The facing walls on their left were blank and slanted upward to shoulder away the concussion blasts that the magicians had never thought to use. The ceramic armor had been perfect when it had been installed, four hundred and fifty years ago, and aside from a light brown defining the seams between the plates, it remained untouched for all the thousands of meters of the eastern galleries. Except where someone had managed to scribe the words "reductio ad imperium," in careful script. The words would not have been noticeable to the man from Lake Gilbert except for the same tan discoloration, an indication of the motto's age.
"Where?"
"I said, there have been no offensive actions of any sort."
"Then they've gone. Do your people have any theories?"
"The continuum is infini . . . "
"Goddamn it is."
"Infinite, and the possibility always exists that they have opened up new areas of it." The man shrugged. "First there was one spectrum, then the parallels were discovered. Possibly there are divergent areas of existence."
"There hasn't been any action on their part for years. No appearances, no creatures of light in the streets, nothing freezing the air inside jet engines." The man from Lake Gilbert realized Etridge was hardly aware of his presence. "I wonder if we've acquired something like a critical mass of understanding. Nothing sudden, but just gradual accretions, year after year. Half the old magazines here are filled with reference books and tape summaries, all piled up, cross-indexed, cross-referenced, constantly revised and brought up to date by newer findings. Our computers talk to at least a dozen other Border installations on a regular basis. They can tap into nearly every unit of any consequence in the world if they feel they're running into a particular problem. Could be. Just enough."
"But our knowledge alone could hardly make them vanish. Retreat and re-entrench maybe, but not just vanish." The man wished he was back at Lake Gilbert, walking with his morning coffee along its quiet hallways, confronted by nothing more disturbing than the portrait busts of dead heroes.
"They listen to us, you know," Etridge mentioned offhandedly. "Not in the way we examine them, disassemble them, and do the same to the pieces that are left.
They just listen now and then in their own ways." The contempt and condescension in Etridge's voice was unmistakable; the man from Lake Gilbert thought it inappropriate. "We only began to understand how they did it about eight or nine years ago. They use a number of means, but the non-corporeal ones all operate on the same final principles. Of course, there was no real reason to interdict them." The man from Lake Gilbert paled at this. "Joust Mountain isn't an offensive base, just a forward observation post that happens to be impregnable. All their listening and watching could tell them about was themselves." Etridge began smiling to the east. "Joust Mountain: the Wizards' Mirror. We just kept at them, about how they did what they were doing."
"That can't be what happened. You seem to be speaking entirely in metaphors, not hard facts."
"Metaphor was the only way we could talk about the magicians' world until the strategic shift from offense to understanding. There was no common reference or standard in their actions. Now, maybe, we've offered them one."
"And if they've taken it?"
"Then they've done one of three things. They have become like us. They have found another place and time which can better protect their goddamned mysteries, or they have turned their last mysteries on themselves and died." Etridge was grinning broadly now; the prices other people had paid at Thorn River and at scores of other places might have been worth something after all. We've pushed them to the edge, he thought, shown them the short end of the pier and the fools walked off it rather than admit it ended.
"We know it's not the first, because if they became like us they'd be tossing atomics at us before we caught on and did the same to them. I also imagine they'dbe pissed as hell at us for having broken up their little game."
Little game. The man from Lake Gilbert shuddered to himself. Seven hundred years of the little game where millions had been ground to pulp between two opposing forces that could not understand each other well enough to carry on the well-ordered killing of normal wars. Seven hundred years of the little game where men marveled speechlessly at the non-exclusivity of their world and the thought that other gods might stand against their own.
He must report this man to Lake Gilbert, or to the government at Castle Kent. Etridge was proposing a single, unthinkable triumph. If what he was saying was true, he should not be in a position of responsibility, not at such a critical strategic and historical juncture. The victory he hinted at smelled of Heisner's achievement.
If only there were more armed people here. He was a soldier and did not like the paradox of a frontline post like Joust Mountain being staffed with people who clung to computer readouts more passionately than the regiments at Lake Gilbert did to their automatic weapons. But then, it seemed that the people at Joust Mountain did everything more passionately than those at Lake Gilbert, Everwhen, The Corridor, Castle Kent, or in any of the cities of the world. The guns there implied respectful fear and caution; one had to be ready because one did not
know.
Know what the enemy was thinking, know how he performed his feats of wondrous violence, know when and where he might leave his preposterous castles and strike against them.
Here, they were blinded by looking into the night, against whose visitation Lake Gilbert and its divisions waited.
The man must be reported. This is not the way the services should protect their world.
"It could be that we've shown the bastards the edge," Etridge repeated. "A few more weeks, a month or two at the most, and we may have to go and look around for ourselves."
"I'll pass your evaluation of the situation along to Lake Gilbert."
The doctor, who was a machine, found Aden sitting in a wicker lounge chair. Graceful oaks and maples framed the hospital behind him. It had been the home of an immensely wealthy family before the war, and the Special Office had taken great care to preserve its Georgian tranquility. It was free of the baroque pretensions of the magic's architecture; neither did it have the sullen massiveness that their own world had necessarily adopted in the times when the enemy might appear anywhere. The Special Office had found that it greatly comforted its people.
At the far end of the lawn, where the dogwood groves started, the doctor could see the long knitting needle barrel of a Bofors gun weaving back and forth across the sky, waiting as it had for decades for the enemy, not even sure if its ammunition could harm the particular avatar he might choose. Its splayed base was overgrown with ivy that the groundskeepers had trimmed and weeded; the paint had been polished off its controls so it looked like one of the ceremonial guns that were fired to celebrate Republic Day at Castle Kent.
