Among the Powers (25 page)

It was a strong face, neither a particularly
attractive one, nor one ugly or frightening enough to fit the
stories told about its owner.

“Hello there,” Thaddeus said
conversationally. “Only three of you? Are the rest somewhere else?
I’ll wait while you call them, if you like.”

“There are only the four of us,” Geste
replied, gesturing so as to include Bredon with the two women.

“Four?” Bredon was unsure whether Thaddeus’s
surprise was feigned or genuine. “Who is that, then? Has someone
taken a new body, or been rebuilt? I thought that was an android or
a primitive.”

Geste turned expectantly, to let Bredon
speak for himself.

“I am Bredon the Hunter, son of Aredon the
Hunter,” Bredon announced, aware how foolish that once-proud
declaration of his identity must sound to this unspeakably powerful
and ancient being.

“A primitive—so there
are
just three
of you. You will have your little joke, Geste, won’t you?” He eyed
Bredon warily, however.

“What do you want, Thaddeus?” Geste inquired
wearily.

“I just want to come to an
understanding.”

“What sort of an understanding?” the Skyler
asked.

“And where’s Aulden?” Imp demanded.

“Aulden is right here, Imp; he’s alive and
well. As for what sort of an understanding, that’s why Aulden is
here.” The image of a handsome, rather distracted-looking,
outwardly youthful man appeared briefly beside Thaddeus’ image,
then vanished again before Bredon could even be sure of the color
of his hair. “And Sheila, and Sunlight, and Rawl, and O, and
Khalid, and even Brenner.” More faces flashed briefly, then faded.
Bredon felt his throat tighten at the glimpse of Lady Sunlight’s
radiant features.

“What are you talking about, Thaddeus?”
Geste asked.

“Bluntly, Geste, I’m talking about
blackmail. I have seven of your friends here, all alive, at least
for the moment, but all very much in my hands. If any of you
interfere with my plans—for that matter, if any of you fail to give
me your fullest cooperation—I’ll start killing my prisoners.”

He smiled malignly down at the party aboard
the Skyland, and for a long moment no one spoke.

“Just what
are
these plans that we
aren’t to interfere with?” Geste asked at last.

“I would suppose that you’ve already
guessed. You all know who I am. I intend to rebuild my empire, and
this time I won’t be stopped.”

“No? You’ve lost two empires already,
haven’t you? Why should the third be any different?” Geste said
sweetly.

Thaddeus’ expression turned dark, and he
hissed, “Watch your mouth, Trickster, or I might just stuff
Sheila’s guts in it.”

Geste’s smile vanished, and Thaddeus calmed
slightly.

“I should have expected that from you,
Geste,” he said. “Yes, I lost two empires. The first one was
poisoned against me by my father and my brother, so that I couldn’t
hold it. The second was built on a bunch of stupid primitives who
betrayed me because they didn’t have the brains or the guts to
understand anything.
This
time that won’t happen. I’ll build
my own empire, one that Peter and Shadowdark didn’t meddle in, and
I won’t trust anything important to savages—I’ll use artificial
intelligences or my own tailored creatures instead, or just
pre-conscious machines.”

“And you expect us to just stand by and
watch?”

“Oh, no, more than that; I expect you to
help me. I’ve got your woman, Geste, and your man, Imp, and the
others as well, and I expect you all to turn over all your
equipment to me, so that I can use it to build my fleet. And in
exchange, when I’ve built my empire, you can each have a planet to
rule as my viceroy.”

The three immortals on the Skyland exchanged
glances with one another; Bredon looked from one to the next, but
they ignored him.

Thaddeus did not, however. He said, “Oh,
yes, and if you care about the primitives like your friend here, if
you cooperate I won’t kill any more of them, either, unless I have
to.”

“Any
more
?” Geste asked,
startled.

“Well, certainly; I had to kill off all the
tribes that lived right around the Fortress. I couldn’t trust them,
not after what happened back on Alpha Imperium. That was how I got
Khalid here, as a matter of fact; he came to protest about one
bunch that were his special pets.”

The four stared at him, speechless.

