The Golden Queen

Chapter 8

Gallen began to canvass the city an hour after leaving Orick. That day, he stopped at numerous shops and studied local merchandise while quietly pumping proprietors for information. He methodically stepped off passageways and learned the ins and outs of the city.

The locals called the place Toohkansay, and Gallen learned about the various housing quarters, the manufacturing sectors, and the business districts. Some of these places denied access to the public, and this left gaping holes in his mental map of the city. For example, with only a few questions he learned where Lord Karthenor’s two hundred aberlains worked night and day in some mystic enterprise that a businessman said would “improve mankind,” but when Gallen went to the place, he found only a small clinic where men and women waited for some mysterious ministrations to be performed on them.

Gallen surveyed the area around the clinic-studied Toohkansay’s exits, found each window and skylight, hunted for likely places to hide.

Most of the city’s inhabitants fit within certain categories: those who wore silver bands on their heads either could not or would not speak to Gallen. The merchants with their lavish robes soon became easy to spot. In a dark cafe near one manufacturing district, Gallen sat at a table filled with the small white men and women with enormous eyes and ears. His questions elicited raucous laughter from them, yet they answered good-naturedly. They called themselves the Woodari. Their ancestors had been created to work on a distant planet where the sun was dark. Here on Fale, they worked as miners and built ships to carry cargo from one world to another. The Woodari starfarers claimed that their guild was so powerful that they did not fear the dronon.

Gallen asked so many questions of one little Woodari named Fargeth that the little man said, “Your vast ignorance amuses me, but I have work to do. You are so full of questions, why do you not go to the pidc?”

“The pidc?” Gallen asked. “What is that?”

“It is a place where all the questions you can ask in a lifetime will be answered in moments.”

“Where is it?” Gallen asked. “What do they charge for their service?”

Fargeth laughed. “Knowledge carries its own price. Gain it to your dismay.”

Gallen wandered the halls until he spotted the creator at work in his stall, making a child. In his past two days here in the city, the old alien was the only person Gallen met whom he genuinely liked. Gallen recalled the sadness in the old creature’s voice as he talked of “troubles in the city.” Gallen suddenly knew that the old man was an enemy to the dronon.

Gallen said, “A friend of mine has been taken by Lord Karthenor of the aberlains. I need to learn how to free her. Can you tell me where the pidc is?”

The old toadman nodded. “I feared such a thing might befall you. I will take you there.”

The toadman unhooked the various mechanical devices from his back, led Gallen down a familiar corridor to a business where young parents took children into little cubicles, set them in plush chairs, then attached silver bands to their children’s heads for hours at a time. The bands had a calming effect on the children, and Gallen had thought this was the only benefit the devices imparted.

The creator set Gallen in a white chair, showed Gallen how to strap a silver band to his temples, and whispered, “Good luck, my friend. For most people, this is all they ever learn in life, and a session here becomes the end of knowledge. If you were from Motak, you would know that filling your mind with trivia is only the beginning of study. Right action will lead to greater light.”

The toadman left, and Gallen held the silver strip a moment. He placed it on his head as if it were a crown. A gray mist seemed to form before Gallen’s eyes. The room went dark, and in the distance he could see a bright pinpoint of light. A voice within the light said, “I am the teacher. Open yourself to knowledge. What do you wish to know?”

Gallen couldn’t decide where to begin. “I know nothing of your people or customs. I can’t figure out what your machines are, or how they work-”

“I can teach you of people and customs-save those things that each community might consider too sacred to share. I can teach you the basics of all technology, though each industry has its own manufacturing secrets that are private property.”

“Teach me,” Gallen said. And if Maggie’s education was rough and painful, Gallen’s was sweet and filled with light. It began with a knowledge of mathematics that coursed into him evenly-beginning with the basics of number theory, moving up through advanced spatial geometry. There, mathematics branched into physics and he learned about subatomic particles, relativity, and Gallen memorized the various equations for the unified field theory and its many corollaries.

Then the introduction to physics moved into applied technologies, and Gallen was given to understand the workings of starships and incendiary rifles and gravcars and ten thousand other items.

He learned how thinking machines developed until they reached the point where they began evolving on their own and now could store more information than any human. The Guides were one form of teaching machines, but they included invasive technologies that let the Guide control the wearer. The chainmail headdresses, called mantles, like the one worn by Everynne were a more advanced type of personal intelligence that did not seek to dominate its wearer, and beyond these were a realm of intelligences that had nothing to do with mankind.

Gallen studied nanotechnology and learned how war machines were built. He learned about the development of viviforms and artefs and genetically upgraded humans-and he learned of some creatures that appeared to be biological in their construction but straddled the line between creature and machine.

