Wine of the Gods 26: Embassy (12 page)

"What gate?" Easterly frowned at the rock arch. "I've sent for the gate experts, but it looks to me like one of your attackers was able to close it."

Colonel Benton straightened as he looked past Easterly. Easterly looked over his shoulder. The God of War and the Dark Lady. Looking very civilian thank goodness, despite the pair of huge and huger black stallions they rode.

"Yes. It's gone." Rustle dismounted and ran her hands around the arch. "We'll need to establish a new one. Do you want it back where this one was, or would you prefer to assault the prison from a different side?"

"To the left of the old position, please. About a quarter mile."

Rustle sat cross-legged on the ground right there and closed her eyes.

The Auld Wulf looked at the Colonel. "This may take awhile. I'll try to give you advance notice that she's about ready to connect it." He sat down too.

Easterly gestured everyone away. A private looked uncertainly at the two black horses, and Easterly shook his head. "If they wanted to be put up they'd probably go over the stables themselves."

The private gave him a spooked look and retreated.

Time trickled by, and the soldiers standing by with horses ready sweated and their officers started rotating them out for breaks.

Four hours since the alarm went up. What are they doing over there? Running, or preparing to fight?

More clatter of hooves and Garit, Xen and Q joined them. Xen and Q sat. Garit sighed. "Wish I could do any of that."

Easterly nodded. "Yeah, me too. I think."

The Auld Wulf stood up and caught the Colonel's eye. "A few minutes. Let us get through first to block any hostile magic."

Rustle and Xen unfolded and stood, leaving Q alone. They all mounted, and Easterly fought down a chill as the late afternoon light gleamed off the War God's armor.
It wasn't there a second ago!

Xen was in his corduroy 'God of Spies' outfit and even Rustle was in black. They all mounted, and Xen looked at Garit and nodded at Q. "As soon as the gate goes up, get her out of the way."

Easterly stepped back and looked for his crew. Peter came up with his horse. He wished he hadn't succumbed to insanity and bred Bandit, but Blazer was a good enough fellow.

The arch of rock filled with bright fog that swirled open, showing a grassy hill down to the back of the men's building. Garit lifted Q bodily and stepped aside and Easterly led the troops through on the heels of the old god and the young goddess. It was quite an anticlimax. The inmates were gone, and only the limp bodies of the stunned guards were left behind.

Q walked through after the troops cleared the gate, sat and concentrated. Pointed. "About thirty miles. They're opening a gate."

The Auld Wulf, Rustle and Xen disappeared, then Quicksilver opened and threw a corridor. Stepped through. Easterly was on her heels, with Garit and the Colonel on his as she pointed again. "Right down there, maybe a mile."

The Colonel spurred off, troops following as quickly as they could pour through the corridor. Easterly rode with them, reviewing shields. A flash of bright light ahead of them, and the battle was over before he gotten to it.

The magicians and gods were all swatting burned spots and sharing around a flask of joy juice.

"I didn't know a gate could do that." Xen wheezed and felt his reddened face.

"They got away?" The Colonel frowned around the burned slope.

"Thoroughly. Damn." Xen looked over at Garit. "You know what we were saying about not needing a criminal investigation division?"

Garit nodded. "You think some dimensional criminals might just exist after all?"

"Yeah. Apart from the freed prisoners, I didn't recognize any of the men. The two Whores de Combat we never caught were there, Jade, and another witch, very young. The young one was creating the gate."

Quicksilver joined them then. "She didn't slow it enough to attach, it was very strange."

Xen nodded. "As soon as they saw something on the other side they charged on through, and the guy I think was leading them grabbed the witch who was still working on the gate and yanked her through with him. That's when it exploded."

The Colonel scowled. "I can only hope it burned the hell out of them. Can you follow?"

Q shrugged. "There are three Worlds they might have gone to, but I don't have any idea of where on that World they are. I may be able to find a gate scar . . . "

Easterly staggered and the horses spooked. They were all staggering. Earthquake.

Q stood up abruptly. "That blast cleared out everything I need for a gate, and I don't like the things the inbetween is doing. Time to leave."

The Colonel formed up his people and headed them up the hill. The Auld Wulf jumped for his stirrup and then reached down to pull Q up behind him. Another quake sent the horses skittering about. Easterly turned and followed the assorted gods up the hill and the Colonel fell in beside him. "Do you think these quakes are caused by that gate flash?"

"Were there many quakes here?"

"I've not heard of any, no one has reported them."

