The Nonborn King (45 page)

"I won't minimize the hazard We are all in danger of death Felice's mind is more powerful than any in the Many-Colored Land, more powerful even than any mind that will exist in the Galactic Milieu six million years from now. But we can stand up to her' We can unite in a true metaconcert, and under my leadership vanquish the female demon once and for all Believe this.

"Let me tell you what we will do. This Genii River is navigable for about one hundred and thirty-five kilometers, ninety Tanu leagues. We follow it to Mulhacen, where it has its source. There'll be rapids, but the best skippers in the Pliocene will be doing the driving, so have no fear Certain of you psychokmetics have been assigned to add auxiliary power to the boats, to insure that we reach the head of navigation by 1400 hours Then we take to the saddle. We'll be out of the jungle by then and into open savanna, and we'll nde hell for leather for another twenty-five or thirty kloms. A little over an hour and we should be at the base of the Sierra Nevada massif, where a dense forest begins and we're in the very shadow of Mumacen.

"All of the way up the nver and all across the savanna you will have your minds in linkage, forming a protective umbrella of psychoenergy that will hide us from the monster's sight At the foot of the mountain, you'll take your stand, waiting in a well-sheltered spot with perfect line of sight on the region around Felice's lair, I alone will fly to the cave. You'll extend your defense to cover me while I abstract the Spear and the torcs Since I'm able to lift more than four hundred tons, I should have no trouble making off with the loot. However, that time when I'm flying back with it does represent the most hazardous period of our raid, since I'll be using most of my brainpower in the levitation. I'll maintain my direction of our offensive metaconcert, but minus my usual share of the psychozap potential If you ever plan to pray for us, pray then

"Once I'm safe at the foot of the mountain, I parcel out the treasure and we all haul ass back to the nverboats We'll turn the mounts loose That'll give us added speed back to the gulf, since the boats will be lighter We'll also be traveling with the current instead of against it As we sail downriver, our hard working technicians under Pete Carvalho and Yuggoth McGilhcuddy will fix the Spear Again, let us pray' I will lend them my royal assistance unless I'm occupied battling for our lives

"After the sacred zapper is repaired, we are virtually home free' Abaddon has studied what Felice did at Gibraltar, and he's also analyzed the potential of the metaconcert we'll be putting together Felice's creativity checks in at something he calls the six-hundredth order of magnitude Very heavy But if we hit Felice with a photon cannon in addition to the metaconcert blast, we should pull the equivalent of six-thirty, and the monster dies, zapped to a flaky flmder

"So we're off And we're going to win' You have the Shining One's guarantee'"

They had been cautioned against uttering even the most discreet response But the aether fizzed with jubilation, nevertheless, as the pneumatic boats cast off and sped up the Genii at more than 20 kph No sooner had the journey begun than the 3550 combatants were put to work. assembling their minds into the three-pronged metaconcert that would shortly serve as both weapon and buckler for King Alken-Lugonn

The three human operants from North Amenca began the process, sorting and interleaving the minds, one by one Owen Blanchard took the coercers, who were headed by Alberonn Mindeater, Artigonn of Amalizan, and Condateyr of Roniah. Cloud Remillard coordinated the psychokinetics under Bleyn the Champion, Neyal of Sasaran, Diarmet of Geroniah, and Kuhal Earthshaker (the latter only a proforma participant). The all-important creative faction was marshalled by Elaby Gathen, working with Mercy, Aluteyn Craftsmaster, Celadeyr, Lornnovel Brainbumer, and Thufan Thunderhead. The High Table members were entrusted with refinement of the substructures in each syntagmatic chain, binding together the lesser minds into coherent units that would be, thanks to the new sophisticated armature furnished by Abaddon, greater in power than the sum of their component parts.

