Redworld, page 19
I looked over at the other, empty, casket. For one breath-fraction I entertained the thought of climbing into it and making the long trip with Josi. But no. That wouldn’t work. There was too much still to do here. I had to keep faith with Gil. And Mother would never understand my unexplained disappearance. It would be hard enough explaining to her the new order now developing.
No. Time now to get out. I walked to the center console, pulled the flashing red lever, then scurried out and slammed the chamber door behind me. I listened to machinery turning and purring somewhere, and watched the far wall begin to move upward, first slowly, then faster as the great ship rose up and away.
And then it was gone, and the murder mob and the militia down in the street were screaming again—this time in fright.
I got up, walked down the stairs, out on the porch, and looked around. Where the Tower once had been was now a great emptiness in the side of the house. I looked overhead but could see no movement. The sky marvel was given to its immense journey.
The coronel stepped forward again. Holding his torch carefully so that I could see his face, he slowly approached the porch. He seemed almost a different man. He looked at his arrow in my chest, and then at my face. His eyes were wide; his mouth hung slack. The officer cleared his throat. “If you please, who was she?”
“The Madonna of the Clouds.”
“Not a lamia?”
“No.”
“And now gone forever?”
“Yes.”
“I am sorry. We did not know.” He seemed now to study the arrow, with growing distress and surmise. The point still stuck out of my chest. He said, “You should be dead.”
“Yes.”
“But you still live.”
“Yes.”
Perhaps for the first time in his life the icy features of the coronel began totally to unravel. His face showed in succession, astonishment, fear, and horror. He understood that he had suddenly become notorious (innocence notwithstanding), and would enter history, theology, and finally myth, along with the legend he had unwittingly helped to create.
I waited while he attempted to get his face and mind back into working order. (He would never be the same again, and already I was making plans to replace him.) At last he was semi-organized. He was going to ask his question. “If you please, who are you?”
How could I answer that? How could I explain something to him that I myself couldn’t understand? I took the arrow shaft in my left hand and pulled it forward and out. There was a brief flow of blood, then it stopped. I tossed the arrow to the coronel. He caught it, and held it, wondering and waiting.
Just then there was a commotion in the front ranks of the mob. Two familiar figures pushed their way through the torches. Squire Vys and Captain Kertor helped each other up the porch stairs.
“Boy,” gasped Kertor, “did you make all this mess?”
“I guess so, Captain.”
“Did Josi get away all right?” demanded the squire.
“Yes. She’s on her way.”
Kertor looked at the bloodstain on my chest, then turned around to look at the coronel and the arrow in the officer’s hand.
“Boy,” said the cavalier cautiously, “is this what it looks like?”
As if to answer him, just then a great thunderclap burst down out of the heavens. I knew that somehow Josi’s ship had caused it. The mob shrieked out in one terrified howl, but no one moved.
And then for a fraction of a breath there was silence; it was quickly broken by the peal of a great strange bell: Revenant, in the temple bell tower. The ship-thunder had finally broken it loose from its rust-prison, and it was heard now for the first time. As if in imitative envy, the other bells began their senseless clangor.
I could see faces looking at each other, then at me, wondering, speculating.
Voices in the crowd began a rolling chant. Others picked up the rhythm. They began to stomp their feet and clap their hands. “Rev-en-ant! Rev-en-ant! Rev-en-ant!”
The coronel called up again, this time in a harsh cry, more a declaration than a question. “You are—?”
“For better, for worse,” I answered him wearily. “I am the Revenant.” I pointed toward his hand. “You hold the sacred arrow, coronel. Find a cushion. Will you now form up the Grand Procession, and move forward by torchlight. Have Lieutenant Leder get word to the outlying provinces by night semaphore, balloon, and racing borch. I want the Great Archon to know all that has happened before dawn, and I would like a report in the City Building tomorrow morning.”
He bowed. He knew what to do. His world was comprehensible and orderly once more.
My two old friends and I watched the torches move away. “Come inside,” I said. “I need your help.”
They followed me into the shambles that used to be the Main Room. “Squire,” I said, “I want you to take over the collegia. Get yourself an impressive title. Chief regent? Something like that. Restructure the science program. Emphasize math and chymistry. Hire the best professors. Get Fels to help you. Give them absolute freedom to experiment … teach … publish. They can keep the theology courses, but I’ll want a complete separation of temple, science, law, and government. I want this all over the province. At the proper time we can think about the rest of the world.”
