Part 19 (1/2)

The drop to the hoppers feeding the all-devouring mouths was a minute away. The crowd was howling. Below the canopy in the center of the Bridge of Pillars, the VIPs had all risen to witness thefatal moment.

”Now we shall be rid of those accursed brothers forever,” Eskenderom gloated.

Frennelech scanned the sky above them warily. ”Still no sign of Lumian dragons,” he said.

”Nothing can go wrong now, my lords,” Mormorel a.s.sured them.

From its acc.u.mulated tables and records GENIUS identified the processors that controlled the conveyor system, and from their local memories traced the circuits to the drive motors and clutches for the final section of the line. As Groork, with Thirg and Brongyd close behind, came within yards of the terrifying drop, GENIUS stopped the conveyor-then, just to be safe, reversed it.

Silence came down on the crowd like the sky falling as, before their eyes, the river stopped, then began flowing backward. Ten thousand pairs of imagers stared, terrified. Heads turned to gape at each other, then looked back at the river again. It was true. They hadn't imagined it.

”A miracle! A miracle!” a voice shouted.

At once, others took up the cry: ”Again the Lumian G.o.d saves the Enlightener!”

”We had forgotten His power!”

”Where is thy Lifemaker now, Frennelech?”

”See, Eskenderom's words are false!”

”Out with both of them!”

”Long live Nogarech!”

”Nogarech!Nogarech! ”

But Eskenderom and Frennelech weren't listening. GENIUS had reversed only the final section of conveyor, from the bridge to the furnaces; the section above the bridge was still running normally, bringing its load downstream. The two flows had collided underneath the bridge and started piling up into a jam that upended the platform on which the executioner and his helpers were still standing. They were pitched in a tumbling ma.s.s of bodies and limbs down into the river. The platform in turn demolished the dignitaries' box above, spilling king, archprelate, canopy, chairs, n.o.bles, and eminences down on top of the execution squad, amid the swiftly acc.u.mulating ma.s.s of city rubbish.

”How are we doing?” the voice inquired in Groork's head.

”You . . . took your time,” Groork replied shakily. ”But we are saved. The people think it was a miracle. Er . . . you are not the work of the Wearer, the Lumian-Who-Performs-Miracles?”

”Never heard of him,” GENIUS said.

Thirg and Brongyd were still bewildered fifteen minutes later as they stood with Groork back at the Bridge of Pillars. They were free again and now were the objects of delirious adulation. Rex bounded out from the crowd to leap excitedly around Thirg's feet. Mordran, beaming, strode up after him and clapped Thirg's shoulder cowling heartily.

”Ee, I don't know 'ow thee pulled that one off, but it 'ad me worried for a while, I can tell yer!” he roared. ”Ye've been learnin' some good tricks out in Carthogia, Thirg, an' that's the truth.”

Then shouts went up from the throng on every side as a Lumian sky dragon descended. The crowd fell back in reverence and cleared a s.p.a.ce. The dragon opened, and friends of the Wearer emerged, announcing that they had come to take the three back to Carthogia. Eskenderom and Frennelech, cowed, dilapidated, and drenched in oil after having been fished out of the garbage mountain, were in no state or condition to object.

On the way back to the Lumian camp, GENIUS came through to Groork again, wanting to know more about the ”miracles” Groork had mentioned. ”What are they? I don't think it's something I've come across before,” GENIUS said.

Groork was amazed that a voice wouldn't know about miracles. He did his best to explain. ”Featsthat involve supernatural powers, beyond the ability of common understanding and the sciences to explain.”

”They thought that what I did back there was due to some supernatural power?” GENIUS checked.

”The knowledge of robeings is limited, and much that they fail to comprehend, they take to be miracles,” Groork replied. ”Of course, these things are not truly magic. But the Lumians possess arts and knowledge far advanced beyond the simple forms of Robia. There is one, called the Wearer, who performs true miracles. He communicates over vast distances and moves objects by power of mind alone. He is one of a rare kind of master who exist on the world of Lumia.”

This was all new to GENIUS. No such notions had ever been conceived among the hypermaterialistic and utilitarian Borijans. ”Fascinating,” it replied.

GENIUS was curious, naturally, but skeptical. It would, it decided, have to seek out this ”master”

and find out more for itself.

38.

Zambendorf sat with his back to the wall at one of the long tables in the mess area and spread the deck of cards facedown, looking at Abaquaan invitingly. Abaquaan obliged by turning up the corner of one of the cards to peek at it, then let it snap back down. Zambendorf swept them back into a deck and performed two quick shuffles, in the process of which the card Abaquaan had picked found its way to the top and slid invisibly into Zambendorf's hand as he put the deck down again. He produced it out of thin air a moment later, showed it briefly, and then made as if to throw it away and showed both sides of his hand to be empty.

”Good,” Abaquaan p.r.o.nounced, nodding.

Zambendorf's mood was alternating between flippancy and exasperation. Moses and his brother, Galileo, were reunited again and currently were bringing Arthur and his advisers up to date on what had been happening in Padua. ”Linnaeus,” the scientist-friend Galileo had brought back with him, was with them at Camelot. Earth was in financial and economic chaos, its military and industrial networks nonfunctional, leaving the Asterians free to carry forward their plans without fear of interference from that quarter.

”Me?” Zambendorf finally said, turning to Drew West, who was with them, and producing the card from behind West's ear. ”What do they expect me to do? It's all right for Yak.u.mo to sit there saying that the experts have screwed up. I wasn't aware that I was brought here to pick up the mess after their experts. Were you?”

”Well, I guess that's what happens when you get yourself a reputation,” West said, as sympathetic as ever.

Zambendorf looked at Abaquaan. ”For once you're not even worrying, Otto. That worries me.

You worry about everything. Why aren't you worrying?”

Abaquaan shrugged and made a gesture that said they might just as well worry about death and taxes. ”I only worry about things I've got some control over. What can you do about aliens who shut themselves up in computers and won't talk to anybody? We can't switch them off, and they won't come out. It's insane. Meanwhile, they're tearing down whole areas of t.i.tan and putting up factories that actually look like factories. I guess we just have to wait and see what it's all about. What else can we do?”

”I presume Yak.u.mo's hoping that Karl will come up with some way of enticing them out again,”

West said.

”And then what, even if I did?” Zambendorf asked them. ”Let's be frank. My skills are in exploiting gullibility and overcredulousness. From the little I've seen, if Cyril is anything to go by, these aliens don'thave much in the way of weaknesses in that direction. How can you mislead somebody whose whole nature is not to believe anything?”

At that moment a mess steward in denim s.h.i.+rt and NASO fatigue pants came over to the table, carrying a portable seefone. Before he could say anything, Zambendorf fanned the card deck and told him to pick one. When the steward reached to comply, Zambendorf used some deft fingerwork to force the choice of the same card Abaquaan had selected previously. ”Now, Otto, what do you think it is?”

Zambendorf asked Abaquaan before the steward had even looked at it. His way of wording the question was a code that told Abaquaan the answer.

”Five of clubs,” Abaquaan drawled offhandedly.

The steward turned the card over, inspected it, and shook his head. He was too used to this kind of thing by now to bother asking. ”Call for you from the comms room,” he said, handing the seefone to Zambendorf.

The miniature screen showed a face Zambendorf recognized as belonging to one of the NASO communications technicians. ”Yes?” he said.

”Er, we've got an incoming call for you,” the tech told him, then added mysteriously, ”It might be best if you came and took it here.”

”Oh? Who's it from?”

The tech didn't seem to be quite sure how to respond. ”It's not a 'who,' exactly. ”It's a . . . I'm not sure I know how to describe it.”