“You don’t think they’d cooperate?” Markham asked.
“Why should they?” Albright said with a shrug.
“Given time, we might manage a mission such as you describe,” Celia Howe said. “But what good would it do? We couldn’t possibly get anything useful done before that twenty-four-hour deadline.”
The telepath in the corner cleared his throat, and all four faces turned toward him.
“His Imperial Majesty informs me,” the telepath said, “that we are to return this man’s family forthwith.”
“Well, that’s it, then,” Markham said, with visible relief.
“But does His Majesty understand that we cannot be sure what Brown intends…” Sheffield began.
“His Majesty understands quite enough,” the telepath said, cutting him off. “He also desires that we proffer a formal apology, and Secretary Sheffield is hereby recalled to Terra immediately.”
The others glanced at one another; they knew what this meant.
George VIII let his governments operate independently up to a point-but when his personal safety was threatened, that point had been passed.
Sheffield was ruined, at least temporarily; the Emperor would undoubtedly convene the Council and the Peerage and ask them to appoint a new government. And until they came up with one he liked he would run the Empire himself.
Whether Albright and Markham retained their posts…well, the Emperor hated doing the work of running the Empire himself. He would want a new government installed quickly. That meant as few cabinet changes as possible, and His Imperial Majesty might well instruct the legislature accordingly.
But on the other hand, Albright and Markham were involved in this interdimensional debacle, just as much as Sheffield was.
It was up to the Imperial whim.
Meanwhile, they had little choice but to obey orders as quickly and efficiently as possible. Albright stood up.
“Get me a messenger,” he said.
* * * *
The matrix twisted, and Pel almost fell. A space-warp had opened, one that was fairly close, and big enough to disturb the matrix noticeably.
It was, he quickly realized, in the same place as the second invasion.
He looked down at the forest below with something like regret; he had been enjoying his scenic tour of Faerie. The mountains ahead looked quite spectacular, and he was sure there was plenty more to be seen. He hadn’t yet come across more elves, nor any of the little people, the gnomes, as they were called, let alone their homeland of Hrumph.
Of course, Grummetty’s comments all those months ago had implied that Shadow had driven the gnomes out of Hrumph-they might have wound up on a reservation somewhere, the way the elves had.
There was so much Pel didn’t know.
For some time he had thought of Faerie as a narrow strip stretching from Shadowmarsh to the Low Forest, but now it had finally sunk in that it was an entire world.
Perhaps he and Nancy and Rachel could take a vacation here before returning to Earth, take a flying tour of the countryside. They couldn’t see all of it, of course-there was far too much, a world larger than the whole Earth-but they could roam about a bit.
For now, though, it was time to see whether the Empire had finally seen reason, or whether he would have to find a way to kill George VIII and hope that George IX, or whoever the next Emperor was, would be more sensible.
He wheeled about and headed back across the wooded hills, accelerating as he went.
Moments later he stumbled to a stop on the charred remains of a barley field, where two steel cylinders lay side by side, a sheet of paper atop one of them.
He picked up the paper and read, “With Our apologies for the delay, and hopes for cordial relations hereafter.” A blue seal adorned one corner. The signature was done with something like a rubber stamp and was slightly blurred, but still decipherable-Georgius VIII Imperator et Rex. An illegible scribble next to it was presumably the mark of the secretary who had stamped the document in accordance with Imperial instructions.
“Well, that’s more like it,” Pel said to no one, dropping the paper and turning to the cylinders.
His stomach was suddenly trembling inside him, his knees unsteady.
The cylinders were cold to the touch. Each was held closed by two complex screwed-down latches of some sort; Pel spun the flywheel of each latch on the nearer container and pried open the complicated hooks.
He felt as if he might faint, and his hands were cold, and not just from the cold metal. He was sweating. At last, at long last, he had his wife and daughter back.
Either that, or the Empire was in for unrelieved hell, if this should prove to be some other stupid delay.
He lifted the lid, not breathing, and looked inside.
For a moment he thought that it was some sort of trick, that they had substituted some ghastly thing for his wife; then he realized he was wrong.
This thing was Nancy.
She was naked, but so battered and horrific that that hardly mattered. Her skin was pale and discolored, a sickly grayish hue, and large areas were flaking or peeling, as if her skin were badly weathered paint. Her belly was a ruin of blackened, torn meat-the pirates had shot her in the gut with a blaster at point-blank range. She was half-frozen, still stiff, lying in a puddle of condensation.
One of her legs was cracked, exposing bone and flesh; Pel supposed it had happened while she was frozen.
And three fingers were gone from her right hand, but a moment later Pel spotted them, little shrivelled pink things lying by her hip.
And her face…part of the skin was gone from around her left eye, and her right cheekbone was caved in; a huge purple bruise had apparently formed before death. Her eyes were wide open and staring.
But it was Nancy.
Pel stepped back and sat down abruptly to keep from falling. He felt sick and faint.
He had never thought about what she would look like. He had thought of her looking as if she were asleep.
He should have known better. Especially after some of the things he had seen since-the disembowelled bodies hanging from gibbets in Shadow’s empire, the blackened remnants of Shadow’s enemies, the corpses he had resurrected himself, the Imperial troops he had killed himself-he should certainly have known better.
He put his head down and took deep, slow breaths, and tried not to think about her appearance.
After a minute or two he felt better-still sick, but fairly sure he wouldn’t faint or vomit.
He didn’t look at Nancy again; instead he went to the other cylinder and opened the latches.
He hesitated, however, before lifting the lid.
No one had said how Rachel had died. He knew she had died on Zeta Leo III, at the hands of the slave-owners there, but only that. Nancy had been beaten, raped, and murdered by the pirates on Emerald Princess; Rachel’s death was a mystery.
He had to be prepared for the worst.
He took a deep breath, then opened the cylinder and looked in.
It wasn’t as bad.
She was wrapped in dirty white cloth from her shoulders to her knees, and whatever might be hidden by the cloth, Pel wasn’t interested in seeing. There were no bloodstains, nothing obviously broken or missing; her eyes were closed. Although she was plainly dead, so pale and lifeless that no one would ever mistake her for a living child, she showed no signs of whatever had killed her. There were a few bruises, though, and her face was smudged with dirt. Bits of dirt clung to her hair, as well, and more dirt was smeared across the cloth…