Jaime nodded at him.
“Okay,” he said. “You’re in charge of getting the gate open, Jeb.
“Stu and Roge, you’re experienced Agents, so I want you with me; we’ll take the brunt of the assault. The rest of you guys, just get through to our flyer as soon as Jeb has the gate open. Stun whoever you have to stun, but don’t try to be heroes. In a situation like this, quick and dirty wins the day, with the emphasis on the quick.”
“Okay.” There was respect in Roge’s tone of voice. Apparently Jaime’s last words had convinced him that the Scientific Advisor did know something about tactics.
He and Stu followed in Jaime’s wake as he ran into the last clear section of the hall; all three of their stunners were ready to be triggered the moment there were targets for them.
There was a burst of laser pistol fire from the door; Jaime, Roge and Stu were already on the floor, Jaime’s stunner catching the arm holding the pistol which fell to the floor.
“Frig,” shouted someone at the door. “My shooting arm’s gone! How are we supposed to do this if they’re going to cripple us!”
“Damn, Jerold! That shot got your shoulder!” Cam shouted.
The back-up men had not been quite as quick to hit the floor as the front three had been!
“It’s not my shooting arm!” the sandy-haired man protested. “I can still push through. Those guys think they’re so frigging tough, anyway, but they’re just a bunch of wusses when push comes to shove!”
But the burn on his left shoulder did look nasty.
Jeb had crawled to where the first three were, listening to an argument going on ahead of them.
“One of the lab guys took a nasty burn on his shoulder from that shot,” he told Jaime. “But he says that he can still push through.”
Jaime rose up to a squat.
“Okay, then,” he said. “Let’s go while their troops are rebelling at the first sign of trouble. There are no pros among them; at most, maybe one or two.”
He glanced back to where the others had nearly reached the four front men. Peter, the oldest, was flanking the injured man.
“Joe, Texi, Cameron, join the fray behind us. The other two, just get to the flyer the moment Jeb gets us an open route. The others, if you can’t get a good stunner shot, get a poor one. These guys aren’t fighters; they’re what the guerrillas I once knew used to call mice.”
It was not a pretty fight. The Elite Karil tried to rally his rag-tag troops to do some serious damage, but after Cam took it upon himself to down him with a chest shot, the fight went out of everyone except Morri, and Jaime handled him with a head shot. Even Les turned to flee but got nowhere before Texi had shot him in the back.
“That was for Nance,” he muttered, stepping over a cowering Sevi as the whole fence flared up for a split second, and then died, thanks to whatever magic it was that Jeb had performed on it.
“Oh no,” Sevi moaned as Jeb opened the gate, “who knows how much of the electric system just died!”
“Good,” said Jeb, helping Jaime herd everyone of their troop through the gate. “Maybe that’ll slow down the military troops which just arrived at the port. Two ships, Roland just told me. We’re not going there. We’ll have to find someplace else on this mudball to hole up until our side arrives.”
“Shit,” said Joe. “What about Roland and Elli?”
“They’re pros,” responded Roge. “They’ll handle themselves until help comes.”
“How far can we travel in this machine?” Jeb asked, as they crawled into the flyer, Jaime grabbing a first aid kit from a storage locker, and passing it to Peter, who was still helping Jerold.
“Around the globe if necessary,” Joe replied. “I made sure that it was stocked with everything, including emergency rations, last night. Even if that meant that the other vessels had to do without a few things. We’ll just have to make sure that we’ve got the solar collectors operating whenever the sun’s out, and we’ll be able to even cross an ocean. Not comfortably, but we can do it.”
“Good. We may have to cross a bit of the ocean. Apparently there’s a group on one of the big islands south of us who are known for having people disappear, and reappear at strategic times. It was spoken of, sometimes, in the Settlement, always in whispers. They might be willing to help us.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
For some time Sarah simply sat on the ground where she had fallen, from where? Not from the tree above her, obviously, although that looked like the only place she could have fallen from. Well, whatever; she certainly did not feel like a dropped body—she felt incredibly healthy, as a matter of fact. That really made no sense; hadn’t she just moments ago made some heroic effort to save somebody, or something? Why was she having trouble remembering what it was, anyway?
