The Warlock Wandering (32 page)

"I gotta see this to believe it!" Rod aimed a jab at the moire, straight from the shoulder. It felt as though his hand 252 Christopher Stasheff

hit a mattress. The moire roiled on, unperturbed. The bureaucrat actually smiled. It was a bare twitch of the lips, but it was a smile.

Gwen tested the field with her fingers, feeling it with a thoughtful frown.

The bureaucrat turned away, beckoning to the man with the console. "Come."

The operator followed him.

The force field scooped the company off their feet as though it were a snow shovel and rolled them down the hall, shouting and squalling.

The bureaucrat smiled again.

Gwen scrambled to her feet, flushed with anger, and scurried to keep up with the force field, one hand touching the unseen wall, scowling in concentration.

Rod saw, and shuddered.

Gwen reached out and hauled Chomoi to her feet with deceptive ease. "How can that gleaming slab make an invisible wall like to this?"

"Well, I don't know the details," Chomoi panted, "but roughly, it's a sort of transmitter. It projects a small magnetic field that triggers a localized warping of the gravitational field. It wraps itself around the tiny globe of electromagnetic force, then expands according to how much power the operator feeds into the trigger field." Gwen nodded, then glared at the back of the operator's head for a few minutes. Finally, she closed her eyes—and the moire disappeared.

The operator jarred to a halt, fiddling frantically with sliders and pressure-pads. "My board died!" The bureaucrat whirled about, staring, appalled. So did all his henchmen.

So did Rod. He knew he couldn't even dream of understanding that console—and here his wife, who hadn't even heard of an electron till a few weeks ago, had figured out a gadget that was so complicated, it was almost abstract.

At least, she'd figured it out well enough to turn it off from twenty feet away.

Gwen smiled gaily, snapped her fingers—and the moire swirled about them again. Rod stared at it in disbelief, then reached out to probe. Yes, the wall of force was there again.

"Do not fash thyself," Gwen said to the bureaucrat, "we are once more enveloped."

The bureaucrat darted a glance at his operator, who was still stabbing at pressure-pads and jamming toggles. Sweat rolled down his brow; he shook his head.

The bureaucrat turned back to Gwen, staring in horror. Gwen nodded. "This time, 'tis of my doing—and 'tis I who have the managing of it." She smiled brightly at Rod.

"Come, husband, let us go." And she strode straight toward the bureaucrat.

Chomoi and Yorick yelped as the field scooped them off their feet again. They rebounded and scrambled back up, and joined Rod in a quick scurry to keep up with Gwen. The bureaucrat jumped aside, shouting, "Stop them!" His thugs instantly formed a line.

Gwen sailed into them.

They flew like tenpins and bounced off the walls. A couple of them rolled to the ground, unconscious, but the rest whipped out blasters and started firing.

Yorick frowned, feeling the unseen wall. "It's growing harder."

Gwen nodded, tight-lipped. "My field doth drink the flame of their weapons. I do feel it."

Rod's head whipped around, staring at her. "Be careful!" In spite of the strain, she smiled and reached out for his arm. "Fear not, my lord. I can contain it." The "my lord" helped. "Mind telling me how you did this little trick?" -^

Gwen beamed up at him. "I felt within that 'console,'

as thou dost term it, with my mind. Thou hadst taught me long ago, husband, how to make the tiniest bits of matter 254

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speed their movement, or slow; so 'twas not totally strange to me, to sense the flow of bits so much tinier. I let my mind flow with their movement, and did discover how they streamed in patterns that did set up a small ball of force, which did summon up and mold a force much greater, from the earth itself."

Rod's mind reeled, also his ego. Just by feel, with only a little knowledge to guide her, she had figured out how to shape an electromagnetic field and use it to make a gravity wave extrude a bubble of force around them. He patted her hand and said, "I'm just glad you're on my side." She smiled sweetly at him. "I, too."

"Just a little warm." Chomoi was feeling the force field with her fingers. "All that wild, pure energy going into it, and it's just a little bit warm."

"'T will grow hot soon enow, an we cannot find sanctuary." Gwen's brow was moist. "Tis thou must now direct me."

"Sanctuary?" For a moment, Chomoi just stared, totally at a loss. Then inspiration struck, and she grinned. "Turn left at the end of this hallway!"

