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obvious need to recall and re-instruct our ambassador to the UN, to renegotiate all present agreements,
we're so sorry but we're sure the Security Council will understand—" She chuckled too. "How I'll enjoy
dismantling the fool's work he's been about."
Lee stood there trying to contain her anger, and turning and kneading the stone in her fingers, the way she
kneaded pasta when she made it from scratch, to give her something to do while she was considering a
problem. Do I go forward, or back? What I've got on the implant right now is enough to make a
lot of trouble for these people. But if I—
In her fingers, the stone went soft, and squished like dough.
Lee gasped in terror and astonishment, and would have dropped it right on the floor if it had been out of
her pocket. Even now she had to force herself to hold on to the stone; the feeling of what it was doing in
her hand was bizarre. It was moving a little, squirming against her hand as if it was alive. I wish it would
cut that out—
It stopped.
Lee's eyes widened a little at that. It's not just illusion they're working with here. Things here can be
changed.
And not just by them!
Lee gripped the stone in her fist harder."—but he doesn't have the support he needs in the Miraha," the
male voice was saying; "they've never trusted him—"
No matter how solid this reality seems, Lee thought, it's not that solid. Others plainly perceive this
malleability, too, as a commonplace: a truth. And the truth that others can perceive, I can See, no
matter where I am or how others try to prevent it... She took a long breath, preparing for the next
experiment.
Two things happened then. "They won't have to trust him much longer," said the female voice, getting
louder by the second. "Kil, I'm for my couch. Comm me in the morning; we have some things to work
out." Away down the hall, near a wide archway of stone, Lee saw Dierrich dil'Estenv come out of
another doorway, and saw her, without any fuss, seem simply to draw the air aside, and vanish through it
and be-hind it, as if behind a curtain.
The hair stood right up on the back of Lee's neck. Sud-denly she was standing at the comer of
Eighteenth Street again, watching Omren dil'Sorden fall slowly past her, gasping out one of his last
breaths; and that dark shape be-hind him, some Alfen male, pulled the air aside and was gone.
Matt was right, she thought. The sonofabitch, he was right... But she had no more time to spend
hating Mart's guts, or making any further sense of what she'd seen—be-cause the other thing happened.
About two meters in front of her, one of the doors on the right-hand side of the hall opened, and an Alfen
came out, and looked straight at Lee in complete astonishment.
In one of those frozen moments, Lee saw his mouth open to say she had no idea what. She didn't wait
around to dis-cover. She took to her heels and ran back the way she'd come. Behind her, his shout
echoed: "They're out, the ephemerals are out!" As if we were in a kennel, or a hutch, Lee thought,
running like a miler down that long hall, her fists pumping up and down as she ran. I could really begin
to dislike these people if I didn't need a door more!
The blind wall a little way ahead of her began to ripple. The stone in her fist stung her hand, sharp-edged,
a reminder or a warning. Lee hardly dared to slow, but there was no mistaking a sudden transparency of
the wall, a doorway cur-tained in rippling air, leading somewhere else, anywhere but this hall—
Worth a try, she thought, and threw herself through it. It brushed across her face and body like cobwebs
that didn't stop at clothes or skin but went straight through her. Lee shuddered, and came down clumsily
on a stone floor, the jar of the landing shocking up into her knees. She looked around her in uncertainty
and terror. Another hallway, in the modern part of the building this time. She saw someone come out a
door at the far end of the hallway and head right for her—
One more time! Lee said to the rock, looking at the near-est wall. And not just anywhere, this time!
Our suite—
The rippling melted into being, the texture of the stone moving with it. Lee jumped through it, once more
enduring the cobwebs trailing across and through her, though they made her shiver—
She was outside the door of the suite, which stood open. Lee stood there trembling for a moment, staring
at it and fi-nally understanding both the "fading" of Jok Chastelain's psychospoor from the bus, and his
strange vision that had looked to him like passing out. Someone had snatched him out of that bus through
a gating just like this last one.
But why's the door open? "Gel?" she said, and went in. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]