Then he was gone, the door shutting behind him. Presumably he was unzipping himself out of the barrier, his laser pistol no doubt trained on the nearest of The Mission people.
“Nance, you’re carrying a little something useful on your body, right?” Anya asked.
When Nance reached for her cleavage Anya stopped her with a gesture, and stepped over to direct her to stand near a wall, with her back to the room.
“Maybe this will earn us a few more seconds of precious time,” she muttered out loud, and then began to whisper instructions to Nance who drew the com from its hiding place and switched it on.
“Jeb are you there?” Nance muttered into the com. “This is really important, and we have no time to lose.”
“I’m on to you, Nance, what is it?” came Jeb’s voice.
“Get hold of your bosses at the Headquarters. Tell them to communicate with Coryn Leigh, right away. He has to call Ferhil Stones, immediately. He has to get Witch Marlyss to empty out the browhorn testicle sac holding the amartos that are keyed to Sarah. This has to be done right away! We don’t have much time, and Sarah needs the energy of those Stones to break everybody free of the Neotsarians’ infernal machine. So do it, Jeb!”
“I’m on it, Nance. Let Sarah know that it’ll be done as fast as possible!”
The com clicked off. Nance drew a ragged breath.
“I hope that nothing goes wrong with that message,” she whispered, a tremor in her voice.
It seemed to her like such a roundabout way of passing on a message which meant everything! And would Witch Marlyss listen to Coryn?
*****
Coryn had finally given up pacing the floor, and had fallen asleep, on the top of his quilt. It was full day outside, he saw, in spite of his bleary-eyed state, when the alarm on his wrist com went off shrilly. To give himself a few seconds to wake up he did not answer it, but hurried to the Residence com, on which the emergency light was blinking furiously while a nasty sounding buzzer was—buzzing.
“This is The Agency Headquarters, Marcues speaking,” a familiar voice announced when he answered the summons. “We have an urgent transmission from The Mission. You are, immediately, if not sooner, to get Witch Marlyss to release the cache of amartos that you and Clennan picked up, along with Sarah Mackenzie, from the Planet of the Amartos, some time ago. Whatever that means; I didn’t realize that it was possible to leash those things in any way. The request—or demand—originates with Sarah herself. None of it makes sense to me, but then I’m not the expert when it comes to the Witches and their Stones.”
“Good God, what is she finding it necessary to do...? Thanks, Marcues; I’ll get on it right away. I just hope that Marlyss will listen and doesn’t argue. This sounds serious.”
He took a short moment to calm himself before putting in the call to Ferhil Stones.
“What do you want with us at this time of the day, Coryn Leigh?” asked the Apprentice who was minding the reception while even Witch Alta, the usual receptionist, slept.
“I want Witch Marlyss, the Eldest of the Circle of the Twelve,” Coryn replied crisply. “Go and fetch her immediately. Lives are hanging in balance, and at least a couple of them are the lives of Witches.”
The girl sputtered; then apparently turned the com to someone else.
“I’m here, Coryn,” Marlyss said. “I couldn’t sleep. Is it bad?”
“I don’t know, “ Coryn said tersely. “I just got a call, routed through how many convolutions, I don’t know, but the original word apparently came from Sarah. She needs you to let out from the insulating sack the amartos that she inadvertently keyed inside that cavern on the Planet of the Amartos.”
Marlyss gasped.
“All of them?” she asked.
“Apparently so. I don’t know the details, just that the request is urgent.”
“That’s why the cat—remember the Greencat?—came to make sure that I was awake, just moments ago! But all of them—that’s a tremendous blast of power for Sarah to handle! Maybe if I just take out a few....”
“No Marlyss. All of them. Release them all. She—and I don’t know who else—will die, if you don’t do this. Remember, I had to stay on Kordea for a reason? This is the reason, Marlyss, to make sure that you do this. Sarah told me that she had been given, in a dream, the message that if I went on The Mission someone very important to me would die, but that I might be able to prevent the death if I stayed on Kordea. I don’t think that she realized who the important-to-me person was, but I knew immediately that it had to be her. Because she is the one and only woman in the whole galaxy whom I love with my whole heart. So, do this for me, if not for yourself, or Sarah. Or anyone else. I beg it of you.”
