Tintagel (25 page)

"
I
need your help, Katie."

She shook her head, quite lucid now. "No," she stated, her mind made up. "I won't go back. I don't
want
to go back. The country's falling, Francis. Don't you understand? The population is diminishing because of the Syndrome. Industry has collapsed and the Congress wants me to declare martial law. And the goddamn aeroplankton …" Again, she shook her head vigorously. "I just can't stand it anymore. I didn't bargain for this."

Smoke drifted around them, mixed in with the frantic cries and yells of the colonial defenders. Gunfire cracked. Men fell backward, pierced with long arrows.

Then the tower shook, but not from cannon fire.

The Shawnee had breached the tower, and one of their boats had lodged on the very top of the command post.

On long, braided ropes of hemp, they suddenly swung inside, swarming over the smoldering cannon snouts and the men at the windows. They came in from all of the surrounding windows, and the colonists fell to fighting hand-to-hand.

The Shawnee wore swords in leather sheaths strapped to their backs, and these were quickly drawn.

The settlers inside the command post didn't stand a chance with the short swords drawn against them. The Indians began mowing the men down like blades of sawgrass in a field.

Lanier grabbed Katie around the shoulders and rushed to an opposite wall, away from the savages. There, with his back against the wall, Lanier raised the Malachi and fanned the whole inside of the command post, defenders included, with a lightning burst of anesthetic needles. He shot the ones closest to him first, and quickly jerked out the empty clip. In the confusion, he snapped in another clip and shot down all the rest.

Within seconds, the whole floor of the tower command post was piled with sleeping combatants with the exception of Katie Babcock and himself. Even the dreamling, Rennel/Randell, slept soundly.

"A bit extreme, mind you," he said. "But it does tend to do the trick."

Then he saw a peculiar thing, something he'd been waiting to see happen for a while now. A few of the bodies, among both the colonists and the sleeping Shawnee, began to fade right before their eyes.

"Look." He pointed. "They were Walkers. I told you about them, remember? They were real people."

Five individuals disappeared, and headed back, sound asleep, to the real world. But that meant, he suddenly realized, that this world was constituted of slightly more than just the pure elements that Katie Babcock, in her neurotic fantasy over the Harris symphony, had dreamed up.

For it occurred to him then that there might not be any way to tell who was real here and who was not. Theoretically speaking, you could have a world composed entirely of Walkers and not dreamlings.
But
, he thought,
who'd want a world like this one
?

Suddenly he smelled fire.

From down the well of the staircase that threaded up the center of the tall tower, Lanier heard screaming.

"Oh, my God," Katie gasped. "They've set fire to the tower! They made it below to the village!"

Lanier ran to the window. The whole town, with a good part of the forest surrounding it, was broiling in smoke and flame.

Curiously, off in the distance, where he hadn't taken the time to originally observe, were other wooden defense towers in towns several kilometers away. Two of them were also aflame.

It's a war
, he realized. A coordinated effort to destroy the colonists. If Katie stayed, she wouldn't have a chance, even if they did manage to push back the Shawnee and rebuild the community. The Indians far outstripped the settlers in both technology and hostility.

Katie stood apart, frozen with fear. The screams got louder, the smoke thicker. It was happening too fast!

The tower rocked again. A boat drifted by and the Shawnee catapulted a firebrand into the midst of the sleeping dreamlings.

Lanier backed off, pushing Katie aside. The firebrand burst into several pieces and the smell of burning flesh filled the chamber.

If he shot her now with an anesthetic needle, it would require time for the drug to take effect.
She could die in that time
, he thought.
Especially here, in this fire
.

"We have to get out of here," he said. They had to find a place where he could withdraw her from the fantasy as peacefully as possible.

And that might not be possible
, he suddenly realized.

Lanier looked, out the window and saw that one of the boat-craft was still tethered to the top of the command post by a number of dangling grappling hooks. It was empty, having formerly held the troop of Shawnee that had invaded the tower, who were now fast asleep and burning to death.

