Medraut sputtered with barely repressed laughter.
Morgana smiled faintly. "And she is doubtless quite the expert on treating burns, those being the mainstay of a healer's work when she ministers to smithies who work gold and silver and forge the best weapons ever hammered against anvil. And she treats as well those who blow the glass as the Romans did, giving the Saxons' spies some innocent reason for that many forges to be running at one time on the Tor."
"Covianna Nim said the Saxons have taken to calling it Glastonbury Tor, the Isle of Glass."
Morgana said tartly, "Mark you, nephew, 'tis far better they mock our prettily colored glass than mark our finest steelmakers and ride across the marshes to the Tor, hacking down everything that moves to deprive us of the smithies. That threat alone," Morgana muttered as they hurried down a dark corridor toward a sound of men's voices not too far from Morgana's room, "would be enough to justify Covianna Nim scampering toward greater safety in the northern kingdoms. Doubtless, she will ingratiate herself with Artorius as much as she did with Emrys Myrddin during her last and seriously eventful visit to the northern kings."
Satchel of healing herbs in hand, Morgana and her nephew thrust themselves through a group of deeply agitated men at the end of the corridor and there was no more time for Morgana's intense personal grief, for the wounded man was in sight, needing Morgana more than the grieving queen needed her solitude and tears. Brenna, an unhappy passenger, had absolutely no idea what to say or do that could possibly help.
Chapter Four
Trevor Stirling's hands sweat against the plastic cushion of the transfer couch, while Cameron Blair, the medical technician whose supervisor had committed step one of the worst terrorist atrocity in the history of humankind, fitted the transfer headset to Stirling's skull. Blair was pale, eyes shell-shocked, jaw set in anger at what McEgan had done. The Irishwoman had inherited Blair, not brought him with her, but it was clear that the medico felt the suspicion radiating from his colleagues. He'd worked for the woman... Stirling had to quell a deeper flutter in his belly, letting the man fit him for a transfer he could not control, when he hadn't had a chance to thoroughly vet the man, himself.
No time, dammit, there's simply no time to do a proper job of this. He clenched his teeth, very much aware that his own arrival had triggered Beckett's murder and the terrorist's hasty flight into history. The only other people in the transfer room with him were senior staffers. Zenon Mylonas sat in full symbiosis with his computer equipment, preparing to insert Trevor Stirling's consciousness into the same time stream Brenna McEgan and Cedric Banning had entered. Dr. Indrani Bhaskar was attempting to give Stirling a last-minute briefing on the historical situation he would emerge into, while Cameron Blair fastened more electronic leads to his scalp, his cheeks and brow and jaw.
He cut off Blair's attempted explanation of why the transfer equipment was attached only to his head, when the energy field of human consciousness existed throughout the body. It sounded like New Age psychobabble about chakras and out-of-body soul transference, leaving Stirling's head whirling when he needed to focus as clearly as possible on what he was about to attempt.
"Only your consciousness will transfer," Dr. Bhaskar had taken over the explanation. "You will arrive inside a host mind. That is what Dr. Beckett described. The pattern of his consciousness entered another person's body and he shared awareness with that person for sixteen minutes."
"Shared awareness?" Stirling frowned. "You mean, he took over the other person's mind?"
"Not... precisely." She hesitated. "Terrance said it was more like a symbiosis of awareness. His host was terrified witless by the experience. Of course, when Dr. Beckett transferred, the power setting was lower."
"Lower? You mean, Brenna McEgan set it high enough to displace the host's mind?"
Indrani bit her lip. "I don't know. None of us do. We never transferred. And with only one short field test to judge by, we simply haven't the data to answer that. It's possible that the host mind is displaced."
"Killed, you mean," Stirling interrupted grimly.
"Or perhaps completely suppressed. Or not. There may be a synthesis of minds, a bit like split personality, with a struggle ensuing for control of the body."
Lovely things to look forward to, Stirling groaned inwardly. Murdering an innocent bystander's personality—or driving the poor sod mad for control of the hijacked body—was not how Stirling had envisioned ending his career with the SAS. The very act of arriving might alter history in a catastrophic fashion, if a critical person's mind was the one's displaced.
"There's no way to determine who I'll take over when I arrive?"
Indrani shook her head. "I'm afraid not. We've theorized that you'll gravitate toward someone whose mind is very similar to yours, but there's no evidence to back it up, yet, of course. And there'll be very little to go by in identifying Dr. McEgan or Dr. Banning. Neither of them will be able to speak openly, or even act openly, for fear of giving themselves away. To one another, if not to the temporal natives."
Stirling closed his eyes briefly. McEgan could sit like a spider at the center of a web for months, doing and saying nothing, while her pursuers blundered about, giving themselves away in the very need to search her out. And if the natives grew too suspicious, they might well either confine or kill someone who had apparently gone mad or turned traitor. Nobody ever said the SAS was an easy job. When he got his hands on McEgan, or rather on her host...
What if she inhabited someone he couldn't safely kill?
For that matter, could he safely kill anyone without risking the whole future?
"Any last-minute instructions?" Stirling asked. "What's this transfer going to feel like? How do I get home again? What happens if my host's body is killed before I complete this mission?"
Marc Blundell, who sat at a computer console beside Dr. Mylonas, said over one shoulder, "Terrance Beckett said it was like being kicked in the head by a mule. As for the other, you'll return home when the timer begins shutting the transfer equipment's power down, a year from now."
"What if the power goes off?"
Blundell tried to smile. "We're operating on our own generators, Captain. Snap generators."
Nuclear power in a compact package. Bloody wonderful. At least a simple thunderstorm shouldn't be able to disrupt power to the equipment.
"We don't know what will happen if your host body is killed," Blundell added unhappily. "You might die from the mental shock. It could disrupt your own energy pattern of consciousness, when the host's pattern is disrupted. You might find yourself floating about, like a ghost, possibly a permanent state, or perhaps only until someone comes close enough for you to transfer into another host. We just don't know."
"But I wouldn't, say, return here?"
"No." Blundell hesitated. "What the shock might do to your body here, we don't know either. Dr. Beckett's heart was badly strained by the entire transfer process."