Back | Next
Contents


Chapter Twenty-five

Hansen stepped into a sun-dappled woodland. It was late spring, and the tips of the fir branches were bright green with new growth. A squirrel chittered wildly as it peered around a treetrunk at the intruder.


Hansen probed at the ground with his finger tips. He touched a yielding surface—but not the mat of needles his eyes told him to expect. He reached for a fir tree and found nothing, only an illusion of light through whose ghostly ambiance his hand gestured.


A tall nude woman ran barefoot past the false trees. Her braided red hair was long enough to fall to the back of her knees when she was at rest. A male cardinal flew from a pollen-bright bunch of cones as she flickered by.


Then the bird and woman were gone. Even the squirrel was silent—and none of them had existed to begin with.


The door had closed behind Hansen. No sign of its presence remained. He licked his lips and walked in the direction the woman's image had taken.


Hansen stepped into a meadow. The grasses waved high over his head. The stems were studded with tiny pastel flowers; birds fluttered among them.


He couldn't tell which way the woman had gone. His body touched nothing as he brushed through the sunlit display.


The woman was walking toward him. The grasses parted for her. A chickadee hopped from a green milkweed pod to her shoulder and back again, calling its brilliant, cheerful song.


The sun burnished golden highlights from her hair, but her skin was the pure white of an android.


Hansen stepped into her path. "Lady?" he called. "Acca?"


The image stepped through him without contact. He turned and ran after it/her onto a drift-swept volcanic plain. Here and there a patch of gray-green lichen grew where winds had scoured snow from the ropy basalt.


A golden battlesuit strode across the rock toward Hansen.


He halted. His body wanted to run, but there was nowhere to run. . . .


"Acca," Hansen called. "I've come to you."


Hansen could not only hear the sound of the battlesuit's steps, he could feel the impacts through the springy reality of what appeared to be lava.


The figure was within ten meters of Hansen. It raised its right gauntlet and ripped the air with the lethal blue fountain of its arc—higher than the distance still separating guard and intruder.


"I must kill you," the suit said in a woman's melodious voice.


"There's no must, Acca," Hansen said. He spread his open hands. "You make your own fate. I was sent to you."


The arc cut off. The battlesuit continued to advance, step by measured, armored step.


"I have everything here!" Acca said.


The volcanic waste shimmered into the meadow, the forest; a rocky skerry on which elephant seals roared their challenges back to the tossing surf.


"Now you have everything, Acca," Hansen said. "I was sent to you."


The golden armor halted almost close enough for him to touch it. "You can't leave, now," Acca said.


Hansen nodded. "I don't want to leave, Acca. I was sent to you."


The battlesuit's right arm reached down to the latch and tripped it. Hansen gripped the edge of the heavy plastron and helped pull it open.


The woman inside was the original of the images which Hansen had followed through the images of places.


The spring forest grew about them again.


Acca accepted his hand as she stepped out of the golden armor. She looked him in the eyes and asked, "What do you want?"


"You, Acca," Hansen said. "And to ask one question of the knowledge which you guard."


He smiled. "But first you," he said as he put his arms around her naked, perfect form.


 


They lay on a beach whose sand had the smooth resilience of rubber beneath them. The light of a full moon turned the sheen of the open battlesuit to silver. Hansen didn't recognize the constellations.


He kissed Acca's throat. She smiled and purred, but her eyes did not open.


"Darling?" he said. "Now I need to look at the data bank."


She raised her hands to his neck.


"Why that?" she murmured. Her fingertips traced the flat muscles of Hansen's shoulders and chest.


Moonlight turned her coppery pubic hair to silver. Hansen touched her groin, very carefully because the past hours had surely caused bruising.


Acca closed her eyes firmly again. She began to breathe in a series of gasps at decreasing intervals. He knelt and took one of her nipples between his teeth gently, tonguing it until her shuddering climax had come and passed.


"Now, darling," he whispered. "The data bank. One question."


Acca moaned softly. She made a gesture toward empty air. A terminal formed there, abruptly as solid as Hansen or the battlesuit standing in rigid majesty.


"Place me in front of it," Walker ordered through the earphones, "and get into the battlesuit. It will fit you."


Hansen kissed the woman's lips and got up. He'd always done whatever the job required.


He set his helmet on the ground. The air through his perspiring scalp felt cool and pure.


Acca looked up at him with languid eyes. "Don't play with the suit now," she said. "Come to me. Just hold me."


She smiled. Hansen closed the battlesuit over himself.


The display was diamond hard. Acca stared at him in dawning wonder.


The jewel burning in the center of the plastic helmet had extruded crystalline pseudopods into the casing of the terminal.


"What are you doing?" Acca called. She waved at the terminal, but it ignored her by remaining solid. "Please come out. Please, whoever—"


Walker was growing like a time-lapse image of ice forming in a supersaturated atmosphere. Highlights streaked his crystal limbs, but a single blue spark winked at his heart.


The mass grew above Hansen and about him, distorting his vision of the surroundings. The universe started to shift.


Very faintly, Hansen heard Acca calling, "Please, whoever you are. Please don't leave me. . . ."


For a moment, Hansen in his golden suit stood on frozen shingle beneath the huge red sun. The crystal surrounding him began to cloud and crack, like ice in shadow on a warm day. Bits dropped from the outer surface of the mass.


"Walker?" Hansen said, outwardly calm but unable to control the jolt of adrenalin that made his limbs quiver.


Walker's form was crumbling to white sand which dribbled across the gravel of the ancient beach. Hansen could still see the blue glint, but it hovered in airless space before him. He was hearing speech and almost words again. . . .


