Pathspace: The Space of Paths (50 page)

He staggered down the last few steps,
emerged into the stables on the ground floor, and stumbled into a
soldier who was buckling his sword belt. “Have you seen
Xander?”

The guard bounced off a wall, straightened
himself, and seemed about to shout a reply until his expression
changed as he seemed to recognize Lester. Horses were whinnying and
pawing the straw on the floor of their stalls, startled by the
sound of the explosions. The soldier led him to the front gate and
pointed. “He's down there.”

Lester winced as a frigid gust from outside
whipped around his face. He squinted through eyes reflexively
tearing up at the sudden change in temperature, and eventually saw
the gray robe and staff. The man was standing about half a block
down the sidewalk, looking at the street.

Snow had fallen long enough to hide his
handiwork. Satisfied, he turned away from the road and listened to
the thunder of the Texans down the street,while the words of the
ancient text came back to him:

“
. . . the phase change involves a change in the state of
order of the matter, while staying at the same temperature. For
example, if a piece of ice melts, the total (ice + water) mixture
remains at the melting point until all the ice melts. The available
energy is always used to
change the state
of order
before raising the
temperature.”

What they always neglected
to tell you, he thought, was that heat has to go
somewhere
. To freeze
water, you
remove
the heat that keeps it a liquid – but you must
put
it somewhere else.
To melt ice, you must
supply
the heat that will free it from the low energy
state of crystalline order – but you must
take
that energy, that heat, from
somewhere else.

He walked out into the middle of the
street. After dumping close to four inches of snow on them the
clouds had rolled back; the sunlit snow was so white it dazzled the
yes. Shading his eyes with his left hand, he squinted at the
distant tanks. There were two of them, both turned so that they
were facing to his right, blasting away at buildings.

“
What are they doing?”

He turned at the sound of Lester's
voice behind him. “If I had to guess,” he said, “I'd say they are
trying to lure the Governor's forces out to engage and destroy
them.”

Poor Lester appeared to be at his
wit's end. “We can't let that happen! How did they get here without
word from our sentries?”

Xander gazed at the tanks again. “An
excellent question. I can think of at least one way, but it seems
unlikely. How would you do it, if you were the Honcho?”

“
Well, I suppose I would get a wizard to put up a invisibility
shield, But he can't do that because Texas doesn't have any
wizards.”

“
Since they
are
here,” said Xander, “he must have at least one. I
underestimated Martinez. It would appear that he is flexible enough
to rationalize using magic to spread his empire, even when his goal
is a civilization without it. Apparently he cut a deal with Ludlow
after all.”

“
What are we going to do? All those swizzles and everflames we
were making for weapons. . . there's no time to finish them
now.”

“
What
you
are going to do,” said the old wizard, “is warn Kristana
to
not
go after
those tanks. See what they are doing? Destroying unoccupied
buildings. When she goes after them with her cavalry, odds are the
tanks will turn around and lead her into a trap. Probably more
tanks, lying in waiting, with Ludlow shielding them from sight
until it is too late for her.”

“
But if her forces stay inside the 'scraper, she'll have no
way to escape. She'll be trapped.”

“
True. Which is why while you are warning her, I'll be dealing
with the tanks.”

“
You have a spell powerful enough to stop tanks?”

“
In a way. It's not what you have, it's how you use it that
matters. Now hurry up and warn her not to engage them. People are
going to die tonight, and I'll be too busy to kill all of
them.”

The apprentice loped off toward the
horsemen lining up in the building's ground floor. Xander turned
and examined the tanks again. They were beginning to turn in his
direction. He tried jumping up and down to get their attention.
“Over here, you bastards!”

Nothing. He reached out and uncorked
his staff at both ends. Presently it began to hum. “Every time I do
this I think it'll be the last time,” he grumbled, as his feet left
the ground.

Even with the ear protectors his ears
kept ringing. BOOM! Another small building collapsed as his tank
demolished its first floor. “This is taking too long. Let's roll up
the street and hit the ones across from her building. That ought to
get her attention.”

With a grinding of treads the tank
wheeled around to face straight down the street.

“
Huh,” said the driver. “There's a guy jumping up and down in
the middle of the street.”

“
What? Is he armed?”

“
Not that I can see. He's holding a walking stick, is
all.”

Certainty crystallized. Peter unbolted
one of the turret's hatches and climbed up for a better
look.

It was Xander all right. Even at this
distance the old fool was unmistakable – he looked more like a
character in a book of fairy tales rather than a flesh-and-blood
opponent. Peter swore, wishing his engineers had taken the time to
refurbishing the .50-caliber machine gun. That was his first
thought. His second was to lob one of the main gun rounds at the
wizard. But even as he had that thought, he saw Xander do something
with his staff and wrap himself around it as it rose from the
ground, the force of its exhaust blowing the snow away in a wide
circle under him, uncovering the street's pavement.

As the distant figure leveled off and
began zooming directly toward him, Peter ducked down and slammed
the hatch shut and bolted it. “He's coming right at us,” he told
them.

Unnecessarily so, since both driver
and gunner could see for themselves. “Should I open
fire?”

