had to be done more clearly than the wise women of the city. And they had done more of what needed to be done than their sisters had, shedding their blood more freely in doing so. Or so it seemed to them, at least. Blade hoped the farm women would not strut enough to cause bad blood between them and the city.
But that was something which he could not possibly hope to control. What he could do, and had to do now, was to enter the city and approach the House of Fertility. Perhaps he could enter it, if the Mistress and the guardians were so disposed. He could certainly speak with them, tell them about the new society which had been hammered out in blood that morning.
Himgar was unable to speak for nearly a minute after Blade threw out the suggestion. And all he could say when he did find his voice was, «Why?»
Blade shrugged. «If the women are planning treachery-well, I know the city, and I have a good chance of running or fighting. Also, I can perhaps understand what the Mistress will say better than others of your people.»
«Possibly. But-to enter the House of Fertility-?»
«It will have to be done sooner or later,» said Blade wearily. «And the sooner the better. If we move in before the women of the city recover from their shock, we will be in a much stronger position. I'm willing to risk having to fight my way out of the city again, but I'll be damned if I want to have to fight my way into it.»
Himgar had to concede that point. An hour later Blade had picked seventy volunteers for his expedition to the city, including Melyna. And an hour after that, the seventy-one were on the march.
Although they had all fought through the battle, Blade pushed his volunteers along as ruthlessly as he pushed himself. He had meant what he said to Himgar about the need for haste, before the women of the city recovered from the shock. And there was another reason for haste, one that he could not very well admit to anyone. His time in this dimension could not last much longer. He badly wanted to take something home besides a tale of more than usually hair-raising adventures among more than usually strange peoples.
Some of them were almost asleep on their feet, but all seventy were still with Blade when he marched up to the main gate of the city. It was just before dawn of the next morning, with the sky only beginning to turn gray. Blade stepped forward and hailed the gate. He was not sure that the response would not be a flight of arrows. And he would not have particularly blamed the women if it had been.
But it was not. By good fortune the commander of the gate was the same officer who had been on duty the day of Blade's flight from the city. She even recognized him in the dim light. Her voice held a strange, almost bantering note as she spoke to him.
«Well-if it isn't the strange Senar. Have you come to gloat over what you have done to the city?»
«No, I have not. I have come to pay my respects to the Mistress of Fertility, and if possible to enter the House of Fertility.»
This produced a prolonged and total silence from the gate tower. Eventually there were mutterings and murmurings, as though a debate were going on among the guards on duty. Then the commander's voice came again.
«Enter the city, man, and trust us at the gate for anything we can control. But I cannot aid your suit before the Mistress. Still less can we protect you from any women in the city who may take vengeance for»-the officer's voice choked-«seeing the Law of Mother Kina fall down about them.» Her voice broke, faded away, and then there was the sound of sobbing in the darkness above.
Blade did not feel like waiting around to witness the officer's humiliation. As soon as the gate opened, he led his followers through it at a trot and into the city.
It would not have mattered whether the women of the city were friendly or not, for the streets were almost totally deserted. At least there were few living women out and about, and these dove for cover when Blade's grim and well-armed seventy came marching past. But there were a good many bodies still littering the streets. A nauseating miasma of death and decay and stark fear hung over the city.
So did a
terrible and sullen silence. Occasionally moans and cries floated out of half-open windows, and once or twice drunken laughter. Once the marching column had to scatter to avoid a shower of tiles hurled down from above amid mocking laughter. Blade's party did not even bother to send any arrows back. It seemed that the women of the city had crawled away into hiding like wounded animals, to try to come to terms with their grief and shock.
They came up to the House of Fertility at a brisk trot and formed a ring around the broad wooden stairs. Blade walked up those stairs with Melyna one step behind him and struck the high silver door three times with the hilt of his sword.
«Who craves entrance?» came a booming voice from above.
«Blade, a warrior of the Purple River, to speak with the Mistress.»
