The Guardians

By Frederick Kirchhoff

Sixth and final volume in “The Emperor’s Library,” “The Guardians” is told by three of the main characters introduced in “The Chronophage”—Nan, Rake, and Lim—and takes place immediately after the events of that novel. It returns the reader to settings familiar from earlier books in the series, as well as to wholly new locations: Bright Star, a city of gem-cutters in the mountains south of Gort, where the Guardians live in their vast fortress; Sillery Taun, where an ageless race await the return of the First Men, who reshaped the planet thousands of years in the past; and Port Axor, a town founded by the Empress Zoë at a location first encountered in “The Flight from Kar.” Circumstances diSixth and final volume in “The Emperor’s Library,” “The Guardians” is told by three of the main characters introduced in “The Chronophage”—Nan, Rake, and Lim—and takes place immediately after the events of that novel. It returns the reader to settings familiar from earlier books in the series, as well as to wholly new locationsvide the three protagonists. Lim teaches himself to read ancient books in the Guardian’s library, where he studies side-by-side with an alien creature; Nan and her brother Filo use an equally ancient technology to travel between Sillery Taun and the Empire, where she is wooed by three very different suitors; and Rake, using no technology whatsoever, finds himself a boyfriend and becomes confidant of a prince who paints cabbages.
With the death of the Emperor, civil war threatens the Empire and prejudice against the Rand becomes open warfare—a struggle that briefly reunites the main characters, but then sends them off again in different directions.
Beneath the counterpoint of these varied stories, a narrative of the planet’s hisBeneath the counterpoint of these varied stories, a narrative of the planet’s history unfolds and we learn how the final events in “The Clavis” now threaten the survival of civilization. tory unfolds and we learn how the final events in “The Clavis” now threaten the survival of civilization. “The Guardians” is about return to and recovery of the past, but it is also about the limits of knowledge and the inevitable passing of human achievement.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Frederick Kirchhoff
• Release date: Nov 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311844132

Frederick Kirchhoff

A native of Jacksonville, Florida, Fred Kirchhoff graduated from Harvard and for many years taught English at a state university in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where he was responsible for course in British Romantic and Victorian literature. While in Indiana, he also wrote two books on William Morris and a book on John Ruskin, as well as articles on other literary subjects. He later moved to Minneapolis, where he served as Dean of Arts and Sciences at Metropolitan State University. Since retiring, he has lived in Portland, Oregon. He began writing the Emperor's Library series while living in Minnesota, but completed it in Oregon, where his chief pleasures have been writing, classical piano lessons, and cooking up dinners for his favorite man and a few cherished friends.

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The Emperor’s Library: Book Six

The Guardians

Frederick Kirchhoff

Dron Press

Second Edition

Copyright Frederick Kirchhoff, 2015, 2016

All Rights Reserved

Author’s Note

The events described in this novel take place immediately after those described in The Chronophage, to which it should be considered a sequel. It is also the final volume in The Emperor’s Library and assumes readers who are familiar with the earlier novels. The second edition contains a number of small but important changes from the first.

Chapter One

(Nan)

Lim’s obsession with rousing Jules never made sense to me. Understand, I’d known Jules off-and-on all my life—a rich fool who’d survived largely because Father managed his affairs. Naturally, the particulars of his Gort existence had been a mystery, but Lim told me a few things, which my brother Filo refused to deny, so I’d decided that the man was not only a fool but also a monster. For Jules had actually paid thugs to rape Lim while he looked on in secret, probably playing with his wanker, and he may have done something even worse to Filo, although Filo balked at revealing the details. So why should Lim care so much about waking Jules from his drug-induced coma? Especially now, when the government had branded him a traitor and turned his property over to a distant cousin. He was really a lot better off asleep.

When I’d asked for his reasons, Lim said he was doing it for Laurel’s sake, but why he idolized her was also hard to fathom. Over my twenty some years, I’d encountered Laurel from time to time when on occasion and for no apparent reason she’d visited the farm with her uncle. I’d always found her a cold fish—although, to be fair, I’d had no reason to expect love and kisses. We were slaves, weren’t we? Most Masters didn’t bother to treat their slaves with even rudimentary politeness, but with Jules and Laurel, politeness was the rule—I have to give them credit for that—and certainly she was more than polite. She made a point of asking me about the activities I enjoyed and that sort of thing; and, while there was always something awkward in her questions, I knew she meant well. But that was the problem. Meaning well isn’t the same as feeling, and neither is curiosity. She may have wanted to imagine we had some kind of life of our own—she may even have regarded us as fellow human beings—but her heart wasn’t in it, and that made her attentions chilling. Of course I had to pretend I was honored by them, but that only made it worse. I often wondered what she’d do if I told her what I really thought.

Looking back, I know I misjudged her. She wanted to make a connection with me, but she had no idea how to do it, probably because she’d always been uneasy with her own feelings. Even among the slaves, you saw women like that—women who suppressed their emotions and compensated with importunate good will.