He learned how the World Gates tapped into the power of a singularity, a black hole, where time and space were warped to the point that they did not exist, so that those who walked through the gate were whisked in a stream of atoms and recreated at a chosen destination.

At the end of an hour, Gallen’s head was sweaty. The teacher interrupted the session. “You are learning too much, too quickly,” it said. “Your brain can form only a limited number of neurological connections within a given time. Now, you must rest.”

“When can I come back?” Gallen asked.

“You will need to eat, nourish yourself, and return tomorrow,” the teacher answered.

Gallen rose from his chair, and the world seemed to spin. He fell down, grabbed the chair to support himself, and waited until he felt steady enough to walk to a cafeteria. He ate heavily and felt gloriously elated for an hour, then found himself slightly nauseated and absentminded.

In three hours, his head began to clear. He walked through the bazaar for a bit and felt a new man. He looked at the vendors with new eyes now, appreciating the craftsmanship of their wares, understanding the utility of items that he could not have fathomed hours before. Indeed, he had become a new man. Before, he had walked through the bazaar shaking his head in wonder, certain that many items worked on principles of magic beyond his ken. Now he saw that there was no magic-only creativity and craft.

He watched the people with open eyes, marking those who wore personal intelligences. Those who wore Guides, he saw now, were often slaves or bond servants. Some submitted to the indignity of wearing a Guide in the hope of earning greater rewards.

Those who wore the chainmail headdresses called “mantles” were vastly wealthy in ways that Gallen had not imagined. Their mantles served them and were far more intelligent than the little Guides.

Merchants were frequently freemen who made themselves useful, but the vast majority of mankind were worthless in this society, and so long as they were free to eat and breed and be entertained, they seemed content.

Here on Fale, there was no need for a man with a strong back or quick wit. There was nothing a human could do that an android could not do better. So those who did not have some type of relationship with a personal intelligence-either as a possessor or as one possessed-were considered only waste, the excess of humanity. And as Gallen studied the peons of Fale, he began to see that behind the well-fed faces, there was a haunted, cramped look.

Gallen went to his camp that night and lay looking up at the stars, smelling the wind. On this world, despite all of his strivings, the people would consider him worthless, and this was something that he had never imagined.

He considered what Karthenor had done. Perhaps in the lord’s mind, by giving Maggie a Guide, he had made her a person of worth, bestowed upon her some dignity. Yet such a gift was bound to carry a terrible price.

On the morning of her third day on Fale, Maggie’s Guide completed the task of injecting its own artificial neural network into Maggie’s nervous system. The Guide now commanded a secondary network of neurons that led through all of her extremities, so that it could control the rate of Maggie’s pulse and breathing, feel with her fingers and toes, watch with her eyes, and hear with her ears.

When it finished, it reported its progress to Maggie, flashing a three-dimensional image of the new nervous system to her. A sense of panic rose in her when she saw what had happened, but the Guide did not tickle her, did not send her its calm assurances. Instead, it left her with her fears.

Now that the Guide had extended its control over her, it announced that it was free to begin its greater work of teaching Maggie the intricacies of genetic manipulation. The Guide gave her routine tasks for the day. During one marathon twenty-hour work session, Maggie extracted, sorted, and upgraded over a hundred egg cells from one woman. Afterward, she added genetic enhancements to several hundred thousand sperm. She then mixed the cells and put them in the incubator before she left for the night. Her Guide reported her daily accomplishments to Karthenor, and Karthenor set up a credit account to give her advances on the future earnings of the children she was creating. In time, one hundred children would each pay her one percent of their life earnings. In one day, she had sewn a crop that would in time reap a fortune. The Guide made sure that she understood and felt properly grateful to be so employed.

As she worked that day, there was little to distract her. In the late afternoon, she heard an explosion in a storage room. For a few moments sirens blared and dronon vanquishers rushed through the smoke-filled compound, securing the area. Maggie could hear the screams of a wounded woman. Her guide merely informed her that terrorists had exploded a small bomb, and one of her fellow workers was injured. The Guide instructed Maggie to continue working.

Maggie was too heavily tranquilized to even consider disobeying. All through the morning, the Guide had been dumping information into her, data gleaned from genetic engineering experiments over eighteen thousand years from a hundred thousand worlds. A thousand distinct subspecies of mankind had been formed in that time, and billions of minor alterations had been tried. Maggie learned how to engineer people to live underwater, in reduced or increased gravities, or to cope with chemically altered atmospheres.

Yet the dronon Guide also taught her the glorious plans that it had for Maggie’s people, and as the plans unfolded, Maggie was tickled so that she felt as if she were floundering in a pool of ecstasy. The genes that Maggie inserted into that day’s batch of children were specifically designed to decrease a female’s infant mortality rate and at the same time engineer a subspecies of future women to become breeders. These breeders would bear litters of ten or more children. The women that Maggie engineered would be tall, languid, wide at the hips, and would spend a great deal of time eating. They would require little in the way of cerebral stimulation-would shun mental exercise, physical stimulation. In effect, they would be sacks to bear children.

