Beyond the Gate

Chapter 30

That evening, Gallen was relieved to find that instead of another sleepless night sitting among cold stones, he was able to enjoy the company of the Riallna in their temple at the Vale of the Bock.

The Riallna devotees were all women, with cream-colored complexions and hair that was long and as soft and golden brown as corn silk, and though he knew that they were each hundreds of years old, they looked as if they were only handsome women of middle years. Their lives were simple and peaceful, and in their own way they were as devoted to making the world a place of beauty as any of the Makers.

On the outside, the temple seemed to be only a large blockish building of ivory-colored stone with a row of four fluted-stone columns that rose in front to form a large porch. It was a variation on a theme common in this rainy region, and it was a simple design, and graceful.

But inside, the temple was a masterpiece of functionality and comfort. The walls were covered over in some gold cloth and decorated with large wooden panels of ash, carved with delicate scenes of the suns rising over mountain fields.

On the main floor, low beds were laid out on rich carpets around a central fireplace that was shaped into a tall cone, with perhaps a dozen small holes near the bottom so that heat and light could escape the fire, while the smoke would be drawn up the chimney.

Various oil lamps burned around the room, keeping the place bright inside, but the soft wine-colored sofas and the forest-green carpets muted the brightness, creating a lighting that reminded Gallen of a forest glen at dusk, rampant with earth tones.

Evidence that the Riallna had a strong sense of smell was also abundant. Gallen noted a cleanness, a freshness to the room that had seldom been duplicated among other cultures. The scents of lightly seasoned foods were evident, but no harsh perfumes, and perhaps it was the scent more than anything else that gave the room a sense of wide spaces, an openness that size alone did not account for.

In moments, the Riallna began serving them silently, bringing in warm water to wash with first, followed by plates heaping with food. Some of the priestesses played flutes and cymbals at the far side of the great hall, so that the music of woodwinds floated dreamily through the air, and Ceravanne’s friend Alna sat quietly with them, anticipating their needs, willing to let them steer the conversation in any direction they desired.

After a while, it became evident that the priestesses were seeking to serve their every whim, to give themselves completely in a manner that Gallen had seldom seen, even among the many lives the Inhuman had shown him, and he was pleased by the effect. He knew that this night, he was free to do whatever he pleased-whether it be to eat, sleep, listen to others, or talk quietly, and he realized suddenly how shallow the Inhuman’s training had been.

Among the lives that he’d been shown, none of the peoples he’d met had been as generous as the Riallna. Instead, they’d often been grasping and outright selfish. Perhaps not overtly so, but it ran like a strong current beneath all of their actions. Even the best of the people he recalled had been … unconcerned about anyone beyond their own kin.

And as Gallen considered where he most would like to be this night-home in Tihrglas listening to some old hand playing the violin, or among the Suluuth listening to the piping song of the winged people, or on the plains singing at the stars with the Roamers, he realized that he was most content to be here.

Almost effortlessly, he fell asleep beside Maggie upon one of the couches, unaware of when the music ended.

Shortly after dawn, Gallen woke to the sounds of women cooking. Orick was asleep on one couch, lying on his back, his paws in the air. Maggie slept beside Gallen, and he gently disentangled himself from her arms. Ceravanne was no place to be seen, and Gallen imagined that she might be out bathing in the pool again.

He got up, wanting to plan for the day’s coming battle, so headed out to the transport.

The suns were just rising in a soft violet haze over the mountains, and down the slope below the temple, the Bock had gathered near the pool, where they were dipping their feet into the pool’s edge.

Ceravanne was sitting down with them, dressed in a clean green tunic that one of the priestesses must have given her. She was talking energetically to the same Bock that Gallen had met before, though something odd was happening. When they’d first met a few weeks before, the Bock had been a dark green in color, but now the color of its skin was tinted with a grayish-brown, like the stalk of a plant that is dying. Gallen walked toward them.

The Bock spoke back to Ceravanne, slowly, in dreamy tones, telling her, “Too late, too late for me to come now. Winter is upon us … task falls to you!” Gallen stopped beside them for a moment, looked up at the green man, with his knobby joints, his long fingers splayed up toward the sun.

“Is everything all right?” Gallen asked Ceravanne.

She looked up at him. “The Bock are not awake yet. They have trouble this time of year. When the sun rises a bit more, and the blood warms in his veins, he will understand me more.”

“Can’t … can’t go,” the Bock said dreamily, the voice of an old man, long senile.

“I’ll leave you two, then,” Gallen said. He went to the transport, got Ceravanne’s map out for further study, laid it out on the floor, trying to imagine alternate routes into the Tekkar warren that might exist somewhere in the gray unknown spaces the map did not show.

