Part 73 (1/2)
There is considerable risk. I've not yet had the opportunity to translate any living thing in the external field. You would be riding outside the stars.h.i.+p, as it were. In theory, it should work.
”What must I do?”
If you could manage to stand upright, and come as close as possible to the apparatus without touching it.
Basil groped about and found the shovel. ”I shall have to balance on my broken ankle. The left leg is compounded. You'll have to be quick at it, for I shan't last long.”
Come.
He sank the blade into the snow and heaved. The pain came in sickening waves and he cried out. Then he was standing, wobbling slightly before the dead-black monstrosity.
”I'm ready,” he said, and the grey limbo claimed both of them.
III.
Nightfall
CHAPTER ONE.
Rain deluged the Armorican night. Goriah, on the northwestern horizon, was an indistinct blob of light all but lost amid the lightning flashes. Secure inside a bubble of psychocreative force, Elizabeth and Minanonn flew through the storm.
”It seems more like January than early October,” Elizabeth observed.
Minanonn said, ”Four great tempests, one following the other! The weather reflects the perverse spirit of the times. In my stronghold in the Pyrenees, the snows have already sealed the high pa.s.ses. This has never happened so early in the season during the five hundred and sixteen years of my banishment.
It's enough to make one believe in Nightfall! Our legends say that the Terrible Winter precedes it.”
”Then we should be safe from war until spring,” Elizabeth said.
”I wish that were so! But winter was an ambiguous term on Duat. Because our planet has no axial tilt, the seasons are not clearly defined. To us, therefore, winter is any prolonged period of bad weather.”
Elizabeth did not comment on this. Instead she asked, ”Will the mountain snows prevent members of the Peace Faction from attending the games?”
”Those who could not resist the lure of Aiken's novelty left last week, on the first day of the Truce. They are already in the lowlands. I fear that most of them will have to spend the next half-year there unless the weather moderates-and I blame myself not a little for their predicament. If I had not accepted the King's invitation to partic.i.p.ate, my Peaceful Folk would not have been so attracted to the spectacle.”
Rather undiplomatically, Elizabeth asked, ”Whatever possessed you to accept?”
The Heretic uttered a rueful laugh. ”I could rationalize the decision, saying that thus I affirm Aiken-Lugonn's sublimation of the ancient blood-letting of the Grand Combat. But why not be honest? In my heart, I was fired by the prospect of once again joining in on a whacking great row! My intellect may abjure violence and contention-but the Battlemaster of old still lurks within me, whether I will or no. Sometimes this drives me to despair. But at other times, when I am more philosophical, I bless Tana for having let me know myself as she must know me ... while still steadfastly holding me in her loving hand.”
”Don't you ever curse yourself for giving in? For letting your frailty get the better of you?”
The Heretic's face had a lambent glow in the stormy darkness.
”Tana did not make us perfect, it is said, for then there could be no growth through triumph over pain and adversity, no supervening transcendence. Not for the individual, and especially not for the Galactic Mind.”
”I was taught that,” Elizabeth admitted. ”Long ago. But the idea easily slips away from one. Especially when we're forced to confront suffering and evil. One becomes impatient with mysteries, and despairs of waiting for good to come out of one's own weakness.”
They began to descend over Goriah. Minanonn showed a momentarily youthful grin. ”Nevertheless, I still plan to fight in Aiken's Grand Tourney!”