Pathspace: The Space of Paths (42 page)

“
These aren't just to stop
arrows,” Xander told him. “These are for hiding.”

“
What's the point of
hiding behind one of those,” Lester wanted to know, “when you can
see them a mile away?”

“
Watch.” Xander seized the
curved tower shield, grunting with the effort of lifting the metal,
and turned it so that the inner part of the curve faced the wall.
Then he concentrated, weaving pathspace. The shield faded
away.

“
This is what I want you
to do with the others,” he told his apprentice, leading Lester
around so that he could see the shield was perfectly visible from
the back, at close range. “The trick is to weave the pathspace so
that light coming from behind it curves around the shield and makes
it invisible from the front, because you see what's behind it
instead.”

“
I still don't see the
point of it,” Lester complained.

“
Stand over there, and
watch,” he told the boy, pointing to the middle of the
smithy.

Then he ducked behind the shield. “Now you
can't see me.”

“
So? I can do that without
a lot of iron.”

“
This isn't for you. It's
for ordinary troops who can't weave their own invisibility. You'll
only have to weave each one once, and then the metal will anchor
the pathspace pattern, better than wood can, so it will last and
ordinary people can use it..” He gripped the side of the shield and
lifted it, taking a few steps toward Lester. “And they can move
forward without having to re-weave the pattern. Anchoring the
pattern in the metal lets you carry it around without constantly
having to make and unmake it.”

He un-wove the spell, letting the shield
reappear closer to Lester, who finally looked impressed. “How many
of these do we need?”

“
As many as you can make.
Do them while you're waiting for more pipe.”

He turned at the sound of hoofbeats
approaching the smithy. Who could that be?

A few seconds later Aria appeared at the
doorway. “I need to have a word with you, wizard.”

He stepped out of the smithy and followed
her as she led him around the back of the building. “What is it? Is
Texas on the move already?”

“
No,” she said. “This is
personal.”

“
Well, as I've told you
many times, you can tell me everything.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Yes,
but you haven't told
me
everything,
have you? Like why we have the same rare blood type.”

Xander blew out his breath in a long
whistling sigh. There was no point in denying anything now. Someone
must have told her. The certainty on her face confirmed it.

Aria looked left and right to make sure no
one was within earshot of them. “I didn't want to believe it, even
when Mother admitted it,” she said. “Did you love her?”

Xander met her gaze. “I still do,” he
murmured. “But I'm sure she explained to you why things had to stay
the way they were. Rado and your legacy depend on it.”

“
On a lie,” she said. Her
tone was bitter. “So you're ashamed to claim me.”

“
Hell, no. Anything but
ashamed. If you were anyone else, you'd be my apprentice.” He took
a breath. “You've no idea how hard it's been on me, being just the
weird old man, the loyal advisor, instead of your father. But
leadership needs continuity. Rado and Kristana needed you for an
heir, and we decided – “

“
You
decided. What
about me? Don't I get a choice? It's
my
life! Not yours.”

He sighed. “No, you don't get a choice, any
more than I did. Deal with it. Fate chose me to be the wizard, and
you to be the next Governor. There's no one to replace either of
us.”

“
At least you have
Lester.” She was silent for a moment. “And people used to choose
the Governor. You know that. The Governor used to be elected by a
vote.”

Ah, to be young and idealistic again! “Yes,
and someday they will again. That's the difference between your
mother and the Honcho. She doesn't want to be an emperor. But that
day has not come yet, and it never will...unless we are all strong
enough to keep this continent from becoming an empire.”

“
Would that be much worse
than what we have now?”

“
I think so. So does your
mother. And so did the General. We believe in his
Dream.”

“
Maybe you do,” she said.
“But you have another Dream, don't you? Your school for wizards.
Something we've never needed before. Can you honestly tell me you
wouldn't be working for the Honcho, if he'd let you build your
school there? If you were there, you wouldn't have to waste time
worrying about invasions, would you?”

He pursed his lips. “Don't be too sure. He
has enemies too.”

“
So you're worried about
his enemies more than you are about ours? Is that it?”

“
No,” he said. “I'm more
worried about his friends.”

Even in the cooling air of early Winter, it
was hot inside the tank. “How did they ever stand this?” Jeffrey
asked one of the men with him, as he mopped sweat off his brow. It
was a good thing they'd started out long before dawn.

“
I heard they used to have
something to cool the air inside,” one of them said, raising his
voice to carry over the sounds of the engine and treads coming down
the open hatch. “They called it 'air conditioning'. There's a
couple of buttons on the controls for it.”

“
Well, make it work then.
What are you waiting for?”

“
Freon.”

“
What?”

“
Something called 'Freon'
that the system needs to cool down the air,” the man explained.
“But it must have dried up a long time ago. We're not even sure
what it was, but the manuals tell where to pour it in, so it must
have been a liquid. Anyway, we haven't got any, so the best we can
do is leave the hatch open.”

“
This is crazy! How can we
expect to fight in something like this? You'll drop of heatstroke
before we even get to Rado.”

“
Well, sir,” the man
responded, after a pause, “we ain't going to Rado today, are we?
Just some little town out in the middle of nowhere for practice.
They tell me by the time we do get to Rado we might be wanting to
run the heater instead.”

He did not know what to say about that.

The 'tank' was one of the strangest things
he had ever seen. Built of thick metal, it must weigh tons. He
still had a little trouble believing that even the motors of the
Ancients could move the thing. But they did. It had wheels, like a
cart or coach, but instead of rolling on the ground, they were
inside a kind of metal cloth that came down in front of the vehicle
for them to roll on, as if it were laying its own road down as it
went, and rolling it up in the back after passing over it.