They stared at me. I continued. “Captain Kertor, you’ll have to come back out of retirement. Will you please take over the militia. To begin with, no more electroburns. Destroy that damned battery. Next, get some protection for the coronel. As soon as the temple discovers he fired the fatal arrow, they’ll try to have him assassinated.”
“Son,” interrupted the squire gravely, “do you realize you’re destroying the Great Treaty? Don’t you see this could bring back temple trials … confessions under torture … boys screaming with burning arrows in their silly guts … the plague … the starving times … And then the war will break out all over again?”
“No, squire. That’s not going to happen. I, the Revenant, hereby cancel the Treaty. As for restarting the war, I hereby issue a proclamation, that anyone taking up arms will be excommunicated, and cast into a dark and horrible hole, where he shall live forever in torment.”
There was a long silence.
“Well,” said Kertor. And then he shrugged and subsided.
“Suppose,” said the squire, “just suppose, I refuse to take over the collegia .”
“In that case, squire, I would touch you, and energy would flow from my body to yours, and you would glow. I would announce your living beatification. You would be entered on the hagiography as Saint Kon. When you die you would not be given a normal burial. Your flesh would be boiled away from your skeleton, and your bones would be rented out as sacred relics, to hang over stables at borch foaling time, and for rattling at weddings and the start of journeys. You—”
“Oh never mind. I’ll do it. But I tell you, Pol, I now view you as a creature without shame or mercy. I liked you better when you were a dumb kid.”
I sighed. “Yes, squire, so did I.”
“But what’s the point,” said Kertor. “Suppose you do develop all this new science. What’ll you do with it?”
I thought of Gil. “For one thing, we can cure sickness with it. We can save lives.”
Vys and Kertor exchanged glances. “Boy,” growled the militiaman, “we think you’re not being entirely honest.”
“Then hear this,” I said. “Within my lifetime we will develop a magnificent body of science—the whole gamut. We will discover how to move things … people … over fantastic distances. We will do this, and I will go to Brightstar, and I will certainly find her! No, don’t interrupt. I know what you’re thinking, especially you, squire. You’re thinking, what right have I, what right has anyone, to use an entire world just to find her. Well, think what you like. Civil war and anarchy be damned. Redworld will do this for me, and I will find her!”
The two old men looked at each other, then back at me. The squire grinned. “Well, boy, hadn’t we better get moving? She’s got a big head start!”
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Also by Charles L. Harness
Rings
1. Flight into Yesterday (aka The Paradox Men) (1953)
2. The Ring of Ritornel(1968)
3. Firebird (1981)
Other Novels
Wolfhead (1978)
The Catalyst (1980)
The Venetian Court (1982)
Redworld(1986)
Krono(1988)
Lurid Dreams (1990)
Lunar Justice (1990)
Cybele, With Bluebonnets (2002)
Collections
The Rose (1966)
An Ornament to his Profession (1998)
Dedication
To William D. Barney
Charles L. Harness (1915–2005)
Charles Leonard Harness was an American science fiction writer born in Colorado City, Texas. He earned degrees in chemistry and law from George Washington University and worked as a patent attorney from 1947 to 1981. Harness’ background as a lawyer influenced several of his works. His first story, “Time Trap” was published in 1948 and drew on many themes that would recur in later stories: art, time travel and a hero undergoing a quasi-transcendental experience. Harness’ most famous single novel was his first, Flight into Yesterday, which was published first as a novella in the May 1949 issue of Startling Stories and was later republished as The Paradox Men in 1953. A great influence on many writers, Harness continued to publish until 2001 and was nominated for multiple Hugo and Nebula awards. In 2004 he was named Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Harness died in 2005, aged 89.
Copyright
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Charles L Harness 1986
All rights reserved.
The right of Charles L Harness to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2013 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 12539 1
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
www.orionbooks.co.uk
Table of Contents
Title Page
Gateway Introduction
Contents
Author’s Note
1. The Procession
2. Josi
3. Memories of Women
4. S–144
5. The Main Room
6. Gil’s Elixir
7. Dean Qard
8. A Mix: Jeil, Temple, and Flash of Blade
9. A Long Walk
10. The House
11. The Bridge
12. Sheep May Safely Graze
13. Charity Multiplied
14. Gard is Horrified
15. Coronel Dite
16. I Am Auctioned
17. Josi’s Room
18. Science!
19. Dactylography
20. The Face
21. An Anatomical Anomaly
22. The Explosion
23. Night Watch
24. In the Library
25. Inside the Tower
26. The Raid
27. Jeil
28. The Death Hut
29. The Revenant
Website
Also by Charles L. Harness
Dedication
About the Author
Copyright
Charles L. Harness, Redworld