Yorick waved a hand to fan himself. "Give her every shortcut you know. It's getting hot in here!"

"The charges in those blasters just have to run down soon," Rod grumbled.

They turned a comer, and the hallway opened out into a broad concourse. People in drab coveralls were hurrying here and there all about, most of them carrying satchels. Another half-dozen uniformed men came running, blasters waving, shouting.

"So much for the chance of their charges running down," Rod growled. "But they won't shoot when there're so many taxpayers around!"

"All personnel and passengers seek cover," an amplified voice boomed around them. "Dangerous criminals are at large within the concourse. Security agents must fire to kill. All personnel and passengers seek cover!"

"So much for the taxpayers," Rod grunted. Heads jerked up all along the concourse. Then people dived for doorways or fled around comers, screaming.

"Down here! Quickly!" Chomoi pointed at a broad stairGwen swerved and stepped onto the escalator. Everyone managed to stay with her except Yorick, but he was back on his feet in a second.

Behind them, the uniformed men started yelling in panic.

"Oh! Steps that move!" Gwen cried in glee. "Then 'twas not a mere dream!"

"What?... Oh! The dreamhouse!" Chomoi wrinkled her nose. "Yeah, I hated that stairway. But keep walking, please, Miz Gallowglass. They'll try to head us off."

"Certes, an thou dost wish it!" Gwen tripped gleefully down the staircase. Rod tripped, period, but the field gave him a soft landing, and he caught Gwen's hand to steady himself as he came back onto his feet.

"Why do they shout so?" Gwen frowned back up at the security guards, who were just appearing at the head of the stairs.

"Because what we're doing is dangerous," Chomoi explained. "Here,we're at the bottom! See that clear wall, Miz Gallowglass? Just stroll over there, would you?" Rod suddenly realized what they were doing. He paled.

"All the way," Chomoi directed. "Up against the doorway—that's right. Now, we wait." Gwen turned to face the stairway. "Wherefore do we no longer flee?"

The armsmen thundered down the escalator, saw the company against the doorway in the clear plasticrete wall, and skidded to a halt, frozen in horror.

"This tunnel is a linear accelerator," Chomoi explained.

"It's lined with ring-shaped electromagnets, and they turn on and off in sequence, so it's almost as though a magnetic field were moving down this tunnel."

Gwen's eyes had lost focus as she absorbed the concept. 256

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She nodded. "Ingenious. Yet what purpose doth it serve?"

"They put, uh, 'carriages' inside the tunnel, Miz Gallowglass—tubular carriages, without wheels; they call them

'capsules.' They're fitted out with seats and carpets, and each one holds a hundred people."

Gwen frowned. '"Tis an odd mode of travel."

"Not really. You see, these capsules can shoot through these tubes at hundreds of miles per hour, and there's a huge network of tubes, so you can get to almost anyplace in the world through them. If we climbed into a capsule now, here underneath the island of Medeira, we could be in Puerto Rico, the nexus for the Americas, in four hours. That's thousands of miles away."

'"Tis incredible," Gwen breathed. Then her eyes focused, and she frowned. "How many folk are in such carriages at this moment?"

"Probably a million or so."

"And," Gwen said slowly, "What would happen if these men-at-arms so filled my field with flame, that I could no longer hold it in its form?"

"All that energy would be released in a single instant," Chomoi said softly. "It'd all cut loose in one huge explosion. It'd kill the four of us, of course, but it'd also wreck this station, and this section of tube."

Gwen nodded slowly. "Then the force would no longer flow."

"That's right," Chomoi said.

"And all the carriages with all those folk would come to a halt?"

"Yes. Slowly—but they would stop. And their lights would go out. Also the fans that blow cool air to them. The farther down you go, Miz Gallowglass, the hotter it gets."

"Would they all die, then?" Gwen said faintly.

"Not most of them—at least, not right away. But some of them would be hundreds of miles from the nearest station—even thousands, for the ones under the sea floor. So it'd take so long to get them out, that some of them might actually starve. More likely, they'd panic and trample each other. Or suffocate."

Gwen was trembling. "Whate'er the cost, I will not slay so many."

