Pliocene Exile - The Adversary Part 4

Elizabeth your thoughts are riddles.

I know. Ignore them.

How can you compare yourself to others? I am simpleman warrior enlightened unto peace but still child before you & MarcAbaddon. If youtwo share sin it is one beyond myken. But Cull! He was Thagdalson mybrother. I knew his temptation.

Unlike poor Aluteyn & somany others he knew truth but mocked it aloof alone outside intheend bored to death afraid of death personifying death.

Now doomed to crave it. Enclosing her fire.

I mourn my poor brother.

As I mourn Felice.

We can only pray and sing the Song for them.

Something else I must do with your help. [Image.] G.o.ddess! Surely no chance resuscitation?!

We dare not risk it.

... So this why you bring roomwithoutdoors!

Room programmed to my aura alone by Brede before her death. Once activated it admits me and no other. Not Aiken not even Marc. Understand! None must meddle with this terrible Duality hoping to revive and use it! I must make for it a dark temenos tabernaculum sanctuary inviolate where it will burn unmolested.

How long?

G.o.d knows.

It will be ... secure within?

No energy no matter no mind can break into this forcefield from outside. Room gravomagneticpowered enduring as long as Earth. Or until I myself return to enter and deactivate.

Then Duality safe imprisoned.

Not quite.

?You forget. Those inside room always free exit themselves.

But-how? Surely it never could! Look at thing Elizabeth.

Microscopic weakglowing at extinctionedge!

But refusing death.

Then we never free of threat?

Peace myfriend. I feel (perhaps s.h.i.+pspouse would say know!) that this thing will never again menace ManyColouredLand.

Yours the dangerous judgment Lady.

This time I have no doubts.

... If you leave roomwithoutdoors here you deprive yourself of its protection. You will be vulnerable at Black CragEnough Minanonn. Help me now. Use your psychokenetic power to uncover the Duality for a moment so that I can erect its tomb. Then we must hurry to AikenHeal him and you heal nemesis.

Nevertheless I will. I owe him too much. He undertook the job I s.h.i.+rked.

PROLOGUE TWO.

The middle-aged man with the prominent jaw and the un.o.btrusive apparatus clamped to his skull tended to his simple gardening ch.o.r.es. Inside the observatory, the other inhabitants of Ocala Island were rallying round their ruined leader in a battle that strained the very planetary aether. It was almost like the good old days!

They had known better than to invite him to join them.

"Poor wand'ring one,"sang Alexis Manion in a plaintive tone.

"Dee-dah-dah d'hum-dum DAH-hah." He swept up a dead palm warbler and deposited it into the wheeled cart that trundled behind Mm, obedient to his irrepressible PK function. "Oh, yes, I have surely strayed. I am a disgrace to villainy." Humming, wearing the abstractly intoxicated smile of the docilated, he shuffled along the path. The gardens around Marc Remillard's star-search observatory simmered in late afternoon sun but there was heavy shade beneath the macrophyllas. Their blossoms, wide as dinnerplates against whorls of metre-long leaves, gave off a cloying scent that overwhelmed the subtler perfume of the granadilla vines. He tidied up a section of the white coquina walk that was littered with zapped b.u.t.terflies. (Common heliconians, alas. Nothing suitable for his collection.) Then he tsked in sympathy as he spied another victim of the observatory's robot defences: a crumpled male golden egret, gorgeous in mating plumage, that had fallen close to the building wall.

A thought slowly formed in Manion's electronically dulled brain. He squinted up into the sun dazzle at the narrow parapet around the open observatory dome, where the barrels of the Xlasers protruded in a glittering chevaux de frise. Yes! There was the female egret's body as well, caught in the angle of the pendentive. Poor birdie lovers! Still, if one had to go ...

"And if you remain callous and obdurate, I," he carolled, "shall perish as they did and you will know why." A mental nudge sent the corpse tumbling down. He consigned it to the bin. "Though I probably shall not exclaim as I die-"

Alex. Come at once.

"Oh, willow," he whispered, carefully closing the lid. "t.i.twillow-"

Quickly dammit!

"t.i.twillow."

The coercive power of Jordan Kramer, clutching at Manion's mind, failed to get a grip on the docilated, preprogrammed mush. There were telepathic epithets.

Manion smiled his sad idiot smile (so at odds with the set of his jaw) and restored push broom and dustpan to their brackets on the side of the cart. He took up a pair of clippers. Overhead, the laser array lost its sparkle as the power was switched off. A cormorant winged above the slowly closing dome with impunity and soared out over Lake Serene. Manion waved at it, then began to snip spent blooms from a cl.u.s.ter of pink laelias nestled in the crotch of a gumbo-limbo tree. He started a new song: My boy, you may take it from me, That of all the afflictions accurst With which a man's saddled And hampered and addled, A diffident nature's the worst!

Now people were rus.h.i.+ng from the observatory into the garden. There was a wild melange of farspoken thought: It's that G.o.ddam docilator Steinbrenner go fetch himRight. Pat comealong help coldturkey letdown.

Affirm hurryhurry!

SHEWASHERERIGHTHEREYESMONSTERFELICEWAS HEREODIDYOUSEEWASITILLUSIONOCHRISTNO REALDIDN'TYOUSEELaura you&Dorsey get tank ready Keoghs bring bodytransporter.Affirm/Affirm/Affirmaffirm.

G.o.dBLANCHARDDIEDDIDYOUFEELITf.u.c.kHIM WHATABOUTMONSTERFELICEDIDSHEFUSEMARC WHOTHEh.e.l.lKNOWSITWASADJUMPDJUMP CHILDRENWHATABOUTTHEMARETHEYSAFESHUT UPOG.o.dISMARCDEADISFELICEDEADORDIDSHE SUBSUMEMARCYOUf.u.c.kINGIDIOTSSHUTUPONO SHUTUPONOTHEGENESMENTALMANTHEGENES MARCMARCSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUT UP!.

DJUMPDJUMPSHECOULDHAVEFUSEDSUBSUMED it was a d-jump I tell you ...

Silence!

Jordy you can't be certain.

It was a d-jump.