Pathspace: The Space of Paths (7 page)

The cat looked even stranger now that it was
closer. A solid black tail grew out from an all-white rump. Most of
its fur, in fact, was bright white, save for an irregular black
patch on one side, another on the top of its head, and some little
black spots under its mouth as if it had been recently drinking
black ink. “Did you miss me?” Xander asked.

“Rrrrrt,” said Otto. Les had been expecting
a meow but none seemed forthcoming.

“I doubt it, you old rascal. You just say
that for my benefit, don't you?”

“Rrrrrrt”,” Otto agreed, eying Les
warily.

“Otto, this is Lester, my new apprentice.
Les, meet Otto. Try not to step on him, will you? I've had him for
a long time, and he sometimes forgets that humans can be more
careless and less graceful than his own species.”

Les squatted down and extended his hand to
let Otto inspect it. Only after the animal sniffed it cautiously
and satisfied himself did he venture to scratch it gently behind an
ear. This Otto tolerated, before returning his attention to Xander
and finally meowing.

“Ah, I see you know about cats,” said
Xander, reaching inside his cloak to produce a crumbly bit of
cheese. Otto deigned to accept this offering.

“Of course. My Ma has a couple at the inn,
Jules and Pixie. To keep down the mice.”

“Course she does. Course she does.” Without
looking, Xander let his staff go and it fell into the corner by the
front door with a muffled clink! as it struck the wall. Suddenly
Les realized that the staff, which he had taken for wood, must be a
thin length of pipe, painted brown. From the way Xander had handled
it, the old man must be stronger than he appeared at first
glance.

“The Governor sounded like she's known you
for a long time,” he said, making conversation. “How did you end up
here? Were you born in Denver?”

“Nowhere near. But I worked for her husband,
the General.” Xander removed his cloak and threw it over a chair.
“That was almost twenty years ago.”

“What was he like?”

Xander flopped into a chair and scratched
his beard thoughtfully. “The General? I expect you've heard a lot
about him already.”

“Yes, but not from anybody who knew him. Is
is true that he used to lead charges against enemy armies, instead
of directing them from the rear?”

“Not everything you hear about him is true,”
the wizard replied, dragging a stool toward him to put his feet up.
“But that one is. He claimed he got it from someone called
Alexander. Or was it Caesar? Anyway, it wasn't just bravery. He
always claimed it was to inspire the troops, but between you and
me, I think he knew they were afraid to lose him.” He paused,
gazing at nothing. “He'd charge right in, and they just had to
charge after the rascal to save his bacon.”

“Rrrrrrt,” Otto agreed.

Les rubbed his eyes and yawned. It had been
a long day. “Are you really a wizard?”

Xander shrugged. “That depends on who you
ask,” he said. “If you're asking, do I have a pact with the Devil,
or spirits who do my bidding, the answer is no. There are no 'magic
words', no matter what you've read in storybooks, and as far as I
know, no demons or angels either. If you're asking if I can do
things most people can't, well then the answer is yes. I can.”

“Like make yourself disappear,” Les
prompted.

“Like that,” the wizard agreed. “That's just
an application of what I call
pathspace
. Fairly simple, but
surprisingly handy in a pinch. You'll start on that tomorrow.”

Les looked down, then up again. “How do you
know I won't just run away?”

Xander laughed. “Two reasons. For one thing,
I know where to find you. Retrieving you would hardly be any
trouble – your father's inn is a regular stop for the coach.”

He had to frown at that, because it was
true. He couldn't just go home, when he made his escape. He'd be
running away, not toward. “And the other reason?” he
challenged.

Xander just smiled. “Oh that's even simpler,
and the same reason I usually don't. We're on the thirtieth floor
here, and the Governor always posts armed guards outside my rooms.”
He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. “But feel free
to fly away, if you can.”

