“Try it,” Bascombe ordered him. “And get your sister going on contacts on Earth.” Then he turned back to the scientist. “And I want your department to figure out how we can get agents safely to Earth and Shadow. Don’t worry about getting them back yet; we can take care of that when the time comes.”
“Yes, sir.” The scientist glanced at the telepath; the telepath carefully avoided the man’s gaze.
“Go on,” Bascombe said. “Both of you. Get on with it.”
“Yes, sir.”
Chapter Five
Pel wondered why he kept coming up to the top of the tower. There wasn’t anything new up here; the rain still sounded like a child’s footsteps, it hadn’t changed any. He’d heard the rain through the broken gargoyle before, seen the landscape spread out on all sides, drawn the currents of power down from the skies and guided them through the clouds. There was nothing new up here.
But there wasn’t anything new elsewhere in the castle, either. There wasn’t anything he wanted anywhere in the entire place.
A gust of wind blew dripping rainwater toward him; his aura turned it aside with no conscious command. Pel barely noticed; he just stared out over the marsh.
He knew why he was up here; it was because he was bored. He was bored and miserable, and this place, out in the rain, with its vast and depressing view, was nicely suited to being bored and miserable.
Really, it was rather amazing that he was bored and lonely and unhappy. At least in theory, he was the absolute ruler of an entire world; he was an all-powerful magician, with anything he wanted his for the taking.
Except he didn’t want any of it.
What he wanted was his family back. Or even, he thought, and hated himself for thinking it, just to know that they were really, permanently dead, and he could never have them back, because at least then it would be over, and he could get on to whatever came next-despair, grief, whatever, and maybe someday, if he lived long enough, building a new life for himself.
But this not knowing, this possibility of their resurrection, was driving him crazy. He wasn’t thinking straight, hadn’t been able to keep his mind properly on anything since he had first heard Nancy was dead.
Shadow had said she could raise the dead; she had had her fetches, and even though those weren’t much better than zombies, there was no reason to think they were the best the magical matrix could do.
After all, Shadow had wanted servants, not companions; she hadn’t been doing anyone any favors with her resurrections.
Pel didn’t want servants. He wanted Nancy and Rachel back. He wanted to hear real running footsteps on the battlements.
He paused, staring out over the marsh.
On the battlements? Did he want to stay here, if he once managed to bring his wife and daughter back from the dead?
Probably not. It was lonely here. Controlling the matrix gave him power, it let him move and reshape matter anywhere in this world, and at least in theory it could let him see through the eyes of others, hear through their ears; it made him the unquestioned final authority; but it cut him off from everyone else at the same time. No one had even remembered that his predecessor, Shadow, was human-they’d all called her “it,” and treated her as a force of nature.
He didn’t think he was at that extreme, but the men he had had dragged in hadn’t exactly treated him as another like themselves. He had had the power of life and death over them; when he hadn’t made a conscious effort, they hadn’t even been able to see him through the seething aura of magical energy that was the visible manifestation of the matrix.
And when they did see him, those peasants in their homespun and leather…
He looked down at himself, at the battered purple slacks he still wore. He remembered Raven of Stormcrack Keep, with his black velvet cloak and high boots; Valadrakul of Warricken, with his braids and knee-length vest; Elani, with her red robes.
He didn’t belong here. He belonged back on Earth-but with his wife and daughter, and it was only in this world that anyone had the power to revive them.
He had the power.
All he had to do was learn how to use it.
And that, of course…
He stopped in mid-thought, and stared down at the causeway that connected the fortress to drier land to the east of the marsh. He wasn’t sure whether he had seen them first with his eyes or through the matrix, and now he needed a moment to convince himself that they were real, and not some damnable illusion the matrix had created.
They were real-there were people approaching the fortress. Six of them-or really, four people and two fetches.
There was only one explanation, one sort of people who would be coming here.
Wizards!
At last, wizards were coming!
Now maybe he could learn this resurrection business and get on with it!
* * * *
The scientist cleared his throat and glanced nervously at Bascombe.
Bascombe glared back.
“Well, sir, it’s simple enough to get people to either of the other universes, really; the space-warp generator is completely functional. The problems arise when you require that they arrive safely and be able to get back…”
“I don’t care if they can get back,” Bascombe interrupted. “We don’t need to worry about that. Cahn and his men got back, most of them, without any help from us.”
“Well, in that case, it’s just a matter of landing them safely, and as I understand it, no one was seriously injured in the previous warp transitions…”
“I don’t want them…Wait a minute.” Bascombe glowered at the man; the poor twit was almost a caricature of a scientist, probably didn’t even like to be called that, wanted to be referred to as a physicist, or an electronician, or something-as if all these arcane distinctions made any difference to anyone normal!
But he had a point; Cahn and Carson had both arrived intact. Bascombe considered their arrivals to be unsatisfactory, but he had to stop and think for a moment to put into words, simple words a scientist could understand, exactly what had been wrong with those landings.
“All right,” he said, “I want them to arrive quietly, without throwing away any more ships, without attracting a lot of unwanted attention. Can you do that?”
“Well, sir,” the scientist said, “I don’t see why we couldn’t put them in space suits, with a simple anti-gravity unit to get…”
“Anti-gravity doesn’t work there. What else have we got? Isn’t there any way to fly without using anti-gravity?”
The scientist blinked.
“Um,” he said.
“Care to be a bit more explicit?” Bascombe let the sarcasm drip from his words.
“Well, we…I mean, AG is so cheap and convenient, that we…there were experiments, but…” His voice trailed off.
Bascombe decided the time was ripe for a suggestion, to get the man thinking positively again. “Why can’t we just make the warps come out at ground level?” he asked.
“Oh, because…well, we were sending ships before, and the control isn’t fine enough, and solid matter…the interaction…it’s not safe.”
“So we have to make these holes in mid-air, and let our men just fall through?”
“Well, I-” The scientist stopped dead this time, rather than trailing off.
“You what?”
“Well, there’s no reason they couldn’t climb through. With ropes.”
“Ropes?” Startled, Bascombe considered the idea.
It seemed very obvious now, so obvious that he wondered how they had missed seeing it sooner. Maybe because it was too simple-getting to another universe involved huge machines, vast quantities of energy, super-science of all sorts; plain old rope didn’t fit the image.