Behind them, the uniformed men started yelling in panic.
"Oh! Steps that move!" Gwen cried in glee. "Then 'twas not a mere dream!"
"What?… Oh! The dreamhouse!" Chornoi wrinkled her nose. "Yeah, I hated that stairway. But keep walking, please, Miz Gallowglass. They'll try to head us off."
"Certes, an thou dost wish it!" Gwen tripped gleefully down the staircase. Rod tripped, period, but the field gave him a soft landing, and he caught Gwen's hand to steady himself as he came back onto his feet.
"Why do they shout so?" Gwen frowned back up at the security guards, who were just appearing at the head of the stairs.
"Because what we're doing is dangerous," Chornoi explained. "Here,we're at the bottom! See that clear wall, Miz Gallowglass? Just stroll over there, would you?"
Rod suddenly realized what they were doing. He paled.
"All the way," Chornoi directed. "Up against the doorway—that's right. Now, we wait."
Gwen turned to face the stairway. "Wherefore do we no longer flee?"
The armsmen thundered down the escalator, saw the company against the doorway in the clear plasticrete wall, and skidded to a halt, frozen in horror.
"This tunnel is a linear accelerator," Chornoi explained. "It's lined with ring-shaped electromagnets, and they turn on and off in sequence, so it's almost as though a magnetic field were moving down this tunnel."
Gwen's eyes had lost focus as she absorbed the concept.
She nodded. "Ingenious. Yet what purpose doth it serve?"
"They put, uh, 'carriages' inside the tunnel, Miz Gallowglass—tubular carriages, without wheels; they call them 'capsules.' They're fitted out with seats and carpets, and each one holds a hundred people."
Gwen frowned. "'Tis an odd mode of travel."
"Not really. You see, these capsules can shoot through these tubes at hundreds of miles per hour, and there's a huge network of tubes, so you can get to almost anyplace in the world through them. If we climbed into a capsule now, here underneath the island of Medeira, we could be in Puerto Rico, the nexus for the Americas, in four hours. That's thousands of miles away."
"'Tis incredible," Gwen breathed. Then her eyes focused, and she frowned. "How many folk are in such carriages at this moment?"
"Probably a million or so."
"And," Gwen said slowly, "What would happen if these men-at-arms so filled my field with flame, that I could no longer hold it in its form?"
"All that energy would be released in a single instant," Chornoi said softly. "It'd all cut loose in one huge explosion. It'd kill the four of us, of course, but it'd also wreck this station, and this section of tube."
Gwen nodded slowly. "Then the force would no longer flow."
"That's right," Chornoi said.
"And all the carriages with all those folk would come to a halt?"
"Yes. Slowly—but they would stop. And their lights would go out. Also the fans that blow cool air to them. The farther down you go, Miz Gallowglass, the hotter it gets."
"Would they all die, then?" Gwen said faintly.
"Not most of them—at least, not right away. But some of them would be hundreds of miles from the nearest station—even thousands, for the ones under the sea floor. So it'd take so long to get them out, that some of them might actually starve. More likely, they'd panic and trample each other. Or suffocate."
Gwen was trembling. "Whate'er the cost, I will not slay so many."
"You won't—they will. Only they won't take a chance on it, because they know what their bosses would do to them. They don't dare risk it, especially since some of the people in those tubes right now might be PEST officials. Or their wives and families."
Sure enough, the armsmen were holding a quick conference, darting glances at one another while they kept their blasters trained on the company.
"Shake 'em up a little," Chornoi advised. "Expand the field."
Gwen frowned, but the moire moved away from them on all sides. It touched the clear wall, then went through it.
The armsmen went rigid, staring. Then one of them barked an order, and they began to retreat to the "up" escalator. Slowly, they disappeared from sight, one by one, backwards.
When the last was gone, Gwen released her breath in a huge sigh. "Tell me, sin that thou dost seem to know— how can I dissipate this bubble of force, without the explosion thou didst speak of?"
Chornoi frowned. "Think you can let all that energy go, slowly?"
"Aye, that I can. Yet where shall it go when I do release it?"