Thaddeus smiled back. “Oh, I see you want
time to think about it—or rather, to talk it over before yielding,
in order to save a little face. That’s fine; I won’t rush you. I
understand how it is. I’ve studied psychology for thousands of
years, and I know that you need to salve your pride by holding out
for awhile. You go right ahead; make a foolish gesture if you have
to, but just remember, I have your friends here, and I have enough
automated weapons to kill you all and build my empire without your
help, if I have to.” He raised a hand in sardonic salutation.
“Until the next sunset, as measured at the Fortress. I want your
capitulation no later than that, or the first captive dies.”

The image vanished.

Bredon stared at the empty air, trying to
decide whether or not to believe the casual confession of mass
murder. Had Thaddeus really butchered hundreds of innocent
people?

Yes, he probably had, if Gamesmaster had
told the truth about what happened on Alpha Imperium.

Bredon’s own tribe was safe; they dwelt far
to the east of the mountains, while Fortress Holding was far to the
west. Still, a shudder ran through him at the thought of what a
Power could do to them on a mere whim.

The others were also staring at the air, but
their thoughts were clearly different.

“It’s a bluff,” Geste announced.

“I don’t know,” the Skyler said.

Imp glanced at the others, then turned back
to the empty air without commenting, obviously involved in her own
considerations.

“Of course it’s a bluff!” Geste insisted.
“He wouldn’t dare kill helpless prisoners like that. Someone would
find out. If any of us die, Mother will know, and she’ll report it
back to Terra, and they’ll send someone out to investigate.
Thaddeus won’t risk that.”

“Of course he would!” the Skyler said. “We
don’t know what’s happened on Terra in the last four centuries;
someone might have blown the whole planet apart by now. And Mother
would send the news at light-speed, and we’re hundreds of
light–years from Terra. We’ve been through this before, Geste.”

“But he
couldn’t
,” Geste insisted.
“Even without bringing Terra into it, if he kills one of us, a
cold-blooded murder like that, the others won’t permit it. They’ll
all join forces against him. He won’t risk
that
!”

The Skyler frowned. “Geste, you’re being
stupid; of
course
he will. First off, he’s crazy. Second,
the others are all apathetic and lazy, and they won’t try to stop
him and he knows it. Third, they can all be blackmailed by threats
to the other six, if he kills one—seven is a lot of hostages to
risk. And fourth, even if they
did
all gang up on him, he’d
probably still win, because he’s ready for it and he’s got
Aulden.”

Geste hesitated, then said, “All right,
you’re right. I suppose I knew it, but I didn’t want to admit it.
He
will
kill them, all seven of them. He says he already
killed all those other people, and I don’t think he’d lie about
that—we could check it too easily. Seven more won’t mean that much
more to him. But damn it, Skyler, we
have
to stop him, even
if he
does
kill them! This may be the last chance anyone
has. He expects us to give in, so if we attack we can catch him
off-guard. And if we
don’t
stop him, he’s going to start an
interstellar war, and probably kill
millions
of people. We
have
to stop him!”

It was the Skyler’s turn to hesitate. She
pursed her lips and glanced about uncertainly.

“You’re right,” she said at last. “I hate
it, but you’re right. And if you can let him kill Sheila, I won’t
argue any more. I don’t even
like
most of the people he has
there.”

“Good! Imp?”

“What?” The redhead started at the sound of
her name.

“Do you agree?” Geste asked. “We
attack?”

Imp stared at Geste as if not really seeing
him. “I don’t think so,” she said, oddly detached. She pulled a
gleaming object from the air and spoke into it, slowly and
clearly.

“Do it, code green, I tell you three times,
code green, code green.”

Geste lunged forward, grabbing for the
device she held, but was not in time to prevent her completion of
the command. Imp fell back under his onslaught, landing roughly on
the stone terrace with Geste on top of her. A sudden whirring and
hissing came from all sides.

Bredon was at first baffled by this entire
incident, but then dredged up a bit of information from his
imprinted knowledge. The gleaming object was a master-link
communicator.

