The Adversary - 4 (31 page)

"You're about my size, I'd say. Suppose I lend you my sinfully secular silk bathrobe and a pair of gardening dungarees? Next time you visit, I'll have something ready you can call your own.

How about white tie and tails, or a Faustian wizard outfit?"

"What am I, Brother Anatoly?"

Stopped in his tracks by an irresistible coercive hold, the old priest strained to look over his shoulder. "We're almost to my room. Why not hold off on the mind-ream job until we get there? Turning me inside out here in the hallway is a mite uncivilized."

"As you like." The grip turned him loose and they moved on. "What are you doing here on Black Crag, Brother?"

"I'm her confessor." The old man grinned ironically. "She hasn't exactly made use of my priestly faculties as yet, but she hasn't thrown me out, either. I've been waiting for you outside that nursery every day from twenty-one hours until three, for the past two and a half weeks-on her orders. D'you suppose she expects me to exorcise you, or something?"

Marc laughed heartily. "You'll have your chance in a few minutes."

They went up a small rear staircase. Anatoly said, "So you two are going to intensify Brendan's redaction, eh? Do you think the little fellow will make it?"

"One can only try."

The friar cast a shrewd glance at the figure in black that followed him. "And I wonder why you do try."

Marc did not answer.

"Is the baby just an excuse?" Anatoly opened a door at the top of the stairs. They came into a spacious suite under the eaves of the chalet, with roof-high windows all along one side.

When they were inside with the door shut, Marc said: Now.

Anatoly gritted his teeth and stood stiff as a post with his eyes screwed shut. "Make it fast, dammit."

He felt the coercive-redactive impulses lance into him, making his scalp tingle and his closed eyes experience a neural fireworks display. As the drain commenced he lost contact with reality.

Then he found himself standing quite relaxed in the middle of the sitting room. There were shower noises coming from the bathroom, where someone was whistling "Le veau d'or."

Anatoly hunted up the magnificent scarlet brocade robe and the old faded pants and hung them on the door hook. Then he went out onto the balcony and said the First Sorrowful Mystery under the stars to steady his nerves. Gethsemane. Bloody sweat. What if he does ask? All the Remillards were Catholics. If it's possible, let this chalice pass.

Does this man even know it was a sin?

"It was no sin, only a failure, Anatoly Severinovich. 'And even if my troop fell thence vanquished, yet to have attempted a lofty enterprise is still a trophy ... ' "

The priest turned around to face the challenger of the galaxy.

"Now that's really interesting. Forty-two years in Holy Orders, you hear all the sins in the lexicon. But angelism-! Now there's a genuine rarey." His eyes fell to the scars on Marc's chest.

"And are those another trophy of the lofty enterprise?"

"Not at all. Only the traces of a recent accident. They'll disappear in a few months. My body is self-rejuvenating."

"So you can ignore the vultures nibbling at your liver, eh?

Still-it must be a terrible kind of security. Lonely in the long run, too. Well ... if you ever need me, I'll be around. I told her that, and the same goes for you."

Marc was expressionless. "Listen to me, Anatoly Severinovich. I can see that you mean well, and you're a kindly man.

But don't presume to meddle in my affairs."

"Don't tell me you're so far gone that you'd zap a poor old priest just for praying for you?"

"Save your prayers for Elizabeth. I'm past the need. Now let's get back downstairs." He turned and headed for the door, with Anatoly coming after him.

"Nu, ne mudiy, my son! Your brother Jack would never let you get away with saying that."

Marc paused. His voice was deadly calm. "For a man who came to the Pliocene before my brother's ... notoriety, you seem oddly knowledgable about his mind-set."

"It's hearing all those confessions," sighed the friar. "You'd be surprised, the kind of people who've gone time-travelling to escape reality. Or maybe you wouldn't! I know a lot more about you than my memories told you in the brain-ream, son." He smiled encouragingly. "The loneliness, for instance. Is that the real reason you've come here to Black Crag-hoping to find another metapsychic who'll accept you as human instead of failed angel?"

"A very interesting question," said Marc Remillard. "Let's both try to find out the answer." Carrying his black overall, he went out laughing.

CHAPTER THREE

Praise be to Te, it was a banner year for giant slugs!

