“No, sir,” the floater replied with inhuman patience and calm. “The people you call the Powers came to this world, which you call simply ‘the world’ but which they know by the ancient catalogue name ‘Denner's Wreck,’ four hundred and sixty-two years ago. Prior to that they had lived on a variety of other worlds before gathering on Terra and choosing to investigate the lost colony on Denner's Wreck. As for Shadowdark's rank, at one time he was an emperor, absolute master of more than twenty worlds, before he grew bored with power and abdicated. Mr. Geste has never held any rank or office higher than his current position as freeholder."
Bredon was growing ever more confused. The floater's explanations were clear enough, but simply did not fit with what he thought he knew about the universe or the Powers. An emperor ruling twenty worlds? The universe as he understood it only held three inhabited worlds-the one in the sky whence mankind had come, the one he lived in now, and the one the Powers had come from, where the gods ruled and where his soul would go when he died, to either serve the gods or to be fed to the demons in the wilderness called Hell.
“I don't understand,” he admitted.
The floater was silent for a moment; Bredon glanced out the window in the surrounding bubble of darkness and saw only more darkness. He could only distinguish the window from the rest of the bubble by the presence of stars in the sky beyond.
Geste, almost invisible in the gloom, was still sunk in thought.
“I am afraid,” the floater said at last, “that explaining the situation will take a considerable length of time. Your ignorance of history and cosmology presents a significant barrier to comprehension of the present situation."
Bredon asked, “What did you say?"
“I said you don't know enough to understand my explanations,” the floater explained.
“Oh.” Bredon started to protest, to defend himself, then stopped. The thing was probably right, he realized. He was not stupid, but he was very ignorant indeed.
He didn't even know what he was talking to. Was it a familiar spirit? He didn't know.
He wanted to know, though. He wanted it very much.
This entire journey had been a flood of new experiences and new ideas, and Bredon found it exciting and invigorating, so much so that he had already forgotten his resentment of Geste, and had come close, at times, to forgetting that he was here in pursuit of Lady Sunlight, and not for the sake of the adventure itself. He wanted more. He wanted to understand what the thing was talking about. He wanted to understand who and what the Powers were, and what they were doing.
He had always liked learning, even as a very young child. He had spoken early, and had asked more questions than the other children. His heritage as a hunter had been a good one in regard to his love of knowledge; he had been not merely permitted, but required, to learn the habits of the various creatures that roamed the grasslands, to learn the patterns of the weather, to learn to read an animal's trail. He had been able to study the animals he hunted-not merely their behavior when pursued, but every aspect of their behavior, their anatomy, their environment. He had been free to roam the countryside, to explore more or less wherever he chose, and he had pitied those people who stayed always in the village. He had thought that he knew his world well.
Now he was discovering that he knew almost nothing, and he wanted to learn more. He did not want to go quietly back to his village and wait there while Geste rescued Lady Sunlight for him.
“You know, you don't really need to take me home,” he said. “I don't mind coming along while you… while you do whatever you're going to do."
“Who's taking you home?” Geste asked, startled out of his reverie. “I never said I was taking you home."
“But… but you told the platform to take me home!” Bredon blurted.
“I said take us home. I meant my home,” Geste replied coldly.
Bredon hesitated, confused, but unsure asking the obvious question would be wise.
Every story he had ever heard about Geste the Trickster had emphasized that Geste was a wanderer, that he roved about wherever he pleased. Other Powers had their holds, their places of power, but a few carried all the power they had with them-Rawl the Adjuster and Geste the Trickster were the two wanderers Bredon knew of.
He could not restrain his curiosity.
“What home?” he asked. “I thought you didn't have one."
Geste smiled, for the first time since the drone had attacked the platform.
“Ah,” he said smugly.
Bredon waited, but the Trickster did not continue.
“What home?” Bredon repeated.
Geste smiled, and gestured mysteriously with an upraised finger. “You'll see!” he said.
Bredon felt himself growing angry, but before he could say anything more Geste gave in and continued.
“It's true,” he said, still smiling cheerfully, “that I don't stay home much, and that I don't let anyone else in, as a rule. I don't suppose my home gets into the stories you people tell about us. It may well be that even some of the other Powers, as you call us, don't know it exists, since I've never held a party there, never had more than one or two guests. It's real enough, though, and you'll be the first mortal to see it in, oh, two or three hundred years."
Mollified, Bredon relaxed, and tried to think of more questions to ask.
They stood on the platform, surrounded by darkness, and Bredon knew that the world was rushing by them, but he could neither see nor feel any movement.
“How will you know when we're there?” he asked.
Geste shrugged. “I'll know."
Bredon could think of no polite way to pry further into that subject, so he switched to another that had been preying on him. “Do you really think Lady Sunlight is trapped in that place, that castle we saw?"
“Probably.” Geste's smile faded. “If she's not, if she's faked all this somehow, then she's managed a stunt that makes any of mine look trivial.” His expression turned thoughtful. “I wonder… I wonder, could she have put all this together? Got them all into a little conspiracy to get back at me?"
