Co-mingled with his weariness and lethargy was a new, odd sense of mental power, as though the twisting force had also liberated areas of his brain that had previously been dormant. Throughout the uncounted days of torment he had heard a constant shrill chorus of thin voices, as though he lay in the midst of a vast throng of children at play. Now he could bring back the voices at will, merely by reaching to hear them.
When food, was brought, one of the shrill voices separated itself from the others and became so distinct that he could understand scattered phrases, “—should be executed — Andro will decide — so many things changed — the Great Ones—”
And slowly Deralan came to know that he was listening to the thoughts of those near him. For a long time he listened. With practice he grew more acute, more certain of this new power. Once, when food was brought on an earthen dish, he willed the movement of opening the fingers of his right hand, not opening them, but willing the movement to open them with all his strength. The guard stared stupidly down at the smashed dish and scattered food. He massaged his fingers for a few moments.
With this start, Deralan began to practice with great care, making sure that what he was doing remain undiscovered. He found he could trip those who walked by the cell. At times he wondered if it was merely madness, but there was the evidence of his eyes and ears to be considered.
When he was certain of himself he caused a guard to leave the cell door unlocked. Deralan walked out. It was simplicity itself to cause every other guard to look the other way. He walked through as though invisible. He climbed the flights of stairs up to ground level and went out through all the gates into the streets of the city. He found a man of his own general build and guided the man into a narrow place between two buildings and caused the man to strip and don the prison garments. The man obeyed with an utterly blank expression, with no sign of confusion or fear.
Suddenly Deralan realized how pointless this attempt at escape was. This inexplicable gift which had been thrust upon him at the moment of hurling the knife was too powerful to be used for such a petty affair as escape. He turned soberly and walked back toward the main palace.
He found Andro and the fair-haired girl of the dark plain in the apartments that had once belonged to Shain. He sent the guards striding woodenly down the corridor and entered through the arched doorway.
Andro stared at him, his eyes widening. “Deralan!” he gasped.
“Where is Shain?”
“Shain is dead by his own hand. Larrent and Masec are in exile.”
“You are Emperor?”
“The last one, Deralan. How did you get by the guards?”
“How do you plan to dispose of me?”
“By trial. You’ll receive justice.”
He stood and listened to their thoughts, first sorting out Andro’s, then the woman’s. Andro was merely puzzled, not afraid. The woman intrigued him. Two voices seemed to come from her. One from here and now. Another background voice that spoke of far places and wondrous things and skills beyond imagining, of others like her who were nearby. He related it immediately to the thoughts of the guards who had spoken of the Great Ones. He changed his plan immediately. He had intended to kill them both, setting them against each other to kill. But these two were not the real opposition.
“Take me to your people,” he said aloud to the woman. She reached for a glittering object which hung from her wide belt. He remembered the three who died so quickly and strangely on Simpar. He made her fling the glittering object into a corner. Her eyes widened with fear and then assumed the familiar blankness. She came with him as he willed her to walk. Andro gave a hoarse cry of alarm and Deralan forced him back into a far corner, left him standing there.
The woman guided him to a place just outside the city where a ring of golden pyramidal objects stood around a building that was new, oddly constructed, covered with hoods and twisted screens of wire.
The woman took him into the building where there were scores of people at work. They stared at him oddly. These were the enemy.
In the center of the floor was the cube on which they worked. Cables as big around as a man’s thigh writhed away from the cube. A shining metal column rose upward from the cube through the roof high overhead.
Deralan looked at the cube and he was puzzled. He had a feeling of wrongness. He stared at it and saw wrongness, and an obscure clumsiness, and a childish ineffectuality. He walked closer to it and in his mind saw the image of the way it should be. The people were forgotten. Only the power cube was important. He brushed by those who tried to bar the way and reached into the cube where tiny tubes glowed and relays chattered. Slowly at first, and then with increasing dexterity he began to take down circuits. As they tried to pull him away, he turned with impatience and smote them back with a careless easy power of the mind which sent them sprawling. Soon he noted that they were helping him, and he heard his own voice giving instructions that sounded meaningless and yet had a sound of rightness as opposed to the wrongness he was eliminating.
After fifty hours of ceaseless labor the work was done. The blue cube was like nothing any of the exiled Agents had ever seen before. It utilized only a fractional part of the power they had hooked up to lead into it. It had ceased to be a cube and had become a geometric form which dizzied them as they looked at it. It had nine sides, yet only ten edges. The effect was mildly hypnotic, and the attempt to relate visual evidence to known geometric forms gave it the look of being in constant flux.
Deralan had collapsed the moment the work was finished. They had taken him to a couch. His eyes were wide and he babbled endlessly and sucked at his fingers.
The cables led to one of the Agent ships which had been brought as close as possible to the main entrance to the building.
Calna looked at them all in anger. “Are we to be superstitious children? Are we to be afraid of this? He was used before, by ‘them’. Now he has been used again. Once he had fulfilled his purpose, he was discarded.”
“What will it do?” Solin asked.
“I say it will do just what it was intended to do. Take us back to our own era,” she said.
Hesitation faded. Two Agents stepped into the ship and port folded shut behind them. The others watched, expecting the mistiness which would indicate that the ship had slipped properly. Instead the ship was just... gone. The heavy cables fell to the ground and the air, rushing into the place where the ship had been, made a sound like the cracking of a great whip.
One by one they departed. Solin was last. He left alone in the ship which he had shared with Arla. There was one golden ship left. And Calna. Andro had come. He watched her thoughtfully.
“You may go,” he said.
“I shall stay here, Andro. I belong now.”
She went back to the palace with him.
The long days went by. Often she went to a high window from which she could see the building in which the cube throbbed and shifted. Many times she walked to that place and watched the cube and touched her fingers lightly to the side of the small golden ship.
Andro sensed her discontent. He was busy with the new structure of government which he was building carefully. There was little that they could share.
She remembered other days, and other times, and realized more strongly each day how savage and primitive an era this was.
In a place that was no-place and in a time that was no-time, the thought record halted and waited. It waited, not in the sense of elapsing time, hut in the sense of an endless interruption. Impatience was not known to the intelligence directing the record. Other endless computations continued. But the directing intelligence, which did exist in a finite, though variable, space time, felt a subtle irritation.