Kristana:
“and made firm the sand”

The Governor walked, and
did not walk in peace. How could she, with everything that was
happening? But her face was impassive as she passed the guard
stations.
You must always be more confident, more calm
than the troops
, the General had told her.
She could remember the scene as if it were last night.

“
Even if I'm not?” she had
asked, sitting by the bed, listening to his labored
breathing.

“
Especially if you're
not!
Nothing
will terrify them so
much as thinking their Commander is worried.” He coughed into a
handkerchief, and groped for his cup of water. “They will always
assume that you know more than they do, whether you do or not. If
you look worried, they'll assume there's something bad you haven't
told them. And nothing is scarier than a danger you don't know the
details of. Not knowing what it is makes it a hundred times as
scary.”

“
But I'm only human” she
protested.

“
Not when I'm gone, you
won't be,” he retorted. “You'll have to be something more, their
rock in the quicksand. You're ready for this. Tough enough for
this. In the last year you've met commanders, reviewed troops, and
debriefed returning sorties. We've let them see you by my side in
all major decisions. This will work.. It has to. People, especially
troops, need to believe that
someone
has a plan, that someone has the answers. Otherwise …
otherwise it's all quicksand, and they'll panic.”

She stroked his head. “But
what if it
is
all quicksand?” she
whispered.

“
Then you fake it,” he
said. “You'd be surprised how much your troops can do if they don't
know how bad the odds are. I've led them to victory many a time
against odds of five, ten to one. Do you think I ever said 'men,
were doomed, but put up a good fight anyway?' Hell no! I put on my
game face and said 'let's go GET those fuckers!' And we did. Every
time.” He stopped and retched into the handkerchief again. Specks
of blood stained the linen. She felt as if they were coming out of
her own heart.

“
Robbie” she whispered,
using the name no one else dared use with him, “Robbie … I don't
know if I can do it.
You're
my
rock. Without you, love, it's
all
quicksand.”

He just looked at her with
those hazel eyes. Eyes she had worshiped for eighteen years still
pierced her like darts, opened holes into her soul, wounds that
would never close. Even now, in his last battle, they remained
clear and imposing. “You
must
,” he
told her. “Or everything I've done was for nothing. For nothing!
Without a strong leader, it'll be civil war, and you know it. The
State will collapse, and Texas will pick up the pieces. Are you
going to let that happen? Is that how you are going to remember me?
Is that – “ he lapsed into another coughing fit, but above the
linen clenched in his fist, his eyes held hers,
indomitable.

She waited until the worst of it passed.
Slowly, he regained control, but his color was paler now, as if he
were using up the last drop of himself to try to get through to
her. Then he spoke again, but she had to lean forward to make out
the words.

“
If you ever loved me,” he
said, “then do this. Do it for me. Do it for yourself. Do it for
all the poor bastards who will be lost without you. Keep the dream
alive!”

His head fell back on the pillow, but the
eyes still watched her, waiting for her agreement. Those eyes clung
to her as unwaveringly as the General had clung to his Dream.

There was a knock at the door. Without
waiting, Collins stepped into the room. The young lieutenant's face
was blank, but new lines at the corners of his eyes, a hint of
redness in them from blinking back too many tears, and the way he
unconsciously fiddled with one of his buttons betrayed his
nervousness, his unspoken fears for the future. “I'm sorry, ma'am,”
he began, “but the doctor says that we need – ”

Kristana stood. She was not a tall woman,
but at the moment she refused to acknowledge that. It was now or
never. “YOU NEED?” she roared. “How DARE you? Do you know who I
am?”

He snapped to attention at the sound of her
voice and gulped. “Y-you are the – “

“
I AM THE ACTING GOVERNOR
OF COLORADO!” she screamed. “Get OUT! Get out and give this man
some peace, by GOD, or you'll wish you had never been
born!”

Collins jerked like a he had been slapped
and his hand rose without conscious thought, snapping her a salute.
Without a word he turned, ramrod straight, and marched from the
room.

