Golden Torc - 2 (27 page)

Brede raised her hands. The mask came down and there was only the sad, patient smile. "Then help me to fulfill my duty, which does lie with them all. Teach me."

"We-we don't have a pain source of sufficient intensity."

"We do." Brede's determination was unshakable. "There is hyperspatial translation. My body can be sustained in the superficies of the continuum for as long as necessary. I have the legacy of competence from my Spouse. I require no mechanism whatever to span the width of this galaxy. I have never considered using the translational power before this, simply be-cause there was no question of deserting my people. And of course I would not actually leave them now. I would return."

"If the attempt at mental enlargement doesn't kill you."

"I am willing to risk all, to suffer all."

Elizabeth exclaimed, "How can you love these wretched barbarians so much when they can never appreciate what you do for them?"

Only the smile, and the invitation to enter the mind. With great reluctance, Elizabeth said, "There's another thing I haven't touched on. The teacher... shares the ordeal." O Elizabeth. No I did not realize. I have been presumptuous and you must forgive. I see now that I have no right-

Elizabeth broke into the protesting thought with brusque words. "Brede, I'm going to die. Even if I fly out of here, your dearly beloved people are going to track me down sooner or later and finish me off. And so... why not? Perhaps, if I succeed with you, it would be a kind of epitaph. If you're willing to chance the ordeal, I'll take you. You'll be my last student. And if your vision of joint racial destiny is fulfilled, perhaps you can even be my justification."

"I never intended to cause you more pain. And I commiserate."

"Well-don't waste it." Elizabeth's tone was wry. "Every bit of suffering is valuable!... Are you sure you can work the translation?"

Brede's mind showed her. Elizabeth would not physically accompany the exotic traveler, of course. But her mind would remain meshed with Brede's to channelize the neural fires. "Whenever you are ready," the Shipspouse said, "we can go forth."

The ceiling of the room without doors opened. There toward the south was the milky river of the Galactic Plane. And behind its dust clouds, the Hub; hidden beyond that lay the other arm of the spiral, almost a hundred thousand light-years distant. "All the way across," said Elizabeth. "Now."

... And there they were, in an instant and forever, stretched on a rack the width of the starry whirlpool, poised between gray limbo and black, distorted, spangled space. The atoms of Brede's physical body had become more tenuous than the rare atomic fog that floats in the void between the stars and vibrates still with the birth cry of the universe. The mind of the Ship-spouse shrieked on the same frequencies as the agonized particles. And in this manner, the enlargement began.

It would be all the more difficult because Brede's latent powers were so great. All of the well-worn psychoenergetic circuits leading from the torc would have to be rerouted through the syncytial mazes of the right cortex, reeducated to operancy within the refining flame of the ultimate pain that the universe could inflict upon a thinking, feeling creature. By enduring, Brede might pass in a short time through a process that ordinarily took many years. But the pain in itself was worthless unless discipline could be maintained and the divarication of the mental network kept firmly under control. This was where the guidance of a skilled teacher was all-important. While Elizabeth's great redactive power clamped around the pulsating psyche and kept it from disintegrating, she also directed Brede's flaring limbics as though they were countless metapsychic torches burning away the accumulated cortical debris of a lifetime 14,000 years in length.

The mind of the operant, steadfast in the mutual anguish, led and braced that of the aspirant. The two of them hung locked together in the inferno between true space and hyperspace, where there is but a single dimension, an afferent input that sentient beings of all races apprehend only as pain... The process went on and on, simultaneous and eternal according to their shared subjective consciousness. Brede knew in her agony that changes were taking place within her soul-but she could not rise above the fire long enough to study herself. She could only accept and affirm and continue to be strong, hoping that when the suffering was done her mind would still live in the physical universe.

The pain lessened.

Now Brede felt Elizabeth's binding energies soften to gentleness. She became aware of other life-forces besides their own two, appearing to sing amidst the diminishing flame. How odd! And what was that? There, so far away, beyond the gray and the black and the humming megatonal song and the rack of invisible waning fire was a glimpse of brightness that might have been approaching; and the clearer her perception of it, the more irresistible it became. Brede abandoned discipline, forgot all self in her sudden eagerness to reach it, to see and join with it, now that she was capable of the Unity... Return.

