Part 47 (1/2)

VEIKKO: Seems like.

HAGEN: [Doubt.] Listen, Veik. I've got a bad feeling about those Firvulag you contacted on the way up. The ones you bought the slimies from.

VEIKKO: Yeah. You think they might have betrayed us to spook HQ. But Elizabeth is supposed to be watching out for Little People pulling a sneak on us, and she hasn't reported any movementHAGEN: I wouldn't rely on her overmuch. These days, she's got more interesting things to do than play wetnurse to your lot.

The lady has been entertaining Papa in her chalet!

VEIKKO: ?!.

HAGEN: She admitted it to the King, cool as you please. She says she's anxious to reconcile Marc with all of us ...

VEIKKO: Some hope! Any more sightings of your old man around Goriah?

HAGEN: Not since the King spotted him sampling the night life a week ago. But we're ready if he tries to attack the project.

The castle dungeon is carved from bedrock, so he can't jump in, and all the access points are sigma-wrapped and guarded by armed troops. Cloudie has the mind-idents of every person authorized to enter the restricted area and checks them in and out on the castle computer. Papa won't be able to pull a simple masquerade. The really irreplaceable workers are being guarded as carefully as the component store, so he can't hit us that way.

VEIKKO: How's the materials search coming?

HAGEN: We managed to scare up a lot of good stuff. It looks like the only real sticker is the one we antic.i.p.ated all along-the dysprosium-niobium wire for the microa.s.sembly in the taugenerator mesh stacks. The Little King sent a scouting crew off to the Northland hunting ore, but that could take months.

We need those aircraft, Veik. And not just for mineral scrounging ... I tried to talk the King into flying out over the ocean and blasting Kyllikki out of the water with his wonderful psychocreative powers. But he turned the suggestion down flat. No reason. I knew there was some trick to the way he zapped us!

VEIKKO: Is Kyllikki still coming strong?

HAGEN: Sailing fair in the westerlies, about halfway between Bermuda and the Azores. She'll be here in nineteen days at the earliest.

VEIKKO: [Fear.] With the X-zappers charged and ready. We sure better bring the birds home to Goriah before then.

HAGEN: How right you are. They're looking more essential every day. For instance-with Papa on the loose, how could we ever hope to carry the Guderian device to the gate site without air transport?

VEIKKO: Tell the truth, I was surprised you didn't just build the dingus there at Castle Gateway.

HAGEN: I pushed for it but the King vetoed. He wants us under his thumb, of course. And Goriah is a superior manufacturing locale from a security and logistics standpoint, aside from being too close to the sea. The real problem with Castle Gateway is that it's been pretty well abandoned since the Flood. Last winter a Firvulag raiding party got in past the skeleton guard force and did a lot of damage. The place is being fixed up now, ostensibly as a kind of hostel for travellers bound for the tournament that they're having up north at the beginning of November. The King sent Cloud's Tanu boyfriend off last week to oversee the Castle Gateway rehabilitation.

VEIKKO: Hard luck for her.

HAGEN: Um. She says she and Kuhal are finished. But I notice they still keep fairly regular head-skeds. No doubt having serious discussions about the meaning of life and suchlike dreckola.

VEIKKO: How's Diane?

HAGEN: Giving me a hard time, if you must know. Suddenly she has qualms about the kind of reception we might get in the Milieu. Because of Gibraltar. Because of ... who we are.

She's half convinced herself it would be better to stay here.

VEIKKO: G.o.d! After all we've been through?

HAGEN: And a way to go y e t ...

VEIKKO: She might be worrying about her father.