From Lim’s account of Gort, I later got the idea that Laurel would have been better off without her uncle. Father’d said Gort had many districts, and Lim said that some of them were nice neighborhoods where the Masters set up poor relations and discarded mistresses. Surely Laurel would have had the means to live there—in a two-room cottage or an apartment with a view of the bay. (Whether such accommodations existed, I had no idea, but it seemed logical to assume they did. And a little house like that had always been a dream for me—although I knew it was next to impossible for that dream to come true.) If Lim was right, a place of her own would have been just the ticket—unless Laurel had compunctions about taking money from Jules. Lim said that Jules had once offered her a set of expensive jewelry, but Laurel had refused the gift. Telling me about it, Lim treated her refusal as a sign of Laurel’s moral superiority, but I’d call it stupidity. She could have worn the jewels once or twice to please her uncle and then tucked them away. Gems, they say, hold their value. But, despite her intelligence—and both Filo and Lim insisted she had a good mind—she must have lacked the common sense a woman needs to survive.

But I don’t mean to criticize. I never really knew Laurel, and she was always, I repeat, polite to me. When she asked about my interests she believed she was genuinely concerned about my happiness. Yet, even then, I sensed there were words she wanted me to speak—words that would give her comfort of some kind. I couldn’t have told you what they were, but, to be honest, if I’d known them I doubt they’d have passed my lips. She may have wanted to bridge the gap between masters and slaves, but I would never have wanted to make that easy for her. It was hard being a slave—even a privileged slave like I knew I was. I didn’t want to make her life any less difficult.

Yet all this is beside the point. Either because of his feelings for Laurel or for some other reason, Lim felt duty-bound to seek an antidote for the drug that had taken down Jules. Why, I can’t tell you. Maybe it was just one of those things about men. They’re like dogs eager to lick the hand that beats them, and, let me tell you, that’s nothing I’ll ever do.

Anyway, when Rel proposed we go with him to Fessen, Lim offered Jules’s condition as his reason for accepting the invitation.

Raven’s mother came from Fessen, so someone there may know how to wake him.

Hearing those words, Rake shook his head that way he used when he thought someone was behaving like an idiot.

You don’t think waking Jules is a good idea? I asked Rake.

He shrugged his shoulders.

Jules means nothing to me. Why should he? But Larkos once warned me to avoid Bright Star, he added, almost casually.

Did Larkos explain the warning? Rel asked.

No. He wasn’t big on explanations. He thought his advice was all you needed. However, I took the warning to mean that Larkos had had a bad experience there in the past. He once traveled a lot—when he was younger, of course, and less heavy-set. But I could be wrong. Maybe he’d had a run-in with someone who’d come from Fessen. Given his line of work, he met odd people, so your guess is as good as mine.

And that was where Rake left it.

I have to confess I’d hated Rake at first. A fat jerk, I’d thought. And evil. Brought up on Father’s religion, Rake had seemed like the devil to me. Or at least one of the Devil’s henchmen. But, once I’d gotten used to him, I realized I’d been wrong. Beneath his cynicism, Rake had a soul, and I soon learned that he was a man worth listening to. And in this case I would have listened to what he’d said about Bright Star, but he offered nothing further on the subject, so we accepted Rel’s proposal. After all, what were the alternatives?

Of course, as far as Filo and I were concerned, few journeys could have been more intriguing. Fessen was where our ancestors had come from—before they’d been taken slaves by raiders from Variens. At least we’d always been told it was raiders from Variens who captured them and later sold them to Masters in Gort. Of course the story had contradictions. We were the brave warriors and they were the cowards, so how had they had the advantage over us? Yet, while the precise details may have been questionable, no one doubted the fact that we’d once been Fessen people, so Filo and I wanted to learn what we could about our relations. We might even find cousins with stories about stolen ancestors.

Before going further, I should add that what I just said about Rake also applies to my brother. I didn’t like him much at first either, although Filo was nothing like Rake. In fact, he was the opposite. He seemed wrapped up in his own feelings, and it took time to penetrate that impression. He was shy, I eventually discovered. But the problem wasn’t Filo himself; it was our separation for so many years. You’d have thought Jules would have brought Filo on his farm visits so the boy could see his family—he brought Laurel sometimes, didn’t he?—but he invariably left Filo behind. Yet he wasn’t deliberately keeping him away from all of us. Father met with Filo whenever he traveled to Gort and always reported on him. But those reports were generalities. Your brother’s grown a good two inches in the last year, Filo’s reading natural history—nothing that described the person he was becoming, beyond his being a tall young man who studied science.

