Shaman (21 page)

Rhys tried not to make any impatient gestures. “I'm not asking for anything that would violate a cautious approach, Admiral. This is difficult to explain to someone who hasn't experienced it, but the Trade I made with Javar—one of the Tsong Zee Speakers—basically made me privy to his innermost thoughts. The Shrine is just that—a Shrine and a repository of Tsong Zee knowledge.”

Sanchez gave him a long, appraising look. “Has it occurred to you, Professor, that the Tsong Zee may have allowed you to experience exactly what they wanted you to experience?”

Rhys flushed with sudden heat. “No, sir. It had not. They were so reluctant to even allow me to attempt the Trade.”

“That could have been a ruse.”

“I... I suppose I don't have a suspicious enough nature.”

“No. I guess not.” Sanchez studied him a moment longer, then waved a hand at the door. “All right, Professor Llewellyn. Your argument for settling the uncertainty surrounding the Tsong Zee origins is well-taken. Proceed, but for God's sake—and your own—proceed with caution.”

Rhys was nearly dumfounded. He'd been readying his next verbal volley, gearing up for a long, arduous campaign, and Sanchez had foiled him by agreeably raising the portcullis. He shook himself.

“Thank you, Admiral. We'll leave immediately.” He turned to Joseph Bekwe. “Governor, will you contact the Medical Center?”

“Immediately.”

As he moved to do so, Sanchez turned wary eyes to Rhys. “Medical Center?”

“I'm not Tsong Zee,” said Rhys. “My communication with them will have to be enhanced electronically.” He raised his hand against further questions. “It's a long explanation, Admiral. And yes, I will be cautious.”

The ride to Haifa's Medical Center was tense but mercifully brief, giving Rhys only enough time to offer a passionate prayer that no one would reveal their whereabouts to the wrong parties.

At the Center, Rhys parked Roderick Halfax and the Tsong Zee apprentices in a waiting room then, with Yoshi's aid, briefed the lab chief, Dr. Plaatz, and his technicians, explaining in as much detail as possible what they needed to accomplish. Then the procedure was described in careful detail to the Tsong Zee.

“These little jewels,” said Dr. Plaatz, holding up a tiny gleaming cabochon, “are the individual sensors for the EEG array.” He gestured at the compact machine with its impressive bank of monitors that sat in the center island of the lab. “Attached to your heads,” —he feigned pressing one behind his ear— “they will monitor the carrier activity from the region of your brains which deciphers scents, tastes, sights, sounds and feelings, and feed them through the same device on Dr. Llewellyn's head directly to his entorhinal cortex. In this way, what you are sensing will come to him without interference from external input. It will override external input as long as he's receiving a burst of information from you. Then, when he visualizes something as a result of your input, his sensor will carry that image back to each of you, triggering—presumably—the next step in the key sequence.”

“Which will then return to you,” Javar said to Rhys when he had completed translating Dr. Plaatz's words. “Most impressive. This technology would be of great assistance in the treatment of individuals who are mentally debilitated or have difficulty achieving the state necessary for the Trade.” His eyes were on Brasn, who canted his head in agreement, his own gaze fastened intently on the sensory “jewel” in Rhys's hand.

“It is a technology we would gladly share,” said Rhys. “But now, unless you have reservations or questions...?” He swept the group with a careful gaze, resting most uneasily on Keere. All responded negatively. “Well, then. Let's make a quick test and pray it works. I believe we have a mountain to climb.”

o0o

Harris Beneton glanced up at the security scanner trained on him from behind its wall-mounted lens. At an unseen security station on the same floor, Colonial Sergeant Greg Lederman glanced quickly away.

As if he can see me
, he thought disparagingly. He couldn't be seen—he knew that, yet still felt uncomfortable whenever the man behind the empty desk looked directly at the scanner.

He had done nothing for about an hour but sit and doodle on odd bits of flimsy sent down by the governor's secretary. On this newest piece, Lederman could make out a bunch of little pyramids, a stick figure and something that looked like a woman's face. He blinked and squinted to see if he could recognize anything else. Okay, that could be a stick or a baseball bat or... nah. Now, that was a bolt of lightning.