He hesitated, considering, then said, “No. She could never get Thaddeus to help. And Brenner wouldn't let them shoot up the High Castle for a joke, and that attack on us seemed pretty serious. Besides, if it were a set-up, they couldn't know when I'd come across it. I only tried to find Sunlight to help you; I might have gone years without checking on her whereabouts otherwise, so you'd need to be in on it, and I can't imagine Sunlight finding you and recruiting you into something like that."
Bredon agreed, “Nobody recruited me for anything. I don't know what's going on at all."
“Oh, it's simple enough, really. We Powers squabble amongst ourselves all the time, but nothing much comes of it; we all have so many machines and devices protecting us that it would take a real effort to do each other any harm. But now it looks as if one fight has turned nasty, and Thaddeus is making that effort against Brenner, and Sheila and Sunlight and the others got caught in the middle."
Bredon thought he glimpsed something in Geste's expression, something that indicated that the Trickster did not believe his own explanation, that he was worried, as if he thought something else, something more, was involved. Bredon could not imagine what else could be involved, but he could not find the nerve to ask directly, to admit he did not believe Geste. Instead, he poked around the edges of the subject.
“Do you think Lady Sunlight may be hurt?"
“She could be,” Geste admitted.
“Is it my fault? Would she have gotten involved if I hadn't tried to get into the Meadows?"
Geste glanced at him, then looked away again. “Oh, I wouldn't worry about that,” he said. “I doubt she paid any attention to you at all."
Bredon hardly found that flattering, but he let it slide as he pressed his inquiry.
“Could she be killed?” he asked. “Can a Power die?"
Geste laughed bitterly, then said, “Oh, we can die, all right, bu
t it takes a lot to kill one of us. There isn't much on Denner's Wreck that could kill a Power except another Power, and even then it isn't easy."
“Do you think Thaddeus the Black might kill Lady Sunlight?"
Geste glanced at him again, his face unusually serious. “Not intentionally,” he answered. “Are you hungry?"
The abrupt change of subject caught Bredon by surprise. “Yes,” he said, realizing suddenly that he was indeed very hungry.
“Good; so am I,” Geste said. “Worrying always gives me an appetite. We'll be at my hold in a minute, but I'd rather not wait.” He reached out and began pulling foil packets and glittering crystal vials from the air and handing them to Bredon.
When Bredon's arms were full Geste settled down cross-legged on the platform. Bredon followed his example; they sat facing each other as they peeled open packets and popped the lids from vials, and both ate and drank heartily of Geste's strange and wonderful viands.
Chapter Ten
"The Skyler's job, of course, is to maintain the sky, to put fallen stars back in their places, to herd the clouds into rainstorms, to polish the sky dry after every storm. She cleans the clockwork that moves the sun across the heavens, paints the colors of the sunset, collects the stars each sunrise and then hangs them back up at dusk.
"It's a hard, lonely job, and the Skyler is always much too busy to spare any thought for the mortals below. She hasn't even got time to go to and from a home on the ground, so long ago she picked up an island from the sea and set it sailing in the sky, where we call it the Skyland. This makes her work much easier, since she can keep all the stars and clouds neatly stored away in compartments aboard the Skyland, ready when she needs them. Imagine what the bins and cupboards must look like, with the stars twinkling and the sunsets glowing softly, the clouds piled up everywhere, white and fluffy on top, grey and dripping below! What a wonderful sight it must be!
"Of course, it can be a bit startling for people on the ground to see that island hanging overhead, but it's nothing to be afraid of, just the Skyler at her work, keeping the heavens clean and beautiful for us all."
– from the tales of Atheron the Storyteller
****
The last crumbs fell from his clothes and vanished in mid-air as Geste stood and calmly stepped off the platform.
Bredon started, then reached out tentatively and discovered that the surrounding bubble had vanished. The air was still almost motionless, but he realized it no longer felt quite as dead and trapped. An unfamiliar scent reached him, a curious mixture of flowers and spice. They had landed somewhere, some place so dark that the stars did not show above them.
Then light sprang up on all sides in soft pastel colors, like the light of an early dawn, accompanied by soft, plaintive music.
“Welcome to my home,” Geste said, gesturing at the vast chamber that surrounded them. “Welcome to Arcade."
Bredon stared silently for several seconds.
The platform rested on the floor of a great hall, a dozen times bigger than the village feasting hall, bigger than the lounge he had seen at Autumn House. The ceiling was fifteen or twenty meters high, and the nearest wall more than a dozen meters away.
Both ceiling and wall were, for as far as he could see, of some white, porous substance, almost, but not quite, like bone. The walls curved over to become the ceiling, and were divided by vertical columns that looked not so much like pillars as like ribs, which continued up across onto the ceiling, where they became a web of elaborate tracery.
Green and blue-green vines criss-crossed the walls, and seemed to be quivering. To one side the walls were hidden by a grove of strange trees. Bredon marvelled, wondering how vines and trees could grow inside the chamber, where the sun and rain could not reach them.
These trees seemed to be doing just fine, but they were like none Bredon had ever seen. Their branches grew in symmetrical patterns, and their trunks were all a peculiar ashy grey color. The leaves were green on one side, like any other leaves, but their undersides were colored a thousand subtly different hues.
