Part 21 (1/2)

The big four-masted schooner Kyllikki, trig and handy and utilitarian. Deep in the water. Loaded. Elizabeth had said that they put a sigma-field umbrella over her at quayside, but there was none now. She rode at anchor in forty metres of salt water, and no portable sigma could overcome such a power drain.

Excruciating pain.

Now seek him out. All the ex-Rebels were on that s.h.i.+p, waiting for dawn. He was sitting alone on the afterdeck under the midnight sky, wearing stagged white dungarees and a black singlet.

Marc Remillard smiled at Aiken Drum. The vision of him was dim, minuscule. But his voice sounded as though he was there on the windy tower in Goriah.

”As you can see, we're ready to sail. It's quite a wrench, after more than twenty-seven years. Some of us were very reluctant to leave here.”

Then why?

”Ah, I quite forgot!” The smile widened. ”You don't really have the full picture, do you? What our errant children told you ... well, we must make allowances. But it's time you knew the truth, King Aiken-Lugonn. My son Hagen and daughter Cloud and the rest of their contemporaries have come to Europe with only one objective. To reopen the time-gate. From the Pliocene side.”

Not possible!

Marc's laugh was rueful. ”From my point of view, I could hope you were right. But I'm afraid that it's quite possible-given the construction of a very intricate piece of apparatus. Our rebellious young took with them complete schematics for the Guderian device, together with certain manufacturing equipment and what specialized components they could find here. They hope to prevail on you to provide Milieutrained technicians and raw materials, as well as access to the time-gate site. For my part, I would suggest that you hold off giving them your whole-hearted cooperation until you consider the consequences most carefully.”

Open ... gate ... RETURN ...

”The children hope, as they quaintly put it, to 'return home' to the Milieu. You can imagine my own thoughts on this subject.”

The sun was hovering just below the eastern hills of Armorica.

Its plasma-generated roar filled the aether, making fa.r.s.ensed concentration hideously painful to Aiken's mind. The gulf was widening, the vision fading beyond recall. He heard the voice clearly until the end, however: ”Think about it, Aiken. An open time-gate leading back to the Galactic Milieu-and, of course, its concomitant: the reopening of the original gate leading from the Milieu to the Pliocene. Do you want that, King Aiken-Lugonn? Do you want to go home again?”

The wind whistled about the broken tower. Aiken's hand throbbed as though it would burst. Blinded, he slid to his knees and pressed his forehead against the cool gla.s.s blocks.

When the sun was full up and he heard the voices of the approaching workers on the staircase below, he pulled himself together. A saving cloak of invisibility was still within his powers. He conjured the illusion and slipped back into his own apartments. There he went to the closet where his old suit of many pockets hung. He opened the compartment below the right knee and took out a book-plaque that he had stowed away in there one year and one week ago. It was ent.i.tled THE GUDERIAN TAU-FIELD GENERATOR Theory and Practical Application ”Do I want to go home?” he asked himself.

He sat down on the edge of the big round bed in the morning sun and began reading page one.

CHAPTER.

SEVEN It was not so much the giant spiders themselves as their feeding habits that finally caused Mr. Betsy to crack.

On the ninth day of their incarceration in the communal cell, he awoke to the all too familiar tickle of one of the things running over his hand. He mewled in revulsion and pulled himself up in his straw nest, patting his wig back into place-and then spotted the odious creature still lurking not half a metre away, close by the snoring medievalist, Dougal. The spider saw Betsy, too, for it reared up, twiddled its pedipalps with conspicuous insolence, and emitted a crackling purr. It was coalblack, and hairy and had a body the size of a peach.

”Disgusting brute!” Betsy hissed. He adjusted his crumpled ruff. Dawnlight from the slot-window overlooking the gorge weakly illuminated the dungeon's squalor. All about lay the hunched or sprawled forms of the little band of technicians, pilots, and adventurers known as Basil's b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, betrayed into the hands of Nodonn Battlemaster by a mysterious operant woman, robbed of the aircraft that were to have insured the freedom of Lowlife humanity. Basil himself had been removed from the cell days ago, presumably to be sent to the torturers.

Keeping a wary eye on the spider, Betsy bent to untie the scarf that bound his farthingale skins tightly about his ankles.

He had learnt to sleep that way early on, since the cell was alive with mice, the legitimate prey of the giant spiders. Betsy was well aware-as had been generations of full-skirted women before him-of the havoc the little mammals could wreak if they ran up your legs. Perhaps he should have welcomed the presence of the spiders, for the mice bit and the spiders didn't; but instead he loathed them. They were too calculating, too agile in pursuit of their victims, and the mice screeched in such a heart-rending fas.h.i.+on when they were caught and whisked away to the lairs up in the dungeon ceiling. After the predators had drunk their fill of rodent bodily fluids, they dropped sad little web-wrapped carca.s.ses on the prisoners below.

Betsy, with his elaborate Elizabethan costume, was by far the most vulnerable target.

And now this spider had the temerity to challenge him! He threw a few bits of straw at it but it refused to retreat, standing its ground near Dougal's bandaged ginger head. Betsy felt about in the heavy shadows for a more substantial missile, but there was nothing handy. The spider waved its legs mockingly. With some effort, Betsy struggled to stand upright, and then saw to his dismay that there was a long tear all along the side of the hoopskirt, exposing the frame. Muttering darkly, he shook the costume to settle it into place.

Three packaged mouse bodies dropped out of his petticoats into the straw.