In a few days, Maggie knew that she would be allowed to work on a second subspecies of females who would be sterile workers, filled with an incredible amount of nervous energy that would be released in the joyful pursuit of labor. Other colleagues were developing males that would consist of one subspecies of dreamy-eyed artisans and creators, while another subspecies would form a caste of giant warriors with superb reflexes, immense strength, and an instinct for killing. These would burn a path across the galaxies, uniting all mankind under a common banner.

In all aspects, human society would come to emulate the more perfect dronon society, and the worlds would embrace a new, superior order.

That night, Maggie ate a quick dinner and then threw herself on her bed, contemplating the riches she had earned. Her Guide tickled her so that her blood raced at the thrill of it.

A few minutes later, her Guide announced a visitor only seconds before he entered the room.

He was a tall man, perhaps twenty-five years of age, with pale blond hair. The sculpted muscles of his chest and shoulders revealed a body type that Maggie recognized from her studies-the human equivalent of a dronon technician.

He entered her small bedroom and sat in her single chair. He watched Maggie with an intensity peculiar to those raised in dronon society. It was as if Maggie were food, and the man was feeding on her with his gleaming blue eyes.

“My name is Avik,” he said. “Lord Karthenor asked me to speak with you. He feels that you are not adjusting well to your new assignments. You’ve been distressed, and your Guide is devoting considerable resources in an effort to make you happy. Is there anything I can do to make you happy?”

Maggie stared at him, and it was as if suddenly her Guide shut off, and she was falling, swirling toward ruin. The false euphoria left her, and she felt helpless, abused, physically exhausted. Her head was spinning with visions of the children she was creating, the mothers with their vast wombs, the legions of sexless workers, the deadly warriors with their quick wits and killer’s eyes.

Maggie found herself sputtering, trying in one quick burst to express the rage and horror that the Guide had been suppressing for two days now.

“I can’t …” she cried helplessly. She wanted to launch herself at Avik, claw his eyes out, but the Guide would not let her.

Avik took her hands, held them. “What you need,” he said softly, “is another human to help you cope with this change.”

Maggie glared at him and thought, If there were another human in this room, I would do that. She was painfully aware that Avik’s enhancements made him unlike other men. He had a dreamy look in his eyes, a soft-spoken nature, a predisposition to move his hands as he spoke. In every way he was a dronon technician, as distinct in his characteristics as a bloodhound would be among mongrels. Yet Maggie could not hate him for something he could not change.

“Set me free,” Maggie pleaded. “I can’t live the way you want me to.”

“Of course you can,” Avik said. “It takes time, but you can become dronon. In fact, you have no choice in the matter. Believe me, you will find peace among us.”

“I can’t,” Maggie said. “Don’t you see how different they are from us? We weren’t meant to live like the dronon.”

“The differences between us and the dronon are superficial,” Avik said. “They have chitin, we have skin. But we are both a species of conquerors, and both of us found the need to overwhelm nature, expand our domain to the stars. Do you realize how few sentient species have done this?”

“We are nothing like them!” Maggie shouted. “If we were, they wouldn’t need to force us into their castes.…”

Avik smiled, sat back smugly. “They are not forcing us into castes. Don’t you see what they are doing? They are merely enhancing the differences that already exist between us. Even in the natural state, some of your men are born to be warriors. The urge to compete in them is so overwhelming that they can hardly control it.” Maggie suddenly thought of Gallen. “And others of your men are like me, dreamers and creators. Some of your people are workers-unable to stop, unable to enjoy any other facet of life but the workplace. And some of you are nurturers, breeders who find comfort in sprawling families and take joy in raising children. And some of you are born to become leaders. In every age of humanity, it has been this way. The hive mind is within us, just as it is within the dronon. Believe me, once your people make the transition to our order, your children will enjoy greater peace and prosperity than they have ever known.”

It was disconcerting in a way to watch Avik, so human in form, talk about humans as if they were alien. But she could see the alienness in his eyes, in the hungry way he watched her.

“But you have no freedom. Our children will have no choice in their decisions,” Maggie shouted. She found herself shaking with rage, her muscles spasming.

“Perhaps we lose a little,” Avik countered, “but we gain much in return. We have no crime on dronon worlds, for the Guides do not allow it. We have no confusion over making simple choices. We don’t spend vast portions of our youth uselessly vacillating as we struggle to learn what we shall become. Among the hives, each child knows what he or she will do as an adult. We are bred to our positions, and we do find peace, a peace that is greater and more profound than any you can imagine. It may appear to be a contradiction, but though our laws seem restrictive to you, they free us to find that peace.” Avik spoke evenly, a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead. Maggie looked into his wild eyes, wanted to shout him down, yet he so obviously believed in the dronon order, she realized that to argue would be futile.

