Bredon struggled with this for a moment.
“You said Shadowdark had lived in other worlds?” he asked. “And had a higher rank than Geste? I don't understand that. I thought that the Powers were the Powers, and had always been what they are now."
“No, sir,” the floater replied with inhuman patience and calm. “The people you call the Powers came to this world, which you call simply ‘the world’ but which they know by the ancient catalogue name ‘Denner's Wreck,’ four hundred and sixty-two years ago. Prior to that they had lived on a variety of other worlds before gathering on Terra and choosing to investigate the lost colony on Denner's Wreck. As for Shadowdark's rank, at one time he was an emperor, absolute master of more than twenty worlds, before he grew bored with power and abdicated. Mr. Geste has never held any rank or office higher than his current position as freeholder."
Bredon was growing ever more confused. The floater's explanations were clear enough, but simply did not fit with what he thought he knew about the universe or the Powers. An emperor ruling twenty worlds? The universe as he understood it only held three inhabited worlds-the one in the sky whence mankind had come, the one he lived in now, and the one the Powers had come from, where the gods ruled and where his soul would go when he died, to either serve the gods or to be fed to the demons in the wilderness called Hell.
“I don't understand,” he admitted.
The floater was silent for a moment; Bredon glanced out the window in the surrounding bubble of darkness and saw only more darkness. He could only distinguish the window from the rest of the bubble by the presence of stars in the sky beyond.
Geste, almost invisible in the gloom, was still sunk in thought.
“I am afraid,” the floater said at last, “that explaining the situation will take a considerable length of time. Your ignorance of history and cosmology presents a significant barrier to comprehension of the present situation."
Bredon asked, “What did you say?"
“I said you don't know enough to understand my explanations,” the floater explained.
“Oh.” Bredon started to protest, to defend himself, then stopped. The thing was probably right, he realized. He was not stupid, but he was very ignorant indeed.
He didn't even know what he was talking to. Was it a familiar spirit? He didn't know.
He wanted to know, though. He wanted it very much.
This entire journey had been a flood of new experiences and new ideas, and Bredon found it exciting and invigorating, so much so that he had already forgotten his resentment of Geste, and had come close, at times, to forgetting that he was here in pursuit of Lady Sunlight, and not for the sake of the adventure itself. He wanted more. He wanted to understand what the thing was talking about. He wanted to understand who and what the Powers were, and what they were doing.
He had always liked learning, even as a very young child. He had spoken early, and had asked more questions than the other children. His heritage as a hunter had been a good one in regard to his love of knowledge; he had been not merely permitted, but required, to learn the habits of the various creatures that roamed the grasslands, to learn the patterns of the weather, to learn to read an animal's trail. He had been able to study the animals he hunted-not merely their behavior when pursued, but every aspect of their behavior, their anatomy, their environment. He had been free to roam the countryside, to explore more or less wherever he chose, and he had pitied those people who stayed always in the village. He had thought that he knew his world well.
Now he was discovering that he knew almost nothing, and he wanted to learn more. He did not want to go quietly back to his village and wait there while Geste rescued Lady Sunlight for him.
“You know, you don't really need to take me home,” he said. “I don't mind coming along while you… while you do whatever you're going to do."
“Who's taking you home?” Geste asked, startled out of his reverie. “I never said I was taking you home."
“But… but you told the platform to take me home!” Bredon blurted.
“I said take us home. I meant my home,” Geste replied coldly.
Bredon hesitated, confused, but unsure asking the obvious question would be wise.
Every story he had ever heard about Geste the Trickster had emphasized that Geste was a wanderer, that he roved about wherever he pleased. Other Powers had their holds, their places of power, but a few carried all the power they had with them-Rawl the Adjuster and Geste the Trickster were the two wanderers Bredon knew of.
He could not restrain his curiosity.
“What home?” he asked. “I thought you didn't have one."
Geste smiled, for the first time since the drone had attacked the platform.
“Ah,” he said smugly.
Bredon waited, but the Trickster did not continue.
“What home?” Bredon repeated.
Geste smiled, and gestured mysteriously with an upraised finger. “You'll see!” he said.
Bredon felt himself growing angry, but before he could say anything more Geste gave in and continued.
“It's true,” he said, still smiling cheerfully, “that I don't stay home much, and that I don't let anyone else in, as a rule. I don't suppose my home gets into the stories you people tell about us. It may well be that even some of the other Powers, as you call us, don't know it exists, since I've never held a party there, never had more than one or two guests. It's real enough, though, and you'll be the first mortal to see it in, oh, two or three hundred years."
Mollified, Bredon relaxed, and tried to think of more questions to ask.
They stood on the platform, surrounded by darkness, and Bredon knew that the world was rushing by them, but he could neither see nor feel any movement.
“How will you know when we're there?” he asked.
Geste shrugged. “I'll know."
Bredon could think of no polite way to pry further into that subject, so he switched to another that had been preying on him. “Do you really think Lady Sunlight is trapped in that place, that castle we saw?"
“Probably.” Geste's smile faded. “If she's not, if she's faked all this somehow, then she's managed a stunt that makes any of mine look trivial.” His expression turned thoughtful. “I wonder… I wonder, could she have put all this together? Got them all into a little conspiracy to get back at me?"
He hesitated, considering, then said, “No. She could never get Thaddeus to help. And Brenner wouldn't let them shoot up the High Castle for a joke, and that attack on us seemed pretty serious. Besides, if it were a set-up, they couldn't know when I'd come across it. I only tried to find Sunlight to help you; I might have gone years without checking on her whereabouts otherwise, so you'd need to be in on it, and I can't imagine Sunlight finding you and recruiting you into something like that."
Bredon agreed, “Nobody recruited me for anything. I don't know what's going on at all."
“Oh, it's simple enough, really. We Powers squabble amongst ourselves all the time, but nothing much comes of it; we all have so many machines and devices protecting us that it would take a real effort to do each other any harm. But now it looks as if one fight has turned nasty, and Thaddeus is making that effort against Brenner, and Sheila and Sunlight and the others got caught in the middle."