A moment’s silence at the Ferhil Stones end. Coryn realized that he was sweating, and shaking.
If only it wasn’t too late already! All this talk while who knew what was happening on the other side of the galaxy!
“All right, I’ll do it, Coryn. I trust that you would not mislead me.”
“Thank you, Witch Marlyss. But hurry.”
There was nothing else that he could do, except cut the connection and heave a sigh of relief. Marlyss would not go back on her word. Maybe all hope need not be abandoned, yet.
*****
“That girl you took into the lab is up to something, with Anya’s help,” Morri, at the security desk, reported to the Elite Karil, even before the Elite had made it to the Cafeteria.
“Come on, Morri, what can any of them do? They’re stuck there, as long as the amarto-reflector pens them in; you’ve got one of the controllers there in Security, and I’ve got the other one in my pocket. And the moment Sarah tries to use her amarto, her Stone will become a part of the reflector’s field, and a power source to it. They’re helpless.”
“Well I noticed that this cutie, she called herself Nance when she came here earlier, hasn’t, so far, uncovered her Stone. There’s probably a reason for that.”
Morri was thinking hard. He, like the rest of the peons left to run the Facility while the real powers-to-be went for their caste-determined rest, had not much respect for the Elite Karil. He seemed to have gained his position as the Head of the Facility through family and class connections, and not for his brilliance. Some of his professional underlings were the more capable individuals, but generally they demanded that they be allowed their rest days. They had families on the home planet, and they wanted to spend time with their wives and children, and, since they were valuable employees, the more sensible Elites made a point of not antagonizing them too much. Apparently Karil had come in almost alone, in response to the request which Les had sent him. Where was the military back-up anyway? Wasn’t this amarto business important enough to be protected by the might of the Neotsarian Armed Forces? It was showing more promise of gaining for the Elites further power in the galaxy than anything else that his people had come up with. Of course the important work had been done mainly by Confederation minds and Kordean talents; although Jerold was one of the Neotsarians’ own, if from a world which mostly ignored the rules which regulated, and rightly so, the lives of the normal Neotsarians.
Elite Karil and his protégé, Les, figured that the machine which they had succeeded in getting the chattels—and Jerold—to build was beyond sabotage. Perhaps it was, because, once it had linked to enough amarto-power, it apparently had the ability to defend itself, a serendipitous circumstance which no-one, least of all Karil, had predicted. It was not sentience, Morri understood, but a consequence of the reflecting and re-reflecting characteristic which the men from the Confederation had come up with to solve the problems which their captors had forced them to work on. It had been a good idea to keep Peter and Cameron bored during the early part of their captivity; when they had finally had something interesting to do, they had done it with enthusiastic gusto. And in the beginning of the work they had had no idea of the real use to which the machine they had created would be put; they had been given mere slivers of amartos to work with, and had
had very little idea of what the Stones could do, especially when amplified by the reflection system which the two—with Jerold’s help—had devised.
But, and Morri shook his head at the thought, apparently the young woman who had been passing herself as Nance was Peter’s daughter, Cameron’s sister, and Anya’s granddaughter. Family ties could run deep, Morri knew, hadn’t the captive father and son managed to hide Sarah’s existence from the Neotsarians for a long time? They had not betrayed her even when she, herself, had inadvertently announced her identity to the galaxy, including the Neotsarians, by keying a stash of amartos! Then the Kordean Witches had taken it upon themselves to protect her, but, it seemed that they and their ally, that Liaison Officer at the Trahea Port whom the operatives on Kordea spoke of with such derision, had tried to be too cute by half, and the operatives had caught on to Nance’s true identity.
