would have chosen.'
Reave still could not believe what he was hearing. 'We can get out of here?'
'You've been selected to escort a party of the city's metaphysicians out to Palanaque.'
'Palanaque?'
Zill nodded. 'Anywhere's got to be better than here.'
Reave grunted. 'So the rats are leaving?'
'Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.'
Reave half smiled. 'Have you found a way out, too?'
Zill's eyes hardened. 'That's none of your fucking business, Reave Mekonta. Just get your ass to J platform and thank whatever miserable gods you may believe in that you've been given a second chance.'
It was Thelodian who wrote, 'In this era of irritating mysteries nothing was more irritating (except perhaps humanity's capacity for accepting virtually anything as normal in the shortest possible time) than the matter of the disrupters.' Few of the proffered explanations for the arrival of the disrupters in those troubled final days have come close to being satisfactory. The facts are not in dispute. The disrupters appeared like the sand-worms of Herbert, apparently composed of a thirdform matter that was a full ninety degrees more unorthodox than that which made up the nothings. They came, and they chewed their way through reality. When they were gone, they left a slimetrail of intolerable hallucination that faded only as the nothings reinsinuated themselves.
The Externalists, with characteristic tunnel vision, maintained that the disrupters were simply the final form of the Draan doomsday weapon that had started by causing the nothings and came to full cycle in the Final Cataclysm. Clearly, this is nonsense. The very fact that the Thousand Years War lasted for a full thousand years seems ample proof that the forces of the Draan and those of mankind were very evenly matched. There is no possibility that in the latter days of the war the Draan were able to command forces so far beyond the understanding of human beings. As with all Externalist arguments, the primary motivation behind the theory would appear to be not so much an arrival at the truth but the absolution of the human race from responsibility for its own destruction.
The Juxtapositionists were considerably more inventive. Extending their central belief that the entire Damaged World effect was a result of the random encroachment of a neighboring extradimensional reality in the same area of actualspace, they claimed that the disrupters were merely an outside reflection of something that, although ultimately destructive to human reality, was perfectly normal in its own.
La Vortice, ever handy with the related painpattern and the Burden of Guilt, had his own gloomy and ponderous ideas. Of course, to buy the grim old Master's disrupter concept, one had also to accept his whole elegantly constructed but complex premise that humans brought it on themselves, that man was crushed by the massive monolithic burden of his monstrous history and culture and his inability to adapt when the divisions between the temporal and spiritual, the physical and the meta, became blurred and fragmented. The disrupter, according to La Vortice, was merely a product of that decay, a mutated virus in the already disease-racked body of reality. As he liked to repeat, 'What could be closer to the human spirit than an entity that ate reality and shit hallucination?'
CHAPTER TWELVE
'There's seven of us.'
'Another fucking mystic number.'
The biode had picked an escort for the metaphysicians of Krystaleit that impressed even Billy with its radical weirdness. Waiting on the airship dock for their arrival were the DNA Cowboys and Renatta de Luxe; an armored trooper who had introduced himself as Lister Stent; Jet Ace, who was convinced that as a team they were destined for epic deeds; and Clay Blaisdell, who was drunk. There was also a hexaclone air crew of six, wearing trim, identical leather jodhpur suits, helmets like skullcaps with flaps, and raised propeller insignia. Behind them, the silver expanse of the dirigible R1009 rode gently on its mooring beams against a background of nothings that had become a deep purple. Inside the city all hell was breaking loose. It sounded as if the last organized stand had started.
The metaphysicians came out of the tunnel mouth. As always seemed to be the way with metaphysicians, their white bodysuits were spotless, and they seemed totally unconcerned about what was going on around them, except for maybe a bare acknowledgment of the need to hurry. There were twenty-seven of them, and they walked in a tight, informal procession, guarded by a squad of militiamen who formed a tense half circle behind them with their weapons leveled back down the tunnel. They seemed to expect that pursuit might catch up with them at any minute.
The metaphysicians did not hesitate. They walked straight up the lowered gangway and through the main lock of the dirigible. The air crew turned smartly and followed. Nobody had told the escort of seven what exactly they were expected to do, but they did not wait for an order to board. They hurried up the gangwayin the wake of the air crew. Renatta went first, and the DNA Cowboys followed. Blaisdell stumbled after them, and Stent and Jet Ace lumberingly brought up the rear. Reave had expected the militia to follow them — there was certainly enough room aboard the very large airship. Instead, they remained standing on the dock, looking nervously at the access tunnel. As the gangway rolled back and the port sighed shut, he noticed dial they did not even have stasis generators. There was no way out for them.
The main lock led to a long viewing gallery dial ran all the way around the outside of the lower gondola. Once inside the airship, the metaphysicians gathered in an exclusive group, holding an urgent whispered conversation. Renatta and the other three put down what gear they had managed to rescue from the Victory Cafe and went to the viewing windows to take a last look at Krystaleit. The Minstrel Boy had insisted that they go back and retrieve his veetar, even threatening to go on his own when the others showed an understandable reluctance to risk their lives for a musical instrument, no matter how exotic, particularly as the Minstrel Boy appeared not to play it any longer. Surprisingly, it was Reave who had decided that it was only fitting that they rescue the Minstrel Boy's legendary instrument. When Billy had still seemed disinclined, Reave had pointed out that they had done as much for him when they had rescued Renatta. Renatta had immediately protested being equated with a veetar, but Reave had dismissed her complaint with a casual wave. It was not the nature of the rescuee that mattered. The common point was that both had been gratuitous, even selfless, operations that were carried out at the request of a comrade. His explanation in no way satisfied Renatta, but further argument was short-circuited by the spectacle of Stent lumbering across the deck with the unconscious Blaisdell draped across his outstretched metal arms.
A chime sounded, and the pleasant, melodic voice of the airship's passenger-aid intelligence came over a concealed PA.
'Please stand by. The R1009 is about to disengage its mooring beams and pull away from the docking platform. Turbulence may be experienced during the initial move under power, and major disturbance will occur during entry to the nothings. There will be a further warning before entering the nothings.'
There was something a little disturbing about the soothing tone of the artificial voice announcing their departure from a city that was being torn apart and butchered. Even more disturbing was the fact that the airship was almost empty. The R1009 was quite capable of lifting with a couple of hundred refugees, and it seemed almost criminal to Reave that it was leaving the city with just thirty-four passengers on board. The study of metaphysics appeared to do nothing to foster the growth of a humanitarian conscience.
The mooring beams snapped off, and the R1009 rose gently away from the platform. It was unbelievable that anything so large could move with such precision and delicacy. The vast, extended silver cigar was built externally on the ancient zeppelin pattern but with an industrial stasis generator and a pair of big mass repulsers where the gasbags had been back in the olden days. Its nose slowly turned, and once clear of the platforms, it pushed out to
