“Were paying?”
“Look at the dust, heavy years of dust. Nothing has come through here for a considerable time.”
“But they used this one gate, both ways?”
Ella May said, “Nothing is stacked conveniently next to the other one, and that machine with wheels is an odd thing to find here…” She went to look it over more closely. “Phase transformer! Look at the size of it. It has to be salvage, because no one has used anything like this for years.”
“Used it to do what?” Lady Badness demanded.
Ella May nodded. “The fields of these gates are obviously one-way. This thing, if started up inside it, or in contact with it, is probably designed to reverse it.”
We turned toward the door as it clattered with a hammering of spearpoints.
“The K’Famir police don’t carry energy weapons,” said I. “But it won’t take long to get them from the armory.”
Ella May said, “I suggest we push this machine into that light pool and turn it on. It seems to have its own energy source.”
“Don’t push it all the way in,” I cried. “Push in the front end, but leave the end with the controls out, so we can see what happens.”
“An excellent suggestion, my dear,” said Mr. Weathereye, applying his shoulder to the machine, which seemed reluctant to move in any particular direction. The clatter outside grew louder, and there were coordinated calls.
“They’re bringing up something to batter the door down,” I translated. “We have to make it move.”
We managed to get it turned around, though it seemed to me that only Ella May and I exerted any real force upon it. With a last, desperate shove, we thrust the end of it through the glowing gate. When Ella May pushed the button, the shimmering pool turned abruptly black as air smelling of dust and damp rushed around us. When she pushed the button again, it reversed.
“So they were trading with one source,” mused Mr. Weathereye. “I wonder where the black one goes.”
I had gone to peer through the crack along the hinge side of the great door. “They’re in the plaza. They’re bringing up some huge…looks like a log?”
“Battering ram,” said Ella May. “We don’t have much time. I suggest we go through there”—pointing at the shining gate—“and take the machine with us.”
“When we get to the other end, we use it to seal it off behind us,” said Lady Badness.
“Exactly,” said Ella May.
“This road, rather than the other one?” I asked.
Ella May shook her head. “We don’t have time to move it to the other one. This one smells fairly clean.”
From outside came a chant, “Hrnah, cush, hrnah, cush.” The battering ram had arrived and was thundering against the door. The metal shrieked as it bulged inward in a huge, swollen carbuncle. Crates toppled in a cloud of dust. Ella May and I thrust the machine ahead of us.
Voices outside built to a bellowed unison: “Hrnah, cush, hrnah, cush!”
The door screamed, the hinges popped, long metal screws flew across the room, one striping my cheek with blood. Over my shoulder I could see the bolts bending slowly, a little more with each crashing blow. We pushed, grunting, sweating, the others swearing words I had never heard before, thrusting through the shining disk only moments before the great metal doors came off their hinges.
The heavy machine was moving more easily, as though downhill, and I glimpsed the room behind us as it filled with K’Famir who were obviously unfamiliar with the gate. Some of them approached it cautiously, some searched behind the crates, some approached the other gate and were shocked by it, as Ella May had been. We were still pushing when the machine reached the end of the way we were in and protruded into somewhere else. Several of the K’Famir tried reaching into the light gate, discovered it did not hurt them, walked boldly through and began to pursue, spears waving.
“Turn it around,” I cried, shoving at the nearest exposed surface of the device with all my strength. The bulky device was now moving fast enough that the momentum carried it around and let it come to rest with the four of us in the clear while the front of it remained inside the gate. I was nearest to the control and I slammed my fist down on it, holding it down. From inside the gate we heard the high, ululating screeches of K’Famir voices just as we, ourselves, were thrust hard against the machine by a gust of air that came from behind us. It rushed away into the opening, then stopped.
“It’s closed,” said Lady Badness. “I hope whoever was in there was blown out. Now it’s black at their end, just like the other one. They can’t use either gate, unless they have another machine.”
“Were the soldiers pushed back?” I whispered.
“The sounds of pain receded,” said Mr. Weathereye. “I think it likely they were more than merely pushed. Flung, perhaps.”
“It’s dark in here,” I said. “The only light is from the pool…”
“I have a light,” said Ella May, turning it on. We looked around ourselves, trapped in a short tunnel, blocked at one end by the shimmering gate and at the other by a locked iron grille. Beyond the grille was a huge, heavy door.
Ella May asked, “Shall I see if I can cut through the grille?”
Weathereye shook his head. He sat down and leaned against the wall. “There’s no hurry,” he said. “We’re not trapped. Cantardene can’t follow us. While we have a moment, I’d like to sit here quietly while Miss Ongamar tells us what she has learned over the last decades she spent there.”
To their manifest amusement, I took off my Hrassian nose, turned my outer garment inside out, and began at the left side hem to read them everything I knew about the K’Famir.
I Am Gretamara and Ongamar/on Chottem
When the Gardener joined Sophia and me as we breakfasted under the flowering tree, she seemed distracted. While we ate,