In a few minutes, Maggie came to join him. “The Riallna are making breakfast for us,” she whispered, kneeling behind him. “I told them we’d be there in a while.” She too was wearing her mantle and a new green tunic, and she knelt over the map just behind him to his right. Gallen inhaled her clean scent, tasted her exotic perfumes from Fate, and was very conscious of the way her left breast pressed against his arm. He felt somehow old. I should be rutting with her, celebrating with her, instead of making plans for war, he considered, but he put the stray thought from his mind.

Maggie stroked him quickly up the spine with the back of her hand-an act that made the nerves tingle all along his body. It was an odd caress, one that the Worren women used to good effect in their lovemaking. They were a lusty people and Gallen smiled at some of his memories.

“I love it when you smile at private little dirty jokes like that,” Maggie said. She put both hands on his shoulders, knelt behind him, and nibbled his ear. “You know, darlin’,” she said in her rich brogue, “I know more tricks than any madam in Baille Sean. In fact, I’ll bet the Inhuman taught me more than the whole lot of them know together.”

Gallen licked his lips, considered what it would mean to have someone with the memories of an Inhuman as a lover. “Then I’d say our time here has been well spent for that, if for nothing else.”

Maggie giggled and twisted him down to the floor, then straddled him, commanded the car’s AI to close and lock the security door to the transport, then she smiled at Gallen and wiggled enticingly. “It would be a shame if we disturbed the others with all of our moaning and yelling, now wouldn’t it?”

Gallen nodded, and Maggie bent over and kissed him, and her breasts brushed against his chest. She just knelt there for a moment staring into his eyes, and then she began to untie his tunic slowly, sometimes reaching up to stroke his face or to snatch a kiss in gestures that he recalled from dozens of lovers over a hundred lifetimes. And yet being with her was better than being with any of the others, for Gallen saw that she knew all of the women he had ever loved, and with her gestures, she showed that she was willing to become all of them, to give what each had given before.

Gallen reached up and began to untie the strings on the front of her tunic, but Maggie shook her head, did it herself, and pulled off her clothes.

For the next half hour, Maggie led him on a tour of wonderland, and what they shared was as pure and beautiful as any moment he ever remembered. Somewhere in the lovemaking, he recalled some of the things he’d learned about women over the past six thousand years, and he began to give as good as he’d gotten, so that at the height of her excitement Maggie actually let out a jubilant shout of “Thank God and Gallen O’Day!” though when he teased her about it later, she denied recalling that she’d ever said it.

When they finished, Gallen held her for a long time, just lying on the cushions of the benches, and realized that for the first time in weeks he’d been able to completely forget about the Inhuman, about the world, and just enjoy the one woman he loved.

For a long time, he said nothing, till the suns began to shine higher through their window, and then Maggie said, “I was meaning to ask, what did you come in here for, anyway?”

“I was studying the map of Moree,” Gallen said, “trying to figure out how to get in, but I don’t see any easy path.”

Maggie smiled at him. “That’s because you’re looking at the wrong map.” She looked up toward the ceiling, to the crystal web in the cryotank above the doorway. “Car, can you see the map Gallen has here spread out on the floor?”

“Yes,” the car’s AI said.

“Show us a holo of the aerial view of Moree, as it was last night, and superimpose your image over the map.”

A holoimage appeared on the floor, an image of hills and trees in perfect miniature. Gallen sat up, and his feet sank into the landscape just below the knees, and he felt like a giant towering over the earth. The land around Moree was a yellow desert, with but one thin river flowing through it. Gallen could see individual Russian olive and juniper trees clumped among the rocks, and along the river was a veritable sea of cattails. By looking close, he could see the smoke holes from chimneys carved in rocks, along with the rare entrances where the Tekkar let in light to their world. Much of the land above the warrens was dedicated to farms that were carefully tended at night.

The starport facilities spread out on three sides of Moree, with five separate ships, like silver globes, set equidistantly around the city.

Crouching to the north, south, and west of Moree were three dronon walking fortresses, like huge black crabs guarding the carrion from which they would make a meal.

South of Moree were parked seven aircars, lozenge-shaped vehicles like the one they were in. “Wait a minute,” Gallen said, pondering the image. “Car, is this the total number of air vehicles that have been created?”

“Yes,” the car said.

Gallen looked closely at the holograph. The airfield at Moree was only lightly guarded by a handful of men-and they were best positioned for a ground assault.

“Do you see what I see?” Gallen asked Maggie. She looked at him craftily, and Gallen suspected that she did. “The Tekkar are ready to fend off a ground assault, but they’re not prepared to fight off an air attack.”

“Of course not,” Maggie said. “These are the first aircars they’ve ever owned, and they know that Northland has no air power. So they haven’t even considered how to best defend them. The servants of the Inhuman are relying on techniques and tactics they’ve learned over the past six thousand years-not the tactics your mantle knows.”

Gallen considered, questioned his mantle about the best way to assault the city from this transport. The other military fliers at Moree were parked too close to one another-a single rocket could blow them all into vapor. And the walking fortresses would not be able to defend the airfield from a smart missile fired a hundred kilometers away.