“Maybe I don’t want to know,” she muttered to herself, reaching up to caress the bark of the tree.
Ah, the bark felt so friendly beneath her hand. Friendly? Tree bark couldn’t be friendly, now, could it?
There was something familiar about the way her thoughts were flowing, how everything around her seemed to be. Had she been in this place before, and if so, when?
She asked the question of her surroundings, and an answer came: “You’re in Eden. Remember Eden? You ended up here that time when you were running away from the mental powers you thought were trying to absorb you. Remember that? Now, in your need you chose a path you were already familiar with, and crossed the barriers between realities to end up here again. Here you are, with us, wanting rest and succour, and we will give it to you, in whatever fashion suits you the best.”
Yes! Memories flooded back of her first visit to Eden. She had found it a magical place, and a part of her had wanted to stay there, and explore it. But there had been things left undone in her own reality and she had gone back to do them. Now they were done, so perhaps she could stay here this time, and explore the magical properties of this reality! Or were they done? She was a little iffy about that, but also unwilling, at the moment, to delve deeper into the subject.
Shouldn’t there be a meadow, a flowered meadow, near the forest in which she was? Hadn’t she found a meadow, the last time she had been here? Oh yes, immediately she knew which direction to go; there was even a faint path, going in that direction, at her feet. How convenient!
She followed the implicit suggestion of the path, and began to walk along it. The ground was gentle on her bare feet; there were no sticks or stones for her toes to stub themselves on.
“Only if you want to stub your toes,” somebody seemed to be telling her, mentally, and she giggled at the thought. Who would want purposely to stub their toes?
“You’d be surprised,” came the answer. “In fact, the souls of your own world are big into toe-stubbing—metaphorically. If it’s an offence, Sarah, you are one of the worst offenders. You’re always creating, or finding, obstacles to overcome, no?”
Surprised, she thought back on her life, and found, unexpectedly, that she had no longer any trouble remembering the details; in fact many of them were crystal clear, clearer than they had ever been before. The mental voice was right, she realized; she had enjoyed battling obstacles, and taking risks.
“How come I never saw that before?” she asked the air around her, not really expecting an answer.
But an answer came:
“You were so busy being who you are, the risk-taker, the fighter-against-odds, the young woman of definite likes and dislikes, and of strong emotions, that it never occurred to you to question yourself. You didn’t even understand that those qualities of yours drew other people to you. You thought that you were an ugly duckling, the unattractive daughter and sister, when all that time you were a magnet that pulled people to yourself. Ponder on that.”
She did. Was that why Nance had had that thought which Sarah, out of body, had picked up in The Organization laboratory, that, for just a short while, she would have liked to have been Sarah for real, not just in pretence? Coryn had mention
ed when he had talked about her Mackenzie grandparents, that Jane had told him that Sarah had been her favourite grandchild, and that she had felt guilty for preferring the little rascal over the better-behaved ones. When she and Cam had been children, it had always been a matter of him following her, and not the other way around. Yet he was the older one, and male; anyone could have been forgiven for assuming that he must have been the leader in their escapades.
But he had not been. Sarah acknowledged that now, with a rueful grin. It had been little Sarah, “scrawny Sarah” as he had termed her ten-year-old self when he had commented on Nance’s impersonation in the Neotsarian lab. (Now, how did she know how that talk had gone? Eden certainly was a strange place; the rules of normal reality definitely did not apply.) He must have known in a second that Nance was not Sarah—and Peter would have known it, too. Only the Neotsarians could have made the mistake of taking Nance for Sarah, partly because they really had no idea of who Sarah was, and partly because they did know what they expected her to be. And Nance fit their image of what she ought to be better than Sarah herself did—the thought had Sarah giggling to herself.
