Gordon R. Dickson (45 page)

Apparently, we were not to return to
where her camp had been when I had visited. Her orders had already gone out,
and her troops and wagons had been on the move from an hour after I had broken
the news to her over our breakfast table. We flew on eastward and put down by a
river about twenty-five miles further on, where the motorized section of
Paula's transport had already arrived and set up her personal tents. Later,
that evening, the main body of her wagons and infantry arrived.

I kept Doc with me for four days,
mainly so he could prowl around and get acquainted with the way Paula's people
did things; then I sent him home before they saw through the bright-eyed,
teenage image he had been careful to wear anywhere near her and them. The Old
Man stayed close in the tent I had assigned to me for my exclusive use and was
no problem. I found myself happy to have him there. He was, after all, a small
touch of home.

We continued to move steadily eastward.
In open country, between objectives, the pattern seemed to be for Paula's
headquarters to stay comfortably put for three days while her army marched
forward. Then her motorized division would move the headquarters tents and
equipment forward one short day's trek in their jeeps and trucks. Meanwhile
Paula, her general, and a handful of us who were at the top of the table of
organization took it easy for most of the day, then struck the pavilion tent
and made a half to three-quarters of an hour hop in a single 'copter to the new
site, while the other two aircraft followed empty except for pilots and
copilots.

It was a pleasant life, but
monotonous; particularly when it began to be obvious that Paula had no real
need for services from me, but was only carrying me along as a satellite to
impress possible enemies and reluctant allies. I had a great deal of time on my
hands; but it turned out this had been provided for by Paula's foresight. I
discovered one of the main duties of her large staff of women clerks and
attendants.

Briefly, they were there to keep
everyone happy, from me down to the lowest officer in the army; and also to
keep us out of Paula's way and off her mind, except when she had a need for us.
A good share of this, I picked up from my own observation; but it was General
Pierre de Coucy Aruba who dotted the i's and crossed the t's for me.

The general was a drinker. That is,
he could not yet be called a drunk because he held his alcohol without visible
sign and never seemed to prolong his drinking beyond three or four drinks. But
those drinks came at every lunch, dinner, cocktail hour and late supper at
which I ever saw him.

"You could call me a
philosopher," he told me one evening in his tent, after a post-dinner
planning session with his staff had concluded. His officers were gone and he
had invited me in for a private chat with just the two of us.

"You might think that I could
probably set up with my own army and carve out a nice little empire for
myself," he went on. "And I could—I could. But I'm not the kind who
wants an empire for himself. '
Everybody's a little mad except thee and me,
and I even have my doubts about thee
!' People intrigue me. I like to be
comfortable and watch them. So I'm the perfect commander for our Empress. She
knows she never needs to worry about a military coup as long as I'm in
control."

"I can see she'd appreciate
that," I said.

"Yes, indeed." He smiled
at me—and it was a smile, not a grin, with the sun-wrinkles deepening at the
corners of his eyes and the tidy, little grey mustache quirking upwards at the
corners. "Wouldn't you, in her shoes?"

"I gather she makes a good
boss?" I said.

"A good Empress, you
mean." He waggled a forefinger at me. "Always remember that. An
Empress has to be an Empress, at all times. That's why the young ladies."

"The young ladies?"

"Of course. Familiarity breeds
contempt." He smiled again. "And there's no familiarity like that in
bed, eh?"

"That's true enough," I
said soberly, thinking of my own two women.

"Most queens had trouble out of
getting laid," he said. "Most empresses, too. Queen Elizabeth...
Catherine of Russia... notice none of the girls around here, though, are quite
as good-looking as the Empress?"

"I had," I told him.

"Obviously. The art of
controlling a man with your female presence is to be just out of reach, but out
of reach. You understand?"

I did. Not only did I understand,
but a certain near-demonic impulse moved in me, and my trader's instinct was
challenged. During the days when Paula had been talking to me about coming with
her on her road of conquest, she had sent up clear signals that she was
attracted to me personally. I had taken for granted, that part, if not all of
this was calculated, to gain her own ends. But, as it turned out, she had
wanted me neither for my services as a magician nor myself; she had simply
bought herself a show piece at the cost of nothing more than promises, rather
than having to spend her troops and materiel to get it. Again, it had been a
case of "seller beware"; so I really had no kick coming if I had
taken counterfeit currency for what I had sold. But for her to assume that,
after having been sharped, I would cheerfully reconcile myself, given the
equivalent of two cents on the dollar, was something of an insult.

Accordingly, I played the game with
the female staff, so as not to arouse any suspicions; but privately, I set my
sights on Paula after all. I was patient. I had my ability to see patterns
working for me. Success would be along, down the line there, somewhere.

Meanwhile, in the patterns, I had
found another hobby to occupy my time. Now I had broken through twice to the
oneness of the universe, and there was no longer any doubt in my mind that such
a state of mind existed; and if that was so, anything was possible, even the
destruction of the time storm. I made it an invisible exercise to look around
me for patterns constantly, and to develop my perception of them to the point
where that perception and recognition and understanding of the patterns would
be simultaneous.

The work paid off. The patterns were
there, all about me all the time. They were there in the interactions of
people, in their physical movements, their speech, their reactions, and their
thinking; and in all else about fauna, flora, earth, and sky. Little by little,
my knowledge of such patterns became deeper and surer, until it began to
approach eerily close to the true magic of telepathy and second sight. I could
have played chess now, better than anyone I had ever encountered; but the chess
patterns, for all that they were fascinating and innumerable, were dead
patterns. I preferred the live patterns created by my fellow men and women.