As Blade had expected, this produced another of those long silences. This one stretched on for nearly ten minutes. The people in the street below began to fidget. The sky had grown noticeably lighter by the time the silence was broken.
It was broken by the huge silver door beginning to slide open, smoothly and with only the faintest of grating sounds. There was a concerted gasp from the people below. The door slid into a wall slot, leaving an arched opening thirty feet high and forty feet wide.
Against the pale gold light filling the opening Blade saw a small figure silhouetted.
It was a woman, the smallest that Blade had seen in Brega. She was several inches under five feet tall and looked at least a hundred years old. Her hair was silvery-white, making a striking contrast with her plain black robe.
«You are Blade.» It was a statement, not a question.
«I am.»
«I am the Mistress. Enter the House, and the woman with you also.»
«My-«
«They may wait. No harm will come to them, the city being as it is.»
Blade hesitated for a moment, but only for a moment. A trap? Not likely. The Mistress looked about as capable of setting a trap as of beating him in hand-to-hand combat. He stepped forward, Melyna followed him more slowly, and the door slid shut behind them.
There was no trap for Blade and Melyna in the House of Fertility. Instead, there were three hours of tramping endless corridors floored in shining black and walled in equally glossy white. Three hours of following the tireless footsteps of the diminutive Mistress from one gold-vaulted chamber to another. Three hours of marvels-enough to give Home Dimension doctors ten years' work in analyzing any one of them and the people of Brega a thousand years' work in relearning how to use them all.
Outside, Blade knew that daylight must long since have come. Perhaps the city had awakened from its daze, and his party was fighting for their lives against the enraged women. The Mistress assured him that this was not so. But how could she know? The walls of the house seemed thick enough to resist a bomb, let alone shut out the noise of any battle.
And then finally they came to the Chambers of Nurture. Row on row of tubular glass incubators filled it, stretching away into the shadows at the far end. In almost every incubator was a baby-naked, healthy pink, sometimes kicking small limbs. At the end of each incubator sat a small gold box about a foot long, with a dozen or so flickering lights on the top.
The Mistress pointed. «As soon as an infant can live outside the womb, it is taken from its Brood Mother and brought here. It is placed in a Nurturing Cell, and the Watcher for the Cell is activated. For-«
«The Watcher is-what?» Blade stared at the gleaming cylinders and the gold boxes.
«The gold box. It senses any change in the condition of the baby, and-«
But Blade was not listening to the explanation of the Mistress. Pain-raw, tearing pain-was beginning to pound in his head, pound at his brain. Lord Leighton's computer was only seconds from taking him. His time in this dimension was coming to an end, and he still had nothing to show for it.
The Watcher! Perhaps it was worth-
«Mistress!» He fought to keep his voice under control. «Could I see one of the Watchers? I want to-look at one-more closely. In-my-land-«He did not want to just run over and snatch a Watcher, risking the precarious peace to satisfy his own curiosity, or even to carry out his mission!
The Mistress looked at Blade strangely, for his voice sounded distorted and pain-ridden even to his own ears. But she stepped over to one of the vacant Cells and picked up its Watcher. She came back to Blade, saying, «To activate it, one-«
But Blade could hold back no longer. His arms reached out; his hands clutched the box so hard that he felt the thin metal bend under his grip. The Mistress stared wide-eyed, while Melyna gaped in growing terror.
Blade clutched the Watcher to his chest just as the pain reached a peak. He knew his legs were buckling under him, but he managed to throw himself backward instead of falling on the Watcher. His head struck the floor with a crash and pain flamed through him. But he did not relax his grip on the Watcher. He was still holding his arms clamped around it when the pain washed over him and carried him away into blackness.
Chapter 20
J stubbed out his cigar in the marble ashtray and pushed the manila folder across the teakwood desk at Blade.
«There's your copy, Richard. It's only a preliminary assessment, of course, but-«
«What is the Watcher, then?»
