And probably bringing them under Imperial domination instead, Pel thought.
“I’m here today to invite the four of you to join that combined force,” Major Southern said. “As natives of a universe different from both ours and Shadow’s, you have a different viewpoint, you have knowledge and techniques that might be just what’s needed to defeat this…this inter-universal horror.”
“Fuck off,” Pel said, unable to resist any longer. Did this beribboned idiot think they didn’t know what the Empire wanted? They knew, and they weren’t interested. They had all made that clear enough. “Just send us home,” he said.
“It’s not our fight,” Amy added.
Ted giggled.
Susan’s lips were a tight line; she said nothing.
“I’d been told that some of you felt that way,” Major Southern said, frowning. “You’re civilians, and subjects of another nation-one we don’t recognize, of course, but still, we realize you aren’t soldiers we can order into battle. Further, you probably wouldn’t be of much use if we sent you out there involuntarily. We don’t seem to be getting anywhere by appealing to your patriotism and common decency-you’ve all turned us down. Revenge doesn’t seem to have been enough, either.”
“We don’t know it was Shadow that sold us into slavery,” Amy said. “We only have your word for that.”
“Why would we lie?” The major spread his hands in a gesture of bewilderment.
“You might have staged the whole thing to get us on your side,” Amy suggested. “If it was Shadow that captured us, why would it sell us? If it’s after us, why weren’t we killed?”
“We don’t know,” Southern admitted, “and that’s something we’d like to find out, but we can’t.” He hesitated, but Amy had said her piece; no one interrupted further, and he returned to his speech.
“You won’t go voluntarily, as I said,” he told them, “so we’re offering you a choice. Lord Raven and the rest will be sent into Shadow’s universe three days from now, whether any of you four are with them or not. Those of you who don’t go-well, we can’t keep you here forever, living on the largesse of the Empire. You’re free to join the Imperial military; we can always use bright people like yourselves. If you’re not interested, though, I’m afraid you can’t stay at Base One, which is, after all, a military installation. Instead, we’ll send you to any nearby planet you choose; we’ll land you where you ask, and from then on, of course, you’re on your own.”
“Send us home, damn it!” Pel shouted.
The major pretended to ignore him and continued, “Of course, we can’t create an inter-universal space-warp just for the convenience of a handful of uncooperative civilians, but I suppose we can arrange grants of citizenship and provide the necessary papers to keep you out of jail. For brave volunteers, once the crisis is past and Shadow defeated, no reasonable reward would be refused, and opening a space-warp would be considered; but for civilians who’ve turned down a chance to serve the Empire? Not likely.”
The four Earthpeople stared at him-or at any rate, three of them did.
Ted Deranian shrugged and said, “I’ll go with Raven if you like; it’s all the same to me. Might make a better story that way, if I don’t wake up before I get that far.”
Amy let out a low moan of disgust at Ted’s insistence on his delusion. Pel glanced at her, but said nothing; he understood her reaction.
Ever since the party had stepped through the magical portal from Earth to Shadow’s world, Ted had been convinced the entire thing was a dream. Beatings, torture, wounds, and the passage of days and even weeks had failed to dislodge this conviction. Almost two months had now passed since the May evening when they had passed through Pel’s basement wall, but Ted persisted.
The man’s exact mood varied; sometimes he seemed to be struggling to maintain his belief, sometimes he sank into near-catatonia. Right now he was treating it all as a joke that had gone on a little too long, a story that was slow in reaching the point.
It got on everyone’s nerves, and Pel and Amy both feared that Ted had slipped irretrievably into insanity weeks ago. Pel suspected the head wound he had acquired resisting the pirates aboard Emerald Princess, or the beatings he had received on Zeta Leo III, might have caused brain damage, as well.
“What about the rest of you, then?” Major Southern asked, smiling.
“You’re a sadistic bastard, you know that?” Pel answered calmly.
“Now, now, Mr. Brown,” the major said, feigning shock. “That’s no way to talk!”
No one replied. He looked them over, then stepped out from behind the lectern.
“I’ve said my piece,” he told them. “From here on, it’s all up to you.”
“Sure it is,” Amy said. “We get our choice of two universes-but neither one of them’s ours.”
The major smiled and patted Amy on the shoulder. “That’s right,” he said. “I’ll let you think about it.” He looked around the room, gave everyone a cheerful grin that was only slightly patronizing, and strolled out.
Amy glared after him, and muttered, “Where’d they find that stupid prick?”
Pel shrugged. “Same place as all the others, I suppose,” he said. “Wherever that is.”
Susan suddenly spoke, for the first time since entering the room.
“I’m going with Raven,” she said. “And I’d advise you both to consider joining us. I don’t have any power over you, Mr. Brown, but as your attorney, Amy, I strongly recommend you take my advice.”
The other three all turned to stare at her.
“Susan, are you…what are you talking about?” Amy demanded.
“Amy, just think it over.”
She turned and marched out.
Baffled, Pel and Amy and Ted watched her go.
Chapter Two
We’ve no need of them,” Raven repeated.
“We don’t need them here, either,” General Hart replied, “and they might be useful to you. Our telepaths tell us they have the most amazing assortment of odd information tucked away in their heads; this Earth of theirs seems to make a fetish of spreading information every which way, whether it’s needed or not.”
“And what know they of my world?” Raven protested. “Not so much as a newborn babe at the nurse’s breast!”
Hart shrugged. “So? My men aren’t much better.”
“Soldiers?” Raven waved that away, the natural gesture stiff because of the bandaged fingers of his left hand. “A soldier’s a soldier, man-an they know their jobs, we’ll find use for them in Stormcrack and in Shadow’s lands. But the Earth-folk…”
“Are you bothered because two of them are women?”
Raven, pacing by the wall-map, glanced at the general. “Aye,” he said, “there’s that, and I admit it freely. ’Tis no place for a woman, in the midst of battle.”
“One of your own party’s a woman,” Hart pointed out.
“Elani? Nay, she’s a wizard; ’tis another matter entire.”
“Looks like a woman to me,” Hart said.
Two rooms away a telepath listened in on the conversation, and on the thoughts of the participants. Proserpine Thorpe had been reading the minds of those around her, sometimes whether she wanted to or not, since her earliest childhood; she was rarely surprised by the lies and deceptions of non-telepaths dealing with one another. Even so, the cynicism underlying this particular discussion was more than she would have expected.
General Hart really didn’t care about any plans to destroy Shadow, had no interest at all in the people the mysterious evil had harmed or killed; he just wanted to get rid of all the extra-universal troublemakers before some idiot politician or ambitious underling found some way to exploit them and make him look stupid or ineffective. He didn’t really completely believe in other universes, or that this Shadow thing posed a serious threat; this whole business had happened because nobody kept a close enough eye on that over shy;zealous geek Copley, who should never have made Major, and that pompous civilian fraud Bascombe, the so-called Under-Secretary for Interdimensional Affairs-a post in the Department of Science that existed only because Bascombe had invented it and pulled sufficient strings to get it for himself.