“Others?” As usual, it was Lady Sunlight who rose to the bait.
“Aulden, Khalid, and O,” Rawl said, taking away a little of Thaddeus's own.
The image frowned. “How did… oh, I see. Of course. Yes, it's Aulden and Khalid and O. Now, come along. Your chains are waiting."
“Chains,” Brenner spat. “Thaddeus, you… you…” He could not find the words he needed. As a metal arm reached out toward him he stepped forward, following the machine.
The arms reached out for the others, and they all obeyed, allowing themselves to be herded toward an open door.
“I can't believe any of this,” Lady Sunlight said as she stumbled forward into the stone corridor beyond. “It can't be happening."
Rawl wished she were right, but he knew, as he walked to their cell, that it was all quite real.
Chapter Nineteen
“…Arn of the Ice rides upon the north winds in the winter, and roams invisibly throughout the world, wherever the winds blow and wherever the snows can seep in. He draws icy patterns upon stone and glass, shapes the snow into graceful curves, and does all he can to transform all the world into a new wing for the Ice House…"
– from the tales of Kithen the Storyteller
The Skyland's automatic defenses had been ready for anything when the nuke went off, and the island was undamaged. The Skyler's automatic defenses had also been alert and ready, and her optical symbiote had thrown nictating membranes across both eyes before the flash could do any serious damage.
The symbiote itself had suffered extensively, but no one much cared about that. In a few wakes it would regenerate completely, it had no sensitivity to pain, and it possessed only the most rudimentary sort of consciousness.
No harmful radiation except visible light had gotten through the fields surrounding the Skyland, so no one had to worry about burns or hidden damage of any sort.
Geste and Imp had been looking at the Skyler, not at the flash. They were unhurt.
Bredon had been looking up, not directly at the flash, but he had no symbiotes guarding him, no programmed reactions, no defenses beyond what he had been born with and the dying remnants of the “repair kit” Geste had fed into his bloodstream. His eyes were intact, and would heal, but for the present he was half-blind, seeing everything only dimly. He had completely missed seeing the mushroom cloud.
By the time everyone's condition had been ascertained, and Bredon's injuries treated with microbe-administered analgesic, anti-infectants, and healing accelerator, the machines had definitely established that the Skyland was completely unscathed. The island, having no orders to the contrary, had sailed on, directly toward the site of the explosion, and by the time anyone paid attention to their location they were over the mountains, and the rising sun was a disk, noticeably above the horizon.
By the time Geste had assessed the damage to the various machines he and his companions had sent on ahead-most of the observers in the area had been vaporized-the Skyland should have been within sight of the High Castle, and the sun should have been well up the eastern sky.
The sun was presumably where it should be. The castle, however, was gone, and the entire area covered by smoke, smoke so thick that once they had entered it the sun was hidden from view.
Of course, protective fields kept the smoke from touching anything on the island. The Skyland forged on, and the Skyler sent machines out to douse the fires and dissipate the smoke. Within an hour they were hovering near where the castle had been.
The peak upon which the castle had stood was still there, and a wide variety of debris littered its slopes, but the huge and complex structure that had once capped it was gone, leaving a gleaming crater. Bredon peered over the edge of the Skyland in wonder, cursing his damaged vision and marvelling at the desolation.
It was hard to believe that anything had ever lived in the smooth, glistening black hole atop the mountain; the inside surface shone like glass, and carried an uneven reddish tinge that might have been the glow of the residual heat. Nor was the surrounding area much better; for as far as Bredon could see, the land had been laid waste.
The forests on the surrounding slopes had been blown down, trampled by the shockwave like grass beneath a horse's hooves, and most of them had caught fire; the Skyland's machines now had the fires contained, so that the smoke no longer blocked the view. Bredon and the others could see just how complete the destruction was.
“Well,” Geste said, contemplating the crater, “there's certainly no one down there now. Either Brenner and Sheila and Sunlight and Rawl got out, or they didn't, and either way there isn't anything we can do about it."
After a moment of silent contemplation of the horrible thought that Lady Sunlight might have died, Bredon asked, “Isn't there any way we can find out if they're alive?"
Geste shrugged, then stopped. “Of course there is,” he said. “I don't know why I didn't think of it before. They've all got emergency transponders.” Without further warning, his eyes rolled back in his head disconcertingly for a moment, then reappeared.
“They're alive,” he said. “Or at least Mother tracked all four of them leaving the High Castle together, then lost them again at Fortress Holding. She spoke to Rawl briefly, too. So either they're all alive, and captured, or they're alive and launching some sort of hare-brained counterattack, or they're dead and Thaddeus is doing something very tricky and forging their signals."
“What can we do about it?” Imp asked.
“Not much,” Geste admitted. “We just go on, I guess."
Bredon was relieved that Lady Sunlight still lived, and looked down at the crater with new eyes.
“If Thaddeus has weapons that can do this,” he asked suddenly, pointing at the ruined mountain, “why does he bother with those little flying things that were shooting at us when we came here before?"
“I can think of several possibilities,” Geste said. “First off, he seems to have wanted Brenner and the others as prisoners, not ash. A nuke would have killed them if it got through at all. Also, there are ways to defend against nukes. If Thaddeus had just thrown one at Brenner first thing, Brenner could have defended against it. I don't know what delivery system he used, but if he had just dropped it and triggered it while the High Castle was intact, it wouldn't have breached the castle's protective fields."
“It wouldn't?” Bredon stared at the wasteland below and tried to conceive of anything withstanding such force.
“It wouldn't. Nukes aren't subtle. They just throw an incredible amount of energy at everything. Brenner's defenses were subtle; Thaddeus had to pick away at them until he found the weak spots."
“Oh,” Bredon said.
“Another thing, we didn't bring any nukes with us when we came to Denner's Wreck; he must have built this one himself. And as I said, nukes aren't subtle. By setting one off, he's let us all know that he's been stockpiling weapons and that he's not afraid to use them. It gives the game away. Everyone will see that he's not just playing around."
“That's good, isn't it? You can get the others to help, then."
Geste shook his head. “I'm not sure. If Thaddeus had dropped a nuke and Brenner had survived it, then I could; the others would all agree that it wasn't playing fair. But trying to stir them up with Brenner gone is another matter. It's over and done, now. I don't know."
“I think they'll help,” Imp said, her voice tense. “I think they'll have to."
The Skyler said, “What worries me is why Thaddeus feels he can use a nuke now, after he had already broken the High Castle. Why does he feel so safe?"