"
Mad
," he repeated, with emphasis. Jela, the tree apparently situated to his satisfaction, straightened and turned 'round to face him.
"You say that like there's something wrong with being mad," he commented.
Tor An glared at him, and the soldier laughed, softly, soothing the air between them with his big hand.
"I'm not the one to complain to about the scholar's state of mind," he said. "Think about it—I'm here to steal a set of equations that might save the galaxy from an enemy we can't possibly overcome."
Tor An caught his breath. "Is that certain? I thought—the soldiers were being pulled back to a more defensible—"
Jela sighed. "The soldiers are being pulled back to defend the Inner Worlds because the Inner Worlds bought the High Command," he said, with a sincerity that was impossible to doubt. "The Inner Worlds think to buy themselves free of the fate that overtook the Ringstars, but what they've bought—at the price of countless lives and numberless planets—is a few years, at most. The decrystallization process is going faster, according to my information; it's as if whatever technique they're using, it's cumulative, so the more space the Enemy decrystalizes, the more they
can
decrystalize..."
Tor An glanced aside. The cat was sitting on the counter; he extended a finger, received a polite nose-touch. "So, are we all mad, then?" he murmured, skritching the cat's ear.
Jela laughed, a low, comfortable rumble deep in his chest. "Well, let's see. We're in a fight to destroy an enemy that can't be defeated." A pause, as if he were seriously weighing the merit of this statement, then, "Yes, Pilot. We're all mad."
Tor An sighed. "What shall we do?" he asked, the cat purring against his fingers.
"Unless you have an idea that seems more likely to move us along the road to victory than the one the scholar gave us, I suggest we follow our orders."
Tor An thought, briefly, of the back garden at home. He wanted nothing more, in that moment, but to sit under his piata tree, nibble on a fruit; perhaps nap, and awaken some while later blanketed in fallen leaves, safe, cherished and protected.
Gone forever, he thought. And if there were a chance—even a vanishingly small chance—that he might preserve someone else's tree and garden, was that chance not worth taking?
And it wasn't as if he had anything else to do.
Reluctantly, he stopped skritching the cat and picked up the sealed packet the scholar had left on the counter. He weighed it in his hand before slipping it away into an inner pocket, and turned again to face Jela.
The soldier gave him a critical look, for all the worlds like Melni making certain that he hadn't done his shirt up crooked, back when he was still in the schoolroom, and held up a blunt finger.
"You're missing a very important accessory, Pilot. A moment, if you please."
He moved across the room, absurdly light for so bulky a man, rummaged in the scholar's rucksack and was back, holding in his big hand a discipline bracelet the twin of that which Scholar tay'Nordif wore. Tor An frowned.
"Problem?" Jela asked.
Not quite able to mask his distaste, Tor An took the bracelet and turned it over in his hands, looking for the hair-thin wires that would pierce his skin and bond him to—
He looked up and met the soldier's bland black eyes.
"Two problems, in fact," he answered crisply. "One, you are not a kobold. Two, this bracelet lacks the coding wires. It won't work."
"Well," Jela said, untroubled, "that makes it a match for Scholar tay'Nordif's, now doesn't it? And as for me, I'm a kobold, sure enough." He rubbed the ball of his thumb over the ceramic threads woven into his chest. "If it falls that way, discipline me, Pilot. I'll trust your judgment."
Tor An sighed, and used his chin to point at the tree. "How are we to transport that?"
"I'll carry it," said Jela.
"
Carry
it? It must weigh—"
"I'm strong, Pilot, never fear. I've carried that tree since it was shorter than I am."
"But—"
"And we'd best be going," Jela continued, moving over to the subject of the discussion and flexing his arms. "It wouldn't be polite to keep Scholar vel'Anbrek waiting."
He went down on a knee, wrapped his arms around the pot, heaved—and came to his feet, tree cradled in his arms. "After you, Pilot," he said, under no apparent strain.
Tor An took one last, reflexive look around the room. Not a very tidy room, truth told, and Lucky nowhere in sight. The first irritated him—he was a meticulous lad—and the second saddened him—he would have liked to have stroked the cat one more time, for luck.