O no Elizabeth not now let me go on-

We have reached the limit. Return with me.

No no we exiles together continue on with me to the end of it and join beyond pain where it waits for us loving... We must return. I'm going to draw you back. Don't resist.

No no no no-

Let go. Stop looking. You may not have that and live. Come back now from there submit to my redaction fly back across the expanse don't struggle Sancta Illusio Persona Adamantis ora pro nobis wherever you are submit Brede submit to my guidance rest in me we are almost there... there... The Shipspouse sat unmasked across the table from Elizabeth.

"Gone. It's gone. You took me away from it."

"It was necessary for both of us. And the culmination of the pain in your ordeal. Which was successful." Tears steamed down Brede's face. There was a slow rekindling after near-extinguishment, and regret that would be a part of her until, at last, she died. In the silence of the room without doors Brede recovered.

There was an opening and an invitation. Brede ventured in, then cried aloud as she knew the first true Union with a mind of Earth.

So that is-how it is.

Yes. I embrace thee Sister.

The exotic woman put fingertips to the lifeless gold at her throat and unfastened the catch. She held the open torc at arm's length for a moment before laying it on the table beside the Ship's likeness.

I live. I function freely feeble an infant tottering on first legs but the metafunctions are released and such richness and the Unity is twoinone now but later when I know the loved Mind-

There will be spontaneous growth with joy instead of pain until you are filled to capacity. This last is subject to the limitations of your physical body as well as the state of the local Mind. Since you already love the Mind, you will be able to pour forth without diminishing. This is something I cannot do. And that which I saw-

What most of us operant or no shall see and possess ultimately.

Not many aspirants catch a glimpse of it. Fortunately.

Once more the two women sat in mental silence.

"There is no memory of anguish," Brede finally said out loud. "But I can see that there would not be. The guiding and the acceptance are all-important in differentiating unproductive misery from creative purgation. And after that comes joy. Yes-that, too, is what one would expect. Not mere absence of pain, but ecstasy."

"Almost all mature humans are aware of the thin line dividing the two-even if they can't understand what to make of it. If you wish, as part of your further education, I'll share some concepts of the Milieu essence that our philosophers and theologians debated."

"Yes. You must show me all that you can. Before you-go."

Elizabeth refused the gambit. "The psychology of each sentient race savors the theosphere in a unique way. We might study the possible niche that your people might occupy. And now that there are two of us, we can do what no single operant mind can do-partake together of the essence in a limited fashion. It will be dilute because the Mind of the Pliocene is still so infantile, but you'll find it wonderful."

"It is already wonderful," said Brede. "But the first thing I must do with my enriched newness is look once again along the lines of probability in search of the all-important pattern that was unclear. Will you join me?"

The teacher and sister vanished. Mental doors slammed. "I might have known! Brede, you're an incredible fool." The exotic woman's mind was fully open but Elizabeth would not go in, would not look.

"I'm leaving your rooms without doors," Elizabeth said. "I'm going to find your King and tell him your judgment concerning my fate. Your new judgment. And I'm going to find the balloon, and in my own sweet time I'm going to leave this place."

Brede bowed her head. "I will give you your balloon. And if you wish, I will deal with the Host of Nontusvel. Please-let me go with you to the King."

"Very well."

The two of them went out and stood again briefly on the promontory above the White Silver Plain. The salt was crowded with miniature lights. As the time for the Grand Combat approached, the tent-city of the Firvulag grew. Even though it was the middle of the night, supply caravans flanked by rama linkmen could be farsensed as they crept down the slope south of the city toward the temporary encampment. Landing stages at the shore of the lagoon were illuminated and there were lights on the water as well.

Brede studied the scene, masked and inscrutable. "Only three weeks until the Grand Combat, and then it will be resolved."

"Three weeks," Elizabeth repeated, "and six million years."

