Kirlian Quest (21 page)

Psyche put her hand on Weew, suffusing him with her potent aura. "Wake, Hweeh, wake...."

And he did. "That aura... beautiful!" he exclaimed. Then: "The Space Amoeba! I can face it!
I know what it is!
"

"You have broken through!" Herald exclaimed.

"What is the threat?"

"It is in the very nature of the Amoeba, which we have misconceived from the outset! It is not an amoeba at all, not an explosion of dust, not a supernova remnant, but a—remarkable! Absolutely remarkable! Don't let go of me, child bride, or I shall surely go into shock again! Oh, we must get word out
immediately!
"

"But what is it?" Herald demanded.

"To comprehend, you must first comprehend the nature of—I must fill in the background—like describing color to a blind entity—the ramifications—"

"Try, in orderly fashion," Qaval said calmly. "We are
not
blind entities."

"It is—it is an invasion from extra-Cluster space!" Hweeh exclaimed. "A pattern of living creatures, traveling by mattermission—"

"An invasion!" Qaval said. "How could there be an invasion from beyond the Cluster? We have never had contact with the larger Universe. The sheer energy required—"

"I don't know
how
or
why
," Hweeh said. "My shock cut me off before I could work it out. But I do know it is
so
. A monstrous fleet, mattermitting to a point in space, tunneling through, radiating out. On that scale it takes a century merely to organize the staging area! Hundreds of thousands of ships—a million ships—the most tremendous fleet of full-scale battleships ever. It can conquer our entire Cluster in a mere century or so, maybe less, if it—" He broke off in sheer wonder.

Qaval glanced at Herald. "This entity is a creature of repute? Not given to hallucinogenic indulgence? He knows whereof he speaks?"

"He knows. It seems we must face a siege of much larger proportion than that of Kastle Kade."

"Then we had better get a message out," Qaval said. "I can arrange—"

He was interrupted by a tremendous rolling shudder, somewhat like thunder and somewhat like an earthquake. There was a cry from above. "AVALANCHE!"

"Too late!" Qaval said. "They have launched the main thrust."

"But we balked that ploy!" Herald protested. "We had our cattle stampede—"

"Get you to your walls and see," Qaval said grimly.

They hurried up out of the cellar, blinking in the light of day, for their eyes had become acclimatized to the wine-dark.

It was true. The cliffs of the
east
face had collapsed, filling in a quarter of the lake. Displaced water was rushing over the dam, sweeping its defenders away. The Duke of Kade was surveying the situation angrily. "Explosives! They used explosives!"

"Not so," Qaval countered. "We do not violate the Code Medieval. No explosives on Planet Keep. Our animals mined the cliff by night, lo these many nights, while you prepared for siege. Wheelbores, tunneling into the stone like little Andromedan Quadpoints, weakening it crucially, silently. Just a little hammering of wedges at the key spots, and down it came!"

"There was no explosion, sir," a crossbowman assured the Duke of Kade. "We heard tapping, but did not realize...."

Already the dozers were descending the new slope of rubble, pushing the broken rock farther toward the castle. Some animals rolled into the water, scooping out the sides of the fall, making a narrower but longer ramp. The causeway was driving inexorably toward Kastle Kade, and there was little the defenders could do about it. Even the alligators who had not been crushed by the fall itself were cowed and stunned by the shock of it.
 

Kade turned to Qaval. "You are drawing all the stops, sir. I could have wished that such perseverance and imagination had been employed in a better cause."

"A just critique," Qaval agreed.

Kade did something like a doubletake. "Another creature might alter his views at the convenience of the moment, for fear of retribution, but you were never thus, Qaval. You have doubts?"

"I think it at least as likely that your daughter is a mutation as that she is possessed," Qaval said. "This castle seems to have been constructed upon the tomb of some demon creature whose lingering aura moved the first Duke of Kade, and now moves Kade's distant descendant. Excavation of the tomb should abolish that influence. Still, even if it does not, it is possible she is a kind of healer. Her changes follow a pattern that is typical of no Possession I know of. I have felt her aura at its low and at its high, and though I have only a fraction of the Kirlian perception that Herald does, my findings concur with his. Were I of your species, I believe I would be moved to marry her myself. What she has is far too valuable to throw away."