Well. He pushed the unaccustomed annoyance of the bracelet up over his shirt until it stuck, and smoothed the sleeve of his jacket over it. Jela stood, face slack and stupid, holding the tree as if it weighed slightly less than nothing. Tor An sighed, went forward, opened the door and led the way down the hall.
"True pilot timing," Scholar vel'Anbrek snapped, "cut to the last fraction of a second." He moved off hurriedly, robe flapping around his legs. "Come along, we must needs be away from the arena before it begins."
"Before what begins?" asked Tor An, moving determinedly to the scholar's side. A quick glance over his shoulder reassured him that Jela was keeping up, even at his stolid "kobold" walk.
"Ah, she didn't tell you the whole of it, did she? Just as well. This way, now, and be quick!"
They rushed single-file down a hall so thin Tor An's shoulders each brushed a wall. A single ceramic track down the center of the floor—a supply tunnel, Tor An thought. Another quick glance showed Jela proceeding sideways, somewhat the slower for the tight quarters. Ahead, the scholar darted right into another tunnel.
An alarm sounded, frighteningly loud.
Tor An stumbled, but the walls were too close to allow of a fall. At least this time he did not mistake it for a ship's system in ultimate distress. This time, he knew what it was—and his blood grew cold.
"Scholar tay'Nordif," he gasped and the old man turned his head, with no decrease in speed.
"Come along, Pilot! This is more important than a single scholar—or even a whole Tower full of scholars too blind to see aught but their own comfort and petty quarrels. This way!"
He dodged into a left-tending hallway as the second alarm sounded, opened a door and waved them inside. "Keep a good hold on the strap! This lift is calibrated for cargo."
It was a nasty trip up, and how Jela bore it, with no hand free to steady himself, Tor An could not imagine. The alarm sounded for the third time during the short, brutal lift, and then they were following Scholar vel'Anbrek down a tunnel the twin to those below-deck, the track set into the floor shiny with wear.
"In here!" the scholar snapped, and pushed through another door.
The hall beyond was dim, the air slightly sour, the track dusty with disuse. Their passage disturbed moths and cobwebs—and then the scholar halted, put his hand against a section of blank wall like all the rest of the blank wall up and down the tunnel—and waited. Tor An came up beside him and a moment later Jela arrived at his shoulder. Still the scholar stood with his hand against the wall—which suddenly showed a moire pattern of golden motes—and disappeared altogether.
Scholar vel'Anbrek stepped through the opening. Tor An hesitated, then bethought himself of Scholar tay'Nordif, risking her life in order that this opportunity be made available, and followed the old scholar into the unknown.
THE SEATS FILLED quickly, many of the scholars with breakfast cups and pastry sticks in hand. There was a murmur, a rising wave of voices exclaiming over a third challenge coming so close upon the heels of the others—and then rising again, as those who had already downed their first cup or two of morning tea recalled that the challenge which had deprived the Tower of Prime tay'Palin had been but the last of many...
Maelyn tay'Nordif stood inside the proving court, head bowed, hands tucked inside the sleeves of her robe, and wondered if she was going mad. Almost, she would have thought that the wine dea'San had pressed upon her so solicitously last evening had been poisoned, only she could think of no poison which would act in this manner—there! What did she know of poisons or their action? She was a scholar of Interdimensional Mathematics, lately Seated within Osabei Tower, as she had long ago determined that she would be. None of the other, lesser, Towers would assuage her pride—it
would be
Osabei, the First—or a lifetime of wandering.
And so she had fulfilled the task her pride had set her, disproven the master's own lifework, gained the coveted Chair in the only Mathematical Tower that mattered—only to find that her mind, far from being that honed instrument she had always felt it to be, was rather a weak blade which had speedily shattered upon the rock of Tower life.