She had reached the meadow. For a few minutes she stood at its edge, marvelling at the luminous sky, which, she remembered, had come as a huge surprise to her, during her first visit to Eden. Only, it was just right for the place; this was how Eden was supposed to be. Did Eden have day and night, she found herself wondering, did the luminosity fade into a velvet black sky at the end of the day? She had not thought of that the last time she had been here; she had been anxious to return to her own world, since she had had unfinished business waiting for her there.
“As should you be, now, too,” the mental voice which seemed to like to communicate with her, now nudged her. “Don’t you have unfinished business in your own reality, this time, too?”
“Do I?” she countered, unwilling to think about returning, about leaving this beautiful paradise that she was in. “Surely there are those who could finish the job? Those who’ll do what needs to be done, if I never return? Am I so necessary to the task of keeping The Organization from gaining amarto-power, that it cannot be done without me?”
“Of course there are people who’ll step into the breach that your dying would leave behind. But—you got the women away from the Neotsarians. What about the men? The husbands, your father and brother? What about the husband and wife team who led The Mission for The Agency? They had the good sense to let the Team which Coryn Leigh had put together to do what they knew how to do, without interference. But that got them caught by the Neotsarians, angry Neotsarians, who had just seen their mad hopes turn to dust. And the Neotsarians are looking for scapegoats.”
What the heck was going on here? Sarah had no memory of having been nagged, the last time she had been in Eden. The women in the Castle Fortune had asked her what it was that she wanted to do—to stay, or to go? And had helped her figure out why she wanted to go when it became clear that she wanted to return to her own reality; but they had in no way tried to influence her decision.
“But they were other than you,” the voice explained. “I am not. In a sense, when we converse you are talking with yourself. I’m the part of you that is more than the you that you know yourself to be. Here, in Eden, I can offer my knowledge to you directly. As a matter-of-fact, you are always picking up information from me. Think of those times when you felt that you were being told what was the best thing to do? Well, that teller was me, or yourself, really. The you that knows what to do in a sticky situation. The you that can handle an amarto—or a whole cache of them.”
“Yeah, I guess that I handled a whole cache of them—and I knew that I could, that I had to. But I guess that handling sent me spinning here, too.”
“But you also know how to go back. And this time you won’t need any help from The Twelve. You have studied under them, and the other Teachers at Ferhil Stones. You know, more or less, what they know, and you will be able to build a bridge across realities, on your own, without any help from anyone.”
“Except you, of course.”
“Except me. But, like I said, I am you, or you and I are one and the same, only I’m the depository of knowledge which, under normal conditions of your universe, remains below the threshold of a person’s consciousness.”
“The ‘subliminal self’ someone called it once, a long time ago.”
“That’s as good a moniker as any. Like I said, I am available, even in your reality. Or my knowledge is available to you, even if you don’t necessarily feel like you’re talking with someone.”
“You know, subliminal self,” Sarah said a little testily. “I actually, rather wish that you’d go away. I’d sooner talk to the two women I met in the Castle Fortune, the last time I was here. Talking to myself, like to another person, is kind of creepy.”
“Suit yourself. You always were headstrong. But I will guide your feet to the Castle Fortune, regardless.”
The sense of another personality was gone. Sarah heaved a sigh of relief. Talking to an entity claiming to be another portion of herself was bizarre. Still, she knew that whoever, whatever, had not taken any offence at being told to scram.
“She knows me so well,” she found herself muttering, enormously grateful that no answering words floated into her mind.
“So, Castle Fortune is—“ she twirled around on the patch of grassy meadow that she was standing on, and pointed, “—that way.
“Okay, that’s the way I’ll be going.”
