Journey - Book II of the Five Worlds Trilogy (20 page)

The Machine Master fingered a slim device in his hand and disappeared.

In a moment he was back.

The High Leader said, a note of disappointment in his voice, “Another cloaking device?”

“Something more. I have been working on it for some time. With it, I can travel elsewhere and return.”

Cornelian’s interest began to heighten. “And so could, perhaps, an army?”

“Yes.”

“And all of its supplies and weapons?”

“Of course.”

“Excellent! And this device is ready to use? I am thinking of Titan.” The High Leader kept his eye on Sam-Sei. “And Wrath-Pei.”

The Machine Master said, “It will be ready soon. The range is not yet what I want it to be.” He displayed the elegant device in his palm. “Young Visid here was instrumental in its design.”

The High Leader turned to Visid with new interest. “So, we have a budding Machine Master here?”

“Perhaps,” Sam-Sei said.

“Do I detect a note of … pride in your voice, Sam-Sei?” Cornelian said, his eyes still studying the girl, whose demeanor had returned to one of respectful bravado.

The High Leader rotated his head to face the Machine Master. “Hmmm?”

Sam-Sei, as unattractive as ever, showed for the first time since Cornelian had known him a trace of emotion.

“She is very helpful,” Sam-Sei said.

“Yes…” The High Leader said. He made his way to the doorway, his metallic claws clicking on the sandstone floor. “Let me know as soon as your new weapon is ready, Sam-Sei. I can already think of some marvelous uses for it, and I have just begun to contemplate it. I’m sure it will be very useful.”

On the way out, the High Leader revolved his head and fixed his gaze once more on the young girl, Visid—and noted that she met his gaze and calmly held it.

Chapter 22

A
s he had with everything in his life, Porto made of his prison cell a stage.

He had mostly to use his imagination, since his body, once lithe and strong, capable of theatrical sword fights, leaps from mock roofs, and even dancing when required, was now nearly useless. Both legs had been broken during his torture sessions, and only one had healed straight; he had to hop to get anywhere, and that only a recent development: before, crawling had been the transportation mode of choice. Most of his fingers had also been broken, viciously bent backward by Prime Minister Acron himself, who had also proven adept at beatings and, when in a fey mood, at burning various parts of the body with a hot iron or electronic instrument Porto had come to call the “Oucher.”

At least there was pride, Porto thought to himself, in knowing that you’ve been tortured by the very best.

And so, his body stolen from him, he had taken to using his mind.

After the first few days since his breaking down, he had let guilt overtake him; but, before too long, his sense of proportion and humor had returned. He knew there was nothing else he could have done, just as he knew that Erik would not in any way have blamed him. So how was he different now than he had been before? He was still Porto—Porto with a broken body and agonized mind, yes, but Porto nevertheless. So he had taken to dressing his cell—a concrete pit whose only window was on a level with the street outside; when it rained, the floor quickly became covered with rank water that took days to drain away—in stage colors, in his mind. To him, his cell became just another theater, with its own set. The water? A flood! The thumb-sized roaches on the walls? Ancient monsters, in need of slaying! His jailers? Costumed actors in his play, some villains, a few characters with a measure of pity for him and therefore heroes!

“Say, Raymond!” Porto called out brightly, knowing that his present guard, one of the better-tempered ones, could hear him, even though his words were somewhat slurred, given the number of teeth he had lost to the prime minister’s fist.

Raymond grunted a laugh. “What do you want, you crazy actor?”

“Know what play I’m performing today?
Constancy for Constance!”

The guard laughed again. “Never heard of it!”

“A Martian comedy, from the 2200s! Funny as anything!”

“Oh? Make me laugh, actor!” Raymond was brutish, but not cruel, and Porto sought to oblige him, raising himself painfully up on his elbows from his metal pallet resting on two-foot-high concrete blocks that served as his bed and kept him off the normally damp or wet floor.

“You’ve got to set the scene in your mind, Raymond!” Porto said brightly. “Imagine an aqueduct outside of Lowell, with a hole in it! Precious water is streaming out! A young girl, our heroine, named, believe it or not, Constance, walks by and puts her finger in the hole to stave the leak!”

