pondering what was more than mere life or death, but the infinite shading of gray spanning the gap between. They were embarking on a rainbow bridge, Bifrost, to take its place. Along separate paths, each mind questioned the power of their protective Heimdall, but thething had progressed too far for any backward turning now. . . .
Instead of the convenient but inefficient circlets of common use, they sprouted induction leads from their scalps, tucked in at the roots of their hair, and they were overloaded. Demogorgon, the familiar of his own lifework, wore more than double his usual number of cables, become the maintainer of the effort they would make. Krzakwa wished once again for the direct physical taps into his own circuitry that would remove the hundred-angstrom uncertainty in the induction field.
Brendan's body was energized, brought to the full level of its inherent ability. The shell waited, hoping for a return of its master, ready to unleash the demonic, primitive being that lurked at its physical core. With the circuit completed, open but untuned, they could all feel it waiting: a creature laid bare, stripped from beneath the layers of a hundred-million-year evolutionary path. It might be of some use. . . .
'Your show, Demogorgon. . . .'
'Right.' Compressing his lips, eyes unfocusing with concentration, Demo thought his new command sequences and, in a wash of mingled wills, they went under and down.
Bright Illimit.
And again.
Again . . .
Demogorgon appeared alone on the middle of a clean white dais, standing in high-booted feet on a tough, somewhat resilient material, and noted the slightly diminished Earth gravity normal to the Illimitor World. All around was a sparsely grassed flat tundra, much of it a desiccated mud flat, cracked and clay-red. The sky was a winter cobalt blue flattened by the broken clouds which lined the horizon like a collar. A gusty wind fluttered from every compass point, plucking at the loose, cloth-of-green-gold combat uniform he wore. He felt the covered hilt of his golden sword Halaton at one hip, and a lozenge-shaped pistol on the other. Everything seemed right, although he couldn't identify this actual terrain with any he recalled creating. There was neither sun nor shadow. Theplatform sat on a courseway, a white road seemingly bleached into the otherwise naturalistic countryside, running off into the far distance. At its end, beyond the clouds, lay a faint blue shadow, a dark, almost empurpled thing, mountainlike. When he squinted hard, Demogorgon could make out shimmering, crenellated battlements, towers, and the instruments that would resist a siege. Like a sea mirage, the castle was disconnected from the horizon, floating, and he knew that, if he concentrated, he would see that the world dropped away from that citadel. There would be no earth there, no sea, no fire; just air. The elements of the world converged.
Briefly, Sealock's face, the face of the GAM, floated huge above him, looking down through featureless blue eyes, holes in its face that showed the sky behind. Demo shivered, and beckoned the others.
Harmon and Vana blinked into existence side by side a fraction of a second apart, clad in identical oversized gray tunics, the lustrous cloth bound in place with thin leather bands at waist and shoulder. Silver swords and ancient wheel-lock guns dangled from hip webbing. John appeared alone, holding a metallic blue machete, wearing a tight- fitting white shirt and trousers, with an emblem on his chest that showed twin eclipsing moons, their faces seamed by irregular canals. He wore a long white cape and had a small, modern-style sidearm in a holster that hung from his thigh, an energy weapon of some sort. Beth appeared behind him then, clad in a pale blue jumpsuit, similarly armed. She looked more like herself than any of the others, less enhanced. Ariane came, dressed in white also. Her sole weapon was a slim, rifle-like device, a delicate thing of lenses and indigo crystalline rods. Axie appeared in a diaphanous swirl of pale green fabric. She carried nothing, but the diadem about her temples had a red gem that glittered dangerously. There was a long pause and then Temujin Krzakwa came into existence. He was dressed in flowing black robes and had a massive sword at his hip. Over one shoulder he carried a heavy iron weapon, its snout a blued metal cylinder. It had complex controls on its stock and, with them, instructions stenciled in white. Demogorgonsquinted and could make out one line: it said,missile preheat. Stiffly they came together, staring at the outlines of Centrum's castle in the distance. Krzakwa looked around. 'Somehow,' he said, 'I expected more than this.' Ariane nodded. 'With so much to draw from ... It could be more compact.'
'It's giving us room to negotiate,' said Demogorgon. 'A big world means options, choices. . . . We can't have expected it to be cut and dried. I'm surprised, actually, that so far everything is so comprehensible.'
'Well, with this white Brick Road, and dark Oz on the horizon, our choices seem pretty clear cut,' said the Selenite, 'but we don't want to be too predictable. There's no telling what might happen.'
'Maybe we should head in the opposite direction,' said Cornwell. 'Though I doubt that would accomplish much.'
'Probably not.' Demo walked slowly to the edge of the platform and looked out into the arid wasteland. 'We may as well try to make contact.' He turned back to face them. 'No reason for us to walk, is there?' Without waiting for a reply, he clasped his right hand to his left shoulder, then whipped it about in a salute-like motion, thinking his control calls. Eight of the gray, three-legged riding beasts of Arhos appeared: heavy, three-eyed creatures called
Harmon stared at the one that approached him, looking into its limpid brown eyes. It was the size of a small house. 'How are you supposed to mount . . . Oh!' He looked up and the animal had crouched down on two of its legs to make a perfect thirty-degree ramp with its third. Delighted, he clambered up the leg and sat himself on the cushion of soft flesh in the center of its disk-shaped body. When the rest had mounted up, they began to ride. The thers stayed in a compact group and were faster than they looked, propelling themselves into a sinusoidal canter that was totally at variance with their appearance.
In the distance, Centrum awoke to itself, feeling slightly uneasy, a faint itch that was inaccessible to its full