So I observed and learned; and,
curiously, I could feel the Old Man learning through me.

Meanwhile, we were marching to the
Atlantic seaboard. The points we searched out were sometimes the fragments of
cities or towns that still held supplies or needed equipment; or sometimes they
were population centers like my own community, which had not existed before the
time storm forces had been balanced, but which had sprung up since around some
acquired communication equipment or military force.

In every case, however, these places
and the people in them were plainly inferior to the armed strength of the
Empress. They sometimes bluffed for a day or two before yielding, but in the
end they all acknowledged her as their overlady. Then, at last, we ran into
opposition.

We had reached the ocean and a place
that called itself Capitol, which once had been half Washington International
Airport, and was now half that and half something else, because deep-water
ocean lapped up against the base of cliffs that abruptly cut off the main road
into the airport. On the ocean, moored out a little distance from a jerry-built
wharf, were a number of small oceangoing craft. Still hangared about the
airport were a number of 1980 commercial passenger jets and—on the land area of
that part that now opened to the ocean—some light, five-passenger craft, that
were like flying bubbles with stubby wings, and a tiny power plant that seemed
permanently fueled with an inexhaustible, built-in supply of energy.

These were from some time later than
the twentieth century; and these also were the real prize from Paula's point of
view. The craft, in their own right, were almost as famous as I was in mine.
For, although there were still large cruise ships and other massive watercraft
to be found up and down the Atlantic coast, there was no way now to either
maintain or operate them. It was still possible to cross the Atlantic in boats
up to the size of small yachts. But the trip would be uncomfortable and a
matter of some weeks. With these light aircraft out of the post-twentieth
century, the ocean could be crossed in hours.

Once more, Paula moved in, going
gutsily herself with a small guard to negotiate, while readying her armed
forces and artillery behind her. But this time, the target did not yield; and
she was forced to fight for what she wanted.

Not only that, but these people
fought hard. It took nearly a week for Aruba and his soldiers to take the place
and subdue its inhabitants; and it cost them over half of their strength in
casualties. Replacements would have to be marched across the continent from the
west coast, since she could not trust any of the recently subjugated communities
in between to furnish her with loyal fighters. That meant months. Fall and
winter would be upon us before they were here and trained. Paula herself, and
her inner staff officers, could cross the ocean by air at any time; but the
small boats available could not ferry her army across the Atlantic in bad
weather. We were stuck where we were until spring.

I saw the pattern of this situation
evolving ten days before the rest of them did. It solidified in my mind on the
first day of hard fighting in which they pounded the enemy positions with
artillery and confidently advanced afterwards, only to be cut to pieces by
machine gun fire. I saw it; and I raged inside at the inevitable delay it
implied for Paula's plans of world conquest. Doc was overdue for one of his
periodic visits, and for the first time, I found myself fearing, rather than
hoping, that he would bring me word that Porniarsk had found the ultimate
universe pattern possible to the viewing tank. If the avatar had found it, I
had no choice. I could not delay going home, with the risk that, in the
meantime, some chance here might kill me, cripple me, or somehow prevent me
from returning at all.

On the other hand, I told myself, I
did not want Paula still on the North American continent when I left her,
without leave, and headed once more for my own territory. I wanted her on the
other side of the world, by preference; or at least across the Atlantic, so
that the trouble and expense of sending forces after me to bring me back would
be so great she would delay as long as possible in doing so. It was, I
believed, a reasonable reason for wishing her success. Therefore, as the week
of fighting went on and casualties mounted, I looked grim along with everyone
else in the Empress' camp—but for my own private reasons.

About Thursday, Doc finally arrived.

"Porniarsk's found it?" I
said, the moment we could get off someplace where we were safe from being
overheard. In this daylight instance, that meant a training area behind the
field hospital, where we could see there was no one else within earshot.

"No," he said. "Not
yet."

"Good!" I said. He stared
at me for a fraction of a second.

"Never mind," I told him.
"I'll explain later. What's the rest of the news?"

"I was going to say," he
said, "Porniarsk doesn't have it yet, but he thinks he's close—"

"Hell's bloody buckets!"

This time he really did stare at me,
his tanned young face stretched smooth-skinned with puzzlement.

"I've got a reason," I
said. "Go on."

"I was saying, Porniarsk hasn't
found the furthest possible future configuration the device can show; but he
did find a sort of sticking point—some point where he got hung up for some
reason. He's pretty sure he can get the tank to go beyond it, with a little
more work; but he says to tell you he thinks this sticking point is some kind
of sign he's close to the ultimate."

I took a deep breath.

"All right," I said.
"If he has, he has. I'll talk to you about that in a minute. Anything else
important? How's everybody? The community running the way it should?"

"Nothing else. I've got some
letters for you, of course." He tapped the leather wallet that hung from
one of his shoulders. He always brought me a bundle of personal mail, that
being the ostensible reason for his coming. "But everyone's fine. And the
place's running, like always, on the button."

"Fine. Let's go back to my
tent."

We headed toward it. It was a matter
of elementary caution not to talk to him for more than a few seconds as we were
now, for fear of triggering off suspicions. Given the important and general
news, we could do a fairly good job of discussing matters in hyperbole while I
went through the home mail, even if there might be ears listening.

At the tent the Old Man leaped up to
seize my hand, then turned to grasp one of Doc's as well. He walked with us to
a pair of armchairs, still hanging on, and hunkered down between us.