The Magick of Camelot Page 25

  Nothing happened. I mean that, literally. Everything simply stopped, dead. Even the usual midday breeze from the west was just suddenly, gone.

  All those around me seemed in some form of stasis. Everything and every one, singly or in groups, were as a series of silent tableaus in a monstrous wax museum that stretched to infinity. Were our dottles and Marackians even breathing, I wondered? They were; slowly, imperceptibly. Were then1 hearts beating? Yep. At five beats per minute. Those nearest me on the small platform remained as they had been, standing, relaxed, and staring straight ahead. … All except Kriloy who hadn’t slept for a full twenty-six hours. Coming up from weapons control he’d fortunately collapsed on a couch in the rec-oom. One of the ladies still aboard—and why this ‘was I do not know—was then sent by Gen-Rondin to attend him. She did so, holding his hands, massaging his neck, shoulders and body, and bringing cool cloths for his brow. Murie, an inadvertent witness to the more intimate aspects of the body massage, frowned her disapproval and complained to me of a growing “looseness.” “Sooner or later, my lord,” she said, “well have to attend to it.”

  I was frankly glad he was asleep. For like myself, Kriloy was not subject to the balm of Hooli’s flute. I’d fully earned my front row center, and I’d no desire to share this very personal thing I had with Hooli, and he with his sphere-opponent, with anyone.

  As for what would happen now, well, whatever it was, Hooli would handle it. He’d already left the genuflecting dottle to make his way across the field to me. He did. this, I might add, at a much greater speed than his little legs would ordinarily propel him.

  He climbed the stairs to the platform, looked me square in the eyes and said, “Well, it’s about that time, old buddy; the end of the line. Tell me, have you guessed any of it?”

  I grinned. “Surely you must know. You do have mind control.”

  “I do. But with you, Great Collin Adjuster, what with our being friends and all that, I use it as little as possible. Again—what have you learned?”

  I sighed. “That you are alike, just as you and the Dark One were alike.” Even saying it mentally caused a chill of sheer terror to slice at my spinal nerve ganglia. Still, I could not have said it if I didn’t believe in his essential goodness.

  He nodded. “Yep. All true, buddy. And it’s time, too, to grab the old tiger by the tail. You won’t like what you’re going to see,” he cautioned seriously. “And I adjure you, tovarich, that it could easily make a zombie out of you for a week or so. I can change that if you wish, enter your mind and make it like a couple of boxers going at it; or maybe a couple of lady wrestlers?”

  “Cut the crap. Am I the only one who’ll see this, Hooli? The only one in the whole damn universe?”

  “You are.”

  “Then let ‘er tip, brown bag. Lay on,” I quoted, “And damned to him that first cries, hold, enough?’

  His beady eyes glittered, his real way of smiling. He said, “Well, then, I’ll be leaving this for a bit,” (he meant the host Pug-Boo). “But it shouldn’t take too long.”

  “A last thing,” I asked deliberately.

  “What?”

  I grinned. “Where’s the Deneb?”

  “In orbit, where its always been. You’ll see it—after.” And he was gone. And the little rodentius drusis sat, kerplunk, upon the platform and went instantly to sleep.

  I swept the horizon,searching. The blue sphere remained where it was, as if it neither knew nor cared what happened to the two Alphian ships…Nothing, nothing, nothing. Except, unh-huh, just there and above the great forest to the southwest was a second hovering sphere. Why that little bastard. It had arisen from almost the exact spot where I’d first damped the Deneb scoutship.

  Without the slightest hesitation it came directly toward our tournament field, a fitting place, perhaps, for whatever it had in mind. It landed between the bridge with its mass of unseeing viewers, and myself on the platform of the Kentii warship… .

  I looked toward the south hill. The first blue sphere was already airborne, as if surprised; caught off base, but heading quickly toward its brightly shimmering companion. Its bulk, for whatever reason, had decreased still further. Both were now but half the size of the Alphian ship.’

  For the record, the first ship, from the hill, was, as Hooli had put it, the Dark One’s uncle. The second was Hooli, himself; the real Hooli. They were entities, living organisms; I knew that now. They needed no ships, just a shimmering shield, a part, actually, of their own substance to ward off meteorites, or sunburn, perhaps—the kind you get when you’re but a few thousand miles from sun-surface. No doubt the shield could also keep mosquitoes away, or even Fregis’s ubiquitous thousand-legged bugger-bugs….

  It came to ground just thirty feet from Hooli.

  There was nothing then for quite some time. Indeed, thirsty, I even took a chance on missing something by running to fetch myself a drink from the command room.

  And then—and then there occurred a tingling in the air and a sudden darkening of all the heavens around us. It was as if some great electrical disturbance were building; but without clouds. The very horizon itself seemed suddenly to shift, to blur. Checking Fomalhaut I, and it was now approaching high-noon, I was in no way surprised to see that it, too, seemed but half its usual size. There was an obvious and most powerful distortion factor present. Looking toward the castle, I saw that its battlements were now rounded in all the wrong places; its four towers, twisting, melting, as would a butter frieze beneath a brace of candelabra.