Still, she could not resist the temptation to say more. “Avik, don’t you see-your order doesn’t really free you, it merely limits you. You could choose to be more than an architect-you could become anything you want: a father, a leader, a warrior. The dronon haven’t freed you. They’ve merely made you comfortable. You have become content slaves, when you could be gods.”

Avik’s nostrils flared. Maggie could see that she’d struck a chord. He backed up in his chair, looked at her appraisingly. “You will never speak against the order again.”

Maggie tried to argue, but the Guide stopped her tongue and would not let her speak, so that his words seemed to carry the weight of a prophecy.

Avik got up from his chair, put his hands on her shoulders and looked into her eyes. “I will instruct your Guide to continue tutoring you in the ways of the dronon, and in your job. Each time you think of the order, your Guide will give you comfort, and perhaps in this way, over time, you will learn to love the order. Tomorrow you will begin working on the Adoration Project, and as you learn to love our order, you will in turn be teaching others to love it. Maggie, don’t fight us. You can’t win, and you might get hurt in the struggle.”

He cupped her chin in one hand, and her Guide sent her a spasm of lust that knotted her stomach and made her face burn. She tried to fight it, to give vent to her anger, but she realized that Avik was controlling her Guide, forcing this emotion on her. “You’re such a pretty thing. I like red hair. Lord Karthenor has asked me to give you physical companionship. You will find that having sex while wearing a Guide is more compelling than anything you have ever dreamed. No beast in heat will ever find greater satisfaction than you will find with me this night.”

Maggie locked her legs together and curled up in a ball on the bed. She knew that fighting would be no use. Her Guide could take control of her muscles at any moment, force her to open her legs and give herself to him. But she needed to do this, to commit one small act of defiance.

Avik grinned. “So, is that to be the way of it? Then I’ll leave you to this lust, and it shall keep you company tonight. Tomorrow, when I return and make the offer again, you will be grateful.”

Avik left the room. The lights dimmed as he exited, and Maggie was left in pain, screaming inside, aching for Gallen.

Gallen returned to the pidc that morning, put on the instruction hood. “Teach me about mankind,” he said. The teacher began with genetics and showed the path of evolution, including ancient species of mammals and dinosaurs whose DNA had been salvaged and reproduced on many worlds. The teacher taught him the genetic structure of man, showing how genetic engineers had developed mankind into over a thousand distinct subspecies, each bred to a specific purpose, to live in a specific environment.

He learned the schemes humans used to achieve life extension. Thousands of drugs and procedures had been developed to cheat death. Most who died had their consciousness transmitted to virtual heavens that existed within computers. Some had their memories downloaded to machines, like the artefs, which were simply colonies of self-replicating nanotech devices. The most ambitious plans to beat death involved life extensions coupled with downloading memories into clones. Such plans culminated in virtual immortality-a commodity that had once been reserved for the most deserving but now available only to the wealthiest.

Last of all, the teacher showed Gallen the crowning achievement of genetic manipulation, the Tharrin, a race fashioned to embody nobility and virtue, a race designed to integrate fully with personal intelligences without losing their humanity. The Tharrin were to be the leaders and judges of mankind, a subspecies that would control the naval fleets, the police forces, and the courts of a million worlds.

The Tharrin’s physical features embodied strength and perfection. Certain glands secreted pheromones that attracted other humans so that the Tharrin constantly found themselves at the center of attention. Yet the Tharrin seldom became conceited. They did not see themselves as leaders or judges, but as the servants of mankind.

Gallen was not surprised when an image of a Tharrin formed in his mind, and he recognized Everynne in a thousand details.

Yet the Tharrin represented only half of a human/machine intellect. The machine half, the planet-sized omni-minds, stored information on the societies, moral codes, and political factions of tens of thousands of worlds. All such information was used when debating criminal and civil suits, but the data was all considered to be obsolete when passing a judgment. When a Tharrin passed judgment, it did so based on information stored in its omni-mind, but human empathy and understanding were meant to vitiate judgment. In the end, the wise and compassionate Tharrin ruled from the heart.

In his lessons, Gallen learned the brief history of Fale, how here the Tharrin ruler Semarritte had been overthrown by the alien dronon. For decades, the dronon had presented a threat to mankind, but Semarritte and her Tharrin advisors refused to go to war. Semarritte had created more guardians to protect her realm-creatures who were as much nanotech machine as flesh, creatures who could be controlled only through her omni-mind. Yet always Semarritte and the Tharrin had hoped that the humans and dronon might someday learn to live together in peace. They could not reconcile themselves to the horrors that would result from an interspecies war.

