Chapter Twenty-nine

Sparrow's dog growled deep in her throat. She was responding to the ultrasonics which, along with probes in a dozen other spectra, painted their skimmer.

"Steady . . . ," the smith murmured as he eased off the throttle. The skimmer slowed and dropped minusculy closer to the ground. "Steady now. . . ."

They curved around a spit where the land rose higher than most. It was covered densely with trees whose trunks were slender cones and whose branches flared into pompon tufts. Beyond the trees was a pond over which the sun drew mist like a bloody shroud. Across the water stood the stark black walls surrounding Princess Mala's bower, three meters high.

"Gee-up," Sparrow muttered reflexively as he dialed on more power and adjusted the skimmer's angle of attack. The little platform needed more speed to cross the pond. Open water dissipated the supporting charge more swiftly than dry soil would.

From the walls and the dome whose faceted curve could be dimly glimpsed beyond, scores and perhaps hundreds of weapons aimed at the skimmer. The lavaliere prickled on Sparrow's chest, seeming to burn him through the fabric. That was all in his mind—but Sparrow the Smith knew better than most the reality of a mind's images.

A large amphibian rose from the center of the pond with a fish in its jaws. The broad skull turned. One of the beast's separate-focusing eyes started to rotate toward the skimmer a hundred meters away.

The motion brought the amphibian within the area protected against targets of that mass. The walls' automatic defenses went into action.

Vertical rods every two meters stiffened the black wall the way a bat's fingerbones brace its wings. Gun muzzles unmasked at mid-height on three of the miniature bastions.

A laser howled, pulsing its indigo beam across the amphibian's broad neck like a bandsaw. Explosive shells from an automatic cannon blew fist-sized chunks out of the creature's skull. Fléchettes from the third bastion drilled through the pond surface to the calculated location of the amphibian's body.

The shattered head sank and the beast's torso curved up convulsively. High explosive and the laser worked over the blotchy gray hide, while fléchettes now sought what was left of the skull. The weapons stopped hammering only when the largest piece of the luckless amphibian was the size of Sparrow's hand.

The reformatted identification chip in the lavaliere had properly matched the brainwave patterns of Sparrow and his dog. Otherwise, similar weapons would have ripped them to patches of red mammalian pulp.

Spray lifted from beneath the skimmer. The spewing water caused further batteries to unmask and track the intruders, but none of them fired.

In order to reach the courtyard's single gate, Sparrow had to curve near the weapons which had destroyed the amphibian. The stomach-turning miasma of propellant permeated the humid atmosphere, mixed with the scaly odor of air the laser had burned to plasma.

The bitch rubbed herself against her master's legs, reassuring herself of Sparrow's presence and solidity. Her body trembled.

The gates were as wide as the wall was high. The double leaves were inset slightly between a pair of thick towers supporting multi-barrel plasma dischargers for high-altitude defense. Sparrow pulled up before them.

The strip of mud in front of the gates was the only bare earth on the island outside the walls. It was broad enough, if barely, and Sparrow would have lain down in the muddy water if necessary. There was no discomfort that Sparrow would not accept if it was a necessary step in his path.

The smith arranged his equipment so that the weight of his body would not damage it. He settled full-length in front of the portal. One mark of a smith's skill was the distance from his entranced body at which he could affect the structure of molecules through the Matrix. Sparrow's powers of extension were unexcelled—but closer was better, and he wasn't involved in a contest.

The dog snuffled up along the smooth walls for a few meters, finding nothing of particular interest. The dense black plastic had no taste or odor, and the debris of years had been unable to cling to its waxy surface.

Insects hummed in clouds over the pond, settling on bits of the amphibian. Occasionally fish lifted through the greasy sheen to suck down carrion and carrion-flies together. The dog eyed the froth and the activity it drew, but she remained close to her master.

Sparrow closed his eyes. He slid into the Matrix like one of the pond's lungfish diving back for its burrow in the mud . . . but the water was warm and the Matrix was a slime of cold light which froze the minds of those who entered it.

All templates, all realities, all time.

Princess Mala's dwelling had two layers of defense. The external band destroyed all targets which came within range. The targeting array plotted mass and proximity on a graph of death. Nothing larger than a thumb-sized beetle would be permitted to live within a meter of the black walls unless the creature was correctly keyed into the bower's identification system.

Within the gates, the defenses were simpler and still more stringent. Only if someone inside deliberately imprinted the visitor onto the system could that visitor enter and survive. Otherwise, blasting radiance would fill the courtyard, fusing the mud to glass and ripping all protoplasm into a haze which spewed upward toward the clouds.

But the controls were electronic, and their crystalline pathways clicked into new forms under the smith's instinctual touch. Sparrow's body shivered on the warm mudbank, but there was never such a smith as he, never in the measureless eons of Northworld. . . .

Sparrow awoke from a shuddering nightmare in which he was one of the damned souls on Plane Four and crawled motionlessly across the endless ice. The dog barked fiercely as she pranced beside him, turning from Sparrow to the gates and back again.

The gate leaves were open. Their lower edges had planed arcs across the mud of the courtyard. The interior was virtually undisturbed, except by the daily rainstorms.

Sparrow started to get to his feet. He had to pause for a moment on all fours. His knees and knuckles sank into the wet soil.

The smith was still trembling from the cold of the Matrix, entered twice in an hour and either time on a task of utmost precision. His head ached from the grenade explosions, and his hands and forearms were swollen. He inhaled deeply, expelled the breath, and drew in another without yet attempting to rise further.

A fly, bloated with the meal it had made on the amphibian's remains, burred past Sparrow. The dog made a half-hearted snap at the little creature.

The insect zigzagged through the portal. When it was three centimeters into the enclosure, a spear of light from the inner surface of the wall made the fly vanish completely. Only the echoing thunderclap proved that the insect had ever existed.

Sparrow smiled. He rose to his feet. "Time for us to go, dog," he said, slurring the initial words slightly. "Inside, we will ask as guest rights that they feed us."

Dog and master stepped into the courtyard together. Their feet left deep prints in the bare mud.

Sparrow's stride was unsteady for the first few paces. For the rest of the way to the dome, his legs obeyed as though the smith were a creation of his own unsurpassed craftsmanship.