As Porto spoke, his damp, chilly cell became that scene, and his voice brightened even more as he continued.

“Are you with me, Raymond?”

“Sure, I’m with you, actor boy,” Raymond laughed, “But when does it get
funny?”

“Just listen! And see it in your mind!”

“I’m seeing it!”

“Good! Now what happens is, the aqueduct pipe begins to rotate, like they have to do on Mars to keep it evenly heated—you know what I mean?”

“Sure, sure, I’ve seen those pipes.”

“Well, now our heroine, whose finger is still stuck in the pipe, has to go around with the pipe, crawl underneath, then climb up the other side, around and around!”

Raymond began to chuckle.

Porto continued, building the scene, “And now, just when she doesn’t want to see him at all, Constance’s
fiance,
Bil-Bei, comes sauntering by, looking for her! And the thing of it is, Bil-Bei is from a very old Martian family—in fact, Bil-Bei’s father is a Martian senator, up for reelection—and any hint of scandal at all will sink the old man! So the thing is, Bil-Bei is out with a bunch of Screen reporters, who are supposed to do up a wonderful piece about Bil-Bei and his charming young fiancée, so prim and proper, and here she is whirling around a section of Martian aqueduct, dizzy as can be, looking drunk, with all these reporters taking pictures of her! So Bil-Bei just faints dead away!”

Raymond is guffawing, laughing out loud. “Hey, that’s funny!”

“And there’s all kinds of witty dialogue,” Porto says, “like—”

It went suddenly quiet outside. The door to the cell opened, and Porto looked expectantly, but Raymond was not in the doorway.

It was Prime Minister Acron.

“I just wanted you to know,” the prime minister said, striding into the room and bringing back his booted toe before giving Porto a vicious kick in the side, “that I am about to talk with Prime Cornelian, and I’m sure he’s about to give me what I want.” Acron bent down over the moaning actor and said, his face florid and red with vicious pleasure, “Within the hour, concussion bombs will be dropped on the heads of your friends and wipe them from the face of the Earth.”

For good measure Acron gave Porto another kick and, breathing hard with satisfaction, marched from the room.

“Y
es, High Leader!” the prime minister said soon after, into the Screen in his office. For the occasion he had scrubbed and brushed himself to military perfection, wearing his finest ribbon-bedecked uniform. As Cornelian’s metal visage came onto the Screen, Acron stood at attention.

“Rather spiffy, aren’t we?” the High Leader said. Acron, beginning to redden, couldn’t tell if Cornelian was laughing or not.

“I wanted to look my best when—”

The High Leader held up a metal hand to silence the prime minister. “I’ve decided that your request finally meets my agenda. I’m in a position where I cannot let Earth problems bother me.”

“Thank you, High Leader!”

“The bombing will start before long.”

The Screen picture went blank, leaving Prime Minister Acron staring at his spic-and-span, at-attention image in reflection; after a moment he could not contain his joy.

“Finally!” he said, and marched to the window of his chamber to watch the show, which would blossom far to the west.

H
earing a commotion outside, Porto overcame the pain in his side and crawled across the damp floor. He stopped beneath the window and, wincing, hauled himself up onto his stiffened, ill-set leg. The pain in his side did not lessen, and he knew from its intensity that at least one rib had been fractured.

The cries outside his basement cell window became more intense. With a sinking heart, Porto looked out, expecting to see citizens pointing to the west, where Acron’s bombs would fall; instead, the few who stood on the street pointed east, which was the direction in which Porto’s window faced.

The sky was an ugly, dung-colored blot in that direction.

“Raymond, what’s happening?” Porto managed to get out, between further flinches of pain.

There was no answer.

“Raymond!”

Now the street was filling with people.

Porto saw above their heads a rend in the still-clear sky; a bolt of light shot downward, accompanied by a shudder of man-made thunder.

The sky disappeared and, amid a sound like a huge approaching machine, the ground began to rumble. Outside, cries turned to screams.

And, as the rolling, flattening concussion neared the Imperial Palace, and the jails in its basement, Porto put his hands on the bars of the window and began to laugh—even as the prime minister far upstairs began to shriek with the realization of his imminent demise.

