The Dreamtrails (72 page)

“How am I to pay?” I asked.

He giggled horribly. “He said you would ask that, too. See how clever he is? He said I must tell you that you will pay in pain.”

“Guilden Domick,” I said sharply and with authority.

Mika stared at me, his mouth slackly open, and then he closed his mouth, and there was pain in his eyes. “Elspeth,” Domick rasped. His voice was stronger than before. “You must not … enter my mind. He has … set up traps. You would not die, but you would suffer, and that is what he wants. He hates you.… You can’t imagine how he hates you. And he sees so much. More than Maryon and Dell. More clearly. But there are gaps! There must be since he did not know I would be able to take control and talk to you. He did not see that you would make me strong.”

I was afraid to say Ariel’s name in case it brought Mika back. “Tell me about Rushton.”

“It is as Mika told you. The Herders got us. Ariel told the warrior priests where to find us. Rushton was trying to make me come … come back to Obernewtyn. I was … I could not. I told him that. What Mika had done was too … I could not go back to Kella with blood on my hands. If she sensed what I had done …”

“So the Hedra took you to Ariel, and he took you both to Norseland. What happened then?”

“Ariel has a machine that gets inside your head. Noises and colors and pain come from it … He used the machine to try to open our minds so he could empathise us. He is a weak coercer, you see. But Rushton would not let him in. I fought, too, but he found Mika, and he summoned him and made him strong. Mika opened my mind for Ariel. He … came inside my mind with empathy, but—Elspeth—he is like an
empath turned inside out. He … he made me feel such terrible things. He made me imagine hurting Kella. He made me take pleasure from it. I fled inside myself, which left Mika. It was what Ariel wanted. Mika coerced Rushton, and Rushton had no defense against him because they had been … we … were friends.” The last words were spoken in a sobbing hiss. “Ariel entered Rushton’s mind, but still Rushton fought. He used your face and form as a shield against hatred and despair and pain and all that Ariel used on him, but with Mika and the machine, Rushton could not hold out forever. When Rushton broke, Ariel took his revenge. He made Mika help him to … distort Rushton’s memories so whenever he thought … of you, of Elspeth … he would feel pain and he would see the most dreadful …”

“Why would he do such terrible things to Rushton?” I asked through clenched teeth, sickened to the heart by what he was telling me.

“Ariel said Rushton must suffer for opposing him. But in truth, his anger at Rushton is small compared to his hatred of you. I … Once I asked him why he hated you so. He said that he had dreamed you would find something he greatly desired, something from the Beforetime. Only you could find and claim it, and no matter how many times he sought for another outcome, it was always the same. You found what he desired. He realized that the only way for him to possess what he wanted was to let you find it and then take it from you!” Domick almost screamed this last word. Then he lurched forward and vomited thin yellow bile onto the white sheet. Two more of the circles had been torn away, and I heard a muffled beeping sound. Domick laughed, a thread of saliva hanging from his lower lip. “See? He is a thing I can vomit out.” It was Mika’s voice, crafty and malicious.

“That is because you are stronger,” I said smoothly.

Mika nodded eagerly. “Domick had locked me away. I was hidden in the darkest place in his mind, but the master let me out and made me strong. He laughed and laughed when he discovered me, and Domick wept.” There was contempt in his tone. “The master gave me power, and I obeyed him. He locked Domick in the darkness where he had hidden me.”

“He used you,” I said slowly. “He used the plague to make me find you so you could tell me what he had done to Rushton.”

Mika’s eyes glowed blackly in his ashen face. “He trusted me to do his will—me, not Domick. I wanted him to kill Domick, but he said that he could not be killed or I would die.” His face twisted with rage. “But he said Domick would never get out. Never.” The triumph in his face dwindled to an irritable fretfulness. “But you made Domick want to come. You tricked me.” Now there was anger again, but I ignored it, for I felt that something still eluded me.

I said coldly, “Your master failed you. Because he made a mistake about Domick’s strength, and he made a mistake about Rushton, too, didn’t he? He took him to Norseland and tried to use him, and in the end, he could only hurt him.”