Some of the trees seemed to bear fruit, but whatever they produced was nearly hidden amid the foliage, so that Bredon could not make out its nature. The scent he had noticed upon arrival seemed to come from the fruit trees.
Small creatures peered down at him from the treetops, but whenever he looked at one directly it would take fright and vanish into the leaves, so that he could make out nothing of them except wide golden eyes and flashes of soft brown fur.
Bredon had seen nothing of any of this as they approached, since he and Geste had been enclosed in the protective bubble. He looked for an opening they could have entered by, but could find none. There were no doors, no windows, no visible openings of any sort in the white walls. Even the gaps between the trees appeared too narrow to allow the platform passage. For all he could see the platform had had to pass directly through the wall.
He saw no furniture, either. Except for the enchanted forest, the room was simply a huge, ornate, empty box. And he could not figure out where the soft, even light was coming from.
Geste was grinning at him, and Bredon remembered just whose home he was in-if it was really anyone's home. He stepped down from the platform, but moved with extreme caution, half-expecting to bang his shins against an invisible chair or table, or his nose against a wall.
Nothing happened. He did not collide with anything invisible, nor did any of the creatures from the grove leap out at him. He took a few steps and stood uncertainly.
“Make yourself at home,” Geste said, waving an arm in invitation.
Bredon eyed him warily. He tried to think of some response that would cleverly express his growing weariness, annoyance, and impatience, but could think of nothing that would not have sounded simply petulant. He looked around at the bare floor, the vine-striped walls, and the alien trees.
Geste said nothing to help him.
“Thank you,” Bredon said at last. “I will.” He lowered himself cautiously and sat cross-legged on the floor.
Although he knew it was still dark outside, the air in the room was warm, its scent pleasant and relaxing, and he had had an impossibly long and eventful wake. He slipped off his vest, folded it into a makeshift pillow, then started to settle down for a nap. This, after all, was a sleeping dark, not a mid-wake dark, and he had been awake far too long.
Geste watched for a minute, then shrugged in acceptance of a minor defeat. Bredon was obviously not going to do anything amusing. “I'm being a poor host,” he said. “Gamesmaster, we need proper accommodations."
“Yes, master,” a disembodied voice, much like that of the housekeeper at Autumn House, replied. “Whatever you say, boss. You want it, you got it. Right away, you bet. Ask and ye shall receive."
The slick grey floor to one side suddenly bulged upward into an immense bubble, four or five meters in diameter, almost touching Bredon; startled, he rolled away without thinking and came to his feet in a fighting crouch, a dagger in his hand.
The bubble burst with a loud pop. The fragments dissolved into air, with a sizzle and a smell like frying batter. Where the bubble had been stood a soft, richly blue mass with several oddly-shaped appendages.
“I think,” Geste said, “that something a little more primitive is in order. Our guest is a native of Denner's Wreck."
“I got you, boss."
The blue mass sank into itself, melting away like butter over a hot fire, and then hardened into a new shape.
It had become a bed. Four of the appendages had transformed into bedposts; the rest had vanished. The blue stuff, whatever it might actually be, now looked like fine fur.
Bredon relaxed, tucked the knife back out of sight, and carefully approached the bed.
It was, as far as he could determine, just a bed. Except for its color, the blue fur that adorned it was an ordinary fur coverlet, with a texture much like good-quality rabbit. The pillow and mattress were also blue, but felt like ordinary down-filled linen. Bo
th the spiced-flower smell and the frying odor were gone, now, replaced by a cool, clean, inviting fragrance that reminded him of freshly-washed linen hung out in a spring breeze.
With a shrug, Bredon dropped his vest and climbed into the bed.
The room vanished; the bed seemed to be floating in a soft black void. He could no longer hear the music.
Bredon had seen too many wonders to be much disturbed by this, and he was utterly exhausted. He rolled over and went to sleep.
Outside the illusionary void, Geste settled back into a floating seat that popped silently up out of the floor when he first began to bend his knees. A feelie vine slithered up silently to caress his ankles, and a messenger weasel jumped down from the forest and stood alert at his side, ready to run any errand its master might care to give it. Food trees ripened a variety of tasty products, prepared to drop them on an instant's notice, and certain other trees, the cousins of the feelie vines, pumped lubricious sap into erectile tissue and stood ready. Soothing scents spilled into the air. The music transformed itself from nondescript background noise to one of Geste's favorite suites, a piece slightly over a thousand years old that Bredon would not have recognized as music at all.
The Trickster paid no attention to his obedient creatures. He watched, amused, as Bredon slept. “Resilient, isn't he? He's just taking it all in stride,” he said.
“That's just because he doesn't know what the hell is going on, boss; he doesn't know enough to be scared."
“You're probably right,” Geste agreed. “I think I'm scared.” He motioned for a drink; a silver service floater extruded itself from the floor by his foot, startling the waiting weasel.
“Why did you bring him here, boss?” Gamesmaster asked. “You aren't exactly in the habit of bringing folks home for dinner, after all."
Geste reached out and picked the waiting goblet off the floater. “You know what's been going on?” he asked. He tasted the drink, grimaced, then put it back on the floater.
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