But in a surprise attack, dronon technicians won control of Semarritte’s omni-mind, then manipulated her fleets and guardians, sending them to war against their human creators. Then the dronon killed Semarritte herself and murdered every Tharrin who fell into their hands.

Gallen had to rest and eat again, but he came back late that night and questioned his teacher on matters of law, hoping that he would find some legal means of freeing Maggie. Under the old Tharrin law, slave-taking had been criminal. But under dronon law, Lord Karthenor could capture or buy servants who were not claimed by more powerful lords. Since his work ranked as a top priority among the dronon, he was free to choose servants from ninety percent of the population.

Seeing that he had no legal recourse, Gallen sought information on current war and battle techniques, but the teacher let him study only some very basic self-defense. Obviously, the dronon controlled this teaching machine to some degree, and they would not let it teach tactics that might be used against them.

In his last session that evening, Gallen downloaded a map of Toohkansay. That night, he dragged himself back to the woods late. Orick had returned to the camp.

“I searched all around the spot where we entered,” Orick said. “I couldn’t smell Everynne anywhere. I couldn’t find any other cities.”

“I know.” Gallen sighed. “Toohkansay is the only city for-” he converted kilometers to miles in his head “-eighty miles.”

“I don’t understand,” Orick said heavily. “We all went in the same gate, but we didn’t come out at the same place.”

“The making of gate keys is hard,” Gallen said, “and our key was stolen from someone who may have fashioned an imperfect key. Obviously, it dropped us off in the wrong spot. Each gate leads to only one planet, so I’m certain we are on the right world, but Fale is a big place. We might be two miles from Everynne, or ten thousand. There is no way to tell.”

Orick studied Gallen. “You’re certain of this, are you?”

“Aye, very sure,” Gallen said.

“What else did you learn in the city?”

Gallen could not begin to answer. He had studied handwritten books in Tihrglas, but in only a few hours here on Fale, the equivalent of a thousand volumes of information had been dumped into his head. How could he explain it?

“I went to a library,” Gallen said. “I learned some things from a teaching machine, like a Guide-but this machine doesn’t control your actions. I learned so much that I can’t begin to tell you everything. But I can take you there tomorrow, if you have a mind to learn something.”

“I’ll not have one of their devices twisting my brain, thank you!” Orick growled. “I saw what it did to Maggie!”

“It’s not the same,” Gallen said. “This is a different kind of machine. It won’t hurt you.”

“Won’t hurt me, eh?” Orick said. “What have they done to you? There’s a new look in your eyes, Gallen O’Day. You’re not the same man who left here two days ago. You can’t tell me that you’re the same, can you?”

“No,” Gallen said. “I’m not the same.” He reflected for a moment. Only a few days before, Everynne had told him that she found the naiveté of his world to be refreshing. She’d wished that all worlds could be so innocent. And now Gallen lived in a much larger universe, a universe where there was no distinct boundary between man and machine, where immortals wielded vast power over entire worlds, where alien races battled the thousand subspecies of mankind for dominance in three separate galaxies.

Gallen could have described the situation to Orick, but he knew Orick wanted to be a priest. He wanted to sustain the faith of those in Tihrglas, ensure the continuation of the status quo, and Gallen saw that this too was a valuable thing. In one small corner of the galaxy there could be sweet, blissful ignorance. In one small corner of the galaxy, adults could remain children. Knowledge carries its own price.

“I have learned some of the lore of the sidhe,” Gallen said at last. “Not a lot, but perhaps enough. I’m going to try to steal Maggie back.”

In a darkened room in the city of Toohkansay, nine lords of Fale sat around a table in their black robes and boots. Their masked faces shone in shades of crimson starlight. Veriasse and Everynne sat with them, both masked and cloaked as lords, Everynne in a pale blue mask, Veriasse in aquamarine. Though they had been on the planet for less than an hour, Veriasse had set up this meeting nearly five years earlier, and as Everynne watched her guardian, she could see that he was tense to the snapping point. His back was rigidly straight, and his mask revealed his profound worry.

All their years of plotting came to this. If anyone down the long trail of freedom fighters had betrayed them, now was when they would be arrested. And everyone in the room expected to be arrested: one of their number had not been seen in two days. Surely, the dronon had captured him, wrung his secrets from him. Because of this, they had been forced to change the meeting place at the last moment.

One crimson lord, a woman whose name Everynne did not even know, pulled from the depths of her robe a small glass globe, a yellow sphere that could easily fit in Everynne’s palm or in a pocket. “As Lord of the Technicians of Fale, I freely give you this in behalf of my people,” the woman said. “Use it wisely, if you must use it at all.”

