“How do you mean?” asked the High Head.
He was offended. Zillah realized that her anger had fooled her and somehow slipped out sideways. She bit the tip of her tongue. Otherwise she was going to give the obvious answer: Because your world sponges on mine. “Well — I suppose I meant — well, this fortress is so bare. Don’t any of the mages paint or sculpt or — compose music or anything?”
“If we do,” the High Head answered austerely, “it goes into our work. Magework is creative and leaves us little room for hobbies.” He was taken aback. Zillah’s power had risen about her until she appeared to him to be enfolded in golden, feathered flame. He could not understand why a trivial thing like artwork could be that important to her. But there was no accounting for alien ideas. His main thought was that he had been right about Zillah: she was the important one among the castaways, and it behoved him to treat her with respect, or her world might become a hostile force on the Pentarchy’s doorstep. “Why,” he asked, with as much courtesy as he could muster, “does this trouble you so much?”
There seemed no way on but honesty. Zillah blurted, “It — it seems so sterile. And — I get the feeling that this fortress needs something more creative.”
“Ah no,” the High Head politely corrected her. “What you have sensed is that all Arth, and particularly the citadel, is precariously balanced. It certainly has needs. Our work is performed very carefully to supply the needs without upsetting the balance.” He stood up to show the interview was at an end. “Any extra activity — music, artwork, and so on — would influence the vibrations in a way that might destroy the balance.”
Zillah wanted to say that in that case, they should redesign the whole thing — anything to show she was at odds with him without giving away the real reason why she was so angry — but he was showing her to the wall, or door, or whatever, bowing her out and asking for Helen. All she managed to say was, “How do I find Marcus?”
“The child will be brought to you,” he said.
Then Helen passed her and disappeared, and she was in the anteroom under the severe eyes of the elderly mage. Roz looked the old man in the eye and demanded, “How much longer do we have to kick our heels in here?”
He pursed his old lips and did not answer. It was obviously a battle that had been going on for some time.
4
By the time it was Flan’s turn to be interviewed, the High Head was in no good mood. Zillah’s accusation had eaten away at his serenity. Helen did not help by sticking doggedly and colorlessly to the Highland Games story. When faced with projections of the three worlds, she pointed to the second — the one Zillah had thought of as the pear and the crab, and known to Arth as Postulate — and declared the whole party came from there. Insipid liar, the High Head thought. Postulate and its people were known to Arth. The two universes guardedly traded objects of magecraft, talismans from Postulate for specula from Arth, and its mauve-skinned traders in no way resembled these female castaways. Sandra he treated with respect, as a quasi-Azandi, and was puzzled to find she seemed to think he was mocking her in some way. She claimed otherworld as her home, and he could tell it was a random guess.
So then he came to the small, chirpy woman with the bright, dark eyes, determined to discover why they were all so intent on concealing their origin.
Flan’s chirpiness was verging on bad temper by this time. Waiting about always gave her a headache. Or maybe it was Roz, sniping away at that old man. Poor old fellow, in his slightly shriveled blue uniform! You might as well make rude remarks to a Chelsea Pensioner because of your income tax. Flan herself wanted to get at High Horns. She wanted to get on with the job they had come to do. But careful! she warned herself. He’s quite capable of locking us all up.
“The Highland Games?” she said. Curse Roz for landing them with that stupid story! Amanda had invented a perfectly reasonable tale of a strayed strato-cruiser, and bloody Roz had to go and embroider it! “Oh yes, Roz tosses the caber, all right. It’s a dirty great tree and she staggers around with it. Me, I’m a dancer. The Games has every kind of competition you can think of. I’m in the Eisteddfod section, which is singing and dancing and weaving, but if you could have talked to the others on the Celestial — the stratobus, you’d have found every kind of competitor. Pity they’re dead.” To her annoyance, Flan found she choked up here and tears came to her eyes. Poor Tam. One of the nicest boys you could hope to meet.
“Healing Horn will, of course, be examining your dead companions,” the High Head told her.
“What do you mean?” Flan squawked. “Autopsies? Oh, well, I suppose we’d have done just the same at home. But I hope you’ll have the decency to tell us — tell us why they died.” She choked and broke off again.
“Of course,” he said. “Was Zillah Green a competitor too?”
“Zillah?” Flan found she was furious with Zillah. What did she think she was doing, bringing not only herself but her baby along on what she must have known was a dangerous mission? Flan had been simmering about this from the moment on the rescue platform when she had realized Zillah had got herself on the Celestial Omnibus; but now she was so angry that, for a moment, she wondered whether to say Zillah was a pole-vaulter and get High Horns to make Zillah prove it. No. Zillah undoubtedly must have told him something. Flan did her best to make it awkward for her. “Oh no, Zillah just came along for the ride because her husband was competing. He’s a pole-vaulter.”
To her annoyance, High Horns simply accepted this, with a bit of a look as if it confirmed something someone else had said, and then went on to show Flan three sets of floating colored shapes he said were worlds.
“Worlds?” said Flan. “I never saw a world that shape. Worlds are round where I come from. But if it makes you happy, this one.” She pointed to the one that struck her as strangest.
Other world. The High Head tried to suppress his annoyance. Another transparent lie. “Very well. As you probably realize, I have a pretty fair idea of what your party was doing by now.” He was glad to see that this terrified her.
“What is that?” Flan asked. She was so scared, her voice almost went.
“You were escorting one of your number to a meeting of great magical importance. I do not think your arrival here was a simple accident. I suspect some enemy on your own world tried to eliminate you all.”
There was a short silence while Flan wrestled with both relief and incredulity. The High Head watched red turn to white in her face, and then the pallor change to a surge of red, and believed he had struck home. Eventually Flan gave a short, wild cackle of a laugh. “Oh no!” she said. “Oh no, what we were really doing, of course, was coming to attack and destroy your citadel.” Hearing herself say this, she wondered if she had gone mad.
She could barely credit her ears when High Horns laughed too. “Indeed? Sarcasm apart, what was your meeting about?”
I don’t believe this! Flan thought. I must be in shock. She heard herself say solemnly, “That’s something I’m not at liberty to say.” And as if that were not enough, she heard herself adding, “But I don’t doubt you could read my mind if you wanted to.”
He looked decidedly shocked. “Great gods, I wouldn’t dream of that! There are very strict laws against reading the mind of a fellow human. But,” he said, standing up to show her the interrogation was finished, “I wish you could all bring yourselves to be a little more open with me. You must see that it is very difficult to restore you to your own world when we don’t know which it is.”