Thus, we’d both become little more than names to one another, and when that happens much you imagine about the other person turns out to be wrong. Knowing that my brother was tall, I’d assumed him big like the men on the farm, but he was a pale, wispy youth who gave me the feeling he’d never lifted anything heavier than a book, so he seemed unmanly—and also an intellectual snob. After we’d spent time together, however, I changed my mind. Filo was simply different from what I’d expected, and I recognized a lot we had in common, like the way we judged people. Soon, all it took was a glance and we knew what the other was thinking, and even his wispy body began to look beautiful.

One subject we concurred on was Lim. We both liked him. He was smart and those green eyes of his gave him a look that was almost magical. But we agreed that he had a way of becoming wrapped up in his own thoughts and that he often acted impulsively, without thinking through the consequences of his behavior. For one thing, he couldn’t resist a dare. I loved the story about his climbing through that sewer to reach the beach. I wished I could have seen the place where it happened, and I knew I could never have done anything like that myself—especially when I heard about the rats. Lim also seemed to like nothing better than rescuing people, but he seldom had a clear idea where he was taking them. When he brought Raven and me to Gort hadn’t he realized it would be dangerous there for us? Without Rake’s intervention, there’s no telling what might have happened. Rake had a practical side that was missing in Lim. Ideas always meant more to Lim than anything else.

Yet Lim wasn’t all ideas, for there was the business of Raven. That kid knew how to take care of himself—anyone could see that. Anyone but Lim, I mean. For Lim thought he was Raven’s protector and obligated to keep him safe. I don’t mean Lim didn’t enjoy the sex. He made no secret about their sleeping together and it wasn’t hard to discover that whatever they did was wild. Mother must have anticipated that when she put them both in Jules’s bed. She was a smart woman, and she enjoyed breaking the rules as much as I did.

Why else did she let me set off with those two fairies? Morsen was horrified, but Father had taught him never to contradict his mother, and when she agreed to my traveling with Lim and Raven he didn’t oppose her, although he gave me one of his you’re-going-straight-to-hell glances. Looking back, I believe Mother thought none of us had long to live, so I might as well go out on an outrageous note. She was a rebel at heart, although she concealed it from her husband and sons. As much as I loved her, I told myself that, if I had children, I’d never hide things from them that way. On the other hand, back then having children was far from my mind. I’d seen what it did to women and I wanted none of that.

As for Raven, I thought we’d lost him for good in our escape from Gort. Rake said he’d insisted on going to a party the Commander was putting on for a group of the actors. Rake had tried to convince him that it was a bad idea, but Raven was too flattered to ignore the invitation. Rake told me it was because Raven had been invited and Lim hadn’t.

It’s hard always playing second fiddle, I remember him saying. He probably expected lording it over Lim for a dozen years or more. Poor guy. Now we’ll never know what became of him. Can’t say I’ll miss him though.

Not even his pretty face? I’d asked.

Especially his pretty face.

Weeks later, when Raven appeared at our camp, his escape from the city made sense to no one but Lim, who was sure it had to do with the cave we’d slept in on our way to Gort. Lim always maintained we’d been there a full six months, but that sounded incredible—although, if you believed Rake, six months was more than the length of time Lim himself had been away from the city. Lim also insisted that while we’d slept we’d been filled with an energy that enabled us to resist the chronophage. An extra dose of time, he called it. And he’d said that that protection must have been what the Kormen had been after, for, as we learned from Raven, the Kormen, too, had been able to pass through the timelessness of Gort. But when Lim tried to explain the science behind the business he lost me. In fact, I doubted he knew what he was talking about. But if Raven had resistance to the chronophage it made sense that Lim and I had it as well, since the three of us had dozed off together in the same cave—although Lim insisted it wasn’t a cave, but a chamber carved into the rock by beings he had yet to identify.

And that was another reason Filo and I both liked Lim. He knew things you could never imagine anyone knowing. As I’ve said, he wasn’t always practical, but he’d come out with stuff that blew your mind. Science, I mean, and ancient history. And when a serious mood hit him, he was the most serious man on the planet. And yet there was a certain tangle about his personal life. While neither of them ever said anything about it, I was sure there’d been some kind of relationship between Lim and Filo before Raven appeared on the scene and I also had the feeling that it wasn’t Raven who’d interrupted it. If anything, Lim was using Raven to make some kind of point to my brother—or at least things may have started out that way. But then they’d gotten out of hand, which is why Lim was relieved when it appeared that Raven had been permanently left behind.

Naturally, Lim made a show of joy when Raven turned up at Rel’s camp, but I was sure the feelings were feigned. Nevertheless, once together again, they renewed the wild sex that was Raven’s trademark. Living in tents, the sounds were hard to ignore, and they went on for hours. But I doubt Lim ever cared enough to notice that he wasn’t Raven’s only partner, for Raven quickly ingratiated himself with some of the soldiers, and once I had the impression he was spending time with Rel himself. Not that Rel wasn’t a handsome man, but he was old enough to be Raven’s grandfather. That’s when it dawned on me that sex was the only way Raven could connect with other people. It made me glad he had little interest in women.

