Okay, okay. Let's talk about that some other time. Josh. Right now I've got an idea I want to discuss with you and Father Kadir. Plus a lot of information about these people that could be very useful.

Okay, sis. We're all ears.

Myali smiled. You look silly that way. Then she began to talk.Sergeant Jackson snapped off a quick blast down me corridor, then ducked back around the corner.

Think I got the b.a.s.t.a.r.d. I better. Don't like being cornered here in this dead end. He heard a scrambling sound. Reacting, he popped around the corner and fired again. Two of 'em. He hit one and the other jumped back. s.h.i.t, he thought. Pistol's running low. He bent down to see if Nelson's had a better charge.

Yeh. Old Nels bought it quick. Right in the throat. Pistol's good, though. Half charge left. He traded.

Got to get out of here, he realized. More footsteps. Must be three of 'em now from the sound of it.

He sneaked a look up the corridor. It was about twenty feet long, ending in a main cross-corridor. About ten feet up, along the right wall, was a door. The door was what all the fighting was about, why Nelson and Jimmy had got killed. Not to mention old Tige up at the mouth of the corridor.

Doors critical... back way into the bridge. Once the f.u.c.kers get in there it's all over. Right now our boys are holding their own at the main entrance, but this one is vulnerable. Gotta keep it.

He snapped another shot around the corner just to let them know he was there. He wondered what would have happened if he hadn't seen that acolyte and found the laser rifle.

d.a.m.n! Might have surprised us. But it didn't work that way. No sir, not a bit. We were half ready for 'em. s.h.i.t, another ten minutes and we would have wiped their a.s.ses. Now, even if they make it, we've made 'em pay plenty.

More noises from the head of the corridor. Sounded like they were getting ready to rush him. f.u.c.k, he thought, now I'll never be a lieutenant. Luck run out.

The pounding of feet told him they were coming. He dove out in the center of the pa.s.sageway, low, firing up at them. The first two he cut off at me knees. Their shots went high, up where he should have been. If it had only been two, he would have won. But there were five. He burned one of the three others before they could adjust to his being on the floor. As he was swinging his pistol to bear on the survivors, a bolt of light hit him square in the chest.

f.u.c.k. Doesn't even hurt, he thought as he fell into the darkest night he'd ever seen.

The bishop watched the display with growing dismay. It wasn't possible! The surprise hadn't worked.

He cursed Kohlsky, the admiral, and every d.a.m.n marine he'd ever known. The engine room had fallen, but he'd lost seven men in the process. Two was the estimated; four, the maximum. But seven! Holy Kuvaz!

Yamada's men still held the comm room and the bridge. The attempt to seal and gas the marines'

quarters had failed miserably. Most of them had been out, moving in squads to key positions when it had happened. Not more than five had died in the ga.s.sing.

How had they known? Was Kohlsky really that utterly incompetent? Or was there still another spy in his system, another informer who told Thomas his every move?

Wait! Ah, ah, that's more like it. The bridge had been broken into from the back way. Now, now!

Kill them! He switched on the visual monitor. Yes! The lasers spit deadly tongues of light. d.a.m.n, be careful of me controls! Two more marines down. Another brown robe tumbled, smoking, to the floor.

He punched the comm b.u.t.ton and spoke to the bridge. "Surrender! This is Bishop Thwait demanding that you surrender. Any one of you who dies fighting the Power is doomed to eternal d.a.m.nation. We will toss your bodies into deep s.p.a.ce and you will never know burial. Throw down your weapons and you will be spared. Surrender! The Power demands it."

For a moment the fighting stopped as the last defenders listened and considered. Suddenly a marine shouted, "f.u.c.k you and your f.u.c.king Power," and began firing again.

"d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n," Andrew intoned helplessly. The marines didn't have a chance. Surely they could see that. The breaching of the rear entrance doomed them. But they refused to give up. More bloodshed, more death. More than he could afford.

The outcome was inevitable. In a few more moments, the last of the resistance had been silenced and the brown-robed members of his force moved in stunned wonder through the ruins of the bridge. For a few seconds he watched as they searched for the admiral. He wasn't among the dead.

Andrew slapped the switch and the picture died. He looked at the monitor. The fighting was still raging at the comm room and in many of the main corridors. Where the h.e.l.l is Thomas? he wondered as he watched the display. Until that man is dead, I'm not safe. He must be found and killed.But where is he?

The marine burned the door open, thinking: Must be important if it's locked. Three dead bodies right by it. Two guards and one of us. Must be important.