Chornoi expelled a sigh of relief. "Into the wall, Miz Gallowglass. That's no problem, thank Heaven. Just take us over next to one of the rock walls, and let the power discharge."
Gwen looked puzzled, but she moved slowly over to the nearest solid wall.
"That's it, so the bubble's just touching it," Chornoi prompted. "Now, as it gets smaller, move closer to the wall, so the bubble stays in contact. Okay, try letting go."
Gwen scowled in concentration, and sparks cracked like pistol shots, wherever the skin of the bubble touched the wall.
Rod watched in awe as the power grounded itself out, wondering how he'd ever be able to embrace Gwen again.
"It's bedrock," Chornoi explained as the bubble shrank. "The energy goes through the wall, on down into the bones of the very earth itself. It's big, Miz Gallowglass, very big. There's a lot of rock there to soak up power."
"Mayhap it soaks not swiftly enow," Gwen said, frowning. "The stone doth glow."
They looked and, sure enough, the rock wall had turned cherry red.
"I think the bedrock can take it." Chornoi frowned. "After all, the bubble's almost gone, and the stone's not softened yet."
Rod nodded. "As long as it's only red, we're probably okay."
"Tis gone," Gwen sighed, as the last of the power jumped into the wall in one final pistol-shot spark. "Now whither do we go?"
"Why, into a tube-car, of course." Chornoi grinned. "Shall we?"
They waited by the door in the clear wall for five minutes or so. It was five minutes too long for Rod; he kept glancing back at the escalators with apprehension. But finally, a tube-car swooshed up to the door and hissed to a stop. The door rolled back, and a stream of people filed out.
"Let 'em go, let 'em go," Chornoi murmured. "The more of them who get off, the more room there is for us."
Finally, they could step aboard. There were only about twenty people in the car, so they were able to take four seats that faced each other, but were well away from anyone else.
Gwen glanced nervously at the door. "When will it start?"
"It already did." Chornoi smiled, amused. "Smooth ride, isn't it?"
"It is, indeed." Gwen's eyes were wide with astonishment. "Yet tell me—how is't we ride? Wherefore hath that little man's 'superiors' not halted all carriages near to us?"
"They can't," Chornoi explained. "They'd have to shut off power to this whole sector, and that would leave thousands of people trapped until they could find us. And I think they realize that if they leave us alone in the dark in a tunnel-complex like this, they might never find us."
Rod's face was wooden; he was filled with sullen resentment, hearing Chornoi explain the facts of the situation to Gwen. He glared around him, looking for an outlet for the emotion—surely it couldn't be jealousy?
There! That gleaming, modest, inch-wide circlet on the front wall. "Smile," he advised, "we're on somebody's screen."
The other three turned around, staring at the front of the car. But Rod's eyes narrowed as he glared at it, and the faintest whiff of smoke coiled out of the vent nearest it. Passengers in the front of the car began to sniff, frowning.
"Neatly done." Gwen sounded surprised. "Yet wherefore, husband? What harm was there in it?"
"It was an electronic eye," Rod explained, "and when we decide to get off this high-speed sausage, I'd rather the security people didn't know exactly where we did it."
"Ah! Well thought!" Gwen swept the rest
of the car with a thoughtful gaze. "Nay—I sense no more of them…"
Rod stared. She could sense electromagnetic fields now, too?
Gwen shook her head with decision. "Nay, only the one."
"Makes sense," Chornoi snorted. "No doubt the Proletarian Eclectic State of Terra was too cheap to put more than one audio and one video pickup on each car."
Rod's mouth tightened, though he had a fleeting thought that Chornoi might have been trying to be tactful. Irritated, he directed a glare at the small grille in the ceiling in the center of the car, thinking searing thoughts. When smoke curled out of it, he relaxed. "Okay. Audio's out now, too."
Yorick nodded, satisfied. "No way they can tell where we get out now."
Rod frowned at a sudden thought. "But they don't have to, do they? They just have to detail a bunch of guards at every station." He turned to Chornoi. "How many do we have coming up?"
She had paled. "Only one—the Canary Islands. After that, the next stop is Puerto Rico."
"So." Rod leaned back, pursing his lips. "We've got one chance."