Porto threw back his head and bellowed laughter, even as the concussion reached and exterminated him:

“Ha, ha! The final curtain, then!”

Chapter 23

T
he garden of forever…

Roses, and a kiss, forever…

Slowly, ever so slowly, Tabrel Kris awoke.

And the longest of dreams slowly faded, like dew against the rising Sun.

For a moment, she thought perhaps she was merely within another dream. It had been so long since she had been able to touch reality that when reality finally did come, it seemed unreal to her. She lay unmoving, afraid to test her limbs, tired from the extent of her rest, and still not knowing, as the last tendrils of unreality loosened their grip upon her and melted away, if what she saw was real or not.

Where am I?

This, then, was a first test passed: if she could ask herself where she was, perhaps she was in a real place after all.

But what sort of place? If this was a dream, it was an imposed one: nothing in her own experience could have provided the building blocks for such an illusion.

She felt as if she were within something.

In the … belly of a beast?

Ever so carefully, she moved a finger; then another; then a hand and an arm. So far, reality held. She brought her hand up to her face and counted the fingers: five.

She moved a foot, a leg; everything worked.

She noticed that her hand still hung in front of her face.

Nearly weightless.

With a little effort, she sat up, and nearly rose all the way out of the open Life Suit she had reclined in. The locks, she noticed, had never been sealed, which meant that she had not been transported to this place within the suit.

Gaining strength now, she swung herself out of the suit and, eventually, landed on the floor.

It was only now that she saw how strange her surroundings were.

Like … an artificial Earth environment.

The tall ceiling was colored a deep blue; had, through illusion, the depth of a real Earth sky. Cumulus clouds moved across; and it was only when one looked to the “horizon” that the illusion broke: the line of the walls, where a projection of an Earth landscape was produced with false perspective, gave the game away. Beneath Tabrel’s feet was a simulacrum of an earthly meadow; tall grass moved in an artificial breeze, but real soil held the faux grass stalks in place. There was even the faint odor of new-mown lawn—a rare enough smell on Mars, and one that Tabrel had relished on her trips to Earth.

There were daisies that looked real enough to pick—and, indeed, as Tabrel reached down to pluck one from the meadow grass surrounding it, its own essence reached her nostrils and was as real as real could be.

“The daisies are real,” a loud, imperious, gelid voice—a voice Tabrel knew well, that of Queen Kamath Clan—said.

Tabrel whirled around; the voice seemed to come from everywhere around her.

But now a Screen opened on one of the walls, destroying the illusion of distance and showing the queen’s coldly imperious face.

How Tabrel hated that face.

“I am not Queen Clan, but an interactive simulacrum,” the image said. “I am to tell you that you are in no immediate danger, though if you are coherently listening to this I have not been able to visit you for some time and renew your potions.”

“To hell your potions!” Tabrel shouted at the Screen.

“I have no response to that; what I state is fact. You are presently hidden deep within Titan, near the Heating Core. The area you inhabit is nearly without gravity, for reasons having to do with the Heating Core’s physics; these same physics provide, in the obverse, Titan’s one-point-zero gravity at surface level—”

“How do I leave here?” Tabrel shouted.

The Queen Clan on the Screen said impassively, “Only I can provide you with entrance and exit. It would be quite useless for you to try, and only damage to your environment can occur. You are quite safe—”

“Screen off!” Tabrel said in fury, looking in vain for something to throw at the simulated queen.

The Screen obeyed her instructions and ceased its broadcast.

At the same moment, though, a second, smaller Screen opened on the adjacent wall.

It showed a startling image: that of Kamath Clan utterly changed, her physical appearance aged and bent. Gone was the cold, sure cast of her eye, and when she spoke, the imperious tone was absent, replaced by a harsh whisper.

“Tabrel Kris,” the image said.

“Screen off!” Tabrel ordered, but the image remained and continued to speak. Tabrel ordered the Screen to cease its broadcast and missed part of what the Queen said; Tabrel realized then that this was not an interactive image, but a mere recording.