Everynne took the globe, held it in her palm. It was as heavy as lead. Inside, was a small dark cloud at the machine’s core-a housing where the nanotech components were stored, along with a small explosive charge designed to crack the globe and set its microscopic inhabitants free. In ages past, only a few weapons like this had ever been used. People called it “the Terror.” It seemed only right to Everynne that something which could destroy a world would be so gravid, so weighty.

“How fast will it work?” Everynne asked.

The crimson lady’s mask showed sadness. “The Terrors reproduce at an explosive rate. We designed them to seek out carbon molecules and form graphite. On a living planet, every animal, every plant, the atmosphere itself will be destroyed. Only the Terrors will survive for more than a day. They will appear as a blue shimmering cloud, moving outward through the sky at two thousand kilometers per hour. On the ground and in the sea, they move somewhat faster. The Terrors would destroy most worlds within a matter of twelve to eighteen hours.”

Everynne watched the woman’s face. The crimson lady was old, centuries old, and in that time she had probably learned to control her emotions exquisitely, yet her voice cracked as she spoke of the machine’s capacity for genocide.

“And how fast could this destroy Dronon?” Veriasse asked. “Will the Terrors be slowed significantly by being forced to reproduce on such a dry, desolate world?”

Even as Veriasse asked the question, Everynne cringed. The thought that the weapon might actually be used disturbed her. Time and again, she had begged Veriasse not to fashion such a weapon, to create only a simulated Terror. If the glass case broke, an entire planet would be destroyed. But Veriasse would not hear her arguments. He planned to take the Terror to the planet Dronon itself. He wanted to fear him, and the only way he could arouse such fear was if the dronon knew that a working Terror lay hidden on their world.

But sometimes at night, Everynne wondered if he had a hidden agenda. If refused to concede to his demands, she wondered, would Veriasse hesitate to lay the planet Dronon to waste?

“Dronon’s atmosphere is heavier in carbon dioxide than most. The Terrors will find it to their taste.”

Another of the masked lords smiled cruelly and said, “I designed the package with Dronon in mind. The planet can be terminated in six hours and fourteen minutes. Just make sure that you are near the imperial lair when you set it off.”

Everynne was disturbed by the man’s maleficent air. It pained her to see her people given over to such hatred. Though she knew that the dronons had killed her own mother, Everynne did not hate them. She understood them too well, understood their need for order at any cost, their instinctive desire to expand their territories and control their environment. “Let us have no more talk of genocide,” Everynne said. “Even if we tried to fight the dronon on such terms, they would be forced to retaliate. In such a war, there can be no victors.”

“Of course, Our Lady,” the crimson lords agreed, and almost as one they breathed a sigh of relief. They had spoken treasonous words and had not been arrested. Everynne could feel the clouds of doubt and fear lifting from her. For a long moment, they all sat and simply looked at one another around the table. For five years the crimson lords had worked, and now their part was done. Everynne watched them relax and wanted only to relax with them, take one last rest before her part in the great work began.

“We must go now,” Veriasse said. Everynne knew he was right. They had left Tihrglas only an hour ago. The vanquishers could transmit news of their escape over tachyon waves. Within another few hours, word of their escape would reach Fale, and the vanquishers would seek to block all of Everynne’s escape routes.

“Wait, please,” the crimson lady begged. “I have one last favor to ask before you leave.”

“Which is?” Everynne said.

“Your face,” the crimson lady asked. “Once, before you leave, I want to see your face.”

On Fale, the lords never went unmasked in public. It was a tradition millennia old. The crimson lady would never have asked such a favor of one of her own neighbors. Everynne had little time to spare, but these people had risked so much for her that she could not resist.

She peeled off her pale blue mask, and the lords stared at her in awe for a moment. “You are truly a queen among the Tharrin,” the crimson lady said. Everynne felt sick at the words. After all, what was a queen among the Tharrin but a specific set of genetic codes given to those who were born to be leaders? It was nothing she had done, nothing she had earned. Her genetic makeup gave her a certain sculpted beauty, a regal air, a measure of charisma and wit that probably would never have been duplicated in nature. Yet Everynne saw all of this as a sham. It was simply a station she was born to. Her flesh was the clothing she wore.

The crimson lady peeled off her own mask, showed herself to be a handsome, aging woman with penetrating gray eyes. “My name is Atheremis, and it has been my pleasure to serve you. I will never betray you,” she said.

One by one, the other crimson lords around the room also peeled back their masks, spoke their names and their gratitude.

That is when Everynne knew for sure that they would kill themselves. If they had not been planning suicide, Everynne was sure that they would not have revealed themselves. But one of their number was missing, so they were choosing to die now by their own hands rather than risk that they might be captured and forced to reveal damning evidence.

The crimson lady cried; tears rolled down her cheeks. Everynne wanted to stay with them a little longer, hoping to keep them alive. If looking into her face gave them pleasure, then she would stand here for hours. But Veriasse took her elbow, and whispered, “Come, we must hurry.”