“
No.” As he recalled, the tank only carried about 40 rounds
for the main gun. No sense in wasting one just to kill one human,
and they'd probably miss, anyway. The old devil was nothing if not
agile, on his one-man rocket stick.

He heard a muffle thunk on the top of
the turret. What could the man be thinking? He couldn't harm them
inside this war machine. Solid steel would have been hard enough,
but the engineers had said the specs included composite armor
reinforced by depleted-uranium mesh that could defeat even an
armor-piercing round from another tank. And all he had was a
swizzle that could fly him around or throw rocks.

“
Shake him off, then run him over,” the Honcho ordered. The
driver hunkered down, gripping the handlebar-style grips and tried
to comply. With a grinding of treads and the roar of the gas
turbine engine the tank whipped around in a tight circle on the
road, an endless left turn.

Peter cast his eyes about the
interior. “Does anyone have a crossbow?” Wonder of wonders, someone
had brought one. He lurched against the gunner as the loader passed
it to him, loaded.

They heard a scraping noise go across
the turret as the tank wheeled through its turn. Had they flung him
off?

Peter decided to risk it. “Stop for a
second.” The tank was pointed almost exactly 180 degrees from where
he had intended to go, but that didn't matter for the moment. He
popped the hatch. Xander had fallen off the right side of the tank
and was in the act of clambering to his feet, his staff maybe ten
feet further to the right where he had dropped it to
roll.

As Peter took aim Xander
looked up and saw what he was doing and lunged to the left, running
around the front of the tank.
Damn!

He took his finger off the crossbow's
trigger and craned his neck seeking the target. The wizard had
ducked around to the rear of the tank. Peter swore and called down
the hatch. “He's running back up the street. Turn this thing around
and run him down.”

Once again the mighty death device
roared around in a turn and centered itself on the road pointing in
its original heading. Xander was pounding down the street, but not
looking as confident now that he'd lost the staff. He skidded on a
patch of snow and slipped, sliding for a dozen feet before
regaining his feet.

The tank geared up to give
chase.
The top speed for this thing is
over forty miles an hour on roads. He's not getting away this
time!

As the tank gained speed,
despite the snow on the road (unlike Xander), they began to close
the gap. Xander ran past the open patch of road blown bare by his
earlier takeoff and kept going.
Not bad
for an old coot, but not good enough. We'll have him in
seconds.

As he reached a position
directly across from the Governor's building, the gray-robed figure
suddenly stopped and spun around to face them. Was it bravery? Or
suicidal confidence?
What could he be
thinking?

Wait a minute. What was that
noise?

His lungs were burning despite the
cold. But something inside him was even colder than the snow. Some
things just have to be done. “Come on,” he muttered. “Finish
it.”

The tank kept coming, as he'd hoped
and planned it would. The Honcho was about to get a nasty
surprise.

The front of the treads actually came
a couple of feet onto the ice before the weight of the sixty-ton
tank cracked through. From there, gravity did his dirty work. The
front of the tank hung there for a split instant before the
unsupported weight pitched it down head-first into the hole his
workers had dug and filled with water.

Xander smiled grimly, remembering how
hard they'd dug to make the pit that deep. “What good will this
do?” one of the soldiers had grumbled. “He'll never fall for
it.”

It was a fair question.
Xander had studied books on tanks, and knew that tanks could easily
climb out of holes. They would have had to dig the thing
really
deep and somehow
make the sides slippery and too hard to break, or else the tank
could simple grind against the pit walls and build itself a hill of
debris to climb out. And there had been no time to do that.
Besides, it would have been visible. Stretching a tarp across it
wouldn't have worked, either – it would have sagged suspiciously in
the middle.

He'd found a better way. They'd filled
it with water. A coldbox spell had frozen an inch or so on the top.
Enough to support his weight – but not a sixty ton tank.

As the water closed over the rear of
the tank, with chunks of ice bobbing in the waves and gushing over
the edges of the pit from the displacement of the tank, Xander
reached out again with his mind. Imagine a coldbox forty feet on a
side and forty feet deep. That was a lot of water in the box now.
Plus one tank and four people.

He breathed deeply and wove tonespace
around the pit, pushing the coldbox spell as hard as he could and
then straining for more.

Lester rushed out of the Governor's
stronghold and dashed over to him. “What are you doing?”

“
Making a two thousand ton ice cube.” Snow was melting all
around them and the patch of clear pavement around the now-frozen
surface was spreading.

“
What? Really?”

Xander pushed some more, then finally
sagged. He could feel the growing warmth beneath his feet, even
where he stood five feet from the pit. “No, of course not. What was
I thinking? It'll be heavier than that, because of the tank inside
it.”

Lester's eyes bugged out. “But won't
it just climb out?”

“
No. With any luck, it's on its back spinning treads against
solid ice. But even if it only landed gun-first, it's trapped like
a fly in amber. And the Honcho is in it, with some of his
men.

There was a humming vibration coming
from the ice. After a while it stopped.

“
Are they . . .?”

“
Yes. He forgot to close the hatch.”

Lester shivered. Xander could see him
wondering. What would be a worse way to die? Frozen solid in ice?
Or frozen inside an air bubble waiting for the oxygen to run
out?

At last the apprentice spoke. “At
least it was quick. I'm only sorry I didn't get to say goodbye to
Brutus.”