So did Rod. He knew he couldn't even dream of understanding that console—and here his wife, who hadn't even heard of an electron till a few weeks ago, had figured out a gadget that was so complicated, it was almost abstract.
At least, she'd figured it out well enough to turn it off from twenty feet away.
Gwen smiled gaily, snapped her fingers—and the moire swirled about them again. Rod stared at it in disbelief, then reached out to probe. Yes, the wall of force was there again.
"Do not fash thyself," Gwen said to the bureaucrat, "we are once more enveloped."
The bureaucrat darted a glance at his operator, who was still stabbing at pressure-pads and jamming toggles. Sweat rolled down his brow; he shook his head.
The bureaucrat turned back to Gwen, staring in horror.
Gwen nodded. "This time, 'tis of my doing—and 'tis I who have the managing of it." She smiled brightly at Rod. "Come, husband, let us go." And she strode straight toward the bureaucrat.
Chornoi and Yorick yelped as the field scooped them off their feet again. They rebounded and scrambled back up, and joined Rod in a quick scurry to keep up with Gwen.
The bureaucrat jumped aside, shouting, "Stop them!"
His thugs instantly formed a line.
Gwen sailed into them.
They flew like tenpins and bounced off the walls. A couple of them rolled to the ground, unconscious, but the rest whipped out blasters and started firing.
Yorick frowned, feeling the unseen wall. "It's growing harder."
Gwen nodded, tight-lipped. "My field doth drink the flame of their weapons. I do feel it."
Rod's head whipped around, staring at her. "Be careful!"
In spite of the strain, she smiled and reached out for his arm. "Fear not, my lord. I can contain it."
The "my lord" helped. "Mind telling me how you did this little trick?"
Gwen beamed up at him. "I felt within that 'console,' as thou dost term it, with my mind. Thou hadst taught me long ago, husband, how to make the tiniest bits of matter speed their movement, or slow; so 'twas not totally strange to me, to sense the flow of bits so much tinier. I let my mind flow with their movement, and did discover how they streamed in patterns that did set up a small ball of force, which did summon up and mold a force much greater, from the earth itself."
Rod's mind reeled, also his ego. Just by feel, with only a little knowledge to guide her, she had figured out how to shape an electromagnetic field and use it to make a gravity wave extrude a bubble of force around them. He patted her hand and said, "I'm just glad you're on my side."
She smiled sweetly at him. "I, too."
"Just a little warm." Chornoi was feeling the force field with her fingers. "All that wild, pure energy going into it, and it's just a little bit warm."
'"T will grow hot soon enow, an we cannot find sanctuary." Gwen's brow was moist." Tis thou must now direct me."
"Sanctuary?" For a moment, Chornoi just stared, totally at a loss. Then inspiration struck, and she grinned. "Turn left at the end of this hallway!"
Yorick waved a hand to fan himself. "Give her every shortcut you know. It's getting hot in here!"
"The charges in those blasters just have to run down soon," Rod grumbled.
They turned a corner, and the hallway opened out into a broad concourse. People in drab coveralls were hurrying here and there all about, most of them carrying satchels.
Another half-dozen uniformed men came running, blasters waving, shouting.
"So much for the chance of their charges running down," Rod growled. "But they won't shoot when there're so many taxpayers around!"
"All personnel and passengers seek cover," an amplified voice boomed around them. "Dangerous criminals are at large within the concourse. Security agents must fire to kill. All personnel and passengers seek cover!"
"So much for the taxpayers," Rod grunted.
Heads jerked up all along the concourse. Then people dived for doorways or fled around corners, screaming.
"Down here! Quickly!" Chornoi pointed at a broad staircase.
Gwen swerved and stepped onto the escalator. Everyone managed to stay with her except Yorick, but he was back on his feet in a second.
Behind them, the uniformed men started yelling in panic.
"Oh! Steps that move!" Gwen cried in glee. "Then 'twas not a mere dream!"
"What?… Oh! The dreamhouse!" Chornoi wrinkled her nose. "Yeah, I hated that stairway. But keep walking, please, Miz Gallowglass. They'll try to head us off."
"Certes, an thou dost wish it!" Gwen tripped gleefully down the staircase. Rod tripped, period, but the field gave him a soft landing, and he caught Gwen's hand to steady himself as he came back onto his feet.
"Why do they shout so?" Gwen frowned back up at the security guards, who were just appearing at the head of the stairs.
"Because what we're doing is dangerous," Chornoi explained. "Here,we're at the bottom! See that clear wall, Miz Gallowglass? Just stroll over there, would you?"
Rod suddenly realized what they were doing. He paled.
"All the way," Chornoi directed. "Up against the doorway—that's right. Now, we wait."
Gwen turned to face the stairway. "Wherefore do we no longer flee?"
The armsmen thundered down the escalator, saw the company against the doorway in the clear plasticrete wall, and skidded to a halt, frozen in horror.
"This tunnel is a linear accelerator," Chornoi explained. "It's lined with ring-shaped electromagnets, and they turn on and off in sequence, so it's almost as though a magnetic field were moving down this tunnel."
Gwen's eyes had lost focus as she absorbed the concept.
She nodded. "Ingenious. Yet what purpose doth it serve?"
"They put, uh, 'carriages' inside the tunnel, Miz Gallowglass—tubular carriages, without wheels; they call them 'capsules.' They're fitted out with seats and carpets, and each one holds a hundred people."
Gwen frowned. "'Tis an odd mode of travel."
"Not really. You see, these capsules can shoot through these tubes at hundreds of miles per hour, and there's a huge network of tubes, so you can get to almost anyplace in the world through them. If we climbed into a capsule now, here underneath the island of Medeira, we could be in Puerto Rico, the nexus for the Americas, in four hours. That's thousands of miles away."
"'Tis incredible," Gwen breathed. Then her eyes focused, and she frowned. "How many folk are in such carriages at this moment?"
"Probably a million or so."
"And," Gwen said slowly, "What would happen if these men-at-arms so filled my field with flame, that I could no longer hold it in its form?"
"All that energy would be released in a single instant," Chornoi said softly. "It'd all cut loose in one huge explosion. It'd kill the four of us, of course, but it'd also wreck this station, and this section of tube."
Gwen nodded slowly. "Then the force would no longer flow."
"That's right," Chornoi said.
"And all the carriages with all those folk would come to a halt?"
"Yes. Slowly—but they would stop. And their lights would go out. Also the fans that blow cool air to them. The farther down you go, Miz Gallowglass, the hotter it gets."
"Would they all die, then?" Gwen said faintly.
"Not most of them—at least, not right away. But some of them would be hundreds of miles from the nearest station—even thousands, for the ones under the sea floor. So it'd take so long to get them out, that some of them might actually starve. More likely, they'd panic and trample each other. Or suffocate."
Gwen was trembling. "Whate'er the cost, I will not slay so many."
"You won't—they will. Only they won't take a chance on it, because they know what their bosses would do to them. They don't dare risk it, especially since some of the people in those tubes right now might be PEST officials. Or their wives and families."