Pathspace: The Space of Paths (48 page)

The drivers would have the same problem, but
whereas they'd set up a rotation to ensure someone rested was
always at the wheel while other snoozed (or as well as they could
given the noise and vibration of the motors), there was no one to
relieve Ludlow at his post as the maintainer of their invisibility.
He'd just have to catnap as best he could until this was over.

They continued on. In a few minutes they'd
be turning from the old 84 W onto 87 N, which would take the most
of the way until they joined what was left of 25 N just below the
border of Rado. A couple of his advisors had wondered whether the
weight of the tanks bearing down on the road surface with metal
treads would do irreparable damage to the ancient surfaces. But
other advisors had disagreed. According to their research, older
and smaller roads would have suffered, but the main highways had
been resurfaced with composite materials that could easily handle
the loads involved. You could even tell the difference by sight,
they had argued. The older, smaller roads had faded to light gray
and succumbed to innumerable cracks and potholes from subsidence of
the underlying ground, they maintained, whereas the more modern
roads were still a uniform dark gray and had held up might better
than the simple asphalt-and-grit surfaces they had replaced.
Apparently the newer roads had cost more but were built to
last.

Peter studied the road ahead of them and saw
the yea-sayers had been right. The road was dark and smooth. Only
the occasional crack betrayed its antiquity. He was glad he had
listened to the second group of advisors and not the worriers.
Sure, he could have directed the convoy to drive on the shoulder of
the road . . . but they would have kicked up a lot of dust, and
that would have attracted the attention of observers even if
'Captain' Ludlow's magicking was successful in blocking sight and
sound of the actual vehicles.

So far, everything was going according to
plan. Part of him was not happy with the idea of using a wizard.
Not because of the Church; he wasn't worried about so-called
demons. It was, rather, the inconsistency in policy that Ludlow's
presence implied.

Hell, if he was going to worry about that,
all he had to do was remember where his fuel came from. Here he was
trying to build a new civilization without magic, without the
“Gifts” of the Tourists . . . but to do that he was using fuel
sucked out of the ground with swizzles and cooked with
everflames.

He wasn't troubled by it.
The old quote from Emerson came to him: “a foolish consistency is
the hobgoblin of little minds,
adored
by
little
statesmen and philosophers and divines.”
We deal with such wise inconsistencies all the time,
he thought. We know fire is deadly. It destroys
forests, eats houses and roasts the incautious. But we heat our
homes with it and survive the winter.

So too with magic. I won't have a
civilization based on it, but when there is no other way, not in
the short term, I'll use whatever works.

Speaking of magic, that
wizard of Kristana's would undoubtedly be at the battle. Should he
be worried about that? He might be pulling the same invisibility
trick.
But my invisible tanks beat your
invisible horses or archers,
he
thought.

He was actually more worried about the
wizard or his apprentice escaping. Or Ludlow! He glanced at the man
beside him out of the corner of his eye. The thought of someone who
could walk up to you unseen, with a knife or even a big stick, was
enough to make his skin crawl. Kristana's wizards had to die, and
he was going to have to dispose with Ludlow himself soon. Just how
soon was a tricky decision. If Ludlow thought it was going to
happen soon he might try to slip away in the confusion of a
battle.

Her daughter passed her on
the stairwell, going down as she went up.
Or do I have that backward? Is she ascending into the noble
(if impractical) ruminations of philosophy from the idealism of her
youth, while I descend once more into the practical (if bloody)
business of defending my land, my citizens, and those I
love?

Enough. Aria seemed less troubled, for
whatever reason, so Kristana left it at that and didn't speak as
they passed. Pushing the door to the rooftop open, she was
surprised to see Xander seated out there. Aria must have been
speaking with him, and from her untroubled countenance one could
infer that at least they had not argued. She tried to imagine the
shock of it. Bad enough to be a young woman expected to put aside
all other ambitions to assume the mantle of leadership for a
country. That she knew, herself, from experience. But add to that
the disconcerting revelation that you are the child of the court
wizard, the odd man none seemed to know well, whose main
furnishings and possessions were old books and bits of alien
technology. Imagine discovering that some feared sorcerer were your
father, rather than the beloved General.

She left her guard at the door and
moved closer to him. He seemed oblivious, and yet when she was
within a couple of paces of his position he let he know he was
aware of her.

“
What can I do for you, your Excellency?”

Rather than get right to it, she
decided on an indirect approach. “I passed Aria on her way down.
Were the two of you speaking? She seemed calmer than
before.”

“
Yes. She was asking how we met. Dustfall seems a thousand
years ago. But she does seem to be coming to terms with her
unexpected lineage.”

Dustfall? She tried to remember it.
One of the stops on her husband's recruiting trips. She, a young
woman barely into her adulthood, still barely believing the older
man could actually love a nothing like her, watching the faces of
the people in the inn as they listened to the General dream out
loud for them. “Were you there?”

He glanced at her. “It was where I
first saw both of you. I'm not surprised you don't remember. I
didn't speak to you, not then, though we passed each other in the
moonlight behind the inn.” He fell silent for a bit, then resumed.
“After hearing him, and seeing you, I walked most of the night
toward Panning, to meet up with you again there the next
night.”

