Pathspace: The Space of Paths (44 page)

Mentally he sighed. Part of him wanted to
make Brutus his heir instead of Jeffrey, even if the title Runt
would seem like a misnomer when applied to the tall seasoned
commander. Brutus would carry on with the expansion of the Empire,
no question about it. He never let anything stand in his way.

The problem was, he just couldn't do it. For
the Empire to succeed, it needed clear and consistent succession of
leadership, and he'd concluded that a dynastic monarchy was the
stablest form they could manage. If he set the precedent of making
his best commander the next Honcho, it would set the stage for
generations of infighting and competition among the officers as
each military family strove to attain enough glory to be chosen.
That might be great for the initial period of expansion, with each
field commander trying to outdo his peers.

But what about when they had finished
subduing and unifying the entire continent? Would it then be a
competition between captains, between admirals, when they built
their navy and began the conquest of Eurasia?

The Empire would not survive such
competition. There would be rebellions, secessions, civil wars. And
then what would he have spent his life building?

No, he couldn't do it. Jeffrey would be the
next Honcho. But that brought its own problems. Unless he changed
his attitudes, he would always be at odds with his own officers. If
he didn't get off his righteous high horse and face reality,
there'd be a lot of courts-martial and a general loss of morale. He
had to learn to let boys be boys, especial the boys who were men
leading his armies.

“All right,” he said, when they were
finished. “Here's what I think.” He looked at his son. “I
appreciate what you tried to do to spare some hostile citizens.
We'll need every man we can get to build the armies required for
expansion. But you forgot that the Commander had operational
control of this mission. Trying to take over in front of the troops
was a mistake, and bad for morale and discipline. I'd be chewing
him out if he'd let you get away with it.”

Jeffrey did not take this criticism well. “I
know about discipline,” he said, his voice sullen. “But how am I
supposed to be learning how to run things when you never let me run
anything? Glock didn't get where he is today by always being a
subordinate.”

Peter narrowed his eyes. “No,” he said. “But
when he was a subordinate he followed orders. He didn't get
promoted by pulling stunts like you did, walking up to hostiles
thinking you could talk them into abandoning their homes.”

Brutus was enjoying this too much, he
thought. He turned to face the Commander.

“And you, stop grinning. You accomplished
your objectives, and I'm glad of it. What I'm not happy about is
that you allowed this disagreement between the two of you to happen
in full view of the troops. You know better than that, Brutus,” he
said, using Glock's first name to take some of the sting out of the
rebuke. “You can disagree with fellow officers in private, but you
have to be united in front of the lower ranks. Understand me?”

A soldier came in with a tray of sandwiches
and a pitcher of cider. Peter used the interruption to change his
tone, underscoring his point. “Ah, good, thank you corporal. Now,
gentlemen, let's talk tactics. Denver is going to have more than a
rabble with bows and pitchforks. Have you had a chance to read that
book on tank warfare?”

Jeffrey nodded. “The problem with it is that
it is mainly about how groups of tanks fight other groups of tanks.
Rado doesn't have any tanks.”

“Nor anything that can stand against tanks,”
said Brutus.

”You've both seen the size of her
headquarters building. Do you foresee any difficulty bringing it
down?”

Brutus yawned. “Nope. It's just a matter of
having enough ammunition. All we have to do is blow out the ground
floor and the rest of it'll collapse under its own weight.”

Jeffrey shook his head. “Are you sure we
want to level it? We probably can, but why? For the psychological
advantage? They'll know when they've been beaten.”

Peter almost laughed as their differences
came out again. Brutus, asked what he considered a practical
question, gave a practical answer. Jeffrey, on the other hand, saw
it not as a logistical problem but a human one. “They have to
stay
beaten, son.”

“Yes, but it's a ridiculous waste! We should
occupy that building, use it as the headquarters of whoever you put
there as your local representative. Same building, but under new
management. Look, you'll need a local headquarters anyway, so why
build a new one that won't be as good as the structures the
Ancients made?”

Peter considered it. He'd kind of liked the
idea of toppling Kristana's tower, a visible demonstration of his
power and the fact that she'd lost and he'd won. But the lad had a
point. Why waste resources during an expansion when you could use
what already existed?

“In that case,” he said, “tell me what you
would do instead, both of you. How do we take the building without
destroying it?”

Naturally, this sparked off another
argument. While they debated strategy and tactics, he sent out for
more food and drink. It was going to be a late night for all of
them.

He moved like a ghost in the shadows of the
empty armory. Well, not empty; the eight tanks were lined up (the
ancient metal brutes reminding him of the dinosaurs in some of
Xander's books) against one wall, and the two fuel trucks and three
jeeps faced them from the opposite wall like a pair of metal
monster armies lined up to attack each other on some ancient
battlefield.

He yawned. This would have been a lot more
convenient if he could do it in the daytime. But the Honcho had
been adamant. All of Ludlow's practicing had to be done after the
workday for most was over, because there was a chance even the
armory workers had been infiltrated by Rado spies. And what he was
about to practice would lose its advantage of surprise if Denver
had any inkling of it.

He stood in front of a tank and faced the
jeep across from it, concentrated as he strove to weave pathspace.
As the light from the lanterns began to flow around him in the new
configuration, he was plunged into darkness.
Damn. This will
never do. The drivers have to see where they are going.

He abolished the weave and the light flooded
back into its original straight path. Now he could see again, but
the tank would be visible. Also unacceptable. There had to be a way
to hide the tank without blinding it.

Frowning, he kicked at a clod of dirt that
had fallen off one of the tank's treads. The clod sailed across the
room and bounced off the grille of the Jeep back toward him.