He considered shooting at the fortresses, too, but shook his head. His memories from Tkintit, a Dronon technician, warned him that those walking fortresses were so heavily armored that he couldn’t make much of a dent in them, and they had enough firepower to devastate his little transport. But Maggie pointed out that the whole reason the starships were spaced so far out from the city was to avoid damage to metropolitan areas in case the combustible liquids stored in the exterior radiation shields leaked out and caught fire. In space the liquids cooled to below their freezing point, and there was no danger of the shields exploding on impact with a meteor. But so long as they were down here in the atmosphere, those starships were just fancy bombs, and one of Gallen’s rockets could light a fuse that would blow the nearest hive fortress off its feet, and Gallen suddenly saw some interesting ways to wreak havoc on the Tekkar. Four missiles was all he had-one for the airfield, one for each of three starships.

“You know,” Gallen said, “if we convinced the Tekkar that our purpose in attacking was to destroy their technological buildup, it could form a decent diversion, allowing us to land near the Harvester’s throne room.”

By studying the map he realized that in all likelihood, a single rocky hillside hid the chambers where the Harvester lived. The hill was nestled deep in the heart of the city, and from the air it looked rather innocuous. But if the maps were right, then somewhere on the hill’s northern slope, a huge chamber had been hollowed out. Gallen imagined that if they could blow a hole in that room, they could drop themselves right into the middle of the city. But after a few moments, he shook his head in dismay. “I’m not sure. This vehicle has enough firepower to knock out the airfield and probably even take out a couple of spaceships, but I might not have enough rockets to blow a hole into those chambers.”

Maggie shook her head, and her mantle jangled. “You’re still thinking like some backward hick. What is it that makes our aircar fly?”

“The fusion reactor?” he said.

“No,” Maggie answered, “that’s the power source. The car flies on waves of directed antigravity.”

Gallen looked at her, and his mantle began to hint to him what she planned, but he did not have a technician’s mantle, with its own arcane wisdom, so he let her explain it. “Most of the time the antigrav generator gives off weak pulses, but I can vary those-creating phased wavelengths if I want to. And I guarantee that none of these subterranean hives here on Tremonthin were built to withstand the stresses I could put on them! If I fly over this subterranean city, spiking out harmonic frequencies-well, these Tekkar will be surprised at how quickly their stone walls can get pounded into sand.”

Gallen looked up into Maggie’s eyes. “Do you know how many people you’re talking about killing? There may be a half million or more Tekkar in that city.”

Maggie leaned back, and her hair fell behind her shoulders, accentuating the impassive lines of her face. “Gallen, when we talked to Ceravanne, you must have noticed that she has no idea how to run a war. She wants to go to Moree and ‘talk to’ the Harvester, for God’s sake! Well, that’s not how we’re going to do it. The dronon brought technology here to use as a weapon, and the Inhuman is tearing these people apart. I think we should cram these weapons down their throats and let them know just how monstrous a war can be.”

“We’re talking about killing innocent women and children,” Gallen said. And he surprised himself by saying “we’re,” for he knew that he had to consider it.

Maggie shrugged. “So hit them where they least expect it. Play on the Harvester’s weaknesses, and on the Inhuman’s inexperience. We can’t afford to be nice. We can’t afford to fight cleanly. I keep … I keep thinking about something my uncle Thomas told me just before we left Tihrglas. When he came into the inn, he planned to move in and use me badly. He lay on one of the beds in my inn, wearing his dirty boots, and he said something like, ‘If you ever have to play the villain in someone’s life, play your part well. Savor it. It’s one of the greatest joys in living.’ He hinted that you should stab the fellow in the back, and twist the knife with glee.

“Well, the Inhuman tried its best to make our last two weeks on this planet a living hell, and I for one don’t think we should pull our punches. When you see the Harvester, Gallen O’Day, I’ll not have you making any nice kissy faces at her just because she’s Ceravanne’s clone. If you don’t blow her head off, I will!”

Gallen stared at her in wonder. “Jesus, you Flynns are a bad-tempered lot! It’s a wonder the priests don’t catch on and drown the lot of you when you’re born!” Gallen leaned back, and his mantle was already considering the approach it would use when they attacked. He could trace the battle lines in his imagination.

He considered the carnage they would wreak on Moree, wondered about alternatives. Maggie was right. Her diabolical ideas did have the virtue of offering them the best chance at success, but Gallen couldn’t bring himself to seriously consider such a plan. In some ways, he realized, Maggie was tougher than he was. She’d been the one who first put her life on the line when battling the dronon, and now she was willing to wage a full-fledged war with the Tekkar.

He looked back down at the holographic image hovering over the floor, his legs rising like giant tree trunks from the land. But the image of the land transposed over Ceravanne’s map gave him an idea.

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