Mika sneered. “Rushton held you before him like a shield, but we broke him and then the master gave Rushton to the Herders to let him rot in a cell.”

“But Rushton is not in the cell. He is free and works against your master. That was a mistake, too, wasn’t it?” Some part of me was sickened by my cruelty, for it was Domick I was taunting. Mika was just a poor twisted part of his mind. I forced myself to go on. “You were supposed to be the instrument of Lud, bringing plague, but instead you are just Ariel’s messenger boy.”

“It is your fault.” Mika’s face was as confused as a child’s.

“Yes,” I said. “The seeds of sickness in you will flower and you will die, but only you. Why did Ariel infect you with the plague when he knew you would never be allowed to spread it to another person? Why didn’t he trust you to pretend?”

“He … he said it would change things if he did anything differently. He said … he said he must act as if … as if he had seen nothing. It was the only way.…”

“So you alone are to die from the plague you carry? Maybe he kept that from you. Maybe he didn’t trust you after all.…”

“He did! He trusted me. He said I must wait, and you would find me. He said you had to find me because of the plague.” The words became a labored gasping and a breathless sobbing. Then he was still, his head hanging down. When the face lifted, Domick’s eyes looked out at me, tortured and bleak.

“I am so sorry, Domick. I needed to weaken him,” I whispered. I could feel sweat trickling down my spine.

“Elspeth, listen to me,” Domick rasped. “Ariel wants you to live, because he needs you to get something that he wants.… I … Elspeth, I think it might be a weapon. Something terrible. That is the center of Ariel’s mind, and all the rest is a chaotic whirl of madness and brilliance and cruelty. I felt it when he bound himself to me so he could enter Rushton when I did. The One is mad, but Ariel is worse.”

I heard a movement behind me but did not turn. At any second, Mika might again take over. My whole body ached from tension, and I hoped whoever was behind me would have the sense not to speak. But it was already too late. Domick gave a cry and seemed to struggle with an invisible assailant before sinking back. Mika leered at me, panting. “You think you are so smart! He tells you things he should
not, but my master is stronger. You think he failed with Rushton? You are wrong! He serves my master yet!” His white face shone like polished marble in the bloody light, and his eyes seemed to bulge. He continued speaking, but now there was only a mad babble. Then he convulsed again and fell back, unconscious.

The plast hand reached out and began to wash the sweat from his body.

“It begins,” Jak said. He was behind the bank of computermachines. “He is obviously delirious.”

I swallowed, tasted blood, and realized I had bitten the inside of my cheek. I asked, “Did you hear what he said?”

“Some of it, but I would not strive to find meaning in the mad babble of delirium. After all, he said that Ariel took Rushton to Norseland, but Dell foresaw that he had been found in Sutrium.”

“He was, but it is possible he was taken to Norseland first. It would … explain much if it is true,” I said with difficulty. “What did you mean by saying it had begun?”

“The first stage is ended. Domick is contagious now.”

I had guessed it, but the words said aloud made me feel as if he had struck me. “Have you found a way to heal him yet?”

“We have still not been able to identify the plague,” Jak said. “Elspeth, you should get some food and rest. Pavo has given Domick something to make him sleep now, for his pulse was racing dangerously, and there was a risk that his heart would give out. He will not wake again for some hours. Seely will come for you the minute there is something to tell.”

I shivered and nodded, and he took my elbow and made me sit down, saying that Seely would return soon to take me to my sleeping chamber.

“I do not think I will be able to sleep after this,” I said.

“I could give you something to help,” Jak said, “but I know you eschew such remedies. Why not bathe and eat and have a look around if you cannot sleep immediately. This is truly an amazing place, Elspeth. You might find Dell and ask her to tell you how she began to communicate with the main computermachine here. Without that, none of this would have been possible.”

That got through the haze of confusion I was feeling. “
Dell
communicated with computermachines?” I asked.

