“Uh, what are you going to do with the interdimensional thing when you get it?”
“Well, essentially this is a military operation. With it we are going to mount an attack on another universe.”
“All right,” Jeremy said with obvious glee.
“Don’t get an erection. This is going to involve killing, lives lost. The real thing.”
“Oh.”
“‘Oh,’ he says. Have you ever killed anyone?”
“No.”
“Well, if you assist me, you’ll be an accessory before the fact. Still willing?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good, because the cause is just. The enemy is nothing less than the epitome of evil itself.”
“Who are they?”
“They are beings who inhabit a very bizarre universe, a place which I am not quite sure is within range of human understanding. Their traditional name is the Hosts of Hell. They are very powerful and extremely malevolent. We’ve held them in check for millennia, but they’ve learned some tricks over the years, and now they’re more dangerous than ever.”
Linda returned from another corner of the lab.
“Are these newts the right species? They look awful enough.”
Incarnadine examined the animals crawling around inside the portable terrarium.
“They’ll do. Now, cut the eyes out of them.”
“Yecch!”
Incarnadine waved a hand, and the things stopped squirming.
“There. It’ll be easier now.” He handed them back. Linda walked away still mock-retching.
“What do you need with all that magic stuff?”
“The computer needs some very traditional magic to keep going. Elementary business, but necessary.”
“Even the chickens?”
“Some polarity-switching spells call for chicken blood. Fresh. No way to substitute.”
“Geez.”
“Anyway, to get back to your original question, what I’m going to do with the traveler is attack the Hosts from a direction they don’t expect. Last year I sealed their portal with a fairly unbreakable spell. Nevertheless, they’ll probably be concentrating a good deal of their defensive might around the portal locus, expecting some sort of attack through there, if only a feint. With the traveler, I can pick my point of invasion. The second spell will supply the power that the vehicle requires.”
“Got it,” Jeremy said. “What’s the third spell?”
“It’s a weapon. Call it the ultimate weapon. It’s been entirely theoretical up till now. No one has ever actually done it. In essence, it’s a complex energy phenomenon that travels along a prescribed vector path. It’s hard to explain, but it’s incredibly destructive. To use it is to risk serious damage to the entire multiverse. But I have no choice. The Hosts seem bent on imperiling the cosmos. Why, I have no idea.”
Jeremy asked, “What are they doing?”
“They’re tapping an energy source that the multiverse depends on to keep from dissolving into chaos. This energy is very primal stuff. The Hosts have somehow learned to siphon it off. Their doing so does two things. One, it gives them power on scale they never dreamed of; two, the very act of tapping it destabilizes the castle, as you have seen.”
“I’ll say.”
“But what the Hosts don’t know is that if they keep doing it, the castle will go. And if the castle goes, the whole shebang does, too.”
“The whole shebang?”
“Creation itself.”
“Oh.” Jeremy shifted uncomfortably on his chair. He didn’t know how much he understood out of all that. “Um, how many lines of code are we talking about for all three spells?”
“Couple of hundred million, tops.”
“Hunhhh?”
“Oh, the mainframe will do most of the writing. In fact, it’ll write the whole thing. You need a computer to write the program for a job this big. What I need is someone to supervise the debugging and compilation. I’m printing out a flowchart over here. It’ll give you an idea of what the job entails.”
“How much time have we got?”
“Almost no time at all,” Incarnadine said. “I have a temporal compression spell going in the lab, though. We’ll have about forty-eight subjective hours at our disposal. Probably not enough, but we have to try.”
Jeremy swallowed hard. “Holy heck.”
“Yes, it’s a monstrous task. Feel up to it?”
Jeremy giggled. “Yeah, sure.”
“Good.”
Two coffee cups came floating through the air. One settled on the table in front of Jeremy. The other wafted to Incarnadine’s hand.
“You take cream and sugar?”
Thirty
Annau
“Anybody home?”
Gene’s shout rang through the empty corridors, echoing among the silent towers. There was no answer.
“Stay low,” he whispered to Vaya, who crouched beside him behind an overturned fuel storage tank.
“Will I hear the gods speak to you?”
“Yeah. In fact, you’ll have to help me translate. I’ve lost communication with Zond. Left my walkie-talkie underwear back at camp.”
Silence returned, and they waited. Nothing happened.
Gene settled to his knees. “I don’t know about this.”
Vaya asked, “What is wrong, my husband?”
“This city doesn’t look in very good shape. Junk all over the place. Hell of a mess. I have a feeling it might be a dead town.”
“Will the dead show themselves?”
“That’s not what I mean. It’s dead, period. The machine that runs the place isn’t in operation.”
After waiting a minute or so, Gene turned, sat, and put his back against the tank. “Looks like we’ve come a long way for nothing.”
Vaya squatted beside him.
“Where will we go, my husband?”
“Back to Zond. We can live there indefinitely. Maybe with Zond’s help I can rescue the tribe, though it’s doubtful that Zond can ever be persuaded to build a weapon. Chance I could knock one together myself, maybe.”
Vaya lowered her head and did not speak.
“I am here,” a voice suddenly said, in English.
The disembodied voice was epicene, not quite human. Gene knew it to be the voice of the city. It sounded similar to Zond’s voice, but had more nonhuman overtones.
Gene sprang to his feet. “Hey, you’re home! How’s it going? I mean … Greetings! My name is Gene Ferraro. Uh, how did you learn English?”
“My colleague Zond speaks with you often. I have listened, and have learned.”
“Great. Well, then, you must know what I’m here for. First, though, we’d like a little hospitality, if you don’t mind. Long trip, and there’s dust way at the back of my throat.”
“Indeed.” The voice seemed rather cold.
Gene looked around. “Uh, yeah. Tell me … you say you’ve been eavesdropping. Have you had trouble with your transmitter? Zond says he hasn’t talked with you in years.”
The voice was silent for a long moment. Shuffling his feet, Gene began to feel a little awkward. It also occurred to him that he was exposed and vulnerable.
“My enemies are legion,” the voice said. “To speak is to divulge information, to give over data. I avoid this. It is dangerous.”
Gene gave a nervous cough. “Yeah. Definitely. We —”
“You come here to steal from me. I am not programmed to show hospitality to thieves.”
“Now, wait a minute. You’ve got the wrong idea.”
“You are not of the Masters. Neither did the Masters create you. The female one, yes. But you, no.”
“That’s true, very true.” Gene drew himself up. “I am a god from another world. I have powers far above any the Masters had.”