this disaster ... this d-jump has been valuable.
I learned ... but I'll show you when I wake up.
Meanwhile, get everything ready to go to Europe. Jordy and Peter ... I'm counting on you and your people to repair this CE rig. Dismantle it ... power supply, computer, auxiliaries, the spare suit of armour, everything! Salvage Kyllikki ... get this equipment set up on board. Use the small sigmas so that the children and Aiken Drum can't farsense you clearly. My plan ... destroy deep geological structure of time-gate site, thus ... interfere with geomagnetic input to tau-field. Old Guderian himself wrote that this input was critical to the focus of the timewarp. Advantage of this plan ... we need not confront the children directly, nor Aiken Drum. And solution is permanent.
Can't say more now. Trust me."
"We do," said Patricia.
Again that smile [ pine pine pine ] . A nd pain.
Marc's farspeech was laughing, shouting. You aren't born yet Mental Man I'm free of you!
Then he was speaking rationally, aloud, concentrating entirely upon Patricia Castellane. "Keep a close watch on me while I'm floating, Pat. We all know the regen tank has its quirks and crotchets. I don't want to wake up with extra fingers or toes ... or anything else."
"I'll see to it," she whispered. "Now let me take you down.
Out of the pain."
Painpinepainpine.
[Images: Adolescent boy opening baby's blanket to see rosy perfection. Mama he's all right Papa was wrong after all wasn't he Yes dear wrong wrong wrong. Pine roses cancerous degeneration stink smoke guttering vigil candle consummatum est young Jack.] "Thank you, Pat. No, I must go alone. Au 'voir." The eyes closed. The mental projections faded.
Marc Remillard had withdrawn into his abyss.
I.
The Subsumption
CHAPTER ONE
Summer fog.
It leached all colour and substance from the world, leaving only greys. Lead grey tombstone grey cobweb grey mouse grey ash grey snot grey dust grey corpse grey. It was unheard-of that there be fog at that time of the year, late August. So it had to be still another portent-as dire a one as the death of the OneHanded Warrior. There were many who said that the fog had its origin in the supercooled ashes of the hero: each molecule of his scattered body accreting water vapour, each tiny relic drawing to itself the air's own tears to fashion this widespreading shroud over the Many-Coloured Land.
(The less morbidly poetic decided that the fog was a meteorological freak, perhaps a belated consequent of the Flood refilling the Empty Sea. Ah ... but they had not been there in Goriah, watching the duel at dawn from the battlements of the Castle of Glass!) The fog rolled over Armorica from the Strait of Redon to the dense jungles of the Upper Laar, south beyond the Gulf of Aquitaine and the marshes of Bordeaux. It brimmed the Paris Basin swamps and the Hercynian Forest and flowed eastward to the Vosges, the Jura, the very foothills of the High Helvetides. By afternoon its south-moving front had poured through the Cantabrian passes into central Koneyn. Paradoxically growing in volume, it buried the low Sierra Morena, seeped into the embayment of the Guadalquivir, and only halted at the snow-dusted Betic crest, lapping the slopes of Veleta and Alcababa and blasted, empty Mulhacen.
Bland, energy sapping, it masked the sun and stifled sound and left the vegetation dripping sadly. Forest animals hid.
Chilled birds and insects slept. The great herds of the Pliocene steppes crowded together on the heights, nostrils quivering and eyes wide and ears pricked, paralysed because their senses gave no input but misty uncertainty.
It was the day the Nonborn King had his great victory. The day Queen Mercy-Rosmar and Nodonn Battlemaster died.
In the aftermath, the King returned to his castle, carrying the trophy.
The knights and retainers came rushing to meet him, exultant and mind-shouting, eager to proclaim the triumph. But they fell back dismayed when he dropped the silver hand in the
I learned ... but I'll show you when I wake up.
Meanwhile, get everything ready to go to Europe. Jordy and Peter ... I'm counting on you and your people to repair this CE rig. Dismantle it ... power supply, computer, auxiliaries, the spare suit of armour, everything! Salvage Kyllikki ... get this equipment set up on board. Use the small sigmas so that the children and Aiken Drum can't farsense you clearly. My plan ... destroy deep geological structure of time-gate site, thus ... interfere with geomagnetic input to tau-field. Old Guderian himself wrote that this input was critical to the focus of the timewarp. Advantage of this plan ... we need not confront the children directly, nor Aiken Drum. And solution is permanent.
Can't say more now. Trust me."
"We do," said Patricia.
Again that smile [ pine pine pine ] . A nd pain.
Marc's farspeech was laughing, shouting. You aren't born yet Mental Man I'm free of you!
Then he was speaking rationally, aloud, concentrating entirely upon Patricia Castellane. "Keep a close watch on me while I'm floating, Pat. We all know the regen tank has its quirks and crotchets. I don't want to wake up with extra fingers or toes ... or anything else."
"I'll see to it," she whispered. "Now let me take you down.
Out of the pain."
Painpinepainpine.
[Images: Adolescent boy opening baby's blanket to see rosy perfection. Mama he's all right Papa was wrong after all wasn't he Yes dear wrong wrong wrong. Pine roses cancerous degeneration stink smoke guttering vigil candle consummatum est young Jack.] "Thank you, Pat. No, I must go alone. Au 'voir." The eyes closed. The mental projections faded.
Marc Remillard had withdrawn into his abyss.
I.
The Subsumption
CHAPTER ONE
Summer fog.
It leached all colour and substance from the world, leaving only greys. Lead grey tombstone grey cobweb grey mouse grey ash grey snot grey dust grey corpse grey. It was unheard-of that there be fog at that time of the year, late August. So it had to be still another portent-as dire a one as the death of the OneHanded Warrior. There were many who said that the fog had its origin in the supercooled ashes of the hero: each molecule of his scattered body accreting water vapour, each tiny relic drawing to itself the air's own tears to fashion this widespreading shroud over the Many-Coloured Land.
(The less morbidly poetic decided that the fog was a meteorological freak, perhaps a belated consequent of the Flood refilling the Empty Sea. Ah ... but they had not been there in Goriah, watching the duel at dawn from the battlements of the Castle of Glass!) The fog rolled over Armorica from the Strait of Redon to the dense jungles of the Upper Laar, south beyond the Gulf of Aquitaine and the marshes of Bordeaux. It brimmed the Paris Basin swamps and the Hercynian Forest and flowed eastward to the Vosges, the Jura, the very foothills of the High Helvetides. By afternoon its south-moving front had poured through the Cantabrian passes into central Koneyn. Paradoxically growing in volume, it buried the low Sierra Morena, seeped into the embayment of the Guadalquivir, and only halted at the snow-dusted Betic crest, lapping the slopes of Veleta and Alcababa and blasted, empty Mulhacen.
Bland, energy sapping, it masked the sun and stifled sound and left the vegetation dripping sadly. Forest animals hid.
Chilled birds and insects slept. The great herds of the Pliocene steppes crowded together on the heights, nostrils quivering and eyes wide and ears pricked, paralysed because their senses gave no input but misty uncertainty.
It was the day the Nonborn King had his great victory. The day Queen Mercy-Rosmar and Nodonn Battlemaster died.
In the aftermath, the King returned to his castle, carrying the trophy.
The knights and retainers came rushing to meet him, exultant and mind-shouting, eager to proclaim the triumph. But they fell back dismayed when he dropped the silver hand in the
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