Herald and Psyche watched the enemy Duke in silent, gratified amazement. Even Kade seemed startled. "You would testify thus to the Prince?"

"No."

Again Kade reacted, this time with angry puzzlement. "How can a noble of your courage and integrity be found on such opposite sides of the question?"

Qaval smiled, the long edges of his lip curling in a sine wave of mixed emotion. "Delicately put! My rationale is this: There is doubt in my mind, with the preponderance in the girl's favor. She seems in most respects a normal example of her kind, very female. I would let her go. But there is no doubt in the mind of the Prince. To plead her cause before Circlet of Crown at this stage would be merely to invite the fire for myself. I made the attempt before, and nearly lost my status in his counsels; hence you find me on the battlefield instead of in the command tent. He has committed himself to the fray; he cannot with pride retreat. And I must serve my Prince."

Kade turned away, looking down at the advancing causeway, aimed like a lance at the heart of the castle. "I cannot quarrel with your rationale, sir, though it doom me to destruction. Still, perhaps we can deal. If I yielded my daughter to you captive, and gave you passage out of my demesnes, could you guarantee fair trial for her, with all evidence considered?"

"No."

"What likelihood for her, then?"

"Perhaps ten percent. How could the Prince justify what he has undertaken, without a witch to be burned and plunder for his minions? A fair trial might absolve her, undermining his honor. It would not be politically feasible, therefore it will not come to that."

"Has the pride of fair Keep sunk to such state?" Kade demanded with disgust.

"It seems it has."

"What would you have me do, then?"

"Proffer me as hostage for her safety. I am not at the moment held in high esteem by the Prince, but that offer, rejected, might cause my own forces to rebel against him. My contingent is by far the strongest of his forces. Such revolt would so weaken the Prince as to render him unable to complete the siege."

"You speak practical politics," Kade said. "But this is not my way. I would not promote my interest by stooping to treachery, or otherwise sully my own honor."

"This is your liability," Qaval said. Then, slowly, he extended his claw. Kade shook it gravely, accepting this silent token of respect.

"Isn't that beautiful?" Psyche murmured to Herald, her eyes moist. "They are so like each other."

Herald felt tears in his own human eyes. Solarian and Qaval, each interested in saving Psyche, each constrained by honor to sacrifice her—and she admired their stands! This was the beauty and tragedy of this truly heraldic culture. He had dallied with its symbols, without ever before appreciating its inner quality. If by some miracle they all survived this crisis, he would spend the rest of his life here, and not merely because of Psyche. This was a society an entity could truly believe in.

Kade returned to business. "You do not believe we can withstand siege directly?"

"I am sure you cannot. Kastle Kade will fall within the day."

"Then I must take desperation measures. You shall be chained to my daughter, and the two of you and Herald the Healer will be removed from this castle via our underwater crawler. You will go not to her trial, but into hiding. The castle may fall, but the Lady Kade will survive."

"This I would not recommend," Qaval said.

Kade signaled. Human guards stepped forward. "I am unable to follow your recommendations," Kade said. The guards clamped manacles on one wrist each of Qaval and Psyche, adjusting them to fit snugly. Qaval did not resist. The two of them were then guided down toward the courtyard between the outer and inner walls, Kade following with Herald. "My daughter knows who possesses the key to these locks," Kade said. "You all arrive alive—or none do. Then you will be released."

"This cannot succeed," Qaval said.

The guards conducted them down to another part of the cellar, leaving the Duke of Kade to his defense of the castle. Psyche glowed again as they marched along the dark corridors; her incredible aura was still rising.

Behind a barred door was a contraption like a giant alligator, with projecting paddles in lieu of legs. Evidently it was designed to rest lightly on the bottom, propelled by the paddles worked from inside. A medieval submarine.

Herald bent over and entered the crawler, putting himself into its front seat. Two oar handles projected in, one from either side, and a transparent panel showed the terrain in front. It would be slow and clumsy, but presumably they could escape the castle this way. They could surface at the north end of Lake Donny, where no one was watching, and get away overland through the deep forest.