Rel, who’d brought a roll of maps, had showed us how the regular route to Fessen went south from Gort, then veered southwest on the highway connecting Variens with Bright Star. But that way was closed to us, since it used the bridge at the center of Gort City. Instead, we’d take a road that crossed the old highway from the Empire near the far end of Gort Valley. When Lim asked if there was a bridge there, Rel told him you didn’t need one because that far west the river had dwindled to a shallow stream.

From what I’ve been able to learn, he said, the big rivers on this side of the continent are further north.

And he was right about that, for the Darrow was a much larger river than the sliver of water that divided Gort into North and South, although in Gort City it widened considerably and rose and fell with the tides, so it was hard to say what was river and what was ocean. But once we’d traveled westward, the river water turned sweet and, just as Rel had said, it grew shallower and shallower, so that when it came time to cross, the water was only just above your ankles. But, since we were on horseback, we didn’t get even our feet wet.

The north-south road we then took was barely a road at all—just a trace of where once a road had been, and miles passed without sign of human habitation, and during the weeks we headed in that direction we passed few homesteads, mostly where there was a bit of water, and even fewer other travelers. That and the poor condition of the road itself gave the impression we were on our way to nowhere, and I began to dread the journey to Bridgetown through territory Rel said was even more desolate than this. But everything changed when we reached Martensbrucke. Here, where we joined the main highway to Bright Star, we found ample provision for visitors, and Rel convinced a local farmer to allow the soldiers to pitch their tents in a fallow field while we made the rest of the journey on foot. He explained that he had no commission to Fessen and wanted to appear an ordinary traveler. I found it remarkable what a few gold ducats could accomplish, but Rel also knew how to turn on the charm when it suited his purposes. He even bought all five of us new clothes. Except for Rake, we’d left Gort in the skimpy costumes we were wearing for the play, although Rel had managed to find us something appropriate for travel among the gear brought for the soldiers. Now, he said, it was time for us to begin looking less military, so I traded my wool pants for one of the long skirts the women in Martensbrucke wore with short, tight-fitting jackets. From the way the soldiers looked at me, I saw they approved of the change.

Three days later, the six of us reached Bright Star. I’ll never forget my first sight of the place—a walled city on a hill framed by towering mountains, with the Altburg high above it stretching along the cliffs like the wings of a giant bird. It reminded me of the fortress above Gort City, but the Altburg was larger by far, and, as Lim observed, constructing it had required skills beyond Gort’s mastery. Simply raising the materials to such heights must have been a challenge. Yet, looking at the structure, it appeared to blossom out of the rock itself, like the growths diseased plants produce, half stem, half flower.

We knew the name because they’d told us about it in Martensbrucke, calling the fortress at Bright Star the greatest sight on the planet. I’d assumed they were exaggerating, but, seeing the Altburg, I accepted their description. Yet if Lim wondered how it had been built, I wondered what it had been built for. All we’d been told was that it belonged to the Guardians, but when I’d asked a Martensbrucke woman who they were, she’d evaded the question. You’ll learn when you get there, she’d said and left it at that. And she was right. We did learn about the Guardians our first night in Bright Star.

When we identified ourselves to the warders at the North Gate, one of them said that, if we expected to find beds, we’d have difficulty, since most inns were full, although the Blue Thistle did have at least one vacancy.

A man who left this morning, he explained. An emergency, he said, and he wasn’t too happy about it, although it must have been important.

Like most of the other lodgings, the Blue Thistle stood on the street connecting the North Gate with the Ducal Plaza at the town center. A tall building, with three stories and an attic, the inn had yellow shutters painted with bright blue thistles. As the guard had said, it did indeed have a vacancy—but it was the smallest of their single rooms, so they had no place for five of us. Indeed, the innkeeper was surprised when we asked about accommodations.

So many visitors this time of the year, he admonished us. People reserve rooms as long as two years in advance. Most understand the situation.

He then mentioned something about local families who took paying guests, but he didn’t sound hopeful, so I assumed we’d have to go back outside the walls and camp beside the road yet again. But then an old woman entered the room. She looked at us intently for a few seconds; then she walked straight to Rel and greeted him with a vigorous handshake.

So you finally made it, she said. But what took you so long? If you’d left Gort when you’d planned to, you should have been here weeks ago.

I couldn’t tell whether she was being serious or simply putting Rel on, amusing herself with his confusion, for she was clearly a strange woman—old in some ways, but not old in others, yet older still in a manner I couldn’t define. She was wearing a long blue dress with embroidered hems, much like those worn by the women I’d observed on the street, only the blue fabric had a richer look than theirs and the embroidery wasn’t the same. If you’d known how the Fessens dressed and commissioned a seamstress to make similar clothes without showing her the real thing, you might have ended up with what she was wearing.