Easterly nodded. "Could be then, and they look to be in a bit of a hurry, which is a bit scary on its own."

The colonel shook his head. "Scary is the thought of reporting in. I have a nasty suspicion I'm going to wish I'd gotten into enough of a fight to have died bravely."

They trotted through the corridor. On this side a detail was dealing with the limp bodies of the guards in the towers.

"They're all breathing." One lieutenant reported.

The colonel ordered them all though the gate and the various magicians followed.

Q slipped off the big horse and sat. The gate dimmed and disappeared. "Sorry, but that just looked bad. I'd rather over react than wish I had when it's too late. I'll stay around and monitor the situation. I think that gate maker must be pretty damn good at it, or damned lucky they didn't all get killed rushing a gate that isn't attached like that. And I haven't a clue where they might be."

Easterly winced, realizing that he was going to have to report abject failure as well.

". . . so that's our inconclusive report." Xen was sympathetic with his listeners grumpiness. "Until they come back, we can't find them."

King Leano steepled his hands. "You say until, rather than unless?"

"I can think of two reasons for this prison break. One, the Hors de Combat wanted to free their compatriots, or two, someone has plans to use Mirk against the Kingdom. We can't count on option one."

Janic nodded agreement. "Most likely someone with plans for Mirk used also getting the Hors de Combat free as an inducement for the others to provide magical assistance. The descriptions of the six men don't fit any known agents or criminals. The girl that apparently made the gates is tentatively identified as a daughter of one of the . . . Combat group."

King Leano spread his hands. "Unfortunately you're probably right about their plans. Well, I hadn't expected to be finding out how well we worked with the Dimensional Guard so quickly. Xen, if you and Colonel Janic would keep each other informed, I'd appreciate it. Anything else? Meeting adjourned. Garit, Xen, will you stay for dinner, we haven't seen much of you two lately."

"I would be delighted." Garit grinned. "Tomorrow we get to meet the people the Oners and Earthers are seconding to us. So I'll finally discover if they really are as impossible as Xen claims."

Rufi grinned. "Oh come now, Garit, you were weaned on diplomats. How bad can they be?"

"Is it wrong of me to wish we could run off to hunt down those multidimensional criminals we so smugly thought didn't exist, instead of staying here to be diplomatic?" Garit looked around the rolling plain and wondered how it would look to someone from an advanced civilization. A tiny grid of roads, a huge fountain, a single over-sized building faced in black basalt.

"Very wrong. Dammit." Xen glanced from the Earth's gate to the Oner's. "I wonder who will get here first, this time?"

"Do you think a hundred arches is overly optimistic?" Quicksilver joined them on the steps. She was actually looking a bit nervy.

"Definitely optimistic, since we've only got six Worlds with the faintest interest in coming here." Xen was managing to look cool and casual and well dressed. At six and three quarters feet he never had to worry about looking fat instead of muscular. "Well, five, but I'm not going to tell Arrival they have to share a gate with Arbolia."

"Do you suppose all our nations will want separate embassies?"

Xen nodded. "Organtes and Discordia have both demanded them. The king said he looked innocent and offered to pass a message or let them come through his and talk to us."

Garit straightened. "Here we go. Earth has made it here first."

They all sauntered over toward the Earth gate. Jacob Montgomery eyed them and sniffed. "Tell, me, are we six the only people on the planet?"

"At the moment. Our admittedly small staff has gone shopping, and the Oners haven't shown yet." Garit eyed the two people following the representative. Older than he'd expected. Not the military type either. "Welcome to Embassy. I'm Garit Negue, this is Xen Wolfson and Quail Quicksilver."

The man stepped up and shook his hand. "Lon Hackathorn, and this is Julianne Prescott."

Xen raised his eyebrows. "You were the leader of the Earth's exploration party to Comet Fall? And Miss Prescott was a linguist in that party, if I recall correctly."

Hackathorn nodded. "Yes. We were not combatants, though. We worked for the Dallas Dimensional Exploration company."

"Come on over to the Disco building, we'll give you a tour. What was your specialty, Lon?" Garit homed in on him while Xen started asking the woman about languages. Q was standing and chatting with Montgomery, and they angled abruptly off and over to the square on the east side of the fountain.

'They're hot to beat the One World here." Lon shook his head. "I've been on thirty-two planetary exploration cadres, led the last twenty-five."

Garit looked over in surprise. "So you are used to finding yourself in strange places? How many inhabited Worlds have you explored?"

"Apart from Comet Fall?" His voice was a bit dry. "Fortunately only three others."

