"But this isn't your brand," Rod protested.
"No," Yorick agreed, "it's a copy. Who do you think invented the damn thing, anyway?" He twisted a final key. "There! That's date!" He pushed a slider. "That's location!" He punched a sequence on a keypad. "That's the security code! And the instruction to forget!" He punched at a pressure-pad. "And that's the time-delay control! Everybody inside! It'll start up in one minute!"
A huge, hulking shape filled the shattered doorway.
"Laser cannon!" Chornoi yelped.
"Inside, quick!" Rod all but threw her into the six-foot cubicle. Yorick leaped in after her, and Gwen stepped up. Rod was right behind her. He turned just as the cannon rotated, its huge maw facing them. Rod stared into doom.
Doom was suddenly warped and twisted and shot through with the color-swirl of the moire. Gwen clasped his hand with both of hers. "Tis as thick a field as I can manage. Now, husband, lend me of thy strength!"
It took a moment. There had been so much power flying around loose during that march from the torture chamber— and she'd been learning so horribly much about electronics! But after that moment, Rod managed to remember the girl in the haystack, the mother with the baby in her arms, the gentle partner, and his thoughts flowed and melded with hers.
"Thirty seconds," Yorick groaned.
A stream of ruby light lit the force field.
The whole doorway filled with a sheet of flame. It raged and twisted in convolutions—not in a single blast, but in an endless roiling rage.
Sweat sprang out on Gwen's brow. Her hold tightened on Rod's hand.
Rod gave her all the energy he had, all there was of him.
She paled, trembling.
Concern flooded him, and washed into her—concern, tenderness, love.
Heat seared him, a Sahara noon, an oven, a flaming furnace. Chornoi gasped, and Yorick groaned, "Ten seconds."
It was ten seconds of eternity, ten seconds of agony, ten seconds of the sickening realization that, this time, they just might not make it, as the flames baked and raged—but it was ten seconds that were just long enough for their minds to meld completely, and for Rod to realize, in the midst of Hellfire, that she was still the same, loving partner, and that she was still his self-interest, as the flame wrapped them up…
The floor lurched, slamming them against each other, and air flooded in, blessedly cool. Dazed, Rod straightened, clinging to Gwen, gradually becoming aware that the flame was gone, that he was staring into a vast chamber filled with bench after bench full of electronic equipment, huge wardrobes, tall cabinets…
And, right in front of them, a short, spare man in a white lab coat, with a mane of white hair and an eagle's face, on a head that was too large. He glared up at them with a gaze that was so piercing Rod almost shuddered, even though he had borne that stare before.
But he pulled himself together, squared his shoulders and took a deep breath, then stepped down out of the time machine carefully and said, "Dr. McAran, I presume."
They were sitting around a circular table, drinking restoratives (hundred proof). Around them, other tables filled the large room, with a variety of people clustered in discussion groups. Egyptian scribes rubbed elbows with ninth-century paladins; Sumerian peasants chatted with Ming Dynasty bureaucrats. The whole room was a glorious melange of periods and styles, a meeting place of the centuries in a riot of colors, with a nonstop buzz of conversation in a pidgin English that Rod could just barely recognize as the ancestor of his own century's Anglic.
He frowned intently at McAran's last comment. "Well, sure. Of course I understand that Gramarye's pivotal. If it develops into a constitutional monarchy, it'll be able to provide the communications system the DDT will need to keep democracy alive."
"More than that," McAran said. "Your neighbors aren't going to be standoffish, Major. They're going to leave their home planet, lots of them, and they're going to fall in love and marry, wherever they go. A thousand years from now, about half the people in the Terran Sphere will be telepaths—because of your people."
Rod just stared. He felt Gwen's hand tighten on his, and squeezed back.
McAran waved his last earthquake away. "But that's really secondary. Gramarye's real contribution will be the wiping out of this artificial dichotomy we've developed between intuition and intellect, humanity and technology. Your local chapter of the Order of St. Vidicon is the cutting edge of that revolution, but it's simply formalizing something your whole people have been developing since they landed on Gramarye. Of course, they just view it as magic and mechanics—and they see absolutely no reason why one person can't be gifted in both."