Purtsinigelee Specklebelly chortled in satisfaction as he lifted the bark lid off the last tray of stale beer. It was crowded with plump molluscs, amber with grey spots. Each slug was nearly the size of the bananas the Lowlives grew at the plantations down at Var-Mesk-and far more succulent and nourishing.

Every tray along the trapline this morning had been full of the creatures. Drawn by the seductive aroma of hops, they crept over the floor of the alpine valley rain forest and up the mossy stumps upon which the trays rested. After drinking themselves into a blissful stupor, the slugs tumbled into the beer and drowned. It was an easy death and Purtsinigelee, who was a peaceable dwarf, often reflected upon it philosophically as he made his daily collections in the Gresson Vale. Later, after they had been pickled and stored in small firkins, the slugs would not only provide protein-rich food for his family when the winter storms swept down from the Helvetides, but they would also be a valuable trade item. The more sophisticated Firvulag in western Famorel paid a hefty price for prime, season-end molluscs like these. The delicacy might even find its way to the banquet table of King Sharn and Queen Ayfa at this year's Grand Tourney. Purtsinigelee hoped that would happen; he was a stay-at-home sort himself, but it was nice to think that some of his slugs would be relished in the highest social circles ...

Humming a happy tune, he transferred the final creature to the tote-skin slung over his shoulder. He strained the liquid in the tray, topped it off with more stale beer, and replaced the loose-fitting lid with care. Then he was off for home and lunch, striding along the steep trail with the mist coiling about the green, dripping rhododendron trees and the birds and oreopithecine apes making a great racket down by the river.

After a time he emerged from the densely wooded gorge into more open, rocky country. The fog burned away as the sun mounted and it became a cool and splendid September morning.

The meadows were dotted with flowers, the sky was so intensely blue that it made the eyes ache, and along the northern horizon the stupendous front range of the Pennine Alps reared in dazzling majesty. The Famorel Firvulag called them the Goddess Mountains-not only because of their beauty, but also because certain First Comers said that the snow-clad peaks resembled the ancestral territory of the Little People on lost Duat. No mountains on Pliocene Earth were more lofty.

Purtsinigelee's home, like that of many other isolated Firvulag living in caveless terrain, was situated on a commanding height.

It sat just below the ridge that separated the Gresson Vale from that of the River Ysez to the east. Pausing for a moment on the trail, he spied the snug little cottage, shaped like a stone beehive, nestled among pin oaks and wind-twisted pines at the edge of a tiny tarn. And grouped around itHe wailed in dismay and darted behind the shelter of a large boulder.

Machines!

Merciful Te-there were some kind of alien contraptions surrounding his home! He cautiously extended his farsight and spotted fair numbers of people as well. Horror upon horror! The Foe was upon him! He moaned out loud and let the sack of slugs slip squishily to the ground.

"My poor Hobbino-and the children! Goddess preserve them!"

Heart pounding, he crept out from behind the rock, keeping down under a low-growing juniper. There appeared to be seven machines, cartlike vehicles with eight fat wheels along each side.

They bristled with appendages of unfathomable function and had many dirty windows that gleamed dully in the sunshine.

They were a little over twice his height and perhaps four times as long. Not only Tanu knights in glass armour but also torced and bareneck Lowlives were in evidence, strolling in and out of the open front door of his cottage and lounging about the grounds as though they owned the place, the vile miscreants!

Te alone knew what atrocities had been perpetrated.

Getting a grip on his palsied nerves, he ventured to call his wife's name on the intimate mode. As he feared, there was no answer. The house walls were thick, proof against all but the most extraordinary telepathic penetration. He considered calling to the children, but his two sons and three daughters were all under ten years of age, totally unskilled at mental screening.

They would surely betray his presence to the Foe.

He lay there for some time, his senses whirling, clutching the slug sack in anguished desperation. Then he made an effort to pull himself together. What was the Foe doing here? Tanu never ventured into remote Famorel. Once in a great while a pathetic outlaw human might wander up from Var-Mesk, but none of them lasted very long. Not with the likes of Tatsol Flamespitter and Ryfa the Insatiable lurking among the Maritime Alps!