Lanier pulled out a grappling hook of his own, this one made of textured steel alloy and not the crude iron the Shawnee used, and tossed it out on a long nylon rope. The hook attached itself to one of the suspended ropes. Lanier reeled his nylon rope in, with the floating boat.

Craft were still descending from the clear sky, and below him the street of the colonial village teemed with hundreds of Indians who were looting and burning at random.

"Here!" he yelled back at Katie. "Let's get in."

She stepped back into the smoke, now quite frightened and reluctant.

"Let's go!" He gestured frantically, trying to hold the boat to the burning tower. Flames had appeared in the stairwell. The smoke was so thick that it hurt his eyes.

Hell
, he said to himself.
I'm not losing this one
!

He pulled out the Malachi and dropped the President of the United States with a single burst. The needle caught her squarely in the stomach. She fell onto a pile of fallen colonists.

He yanked on the rope, then let go of it, hoping that the boat would drift closer to the tower before bobbing away on the wind. He ran over to Katie and scooped her up into his arms.

At the window, the edge of the craft drifted up to the wide sill, and Lanier tossed her like a sack of potatoes into the bottom of the boat. He thought for a minute the boat would capsize with the sudden weight thrown into it, but it righted itself easily.

He mounted the window ledge, flames at his back, and leaped out over the few meters that separated the tower from the boat-craft. Quickly, he disengaged the lines and the boat began drifting away on the currents of air heated by the flaming tower.

He rolled over and the craft hovered gently. It moved off from the tower and the colonists trapped inside. He watched as Katie slowly faded back into the real world. If he hadn't known her as the President of the United States, the woman disappearing before his eyes would have looked exactly like a Pilgrim woman in her apron and wide, cumbersome dress. Every feminine feature of hers was disguised under layers of powder-stained cloth.
Governor
, he thought. Even here, despite her weakness and sensitivity, she still had a predilection for power.

Slowly, he calmed himself.

But in the back of his mind he knew that the people in the tower were dying, and some of those people were Walkers, not dreamlings. Those screams he'd heard: some of them were quite real. They were back there dying a real death.

Roy Harris's
Seventh Symphony
played on. Even if this world was being destroyed by vengeful Shawnee, he knew that people here could survive. If not here, then back in Asia or Europe. He closed his eyes.

Chapter Thirteen

The Unanswered Question

Charles Ives

Lanier regained consciousness in a dark room full of bodies that were sprawled in various awkward positions. Next to him, Katie Babcock wheezed in her drugged sleep.

A light burst in upon him, and Christy stood in the doorway.

"You're back!" she said excitedly and somewhat relieved. She yelled over her shoulder, "Charlie, they're back! A whole bunch of them, too."

Daylight
? Lanier looked through squinted eyes beyond Christy to the bright light filtering in from the front room.

"Is that daylight?" he asked.

"Yes," she replied, smiling. "You've been gone for twelve hours, now." She checked her watch.

Relieved and worried at the same time, she wrung her hands nervously, standing before the sleeping bodies.

"Twelve hours?" Lanier asked, trying to rearrange his senses. He nudged Katie Babcock. "Twelve hours. It's certainly getting worse. I was only gone for an hour at the most. At least we got her back."

Charlie loomed in the doorway, eclipsing the sunlight to the workroom. "May not do any good, though."

Lanier slowly got to his feet, smelling of gunpowder and burnt wood. "Why's that?"

Charlie and Christy exchanged pained looks.

"Randell's taken over, more or less," Charlie reported.

Lanier detached his priest's collar. "Randell?" He was too exhausted to be surprised.

Charlie began, "The Vice President finally slid into a coma early this morning, and the new riots in Los Angeles and Chicago caused him to vote himself into power, at least until Katie returns. Half of Congress itself is gone, vanished, and General Carey and the Joint Chiefs backed the referendum." He paused briefly, almost as if trying to catch his breath.

Just twelve hours
, Lanier thought ironically.