Rod transferred his stare to Gwen.
She looked about her, confused, then back at him. "Milord?"
"Uh… nothing. We'll talk about it later." But he tucked her hand into his elbow and kept firm hold of it with the other hand, as he turned back to McAran. "Okay, so Gramarye is immensely important to the future of democracy, maybe even to the future of humanity, period. So what does that have to do with your coming eleven hundred years into your future, just to meet me?"
McAran looked a little uncomfortable. "Well, I really only came over to the time machine that was bringing you in. You're in the twentieth century right now, Major—technically."
Rod pushed his jaw back into place.
Yorick erased the problem. "Doesn't really matter, Major. This time-travel base could be located in any century. It is, in fact—just keeps going for a couple of thousand years, all the way through the Fourth Millennium. And it was just as easy to set the controls for this century, as for the one we were in. Easier, in fact—these are the ones I have memorized. Quicker to punch in, when you're in a rush."
Rod gave his head a shake. "Okay, if you say so. But…"
"Why did I want to meet you?" McAran wore his grim smile. "Well, I've heard so much about you, Major!"
"Great. Can I present my side of it?"
"No. Because if Gramarye is pivotal in the development of democracy, you're pivotal in the development of Gramarye."
Rod froze.
Gwen gazed at him, wide-eyed.
"Me?"
McAran nodded.
"Why not her?" Rod jabbed a finger at Gwen. "She's at least as powerful as I am! And she's done as much as I have toward putting Gramarye on the road to freedom!"
"Aye, yet I've espoused thy cause only for reason that
I've espoused thee," Gwen said softly, "and so would I continue to do, e'en—God forbid!—an thou wert ta'en from me. Yet had I never known thee, I ne'er would have so much as thought of it."
McAran nodded. "She was reared in a medieval monarchy, Major; she didn't have the vaguest notion of democracy. Nobody there did—except the future totalitarians and anarchists, who had come back in time to subvert Gramarye."
"And she wouldn't have learned advanced technology if those Futurians hadn't kidnapped the two of you back in time," Yorick said.
Gwen shook her head. "Thou canst not avoid it, my lord. Thou mayest not be the person who doth bring matters to fruition, but thou art the one who doth sow the seed." She flushed, smiling, and turned to McAran. "Which doth bring to mind that thou hast not spoken of the role our children are to play in this."
"Mighty," McAran assured her, "but only an extension of what you two are doing. An extension and an expansion, I should say, there are four of them, and each of them will grow up to be more powerful than either of you. Still, they'll only carry on what you've begun." His frosty smile etched itself on his face again. "Even if they don't quite realize it."
The exchange had given Rod a moment to recover. He took a deep breath. "But that still doesn't tell me what I'm doing here, talking to you."
"Do I have to lay it out for you?" McAran growled. "I want to make sure which side you're on."
"Why… democracy's."
McAran just regarded him, with a glittering eye.
"No," Rod said slowly, finally recognizing the transformation within
himself. "Gramarye's."
McAran nodded.
"But democracy is in Gramarye's best interest!"
"If you're so sure about that," McAran grated, "you won't mind joining GRIPE."
Rod sat still for a minute, letting the shock pass. Then he said, "I'm already a SCENT agent. Doesn't that make me an affiliate member?"
McAran shook his head. "There's no official alliance between the two groups—just common interest. We don't even have a formal tie to the Decentralized Democratic Tribunal. In fact, neither of them knows we exist—and frankly, we like it that way. So, of course, one of the responsibilities of membership is maintaining that secrecy."
"Of course," Yorick added, "we do have overlapping membership. Other than you, I mean."
McAran nodded. "Some of our best agents are SCENT operatives. We even have a few DDT bureaucrats, and the odd tribune or two."
"Must be pretty odd, all right," Rod muttered.
"So how about you?" The eagle's eye was still on him. "Are you for us or not, Major?"
Rod met McAran's stare, and took a deep breath. "For you—but not part of you. Call me an associate member."
McAran sat still for a moment. Then he nodded. "As long as you're for us, and not against us." He stood, holding out his hand. Rod stood, and clasped it. He was amazed at how fragile and slender the scientist's hand seemed.