“
You never told me that.”
How like
him
, she thought. There I was, waiting to
meet him, not knowing it, and also not knowing we'd already passed
at the town before that. It reminded her of one of the things she'd
come to discuss. “Do you really think he'll come before
Spring?”

He didn't have to ask who she meant.
“No question about it. With the snows we've been having, it's a
stupid time to attack, at least with horses, and since we know
that, he'll expect us to think he'll wait. But he
won't.”

“
Why not?”

“
Because he won't be bringing any horses. His little motorized
army will be moving too fast for them to keep up, and we both know
with ice and snow the footing will be bad for horses anyway. Plus
there's the morale issue.”

What was that supposed to mean?
“Oh?”

Xander sighed. “This is only his first
attack with the tanks and troop carriers, so he'll want to make a
good first impression on his troops. Make them feel invincible so
they'll be ready to move on other countries soon. For that reason,
I can't seem him letting it be a matter of dueling horse-archers.
What he'll want his men to see is themselves, in tanks and trucks,
overrunning an outclassed rabble with horses and crossbows. So he
won't bring any horses.”

“
You mean, he won't want any of his forces to seem on the same
level as ours.”

“
Exactly.”

“
But isn't he putting a lot of faith in his refurbished
vehicles? It seems to me that for all he knows they might have
problems with the cold. If they break down on the way, or in the
middle of battle, won't he look like a reckless fool?”

“
He would,” Xander granted. “But he's had some time to plan
this since they cleared away the rubble and found that lost armory.
If he comes at all, it will mean his advisors and engineers are
betting their careers and lives on their ability to make the old
machines work, even under these conditions.”

She touched his shoulder, and when he
turned his head she caught his eyes with hers. “How are we going to
beat him? I know you haven't been killing yourself at the smithy
just to make swizzles and everflames for the citizens.”

“
No,” he agreed. “Not just for that. I have a plan, but since
we know he might still have spies in Rado I've been keeping it to
myself until the last minute. He can't hear a whisper of it. The
slightest change in what I think his plans are would keep me from
stopping him.”

“
And you're going to do this all by yourself? Because unless
you are, you'd better tell me what you need to make it
work.”

“
I was just about to do that. But will you promise me
something first?”

Kristana shook her
head.
I will never understand how he
thinks. Here we are facing destruction and he needs to hear a
promise?
“What is it?”

“
If anything happens to me, but you still win...or at least
survive the Honcho's attack, promise me you'll start my school for
wizards. What I mean is, if after the battle you're still Governor
you do it officially of course, but if we lose and you manage to
escape to wherever, even if you're in hiding, promise me you'll
start the school.”

“
How can you ask me to promise this, now? Are you
crazy?”

“
Never saner,” he said. “And I think I've earned it, after
serving Rado all this time. Don't you? We always talked about doing
it, but it always got put off until later.” He looked out over the
city. When he resumed speaking his voice was barely above a
whisper, but she could hear the desperation in it. “It's not for
me, Kristana. It's for you. For everyone.”

He turned to lock gazes with her. “The
old world is crumbling. Humanity might make it back up the long
climb to where we were before, before the Tourists. They might.
Then again, they might not. If people like the Honcho win, we might
just stay in an age of empires and wars for who knows how long
before things change. Another Dark Ages! But you can prevent
that.”

She stared at him. “Me? How can I
prevent it? I'm not even a wizard.”

“
It's like lighting a torch from another torch. That's fine if
all you ever want to do is have one torch burning. But if you want
to enlighten the whole planet, if you want to jump start our
technology using what I've learned from the alien magic, you'll
need more than one wizard, your Excellency. Blacksmithing survived
because enough people knew it . Magic can do the same thing. It
needs its own skills, its own guild. You can start it
happening.”

“
Didn't you hear me? I can't do it without you. I'm no
wizard.”

“
No,” he said. “But Lester is. He can make it happen. With
your help.”

Kristana just looked at
him.
Why does this all feel so
familiar?
And then she knew. Her mind went
back to a another man, on his deathbed, making her promise to keep
a Dream alive. It was the General all over again. She put her hand
on his shoulder. “We'll do it. With or without you, I promise your
school will be born. Somehow we'll make it grow. In cities or in
caves, officially or underground, it'll happen. Now, how do we beat
the Honcho?”

By mid-afternoon the thrill of riding
on the front of the tank had faded and he climbed back over the
turret and into the hatch to escape the dust and grit of the road.
He was surprised that it was so roomy inside. Aft of the driver and
gunner's seats, padded benches faced black screens rather than the
windows he had expected. These, he was told, were 'monitors' that
were supposed to show what was seen by electric eyes called
“videocams” – though all were blank except one near the front on
the left side, and all it showed was a black background
occasionally peppered with white dots and lines. Not all of the
tank's systems, it appeared, had survived the entombment of the
buried armory.

Below the dark monitors were narrow
rectangular hatches that turned out to be the windows he had
expected. These were currently shut to keep out the chill of the
air that had been growing ever colder as they sped North. He heard
a hum as ancient ventilation blew filtered air into the confines of
the interior.

Besides the driver, whose name he
learned was Mathers, and the gunner, Thompson, there were only two
others inside the tank with him. He tried not to imagine how it
would have felt if the benches were full. Despite his initial
impression of roominess, the interior was beginning to feel a
little confining, especially since he could not see out The way he
had always been able to see out of his horse-drawn
limousine.