The Special Office thought that people were more at ease with machines that looked like machines, rather than like people. Thus the doctor, while manlike in his general form, had no face. His oval skull was brushed aluminum and it reflected the sunlight in frequencies which the Office had discovered to be comforting to its people.
The doctor walked over to Aden and introduced himself. The man looked rather older than his service record listed him to be, but that was to be expected. He sat down in another chair, slouching easily on his spring steel spine, and folded his hands in front of him.
"We think you'll be well enough to leave us in a month or two." The voice, like the reflective abilities of the doctor's skin, reassured Aden. "I must say, though, that not many of us thought you'd come along so well when they brought you in."
Aden smiled to the doctor and nodded. The device was easier to talk to than an actual person at this moment. "Yes. I lost track of things . . . How long was I . . . ?"
"Less than six months after you emplaced the eye."
Aden was embarrassed by his vagueness. "So short?"
The doctor had no face but Aden had the impression that he was smiling. "Not really. You've been here for almost four more. And all of them have been rather important months, what with the war winding down and all." The doctor stretched his polished arms and looked around himself. The hospital was a beautiful place and he liked it more than any other he had been assigned to.
"I know. Donchak said that was happening in the City, and, ah. . . "
"Havinga," the doctor put in helpfully.
"Yes. He said the same thing. I wonder what it will be like, not having the war around."
"They're practicing for our new world in some of the southern districts and in the Taritan Valley. Getting wonderfully eccentric and irrelevant. Some jewelry making, art, quite a bit of music playing, storytelling and people back in bright colors. The reports are really a delight to read."
"The government's not afraid they're being subverted by magic?"
The doctor inclined his featureless head in a way that indicated amusement to Aden. "Not at all. The Border Command, of course, has its usual dark opinion of the matter, but the people at Castle Kent just feel that they're turning away from understanding and Dr. Heisner's numbers, not towards magic."
"Then it might be over."
The doctor nearly said that, yes, they'd won, but he knew the kind of victory Aden felt it would have to be. "It might." The gun was still emplaced at the bottom of the lawn and the communication aerials were still strung between the hospital's ancient chimney pots; but it might be over.
"Will we be going back if it is?"
"Not immediately. No, not for some time. Those people in the Taritan, I think, are going to set the style for the moment. People will just want to rest and get all this damned purity of oppositions out of their systems. We don't all want to end up like old Heisner, even if the Border Command thinks we should."
"And the other half of the world?"
"We'll just let it heal for a while, I suspect."
Aden looked into the soft penumbra of the doctor's face. "Heal?" he whispered, but did not know why he found the word so disturbing.
The doctor knew and he ached for the young man. "Yes. We've been hurting each other for so long. We need the time as much as the land over there will for the enchantments to die down."
"Will she be there?"
"She?"
The word came into his mind slowly and for a second he continued to look at the doctor without saying anything. "Gedwyn"—he was not sure he pronounced it right. "What about her magic? Will that be gone too?"
"The magic of her garden will go. That's where we first picked you up. You really had us concerned after you left the eye. . . "
"Then it was magic, all of it."
"Not what held you. That was, ah, love. That's why we really weren't too concerned with you and it was relatively easy to stop any treason charges from being brought by the services. They understand those things at Castle Kent more than they used to." The doctor forced himself into postures and tones of reassurance. His work with Aden had come along so beautifully, and he felt some of it eroding.
"But that is just magic too. Heisner explained that, didn't he?" Aden's voice was shaking.
"You are not a very strong man, Aden." The doctor felt it necessary to release the pressure. "Brave and honorable, but not strong."
"No. I guess not," Aden said softer than dust. The charred ribbon of the road recoiled against his heart, winding all the way from Clairendon to the sentry tripod, bringing with it the first clear memory of Gedwyn he had had since he was brought to the hospital. He wrapped his arms around his chest despite the warmth of the air.
"But, you must see, Aden, that the Office never wanted strong men. The Border Command takes all it can get and the regular services only want enough to get by. But we, you and I, cannot afford such strength. We work with too many fragile things that break so easily. But we have to use them. That's been our job through these centuries."
"Who sent the bomb?"
"The device was due to be sent in anyway from First Valley. The Office just modified it a bit so that you and she would not be hurt."
"This is not hurt?"
"It's minor compared to what you both would have felt had you stayed any longer. The lives on the road were going to be lost no matter what we did. We only changed so much of it so that two of them could be prolonged a bit more." The doctor sensed Aden's acceptance of what he was saying. "Your Office continued to watch after you and after its own enemy. We only covered your treason with one of our own."
"And I could not have seen any of that by myself, without the eye?"
"You were half blind, you know. We had to provide you with enough light to get you moving again."
"I still am half blind." He touched the bandages covering his left socket.
"Yes."
"Could I have another?"
"A normal . . . ?"
"No. Like the first one the Office gave me."
There was some uneasiness in the doctor's voice, but with no facial expression to match it with Aden could not be sure. "But you know that one was a one-off project. Incredibly complex and expensive. You know it would just lead you back to where you started, back on Heisner's track. Magic is gone or at least withering. Without its mysteries to look at, you'd turn in on your own life and world.
"Anyway, the, ah, Office is being shut down. Funding has always been difficult. And now that the war is winding down, the services cannot see the need for us. Centralization, that's what they say is necessary. Things that will look at the enemy, or what's left of him, from the outside, that won't have to go there and risk getting caught when their outrage shows, or just, ah, succumbing to the appeals of that place." The machine felt embarrassed again.
Aden had not noticed; instead, he was struck by the thought that the technique of external observation and contact was just what the robot was practicing on him, as if the Office itself was distrustful and afraid of its own people and sought to deal with them from a distance.