Rel stared at her. You could see he was frantically trying to place the woman. But when he finally realized her identity, he smiled broadly.

Mrs. Soloff, he said. Could it really be you? So many years it’s been. Almost a lifetime.

You found my message, didn’t you?

I did . . . I guess I did, he stumbled. So that mysterious note was from you?

Who else could have managed placing it in your room? she asked.

"You’re right about that. They kept me under strict guard in Gort. I’d never experienced such surveillance. At times I wondered if they’d ever allow me out of their clutches. After all, what did they care about the Emperor or his ambassador? And I was allowed to speak only to one man. Once, when I tried to strike up a conversation with the housekeeper, she screamed in terror and fled. They must have threatened her with death if she uttered a word to me. Naturally I was amazed that someone had been able to slip a note into my book, although it was cryptic. Your Emperor should learn what’s happening in Bright Star. How could I have known it came from a woman I hadn’t seen in fifty years?"

I signed it, didn’t I?

You initialed it with a large S. Not exactly an uncommon letter. Hundreds of names begin with S—Sylvester, Sam, Serena.

A shade of annoyance passed over her face. Did the woman think the letter her personal property?

The feat itself should have identified me, she said. I doubt any Sam or Serena could have placed the note where I had it placed. But there’s no use arguing. At least you’re finally here, and, while you may have taken a while to recall an old friend, at least one of your friends recognized me from the first.

We looked at each other; finally Lim identified himself with am awkward nod.

I did recognize you, ma’am, he admitted. But you were speaking with Rel and I didn’t want to interrupt.

Mrs. Soloff laughed.

Well, you had an advantage over Rel. As he just told you, it’s been fifty years since he and I last encountered one another, while you and I have met more recently.

Mrs. Soloff visited Falke a couple of times. That’s what she’s referring to, Lim explained, looking around at us as he spoke.

Yes, Falke and I are old friends. In fact, I knew him long before I met Rel. Long before he ended up in Gort, even. Quite a determined man he always was. I admired him for that, even though he’d paid a price for it. Is he still running that odd shop of his—a cross between a locksmith and an art gallery?

I’d met Falke at Larkos’s house. He wasn’t a young man, but, if Mrs. Soloff had known him before she met Rel, he must have been older than I’d imagined. And what did she mean about his paying a price?

Don’t you know? Lim asked her.

Know what?

About what happened in Gort.

From her look, it was obvious that she had no idea what he was talking about.

I left the day I wrote my note to Rel. It was the last thing I did before leaving the city. I know nothing about anything that’s happened there since then. And, from the day of my arrival here, you’re the first people I’ve seen in Bright Star who’ve come from Gort. An odd fact, I now realize, but I’ve had other things on my mind.

Then perhaps you should ask Rel to explain what occurred in Gort after your departure, Lim said, assuming a strangely formal tone.

Rel seemed about to speak, but Mrs. Soloff prevented him.

Later, she said. He can tell me later. And I will have a few things to tell you as well. However, it’s clear you’re faced with a problem at the present moment, so perhaps I can help you.

Taking the innkeeper’s arm, she led him to the other side of the room, where they conversed in hushed tones for a few moments. Then, Mrs. Soloff waved Rel over to join them. At first the innkeeper kept shaking his head no, but then something Rel said changed his mind.

Thank you, Rudolf, I heard her say. I knew you’d come to your senses.

When they returned to us, she explained that Rudolf had agreed to turn three dormer rooms in the attic into temporary guest rooms, one for me, the others for the four men.

Nothing up to our usual standard, Rudolf told us in an apologetic voice. And we’ve never done anything like this before . . . but as a favor for Solova, who has been our guest so many times in recent years . . . just this once we’ll make an exception. Expect nothing luxurious, but we will do our best.

Watching the man, I sensed that he wasn’t simply doing a favor for an old client. Those gold ducats, of which Rel appeared to have an endless supply, had no doubt influenced Rudolf’s decision.

Since the rooms needed readying, we walked to the Ducal Plaza, where, as Rudolf explained, newcomers were expected to report to the Foreign Registry if they intended to stay overnight. The office wasn’t hard to find and the procedure was simple. You filled out two cards with your name, nationality, and purpose in Bright Star. The clerk was surprised that we hadn’t come for the gem sales, but she stamped our cards with an indication that we could remain for two weeks and gave one back to each of us, handing the others over to a second clerk.

Show your card wherever you have lodging, she said. Each inn reports the names of its guests to us on a daily basis. As you can see, we keep good records here—but it’s all to ensure the safety of our visitors. Bright Star is known for its safety and we wish to maintain that reputation. Also, if you make any purchases in the city—not meals, but anything else—you will need to show the proprietors of the shop your card.