Once the newbom Tanu metaconcert had stabilized and assumed a proper condition of dynamic potential. Marc Remillard took it up, smoothed the rough spots, and phased in the operant minds under his personal control: the surviving rebels in Ocala, together with their runaway adult children (now simmering but submissive), who were situated in a bivouac on the Moroccan coast about 900 kilometers southwest of Mulhacen. To this combination Marc added his own awesome creative faculty, boosted by auxiliary cerebroenergetics. The whole was then subtly cleft into offensive and defensive capabilities, with the former relying more heavily upon the creative powers and the latter weighing more on the coercers. The defensive aspect of this Organic Mind Marc kept under his own control. His farsense, in a virtuoso maneuver that neither Aiken nor the Tanu could fathom, somehow maintained its independent monitoring function. Aiken, as prime executive of the Mind, could watch out for the enemy himself; but if he became distracted, or if Felice contrived some outrageously subtle ploy, the cold farseeing eye in North America would be watching and ready to sound the alert.

Plugged in last of all, poised between Marc and the director's slot. with its soul-substance attenuated and drawn into a virtual cylinder of enormous bore, was the mind of Cuiluket the Interrogator. He was completely passive (but aware), a living conduit through which psychoenergies might pass in only one direction: outward. If Felice tried to penetrate the Mind with her own forces, or if she attempted to choke off the output, instigating feedback, the sentient safety fuse would disrupt. Cuiluket would die. (And he thought: That would be the easiest! But at the same time came the nagging voice of prescience, admonishing: Not until you pay the account in full.)

When the Mind was finally ready, the faceless entity called Abaddon presented it to Aiken Drum.

"All you need do is slip your own mind into the ultimate position: prime focus and executive director. If you're quite sure you're up to it..."

The waiting mental edifice seemed to shimmer before Aiken's bemused eye- How splendid! How strong! How huge\ True, the program was Abaddon's, as well as the expertise in the assembly. But it was Aiken Drum who now look up the organism boldly and wore it, he who was in control.

The sky he saw now through the defensive barrier was almost purple. The solar disk shone vermilion with a whitehot core. As the lead boat he rode in hurtled up the river, the rushing walls of jungle were a green so intense that it verged on black. The Genii itself, still carpeted in mist, was a twisting track of molten gold unwinding endlessly.

If you're quite sure you're up so it...

Was he!

He let the godlike offensive potential fill him. let himself expand with it, savoring the biddable menace. He was Mercy, he was Aluteyn, he was Alberonn and Bleyn. He was Owen Blanchard, Grand Master Coercer. He was Cloud and Elaby. raw and youthful and operant. He was more than 3000 Tanu minds, synchronized in unprecedented union. He was 40 veteran villains of the Metapsychic Rebellion and 28 of their adult offspring. He was Marc RemiHard, challenger of a galaxy, locked in refrigerated armor with charged needles piercing his incandescent brain.

He was all of them! And himself! He was King.

She was sure, so sure that he would be there in Goriah, but when she circled the Castle of Glass, calling his name, he did not answer, nor was he anywhere to be found in the surrounding city or in its satellite plantations and settlements. She would now recognize his aura, no matter where he hid. But he was not there.

Baffled, the black bird Hew southward, following the Atlantic coastline to Rocilan. But he was not in the Candy City either, nor in Sasaran far up the Garonne, that mighty river called Baar by the Tanu. She scanned Amalizan, the cilade! guarding the principal gold mines of the Many-Colored Land, and then winged tirelessly on to Sayzorask on the lower Rhone and Darask in the Provencal Everglades.

Beloved! Culluket!

Again and again the raven called, but it seemed he was not in any of the French cities. His aura, so glacial and hard. the color of frozen blood, would be readily discernible now that her farsenses had been sharpened as a result of the redaction. If she flew to within a dozen kilometers of the Interrogator, she would know him.

She rested and broke her long fast in a verdant parkland west of the great lake, subduing a newbom antelope fawn and feeding upon its tongue. Refreshed, she mounted into the air again and called out in playful derision as she passed Black Crag. She expected no answer from Elizabeth and received none.

Elizabeth will be useful again some day, the raven thought.

But I really don't need her help to find Cull. It'll be more fun to search for him myself!

She flew south at gale speed, streaking over the flowering jungles of the Corbiere Hills and through a pass of the eastern Pyrenees. The Beloved was not in Geroniah, nor in Tarasiah;

so she angled far inland and crossed the Catalan Wilderness and came betimes to the head of the Iberian Grand Canyon, where Aluteyn Craftsmaster's lonely citadel of Calamosk perched above the rushing torrent. Culluket was not there. Indeed, the city was almost deserted.

