'Thank you, Declan," said Ma'el quietly, and went on, "Sinead, nullify the sound attenuators. When you bring the craft in, it must make much more noise than the fireworks."
Declan moved clear of them and the four remaining soldiers followed him, knowing that they would have to bring him down before they could risk attacking the other two. They circled him cautiously beyond the radius of his rapidly swinging weapon, occasionally jumping forward to try to stab him in the side or back as the axe head whistled past. He countered that by leaping forward, too, and shortening the distance to the attackers in front who retreated. Then one of them, plainly impatient with a game that nobody was going to win, moved back several paces. Grasping his blade at the weapon's center of balance, he hurled it spearlike at Declan's. The Hibernian dropped to his knees quickly and the blade glanced off his shoulder, opening a long cut in his forehead, eyebrow, and cheek as it spun away. Blood was running into one eye, partially blinding him, but he was able to see the thrown sword lying nearby. Still swinging the axe he rose to stand over it, knowing that while it was at his feet there were only three men with swords to contend with.
He swore as he saw the fourth man with what looked like a short knife in his hand moving toward Sinead and Ma'el, but he was too far away and too busy with the other three to do anything about it.
Suddenly the hillside was lit by an intense blue light and there was a deafening, hissing scream as the space vessel emerged from its dimensional jump almost on top of them, bleaching out the light of the fireworks and reducing their thunder to a low grumble. For a moment the four remaining attackers stood paralyzed by fear so that he could have slain them easily, but instead he watched them run screaming down the hill while Sinead brought the vessel into a gentle but incredibly noisy landing. Carefully, she folded and put away the chart and remote-control screen and followed Ma'el into the vessel with Declan close on her heels. The soundproof seal hissed shut behind them and they could hear themselves think again.
"Declan, you're wounded," Sinead said in an angry, concerned voice. "That eye… Let me look at that eye before we lift off…"
"Not yet," he said, and pointed through the forward screen into the valley where the fireworks display had ceased and the only lights visible were a few bobbing torches that were being carried by members of the fleeing crowd. Reassuringly, he went on, "My eye isn't damaged, just bloody, the cuts are above and below it. So first I want you to take us down there so that I can steal some of their abandoned fireworks. I might have a use for them…"
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Ma'el Report. Day 112,303…
Declan remains secretive regarding the setting up of a family home in Hibernia other than that it will not be in my laboratory, and his secrecy includes Sinead. His explanation for this is that if his plan proves not to be successful, only he will know the full measure of his disappointment Both of them remain intensely loyal to me. Over the past year they have become much more than friends and protectors. But I know that if either of them had to make the choice between myself and the other one, the decision would not go my way.
"I could implant each of them with a CVI, which would bind them emotionally to me rather than each other, but that would only make of them willing but unhappy servants, and they are already willing and happy to serve me while loving each other. I am in great need of their assistance, but I will not do such a cruel thing to them.
"Instead I will break the most important precept in the canons of both the Commonality of Taelon and its Synod by revealing to a lower order of intelligent life the truth. "Although not all of it…"
–
Sinead had sewn closed the wound and covered half of De-clan's face with what he thought was an unnecessarily large and foul-smelling pad, when she sat close beside him and lifted one of his arms to wrap it tightly around her waist. They had returned to orbit; both the sun and the moon were hiding somewhere behind the darkened world below them so that the stars that filled the sky were bright and beautiful and seemed closer than they had ever been before. She put her head on his shoulder and sighed.
"Ma'el," she said, "when will we be finished with all this traveling, and the killing even when we only have to watch it rather than being forced, as in Cathay, to take part in it? The way I feel these days, the constant fighting and needless cruelty down there on our world seems so stupidly wrong. With your Taelon knowledge, cannot you teach us to make our world a place where a child can grow and learn in health and safety?" She gestured at the crowded sky beyond the forward screen. "Look at the stars where you live, they are so lovely and serene and, and most of all, peaceful."
When Ma'el replied there was more pain and anger in his usually quiet voice than they had ever heard in it before.
"Believe me," he said, "the stars are not peaceful."
They were silent knowing that to ask questions would only delay the answers that were coming.
"You inhabit one small and at present unimportant world among many hundreds," he went on quietly, but with the angry edge remaining in his voice. "The peoples of some of them are less intelligent than yours and some, including the Taelon, are more. Most of these species have no idea of the fate that lies before them and a few, again including the Taelon, do. You know of the wanton cruelty and indiscriminate slaughter that many of your kings and emperors have meted out to their own people as well as those of neighboring countries to bring themselves to power, and the even greater crimes committed by them to maintain it. But those excesses are as nothing compared to the actions on a planetwide scale by the Jarridians, who begin by…"
"Wh-what does a Jarridian look like?" Sinead broke in. In the dim lighting of the control canopy her face had gone a sickly shade of gray and suddenly her body felt as stiff and unyielding as a statue.
"It is plain from the language of your body muscles," said Ma'el, gentleness retaining to his voice, "that you already know. You had a timesight that you did not tell me about?"
"No." Sinead shook her head in agitation, then immediately contradicted herself. "I mean, yes. I was sleeping at the time and thought it was a nightmare, not real and therefore not worthy of mentioning. It was in a city of the far future, with tall buildings whose walls had more glass in them than bricks and smoothly paved streets crowded with people and shiny, brightly colored horseless coaches, and I could see and hear one of the metal birds flying high overhead. The thing, whatever it was, rampaged through the streets sending out thin bolts of lightning that burned and cut down the people even as they fled and made the vehicles explode into flames. The screaming was terrible to hear."
Her hold on Declan tightened as she went on, "It was like a squat, metal beast, or perhaps a beast encased in metal armor, but a beast it certainly was. Despite the entreaties of the men and women around it, it burned and killed and destroyed completely without mercy and nobody could stop it. I, I could not believe that it was real. Are you saying that it is?"
'The Jarridians," said Ma'el, "are real."
Declan felt the stiffness in her body begin to ease. Now that Sinead's worst fear was confirmed, some perverse streak in her nature was enabling her to regain control of herself.
She said calmly, "In the dream, I mean the timesighting, nobody there could stop the Jarridians. Can you?"
"No," said Ma'el, "not without help."
Declan said, "Sinead did not mention this to me, either, so I know nothing about the strengths or weaknesses of this seemingly unbeatable enemy. Will it come here?"
"Yes," Ma'el replied. "Sooner or later they will find your world."
"Terrible they may be," said Declan in a quietly furious voice, "but they will not find it an easy conquest."