Looking around, I saw that the office was actually the corner of a large room where dozens of men and women were busy transcribing and filing data. I also noticed that Rake was eyeing a fleshy young man at a corner desk, whom, despite his age, I took for a supervisor, since he was better dressed than the others and seemed to be doing nothing in particular. When we turned to leave the office, Rake made a point of smiling broadly at the man, who winked back and then turned his attention to the papers on his desk as if nothing out of the ordinary had just occurred.

Later, when I asked Rake what that had been about, he said he was surprised I’d had to ask the question.

It’s always useful to make friends with the right people. I learned that when I was a very young man.

That night, Mrs. Soloff invited our party to dinner at the Blue Thistle, which turned out to have food almost as good as the meals Larkos had provided in Gort. Rake, I saw, was impressed by its quality, and managed to put away second helpings of most of the dishes.

I know, he whispered to me, I shouldn’t eat so much. But it reminds me of Gort and for one night I can follow my appetite. Tomorrow I’ll go back to bread and water.

Afterwards, as we sat by the fire in the inn’s common room, Rel told Mrs. Soloff about the recent events in Gort. As the narrative unwound, I was surprised by how many precise details he remembered.

And it was Falke’s doing? she asked, when he’d finished the story. Falke and his machine—or whatever you call it.

Yes, you might say that, but not Falke’s alone. It was Larkos’s show, wasn’t it? And Lim had helped Falke make that machine. He’s the one to ask about it, not me. Moreover the rest of my friends all took part in the extravaganza in one way or another. And I guess you could say I did as well, since my presence was part of it.

And you learned all this business about Larkos and the chronophage from Lim and his friends? she asked.

Yes. I thought Valyar might be interested in hearing about it, so I spoke at length with everyone who’d been there. I even took notes.

And then you brought them along with you to Fessen, she observed.

They couldn’t very well have stayed behind in Gort, Rel reminded her.

So all of you escaped the city—all but poor Falke, who was left in the basement with his ‘kinetic sculpture.’ He really called it that?

He did, Lim told her.

"I think I prefer Rel’s term. ‘The time-eating machine,’ he called it. I think that’s the meaning of chronophage."

I had to smile.

What does it matter what you call it? I asked.

Mrs. Soloff stared at me for a few seconds.

Probably not very much, my dear. It simply amuses me that what one man calls a work of art, another calls a machine. But what I don’t understand is why Falke let himself be trapped that way. He could have conveyed the machine to Larkos—or the sculpture, if you wish—with instructions for turning it on and then gotten the hell out of the city. He wasn’t a stupid man. In fact, he was one of the smartest men I’ve ever known. True, he may not have known exactly what would happen once the thing was put in motion, but he must have had a good idea of the possibilities.

Yes, Falke was a very intelligent man, and he could have done what you said, Lim observed. I knew how to set the chronophage in motion. It wasn’t difficult. Larkos could have done it himself or ordered one of his assistants to turn the switch. And, once it was turned on, the effects were fast but not instantaneous. We managed to get away, so he could have as well. We had to hurry, but, even with his limp, he could be fast if he had reason to be.

But, despite his options, Falke stayed, Mrs. Soloff said, reflecting on the thought. And, if he’d wanted to, he could have been thousands of miles away from Gort.

He had a another way to leave the city, if that’s what you mean, Lim said. They stopped people coming into the compound, but they didn’t care who left, and he could have made it to the place I think you’re talking about without difficulty if he’d left in time. It was a ways away, but the route was downhill, and nobody ever made a fuss about people going to the Hill. It was leaving it that was difficult.

You’re referring to that strange building you were so curious about? Rake asked.

Wasn’t that it’s purpose, Mrs. Soloff? Lim added. To take you thousands of miles from Gort? And he appeared to take it for granted she knew what he was referring to, although I, for one, hadn’t the slightest idea what any of them were talking about.

"Of course. If you spied on him, which I trust you did, being a smart fellow, you must know that as well as I do—although, unless he brought you with him, you cannot possibly have known where that strange building could have taken him."

He never took me inside the building, Lim said.

I know.

She paused before she continued.

Of course I used the building myself. How do you think I come to Bright Star so often? You can’t expect me to have ridden here on horseback, much less walked, as I can see the six of you did.

Only from Martensbrucke, Rel assured her.

Even that’s too far for me. So you left your horses there?

Yes, along with my military escort.

That was wise of you, Rel. These people are suspicious of strangers—perhaps because they depend upon them for their livelihood. But you always had a good mind. Bringing you to work for him was the smartest thing your uncle ever did. It still surprises me he had the sense to do it.

"But how did you get here?" Raven asked Mrs. Soloff. Filo and I glanced at one another. As usual, Raven had not been following the conversation closely.

I walked, too, only not as far as you.

Raven looked confused, but she was quick to help him out.