Lederman nodded, wondering what a psychologist would make of the scrawls. Just as he was beginning to warm to that new facet of the game, Beneton grimaced, wadded up the flimsy in obvious disgust and threw it into a refuse chute.

So, suddenly he's a neat-nik
, Lederman thought, glancing at the little pile of earlier doodles tossed haphazardly about the floor of the cell.

Oddball. He sighed. Back to boredom.

The breeze was brisk along the northeast flank of Mt. Carmel. It played havoc with the Tsong Zee's colorful sashes and belts and the men's long, unbound hair. Parsa, whose cropped, medallioned, rose-gold locks stayed neatly put, helped the three Tsong Zee men affect braids, then meekly allowed a technician to affix the EEG array to her head. The others followed suit, while Rhys received reports from other quarters.

“The Admiral is having a conniption,” Danetta informed him over the comlink Yoshi carried. She had remained behind at the Medical Center to monitor their progress and keep an ear tuned to the military situation. “Joseph says if he complains about having his hands tied one more time, he's going to tape his mouth shut. I can understand how he feels, though. You're up there on that mountain, and I'm sitting here in a white room surrounded by a flock of murmuring, white-coated lab-dwellers. Why is life so unfair?”

Rhys felt a profound appreciation of Danetta's enduring wry humor. It kept at bay the unease that wanted to settle in the pit of his stomach. “How's the situation with the Tsong Zee fleet?”

“A standoff. They've been moving around, evidently, but always to assume similarly non-threatening positions. They never get any closer.” He heard another voice say something in the background and Danetta chuckled. “Astrid says it's like a snake charmer and cobra.”

“Apt image. Has Sanchez attempted to communicate with the Tsong Zee directly?”

“Oh, yes. But you know how frustrating that is with those DT collars. You miss half of what they say and you offend them every time you open your mouth. I suggested he take your SubLearn course. I think he's actually considering it. How's Kuskov taking this?”

“He's been pretty empathetic with the Tsong Zee up to now. He's seen their art—experienced it—and he seems to take to them as individuals, notwithstanding there's a slight communication barrier. Some of his staff are a little ambivalent.”

“They'd be more so if they weren't so isolated from what's going on down here. Between Beneton's ‘associates' and the other agitators, this place is hopping mad. There's even some sort of doomsday religious group in the courtyard that thinks the Tsong Zee are angels of darkness and that this is all some sort of spiritual test.”

“Who's to say it isn't?” murmured Rhys.

“Yes, well. Fortunately, the Dark Angel contingent is balanced by an opposing group of theologians who are afraid the Tsong Zee are grossly misunderstood simply because they match some Human picture of a devil. It's frustrating as hell, Rhys. No matter what Joseph and Sanchez do toward trying to alleviate the tension on the street, someone else—Beneton's cronies, we can only think—stirs it up again. There's been chatter of guerrilla groups forming. Colonials arrested several people who were trying to break into the spaceport. Evidently, they thought they could commandeer a ship right out of its cradle.”

Rhys nodded, forgetting she couldn't see him. “Is Beneton still under arrest?”

“Doubly so. Kuskov sent one of his curators down here to go over the archaeological evidence with Sanchez. He brought that spanking new sense-cube with him. Beneton got caught in a little white lie. He told Sanchez experts had determined the process was entirely different than the one used on the Velvet artifacts.”

“Well, that's a relief of sorts.”

“It's
revenge
of sorts, you mean. But Sanchez can't undo with his fleet what Beneton has done with words and credits. They don't make weapons that powerful. Besides which, we have no idea how many members of Joseph's staff might have been compromised. For all we know, Beneton could still be in contact with his organization... . Rhys, you'll be sitting ducks out on that mountainside.” Danetta's voice was tight with apprehension.

A frisson of answering fear ran up Rhys's spine. “We may not have anything to worry about, Danetta. We outlined our plans to Sanchez in private. Joseph made the call to the Med Center on his office's secured line. I'm going to believe we're safe. Safe and secret.”

o0o

“This is it?” Wood Carson smoothed the wrinkled piece of flimsy under his hands.

“That's it. That's the only thing that came down the chute from Harris's cell. Can you make it out?”