But McAran was nodding, and smiling again. "Good to have you, Major. Now, would you like to go back where you came from?"
"I would indeed," Gwen said instantly. "Eh, my little ones!"
Rod nodded, grinning. "Yeah. I think I've had my fill of high-tech society for another dozen years or so. Send me home."
McAran turned to Chornoi. "What do you want to do, O worm in the woodwork?"
"Worm?" She leaped to her feet. "Who the hell do you think you are, throwing insults around like lava?"
"The volcano on whose slopes the tyrants live," Doc Angus snapped, glaring.
Chornoi's eyes narrowed. "I made a mistake. It was a bad one, and I helped hurt a lot of people. But I think I've kind of paid for some of that on this trip—even if Gwen and her husband did help me as much as I helped them."
McAran's smile was sarcastic. "Oh. You don't like dictators anymore, huh?"
"No," Chornoi snapped, "especially on the personal level."
"Prove it," McAran jibed. "Join GRIPE."
Chornoi stared, totally floored.
"He means it, Miz," Yorick said softly.
"But… but… how can you?" Chornoi exploded. "For all you know, I could be the worst PEST agent alive, trying to infiltrate your organization!"
McAran nodded. "Possible, very possible—but if you were, you wouldn't have been helping fight totalitarianism at every turn."
Chornoi frowned. "When did I do that?"
"When you helped avert a war on Wolmar," Yorick reminded her, "and when you helped us fight off Eaves and his buddies on Otranto. Listen, Miz, if you were really a PEST agent, you would have shoved a knife in Whitey the Wino's ribs at your first chance. He's at least as important to democracy as we are."
Rod nodded. "Charley Barman, too, and you never lifted a hand against him."
"But… but… I didn't know! I didn't know either of them were important to democracy!"
"Yeah, but you would have, if you were still a PEST agent. Besides, you helped get the Gallowglasses through."
"Only because I liked them—personally!"
Gwen's smile was radiant.
"Him, too!" Chornoi stabbed a finger at Yorick. "It's not just them, you know!"
"Yes, I know," McAran said grimly, "and I'll bet this is the first time in your life you've found people who liked you."
Chornoi stood very still.
"I'll take personal loyalty," McAran said. "I'll take it over loyalty to an idea, any time—even if it's loyalty to the group, and not to me."
"I might not like your other people as well as I like him," Chornoi said slowly.
"Then again, you might." The frosty smile was back. "Why don't you circulate a little, get to know them better?"
"Yeah—kick around for a while, Miz!" Yorick grinned. "I've got some buddies here I think you'd like."
"Buddies?" Her tone was frigid. "No women?"
"Of course." Yorick shrugged. "What do you want me to say, 'bosom buddies'?"
Chornoi's eyes narrowed. "Definitely not."
"Okay, then—friends. A person's a person. So I've got friends, all right? And I think they'd like you. Okay? So why don't you come and meet them?"
"Yes," Chornoi said slowly. "Yes," she said, nodding. "Yes, I think I will."
Yorick grinned, and held out an elbow.
Chornoi hooked her hand through it, and turned to Rod and Gwen. "Major—Milady—a pleasure meeting you." She actually inclined her head, smiling.
Rod grinned, lifting a hand. "See you in the time zones."
Chornoi smiled, tossing her head proudly, and whisked away on Yorick's arm. They stopped two tables away, where Yorick introduced her to a small troupe of Mongolian barbarians. She pressed palms.
McAran watched her go with a victorious smile. Then he turned back to Rod and Gwen, leading them away. "That's the basis of our organization here—misfits. None of my people ever had any friends, never felt they belonged— until they found us." He cocked his head to the side. "Doesn't apply to the two of you, of course."
"Oh, I wouldn't say that," Rod mused.
"Thou hast never been a Gramarye witch or warlock," Gwen agreed.
"Could be." The frosty smile turned into amusement. "Could very well be."
They came up to a thirty-by-thirty area, lined with time machines. One of them had a large sign over the portal, which said in Gothic lettering,
GRAMARYE
Rod's eyebrows lifted. "We rate a machine all to ourselves?"
