The Ship Who Won (18 page)

"We're at least as strange to them as they are to us."

"I'd rather not have them know you can talk," Keff said

thoughtfully.

"But they already know I can speak independently. I

talked to Brannel while you were unconscious. Unless he

thought you were having an out-of-body experience."

"Supposing Brannel had the nerve to approach our

magicians, he wouldn't be able to explain the voice he

heard. He was gutsy with me, but you'll notice on the

screen that he's staying well out of the way of the

chair-riders. They're in charge and he's a mere peon."

"He is scared of them," Carialle agreed. "Remember

how he explained punishment came from the mountains

when one of his people is too curious. It's no problem for

them to dispense punishment. They're endlessly creative

when it comes to going on the offensive."

"Contrariwise, I take leave to doubt that any of the

magicians would give him a hearing if he did come forward

with the information. There's a big crowd of Brannel's folk

out there on the perimeter and the wizards haven't so

much as glanced their way. No one pays the least attention

to the peasants. Your secret is still safe. That's why I want

you to keep quiet unless need arises."

"All right," Carialle said at last. 'Til keep mumchance.

But, if you're in danger... I don't know what I'll do."

"Agreed." And Keff shot her column an approving grin.

"Let's test the system," Carialle said. The small screen to

the right of the main computer lit up with a line diagram of

Keffs body. He rose and stood before it, holding his arms

away from his sides to duplicate the posture.

'Testing," he said. "Mah, may, mee, mo, mu. The quick

brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. Maxwell-Corey is a

fardling, fossicking, meddling moron." He repeated the

phrases in a subvocal whisper. Small green lights in the

image's cheeks lit up.

"Got you," Carialles voice said in his ear. Lights for the

mastoid implants clicked on, followed by the fiber optic

pickups implanted in the skin at the outer comers of his

eyes. "I'm not trusting the contact buttons alone. The

lightning earlier knocked them out for a while." Heart,

respiration, skin tension monitors in his chest cavity and

the muscles of his thighs lighted green. The lights flicked

out and came on again as Carialle did double backup tests.

"You're wired for sound and ready to go. I can see, hear,

and just about feel anything that happens to you."

"Good," Keffsaid, relaxing into parade rest. "Our guest

is waiting."

"Here comes the stranger."

Keffs implant translated Asedow's comment as he

stepped outside. He assumed the same air of dignity that

Chaumel displayed and walked to the bottom of the ramp.

He paused, wondering if he should stay there, which gave

him a psychological advantage over his visitor who had to

look up at him. Or join the fellow on the ground as a mark

of courtesy. With a smile, he sidestepped. Chaumel backed

up slightly to make room for him. Face-to-face with the silver magician, Keff raised his hand, palm out.

"Greetings," he said. "I am Keff."

The eyewitness report had been correct, Chaumel realized with a start. The stranger was one of them. The

oddest thing was that he did not recognize him. There

were only a few hundred of the caste on all of Ozran. A

family of mages could not conceal a son like this one,

grown to mature manhood and in possession of such an

incredible power-focus as the silver cylinder.

"Greetings, high one," Chaumel said politely, with the

merest dip of a nod. "I am Chaumel. You honor us with

your presence."

The man cocked his head, as if listening to something

far away, before he responded. Chaumel sensed the faintest hint of power during the pause, and yet, as Nokias had

informed him, it did not come from die Core of Ozran.

When at last he spoke, the strangers words were arranged

in uneducated sentences, mixed with the odd word of

gibberish.

"Welcome," he said. "It is ... my honor meet you."

Chaumel drew back half a pace. The truth was that the

stranger did not understand the language. What could possibly explain such an anomaly as a mage who used power

that did not come from the core of all and a man of Ozran

who did not know the tongue?

The stranger seemed to guess what he was thinking and

continued although not ten words in twenty made sense.

And the intelligible was unbelievable.

"I come from the stars," Keffsaid, pointing upward. He

gestured behind him at the brainship, flattened his hand

out horizontally, then made it tip up and sink heel first

toward the ground. "I flew here in the, er, silver house. I

come from another world."

"... Not. . . here," Chaumel said. IT missed some of

the vocabulary but not the sense. He beckoned to Keff,

turned his back on the rest of his people.

"You don't want me to talk about it here?" Keffsaid in a

much lower voice.

"No," Chaumel said, with a cautious glance over his

shoulder at the other two Big Mountain Men. "Come . . .

mountain ... me." IT rewound the phrase and restated the

translation using full context. "Come back to my mountain

with me. We'll talk there."

"No, thanks," Keffsaid, with a shake of his head. "Let's

talk here. It's all right. Why don't you ask the others-uh!"

"Keff!" Carialle's voice thudded against his brain. He

knew then why all the Noble Primitives were so submissive and eager to avoid trouble. Chaumel had taken a

gadget like a skinny flashlight from a sling on his belt and

jabbed it into Keffs side. Fire raced from his rib cage up

his neck and through his backbone, burning away any control he had over his own muscles. For the second time in

as many hours, he collapsed bonelessly to the ground. The

difference this time was that he remained conscious of

everything going on around him. Directly in front of his

eyes, he saw that, under the hem of his ankle-length robe,

Chaumel wore black and silver boots. They had very thick

soles. Even though the ground under his cheek was dry,

dust seemed not to adhere to the black material, which

appeared to be some kind of animal hide, maybe skin from

a six-pack. He became aware that Carialle was speaking.

"... Fardle it, Keff! Why didn't you stay clear of him? I

know you're conscious. Can you move at all?"