The whole thing had seemed ridiculously
complicated to him, until he'd seen it go over rocks and wreckage
strewn in the road. Instead of butting up against a boulder, as a
wagon wheel would, the 'treads' let the tank tilt up and climb over
it. The tanks (they had found eight of the monsters in the sealed
armory in Abilene) were very hard to stop. Each carried a movable
cannon on top; if a wall came in their way, they could blast
through it and roll over the fragments.

For today, they'd only had enough fuel to
power up two of the weapons. His tank was following the one
carrying Brutus.

When they'd first climbed
inside the thing and started it up, he'd been a little startled by
all of the lights that came on. Tiny lit buttons, dials and
indicators glowed to life like eyes, as if they had resurrected
some ancient dragon. The engineer had explained it to him.
Apparently a reservoir of energy called a battery was needed to
make the fuel begin exploding inside the engine. For this, they had
reassembled some batteries stored in the depot, following the old
manuals. They'd opened cannisters of acid and poured it into the
plastic casings, letting it react with metal plates to build
up
voltage
, then loaded the
batteries into the tanks.

Jeffrey didn't like any of this. Are we
going to be pouring acid all day? He had asked. No, he was
reassured. Once the engines were started, they would generate
electricity to keep the batteries recharged, changing the lead and
zinc sulfate and water back into metal and acid. And also,
apparently, generating power for the internal lights, the controls,
and a motor that swiveled the big gun of the tank when they needed
to aim it.

Used to seeing cannons fired, Jeffrey had
not seen the need to turn the gun. Couldn't they just point it
straight ahead, and steer the tank to point the gun at
fortifications when needed?

“
What if someone came up
behind you, or on one side of you,” the engineers had pointed out.
“The electricity is easy enough for the tank to generate and store,
but the fuel is precious. One of the best things about these
weapons is you don't need to hitch up a team of horses to turn them
around if horses ride past you. You just swivel the gun and keep
shooting. And you can keep turning the gun to follow them, like you
would with a crossbow.”

“
I thought the great thing
about them is that they move faster than horses,” Jeffrey had
retorted. “You can just move the treads in opposite directions and
turn the tank that way.”

“
Oh, they can outrun
horses on straight paths, no problem,” the engineer had agreed.
“But horses are lighter and more agile. And like I said, fuel is
precious. You'll be using the gas to get there, but unless the Rado
people are really troublesome, most of the time you'll be firing
while stationary.”

“
Troublesome against
these?” Jeffrey shook his head. “If they have any sense at all
they'll surrender the first time we use these things. No arrows can
get inside this. From what I read in the manual and old books, one
or two of these things could wipe out a whole army of horsemen by
itself.”

“
You're right about that,”
the engineer said. “Now if we were fighting them in July, the crew
would be baked inside this like riding in an oven, without the air
conditioning. In that case it might be a different fight
altogether. But it'll be December, and your only problem with a
long battle would be running out of gas if you did too much moving.
These things drink a lot of fuel.”

“
Are we going to have
enough? I don't want to get stuck somewhere waiting for Rado men to
come with sledgehammers and bash their way inside.”

The engineer spat out the
end of a cigar and lit another one. “Don't worry about that, sir,”
he advised. We got a tanker truck that can follow you and refuel
you on the spot, if need be. They've got the refinery tunning flat
out now, cracking gas for us. You'll have all the gas you need, and
then some.” He gazed northwards, as if he could see the mountains
of Rado from Abilene, which of course he couldn't. “Those Rado
people have their mountains and mines. They can dig out gold to
hire troops and buy uniforms. But this is Texas. We are the
motherload
of oil. We'll still be pumping
oil and making gas for tanks when your great-grandson is running
the show.”

Remembering the man's
words, now, he tried to present more confidence than he felt.
I
'm sitting in a metal monster,
he
thought,
that only keeps going because inside it
something keeps exploding.

It had not been easy to make the lamp. They
allowed him no candles here, no oil, But the food they served was
often greasy stuff, and he had saved the grease, in a clay
bowl.

Stealing that bowl had cost him dearly. Oh
how angry they'd been, ransacking his little cell the next day! He
had to smile at the thought that they'd worried he was going to
break it and use the shards as weapons. While one guard was
stripping the bed and shining his lantern in the dim, the other had
been busy kicking him until he vomited.

How he'd wanted to laugh through his split
lips. The entire time they were searching for it, the bowl lay in
plain sight on the top of the wooden crate that served him as a
table. Well, not in plain sight. The invisibility he'd woven around
it had kept it safe from prying eyes, even his own.

The wick had been tricky too. They'd left
him no string, not even bootlaces. He considered tearing thin
strips from his bed sheet, but they would have spotted that.
Inspiration came one day when he cut his hand on a rusty edge of
the cot. In short order, he had used the roughness of the flaking
corroded iron to saw off several locks of his hair. These he did
his best to braid together, making a wick for the grease bowl. And
so his lamp was born.

Of course he had no reading materials. But
that didn't matter, because the lamp wasn't for reading. Its main
purpose was to keep the rats off him while he was sleeping. It had
a second function, too. Keeping the guards from seeing its light
gave him a reason to keep practicing his weaving of pathspace. To
keep sharpening his skill, as he waited for the opportunity to
vanish one day when they got too careless.

One thing they hadn't been careless about
was the door. It was metal, and the thick bolt on the outside was
secured with three padlocks.