beam of his lamp showed nothing but the walls of the corridor, fading to a geometric point with distance. 'That heads due east, near as I can tell.' Out from under the city and towards the hills. 'If there's anything beyond that. . light. . we might find another shaft leading up.'
Thom nodded, wiping a sleeve across his mouth. 'Maybe. I wish we'd brought some water.'
Raj grinned. 'I wish you hadn't said that,' he said. 'I really do.'
* * *
'Mirrors,' Thom said. For the first time in Raj's memory, there was real awe in his friend's voice. 'I've never
'I've never seen a
The room was circular, floored and roofed with mirrors, and with a single seamless sheet of mirror for the walls. The center of the circle was a pillar of light; white, glareless, heatless, odorless, shining on the endless repeated figures of the two men. Raj felt himself stagger in place, lost and splintered in fractions of himself. It was a moment before he noticed the last, the intolerable strangeness.
'Thom,' he said urgently. '
Thom blinked for an instant; then his eyes widened and he turned to run.
Raj fired, with his second finger on the trigger and the index pointing along the barrel, the way the armsman had taught him: at close range, you just pointed and pulled. The five shots rang out almost as one, the orange muzzle flashes and smoke dazzling his eyes. Almost as loud was the
Raj's muscles seized halfway through the motion of reloading. A voice spoke: not in his ears, but in his mind. Spoke with an inhuman detachment that had a flavor of hard-edged crispness:
yes. yes, you will do very well.
Chapter Two
The floor had vanished, and the pillar of light. There was nothing beneath him, although he could feel the pressure of weight under his feet. The off-white haze of powder smoke cleared rapidly, as if the air was being circulated without a detectable breeze. Thom hung suspended also, still in the first motion of flight, as if this was the Outer Dark where those who rejected the Spirit of Man fell frozen forever.
He heard his throat trying to whimper, and that brought him back to himself. He was a Whitehall of Hillchapel, and a soldier, and a man grown. The worst this whatever-it-was could do was kill him, and a paving stone in the riots could have done that. Or a scropied in his boot on a hunting trip, or a Colonist bullet or a Brigade bayonet. His soul only the Spirit could damn or save.
yes. excellent.
'Who the Dark are you?' Raj said, trying for the tone his father had used on machinery-salesmen back at Hillchapel. Hillchapel, sweet wild scent of the silverpine blowing down from the heights, the sound of a blacksmith's hammer on iron-
I am Sector Command and Control Unit AZ12-b14-c000 Mk. XIV.
Awe struck the human; he tried to genuflect, found himself still immobile. 'Are you. . a
yes. although not in the sense you use the term.
'What do you mean?'
i am not a supernatural being.
'What are you, then?'
i am a sentient artificial entity of photonic subsystems tasked with the politico-military supervision of this sector for Federation Command.
That's what a supernatural being is, dammit. Raj frowned; that was straight out of the Creed, and even the phrasing was the archaic dialect the priests used. First it says it isn't a supernatural being, then it says it's working for the Holy Federation, he thought in bewilderment. An angel.
'What do you want of me?' he continued bluntly. Although the skeletons outside had given him a few grisly notions along those lines.
observe. think.
Thom and the mirrored sphere vanished. This time Raj did cry out, but it was as much wonder as fear; he was hanging suspended in air, flying as men had done before the Fall. It took a moment for him to recognize precisely where; the bird's-eye-view was utterly unfamiliar, and the scene below was not that which he knew. It was the shape of the land itself that finally shocked recognition out of him, known from a hundred maps. The New Residence, the city of the Governors and the capital of the Civil Government. The near-perfect circle of the bay, cut by a single three-kilometer channel; the buildings were laid out on the Silver Antler hills, just in from the passage to the sea. Off south he could see the delta of the Hemmar River, misty in the morning light . . .
But it was not
The view swooped down to show people in odd, rich clothing strolling amid unearthly splendors. In a fenced garden with a strange double-helix sign above the gate children played with fabulous beasts, griffins and centaurs, miniature bears and tiny dogs no higher than a man's waist; even the ordinary riding dogs were odd, the usual breeds seeming shrunk to no more than five hundred pounds, smaller even than a lady's palfrey.
'Holy Spirit of Man of the Stars,' Raj whispered. Tears of joy formed at the corners of his eyes and leaked downward. 'I am not worthy!'
no. Was there a trace of exasperation in the passionless non-voice? this simulation is of a period roughly twenty years after the events you refer to as the Fall, after the last faster-than- light transit from bellevue. observe.
* * *
Something flashed by him in mid-air, something moving too quickly to see as more than a streak. Fire blossomed below; his heart cried out in shock as the lacy towers crumpled, and he could feel the small hairs along his spine struggling to stand erect as the ball of flame expanded out toward him like a soap bubble of orange and crimson. Thunder rolled impossibly loud and long.
Wait a minute, he thought. I don't feel anything different. The air even smells the same as it did before the vision. Why don't I feel the wind?
this is a simulation. consider it a very good map. you may alter your point of view by concentrating.
There was a feeling like a click behind his eyes, and the scene swooped dizzily. Raj tumbled for a moment