Chaumel s feet clumped backward and to one side, out

from Keffs limited field of vision. Suddenly, the ground

shot away. Unable to order his muscles to move, Keff felt

his head sag limply to one side. He saw, almost disinterest-edly, that he was floating on air. It felt as if he were being

carried on a short mattress.

Unceremoniously, Keff was dumped off the invisible

mattress onto the footrest of Chaumel s chariot, his head

tilted at an uncomfortable upward angle. The magician

stepped inside the U formed by Keifs body and sat down

on the ornamented throne. The whole contraption rose

suddenly into the air.

Telekinesis," Keff muttered into the dental implant.

He found he was slowly regaining control of his body. A

finger twitched. A muscle in his right calf contracted. It

tingled. Then he was aware that the chair was rising above

the fields, saw the upper curve of the underground cavern

in which Brannel's people lived, the mountains beyond,

very high, higher than he thought.

"Good!" Carialles relief was audible. "You're still connected. I thought I might lose the links again when he hit

you with that device."

"Wand," Keff said. He could move his eyes now, and he

fixed them on the silver magicians belt. "Wand."

"It looked like a wand. Acted more like a cattle prod."

There was a momentary pause. "No electrical damage. It

seems to have affected synaptic response. That is one

sophisticated psi device."

"Magic," Keff hissed quietly.

"We'U argue about that later. Can you get free?"

"No," Keff said. "Motor responses slowed."

"Blast and damn it, Galahad! I can't come and get you.

You're a hundred meters in the air already. All right, I can

track you wherever you're going."

Carialle was upset. Keff didn't want her to be upset, but

he was all but motionless. He managed to move his head

to a slightly more comfortable position, panting with the

strain of such a minor accommodation. Empathic and

psionic beings in the galaxy had been encountered before,

but these people s talents were so much stronger than any

other. Keff was awed by a telekmetic power strong enough

to carry the chair, Chaumel, and him with no apparent

effort. Such strength was beyond known scientific reality.

"Magic," he murmured.

"I do not believe in magic," Carialle said firmly. "Not

with all this stray electromagnetic current about."

"Even magic must have physics," Keff argued.

"Bah." Carialle began to run through possibilities, some

of which bordered a trifle on die magic she denied, but

something which would bring Keff back where he

belonged-inside her hull-and both of them off this

planet as soon as her paralysis, like Keffs, showed any signs

of wearing off.

Brannel hid alone in the bushes at the far end of the

field, waiting to see if Mage Keff came out again. After

offering respect to the magelords, the rest of his folk had

taken advantage of the great ones' disinterest in them and

rushed home to where it was warm.

The worker male was curious. Perhaps now that the

battle was over, the magelords would go away so he could

approach Keff on his own. To his dismay, the high ones

showed no signs of departing. They awaited the same

event he did: the emergence of Magelord Keff. He was

awestruck as he watched Chaumel the Silver approach the

great tower on foot. The mage waited, eyes on the

tight-fitting door, face full of the same anticipation Brannel

felt.

Keff did not come. Perhaps Keff was making them all

play into his hands. Perhaps he was wiser than the

magelords. That would be most satisfyingly ironic.

Instead, when Keff emerged and exchanged words with

the mage, he suddenly collapsed. Then he was bundled

onto the chariot of Chaumel the Silver and carried away.

All Brannels dreams of freedom and glory died in that

instant. All the treasures in the silver tower were now out

of his reach and would be forever.

He muttered to himself all the way back to the cave.

Fralim caught him, asked him what he was on about.

"We ought to follow and save Magelord Keff."

"Save a mage? You must be mad," Fralim said. "It is

night. Come inside and go to sleep. There will be more

work in the morning."

Depressed, Brannel turned and followed the chiefs son

into the warmth.

Q CHAPTER SEVEN

"Why . . . make things more . . . harderest . . . than

need?" Chaumel muttered as he steered the chair away

from the plain. IT found the root for the missing words

and relayed the question to Keff through his ear-link.

"Why must you make things more difficult than they need

to be? I want to talk... in early..."

"My apologies, honored one," Keff said haltingly.

He had sufficiently recovered from the bolt to sit up on

the end of Chaumel s chair. The magician leaned forward

to clasp KefFs shoulder and pulled him back a few inches.

Once he looked down, the brawn was grateful for the reassuring contact. From the hundred meters Carialle had last

reported, they had ascended to at least two hundred and

were still rising. He still had no idea how it was done, but

he was beginning to enjoy this unusual ride.

The view was marvelous. The seven-meter square

where Brannel and his people laid their gathered crops

and the mound under which the home cavern lay had each

shrunk to an area smaller than Keffs fingernail. On the

flattened hilltop, the brainship was a shining figure like a

literary statuette. Nearby, the miniature chairs, each containing a colorfully dressed doll, were rising to disperse.

Keff noticed suddenly that their progress was not unat-tended. Gold and black eye spheres flanked the silver chair

as it rose higher still and began to fly in the direction of the

darkening sky. More spheres, in different colors, hung

behind like wary sparrows trailing a crow, never getting too

close. This had to be the hierarchy again, Keff thought. He

doubted this constituted an honor guard since he had gathered that Nokias and Femgal outranked Chaumel. More

on the order of keeping watch on both the Silver Mage and

the stranger. Keff grinned and waved at them.

"Hi, Mum," he said.

"It'll take you hours at that rate to reach one of those

mountain ranges," Carialle said through the implant. "I'd

like to know how long he can fly that thing before he has to

refuel or rest, or whatever."

Keff turned to Chaumel.

"Where are we ..."

Even before the question was completely out of his