". . . sen, I sum . . ."


The universe shifted again. Bright sunlight, a red and gold battlesuit; muddy ground—


He saw the practice field below Peace Rock. The whole community was standing around the circle of posts to hear Taddeusz issue his formal challenge.


"Appear or wander an outlaw and coward," shouted the warchief's amplified voice, "destined victim for the hand of any man, slave or free. Hansen, I summon you!"


"Display energy levels," Hansen whispered.


The ground was solid beneath his armored boots. He heard the crowd's gasp.


Taddeusz was twenty meters from him. To the sensors on Hansen's new battlesuit, the power levels of even the warchief's royal armor were varied—and vulnerable.


"Cut," Hansen said. His weapon snarled as it traced a line across the mud at Taddeusz' feet.


"You should have learned, Lord Taddeusz," Hansen shouted across the field, "not to summon what you lack the strength to send away."


 


"Dog spawn!" Taddeusz spat. His rippling arc crossed Hansen's at midpoint between the combatants.


The prickling of incipient overcharge unexpectedly lifted the hair on the warchief's arm.


It must have startled him, but Taddeusz was an old campaigner. He snatched his weapon back, let it vanish into his gauntlet, and thrust with his left hand.


Hansen saw the charge levels building, but he didn't move to block the stroke. They were still twenty meters apart, and if the armor Hansen had brought from—bought from—Acca couldn't take the impact, he might as well learn it now.


The world roared. Hansen's display lost definition and color, and his every hair—from head to the tiny ones curling on the backs of his big toes—straightened as much as his garments would permit.


Hansen twitched his gauntlet. His arc touched Taddeusz' and cut it, breaking the circuit.


The warchief switched hands. Hansen slashed. Taddeusz' AI shifted power from attack to defense, but his armor's scarlet and gilt burned away in a line from wrist to shoulder.


Hansen let his opponent back a step uncertainly.


"Taddeusz," he said. "You see that I don't need to fear you. Let's stop this now."


Taddeusz lunged forward. The arc fanning from Hansen's gauntlet absorbed the thrust before it touched his golden armor. Hansen twisted his hand and overloaded the weapon close to the warchief's gauntlet.


"Taddeusz!" he shouted. "I haven't touched your daughter. I swear it on my honor!"


He'd've sworn he hadn't touched Unn, Acca, or anybody at all if he'd thought it would prevent an unnecessary killing. But even the truth was useless here. . . .


Taddeusz stepped in, his arc flickering from one gauntlet to the other as the warchief searched for an opening with the skill of long practice and natural talent. Hansen shifted his own broad arc, reading Taddeusz' power shifts to block each threat before it occurred.


Golsingh wore tights and a black velvet doublet as he watched expressionlessly from the sidelines. Unn and Krita stood to either side of him. Malcolm and Maharg were to Krita's left.


The air was bright and warm, so only a few of the spectators were wrapped in furs.


Taddeusz attempted a furious overhead cut. Hansen caught the stroke and held it, stepping closer while power draining to Taddeusz' weapon froze the warchief's armor.


Hansen's left gauntlet spat a second arc. He thrust surgically, aiming for Taddeusz' ankle. Paint blistered.


The warchief's weapon went dead as his battlesuit overloaded. Hansen stepped back and let Taddeusz fall on his face in the mud.


"Listen to me!" Hansen said. "I don't want to kill you. Stop this nonsense, take your armor off, and let's discuss the good of the kingdom."


Taddeusz rolled to his back. Balled dirt stripped from his red and gold armor as his suit powered up again.


The black scars on the warchief's arm and ankle were a reminder of how badly he was overmatched. Hansen let him rise.


"There'll be no good in this kingdom so long as you live," Taddeusz said. He turned the palm of his right hand toward Hansen.


Hansen brushed his opponent's gauntlet with a low-amplitude arc from his own suit. Taddeusz' bolt was deafening even through the battlesuit, but the touch of Hansen's weapon steered the charge into the ground. Mud, burned to brick and shattered, blew in all directions.


"Taddeusz!" Hansen shouted. He was sweating despite anything his battlesuit's flawless climate control could do. "Don't make me kill—"


The warchief's armor shuddered and gleamed as he reset it again. It was a fine suit, a royal suit. It recovered quickly.


"—you!"


"You're a coward and no man at all!" Taddeusz shouted. "I'm going to kill—"


Hansen's arc slashed at Taddeusz' neck. The red and gold battlesuit resisted in a momentary blaze of blue fire.


Sparks of blazing metal replaced the electrical discharge, white droplets that pattered onto the ground where they raised puffs of steam.


Taddeusz' helmet fell. For a moment the headless battlesuit remained upright. Then it too fell.


Hansen turned to Golsingh. "M-m . . . ," he said.


His voice caught. Somehow during the fighting he'd bloodied his nose.


"My king," he said. "Lord Golsingh. I regret . . . I regret . . ."


Golsingh nodded. Unn was cold-faced, but the scarf in her hands was twisted into a silken rope.


"I regret the death of your foster father," Hansen continued with sudden assurance. "If you permit me, I'll pay you the blood debt in the best way possible."


He took a deep breath. "Make me your warchief in Taddeusz' place, and I'll lay the kingdom at your feet!"


Golsingh nodded. "Yes, Lord Hansen," he said.


He looked around the circle of spectators with eyes as hard as Hansen's own before adding, "And there will be none, I think, to deny the appointment."


 


Back | Next
Contents
Framed