Then she had showed up on the Facility world, nervy enough to breach the Neotsarian building in the company of her assumed husband, and another, totally uninteresting, man! She must be up to something, Morri figured, and that something did not bode well for the machine sitting on the laboratory counter! And she had not bared her amarto yet; those damn Witches seemed to have a way of hiding their Stones when they chose to do so, even from the gadgets that the prisoners had built!
Unfortunately, his hands were tied.
He did not have many men at the Facility, and even of what he had, only a couple were trained guards. The rest were an indolent bunch, and considered the times when the higher-ups were gone, an opportunity to flout rules. Like Rolf and Sevi: those two had kept the Settlement girls that they were bedding, with them on into the morning, and were probably busy having an orgiastic foursome in their sleeping quarters, right at the moment. Morri was furious about it, not because he cared about the morality, but because he did not get to share in the action. He could have used a woman, too, but his responsibilities had kept him from having a chance to befriend any rebellious Settlement females, and the girls were unwilling to be passed around like common prostitutes. They may have been fighting the moralistic rules of their Elders, but they still claimed to have their standards, and wanted the Neotsarians who they slept with, to at least pretend to be their boyfriends.
Morri sighed. Well, he had done all he could by reporting the shenanigans in the lab to the Elite Karil. It was Karil’s task now to act on it, if he would. Morri was pretty sure that he wouldn’t bother—and maybe he had the right of it. There probably was nothing that Nance-Sarah could do. She would be adding to the amarto-reflector’s power pretty soon.
*****
In the astral counterpart of the laboratory, the waiting felt interminable. The Greencat’s mental form disappeared for a few moments while Sarah ground her non-actual teeth, fretting with impatience. Jaime and Dian seemed calm enough to her; they were still studying the brilliance at the centre of the non-room. The Greencat returned, and informed Sarah that it had ascertained that the Eldest Marlyss was awake, although it was sleeping time at Ferhil Stones. It had not bothered to check on Coryn, knowing that the Agent would have alarms to wake him at any hour of the day should there be an emergency.
“Good. Now Coryn just has to persuade Marlyss to release the Stones, and I have to somehow reach them, and use them without their falling into that infernal machine’s orbit,” Sarah muttered mentally.
“You have to believe in yourself, girl,” the animal responded. “Centre yourself to do so, while you wait.”
It was good advice, Sarah knew, and did her best to withdraw her attention from everything around her, willing herself to be aware of the cache of amartos the moment the Stones became available.
Not a word was spoken in the physical laboratory. Peter had pulled a stool for Nance to perch on at the counter at which he and Jerold were sitting, Anya and Janelle were seated across from them, and Cam had returned to the desk chair. Everyone of them seemed to be expecting something to happen.
In the other lab, Dian and Jaime were conversing mentally; for a split second Sarah wondered if they had come up with something which would allow them to help her, once she was in action. She hoped so, but knew that she dared not count on it. She had to do this thing whether she was alone, or not. So much depended on it.
“Sarah, now!”
Was it the Greencat’s thought?
She did not know for sure, because even as she heard the mental voice, she could see the cache of amartos, falling into a bowl from some kind of nowhere, blazing with the brightness of a major fire. Marlyss was holding the bowl, averting herself from it, as if she truly was handling something that was on fire!
The stones were calling to Sarah, demanding that she come to them, join in their blaze! And she was responding to that call—the amplified power of the amarto-reflector in the laboratory was no match to the call of a couple of dozen of the real thing, all of them still keyed to her essence! She felt herself breaking through something, and there was the sound of shattering crystal in the physical laboratory! The reflector-refractor fell onto the counter in its component parts, the amarto-slivers burnt to black! Muffled gasps could be heard from the counter where the physical inhabitants of the room sat, while Dian and Jaime whose astral forms had been the closest to the gadget were abruptly shoved back into the bodies which were now in the lounge! The invisible barrier in the hallway was suddenly gone!
Sarah nearly lost herself in the torrent of energy which surrounded her. Again, she was inside a storm, and this was, indeed, a tremendously more powerful storm than the one that she had braved to reach the laboratory! But it was a good storm; the energy caressed her, instead of tearing her apart! But there was so much of it!
