“You don’t think they’ll make any more attempts?” I asked him worriedly.
He shook his head. “They know that anybody who can get this far is no slouch. No. Any members of the Synod here will have retreated to the thirteenth floor reception area. They’ll be waiting for us there.”
I looked at the others. “Are you and the other three enough?”
He shrugged. “Depends on how many are there and who they are. We’ve been damned lucky so far. Let’s hope our luck holds out.”
It was preparedness, the training of the sores, and a lot of inside information as well as skill and brass that had brought us this far, but in the end Koril was right. We had been lucky, too. He was certainly right, also, about the rest of the way. None of those doors opened, and we were unobstructed in our walk to the eleventh and twelfth floors. We could all hear, though, the floors below being occupied as soon as we left They had the lift system, after all. They just didn’t, want to shoot up the official quarters. The troopers had already failed—now it was up to their bosses. In one sense, I suspected that the troopers, particularly the officers, were now very much on our side. If we failed, their own failures would have to be accounted for to those very same bosses. No, I decided, for that reason more than any other, they’d stay out of the rest of this fight.
Koril paused at the bottom of the stairway to the thirteenth level. “All right—Ku, Kuril, Kindel, stick close to me.You know what you must do. The rest of you follow us up, but stay out of it. None of your weapons will mean much now.”
We understood what he meant. Our part was at least theoretically finished. All we could do was needlessly guard the back door.
Koril took in a deep breath, let it out slowly, then turned and started slowly up the stairs. One by one the sores followed him, then Kira, Darva, and myself. I don’t know what I was expecting to see at the top, but it wasn’t a sumptuously furnished empty room.
The large chamber was entirely crimson. The ancient-looking chairs upholstered in some silken material were ornamented with metal studs of a bright golden color that were inlaid in the dark native woods; the tables were equally antique and polished to a mirror like sheen. The carpet, too, was crimson, although of some thick, plush hair that the wa said was not native to Charon. In the center was a golden path, marked by two golden stripes of colored cloth woven into the rest and leading up to a raised platform. The platform itself was almost like a stage, with a huge wooden throne in the center of the same polished material and upholstered in the same deep red, but this time encrusted with what looked like—and turned out to be—enormous precious stones from all over the known galaxy. Two slightly smaller and more recessed but similar chairs flanked the big one. Behind the whole thing, eleven similar chairs were arranged in a permanent semi-circle. The entire stage area was decorated with gold-embroidered crimson drapes, hanging loosely around the back and tied back at the front.
We all stood there gazing about the room. I couldn’t suppress a low whistle. “Like something out of an ancient fairy tale,” I remarked.
Koril looked around, his eyes ablaze. “More power than those ancient Icings had is represented here,” he responded seriously. “This is the seat of Charon’s government I used to sit on that throne, remember. I know.” That wistful, almost dreamlike quality left his voice. “She’s redecorated since I left, though. In a way it’s too bad. I had some great works of art looted from the Confederacy’s top museums on those draped walls. Still, all in all, it’s a nice touch.”
“Skip the ulterior decoration comments,” Kira broke in. “Where the hell’s the enemy?”
At that moment I detected slight movement behind the thrones, and I saw Kira’s laser pistol come up. Koril quickly forced her hand down. “No use in burning the place down—unless you have to,” he told her. “You can’t harm these with that toy.”
From behind the chairs five shapes emerged. All wore gold-embroidered robes of that same crimson as the room, and all wore scarlet hoods as well. They looked eerie and impressive, as they were supposed to.
Koril smiled a bit and with a flick of the wrist beckoned his three associate sores together in line, hands linked.
The figures walked out to the front of the stage and stood there, also in a line but not touching one another. Three of the five were women. One was Korman I saw—the only familiar face. None looked particularly worried.
“Just the five of you?” Koril said pleasantly. “I’m shocked.”
“More than enough for the lot of you,” Korman responded for the group. “We don’t spend quite as much time here as we did in your day, Tulio. We don’t have to.” With that, all five levitated a meter or so above the stage and moved out just beyond it. All of us gasped at this, for we all realized it was no Warden trick. They were really doing it.
“Parlor tricks, Dieter?” Koril scoffed. “I thought we were beyond that.”
“No parlor trick,” one of the women answered him. “We are not as you knew us, Tulio. We are immortal, as powerful in body as in wa, with minds clearer than your merely human minds could ever be.”
“So that’s how she kept your allegiance,” Koril responded. “With the new model alien robot bodies. You serve her now because you are programmed to serve! No longer humans—but mere machines.”
“We are not ‘mere machines,’ Tulio,” Korman replied. “I’ll admit I have never heard ‘programmed’ used as a curse word before, but you are wrong. We were among those who freely chose to. throw you out, Tulio. Freely. And none of us has ever regretted it. Should we choose, we could leave this place. Really leave, Tulio. The wa within us dies as it would in you, but leaves us alive and whole—and more than human.”
“May we—examine those fancy new clothes of yours?” Koril asked, and all of us understood that he didn’t mean literally.
“Go ahead. We can fool any scanner, rig any test—but look at us as we really are. Be our guest, Tulio—and the rest of you. You are powerful ones indeed to have come this far. But no tricks.”
Koril had a pained expression. “Would I insult your intelligence?” With that, all four of them reached out their Warden senses to the five who still floated, impossibly, in the air.
“You see our superiority,” Korman continued, not so much bragging as being rather matter of fact about it all. “You are a good man, Tulio. You served Charon well and the Brethren before that. Don’t you see that the revolution is now? Are you so old and blind and prejudiced that you can’t realize that your ideals can become reality now—out there? With your1
They were very, very confident, I thought. Almost unsettlingly so, yet I also understood that this sort of overconfidence can kill you. I had no idea what Koril had up his sleeve at this point, but I motioned to Darva and we edged away toward a far wall, well away from the area between the two group of sores. Suddenly I had a thought, and leaned over and whispered to her, “See that alcove to the left of the stage? I bet that goes up to You-Know-Who.”
She nodded. “Seems likely. When do you want to try for it?”
“Good girl. But not until they’ve started doing whatever they’re doing. They’ll probably ignore us—I hope. We’re certainly no threat to them.”
“I’ll follow your lead,” she whispered, and we turned back to watch whatever was going to happen.