"Fortunately because the profit margin drops considerably when there are natives in possession?"

"I wasn't ever able to quite dehumanize the natives, nor quite figure out how establishing a gate gave us ownership."

"That must have been awkward. Earth was rarely very good about Native Rights." Garit prodded a bit.

"Once. I'm not sure how the Purps managed it. Otherwise, I don't know that we ever were good about Native Rights. But that's all come to an end now, hasn't it?"

"We're going to try to end it. From now on out, it's trade not war." Garit switched his attention to Xen and the woman.

"The Neanderthals' language is very different, as their necks are shorter and the whole vocal cord and voice box is altered. I think most of those Worlds just have research outposts. The paperwork involved in trying to exploit those Worlds is apparently very complex."

Lon snorted. "Not to mention the lawsuits. The elf and dwarf worlds are just as bad."

"And the languages even less human." Julianne smiled. "Do you have fantasy tales with elves and dwarves and dragons, or do you need explanation?"

"Stories," Xen grinned. "But on Comet Fall it can be hard to sort out stories from muddled up history. Would the elves be rather thin with pointy ears, and the dwarves short and muscular with a penchant for mining?"

"Oh yes, those are the stories. Real Elves are, well, about a hundred and fifty centimeters tall, light in build, with slightly pointy ears—hence the name—and tend toward dark complexions, varying a bit with latitude. They all have black hair, varying geographically in the amount of curl. We believe they descended from one of the other Australopithecus types, but the experts argue about which one. The dwarves are more closely related to the Neanderthal, but evolved in a direction away from the main Neanderthal Worlds. The dwarves run about a hundred and twenty cems in height, with proportionally short arms and legs, muscular. The Neanderthals average a hundred and seventy centimeters, and while they lighten up in build as their civilization advances, they're still quite broad and muscular, compared to humans."

"How many Neanderthal Worlds have you found?" Garit asked.

"Four, before the government abandoned exploring that band of energy."

Xen cast a glance back at Q and the envoy. "Q said the Earth scientists had mapped the multiverse in terms of energy and the vertical and horizontal distortions to the spherical magnetic field they use to open a gate?"

Hackathorn nodded. "Worlds tend to clump; there are settings that don't find anything, and other that find tons. We call them bands. What about your people? Montgomery had a holographic diagram from here, but I didn't have time to study it."

"Oh, Q's model. She figured they'd all get cut up for analysis. She's got some extras around." Garit watched Montgomery walk back through his gate, and Q disappeared and reappeared on a round circle on the porch. "Show off. Pay the witch no mind, she's just lazy."

Julianne cleared her throat. "When we were on Comet Fall, we noticed that a lot of those . . . interesting phenomena were accompanied by a measurable drop in the local gravity field."

Q raised her eyebrows. "Yes. We tap the gravity field for the power we need."

"How about the electromagnetic spectrum, especially in the radio wavelengths." Lon shrugged. "The static was awful when you lot were doing things."

Q nodded. "There are a lot of things we can tap. Volcanic eruptions are supposed to be great, but I've never actually been around one. Hot springs are, well, low in quality, but high in quantity, if you're not in a hurry."

Garit glanced back. "Montgomery seems to be in a hurry."

"Yes the engineers and architects will be arriving tomorrow. I got the impression that there's going to be a race with the Oners. I hope you two will excuse our amused spectating?"

Lon nodded ruefully. "We, umm, have talked about having to come to terms with you as equals. We'll try."

"The worst part will probably be us expecting you to meet every new World as equals, humans possessed of inalienable rights. Even the primitives who think you belong in the stew pot." Q grinned. "Not that we've encountered many of those. We won't actually be contacting many new Worlds. Regularizing relations with all the Worlds you and One have already contacted will keep us busy for decades."

Julianne sighed. "Especially the ones we treated badly. They'll want our scalps."

Garit paused. "Umm, I'll take that as a bad thing. It certainly sounds painful. We may need a local police force, yet. Anyhow, this is the great assembly room for the airing of grievances. We've tentatively split the building up, with Research and Exploration on that side and Peacekeeping and Law Enforcement over here. I was hoping for a long stretch of peacefully opening gates before we had any unpleasantness. Unfortunately we had our first—or at any rate the first we've noticed—multidimensional crime. A prison break with a collection of political prisoners escaping through a series of gates."

Julianne bit her lip. "Political prisoner has a specific connotation in modern Earth English. It implies a political motive for incarceration, and implies a lack of actual criminal cause for it."

