Saint Antony's Fire

by Steve White

  For the first time, Winslow began to truly appreciate what the Grella had lost.

  Which didn't happen to help him at the moment.

  But perhaps it can. Perhaps it gives me something I can use. God knows I've used the Dons' blind arrogance against them often enough. Maybe I can do the same here.

  "Yes, Lord!" he blurted. He saw Shakespeare's shocked look out of the corner of his eye, and in the guise of waving his arms gave the young actor a surreptitious jab in the ribs. "Yes, we can be useful! You are, of course, correct: we humans, for reasons beyond our poor powers of understanding, can somehow pass between the worlds. But it can only be done at those 'weak points' in the universal fabric where the Grella have applied their mighty powers, born of their superior wisdom." Winslow wondered if he might be laying it on too thick. But he saw no flicker of suspicion in Sett 44's bottomless eyes. The Grella were impervious to irony.

  Sett 44 leaned forward greedily. "Can you show us where this place is?"

  "Perhaps, Lord, the two of us together can. But," he added firmly, "only with the help of the woman . . . that is, the female breeder. She has indispensable knowledge. She must be kept alive at all costs."

  "Very well. Water, and fodder suitable for your species, will be supplied. She should be fully recovered by morning. We will put your claims to the test then." Sett 44 gestured to the guards, and they were led back to their pen, as Winslow now thought of it. A large pail of water was there, as was another pail containing a tasteless gruel that Winslow and Shakespeare were too hungry to reject. Virginia Dare was also there, slowly returning to consciousness.

  Winslow took her by the shoulders and shook her awake. For a blessed instant, her face wore a look of innocent blankness—before the recollection of what she now knew crashed visibly down. Winslow couldn't let it send her into either despair or berserk rage. He spoke quickly.

  "Virginia, listen carefully," he whispered, lest the Grella have devices that could listen to their conversations from afar—although he doubted that they would be using such devices if they did have them, any more than humans would have used them to listen to the lowing of cattle. "Listen carefully, and don't reveal any reaction. I've told the Grella that I can find the portal."

  Her disoriented eyes cleared, and their emptiness was instantly filled—with fury. "You what?" she gasped. "You damned traitor—!" And she reached for his throat.

  Winslow had known exactly what to expect. So, in spite of her remarkable quickness, his hands were there a small fraction of a second before hers, gripping her wrists and twisting her body around so that he was grappling her from behind. It took all his strength to contain her twisting, writhing struggles. But he got one arm free for long enough to wrap it around her throat and apply a pressure just short of choking.

  "Listen, damn you!" he rasped into her ear. "Can't you see that I'm tricking them?" She abruptly went motionless, although her muscles remained stiff. "Now," he continued, in a lower whisper, "I just want to know one thing. If you have to, can you pilot a Grella flyer?"

  Eleven

  The dome's artificial lighting dimmed, darkened, and awoke again in harmony with the natural rhythms of the sun. This made sleep possible. But they had nothing to sleep on except the hard floor, and they were abominably stiff and sore the following morning. And there were no sanitary provisions of any kind. Winslow and Shakespeare averted their eyes as Virginia Dare performed her necessities in a corner of their enclosure, and she did the same for them. The Grella, Winslow reflected queasily, had not thought of this subject, any more than humans would have thought of it in connection with livestock.

  At least they were provided with more of the tasteless mush, and water to wash it down. Shortly thereafter, a procession of Grella arrived, with Sett 44 in the lead.

  "We will put your boasts to the test," said Sett 44 to Winslow without inquiries into their welfare or any other preliminaries. He indicated a Grell whose gold chest insignia was less elaborate than his own. "Messuin 76, Rank Orbasssin 92, will take you aloft in a flyer. He speaks and understands the Eilonwë language. You will communicate with him through the breeder, who is fluent in that language . . . and for whose behavior you will be held responsible. Do not attempt any surreptitious communications among yourselves in your own language. I will be monitoring everything Messuin 76 hears." Winslow had no idea what he was talking about, but Virginia Dare seemed to understand, and take it seriously. And, he reflected, it made sense that anyone with the ability to cast voices across a great distance could listen across equal distances. And he noted the implicit confirmation of his supposition that Sett 44 was the only Grell who understood English.

  "You will give Messuin 76 directions to the location you claim to know," Sett 77 continued. "A second flyer, armed, will escort you closely. If there is any hint of treachery on your part, you will die. If you fail to deliver on your promises, you will die. If there is any further violent behavior on the breeder's part, you will die. Do you comprehend this sequence of events?"

  "Perfectly, Lord," Winslow groveled.

  "Good. One more thing: when you reach the portal and land, you will be kept separate from your companions. If you yourself should somehow escape by passing through the portal to your own world, as you humans can evidently do, your companions will die. The breeder, in particular, will die very slowly. Finally, as an added precaution . . ." Sett 44 motioned forward a pair of Grella who proceeded to affix to the humans' wrists metallic bracelets connected by flexible foot-long cables of the same metal—thin but, Winslow was certain, unbreakable.

