But in a surprise attack, dronon technicians won control of Semarritte’s omni-mind, then manipulated her fleets and guardians, sending them to war against their human creators. Then the dronon killed Semarritte herself and murdered every Tharrin who fell into their hands.
Gallen had to rest and eat again, but he came back late that night and questioned his teacher on matters of law, hoping that he would find some legal means of freeing Maggie. Under the old Tharrin law, slave-taking had been criminal. But under dronon law, Lord Karthenor could capture or buy servants who were not claimed by more powerful lords. Since his work ranked as a top priority among the dronon, he was free to choose servants from ninety percent of the population.
Seeing that he had no legal recourse, Gallen sought information on current war and battle techniques, but the teacher let him study only some very basic self-defense. Obviously, the dronon controlled this teaching machine to some degree, and they would not let it teach tactics that might be used against them.
In his last session that evening, Gallen downloaded a map of Toohkansay. That night, he dragged himself back to the woods late. Orick had returned to the camp.
“I searched all around the spot where we entered,” Orick said. “I couldn’t smell Everynne anywhere. I couldn’t find any other cities.”
“I know.” Gallen sighed. “Toohkansay is the only city for-” he converted kilometers to miles in his head “-eighty miles.”
“I don’t understand,” Orick said heavily. “We all went in the same gate, but we didn’t come out at the same place.”
“The making of gate keys is hard,” Gallen said, “and our key was stolen from someone who may have fashioned an imperfect key. Obviously, it dropped us off in the wrong spot. Each gate leads to only one planet, so I’m certain we are on the right world, but Fale is a big place. We might be two miles from Everynne, or ten thousand. There is no way to tell.”
Orick studied Gallen. “You’re certain of this, are you?”
“Aye, very sure,” Gallen said.
“What else did you learn in the city?”
Gallen could not begin to answer. He had studied handwritten books in Tihrglas, but in only a few hours here on Fale, the equivalent of a thousand volumes of information had been dumped into his head. How could he explain it?
“I went to a library,” Gallen said. “I learned some things from a teaching machine, like a Guide-but this machine doesn’t control your actions. I learned so much that I can’t begin to tell you everything. But I can take you there tomorrow, if you have a mind to learn something.”
“I’ll not have one of their devices twisting my brain, thank you!” Orick growled. “I saw what it did to Maggie!”
“It’s not the same,” Gallen said. “This is a different kind of machine. It won’t hurt you.”
“Won’t hurt me, eh?” Orick said. “What have they done to you? There’s a new look in your eyes, Gallen O’Day. You’re not the same man who left here two days ago. You can’t tell me that you’re the same, can you?”
“No,” Gallen said. “I’m not the same.” He reflected for a moment. Only a few days before, Everynne had told him that she found the naiveté of his world to be refreshing. She’d wished that all worlds could be so innocent. And now Gallen lived in a much larger universe, a universe where there was no distinct boundary between man and machine, where immortals wielded vast power over entire worlds, where alien races battled the thousand subspecies of mankind for dominance in three separate galaxies.
Gallen could have described the situation to Orick, but he knew Orick wanted to be a priest. He wanted to sustain the faith of those in Tihrglas, ensure the continuation of the status quo, and Gallen saw that this too was a valuable thing. In one small corner of the galaxy there could be sweet, blissful ignorance. In one small corner of the galaxy, adults could remain children. Knowledge carries its own price.
“I have learned some of the lore of the sidhe,” Gallen said at last. “Not a lot, but perhaps enough. I’m going to try to steal Maggie back.”
In a darkened room in the city of Toohkansay, nine lords of Fale sat around a table in their black robes and boots. Their masked faces shone in shades of crimson starlight. Veriasse and Everynne sat with them, both masked and cloaked as lords, Everynne in a pale blue mask, Veriasse in aquamarine. Though they had been on the planet for less than an hour, Veriasse had set up this meeting nearly five years earlier, and as Everynne watched her guardian, she could see that he was tense to the snapping point. His back was rigidly straight, and his mask revealed his profound worry.
All their years of plotting came to this. If anyone down the long trail of freedom fighters had betrayed them, now was when they would be arrested. And everyone in the room expected to be arrested: one of their number had not been seen in two days. Surely, the dronon had captured him, wrung his secrets from him. Because of this, they had been forced to change the meeting place at the last moment.
One crimson lord, a woman whose name Everynne did not even know, pulled from the depths of her robe a small glass globe, a yellow sphere that could easily fit in Everynne’s palm or in a pocket. “As Lord of the Technicians of Fale, I freely give you this in behalf of my people,” the woman said. “Use it wisely, if you must use it at all.”
Everynne took the globe, held it in her palm. It was as heavy as lead. Inside, was a small dark cloud at the machine’s core-a housing where the nanotech components were stored, along with a small explosive charge designed to crack the globe and set its microscopic inhabitants free. In ages past, only a few weapons like this had ever been used. People called it “the Terror.” It seemed only right to Everynne that something which could destroy a world would be so gravid, so weighty.
“How fast will it work?” Everynne asked.
The crimson lady’s mask showed sadness. “The Terrors reproduce at an explosive rate. We designed them to seek out carbon molecules and form graphite. On a living planet, every animal, every plant, the atmosphere itself will be destroyed. Only the Terrors will survive for more than a day. They will appear as a blue shimmering cloud, moving outward through the sky at two thousand kilometers per hour. On the ground and in the sea, they move somewhat faster. The Terrors would destroy most worlds within a matter of twelve to eighteen hours.”
Everynne watched the woman’s face. The crimson lady was old, centuries old, and in that time she had probably learned to control her emotions exquisitely, yet her voice cracked as she spoke of the machine’s capacity for genocide.
“And how fast could this destroy Dronon?” Veriasse asked. “Will the Terrors be slowed significantly by being forced to reproduce on such a dry, desolate world?”
Even as Veriasse asked the question, Everynne cringed. The thought that the weapon might actually be used disturbed her. Time and again, she had begged Veriasse not to fashion such a weapon, to create only a simulated Terror. If the glass case broke, an entire planet would be destroyed. But Veriasse would not hear her arguments. He planned to take the Terror to the planet Dronon itself. He wanted to fear him, and the only way he could arouse such fear was if the dronon knew that a working Terror lay hidden on their world.
But sometimes at night, Everynne wondered if he had a hidden agenda. If refused to concede to his demands, she wondered, would Veriasse hesitate to lay the planet Dronon to waste?
“Dronon’s atmosphere is heavier in carbon dioxide than most. The Terrors will find it to their taste.”
Another of the masked lords smiled cruelly and said, “I designed the package with Dronon in mind. The planet can be terminated in six hours and fourteen minutes. Just make sure that you are near the imperial lair when you set it off.”
Everynne was disturbed by the man’s maleficent air. It pained her to see her people given over to such hatred. Though she knew that the dronons had killed her own mother, Everynne did not hate them. She understood them too well, understood their need for order at any cost, their instinctive desire to expand their territories and control their environment. “Let us have no more talk of genocide,” Everynne said. “Even if we tried to fight the dronon on such terms, they would be forced to retaliate. In such a war, there can be no victors.”