J began to rummage in one drawer of the desk for another cigar as he spoke. «Apparently it is an extremely complex protein compound, only one very small step below living matter. That is a rather impressive achievement, all by itself.»
«There's more?»
«Yes. Remember what the Mistress said-about the Watcher sensing changes in the baby's condition? Well, that's what it does. In some way it undergoes subtle chemical changes whenever there is a deterioration in the vital signs of any human being it is watching.»
«A sort of robot nurse, in other words?»
«All that-and more besides. The people in Brega must have been very close to creating artificial life-completely synthetic artificial life-when the disaster came upon them. But at least we've got the Watcher.»
«By good luck and a margin of about ten seconds, yes.»
There was an edge in Blade's voice as he said that which made J look sharply at the younger man. Blade showed no sign of injury from his trip to Brega except a small bandage over his scalp wound. He was tanned even more than usual, and seemed to have been toughened and trimmed down. That was it-Blade was looking too lean, too stripped down to the basics. J swallowed. This would be a delicate question.
«Is-something particular bothering you-about the trip to Brega?»
Blade shrugged. «Not this trip all by itself. But this on top of all the others-I'm getting tired of relying so much on luck.»
«You don't rely on it, Richard. You-«
«Please-spare me the lecture about making my own luck.» Blade paused. «Sorry, sir. I shouldn't have snapped back that way. But-sometimes I just get the feeling that I'm going around in circles. A lot of work is going into-what? So far there hasn't been a single worthwhile development from everything I've brought back.»
It was J's turn to shrug. «I know. I don't like it any better than you do. But the scientists aren't magicians. And if large-scale teleportation ever gets perfected-«
«And how long is that going to take?» said Blade. He took a long pull at his Scotch.
«Lord Leighton estimates-not more than another five years.»
Blade was so obviously not making the obvious retort-«I may be dead by then»-that J felt slightly embarrassed. To cover that feeling, he lit a cigar from the drawer and took a few puffs on it.
«I'm not asking to be taken off the project,» Blade went on. «It's too important for England-and that means I'm too important for England. I can't indulge myself-although I can't pretend any more that the idea isn't getting tempting.» When Blade mentioned England, there was a world of meaning in the word, meaning which would have sounded like parody or satire if anybody else had said it. But Blade and J-and Lord Leighton and the Prime M
inister-saw eye-to-eye on this, if on little else.
«But I am going to be losing efficiency if I have to carry the whole burden alone too much longer. More than another three or four trips, I suspect. I'm not particularly interested in going back to some places I've already been. So as far as I'm concerned, you can shove Controlled Return up the flue. But I very badly want and need an alternate-or at least a partner. Somebody to guard my back. Consider that suggestion I put in my report.»
«About checking for possible woman partners?»
«Yes. You seem to have drawn a blank with the men so far. I admit women tend to be at a slight physical disadvantage. But suppose they turn out to have more tolerance for the mental stresses of a dimensional transfer?»
«A rather large supposition, one would think.»
«Possibly. But certainly worth exploring.»
«And just as certainly better than risking the whole project, or at least delaying it. I take your point. Very well, I'll extend the search net to qualified women. I doubt if there are more than two or three hundred in the whole free world worth examining. So it shouldn't take that long.»
«I hope not. And-speaking of women-«
«How is Elizabeth?»
«Yes.» Blade's face was slightly flushed. Thank God that Richard could show some concern for someone like Elizabeth! J had met-and even employed-ice-cold killing machines-too many of them. But he had never felt comfortable around them.
«We pushed our inquiry about Elizabeth as far as we could. And as far as we pushed it, her story stood up. So-she's on her way to Canada by now, and there's no reason to think that she won't be perfectly safe. She'll probably be married and have a child or two within five years.»
«I hope so. She was-it was almost obscene, using somebody like that in the game. What turned up about the people behind her, by the way?»
«That we're still having to push along, I'm afraid. Other than the guns, there are no definite signs of any Soviet role in the whole affair.»