These random thoughts which afflicted her, now, at the moment of her trial... Surely, the port police had not required her to look upon a certain broken and battered corpse which she then claimed for her mother? Not only did she remember her mother very well, she thought, taking deep, calming breaths as the noise of the seats filling continued around her, but she was still alive, and serving in the Distaff House of Nordif, which was charged with keeping the 'counts and inventories of the mercantile branch. Her mother was a senior receivables manager—a respected and respectable woman of a respected and respectable House. It had been her mother's support and encouragement which had given her the courage to pursue her scholarly studies, and to stand in defiance before Aunt Tilfrath, who had wished her to remain and serve the House as had her mother, and her mother, and—
And
surely
, she thought in cold horror, as the sounds of the gathering observers began to settle into some semblance of quiet,
surely
she had never—never allowed a—a
kobold
—
She took a shuddering breath, hoping to still the roiling of her stomach, and thrust the thought away. Such things were the stuff of nightmares; and like nightmares were mere disorders of the imagination. She was neither mad nor depraved. She would meet what was to come with sure mind and sure blade, and rightly overcome this challenge. Her work was elegant; pure. She would not be found in error.
"Silence, Scholars!" Prime Chair tay'Welford's voice sounded near at hand. She raised her head, and forced her eyes open. Across from her in the proving court stood a scholar not immediately familiar... She mentally reviewed her acquaintance of the common room—ah, of course! Scholar ven'Orlud, whose speciality was ... pretransitional spatial coordinates, was it not? What could such a person find to prove or disprove in her own work?
"Scholar ven'Orlud," Prime Chair said loudly enough to be heard in the back seats, "challenges Scholar tay'Nordif to defend the point made in her Wander-thesis Number Three that intermittent vectorization within the universal metacrystal could prevent accurate energy-field summation."
Scholar tay'Nordif felt a jolt go up her spine.
But I later refuted those findings myself! How can I be called to prove an error which I later corrected?
"This is a true proving, not merely a point of personal honor," Prime Chair continued. "Blades will be engaged, and scholarship rests upon the outcome. Scholars, prepare to defend the Truth."
"This is a fraudulent proving!" The voice rang against the high ceiling, struck the walls and rebounded—by which time, Maelyn tay'Nordif had recognized it as her own.
THEY WERE IN WHAT once had been a cold storage room. Here and there vacuum cells and yellowed foam could be seen through the scored laminate walls. Looking about them, Tor An felt a certain sense of dismay.
"Forgive me, Scholar," he said politely when some time had passed without their guide continuing. "This scarcely seems an apartment suited to the honor of one of your Tower's great masters."
Scholar vel'Anbrek smiled humorlessly. "Quick off the mark," he said obscurely. "Good."
Tor An frowned. "Scholar, I must insist that you bring me to Master dea'Syl, so that I may present Scholar tay'Nordif's gift, as she bade me to do."
"Patience, Pilot. You will be with Master dea'Syl—ah!—very soon now, I hear."
Were
all
the scholars here mad? Tor An wondered, and gathered his patience, for, mad or no, that had been well-advised.
"Sir," he began again—and stopped as the wall directly opposite vanished in a cloud of golden vapor, and a carry-chair bore through, silent on its supportive pad of air.
The man in the chair had an abundance of white hair plaited into a single thick braid and tied off with a plain red cord. He was bent forward, his shoulders bowed beneath the weight of the robe, and his thin hands rested one atop the other on the control stick.
Halfway across the room, he made a minute adjustment, and the chair's forward progress halted, though it did not settle to the floor.
Slowly, as if the braid hanging across his shoulder was nearly too heavy a burden, the old scholar raised his head.
His brow was high, his eyes deep, his nose noble, and time had writ its passage boldly upon his features. Tor An bowed, reflexively, and straightened into the scholar's thoughtful regard.
"Now, here's a pretty behaved lad," he said, his voice thin and clear. "By which sign I know him to be something other than a scholar of Osabei Tower."
vel'Anbrek stepped forward and placed his hand on the chair's tumble guard.
"This is the pilot, Liad. The one of whom I spoke."
"Pilot?" The thin lips bent in a smile. "He scarcely seems old enough." A hand lifted, trembling slightly, showing Tor An an empty palm. "I mean no offense, Pilot; when one reaches a certain age, the galaxy itself seems a child."
"I have not been insulted," Tor An assured him, and felt his cheeks heat as the scholar's smile grew momentarily more pronounced.
"I am pleased to hear it, for I do not hide from you, Pilot, that it would go badly for me, were we to meet on the field of honor."