"And," Charlie continued, "he declared martial law, just to hold things down. So far, no one's objected too strenuously. On the other hand, no one knows if anyone has objected, since Randell now controls the media and all forms of communication."

Lanier couldn't believe what he was hearing. For an instant, he wondered if he had, in fact, returned to the real world. This seemed like a nightmarish facsimile. He drew a dirty hand over his forehead.

He paced around the sleeping forms at his feet, feeling uncomfortable. His clothing was soaked with sweat and his mind was still unsettled. He felt as if the dirt and filth of the entire world were upon him.

"But," Charlie began eagerly, brightening, "we did look at the film. You were right."

Lanier faced him. "What did I tell you? They're different."

"I'll say they're different! We had to exchange your copies for the ones down at the Watson Pueblo, but the difference is astonishing. The films are heavily ingrained with the Leander Interphase, or something very similar to it, and the studio that rents them out obviously knows what they're doing. They're mesmerizing."

From behind them, Lanier heard someone stir. It was the President.

"Do any of them need any medical attention?" Christy asked, looking down at them. "Is Katie OK?"

I think so," Lanier said. "Those guys," pointing at the three Shawnee and two colonists, "are Walkers. I had to shoot most of them. It was a tough situation. I'll explain it later. But they'll just sleep it off. They got a bigger dosage than Katie."

Katie rolled over and sat up. Her bones ached and her head was splitting with a roller-coaster headache.

"Uh." She raised a smudged hand to her forehead. "What happened? Where am I?"

Lanier went over and helped her slowly to her feet.

"You're back home," he said gently. "You're in my place in Montana. You went under and I brought you back."

She seemed lost in a cloud of confusion.

"Boy," she uttered. "That was sure rough!" She was still shaky.

Lanier smiled at her. He looked very much as if he had had a hard time himself. "You'll be OK once you relax. It's the drug."

She gripped her stomach where the lone anesthetic needle had pierced her flesh. "Ouch," she said, suddenly noticing the small pain.

"It'll go away," he told her. "It'll dissolve in your skin and begin to heal over."

She just groaned. They led her from the room, leaving the Walkers to sleep where they lay.

"I'll get some food going, and some hot coffee," Christy announced, quickly disappearing into the kitchen.

It was late afternoon and the light seemed dim and weak as it slanted in through the wide picture window. Lanier chanced to notice outside, beyond the window and up against the mountainside, the shadow of a helicopter speeding along the bare slope.

He walked over to get a better view.

Charlie saw him and pulled him back. "Better not. It's the CIA."

Lanier looked at him. "
What?
"

Charlie's face was no longer jovial as it had always had been. He looked tired, worn, and rather scared. "We think that it's Randell's doing, but they're watching the ranch. They think you're dead, and that Christy and I have moved into your house."

"They think I'm dead?"

"Fran," he said, "things are very bad right now. As soon as the Vice President went into his coma, Randell just up and took over. The media still think he's only acting temporarily, but he's got the FBI out to arrest you and all the other Stalkers in the country."

For the first time Katie showed interest. She was back to her senses, despite the pain in her stomach.

"What are you talking about?" The expression in her eyes was fierce, angry.

Lanier smiled inwardly watching her.
She's back, mean as ever
.

Charlie fidgeted, feeling somewhat uneasy talking to the President of the United States, having never yet been in the presence of someone quite so important.

"Uh, w–well," he stuttered, regaining some confidence, "it seems that Randell's clamped down on the country. He's activated the entire National Guard, and all the communications in the country, including all national media, are in the control of the CIA until this thing blows over. Or so he says. They think that you're dead."

He looked directly into Katie's eyes. Then he turned to Lanier. "And when you didn't come back immediately, we thought you were dead too. But what's worse," he faltered slightly, "what's worse is that he's arresting and imprisoning all the Stalkers that he can find."

Katie stood and faced him. She was so small, and Charlie so imposing, that the two of them together seemed rather comical. Her face was stone.
The warlord
…