He kicked the smoking door and it collapsed on the floor. Cautiously, he peered in.

s.h.i.t. All kinds of computer c.r.a.p. Consoles. That kind of stuff.

His eyes fell on a figure, its back to him, strapped into a chair. He brought the rifle up to ready and moved quietly into, the room.

As he came around to the front of the seated figure, he realized it was a woman. A woman? What the h.e.l.l was a woman doing here, tied up that way? She was awake, her eyes open and staring at him.

Not fear, no. Something else.

Carefully he approached. Nice looking. Wore a robe, but not like the f.u.c.king Power b.i.t.c.hes wore.

This one was different. Yeh. Nice looking.

"You okay, honey?" he growled.

"Uh-huh. They tried to make me talk. Can you let me loose?"

He licked his lips, trying to decide. Not one of 'em. s.h.i.t, nice. He nodded and moved to unfasten the straps. It only took a minute. She pulled the wires off herself while he finished undoing the straps that held her legs.

The young woman smiled her grat.i.tude. "Thanks. I won't forget the favor." He liked the sound of that.

Liked it a lot. Nice. Pretty. s.h.i.t. He felt the warmth rise in his lower stomach. Been a long time since he'd had a girl. s.h.i.t. The barrel of his laser rifle dropped just a little and moved to the right. The girl stood, a little shakily and stretched. Nice. d.a.m.n f.u.c.king nice. The barrel moved another fraction to the right as his eyes focused on the way her b.r.e.a.s.t.s strained against the robe when she stretched. s.h.i.t.

Myali's foot came up and caught him underneath the chin. The force of the blow snapped his head back and broke his neck. She checked briefly to make sure he was dead.

She picked up the laser rifle, studying it. Pretty simple: firing stud here; charge meter here; half charged. Good. She walked to the door, leaned out slightly and snapped a quick look right and left down the corridor. Empty. Which way was the comm room? She remembered that the admiral had bolted left when he'd shot his way free of the room. Good enough, she thought. Left it is. At a quick trot, she headed down the corridor, rifle chest-high and ready.

"Can you really do it?" Dunn asked.

Josh shrugged. "I think so. We can s.n.a.t.c.h almost anywhere on the planet. As long as there are Mind Brothers at both ends, and more at the arrival end than at the departure, it's pretty easy."

"But from that far? The longest distance you'd ever have to s.n.a.t.c.h on Kensho is some five thousand miles, right? From here to the scout's got to be a good five times that far."

"I'm not sure distance, at least our distance, makes any difference. Don't look so confused. I'll try to explain.

"I have this theory about the Mind Brothers. It's only a theory, and to be honest I don't even know how to prove or disprove it. Anyway, I got to wondering about them."

"I'll bite. What about them?"

"Maybe they're not 'them.' "

"What? Make sense, Josh. Remember, I'm not a Kens.h.i.te and a lot of what you people think is profound sounds like silly gibberish to me."

"No gibberish. I meant exactly what I said. I wonder if the Mind Brothers are really 'them.' Maybe they're 'it' instead. Look, think of it this way. You're a fish, right? I stick my hand in the water to catch you. What do you see at first? Five separate wiggly things, fingers and a thumb, coming after you. But that's only because the rest of the hand, the part that makes it one thing instead of five, is not visible to you. It's out of your plane of perception, above the waterline.

"Let's carry the a.n.a.logy in another direction. Suppose we're two-dimensional creatures on a plane surface. Again, a hand is plunged down into our plane. What do we see? Five individual and separatelines of varied length. If the fingers wiggle, the lines seem to move independently. No hint of anything bigger or more singular.

"If the hand comes farther into the plane, we begin to see the lines grow closer and closer together, until finally they merge into one large line. Many becomes one. If the hand pulls back up, one dissolves into many.

"Follow? Now what if the Mind Brothers are really a creature from another, higher dimension? A single creature. Oh, something totally alien and unimaginable in form, mind you. But still, in some sense, singular, a unit. It's quite possible that if that creature somehow got stuck partway into our s.p.a.ce, we might see it as multiple beings rather than as it actually is."

"Suppose I buy that. What's that got to do with s.n.a.t.c.hing? Or getting Myali back?"

Josh looked around for a second, then saw the piece of paper Dunn had used when figuring out how long the scout would take getting back to fleet headquarters. He picked it up and continued.