  They were conducted through the maze of metal and less familiar materials to a landing stage just inside one of the wide openings in the base of the dome. A number of the open-topped flyers rested there. They were prodded aboard one of them, in the wake of Messuin 76, who took up a position overseeing the open cockpit where the pilot sat. Winslow felt no surprise that a potentially risky assignment had been delegated to a flunky. He was even less surprised that two guards followed them aboard with weapons leveled at their backs. That was all there was room for, besides the pilot. As soon as they all settled in, the flyer rose up and swooped away.

  It was Winslow's first experience of flight, aside from being towed, dangling beneath one of these vessels. It was certainly less unsettling than that had been—at least he had a deck under his feet. Nevertheless, his stomach lurched as the great dome and the other Grella structures fell away behind them and dropped below.

  "Tell him to proceed back to where we were captured," he said to Virginia Dare, who translated into Eilonwë. The flyer and its escort banked and followed the valley eastward.

  Soon the ancient ruins began to be visible among the vegetation below. Messuin 76 hissed something to Virginia Dare, his testiness audible across the chasm of races and languages. She glanced at Winslow.

  "Tell him to bear two points to starboard," he said without thinking. She gave him an exasperated look "Uh . . . north-northeast," he amended, and pointed to further clarify matters. Virginia Dare met his eyes for an instant. In accordance with their whispered colloquy the night before, he was directing the Grella away from the portal, toward the opposite side of the valley. She translated, and the flyer changed course. Their escort kept formation—rather sloppily, Winslow thought with a mental sniff—off the starboard beam.

  Winslow then glanced at Shakespeare. He had no doubts about Virginia Dare's ability to cope with what was about to happen, but he couldn't be quite so certain of his other companion. Those large, luminous hazel eyes didn't hold the same kind of totally nerveless hair-trigger readiness he had seen in the woman warrior's green ones, nor would he have expected them to. But he did see a steadiness that, in its own way, was almost equally reassuring—a steadiness which, like so much else about the young actor, drew on depths he doubted his own capacity to ever fully understand.

  He waited until he was certain they were at the most advantageous point. In fact, he waited long enough to draw a quick glance
of concerned impatience from Virginia Dare. But he held himself in check for a second or two after that, before bellowing abruptly, "No! Hard a-starboard, you lubbers!" Virginia Dare, needing no translation this time, transmitted the command to Messuin 76 with a show of hysterical urgency.

  The volume and suddenness of Winslow's shout had startled the Grella, and Virginia Dare's tone left them no leisure to wonder how serious the situation could really be. Messuin 76 emitted a kind of hissing rattle in the loathsome Grella speech. The pilot, conditioned to unthinking obedience, wrenched the flyer violently to the right. The escorting pilot, caught by surprise, tried to swerve out of the way. He almost succeeded. The two flyers struck each other glancingly, sending the escort skidding away across the sky, its pilot desperately trying to regain control.

  The impact caused the two armed guards to lose their balance. Before they could react, Winslow whipped the length of flexible metal confining his wrists around Messuin 76's skinny throat. Lifting the Grell's feet off the deck, he swung him around between himself and the stunned guards.

  At the same time, Virginia Dare brought her wrists together, gathered the metal cable together in a bunch and, lunging past Winslow into the cockpit, with all her strength brought her weighted double fist down on the pilot's right temple. Even above the whistling of the wind, Winslow could hear the sickening crunch. She shoved the limp Grell out of his seat and grasped the control levers, stretching her hands as far apart as possible, and jerked them to the left.

  The guards, still trying to right themselves after the hard right turn, were thrown completely off balance. One of them flailed his arms for an instant and, with a quavering high-pitched hiss that Winslow decided must be a Grella scream, toppled over the gunwale and fell toward the ruins-strewn forest below. Winslow, who had been ready for the sudden turn, thrust Messuin 76's feebly struggling form before him like a shield—the Grell weighed no more than a ten-year-old child—and thrust it against the remaining guard. At the same time, Shakespeare moved in from the left and grasped the weapon the guard had hesitated to use, wrenching it free. With a final shove, Winslow sent the guard over the side. Then, with a convulsive backwards jerk, he broke Messuin 76's neck.

  It had all taken only a few seconds. The escort flyer was visible in the distance, moving erratically; its pilot was evidently struggling to keep his damaged craft aloft. Winslow dropped the limp Grella corpse away and flung himself forward, where Virginia Dare was awkwardly fumbling at the controls with her confined hands. The flyer plunged sickeningly.

  "Bring her up!" he yelled. "We're headed for the ground!"

  "I'm trying!" she shouted back. She touched something gingerly, and the flyer lurched and turned its nose upward. Winslow hung on, ignoring Shakespeare's wail from aft.

  "Let me take those controls if you don't know what you're doing!" he told Virginia Dare.

  "I told you I've never piloted one of these things. All I know is what I've learned from watching the Eilonwë experiment with captured ones—which is a damned lot more than you know!"

