Here the Brotherhood condescended to lower the weight of things out on the platform. The heavy bodies suddenly became quite easy to handle. Tod found he could manage the next on his own, and Judy, sitting cross — legged with Marcus in her arms, was hanging on to the child as if she thought he might float away. In fact, had it not been for the sad gruesomeness of the work — which Tod saw was upsetting all the women — he would have enjoyed himself. Here were six new people to talk to, and females at that — with all the while the chuckle welling up inside him at how wonderfully awkward this was for Arth.
But of course, it was over quite soon. Five minutes hard work later, Tod’s suit became a fizzing scintilla of dying germs. Oh, so they did get around to me! he thought angrily. Simultaneously the dark screen cleared and busy, blue-clad Brothers rushed forth to deal with the capsule. Others swiftly shrouded the sad row of corpses, speculating in murmurs as to whether the cosmic storm or oxygen-loss could have killed them. Tod and the living ones were ushered through ranks of staring mages and goggling cadets, to where the High Head was standing, cloaked and mitred and stately.
The look on the High Head’s face, Tod thought he would never forget. It was almost horror, as the High Head realized all the survivors were women.
V Arth
1
Tod was told to take the party straight to Healing Horn. Our High Head wishes for time to think, he told himself in considerable amusement as he led the women there.
He was quite right. The High Head was forced to retreat to his workroom and think furiously. What do you do with six women (and one infant) of uncertain origin and social status, when you are an all-male community under Oath of Celibacy? The worst of it was that the problem, however he solved it, would be with him for the best part of a year. The tides that permitted travel between Arth and the Pentarchy were two months past. The next were eight months off. Otherwise the High Head would cheerfully have decanted his unwanted guests to the Orthe and let the king deal with them.
There was always otherworld, of course. The ritual for sending people there was at everyone’s fingertips. But these people had already burst from another universe into this one, and a lot of them had died inexplicably on the way. A second transition would probably kill the survivors. Pushing them off to otherworld was the equivalent of allowing Defense Horn to explode the capsule when it first appeared — as well as a waste of a perfectly executed rescue operation. And the Goddess had permitted these women to come here.
This was a strong consideration. The High Head, although he presided daily at the most reverent worship of the Goddess, took a wholly pragmatic view of Her — some might even say cynical. She was the Power in the Wheel upon which Arth drew: therefore, you did not run counter to this Power. And the rogue capsule had passed through several hundred subtle and strong defenses set up in the name of the Goddess, designed to keep hostile intruders out. It followed that the intruders who survived were under the protection of the Goddess and harmless to Arth. It was in Arth’s best interests to treat them politely.
On the whole, the High Head favored pitching the women back to wherever they had come from as soon as possible. There were, however, two difficulties about this. First, as in the case of otherworld, was the Law of Altered Reality. This stated that the changes brought about in a person in order to permit him to pass from one universe to another were — particularly in the case of worlds of high reality like Arth and its parent the Pentarchy — so great as to allow a person only one such transition. In other words, these women might be stuck here. Going back might kill them in the same way that sending them to otherworld might. But, since the hasty scan the High Head had made while the women were in front of him suggested they were as human as he was, he had hopes that he might find a way around the Law. It was just possible they came from a universe of equivalent reality to Arth. This was his main reason for shunting them straight off to Healing Horn. Edward was presumably checking on the women’s humanity at this moment. If it tallied enough with Arth’s standard, they could be returned whence they came.
This brought him to the second difficulty. Where exactly were they from? The High Head was not sure he followed or quite trusted the explanation given by the one who called herself Roz Collasso — standing very straight and speaking with brave schoolgirl openness — that they were a sport team from somewhere called Middle-Earth who had been on their way to compete in the Highland Games by strato-cruiser. They had, claimed this Collasso, hit sunspot turbulence and found themselves in Arth in free-fall. The High Head doubted this. Even allowing for the fact that the woman was in shock, his study of suns had never come up with a similar accident, and her manner had too much in common with that of one of his cadets trying to conceal the truth from a Duty Mage. He intended to question them separately until he got at the truth.
But what was he to do with them meanwhile, until he found out?
The measure of the difficulty was Brother Dewi, Horn Head of Housekeeping, and his assistant Brother Milo, standing in his outer office waiting for a decision. It was unprecedented. Housekeeping prided itself on knowing the precise social status of every visitor to Arth and providing accommodation for that visitor’s exact rank and degree without ever consulting anyone. But Brother Dewi had no idea what these women were. Nor had the High Head. All he could tell Brother Dewi after his brief survey was that, although one woman had the black skin of a highborn Azandi, neither she nor any of the others merited being housed in the Rooms of State where the Ladies of Leathe had spent the night.
He had no wish anyway to treat these women as important. Even though the Goddess had allowed them to reach Arth, strong twinges of foreknowledge suggested to him that they meant trouble, and his impulse was to lock them up, away from everyone else in the citadel. But Arth had only three solitary-confinement cells. It would mean draining a fish-cellar for them. Besides, this was the sort of solution one would expect of otherworld — all Arth knew that otherworld locked refugees up as a matter of course. Arth could not do that. Arth was civilized.
Edward’s sigil appeared in his glass at last. Thank the Goddess!
“Just my first impressions, you know,” Edward said in his most apologetic way, “but I’d say these — er — people are every bit as human as we are. The black one has nearly all the Azandi traits, and some of the others test out as quite markedly gualdian — specially that very pretty one and her little boy.”
“Fine,” said the High Head. “Then we can send them back where they belong before long.”
“What do you want me to do with them when I’m through?” Edward wanted to know.
Gualdian traits did not mean gualdian status. The decision was not all that difficult after all. “Put them in the servants’ hall attached to the Rooms of State. They can sleep and eat there. It’s convenient for Kitchen.”
Feeling considerable relief, he gave the same order to Brother Dewi.
2
“I saw a centaur,” said Flan. “I know I did. Just after that Tod boy took his skin off.”
“Don’t be silly.” Roz glanced at Judy. Judy was sitting quietly in one of the few hard, upright chairs, which were all the furniture the room had, and she seemed calm enough. That doctor fellow, even though he seemed to be scared stiff of all six of them, had worked wonders there. Now it looked as if Flan was going bonkers too, and that could set Judy off again. “You can’t have seen any such thing.”