"Go back to the a.n.a.logy with the creatures on the plane surface again. Suppose the plane is folded, not sharply in a crease, but just bent so that the two ends come close together." He demonstrated by bending the paper. "From our viewpoint, points on either end of the plane ate quite close together if joined by a line that lies outside the plane. But to the creatures on the plane, the points are as far apart as possible. In fact, you'll notice that a lot of the points on the plane are closer in three s.p.a.ce than they are in two s.p.a.ce. Actually, those that are farthest apart in one s.p.a.ce are those most likely to be closest together in the other.

"Well, of course, what happens in three s.p.a.ce isn't of much interest to a creature in two s.p.a.ce since he can't take advantage of it. But what happens if a creature from three s.p.a.ce comes along and moves him from one side of the plane to the other, through three s.p.a.ce? a.s.suming such a thing is possible, he jumps from one faraway spot to another by making a short journey."

Dunn nodded. "I get it. If the Mind Brothers are from, say, five s.p.a.ce, then they, or it, might serve as a way of getting from one spot to another and distance as we perceive it might be irrelevant."

Josh grinned. "You've got it! We know we can s.n.a.t.c.h from anyplace on Kensho to any other place by using the Mind Brothers. Theoretically, we should be able to s.n.a.t.c.h Myali off the ship. The only apparent drawback is the distance. But if I'm right, it may not be a drawback at all."

"If you 're right. That's a big if, Josh."

"I know," Josh replied grimly. "That's why I'm going to get as many people into the network as I can before I try it. I'm only going to have one chance."

She found a body about her size. The head was gone, but the robe was unburned. It took some doing, but she tugged the garment off and pulled it on over her own. Now at least the forces of the Power wouldn't shoot at her.

A pounding came from down the corridor. Several people, running. She leveled the rifle and waited.

Five brown robes came around the corner at a dead run. At the first sight of her, one screamed, "Don't fire!" and they all threw themselves flat. Myali held her fire and they rose, pale and trembling. The leader tried to speak twice before he finally managed a weak "Thank Kuvaz." He rose and trotted to her.

"Come on," he commanded, "to the comm room. The admiral's holed up there. They're trying to rig a bypa.s.s on the comm to beam a message back to the fleet. Got to stop 'em before they do it." Myali fell in behind them as they started off again.

They attacked a side door while other units tried to smash a way through the main entrance. It took a good ten minutes, not to mention the lives of two of the five she was with, before they finally blasted their way in.

The admiral and two of his men worked feverishly at the comm controls right up to the last minute.

All three died where they stood, never even bothering to turn around.

Myali walked over and looked down at Yamada. She knelt and turned his body over. From the front he looked fine, a feral grin still fixed on his lips. She left him like that and then looked up at the comm panel. This is how they communicate with the fleet, she realized. Without it, they'll have to hand deliver any message. An extra year, she thought, remembering what Dunn had said. If they can't send word ahead, maybe it'll take an extra year.She stepped back into the center of the room. Everyone was busy checking the dead and wounded to make sure none were left alive. Calmly she lifted the laser rifle and blasted the comm panel. Then, before anyone could recover from their surprise, she turned the rifle on every other piece of equipment in view.

Myali didn't even see the blow coming, so intent was she on her work. It fell from behind, smashing into her head behind the right ear. The force of it spun her around to face the open doorway. As the blackness swept up and over, she saw the bishop standing there, his face twisted in rage as he took in the shambles she had made of the comm equipment. His eyes blazed with fury, but she also saw more than a hint of fear.

She smiled as the roaring darkness overwhelmed her.

XVIII.

"We've activated the portside laser cannon on the flagship. That and the fire-control section of the main computer. From the initial readouts, it doesn't look like too difficult a task to knock out one of the scout's drive tubes. Could probably knock out the whole ship if we wanted to." The young Brother's grin was infectious. Dunn found himself smiling back even as he answered.

"Not as simple as you think. The scout has a pa.s.sive shield that could handle the impact of a single cannon on a broad beam. You can punch through with a very narrow pin beam and go for the tube, but from then on, the full shield will be up and you'd need everything your ship's got to even scratch the surface." He shook his head. "Also, they'd head for deep s.p.a.ce, crippled or not, at the first sign of hostility." Dunn paused. "Hmmmm. And knowing Yamada and Thwait, probably send a few robot missiles planetside while they were doing it. No. Best bet is just to go for the tube. It's a threat, a warning, but obviously not an all-out attack. Scare 'em, make 'em run, but don't try to corner and attack 'em. Scouts were built for just that kind of emergency and they're d.a.m.n dangerous."

Father Kadir nodded. "Sound advice, Dunn. Josh? All right, then, we'll just go for the tube." The young Brother gave them all another grin, then rose and left the room.

