"It's an adaptation of the transmitter principle. It lets you see
anywhere, but without jumping. It uses a tracer mechanism like the one
in the Toys. If Rakhal's electrical-impulse pattern were on file--just a
minute." She fished out the bird Toy and unwrapped it. "Here's how we
find out which of you this is keyed to."
I looked at the fledgling bird, lying innocently in her palm, as she
pushed aside the feathers, exposing a tiny crystal. "If it's keyed to
you, you'll see yourself in this, as if the screen were a mirror. If
it's keyed to Rakhal...."
She touched the crystal to the surface of the screen. Little flickers of
snow wavered and danced. Then, abruptly, we were looking down from a
height at the lean back of a man in a leather jacket. Slowly he turned.
I saw the familiar set of his shoulders, saw the back of his head come
into an aquiline profile, and the profile turn slowly into a scarred,
seared mask more hideously claw-marked and disfigured than my own.
"Rakhal," I muttered. "Shift the focus if you can, Miellyn, get a look
out the window or something. Charin's a big city. If we could get a look
at a landmark--"
Rakhal was talking soundlessly, his lips moving as he spoke to someone
out of sight range of the scanning device. Abruptly Miellyn said,
"There." She had caught a window in the sight field of the pane. I could
see a high pylon and two of three uprights that looked like a bridge,
just outside. I said, "It's the Bridge of Summer Snows. I know where he
is now. Turn it off, Miellyn, we can find him--" I was turning away when
Miellyn screamed.
"Look!"
Rakhal had turned his back on the scanner and for the first time I could
see who he was talking to. A hunched, catlike shoulder twisted; a
sinuous neck, a high-held head that was not quite human.
"Evarin!" I swore. "That does it. He knows now that I'm not Rakhal, if
he didn't know it all along! Come on, girl, we're getting out of here!"
This time there was no pretense of normality as we dashed through the
workroom. Fingers dropped from half-completed Toys as they stared after
us. _Toys!_ I wanted to stop and smash them all. But if we hurried, we
might find Rakhal. And, with luck, we would find Evarin with him.
And then I was going to bang their heads together. I'd reached a
saturation point on adventure. I'd had all I wanted. I realized that I'd
been up all night, that I was exhausted. I wanted to murder and smash,
and wanted to fall down somewhere and go to sleep, all at once. We
banged the workroom door shut and I took time to shove a heavy divan
against it, blockading it.
Miellyn stared. "The Little Ones would not harm me," she began. "I am
sacrosanct."
I wasn't sure. I had a notion her status had changed plenty, beginning
when I saw her chained and drugged, and standing under the hovering
horror. But I didn't say so.
"Maybe. But there's nothing sacred about _me_!"
She was already inside the recess where the Toad God squatted. "There is
a street-shrine just beyond the Bridge of Summer Snows. We can jump
directly there." Abruptly she froze in my arms, with a convulsive
shudder.
"Evarin! Hold me, tight--he's jumping in! Quick!"
Space reeled round us, and then....
Can you split instantaneousness into fragments? It didn't make sense,
but so help me, that's what happened. And everything that happened,
occurred within less than a second. We landed in the street-shrine. I
could see the pylon and the bridge and the rising sun of Charin. Then
there was the giddy internal wrenching, a blast of icy air whistled
round us, and we were gazing out at the Polar mountains, ringed in their
eternal snow.
Miellyn clutched at me. "Pray! Pray to the Gods of Terra, if there are
any!"
She clung so violently that it felt as if her small body was trying to
push through me and come out the other side. I hung on tight. Miellyn
knew what she was doing in the transmitter; I was just along for the
ride and I didn't relish the thought of being dropped off somewhere in
that black limbo we traversed.
We jumped again, the sickness of disorientation forcing a moan from the
girl, and darkness shivered round us. I looked on an unfamiliar street
of black night and dust-bleared stars. She whimpered, "Evarin knows what
I'm doing. He's jumping us all over the planet. He can work the controls
with his mind. Psychokinetics--I can do it a little, but I never
dared--oh, hang on _tight_!"
Then began one of the most amazing duels ever fought. Miellyn would make
some tiny movement, and we would be falling, blind and dizzy, through
blackness. Halfway through the giddiness, a new direction would wrench
us and we would be thrust elsewhere, and look out into a new street.
One instant I smelled hot coffee from the spaceport cafe near the
Kharsa. An instant later it was blinding noon, with crimson fronds
waving above us and a dazzle of water. We flicked in and out of the
salty air of Shainsa, glimpsed flowers on a Daillon street, moonlight,
noon, red twilight flickered and went, shot through with the terrible
giddiness of hyperspace.
Then suddenly I caught a second glimpse of the bridge and the pylon; a
moment's oversight had landed us for an instant in Charin. The blackness
started to reel down, but my reflexes are fast and I made one swift,
scrabbling step forward. We lurched, sprawled, locked together, on the
stones of the Bridge of Summer Snows. Battered, and bruised, and
bloody, we were still alive, and where we wanted to be.
I lifted Miellyn to her feet. Her eyes were dazed with pain. The ground
swayed and rocked under our feet as we fled along the bridge. At the far
end, I looked up at the pylon. Judging from its angle, we couldn't be
more than a hundred feet from the window through which I'd seen that
landmark in the scanner. In this street there was a wineshop, a silk
market, and a small private house. I walked up and banged on the door.
Silence. I knocked again and had time to wonder if we'd find ourselves
explaining things to some uninvolved stranger. Then I heard a child's
high voice, and a deep familiar voice hushing it. The door opened, just
a crack, to reveal part of a scarred face.
It drew into a hideous grin, then relaxed.
"I thought it might be you, Cargill. You've taken at least three days
longer than I figured, getting here. Come on in," said Rakhal Sensar.