He froze, seized by a sudden realization:
the tank was visible not because of light moving toward it, but by
the light moving toward the observer. Bending the pathspace of the
incoming light, as he had done, would prevent reflected light from
being seen. . . . but would also prevent the driver from seeing
where he was going. But what if he was going about it the wrong
way?

He turned around to face the tank and took
three steps backward, toward the jeep behind him, and began to
concentrate again. Picturing in his min a wall of light behind the
tank, coming toward him., he imagined it splitting and going to the
left, to the right, and over the tank, coming forward and rejoining
back into a plane just in front of the projected gun.

As he had hoped, the tank faded from view.
Now he saw only the wall behind it. He stepped forward until he was
through the bent pathspace, nearly brushing the front of the
vehicle, which had reappeared,. and slowly turned around.

It worked! He could see forward now. The
trick was not to worry about incoming light, but about the
reflected
outgoing
light. You had to let in light so the
driver could see...but you also had to let light that had not
struck the tank continue outward, so that objects behind it would
be seen instead of a patch of darkness.

While he was gloating, the pattern decayed
and the tank faded back into view. At first he was tempted to curse
at it. He should have anchored the pattern on the tank itself, not
on the region of space around it. It would have been longer-lasting
that way . . . and would be able to move around with the tank,
hiding it even when it was in motion.

On the heels of that thought another
realization struck him:
if I make his tanks permanently
invisible from the front, he won't need me any more.
Then, the
best-case scenario is I get exiled, and worst-case is, I go back
into the cell . . . or get executed to satisfy the Church.

He was well aware that this was not Rado.
For the support the TCC gave the Honcho, Martinez would had to be
seen as respecting the Church's ban on “demon magic.”

He would have to be very careful now. If he
could not help, he was doomed. But also doomed if his help was
permanent.

The sound of a door interrupted his musings.
Speak of the Devil! Turning, he saw Martinez coming into the armory
toward him. The door closed behind him, eclipsing the sight of the
Honcho's bodyguard left outside.

“I see you found the place,” the Honcho
said, pretending his men had not personally escorted Ludlow here to
the Abilene armory. “Have you thought of anything yet that could
help us?”

Ludlow smiled. “Yes, Excellency, I have,” he
said. “I believe I can give you another advantage. But there are a
couple of problems.”

“Explain.”

“I'm sure Commander Glock told you that I
can make myself invisible when I want to. I can also do this to
objects – make the tanks invisible from the front,” he said.
“Kristana and Xander won't see them coming.” Swiftly, he gave a
partial explanation, and demonstrated, doing exactly what he had
just done.

Martinez appeared impressed. That is, until
the tank reappeared again. “What went wrong?”

“Nothing. This is one of the problems I
mentioned. The effect is temporary. Anchoring it in the metal will
help the spell last longer, but it will still fade in time.” He
neglected to mention that with the dense metal, that time might be
measured in years or decades. “And if we were to invisible them
just before you get to Denver, the border patrols will see them
coming in before I cast the spell.”

The Honcho frowned. “Either way we'd lose
the element of surprise. Is there any solution?”

“There is.” Ludlow paused, thinking. “We put
the tanks in a single file column, and I will have to ride in the
lead tank, continually refreshing the spell. That way it will hold
all the way to Denver.”

Now he held his breath, watching the Honcho
absorb this. Ironically, his survival now depended on Martinez not
caring whether he lived or died. If he worried about losing his
only wizard, it would be back to the prison cell.

But Martinez did not disappoint him. “Then
we'll do that. What's the other problem?”

“Sound. Invisibility worked for me in
Kristana's fortress because I walked quietly. But I imagine your
tanks make a lot of noise. Even if they don't see them coming,
they'll hear them.”

“So it won't work.” His disappointment was
obvious.

“I didn't say that . . . only that it was a
problem.”

“Is there a solution to the noise?”

Ludlow let himself appear to be in deep
thought. “There might be,” he said, after a pause. “If I can bend
the paths for the motor noise also, send it back behind the tanks,
then no one will hear them coming.”

The Honcho's eyebrows rose. “Can you do
that?”

“I think so, but it might take a bit of
practice. I've never bent sound before. As your spy in Denver, it
was more useful for me to be unseen but still listening.”

The other man considered this. “All right,
you've got three weeks. They tell me it'll take that long to cook
up enough fuel for all the tanks and fuel trucks and jeeps. If you
can do it by then, you'll get a uniform and rank to avoid questions
from the troops, and we'll proceed as you suggested. Otherwise . .
. well, we'll just have to do without you.”

Do without you,
Ludlow thought.
You mean, execute me.
“I think I can be ready by then,
Excellency.”

His days were blending into each other,
becoming seamless, like waves that crash upon the shore and are
renewed by more water, the same water, repeating endlessly the same
patters with minor changes.

Each morning he arose and practiced his
pathspace weaving, getting a little better, a little quicker in
reshaping the flowing lines of tendency. He was never quick enough
to satisfy Xander, who kept emphasizing that the smallest delay
could mean the difference between surviving and not.

After lunch, they went to the metal workers
and he made more sizzles and invisibility shields, as many as he
could manage, while Xander sat grimly at a table turning metal
disks into everflames. The old wizard was too busy to show him how
it was done, saying that he should concentrate on his pathspace
until he had mastered that. Later he could move on to other
weavings.

In the late afternoon they would troop up to
Aria's garden floors, where Xander spent his time refreshing the
ceiling glowtubes that would keep Aria's gardens blooming through
the long winter ahead.. After dinner Lester would resume reading
his way through the old wizard's bookshelves, searching for clues
in the old volumes that lines the walls of the wizard's den. He
supposed that Xander must have done the same thing, but another set
of eyes could not hurt.

He wasn't even sure what he was searching
for, but there had to be something.