  The tingling became audible, tactile, even. The skies grew darker still so that the stars and constellations were faintly visible. With the enveloping darkness there came a. flashing everywhere, a whirling kaleidoscope of pyrotechnics resembling warp… . And suddenly, it was as if we’d fallen straight through from somewhere, to another set of values in another place, in another time. The sky now was a purple black, and there were no longer any blue spheres. In their place; and this on a red sand plain that sparkled with a million varied crystal jewels, there were two entities. I saw them through a myriad of bursting, dying, color points….

  There is no way to truly describe what then ensued. Extra-dimensional factors were obviously present. They had to be. For where the entities, or beings were, one could still see the spheres as being vaguely superimposed upon them, and vice versa. The very sight of this changing, of all things becoming something else and back again, forced a vertigo that made me physically ill. The entity-beings grew and diminished and grew again while I watched, and retched—and vomited the contents of my stomach. I could not, would not take my eyes from them. And I would have sold my soul to every humanoid-worshipped devil in all the systems for a potential to get the stuff on videotape. But such was not to be….

  There was still no sound beyond the sound, and I’m not even sure now that it was such, of the tactile tingling. I looked just once at my arms—and saw a transparency of cloth, meat, bones and vernal structure. I dared not look at the rest of me. Instead I forced my gaze to hold on the two beings; to watch what now was a mingling of tentacular appendages, whole groupings of them, like unto a monstrous snake pit! Moreover. To see them fully was also to see them from the inside out! For that is precisely one of the ways I saw them; this, while I was outside looking in! Unknown internal organs, a series of great hearts beating and pumping everywhere, juices, effluvia, intestinal tubings, a myriad of eyes looking both in and out. at me. … To view it all at any length was to guarantee madness. To hasten the process was the insidious knowledge that one of the two was diseased, its parts a totting corruption which but clung to life by the sheer will of its owner. One’s olfactory senses could attest to this last, as well as one’s eyes could attest to the four-dimensional qualities of the beings. It was this ultimate knowledge, I think, that finally pushed me over the edge. I simply gagged one last time, and faulted.

  How long I was out,. I don’t know. Hooli said later that it was only for seconds. And that may be so. But when I
revived it was to see that once again there were two spheres. The one, a gray-blue-silver now, was lifting, lifting, to shoot suddenly like a dying star toward that section of sky—and it was all blue and beautiful again—which led directly to Fomalhaut II and the Alphian gateway… .

  The second, smaller sphere, gleaming with hard diamond points of white within the shimmering luster of its iridescent blue, appeared to be watching; to be saying a last good-bye.

  After awhile his voice asked softly inside my head, “Are you all right, Kyrie Fern?”

  “I’ll live,” I answered weakly. “Where did your uncle go?”

  “Home to die. He was dying anyway, you know.”

  “I see. And about the Deneb? What—”

  “No problem. It’s up there. Just give ‘em a buzz.”

  “It’s really been there all this time?”

  “Yep. It thought it was somewhere else, and so did you. But no mind, buddy. It’s all right now.”

  “Is it really—all right?”

  “Well, yesss—except that—”

  “Hooli! For fucking Buddah’s sake—”

  “Calma, hijo. It’s just that I thought you’d like a certain memory erased. I could make it so that every time you thought on the little scene you’ve just witnessed, well maybe your mind would switch to Christmas trees and candles.”

  “I’m an adult, Hooli. I’m an Adjuster! Moreover, I’m a survivor type. It’s a print for my old age. I might even learn something. Old age. That’s a laugh. I’m thirty, Hooli. With luck I’ll make it to a hundred and fifty—and you’re already five thousand.”

  “Ten thousand.”

  “Oh, bloody Magus.”

  “I must leave you now, Collin. There are some things I must do.”

  “So soon? Will I see you again?”

  “Of course. I owe you.”

  And the shimmering sphere with the crisp diamond-point lights rose neatly and disappeared over the southern horizon.

  At the exact nanosecond of Hooli’s disappearance, things sprang to life all around me. The parallel image of a dead video screen and a tape suddenly clearing, slid across my mind’s eye.

  I wasn’t ready for it, really. But still I held them all for the brief seconds necessary to ask that they look toward the south hill. “The last great enemy of the world of Fregis, and of the land of Marack,” I told them, “is gone forever. Our world is now at peace. ‘Twill be our duty to maintain it. Hail Marack!” I roared. “Hail Ferlach! Hail Gheese! Hail Kelb! Hail Great Ortmund! And hail all those of our brothers on the great continent of Om!”

  And they did so, raising their voices enthusiastically for the northern kingdoms, and woodenly for Om. For after all, they were and would continue to be, men and women of a fighting race who had still to get their feet truly planted on the first rung of the ladder.

  To me, other than the peace of Murie and the close companionship of Rawl, Caroween, Sir Dosh, Sir Sernas, Gen-Rondin and now, Elioseen, it was anticlimax. I felt drained, tired, old. I knew something, or rather I knew just a small bit of something that few in all our galaxy would ever know. It was still difficult to accept; especially, since it remained unclear. He’d said he would explain it when he returned. I could only hope—and wait.