A master-link communicator went straight to
the central controls of a system, bypassing all artificial
intelligences and working directly on the basic computer functions
the intelligences operated unconsciously, much as a human’s
internal organs functioned without any conscious control. Such
communicators existed as a safety measure, to make certain that
humans could always override their creations. Only a very limited
number of commands could be made over a master link, all intended
for emergency situations.

Imp had apparently set up a command of some
sort under the name “Code green,” but Bredon could only guess what
it was, or even what system her link was connected to.

Geste, sprawled across a motionless Imp, was
in a light trance, communicating with his machines.

The Skyler demanded, “What’s going
on
?” Bredon looked at her, and realized she was on the verge
of hysteria.

“Damn!” Geste spat, coming out of his
trance. “She’s aborted every major weapon system we had! I let her
take care of coordinating everything, so our weapons wouldn’t get
in each other’s way, and she had saboteur systems built into
everything she could get at, all set to shut down on that
command!”

“I didn’t trust you,” Imp whispered. “I had
to be ready.”

“Now what do we do?” the Skyler wailed.

Geste sat up and looked at her with disgust.
She paid no attention, and his expression altered to a more
contemplative one. “We still have the Skyland,” he said. “We can
drop it on Fortress Holding if we have to. We’ll need to sabotage
his protective fields, though.”

“Drop the Skyland? Oh, no, Geste. No, you
don’t.” The Skyler was suddenly calm, shocked back from the edge of
hysteria by the threat to her hold. “Not
my
home you don’t.
Drop
Arcade
on him if you like!”

“Arcade doesn’t fly, Skyler, and by the time
I could
make
it fly—without Aulden’s help—it would be too
late to do any good. The Skyland is the only one of its kind, the
only real weapon we have left, because Thaddeus would never think
we would use it as a weapon.”

“And he’s right, damn him, and damn you,
too, Geste!
Nobody
is going to do
anything
with the
Skyland!”

“That’s right,” Imp said from where she lay.
“If you smash the Fortress you’ll kill Aulden and the others.”

“But...”

“No buts, Geste!” The Skyler’s tone had
softened somewhat.

Imp said, “I know you mean well, Geste, and
maybe you’re right, in the abstract, but we can’t
do
it. We
can’t kill our friends and smash the Skyler’s home. We
can’t
.”

Geste looked up at the Skyler, and then down
at Imp, who still lay sprawled before him.

“You want to surrender?” he asked.

“We don’t
want
to,” Imp replied,
lifting herself up on one elbow. “We
have
to. If Thaddeus
has those seven people, we
can’t
let him kill them.”

“Would you say that if Aulden weren’t one of
them?”

“I don’t know,” Imp admitted, “I really
don’t. But it doesn’t matter, because he
is
one of
them.”

“If he is,” Bredon said, breaking into the
conversation for the first time. He had been very carefully
thinking over what he had seen, in the light of his new
understanding of Terran technology. “Why did Thaddeus only show
those images for quick flashes like that? Maybe he faked them, or
used old recordings.”

Startled, the other three all looked at him.
“But Mother said...” Imp began.

“If he faked the pictures, couldn’t he have
faked that transmission, too?” the Skyler asked her.

Geste stared at Bredon, but said nothing.
The corners of his mouth twitched, however, and Bredon knew he was
thinking hard, and was pleased with the results.

The two women, after staring at each other
speechlessly for a few seconds, turned to stare at Geste, waiting
for his response.

“
Could
he be faking it?” Imp
demanded.

“I think,” the Trickster said at last, “that
we had better check for ourselves that Thaddeus
does
have
captives, that he hasn’t killed them already, before we agree to
anything.”

“How can we do that, if Thaddeus is faking
all the transmissions out of Fortress Holding?”

“We’ll demand to see the captives in person,
in the flesh.”

“He won’t allow that,” the Skyler said
derisively.

“Why not?” Geste asked. “If he doesn’t, what
is he afraid of?”

The Skyler hesitated, then answered, “He
won’t trust us inside his fortress. We might sabotage the place,
somehow.”

“He can take precautions. Or he can bring
the prisoners out.”

“He won’t bring them out; we might rescue
them.”