George Eising moved to peer over the VP's shoulder. What a mish-mosh—pyramids, lightning bolts... He stabbed finger at one drawing. “Isn't that one of the Tsong Zee?”

Carson grunted. “I wouldn't hail Harris as the next Jainschigg, but I think you're right.” He tapped the flimsy with an index finger. “Clockwise,” he said. “The images are arranged clockwise, and that... that's —”

“A guy in a dress.”

“Llewellyn in that stupid kilt. Llewellyn... goes to the pyramids?”

“Mountains.”

Carson nodded. “Llewellyn and the Tsong Zee are going to the mountains. What's this mosque?”

“That Shrine. It's got to be that Shrine they talked about on the holo.”

The nodding gained speed and intensity. “They're going to look for that Shrine and we're supposed to stop them.” He pointed to where a bolt of lightning intersected a path to the temple.

Eising frowned and tugged at his lip. “How? With lightning?”

“Think, George.” Carson looked up at him on a slow smile.

“Lightning, or something very much like it.”

o0o

The road began in a cul-de-sac at the eastern edge of Kuskov's base camp. They stood now—Rhys and the Tsong Zee—at a point on the road from which they could see a tumble of water issuing from a connecting canyon to flow along the base of the steep scarp. They were joined by an archaeological team made up of Kuskov, two of his fellow archaeologists, and four of their best diggers.

All apprentices had been left behind but two; Brasn's apprentice, Malin, would oversee this new form of Trade, and Yoshi, bearing the remote link to the Medical Center, would oversee Rhys and keep him informed of developments in other quarters. Rick and his Tsong Zee counterparts had stayed behind at the Medical facility with Danetta Price.

With the diggers in a grav-rover some yards behind them, the Key Holders and their ersatz Key Master, who wore a tiny visual recorder along with his EEG array, proceeded on foot. As the path swung southward and the stream made almost a ninety degree turn to parallel it, Rhys ordered the EEG arrays activated. Yoshi breathlessly passed the message along and a second later, the Trade state was instituted along man-made channels for the second time that day.

As with the lab test, the effects were pronounced and immediate. This time, however, the Tsong Zee bursts were not warped by trepidation and surprise. And this time, the image in Rhys's mind must match one in the physical world. As he passed along the mountain road with the sensory input from four Tsong Zee minds wrapping him in their collective experience, Rhys felt as if he was suffering from concussion. The world around him seemed disjointed, discordant, frayed at its hazy edges. It was an unpleasant sensation, like trying to hold an important conversation in a noisy, over-crowded room, struggling to hear what that other pair of lips was saying amid a babble of invasive sound.

And his eyes! They tricked him into seeing everything twice or thrice, while anything he looked at directly jiggled and jumped and tried to escape notice.

Then the jumble assumed a pattern—like a slightly out-of-whack hologram, struggling for focus. Stereopticon slides, Rhys thought. The kind he'd seen in museums. Two images, very slightly different—but with the right set of lenses...

The picture clicked. The sound of the stream now came from where Javar's burst told him it should; the smell of reeds and blossoms, the accompanying taste of honey, weak, but present. He put out his right hand and felt the surface of a gigantic boulder that reared out of the mountainside, its surface dappled with afternoon sun. Ahead, the road sunk into shadow.

“All right!” Rhys allowed himself a sense of accomplishment and waited. Cool, cool shadow; the damp smell of water plants, pungent; a breeze at his back. He hurried on up the road between the steep, hatchet-cut slopes, the Tsong Zee keeping pace. Yoshi and the archaeology team followed.

o0o

“There's the wind-whistle pattern again,” said Dr. Plaatz, his finger tracing the phase map of Rhys's carrier wave bursts on his monitor. “And we've got a coupling with a taste of... sulphur, by the look of it. That's interesting.”

He glanced sideways at the display monitoring output from Rhys's vi-corder. Wisps of yellow steam dragged across the cobbled road.

“These patterns are wonderfully concise, Ms. Price. But then a primer like threat would tend to increase the gain... Whoa! The sound pattern changed drastically, here. Rapid state shift. What's happening?”

All eyes flew to the visual display, which showed a constantly panning view of the landscape. Rhys, too, was searching for the source of the sound. When the image finally fixed, it centered on a plume of sulfurous water that shot meters into the sky.