"Why bother?" Yorick settled back, grinning. "I always liked the Western Hemisphere."
Rod suffered a shy grin. "Well, actually, any place will do fine." The realization suddenly hit him like a bottleful of champagne. "Hey! We're home! This is Terra—the real, bona fide ancestral home of humanity! The planet where we evolved!"
Yorick cocked an eyebrow. "Never been here before?"
Rod shook his head. "Heard about it, though. Lots."
Gwen was looking from one to the other, totally lost.
"This is the planet people started out from, Miz Gallowglass," Chornoi explained. "Your ancestors spread out from here in starships, in all directions. They colonized the planets you live on now."
Awe filled Gwen's face.
"There's still the problem of getting off," Yorick reminded, "without getting arrested."
Chornoi's gaze roamed the car. "Most of these people have luggage, don't they?"
"They do?" Yorick sat up, looking here and there all about the car. "Son of a gun! I suppose those shoulder bags could be suitcases."
"Sure. You don't need much room to pack a weekend's clothes."
"I'll never get used to this compact clothing you folks use," Yorick sighed. "Personally, I always thought we should leave spider silk to the arachnids."
Chornoi smiled. "Okay, primitive. What backward planet did you come from?"
"You'd be surprised." The caveman looked wary. "But I gotta admit, it is handy having a suit that can fold as flat as a board."
Chornoi frowned. "What's a 'board'?"
Rod said quickly, "So they've all got luggage. You're not thinking what I think you're thinking, are you?"
"I think so." Chornoi nodded at a nearby passenger. "He's about your size, and he's got some clothes to spare."
"Of course, we would have to knock him out," Rod reminded her.
Chornoi nodded, scowling. "That's the part I don't like. But it won't do him any permanent damage—and when he wakes up, he'll never know it was you who robbed him."
"We'll leave cash." Yorick eased a flat wallet out of his pocket.
Rod stared. "You've got PEST credits?"
"Sure." Yorick shrugged. "What kind of a traveler would I be, if I left home without some of the cash of the country I was going to?"
A time-traveler, Rod thought, but he had to admit the sense of what Yorick said. A person who was going to travel chronologically, should naturally take the same precautions as a person who was going to travel geographically. It was just that he couldn't count on being able to exchange currency once he got to his destination…"
"So why were we going through that whole elaborate routine at the casino?" Chornoi demanded. Then she frowned. "Oh, yeah, I forgot. Nobody on any of the frontier planets will accept PEST credits for anything anymore."
"Why—because they're free of PEST's tyranny?"
"No—because the PEST BTU isn't worth very much.
Legislation never was a very sound basis for a currency, Major."
"The price of thrift," Rod sighed. "I hate to point this out, but while we're stealing that guy's pajamas, won't the other passengers notice?"
Gwen sat very straight for a moment, gazing off into space. One by one, the other passengers began to snore. Finally, she relaxed with a bright smile and said, "Nay."
Chornoi stared about her, closed her eyes, shook her head, and looked again.
Yorick expelled a hissing breath and said, "Yes." Then he said, "Well." and, "Someday maybe I'll get used to what you can do, Lady Gallowglass."
Privately, Rod hoped he would, too.
Yorick pushed himself out of his seat. "Let's get on with it, shall we?"
A few minutes and quick trips to the powder room later, the four of them sat down again, leaving four suitcases a little lighter and a lot richer.
Gwen plucked at the flimsy gray fabric. "Tis so light that I feel quite unclothed."
"I know what you mean," Chornoi agreed. "After my tights and jerkin, it feels really odd."
"You weren't kidding with that crack about pajamas, were you?" Rod asked.
"Not a bit," Yorick said sadly. "But on Terra, going outdoors is a job for specialists now, so why should anyone else bother wearing all that heavy, uncomfortable wool and buckram?"
"I'm just not used to common sense, I suppose." Rod looked down at his bland, gray pajamas. "How come they all wear the same thing?"
Yorick shrugged. "Standard government issue. This is the Proletarian Eclectic State of Terra, Major… Hey! Don't take it so hard, Chornoi! How could you know what they were going to do?" were gi
"By really thinking about what they were saying," she whispered, "instead of just latching onto the parts I liked."
