They began to see evidence of recent battles — besides the hulk of the blasted truck, they found shell casings, ammo belts, and other military refuse. Nothing in great quantity: Gene got the feeling that this was debris missed in a general cleanup.
“Did you ever hear about what happened here?”
“No,” Alice said. “Never. But …”
“What is it?”
“A while back there was a Citizens’ Mobilization Training Festival.”
“What was that?”
“We were ordered to report for training.”
“Military training?”
“I guess you’d call it that. We marched around carrying wooden sticks.”
“Not rifles?”
“No, just sticks to practice with. They didn’t give us any guns.”
“Then what happened?”
“Nothing,” she said. “It lasted about a week, then there was a notice canceling the festival.”
“Was there anything on the screen then about ‘unsocial outside elements’? Anything at all?”
“Yes, a couple of mentions here and there, but no information.”
Gene mulled it over. Thinking aloud, he said, “There was a battle or a series of battles fought here not too long ago. The area is still being patrolled. That might mean that the front lines are not very far away. Maybe fifty miles to the east. Which puts it close to the portal.”
“Close to the what?”
“The thing that will take us to my world. A doorway. Never mind that for now. Let’s reconstruct a possible history. This nation, whatever it was before, some variant of the United States, was taken over by this mysterious molecular entity called InnerVoice. The rest of the world wasn’t taken over, or there were at least parts of it that remained free. These free nations or a group of them finally managed to invade the East Coast and work their way west as far as western Pennsylvania, meeting strong resistance all the way. Around here somewhere a decisive battle was fought, and the defenders threw back the invasion force. The front lines stabilized somewhere east of here, where they remain. Stalemate. The civilian population is kept in the dark, except for some hastily improvised mobilization effort. How does that sound to you?”
“I don’t know. It could be true.”
“It has to be true. No other interpretation fits the facts.”
“How are you feeling, Gene?”
“Huh? Oh, fine. Fine.”
It struck him then that he was feeling fine. No nausea, no anxiety. He wondered if the battle inside his body had been won. If so, how? What inner resources had he drawn on? Maybe it had been sheer fortitude and willpower, with a little adrenaline added to help.
Somehow he doubted it. He had been thoroughly cowed, beaten. InnerVoice and its mechanisms were almost insurmountable for the ordinary person.
But he was not an ordinary person — at least his experiences were not ordinary. After all, he lived in a magic castle in a world of magic. Was something supernatural working here? He couldn’t see how, because he was not a magician himself; rather, he was a bad one. He could cast a few simple spells but seventy percent of the time he botched them completely. And those spells would not help him here in any event. So, what was happening to him? He felt the faint stirrings of something going on inside, but he couldn’t put a finger on what it was.
They had come to the edge of a strip of woods. Ahead was a wide field and no cover until they reached the other side of a highway below, where trees started again.
Gene checked the highway, then the sky. He listened for half a minute. Nothing but birds, the wind through the trees, crickets in the field.
“We’re going to have to make a run for those woods. There’s no choice. We have to cross the highway at some point.”
“We’ll make it, Gene.”
He smiled at her. “I like you.”
“I like you, too.”
“Let’s go.”
Holding hands, they jogged through the high hay. They were halfway down the hill when a helicopter came out of nowhere, followed by two VTOL gunships.
They dove into the hay at the first sound, and for a moment Gene thought they hadn’t been spotted. But the three craft began circling, and he knew his escape attempt was over.
He wished mightily for a gun, for any means of resistance, even for a handy cliff for them both to leap over. Anything was better than going back to InnerVoice. Anything.
But there was nothing he could do. He seethed with anger, wild desperate thoughts springing to mind. He imagined bolts of death leaving his fingers, striking down his tormentors. If only he had magic, like Linda and Sheila! Why? Why had he been left out?
He offered them no resistance. When they were handcuffing him he couldn’t even look at Alice. He felt as though he’d betrayed her.
They put him in the helicopter, her in one of the VTOL craft. The noise of the rotor blades chopped at him, reverberating inside his head. It hurt. The helicopter took off and swung west. The faster VTOLs shot ahead and lost themselves in the sun. He stared out the window at the green earth below, mourning the silent meadows, the desolate farmlands.
The helicopter landed at what looked like a large rear-area field headquarters, an assortment of tents and temporary buildings not unlike Quonset huts but probably made of fiberglass. There were VTOLs in a field nearby and tanks hull-down in camouflage arranged around the perimeter.
They brought him to one of the fiberglass shacks, pushed him down a short corridor and into an office. He was made to sit.
An officer came in, a tall thin man with a bald head and wide shoulders. His uniform was crisp and new. The insignia he wore weren’t recognizable but he had the odor about him of the rank of colonel or better. He came in and sat at the desk.
“I’m Group Leader Y-9,” he said amiably. “You’re Gene Ferraro, correct?”
“I can’t deny it. How do you know my name?”
“Intelligence has been watching you since you were taken. You were obviously a setup. You were sent here to be captured, though what the strange papers and paraphernalia were about we haven’t quite figured out yet. But we treated you like we treat most agents that you people drop. We usually interrogate them after we give them InnerVoice, but we wanted to see what you would do.”
Group Leader Y-9 got up and began to pace. “We suspected you were immune from the start. You put on quite an act, I’ll have to admit. But you were immune to InnerVoice. This is something we’ve been waiting for.” He turned and smiled. “And we’re prepared for it.”
“Prepared for what?”
“For the day when the Outforces developed a nanotechnology to deal with InnerVoice on a molecular level — when they found a magic bullet to kill it inside an individual who has been infected with it. You obviously have that magic bullet working inside you.”
Gene shook his head. “I have no such technology. And I’m not from the Outforces, though I’m in complete sympathy with them.”
Y-9 laughed. “Where did you come from, then? Or did you appear out of thin air?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact.”
Y-9 regarded him curiously for a moment, then sat down.
“But we still don’t know what you’re up to. Care to tell us?”
“I’m trying to get back to Castle Perilous.”
The Group Leader contemplated the ceiling. “We can’t use InnerVoice on you. Drugs probably wouldn’t work. We’ll have to conduct the interrogation the old-fashioned way.”
“It wouldn’t matter what you did to me. I couldn’t tell you anything.”
“Well, we won’t do a thing to you. We’ll do it to her.”
Gene’s stomach twisted into a knot.
“We can’t understand why you would compromise your mission for a temporary infatuation, but it seems as though you’ve done it.”