For a moment, Kadir considered Dunn. Finally he said, "My son, it's a lovely day outside. I'm sure your wound is well enough on the way to healing to allow you to at least sit in the sun a while." He rose.

"Won't you join me?"

Dunn immediately reached with his right hand to pull back the covers on his bed. His left was halfway down to the bed to boost himself up into sitting position before he remembered it wasn't there. For a brief second, he floundered, then used his elbow to push, swung his feet over the edge of the low platform his mattress lay on, and stood. Josh grabbed his right arm to steady him.

"Whoosh," he breathed out, surprised. "Been a while since I stood. Guess losing a hand takes a little out of you as well as off of you."

Josh and Father Kadir smiled. "You didn't eat a whole lot or rest much on your way here either, Dunn," reminded Josh. "I ought to know, since I had to keep up with you!"

The three of them walked out into the sunlight that bathed the courtyard just beyond the door of Dunn's room. It was a room, he realized now, not a separate cell. A room in a long, low building that stretched down one whole side of the courtyard. There were similar buildings on the other sides of the yard. One of them was two stories high.

In the center of the yard was a huge ko tree, its branches casting an intricate pattern of light and dark on the ground around it. The sun, Dunn noticed, was high. Slept late again, he thought, amused with himself. Broken the habit of years. The Power never lets you sleep late.

The brightness of the sun was almost more than he could bear, so he began to move toward the shade of the tree. Only one tree, he thought. Not like the forest. He shuddered inwardly, remembering briefly the ordeal he had suffered while trudging through that endless green maze. I was insane most of the time, he realized. It was a miracle I made it.

Not completely a miracle, he admitted. A miracle and a Myali. The very mention of the namewarmed him more deeply than the sun. It brought a brightness right into the very center of his heart.

Myali. I know you in a way no person ever knows another. You're part of me.

I am myself. I am Dunn. I can no longer doubt that. The chase after the Face in the forest is over. I know who I am. Now I merely have to find out what I am. And what it means to be what I am. He laughed silently. That's all.

He looked sideways at Josh and Father Kadir. At least I 'm in the right place to find out, he told himself. Careful to hold his left arm up, he lowered himself with his right so that he was sitting at the base of the ko, his back pressed against its trunk.

Good feeling. Secure. Like in the forest. It may be night, with infinite blackness all around. But behind me, it's solid and safe and feels good.

Without that little bit of rea.s.surance, that small crumb of faith, the darkness could easily overwhelm you. He knew. He remembered.

Yes, the ko's trunk felt good. But it felt even better having Josh and Kadir there. Friends. Not just people you a.s.sociate with, people you are thrown together with because you are in the same cla.s.s at the Temple of the Power or part of the same crew aboard ship. Friends. People who are with you because they want to be. It was hard to describe. He'd never really had any friends before. Not in the Power.

He remembered Yoko, his mate. Not a friend. A need, yes. A release, definitely. But never a friend.

Oh, he'd wanted her to be more than just a partner for releasing s.e.xual tension. He'd wanted, G.o.d, needed someone to share his dreams and hopes with. But, then, dreams and hopes were not allowed in the Power. And when he'd tried to share his, Yoko had become so frightened she'd turned him in. Not a friend.

Myali. So much more than a friend. He didn't even have a word to describe it. "Love"? Weak.

"Love" seemed so limited a word. Or not limited enough. Too broad. It could be used to describe so many things, such different things. s.e.xual l.u.s.t for a woman or a man, feelings toward a brother or sister or parent or child or friend or thing or hobby or sport or idea or...Why do we only have one word? Why not a word for each shading, each object, each relationship?

Yet at the same time, only a vast word would do to describe the swelling in his chest, the warmth in his stomach, the brightening in his heart, every time he thought of Myali. It isn't just s.e.x or friendship, d.a.m.n it, he thought. It's bigger. I don't know how or when it happened. But now it's there, everywhere, and I can't imagine how the h.e.l.l I existed before it was there.

And what if Myali can't come back to Kensho? What if she's already dead, up there in the scout?

What if she's dragged back to fleet headquarters aboard the ship? What if the bishop...? He pulled his thoughts to a sharp halt. Enough. Those are useless paths that cross and re-cross and lose themselves in a mora.s.s of worry. It's a beautiful day.

But, dear G.o.d, let her come back, a small voice deep inside him pleaded.

The fear was still in the bishop's eyes, and so was the anger. Her head hurt and she could feel the lump over her right ear. She was in a chair-not the chair-and her hands were tied, tied, in front of her.