But Qaval balked. "This is pointless death for us all," he said. "Better to remain in the castle."

Psyche put her free hand on Qaval's chained wrist. Even in this gloom, Herald saw the contrast between blue fingers and green wrist. "Why, Enemy Witness?" she asked gently.

Her aura had stood at 250 at the time of the avalanche, but Herald realized that it had not been near its peak. She had hit that level before, upstairs; at the ideal spot of the wine cellar, it would have been higher. What astonishing intensity it was moving toward, Herald could only guess. Perhaps 275. The Duke of Qaval was being exposed to the persuasion of aural power such as Herald himself could never muster.

"Lady, I cannot oppose you," Qaval said with another of his rippling smiles. "The Prince knows of the crawler; his spear entities lurk for it outside. We would drown."

Herald scrambled out of the crawler. "We'd better get back upstairs," he said, catching Psyche's elbow.

He paused, feeling her aura. He had been right: It had almost tangible power. The glow in the gloom was stronger.

They returned through the main cellar—and there, forgotten in the sudden crisis of the avalanche, was Hweeh of Weew. He had lapsed into shock when Psyche so abruptly broke contact, and remained here, puddled on the floor. "Oh, poor thing!" Psyche cried, running to him. Qaval had to follow, putting his tail to the floor momentarily to balance as he shifted direction.

"Wake! Wake!" Psyche said, touching the Weew.

"Wow!" Hweeh said, popping into focus. "Lady, you are something!"

"I am peaking," she said. "Hweeh, we were interrupted by an avalanche, and forgot you. I'm sorry; I know how cold these stones are, and should never have left you here. But we'd better define the Amoeba threat, so we can warn the Cluster." Her power of aura was now so great that Hweeh did not even flinch at the dread word. "You told us it is a huge fleet from alien space. That it could conquer our whole Cluster within a century."

"Yes, Lady! I perceive it even more clearly now. The fleet has been approaching via mattermission and half-light dispersion for centuries, and now is deploying for a multiple intrusion. There is no question of destination, and little of motive; we are the target."

"But how could a million-ship fleet mattermit inter-Cluster distances?" Herald asked. "The energy requirement would be prohibitive. The fleet would have to convert much of its own mass into transmission energy. Are you sure it's not a purely local phenomenon?"

"Absolutely sure," Hweeh said. "What local Sphere has a million full-diameter spaceships? It would require a billion sapients just to crew a fleet that size. It
has
to be from an alien Cluster!"

"But at this range... fuzzy photographs... how can you be sure they're
spaceships?
They could be meteorite clouds, or imperfections in reproduction—"

"Trust me to know my specialty!" Hweeh replied curtly. "The information is not from the holographs—which happen to be considerably more sophisticated than photographs, not subject to the same types of distortions—but from my interpretation of diverse sources. I did holographic spectroscopy and verified what could be the emission trails of half-light propulsion. The Amoeba is definitely an artificial structure. I went into shock when my fantastic suspicion was confirmed. We are being subjected to invasion—and we don't have much time. Our records go back four thousand years; there has been no prior Amoeba manifesting, and no other Amoeba is showing now. That means it is not any recent natural occurrence. My estimate is that this fleet is mattermitting from an alien Cluster, perhaps a million parsecs out, or ten million. Perhaps they destroyed that Cluster to gain the energy required for this jump, and will destroy our Cluster, as Andromeda tried to destroy Galaxy Milky Way, to enable them to make their
next
jump. What does a species do, once it has destroyed half of its own Cluster in the course of the war to conquer it? They proceed to some new, virgin Cluster, as the Andromedans would have done in time, had they been successful. The Amoebites do not travel in force merely to see the sights of the Universe."

"But this is unbelievable!" Herald protested, stung by the references to his own galaxy. Bless Llume of Slash, who foiled that disaster!

"Precisely. Hence no one believes it. Yet it is true. Therefore a matter to send a creature into shock."

"It has to be an invasion force," Qaval agreed. "And there is only one thing that would warrant such an excursion."

"Power!" Herald and Hweeh said together.