7

AT THE TIME OF THE GRAND COMBAT TRUCE, ALL ROADS IN the northern regions of the Many-Colored Land led to Roniah. Through this city passed Tanu and Firvulag alike on their way to the games-the Great Ones of both exotic races traveling via riverboat while the humbler majority followed the Great South Road that paralleled the west bank of the Rhone all the way down to Lac Provencal and la Glissade Formidable. Most of the travelers from northern regions broke their journey at the Roniah Fair. There the ancient enemies mingled freely in a once-a-year orgy of commerce that extended through the middle two weeks of the pre-Combat Truce, day and night without a letup. Booths were set up along the great pillared midway and among the surrounding exterior gardens of the river city. The peripheral area became a huge campground where human and Firvulag entrepreneurs presided over tented caravanserais and dining establishments catering to the tourists. This year it was the Finiah refugees, well supplied with money but almost completely bereft of possessions, who were the most eager customers at the Fair. To bolster their spirits they spent lavishly for the luxury goods that were the stockin-trade of Firvulag crafters: polished gems and amber, jewelry, novelties carved of ivory or semiprecious stone, gold and silver gewgaws, begemmed headdresses and garment trims, fancy tack for chalikos, ornate belts and scabbards and battleharness, perfumes and unguents and scented soaps derived from wildflowers and herbs, peculiar liqueurs, psychoactive flycap and panaeolus fungi, and delicatessen such as wild honey, candies with alcoholic syrup centers, truffles, garlic, spices, gourmet sausages, and that paramount exotic delectable-wild strawberry preserves. More staple goods were purveyed by human vendors from Roniah and the other Tanu settlements: fine textiles and ready made garments, dyestuffs and other domestic chemicals, glass tools of every description, glass tableware and containers, glass armor, and glass weapons. From the Tanu plantations flowed quantities of beer, wine, and spirits packaged in wooden casks or leather bottles, smoked and preserved meats, dried and pickled fruits and vegetables, and a wide variety of nonperishable cereal products such as flour, groats, and plain and flavored hardbreads. The food was not only sold to the travelers, but was also sent down the river to aid in the provisioning of the Grand Combat itself.

Late on October fourteenth a certain refugee party came riding down the crowded highroad and arrived at the Roniah Fair. It made its way into the private campground area where petty Tanu and Firvulag nobility could erect their own pavilions separate from the commonalty. The group of travelers was unique only in that it consisted entirely of humans. There were two gold-torc ladies who might have been mother and daughter-the elder wearing flowing emerald gauze robes and an outrageous jeweled chapeau, the younger in full blue coercer's armor and a golden cloak, bearing a lance from which floated a banner of gold with a raven displayed sable. The ladies' entourage consisted of five bronze-armored soldiers led by a captal of gigantic stature, an elderly steward, two handmaids, and a gnarled little one-legged wrangler, in whose presence the packchalikos and remounts seemed unaccountably skittish.

"Yes-we lost everything in the Finiah disaster," the grandam told the sympathetic human campmaster as they signed in. "All save a few treasures and these faithful gray-torc servants are gone, leaving my daughter and me sadly destitute. Still... there is the possibility that we may recoup our fortunes at the Combat, for the Lady Phyllis-Morigel has trained diligently and shows great promise as a warriormaid, and so we may gain both riches and revenge at the White Silver Plain, if Tana wills."

The campmaster saluted respectfully. The lovely young face of the Lady Phyllis-Morigel smiled at him beneath the raised visor of her helmet. "Good fortune will surely attend you in the lists, Lady. I can feel your mighty coercive power even though you've got it leashed back."

"Phyllis, dear," the old woman chided. "For shame." The girl blinked and the wave of coercion receded. "Your pardon, Worthy Campmaster. I didn't mean to press you. This will be my first Combat and I'm overexcited."

"Small wonder," said the man. "But don't you worry, little Lady. Just keep cool and you'll come out a sure winner in the prelims. I've got a feeling about you."

"You're kind to say so, Campmaster. I feel that I've been waiting all my life to participate in the games..."

"Ladies, it's late," interrupted the old steward, who had been fidgeting in the saddle during the chitchat. "You must rest."