Let me explain. There are places—not many of them, I assure you, and certainly fewer than there once were—that were constructed so as to exist simultaneously in multiple locations. It’s part of the way the First Men designed this planet—with transfer points that reduced the inconvenience of distance. They no doubt used a similar system on the planet they came from, and it may have been as natural to them as taking a road is to us. Once there were many more transfer points than we can access now. Whether the points themselves have disappeared or we have simply lost the means to reach them is a question both difficult to resolve and probably irrelevant. Among the few that remain in use are those that link Gort with Bright Star and both with Sillery Taun. Once all were also connected either with Kar or with Dron, but the links with Dron are gone and those with Kar are unusable. The other remaining bits of the system take you to places of little importance. One is not far from Balabar, a costal city north of Gort; another is located in a nondescript town southeast of Tarnak, and the third one is on an island that is no longer inhabited—or was when I last looked there.

You mean there was one in Grady? Rel asked. Why didn’t I see it there?

You didn’t see it because you weren’t looking for it, she replied. But I’ve used it many times—although it always seemed strange to me that it wasn’t located in Tarnak itself. That would have been considerably more convenient.

You mean there’s something that lets you fly from one town to another? Raven asked. Like a magic carpet?

Nothing magic at all. As I said, it’s a set of spatial coordinates that can be entered from multiple locations.

She means a place, I told Raven. A place you can step into from one locations and step out of into a different one that’s far away.

I had no idea how that was possible, and everyone but Lim, perhaps, was as baffled as Raven. Even Filo was looking perplexed.

But where is the place itself? It has to be somewhere, doesn’t it? Raven asked.

Lim, I saw, was pleased by the question.

There’s the problem, Raven, Mrs. Soloff said. "No one exactly understands how they did it. Perhaps the space itself exists simultaneously in multiple locations, or perhaps it’s a space that doesn’t exist at all—at least in our universe. People don’t even know what to call it. Some refer to the space as a multilocational prism; others simply call it a transfer box."

"You called it a transfer point," Lim reminded her.

Did I? I guess you’re right. Sometimes I think there are too many names for things.

And the one in Gort was in that building that only you and Falke could enter, Rake said.

Or anyone else with the right key, Mrs. Soloff told him. And the number of doors you can leave by depends on the kind of key you have, for all keys are not the same. Unless you have a key that opens it, certain doors may not even appear to you. When I’m inside the prism, I see eight doors, but there may be a dozen more, for all I know.

My question is, is the space you enter when you enter the building the space that the building itself occupies or some other space somewhere else?

Mrs. Soloff laughed at Lim’s question.

I hope you don’t expect me to answer anything as difficult as that, she said. Can’t you come up with something easier?

Is the key you just mentioned a ring? Lim asked.

She smiled again.

A ring, perhaps, or something that could be worn in a ring.

Then Falke gave his key to Freddy.

Who on earth is Freddy?

The boy Larkos assigned to help Falke, Lim said.

A boy without a tongue, Rake added.

And he gave the ring to him? she asked, clearly dumbfounded.

Yes, Lim replied. He thought it was the least he could do. To save him, you see. Gort was about to become a dangerous place and he thought Freddy deserved to escape. He’d suffered a lot already.

Mrs. Soloff was silent for a long time.

It was a generous gift, she finally said. A generous gift but probably a foolish one. Falke would have been wiser to keep the ring and bring Freddy along with him to somewhere far from Gort. Or, if he insisted on giving it away, to give it to Lim. In fact, that was his intention. You see, Falke told me he was preparing Lim to take his place.

In that workshop of his? I asked.

The workshop was Falke’s choice. It may not have been Lim’s.

"What do you mean taking his place?" Lim asked.

That’s hard to explain, and, since it appears that Falke changed his mind, there’s no reason to attempt an explanation.

Unexpectedly, it was my brother who asked the next question.

You said you had something you wanted to tell us, Mrs. Soloff. It can’t have had anything to do with Falke, since you only now have learned his fate. Did it have something to do with the Guardians or their fortress?

Yes, the Altburg, she said. I suspected you’d want to learn about it.

What exactly do the Guardians guard? Filo asked.

She obviously relished the question. She had the look of someone on the verge of a prepared speech.

They guard the Ancients, she said.

"And they are?" Rake asked.

It surprises me none of you have ever heard of them.

They’re not mentioned in Rel’s book, Lim pointed out.

"Of course they aren’t. His friend Jon knew nothing about them. Not that Jon hadn’t managed to amass a considerable bit of knowledge. He was a remarkable man, and I wish I’d managed to meet him, but our paths never crossed, even though we were both living in Tarnak for a time. But I had other fish to fry in those days. And Tarnak wasn’t in a region of the planet I was interested in. The East has always been my main concern. That’s why I’ve known about Fessen for so long, although it’s only in recent years that I’ve spent much time here.

But I’m not answering your question, Rake. To put it short, she said, the Ancients are intelligent beings that inhabited this planet before the First Men transformed it. They weren’t supposed to do things like that, you understand. If a place had advanced life, their rule was to leave it alone. Otherwise, they felt free to do what they pleased.