“
And tell the Cabinet to
assemble in the main meeting hall in one hour!” she bellowed after
his fleeing back. Then she turned back to the General.

His hazel eyes were twinkling, and a smile
was playing about his lips.

“
That's my girl,” he said,
and closed his eyes.

He kept smiling for another minute or so.
Then his face went slack.

His last battle was finally over. And he had
won.

Lester:
“For those who walk in darkness”

Lester's mind bobbed back
to the surface of awareness.
What a strange dream,
he thought. Groggily, he shook his head and swung
his feet over the edge of the bed in the darkness of the room. No
time to think about that now. Time to check the chickens for eggs.
Well, that and inspect the coop to make sure no foxes had tried to
get in during the night. After that he –

His thoughts scattered
like a frightened flock of birds when his feet landed on the
carpet.
There was no carpet in his room.
But here there was.

Light flooded the room, summoning the room
from his dream.

“
So,” said Xander, looking
up at him from the chair, “you're awake. Good. Now we can get an
early start.”

Les sagged into a chair and glared at the
old man. “An early start at what? You can't keep me here forever,
you know. I'll find a way to get away!”

Xander laughed. “Of course you will. I'll be
disappointed if you don't. If you do, it'll mean you've learned a
thing or two.”

Lester sighed. He knew how this would go.
He's been through it all ready with Gerrold. They say they teach
you, but what you basically get to do is to sweep their floors. If
this old man really was a wizard he'd never share his secrets. Not
in a million years.

“
Let's start with some
tea,” Xander suggested. He pulled his chair over to the table next
to Lester's, then crossed the room and came back with a small pouch
of something which he dropped on the table. Then he went off again
and to Lester's astonishment he heard water gurgling into a
container.

Xander grinned at his expression when he
returned with two cups, a wooden spoon, a metal bowl of water with
three stubbly legs, and a small jar of something, all balanced on a
wooden tray when he set down next to the little pouch.

“
I expect you've never had
it before,” the old man said. “Doesn't grow on this continent at
all. But Aria has some on the upper floors. No idea where she
managed to get the seedlings.”

Lester stared at him. He had no clue what
the wizard was talking about, and hardly cared. “How did you get
water?” he blurted. “Did someone bring it up while I was
asleep?”

“
Of course not. There's
rain and dew collectors on the roof that drain down to a tank in
the basement. The old molecular sieves filter out dust and such,
and I've restored the
swizzles
they
put in when the 'scraper was built, shortly before the Fall, so
there's no problem pulling it up from the tank.” Seeing Lester's
lack of comprehension, he added, “Remind me to show you the
bathroom later on.”

Lester had understood very
little of that utterance, but he knew that a tank was something
like the watering trough in front of the inn. Fording himself to
swallow his pride, he asked a few questions and learned that
'scraper meant a
sky-scraper
, the
old name for a very tall building such as this one, and the Fall
referred to the collapse of the old civilization that had existed
before the coming of the Tourists.

“
I still don't
understand,” he complained. “If the Ancients were so wise, with all
the wonders you've described, then how could they have let it all
go? How could they have fallen so far, just because they saw that
some things could be easier?” He wanted to pound the table. “There
has to be more to it than simple laziness!”

“
Don't underestimate the
power of shattered pride, lad.” Xander closed his eyes, then opened
them. “For those who walk in darkness,” he said, “a little light
can be blinding. The technology of the Ancients was difficult and
wasteful and often poisonous. When they built their machines, the
process generated some nasty by-products. I've told you about
electricity, their tamed lightning that ran through metal wires to
light their cities.

“
But the electricity
didn't make itself, like the wind. It came from other sources of
power that they set to turning wheels called dynamos. Some of them
were turned by waterfalls. Some were turned by the wind. But some
were turned by steam-power that came from nuclear energy. And the
strange metals they used to power their nuclear power stations grew
ever more deadly as they burned, producing a slew of other elements
that were both poisonous like snake venom and hot like cold fire
that could burn for thousands of years.