*****
Jillian was enormously grateful that she had two flyers to work with. She had been able to send Anya, Janelle, and Nance, to Trahea with the pilot Gen, while taking the two girls, Suse and Mimi, now decently clad in Kordean garments that the Ferhil Stones servants had found for them, in the other. Gen, after one glance at the nearly-hysterical teens, had decided that two Witchy Kordean women, and the beautiful Nance, were by far the preferable load to transport. And, Jillian thought grimly to herself, if she lost it enough to slap the little bitches faces, there would be no one else in her flyer to see it. Not that she had any intention of being cruel, but the sudden change of planetary background had been disruptive even to her well-trained body. Besides, she was tired from the tension of the hours before that, and now the Kordean sun was setting, with the work night about to commence. Plus, at the office, who knew how many people were waiting for explanations from her.
And she was stuck in a flyer, having to deal with two difficult, frightened teens whose main modus operandi seemed to be to do precisely what the adults around them did not want them to do.
“What are Ma and Pa gonna say when I don’t come home at all?” Mimi was shrieking, staring at the dry landscape through the bright-light-adapted windows of the flyer. “They were really suspicious of my goings and comings already, since sometimes Sevi wanted me to hang with him most of the day. Only reason why I got away with it is that I’ve got a brood of younger sisters and brothers, and Ma was always too tired to care what I did, if she didn’t want me babysitting, and Pa never noticed what I did or didn’t do, anyway.”
“If they were suspicious of your goings and comings,” Jillian objected, “they must have cared.
“Someone will send word to both your parents that you two are safe, though I’m not sure that it’ll be possible to hide the fact that you were transported out of a couple of Neotsarians’ beds in the Facility.”
Suse grimaced.
“Can’t say that I really minded leaving. That Rolf is such a randy guy. I’d been with him all night, and, I swear, he gets another hard-on just thinking about a girl’s boobs, less than an hour after she’s let him do his thing inside her. I was getting real sore, and he just didn’t want to quit.”
“It was Nance’s boobs he was thinking about,” Mimi snipped at her. “You don’t have much in that department.”
“Like you do,” Suse snapped back. “And you have hardly any ass either. At least I have a nice butt.”
“Okay,
stop it right there!” Jillian felt her bile rising. “If you think that I’m going to listen to shit talk like that, think again. You want to get dropped on the ground on this god-forsaken planet where the sun’ll dry you into a crisp piece of leather within hours?”
“She said ‘shit’”, muttered Mimi, and Jillian was reminded of the fact that in spite of their sexual proclivities the girls had grown up in a religious community.
Now, there was a thought.... She opened her mouth and let out a litany of cuss words that she had learned from Joe, and his buddies from the mining world where he had grown up.
“Just to let you know that I mean what I say,” she snarled at the end. “Don’t mess with me, girls. I’ve handled a lot worse than you are.”
*****
The first thing Jillian did after landing the flyer was to call the Port Infirmary to ascertain that Dr. Jonas was working, and marched Suse and Mimi, plus the three women from Gen’s flyer, there. Gen offered to return both flyers to Maintenance, and she accepted the offer with relief.
“We were all transported, through amarto-power, across half the galaxy,” she explained to the Doctor whose eyebrows reached for her hairline at the words. “So I need you to make sure that each one of us is completely here—no pieces missing.”
Anya laughed at that.
“I can guarantee that fact without any examinations,” she said.
“I’m an amarto-sensitive,” she explained to Dr. Jonas. “Of a high enough order to have been a Circle Witch once upon a time, when I was a young woman. I was talented enough to have become a Circle Eldest, had I had the personality for it. I didn’t, and ended up in a lot of trouble on the other side of the galaxy. But I can still do the things a Witch can do.”
“Thank you, Anya,” Jillian said. “Don’t think that I don’t appreciate what you are telling us. I have certainly come to respect what the Kordean Witches can do, during my stint as Coryn Leigh’s Second, in the Kordean-Confederation Liaison Office. But humour me; I’m of Terran stock, and I’d feel more comfortable if Dr. Jonas gave each of us a clean bill of health.”
Love and Intrigue Under the Seven Moons of Kordea Page 26