Together they walked from the darkened chamber and headed down a long green corridor past the shops and apartments of Toohkansay. Only Everynne’s mask hid the fact that she was sobbing inside.

They had hardly gone a hundred meters when a blinding flash of light erupted behind them, and the blast from the explosion buffeted their robes like a strong wind. Sirens began to wail, and citizens of the city rushed toward the blast, searching for victims. The living walls of the city did not catch fire, but the distinctive smell of cooked vegetable matter filled the smoking hallways.

They hurried to a cantina on the edge of town where the scent of food beguiled them. Everynne had not eaten for nearly twenty hours, so they went through the dispensary line and grabbed some rolls, then hurried out to a waiting shuttle, a beat up old magcar that would not draw undue attention.

They hopped over the doors, and Veriasse unfolded a thin map and pushed a button until Fale appeared on the legend of the world. The map showed them at the edge of Toohkansay, and a three-dimensional image showed the land around them for hundreds of kilometers. There were three gates within that range, but only Veriasse had traveled the Maze of Worlds enough to know which planet each gate would lead to. “This gate here,” Veriasse said, pointing to the most distant of the three, “leads to Cyannesse. We will be safe there.”

Everynne took the stick and gunned the thrusters. The car raised several inches on a magnetic wave, and she piloted the vehicle slowly at first, fearing that foot travelers might be on the road so close to Toohkansay.

For ten minutes they drove past the yawning farms that sprawled along the calm river. Huge, spiderlike harvesters were at work, cultivating the fields. They turned a wide bend, and Everynne was just ready to raise the windshields so that she could speed up when she saw a bear ahead. It leapt from the road into the woods.

“That’s Orick!” she said, reversing thrusters.

“It can’t be,” Veriasse said. “It’s just a bear.”

“I’m sure of it.” The magcar slowed and idled beside the trees. She gazed into the woods, up a slight rise where white rocks lay in a jumble. There was no sign of Orick-only prints among the fallen leaves that the bear had made as it bowled through the trees. Everynne wondered if it had been a trick of her imagination, yet she let the magcar hover on the road. Uphill, the nose of a bear poked cautiously over some bushes to watch her.

“You’re right,” she said, distracted. She had last seen Orick only slightly more than an hour ago on a planet nearly six hundred light-years away. Somehow, that recent image must have burned into her subconscious so that she imagined that this bear looked just like Orick.

She gunned the thrusters and the magcar rose and began to move forward slowly. She glanced back, and the bear stood up on its hind legs, sniffing the air.

It yelled, “Everynne? Is that you?”

She slammed on the reverse thrusters.

“Orick?” Veriasse called. The bear dropped to all fours and ran toward them with astonishing speed.

“It’s you!” Orick shouted. “Where have you been? I’ve been searching for you everywhere! It’s been days!”

Veriasse and Everynne looked at each other. “What do you mean, ‘days’?” Everynne asked. “We left Tihrglas less than two hours ago. How did you get here?”

“Gallen stole a key from the dronon. He was afraid they would use it to catch you. When we got here, we couldn’t find any sign of you. Maggie’s been kidnapped, and we can’t get her back. Gallen and I have been here for nearly four days!”

“The dronon tried to make a key?” Veriasse asked, incredulous. “Only a great fool-or a very desperate person-would try to make his own key to the Maze of Worlds. That explains how you got here before us. Your key is flawed.”

“You mean to say we got here four days early because of a busted key?”

“Of course,” Everynne said realizing what had happened. “The gates move us from one planet to another faster than the speed of light-but any method of locomotion that can do that can also be used to send things into the past, or the future.”

“Still,” Veriasse said, “it’s a wonder that they broke our access codes at all. We will have to re-tool the gates.” Veriasse looked down at the chronometer on the magcar. “We have to go, Everynne.”

“Wait a moment,” Everynne said. “They need our help.”

Anger flashed in Veriasse’s eyes. “Many people need your help. You cannot risk staying in enemy territory for these.”

Everynne looked at Orick. The bear was dirty, had lost a little weight. The whites of his eyes were wide. “I was born to be the Servant of All,” she said. “I will take care of these three now, because they need me now.”

“Nine people just sacrificed their lives for you back in town!” Veriasse countered. “You can’t stay here and risk making that sacrifice invalid. Leave these three. What’s the difference? It is an acceptable loss.”

“Acceptable to who? To you, perhaps, but not to me. Those nine gave their lives voluntarily for something they understood-” Everynne answered. “These three want to live, and they serve us with innocent hearts. We must give them a little time-fifteen minutes.”

Everynne turned to Orick. “Where is Gallen?”

“Hiding in the woods,” Orick answered. “I’ll get him.” He spun and galloped uphill.

