‘I hate to spoil the party,’ I sent, ‘But they are still holding the Ambassador.’
The Primary of the S2 Council was soon in contact with the Convenor to reinforce that point. She was linked with all of us throughout the conversation, so I understood the emotions involved as well as receiving a translation. For once, the Primary had to communicate mentally, although his control of his barriers was impressive; he gave little away.
‘My proposition to you is very simple. You will cease transporting humans to our new world. You will assign a number of your slider machines to us on various continents, in locations which we will specify. At each location, one machine will provide a direct link between our two worlds, while a transfer machine will link my world with the new one. You will provide geothermal power plants in each location, and housing for our technicians and soldiers. Once established, you will avoid approaching these locations within a radius of thirty kilometres. To ensure that you keep your side of the agreement, we will hold your ambassador until the arrangements are fully implemented. He will then be released unharmed and we will leave you alone. One other thing – we require an additional hostage; the creature you created, the mutant human. If you do not agree to these demands, I am sure that your ambassador will bear his protracted and painful death in a way which will bring credit to all of you.’
He abruptly cut the connection, leaving the Assembly mentally silent. I realised that they were in danger of going into collective shock; for all of their intelligence, wisdom and experience, they had never encountered a situation like this and they were sorely battered by recent events. This was no academic issue which they could debate dispassionately, the hard decisions were constantly jabbing their sharp edges into them.
The Convenor turned wearily to me. ‘You seem to have a better idea of what to do in these circumstances than we have. Do you have any suggestions?’
‘Yes. We need to get the Ambassador out of their hands. Can you locate him?’
‘Yes. They have left him in contact with us, to increase the pressure on us I suppose. As long as they leave him his headnet, we will know exactly where he is.’
‘Do they know that you have a slider machine aboard an airship?’
A pause for consideration. ‘No, I don’t think so. We didn’t try to keep it from them, we just didn’t think to mention it.’
‘Then we have a chance! The sooner we move, the better, before they start to consider what we might do.’
That evening the great tandem airship set off in a south-easterly direction, towards what was Germany on my world. The saurians had not taken the Ambassador far, presumably in case they needed to produce him in a hurry. The city was situated on both banks of the Rhine, the capital of one of the S2 states which divided up this part of Europe. The Ruler still lived in a sprawling castle, parts of which seemed to be of great age although it had clearly been extended and modernised many times. The Ambassador’s signal was coming from one of the older parts. The P.A.W. and I rode down together in the slider cabin while I kept my face glued to the viewscreen, which had a glowing green dot superimposed on it to mark the location of the Ambassador. He appeared to be asleep. It had been agreed that we would not try to contact him just in case his captors had a way of monitoring the communications, or detected a suspicious lightening in his mood. I stayed in close mental contact with the pilot and the winchman, guiding them with my mind as they made fine adjustments to the position of the ship and the height of the cabin. The green dot steadily brightened as the cabin plunged through the ghostly outlines of the castle. The signal was coming from a space deep within the basement area – nothing less than a traditional medieval dungeon, I realised, albeit the castle had wide, gently-sloping ramps rather than steep narrow stairs. Any frontal assault would have had great difficulty even in finding this place, assuming that the attackers had been able to fight their way through the soldiers who doubtless infested the upper levels. I reflected that it was as well that my scaly skin could not sweat, otherwise my grip on the P.A.W. would be becoming rather slippery at this point. Eventually, with painful slowness, we arrived. I looked through the viewer at the thermal image of the interior of the dark cell. The Ambassador was lying down on a mat, fast asleep. I gave the OK signal and the slider machine powered up. I felt my tension increasing; if they had any electromagnetic sensors in the vicinity, they would be beginning to pick this up. The hole popped into existence in front of me; there was not even enough light in the cell for my enhanced night vision to use, but I knew where he was. I walked through the hole, bent over his pad, and touched his head to deepen his slumbers. I picked him up, carried him back through the hole, and switched off the machine.
In the end, it had proved to be absurdly simple. I resisted the temptation to appear in the Ruler’s apartments and carry him back as a trophy – that could wait for another day. The mid-night celebrations back at the settlement were loud with singing and awash with joy.
No morning-after hangovers, I thought. Over-indulgence on water did have some compensations after all. Unfortunately, one downside was a too-sharp memory of the previous night. I had discovered that it was possible to become somewhat intoxicated by the joyous emotions of the party; at least, I couldn’t think of any other reason why I had allowed them to persuade me to sing. Unfortunately, my lack of vocal talent was only matched by the paucity of songs whose lyrics I knew – I had always preferred instrumental jazz. I had an awful memory of dredging up some old rugby songs from my youth. Fortunately, the general reaction had been one of bemusement rather than understanding; however, I thought I caught a flash of amused colour from Tertia.
A week passed with no contact from S2; the Rulers were no doubt plotting something, but it was hard to see what harm they could do with no access to a slider machine. The transfer of the starving human refugees proceeded apace, and was commencing in second-priority areas in order to spread the load and avoid concentrating too many people in one place; the organisers of the transfers were determined to tread lightly on the land. Israel and the Palestinians were locked in dispute, as usual; each thought it was a great idea for the other to move their entire population to New Earth, except of course for the usual zealots on both sides who wanted control of both Temple Mounts. But they were at least talking to each other about it, instead of killing each other. Mind-linking could force even the most intransigent to see their opponents’ point of view.
In that week some of the slider scientists came to see me – both saurian and human, to my surprise. They had used healers at both ends of their machine to transport the humans through, in order to improve still further their ability to co-operate. Apparently this had happened almost as soon as the transfer problem had been resolved but, being scientists, they hadn’t bothered to tell anyone. What they were determined to do now was to find out why I could pass through the slider hole without suffering the agonies and unconsciousness which afflicted other people with mind-linking abilities.