“D’you think it had anything to do with these bodies he wants?”
“I don’t know, sir; he never mentioned them to me.”
“But he could have just sent you to ask for them, at any time,” Albright said. “Why did he wait until Best showed up?”
“I have no idea, sir.”
Albright considered Wilkins silently for a moment, then turned to his telepath.
“I don’t like the sound of it,” he said. “Tell Secretary Sheffield and Secretary Markham about this.”
“Yes, sir,” the telepath said.
* * * *
“I’m going to check,” Pel said, already gathering the energies to open a portal.
Susan and the false Nancy didn’t argue; Susan stood motionless, and Nancy smiled agreeably. And of course the fetch didn’t respond.
Just having someone better to talk to would be a relief, Pel thought. Not that Gregory was much of an improvement.
He reached, and twisted, and the portal opened.
No one was there.
“Damn,” Pel said. He picked a fetch.
“You,” he said, “go find Peter Gregory.”
Chapter Eighteen
By the time Gregory emerged from the portal Pel was furious with impatience, his fingers striking blue sparks from the dark wood as he drummed on the arm of his throne.
“Where the hell were you?” he demanded without preamble, his voice echoing unnaturally. Angry orange currents swirled through the air.
“Down at the port,” Gregory replied, unfazed. “I was trying to get word of what’s happening at Base One.”
“Did you?”
“A little.”
“And?”
“The bodies are still under heavy guard. The Secretary of Science is on his way to Terra to confer with the General Secretary.”
“Is that it?”
“Yes, O Great One.”
Pel glared at Gregory’s bland face, infuriated by the simulacrum’s calm.
“Get someone to Terra,” he said. “Get a message to the General Secretary-or the Emperor, or whoever’s in charge. Tell him I want those bodies now. Through that space-warp out in Sunderland.”
“Yes, O Great One.”
“That’s all. Go on, get out of here!” He gestured angrily, waving Gregory toward the portal.
Gregory bowed deeply, then stepped backward and vanished.
Pel stared at the slight shimmer in the air where the portal hung. To his eyes, it was virtually invisible-if he strained, he could see the very faintest distortion. To his internal vision through the matrix, though, the portal was a gaping hole in reality, an infinite tunnel of powerful blue-black magic that somehow had no length at all, ending in the utter impenetrable darkness of non-magic space.
He knew it came out on some planet he’d never heard of, Delta something-or-other, roughly half a day’s spaceflight from Base One. He’d never found a weak spot that would open directly into Base One; apparently Shadow hadn’t had any portals there. He could create new portals, of course, but he couldn’t aim them all that well, and trying different places in the Empire at random could take forever. Not to mention that if he ever did open a path to Base One, it might come out in the middle of a firing range or something.
So he had no direct route, and the delays were infuriating.
Of course, the Empire’s space-warp connected Faerie to Base One, but that was out in Sunderland, ten days’ march to the east, and he was stuck here in Shadow’s fortress…
Wasn’t he?
Pel blinked, and the matrix slowed into contemplative green spirals.
Was he stuck here?
Why should he be?
Shadow had claimed this fortress and lived here because it was a natural focal point for the network of magical currents that permeated Faerie, so that it was easier to maintain and control the matrix here-but did that mean this was the only place the matrix could be used?
That was silly. Shadow had talked about the early matrix wizards roaming around, taking over each other’s strongholds, absorbing each other’s matrices; they hadn’t all just sat at home like spiders in their webs.
Why couldn’t Pel go up to Sunderland if he chose?
And that obnoxious coward Taillefer had been able to fly, probably at a pretty good speed-sixty, seventy, maybe as much as a hundred miles an hour, and he wasn’t any matrix wizard, he was just a little hedge magician, too feeble for Shadow to have bothered hunting him down and killing him.
And he could fly. Anything Taillefer could do, the master of the great matrix should be able to do. If Pel could do that, if he could fly, he could be in Sunderland in a matter of hours.
Of course, he couldn’t take all his fetches and monsters along, or Susan, or the false Nancy-but so what?
But could he go anywhere? Could he learn to fly, blown on a magical wind the way Taillefer was?
He could damn well try. At the very least, it would give him something to do while the Empire dawdled.
He stood up and marched for the stairs-not the huge staircase down to that absurd entrance hall, but the narrow steps up to the battlements.
* * * *
“A message from the General Secretary,” the telepath said suddenly, startling Best so much he almost dropped his cards.
“What is it?” Markham asked, looking up; at first he seemed annoyed by the interruption, but by the time he finished raising his head and pronouncing those three simple words he was calm again.
“He wants to know if you have anything to add to what’s already been relayed telepathically. Regarding the Brown Magician.”
“Not that I know of,” Markham replied. “Do I?”
The telepath’s mouth quirked in a ghost of a smile. “Not that I can see, sir,” he said.
“So why is he asking? Can you tell me?”
The telepath nodded. “In light of the interview with Spaceman Wilkins, regarding the Magician’s secret project that prevented him from sending Wilkins home, Secretary Sheffield believes that we should cease any further delays or stalling tactics and open direct negotiations with Brown. Therefore, you’re to turn around and return to Base One forthwith; he’ll be coming out as well, along with several trained envoys.”
“Envoys?” Best asked. “What envoys?”
“Well, obviously,” the telepath explained, “the Empire hasn’t needed actual ambassadors since the Unification, but there’s apparently a staff of envoys on Terra, kept on hand in case of need. They’ve occasionally seen duty in negotiating terms of surrender with rebel worlds, and they’re theoretically ready if we ever meet intelligent extraterrestrials.”
“I didn’t know that,” Best marveled. “They think of everything, don’t they?”
“They try,” Markham said dryly. “Tell the captain of the change in plans.”
As the telepath hurried out of the stateroom Markham tossed the four of cups. “Burn,” he said.
* * * *
The wind whipped Pel’s hair forward, slashing it back and forth across his face; it occurred to him that he hadn’t had it cut in weeks, maybe months, not since he had left Base One. And he hadn’t bothered shaving, hadn’t had a chance, since then, either; he had a full beard for the first time in his life. He must be a mess.
He wondered if Nancy and Rachel would even recognize him like this. He hoped the beard wouldn’t frighten Rachel.
Of course, he could shave it off, once everything was back to normal, once he had Nancy and Rachel back.
But first he had to bring them back.
He stepped up on a merlon-at least, he thought that was what the stone blocks along the edge of the battlement were called. Maybe the right term was crenellations.
It didn’t matter.
Below him the wall of the central tower was a sheer drop of a hundred feet or more, down to the roofs and walls of the next layer of the fortress; fifty feet out that, in turn, fell away, for another sixty or seventy feet, and then again and again the stone walls and slate roofs, squat ugly turrets and sinister battlements, until five hundred feet down and two hundred feet ahead lay the stagnant water and thick reeds of the surrounding marsh.