McAran nodded. "I told you Gramarye's important to us. It's locked onto real-time there, dating from…" he coughed into his fist. "… from that little incident we had, with those Neanderthals."
"Yeah." Rod frowned. "I've been meaning to ask you about that."
"Some other time, okay?" McAran said quickly. "Right now, there're some people who've been waiting to see you for a couple of weeks."
"Aye—we must needs be gone to them, right quickly!" Gwen leaped into the time machine's cubicle. "Send us to them at once, doctor, an it please thee!"
"Oh, I could send you quicker than that." McAran peered closely at the date. "I could set it back a couple of weeks, and return you to the same night you were kidnapped."
Gwen's eyes lit, but Rod frowned. "How long would it take?"
"Only a minute, to reset the machine," McAran answered, "but the trip itself would take a couple of hours, because the time-matrix would have to readjust itself into a different configuration."
"I cannot wait so long." Gwen clasped Rod's arm. "I doubt me not an they have been well tended in our absence—and I burn to see them once again!"
Rod shrugged. "It'll probably have done them good to be without us for a while, especially since their baby-sitters have probably been indulging them horribly."
"Oh!" Gwen clasped her hand over her mouth, eyes wide. "Robin will be wroth with us, to have been so long away!"
"Yeah, but think how glad he'll be to see us come back!"
"There's some truth to that." Gwen turned back to McAran. "Send us now, doctor, I beg of thee!"
McAran shrugged. "As the customer orders." He reached out and pressed a button.
Rod and Gwen felt a twisting lurch, and were just fighting down nausea when they realized they were staring around at twilit woodlands, and the calm sheen of a pond.
Rod blinked, staring around him in surprise. "Well! Right back at the pretty little woodland pool I told you about!"
"An thou'lt pardon it, I'd liefer not stay to contemplate it," Gwen said, "especially an I doubt the virtue of that crone who told thee of it."
Gwen threw her arms around his neck. "Eh, h
usband! We are home!"
"Yeah!" Rod hugged her to him with massive relief.
Then he remembered the power he'd seen her wield, and that reminded him how much she'd learned about electronics; and he felt the cold fear seeping through him, at the thought of grappling a woman who could wreak such mayhem—especially since it was his own kind of mayhem. And wreaked at least as well as he could, himself.
She felt the change. "Husband? My lord?"
He held her off at arm's length. "We're not exactly the same people who left here, are we?"
"Wherefore not?" Gwen stared, startled and hurt. "We are still ourselves, my lord. Who else could we be?"
"Well, all right, still us," Rod growled, "but we've changed. And you, shall we say, have learned a lot in the process?"
"Yet it hath not changed who I am, nor the way I do feel toward thee," Gwen protested. "Nay, my lord. Do not think— i
ever!—that only because I learn more, or gain more skill or power, that I shall ever love thee less!"
"Yeah, but it's not just your kind of learning." Rod hooked his hands in frustration at trying to find the right words. "It's that you're learning my kind of knowledge!"
Gwen stilled, staring up at him. Then she said, "Ah, then. So that is the way of it."
"Yes," Rod admitted. "The skills and knowledge I had, that you lacked, were all that were keeping me thinking I was good enough for you."
"Oh, how poorly thou dost know thyself, Rod Gallowglass!" She threw her arms about his neck and pulled his head down to hers. "Thy goodness and thy greatness have so little to do with thy knowledge or skill, or even thy power! 'Tis thy gentle, caring self that drew me into love of thee, and the strength of thy resolve that doth shelter me and mine! 'Tis thee I love—not thine attributes!" She drew back a little, cocking her head to the side. "And, in fairness, thou must needs own that thou hast learned my skills and knowledge, even as I've but now learned thine."
"Well, yes," Rod admitted, "but that's different."
"Only in that I rejoice at such joining, where thou dost seem to dread it," Gwen returned. "Yet thou hast no need of such trepidation, for 'tis thee I love, that inexplicable, unwordable, indescribable essence that is Rod Gallowglass—and only that! Not thy power or knowledge!"
The Warlock Wandering Page 28
