thing's cold, immortal mind, its dread intention, and knows its goal is to
conquer her, nullify her, drive her mind into mad byways and seize her plasm
for his own.
And as his mind presses upon hers she catches a glimpse of the way he sees
things, the world bent and distorted, plasm the focus of the whole world, all
other reality twisted toward it, leaning inward, strangely curved and warped,
the colors shimmering in odd spectra, some strangely alive, imbued with a
strange purpose... and what purpose could a color have .. . ?It is fear
that saves her, a pure reflex that sends the plasm blasting from her into
Taikoen, driving the ice from her in a spray of burning plasm fire. Molten
metal sings in her veins. There is a roar of thwarted anger, a kind of snarl,
and then the hanged man's body twists again, a strange little Mobius shiver,
and vanishes into the wall, into the building's plasm conduits.
Aiah pauses in the Operations Room she is aware of sweat pouring down her
neck, of her heart hammering her ribs and she turns her focus to the Dreaming
Sisters, to the outstretched, pointing arms that seem to bridge the world of
dreaming and not-dreaming. .. .
The arms sway like compass needles, pointing up and right, and Aiah flies,
penetrating the arched ceiling to the story above; and here the sisters' arms
are level, all pointing deeper into the building, and Aiah follows them,
flying through walls and ceilings, through alcoves and images, penetrating as
if entering a mirror her own image in The Apprentice, Sorya's scornful gaze in
The Shadow, Rohder's thoughtful Mage. Contact with Taikoen's mind seems to
have deranged her perception in some way: the corridors and images seem
warped, twisted, looming toward her as if threatening. She tries to ignore
the effect, the distorted and ominous images, and concentrate only on her
blazing pursuit.
She realizes as she flies that she is wearing the Golden Lady anima, the
featureless icon of blazing gold. . . . She can't remember willing this,
and wonders how long she has borne this form, whether she automatically
slipped into it when she began to fly or perhaps took it on when she invoked
the Golden Lady's name, when she shouted at Taikoen in her plasm-pride.
She passes through a wall and finds herself in the dome room, sees Shieldlight
passing through the slits in the dome to illuminate the gleaming plasm
accumulator, copper and black ceramic behind its carved screen. A dreaming
sister lies dead atop a control panel, blood spattering the dials and
switches, the sight all the more horrible in Aiah's distorted perceptions.
Taikoen shimmers toward the accumulator, disappears into it before Aiah can
launch a plasm blast. Other animas fly into the room, hover about the
accumulator like a swarm of angry insects.
It is Taikoen's last refuge. Plasm was flowing in the mains, and flowing only
in one direction, from the accumulator to the sisters' contacts. Taikoen fled
upstream, as it were, to the source of the plasm. Perhaps he'd expected to
find a plasm main that would carry him away, allow him to merge with Caraqui's
vast plasm well and vanish; but instead he'd found only a dead end, trapped
himself here. He can still run, but if he does he will have to flee into a
plasm conduit with less plasm than he has access to now, and he will find
himself weaker and still lost, still caught in the sisters' maze.
The dreaming sister Order of Eternity lies on a couch on the other side of the
circular room. She sits upright, opens her eyes.
"Hit him from all sides," Aiah says. "Destroy the accumulator and he has
nowhere to run. Ready ... on my command.
"No." Order of Eternity raises a hand. Her words are slurred by the plasm
contact still in her mouth. "It is our turn. We will end it.
Aiah hesitates. And then the dome room, the Sisters' stony refuge, the world
itself, seems to undergo a shift, a transformation. Aiah sees everything as
through a pulsing wave, and she feels herself uplifted, as if buoyed up by a
surge of the sea. There is a moment in which all seems to hang suspended. .
. . Aiah thinks wildly of the "slip" in the Barkazil dance, a hesitation
between beats.
The world falls into place again, somehow more intense than before, more real.
Aiah gazes at the dead sister, and recognizes the woman she knows as Inaction.
The dead woman stares at her, a horrified expression that says, / was not
expecting this.
The world shivers again to another pulse of... of what? Reality is changing,
Aiah thinks, the pace of her thoughts fervid, they are changing the world.
"What is going on?" Khorsa wonders aloud in the breathless moment that
follows, like a pause before the clapper strikes the bell.
Another pulse, another endless moment in which the world changes. Aiah feels
herself buoyed up by a wave of gentle power. A cry of wonder parts her lips.
The figures on the screen seem to move, shift, engage with one another in a
solemn dance, the world-dance that Aiah has seen beyond the Shield, the dance
of eternity, the dance of the Woman who is the Moon.
The timeless moment ends, and reality falls into place again, stone by slow
stone.
"Wahhh," Alfeg breathes in awe.
Order of Eternity stands, removes the contact from her mouth, and walks around
the screen to where Aiah, the Golden Lady, waits. She seems to move with
unnatural lithe movements, and her face is distorted, all eyes and forehead,
the mouth and chin tiny. Taikoen's perceptions have left their imprint on
Aiah's mind.
"The creature is dead," says the sister. "We have abolished it.
"How?" The question spills from Aiah's mind.
"It existed as a modulation in plasm. Once the creature ceased its movement
and was contained in one place, and we had the leisure to do so, we modulated
the same plasm in a way as to reduce the creature's modulation to zero we
canceled the creature out, like one wave precisely canceling another and
leaving the sea smooth. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]