And it would have taken ages to round them all up.
He stumbled over a broken branch, and, annoyed, vaporized it in a shower of emerald-green sparks.
Then he was in the clearing, the bat-thing’s remains rearing up before him in an eerie maze of black flesh and white bone; he marched past without paying much attention, up to the hatchway of Christopher.
He’d open his portal to Gregory’s place, whatever it was, aboard the ship; he didn’t want to do it out here in the open, where stray birds or chipmunks or something might wander through it. He wondered if birds ever flew into the Empire’s space-warp up there, to emerge into vacuum and die.
That was a nasty thought.
And for that matter, he wondered why air didn’t flow constantly through the opening into the space beyond. Did the warp create some sort of static field, perhaps, that held it back?
He didn’t know-and it didn’t matter.
The interior of the ship wasn’t quite as he remembered it; there were dead leaves here and there, a few seats had been removed, and it appeared that something had chewed at some of the maroon leatherette upholstery.
Squirrels, probably.
The lights didn’t work, of course, but the matrix made them superfluous in any case.
He settled in one of the aisle seats that was still clean and intact, and began concentrating on opening a portal.
It was much more difficult than he had expected; the nearness of the space-warp created a fierce counter-pressure that he had to struggle against, and the relative weakness of the matrix so far from any power spot left him with far less energy than he had ever had available before when attempting such a task.
Nonetheless, after about half an hour of effort that left him sweating and trembling, he forced open the portal.
Nothing happened. No one stepped out.
“God damn it!” Pel shouted. Fighting to maintain the spell, he reached a magical tendril back into the aft storeroom and swept out everything he could reach.
Steel bottles of oxygen, purple cotton packs and bedrolls, black folding shovels, pieces of space suits, and a great pile of unidentifiable equipment came tumbling through the hatchway into the passenger compartment; Pel let most of it drop as he snatched up an oxygen cylinder and heaved it through the portal.
It vanished, instantly and silently, but Pel was sure it made a suitable clatter on the other side.
He waited.
The portal refused to stabilize completely; keeping it open took a constant effort, and after five more minutes Pel wasn’t sure how long he could hold it. The matrix seemed to be fighting him, rather than cooperating.
He found a piece of equipment with glass parts-he had no idea what it was, some sort of scientific apparatus by the look of it-and heaved that through the opening.
Then he waited again.
Finally, Gregory’s head appeared, and a moment later Pel’s chief spy stood aboard the ship, looking around with mild interest.
“Yes, master?” he asked.
Pel cleared his throat, and began explaining.
When he got to the main point, that everyone was to surrender, Gregory’s usual bland expression turned uneasy.
“O Great One, are you sure that…”
“Sure enough. Do it.”
“Yes, master,” Gregory said unhappily.
It was the first time Pel had seen such unhappiness on a simulacrum’s face, and he felt a twinge of guilt.
“Listen, if you think they’ll mistreat you…”
“No, O Great One, it’s not that,” Gregory explained. “It’s that we’ll no longer be able to serve you. We won’t have a master to tell us what to do.”
Pel blinked.
Shadow had obviously done a thorough job of indoctrinating her creations-or maybe it was something in the nature of simulacra.
“All right, then,” he said, “if you want, and they allow it, you can swear fealty or whatever to the Emperor, and make him your new master.”
Gregory’s relief was evident. “Thank you,” he said.
“Now, get back there and get it started!”
* * * *
Curran was startled to not see any officials in the prep room when he emerged from the airlock. He had expected Markham and Albright and Secretary Sheffield to be waiting impatiently, had thought they would reprimand him for taking the time to remove his space suit.
Instead there was just an ordinary soldier standing there, ready to welcome him back.
“This way, sir,” the young man said, gesturing.
Curran followed, puzzled, as he was led out of the warp facility and into the main working area of Base One, down corridors and up lifts until he arrived at the door of a conference room.
Two guards stood at the door. After an exchange of salutes and whispers, one of the guards opened the door and ushered Curran in.
Sheffield stood at the head of a long table, presiding over the meeting; along the sides were Markham, Albright, and Howe, as Curran might have expected-but also John Bascombe, Samuel Best, Sebastian Warner, Ron Wilkins, Brian Hall, Carrie Hall, General Hart, Major Cochran, and at least a dozen others Curran didn’t immediately recognize.
Everyone who had attended any of Curran’s briefings for this assignment appeared to be present.
All of them glanced up as the door opened.
“Ah, Curran,” Secretary Sheffield said. “Come in! We’ve saved you a seat.” He pointed.
Curran took the chair indicated, between Best and Warner, and whispered to Best, “What’s happened?”
Best leaned over and whispered back, “One of Brown’s agents threatened the Emperor. In person. In the Imperial Palace itself.”
“He what?” Curran blinked.
“She. We got word telepathically just after you went through the warp-even thought about calling you back, but by the time we could have suited someone else up…”
“How’d this person…what did she…”
“No one knows how she got in, but she was waiting in the Emperor’s private apartments when he prepared to retire, and she told him that the Brown Magician wants the bodies now.”
“Oh, my God.”
“But what’s really frightening,” Best said, “is that she got away.”
“How?”
“We don’t know.”
“I take it, Mr. Curran,” Sheffield’s voice said, overriding the private exchange, “that Mr. Best has filled you in on the situation.”
Curran looked up, startled. “Yes, sir,” he said.
“I believe you’ve just spoken with the Brown Magician-and after this latest stunt, I begin to think he deserves to be called a magician.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did he say anything that might shed light on this situation?”
Curran hesitated, swallowed, then stood up, and reported the conversation.
He was still answering questions about the details when the telepaths began delivering the first reports of surrendering agents.
* * * *
“So what’s the general attitude over there?” the lieutenant asked casually.
“Scared shitless,” Carleton Miletti replied.
That was different; the lieutenant struggled not to show any interest, since that might break Miletti’s semi-trance. “Why’s that?” he asked.
“Oh, Brown did something they didn’t think was possible, something to do with their emperor,” Miletti explained.
“What did he do?”
Miletti shrugged. “No idea,” he said. “I didn’t catch that.”
“Was he trying to scare them into turning over the remains?” the lieutenant asked.
“Probably. They don’t know.”
“Didn’t work, of course.”
“Of course not.”
* * * *
Pel stretched and yawned as he stood in the open hatchway. He’d slept away most of the morning, he was sure. The sunlight spattered across the clearing was not at a particularly low angle.