They filed off the car with the other passengers, just four more gray-clad bodies. Rod was glad the pajamas had come with hoods; it gave them a fighting chance that no one would recognize their faces. They filed onto the escalator and glided up. Rod stared at the blank tan plasticrete wall, letting his thoughts go numb. Then he frowned. "This isn't plasticrete anymore."
"Right." Chornoi looked at him strangely. "Plasticrete is tan. This is red."
"It's stone!" Rod wanted to reach out and touch it, but the wall was four feet away from the escalator. "It's real, bona fide rock! But why so far away?" He looked down at the shallow stairs cut into the slope beside the escalator. "And why are there steps there?"
"Because that's the way the Spanish built them," Yorick answered.
"The Spanish?" Rod looked up, frowning. "I thought PEST was an international government."
"Yeah, but they're thrifty, remember? Why pay good money to build a new station, when you can just adapt an old one?"
Rod stared around him. "You mean…"
"Right." Chornoi nodded. "You're in Puerto Rico, Major, where the Spanish once had a colony. They fortified the island heavily. We're inside the castle El Morro, built in the seventeenth century."
"Fourteen hundred years ago!!?!"
Chornoi nodded. "And it's still standing. They built well, back then."
Daylight struck them like a spray of needles, and the moving stairs delivered them gently onto a moving belt. Gwen breathed deeply of the warm, fragrant air. "Why, 'tis Paradise!" Then she frowned out toward a low rock wall
Rod looked, then stared. "That, dear, is an ocean. Water. All of it."
Gwen gazed for a while, then said, "Rarely have I seen waters so blue. What sayest thou, husband?"
Rod was staring up at the other side.
"What seest thou?" Gwen turned to look, and gasped.
The red wall towered up, blotched here and there, but stern and sheer, tilting back away from them, curving away around the headland, and up, up, up.
'"Tis the abode of giants," Gwen whispered.
Rod glanced nervously around the terrace. It somehow seemed very narrow now. The wall was so huge that it made him feel like a fly clinging
by his toes.
"Men built this?" Chornoi said softly.
Yorick nodded. "Lots of them. And they didn't have much choice about it."
The slidewalk delivered them to the base of another escalator. It carried them into a tunnel, rising up along a rampway. Rod stared around at the size of it. "Seventeenth century, you say?"
Chornoi nodded.
"What was this tunnel for? I mean, they didn't have escalators then."
"For cannon, Major. Huge cannon, ten feet long, made out of cast iron. They threw iron balls as big as your head, and they weighed like sin. Tons. You saw those six-foot notches in the seaward wall, down there on the battlements?"
Rod nodded.
"Well, that's what they were for—cannon. Only to get them there, they had to lower them down this ramp. And to get them back up, they had to use horses." Chornoi gazed around her, looking grim. As they neared the top of the rampway, she nodded toward a niche in the wall with a grille of iron bars covering it. "Torture dungeon. When some poor bastard of a soldier broke the rules, they locked him up there for a while. Not enough room to stand up straight, and not much in the way of sanitary facilities, either."
"Plus knowing all his mates were watching him suffer every time they came down here." Rod nodded. "Nice guys."
"Yeah." Chornoi looked at the red stone around her, and shuddered. "A soldier must have thought he was in Hell here, back then. This piece of rock was all there was for him—and the officers were his masters."
"Legalized slavery," Yorick said with a scowl.
They came out into the sun again, and found themselves in a wide courtyard, with a score of rooms cut into its walls. Two huge cylinders stood in its center.
Chornoi nodded toward them. "Cisterns. They were ready for a siege here."
"Siege, cannon…" Gwen frowned. "Why so much might?"
"Because Puerto Rico was the gate to the Caribbean, Miz Gallowglass, and to all the wealth of the countries that lie along its shores. That's the Atlantic Ocean over there, with Europe on its far side—but just around the curve of this shoreline, is the Caribbean. Other countries tried to take this island from the Spanish, and that wealth with it. The Dutch tried it first, then the English, so they built this castle to guard against those enemies."
The Warlock Wandering Page 25
