It seemed so simple and so rational. How could others threaten them with death or mutilation for that? Yet Callista knew that they had threatened and they would carry out the threat.
Andrew said to Ellemir, “I am not concerned for you, but I wish I could be sure this would not threaten your child.”
He knew he had hit on Ellemir’s own fear. But she said steadfastly, “Do you trust Damon or not? If he felt there was danger, he would have explained it to me, and let me make the choice in full knowledge.”
“I trust him.” But, Andrew wondered, did Damon simply feel that if they lost the coming battle it would be useless for any of them to survive anyway, including Ellemir and the baby? Firmly he cut off that line of thought. Damon was their Keeper. Andrew’s only responsibility was to decide whether or not Damon was worthy of trust and then to trust him and follow his directives, without mental reservations. So he asked, “What do we do first?”
“We build the Tower, and we establish it firmly with all our strength. It has been there for a long time, but it is what we imagine it to be.” He added to Ellemir, “You have never been in the overworld; you have only kept watch for me here. Link with me, and I will bring you there.”
With a strong mental thrust he was in the overworld, Ellemir beside him in the featureless grayness. Dimly at first, but with more clarity moment by moment in the overlight, he could make out the sheltering walls of their landmark.
At first it had been a rude shelter, like a herdsman’s hut, visualized almost accidentally. But with each successive use it had grown and strengthened, and now a true, declared Tower rose around them, with great lucent blue-shining walls, as real to his touch and step as the room in Comyn Castle where they had consummated their fourfold bond. Indeed they had brought much of that world with them, because, Damon thought, the fourfold bond and its completion was in a way the most important thing that had ever happened to any of them.
As always in the overworld he felt taller, stronger, more confident, which was the essence of it all. Ellemir, at his side, did not resemble Callista nearly as much as she did in the solid world. Physically, she and Callista were very much alike, but here where the mind determined the physical appearance, they were very unlike. Damon knew enough of genetics to wonder briefly if they were not identical twins after all. If they were not, it might mean that Callista could bear him a child without as much risk as Ellemir. But that was a thought for another time, another level of consciousness.
After an instant Callista and Andrew joined them in the overworld. He noticed that Callista had not clothed herself in the crimson robe of a Keeper. As the thought reached her she smiled and said, “I leave that office to you, Damon.”
For a duel between Keepers, perhaps he should be clothed in the ritual crimson sacrosanct to a Keeper, but he shrank from the blasphemy and suddenly knew why.
He would not fight this battle by Arilinn’s laws! He was not Keeper by their cruel life-denying laws, but he was tenerézu of an older tradition, defending his right to be so! He would wear the colors of his Domain and no more.
Andrew took up the stance of a paxman or bodyguard, just two steps behind him. Damon reached for Ellemir’s hand on his right, for Callista’s on his left, felt their fingertips lightly as a touch in the overworld always felt. He said in a low voice, “The sun rises over our Tower. Feel its strength around us. We built it here for shelter. Now it must stand here, not only for us, but as a symbol for all matrix mechanics who refuse the cruel constraints of the Towers, a shelter and a beacon for all those who will come after us.”
It seemed to Andrew, although the lucent blue walls of the Tower rose around him, that he could see the sun of the overworld through its walls. Callista had once explained it to him:
In the world of the overlight, where they were now, there was no such thing as darkness, because the light did not come from a solid sun. It came from the energy-net body of the sun, which could shine right through the energy-net body of the planet. To Andrew the red sun was enormous, a pale rim rising beyond and somehow through the Tower, shedding scattered crimson light, dripping bloody clouds.
Lightning flared around them, blinding them, and for a moment it seemed that the Tower rocked, trembled, that the very fabric of the overworld shook into grayness. It has come Damon thought, the attack they awaited. Strongly linked to one another, they felt the Tower’s walls strong and sheltering around them, while Damon flicked an explanation to Andrew and Ellemir, less experienced than himself.
They will try to destroy the Tower, but since it is our visualization of the Tower which holds it firm here, they cannot budge it unless our own perception of it falters.
One of the games of technicians in training was to fight duels in jest in the overworld, where the thought-stuff was endlessly pliable and all of their constructs could be wiped out with a thought as quickly as they had been brought into being. Although he knew it was only an illusion, Damon still felt a purely irrational twinge of physical fright as lightning bolt after lightning bolt struck the Tower, seeming to shake it with deafening thunderclaps. This could be a dangerous game, for whatever happened to the astral-world body could also happen, by repercussion, to the physical self. But behind the walls of their Tower they were safe.
They cannot harm us. And I do not want to harm them, only to be safe with my friends… but he knew they would not accept that. Sooner or later the endless attack from outside must weaken them. His only defense was to attack.
As quickly as thought they were standing together on the highest battlement of their Tower. To Andrew it felt like rock beneath his feet. He was clothed, as always in the over-world, in the grayish silvery fabric of a Terran Empire uniform, and as he became aware of it, he felt it alter. No, I am really not Terran now. He realized, with just a flicker of consciousness, that he was wearing the saddle-rubbed leather breeches and the furred riding jacket he wore for work around the estate. Well, that was now his truest self; he belonged to Armida now.
As they stood at the top of the Tower they could see the loom of Arilinn, like a flaming beacon. How, Damon wondered, had it come so near? Then he realized it was the visualization of Leonie and her circle, who had spoken of the forbidden Tower as built on their very threshold. To Damon it had seemed very distant, worlds away. But now they were close together, so close that he could see Leonie, a crimson-veiled statue, grasp handfuls of plastic thought-stuff and hurl lightning. Damon struck it in midair with his own lightning, saw it explode, crash over the circle standing on the pinnacle of Arilinn, saw a crack in the fortress Tower of Arilinn.
They perceive us as a threat to them! Why?
Only a moment, and the thunder was crashing around them again, a fierce duel of lightning bolts, hurled and intercepted, and he felt a random thought — it must be Andrew’s — I feel like Jove hurling his thunders. He wondered with an infinitesimal fragment of his consciousness who or what Jove was.
I can batter down the Tower of Arilinn, because for some reason they are afraid of us. But Leonie abruptly changed her tactics. The lightnings died and they were suddenly smothering, drowning as a rain of sickening slime cascaded over them, suffocating them, making them retch with disgust. Like dung, semen, horse manure, the trails left by the slugs who invaded the greenhouse in a wet season… they were drowning in foulness. Is this how they see what we have done? Damon struggled to clear his mind of sickness, wiping his face free of the — No, that was to give it reality. Quickly, linking hands and minds with his circle, he thickened the slime, made it the richness of fertilized soil, let it fall from their bodies until from its rich depths flowers and growing things sprang up, covering the roof of the Tower where they stood in the rioting life of an early spring blooming. They stood triumphant in the field of flowers, reaffirming life out of ugliness.