She considered. Hadn't the other places she had visited also been strangely emptied of life-aura, especially of Tanu life? Where had all the exotics gone?

The limitless plains of the south were going from emerald to lemon-yeitow. now that the rains were two months in the past. Only the swales and the arroyos remained lush, and the bottomlands along great rivers such as the Proto-Jucar, which flowed past Afaliah Culluket! Culluket!

But again the Beloved was not there, and neither was the city-lord, Celadeyr, nor his cadre of battle-companions- The mystery deepened. Perhaps Aiken Drum had gone off on a Quest against the Firvulag marauders of the western Alps. Felice had not searched the cities of the upper Rhone but had flown straight from Hidden Springs to Goriah, where she had expected to find her quarry cowering in the protection of Aiken Drum. But if the King had mounted some punitive expedition...

It was a bore, deciding what to do. If she was to keep her search methodical, she should by rights skew across the Mediterranean and take up the hunt at dismal Var-Mesk, then go up to Bardelask and Roniah. But the afternoon was lengthening and her precipitous pace had begun to sap her strength.

She thought: I'll go home to Mulhacen, and start again tomorrow.

Her heart lifted along with her raven's body as she soared up on a thermal, then arrowed southwest toward the Betic Cordillera, Home to her mountain, her treasure, her dear animal companionsShe thought: I could keep him in there, chained in gold. Encased in gold. Pervaded with gold! Yes! All through the muscles, a precious network of conductive metal, and golden external terminals to each major neural plexus! The brain itself would need a very special divarication, which he would have to help her build. What a delicious prospect! With him thus equipped, she would be able to play him like some magnificent algetic instrument, first warming his sanguine frigidity with simple capriccios and inventions, then going on to immense panharmonies, dithyrambs of pleasure and pain.

Oh, Beloved! Before it was my joy to receive, and that was sick and unsane, wasn't it? But now I am well and ready for the joy of giving and contemplation relished by all sane minds, even those who would like to reject it, indignant and disgusted at its dark enigma Bul we know don t we Beloved, that the sight of the suffering Other only confirms our own power and pain-freedom, sealing our sense of worth We triumph as we are spared We are gratified by a price paid but not by us

(And did she not suffer and die for me, Crucifixa etiam pro nobis, as her foolish God did for her^)

You too will suffer gloriously. Beloved, but not die I love you too much ever to let you die

Alken came to Felice s cave as a new-hatched spider ndmg on a strand of gossamer one of hundreds that the afternoon s thermal wind blew up the northern flank of the mountain When his glistening thread tangled in a pine tree he made his way down to a branch and rested there, carefully thinking arachnoid thoughts just in case Abaddon s earlier scan had missed the monster Using the shortest possible soft focus farsight, the spiderling scanned the cave ambit Felice wasn I hiding among the green framed boulders or down in the canyon, or anywhere on the upper slopes where the alpine flowers bloomed in pink and white tufts His deep-vision, exerted more forcefully, as sured him that she wasn t concealed inside Mulhacen, at least, not within a kilometer or so of the cave

The tiny spider descended from the tree and turned into a man in a golden suit He lowered the metapsychic shield until it was closely cupped about the cave entrance Then, from the targe pocket on his back, he took a titindion net, which he spread on the ground With his face shining, he entered the cave and penetrated to the inner room, sliding aside the protective rock slab as though it were a paper screen

The radiance streaming from him lit a pile of golden torcs higher than his head How many had the mad scavenger gleaned? It seemed there were thousands, each necklet a hollow shell filled with components from Gomnol's demolished factory in Munah. There remained small stockpiles of the psychic amplifiers in each Tanu city, but none could compare with this cache of Felice's

He sent quantities of the torcs flying out of the cave to pile up on the net, and at length uncovered the Spear of Lugonn and its pack

"At last'" he muttered, taking up the weapon He had last worn it in the Duel of Battlemasters against Nodonn. When the torcs had all been removed from the inner chamber he strolled back outside the cave. the Spear over his shoulder, and stood staring at the heaped-up treasure

Finally he gestured, and the net gathered into a purse that encompassed the golden lores All that remained was to fly back to the waiting army, parcel out the spoils, and flee Felice might never know who had robbed her

But he couldn't leave it at that.