"Ah. Thank you, I shall have to avoid using the term. My brother hired assassins who killed one of my nephews. The Irons, father and son, attempted assassination. Duke Rivolte committed armed insurrection. And, unfortunately, six magically able members of the assassin's gang have also escaped."

"We killed the head of the gang years ago, and have been trimming back the gang whenever we find it." Xen said. "This escape is a major setback, and their apparent ability to make gates is alarming."

"Make gates." Lon eyed them uncertainly.

Q and Xen swapped shrugs.

"We might as well fess up now. Gates are dead easy to make. Which is going to make the future really interesting." Garit turned and walked down the left hand hallway. "Down here we have small courtrooms and offices. The far side has conference rooms. Upstairs, we can overlook the assembly hall, and there are more offices. Xen and I nabbed the corner offices upstairs. Q's on the far side, as she considers herself mainly research. Grab whichever one you want."

"This side, you'll eventually end up looking at the Comet Fall Embassy." Q sketched in a cube and waved at the windows. "On the other side, your own embassy building. Handy for flashing messages and so forth, but it'll make it hard to ignore your other bosses."

Lon snorted. "I've always done exploration."

"C'mon over then."

"I'll stick to this side." Julianne poked her head in an office and nodded approval. "You'll need a linguist soon enough."

Garit snorted as Q and Xen both looked suddenly to the southwest. "Oner's here?"

"Yep. Let's go meet and greet."

Garit led the way, with Xen on his heels.

Q followed with the Earthers. "I'm waiting to see if they've sent someone who knows him—and whether they're going to want to kill him or not."

Lon looked sideways at Q. "Do you think they'd send a cuckold husband for this? We've heard all about his undercover assignment. Intel from, I think they call the World Granite Peak. Of course we get the Earth biased official version. 'Unknown assassins' and so forth. Rumor has it that they were from Earth."

"Hmm, the Oners are spreading propaganda that the assassins were from Earth. But I don't see how assassinating Orde Withione, was of any advantage to Earth. Xen seems to think that Urfa has enough brains to work out a simple 'who would profit' calculation."

Julianne looked surprised. "'Why would we want to kill President Orde' has been our main defense, whenever the rumors come around. I didn't expect you to appreciate that."

Q grinned. "The answer is, 'in retaliation for all the death and destruction the One caused on Earth.' Not to mention making you blame Comet Fall in toto, instead of tracking down the single Auralian leader who assisted the One.

"We don't really believe it, but stupider things have been done. They have an interesting political system, and assassination is not uncommon. I think the War Party just used the Earth to explain away their own assassins. And then turned around and blamed Earth for Xen's presence, once they realized he was from Comet Fall.."

Julianne grinned. "That's the sort of thing that happens when politicians are in charge. Hmm, and I thought we'd be a bit old for the job."

The three people crossing the plaza looked at her. The man on the left crossed his arms. "Wanna race? I'm pretty spry."

"And you look a bit different than when I saw you last, Inso." Xen scratched his head. "Can't quite put my finger on it. Jiol, of course, is as ravishingly beautiful as ever. Urfa Withione, Jiol Withione and Inso Clostuone, this is Prince Garit Negue and Dr. Quail Quicksilver from Comet Fall, and Julianne Prescott and Dr. Lon Hackathorn from Earth."

Garit smiled and shook hands. "So both sides are going for brains over muscle, and sending people with experience with Comet Fall."

Urfa raised an eyebrow. "I prefer to think of it as sending my most experienced and trusted people. I trust you to not waste them."

"Wouldn't dream of it. We were just telling our new colleagues about our first instance of multidimensional crime. Feel free to listen in, in case they target you next." Garit wrinkled his nose. "There will be times when I do not want information disseminated. I will try to be clear on those occasions. Generally speaking, things like this prison break should be passed on to other law enforcement agencies."

People started popping through the Earth gate. Garit recognized Montgomery as he pointed one party at the vacant land and marched toward them with the other pair. Garit blinked and tried not to stare at the man's purple hair.

"Franki would just love him, and Sandy would start trying to duplicate it." Xen cleared his throat. "I think we're about to hear about Planet Purple."

Garit nodded. "Umm, Xen, Q, it may be time for a demonstration."

Montgomery frowned. "Demonstration of what? We need a gate to our ally's world. This is Benit Equis. He was the trade envoy from his World when you shut down all contact."

"And I would like to return. What few flashes of communication we've managed between your destroying Earth's gates indicates that my government still wants to trade with Earth." He crossed his arms and glared.