  And so there was a great and sustained singing and dancing in the streets of all the northern cities; this, of course, after I'd also done a fly-over of the remaining two Alphian ships and blew the both of them to hell. We took as many as fifty additional prisoners who’d not been aboard and tossed .them into Glagmaron’s dungeons along with their buddies. The celebrations went on for days.

  Kriloy and I also visited the Deneb-3, our comrade Adjuster, Ragan Orr, Admiral Drelas Niall and the hundred-member crew. As they told it, they had been living in a gray mist for all this time. They said that no single instrument aboard the Deneb had worked except servos and those needed for the maintenance of food, heat, and (Hooli’s humor), a working video mechanism for the running of old movie tapes. This last, Commander Niall told me, was a most interesting phenomenon, while still being a part of the insoluble problem.

  I, in turn, told them what had happened, which was little enough when you get right down to it. I promised a more complete report, hopefully when Hooli returned.

  Kriloy was his old self. All was most definitely right again in his world. Indeed, as he saw it, to coin a cliche from the past, he’d been reborn. He even volunteered to shuttle the kings, Draslich and Chitar, from Ferlach and Gheese, respectively, plus the appointed regents of Kelb and Great Ortmund to Glagmaron for the major victory celebrations. Each of them had a train of at least fifty lords and knights, together with their ladies. No small task at all. Krfloy was roundly praised.

  Hie victory feasting lasted a full week, and culminated in the marriage of myself, Kyrie Fern of the Galactic Foundation, known for all time in Marack as the Collin, to the Princess Murie Nigaard Caronne, soon to be queen in Marack. We were wed simultaneously with the young Baron Rawl Fergis, cousin to the queen, and his betrothed, the Princess Caroween Cey Hoggle-Fitz, soon to be queen in Great Ortmund … And all this with the one-hundred man crew of the Deneb-3, and her Commander, Drelas Niall, in attendance.

  There had never been anything like it I doubt that there’d ever be anything like it again; not with that feudal splendor.

  I hadn’t given up on Hooli returning. In a way, I think, he was simply allowing both of us a breather. I appreciated that. I’d fought through two great wars, a hundred battles, the recent and quite bloody little conflict; and with a deep-space war tossed into the pot; and then witnessed the denouement of Hooli and the sphere. I’d indeed had it for awhile. My thoughts were on a leave of absence—two years, perhaps, of absolute relaxation, and in a Camelot-Fregis at peace. I’d introduce the game of chess; perhaps, fly-casting, too. Maybe the Terran game of baseball. It was still being played, so I understood; a proof of its staying power. I also wanted to visit and spend some time with Great Ap and the Vuuns again. And finally, I wanted a few hundred hours of sack-time with Murie. What else? Oh, yes. Despite being a vegetarian, I'd become addicted to gog-meat stew….

  And there was one final and very important thing. But only Hooli had the answer to that.

  It wasn’t until autumn that he came again. He’d waited a full three months. The leaves had already changed, were falling, covering the surface of the Cyr and being blown in swaths by soft zephyrs over the great flagstones of the castle courtyard. … It was indeed that time again. Even the greater part of the dottle herds were being released into the forests to seek their winter forage. It was quite a ceremony, and one in which the dottles themselves participated. To watch it would make a Druid out of anyone, if he was half a man.

  I’d been hawking with Murie at the time, a sport both of us dearly loved. Indeed, we were fortunate in that we dearly loved doing many things together, especially now, since Rawl, Dosh and Caroween had gone off to inspect their kingdom, get things set up for a visit by us on Wimbely’s Night before the coming of the solstice… . Even Lors Sernas had finally departed. He’d pledged me his undying friendship, but explained, too, that Hish needed him; that he’d received a message that the worshipers of Dark Tuums, an evil god of sacrifice, was attacking his Hoom-Tet, with the help of certain greedy lords and willing priests. He hinted, too, that he’d been too long from his well-rounded and oh, so willing, Buusti. The tale was all too familiar. I bid him a most affectionate good-bye….

  Our hawks, grown much too fat and lazy for the fantastic amount of poor pitty-docks they’d knocked down and eaten, had lost their enthusiasm for the hunt. And so we lunched, and Fat Henery, my court dottle, broused alongside Murie’s little Tarditi, named for a court seductress of olden times. After lunch we dozed. Murie with her golden head on a downy pillow, myself with my head on her thighs; my second favorite spot, the tummy having been taken over by a small stranger….

  The warmth of the sun and Murie’s thighs, the sound of insects, all of it was conducive
to a total relaxation. Except that suddenly I heard a boat whistle. Nothing shrill, mind you. It was more of an inoffensive “toot,” the kind one might hear on the upper Thames at the height of the boating season. I squinted without squinting, with my eyes closed. Sure enough, there was the river and there were the boats. And there, coming around a bend of rushes and the branches of overhanging English elms, was himself, a very familiar figure. He was working a one-man scull, wore a brimmed beany and had on a shirt in the colors of a very famous English boy’s school. He deftly maneuvered the little craft to the river bank which was directly in front of me, rested the oars, pulled it up a bit so the current wouldn’t carry it off, looked up, waved, and called, “Hellooo, buddy!”