"You won't—they will. Only they won't take a chance on it, because they know what their bosses would do to them. They don't dare risk it, especially since some of the people in those tubes right now might be PEST officials. Or their wives and families."

Sure enough, the armsmen were holding a quick conference, darting glances at one another while they kept their blasters trained on the company.

"Shake 'em up a little," Chomoi advised. "Expand the field."

Gwen frowned, but the moire moved away from them on all sides. It touched the clear wall, then went through it.

The armsmen went rigid, staring. Then one of them barked an order, and they began to retreat to the "up" escalator. Slowly, they disappeared from sight, one by one, backwards. When the last was gone, Gwen released her breath in a huge sigh. "Tell me, sin that thou dost seem to know—

how can I dissipate this bubble of force, without the explosion thou didst speak of?" Chomoi frowned. "Think you can let all that energy go, slowly?"

"Aye, that I can. Yet where shall it go when I do release it?"

Chomoi expelled a sigh of relief. "Into the wall, Miz Gallowglass. That's no problem, thank Heaven. Just take us over next to one of the rock walls, and let" the power discharge."

Gwen looked puzzled, but she moved slowly over to the nearest solid wall.

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"That's it, so the bubble's just touching it," Chomoi prompted. "Now, as it gets smaller, move closer to the wall, so the bubble stays in contact. Okay, try letting go." Gwen scowled in concentration, and sparks cracked like pistol shots, wherever the skin of the bubble touched the wall.

Rod watched in awe as the power grounded itself out, wondering how he'd ever be able to embrace Gwen again.

"It's bedrock," Chomoi explained as the bubble shrank.

"The energy goes through the wall, on down into the bones of the very earth itself. It's big, Miz Gallowglass, very big. There's a lot of rock there to soak up power."

"Mayhap it soaks not swiftly enow," Gwen said, frowning. "The stone doth glow." They looked and, sure enough, the rock wall had turned cherry red.

"I think the bedrock can take it." Chomoi frowned. "After all, the bubble's almost gone, and the stone's not softened yet."

Rod nodded. "As long as it's only red, we're probably okay."

"Tis gone," Gwen sighed, as the last of the power jumped into the wall in one final pistol-shot spark. "Now whither do we go?"

"Why, into a tube-car, of course." Chomoi grinned. "Shall we?"

They waited by the door in the clear wall for five minutes or so. It was five minutes too long for Rod; he kept glancing back at the escalators with apprehension. But finally, a tubecar swooshed up to the door and hissed to a stop. The door rolled back, and a stream of people filed out.

"Let 'em go, let 'em go," Chomoi murmured. "The more of them who get off, the more room there is for us." Finally, they could step aboard. There were only about twenty people in the car, so they were able to take four seats that faced each other, but were well away from anyone else. Gwen glanced nervously at the door. "When will it start?"

"It already did." Chomoi smiled, amused. "Smooth ride, isn't it?"

"It is, indeed." Gwen's eyes were wide with astonishment. "Yet tell me—how is't we ride? Wherefore hath that little man's 'superiors' not halted all carriages near to us?"

"They can't," Chomoi explained. "They'd have to shut off power to this whole sector, and that would leave thousands of people trapped until they could find us. And I think they realize that if they leave us alone in the dark in a tunnelcomplex like this, they might never find us." Rod's face was wooden; he was filled with sullen resentment, hearing Chomoi explain the facts of the situation to Gwen. He glared around him, looking for an outlet for the emotion—surely it couldn't be jealousy?

There! That gleaming, modest, inch-wide circlet on the front wall. "Smile," he advised, "we're on somebody's screen."

The other three turned around, staring at the front of the car. But Rod's eyes narrowed as he glared at it, and the faintest whiff of smoke coiled out of the vent nearest it. Passengers in the front of the car began to sniff, frowning.

"Neatly done." Gwen sounded surprised. "Yet wherefore, husband? What harm was there in it?"

"It was an electronic eye," Rod explained, "and when we decide to get off this high-speed sausage, I'd rather the security people didn't know exactly where we did it."

"Ah! Well thought!" Gwen swept the rest of the car with a thoughtful gaze. "Nay—I sense no more of them..." Rod stared. She could sense electromagnetic fields now, too?

Gwen shook her head with decision. "Nay, only the one."