I’m surprised they were so considerate, Rake said.

Yes, it’s amazing, given what we know about our species. But that at least was the rule and, for all I can tell, they followed it here, only they missed something. For the Ancients were not only intelligent; they were also clever enough to hide from the aliens. I think they had a way of blending into the terrain. It’s thought they can change color, you see, and flatten themselves out, which means they lack the kind of skeleton we have. But I suspect the First Men didn’t look very hard for intelligent life. Seeing nothing at first glance, they assumed there was nothing to see, and so they went ahead and transformed the planet. It was only when the modifications were almost complete that they stumbled across their victims, and then it was too late to reverse the process. But, as a token of remorse, they built the Altburg as a refuge for the remaining members of the dispossessed race and assigned a cadre of men to look after them. To bring them food, you see, because the creatures could never survive on their own, since the environment of their home planet had been completely altered.

Those men were the Guardians? Lim asked.

Precisely—or so they came to call themselves. Originally they were more like slaves—they may even have been prisoners assigned a duty no ordinary person would accept—but over time they got it into their heads that they were the superior beings. And, of course, in a real sense, they were, since they could flourish on this planet, while the Ancients depended on them for survival.

How long ago was that? Lim asked.

"A very long time ago, and many things have changed over those thousands of years. I’m an old woman, but such depths of time seem an abyss to me. However the Ancients, as far as I know, remain alive—at least some of their descendants do—and the Guardians continue to tend them, treating them the way farmers treat their cattle. Yet they are not cattle. Falke once told me that they were creatures as cognizant as he or I. And, while we know much they do not know, they know many things we’ve yet to learn. Especially about the original form of this planet. For they belong to it, and we do not. We may have shaped it to our purposes, but that doesn’t mean we fully understand it. Especially now, when so much of the First Men’s work has been destroyed.

Rel knows that part of the story. He and I were there when those idiots set about destroying Kar with no idea of what they were doing.

But you weren’t there when it happened, Rel pointed out. You left before the city was destroyed. It was quite a sight, I can tell you that.

Yes, I left before the end of the city, and not the way I’d planned, and so it took me a long time to return home. I missed the grand finale you had the pleasure of seeing, but you and your companions were not the only survivors and, over time, I’ve learned what took place after I was gone.

So you know that Jon and Klei left the planet together? Rel asked.

I know that something resembling Jon and Klei left the planet or at least ceased to exist on it.

Where did they go? Filo asked.

That’s one of many questions I cannot answer. For all I know, the two of them may have dissipated into interstellar gas. The device Jon used to appear in Kar had been designed for travel between here and the home planet, but it had stopped working a long time ago. So what it did is anybody’s guess—although it was sufficiently operational to transmit his image from Dron and perhaps his body itself, in a sense, although never completely. And that’s why I can’t be certain what happened to him.

It was always a mystery to me, Rel said. But I’ll never forget what I saw that day. Still, Mrs. Soloff, what you said earlier seems more important. If I heard you right, you said those events in Kar changed the planet.

I can see how they might have done that, Lim said.

How, Lim? I asked.

The devices Rel saw—they were only the upper portions of something very large that had been placed deep below Kar. I don’t know its purpose, but it must have had something to do with keeping the planet habitable for humans. So if the machine was destroyed, there must be effects of some kind. Possibly catastrophic effects.

Mrs. Soloff looked at Lim for a moment.

Yes, she said, that’s what’s been on my mind.

So much we don’t know, Lim said, almost as if he were speaking to himself. We know the planet was changed, but not what it was like to begin with or how what happened in Kar half a century ago may have altered it yet again. If we knew what those machines were for, we might begin to unravel the problem, but we know nothing about them. Even the Ancients are a mystery. Surely the First Men left records about these things, but where are they now? Did they take them back to where they came from?

Mrs. Soloff smiled as Lim spoke. She was obviously pleased by what he was saying.

I’ll answer your second question first, she said. We know little about the Ancients because the Guardians keep it secret, and they’ve managed to do so for thousands of years. They strictly control who gets to see them, and when they speak about them they employ vague, semi-religious terms that convey no useful information. They say, for example, that the Ancients destroy anyone who approaches them without reverence. I take that to mean the Guardians destroy anyone who threatens their secret—but who is to say? They allow a few men into the building from time to time. Most never return, and those that do refuse to say anything useful about the Ancients."

Perhaps a woman could do it, I suggested.

"They’d kill you on the spot. No woman is allowed to set foot within the Altburg. Even those who get too near the building disappear. It’s said they fling them off a cliff on the far side of the mountain. If I thought it was possible, I’d have gone there myself a long time ago—I know how to enter the fortress—but even I have never been foolish enough to try it.

"As for Lim’s last two questions, the First Men did keep records of their work, and they placed those records in two places. One was the library at Dron, which is now under water, for the events that destroyed