  But it soon became apparent that she could only control whatever magical rudder made the flyer turn to port or starboard. As for whatever unimaginable force kept the craft aloft, her efforts were as likely as not to achieve the opposite of what she intended. She gingerly touched a toggle. The flyer went into a series of skidding jerks, as if it were fighting itself, and from aft came a grinding sound culminating in a muffled explosion. The flyer shuddered, and began angling steeply downward.

  Winslow forced himself to think calmly. The flyer obviously wasn't designed to glide like a bird; once the lifting force was gone, it wouldn't stay up long on the stubby down-turned wings that extended from its flanks. He looked below at the approaching ground, and tried to orient himself.

  "Turn to port and bring her down as far as possible over there," he shouted into Virginia Dare's ear over the wind.

  "Why?" she demanded.

  For answer, he pointed to the north. The escort flyer was far in the distance, wobbling toward the ground, apparently crippled by damage from the collision.

  "They'll probably land gently enough to live," he explained. "And even if they don't they'll have already summoned others from the fortress. They'll be all over this area, to cut us off. We have to lead them away from the Eilonwë refuge."

  She turned and met his eyes for the bare second she could spare, and for the first time he thought he saw something like respect in her face. Then her attention was riveted on the control console as she followed his instructions.

  "They won't even have to call," she said absently as she changed course while endeavoring to slow their loss of altitude. "Remember, Sett 44 was monitoring us—he knows something happened, and you can be sure more flyers are already on the way . . . We're going down. I'm going to try to land us in the woods, away from the ruins. Brace yourselves!"

  The two men obeyed as best they could, as the ground rushed up to meet them. Winslow had a confused impression of treetops and crumbling buildings, just before the flyer smashed into the forest with a snapping of tree trunks and a grinding of crumpled metal. Winslow was thrown free and landed in the underbrush just in time to see the flyer plough into the ground and come to a shuddering halt, held up at a crazy angle by the splintered trees.

  He got to his feet in the sudden silence, bruised and shaken but with nothing broken. Virginia Dare and Shakespeare were lowering themselves over the gunwale and dropping to the ground below. Shakespeare looked worse than Winslow felt, but he was still grasping the Grella weapon like a dog with a bone in its jaws.

  "We've got to get away from here," said Winslow without preliminaries. "They'll find this wreck."

  "One thing first," Virigian Dare demurred. "Give me that weapon," she told Shakespeare. She took hold of the thing, clumsily because of her confined wrists and because it was designed for the shorter arms and four-digited hands of the Grella. "Hold out your arms," she told Winslow, "with the wrists spread as far apart as possible." He obeyed, and she held the muzzle of the thing to the short metal cable and touched the trigger. The metal seemed to burn in the weapon's beam, and heat scorched his arms, but the cable parted. She then did the same for Shakespeare, and then instructed Winslow in freeing her own hands.

  "Now let's move," he said. They struck out through the forest, shortly emerging atop a knoll which afforded a wide view. Ahead of them, beyond a short stretch of woodland, was the slope where they had first entered this world.

  "Look!" cried Virginia Dare, pointing to the west.

  Winslow swung around and squinted. Far in the distance, in the sky above the valley floor, the sun glinted off three approaching flyers.

  "They'll land soldiers," Virgina Dare said in tones of grim fatalism, "and start combing the area. At the same time, the flyers will go back aloft and search for us from above."

  "We'll never escape such a cordon," Winslow muttered. "We'd have to vanish into thin air."

  Shakespeare diffidently cleared his throat. "Ah . . . perhaps, Captain, that is precisely what we should do."

  They both stared at him.

  "I recognize that ridge ahead," the young actor continued. "The one we've been calling 'Elf Hill.' You've told us you can find the portal. And I recall what you were saying before: that perhaps we humans can, by an effort of will, remain suspended in the Near Void instead of passing on as we have before."

  "But I was just thinking aloud!" Winslow blurted. "We have no way of knowing."

  "Perhaps it's time to find out," said Virginia Dare. "It seems to be the only hiding place we have."

  "And," said Shakespeare, warming to his argument, "at worst, we pass on into the Deep Void and on to Croatoan—"

  "—Where only a minute passes for every nineteen or twenty minutes here," Winslow finished for him. "So God knows what we'd emerge into when we came back here." He sighed. "You're mad, Will. But you're also right. I fear we're in a land where madness is wisdom." He took another breath, and put the tone of com
mand into his voice. "Now let's move! We have to reach the portal and pass through it before they're close enough to have us in sight. If they watch us vanish, they'll know exactly where the portal is, and all will be lost for England and England's world."

  They ran through the woods with reckless speed, accumulating scratches from lashing tree branches, and emerged onto open ground. "Stay close," Winslow admonished, "so we'll all pass through together. And hurry!" Looking over his shoulder, he saw that the three approaching flyers were visibly larger, shapes and not just points of reflected sun.

  They sprinted up the slope. Shakespeare was gasping, but he kept up. Winslow looked around at the landscape, and summoned up the contours he had memorized. "This way!" he shouted, turning a little to the left.