Because the region had always been secure, the Little People had no garrisons. The only trained fighters lived close to the viceregal capital, Famorel City, six days' journey to the southwest.

Purtsinigelee cogitated as he had never done before. More might be at stake here than the survival of his precious family!

From what he could make out, the expeditionary force numbered at least fifty. Some of them carried gadgets that were all too likely the futuristic Lowlife weapons that everyone was buzzing about. It was necessary-obligatory!-that he pass along this information via the farshout relay.

Using the utmost caution, he crept backward the way he had come. It was only necessary to go a few hundred metres in order to drop below the line of sight from the cottage. Once he was safe from view he began to run. He reached a fork in the trail and turned south, paralleling the ridge and the river, until he had placed the farsense-proof bulk of Pimple Knob between him and his invaded homestead.

He flopped down and caught his breath. His nearest neighbour was Tamlin the Mephitic, a musk-oil processor who lived a day's journey to the west. Because of the solitary nature of his trade he was the most dedicated telepathic gossip in the entire piedmont. Old Tarn would see that the great hero Mimee himself learned of this outrage. Gathering all his mental resources, Purtsinigelee made the call. When he had finished he picked up the sackful of slugs and trudged resolutely back to his cottage without any effort of concealment.

He arrived to find the invaders gone. The only trace of them was a lingering dust cloud along the northern crest. His wife and children were quite safe, sitting numbly around the kitchen table.

"What happened?" he cried.

"They said they're going to climb Big Goddess," Hobbino told him. "They didn't hurt us. They wanted to buy provisions before heading into the high country." She began to laugh rather hysterically, then fumbled in the pocket of her skirt and took out a chamois pouch. "Look!" She undid the strings and tipped a glittering little pile of gemstones onto the homespun tablecloth.

"More than we could earn in five years!"

"They emptied the cellar," said the oldest boy. "Took every last firkin and keg."

The youngest girl added solemnly, "But, Daddy-you should have heard the naughty things they said when they opened a keg and saw what they'd bought."

VEIKKO: Hagen.

HAGEN: Right here, keed. Hold on a sec while I freshen my drink.

VEIKKO: Lucky sod. The only liquor we have left here is designated medicinal.

HAGEN: Stick to herb tea or you'll end like your old man.

VEIKKO: Better like mine than like yours, asshole.

HAGEN: All right, all right, you win that one hands down. Now cool it and report. It's been too long.

VEIKKO: [Edited replay.] HAGEN: [Laugher.] I hope Irena's well fixed for escargot recipes.

VEIKKO: Listen, given a choice of climbing that mountain or staying here in base camp eating naked snails, I'll take the creepies a la mode every time. You should eyeball this Monte Rosa monster! It's not an isolated peak, it's a whole bloody range-like the wall of the world's edge, dripping glaciers.

Who would've thought there'd be so much snow in the Pliocene? And it just shoots up out of the Po Valley flats: instant Alps-below sea level to nine thousand high inside of sixty kilometres.

HAGEN: Give me a firm position on your camp.

VEIKKO: 45-50-31 north, 7-48-13 east, 4322.3 metres up. We must be six kloms from the main summit as the crow flies.

Too friggerty bad we're not crows! I'm gasping like a beached porpoise from altitude sickness. Andre fainted three times this afternoon, and some of the King's Men look like they'd like to. I think their torcs keep 'em going. But the Tanu seem to feel fine, and Basil's Bastards are downright perky.

Wimborne calls this place Camp Bettaforca. There's snow but we're cosy enough in the decamole huts except for the anoxia.

The Bastard quacks say we'll probably get acclimatized in a few days.

HAGEN: Any fresh info on plans for the actual climb?

VEIKKO: The big conference is tomorrow. The climbing party doesn't actually have to reach the top of the sucker, you understand. Just kind of circle around to the other side where the aircraft are parked. The idea is to melt one out, fly it back here, then ferry up the rest of the folks and shuttle off to Goriah. It shouldn't be too tough getting the birds operational. After all, they haven't been on the mountain all that long-just since the end of July. The hard part is reaching the aircraft with the first assault team. Wimborne will use a kind of relay operation with support groups to get the principal climbing party over the top.