“Get the women, especially the amarto-sensitive women out of the Facility, at once!” Sarah heard the Greencat mentally shout. “Transfer them to Ferhil Stones before the Neotsarians can begin to recoup!”
Yes, that was the next step that she had to take! She had to make sure that there was no way that The Organization people could save something amarto-related from what to them would be a disaster! But how.... She fought to gain total awareness of herself, so that she could figure out what to do, and to do it. And then she knew what to do—but of course. She would pull in all the large bodies in the building which carried the double X chromosome in their DNA; that was the simplest, fastest way to do it. Not to mention the easiest, considering how the power of the amarto-cache was distracting her. Besides, moving physical objects, especially from one corner of the galaxy to another, was hard. She had struggled with her lessons in psycho-kinetics at Ferhil Stones, surprised to hear afterwards that her instructors considered her a prodigy at it. It was tough, even now, though she had two dozen amartos to draw on, Witches Stones which seemed to delight in working with her!
She buckled down to it; she did it. And at the same time she drew in another female body from even a greater distance to Ferhil Stones, in response to the Greencat’s request.
Then she was spent, and could no longer hold onto herself. Her exhausted astral form slipped out of her control, and went spinning through a power vortex, continuing to rush across a void.
When she came to herself she was, for the second time in her life, in the world known as Eden, lying under a tree, among grasses and small flowers. She was wearing a short, childish, yellow dress, and her feet were bare.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ferhil Stones was in chaos.
A collection of female bodies had appeared on the floor of the Tower Room which the Circle of Twelve normally used as their work room. One of the bodies was that of a large, dark green cat, which shook itself, before turning to look upon the assortment of humans around it.
“Ah, you’re a female, too,” cried Witch Dian to it, as soon as she had slightly recovered from her own disorientation, which was rather slight, considering the bumps her psyche had just experienced, having first been abruptly thrust back into her body, and then transported, in that body, back to her usual work place on Kordea.<
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The animal padded over to where Dian sat on the floor, shaking herself. It seemed to recognize that the young Witch had handled the crazy transmission better than any of the other women.
“You were aware of what Sarah was doing?” the Greencat mindspoke to her.
“Oh yes. We were in rapport, and Jaime, too. He will know to where we women disappeared.”
Dian’s eyes wandered over the bodies, stirring, as they were, on the wooden floor in the room shadowed by the insulating drapes. It was daytime, apparently. Her eyes stopped at two girlish bodies, lying stark naked, and crumpled, near the centre of the room.
“Oh, look what Sarah’s net caught us!” she exclaimed out loud. “Wouldn’t those two be Suse and Mimi, the rebellious Settlement girls? Snatched straight out of their boyfriends’ beds!”
That got a giggle out of Nance who was struggling up from an uncomfortable position, next to the older Kordean woman from the laboratory, Anya. Janelle was lying beside Anya, her face a mirror of surprise.
Jillian was dragging herself up off the floor.
“What the hell!” she exclaimed, looking around. And: “Oh no!”
She was staring beyond Dian and the Greencat, to the small body lying motionless on the floor, one hand still clutching the amarto on its chain around her neck. It took Jillian only seconds to recover her own energies, and she rushed over to examine the form on the floor.
“Oh no!” she cried again. “Sarah’s not okay! If she’s dead I’ll never forgive myself!”
Dian was up on her feet, and hurried over; the Greencat followed her.
Jillian was checking Sarah’s pulse.
“She’s alive,” she said, heaving a sigh of relief. “But she’s really out of it. Would you know anything about this sort of thing, Dian?”
“We’ll have to call Marlyss,” Dian said. “Probably the effort she made, and the use of the whole cache of the amartos kicked her out of our universe, and into some other reality. She may be really disoriented; may not even know that she’s still alive. If that’s the case, she won’t stay alive; she’ll not come out of the trance that she’s in.”
Love and Intrigue Under the Seven Moons of Kordea Page 24