He smiled. “Not just any one. Dell communicated with the central computermachine, which masters this entire complex and all of the lesser machines.” Then he sobered, looking past me to Domick. “We have named the computermachine that runs this healing center ‘Pavo’ in tribute to my old master, but I do not truly think of it as a live being. Dell has taken the opposite point of view. She believes that a computermachine is simply a different kind of being. This approach enabled her to do what I could not, for all my rational theories. Indeed, it was her struggle to communicate with it as one life-form to another that led to the discovery that it can both speak and listen.”

“Speak and listen?” I said in flat disbelief. I stood and Jak led me to his machine.

Jak nodded. “The Beforetimers gave computermachines voices. The one here sounds like a woman. I learned to communicate with computermachines by tapping on the scribed letters, and I continue to communicate in this way, making instructional sentences on the screen. But Dell speaks to it aloud, asking it to explain words and concepts and explaining her own questions. I would like to do as she does, for I see her results. But although I am a teknoguilder with
machine empathy, I simply cannot make myself regard a computermachine as a live thing. I see it as a tool, but Dell sees it as a living thing with its own intelligence and ideas, and that approach has allowed her to do far more with it. Dell made the computermachine grow crops of hay and wheat and lucerne in vats on the thirteenth level, which we give to the wild herd. But her true interest is in what the computermachine will
not
explain or show us. You see, there are whole areas on some levels that we cannot enter, because we need code words or sets of numbers that we do not have.

“That ought to be the end of it, but Dell has the idea that if she interacts with the main controlling computermachine for long enough, teaching it, stimulating its intelligence, and developing its reasoning ability, she will eventually be able to convince it to allow us access to deeper programs that will tell us more about the Beforetime and give us greater knowledge and power.”

Seeing my look of consternation, he went on to explain that a program was a set of instructions given to a computermachine, which told it what to do. In the case of the dominant computermachine in the complex, its program gave it access to other computermachines. In a sense, it was the program that was the computermachine. “Unlike all the other computermachines here, such as Pavo, the main computermachine in this complex can learn new information and integrate it with old information. That is why Dell is so certain it is capable of eventually understanding why it should give us access to its deepest secrets.” He shrugged. “I admire all that she has accomplished, but I must say that I think Dell is wrong in imagining a computermachine program can alter itself enough to sympathize with our need. On the other hand, when I think about what her approach has managed to
accomplish, I am prepared to be proven wrong.”

“Do you know what the purpose of this place was in the Beforetime?” We were now walking along the green-lit passages toward the elevating chamber.

“It was constructed specifically as a shelter in case of exactly such a world-changing disaster as the Great White. I do not know why the Beforetimers did not use it. Maybe the end of that time came too swiftly. But unless Dell succeeds with Ines, we will never know the truth of it.”

“Ines?” I echoed, my skin prickling, for in one of my visions, the Beforetime Misfits had spoken of contacting Ines at Obernewtyn.

“INES are the letters representing the specific type of advanced program contained in the central computermachine, but Dell uses it as a proper name.”

“Where does Dell speak with the main computermachine?” I asked, trying to keep the excitement from my voice.

“You can address it from anywhere within the complex, and it will respond,” Jak said. “You only need give an order using its letters as a name. I will show you. Ines, can you produce some music?”

“Do you have a preference, sir?” asked the attractive voice of a woman that came from everywhere, like light. This was the voice I had heard only recently in the recurring dream of walking in a dark tunnel and hearing the drip of water!

“Just something soft and soothing,” Jak said.

Music began, of an exquisitely complex type I had never heard before, but I was still reeling at the voice.

“Ines, stop the music now, please,” Jak said, and the music stopped.

I was about to ask why he had stopped it when I saw that Seely had arrived with the key to the demon band. Jak took
it from her and bade me farewell, saying he needed to return to Domick. Seely led me on to the elevating chamber, asking me anxiously how Domick was. I muttered something, still too astonished by Jak’s demonstration to concentrate on anything else. At the elevating chamber, Seely pressed her palm to a square panel in the wall alongside the door. When we entered, she touched one of the listed numbers on the wall and one in a row of colored buttons. This time I felt myself grow heavy, and when the chamber’s vibrating ceased, I felt myself become light.