“We don’t have time for this,” Veriasse told Everynne after Orick hurried into the brush. “Every second of delay places you in greater jeopardy. Can’t you feel the worlds slipping from your grasp?”

“Right thoughts. Right words. Right actions. Isn’t that the credo you taught me?” Everynne said. “Right actions. Always do what is right. That’s what I’m trying to do now.”

“I know,” Veriasse said more softly. “When we win back your inheritance, you will truly be worthy of the title Servant of All. But think: at this moment, you must choose between two goods. The right action is to choose the greater good.”

Everynne closed her eyes. “No, you cannot prove to me that fifteen minutes will make a difference. I’ll serve my friends here to the best of my ability, and afterward I’ll serve the rest of humanity.

“Veriasse, if not for Gallen stealing that key, we would have jumped out of the gate and found the whole planet mobilized against us. We must help them-you must help them. See, here comes Gallen now.”

Gallen and Orick raced through the trees. The young man was dressed in the swirling greens and blues of a merchant of Fale, yet his garments were stained from the camp and his hair was unkempt. He breathed hard as he rushed up to the magcar.

“Orick says that Maggie has been kidnapped,” Everynne said. “Do you know who took her?”

“A man named Karthenor, Lord of the Aberlains,” Gallen panted. “I’ve scouted the city. I plan to get her back.”

Everynne marveled that such a simple man could have so much faith in himself.

“If Maggie has been taken by Karthenor,” Veriasse said, “she is in the hands of a most unscrupulous man. For enough money, he might sell her back to you-or he might become curious and send you to his interrogators to find out why you want her. With the right equipment, you could free her from her Guide and steal her back, but that would be very dangerous to attempt. Both plans carry their risks, and it seems to me that in any event you are likely to fail.”

Everynne hesitated to tell them the most logical course of action. She wetted her lips with her tongue. “Gallen, Orick,” she said slowly, “would you be willing to leave Maggie behind, come away with me through the Maze of Worlds?”

“What?” Gallen asked, incredulous.

Everynne tried to phrase her argument as succinctly as possible. “I am going to try to overthrow the dronons. If I succeed, then we can rescue Maggie. If, on the other hand, I do not succeed, she will become a valuable member of dronon society, and in the long run she will be better off where she is. So, I ask you again: do you two want to come with me?”

Gallen and Orick looked at each other. “No,” Gallen said. “We can’t do that. We’ll stay and see what we can do to get Maggie free.”

Everynne nodded. “I understand,” she said heavily. “Then we will both do what we must, even though it takes us on different paths.” She turned to Veriasse. “Do you have allies here that might help him?”

“I had few allies here,” Veriasse said. “And all of them are dead now. Gallen must forge ahead on his own. The first thing he should do is go learn all that he can about our world.”

“I’ve already been to the pidc,” Gallen said. Everynne looked into his eyes, saw that it was true. There was a burden in his eyes, as if he knew too much.

“The pidc can teach you many things, but it is still under dronon control,” Veriasse said. “Much of our technology is kept secret. Gallen, if you want to free Maggie, you will have to do it without her knowledge. The Guide sees through her eyes, hears with her ears, and it can transmit messages to other Guides. It will be your greatest enemy, and since it controls Maggie, she will fight you herself if you try to rescue her while she’s still connected to the Guide. You will need the help of a Guide-maker to learn how to dismantle the thing.

“At the same time, security around the aberlains will be very tight. Microscopic cameras will be hidden in the main corridors, and motion detectors will be at every window. I doubt that you can make it into the compound undetected. Dronon vanquishers themselves will probably patrol the compound, and they are very dangerous. You will need weapons and an escape plan.

“Gallen, don’t be in a hurry to rescue her. This will require careful planning and research.”

Veriasse looked down at the chronometer on the magcar. “Everynne, my child, we really must go now, before the vanquishers block our exit.”

Everynne gritted her teeth. Veriasse had just outlined an impossible task for Gallen-a task that only Veriasse himself could pull off. She glanced at Gallen, ashamed to be leaving, and said, “Good luck.”

“What world will you be going to next?” Gallen asked. “Maybe we will follow you there?”

Everynne considered lying. She had to protect herself from possible danger, yet she knew that Gallen must be feeling lost and alone. As a Tharrin, her presence gave him a sense of comfort that he could not find elsewhere. And the world she was going to was beyond enemy lines.

“Cyannesse is its name,” she said. “The gate lies nearly three hundred miles north of here, about a quarter of a mile off the right-hand side of the road. When you put your key up to the gate, it will glow golden. That’s how you know you have the right destination.”

Gallen looked at her longingly, and Everynne could not bear to watch him any longer. “Take care of yourselves,” she said. She gunned the thrusters and headed out.